With a one-day delay, the Beta release of the upcoming GNOME 3.24 desktop environment is finally here, available for public testers who want to get an early taste of its new features.

Of course, GNOME 3.24 Beta can't be called a feature-full release, as some things are yet to be implemented, such as the return routes and transit routing planning functionalities of the Maps app that we've discussed earlier, but it comes with enough changes to please the eye.

Before we delve into the new features of the GNOME 3.24 desktop environment, we'd like to inform the reader that GNOME 3.24 is now in Feature Freeze, UI Freeze, and API Freeze stage, which means that there won't be many features implemented in the next Beta, nor the RC, exceptions are only critical bugs and performance improvements.

"GNOME 3.23.90 is now available. This is the beta release for the upcoming stable GNOME 3.24 release. At this point, we have entered feature freeze, UI freeze, and API freeze, so developers should be focused on bugfixes and stability improvements for the next month as we approach GNOME 3.24," said Michael Catanzaro in a mailing list announcement.

What's coming to GNOME 3.24

We've covered some of the new features of the GNOME 3.24 desktop environment in several articles, but we'd like to remind you that among the most exciting new ones are a totally revamped GNOME Control Center with updated Users, Printer, Online Accounts, Keyboard & Mouse, and Bluetooth panels, and a sharing framework to make it easier for users to share things with other apps or to various online services.

Furthermore, the GNOME Music app will get tag editing and ownCloud integration, Nextcloud support will be available via Online Accounts panel, GNOME Photos will import your photos, the Epiphany web browser got a lot of new features and a revamped design, GNOME Calendar brings the Week view, GNOME Software will handle Snap and APT URLs, and it looks like the Nautilus file manager promises to let users browse files as root (system administrator).

Of course, there are some other hidden gems that you need to discover yourself if you take this first Beta of GNOME 3.24 for a test drive, but all the goodies should be unveiled after its final release on March 22, 2017. Until then, the development cycle will continue next month, on March 1, with the second Beta version, and the RC (Release Candidate) is coming two weeks later, on March 15. Don't forget to report bugs!