Compiled by Larry Cafiero
The KDE Plasma beat goes on . . .
Marcus Nestor at 9 to 5 Linux reports on Thursday that the KDE Plasma 6.8 desktop environment is ready for public beta testing, and a second beta will be available on Sept. 24.
“The KDE Project announced today the release of the beta version of the upcoming KDE Plasma 6.8 desktop environment series for public testing, a major update that introduces many new features and improvements,” the article states.
Some of the highlights of KDE Plasma 6.8 include triple buffering for NVIDIA GPUs enabled by default, support for recording audio in Spectacle during screen recording, and automatic logic support for Plasma Login Manager on distros with older systemd versions, such as KDE neon.
“KDE Plasma 6.8 also brings support for the Flatpak version of Microsoft Edge in Plasma Browser Integration, the ability to configure wireless access points to automatically select a channel in the Networks page in System Settings, and better detection of dark GTK 2 themes and applying a matching icon theme,” the article continues.
For users of multi-monitor setups, “KDE Plasma 6.8 will identify monitors with color-coded number badges in all the places they’re configured to make it easier to see which one is which, especially when you have two identical monitors, and faster adjustment of brightness on external monitors,” the article says.
“KDE Plasma 6.8 lets you set up wallpaper slideshows that don’t change automatically, displays notifications about connected devices that have low battery power in full-screen apps, and supports version 1.6 of the Emulated Input system for better integration of virtual keyboard, mouse, and touch input devices,” says the article.
Swiss abandoning Microsoft?
Abhishek Prakash of It’s Foss wrote an article on Monday that Switzerland’s federal government is replacing Microsoft on 3,000 of the country 54,000 federal government’s computers.
Why?
“According to Matthias Stürmer, professor at the Bern University of Applied Sciences (BFH), Microsoft’s supremacy in public institutions poses three problems that are driving this migration,” the article states, and continues to explain.
“First is the risk of foreign access. US cloud legislation could expose Swiss government data to foreign authorities.
“Second is the risk to service continuity, as dependency on a single foreign vendor creates operational risk.
“The third risk is the escalating costs as proprietary licensing fees are rising with no Swiss leverage,” the article concludes.
According to the article, the “Federal Chancellery is investing CHF 9 million in an open-source workplace rollout for 3,000 federal employees. On September 3, 2026, the Federal Council published results of ‘PoC BOSS’, a feasibility proof-of-concept involving 172 federal employees who tested the openDesk suite, a German open-source collaboration platform.”
We’ll keep an eye on this one.
System76’s Cosmic DE gets an update
The Cosmic beat goes on . . .
Bobby Borisov of Linuxiac reported on Thursday that the Cosmic desktop environment from System76 makes several improvements in its latest iteration, Cosmic Desktop 1.8.
“System76 has released Cosmic Desktop 1.8 with a major update to the Cosmic compositor, cosmic-comp, adding touch input support that the developers say ‘vastly improves’ touchscreen support across Cosmic,” the article says. “Work is progressing on the on-screen keyboard, but it is not part of this release and is expected later.”
Other updates in Cosmic Desktop 1.8 also include an update to Smithay, improving mouse capture behavior. “X11 applications can now start minimized. Another fix targets sluggish Steam overlays by ensuring X11 windows continue receiving frame callbacks, resulting in smoother behavior when using Steam games and overlays under Cosmic,” the article says.
Hybrid GPU laptops are also receiving the attention of Cosmic developers as well. “COSMIC now checks all available connectors when determining the primary GPU, addressing problems affecting some systems with integrated and discrete graphics. The screenshot tool also received fixes for crashes related to window corner radii,” the article states.
MocaccinoOS makes improvements
Marcus Nestor at 9 to 5 Linux reported on Tuesday that MocaccinoOS has made improvments on its Gentoo-based distro as well, with MocaccinoOS 26.09 adding x86-64-v3 optimized builds for improved performance.
The latest version of the distro will also ship with the KDE Plasma, Gnome 49.7, Cosmic 1.7, Xfce 4.20 and MATE 1.26 desktop environments.
“Still powered by the long-term supported Linux 6.18 LTS kernel series, namely Linux 6.18.50, MocaccinoOS 26.09 improves Intel CPU/platform support, including for Raptor Lake systems, improves ASUS ROG/Armoury hardware support for asusctl, and adds optional x86-64-v3 optimized builds for improved performance on supported modern CPUs,” the article says.
As it stands now, “x86-64-v3 support is opt-in, which means that you will have to install it manually by running the sudo luet install layers/X-v3 command in your favorite terminal emulator, if your CPU supports it,” says the article. “It needs more testing, but after it’s solid and ready for the masses, it will become a selectable option in the Calamares installer.”
MocaccinoOS 26.09 also “updates the Cosmic edition to the latest Cosmic 1.7 desktop environment, as well as the Mesa graphics stack to version 26.2.1. The rest of the official flavors stay at the same desktop environment versions as in the MocaccinoOS 26.08 release, namely Gnome 49.7, Xfce 4.20, and MATE 1.28,” the article says.
Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS now available
Another day, another milestone at Canonical . . .
Marcus Nestor at 9 to 5 Linux reported on Thursday that Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS is now available for download, containing the Linux 7.0 kernel and Mesa 26.2 while continuing to receive software updates and security patches until June 2029.
“Coming six months after Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS, the Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS point release is here as an up-to-date installation medium, which includes all the latest software updates and security patches, for those who want to deploy the long-term supported Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) operating system on new computers without having to download hundreds of updated packages from the repositories after the installation,” the article states.
In its latest iteration, “Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS is powered by Linux kernel 7.0 and the Mesa 26.2 graphics stack from the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (Resolute Raccoon) release,” the article says. “While Ubuntu 24.04 and Ubuntu 24.04.1 shipped with Linux 6.8, Ubuntu 24.04.2 added Linux 6.11, Ubuntu 24.04.3 added Linux 6.14, and Ubuntu 24.04.4 added Linux 6.17, so Linux 7.0 should add an extra layer of hardware support.”
And that’s all for today. Don’t forget: Distro of the Week appears Wednesday – and it’s always a good one on hand – and Bits and Bobs will return with news over the week next Saturday.