Michael:
[0:00] This week in Linux, we have so many cool things to talk about. It’s kind of absurd. In fact, it’s so much, I had to skip a few things. I have enough for two episodes this week, and more, actually, there’s a little more than that. So it was kind of hard to pick what to cover. Maybe I’ll make some follow-up content this coming week with some stuff to cover that we didn’t have a chance to put in the episode. But this week, we have many new releases to talk about, like the Cinnamon Desktop. NixOS has a new version out. And we got an update for the fourth alpha of the System76’s COSMIC Desktop. Then we have some really cool news from Flatpak and KDE. 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.

Michael:
[0:55] Before we get started with the show this week i want to let you know about something that is awesome that is happening and that is the Destination Linux podcast is about to hit episode 400 that’s right 400 episodes of Destination Linux for those who don’t know I’m one of the hosts of Destination Linux Destination Linux episode 400 is not only a big milestone for the podcast. We’re also gonna be live streaming that episode. So if you wanna join us for the live stream of Destination Linux 400.

Michael:
[1:28] Then join us on December 11th, which is a Wednesday at 6.30 p.m. Central Time. That’s 7.30 Eastern and Pacific Time. That is 4.30 p.m. And if you are in the other parts of the world, I don’t know because time math is a pain. but you can go to destinationlinux.net/live during that time period and be able to watch it. You can also go to tuxdigital.com/live to get some more information about like when it’s happening. We’re going to have a time, we have a time zone converter on that page. So tuxdigital.com/live to get the information. And when the show goes live, destinationlinux.net/live will take you right to the show. So join me, Ryan and Jill for the 400th episode. It’s an extravaganza actually we’re going to do giveaways too so if you want to get potentially get some steam gift cards join us destinationlinux.net/live

Michael:
[2:24] The Linux Mint team have announced the latest release of their in-house Cinnamon desktop environment with Cinnamon 6.4 This new version of Cinnamon brings a lot of new improvements, including a new nightlight effect and a brand new theme intended to modernize the interface of the desktop environment.

Michael:
[2:41] Now, Cinnamon 6.4 also improves a lot of stuff for the look and feel for various pop-ups and menu displays and panels and all that. So let’s get into it. Cinnamon 6.4 has been released, but it’s not going to be available for Linux Mint users just yet because it’s not going to be available until the next version, which is being Mint 22.1. And the desktop is usually released about a month or so ahead of the time for the release of the mint distribution that follows it. But there are also some rumors that this version is gonna be coming before the end of the year. So it might even be less than the typical month wait. So, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens there. Now, the most notable thing about this release is easily the brand new theme and this is to modernize the desktop. So on a previous episode of TWIL, I covered the reasons that they gave for making this new theme and how I don’t necessarily agree with some of their comments about why, but ultimately it’s a good thing that they’re doing this. For a quick recap, they claimed that it was up to distro devs to customize and improve the look of Cinnamon and not the people who developed Cinnamon, but that’s what I disagreed with. It is up to the desktop developers to make a good desktop design, not the distro devs, at least in my opinion.

Michael:
[3:53] Anyway, this new theme uses darker colors for things like the menu and the panel backgrounds. They also increase the border radius for more rounded corners, and they also integrate better with the system accent color feature. So overall, it’s a big improvement over the previous default theme. Cinnamon 6.4 also updates a lot of dialogue windows, such as the logout shutdown session, unlocking the key ring, Wi-Fi network connections, and more. These dialogue windows look really good, in my opinion, and are much better for sure. But there is something a bit odd to me about these because 9to5Linux and OMGUbuntu are reporting that they are using Clutter to make these particular new dialogues.

Michael:
[4:39] And being powered by Clutter, which is a project made by GNOME, is kind of odd to me because, For those unaware, Cinnamon is a fork of GNOME, which they forked many, many years ago. So it’s not like the same kind of thing as GNOME is now. And that’s totally fine. Forking is totally fine. But last I checked, Clutter is no longer being worked on, at least not really. So actually, let’s let’s check that out for sure. Okay, yep. The readme on the project page says, Clutter is in deep maintenance mode. Only micro-releases addressing bug fixes are planned from now on. Additionally, the API and the features are frozen.

Michael:
[5:14] This makes me wonder if they forked it, like they forked clutter, or are they using something that isn’t being maintained? I don’t know, but that’s an interesting topic to say the least. Cinnamon 6.4 also added a nightlight feature to help reduce eye strain when working at night on your computer. The last time I discussed this topic, this kind of feature on TWIL, there were comments claiming blue light effects were debunked and they’re not a big deal. And I’m bringing this up just to clarify that any light at night can affect your sleep patterns, not just blue light, but blue light is more intense. It’s not really the color that does it, but the intensity of the color. And the wavelength of blue is a more intense color. Now, for those who don’t have experience with making content like this, if you light your frame with white light, aka tungsten light, it adds an orange glow to the content, which is good for day-to-day use, but it also adds an unnatural look. Instead, you would use the daylight bulbs to light the frame, which gives off a lot of blue light. The intensity that you feel from these lights every time, it can actually be a lot. So when I get done with the stream sitting under these kinds of lights for quite a bit, you know, these lights are shining directly into your face for many hours at a time, you will feel it. I don’t think laptops could cause this kind of effect, but it’s certainly possible that intense blue light can affect you. So for those who don’t think it will affect you, just.

Michael:
[6:42] You know, sit in front of us, get some blue daylight bulbs, turn them on for hours, sit in front of them, see what it feels like. You will notice there’s a difference. Anyway, that’s just a random tangent. So let’s get back to Cinnamon 6.4. This release also sees the addition of making it much easier to find over amplification option for your audio. Earlier versions of Mint had this ability, but it was harder to find. 6.4 adds a simple checkbox on the settings sound page so you can turn it on and increase the audio past 100% volume. Of course, this is useful for excessively quiet audio or videos, but you need to be careful because if you forget to turn your audio back down, you could damage your speakers or even your hearing, so keep that in mind.

Michael:
[7:26] Now, Cinnamon 6.4 also includes many other improvements, and if you’d like to see all of that stuff, everything that’s going to be included in this release,

Michael:
[7:34] you’ll find links in the show notes. The System76 team have announced the latest update for their Rust-based COSMIC Desktop with the fourth Alpha release. Now, the start of the blog post, they have a message that’s kind of interesting. So let’s check that out. They say that the holidays are upon us, and it’s time to check under your tree as we light another candle for the fourth COSMIC Alpha release. This is exciting to see the pace that they’re keeping with the COSMIC development. I like that, especially the monthly updates are nice to have. But real quick, the opening message is weird because, I mean, you probably shouldn’t be lighting candles under your trees.

Michael:
[8:18] But seriously, this update includes updates to the settings, COSMIC apps, a big batch of bug fixes that you can now set the default applications. You can now get improvements for the region and language settings. There’s new accessibility applets, as well as support for variable refresh rate or VRR in the compositor and so much more. The COSMIC Store introduces a collapsible details panel to monitor any in progress updates and installs for apps. and you can see a list of the recently completed tasks as well. One of the biggest things added for this release is support for variable refresh rate, or VRR. VRR allows your display to match the frame rate of an image source, such as the game that’s being played, which is offering an ever-important benefit of preventing screen tearing. It’s very important. Support for VRR has been added to the COSMIC comp-compositor and display settings, So you can set VRR to be available always or on automatic, which if you put it on automatic, it will enable the VRR to support when you are doing full screen content. They’re also continuing their work on accessibility, which is great to see. There’s a new accessibility applet that can be added to the dock. It’s an early stage of development in this alpha, of course, but the applet provides easy access to turn screen reader support on and off.

Michael:
[9:38] The screen reader works in COSMIC Settings, Mozilla Firefox, and also GNOME applications. The core COSMIC apps don’t have screen reader support just yet, but that is planned. And well, this is still an alpha release. I love to see an effort on accessibility and this sort of thing from System76, because back in the day, there wasn’t a lot of that stuff going for Pop!OS. And I remember a point where Ryan, my co-host on Destination Linux, created documentation for accessibility on Pop!_OS to start the ball rolling, thanks to some of the community feedback and stuff we received on the show. And for that, this resulting in the new effort from accessibility side of the COSMIC Desktop, that’s just fantastic. I love to see that happening from the start of the desktop environment. That’s awesome. There’s also a lot of other things that are related to this new release. If you want to find out more, you’ll find links in the show notes. And of course, it goes without saying. I’m going to say it anyway, though. It goes without saying that this is an alpha release.

Michael:
[10:39] So if you want to try it keep in mind that it is for testing you should not be using it in production and i know as geeks when we hear something like that we think challenge accepted, But I just want to make it clear that the status of it is its alpha. So I know you’ll still do it anyway, but at least now you know.

Michael:
[10:59] The NixOS team have announced the latest release with NixOS 24.11. For those unfamiliar with NixOS, well, first, Nix is a tool that takes a unique approach to package management and system configuration to make reproducible, declarative, and reliable systems. It is a very cool, unique approach to Linux-based operating systems. And if you want to learn more about how it works, I’ll have links in the show notes. But keep in mind, it’s not for beginners, not really. It’s a very unique approach. It’s very cool, but also it is more of a power user type of distribution. NixOS 24.11 has made a lot of updates to various packages and system components and that sort of stuff, including GNOME. GNOME has been updated to GNOME 47, which introduces a lot of things like the accent colors, small screen support, screen capture, hardware encoding, and more.

Michael:
[11:53] Plasma has been updated to version 6.2, which brings a lot of fixes and polishing with color management, power management, and accessibility improvements. This release also adds Pipewire for the default audio system and adds support for mounting file systems with block device devices protected with dm-verity. NixOS 24.11 is shipping with the Nix 2.24 package manager, which includes a lot of improvements and fixes, support for AMDVLK, which is AMD’s Open Source Vulkan driver, also support for HDR on Linux systems for Moonlight Open Source game streaming client, and a new systemd-enable strict shell checks option. The Nix devs team said that when enabled, all systemd scripts generated by NixOS will be checked with shell check and any errors or warnings will cause the build to fail. This affects all scripts that have been created through the script, reload, pre-start, post-start, pre-stop, post-stop options for systemd services. There is a lot of great stuff in this release and of course I’m happy to see Pipewire being set as the default audio system. Pipewire domination is close to complete. For those that don’t know, Pipewire is the drop-in replacement for Pulse Audio that also adds support for pro features like what you could normally do with jack. And also it has video piping support so it’s pretty dope.

Michael:
[13:16] And if you would like to learn more about this particular piece of software, this component of the audio and video piping system. Pipewire well check out episode 363 of Destination Linux where we interviewed the creator of Pipewire, Wim Taymans, and if you want to learn more about NixOS and their latest release you’ll find links to that as well as the link to Destination Linux

Michael:
[13:38] in the show notes Alpine Linux 3.21 was released this week and for those unfamiliar withAlpine Linux, Alpine is a lightweight security-minded linux distribution that is popular for the use within containerized environments embedded systems and more. Alpine is also notable for not using GNU core utils and instead uses BusyBox and Muscle Lib C, which they say allows them to offer a more lightweight.

Michael:
[14:02] Minimalist, and secure experience. Alpine Linux 3.21 upgrades the distro to use the Linux 6.12 LTS kernel, GCC14, and LLVM 19 as the compiler toolchain components, and includes other upgrades to Node.js, Go, PHP, and .NET. Now, Alpine Linux is not typically known for being used as a distro for desktop users, but it is possible. And with Alpine 3.21, they updated GNOME to GNOME 47 and KDE Plasma to Plasma 6.2. And they also have options for Sway Tiling Window Manager and more. Alpine Linux 3.21 is now using Zstd Compression or z-standard for compressing Linux firmware binaries and brings preparations for the /usr merge, as well as various other changes and improvements. If you’re looking for a Linux distro with a focus on security and tries to be very lightweight, whether you want it to run it in a container or as a desktop distro, then Alpine Linux is a solid option to check out. However, if you’re new to Linux, it might sound very compelling, and it is, but it is also not meant for beginners. In fact, on the about page for the distro, they explicitly state that it’s for power users.

Michael:
[15:12] So keep that in mind if you decide to try it out. Flatpaks are becoming more and more the go-to format for getting apps on a Linux desktop system. Flatpaks are a universal app format that offers a ton of benefits for both users and developers. One of the biggest benefits of Flatpaks is the Flathub, which is a centralized store to get your Flatpaks from. Now, I still remember the days when Flatpaks were first started under the name xdg-apps, And there wasn’t a flat hub yet or really any place to get flat packs from outside of GNOME’s apps because it basically was just GNOME and that was it. In fact, I remember going to a Linux conference back in 2014 when I talked to someone from GNOME talking about the new initiative to make what would later become flat packs. And they said they would be called xdg-apps. And my immediate reaction as a marketer and branding person was, please don’t call it that.

Michael:
[16:06] Don’t don’t call it that because it wasn’t just xdg-apps it was xdg-apps but anyway we have a pretty long conversation at that point where i may have seemed a little bit of a jerk because my first reaction was about the name and don’t do that but later the project then became Flatpaks and while I don’t know if my comments had any impact whatsoever on the decision I’m glad they changed it now fast forward to today and not only do we have Flatpaks and the Flathub but now i I want to tell you about a new thing that they’re trying to do. It’s really cool news, but it seems like the Flathub wants to expand into a self-sustaining entity called Flathub LLC. Thanks to funding from Endless, the GNOME Foundation in partnership with the KDE e.V. are looking to hire a contractor to help sort through management.

Michael:
[16:54] Legal, and financial stuff of making this entity. This announcement says that the Flathub has already established itself as the premier app distribution platform for Linux and serving over 4 million active users and hosting more than 2,500 applications from over 1,500 contributors. And they are looking for a program manager that will be expected to do these tasks. Number one, oversee deployment of payment systems for applications and direct donations to Flathub operating costs. Number two, finalize governance documents and convene a simple governing body for Flathub with representatives from GNOME, KDE, and the Flathub community. Number three, establish and manage bank and Stripe payment processing accounts. Number four, finalize and launch terms of use and developer agreements. Number five, coordinate handling of accounting, operations, and expenses with the GNOME Foundation.

Michael:
[17:48] And number six, ensure transparency through clear communications and documentation for the community. There is so much potential this could bring by putting a singular focus on improving the store and the format and so much more, instead of having it, you know, these different organizations that are all also working on something else, having an entity like this could be great for efforts for fundraising and contracting development to improve many facets of the project and so much more. But in my opinion, while this sounds good, this job posting is a bit too optimistic to put it lightly. This is a three months contract position with the stated available budget of $12,000.

Michael:
[18:29] Call me a skeptic, but that amount of money for the amount of work the candidate would be expected to do seems like they might be looking for a unicorn of a highly skilled person who doesn’t need the money, has the spare time to commit to this, and meets all the criteria of having financial experience, legal experience, and experience with Open Source and community management.

Michael:
[18:52] It just seems like it’s a bit much to ask for in terms of like what you need a single individual to do. And also it’s kind of a small amount. And it’s also a contract work of three months part-time work. So you would need someone who doesn’t need the money and can do it as like a side hustle for their other stuff and also have experience as like financial operations and legal document viewer and like, or like reviewer of legal documents and all that sort of stuff. I don’t know. I think it’s cool. I think that Flathub making their own LLC has a lot of cool potential. And I wish them the best. I just feel like this request for a program manager, for that amount of time, for that amount of money, for that amount of work, probably is not going to work out. But I hope for the best anyway, because Flathub making their own LLC and their own entity would be great because of the future and the drive forward of Flatpaks. I think there’s a lot of potential here and I hope it works out. We’ll have to wait and see. But if you’d like to learn more about this or even submit your application, you’ll find links in the show notes.

Michael:
[19:59] In a blog post titled, I think the donation notification works, Nate Graham shared the news that KDE e.V. received double the prior two months PayPal donations in a single day. I think it’s, yeah, I think it’s safe to say that it works. Yeah.

Michael:
[20:16] So also writing on Mastodon, KDE developer Carl Schwan mentioned that he says, I’m so happy to see the big influx of donations to KDE, more than 75,000 euros in the last 30 days, with 35,000 in the past 48 hours. Now, according to Nate Graham, German nonprofits like KDE e.V. are required to avoid stockpiling money, which is why they have an intentional deficit.

Michael:
[20:42] But KDE e.V., the nonprofit organization that represents the KDE community, was expecting a deficit of over 50,000 euros in 2024. So with the funding moving quickly into a positive cash flow, they’ll end up increasing their expenditure, meaning that they can hire more people, sponsor more projects, and so on. And they’re also doing a campaign for funding where you can adopt an app from KDE, which is a really cool idea. So if you want to adopt an app from KDE, you can do these steps. So make a donation of $50 or more to the fundraiser, choose an app that you’d like to adopt from the list, and each app can be adopted by up to five adopters. Then they will add more apps to the list as the adoption slots fill up. And during the donation process, you use the comment section to write which app you want to adopt and the name you’d like to be known as like publicly. So this can be your actual name, a nickname, your social media handle, or whatever. Your name will appear on the apps.kde.org as a supporter from the moment of the donation until KDE Gear 2504 is released in April of next year. So we’ll give you a shout out on social media as well. So these are the available apps to adopt. And this is cool. I actually feel like it’s kind of a bummer that I can’t adopt other things because I didn’t even know they were doing this adopt thing till now. So, uh, I would like to adopt a bunch of these.

Michael:
[22:09] So like Dolphin, KDE Connect, Neo Chat, Tokodon, Gwenview, KWrite, Kate, Okular. So many of these, Spectacle, uh, yeah, I would do that. But these are the ones that are available to do. And there’s also a lot of cool ones in here too. So you have KRuler.

Michael:
[22:26] It’s K-Ruler. It’s like a ruler app, but I like to call it KRuler. It’s fun. Also Eliza or Elisa, I’m not sure. And that’s the music player. There’s Konqueror, the good old fashioned web browser / file manager. Discover, the app store, which is a very good one to do. I’ll probably do that one before the end of the show.

Michael:
[22:47] And Kasts, which is the podcast app. and audio tube. And once these are picked, then they’re going to add even more. So if you want to keep donating, you can keep adopting apps and all that stuff. It’s pretty cool. I like the idea and the effort of like, you can focus specifically on a particular app. I don’t necessarily like the idea that you can only have up to five people focusing on a particular app. I don’t know. I’m not sure the point of that, but still, I think it’s cool that they’re doing it because there’s a lot of potential. I guess the point is like, once you have enough for a particular app, you could always you know support other ones and get more applications that might not be as you know popular in terms of stuff like you know scan page very useful very useful scanning tool maybe not as popular as the KDE Connect or Kate or Ukular and i can get why that would be a thing but this is very cool and i think this is a very important thing to happen and also a very important lesson for KDE and real any Open Source project that is looking to get donations to improve the project. You may have heard that there’s a phrase, you miss every shot you don’t take. Well, that doesn’t really make sense because the way you count misses in basketball, for example, does require you to shoot. Otherwise, everyone’s percentage would be basically zero. So that’s not greatest phrase, but I have my own. So I prefer to say this instead. The answer is always no, if you don’t ask the question.

Michael:
[24:16] So that’s kind of like a sales tip / marketing tip. If you don’t ask someone for something, then the answer is no automatically because they don’t even know the question exists to say yes to. So if you want people to donate to your project, you gotta ask them first.

Michael:
[24:33] Otherwise, they’re probably not gonna do it. And this is a great example because a lot of people were talking about how this is gonna be annoying. It’s a single pop-up that happens once a year. Will it be a good thing for them to do or not? Well, based on the status now that this one pop-up has now garnered in a month, basically meeting the goal, I would say that it’s a good idea. So if you want people to donate to your application…

Michael:
[25:01] You should probably ask them to do that. The Humble Bundle is a really cool project where you can basically pay for what you want. Like you don’t have to pick all the games. You could get a bundle. You also can choose how much you pay. There is a minimum list of like how much you have to pay to get all of them. But you can also add more if you want to help out the charity or help out the developers or whatever reason you want to do it. You can add more, which is very cool. But at the same time, if you do add more typically, basically you’ll still pay less than what you would be paying if you bought all of them individually. So these bundles are really cool. And if you use the links in the show notes in the description, well, those will be affiliate links. So you’ll help out this show if you decide to buy something from the Humble Bundle, which I very much appreciate that.

Michael:
[25:49] But I wanted to talk about a couple of the bundles. Now, some of them are going away by the time you, if you’re watching it live. Well, the Telltale game you can get now, but by the time this comes out, that’s not going to be there. So some of them will not be there depending on when you watch it. But a couple of them that will, that I really wanted to talk about because there’s some really cool bundles right now is the Sci-Fi Shooters bundle and the Disney’s Classic Black Friday bundle. Obviously it’s past Black Friday, but there’s some really cool stuff in there. So let’s check it out. So with the Disney’s classic Black Friday bundle, you get Lego Star Wars The Complete Saga, Lego Indiana Jones 1 and 2, Lego Pirates of the Caribbean. Is it Caribbean or Caribbean? Let me know in the comments.

Michael:
[26:33] Also, you get The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2, and also Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2, as well as Star Wars Republic Commando, and many more. All of the ones I listed have support for Linux and the Steam Deck, at least at the playable status so there’s also some more in there that may or may not but those for sure do which is just a by itself all just the bundle with all the ones i listed very much worth it there’s also another bundle and that is the sci-fi shooter bundle and it comes with prey doom 2016 star wars dark forces remastered crisis one two and three and system shock and all of these are supported on the Steam Deck and Linux so that is very cool and you can get them all let’s see you can get the sci-fi one for what is the minimum okay not 14 19 19 gives you all eight games and if you are looking at the.

Michael:
[27:37] All of them for 10. So that’s pretty good. That’s very good. You can also do more if you want to, but this is one of the cool things about the Humble Bundles that you can get a lot of games for a good price and you can also help charity. So if you’ve never done it before, I think you’ll benefit, you’ll, you’ll see the values of it for sure. And also if you use the link in the description, in the show notes, I will see the value of it too.

Michael:
[28:01] So I’d appreciate that if you do want to get any of these bundles check out the links in the show notes and also uh there’s a lot of games in here that i want to play I’ve never played crisis and to be able to get that so so easily for an all three

Michael:
[28:14] of them yeah thanks for watching this episode of This Week in Linux if you like what i do here on this show and want to be kept up to date with what’s going on in the linux and Open Source world then be sure to subscribe and of course remember to like that smash button if you’d like to support the show and the TuxDigital Network then consider becoming a patron by going to tuxdigital.com/membership. We’re gonna get a bunch of cool perks like access to the patron only sections of our discord server. And also join me in the patron only skybox that happens every week during the live stream. That’s right. If you didn’t know, we’re live streaming the show again. And also you can join me in the patron only post show that happens every week after the live stream. So do that by going to tuxdigital.com/membership. You can also support the show by ordering the Linux is a wear t-shirt, the This Week in Linux shirt, or the Destination Linux shirt that I’m wearing right now by going to tuxdigital.com/store. Plus, while you’re there, check out all the other cool stuff we have. We have like hats and mugs and hoodies and so much more at 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.