GNOME Software Now Supports Upgrading Linux OSes from One Release to Another

The GNOME Project is currently in the process of releasing the first Beta milestone of the upcoming GNOME 3.20 desktop environment, so they're upgrading most of the core components to the Beta 1 status.

GNOME Software is one of the most important components of the GNOME desktop environment, and it has been updated earlier to version 3.20 Beta 1 (technical version number is 3.19.90). Thus, Softpedia is now the first website to reveal the new features implemented in the upcoming release, which, of course, will be distributed along with GNOME 3.20 on March 23, 2016.

As you can see from the changelog attached at the end of the article, GNOME Software 3.20 Beta 1 now lets users upgrade their GNU/Linux operating system from one release to another and implements end-user application review functionality. It also introduces support for Limba bundles and xdg-app, and adds tags to apps, which are explained on the details page. Various language translations have been updated as well.

Furthermore, the list of featured applications has been updated on the front page, the software center metadata file has received the missing tag, and support for the PackageKit distro-agnostic Linux software installer has been made optional. Then, the "Remove" button has been temporarily dropped in the "Sources" dialog, and new app screenshots are picked up from versioned user cache directories.

GNOME Software is coming to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

If you've been reading the news lately, you might know that the Ubuntu developers are planning on replacing the old and deprecated Ubuntu Software Center application with GNOME Software in the upcoming Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system. They might, however, change their minds before the final release gets out on April 21, 2016.

Until then, if you want to take the current development version of GNOME Software 3.20 for a test drive on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, you must add an official PPA following the instructions below. For other Linux OSes, you can manually compile the GNOME Software 3.20 Beta 1 sources, which you can download right now via Softpedia.