GNOME 3.22, the second major update this year to the GNOME desktop environment, debuted Sept. 21—and since then, has made its way into the repositories of Linux distributions, including Fedora and openSUSE. Much as was the case with the GNOME 3.20 update earlier this year, many of the changes in the latest iteration of the popular open-source desktop environment are incremental. Among the most significant capabilities in GNOME 3.22 is support for the Flatpak framework, which is designed to allow an application to be installed on various Linux distributions. The GNOME Builder integrated development environment (IDE) can now also be used by developers to build Flatpak-compatible applications. Flatpak is an alternative approach to Snappy, which provides similar capabilities and was originally developed by Ubuntu. The GNOME Files application continues to evolve and, in this release, adds new capabilities that enable users to open compressed files automatically. Files also enables users to compress files easily in common compression formats. Additionally, Files gained the ability to batch rename files and folders on a user's system. Here's a look at the key features of the GNOME 3.20 desktop update.

This is less than usual. The time saving mostly stems from spending less time recording for the release video. At first thought you might think recording would be a breeze but it can be one of the most frustrating aspects of making the videos. Each cycle the GNOME community lands improvement a wide set of GNOME’s applications. So before each release I have to find some way to run a dozen of applications from master. I do this either by:

• #photos happenings

  We recently released GNOME 3.22. It will be in Fedora Workstation 25. Go look at the video — it’s awesome!

• Talking at mrmcds 2016 in Darmstadt, Germany

  My own talk on GNOME (video) was well visited. I explained why I think GNOME is a good candidate for shipping security software to the masses. I said that GNOME cares about its users and goes the extra mile to support as many users as possible. That includes making certain decisions to provide a secure by default system. I gave two examples of how I think GNOME pushes the envelope when it comes to making security usable. One was the problem of OpenPGP Keysigning. I mentioned that it’s a very geeky thing which mortals do not understand. Neither do many security people, to be honest. And you can’t even blame them because it’s a messy thing to do. Doing it properly™ involves a metric ton of OpSec to protect the integrity of the key to be signed. I think that we can make the process much more usable than it is right now while even maintaining security. This year, I had Andrei working with me to make this happen.

• Who wrote GTK+ and more

  I’ve just posted on the GTK+ development blog the latest article in the “who writes GTK+” series. Now that we have a proper development blog, this is the kind of content that should be present there instead of my personal blog.

  If you’re not following the GTK+ development blog, you really should do so now. Additionally, you should follow @GTKToolkit on Twitter and, if you’re into niche social platforms, a kernel developer, or a Linus groupie, there’s the GTK+ page on Google Plus.

• WebKitGTK+ 2.14 and the Web Engines Hackfest

  Carlos Garcia has recently released WebKitGTK+ 2.14, the latest stable release. This is a great release that brings a lot of improvements and works much better on Wayland, which is becoming mature enough to be used by default. In particular, it fixes the clipboard, which was one of the main missing features, thanks to Carlos Garnacho! We have also been able to contribute a bit to this release =)

• GNOME 3.22 core apps

  GNOME 3.22 is scheduled to be released today. Along with this release come brand new recommendations for distributions on which applications should be installed by default, and which applications should not. I’ve been steadily working on these since joining the release team earlier this year, and I’m quite pleased with the result.

• Catanzaro: GNOME 3.22 core apps

• GNOME 3.22 Released: the Future is Now

• GNOME 3.22 released

• GNOME 3.22 released

• GNOME 3.22 Officially Released

  Matthias Clasen announced the official GNOME 3.22.0 release a short time ago. He wrote in part, "This release brings comprehensive Flatpak support. GNOME Software can install and update Flatpaks, GNOME Builder can create them, and the desktop provides portal implementations to enable sandboxed applications. Improvements to core GNOME applications include support for batch renaming in Files, sharing support in GNOME Photos, an updated look for GNOME Software, a redesigned keyboard settings panel, and many more."

• Parsix' Nice GNOME, OpenMandriva 3 Sluggish, Firefox 49

• GTK+ 3.22 GUI Toolkit Released for GNOME 3.22 as Devs Prepare for GTK+ 4.0

  Immediately after announcing the final release of the GNOME 3.22 desktop environment, Matthias Clasen also had the pleasure of informing us about the availability of the GTK+ 3.22 GUI toolkit.

  Most of you out there developing GTK+ apps know what this open source software is all about, and the latest stable build is now 3.22, released as part of the GNOME 3.22 desktop environment. However, it looks like this will be the last release in the GTK+ 3 series, as the developers are now preparing to bump the development builds to version 3.90.x towards GTK+ 4.0.