I care about wallpapers more than most people. I think it’s because I rarely run apps “maximised”, so my wallpaper is always visible to some degree.

Not that this post is about me!

Reader Le Bao mailed in — thanks buddy — to let me know there are updated desktop backgrounds in use in the latest GNOME OS nightly builds (before you get excited, GNOME OS isn’t a traditional Linux distribution and is best tried through Boxes virtual machine app).

Naturally I had to check ’em out.

Now, keep in mind I’m writing this post in August. GNOME 43 isn’t scheduled for release until late September. What you see here is likely to change a bit by the time the ‘final’ release rolls around.

Assuming you can cope with the temporal temerity of all that, behold the tentative wallpapers for the upcoming GNOME 43 release:

Pretty nice, huh?

Once again the backgrounds are the work of GNOME designer Jakub Steiner.

For context/comparison, here is what GNOME’s default Adwaita wallpaper looks in the three most recent releases of the desktop environment:

The new version of the Adwaita wallpaper is in keeping with its predecessors, but distinct enough to imprint an individual personality on the upcoming release of GNOME 43.

Of course, the default wallpaper in GNOME isn’t always the default wallpaper in the Linux distributions that ship it. Ubuntu, for example, has its own default wallpaper, and Fedora often provides its own

But the background is (usually) available wherever GNOME Shell is shipped, so if you like what you see you can rest assured knowing it won’t take too much effort to use them.

Want to use them right now? You can download the new images in full-resolution from the GNOME backgrounds repo on Gitlab.