elementary OS 8.0.2 released
The latest minor update of elementary OS has been released. This release brings together numerous improvements and bug fixes gathered over the past six months since the last release.
In this post, we'll focus on the key advancements made during the final month leading up to the launch of OS 8.0.2. For those eager to dive into every change since OS 8.0.1, rest assured that a comprehensive summary will be provided in the upcoming post detailing the features and improvements included in OS 8.1.
One of the standout aspects of this release is the revamped Installer experience, which has been enhanced with improved accessibility features. The "Before Installing", "Try or Install", "Choose a Disk", and "Encryption" views now boast accessible labels that can be easily read by screen readers. Furthermore, password quality feedback will now be announced aloud, ensuring a seamless experience for users who rely on assistive technologies.
The installer has also received several key safety checks, which have helped prevent crashes related to complex partition layouts. Additionally, the installer's appearance is now centered on-screen at all times.
Initial setup has also been upgraded with similar accessibility improvements, including password quality feedback that will always appear centered on-screen. Users can now create usernames containing trailing hyphens and underscores, and the keyboard layout information source has been updated to be more reliable.
The Music application has undergone significant enhancements, particularly in its queue management features. The latest release boasts improved performance for handling large queues, allowing users to remove individual tracks from a track's context menu or clear the entire queue with ease.
Searching by track name is now enabled, ensuring that users can quickly locate specific songs in their collections. The application now saves and restores the queue and last played track, and keyboard shortcuts have been added to quit the application and add new files.
Album art is now visible in media controls within both the panel and other areas of the interface, courtesy of efforts by developers who have improved Music's functionality. Additionally, long artist names or system fonts can no longer cause issues when using Music.
The Terminal application has also received attention from developers, who fixed an issue that caused keyboard focus to not be inside the first tab when opening a new window. They have also corrected a problem with text containing "#" being cut off when dropped into the terminal.
Incorrect line breaks while pasting or dropping text during process execution have been fixed, and process finished icons are now always cleared when selecting a tab. An outdated feature that caused window sizes to be odd on certain display sizes has been removed.
A significant update in Hardware Enablement is the inclusion of the latest long-term support (LTS) stack from Ubuntu, featuring Linux kernel 6.14. This version provides improved performance, particularly while gaming, as well as reduced power consumption for certain AMD and Intel chipsets and GPUs. It also brings new security features and expands support for gamepads, wifi devices, microphones, and other peripherals.
Finally, several minor enhancements have been made across various applications, including Camera, Videos, Calculator, and Screenshot. Main menus are now properly marked in these applications, allowing users to access them with the keyboard shortcut `. In Calculator, the "Del" button has been replaced with an icon, and the "New Window" action is now visible in places like keyboard shortcut settings.
A crash that occurred when taking screenshots taller than they are wide has been fixed, while issues causing screenshots to not be saved to custom locations have also been resolved.
elementary OS 8.0.2 Available Now
More reliable and accessible than ever
