Marcus Nestor at 9 to 5 Linux reported on Wednesday that computer maker System76 released version 1.5 of the Cosmic desktop environment.
Based on Rust, the desktop environment’s improvements are generally based on performance issues.
“Coming only a week after Cosmic 1.4, the Cosmic 1.5 release is here to fix high CPU panel usage when the screen is locked, fix panel touch input, fix panel flickering when using the Frosted Glass effect when preserving style on window maximize, and fix Frosted Glass for panel applets on hotplugging an external monitor,” the article says.
Other specific improvements include a workaround to fix a Chromium issue when scaling, a fix for D-Bus deadlock, and a fix for an issue causing panic when rendering fails after a GPU reset, among other bugs in version 1.4.
“This release also brings some changes to COSMIC Settings with slider widget handle improvements, a fix for the one-pixel gap between outputs due to rounding errors, support for adding multiple images at once in the Wallpaper pane, which now supports up to 500 wallpapers, and networking improvements by no longer storing the VPN username as a secret,” the article says.
Check out the release notes on the project’s GitHub page for more details about the changes included in COSMIC 1.5.
Oops! Still GPL items in FreeBSD kernel
Christine Hall at FOSS Force reported on Wednesday that actually some of the GPL-based software in FreeBSD may still be lurking in some of the corners of that particular operating system’s kernel.
“A couple of weeks back we told you that the folks at FreeBSD had removed all GPL code from their operating system to keep the world safe for devs with copyleft allergies,” the article states. “The OS was thought to be GPL-free after the removal of dpv, a toolset that contains the GPL tool ‘dialog.’
That’s evidently important to BSD folks, who think that software freedom means the freedom to make it private.”
But . . .
“Unfortunately, the dev team at FreeBSD left some other GPL code behind, so the GPL still lurks, sprinkled in the FreeBSD kernel, of all places,” the article continues. “It’s in a header file that was copy and pasted from the Linux kernel for Qualcomm SoCs. There are also some GPLv2 snippets in the Device Tree.”
So it’s back to the drawing board for the FreeBSD developers. We’ll keep you updated on this as we find out more.
‘Stonking Stingray’ moving along
Sourav Rudra wrote an article in It’s FOSS on Wednesday about the improvements coming to the next Ubuntu version to be released in October.
“Every two years, Canonical puts out a Long Term Support release that gets five years of security updates, which can be stretched further with Ubuntu Pro,” the article states. “In between those LTS releases, Canonical ships an interim version every six months, and each one is supported for nine months.”
Those releases don’t carry the same importance as an LTS, but that’s the point, according to Rudra. They give Canonical room to test newer kernels, toolchains, and design changes with a smaller user base before those changes get baked into the next LTS.
“The next one, Ubuntu 26.10, carries the codename ‘Stonking Stingray’, continuing the tradition of ordered alphabetical codenames after Resolute Raccoon (26.04),” the article continues.
According to the article, “stonking” is British slang for something impressively big or excellent, and a stingray is the flat-bodied, boneless fish that spends most of its time half-buried in sand near the seafloor.
The article brings to the fore the schedule for the releases, with the next one being a Feature Freeze on Aug. 20, and the testing week takes place a week later on Aug. 27.
The article also states that “[i]f things go as planned, it will land on October 15, 2026, with a short support window that will close in July 2027.”
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 weekend on Monday.
