After yesterday's Ubuntu 17.04 Final Beta releases, I decided to try out the new (second beta) Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 which was released with the new GNOME 3.24 desktop environment.
The final version of Ubuntu GNOME 17.04, which will be released on April 13, will ship with the GNOME 3.24 desktop environment. Although I am not a fan of Ubuntu, I decided to try the new beta, as GNOME 3.24 brings many attractive features. Among them is Night Light.
This feature could not be missing from Ubuntu. Windows 10 Creators Update, Apple's iOS and Google's Android have this feature that can automatically reduce the amount of blue light emitted by laptop screens, computer screens and phone screens during the night.
In GNOME 3.24 the developers decided to add a blue light filter and called the feature Night Light.
We found that there is an updated Calendar app, as well as the all-new recipe app, GNOME Recipes for those with culinary concerns…
However, some of the applications that the new Gnome brings come in older versions, due to some bugs that were not resolved at the time of release. So we have the Nautilus file manager 3.20.4, the GNOME package manager 3.22 with Flatpak 0.8 support, GNOME Terminal 3.22, Evolution 3.22 and File Roller 3.22.
We expect that by the official release, all of the above applications will be at version 3.24.
Notable changes in Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 final Beta include the chrome-gnome-shell system helper being installed by default. The Tracker search indexing engine is now sandboxed. gnome-icon-theme and gconf are not installed by default, and there is an experimental Wayland session.
“An experimental Wayland session is included, but it doesn't come by default. If your computer supports the open source graphics drivers and you want to try Wayland, log out, and select GNOME on Wayland from the tools menu below the password entry, and log back in.”
Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 final Beta comes with Linux kernel 4.10, Mesa 17.0.1 3D Graphics Library, systemd-resolved as the default DNS resolver. The new operating system uses swap files instead of swap partitions, and comes with the LibreOffice 5.3 office suite installed.
If you want to download Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 final Beta for some testing and can't wait until its final release on April 13, you can download the 64-bit or 32-bit Live ISOs from the links below.
64-bit PC (AMD64) desktop image
32-bit PC (i386) desktop image
