GNOME is one of the most popular desktop environments out there, and the default for more than a couple of Linux distributions. GNOME 47.0 is the result of six months of work for the team behind the project.

While it's not exactly game-changing, GNOME 47 has a few decent visual changes, as well as more than a couple of performance changes to make it worthwhile.

GNOME 47 really feels like a 46 (2.0) because the experience is pretty much the same with sprinkles of tiny changes everywhere. The most obvious change is probably the Appearance menu. There are now new options that allow for further customization, mainly a new range of alternative accent colors.

A few of the default apps have also received mini-overhauls. The list includes GNOME Calendar (new support for ICS file importing), GNOME Files (with a fully redesigned sidebar, more flexible bookmarks, and a new file chooser).

Not that it really matters, but Epiphany has also received a bit of work and some new features includng autofill, a bookmark search bar, the ability to import passwords (via CSV files), and the option to set an image as a wallpaper.

A big point of GNOME 47 is the improved overall performance. GNOME now features hardware encoding for screencasts (on both Intel and AMD GPUs). The whole point is to reduce the load on the CPU and make the whole experience of video playback and video work a lot smoother.

Another important change is GNOME is, once more, moving away from X11. It wasn't that long ago that compiling GNOME required X11, but X11 is pretty much on its last legs as a project. Unsurprisingly, Wayland is here to take its place.

Speaking of better performance, GNOME 47 is arguably better at handling asynchronous processes than its predecessors. GNOME no longer depends on the GNOME Virtual File System (or GNOME abstraction layer), and that's generally a good thing.

As mentioned at the start of this review, GNOME 47 really feels like a sort of GNOME 46 (2.0). The whole experience is pretty much the same, but there's really no denying the fact that GNOME 47 is a better OS.

Apart from a few important (but ultimately small) visual changes, GNOME 47 is riddled with under-the-hood changes and improvements, and ultimately, those matter more (at least I think they do). A complete list of changes is available on the official GNOME release section.