GNOME 50, the default desktop for Ubuntu 26.04 and Fedora Workstation 44, is now in alpha testing stage.

This development version is postponed by more than one week according to the release calendar. Features include entirely removed X11 support, week-start-day setting, and more.

GNOME on Xorg was removed since version 49. The new version continues the step by “entirely removed X11 support”, though with an exception:

Entirely removed X11 support, except for the ability to launch other desktops’ X11 sessions with a per-user X server. This means that features like XDCMP and system-wide Xserver are gone, and that GDM’s own sessions will always run with Wayland.

I was confused a bit about the “per-user X server”, so tried to upgrade to Gnome 50 alpha in Arch Linux. And, it did allow to load the XFCE session with class Xorg.

Besides removed X11/Xorg support, the GDM login screen manager introduced a new gnome-headless-session@<username>.service, making easier to start a headless graphical session (i.e. for RDP purposes).

The gdm/gdm3 user is dropped, instead, it entirely relies on dynamically allocated users. Special sessions (like GDM, initial-setup) are now loaded from .desktop files rather than being hard-coded into GDM. And, Linux 6.18’s new boot_display sysfs attribute is supported to identify the primary GPU.

GNOME 50 alpha added support configuring the first day of a week, which is useful for users from most of Europe and China.

I didn’t find the graphical option to do the job, but running the gsettings command in terminal (Gnome Console) worked for me to set Monday as the first weekday.

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.calendar week-start-day "monday"

And, not only Monday, it seems that it supports all the day of the week though you need to type them in lower case in the command (e.g., tuesday, wednesday).

Besides the week-start-day, the new version also added session save-restore gsettings key. And, it’s described as:

When true, running apps will be saved at log-out time and restored on next login.

But, not sure if it’s permission issue or something else, the feature apparently does NOT work.

GNOME Files (aka Nautilus) in this version got a big performance improvements for thumbnail loading via new custom widget. And, the context menu (right-click menu) for Trash or Recent now include an option to open their own settings page.

GNOME Control Center (aka System Settings) has been updated with save/restore toggle switch in Multitasking (though I didn’t see it), ability to change password with remote user, and Animation Effects reverted back to Reduce Animation.

Other changes include:

• Support saving AVIF image through GdkPixbuf.
• Add XBM and XPM support for Glycin image loading library.
• Support image/x-win-bitmap for setting default app to open .cur files.
• Support for customizing the alarm bell in Gnome Clock, though requires FFmpeg in build time.
• Add zoom-on-double-click for maps using libshumate.
• Improve support for tablet devices.
• Improve native Xwayland scaling support.

Get GNOME 50 Alpha

The announcement, changelog, and Gnome OS image for trying out the new Alpha are available in the Gnome Discourse via the link below:

For Arch Linux, this alpha is already made into the Gnome Unstable repository. And, Ubuntu 26.04 and Fedora 44 Workstation will include the new desktop soon if everything goes well.