14 DAY TRIAL // Matthias Clasen has announced that the GNOME development team has released GNOME 3.15.2, which is the next iteration of the famous desktop environment. It's still early in the development cycle, so this is where all the major changes are made.
The development cycle for 3.15.x started back in October and the makers of GNOME have been very busy implementing numerous changes and fixes.
This branch will eventually evolve into 3.16, which is also the stable version of the desktop environment. Until then, users will have to check from time to time to see what is happening with the software stack.
The GNOME 3.14 release is still fresh and numerous distros have already integrated it or are planning to add it. It was received very well by the community and it looks like it's another winner (the 3.12 branch was also a success).
In fact, the 3.14 software stack has already received a couple of updates that corrected some issues and that should land the repositories very soon.
GNOME 3.15.2 brings more Wayland and Mir support
The first iterations in a new branch of GNOME are usually full of interesting stuff and the same is true for the current version. Not all of the packages have been updated, but there are some interesting changes nonetheless, especially for GTK+.
It looks like both the Wayland and the Mir teams are working to get the ball rolling for GNOME. If the work on the Wayland support was started a long time ago, the Mir modifications are just being made.
"Just in time for thanksgiving, here is the second snapshot of the GNOME 3.15 development cycle, the 3.15.2 release. To build GNOME 3.15.2, you can use the jhbuild modulesets (which use the exact tarball versions from the official release)."
"This release is a snapshot of early development code. Although it is buildable and usable, it is primarily intended for testing and hacking purposes. GNOME uses odd minor version numbers to indicate development status," said Matthias Clasen.
GNOME 3.15.2 has the following new core apps: at-spi2-core, atk, Caribou, Eye of GNOME, Epiphany, GNOME Contacts, GNOME Control Center, GNOME Desktop, GTK+, GNOME Online Accounts, GNOME Terminal, Nautilus, Totem (Videos), Tracker, Vino, and a few others.
Some of the integrated apps have also been updated, such as Brasero, Cheese, Evolution, Gedit, GNOME Boxes, GNOME Chess, GNOME Clock, GNOME Software, GNOME Photos, Rygel, Tali, Orca, and more.
Check the official announcement for more details about this release. You can download GNOME 3.15.2 sources right now from Softpedia. Regular users won't find any use for the sources, but they might be interested in the changes being made.
The next development version of GNOME is expected to arrive on December 15, 2014, and the final version on March 23, 2015.
