The Gnome Foundation has announced the release of Gnome 3:28 codenamed ‘Chongqing’ to honor the GNOME.Asia 2017 team. Gnome strives for simplicity to make it easier for a user to use desktop Linux. The Gnome desktop uses simple names for applications -- Files, Web, Software, Videos -- which accompany simple user interface. Gnome 3:28 continues that trend.

According to the release notes, GNOME 3.28 offers two important new features that make it easier to keep track of the things. You can now star files and folders in Files (the file manager of Gnome). Once they’ve been added, starred items can be easily viewed in a special location that can be opened from the sidebar. That’s a handy feature to get quick access to files that you want.

The second feature is the arrival of ‘favorites’ to the ‘Contact’ app. Now user can pin contacts of people they often interact with, similar to the way users do it on iOS and Android devices. The Contact app also allows users to sort names by first and last names.

The Boxes virtual machine manager includes a number of enhancements, including a new feature that makes it easier to pass files between the host and guest systems.

There have been notable improvements in the entertainment department. The Photos app can now import files from removable devices, such as SD cards and USB drives. According to the release notes, this feature automatically detects devices that contain new images and it also allows organizing new images into albums as they’re imported.

With 3:28, Gnome has introduced a new app called ‘Usage’ that tells you which app is consuming what system resources. Since the tool is just being introduced, it’s very basic and includes features for examining CPU and memory consumption. It highlights problem areas so you can easily identify issues and solve them.

From the security point of view, this release comes with extended device support.The integrated Thunderbolt 3 connection support offers security checks to prevent data theft through unauthorized Thunderbolt 3 connections.

The list of new features is long, and the best way to learn about them is by updating Gnome on your system.