Framework announces new 16" modular gaming laptop, revamps 13" one too The Framework Laptop 16 Framework is a hardware company that makes “modular” laptops: very easy to take apart and with little blocks to attach on the sides to customize the IO of the devices. They’re either sold pre-built, or in a “DIY Edition” where you have to build it yourself and bring your own OS (including Linux). ...
Hub 4 introduces AI Tools in Nextcloud We are currently witnessing a race by big companies to introduce AI tools in their “office” ecosystems. Microsoft, as an example, has announced a “Copilot” that will be able to generate text for Word and interact with other Office365 apps; Google also announced similar features in its Workspace applications. Two issues arise: firstly, these features are currently only available to a small selected number of partners; secondly, there is no interest by them - quite the opposite - to push for open and ethical AI models. ...
KDE has managed to port Konsole to Windows 11, and for a good reason; A GNOME Image Viewer application has refactored image decoding, with many user-facing improvements; Meta is considering joining the Fediverse through ActivityPub: there’s a lot going on! However, I’ll start with a major release (2.0) of a little tool that might come extremely in handy if you have an Android device… You can now mirror phone audio with scrcpy ...
This week is full of Distro news. Firstly there’s the announcement of the next version of VanillaOS, which will officially drop Ubuntu to be instead based on Debian. Which, by the way, is also working on their next release, called Bookwork, and which will include Plasma 5.27. The Nitrux has released version 2.7, now offering two different flavors, ditching KDE Plasma in one of the two in favor of Maui Shell. ...
Lately, things have not been going too well for some Linux hardware companies (such as Mycroft), and even HP discontinued their Linux laptop; KDE and GNOME are joining together to raise 100.000 dollars to make Flathub the “Linux App Store”; and of course, both those organizations are also working on new applications and features, as we’ll see. Linux Hardware’s having issues ...
The first big topic is new Linux hardware available in Purisms and Kubuntu Focus stores (a Lapdock kit and a new compact computer, respectively). Then, a blogpost by the maintainer of CoreJS where he says that the current state of Open Source has been widely discussed in Linux communities. Finally, Gnome and KDE shared their latest implemented new features and redesigns. Purisms introduces the “Lapdock Kit” ...
Notice: This is an older newsletter; many links were lost in the migration process. Click this link for an archive of the old newsletter site. This week saw the release of KDE Plasma 5.27 and EndlessOS 5. Aside from these two, we’ll cover the improvements that GNOME and Thunderbird are receiving, and also how Microsoft Bing could be threatening OpenStreetMap community model with its own map editor. KDE releases the last Plasma 5 version ...
Notice: This is an older newsletter; many links were lost in the migration process. Click this link for an archive of the old newsletter site. This last week saw major releases of various projects, featuring Elementary, LibreOffice, and the KDE Mobile Gear (which includes lots of KDE apps to be used on desktop too). Other projects, like Servo and COSMIC, published blogposts with their in-progress work and future plans. ElementaryOS 7 Released ...
Troubles for Open Source Software at the European Commission On the 15th of September 2022, the European Commission has published the European Cyber Resilience Act. The goal is to have a common set of cybersecurity standards that would be able to avoid up to €180-290 billion annually. There’s just an issue: it might have a big impact on the Open Source world. The proposal would require software developers to guarantee the security of their products “throughout the whole life cycle”, to offer a “coherent cybersecurity framework”, to improve the transparency of digital security, and to “use products with digital elements securely”. All of this is expected to have a compliance cost for the software developers; a cost that many Open Source projects might not be able to afford. ...
A sneak peek to Unity 7.7 New proposed sidebar look for Unity 7.7 Rudra Saraswat, the maintainer of Ubuntu Unity, has published a blogpost asking for feedback on the upcoming version of the Unity desktop. He showcased many of the changes that the update will bring, starting from a new widget system called UWidgets. This will allow adding some custom information on the desktop itself, similar to what Plasma offers too. The widgets can be written in Python and will have access to some elements of the desktop itself, such as the wallpaper and dock. Finally, all of this will be available on an online store offered by Unity itself. Another significant change is the new look for the dash, which you can see in the picture. It’s supposed to be the final appearance, though they say feedback is still welcome. There will also be a new Welcome app written in Flutter (a very interesting choice!). The app will explain what the Unity project is and allow you to get started with it, though we don’t know any details yet. Finally, the panel also gets a revamp in its looks, also covering accessibility and usability improvements to the notification section of the desktop. Unity does seem very alive! ...
