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

This release candidate is the last feature complete development version, while, the final release is planned for March 18th in next few weeks.

The RC updated the mutter window manager with sdr-native color mode support for better experience on for users with wide-color-gamut displays. There are as well multi monitor support for Devkit, and, HDR screen sharing support.

This makes screen share PipeWire streams advertise FP16/RGB10 formats with the BT2020 + PQ primaries/transfer function combination, and when used for the stream after negotiation, the resulting buffers will contain “HDR” pixels. The BT2020 + PQ format parameters will only be advertised if the shared monitor is in HDR mode.

The session save and restore feature that was introduced in Aplha release is hidden now and postponed to a future release of GNOME. Because the feature doesn’t really work without the participation of apps. And, so far even GNOME’s own core apps do not support the feature.

Sleep inhibitors (processes that prevent system going sleep) are now ignored when user manually suspends the system, though it will likely need to authenticate before ignoring the inhibitors. And, systemd will, by default, automatically ignore sleep inhibitors when a laptop’s lid is closed.

GNOME Software now remembers the window size between app restarts, and it allows to remove Flatpak remotes from system installation.

The screen reader Orca now uses GSettings, and existing settings will be migrated from JSON automatically. A new “Say All” option is added to only speak displayed text, making reading a long web page smoother. And, new option is added to read chat room messages from the active room when in any application.

Other changes in the release include:

• Support wp-color-management v2.
• Allow selecting hidden languages by searching in Gnome Initial setup.
• Add Primary Sim Slot setting for WWAN.
• Allow using arrow keys to navigate in Gnome Calendar Month view

For more changes in GNOME 50 RC, see the NEWS page in GNOME website.

Get GNOME 50 RC

GNOME provides a GNOME OS .iso image for the release, which is available to download via the link below:

Besides trying out the GNOME OS in Virtual Machine (only support GNOME Boxes), Arch Linux has made this RC into Gnome Unstable repository, Fedora 44 has made it into testing repository, and Ubuntu 26.04 LTS will build it soon in next few weeks.