As many of our readers will know, or should, GNOME It is a desktop made up of a graphical environment, applications and libraries. Although it is mainly used in Linux, for example in the main editions of Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora, it is also used in other systems such as BSD, and some applications are for Windows and macOS. One of the new things that happened in the week from February 28 to March 7 is not for Linux.
What comes next is the list with news that have taken place in GNOME over the past seven days. What is not covered and is also worth mentioning is that GNOME RC 48 has been released, for which we have written an article on one of our sister blogs LXA.
This week in GNOME
- The GTK backend for Android has gained preliminary support for OpenGL. While it is not yet fully implemented, most applications that make use of Gtk.GLArea should now work and other applications should see noticeable performance improvements, especially in shadows.
- GTK applications on macOS will use native window controls starting with version 4.18. To preserve backward compatibility, this behavior is optional; application developers can use native controls by setting the GtkHeaderBar:use-native-controls, either in code or in user interface definition files.
- Time has been spent revising all of the regex expressions that Apostrophe uses for Markdown syntax highlighting and document statistics. They are now more accurate and less prone to performance issues.
- This week, Refine 0.5.0, the GNOME Tweaks alternative that takes advantage of data-driven and composition paradigms, has arrived. This release adds back the Document source option, and renames “Middle-click paste” to “Middle-click text paste” with an accompanying subtitle. 0.5.0 also adds the ability to rearrange window buttons in the title bar. This new feature also allows for the addition of minimize and maximize buttons.
- Pins version 2.1 is now available. This release will make the app grid more complete, thanks to fixes and improvements to app loading, and more colorful, as Pins can now display app icons from non-standard locations. An option to show or hide system apps has also been added.
- Foresight is a new GNOME Shell extension that automatically opens the activity view in empty workspaces. It uses callbacks to monitor windows and workspaces (rather than actively checking them at certain time intervals), making it very efficient and responsive.
And that's been it for this week at GNOME.
Images and content: TWIG.