GNOME OS – The Next Milestone Version (MR)

GNOME is a desktop operating system that features a suite of applications and tools. It aims to offer a comprehensive experience that works as it should out of the box and is accessible for new users coming from other operating systems. Unlike other Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, which focus on creating an OS that works well for mobile devices GNOME is agnostic and focuses on desktops and laptops. This means that new mobile hardware is supported but GNOME has a hard time making its user interface and applications touchscreen friendly. Consequently GNOME desktops often don’t run smoothly on mobile devices and the UI suffers from problems like swiping gestures not working correctly.

The team behind gnome os has been working on these issues for a while now and recently released their first milestone version (MR). The MR contains many experiments to improve the usability of the UI. These include swiping gesture support in the navbar, Google Drive integration in Files, and more. The MR also comes with an updated look for GNOME Software, improvements to Files and Polari, a redesigned keyboard settings panel, and more. Lastly the MR includes full Flatpak support, allowing users to install and update apps from the app catalog via the unified launcher.

In the upcoming versions of GNOME, the project will continue to improve the user interface and application support for mobile devices. This is especially important because GNOME’s community is growing rapidly. According to Tobias Bernard, a designer at GNOME, a number of different GNOME projects are aiming to address the challenges of making GNOME more mobile friendly, including work on a unified UI for the desktop and a separate UI for mobile devices.

Aside from mobile device support GNOME os will continue to make improvements in its core components. This includes a refreshed activities overview with frequent and all apps, better layout of the window grid, and a new initial setup assistant. It will also incorporate a more complete password manager, Google Docs integration, and dual page mode in Polari. Additionally, the message tray will react to the force with which the pointer is pressed against the screen edge and it will display more notifications.

Those interested in giving gnome os a try can do so by downloading the latest nightly build here. This will allow them to create a bootable image that they can run on their computer. Once the image is created, it can be regenerated with any updates to the operating system. This allows users to try out the latest changes to the operating system.

GNOME os uses a lot of the same technologies that are found in other Linux distributions, including UEFI, systemd, and Wayland. It is built on top of a kernel that supports x86_64 and ARM64 hardware. It leverages Flatpak for a broad application base, and utilizes OSTree to provide atomic updates. It can be installed on real systems via UEFI and is designed to run decently on modern x86_64 hardware.