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GNOME 3.12

GNOME Software

The GNOME Software application installer (the gnome-software package), which was first introduced in Fedora 20, is now more integrated in the system and provides additional functionality. Notable new features include:

• Installing application add-ons is now supported.
• High quality metadata, such as screenshots, are now offered with many applications, allowing you to gather more information before installing a package.
• The installer has been turned into a session service, which allows it to check for available system updates automatically even when the application itself has not been launched by the user. This functionality was previously provided by the gnome-settings-daemon service.
• The application is now much better integrated into GNOME Shell:
  • Available system updates are now offered in the Power Off dialog.
  • Non-installed packages can now be displayed among search results when using the integrated search function.
  • You can now right-click an application icon in the shell overview and select Show Details from the menu to obtain information about the application.
• You can now create and customize application folders using the application installer.
• The tool now starts up much faster and provides a more responsive interface due to the switch from the YUM backend to the one provided by the DNF project.

See the Application Installer Continued wiki page for more information.

Wayland support in GNOME

GNOME is being ported to Wayland. In particular, GNOME shell is being changed to run as a Wayland compositor instead of an X11 compositor. Other components of GNOME which currently talk directly to the X server, such as gnome-settings-daemon or gnome-control-center, will be ported to corresponding Wayland interfaces. Most GTK+ applications will continue to work normally using the existing Wayland backend.

Applications that make use of X-specific APIs continue to be supported using the xwayland X server, which is started on demand. gdm supports both Wayland-based sessions and X-based sessions.

Important
Proprietary driver support in Wayland is less complete than under X. Systems that have been configured to use proprietary drivers under X will fall back to using open-source drivers under Wayland. Addionally, support for alternative input devices such as Wacom tablets or joysticks may not be available in time for Fedora 21.

For additional information about Wayland in general, see the official documentation. The Wayland page on the GNOME wiki provides information relating specifically to Wayland in GNOME.

MATE 1.8

The MATE desktop environment in Fedora has been updated to version 1.8. The updated version brings a number of visual and functional changes, such as new applets and extensions and support for UPower 1.0. The default sound mixer has been switched from GStreamer to PulseAudio. MATE now also uses the Yelp help browser, which fixes issues with broken links in help pages.

Many packages which are part of MATE were either renamed or replaced.

A full list of changes is available on the MATE 1.8 wiki page and the MATE 1.8 release announcement.

To install MATE, use the yum groupinstall "MATE Desktop" command, and then select MATE from the menu the next time you log in.

(Other notes, do not publicanize)

Mesa update

SDL2 stack