GNOME 48, the Linux desktop environment that will be default for Ubuntu 25.04 & Fedora 42 Workstation, now is in Beta stage.
The release team announced it just a few hours ago in GNOME Discourse, along with an installer image for testing and porting extensions.
GNOME added experimental HDR support since version 44. It’s a technology allowing to transmit high dynamic range videos and images to compatible displays. In GNOME 48, GCC (GNOME Control Center) finally has a toggle option in the Display setting page to turn on/off this feature.
For GNOME 44 ~ 47 users who want to try it out, I’ve written a tutorial about how to do the trick in Ubuntu 24.04/24.10.
The GNOME 48 alpha release introduced screen time support, which was however disabled by default. The feature is enabled in this Beta, and GCC now has a “Wellbeing” setting page for viewing how much screen time you spent, as well as options to limit screen time usage.
GDM display manager in the release now has banner-message-path and banner-message-source configuration keys. Meaning it can now display a message in the login screen, by loading the text from a file. See how to add login screen message.
The release also introduced GNOME Display Control (gdctl), a command line utility to detect and configure monitors, including configuring HDR.
Loupe image viewer has basic editing support since the last alpha. The beta improved the feature by adding keyboard shorcuts for some operations, as well as options to overwrite original, cancal saving operation, etc.
Other changes in GNOME 48 Beta include:
- Configure screen time with org/gnome/desktop/screen-time-limits.
- Add Conversion mode in GNOME Calculator.
- Add single-panel-mode for distros to launch Settings in a single panel (without sidebar).
- Add “Restart” and “Power Off” keyboard shortcuts, though disabled by default.
- Allow running custom commands in lock screen.
- Support installing flatpak apps in GNOME Software with a flatpak + https: link.
- Introduced new GTK backend, allows running GTK applications on Android phones (experimental).
- Calendar now allows selecting timezones for the start and end times of events
- Gnome remote desktop added support for zero copy rendering with Vulkan and VAAPI, though disabled by default.
- GNOME Text editor now has search-bar in bottom.
- Snapshot (the camera app) now properly detects missing camera permissions.
How to Get/Try out GNOME 48 Beta
As mentioned, GNOME release team provides an installer image (see link at top) for trying out the desktop in either Gnome Boxes or bare metal.
Ubuntu 25.04 this time is the first Linux Distro that includes GNOME 48 Beta, though GCC is still in the proposed repository at the moment of writing. You may try out the daily build image which is available to download at this page.
And if everything goes well, the GNOME 48 stable will be released on 2025-03-19.
