Desktop News Archives

For those preferring an X11-based desktop experience on Linux, IceWM 3.8 released on Sunday as the newest version of this lightweight X11 window manager focused on speed and simplicity.

FreeRDP 3.16 is out today as the newest update to this open-source Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) library and client implementation. This Apache-licensed project continues to be one of the leading implementations of the Microsoft RDP protocol for use outside the confines of Windows.

The libinput input handling library that's used by both X11 and Wayland based environments on the Linux desktop is preparing to introduce a Lua-based plug-in system. Via Lua scripts it will be possible to modify evdev input events / input device behavior to deal with quirky/broken input devices and better workaround other problems that aren't currently easily addressable.

The Trinity Desktop Environment as a long ago fork of the KDE 3.5 desktop released TDE R14.1.4 on Sunday as the newest maintenance release with various bug fixes and minor feature improvements.

Following the COSMIC Alpha 6 release from February, System76 today released COSMIC Alpha 7 as their last planned alpha release for this open-source, Rust-written desktop environment designed around the needs of their Pop!_OS Linux distribution.

The FreeType library for rendering text onto bitmaps that is widely used by a variety of applications has landed a set of three patches today providing an important performance improvement to address a significant inefficiency within the existing FreeType codebase.

LXQt 2.2 was christened today as the newest stable update to this lightweight, open-source Qt desktop environment.

System76 engineers remain quite busy working on their Rust-written COSMIC desktop environment to be used by their Pop!_OS operating system as well as other Linux distributions moving forward.

The Shotcut open-source video editor is out with its first new release of 2025.

Just over one year since the release of the Enlightenment 0.26 window manager, this weekend Carsten Haitzler released the Enlightenment 0.27 window manager and Wayland compositor. Enlightenment continues going now 28 years in development by Rasterman!

Building off the COSMIC Alpha 4 release from early December, COSMIC Alpha 5 is now available as the newest stepping stone toward the first stable release of this Rust-based open-source desktop developed by System76 for their Pop!_OS Linux distribution.

For fans of the Budgie desktop environment that got its start out of the Solus Linux distribution, the Budgie 10.10 release expected later this quarter will be their first release that is Wayland-only.

In addition to all the GNOME advancements and KDE excitement with shipping Plasma 6 this year, other alternative open-source desktop environments enjoyed much success too this year... System76's Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment for their Pop!_OS Linux distribution reached alpha form, Xfce 4.20 released earlier this month, LXQt 2.0 and 2.1 debuted, and other improvements too.

Debuting as a new development release today was XDG-Desktop-Portal 1.19.1 as this portal front-end service for Flatpak sandboxed apps and other desktop containment frameworks. The XDG-Desktop-Portal 1.19.1 milestone is exposing new and expanded portal capabilities for dealing with various hardware devices and APIs.

System76 today released the newest development/testing version of their Rust-based desktop environment designed for their Pop!_OS Linux distribution.

VTE-based terminals on Linux like Ptyxis are now seeing support introduced to better display progress state for long-running processes with a more visually pleasing progress bar. Microsoft's Windows Terminal has already supported this feature while now with systemd beginning to support using these Operating System Command escape sequences, Linux terminal support is on the rise.

Following the Xfce 4.20 Pre1 release from one month ago, Xfce 4.20 Pre2 is ready for testing ahead of the planned desktop release in two weeks.

LXQt 2.1 is now available as the latest feature release to this Qt-based lightweight desktop environment. Most significant with LXQt 2.1 is the introduction of the lxqt-wayland-session component.

Right on schedule for releasing the Xfce 4.20 desktop in December, the "Pre1" pre-release was posted on Friday for testing.

As a nice Halloween treat for Linux desktop users, System76 has published their third alpha version of the Rust-written COSMIC desktop environment.

The Trinity Desktop Environment as a still-maintained fork of the KDE 3.5 desktop software is out with a new point release.

A roadmap/schedule has been published for the lightweight Xfce 4.20 desktop. If all goes well this next iteration of the Xfce desktop will be out before Christmas.

Following the release of the COSMIC Alpha desktop in early August, System76 is closing out September by issuing the second alpha release of their Rust-based open-source desktop environment.

System76 today is releasing an alpha build of Pop!_OS 24.04 that is built atop Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and making it very interesting is that it includes the alpha version of their Rust-written COSMIC desktop environment. I've been playing around with this Pop!_OS 24.04 alpha in advance of today's embargo lift and it's been working out quite well.

System76 continues working vigorously on COSMIC, their Rust-written Linux desktop environment being written for Pop!_OS and to see availability on other Linux distributions as well. They are finishing up last minute changes before putting the flag on a COSMIC alpha release.

System76 developers are still on track for releasing the alpha version of their Rust-written COSMIC desktop in late July.

IceWM 3.6 is out today as the newest version of this lightweight X11 window manager.

The developers at System76 working on their Rust-written COSMIC desktop environment catering to their in-house, Ubuntu-derived Pop!_OS Linux distribution have provided their latest monthly status update on the desktop effort.

System76 software engineers continue working heavily on their COSMIC desktop that is Rust-written and to debut with their Pop!_OS 24.04 release later this year.

LXQt 2.0 is now available for this lightweight desktop environment that has now been ported to the Qt 6.6+ toolkit. Additionally, much of the LXQt components are ready to be used under Wayland compositors.

System76 had been planning an initial alpha release of their Rust-written COSMIC desktop environment to debut at the end of Q1 (March), but now they are delaying the first alpha to May for allowing time to wrap up feature work on their new desktop apps.

The lightweight LXQt desktop environment is fully ready to take on the Wayland world.

Released last June was the SDDM 0.20 display manager with experimental Wayland support and other enhancements after being in development for three years. Out this morning is SDDM 0.21 as another step toward SDDM 1.0 with improved Wayland support and other enhancements to this Qt-tooled display manager.

Iced is the Rust GUI library that's been gaining quite a lot of interest by Rust developers for creating cross-platform user interfaces. Iced is also what's being used by the Pop!_OS COSMIC desktop environment. Iced v0.12 released yesterday as the first new release for this GUI toolkit since last July.

In a Valentine's Day blog post, System76 has outlined how they are nearing the release of their alpha build of the COSMIC desktop environment that they have been developing as part of their Pop!_OS Linux distribution.

Xfce developers have updated their Wayland roadmap this week to reflect their latest plans around the Xfce 4.20 release.

With a goal of delivering a Wayland-only Budgie 10 desktop release later in 2024, Budgie 10.9 debuted today with the early-stage porting work to Wayland.

The Budgie desktop that started off as the desktop project within the Solus Linux space has written a lengthy blog post outlining their highlights for 2023 as well as providing a glimpse ahead for 2024. The Budgie desktop is working eagerly on Wayland and XWayland support and hope to advance enough this year to deliver a Wayland-only release.

The System76 crew has put out a new blog post outlining the work ahead toward their upcoming alpha release of their Rust-written COSMIC desktop environment and in turn the Pop!_OS 24.04 release expected to happen "over the summer".

It's been two years since the release of Enlightenment 0.25 and now just ahead of Christmas there is Enlightenment 0.26 released by Carsten Haitzler.

While much of the focus by Linux desktops as we roll into 2024 is polishing off their Wayland support, there does exist a rather innovative display server out there that's been in the works for years: Arcan. Arcan is the open-source project built atop a game engine and provides a display server paired with a real-time multimedia framework for audio and video. Arcan can be used from embedded purposes through full desktop solutions and can also interact with Wayland and X11 as well as embracing VR. Arcan 0.6.3 was released today along with the announcement that they've taken on some funding.

While the holidays are quickly approaching, the System76 developers working on their Ubuntu-based Pop!_OS Linux distribution and new Rust-written COSMIC desktop environment haven't been losing focus. December has been another busy month so far as they continue crafting this new modern desktop environment.

The Linux Mint crew led by Clement Lefebvre released Cinnamon 6.0 today as the latest version of their customized desktop stack.

The crew at System76 published a US Thanksgiving themed status update to their work on the open-source, Rust-written COSMIC desktop environment that will soon be powering their in-house Pop!_OS Linux distribution.

LXQt 1.4 debuted today as the newest feature release for this lightweight Qt desktop environment that was formed years ago as the merging of the LXDE and Razor-qt projects.

System76 engineers working on their COSMIC desktop environment for their Ubuntu-based Pop!_OS Linux distribution continue to be quite busy working on this Rust-written desktop code.

In addition to KDE Plasma 6.0, another exciting desktop milestone we can look forward to in 2024 is the COSMIC desktop from System76 when they end up releasing the next Pop!_OS based upon Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. The Pop!_OS / COSMIC developers continue making great progress on their Rust-written desktop environment.

XDG-Desktop-Portal as the portal front-end for Flatpaks is out with a new development release that brings accent color support to sandboxed desktop apps as well as other new features.

Budgie 10.8 is out today as the newest feature release for this Linux desktop environment.

While KDE developers are busy working on Plasma 6, System76's software developers are busy working on their new Rust-based "COSMIC" desktop environment. System76 on Friday published a new blog post outlining their efforts in recent weeks.