Introducing GNOME 3.10

The GNOME project is proud to present GNOME 3.10. The release comes six months after 3.8, and contains 34786 changes by approximately 985 contributors. It contains major new features as well as a large collection of smaller enhancements. 3.10 provides an improved experience for users, as well as new capabilities for application developers.

New features in GNOME 3.10 include:

Wayland

Wayland is the next generation technology for display and input on Linux. It promises to deliver smoother graphics, with improved animations and transitions. Wayland's modern architecture will provide greater flexibility for developers, and will enable more secure sandboxed applications. 3.10 introduces experimental Wayland support, which allows GNOME as well as GNOME applications to be run using Wayland. This is an important milestone on the road to full Wayland adoption, and will let developers test their software with Wayland. More details can be found in the developer notes.

Integrated System Status

GNOME 3.10 features a new, redesigned system status area. In previous versions, the system status area was made up of a series of menus in the corner of the top bar. The new system status area replaces this with a single menu. This allows you to quickly get an overview of the state of your device, and provides a more focused top bar which only displays information that you care about. Among many improvements, the new menu provides easier mouse interaction, privacy enhancements, a new screen brightness slider, and a better airplane mode.

Header Bars

A new interface element has been introduced in 3.10: header bars. These merge titlebars and toolbars into a single element, giving more screen space to window content. Header bars also allow more dynamic application interfaces whose controls adjust to the current view, and they ensure that window close buttons are always present, irrespective of whether a window is maximized or unmaximized.

New Applications

GNOME's mission to create a new set of core applications continues in GNOME 3.10. There is a whole collection of new applications in this version, including Music, Photos, Notes, Software and Maps. For more details, see below as well as the section on New and Updated Applications.

Software

GNOME 3.10 includes a brand new application for finding and installing applications, called Software. It provides an integrated place to do all your software related tasks, like browsing, installing and removing applications, and viewing and installing software updates. It contains sections for recommended applications and an easy to use interface for browsing available applications. We have lots of plans for the future of Software, including user ratings, comments and screenshots of applications that you might want to install.

Geolocation

A new geolocation framework has been created for GNOME 3.10. This allows your location to be automatically determined using various data sources, including your internet connection and GPS. The new framework is being used in a number of places: a new Automatic Time Zone setting makes your device's clock update when you move to different time zones, and Clocks will automatically show a clock for your current location. GNOME 3.10 also introduces a new maps application, which can detect where you are and show a map of your location.

Getting GNOME 3.10

GNOME's software is Free Software: all our code is available for download and can be freely modified and redistributed. To install it, we recommend that you wait for the official packages provided by your vendor or distribution. Popular distributions will make GNOME 3.10 available very soon, and some already have development versions that include the new GNOME release.

About GNOME

The GNOME Project is an international community supported by a non-profit Foundation. We focus on user experience excellence and first-class internationalization and accessibility. GNOME is a free and open project: if you want to join us, you can.