Thursday Special on Desktop Environments

Welcome to a special presentation about News regarding Linux Desktop Environments. We will be covering news from 5 different DE’s today, so i should probably make sure that you guys know what a desktop environment is, huh? Ok, that is the heart of what you see on screen, unless you are a command line snob. Typically a desktop environment will include all of the crucial bits to make your computer draw something you might actually want to see on the screen. This includes a window manager (kwin, Muffin, and others), which tells GUI elements where to draw themselves, set rules for the dimensions of windows and their elements, a display server (x11, Wayland, or Sway, for the most part), and other things to help the screen to look more appealing for users like you or me. Ok, enough intro.

Plasma Mobile 23.01
More News on Cosmic from System 76
GNOME 43.3
Budgie 10.7
Xfce 4.20 (hmmm, cannabis)

Ok, so Plasma Mobile 23.01 is out, and brings a slew of improvements to the mobile space for Linux Mobile. If only the glaring issues with Linux Mobile itself were being worked on as diligently and visibly as Plasma mobile is, with one release every month. Enough belly aching on that now, though. Let’s see what they have been working on:
· Improvements to
o Gesture navigation
o Lock screen
o Shell rotation
· Apps updated
o Clock
o PlasmaTube (youtube client)
o Alligator RSS client
o QMLKonsole terminal emulator
o Koko image viewer
o Kasts
o Spacebar messaging app
o AudioTube
o KWeather
o Tokodon
o Kalk
So, quite a bit, when you consider that they just released the previous version a month ago. Just like desktop KDE, Plasma Mobile gets lots of love all of the time from its development team.
https://9to5linux.com/kde-outs-plasma-mobile-23-01-to-improve-gesture-navigation-lockscreen-and-apps

Cosmic DE from System 76 is coming along quite nicely. I was never really a fan of it in the past, as I thought it looked too childish and a bit garish, but my interest was kindled when I heard that they had had a falling out with the GNOME team last year. I know, I know, drama, drama, drama... But this was not just a pissing match between the GNOME upstream team and the Cosmic downstream crew at System 76, it led to the beginning of the development of something new because the GNOME developers chose to be stuck up about their “glorious”NOME vision, and that didn’t mesh with what the team from System 76 asked of them. Now, we have an Iced, Rust-based Cosmic that should be ready for public release by the time the next version of Pop!OS rolls out in May or June. In fact, they are currently working on an implementation of xwayland, which allows standard x11 apps to run on Wayland. Aside from that, they confirmed improved software rendering, animation support, as well as dynamic rendering for multi-gpu systems.
Ok, let me slow down for a second. For the majority of the time that Linux has had a GUI of any kind, the x11 display server has been the king of the hill, sure there have been other challengers, but none have stood the test of time. Wayland has done just that. It has been around for about 10 years now, and simultaneously offers both a lighter, faster option, but also a more secure one. So the Linux community is working feverishly to switch over to it across many distros and desktop environments. That is why it is of interest that so many are making the switch, and that COSMIC is one of them.

What else is new or in the pipeline, here?
· tabs and segmented buttons for the desktop
· Settings app improvements
o Received a continuous scrollable list of search results, as well as various improvements to the Power & Battery, Displays, Sound, Region & Language, Wallpapers, and About sections.
· Alpha version coming soon-ish, but no confirmed date as yet.
https://9to5linux.com/system76-shares-more-details-on-its-rust-based-cosmic-desktop

GNOME 43.3 is out now. There are some solid quality of life improvements, here. Let’s take a look at some of them.
· GNOME Maps bug fixes
· GNOME Software Manager
· Text Editor updated
· New version of libadwaita (theming stuff)
o Bug fixes including a memory leak
· Eye of GNOME photo viewer updated
· Nautilus updated

https://9to5linux.com/gnome-43-3-brings-minor-fixes-to-gnome-maps-and-gnome-software

Budgie 10.7 is out now, about 6 months after the last release. I can’t speak to Budgie very much, as I think I have used it all of 2-3 hours in the last 10 years, and that was only because I was part of a small dev team that was trying to put together a new distro last year, and we lighted on Budgie for a bit in the process. I was less than impressed, to be honest. Part of that is that I know it is simply another GNOME fork like Mate, Cinnamon, old COSMIC, and Xfce. I know it has its ardent fans, but I am not one of them at this point. So what’s new in this release?
· Budgie Menu improvements
o Dual GPU switching ability from the context menu
o Personal User Menu
§ Grants the ability to directly open to a predefined directory in the File Manager
§ Also has options to open Settings, Control Center, and the new Power Dialog
· Power Dialog
o Makes it easier to Hibernate, Suspend, Reboot, and Shut Down
§ Hibernation is dynamically enabled based on the hardware and the distro being used.
· Budgie Screenshot is now baked into the DE itself, rather than being a standalone app
· Application Indexer
· Budgie Run Dialog
And more...

https://9to5linux.com/budgie-10-7-desktop-environment-adds-dual-gpu-support-new-power-dialog

Looking forward to Xfce 4.20
They just released 4.18, but they are already working on the next version, so let’s see what’s in store, shall we?
· Wayland support
o Umm, took long enough, guys...
o Very much a work in progress, but moving away from x11 is a big deal
§ They have partially ported the libxfce4windowing library over to Wayland, and along with it comes the xfce4-panel and the xfce desktop manager
Keep in mind that while development is very active, it is not on anything like the cadence of a GNOME or KDE, as it is intended to be stable and “just work”, not be bleeding edge, by any measure.
https://9to5linux.com/xfce-4-20-desktop-environment-will-finally-bring-wayland-support