Bits & Bobs: ‘Forky’ artwork sought

Compiled by Larry Cafiero

Marcus Nestor at 9 to 5 Linux reported on Thursday that Debian 14 “Forky” artwork proposals are now open for submission, with the final release of Debian 14 operating system expected in mid-2027.

“This is the moment for aspiring artists and designers who want to display their work in front of millions of Debian users to submit their best artwork for the upcoming Debian 14 (codename Forky – continuing the “Toy Story” naming) operating system series, due for release in mid-2027,” the article says.

According to the article, “submissions are open until November 26th, 2026, but your artwork needs to meet some specifications, such as using an image format that can be later modified using free and open-source software, and adding a license that lets the Debian Project distribute your artwork within Debian.”

The artwork will not only be used for Debian Forky’s wallpaper, the article says, but also in various parts of the operating system, such as the boot screen, Debian Installer, login screen, CD/DVD labels, Debian Project’s website, and even stickers for laptops.

“The artwork is a key part of a Debian release because it’s usually the first thing new users see when installing or booting Debian, and it’s also the first thing that appears when Debian users share their screens or connect to an external device while giving talks around the world,” the article says.

Budgie, Cosmic updates for aerynOS

Bobby Borisov from Linuxiac reported on Friday that aerynOS will make Budgie 10.10.3 widely available on its distro, as well as announcing an update of Cosmic to 1.10

“Just days after its previous October update, aerynOS has rolled out another substantial refresh to its Unstable Stream. The headline change is Budgie 10.10.3 arriving in the distribution’s regular package repositories, alongside Cosmic Desktop 1.10, KDE Gear 26.08.2, and Linux kernel 7.2.9,” the article states.

What makes this noteworthy is that “Budgie 10.10.3 represents the desktop’s transition to a fully Wayland-based environment,” the article says. “Instead of relying on its previous X11 architecture, it now uses the lightweight labwc Wayland compositor with a configuration bridge that allows Budgie to manage the compositor’s settings.”

The aerynOS update upgrades COSMIC Desktop from 1.9 to 1.10. The new version includes bug fixes, improvements to drawing tablet support, and enhancements to GPU acceleration.

“KDE users also receive KDE Gear 26.08.2, the latest maintenance update for the 26.08 application series. Meanwhile, Gnome 51 gets several smaller application updates and packaging adjustments, including the addition of the Sushi file previewer to aerynOS’s recommended GNOME package set.

Gnome 52 scheduled for March 2027

Marcus Nestor on 9 to 5 Linux reported on Tuesday that Gnome 52 desktop environment is scheduled for release on St. Patrick’s day of next year.

The alpha of Gnome 52 alpha is expected on Jan. 9, 2027, with the beta scheduled to be released on Jan. 30. The release candidate for Gnome 52 is scheduled for Feb. 27.

The desktop enviroment is code-named “Terengganu” from the city where the Gnome Asia Summit 2026, “the annual Gnome conference in Asia, which will take place later this month, in Terengganu Digital 1303, Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia, from October 31st to November 2nd, 2026.”

Meanwhile, “let’s take a look at the release schedule for GNOME 52, as the alpha release is planned for January 9th, 2027, while the beta milestone is expected later that month, on January 30th, and, finally, the Release Candidate (RC) milestone is currently scheduled for February 27th, 2027,” the article said.

Ubuntu 26.10 gets GnuPG replacement

Sourav Rudra on It’s FOSS reported on Monday that Ubuntu 26.10 will have a Rust-based GnuPG replacement, with the Rust-based OpenPGP tool lands in Stonking Stingray’s main archive, with sq and sqv available alongside gpg and gpgv.

“You already know that Canonical has been selectively replacing Ubuntu’s C-based system components with Rust-written equivalents that don’t compromise in terms of functionality, most of the time,” the article says.

“Now it looks like the distro’s OpenPGP implementation is next, with Sequoia PGP coming preinstalled in Ubuntu 26.10,” the article continues. “Canonical wants it to eventually replace GnuPG as the default toolchain, though that switch has not happened yet.”

What is Sequoia PGP? Glad you asked.

Sequoia PGP was started in 2017 by former GnuPG developers who chose to build a new OpenPGP implementation in Rust.

“Sequoia PGP is designed as a library that other software can use directly, rather than a standalone command-line tool,” the article says. “sqsits on top of that for encryption, decryption, signing, and key management, and sqv handles signature verification, filling in for gpg and gpgv in GnuPG.”

But there’s a caveat. “The release notes for Ubuntu 26.10 and a recent announcement clearly mention that Sequoia PGP becoming Ubuntu’s default OpenPGP toolchain is a future goal, not something that’s already the default experience,” the article said.

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.

Bits & Bobs: Gnome 51 released

Compiled by Larry Cafiero

Michael Larabel at Phoronix reported on Wednesday that Gnome 51 was released, complete with improved frame scheduling among it many improvements.

“Gnome 51 debuted today with many nice improvements to Mutter for bettering the desktop responsiveness and a smoother experience with improved frame scheduling,” the article says. “There are also new Wayland protocols supported (such as ext-background-effect-v1) and other optimizations there, including removal of legacy NVIDIA driver support with EGLStreams. Mutter also now has support for custom pointer acceleration profiles.”

The article continues to state that “Gnome 51 also brings a number of settings improvements, offline map support for Gnome Maps, faster startup of Gnome Software, the Gnome Calendar is also faster now too, and the Gnome File Previewer has a complete UI revamp.”

Debian 13.7 gets update

Bobby Borisov at Linuxiac wrote last Saturday that Debian 13.7 released 107 security updates and 106 bug fixes, as well as updates on the installer, kernel ABI, Cinnamon glbc, and other package updates.

“If you’ve been keeping your system updated through security.debian.org, there’s not much to do with this release, because most of the fixes were already included in earlier updates,” the article states. “13.7 just brings them together in one place.”

Notable changes include the Debian Installer, which has been rebuilt for the point release and now uses the Linux kernel 6.12.107. The audit package also gains support for the RISC-V 64-bit architecture. Desktop users will find a fix for Cinnamon that restores downloading and updating applets, desklets, extensions, and themes.

“At the system level, glibc fixes buffer overflow and underflow vulnerabilities and adds compatibility with Linux kernel 7.0 headers,” the article says. “Plus, several packages have been rebuilt against the updated glibc.”

Firefox enters public beta testing

Marcus Nestor at 9 to 5 Linux reports on Tuesday that Mozilla Firefox 157 has entered a period of public beta testing with the web browser’s new Nova design, with other improvements including audio/video synchronization and a vertical tabs sidebar.

“Firefox 157 looks like a small update, due to the newly adopted two-week release schedule, promising proper support for displaying HDR videos encoded in 8-bit color formats as HDR in most cases, which fixes several cases of dull gray-looking videos that should have been more vibrant,” the article states.

But continuing from there, the article also says that “Firefox 157 also promises to improve audio/video synchronization when changing playback rate on HTMLMediaElement, an improved Vertical Tabs sidebar to work better when the cursor moves to the edge of the screen in full-screen mode, and support for viewing recent searches on Android when tapping the search field.”

One interesting thing that could appear in the Firefox 157 release “is the brand-new design that we previewed in Firefox Nightly back in July,” the article says. “The new theme is called Nova and promises to make the popular open-source web browser feel cleaner, faster, adaptable, and warmer, according to Mozilla.”

Best window manager for Linux?

Linux Stans reported on Monday a very comprehensive and thorough report on the best window manager for Linux distributions.

We’re not joking. This is quite comprehensive. The article breaks down 12 – count ‘em, 12 – window managers, giving the positives and negatives of each, afterward providing a guide for users.

“If you’ve never used a tiling window manager before, start with i3 on X11 or Sway if you’re already on Wayland,” the article states. “Both have the documentation and community size to get you through the first frustrating week. If you want something that looks impressive with minimal effort, Hyprland is the current favorite, and Niri is worth a look if the scrollable layout appeals to you. If you want the smallest possible resource footprint and don’t mind compiling code, dwm is hard to beat. And if none of that appeals to you, Openbox or IceWM will get you a fast, familiar, floating desktop without asking you to learn a new workflow at all.

“There’s no wrong answer here. Try one, keep your old desktop environment installed as a safety net, and switch back anytime it stops working for you.”

Note to self: Take a look at some of the window managers other than Openbox, Fluxbox, and IceWM.

Fedora 45 beta released

Marcus Nestor at 9 to 5 Linux reported on Tuesday that the Fedora 45 Beta was released with the Linux 7.2 kernel, Gnome 51 and KDE Plasma 6.7, with the final release expected in late October or early November.

“Some interesting features in Fedora Linux 45 include fully reproducible package builds, kmscon as the default VT console, signature checking by default for RPM default package verification mode, disk images for Fedora Atomic desktops built with image-builder, and the new WebUI installer on all Fedora Atomic ISO images,” the article says.

Fedora 45 is also expected to bring “web-based remote installation support for Fedora Atomic desktops, LibreOffice help packages in HTML and noarch, systemd-oomd and zram swap by default for Fedora CoreOS, GRUB EFI support for confidential computing, PAM support in chpasswd and newusers, and IPv6 support in NetworkManager.”

Among other changes, “Fedora Linux 45 promises to relocate all packaged RPM repository configuration data from /etc to /usr, switch the default Secrets Service provider for Fedora desktops from KWallet and GNOME Keyring to oo7, restrict ptrace by default, and disable vendor change by default for DNF5,” the article says.

Seven eternal Linux applications

Umair Khurshid of How-To Geek wrote an article on seven pioneering Linux applications that never needed replacing, and for all intents and purposes he is spot on.

We’re not going to list all of them here, needless to say – read the article – but two of them are programs which in 20 years of Linux use by yours truly I absolutely swear by. And I will give you those – Vim and the GNU Image Manipulation Program, also known as GIMP.

“Linux has changed dramatically since the early days of the kernel,” the article starts. “Desktops have gone from X11 environments with primitive window managers to polished graphical shells. Containers, cloud computing, virtualization, and immutable operating systems have transformed how people deploy Linux. Even the hardware running Linux today would have seemed extraordinary to many of its earliest users.”

The article continues: “Yet some applications have barely budged from their place in the Linux ecosystem. You can install a modern Linux distro in 2026 and still find yourself using software whose origins stretch back decades.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the many reasons we use Linux, isn’t it?

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.

Bits & Bobs: Happy Birthday, Debian

Compiled by Larry Cafiero

Marcus Nestor in 9 to 5 Linux on Sunday wrote about Debian Linux turning 33 years old on Sunday.

“That’s right, it’s been 33 years since the late Ian Murdock announced the Debian Project on August 16th, 1993, and the initial release of Debian GNU/Linux a month later on September 15th, in an attempt to develop the so-called ‘Universal Operating System,’ ” the article states.

Debian is being used 33 years later by millions of users around the world, “either directly by using the Debian GNU/Linux operating system or by using one of its numerous derivatives, such as the very popular Ubuntu or Linux Mint distributions,” the article states.

Parties are taking place in multiple locations across Bolivia, Brazil, Germany, India, Indonesia, and Turkey.

“Without further ado, we would like to wish the team behind the Debian Project a big Happy Birthday!” the article says.

Gnome 51 beta released for testing

Michael Larabel on Phoronix on Saturday reported that Gnome 51 Beta has been released with a wide range of changes.

“The beta release of Gnome 51 is now available for testing,” the article states. “This cycle for the beta milestone is mostly a wide collection of minor improvements throughout the vast package set.”

Gnome 51.beta’s updates include the following:

– The Gnome Control Center added a new fingerprint management UI to the users area.

– Gnome Initial Setup gained support for systemd-homed accounts.

– Gnome Shell now honors the “reduced-motion” setting for those wanting reduced motions/visuals. There is also SVG-based cursor support in the same format handled by KDE.

– The Mutter compositor now supports the background blur effect on Wayland and various other improvements.

– Gnome Software improved the performance of icon loading and PackageKit repositories refine.

– GTK now supports the ext-background-effect Wayland protocol, reworked GDK frame-clock to improve precision and reduce frame drops, and other enhancements.

– The GVFS daemon added auto-unmount support for idle backends.

– Various small refinements to the Nautilus file manager.

Tuxedo OS releases beta for testing

Bobby Borisov on Linuxiac reported on Sunday that Tuxedo OS has released a beta version open for testing, marking the distro’s move away from Ubuntu to Debian Testing.

“In July, the company revealed that Ubuntu would no longer serve as the distribution’s foundation, ending the model under which Tuxedo combined an Ubuntu LTS base with newer kernels, graphics components, browsers, and KDE software maintained on top,” the article explained.

According to the article, Tuxedo maintained “that approach became increasingly difficult as Ubuntu LTS releases aged. Newer software depended on libraries that were unavailable or too old in the base. Additionally, the company cited Canonical’s growing emphasis on Snap as another reason for seeking greater independence.”

The replacement base distro has become Debian Testing, “which Tuxedo plans to use permanently instead of moving to Debian Stable when the current Testing branch becomes Debian 14 ‘Forky,’ ” the article continues. “The company calls this approach ‘Continuous Debian,’ allowing Tuxedo OS to keep its hybrid model while using a much newer package base.”

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 on Friday.

Bits & Bobs: KDE goes ‘bulletproof’

Compiled by Larry Cafiero

Marcus Nestor of 9 to 5 Linux reported on Thursday that KDE announced a suite of software which includes three years of support for KDE Plasma 6.6 LTS and related KDE software.

“The KDE Project, Kubuntu Focus, and Techpaladin Software announced today a new project for those who need long-term support (LTS) for the KDE Plasma desktop environment and related KDE applications called the “bulletproof” KDE suite,” the article states.

The KDE Project dropped LTS support for the KDE Plasma desktop environment, but “they teamed up with Linux hardware vendor Kubuntu Focus and Techpaladin Software to provide three years of bug and security fixes for the KDE Plasma 6.6 desktop environment series through Kubuntu 26.04 LTS,” according to the article.

“They called it the ‘bulletproof’ KDE suite, and the idea is to provide companies, public institutions, and professionals that need long-term support for the KDE Plasma and KDE apps with the capability and stability they require to replace proprietary software with software that respects their autonomy, privacy, and security,” the article says.

Gnome shares future vision for Shell

Bobby Borisov of Linuxiac on Wednesday wrote an article regarding Gnome sharing its vision for the future of the Gnome Shell.

The article states that Gnome designers outline long-term ideas for Gnome Shell, including editable Quick Settings, improved search, Mosiac tiling, and a transparent panel.

“The designers of Gnome have given a glimpse of the direction the Gnome Shell experience might take in the coming years, presenting a set of ideas that include minor interface improvements as well as more ambitious changes to window management,” the article states.

“A very tangible idea relates to the search interface of Gnome Shell,” the article continues. “Currently, when you type in the Overview, the entire view is replaced by search results; Gnome, however, wishes to change this by introducing a search overlay that springs from the search field and appears above the current Overview, thus retaining the spatial relationships among the various Shell elements.”

This is not merely a mockup, says the article. “Dev says that there has been recent progress toward implementing it, and the improved search experience is expected to be included in Gnome 51 this fall,” the article states. “In the longer term, GNOME also hopes to make the search results more capable, possibly by providing file previews, allowing multiple actions for individual results, introducing filters, and including other features similar to those found in tools such as Alfred and Raycast.”

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.

Bits & Bobs: Gnome 50.4 released

Compiled by Larry Cafiero

Marcus Nestor of 9 to 5 Linux reported Wednesday that the Gnome Project “released Gnome 50.4 today as the fourth maintenance update to the latest Gnome 50 desktop environment series to fix more bugs across various core apps and components.”

Released a month after Gnome 50.3, “the GNOME 50.4 release improves menu animations in GNOME Shell, which also received fixes for a miscaled magnified cursor on HiDPI displays, a sound glitch when pushing redundant volume changes, and a glitch when switching to a minimized window on another workspace,” the article states.

“GNOME 50.4 also improves the Mutter window and composite manager by fixing blurred rendering with non-pixel-aligned monitors and invalid redraw clips on rotated monitors, while also preventing unsupported fallback monitor modes from being added and filling in mastering display metadata for HDR outputs,” the article continues.

The article also states that GDM (Gnome Display Manager) has been updated to version 50.2 with a fix for a path traversal vulnerability where a compromised greeter could load arbitrary .desktop files via SelectSession, potentially executing attacker-controlled commands as the authenticated user.

“GDM 50.2 also brings fixes for an autologin bypass vulnerability where a compromised greeter could request autologin for any local account by sending arbitrary usernames via BeginAutoLogin, and a fix for a denial of service where an invalid session name from the greeter would cause the entire daemon to exit, terminating all active sessions,” the article says.

It’s not about the distro . . .

Bhuwan Mishra of It’s FOSS wrote on Thursday an article about his experience with distrohopping and came to an interesting conclusion.

“It was never really about the distro,” he writes. “It was about what desktop environment sat on top of it.”

Starting with Linux Mint, Mishra writes that he switched to Ubuntu, where “Ubuntu felt sluggish in ways that bothered me. I blamed Ubuntu.

“Here’s what I discovered later: the culprit wasn’t Ubuntu. It was Gnome, he writes.

The Xfce desktop environment saved his life, Linux-wise, according to the article.

“Xfce doesn’t win ‘most beautiful desktop’ polls,” he writes. “But I ran it on that i3 first-gen machine, and it ran smoothly out of the box. I ran it on a Core 2 Duo at some point.”

Mishra tried KDE, too. “I wanted to like it,” he wrote. “I kept going back, hoping something had changed. What I found, every single time, was that a single click could take three to four seconds to get a response. It felt like the desktop was thinking about whether it wanted to comply with my input.”

He outlines adventures with Kali Linux, Arch Linux, AntiX, and making the discovery about desktop environments, he has chosen now to use a window manager instead.

“Looking back at all of it, I did not like Mint just because it’s Mint,” he writes. “I felt comfortable with Cinnamon. I did not dislike Ubuntu because it’s Ubuntu. It’s because Gnome demanded more of my old hardware than the hardware could give.

“Every distro-hop I’ve listed here, from Kali to Arch to AntiX to Mango WM, was really a hop between desktop environments and window managers wearing a different distro’s name. The package manager changed. The installation experience changed.”

This article is an entertaining read about one distrohopper’s adventure which many, no doubt, can relate to.

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.

Bits & Bobs: How to use AUR safely

By Larry Cafiero

Senthilkumar Palani (aka SK) wrote in OS Technix on Thursday a guideline regarding how to safely use the Arch User Repository (AUR), which was compromised to the tune of over 1,500 programs recently.

According to the article – and to recap – back in June, “a attackers compromised more than 1,500 packages in the Arch User Repository (AUR). Sonatype researchers named the campaign Atomic Arch. It is one of the largest attacks against the AUR to date.”

The article continues to say that the attack did not exploit a flaw in Arch Linux or its package manager, Pacman. The official Arch repositories were not affected.

The article details a wide range of steps Arch users may want to take to avoid pitfalls in the future, which is worth a read, especially if you’re an Arch user.

In summary, the article states that the malware campaign is not a reason to stop using Arch or the AUR, but “[i]t is a reminder that trust should be earned and reviewed over time.”

“The attack did not exploit a vulnerability in Arch Linux,” the article explains. “It exploited the trust users placed in packages that changed maintainers. The same idea appears in many software supply chain attacks. Attackers often target trusted software instead of technical vulnerabilities.”

Gnome makes testing safer

Sourav Rudra at It’s FOSS wrote on Thursday about a unique situation that Gnome has provided its users regarding testing software before actually using it.

Tentatively callled Test Center, “It is meant to act as a one-stop solution for installing, running, and removing anything experimental, whether that’s an app or a piece of the system itself.”

The article continues to explain that system components “run on sysext images instead of Flatpaks, though the idea plays out the same way. Take something like parental controls, still early in development, you’d grab the sysext tied to that merge request through Test Center, and it lands on your system as an overlay rather than a replacement. Remove it, and you restore your system to the same state before the experimental change was applied.”

Neat.

“All this effort is part of the Gnome OS Developer Tool Suite, a project that’s been in funding through Germany’s Prototype Fund since June 2026,” the article continues. “Tobias Bernard, Jonas Dreßler, and a few others are working on this under the Modal Collective umbrella.”

Void Linux gets new package manager

World, welcome to Caerus.

Bobby Borisov of Linuxiac reported on Wednesday that Void Linux is getting another Synaptic-like GTK4 package manager in the form of a new program called Caerus.

“Void Linux users looking for a GUI alternative to command-line package management now have yet another option,” the article states. “Called Caerus, the application is a GTK4 front end for the distribution’s XBPS package system, inspired by the well-known Synaptic Package Manager.”

Written mainly in Rust, Caerus exposes both routine and advanced XBPS operations through a desktop interface. Users can search the package collection, sort and filter results, and mark multiple packages for installation, upgrading, removal, or other actions.

“The available filters include installed, not installed, upgradable, held, marked, and orphaned packages,” the article continues. “Selecting a package opens a detailed information pane containing its description, size, maintainer, tags, dependencies, reverse dependencies, conflicts, replacements, shared-library requirements, and an optional list of installed files.”

The article also states that Caerus “is an independent community project rather than an official Void Linux app. The repository also states that the software was developed with substantial assistance from Anthropic’s Claude and directs users to a separate disclaimer covering its development process, security assumptions, and known risks.”

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 on Monday.

Bits & Bobs: Gnome 51 ready for testing

By Larry Cafiero

Marcus Nestor on 9 to 5 Linux reported on Friday that Gnome has released the alpha version of Gnome 51 for public testing “to give the community a first taste of the new features and enhancements.”

According to the article, “highlights of Gnome 51 ‘A Coruña’ include a new API to generate QR codes, support for the input capture portal to integrate with the clipboard, improved screencasting by minimizing stage paints and buffer copies, support for elogind as libsystemd provider, and support for saving and restoring monitor brightness.”

The article continues with Gnome 51 also removes support for legacy NVIDIA graphics drivers on Wayland. The Nautilus file manager – called Files – now shows a count badge for selected items when dragging multiple files, advertises notification categories for files, as well as mount and unmount operations, enhances the view reloading performance, and shows the correct starred status in the Recents view.

In addition, the Gnome Control Center – now called Settings – “received quite the attention during this cycle with an ‘Auto Rotate’ option for devices with an accelerometer and center-aligned snapping for horizontal edges in the Display section, and the ability to disable the touchpad in the Mouse section while a mouse is plugged in.”

Hannah Montana Linux reborn

It’s a girl!

Mark Tyson at Tom’s Hardware reported on Sunday that Hannah Montana Linux – after nearly two decades – is making a comeback, complete with about 18 years of security patches.

“Say whaaaat? Hannah Montana Linux is back,” the article states. “The distro made as a tribute to the noughties Disney Channel sitcom for tweens and teens, featuring the eponymous secret pop star, was basically abandoned in 2009. Now it’s back, with a modern kernel and about 18 years of patches, with the release of the Hannah Montana Linux v26.0 remaster by developer Noah Cagle.”

Thanks, Noah!

The article continues: “Little is known about why the original Hannah Montana Linux was developed, released, and almost immediately abandoned. The version available via Archive.org. This the only known release, identified as Hannah Montana Linux x86 basic edition 202201. It is still available if you’d like to test out a frozen-in-time HM-themed version of Kubuntu. You can grab it as a 691.7MB download via the link provided. Be warned that it is now ‘basically unusable,’ though, according to Cagle, due to being insecure and for its poor software support.”

But bringing the distro up to date was no easy task for Cagle, basing the new edition on Debian from the original distro’s Kubuntu roots.

“Fast forward to the present day, and Cagle’s HML26 release solves all the issues with the old distro. Browsing the modern web is possible and safe, finding and installing software is easy, and the dev has even made the terminal look pretty,” says the article.

Want to give it a shot? Download Hannah Montana Linux 26.0 on its download page.

6 Linux desktops … we still use

Dipan Saha of Make Use Of wrote an article Saturday which was a bit confusing, but warrants mentioning anyway.

Under the headline, “Everyone forgot about these 6 Linux desktops, but they might be better than what you use now,” we understand the point he is making, but the six desktop environments he mentions are hardly forgotten, and some users – me included – go out of their way to seek them.

Like Xfce, for example. Saha describes the desktop environment as “built with modularity in mind. You can use the desktop as is or strip it out for something completely custom — without breaking it. This modular approach makes Xfce a bit of a unicorn, and also happens to make it quite lightweight.”

Interesting. As an Xfce user for years, bordering on a decade now, and looking at the army of Xfce users around the world, I am sure that this one is far from forgotten. In fact, for Distro of the Week, I lean toward using the Xfce version of the distro if it’s available.

Saha also mentions Openbox, a window manager, which he descibes as “distinct in being a very stable, finished project. It has been in maintenance mode for quite some time now. It’s a rock-solid option for folks who know exactly what they’re doing and don’t mind sacrificing a few features for stability.”

Funny, because my daily driver – BunsenLabs Carbon – is basically Debian with the Openbox window manager, and as a daily driver, it’s usually in the forefront of my mind.

In any case, what I think Saha was trying to say is that the rest of the cast of characters – including MATE, LXQt, Budgie, and Deepin Desktop Environment – are not “forgotten” so much as not used as often as the Gnome/KDE Plasma juggernaut rolls on in the Linux universe. And Saha is right when he says in the headline that they “might be better” than the desktop environment you’re using now.

However these desktop environments – and Openbox window manager – are hardly forgotten and continue to be viable options in the Linux realm.

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 on Friday.