14 DAY TRIAL // The GNOME developers are hard at work these days preparing for the first Beta build of the anticipated GNOME 3.18 desktop environment, due for release on September 23, 2015.
Florian Müllner, who is responsible for the Mutter software, an open-source window and compositing manager used by default on the GNOME desktop environment, published details about the first Beta of Mutter 3.18, which will be distributed as part of the GNOME 3.18 release.
According to the brief changelog, Mutter 3.18 Beta 1 is a small bugfix release that addresses an issue with the update of the screen when using the proprietary Nvidia video driver and fixes a glitch with various full-screen applications.
Among many other miscellaneous bugs and code cleanups, we can mention that Mutter is now capable of calling only frame callbacks for surfaces that get drawn. The Thai language translation has also been updated.
As mentioned, the first Beta build of Mutter 3.18 will be available for testing as part of the GNOME 3.18 Beta 1 desktop environment release, but you can also download the Mutter 3.18 Beta 1 sources right now from Softpedia and compile it yourself.
However, please try to keep in mind that this is a pre-release version that might contain unresolved issues. Thus, we don't recommend installing it on production environments where stability is of the essence.