Tracking libadwaita adoption in Fedora (updated for F43)

This short article shows the progress of introducing libadwaita, the set of new design patterns in GNOME desktop environment, to Fedora. Fedora is considered a distro close to the upstream, with release cycle similar to GNOME’s.

The goal would be to have a consistent modern theme for all preinstalled apps by default. Some programs are not a part of GNOME itself, so the 100% completion may not be possible. However, apps trying to mimic libadwaita look-and-feel are also accepted.

You can install a custom theme to make older GTK software look like other libadwaita apps. You don’t need to manually download it from GitHub. Get it from Fedora repos, open the GNOME Tweaks app, and change “Legacy Applications” style to adw-gtk3:

dnf install gnome-tweaks adw-gtk3-theme

The libadwaita was first introduced in GNOME 42 (Fedora 36). I’ve tested all Fedora versions with their launch day 64-bit ISO image, in live mode and with no internet connection.

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Application list

(This table can be scrolled horizontally on mobile.)

	F43	F42	F41	F40	F39	F38	F37	F36
Audio Player
Boxes
Calculator
Calendar
Camera
Characters
Clocks
Connections
Contacts
Disk Usage Analyzer
Disks
Document Scanner
Document Viewer
Fedora Media Writer
Files
Firefox
Fonts
Help
Image Viewer
LibreOffice
Logs
Maps
Parental Controls
Problem Reporting
Settings
Software
System Monitor
Terminal
Text Editor
Tour
Video Player
Weather
Total	25/32	21	20	19	16	15	15	12

Notable changes

Fedora 39:

• Image Viewer: eog is replaced with loupe.

Fedora 40:

• Camera: cheese is replaced with snapshot.

Fedora 41:

• Terminal: gnome-terminal is replaced with ptyxis, using custom launcher icon and name.

Fedora 42:

• Parental Controls: new app (malcontent).

Fedora 43:

• Audio Player: rhythmbox is replaced with decibels.
• Document Viewer: evince is replaced with papers.
• Video Player: totem is replaced with showtime.