Linux: The Ultimate Guide

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added to the Contacts application and can pin your favorite contacts 
with whom you interact more.
• Night Light: It is the main feature in GNOME. It works as adver-
tised, subtly adjusting the color temperature of your monitor based 
on the time of day. During the day, you will see things as you used 
to. The screen temperature gets colder and brighter with more blue 
light – the screen transitions to a warmer hue with less blue light in 
the evening. The blue light filters help promote natural sleep cycles 
and reduce eye strain.
• Calendar: The month view in the Calendar in GNOME shows the 
Events more readable. You can also expand cells that have several 
events overlapped. Also, notice the weather info besides the events. 
The To-Do list has been revamped to reorder tasks by drag and drop.
• Terminal: Terminal gets some enhancements as well. Notice the 
redesigned preferences window. There are no longer separate 
Preferences; both Profile and Preferences options are clubbed into 
one window. You will also see blinking text.
• Search: The GNOME Search tool is potent. Not only can it search 
for installed applications within the Application overview, but it 
can also search for applications not yet installed within GNOME 
Software and search for files.
• GNOME Beautification: GNOME looks more sleek and beautiful 
with Cantarell’s enhanced default interface font. Character forms 
and spacing have been improved to make the text more attractive.
• A More Wonderful Web: The Web is the default GNOME browser 
and is often overlooked by users preferring to browse the Web 
with a better-known app, like Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome. 
Bookmarking web pages on the Web now takes a single click. A new 
bookmarks popover makes it easy to access existing bookmarks, and 
a new interface for managing, editing, and tagging bookmarks will 
appease those who like to stay organized.
• Better Device Support: GNOME comes with integrated Thunderbolt 
3 connection support. Security checks are added to prevent data 
theft through unauthorized Thunderbolt 3 connections. The top bar 
shows the Thunderbolt 3 connection status when active. Touchpad 

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GNOME Desktop Environment 
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uses a gesture for the secondary click, which is nothing but right-click 
action in a mouse. Keep a finger in contact with the touchpad and 
tap with another finger to use the motion.
• Clocks App: Now, adding the UTC time zone to your world times 
is possible.
• Better Icons: There’s one area where the GNOME desktop often 
shorts. A slate of high-resolution icons is included to ensure that 
everything looks sharp and detailed on high-density displays. Many 
redesigned devices, mime-type, and app icons feature a brighter, 
cleaner, and more modern look.
• App “Usage”: GNOME ships with a new technology preview app 
called Usage. Using this App, you can see CPU and RAM consump-
tion and highlighted problem areas. It is a great feature that helps you 
troubleshoot issues quicker than before. More features are planned 
in future updates to the App.
• Screenshots: Another great feature is built-in screenshot support. 
Driven by hotkeys, it allows you to capture the whole screen, an 
active window, or a screen region to the clipboard or directly to a 
PNG file under $HOME\Pictures\Screenshot-*.
• All-New On-Screen Keyboard: The on-screen keyboard has been 
recoded entirely in GNOME. The new keyboard is user-friendly and 
automatically pops up when a text is selected. The view gets away to 
ensure you can see what you are typing.
• Minimalist Design: Most interfaces include quite a few on-screen 
elements unrelated to the task at hand. Windows and Chromebooks 
have taskbars across the bottom that contain all the favorite or open 
apps. On GNOME, the panel at the top does not contain any app 
launchers. The panel is small and black, like on a phone or tablet. 
It includes the date and time and a few system indicators in the top 
right.
GNOME SHELL
It is the graphical shell of the GNOME desktop environment starting 
with version GNOME 3, released on April 6, 2011. It provides essential 
functions like launching applications, switching between windows, and a 
widget engine. GNOME Shell replaced GNOME Panel and some ancillary 

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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 differ-
ent devices, the GNOME Shell is designed to be used on desktop com-
puters with large screens operated via keyboard and mouse, as well as 
portable computers with smaller screens operated via their keyboard, 
touchpad, or touch screen. However, a fork of the GNOME Shell, known 
as Phish, was created in 2018 for specialization with touch screen 
smartphones.
History of GNOME Shell
The first version of GNOME Shell was created during GNOME’s User 
Experience Hackfest 2008 in Boston. After the traditional GNOME desk-
top and accusations of stagnation and low concept, the resulting meeting 
led to GNOME 3.0 in April 2009 since Red Hat has been the main driver 
of GNOME Shell’s development.
Pre-release versions of GNOME Shell were first made available in 
August 2009 and became a regular, non-default part of GNOME in ver-
sion 2.28 in September 2009. It was finally shipped as GNOME’s default 
user interface on April 6, 2011.