An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Now, leaders from the GNOME Foundation and KDE Foundation, along with Debian Linux, are considering [...] building an app store on top of Flatpak, a universal Linux software deployment and package management program. This idea of replacing traditional but not very friendly ways of delivering Linux desktop apps, such as DEB and RPM package management systems, has been around for a while. Besides being easier to use, Flatpak and its rivals, such as Appimage and Snaps, can also run on any Linux distribution. All the programs do this by containerizing applications with all their necessary libraries and associated files.

Now, as laid out in former Google chairman Eric Schmidt's Plaintext Group, the proposal is to "Promote diversity and sustainability in the Linux desktop community by adding payments, donations, and subscriptions to the Flathub app store." Behind this idea are several Linux desktop leaders, such as GNOME president Robert McQueen; former GNOME executive director and Debian project leader Neil McGovern; and KDE president Aleix Pol. Flatpak, unlike the earlier store attempts, works on essentially all Linux distros. This makes it much more interesting.

Why Flakpak, instead of its chief rival, Snaps? They explained, "Flathub is a vendor-neutral service for Linux application developers to build and publish their applications directly to their end users. A healthy application ecosystem is essential for the success of the open-source software desktop, so end-users can trust and control their data and development platforms on the device in front of them." [...] Be that as it may, while the proposal for a paid Flathub app store remains just an idea, it's still one that may garner support. If this plan can generate enough support, and then the revenue, to cover its costs, it may create the first popular universal Linux app store. Then, who knows, maybe the Linux desktop will finally become broadly popular. Stranger things have happened.

System76 is announcing a "fully redesigned" version of its AMD-only Linux-powered "Pangolin" laptop with an upgraded memory, storage, processor, and display.

9to5Linux reports: It features the AMD Ryzen 7 6800U processor with up to 4.7 GHz clock speeds, 8 cores, 16 threads, and AMD Radeon 680M integrated graphics.... a 15.6-inch 144Hz Full HD (1920 x 1080) display [using 12 integrated Radeon graphics cores] with a matte finish, a sleek magnesium alloy chassis, and promises up to 10 hours of battery life with its 70 Wh Li-Ion battery. It also features a single-color backlit US QWERTY Keyboard and a multitouch clickpad. Under the hood, the Linux-powered laptop boasts 32 GB LPDDR5 6400 MHz of RAM and it can be equipped with up to 16TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD storage. Another cool feature is the hardware camera kill switch for extra privacy....

As with all of System76's Linux-powered laptops, the all-new Pangolin comes pre-installed with System76's in-house built Pop!_OS Linux distribution featuring the GNOME-based COSMIC desktop and full disk-encryption or with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Someone made a Chromium fork... for your terminal. The terminal-based browser Carbonyl "adheres to, and is compatible with modern standards," writes MUO, "meaning that pages behave as they should, and you can even watch streaming video, within the Linux terminal!"

But best of all, "Pages connect and render in an instant—seemingly quicker than a desktop GUI browser, and every page we visited was rendered correctly."
From the article: There are a bunch of good reasons to browse the internet from the comfort of your terminal. It could be that eschewing the bloat of X.org and Wayland, a terminal is all you have. Maybe you like SSHing into remote machines and browsing the internet from there.

Perhaps you, like us, just really, really like terminals.

Whatever the reason, your choices of web browsers have, until recently, been limited, and your experience of the world wide web has been a janky, barely-functional one.... We tested Carbonyl in a range of Linux terminals, including the XFCE terminal. GNOME terminal, kitty, and the glorious Cool Retro Terminal. Carbonyl was smooth, fast, and flawless in all of them.

We even connected to our Raspberry Pi via SSH in CRT, and ran Carbonyl remotely, watching Taylor Swift music videos on YouTube. No problem.
And yes, you can use it to play DOOM.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet, written by Jack Wallen: PikaOS is very similar to that of Nobara Linux, which opts for a Fedora base. But what are these two Linux distributions? Simply put, they are Linux for gamers. [...] So, what does PikaOS do that so many other distributions do not? The most obvious thing is that it makes it considerably easier to install the tools needed to play games. Upon first logging in, you're greeted with a Welcome app. In the First Steps tab, you have quick access to tools for updating the system, installing patented codecs and libraries, installing propriety Nvidia drivers, installing apps from the Software Manager, and installing WebApps.

Next comes the Recommended Additions, where you can install the likes of: PikaOS Game Utilities is a meta package that installs Steam, Lutris, GOverlay, MangoHud, Wine, Winetricks, vkBasalt, and other gaming-centric tools; Microsoft TrueType fonts for better Windows font emulation; Blender for creating 3D images; OBS Studio for streaming; Kdenlive for non-linear video editing; Krita for painting; and LibreOffice for productivity. In the Optional Steps tab, you can add AMD proprietary drivers, ROCm drivers, Xone drivers, and Proton GE (for Steam and Wine compatibility). Finally, the Look And Feel tab allows you to customize themes, layouts, and extensions. The layouts section is pretty nifty, as it allows you to configure the GNOME desktop to look and feel like a more traditional desktop, a MacOS-like desktop, a Windows 11 layout, a throwback GNOME 2 desktop, and even a Ubuntu Unity-like desktop.

As far as pre-installed software goes, it's pretty bare bones (until you start adding titles from the Recommended Additions tab in the Welcome App). You'll find Firefox (web browser), Geary (email), Pidgin (messaging), Weather, Calculator, Cheese (web camera software), Rhythmbox, Contacts, a few utilities, and basic games. However, installing new apps is quite simple via the Software Manager app. Of course, the focus of PikaOS is games. When you install the PikaOS Game Utilities, you'll get Steam installed, which makes it easy to play an endless array of games on the Linux desktop. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that when you launch the PikaOS Game Utilities installation, it opens a terminal window to run the installation. Give this plenty of time to complete and, in the end, you can launch Steam, log in to your Steam account, and start playing. Just remember, the first time you launch the Steam app, it will take a moment to update and configure. But once it's up and running... let the games begin.

"From the maintainer of Ubuntu Unity and the Unity desktop environment, here comes blendOS," writes 9to5Linux, "a GNU/Linux distribution that aims to be the last distribution you'll ever use, especially if you distro hop." blendOS is here to offer you "a seamless blend of all Linux distributions," as its creator wants to call it. blendOS is based on Arch Linux and GNOME on Wayland, but it lets you use apps from other popular distributions, such as Fedora Linux or Ubuntu.

This is possible because you can use the native package managers from Arch Linux (pacman — included by default), Fedora Linux (dnf), and Ubuntu (apt), which are included as containers using Distrobox/Podman. However, the DNF and APT package managers aren't included in the live ISO image, nor blendOS's own blend package manager.... It also follows a rolling release model, since it's derived from Arch Linux.

Even if it comes with the GNOME desktop by default on the live ISO image, blendOS will let you deploy a new installation with another popular desktop environment, such as KDE Plasma, MATE, or Xfce, or even window managers like Sway or i3. Apart from the fact that you can install any app from any of the supported Linux distributions, blendOS also comes with out-of-the-box support for sandboxed Flatpak apps, which you can easily install directly from the Flathub Store app, which is a Web App that puts the Flathub website on your desktop.

Last summer GNOME invited people to voluntarily run the tool gnome-info-collect on their systems to send back (non-sensitive/non-identifiable) data about their system configurations. 2,560 people ran the tool, and they're now releasing the data.

Here's the distribution of distros for all 2,560 respondents:

Fedora: 1,376 (54.69%)
Arch: 469 (18.64%)
Ubuntu: 267 (10.61%)
Manjaro: 140 (5.56%)
EndeavourOS: 66 (2.62%)
Debian: 44 (1.75%)
openSUSE: 38 (1.51%)
Pop! 38 (1.51%)
Other: 78 (3.10%)


And the breakdown of hardware manufacturers (top four):

Lenovo: 516 (23.54%)
Dell: 329 (15.01%)
ASUS: 261 (11.91%)
HP: 223 (10.17%)


The site OMG! Linux pointed out that 90% of systems had Flatpak installed — (though it's enabled by default on Fedora, which was 54.69% of all the respondents). Some other interesting stats they noticed: - Most common default browser: Firefox (73.14%), Chrome (11.64%), Brave (4.76%). [Microsoft Edge was the default browser on 37 systems (1.51%) ]

- 83% of users have at least one (non-default) GNOME extension installed
- 'App Indicator' is the most popular extension (by 43% of those using extensions)

- GSConnect, User Themes, and Dash to Panel/Dock also widely used

- Most popular desktop apps: GIMP (58.48%), VLC (53.71%), Steam (53.40%)


[...] The popularity of GNOME extensions will surprise no-one. It is a solid indicator that the existing GNOME extension system is good at doing what it's there to: let users augment and extend their system in the ways they want.
GNOME's report adds that "it's exciting to see the popularity of new GNOME apps like Flatseal, To Do, Bottles, and Fragments."

One other interesting stat from their report: 55% of the participants were using Online Accounts, with Google the most common one added, followed by Nextcloud and Microsoft. But "Some of the account types had very little usage at all, with Foursquare, Facebook, Media Server, Flickr and Last.fm all being active on less than 1% of systems."

Following controversial changes to Dungeons & Dragons' decades-old Open Gaming License (OGL), "many prominent third-party RPG publishers now say they're abandoning the OGL, regardless of what changes [publisher Wizards of the Coast (WotC)] officially releases in a coming new version," reports Ars Technica. "What's more, many in the community have now lost faith in WotC's stewardship of the licensed rules system that has underpinned so much of the industry's last two decades." From the report: Pathfinder publisher Paizo Inc. is behind perhaps the biggest effort to move the industry away from WotC's OGL. The company announced last Thursday that it is creating a new Open RPG Creative License (ORC) designed to be "open, perpetual, and irrevocable." [...] Regardless of the legal fate of the OGL, Paizo says it wants to "irrevocably and unquestionably keep alive the spirit of the Open Game License" with its new ORC. The system-agnostic license, designed with the help of IP law firm Azora Law, will eventually be controlled and protected by a nonprofit akin to the Linux Foundation, the company says. Until that new license is ready, upcoming Paizo products will be printed without any explicit license, the company says.

Paizo's ORC effort has already drawn some significant support from the community. Call of Cthulhu and Runequest publisher Chaosium, which never used the WotC OGL for its products in the first place, nonetheless writes that it's "very happy to be working with the rest of the industry to come up with a system-wide OGL that anyone can use." Popular D&D module publisher Kobold Press has also lent its support to Paizo's ORC product but stopped just short of committing to use it for its just-announced Core Fantasy ruleset, codenamed Project Black Flag. Instead, Kobold says it is "wait[ing] to see exactly what shape the Open Gaming License might take in this new era" and "will review the terms and consider whether they fit the needs of our audience and our business goals" when the updated OGL is eventually released. Mutants & Masterminds publisher Green Ronin is also on board with the ORC, with founder and President Chris Pramas publicly comparing the current OGL fiasco to WotC's disastrous attempt to push a new Game System License for the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons back in 2008.

Apart from the companies backing Paizo's ORC -- including Legendary Games and Rogue Genius -- some tabletop publishers are creating their own licenses or finding other ways to extricate themselves from the WotC OGL. Blade Runner RPG and Mutant: Year Zero publisher Free League, for instance, says it's overhauling its unique Year Zero Engine to remove any WotC OGL content. At the same time, it's creating a new "irrevocable, worldwide, and royalty-free" license for anyone who wants to use that engine in their own games. [...] Old-School Essentials publisher Necrotic Gnome has similarly announced that it's "moving away from the OGL" for its future products. The company is leaving a bit of wiggle room, saying it will be "keeping an eye on developments" and that its next move "will depend on how the OGL topic develops over the coming months." But Necrotic Gnome adds that "the direction is clear," and that direction is toward "an alternative open license," which could end up being Paizo's ORC. Arcadia publisher MCDM and publisher Basic Fantasy also have plans to abandon the D&D 5th edition ruleset. "Troll Lord Games, meanwhile, publicly abandoned the OGL weeks ago and liquidated its existing stock of 5th-edition D&D products, 'never to be revisited again, in any edition,'" adds Ars.

"If you've been itching to try an Arch Linux distribution and want something outside of the usual GNOME/KDE/Xfce desktop environments, Mabox Linux is an outstanding option...." writes ZDNet's Jack Wallen.

"It reminded me of my early days using Linux, only with a bit of a modern, user-centric twist...." Linux was hard in its infancy. So, when I see a Linux distribution that reminds me of those days but manages to make it easy on users without years of experience under their belts, it reminds me how far the open-source operating system has come. Such is the case with Mabox Linux.... It's not that Mabox doesn't make Arch Linux easy...it does. But when you first log into the desktop, you are greeted with something most hard-core Linux users love to see but can be a real put-off to new users. I'm talking about information...and lots of it.Â

You see, Mabox Linux places four information-centric widgets front and center on the desktop, so you can get an at-a-glance look at how the OS is using your system resources and even two widgets that give you keyboard shortcuts for things like opening various apps, menus, and even window management controls. Also on the OpenBox Window Manager desktop, you'll find a single top panel that gives you quick access to all your installed apps, the Mabox Colorizer... and a system tray with plenty of controls....

Once you have the distribution installed, the big surprise comes by way of performance. Mabox Linux is amazingly fast...like faster than most distributions I've used. A big part of that is due to the OpenBox Window Manager, which is very lightweight. Compared to my regular GNOME-based Linux desktop, Mabox is like driving a Lamborgini instead of a Prius. The difference is that obvious.ÂÂ
The installation process lets you choose between open-source or proprietary video drivers, the article points out. And "you can easily customize the color of your Mabox desktop, including the theme, side panels, Conky (which creates the desktop widgets), wallpaper, Tint2 Panel, and even the terminal theme."

OS News cheers the first official release of Vanilla OS, calling it "an immutable desktop Linux distribution that brings some interesting new technologies to the table, such as the Apx package manager."

From the official release announcement: "By default, Apx provides a container based on your Linux distribution (Ubuntu 22.10 for Vanilla OS 22.10) and wraps all commands from the distribution's package manager (apt for Ubuntu). Nevertheless, you can install packages from other package distributions.... Using the --dnf flag with apx will create a new container based on Fedora Linux. Here, apx will manage packages from Fedora's DNF repository, tightly integrating them with the host system.
ZDNet calls Vanilla OS "a new take on Linux that is equal parts heightened security and user-friendly." Among other things, "the developers opted to switch to ABRoot, which allows for fully atomic transactions between 2 root partitions." The official release announcement explains: ABRoot will check which partition is the present root partition (i.e A), then it will mount an overlay on top of it and perform the transaction. If the transaction succeeds, the overlay will be merged with the future root partition (i.e B). On your next boot, the system will automatically switch to the new root partition (B). In case of failure, the overlay will be discarded and the system will boot normally, without any changes to either partition.
But ZDNet explains why this comes in handy: Another really fascinating feature is called Smart Updates, which is enabled in the Vanilla OS Control Center, and ensures the system will not update if it's either under a heavy load or the battery is low. To enable this, open the Vanilla OS Control Center, click on the Updates tab, and then click the ON/OFF slider for SmartUpdate. Once enabled, updates will go through ABRoot transitions and aren't applied until the next reboot. Not only does this allow the updates to happen fully in the background, but it also makes them atomic, so they only proceed when it's guaranteed they will succeed.

The only caveat to this system is that you are limited to either weekly or monthly updates, as there is no daily option for scheduling. However, if you're doing weekly updates, you should be good to go.... Setting aside that which makes Vanilla OS special, the distribution is as stock a GNOME experience as you'll find and does a great job serving as your desktop operating system. It's easy to use, reliable, and performs really well...especially considering this is the first official release.
"Every wallpaper has a light and a dark version," adds the release announcement, "so you can choose the one that best suits your needs."

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland shares an article listing "the five best Linux distros of 2022" — as chosen by the editor of the blog omg! ubuntu!

"Spoiler: they're not all Ubuntu-based!" the article begins, also noting that it's not a ranking of superiority of importance, but rather "giving a shoutout to some of the year's best Linux releases."

Its top-listed non-Ubuntu distro? Fedora Workstation 37
Fedora Workstation is a flagship desktop Linux distro for good reason: it's robust, it's reliable, it's impeccably produced — it distills what a lot of folks seek most: a "pure" GNOME experience, delivered as devs intend, atop a strong and stable base.

Autumn's offer of Fedora 37 Workstation features GNOME 43 — an update that majorly improves the GNOME Shell user experience with Quick Settings. There's also a more-featured Files rebuilt in GTK4/libadwaita; a revamped Calendar app; a Device Security panel; Raspberry Pi 4 support; GRUB instead of syslinux on BIOS; and more.

Folk often overlook Fedora Workstation because, as Linux distros go, it's rather understated, unassuming, and drama-free. Yet, it is a finessed and functional distro that forgoes fancy flourishes to focus entirely on its performance, its integration, and its cohesion.

If you've never tried Fedora you're missing out, so sort it!
There were two other non-Ubuntu distros on the list:

• Manjaro 22.0 'Sikaris'. "As Arch-based Linux distros go Manjaro is one of the best.... Everything from the shell to the package manager to bespoke touches and apps are cohesive, considered, and choreographed. Manjaro 22.0 isn't just a distro, it's an experience."

• Linux Mint 21. "As well as being easy to use, Linux Mint ships with an interesting selection of pre-installed software that aims to cover most users' needs, including some homegrown apps that are rather special."

slack_justyb writes: A rather exotic feature in Xorg and Xwayland is being proposed to have the default value turned off going forward in Fedora 38 due to its use in attacks (CVE-2014-8095, CVE-2014-8099, CVE-2014-8103. . . to name a few). The feature allows servers running on one endianess to byte-swap to allow clients of a different endianess to connect to it. This was more common in the 1980s when X servers ran on big-endian and clients would connect who were little-endian.

The Xorg and Xwayland implementation of this feature has gone largely untested, the number of Fedora users that use it are virtually zero, and considering the number of attack vectors this has presented historically, setting the default to deny clients that require this seems the better way to do.

This change will be to the xorg-x11-server and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland packages and those needing the feature turned back will need to add "AllowSwappedClients" "on" to their xorg.conf.d file in the "ServerFlags" section. Xwayland users will need to pass the +byteswappedclients flag, however, the compositor will need to be able to handle this flag which at this time GNOME does not.

Fedora 37 is now officially released. From a report: Fedora 37 brings the GNOME 43 desktop to Fedora Workstation 37, updated toolchain components like Glibc 2.36 and LLVM 15 and Binutils 2.38, official support for the Raspberry Pi 4, retiring 32-bit ARMv7 support, Fedora CoreOS has been promoted to a Fedora Edition, Perl 5.36, Python 3.11, RPM 4.18, LXQt 1.1, and a wealth of other updated packages.

Slashdot reader Soul_Predator writes: Vanilla OS is Ubuntu on stock GNOME, with on-demand immutability and package selection freedom. It is currently a beta project, with a stable release planned for the next month.
"The first-time setup process is a breeze to experience," writes It's FOSS News, applauding how it lets uses choose and enable Flatpak/Snap/AppImage.

Overall, a package manager that installs applications utilizing a container, getting the ability to choose your package managers, on-demand immutability, and vanilla GNOME make it seem like a good deal to keep an eye on... I'd say it is a project that I believe a lot of users will appreciate.

You can download the ISO by joining its Discord channel for now. The ISO is not yet publicly available to all. Take a look at its documentation if you are curious. However, as per the roadmap, they plan to have a release candidate soon enough.

Canonical blog: Codenamed "Kinetic Kudu," this interim release improves the experience of enterprise developers and IT administrators. It also includes the latest toolchains and applications with a particular focus on the IoT ecosystem. Ubuntu 22.10 delivers toolchain updates to Ruby, Go, GCC and Rust. OpenSSH in Ubuntu 22.10 is configured by default to use systemd socket activation, meaning that sshd will not be started until an incoming connection request is received. This reduces the memory footprint of Ubuntu Server on smaller devices, VMs or LXD containers. Ubuntu 22.10 also comes with a new debuginfod service to help developers and admins debug programs shipped with Ubuntu. Debugging tools like gdb will automatically download the required debug symbols over HTTPS.

Ubuntu 22.10 now supports MicroPython on a variety of microcontrollers, including the Raspberry Pi Pico W. rshell, thonny and mpremote are all available in the Ubuntu repositories. The Ubuntu graphics stack transition to kms means developers can run Pi-based graphical applications using frameworks like Qt outside of a desktop session and without Pi specific drivers. This complements expanded support for a range of embedded displays for the Raspberry Pi, including the Inky eInk HAT series, Hyperpixel range and the Raspberry Pi Official Touchscreen. [...] All users will benefit from the refinements in GNOME 43, including GTK4 theming for improved performance and consistency. Quick Settings now provide faster access to commonly used options such as wifi, bluetooth, dark mode and power settings.

Developer Asahi Lina with the Asahi Linux project was successfully able to get GNOME running on the Apple M1, including "Firefox with YouTube video playback, the game Neverball, various KDE applications, and more," reports Phoronix. From the report: This is some great progress especially with the driver being written in Rust -- the first within the Direct Rendering Manager subsystem -- and lots of work there with the Rust infrastructure in early form. It won't be until at least Linux 6.2 before this driver could be mainlined while we'll see how quickly it tries to go mainline before it can commit to a stable user-space interface. At the moment there is also a significant driver "hack" involved but will hopefully be sorted out soon. Over in user-space, the AGX Gallium3D driver continues being worked on for OpenGL support with hopes of having OpenGL 2.1 completed by year's end. Obviously it will be longer before seeing the Apple graphics suitable for modern gaming with Vulkan, etc but progress is being made across the board in reverse-engineered, open-source Apple Silicon support under Linux. You can watch a video of the driver working here.

"The GNOME desktop environment is one of the most popular user interfaces and suites of apps available for desktop Linux distributions," writes Liliputing.

"Now a team of developers have been working to bring GNOME to mobile devices running Linux-based operating systems." GNOME Shell for mobile provides a touch-friendly user interface optimized for smartphones and tablets. And while it looks a bit like Android or iOS at first glance, there are a few key differences. The GNOME team have outlined some of them in an article about recent updates to GNOME Shell on mobile.

Like other modern mobile user interfaces, you interact with GNOME shell using taps, swipes, and other gesture-based navigation. What's different is that Android has three different views for navigation: a home screen, app drawer, and multitasking view. iOS has two: home screen and multitasking. But GNOME Shell has a single screen that allows you to view and launch apps and switch between running apps using gestures. There's no need to wait for a new screen to load. In a nutshell, you can swipe up from the bottom of the any screen to view a list of installed apps, thumbnail images showing all currently running apps, and a search box. You can tap an app icon to launch a new app, enter a term in the search box to find an app, or swipe between running apps to switch which app runs in the foreground.

You can also keep swiping upward to shrink the multitasking thumbnails and provide more room for app icons. And you can flick thumbnail previews upward to remove an app from the multitasking section. Typing in the search box will bring up relevant results including apps and settings.
"One interesting new feature here is that notifications can be swiped away horizontally to close, and notification bubbles can be swiped up to hide them..." the developers point out. "While the current version is definitely still work in progress, it's quite usable overall, so we feel it would make sense to start having experimental GNOME OS Nightly images with it."

But Liliputing also notes that it's not the only GNOME-based UI for mobile devices. There's also Purism's Phosh UI — the default UI for the PureOS on its Librem 5 smartphone (and available for other mobile Linux distros including Debian).

And Purism recently bragged that its smartphone is now also "the first mobile computer with a truly convergent OS" — meaning it can run on multiple hardware platforms, with apps adapting to their hardware. The Librem 5 [smartphone] uses the same convergent PureOS as our Librem 14 laptop and Mini PCs, with the same adaptive applications that make the Librem 5 more than merely a phone, it's a mobile computer in your pocket that can shape shift into a laptop, tablet, desktop, or even a server.... Scale your Librem 5 up to be a full laptop by attaching the Nexdock. Because our core apps are adaptive, they are ready to run on whatever screen you have....

With phosh-mobile-settings installed, you can flip the nexdock around and use the big screen just like a tablet.... Don't have a laptop dock? The Librem 5 can also act like a desktop computer when connected to a screen, keyboard, and mouse using our USB-C dock. Using the beta phom virtual mouse app, you can turn your Librem 5 into a touchpad mouse while it's connected to the big screen.

With the Librem 5, you can keep your desktop computer in your pocket and connect to a bigger screen at home or at the office and use the same apps on the bigger screen without restarting....

With the Librem 5 phone, you're getting much more than smartphone to run mobile-only apps; you're getting a laptop, tablet, desktop, all running software that respects your privacy and freedom.

"After a slight delay due to an installer issue, the first point release for Ubuntu 22.04 has been officially released," swrites Jack Wallen for TechRepublic.

"Although point releases are often overlooked by users, because they aren't major upgrades, this time around you should certainly run the upgrade immediately." The biggest reason is that this point release combines all of the security fixes and improvements that have been added since the initial release of Jammy Jellyfish. So, if you haven't bothered to upgrade Ubuntu 22.04 since you first installed it, which you should have been doing all along, this point upgrade will add everything you've missed in one fell swoop. One of the biggest upgrades for end users will be the ability of 20.04 users to upgrade to the latest release without having to touch the command line. At some point, users of 20.04 will see an upgrade prompt on their desktops, allowing them to easily make the jump to 22.04.1. This is a big deal because previously such upgrades would have required running several commands. That means no more:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -y
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y
sudo do-release-upgrade -y

Another point release found in 22.04.1 is GNOME 42, which features a new enhanced dark mode and switches to Wayland by default, with the inclusion of Xorg for unsupported hardware.

Purism posted an announcement Thursday about their privacy-focused "Librem 5 USA" smartphones. "New orders placed today will ship within our standard 10-business-day window." The Librem 5 USA now joins the Librem Mini and Librem 14 as a post-Just In Time product, one where instead of relying on Just In Time supply chains to manufacture a product just as we need it, we have invested in maintaining much larger inventories so that we can better absorb future supply chain issues that may come our way.

For anyone who is new to the product, the Librem 5 USA is our premium phone that shares the same hardware design and features as our mass-produced Librem 5, but with electronics we make in the USA using a separate electronics supply chain that sources from US suppliers whenever possible. This results in a tighter, more secure supply chain for the Librem 5 USA.

The Librem 5 USA uses the same PureOS as our other computers and so it runs the same desktop Linux applications you might be used to, just on a small screen.

PureOS on the Librem 5 USA demonstrates real convergence, where the device becomes more than just a phone, it becomes a full-featured pocket-sized computer that can act like a desktop when connected to a monitor, keyboard and mouse, or even a laptop (or tablet!) when connected to a laptop docking station. All of your files and all of your software remains the same and follows you where you go. Applications just morph from the smaller screen to the larger screen when docked, just like connecting a external monitor to a laptop.

Everyone who has backed the Librem 5 and Librem 5 USA projects hasn't just supported the production of the hardware itself, they have also supported a massive, multi-year software development effort to bring the traditional Linux desktop to a phone form-factor. Projects such as Phosh (the GUI), Phoc (the Compositor), Squeekboard (the Keyboard), Calls (for calling), Chats (for texting and messaging), and libhandy/libadwaita (libraries to make GTK applications adaptive) all required massive investment and many of these projects have already been moved to the GNOME infrastructure to better share our effort with a larger community.

We are delighted to see that many other mobile projects have recognized the quality of our efforts and adopted our software into their own projects....

The Librem 5 USA was designed for longevity and because we support right to repair, we also offer a number of spare parts in our shop, including replacement modems so you can make sure you support all the cellular bands in a particular continent, replacement batteries for when you ultimately wear out your existing battery, and plenty of other spare parts that haven't had sufficient demand to post formally on our shop (yet). If you need a spare part that isn't yet on the shop, just ask.

Today saw the release of Linux Mint 21 "Vanessa" Cinnamon Edition, a long term support release (supported until 2027).

Release notes at LinuxMint.com promise that it comes with "refinements and many new features to make your desktop experience more comfortable." Among the highlights: its Bluetooth manager is now Blueman (instead of Blueberry). Blueberry depended on gnome-bluetooth, which was developed exclusively for GNOME. In contrast, Blueman relies on the standard Bluez stack which works everywhere and can even be used or queried from the command line. The Blueman manager and tray icon provide many features that weren't available in Blueberry and a lot more information which can be used to monitor your connection or troubleshoot Bluetooth issues.

Out of the box Blueman features better connectivity, especially when it comes to headsets and audio profiles. In preparation for Linux Mint 21 the Blueman user interface was improved and received support for symbolic icons. Upstream, Blueman and Bluez are actively developed and used in many environments.

The lack of thumbnails for some common file types was identified as a usability issue. To address it a new Xapp project called xapp-thumbnailers was started and is now featured in Linux Mint 21. The project brings support for the following mimetypes:

- AppImage
- ePub
- MP3 (album cover)
- RAW pictures (most formats)
- Webp

Automated tasks are great to keep your computer safe but they can sometimes affect the system's performance while you're working on it. A little process monitor was added to Linux Mint to detect automated updates and automated system snapshots running in the background. Whenever an automated task is running the monitor places an icon in your system tray. Your computer might still become slow momentarily during an update or a snapshot, but with a quick look on the tray you'll immediately know what's going on....

Linux Mint 21 uses IPP, also known as Driverless Printing and Scanning (i.e. a standard protocol which communicates with printers/scanners without using drivers). For most printers and scanners no drivers are needed, and the device is detected automatically.
And there's also a fabulous collection of new backgrounds.

In April ZDNet called its beta "the cutest Linux distro you'll ever use," praising the polished "incredible elegance" of Debian-based Cutefish OS, with its uncluttered, MacOS-like "Cutefish DE" desktop.

But now CutefishOS.com times out, with at least one Reddit user complaining "their email is not responding" and seeking contributors for a fork.

But meanwhile, the technology site DebugPoint.com shares another update: It looks like the OpenMandriva project is already continuing with the development of the Cutefish DE (not the OS) for its own OS. For more details, visit the Matrix discussion page.

Besides, it's worth mentioning that Arch Linux already have the Cutefish desktop packages in the community repo. You can even install it as a standalone desktop environment in Arch Linux with easy steps. As you can see, it is easier to maintain the desktop environment to continue its development because the structure is already out there.

I have tested and reviewed hundreds of distros for years, and Cutefish OS is the promising one with its stunning desktop environment. It was written from the ground up with QML and C++ and took advantage of KWin. It would have been an attractive desktop as a separate component and could have been another great option besides KDE Plasma or GNOME.

Many open-source projects are born and die every year, and it's unfortunate to see the situation of Cutefish OS. I hope an official fork comes up soon, and we all can contribute to it.