Gnome Shell 3.6.1 Release

Florian Müllner announced the immediate release of Gnome Shell 3.6.1 which is a major update from 3.6.0. Gnome Shell 3.6.1 comes with 106 new commits (average 61) and is the module that received the most attention in 3.6.1 Gnome release.

Together with Gnome Shell, Mutter 3.6.1 also arrived with a few (as always) changes.

 Gnome Shell 3.6.1 Changes

• dash: Make padding even on the top/bottom of the dash [Jasper; #684619]
• Fix a crash when dragging search results [Jasper; #684888]
• workspaceThumbnail: Fix dragging with static workspaces [Jasper; #684641]
• Really hide ‘Show Keyboard Layout’ on the lock screen [Matthias]
• Misc. improvements to jhbuild setup [Owen; #685352, #685353, #685354, #685355]
• Show message tray in Ctrl+Alt+Tab outside of the overview [Jasper, Florian; #684633, #685914]
• Disable hotplug sniffer on remote filesystems [Jasper; #684093]
• userMenu: Remove ‘Switch Session’ item [Florian; #685062]
• unlockDialog: Make prompt entry insensitive while logging in [Jasper; #685444]
• messageTray: Don’t animate desktop clone for failed grabs [Jasper; #685342]
• Fix crash on dragging windows between workspaces [Ryan; #681399]
• userMenu: Ignore ‘lock-enabled’ setting for user switching [Florian; #685536]
• gdm: Fix key-focus on first user [Adel; #684650]
• Make grid button insensitive when dragging non-favorites [Jasper; #685313]
• Calendar: hide all actions when on the login screen [Matthias; #685142]
• Adapt unlock dialog layout for the login screen [Florian; #685201]
• Make focus-follows-mouse work better with Shell UI [Florian; #678169]
• Improve look of screen shield [Jasper; #685919]
• Fix keynav in the login screen [Florian; #684730]
• dateMenu: Hide “Open Calendar” item if calendar unavailable [Florian; #686050]
• unlockDialog: Reset UI on verification failure [Giovanni; #685441]
• Show unlock dialog on primary monitor when using keynav [Giovanni; #685855]
• Fix height changes of entries when entering text [Florian; #685534]
• Fix show-apps label after successful drags [Florian; #684627]

Misc Bugfixes

• Freeze because of exception on unlock when there is an authentication error | #685434
• extensionUtils: don’t log verbosely on missing extension directory  | #685466
• messageTray: Fix some minor artifacts when tweening back from the tray | #685341
• Notifications from message tray prevent panel buttons to trigger properly | #685156
• Wallpaper (and desktop) not aligned properly when plugging in/out external monitor | #681159
• layout: Fix an accidental undefined variable error | #673189
• critical warning out of st-im-text.c |  #686016
• workspace: fix typo in removeThumbnails | #684869
• Regression: Eject icons should be symbolic in “removable devices” | #686079
• Make org.gnome.ScreenSaver.SetActive work | #686063

Most active hackers in Gnome Shell 3.6.1 were Jasper St Pierre and Florian Müllner with 33 and  20 commits respectively. Gnome Shell alongside with Nautilus are the two modules with the most noticeable changes in this developing cycle, but the whole 3.6.1 had a huge developing, considering that is just a bug fixing release and new features are not permitted.

Gnome Shell Bump to version 3.6.1

Mutter (Metacity+Clutter) is the Window and Composing Manager of Gnome3 (replacing Metacity) based on Clutter Toolkit (which by the way it recently moved infrastructure). Gnome Shell is written as a plugin to Mutter.

Mutter 3.6.1 Changes

• Fix crash when opening large popup menus [Jasper; #681676]
• window: Don’t move the desktop window after monitor hotplug [Jasper; #681159]
• Expose MetaPlugin to introspection [Evan; #671098]
• Optionally delay focus changes in focus-follows-mouse mode [Florian; #678169]
• Resize the guard window when the X screen is resized [Benjamin; #670396]
• display: Only manage the default X screen [Jürg; #648156]
• Misc cleanups: [Owen; #587255]

Mutter Bump to Version 3.6.1

ubuntu & gnome shell

Ubuntu users can install Gnome Shell from Ubuntu Software Center. However Gnome Shell also needs GDM that you have to install it and set it as your default Login Manager (instead of LightDM).

sudo dpkg --reconfigure gdm

To have a complete Gnome3 experience you have to follow many more steps, so I personally reckon if you are going to make a fresh Ubuntu 12.10 installation to try Ubuntu Gnome Remix, which hopefully will be an Official Canonical Spin by next version (13.04). It comes out in October 18 (in two days), as the normal Ubuntu, and you can get it from its wiki here.

Ok, the page seems a bit… but the quality is similar to the regular Ubuntu.