14 DAY TRIAL // The GNOME development team has announced that the final version of its latest GNOME desktop environment, 3.14, has been released and all the new packages are now available for download.
Unlike the previous 3.12 release, the new version doesn't pack the same amount of visible changes, but it has been described by the developers as a refined experience, and that really encompasses all.
The GNOME development cycle didn't hit any major bumps in the road and the new version just made available will probably hit the repositories soon enough, not to mention the fact that it's going to be integrated in multiple distros.
What's new about GNOME 3.14
This new version of GNOME is the result of six months of hard work. The 3.12 branch was a great release and the new one tries to build upon that with a ton of improvements spread across dozens of packages, all working together to provide a better experience.
"The latest GNOME release also includes major improvements for developers, including GTK+ Inspector (a new utility to examine and modify running GTK+ applications), the ability to use SVG assets as a part of GTK+ themes, improved touchscreen support, and major progress towards Wayland," reads the announcement from the GNOME development team.
According to the announcement, new animations have been implemented in the Activities Overview, along with new window animations, the handling for Wi-Fi hotspots that require users to login (so-called "captive portals") is now handled automatically, an improved weather application that uses geolocation to show the weather for the current location of the users has been implemented, support has been added for browsing Google pictures in Photos, and the touchscreen support has been improved and now has multi-touch gestures for both the system and applications.
These are just a few of the new features that can be found in GNOME 3.14. It will take a while until some of the distributions out there are able to integrate it. Most likely, the first ones to do it will be Arch Linux and Debian Testing (Jessie), but it's not impossible that someone else will do it before them.
Also, if you are an Ubuntu fan, you will have to wait for it. The upcoming Ubuntu GNOME 14.10 flavor has only GNOME 3.12, so only the next version in April 2015 will probably get GNOME 3.14.
You can check out the official announced on GNOME.org. You can also download the source packages for GNOME 3.14, but unless you know how to compile and integrate the elements of a desktop environment, you should leave it alone and wait until it hits the repositories.
