14 DAY TRIAL // A few moments ago, Softpedia received an email from Javier Jardón Cabezas of the GNOME Project, informing us about the general availability of the first Beta of the upcoming GNOME 3.20 desktop environment.
Our Linux readers should be very much aware of the fact that the GNOME Project was planning on releasing the GNOME 3.20 Beta 1 desktop environment this week, as we've written several articles about some of the included apps and core components.
Initially planned for February 17, GNOME 20 Beta 1 (technical version number is 3.19.90) is now ready for early adopters who want to take it for a test drive and see what's new, as well as OS vendors that plan on building their upcoming distributions around GNOME 3.20.
"With a little delay, but here it is: GNOME 3.19.90 is now available. Note I had some problems to compile some modules, but hopefully, they will be fixed for the next release," said Javier Jardón Cabezas on behalf of the GNOME Release Team.
GNOME 3.20 is planned for a March 23 launch
Now that the first Beta build of GNOME 3.20 is out and public testers can grab the modulesets and jhbuild to take it for a test drive, the upcoming desktop environment has entered Feature Freeze, as well as API/ABI Freeze and UI Freeze.
What this means is that no more features, API or ABI changes will be added to the upcoming builds. However, the GNOME 3.20 development cycle will continue with a second Beta build on the second day of March, and an RC release on March 16, 2016.
The final release of the GNOME 3.20 desktop environment is planned for a March 23 launch, and the first point release, GNOME 3.20.1, will hit the streets on April 13, 2016, giving OS vendors enough time to push the new packages to their repositories.