A Release Schedule, Features For GNOME 3.2

Two weeks have passed since the release of GNOME 3.0, but preparations are already under-way for the next major release: GNOME 3.2. Continuing in the GNOME release tradition, and while it's not yet shipping in most Linux distributions, the next release will occur in six months time and take place at the end of September.

A tentative release schedule for GNOME 3.2 has been published to the GNOME Live Wiki. The official GNOME 3.2.0 release is set for the end of September, but before that there are a number of development milestones. The first GNOME 3.2 milestone, the 3.1.1 snapshot, is set to take place in less than one month on the 9th of May. A second snapshot (3.1.2) will come in mid-June, two more snapshots in July, two snapshots in August (including the GNOME 3.2 Beta), and then another beta and release candidate in early September.

On the 28 of September, the GNOME 3.2.0 release is set to officially take place. Phoronix readers and I will meanwhile will be celebrating by drinking Augustiner and eating Wiesn Hendl and Bretzn at Oktoberfest. Should there be a GNOME 3.2 Oktoberfest release party? I've never thought of doing such before during "PhoronixFest."

With the 3.0 release out the door, Vincent Untz has also decided to step down as being the release manager of GNOME. Karsten Bräckelmann, Frédéric Crozat, and Lucas Rocha will also be departing the GNOME release team. The announcement was made in this email.

There's also notes from the latest GNOME meeting. Some of the highlights include the 3.0 release being smoother than expected, compliments about the execution of GNOME 3.0, their latest hack-fest was useful, NetworkManager 0.9 is weak, and the GNOME marketing team did a good job.

Features for GNOME 3.2 are already being discussed in this Wiki page. What's been brought up so far is improving accessibility for GNOME 3.x, finishing up the color management work, a shell-style GNOME log-in screen greeter, bringing more system dialogs up to the GNOME3 standards, and better support for GNOME on tablets and other touch-screen devices. There's also hope to integrate more web applications with the desktop.

There's also GTK+ 3.2 to look forward to that will allow GTK applications to run in the web-browser over the Internet thanks to HTML5 and the Broadway back-end.