This week in Linux, we have a lot of new releases to talk about. We have desktop environment releases with KDE Plasma and Cinnamon. We also have some distro news from Ubuntu and postmarketOS. Plus, there was some exciting announcement stuff from Framework Computers about a potential new RISC-V motherboard. That's right. All of this and so much more on This Week in Linux, the weekly news show that keeps you up to date with what's going on in the Linux and Open Source world. Now let's jump right into Your Source for Linux GNews. This episode of TWIL is sponsored by Kolide more on them later before we get started this week are you aware that you can have this shirt too the "Linux is Everywhere" t-shirt it's in our store right now so go to tuxdigital.com/store to get yours the kd community have released the latest version of their plasma desktop environment with plasma 6.1 this release is packed with a ton of cool features and smooth refinements. Plasma 6.1 comes with new hardware support, new Wayland features, and some overall quality of life improvements, including remote desktop functionality and other usability upgrades. So let's start off with the hardware and Wayland features. Probably the most important thing for NVIDIA users is the support for explicit sync, which makes the Wayland support for NVIDIA users actually usable, and not only that, very good, because it eliminates flickering and glitches and it just enhances the overall experience of NVIDIA hardware on Wayland, which used to be not at all acceptable. So this is a much better thing. So if you are an NVIDIA user, you should be looking forward to Plasma 6.1. Next up is the triple buffering support in Wayland and KDE developer Nate Graham says that this is probably the most impactful thing because this would make animations and screen rendering smoother in general. And ideally up to the level of the X11 session, which already did triple buffering. Now let's move on to remote desktop functionality because they have added that built in to have support for the RDP or remote desktop protocol, which allows you to manage systems remotely without third-party tools. So it needs to be manually activated in system settings, which is a good thing because a lot of people don't like the idea of having that automatically, like an RDP server active by default, which you wouldn't want that. But the important part is that all you have to do is go into system settings, hit a toggle, and that's it. You're good to go. It's also compatible with KDE's remote desktop client, KRDC. So if you need to provide remote support for a friend or family, that sort of thing, then this is a great way to do it. KDE also introduced a really nice feature for Wayland users with persistent apps. So it remembers and reopens the last session you have for all the Windows and applications you were running. So if you decide to shut down your system with stuff running, it will remember what they are and reopen them for the next time. KDE Plasma 6.1 also adds a nice synchronization feature for your keyboard as well as the accent color to Plasma. So it syncs the keyboard backlight colors with the desktop accent colors, which is a nice little polish there. They've also updated the panel edit mode, which is very nice in my opinion because it was a little clunky before. And so now it's much smoother and much more visually appealing because they've just kind of readdressed the change the approach for the panel edit mode and i think this one's a much better much better improvement now there's also a lot of refinements that happen in kde plasma 6.1 for example there's a simplified shutdown screen so it only offers the shutdown and cancel options if you choose it from the main menu this allows you to not have all of the different power options If you just click shut down, because if you wanted to have all of them, you could just click the one in the. Menu that you already clicked so i like it it's nice to simplify things at times they've also enhanced the screen locking utilities because it gives you an option to unlock without a password like a screensaver so that's pretty cool and lastly let's talk about the mouse and cursor improvements for usability so they added this feature called shake cursor which enlarges the cursor when shaken to make it easier to find when you lose it for if you'd like for example believe me, where you have multiple monitors, just a lot of screen real estate, you might not know, and it might blend in with your background or blend in with your website or whatever you're doing. And this is a good way to easily find it because you can just shake the mouse and then it pops up in your face like here I am. And I like that. It's a very good idea. Also, they have done some more stuff for people who have multiple monitors like I do, which is adding this thing called the edge barrier, which is basically a sticky area for the cursor between the monitor edges to prevent accidental jumps between the screens. So if you want to click something that's on the edge, it's a lot easier to do it now. So that's nice. So what do you think about this release of KDE Plasma? Have you already tried 6.0 or maybe you're still waiting for it and you're running Platysma 5? Let me know what your thoughts are in the comments or on the forum thread. Are you ready to spice up your desktop? Linux Mint 22 is right around the corner. But first, First, we got a fresh batch of goodness with the latest Cinnamon desktop from the Linux Mint crew. So Cinnamon 6.2 brings a nice mix of tweaks and touch-ups that smooth out the rough edges of the previous release. Sure, this is not the most feature-packed release of Cinnamon ever, but there are some new things to play with. And this update is more about perfecting what's already there, making the experience sleeker, faster, and just better to use. So let's talk about what's new with Cinnamon 6.2. The most notable thing to talk about with this release is probably the new X app because they have the GNOME Online Accounts GTK X app for setting up all of your online accounts and integrating into your Cinnamon desktop, which is really cool. Cool. And GNOME has their own online accounts app from GNOME 46. And that one based on GTK4. And there's a bit of controversy surrounding GTK4 and GNOME's approach to making apps these days. So that's one of the reasons why Linux Mint is making their own version in the XApps. And they've been making XApps for quite a while. And this is a really good addition for that set of applications, because offering users the option to integrate various online with their desktop. Very cool. Although I would like to suggest they consider a name change because calling this X app Gnome Online Accounts GTK is not the most clear way to differentiate it from Gnome's GTK-based online accounts app. Just a little bit more of a tweak. Even if you call it the X app, online. Well, then people would confuse if it's like an X app or like an app for x.com. Anyway, I'm not necessarily suggesting anything specifically, but this thing, it's not very clear. The other refinements you'll see in this latest version of the Cinnamon desktop is that Cinnamon sessions now have greeter badges. The search bar shows by default when adding to the startup applications, the workspace switcher supports removing workspaces with middle click, and there are new screen lock delay options, which are five and 10 seconds. There's also been some improvements to configuring key bindings or keyboard shortcuts because Cinnamon Spices now supports configurable key bindings and you can now search inside of the editor for keyboard shortcuts. I'm sure many users are excited to get their hands on the latest version of the Cinnamon Desktop, but typically we see a release of the Cinnamon Desktop about a month or so prior to release of the next Linux Mint. So users will still need to wait for Linux Mint 22 to give it a spin unless you're using a rolling release that supports it as well. Now, Mint 22 is expected sometime this summer, but I'll wager a guess based on all of the times that I've covered releases for Linux Mint and Cinnamon, I'll say that we're probably going to see the next Linux Mint of Linux Mint 22, which is based on Ubuntu 20.04.04 sometime mid-July. There's not a lot to talk about in Cinnamon. This week, but there's a lot more to talk about with Mint 22 because there will be many exciting changes for that release, like the new kernel release cadence and much more. So be sure to subscribe to get the latest news on Linux Mint 22. What are your thoughts on Cinnamon 6.2? Are you looking forward to the next release of Linux Mint? Let me know in the comments below or on the forum thread. Ubuntu's App Center has had a rather glaring omission from recent releases of Ubuntu. to, it did not come with the ability to install local deb packages that you download from the web. Now, based on my research, it seems like this feature was always planned to be included, but unfortunately, there wasn't enough time to make it in prior to full Ubuntu releases. Now, that is obviously a bummer for Ubuntu users, but the App Center is, you know, it's based on Snap, so you can be updated after release, so that's pretty cool. Now, the first version of the App Center that did not support installing local third-party devs was Ubuntu 23.10 Mantic Minotaur. Prior to this, Ubuntu was using a different software center which did have this functionality and had it for years. And just to be clear, we aren't talking about support of all dev files. The App Center has always supported installing devs from official Ubuntu repositories. This is about install third-party devs, which also is sometimes referred to as sideloading. It is also important to note that users could still install these packages if they really wanted to because it was accessible by running sudo apt install command in the terminal. It was also possible for people to install the app Gdebi, which is essentially a GUI application made for the exact purpose of installing other devs. But both of these things require the user to know this in advance, and beginners or average users would likely not be aware of these options. Ubuntu will also be displaying warnings and confirmation boxes in App Center when someone tries to do this to educate users about the risks of installing dev packages from untrusted third-party sources. I think there are two things to address here. The security concerns of dev packages and control in the hands of the users. So first, devs do present some security concerns. This is an undeniable thing, and it's good that Ubuntu is going to display warnings to users about the possibility. Now, devs grant unrestricted root access to the system and lack any kind of sandboxing. So if you install a dev package, you are giving that dev package full unrestricted root access to the system. That's how they have always worked. So that's one of the reasons why the universal formats were made in the first place. But moving on from that, now dev packages in the official repositories are not guaranteed to be without issues, but the odds of a malicious actor getting something in one of those official repos is pretty, pretty small. But it is certainly possible with a third-party dev, depending on where you downloaded it from, of course. The fact remains, though, for about eight months that beginners or average Ubuntu users unaware of the more technical solutions have not been able to install dev packages that they downloaded. I understand the frustrations people have with this because I think it is fair that it could have waited until after the distro release since it is a snap. But it could have been updated at any time, and it's taken over a full six-month cycle, and it still didn't happen until two months after the release that it first happened in. So 2310, this was the first iteration that didn't have the ability, and it took two extra months after 2404 came out. So that's quite a while, and I'm very curious why it took that long. Now, I personally found myself wanting to do this exact thing recently because I tried using the Snap version of the Steam store. And while for some time the experience was fine, I started running into total crash failure, where not only would the game crash, but all of Steam would crash too. Since I am a technical Linux user, it was pretty easy for me to just bypass the limitation by using apt in the terminal to install the dev of Steam, which I got by downloading it direct from Valve's website. Now, I do want to give credit where it's due. I'm glad to see that Canonical have implemented this functionality, but I do think it is fair to say it should not have taken this long to get it. I understand development takes a lot of time, and I'm not saying that this was a simple process to make it work in the App Center. I don't know. But it took until two months after another release of the distro for it to happen. So that's kind of off a bit for me. I mean, the best solution would be if you don't have that, at least do something where when you double click a dev package, something happens other than just an error saying you can't do anything with it. Like, hey, use the terminal or hey, use Gdeby or wait a second, the App Center will have something. Just any kind of notice that explains what's going on because for average and beginners, they're not going to know what's going on. So that's like the only thing I actually am bothered by it because eventually it was going to be added and that's okay. It might take some time to do development. I understand that. But it needs to be a little better execution next time if there's anything like that happens again in or just you know consider what the possibilities of the user would have if they try to launch something and it doesn't do anything yeah anyway I. What are your thoughts on this particular topic? Let me know in the comments or on the forum thread. This episode of This Week in Linux is brought to you by Kolide. In a perfect world, end users would only work on managed devices with the IT-approved apps. But the BYOD, or the bring your own device trend, is here and it's here to stay. It's been in full swing for a while. Employees use personal devices and unapproved apps that aren't protected by MDM, IAM, and other security tools. There's a giant gap between security tools that we have and the way we actually work. 1Password calls this the access trust gap. And now Kolide has joined forces with 1Password. Kolide brings their user-first device trust solution, which notifies users as soon as it detects an issue on their device and teaches them how to solve it without needing help from IT. 1Password brings their extended access management to secure every sign-in for every app on every device. Kolide is designed for companies with Okta. So if you're using Okta and you're looking for a device trust solution, then look no further than Kolide. Plus now that they've joined up with 1Password and their extended access management, it's just going to get better. Now, Kolide plus 1Password, they care about user experience and privacy too, which means it can go places that other tools can't, like personal or contractor devices. It ensures that every device is known and healthy and every login is protected. So stop trying to ban BYOD or Shadow IT and start protecting them with Kolide and 1Password. Support the show and go to thisweekinlinux.com/kolide That's thisweekinlinux.com/kolide. Go there and get more details about these great security solutions. That's thisweekinlinux.com/kolide While we're on the subject of Ubuntu, let's change gears and talk about the Ubuntu Summit. Canonical have announced the details for this year's Ubuntu Summit, which will be taking place in The Hague. The Netherlands and happening between October 25th and the 27th. And The Hague is a fun name for a city because, you know, there's always these nicknames with, you know, the Big Apple or the Magic City or the Sunshine State or whatever. There's all these nicknames. But then the actual name of the city is The Hague. That's kind of fun. All right. Over the past two years, the Ubuntu Summit has showcased a lot of cool things from open source staples to projects that are innovative and even ambitious. I attended both of these Ubuntu Summits where I met a lot of cool people. I also attended talks and gave some of my own talks, and I even got a chance to sit down with my good friend Spacebro, or Mark Shuttleworth for people who aren't personal homies of his. If you want to check out what the experience was like for me at last year's Ubuntu Summit, then check out the link to the playlist in the show notes where I made some vlogs. Also, if you want to check out the interview I had with my good buddy Mark, I'll have all of that linked in the show notes. Well, the Ubuntu Summit is coming up and they have issued a call for abstracts. So if you want to be a speaker at this year's Ubuntu Summit, now is your time to submit. Also, the Ubuntu Summit has been a great experience for me each year. And this year looks like it will be even better because they're adding booths to the event. Now, booths are good at most of these kinds of events because they offer a central location to find people for specific projects and companies and stuff like that to meet and talk about whatever it is that you want to talk to them about. Now, to make it even better than typical booths, they have decided that projects and communities can request a booth, but these will not be sales booths, but a space for projects to show off their stuff, have conversations and just promote their stuff now if you are part of a project that is interested in hosting a booth then you will find a link for that in the show notes as well as a link to all the other stuff that i've mentioned here now have you attended the ubuntu summit before if you did why didn't you say hi and if you haven't uh are you interested in doing so i mean if you're it's going to be in the netherlands so if you're not if you're from the u.s like i am it's not that easy to do but maybe there is some like sponsorship system depending on like if you're a speaker or not. So look into that. Have you attended any other Linux events? You know, what are your thoughts on this topic as a whole? Let me know in the comments and on the forum thread. Oh, and if you haven't seen my vlogs from last year for the Ubuntu Summit, then go do that. Now, go do it. Framework Computer. They make some really cool stuff. And they announced this week something really exciting to make their stuff even cooler. So for all you hardware addicts out there, Framework has been working with Deep Computing on a partner-developed RISC-V motherboard for the Framework Laptop 13. This is very early stages of the possibility for this. So we don't have much information overall or any pricing information just yet. And the motherboard is still in development. but Deep Computing is working on bringing this RISC-V motherboard for the Framework Laptop 13 as an alternative to the Intel and the AMD options. Just really cool. The Deep Computing RISC-V motherboard will use a Star5 JH7110 processor. Now, this sock does have upstream kernel support and is used by other RISC-V single board computers like the Star5 Vision 5 II, but this is not going to be a workload powerhouse. Pharonix shared benchmarks that the Raspberry Pi 4 is more performant than this particular RISC-V chip. And in my opinion, that's okay because you got to start somewhere, right? For those unfamiliar, RISC-V is an open standard instruction set architecture that has potential to be a game changer in the computer hardware space. Now ARM has been making waves for years and while that is also a RISC-based, but it's not the open standard. The open standard aspect of RISC-V is much more interesting to me than ARM. Now, here's a quote from Framework Announcement about this new option. This main board is extremely compelling, but we want to be clear that in this generation, it is focused primarily on enabling developers, tinkerers, and hobbyists to start testing and creating on RISC-V. The peripheral set and performance aren't yet competitive with our Intel or AMD-powered Framework laptop main boards. This board also has soldered memory and uses micro SD cards and eMMC storage, both of which are limitations of the processor. It is a great way to start playing with RISC-V, though inside of a thin, light, refined laptop. The main board will be able to drop into any Framework Laptop 13 chassis or into the Cooler Master main board case. Now, Deep Computing is also working closely with the teams at Canonical and Red Hat to ensure Linux support is solid through Ubuntu and Fedora. End quote. For those thinking Deep Computing sounds familiar, well, they are the company that announced a RISC-V laptop back in 2022. And recently, Deep Computing is working with DC Roma RISC-V Laptop 2 as their newest RISC-V laptop, and that's going to have Ubuntu support. Are you excited about this as much as I am? Because this is really cool and the ability to have a laptop like a framework where you can replace the motherboard. Let's say, for example, you buy a RISC-V laptop and it's not, you know, the thing that you want. Well, with the framework in theory, you could just take the motherboard out and put in an Intel or an AMD and you have... New, more powerful system. That framework's so cool. Anyway, are you new to the RISC-V space? What are your thoughts on this whole RISC-V versus ARM thing? Let me know in the comments or on the forum thread. The team over at postmarketOS recently released a new version of their mobile operating system with postmarketOS 24.06. This is based on Alpine Linux 3.20, and this is a privacy and security-focused Libre software mobile operating system, and it's very, very cool. It's designed for the purpose of not necessarily just on mobile devices like phones and tablets. You could also put it on laptops if you want to, but it is tailored towards more the mobile side of things. So let's talk about the highlights of this release. They've added support for the Google Nexus 10 tablet, Lenovo ThinkPad X13S laptop. The Microsoft Surface RT tablet, as well as a generic x8664 support allowing you to run post-market OS on pretty much any PC or laptop. And NVIDIA Tegra ARMv7 support was added, giving you access to use post-market OS on a bunch of devices powered by the Tegra stuff. So they've also added KDE Plasma Mobile 6 and Gnome Shell on Mobile 46. Now, to be clear, these are mobile versions of these DEs, not just taking the desktop DE and then slapping it onto phones and tablets. These are made specifically for this kind of thing. So it's KDE Plasma Mobile and Gnome Shell on mobile. Now, if for some reason you want to use FOSH, this is also available too in postmarketOS, as well as shipping with the SXMO interface. Which is one I've not heard of before. So that's pretty cool to see that it has that much flexibility with their OS. Now, postmarketOS 2406 adds new keyboard mappings for Chromebook devices, non-free firmware installed by default, which is good for hardware support and that sort of thing, and many other improvements and bug fixes. I've used postmarketOS on my Pine phone, and I'm very curious what the experience is like these days. Have you ever tried postmarketOS? If so, what are your thoughts on it? And let me know in the comments below. Or on the forum thread. The Kdenlive team have released a brand new version of their very popular open source video editor with Kdenlive 24.05. This release brings a bunch of very cool and very exciting features and improvements. So let's start things off with the changes to group effects. In the latest release, they have added extra features on top of the one they did previously because they introduced it in the last release where you can add effects to a group of clips. Now this release, you can now control the parameters affecting all of the effects of all of the clips within the group. That is awesome. Next up, Kdenlive 24.05 also introduces multi-format rendering. This means you can render videos in multiple aspects ratios, including horizontal, vertical, and square, all from a single project. If you release stuff on social media like TikTok and Instagram, this is going to be a nice addition for you. Then they round things out by making a ton of performance improvements in the editing process by making it much faster with moving clips with the spacer tool, plus faster sequence switching, improved AV1 NVENC support, and quicker timeline operations. They've also introduced a user-friendly interface for creating and editing external camera proxy profiles. And instead of just having one project bin organizing by folders, you can now do that, but also have multiple bins as well. Now let's talk about the audio capture. This was a feature for a long time, but they took it out many releases ago, and they have now re-implemented it in Qt 6. They've also improved the panning and zooming with the middle mouse button, which is really nice, as I find that the most efficient way to navigate a video editor timeline is with my mouse, kind of like that. Now, I assume it's with the scroll wheel, not necessarily the button itself, but, you know, I haven't tried it out myself yet, so who knows? Maybe you knew. You know. Let me know in the comments. They also made it possible to play and pause the playback just by clicking anywhere on the monitor rather than needing to use the keyboard shortcuts or clicking on the play pause button. Now, the last thing could have probably been the first thing. I wanted to save it for last because it's just so cool. Now, they have improved subtitle font styles by adding bold and italic attributes. So it now offers an option to set a maximized character count per subtitle and provides better user feedback by showing the output in the speech recognition dialogue. Now, why do you need a speech recognition dialogue? Well, that's because they have automatic subtitle translations using Meta's seamless M4T system, which is just so cool. Having automatic subtitle translations is a very, very nice feature because you can use that for so much value. You can mix transcripts with it. You can use subtitles for YouTube videos and all sorts of stuff, making it possible to easily have a video to be searchable. It's just such a good feature to add. Thank you very much. Now, do you use Kdenlive? Have you tried this version of the Kdenlive editor? What are your thoughts on this version or just Kdenlive in general? Let me know in the comments below or on the forum thread. Thanks for watching this episode of This Week in Linux. 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You can also support the show by ordering the Linux is Everywhere t-shirt, like I mentioned earlier in the show, or the This Week in Linux shirt at tuxdigital.com/store tuxdigital.com/store Plus, while you're there, check out all the other cool stuff we have, like hats, mugs, hoodies, and shirts. You know, we have lots of other shirts, too. TuxDigital.com/store ... I'll see you next time for another episode of Your Source for Linux GNews. Thanks again for watching. I'm Michael Tunnell. I hope you're doing swell. Be sure to ring that notification bell. And until next time, I bid you farewell.
