// ITS FOSS — LINUX & OPEN SOURCE
On Time! GNOME 51 Arrives With a Set of Improvements You Shouldn't Miss
GNOME is still the initial desktop environment for most people who step into the world of Linux, trying their first distribution. I say that because the mainstream picks like Ubuntu and Fedora Workstation both ship it by default, bringing new users directly into the GNOME ecosystem.
While we are seeing a rise in adoption for dynamic tiling window managers like Hyprland, conventional desktop environments like this one are still a daily driver pick for many.
Now, a fresh release, GNOME 51, has arrived, bringing with it many upgrades, such as a better-behaving shell, a new wallpaper that looks chic, and a host of updated pre-installed apps.
This is the part of GNOME that you directly interact with without realizing that it even exists. GNOME Shell represents the top bar, the overview, the app grid, notifications, the lock screen, and the way windows move between workspaces.
This release cleans up many of its rough edges, giving you perks like monitor brightness being saved and restored across sessions, and more refined screenshot framing that lets you drag a selection all the way to the edges of your monitor.
Screen reader navigation in the app grid was reworked as well, and two smaller annoyances, a bug with minimized windows on another workspace and broken German date formats, are fixed.
Similarly, the autorun prompt that shows up for connected USB drives was improved.
These two are also an important part of the GNOME stack. GDM is the display manager behind your login screen, and it starts a session once you authenticate. Mutter is the compositor that draws the windows, decides where they sit, and handles the input.
GDM picks up a setting for the fallback session. That is the session used when a user has no preferred one or when their preferred one will not start. Administrators can point accounts that have never logged in at a session of their choosing.
The autologin bypass is closed as well. Earlier, a compromised greeter could request autologin for any local account; fortunately, this no longer works.