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LibreOffice 6.1 shows the power of large and diverse community contributors

2018-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

The Document Foundation has announced the release of LibreOffice 6.1. It is a major release with contributions from hundreds of community contributors around the world. TDF showcases this release as an example of, what an open source can do with the collective power of contributors from diverse backgrounds.

LibreOffice 6.1 brings a significant number of improvements, both in UX and in the overall performance. The community contributors have helped to implement most of these improvements. 72% of the community contributors are people working at various open source organizations. While the remaining are individual contributors. In addition to these contributions, LibreOffice is also benefited by a global community with localization, documentation editing, quality assurance, user interface design and other activities.

The main highlights in LibreOffice 6.1 include,

Colibre, a new icon theme for Windows based on Microsoft’s icon design guidelines, which makes the office suite visually appealing for users coming from the Microsoft environment;

A reworked image handling feature, which is significantly faster and smoother thanks to a new graphics manager and an improved image lifecycle, with some advantages, also when loading documents in Microsoft proprietary formats;

The reorganization of Draw menus with the addition of a new Page menu, for better UX consistency across the different modules;

A major improvement for Base, only available in experimental mode: the old HSQLDB database engine has been deprecated, though still available, and the new Firebird database engine is now the default option (users are encouraged to migrate files using the migration assistant from HSQLDB to Firebird, or by exporting them to an external HSQLDB server);

Significant improvements in all modules of LibreOffice Online, with changes to the user interface to make it more appealing and consistent with the desktop version,

An improved EPUB export filter, in terms of the link, table, image, font embedding and footnote support, with more options for customizing metadata;

Online Help pages have been enriched with text and example files to guide the users through features, and are now easier to localize.

For more information on LibreOffice 6.1, see the release announcement published on Document Foundation blog.

Netrunner Rolling 2018.08 released with seamless Gtk Integration

2018-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

The Netrunner team has announced the availability of Netrunner 2018.08, the latest stable release of Arch-based rolling GNU/Linux distribution. This release includes multiple improvements including the Plasma 5.13.3 and other components. It also provides a nice integration with Gtk based applications.

A preview of Netrunner Rolling 2018.08

Unlike the Netrunner Core edition, Netrunner Rolling is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Arch and Manjaro flavors. It provides a decent Plasma experience with continuous updates from the upstream projects.

The main highlights in Netrunner Rolling 2018.08 release can be summarized as follows,

Updated applications including KDE Plasma 5.13.3, KDE Frameworks 5.48, KDE Applications 18.04, Qt 5.11.1, Linux Kernel 4.17, Firefox Quantum 61.0, Thunderbird 52.5 and more.

Gtk Apps now makes use of Kwin borders to provide a better integration with the rest of the ecosystem.

Krita 4.1.1 which has got plenty of features compared to the previous release.

Using the new sidebar Layout, all the revamped UI-related KCM modules into one section called “Plasma Tweaks” for easy configuring Plasma Desktop.

This release also comes with some new Plasma Theme that has some transparency built in to allow for experimenting with the new Blur options.

For the original release announcement of Netrunner Rolling 2018.08 and download links, proceed to Netrunner Website.

Korora team is back on Korora 28 development after the vecation

2018-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

Closing the uncertainties on the future of Korora project, Korora team has started working on Korora 28. Earlier, the team had planned to go on an indefinite vacation because of the poor community support for taking the Korora project forward. This put the future of Korora project in a dilemma.

After the Korora team announced their vacation, some of the community members came forward to prepare the ISO for the upcoming release. Mr. JMiahMan, a community contributor prepared a Korora 28 Xfce image with the usual add-ons. This inspired the team to come back and to start working on Korora 28. As a beginning, the team is performing the QA activities on Korora 28 Xfce. The team is also seeking community contribution for testing this image. Once the issues on Xfce edition is sorted out, Korora team will prepare images with other ecosystems also.

As most people will know the Korora team has been having a break for the last few months. One of our community members wasn’t happy about this and stepped up to produce a Korora 28 release. We welcome the support and ask that the rest of the community help out by testing the ISO and providing feedback.

A past contributor JMiahMan has produced an Xfce ISO based on Fedora 28 and including the usual Korora additions. There are more details on this Engage item. You might find this blog post interesting too.

There are plans to produce ISOs of the other desktops once Xfce is sorted. So even if you don’t use Xfce it would be helpful if you could test this system on a live system or in a VM. Remember these are community produced, beta releases and not designed for day to day use (yet!) so we don’t recommend installing them on a production system. Feedback can be provided on the Engage item mentioned above or IRC.

For further details, you can read the official Korora 28 development announcement.

Lubuntu is taking a new direction with LXQt

2018-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

With the migration to LXQt ecosystem, Lubuntu team is planning to revise their initial design goals and to take a new direction. The initial design goal of Lubuntu was to provide a lightweight operating system that can revive older hardware. In the past, this distribution was a success in accomplishing its mission.

The concept of older machine changes over the time. The rough goal of Lubuntu was to work smoothly on a 10 years old hardware. If we think of a 10 years old hardware now, it will be having a modern processor with a minimum of 2GB RAM and 64-bit compatibility. Today, most of the Ubuntu derivatives can run smoothly run on a system with 2GB of the RAM. So, the design goal of Lubuntu is almost obsolete now. This idea brought a lot of internal debates within the Lubuntu community and the team finally decided to go with a more modern design approach.

Despite the direction change, Lubuntu can still work on older hardware. But, the main goal of the distribution will be providing a more modern user experience to the users. Other decisions made by the Lubuntu team includes,

Lubuntu will leverage modern, Qt-based technologies and programs to give users a functional yet modular experience.

In collaboration with others, Lubuntu will continue to be a transparent and open distribution which makes it a priority to keep the community informed about the development when possible.

Lubuntu will create and maintain complete documentation which will be included by default in the operating system and can guide anyone from beginner to expert on how to use Lubuntu to its full potential and contribute to the further development of it.

Lubuntu will keep a light experience by default but enable users to utilize more heavy and featureful components as desired.

Lubuntu will have the ability to be used in any language across the world, and enable contributors to easily translate all components of the operating system.

For more information, read the official statement on changing the design goals of Lubuntu.

Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition becomes first OEM hardware with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

2018-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

The Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition laptops are now available in the US with pre-installed Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. This is the first major OEM’s hardware that ships Ubuntu 18.04 since it’s inception on April 2018. Canonical and Dell have worked to together to provide a seamless experience with Ubuntu on Dell XP 13 laptop.

Presently, Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition is only available in the US only. It will be available in Europe by August 2018.

The Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition launched in the US provides multiple configuration options including SSD extendable up to 1 TB, 16 GB RAM, the latest 8th generation Quad Core processors. With the power of supporting a wide range of applications, it can be used in either enterprise environments or at home or by developers. It also features the world’s first InfinityEdge 13.3” near borderless display housed in a sleek silver magnesium body, which is the smallest in its class. It provides options to choose between Full HD or Ultra HD resolutions with the option of touch on later.

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS released on April 2018 brings a range of features. It includes the GNOME shell instead of Ubuntu home-made Unity shell. It also provides better support for applications like Skype, Spotify, and Slack with the full snap integration.

“When Project Sputnik debuted over five years ago we launched with one config of our XPS 13 developer edition on Ubuntu 12.04. Fast forward to today and thanks to the interest and support of the community, we are able to announce that our seventh generation XPS 13 developer edition now comes with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. 18.04 represents Project Sputnik’s fourth preloaded LTS. We’re already looking forward to Sputnik’s fifth LTS in 2020,” says Barton George, Project Sputnik and Linux Lead at Dell.

“We are delighted to have worked in close partnership with Dell for the launch of their latest XPS 13 Developer Edition pre-installed with our newest LTS release. Dell’s superior hardware combined with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS provides an excellent, reliable experience straight out of the box. Building on our longstanding relationship with Dell over the last six years, we look forward to seeing 18.04 LTS roll out on further models in the coming months,” comments Will Cooke, Desktop Engineering Director, Canonical.

You can read a feature article on Dell XPS Developer Edition with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS on Ubuntu blog.

ArchLabs Linux 2018.07 released with a brand new dark theme

2018-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

The ArchLabs team has announced the release of ArchLabs 2018.07. It is the latest stable release of Arch-based GNU/Linux distribution inspired by the design principles of Bunsenlabs. The main focus of this release on stability improvement, performance and usability improvements and other optimizations.

A preview of ArchLabs Linux 2018.07

One of the visible change with ArchLabs is the introduction of a brand new dark theme which works well the default light icon theme shipped with ArchLabs. Last week, ArchLabs team had shared some updates on with a discussion thread on ArchLabs forums.

Other main highlights in ArchLabs Linux 2018.07 includes,

The ArchLabs installer finally has it’s own name, presenting, AL-Installer. Originally forked from ABIF, it has been completely re-written for use with ArchLabs and only vaguely resembles the original product.

A lot of changes have been made to keep your install simple. Sorting of mirrors has been added as well as a page to create your user.

A brand new default theme, ArchLabs-dARK. This works nicely with the current icon theme, ArchLabs-Light.

New default wallpaper.

Aurman has replaced Yaourt as our AUR helper. This helper works nicely with Pacman.

Neofetch has been replaced quite some time ago with our lightweight homemade info script, AL-Info.

With the help from Oddproton and Karl Schneider, we have our very own dynamic wallpaper script (à la MacOS Mojave/Gnome) called Dynpaper. With custom walls created by the ever talented Karl. Dynpaper isn’t installed or enabled by default. If you’d like to get this up and running on your system, check out our thread at the forum.

Polybar has been updated to the latest version and has undergone a tidy up.

Vim and Ranger’s configs have been added and updated.

You can find the original ArchLabs 2018.07 release announcement in projects website.

Neptune 5.4 released with a fresh look and feel

2018-07-24T00:00:00+00:00

Mr. Leszek of the Neptune project has announced the release of Neptune 5.4. It is the latest updated snapshot in Neptune 5.x series. It brings a set of updated packages and applications and avoids the need for the bulk package update after installing the operating system.

In addition to package updates and critical bug fixes, Neptune 5.4 brings a fresh look and feel with an improved dark theme. This dark theme also includes a modified version of Faenza icon theme. Neptune 5.4 also brings Linux Kernel 5.16.x. It ensures better hardware support.

A file picture of Neptune 5.0

Other highlights from Neptune 5.4 include,

the update of KDE Frameworks to version 5.48 and KDE Applications to version 18.04.3. As the new KF5 version is not compatible with Qt 5.7 anymore we had to backport its patches to version 5.45.

VLC has been updated to 3.0.3 to provide more speed and lots of bugfixes.

Thunderbird 52.9 fixes issues with encrypted HTML e-mails. The Excalibur menu is now available in version 2.7 which provides some bugfixes in regards to multiple activities and moving favorites around.

KWin the default window manager for Plasma got an update to version 5.12.5. This offers some nice speed improvements as well as some updated effects and better hardware support.

LibreOffice is now available in version 6.0.6. We fixed an issue with MTP causing issues to share files with Android devices.

Enlightenment 22 is now available in Version 0.22.3 together with Terminology 1.2.1.

You can find further information in Neptune 5.4 release announcement and Neptune 5.4 changelogs.

Peppermint OS 9 is a good for some, not for all distribution

2018-07-24T00:00:00+00:00

Peppermint OS a hybrid operating system that integrates many web-based applications. It is built on top of Ubuntu and uses a blend of LXDE and Xfce with some components from other environments.

Peppermint OS 9 is a stable release based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Like it’s predecessors, Peppermint 9 also focuses on improving the overall user experience.

The latest issue of DistroWatch Weekly features a review on Peppermint OS 9. The review categorizes this distribution as a good for some, not for all distribution.

The review praises the distribution for its ability to consume only 350 - 400 MB of memory on idle state. Peppermint is able to limit its memory usage while using usable components from multiple desktop environments.

A preview of Peppermint OS 9 settings panel (Courtesy : DistroWatch)

With the Ice tool, users can create stand-alone web application launchers and keep it on the application menu. This is the most important specialty of Peppermint OS. While most of the applications in Peppermint OS 9 are stand-alone web application launcher, it also supports installing desktop applications.

The DistroWatch review finds Peppermint OS 9 as an ideal choice for people who uses web-based applications extensively. For others, there can be better alternatives.

While I have to admit that I am not the target audience for a distribution focused on web-based applications, I found Peppermint 9 to be a solid distribution. Despite pulling components from multiple desktop environments, Peppermint 9’s desktop is well integrated and easy to use. It was also easy to add both web-based and traditional applications to the system, so the distribution can be adjusted for users who prefer either.

Peppermint 9 is not for everyone, but users who do most of their work in Google Docs or Microsoft Office Online should give Peppermint a try. However, users accustomed to using traditional desktop applications might want to stick to one of the many alternatives out there. Yes, Peppermint 9 can be easily adjusted to use traditional desktop applications, but many of the other distribution options out there come with those kinds of applications pre-installed.

The original Peppermint OS 9 review can be read on DistroWatch weekly.

ReactOS 0.4.9 released with stability & usability improvements

2018-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

Mr. Colin Finck on behalf of ReactOS project has announced the release of ReactOS 0.4.9. It is the latest stable release in ReactOS tri-monthly release series.

The ReactOS tri-monthly release series has reduced the number of changes in each cycle. Rather, it provides improved workflow and ensures the work is moving in the right way.

What is ReactOS?

ReactOS is an independently developed, windows binary compatible operating system. It provides a traditional user experience to make users more productive while moving from other platforms. Despite the default look and feel resembling Windows 9.x releases, ReactOS supports most of the modern windows applications. The project also reuses some components from open source project’s like Wine to avoid reinventing the wheel from scratch.

What is new in ReactOS 0.4.9?

The main highlights of ReactOS 0.4.9 include improved stability and usability improvements.

ReactOS 0.4.9 is a self-hosting operating system. It means, the ReactOS code can be compiled on ReactOS itself. It is a big deal, due to the complexity involved in handling memory and IO cycles. In past, ReactOS used to be a self-hosting operating system. This capability was lost while migrating the Kernel to be compatible with NT components.

A major source of system instability came from the complex interplay between the memory manager, the common cache, the hardware abstraction layer (HAL), and the FastFAT driver. The biggest culprit in the instability came from the significant resource leakages caused by the FastFAT driver, resulting in it eating up the common cache to the point where attempts to copy large files would result in a crash. Multiple stability related issues have been rectified in ReactOS 0.4.9.

Ability to handle zip files natively. Now, you can handle zip files in ReactOS without installing any 3rd party applications.

Ability to choose between copy, cut and create link while dragging files from one location to another.

There are of course plenty of other changes in less trodden parts of ReactOS, with many people providing contributions and improvements. These range from the functional, like zooming no longer crashing in the Paint application thanks to Stanislav Motylkov, to more behind the scenes like Timo Kreuzer’s continued efforts to prepare the codebase to actually function when building an x64 target (the project owes Timo many bottles of beer for taking on that one).

And other improvements…

For a complete list of changes and screenshots, see ReactOS 0.4.9 release announcement.

ArchLabs opts for a new default dark theme

2018-07-22T00:00:00+00:00

The ArchLabs team has announced the availability of a new default theme for testing. This will be the default theme in upcoming ArchLabs releases. Currently, the team is focusing on the window manager theme. The team is yet to finalize the icon theme. Two possible candidates for icon theme are existing ArchLabs-light theme and Suru++ Aspromauros icon theme.

A preview of ArchLabs Dark theme

The new theme is available on ArchLabs-dark theme repository hosted on Gitlab. It will be made available on ArchLabs testing repositories in a few days.

The main highlights of the ArchLabs-light theme include,

Added Geany color scheme. This is in the .config file. Named ArchLabs-dARK.

Jgmenu added and updated.

st color theme added.

Alternative window buttons added. The final choice will be decided by the poll included.

Polybar updated to a new scheme. You will need to change in the config file the path to master and modules with your username.

Custom Firefox CSS included. Read changelog on how to use.

Options on a new theme for the mouse cursor.

Unfocused window decoration change as per @m00n.

Dunst updated and included.

Alternative window decoration colors to replace the OSX traffic lights New Default Theme Available for Testing

You can find the updates on ArchLabs-dark theme on ArchLabs forums. In case you are testing this theme, you can also leave feedback on ArchLabs forums.