The GNOME developers are currently preparing to unleash the first Beta milestone of the upcoming GNOME 3.24 desktop environment, due for release on February 15, 2017.

Therefore, we can't help but notice that several of the applications and core components of the GNOME Stack have received new versions, including the GNOME Software graphical package manager that several GNU/Linux distributions have already adopted to help their users better manage packages.

GNOME Software 3.24 Beta is out today, and according to the internal changelog attached at the end of the article for your reading pleasure, it now handles APT and Snap URLs to allow you to be able to quickly install applications from websites that offer links in the apt:// or snap:// formats.

Additionally, it redesigns the Updates panel to display sections, and now lets users sort the applications displayed in the Installed panel by kind. It's also possible now to launch Flatpak apps after updating them, as well as to install the required Flatpak runtimes when needed during the update process.

New firmware will now be downloaded when it's not cached

Among other improvements implemented in this first Beta release of GNOME Software 3.24, we can mention that new firmware is now downloaded when it's not cached, and a more informative error message will be displayed when your laptop needs to be plugged in for installation of apps.

There are various other small bug fixes and changes, such the capability of displaying only the "scary" firmware warning for removable devices, no longer hardcoding gnome-software application names, and a patch for a large memory leak when loading Steam data.

GNOME Software 3.24 Beta (technical version number is 3.23.90) is now available for download as a tarball from our website if you plan on compiling it on your distributions, though we don't recommend installing pre-release software as they might contain bugs. This will also be available as part of the GNOME 3.24 Beta release this week.