 There is no doubt that Genome and I have a spotty history. It's not a happy one Let's just put it that way. I'm not a big Genome fan I do think over the last year and a half or so. I have gotten a little bit more Accepting of what Genome is after trying it for a week in a long-term review. I I found that I liked it more than I did before I used it for a while So I can't say I'm as negative as I once was but I definitely still have my reservations about Genome and the direction that the genome developers have taken their desktop environment now with all that being said I still pay attention to every genome release simply because Genome is one of the most popular Linux desktops environments and many different desktop environments are based on Genome or use toolkits that are Developed by the genome guys. So it's important to kind of keep an eye on what's going on there in the genome world. So When I saw that Genome 42 had been released, I figured I would take a look at it. So that's what we're gonna do today We're gonna take a look at the new features in Genome 42. So let's go ahead and jump right in So this is Genome 42 and if you think it looks kind of like Genome 41, you'd be pretty much right That's the way Genome pretty much works But there are many many new features, which we're gonna go ahead and dive into right now The first thing you'll probably notice if you start using this is that by default now There is an option for you to choose between a light and dark theme So if we open up the settings and we go to appearance, we'll now see that there is a dark option here Now this is very well implemented for what it is I'm actually very proud of them because a lot of times they don't actually like you to actually do Customization and the fact that they've allowed this is pretty nice And there's a good reason why they've done it but we'll talk about that later So if we select the dark theme now, you'll notice that the wallpaper actually changed There is a selection of wallpapers here that have a both a light and a dark theme and they'll change along with the theme So if you go between the line the dark theme, it'll choose the corresponding wallpaper now one thing That's not here is time-based change of the dark and light theme So say going at like 8 o'clock at night, it would check change to the dark theme It doesn't do that as far as I can tell you have to change this manually So that's still something that will probably be the domain of you know extensions or something like that So it's still good now You will notice that there are some applications that don't follow the dark theme things that haven't been updated to use libata-weta Probably won't use the dark theme So that's going to be just something you're gonna have to deal with until stuff gets updated But that is probably the biggest visual change For GNOME 42 is the inclusion of a dark theme now The reason why they've decided to do this is that theming on GNOME has always been an iffy practice And we know that the GNOME developers don't like it, but in the past has always been possible to download GNOME tweaks download a GTK theme and Use it and most applications would work just fine In fact, I've never seen an application that would break using a regular GNOME theme in that manner But GNOME has decided that they don't want to deal with that anymore. So they've come up with something called libata-weta I'm sure I'm mispronouncing that but basically what this does is it's a new design library that is being forced on every developer and it means that any GTK theme that you put into GNOME tweaks isn't going to work It's just won't work all your apps will look exactly the same They'll either look like this or they'll look like this So theming on GNOME appears at least for now to be dead like the CSS Theming stuff that they that has always been kind of a hack for the GNOME tweaks themes is now something that just won't work That hack will no longer work So until someone comes around and fixes that theming is dead on it got going on But it's not all bad news with the inclusion of more GTK for applications and libata-weta I can't I'm sure I'm pronouncing that wrong, but I've never figured out how to pronounce lib ad wait Is how it's pronounced if you just sound it out. Okay, we'll call it that lib ad wait You're gonna see some polishing of UI elements. So let's open up the Calendar application here and we can actually see some of the stuff here. There's a little bit different So in the past these would all be buttons and they'd be blatantly buttons So actually if we go back to settings and go back to the light themes because it's actually easier to see with the light Theme you'll see that these aren't I mean they kind of look like buttons They have some outlines, but some of them don't have outlines at all and it looks a lot cleaner And I'll try to put a screenshot of what it used to look like up here So that you can see that there's actually quite a big difference in how this looks and for me personally This looks miles and away better like it looks so much better now Not every GNOME application has gotten this treatment yet We have the disk usage analyzer fonts to do two or calendar clock software characters context weather and calculator Those are the GNOME apps that have had this makeover Any other GNOME app hasn't been there yet one application You'll notice that isn't on that list is the files application now I can't actually show you what the files application will look like for you because we're not sure Exactly what's going to be shipped to a lot of people if you're using GNOME right now You're using GNOME 42 right now You're probably going to have the older version or the non GTK 4 slash libata wait the version of Nautilus so you'll still have the big honking buttons in the toolbar if you're using GNOME OS like I am you'll actually see this which is the libata wait a version this right here is still in beta It's not being rolled out with GNOME 42 as far as I'm aware But you will see if you open this up one thing that is an amazing change Like if you're looking at this right now, you'll see the most glorious looking icons Let's open up browser here. And if we can't we can't see the add wait a icons I just want to see the if I can show you these Old icons Yeah, right there. There's there's a picture of one right there That's what they used to look like that thing was hideous and I complained about it for years These are just so much better and you'll get these whether or not you'll get you get the libata wait to stuff or not And honestly there right there is a reason enough for everybody to upgrade because those icons are way better Especially seeing how now you can't change them. At least these look just so much better So outside of the libata wait to stuff that has this new much cleaner Design ethos. There's also a couple of default applications So the first one is called text editor and this is I believe going to be taking over for Jeannie in a lot of places. So this is actually if we look at about this now, we're looking at text editor the alpha version of 42 This is based on gtk4. So you're getting all of the nice new design elements other than that. It's a fairly Minimal text editor. You're not going to get a lot of stuff here that is high brow or meant to be used as an id. This is just a text editor simple and Easy to use so you can use line numbers, right margin. It has tab spaces and stuff like that settings And that's basically it. I don't see anything here for syntax highlighting, but I could just be missing it But I wouldn't be using this as an id. Anyways, this is just a text editor You want to take some notes? You open this up. The other one is slightly more controversial So for years the terminal that came with genome was genome terminal now We're going to get something called the terminal app. So if we type in terminal here We're going to get one call something called console. Now. First of all, if you're kde user, you'll know that they spelled console wrong That's not how you spell console console spelled with a k. I'm just going to put that out there I don't know why they decided to Call their terminal the exact same thing kde calls theirs, but spelling it differently. I don't I mean Obviously, this is the correct way if I mean in English, this would be how you spell it But the point is is that why don't they just call it terminal? I don't know probably just to make it seem like it's new in terms of what's actually different You're going to get some UI changes Overlates scroll bar if you watch down here in the bottom You'll get a size indicator. So I'll tell you how big the text is in terms of like columns and rows And you'll get a header bar here that will change Color when you're running as root. So if we do sudo sudo su You'll see That the header actually changes when you're enroute. So that's kind of a cool feature One thing I will say is that there's not a lot of stuff here in terms of like preferences or changing colors or Changing any of that stuff. You'll you get an option between light and dark themes. How far you're zoomed in and tabs That's literally it. So there's no profile support here. Nothing like that And that means that a lot of people who deal with the terminal on a daily basis are probably going to have to download a different terminal I would say because a lot of them use Their own color schemes their own syntax highlighting stuff like that that requires profile support And as far as I can tell there's no profile support here at all There's no settings here at all by the way. There's just there's at least as far as I can tell there's No settings. So that is the two brand new default applications Also in genome 42 you'll find that they have done several things to improve performance So videos is now using open gl widgets with hardware accelerated decoding. So that should make videos run smoother File index in tracker has been dramatically improved. So things like Search and stuff should be faster input handling has been significantly enhanced resulting in lower input latency and improved Responsiveness according to their show notes according to their release notes. I should say they say it will be beneficial for games and graphics I'm not sure what they're talking about there. There's no more information about that the genome web browser now enables hardware accelerated rendering So that should make loading web pages faster improvements in how full screen applications are rendered will result in reduced energy consumption So better battery life So their connections app has been updated with better rdp support So that should make connecting to remote desktops Easier and more stable and that's basically all you've got So the biggest changes here that are going to be user facing are going to be pretty much dealing with The way genome looks and not really in a over the top way, but more in more subtle ways. So The cleaning up of the header bars so that all the header bars look cleaner and more Modern without the clunky add weight to stuff that has been used for a long time things like The dark theme that is now included that you can you can select and the cool way it also Changes the wallpaper. I like that feature The only other big thing that you'll notice is that your themes your custom themes aren't going to work anymore So if you're into that kind of stuff the previous versions of genome are going to be More interesting for you than this one. So I wouldn't be surprised Over the next year or so if someone comes up with a way to Use custom themes again, but right now that's not something that is happening. So that is genome 42 just very briefly the new stuff in terms of Stability and all that stuff I can't really talk about it because I've only used it for a little while and the version of genoma west that I'm using is Actually a beta So I wouldn't rely on stability or speed on that anyways because it's running in a virtual machine So there's not much I can judge there. So if you're interested in genome 42 Leave me a comment in the comment section below if you are Upset about libata.weta. I'd love to hear from you as well You can follow me on twitter at the linuxcast You can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash linuxcast before I go I'd like to take them on the thing with current patrons robert said davon patrick fred kramer maiglin jeck naven tool steve a seborga linux garich samuel michel arson or j dog carbon dated jeremy shon odin Arnie andy ross merit camp dr. Oli peter a crucial dark minute six primus npm. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time