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Chapter 8. Desktop

GNOME Shell rebased to version 3.28

In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6, GNOME Shell has been rebased to upstream version 3.28. Notable enhancements include:
  • New GNOME Boxes features
  • New on-screen keyboard
  • Extended devices support, most significantly integration for the Thunderbolt 3 interface
  • Improvements for GNOME Software, dconf-editor and GNOME Terminal
Note that Nautilus file manager has been kept in version 3.26 to preserve the behavior of the desktop icons. (BZ#1567133)

The sane-backends package is now built with systemd support

Scanner Access Now Easy (SANE) is a universal scanner interface whose backend's and library's features are provided by the sane-backends package. This update brings the following changes to SANE:
  • The sane-backends package is built with systemd support.
  • The saned daemon can be run without the need to create unit files manually, because these files are now shipped with sane-backends. (BZ#1512252)

FreeType rebased to version 2.8

The FreeType font engine has been rebased to version 2.8, which is required by GNOME 3.28. The 2.8 version has been modified to be API and Application Binary Interface (ABI) compatible with the previous version 2.4.11. (BZ#1576504)

Nvidia Volta-based graphics cards are now supported

This update adds support for Nvidia Volta-based graphics cards. As a result, the modesetting user-space driver, which is able to handle the basic operations and single graphic output, is used. However, 3D graphic is handled by the llvmpipe driver because Nvidia did not share public signed firmware for 3D. To reach maximum performance of the card, use the Nvidia binary driver. (BZ#1457161)

xorg-x11-server rebased to version 1.20.0-0.1

The xorg-x11-server packages have been rebased to upstream version 1.20.0-0.1, which provides a number of bug fixes and enhancements over the previous version:
  • Added support for the following input devices: Wacom Cintiq Pro 24, Wacom Cintiq Pro 32 tablet, Wacom Pro Pen 3D.
  • Added support for Intel Cannon Lake and Whiskey Lake platform GPUs.
  • Added support for S3TC texture compression in OpenGL
  • Added support for X11 backing store always mode.
  • Added support for Nvidia Volta series of graphics.
  • Added support for AMD Vega graphics and Raven APU. (BZ#1564632)