GNOME 47, the next major version of the popular Linux desktop environment, will land on September 18, according to the recently updated release schedule. According to Phoronix, one minor change in that cycle will be that the first point release will come four weeks later instead of the conventional five weeks so that early fixes can be shipped sooner.
The upcoming version of GNOME will likely come with plenty of new features. Some that we already know about, per Phoronix, are better support for smaller displays and Nvidia hybrid GPU copy acceleration. There’s hope we will see better Variable Rate Refresh (VRR) support too.
With it arriving in September, it’ll mean that both Ubuntu 24.10 and Fedora 41 can ship with it. This is great for anyone who likes running the latest and greatest software on their Linux system.
Speaking of Fedora Linux, anyone who’s running Fedora Linux 38 has been instructed by the Fedora Project to upgrade their systems before May 21 to keep their system secure. After that date, the operating system will stop receiving security updates and every day that ticks by, your system will become a bit less secure.
If you’re on Fedora 38, you should open Software and go to the Updates tab. Once you have the latest updates, you will be offered an upgrade to a newer version. You should do this to stay safe from exploits.
The versions of Ubuntu and Fedora that will ship with GNOME 47 will launch on October 10 and October 15, respectively. Ubuntu 24.10 will get updates for 9 months, while Fedora will be supported for one month after the next release, so roughly 13 months. If you’re on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, you will not get GNOME 47 but remain on the current version.
Other Linux distributions will likely ship with GNOME 47. Some of the earlier distributions that will get the update are those based on Arch, such as Manjaro. If you’re using one of those, you can get the updates as soon as they become available.