Interesting times are awaiting the GNOME users

Feb 27, 2015 10:18 GMT  ·  By

The first Beta version for the 15.04 branch of Ubuntu GNOME is now out and users will be able to test it. There aren't too many changes, but there are a couple of interesting new features and one of them involves Wayland.

Ubuntu GNOME 15.04 Beta 1 (Vivid Vervet) is based on GNOME 3.14 and that is not something to change in time for the release. Implementing the latest GNOME packages takes time and there isn't any left. In fact, Feature Freeze is in effect and that means developers can only fix bugs and other issues, not push any major changes.

That doesn't mean that GNOME 3.16 won't be available, via the regular PPAs, soon after the launch of Ubuntu GNOME 15.04 in April. It's possible that Ubuntu GNOME devs will take some flak on this matter, yet again, but it's not something they can change.

Ubuntu GNOME 15.04 Beta 1 (Vivid Vervet) brings an important new option

The latest GNOME iteration saw the introduction of support for the Wayland display server and now we finally get to see it work in a distribution, like Ubuntu GNOME. It's not implemented by default, but that doesn't make it any less interesting.

"We’re preparing Ubuntu GNOME Vivid Vervet (15.04) for distribution in April 23rd, 2015. With this Beta 1 pre-release, you can see what we are trying out in preparation for our next (stable) version. We have some interesting things happening," reads the official wiki entry.

"Experimental wayland session is now available. Install gnome-session-wayland and then select 'GNOME on wayland' from login screen (Only works with OSS GPU drivers)," is also noted on the website.

Other upgrades include the addition of the GNOME 3.14.3 stack, the default wallpaper, and the Ubiquity slideshow.

Users can download the latest Ubuntu GNOME 15.04 Beta 1 from Softpedia. It's a developer release, so please be careful when installing or using it. You really shouldn't use a production machine for this one.

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