The GNOME Project is proud to present GNOME 3.6, the third update to the 3.x series. This latest version of GNOME 3 includes a number of new features and enhancements, as well as many bug fixes and minor improvements. Together, they represent a significant upgrade to the GNOME 3 user experience.

Andreas Nilsson, President of the GNOME Foundation, said: “The GNOME Foundation is proud to present this latest GNOME release, and I would like to congratulate the GNOME community on its achievement.” He described the release as “an important milestone in our mission to bring a free and open computing environment to everyone.”

Highlights for this release include:

• Big improvements to notifications, including a redesigned Message Tray, smarter notifications, and other tweaks and refinements.
• An enhanced Activities Overview with an improved layout.
• A greatly enhanced Files application, with functional file search, a new Recent location, redesigned interface and lots of bug fixes and handy new features.
• Integrated Input Sources, which makes inputting different character sets (eg. Japanese or Chinese) fast and easy.
• Accessibility on demand, meaning that universal access features like the Orca screen reader can be enabled with the push of a button.
• A new Lock Screen. This provides an attractive view when the device is locked, plus handy functionality like media controls and notifications.

There are many other enhancements in GNOME 3.6, including Online Accounts support for Microsoft Exchange, Facebook and Windows Live, much improved System Settings and a redesigned User Menu. Many GNOME applications have also received improvements, including Web, Empathy, Disk Usage Analyzer, Disks and the Font Viewer. This release also includes the first major release of Boxes, an application for using remote systems and virtual machines, and a development preview of the new Clocks application.

You can read about all the changes included in GNOME 3.6 in the release notes. This latest version represents 6 months of hard work by the GNOME community, an open, international association of individuals and organizations. GNOME works to deliver high-quality user experiences based on Free Software. Development is conducted in the open, and anyone can get involved. If you want to support us, you can become a Friend of GNOME.

Read the press release: GNOME 3.6 Released: Evolution in the Making