Everyone knows that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is not exactly the trend setter when it comes to adopting the latest packages. The operating system has always operated under the assumption that old means stable, but that is not true anymore. It's possible that RHEL 7.2 will switch to the latest GNOME 3.14 version.

If you've ever opened an RHEL desktop, you might have noticed that it looks like something from the previous decade and you would be right. This was done on purpose in order to accommodate the existing users who are apparently allergic to change. That's about to be fixed and it's unclear how the community will react.

It's a well-known fact that GNOME is implemented by default in Fedora and this distribution is used as a playground for Red Hat OSes. The problem is that new features made available in Fedora usually end up in the RHEL edition after a long time, maybe after they have proven their stability. In any case, the same is true for the desktop environment, which until not so long ago was still featuring the old GNOME 2. It's needless to say just how old that is.

RHEL, welcome to the future

One of the most important aspects of a Linux distribution is the desktop environment, although that is something that many users might disagree with. It's true that you can use a Linux distro for many things without having to interact with the desktop environment, but if you do have to do that, then it's the first thing you see.

The leader of the GNOME project, Matthias Clasen, has mentioned that a rebase of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the latest GNOME version is incoming, and that will definitely turn some heads. "We are planning a desktop rebase to GNOME 3.14.x in 7.2. gtk3 should be rebased to the latest stable release from the 3.14 branch, probably 3.14.6," is marked in a bug report that's called "Rebase to 3.14.6".

From the looks of it, it seems that it's not only a proposal, but something that is definitely going to happen. You can check the gallery below to see what RHEL currently looks like and how GNOME 3.14 presents itself. There is no indication about the launch date of RHEL 7.2.