GNOME Desktop version 43 is finally released! Which, will be default in the upcoming Ubuntu 22.10, and Fedora Workstation 37.
GNOME 43, code-named “Guadalajara”, features a new “Device Security” page under “Privacy” settings. It displays if Secure Boot enabled or not and information about the security status of your physical hardware.
The top-right corner system status menu now is Quick Settings. Which, has a clean UI to quickly toggle and take a glance at night light, dark and light mode, and performance mode status.
And, it displays a few buttons to launch ‘Gnome Control Center’, ‘Screenshot UI’, and lock screen. While, more options are hidden under expanded menu.

More GNOME core apps are now ported to GTK4. They include the Files, Maps, Logs, Builder, Console, Initial setup, and Parental Controls.
GNOME Files (aka Nautilus) now is adaptive UI, meaning it automatically adjust its layout (such as show/hide sidebar) according to the window size.
The release also redesign About and properties dialog to display information with a new previous/next pages style. And, ‘Open With‘ options are now grouped into sub-menu.

Other changes in GNOME 43 include:
- Switch between multiple sound devices via system status menu.
- Webp image support out-of-box.
- Show info bar in “Public” folder, to quickly open Share Settings.
- Middle click to open folder in new tab.
- Add “Open in Console” context menu option.
- Add WWAN 5G connection support
- “Undo” pop-up when deleting files is now in the bottom.
- Add Web apps support for GNOME Web.
- Ability to update extensions without Gnome Extensions app, while only Extension Manager.
For more about the new desktop, see the official release note.
Get GNOME 43
The new desktop will come along with Ubuntu 22.10 & Fedora 37. Though, user can grab the iso image via link below, and install it either in virtual machine or real hardware.
All these advances are all very well, but until a configuration application that is really complete is made, GNOME will always be very far from looking like a tidy software. It cannot be that with the default configuration application there is no section to modify something as simple as the system fonts, or to modify the scaling factor of the screen and you have to install a foreign application to do it like gnome-tweaks, which by the way has repeated functions. Good for GNOME, but it is surprising to see such obvious things unresolved.
GNOME is always going its own way that keeps less important options, that the developers think, out of Gnome control center. And it lets contributors or Linux distributions to customize what they want.
It could be the direction it moves or just lazy! 😄