GNOME Shell

{{Infobox software | title = GNOME Shell | name = GNOME | screenshot = [[File:GNOME Shell.png|300px|GNOME Shell] | caption = GNOME Shell 46 (released in March 2024) | developer = The GNOME Project | released = April 6, 2011 (2011-04-06) | latest release version = 46.2^[1] | latest release date = 25 May 2024 (25 May 2024) | repo = gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell | programming language = C and JavaScript^[2]^[3] | operating system = BSD, Linux, Unix | language = Afrikaans, Arabic, Aragonese, Assamese, Asturian, Basque, Belarusian, Bengali, Bosnian, Brazilian Portuguese, British English, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French, Friulian, Galician, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Kazakh, Khmer, Kirghiz, Korean, Kurdish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Occitan, Oriya, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian, Serbian Latin, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tajik, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Uighur, Ukrainian, Uzbek (Cyrillic), Vietnamese | language count = 75 | language footnote = ^[4]

| genre =

| license = GPL-2.0-or-later | website = wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeShell }}

GNOME Shell is the graphical shell of the GNOME desktop environment starting with version 3,^[5] which was released on April 6, 2011. It provides basic functions like launching applications and switching between windows, and is also a widget engine. GNOME Shell replaced GNOME Panel^[6] and some ancillary components of GNOME 2.

GNOME Shell is written in C and JavaScript as a plugin for Mutter.

In contrast to the KDE Plasma Workspaces, a software framework intended to facilitate the creation of multiple graphical shells for different devices, the GNOME Shell is intended to be used on desktop computers with large screens operated via keyboard and mouse, as well as portable computers with smaller screens operated via their keyboard, touchpad or touchscreen.

History[edit]

The first concepts for GNOME Shell were created during GNOME's User Experience Hackfest 2008 in Boston.^[7]^[8]^[9]

After criticism of the traditional GNOME desktop and accusations of stagnation and lacking vision,^[10] the resulting discussion led to the announcement of GNOME 3.0 in April 2009.^[11] Since then Red Hat has been the main driver of GNOME Shell's development.^[12]

Pre-release versions of GNOME Shell were first made available in August 2009^[13] and became regular, non-default part of GNOME in version 2.28 in September 2009.^[14] It was finally shipped as GNOME's default user interface on April 6, 2011.^[15]^[16]

Top bar

System status area

Activities Overview

Dash

Window picker

Application picker

Search

Notifications and messaging tray

Application switcher

Indicators tray (deprecated, waiting on new specification)

[19]

Clutter and Mutter support .^[23]

multi-touch gestures

Support for monitors.^[24]

HiDPI

dock

"Snapping" windows to screen borders to make them fill up a half of the screen or the whole screen

A single window button by default, Close, instead of three (configurable). Minimization has been removed due to the lack of a panel to minimize to, in favor of workspace window management. Maximization can be accomplished using the afore-mentioned window snapping, or by double-clicking the window title bar.

A fallback mode is offered in versions 3.0–3.6 for those without hardware acceleration which offers the GNOME Panel desktop. This mode can also be toggled through the System Settings menu. GNOME 3.8 removed the fallback mode and replaced it with GNOME Shell extensions that offer a more traditional look and feel.^[26]

[25]

dropped support of GNOME 2 in favor of GNOME 3 in its repositories in April 2011.^[28]

Arch Linux

uses GNOME Shell by default since release 15, May 2011.^[29]

Fedora Linux

uses the latest version of GNOME Shell.

Sabayon Linux

's GNOME edition has used GNOME Shell since version 12.1 in November 2011.^[30]

openSUSE

2 and later include GNOME Shell, since May 2012.^[31]

Mageia

8 and later features GNOME Shell in the default desktop, since April 2015.^[32]^[33]

Debian

11.4 replaced GNOME 2 with GNOME Shell in August 2018.^[34]^[35]

Solaris

uses GNOME Shell by default since 17.10, October 2017, after Canonical ceased development of Unity.^[36] It has been available for installation in the repositories since version 11.10.^[37] An alternative flavor, Ubuntu GNOME, was released alongside Ubuntu 12.10,^[38] and gained official flavor status by Ubuntu 13.04.^[39]