Original MuyLinux note
To read Eduardo Medina’s original in Spanish, click here
On several occasions we announced that Ubuntu 21.04, whose code name is Hirsute Hippo, would bring GNOME 40. That forecast was made based on the trajectory of the distribution, which after returning to GNOME had not shown too many qualms about adopting the latest version of the environment. desktop with the exception of Nautilus / Files. However, in the end that is not going to happen as Canonical decided to keep GNOME 3.38 for the next Ubuntu release.
In case it was not clear enough, yes, Ubuntu 21.04 will incorporate GNOME 3.38 as a desktop environment. Canonical has motivated its decision in the profound changes that GNOME 40 will incorporate, among which are the new environment arrangement and the inclusion of a still very young GTK4, so the Yaru theme could be negatively impacted.
Canonical has asked in its official forums about the new shell design: “Will it be fully ready in one cycle? What is the impact on our desktop and extensions? We will likely have design questions to solve and non-trivial code changes. " Regarding GTK4, he explained that Debian is already packaging it, so its arrival in Ubuntu would not present any difficulties. However, the company questions its stability, the impact on its software, the risks and the delay of the transition. Another issue that GTK4 allegedly leaves up in the air is the Yaru theme, as Ubuntu does not use Adwaita by default (even though Yaru has long relied on Adwaita to minimize fragmentation).
Canonical has also exposed that the team behind the Ubuntu desktop is overloaded, in addition to announcing that they will be careful when bringing GTK4 updates to the default installation of the system until the doubts about the subject are cleared. Mind you, the company hopes that there will be no problems with automatic syncs as Debian 11 Bullseye has recently started to freeze.
In short, the changes introduced in GNOME 40 are excessive for its rapid adoption by Canonical, which needs time to adapt everything to its extensions, its theme and the own components that it introduces in the environment, such as the legacy scaling tool of Unity 7. To what has been said so far, the release date of the next version of the desktop environment is probably added, which is scheduled for the month of March.
We will see if this move to maintain GNOME 3.38 for Ubuntu 21.04 is just a bump or if it is the beginning by Canonical of the displacement of the distribution with respect to the releases of the desktop environment.