The GNOME Project has announced GNOME 50.6, the latest maintenance update for the 50 desktop series, now considered old-stable after GNOME 51’s release.
This time, only six components have been updated, with most of the changes concentrated in GNOME Shell, Mutter, and the Nautilus file manager.
Starting with GNOME Shell 50.6, the update fixes an issue where Quick Settings could prevent direct scanout, an optimization allowing compatible content to display without additional compositing.
Other fixes address incorrectly centered workspace thumbnails in right-to-left layouts, problems applying color filters in full grayscale mode, and mount notifications remaining visible after disconnecting a drive. Plus, several memory leaks have also been resolved.
Mutter 50.6, GNOME’s window manager and compositor, fixes automatic screen rotation on phones without a tablet-mode switch. It also corrects panel orientation resets and an issue where the workspaces-only-on-primary setting was not applied properly after monitor configuration changes.
The Nautilus file manager has also been updated to version 50.4, bringing several usability fixes. These include correcting the indicator for files that cannot be written to, fixing Properties dialogs that sometimes opened too small, and setting the Replace button to receive focus by default when a file conflict occurs.
Nautilus also handles invalid boolean metadata without aborting, fixes a memory leak in its audio/video extension, and addresses several other memory leaks and errors.
The remaining updates include GLib 2.88.4, which incorporates backported security fixes and improves handling of long filenames when moving files to the Trash. Orca 50.3 fixes an error when clicking objects through its object navigator. Libgsf 1.14.60 includes a fix related to ABW and OLE2 handling.
For additional details, visit the announcement or review all the changes here. The update should reach Linux distributions still shipping GNOME 50 through their regular package update channels.
