In April 2021, Canonical released Ubuntu 21.04 and there was a little controversy or topic of conversation. The company that runs Martk Shuttleworth thought that GNOME 40 and GTK4 were very green, so they stayed with the same GNOME 3.38 that was already using the version released six months earlier. Last October they already uploaded GNOME 40, but GNOME 41 was already available. It was known that the operating system that gives its name to this blog would skip a version of GNOME, and that moment could come with the launch of Ubuntu 22.04.
Ubuntu 22.04 will be codenamed Jammy Jellyfish, and it will be a LTS version. Although we have a new installment every six months, the really important ones are those released in April of even-numbered years, and it is in those where Canonical introduces the most important changes. So what better time to go back to using the latest version of GNOME than next April.
Ubuntu 22.04 will arrive in April 2022
GNOME 42 It is currently in development, and will release its stable version in March. It will be designed to fit perfectly with GTK4 and the latest version of libadwaita, but you will run into a little problem that this time has nothing to do with Canonical.
The GNOME project is now working on many new features, and most of them are related to libadwaita and GTK4. Thus, Ubuntu 22.04 would use the latest version of GNOME, but there would be many applications that would not yet be re-based on GTK4. Once again we would have like a puzzle that must be forced to assemble; If a year ago I had some GNOME 41 apps but the Shell stayed at 3.38, this April it would be uploaded to GNOME 42, but many applications would continue with the GTK3 image.
Regarding some of the news that we will see in Jammy Jellyfish, I would personally highlight the elimination of the aubergine color and the new screenshot tool that will also allow you to record the desktop on video.
