Gnome 51 Launches With Smoother Desktop Performance and Myriad QoL Updates

It's been just over six months since Gnome 50 launched into beta, in the process, ditching X11 and issuing a number of updates to Mutter, its compositor, including VRR and fractional scaling. Now, the Gnome Foundation has officially announced the public release of Gnome 51, which features myriad updates, both to the user interface and to the underlying tech, all of which is aimed at making Gnome easier to adopt and use as an average computer user and make "the desktop feel smoother and more responsive than ever."

Most notably, Gnome 51 improves frame scheduling, which should make the system feel more responsive, especially under load; faster screen capture with the screenshot tool, and streamlined support for NVIDIA GPUs, which will now all be consolidated into a single, modern management UI. Some of the other major changes include new settings dialogues for smoother fingerprint enrollment, an Auto Rotate option in display settings, for portable devices with accelerometers, and more intuitive window snapping with a new center snap option. Gnome 51 will also let users automatically disable the touchpad when a mouse is connected. Read full story