It’s been another exciting week in the Linux landscape, with Linux support arriving for the M1 and gaming on Linux continuing to expand thanks to the Steam Deck. Around Xubuntu, docs are done, and AppImage continues to be supported. As usual, Xfce has a few new releases as well. All this and more in this week’s FOSS Roundup!

The first Asahi Linux alpha release arrives

The first release of Asahi Linux, the first distribution for M1-powered Macs, has been made available. There are still many missing features, but even just getting here is incredible. This team has made so much progress in a very short time. Interestingly, Apple has, at the same time, been quietly enabling features to support booting Linux on the M1 Macs.

Microsoft is working to bring Xbox Cloud Gaming to Steam Deck

Working closely with Valve, Microsoft has prepared a beta version of the Microsoft Edge browser that brings the cloud gaming service to Linux and the Steam Deck. A handful of Microsoft-published verified titles are also available on Steam.

The new Xubuntu Documentation is finally ready

After nearly two years, the newly rewritten Xubuntu Documentation is ready to be reviewed, merged, and published. Together with another Xubuntu Team member, I worked with members of the community to document Xubuntu’s user experience more completely. The most painful part of it all was converting to DocBook, our native documentation format. This part is now complete.

It’s finally done. 🎉 https://t.co/k7a2bP6sYH https://t.co/jinkuoI6ZV

I’m so tired of working with Docbook. pic.twitter.com/k0rmta101k

— Sean Davis 🦣 @bluesabre@floss.social (@bluesabredavis) March 19, 2022

Supporting AppImage on Xubuntu

While installing Xubuntu 22.04 on my main machine for testing, I found that it could no longer open software distributed with AppImage. This includes .run and .AppImage files that you might find online, like DaVinci Resolve or Cryptomator. The missing piece was the libfuse2 package, which was no longer pulled in as a dependency in 22.04. As of today’s daily ISO, this issue should be resolved for Xubuntu and Ubuntu Studio.

http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changelogs/pool/universe/x/xubuntu-meta/xubuntu-meta_2.240/changelog

This week’s Xfce releases

libxfce4ui 4.17.5 was released this week, including several bug fixes and enabling Mousepad to use the XfceShortcutsEditor. Sounds like some nice new features are on their way.

Orage 4.16.0, previously unmaintained and archived, has now been ported to GTK 3 and is once again an active Xfce project. The Orage panel plugin has been discontinued, but the standalone calendar application will be supported going forward.

What I’m working on…

With the documentation updates nearly out of the way and bug lists cleaned up, I hope to start working on bug fixes and more testing this week. We’ve also nearly completed voting on the 22.04 Xubuntu Wallpaper contest, with 3 clearly identified winners and three we’re sorting out. Look for more news early this week.

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed this newsletter, consider sending me a tip! I’ve added links to GitHub Sponsors, Ko-Fi, and Patreon to the Donate page on my website.

Thanks for reading. I’ll see you next week with some new and exciting Xfce and Xubuntu updates! Have a great week, and stay safe out there!

Welcome to the sixth edition of my Weekly FOSS Roundup! I’ve been hard at it this week, cleaning up Xubuntu bugs and hacking on docs. A new Linux vulnerability, “Dirty Pipe,” was announced. And Xfce has been accepted into the 2022 Google Summer of Code program. What a week!

Dirty Pipe Linux Vulnerability Discovered

A new Linux vulnerability that allows attackers to overwrite read-only files, including immutable files and those on read-only Btrfs snapshots. Kernel versions 5.10.102, 5.15.25, and 5.16.11 have already been patched. Update your machines now!

Xfce Accepted into Google Summer of Code 2022

Xfce will again participate in the Google Summer of Code (abbreviated “GSoC”) in 2022. GSoC is a program focused on attracting new contributors to open source software development through a 12-plus-week mentorship program.

Submissions for the 22.04 Xubuntu Wallpaper Contest are Now Closed

After receiving a fantastic 126 submissions from numerous contributors, the 22.04 Xubuntu Wallpaper Contest is now closed for additional submissions. The Xubuntu Team will begin the voting process, with expected results within the next two weeks.

Submissions for the 22.04 Xubuntu Wallpaper Contest are now closed! We received 126 submissions, and will now begin the voting process. Look forward to news of the winning entries in the near future. In the meantime, you can browse the entries here: https://t.co/HamoGf1sQp

— Xubuntu (@Xubuntu) March 13, 2022

This Week’s Xfce Releases

Xfce Screenshooter 1.9.10 features a handful of fixes and now uses symbolic icons for the interface. This means the application will automatically look better regardless of using a dark or light GTK theme.

Xubuntu Bug Spring Cleaning

I’m unsure what prompted me, but I got into a cleaning mood this week. I started the long and arduous task of cleaning up Xubuntu’s bug reports. After starting with nearly 2,000 bug reports that affect Xubuntu and its related packages, I’ve reduced this list to a (still large) 1,584 bugs! There’s still lots of work and probably a hundred or more bugs that could be cleaned up or de-duplicated.

My first pass is finally done. Down from nearly 2,000 bugs to 1,584! What remains now are bugs that are reported or confirmed for 20.04+. I also didn’t touch blueman, onboard, synaptic, or the Mate apps.

Next steps: Triage in 22.04, tag duplicates, and report bugs upstream. pic.twitter.com/omNBENUNan

— Sean Davis 🦣 @bluesabre@floss.social (@bluesabredavis) March 11, 2022

Making Strides with Xubuntu Documentation

I had a really productive week with the Xubuntu Documentation, getting the to-do list down to just two more chapters. I need to go through and clean up some of the formatting and tag usage, but we should be ready to merge this week! The latest documentation has been built here.

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed this newsletter, consider sending me a tip! I’ve added links to GitHub Sponsors, Ko-Fi, and Patreon to the Donate page on my website.

Thanks for reading. I’ll see you next week with some new and exciting Xfce and Xubuntu updates! Have a great week, and stay safe out there!

Welcome to the fifth edition of my Weekly FOSS Roundup! We’re halfway through the Ubuntu Testing Week (March 3-10), and it’s time to start getting involved. In other news, the Xubuntu Wallpaper contest is ongoing, and there are some updates around Bluetooth and Xfce. Here’s the latest!

The Xubuntu 22.04 Wallpaper Contest Continues

The Xubuntu 22.04 Wallpaper Contest is progressing smoothly. So far, we’ve already had 77 quality submissions from numerous contributors. Submissions are open through March 12, so it’s not too late to submit your own. Keep your submissions coming!

Ubuntu Testing Week March 3-10

The next LTS release of Ubuntu and its many flavors will be released in less than two months. Feature Freeze is behind us, so there is no better time to get started with testing. Please help make this another dependable release by taking time to test and report any bugs you find.

Linux Mint is Switching to the Blueman Bluetooth Manager

Linux Mint has been using its own Blueberry application to manage Bluetooth devices for several years now. Later this year, it looks like they’ll be switching to Blueman, the same utility found in Xubuntu and several other Linux distributions. Their move will no doubt have a positive impact on any other Blueman-using distros.

This Week’s Xfce Releases

The 0.9.2 release of the Xfce Terminal is a release candidate for the upcoming 1.0.0 release. It includes several improvements and bug fixes. Take it for a test drive to help identify and eliminate the remaining bugs!

Xfdashboard provides a GNOME Shell-like experience for Xfce. The new 0.9.90 release is a release candidate for the upcoming 1.0.0 release. If you’re a fan of GNOME Shell’s behavior but prefer to stick with Xfce, Xfdashboard is worth a look.

The Xfce Diskperf (Disk Performance) plugin displays instant disk and partition performance in the panel. The 2.7.0 release features various usability and feature improvements.

What I’m working on…

This week I spent extra time working on the Xubuntu Documentation updates. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 have been converted to Docbook, leaving only 8 chapters to go. I’ve got a pretty good flow for converting them now; it depends on having a solid, uninterrupted 20-30 minutes to migrate a single chapter.

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed this newsletter, consider sending me a tip! I’ve added links to GitHub Sponsors, Ko-Fi, and Patreon to the Donate page on my website.

Thanks for reading. I’ll see you next week with some new and exciting Xfce and Xubuntu updates! Have a great week, and stay safe out there!

It’s the fourth edition of my Weekly FOSS Roundup! This week’s hottest news is the Steam Deck, an Arch-based handheld Linux gaming console. If that’s too hot, cool down with the OSTree-based XfIce desktop. Once you’re comfortable, send the Xubuntu team your best wallpaper for a chance to be included in the 22.04 release. Let’s get to it!

Steam Deck Released

Valve’s Steam Deck has finally been released. It runs Steam OS, based on Arch, with a KDE desktop. Hundreds of games are supported via Steam Proton. As more games become verified on the Deck, they’ll be supported on nearly any Linux distribution!

An OSTree-based Xfce desktop has arrived

Based on Fedora, the “XfIce” desktop is an immutable base operating system running Xfce. Immutable Linux distributions have gained popularity quickly, and now Xfce can be used with them.

The Xubuntu 22.04 Wallpaper Contest is Live

For every LTS release, Xubuntu holds a wallpaper contest for the community to submit their finest work for inclusion in the ISO release. The 22.04 contest is live until midnight March 13th (2022-03-13 00:00:00). There have already been 12 submissions! Send us yours!

A new guide for installing Xubuntu on the Raspberry Pi

One of the most popular articles on my website is a guide for installing Xubuntu 19.10 on the Raspberry Pi. This article is obsolete as I’ve published a new, in-depth how-to for the current supported and development releases. Check it out!

What I’m working on…

Last week I rolled out my new website. This week, I did some scans and found that I had a lot of broken links (bad migrations, services going away, the introduction of the Xfce GitLab, and deprecation of the Xfce build bot). Those have now been resolved, so any article you read on my site should take you to the right places. Here’s a relevant and time-appropriate goodie that would have been lost to time if not for archive.org…

Today, I am back to working on the Xubuntu documentation updates. There are only a few completed chapters left and a handful of chapters that we started updating a couple of years ago but stopped due to time conflicts (and, to some extent, probably burnout). That said, with the existing completed content, I may be able to wrap it as early as this week!

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed this newsletter, consider sending me a tip! I’ve added links to GitHub Sponsors, Ko-Fi, and Patreon to the Donate page on my website.

See you next week with some more Linux and Open Source news!

Introducing new layouts and improving on existing ones, Xfce Panel Profiles 1.0.13 makes it easier than ever to manage and experiment with new panel configurations.

What’s New?

New Features

• New “Cupertino” macOS-inspired layout ( Xfce #7). Note that this theme requires the AppMenu Plugin to display the menu in the panel.
• New “Redmond 7”, Windows 7-inspired layout ( Xfce #8)
• New “Xfce 4.16” layout to make it easier to get back to defaults
• The Whisker menu configuration is now included in the export (Xfce #11). Existing templates using the Whisker menu have been updated to include appropriate defaults.

General

• All existing templates have been updated with better support for Xfce 4.16. This includes updated launchers, current defaults, and replaced plugins.
• Bashisms have been removed from the Makefile, enabling installation with alternative shells.

Updated Translations

Belarusian, Czech

Screenshots

Xfce 4.16, Cupertino, and Redmond 7 Layouts

Downloads

Download Xfce Panel Profiles 1.0.13 from the link below.

Source tarball ( sha1, sha256)

Xfce PulseAudio Plugin 0.4.3 has arrived! It includes improved MPRIS compatibility and support for the Plasma Browser Integration plugin.

What’s New?

General

• Exo 0.11 or newer is now required
• Fixed various memory leaks and warnings
• Removed unused dbus-glib include (Xfce #15343)
• Replaced g_type_class_add_private deprecations
• Updated copyright years
• Updated URLs from goodies.xfce.org to docs.xfce.org (Xfce #16173)

MPRIS Enhancements

• Support for filename icons (Xfce #14329)
• Support for single-string variants on xesam:artist
• Support for the DesktopEntry property (Xfce #14412)
• Support for the plasma-browser-integration plugin (Xfce #15487)
• Detection of artist and title from the track title

Preferences

• Fixed icon rendering for known players

Translation Updates

Albanian, Belarusian, Chinese (Taiwan), Galician, Interlingue, Slovenian

Plasma/Browser Integration

Plasma/Browser Integration is an extension for Firefox and Chromium-based browsers that better integrates those browsers with the Plasma Shell. It enables the following functionality for Plasma desktops:

• MPRIS2 media controls
• Sending links via KDE Connect
• Showing and controlling downloads from the notification area
• Finding browser tabs in the Run Command window

Thankfully, this extension does not require Plasma to run! With just a few adjustments to the Xfce PulseAudio Plugin, Xfce users can now also utilize the MPRIS2 media controls and link sharing.

How to Install

Instructions adapted and simplified from the KDE Community website. Check this link if these instructions no longer work.

The extension requires two components: the browser extension and the native host. Once both are installed and correctly configured, active streams should appear in the Xfce PulseAudio Plugin menu.

Browser Extension

Install the plugin appropriate for your browser. Most Chromium-based plugins support extensions installed from the Chrome Web Store.

• Chromium-based browsers including (but not limited to) Google Chrome, Chromium, Brave, and Vivaldi: Chrome Web Store
• Mozilla Firefox: Firefox Add-Ons

Native Host

Most distributions should now include a plasma-desktop-integration package in their repositories. Find yours here at Repology. If you’re using Ubuntu or a derivative, installing the native host is as easy as:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install plasma-browser-integration

Once both components are installed, the extension should start working!

Downloads

Source tarball

$ md5sum xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin-0.4.3.tar.bz2 3d86032acb9364d47e0a144350c63e1a

$ sha1sum xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin-0.4.3.tar.bz2
5682fa1ed6976e94fa01c91fc5b7839bfe804241

$ sha256sum xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin-0.4.3.tar.bz2
5a518237e2137341d8ca6584938950525e20c28a0177e30ecaea3ba8e7a2615b

Xfce PulseAudio Plugin 0.4.3 is included in Xubuntu 20.04 “Focal Fossa,” which will be available in April. Users testing the daily images should be able to check it out now.

Welcome to 2020! Let’s ring in the new year with a brand new Catfish release.

What’s New

Wayland Support

Catfish 1.4.12 adds support for running on Wayland. Before now, there were some X-specific dependencies related to handling display sizes. These have now been resolved, and Catfish should run smoothly and consistently everywhere.

Dialog Improvements

All dialogs now utilize client-side decorations (CSD) and are modal. The main window will continue to respect the window layout setting introduced in the 1.4.10 release.

I also applied several fixes to the new Preferences and Search Index dialogs, so they should behave more consistently and work well with keyboard navigation.

The new dialogs are more streamlined and standardized.

Release Process Updates

I’ve improved the release process to make it easier for maintainers and to ensure builds are free of temporary files. This helps ensure a faster delivery to package maintainers and, therefore, to distributions.

Translation Updates

Albanian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, Galician, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian Bokmål, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Turkish

Downloads

Source tarball

$ md5sum catfish-1.4.12.tar.bz2
9aad6a0bc695ec8793d4294880974cb2

$ sha1sum catfish-1.4.12.tar.bz2
4e78e291a2f17c85122a85049bdc837b49afdd66

$ sha256sum catfish-1.4.12.tar.bz2
c3fb30e02b217752aa493b49769be1a5fc2adde70b22aef381e6c67d5227134a

Catfish 1.4.12 will be included in Xubuntu 20.04 “Focal Fossa”, available in April.

Catfish 1.4.11 is now available. The latest release features improved support for symbolic links, various bug fixes, and a clearer preferences dialog. Search is better than ever.

What’s New?

General

• Radio indicators are now displayed on the layout options, making your selection clearer on all themes

Bug Fixes

• Startup crash when GdkDisplay or GdkScreen calls return None (LP #1822914)
• Configuration of preferred window layout (Xfce #16085)
• Finding files in the target directory (Xfce #15985, #16233)
• Symbolic links loop, causing the search to go on forever (Xfce #16272)
• Home (~) expansion for the start path, simplifying command line usage:

catfish --path=~/Desktop

• Fix asv-summary-has-dot-suffix ( Debian Appstream)

Translation Updates

Albanian, Belarusian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Interlingue, Italian, Korean, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Thai, Turkish

Downloads

Source tarball

$ md5sum catfish-1.4.11.tar.bz2
67e23d45fded026ef3445bc7fe1d1653

$ sha1sum catfish-1.4.11.tar.bz2
e7617948d59c69faa3f2569981b7371126d00737

$ sha256sum catfish-1.4.11.tar.bz2
617baf9309e3cdfb20c8357ac786eb26f30e6fd4280d4534d3cdd742c7ffcd85

Catfish 1.4.11 will be included in Xubuntu 20.04 “Focal Fossa,” available in April.

The best Linux graphical file search utility keeps getting better! Catfish 1.4.10 features a new preferences dialog, a polished user interface, and significantly improved search results and performance.

What’s New?

New Features

• A brand new Preferences dialog. This dialog includes options for window layout, display options, custom exclude directories (new!), and an option to close Catfish after opening a file (new!).
• Custom exclude directories. Previous releases of Catfish excluded various directories (/dev, ~/.cache, ~/.gvfs) to boost performance. This latest feature customizes path exclusions so users can further speed up their searches. (Xfce #15317)
• Close after select. Frequent file searcher? This feature will let you find and open your missing file and close Catfish immediately, keeping your application list at bay. (Xfce #14888)

Bug Fixes

• The previous release, Catfish 1.4.9 meant to include fixes for path exclusions. Somehow, I forgot to include the actual fix! Path exclusions are fixed and search performance should be increased as a result. (Debian #926850)
• The results now always display icons at a consistent size. Previously, some icons were displayed much larger than others, breaking the visual flow.

Improved Application menu

In the past, clicking the application menu in Catfish meant seeing a cluttered, inconsistently spaced, and aligned popover with poorly worded options. No more!

• Better use of space, padding, and margins
• Clearer purpose labels
• Keyboard accelerators are now displayed in the menu

Search Improvements

• Symbolic links are now traversed, with actual paths only processed once
• Added search priority, surfacing more relevant results faster. Folders are now descended with the following priority, then alphabetically:
  • XDG paths (Desktop, Documents, Pictures, Videos, etc)
  • Visible paths
  • Hidden paths

General

• Better use of alt-accelerators
• Improved installation instructions (Xfce #15105)
• Reduced warnings displayed in the terminal
• Simplified Python 2/3 compatibility code
• Various code quality fixes (pylint, flake)

Translation Updates

• Simplified welcome text. While not visually different, the 3 translatable phrases were merged into a single sentence to simplify translations. (Xfce #15596)

Albanian, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Danish, Dutch, French, Galician, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Lithuanian, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Turkish

Screenshots

Downloads

Source tarball ( md5, sha1, sha256)

Catfish 1.4.8 is now available. This latest release improves integration with OpenBSD, Wayland, Xfce, and numerous other desktop configurations. It also features many translation updates to improve Catfish’s international support.

What’s New?

Desktop Integration / Enhanced Thunar Support

A long-requested feature ( requested 2+ years ago), navigating directly to a file in Thunar, is now possible. Right-click on a file and select “Show in File Manager.” Thunar will open it immediately, scroll to it, and select the requested file. Folder spelunkers, rejoice! (Xfce #14494)

Bug Fixes

• Automatically adjust locate arguments to accommodate the host OS, improving support for OpenBSD
• Fixed crash at startup on Wayland (Xfce #15297)
• Fixed directory support when XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP in unavailable (Xfce #15099)
• Fixed search exclusion of non-standard paths (~/.cache, ~/.gvfs, /dev) (Xfce #15206)

Translation Updates

• Added ‘translator-credits’ string to .po files (Xfce #15564)
• Changed “…” to “…” for consistency with other Xfce apps (Xfce #15407)
• Marked the “Search for files” string translatable (Xfce #15097)

Albanian, Arabic, Armenian (Armenia), Basque, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (Australia), Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Interlingue, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Serbian, Sinhala, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian

Downloads

Download Catfish 1.4.8 from the link below.

Source tarball ( md5, sha1, sha256)

As we prepare to release Xfce 4.14, each component receives another review and polish round. Xfce Settings 4.13.8 includes many fixes and translations, forming a solid foundation for the Xfce desktop.

What’s New?

General

• display: Disable auto-enabling profiles by default (4.13.7)
• display: Sync display when applying config
• display: Use current display

Bug Fixes

• color: Fix crash when launching GNOME Color Manager in the Settings Manager window (4.13.7) (Xfce #15426)
• color: Set the correct icon in color dialogs (4.13.7)
• display: Add mnemonics to minimal dialog buttons (4.13.7) (Xfce #15449)
• display: Replace deprecated icon (4.13.7) (Xfce #15416)
• settings-manager: Fix missing icons on resize/add/remove (4.13.7) (Xfce #15428, #15613)
• xfsettingsd: Fix numlock state restoration (4.13.7) (Xfce #15642)
• xfsettingsd: Start settings before complete startup (Xfce #15725)
• xsettings: Grab and sync XServer on startup (Xfce #15725)

Translation Updates

Armenian (Armenia), Belarusian, Danish, English (Australia), Finnish, Finnish, French, Indonesian, Lithuanian, Norwegian Bokmål, Portuguese (Brazilian), Serbian, Turkish, Ukrainian

Downloads

Source tarball ( md5, sha1, sha256)

Xfce Settings 4.13.8 is included in Xubuntu 19.10 “Eoan Ermine,” installed with the xfce4-settings package.

We’ve worked hard optimizing Xfce’s screensaver to give users the best possible lock and screensaver experience in Xfce. With Xfce Screensaver 0.1.7, we’ve dropped even more legacy code while implementing a long-requested feature: per-screensaver configuration!

What’s New?

New Features

• Added support for on-screen keyboards. This option adds a button to the login window to show and hide the keyboard at the bottom of the screen.
• Added per-screensaver configuration. The available options are pulled from the xscreensaver theme file and are stored via Xfconf.
• Improved background drawing when using 2x scaling.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed flickering within the password dialog (0.1.6)
• Fixed various display issues with the password dialog; all themes should now render xfce4-screensaver identically to lightdm-gtk-greeter (0.1.6)
• Fixed confusion between screensaver and lock timeouts (Xfce #15726)
• Removed reference to pkg-config (.pc) file (0.1.6) (Xfce #15597)

Code Cleanup

• Cleaned up kdb-indicator logic (0.1.6)
• Consolidated debug function calls (0.1.6)
• Dropped libXxf86 dependency (MATE Screensaver #199)
• Dropped lots of unused or unneeded code, significantly streamlining the codebase
• Migrated xfce4-screensaver-command to GDBus
• Moved job theme processing out of gs-manager (0.1.6)
• Removed full-screen window shaking on failed login
• Simplified handling of user preferences (0.1.6)
• Simplified lock screen and screensaver activation code

Translation Updates

Armenian (Armenia), Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Turkish

Downloads

Source tarball ( md5, sha1, sha256)

Xfce Screensaver 0.1.7 is included in Xubuntu 19.10 “Eoan Ermine,” installed with the xfce4-screensaver package.

With Xfce 4.14 rapidly approaching, development efforts have shifted to bug fixes. Exo 0.12.6 is no exception, with several old and new bugs finally meeting their end.

What’s New?

Did you miss the release announcement for Exo 0.12.5? Click here to check it out!

Bug Fixes

• Add trailing “;” to mimeapps.list (Xfce #15087)
• Clear bad entries from mimeapps.list (Xfce #15046, #15238)
• Synchronize default applications to gio-mime (Xfce #14633)
• Disable emoji menu in type-ahead search (Xfce #15451)
• Enable dismissal of “Failed to open default” dialogs
  • Related Issue: Brave Browser #4142
  • If the error can be safely ignored, the user can dismiss it. After changing defaults, the dismissal is forgotten.

Translation Updates

Albanian, Armenian (Armenia), Bulgarian, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Danish, French, Galician, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Interlingue, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish

Downloads

Download Exo 0.12.6 from the link below.

Source tarball ( md5, sha1, sha256)

A new version of the Xfce Screensaver is now available! Xfce Screensaver 0.1.5 fixes many bugs while making the codebase leaner and more efficient. Check it out!

What’s New?

New Features

• Added support for elogind (Xfce #15243)
• Added support for profile images from AccountsService (Xfce #15235)

General

• Removed a lot of unused code (2,700+ lines)
• Simplified monitor-handling logic
• More consistent spacing in makefiles

Bug Fixes

• Added categories to display in the Settings Manager (Xfce #15507)

• Added a fallback idle timer for when X11 screensaver doesn’t notify

• Fixed warning during configure stage (Xfce #15552)

• Fixed Inhibitor lock (Xfce #15551)

• Hid screensaver themes from “Open with” options (Xfce #15531)

• Made numerous cppcheck, cpplint, and Coverity Scan fixes

  • Constant variables guarding dead code
  • Dereferencing before/after null
  • Unchecked return values
  • Unused variables
  • Memory leaks

Translation Updates

Albanian, Basque, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (Australia), French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Korean, Lithuanian, Malay, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish

Downloads

Download Xfce Screensaver 0.1.5 at the link below.

Source tarball ( md5, sha1, sha256)

A new (more) stable version of the Xfce media player is now available! Parole Media Player 1.0.2 fixes several bugs and improves packaged releases for distributions.

What’s New?

Bug fixes. So… many… fixes!

Build Fixes

• Fixed compiler error -Wcast-function-type with GCC 8
• Fixed Appstream validation by removing tags from translations (Xfce #14260)
• Resolved g_type_class_add_private warnings (Xfce #15014)

Playback

• Fixed play button sensitivity items are added to the playlist (Xfce #13724, LP #1705243)
• Improved support for missing Gstreamer plugin installers (Xfce #14529)

Plugins Manager

• Fixed crash when opening files after disabling plugins (LP #1698540)
• Fixed disabling plugins enabled by distributions (e.g., MPRIS2 in Xubuntu)
• Fixed display of active/inactive plugins when reopening the Plugins Manager

Translation Updates

Albanian, Arabic, Asturian, Basque, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (Australia), Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian Bokmal, Occitan (post 1500), Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Uighur, Ukrainian

Downloads

Parole Media Player 1.0.2 is included in Xubuntu 19.04, with other distributions likely adding it soon. If you can’t wait or want to install it from the source, download it below.

Source tarball ( md5, sha1, sha256)

With numerous performance improvements and an improved low-power resource footprint, Xfce Screensaver 0.1.4 continues improving screen locking on Xfce.

What’s New?

Features

• We have added support for screen locking when the system goes to sleep (Xfce #15001) via a shared preference with Xfce Power Manager. To accommodate this, a new configuration option, “Lock Screen with System Sleep,” was added to the Screensaver Preferences dialog.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed password entry after forcefully grabbing input focus (Xfce #15042)

General

• Faster screen locking when activated
• Faster rendering of the authentication prompt
• Improved handling of monitor (dis-)connection events
• Improved screensaver and locking activation when idle
• Improved laptop lid support: The lock screen is now displayed immediately when the laptop lid is open instead of requiring a wake event from the keyboard or mouse
• Improved low-power state: Screensavers are now suspended when monitors are powered off via DPMS (Debian #921835)

Translation Updates

Basque, Belarusian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Galician, Lithuanian, Malay, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish

Downloads

This is the second beta release of Xfce Screensaver. If you’re feeling adventurous, check it out and report bugs so we can continue building an awesome screen-locking tool for Xfce. Download Xfce Screensaver 0.1.4 at the link below.

Source tarball ( md5, sha1, sha256)

With tighter desktop integration, improved performance, and fixes for old and new bugs, Catfish 1.4.7 makes desktop search faster and easier.

What’s New?

General

• Cleaner, easier-to-read manpage contents
• Information about the --path command-line flag was added to help and the manpage
• Updated AppStream components to align with the latest specification
• Replaced project URLs with HTTPS where possible

Desktop Integration

• The window layout now respects the current desktop ( Xfce #14486)

• A headerbar layout is used for Budgie, GNOME, and Pantheon

• All other desktops use the traditional title bar layout

• This option can be overridden using the use-headerbar option

  in the Catfish configuration file (~/.config/catfish/catfish.rc)

• Files can now be dragged into other applications ( Xfce #14492)

• For file managers, the files will usually be copied to that location

• For other applications, the files will be opened by the application

Performance

• Thumbnails will now only be generated when the thumbnail view is active ( Xfce #14689)
• Added /dev to list of standard excluded directories
• Files within /dev can still be searched if explicitly selected by the user

Bug Fixes

• Quoted search strings now allow for searching for specific phrases instead of searching for actual quote characters ( Xfce #14501)
• The file context menu can now be opened multiple times ( Xfce #14621)
• Fix crash at startup when Catfish enables multi-file selection ( LP #1753163)

Translation Updates

Albanian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (Australia), French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian Nynorsk, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Serbian, Sinhala, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian

Downloads

Source tarball ( md5, sha1, sha256)

Exo 0.12.4 is now available with an improved icon view, better icon rendering, and reduced disk usage. Come and get it!

What’s New?

General

• Exo again uses the same thumbnail directories as other applications ( Xfce #14799), reducing disk usage.
• Where everything else moved to ~/.cache/thumbnails quite some time ago, Exo continued to use ~/.thumbnails. Enjoy all the extra disk space!

Bug Fixes

• ExoCellRendererIcon: Fix highlight rendering with GTK 3 ( Xfce #14971)
• ExoIconView: Fix search popup placement ( Xfce #14994)
• A long-standing bug in which the type-ahead search widget would be drawn partially off the screen for maximized windows has also been fixed!

Translation Updates

Belarusian, Catalan, Chinese (China), German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Kannada, Korean, Lithuanian, Malay, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Thai

Downloads

Download Exo 0.12.4 from the link below.

Source tarball ( md5, sha1, sha256)

2018 has been a busy year for Xfce & Xubuntu. As we enter 2019 and continue to inch closer to Xfce 4.14, let’s look back at one of the busiest development years in a while. Here’s your 2018 year in review!

January

News

• Xubuntu 17.04 “Zesty Zapus” reached End of Life
• Xubuntu 17.10.1 “Artful Aardvark” was released, resolving the Lenovo BIOS corruption bug

Major Releases

• MenuLibre 2.1.4 introduced some useful new features to the popular menu editor, including a Test Launcher button to try out a launcher before saving and the Parsing Errors dialog to easily identify menu configuration issues.

Other Notable Releases

• Catfish 1.4.4 (performance and error handling improvements)
• Xfce Timer Plugin 1.7.0 (GTK+ 3 port and UI improvements)

February

News

• The State of Xfce Tranlations in Early 2018
• The Xubuntu 18.04 Community Wallpaper Contest was opened

Major Releases

• Exo 0.12.0 was the first stable Xfce 4.14 release for the Xfce application development library. The new release included support for both GTK+ 2 and 3, and added Brave, Geary, Google Chrome, and Vivaldi to the natively supported application defaults.
• MenuLibre 2.1.5 expanded its support of desktop environments. With this release, MenuLibre’s powerful menu editing options are available for Budgie, GNOME, KDE Plasma, LXDE, LXQt, MATE, Pantheon, Unity, and Xfce.

Other Notable Releases

• Thunar 1.6.14 (stable bugfix release)
• Thunar 1.7.1 (development bugfix and feature release)
• Thunar Media Tags Plugin 0.3.0 (GTK+ 3 port)
• thunarx-python 0.5.1 (Python 3 documentation fixes)
• Xfce PulseAudio Plugin 0.3.5 (improved device and media player management)
• Xfce Terminal 0.8.7 / 0.8.7.1 (bugfixes and new configuration options)
• xfce4-volumed-pulse 0.2.3 (GTK+ 3 port)

March

News

• The Xubuntu QA & developments teams called out for testing

Major Releases

• MenuLibre 2.2.0 was finally released with an expansive list of improvements. Key improvements include expanded desktop environment support, easy window identification, launcher testing, and parsing error reporting.
• Parole Media Player 1.0.0 included playback performance updates, automatic video output selection, and improved podcast and live stream support. The new Mini Mode reduces the player to a small window that stays out of the way and within reach.
• Xfce PulseAudio Plugin 0.4.0 introduced device management and MPRIS support to the audio management plugin. Available input and output devices can be selected from the plugin menu, immediately moving streams to the new device. MPRIS support adds media player controls for supported applications.
• Xfce Settings 4.12.2, 4.12.3, and 4.13.2 improved multi-monitor support for stable and development releases. The mouse cursor can now be shown with a key press, which can be configured with the Xfce Settings Manager.

Other Notable Releases

• LightDM GTK+ Greeter 2.0.5 (improved defaults and theme support)
• Thunar Shares Plugin 0.3.0 (GTK+ 3 port)
• Tumbler 0.1.33 and 0.2.1 (bugfix releases)
• Xfce Indicator Plugin 2.3.4 (fixed builds with Xfce 4.14 development libraries)
• Xfce Notifications 0.4.2 (improved stability and several bug fixes)
• Xfce Terminal 0.8.7.2 and 0.8.7.3 (bugfix releases)

April

News

• Xubuntu 18.04 Community Wallpaper Contest winners were announced
• Xubuntu 18.04 was released! I featured some screenshots here.

Major Releases

• Xubuntu 18.04 “Bionic Beaver,” an LTS release supported for 3 years, was released with 32-bit and 64-bit downloads available. This release included some new desktop applications: Some MATE components replaced their GNOME counterparts for improved desktop consistency; the Xfce PulseAudio Plugin replaced the Sound Indicator; and the Xfce Notifications plugin, featuring a new Do Not Disturb mode, was added to the panel.

Other Notable Releases

• Parole Media Player 1.0.1 (translations)
• Thunar 1.6.15 and 1.7.2 (bugfix releases)
• Xfce PulseAudio Plugin 0.4.1 (translations)
• Xfce Verve Plugin 1.1.1 (GTK+ 2, translations and feature release)
• Xfce Verve Plugin 2.0.0 (GTK+ 3 port)
• Xfce Whisker Menu Plugin 2.1.6 and 2.1.7 (translations and bug fixes)

May

This was the first month I started publishing monthly news roundups. Check out the June Development Update for an in-depth look at May’s development progress.

News

• New Xubuntu Testers Wiki Pages, written by the testers themselves, were announced
• The last of Xubuntu’s repositories were migrated from Bazaar to Git
• The codename for Ubuntu 18.10, “Cosmic Cuttlefish,” was announced
• Kubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE, and Ubuntu Studio announced that they would no longer provide 32-bit ISOs for 18.10 and forward
• I chatted about Xfce and Xubuntu on Destination Linux and Late Night Linux Extra

Notable Releases

• Xfce CPU Frequency Plugin 1.2.0 (GTK+ 3 port)
• Xfce Screenshooter 1.9.2 (various enhancements and dropped Zimagez support)
• Xfce Sensors Plugin 1.3.0 (bug fixes and code quality improvements)
• Xfce Panel 4.13.3 (bug fixes and usability improvements)
• Xfce Terminal 0.8.7.4 (bugfix and feature release)
• Xfce Whisker Menu Plugin 2.2.0 (performance and usability improvements)

June

June Development Roundup

Major Releases

• Thunar 1.8.0 and 1.8.1 were the first stable GTK+ 3 releases of the Xfce file manager, offering major usability and developer-friendly improvements. The pathbar now includes navigation buttons and a much tidier location selector. GObject Introspection for Thunar’s plugin library makes it possible to develop plugins in a number of programming languages.
• Xfce Settings 4.12.4 and 4.13.4 featured improvements to display manufacturer recognition. The mappings were updated and various manufacturer names were simplified for better screen real estate. 4.13.4 introduced Xrandr display scaling, making it possible to scale the X display and all applications.

Other Notable Releases

• Exo 0.12.2 (performance improvements and support for the latest GCC)
• libxfce4util 4.13.2 (support for Vala bindings and improved documentation builds
• Mousepad 0.4.1 (bugfix release)
• Ristretto 0.8.3 (Port to GDBus and various bug fixes)
• Thunar VCS Plugin 0.1.90 (GTK+ 3 port)
• Xfce Desktop 4.13.2 (support for the Thunarx-3 API and various bug fixes)
• Xfce Dictionary 0.8.1 (appearance improvements)
• Xfce Task Manager 1.2.1 (bug fixes and a new –start-hidden command line flag)
• Xfconf 4.13.5 (bugfix release)

July

July Development Roundup

News

• Xubuntu 17.10 is now End of Life
• Xubuntu 18.04.1 was released
• Catfish and Xfce Panel Profiles became official Xfce projects

Major Releases

• Xubuntu 18.04.1, the first point release in the Bionic Beaver series, became available. At this time, users of a prior release should have received an upgrade notice. This release included several stability and performance improvements.
• Xfwm 4.13.1 included massive updates, including a full port to GTK+ 3 and various fixes. This component is one of the critical pieces of the Xfce 4.14 release, so it’s great to see it humming along.

Other Notable Releases

• Catfish 1.4.6 (improved thumbnailer and various bug fixes)
• Thunar VCS Plugin 0.2.0 (GTK+ 3 port)
• Xfce Mount Plugin 1.1.3 (translation updates)
• Xfce Panel Profiles 1.0.8 (bugfix release)
• Xfce Whisker Menu Plugin 2.2.1 (bugfix release)
• Xfwm 4.12.5 (bugfix release)

August

August Development Roundup

Notable Releases

• Mugshot 0.4.1 (bug fixes and code quality improvements)
• Xfce Appfinder 4.13.1 (bug fixes and usability improvements)
• Xfce Screenshooter 1.9.3 (bugfix and feature release)
• Xfce Session 4.13.1 (numerous bug fixes and code quality improvements)

September

September & October Development Roundup

News

• Elementary Xfce 0.13 switched to Manila folder icons, following upstream

Notable Releases

• Thunar 1.8.2 (bugfix release)
• Tumbler 0.2.2 and 0.2.3 (bug fixes and performance improvements)
• Xfce Battery Plugin 1.1.1 (bug fixes and appearance improvements)
• Xfce Cpufreq Plugin 1.2.1 (bug fixes and appearance improvements)
• Xfce Weather Plugin 0.9.0 (GTK+ 3 port)

October

September & October Development Roundup

News

• Xubuntu 18.10 “Cosmic Cuttlefish” was released

Major Releases

• Xubuntu 18.10 “Cosmic Cuttlefish” featured several appearance updates and Xfce 4.14 components. Our icon theme, elementary-xfce, was updated with new Manila folder icons and optimized, resulting in a smaller install size and improved performance. Many more GTK+ 3 Xfce applications were included.
• Xfce Screensaver 0.1.0 (and 0.1.1) was announced as a new screen locker and screensaver for Xfce. This application is a port of MATE Screensaver, adapted to integrate tightly with the Xfce desktop. It shares theming with LightDM GTK+ Greeter to guarantee users a consistent login and lock experience.
• Xfce Settings 4.13.5 featured the new display profiles: saved multi-monitor layouts automatically applied when a new monitor configuration is detected. This works with multi-monitor layouts and switches a laptop to use only the external display when connected.

Other Notable Releases

• Exo 0.12.3 (bug fixes and appearance improvements)
• Gigolo 0.4.90 (GTK+ 3 port)
• Xfce Clipman Plugin 1.4.3 (bug fix and appearance improvements)
• Xfce Notifications 0.4.3 (bugfix release)
• Xfce Sensors Plugin 1.3.90 (bug fixes and appearance improvements)
• Xfce Whisker Menu Plugin 2.3.0 (bug fixes and appearance improvements)

November

Major Releases

• Xfce Screensaver 0.1.3 is the first beta release of the new Xfce Screensaver. It features an expanded configuration dialog, better support for X11 Screensaver and XDG Screensaver, and fully documented functionality. With a focus on improved code quality, contributors should have a much easier time with the project going forward.

Other Notable Releases

• Xfce Screensaver 0.1.2 (bugfix release)
• Thunar Volume Manager 0.9.1 (bug fixes, appearance improvements, and Blu-Ray media support)
• Xfce Dictionary 0.8.2 (bug fixes and appearance improvements)
• Xfce System Load Plugin 1.2.2 (bug fixes and appearance improvements)

December

News

• Lubuntu and Xubuntu announced they will no longer ship 32-bit ISOs for Ubuntu 19.04 and onwards. Ubuntu 18.04 will continue to be supported for the 3-year LTS support window.
• André Miranda published The Ultimate Contributor’s Guide to Xfce, which is definitely a worthwhile read for new and existing contributors.

Notable Releases

• Garcon 0.6.2 (bugfix release)
• Xfce Appfinder 4.13.2 (bugfix release)
• Xfce MPC Plugin 0.5.1 (bug fixes and appearance improvements)
• Xfce Task Manager 1.2.2 (bug fixes and usability improvements)

Cheers to 2019

Look out for Xfce 4.14—we’re so close! Look out for more updates in the coming months.

After 3 weeks of dedicated development, the Xfce Screensaver 0.1.3, the first beta release, is now available! With better event handling, a significantly upgraded preferences dialog, and a tidier codebase, the new version is nearly ready for prime time. 🎉

What’s New?

Features

• All available configuration options are now available in the Preferences dialog, boosting the easily accessible options from 4 to 13!
• Idle time is now based on the X11 Screensaver plugin instead of the GNOME Session Manager.
• Xfce Screensaver now respects the xdg-screensaver state, inhibiting the screensaver when using apps like Caffeine or watching a fullscreen video.
• Screensaver and lock screen functionality can easily now be toggled separately.

General

• All deprecated DBUS methods and signals have been removed from the documentation.

• Documentation has been written and is available on the Xfce Docs site. Available docs include:

  • Building & installing Xfce Screensaver
  • Using the DBUS interface
  • Frequently asked questions

Preferences

• Dropped unused configuration options [ 1, 2, 3]
• Renamed all Xfconf properties for improved clarity and easier maintenance [ 1, 2]

Bug Fixes

• Replaced the Help link with a link to the Xfce Docs (Xfce #14877)
• Added /usr/lib and /usr/libexec as trusted engine paths, enabling local installs on Linux with access to existing screensavers (Xfce #14883)
• Fixed screen blanking and locking on FreeBSD and OpenBSD (Xfce #14846)
• Fixed lock screen crash on laptop lid-close events (GTK #1466)
• Fixed daemon crash when scrolling through available themes
• Improved window size resizing for smaller displays
• Renamed included screensavers to avoid conflicts with MATE Screensaver
• Reduced flicker rate when multiple keyboard layouts are available (still not fully fixed, but greatly improved)

Build Improvements

• Silenced warning: ar: ‘u’ modifier ignored since ‘D’ is the default
• Fixed warning: Target given more than once in the same rule

Code Quality

• Applied cpplint fixes and added cpplint configuration file
• Cleaned up unused variables, trailing spaces, and deprecated code
• Glade templates were cleaned up and organized for easier maintenance

Translation Updates

Albanian, Basque, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Danish, French, Galician, Hebrew, Icelandic, Italian, Korean, Malay, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Turkish

Screenshots

Downloads

This is the first beta release of Xfce Screensaver. While still not recommended for production machines, this is a great time to test and report bugs so we can assemble an awesome stable release soon.

Source tarball ( md5, sha1, sha256)

Xubuntu users (18.04, 18.10, and 19.04) can grab the package from the Xubuntu QA Experimental PPA.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xubuntu-dev/experimental
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xfce4-screensaver

Remember also to remove or exit light-locker and start xfce4-screensaver (or log out and back in) and add support for xfce4-screensaver to the xflock4 script.

Thanks, and enjoy!