Gnome 43 Beta Released

Desktop Environments Gnome
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Greetings lovely community,

I only just heard about this news so I’m still currently in the process of downloading the 2.36GB beta .iso image, but Gnome 43 Beta has been officially released. It just so happens to also be released on the same day as Gnome’s 25’th birthday btw so this is no mere coincidence! For the official announcement from the Gnome devs, see the below link:

https://mail.gnome.org/archives/devel-announce-list/2022-August/msg00002.html

For a quick rundown of what’s included in this release, see the excellent Phoronix link here:

I don’t have much to add at the moment that the links above don’t already address, but feel free to use this thread as a Gnome 43 Beta (and bugs*) discussion.

A brief word of caution from the Gnome Devs regarding the Beta release:

WARNING!

This is beta quality software. This release is intended for GNOME
developers and beta testers. For more information about GNOME 43,
including the full schedule, please see our wiki page:

https://wiki.gnome.org/FortyThree

This is a Beta, so please do not install it on any production machine if you are concerned about stability. This is really only meant to be tested in a VM environment like on Boxes, so please be aware of that. If you do decide to install this on bare metal (not advised), you do so at your own risk.

With the release of this beta, it begins the final month the Gnome devs have to put the finishing touches on everything before the September 21st stable release date. So feel free to test and if you come across any bugs, feel free to share about them and if need be we can notify upstream of any they aren’t already aware of and tracking.

That’s all I have for now, so share your Gnome 43 beta experiences below.

Edit: Direct link for Gnome 43 Beta iso: https://os.gnome.org/download/43.beta/gnome_os_installer_43.beta.iso

Edit2: For a full list of changelogs so far, here is an exhaustive list:
https://ftp-nyc.osuosl.org/pub/gnome/core/43/43.beta/NEWS

Edit3: Here’s a 4 minute video breakdown by 9to5Linux of what to expect with the Gnome 43 Beta:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b97Z_fMG0I

6 Likes
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Downloaded the iso (twice) and can’t get qemu to recognize the image as bootable. Not going to install boxes flatpak just to look at this. I have been maintaining an extension and really just want to test that for compatibility. Maybe I am at the end of my run with Gnome DE?

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I just the Boxes flatpak myself (it’s also what the devs recommend using) and I had no issues installing other than once it installed and reboot, I had to close and reopen Boxes so it actually loaded the new installed installation. Testing it out it’s a very bare bones Gnome OS Nightly kind of build, so it’s very limited, but there’s a lot of progress to GTK4. Still a lot of GTK3 apps there too, but I imagine by Gnome 45 or 46 most, if not all Gnome apps will be GTK4 by then (at least that’s my hope).

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I also tried it on vmware and it wouldn’t recognize the partition created to install it on. :man_shrugging:

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It’s coming along well.

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The image might need UEFI to boot.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface#OVMF_for_virtual_machines

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Usually just disable secure boot on tianocore and GNOME OS will boot, maybe need to add .iso image on devices and share, i use default boxes on fedora not flatpak version.

Captura de tela de 2022-08-17 21-14-39

Captura de tela de 2022-08-17 21-34-25

Captura de tela de 2022-08-17 21-19-30

in the last case you can use a branched fedora 37 image or rawhide to test gnome 43.beta.

https://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/compose/branched/latest-Fedora-37/compose/

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This fixed me up. I wasn’t paying enough attention while creating the VM

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Screenshot from 2022-08-18 16-30-16

I installed Gnome 43 so you don’t have to… AMA

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Initial impressions:

  • Animations feel smoother and overall nicer
  • Nautilus improvements are really good
  • current version of sushi is broken so no file previews
  • I like the new buttons in the top bar menu

I don’t really use any extensions but I assume a lot of them won’t work properly until updated

Nothing groundbreaking but seems like a nice incremental update, and apps written in gtk4 & libadwita look and feel nicer than gtk3 ones

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https://blogs.gnome.org/aday/2022/08/25/help-improve-gnome/

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Looking good so far.

Been reading the changelog for nautilus and seeing them restoring disk integration makes me hopeful that we could see the ability to display partitions in the sidebar at some point. I use bookmarks in order to have easy access to them right now.

Speaking of bookmarks, was the ability to move them around in the sidebar added? Like, move a bookmark to be between home and documents for example. Didn’t see anything written about this but I’m curious.

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Nope can’t move them they have their own section

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GNOME 43 control menu (or what is it called?) (Fedora 37 Beta)

Screenshot from 2022-09-17 12-48-19

GNOME 42 (Archlinux):

Screenshot from 2022-09-17 12-51-44

I don’t really like the new look/layout of the control menu.
I like better the slicker look of the older one.

Also, unfortunate that the battery remaining time is removed.

Does anyone know if there is a way to get back the “legacy” look?
An extension, perhaps? :wink:

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Definitely not yet.

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There’s MATE :wink:

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I meant “legacy” as in GNOME 42 not prehistoric as in MATE :sweat_smile:

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19

fabis cafe is there to serve it :wink:

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I used to use Ubuntu with Gnome 2. “Prehistoric” :smiling_face_with_tear:

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Jurassic :wink: