Category: KDE Plasma

Bits & Bobs: Fedora 45 delayed again

Compiled by Larry Cafiero

Bobby Borisov at Linuxiac reported on Tuesday that Fedora 45 has been delayed for a second time, with the new release date targeted for Nov. 3, thanks to unresolved blocker bugs.

“According to an official announcement by Fedora Operations Architect Aoife Moloney, the Fedora 45 Final RC-1.2 release candidate was declared NO-GO during the October 22 Go/No-Go meeting due to outstanding blocker bugs,” the article says.

The article continues: “As of October 27, one accepted release blocker remains on the Fedora 45 Final blocker tracker. It affects Stratis encrypted storage pools, which can fail to initialize during boot because the expected root device is unavailable.”

Three other issues are also in the mix, concerning SSH key passphrases not unlocking automatically after upgrading from Fedora 44, problems replacing migrated Gnome Online Accounts credentials, and an SELinux policy update that breaks SSH port forwarding.

“Importantly, these three issues have not yet been formally accepted as release blockers,” the article says. “The tracker also lists several freeze exceptions covering other components, including GDM, KDE Plasma, and network configuration.”

The Fedora Project plans its next Final Go/No-Go meeting for Oct. 29. Developers and quality assurance representatives will review remaining issues and decide if the distribution is ready for release.

Immutable Ubuntu on the way?

Marcus Nestor at 9 to 5 Linux reported on Wednesday that Canonical plans to revive its immutable Ubuntu Core desktop flavor, partnering with the KDE Neon Core team to offer support for desktop environments other than Gnome.

“After a dormant period following a 2023 developer preview, Canonical has assembled a dedicated, cross-functional team to restart development of Ubuntu Core Desktop,” the article said. “The goal? A safer, more resilient Linux desktop built entirely on Snaps, from the bootloader and kernel all the way up to your apps.”

For those of you keeping score at home, “Ubuntu Core’s defining feature is its immutable architecture where every component is packaged as a strictly confined Snap. For users, this translates to a desktop that’s harder to break, simpler to recover, and more flexible across different devices,” the article continued.

Additionally, “The revived Ubuntu Core Desktop will focus on three key use cases to validate its architecture: the browser-centric machine for users whose workflow lives in Firefox or Chromium, the developer workstation for sandboxed, reproducible dev environments, and the gaming machine for Linux gamers,” the article said.

Speaking of applications, “Canonical acknowledges that strict confinement creates real hurdles, as popular tools like Visual Studio Code rely on classic confinement and can’t run directly on Ubuntu Core Desktop,” the article continues. “Their preferred workaround is to let users run graphical classic-snap apps inside a Canonical Workshop container.”

KDE Plasma 6.8.2 released

Michael Larabel of Phoronix reported on Tuesday that KDE Plasma 6.8.2 has been released with dozens of additional bug fixes.

KDE Plasma 6.8 made its debut two weeks ago on the 30th anniversary of the KDE Project with significant fanfare. Last week it was updated to KDE Plasma 6.8.1 with a variety of bug fixes, and the bug fixes continue with the lastest issue.

“KDE Plasma 6.8 is in great shape overall while various small bug fixes continue to accumulate,” the article maintains. “With Plasma 6.8.2 there are dozens more fixes including some Wayland fixes for KWin, the tiled wallpaper code fixes an animated image regression that they weren’t being animated, KPipeWire now passing the stream’s framerate to libx264, a rework to Plasma Big Screen’s rows and tiles, fixing disappearing desktop icons, many Plasma Workspace fixes, and updates to the Union theme engine.”

Tall order indeed.

“The full list of fixes can be found via the change-log for Plasma 6.8.2,” according to the article. “More details on today’s point release via KDE.org.”

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, KDE

Compiled by Larry Cafiero

Marcus Nestor of 9 to 5 Linux, among other outlets, reported on Wednesday that KDE is celebrating its 30th birthday while also releasing the KDE Plasma 6.8 desktop environment, moving it to a Wayland-only experience.

A little history: “On October 14th, 1996, Matthias Ettrich proposed a consistent, easy-to-use desktop environment for Unix-like systems,” the article says. “He called it the “Kool Desktop Environment” (KDE) — a deliberate jab at CDE, the proprietary Common Desktop Environment dominant at the time. What followed was 30 years of remarkable momentum.”

But wait, there’s more. “The first stable desktop environment, KDE 1 (One), shipped in 1998. Konqi, the beloved green dragon mascot, arrived in 1999 and eventually displaced Kandalf as the project’s mascot,” the article states. “By 2009, the community had landed one million commits to its codebase. The modern era brought KDE Plasma 5 in 2014, a full rearchitecting of the desktop built on Qt 5 and KDE Frameworks.”

For those of you keeping score at home, KDE’s current portfolio spans the Plasma Desktop, Plasma Mobile, KDE Gear, and KDE Frameworks. KDE counts more than 2,500 regular contributors, maintains software translated into over 108 languages, and sits atop more than six million lines of code.

“To celebrate KDE’s 30th anniversary, the KDE Plasma 6.8 desktop environment will be unveiled later today as a major milestone that moves to a Wayland-only experience and introduces numerous new features, including triple buffering for NVIDIA GPUs by default, enhanced multi-monitor support, Kup backup system integration, and much more,” the article says.

Happy 30th birthday, KDE.

Peppermint OS trying out Void?

Bobby Borisov on Linuxiac reported on Monday that Peppermint OS is setting its sights beyond Debian with Void Linux-based PepVoid, offering a new Void Linux-based edition featuring Xorg and Xlibre potentially coming in November.

“The initiative is very interesting because Void Linux takes a substantially different approach from Debian,” according to the article. “Unlike Debian’s fixed-release model, Void follows a rolling-release approach, allowing users to receive software updates continuously without waiting for major upgrades.”

Additionally, “Void uses the XBPS package manager instead of APT and is a systemd-free distro, betting on the runit init system rather than systemd. These differences give PepVoid a distinctly different technical foundation while, at the same time, retaining the familiar Peppermint philosophy,” the article says.

The Peppermint OS team is targeting November 2026 for a possible official PepVoid release, though the timeline depends on testing progress and will coincide with planned ISO refreshes for the project’s Debian-based editions.

Stonking Stingray now available

Hmmm, this looks like a good candidate for Distro of the Week . . .

Marcus Nestor on 9 to 5 Linux reported on Thursday that Ubuntu 26.10 – otherwise known as Stonking Stingray – is now available for download, and provides for a couple of improvements.

“Powered by the upcoming Linux 7.3 kernel series, Ubuntu 26.10 ships with the latest Gnome 51 desktop environment, TPM-backed full disk encryption (FDE) support on computers without a hardware root of trust, updated Settings to show whether a computer is certified for Ubuntu, and many accessibility improvements,” according to the article.

But wait, there’s more. “There are several App Center enhancements in Ubuntu 26.10, such as a unified app-details view for Snap and Debian packages, a dedicated Drivers page where you can review the available graphics drivers, including NVIDIA driver branches, and support for installing codecs for one-time playback when a media file uses a codec that’s not installed,” the article says.

The article also says that Ubuntu 26.10 also introduces the Myna speech-to-text dictation tool, but it’s not installed by default. With Myna, you would use locally installed AI models for dictation into the focused app by holding a configurable key. The transcription only runs locally, with no audio being sent to a cloud service.

“Under the hood, Ubuntu 26.10 comes with an updated toolchain that includes GCC 15.2, GNU C Library 2.44, GNU Binutils 2.47, systemd 261.3, Mesa 26.2, LLVM 22.1.8, Python 3.14.7, Rust 1.97.1, Go 1.27, OpenJDK 25.0.4, Zig 0.14.1, Zig 0.16, .NET 10.0.112, and others. Ubuntu 26.10 also switches to 100% Rust coreutils,” the article says.

Among other noteworthy changes, Ubuntu 26.10 improves rendering with fractionally scaled monitors, splits OpenSSH into two source packages on Ubuntu Server, removes support for legacy System V scripts, improves loading of desktop icons, and adds initial support for the SpacemiT K3 platform, along with RISC-V desktop images.

Gentoo looking for sponsors

Christine Hall at FOSS Force reported on Monday that after losing several long-running sponsors Gentoo is looking for infrastructure sponsors, specifically around hosting, hardware, rack space and, wait for it, cash.

“The Linux distribution Gentoo announced last week that it’s looking for some infrastructure sponsors,” the article says. “Like a large number of open source projects — and probably a majority of distros — Gentoo relies not only on volunteer developers to write and maintain code, it’s also dependent on community donations and sponsors to help cover expenses and meet infrastructure needs.”

The article continues: “The project, which announced in February that it was leaving Microsoft-owned GitHub for open source Codeberg, posted on Wednesday that this year several long-running sponsors were compelled to drop their support, so it’s looking for replacements. It appears the primary need is for infrastructure stuff such as rack space, servers in a data center, and server hardware, although cash donations are needed too.”

For potential sponsors, the project has set up an Infrastructure/Sponsorship wiki that includes a wish list of its needs:

EDITOR’S NOTE: Because I will be on the road most of next week, thanks to a speaking gig at the Seattle GNU/Linux Conference, there will be no Bits & Bobs column appearing next Saturday, Oct. 24. The Bits and Bobs column will return on the following Saturday.

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 skip a week but return with news over the week the following Saturday.

Bits & Bobs: KDE Plasma ready to test

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.

Bits & Bobs: KDE Plasma 6.8 improves

Compiled by Larry Cafiero

Bobby Barisov of Linuxiac reported on Saturday that the developers at KDE have made improvements to KDE Plasma 6.8, including making auto-hide panels 10 times faster and smartening the automatic brightness, among others.

“One of the first changes users will notice is with auto-hide panels,” the article states. “KDE has shortened the time it takes for a panel to hide after the pointer leaves it from 500 milliseconds to just 50 milliseconds, making the panels feel much more responsive.”

Also, “System Settings will also have a better search feature for people using Plasma in languages other than English,” the article continues. “With Plasma 6.8, you can use English keywords along with those from your chosen language. For example, searching for ‘mouse’ on a system set to French will still bring up the ‘souris’ settings page.”

Plasma’s automatic brightness feature is also getting smarter. “The system will now remember your manual brightness changes and use them to learn your preferred brightness levels in different lighting conditions,” the article says. “In Discover, the system will remember whether you’ve already marked a review as useful and will stop you from rating the same review again.”

Bazzite gets ‘biggest’ update

Bobby Barisov of Linuxiac also reported on Friday that Bazzite has released an update which the project called “the biggest update in Bazzite history.”

For the uninitiated, Bazzite is an immutable Linux distro built on Fedora Atomic Desktop technology and developed as part of the Universal Blue project.

Released last Tuesday, Bazzite Linux 44 was sent out with Linux kernel 7.2, a new gaming stack and GUI updates, as well as a new SteamOS-aligned gaming stack, graphical updater, a redesigned portal and more.

“One of the largest changes is a complete overhaul of the software stack for Bazzite’s handheld images,” the article says. “The old setup is replaced by a SteamOS-aligned stack built around InputPlumber for controller handling, emulation, and remapping; SteamOS-Manager for session switching and TDP management; PowerStation for power controls on hardware not fully supported by SteamOS-Manager; and OpenGamepadUI for additional controls Steam does not expose.”

Users of Bazzite on the desktop get several environment-specific changes. “On KDE Plasma, Konsole replaces Ptyxis as the default terminal since Konsole provides comparable container functionality,” the article states. “The Oxygen theme and icon set are included by default, along with Bazzite Portal integration with KDE’s search interface.”

And Gnome? “Gnome receives its own Bazzite Portal search provider and out-of-the-box support for rounded blur through Blur My Shell,” the article says. “Both desktop options also get three new wallpapers.”

For additional details, see the release announcement.

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: KDE Plasma 6.8 progresses

Compiled by Larry Cafiero

Bobby Borisov reported in Linuxiac on Saturday that KDE Plasma plans to improve remote desktop performance, among other improvements.

The October release of the new desktop also includes a faster remote desktop performance, lower latency on poor connections, reduced memory usage, and several UI refinements.

One of the primary improvements involves printing. “Starting with Plasma 6.8, sending a print job to an unavailable printer will trigger a notification explaining the problem,” the article states. “Currently, the action may appear to do nothing, leaving users without a clear indication of what went wrong.”

KDE Plasma’s built-in remote desktop server is also receiving some improvements as well, as KDE developers have fixed an issue that could cause certain remote desktop clients to display a black screen instead of the expected desktop content.

“At the same time, work on the remote desktop implementation should make sessions feel more responsive,” the article continues. “Plasma 6.8 lowers latency and improves performance when connections are less than ideal, thus improving user experience over slower or unstable networks.”

For a full rundown of all the improvements so far for KDE Plasma 6.8, the article has a link to the “This Week in Plasma” report released on Saturday.

Linux 7.3 to better handle cluster loads

Michael Larabel of Phoronix reported on Saturday that a “set of patches from Intel are set to be merged for the upcoming Linux 7.3 merge window to enhance the cluster-aware scheduling code so it better handles load balancing on modern Intel Core (Ultra) hybrid CPUs with a mix of P and E/LPE cores.”

Intel Linux engineer Ricardo Neri has been leading the latest effort to fix cluster scheduling for processors with asymmetric capacity.

Quoting Neri in the article, “Cluster scheduling aims to maximize performance by spreading load across clusters of CPUs that share mid-level resources. It works well on uniform systems, but it breaks down on topologies with big and small cores arranged in clusters. As a result, it fails on several generations of Intel processors already shipped and upcoming.”

Neri is also quoted as saying that he “tested these patches on Alder Lake, which has both SMT Pcores and clusters of Ecores. I tested with SMT both disabled and enabled. I also tested on Lunar Lake and Panther Lake, which have an Ecore cluster not connected to the L3 cache. I repeated the same experiment with CONFIG_SCHED_CLUSTER disabled. The load balancer behaves as expected.”

According to the article, these patches are now queued into tip/tip.git’s sched/core GIt branch. “With the patches now in a TIP branch, they should be merged for the upcoming Linux 7.3 cycle,” the article concludes.

CachyOS August ISO released

Marcus Nestor of 9 to 5 Linux reported on Sunday that the latest CachyOS ISO Release for August 2026 has several improvements lined up for that distro.

Improvements includes an upgrade for the installer and desktop profiles while shipping with the latest KDE Plasma 6.7.4 desktop environment and KDE Frameworks 6.28 and KDE Gear 26.04.3.

But wait, there’s more . . .

“The CachyOS ISO snapshot for August 2026 looks like a small update that updates the CachyOS Hyprland Noctalia installer option to use the noctalia-greeter login screen instead of SDDM, updates the Cinnamon desktop option to use lightdm-slick-greeter instead of lightdm-gtk-greeter, adds gvfs-dnssd to the Gnome desktop option, and adds Cosmic Monitor to the Cosmic desktop option,” according to the article.

The latest release also updates the command line installer “with experimental support for Server Edition installation profiles, updates the CachyOS-Welcome app with improved DNS handling to correctly apply the speed-test-based server ranking, and rebase the Cachy-Update tool on Arch-Update 4.x with a Rust-based system tray applet,” the article says.

The article continues to say that the CachyOS ISO snapshot for August 2026 “adds nice-value tuning to limits.d in cachyos-settings, adds support for the CachyOS mirrorlist API to cachyos-rate-mirrors for ranking mirrors, and updates chwd with better VM handling, improved quote pacman arguments, and improved handheld detection.”

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: LibreOffice updated

By Larry Cafiero

Not exactly Linux-specific, but close enough . . . Bobby Barisov of Linuxiac reported on Friday that LibreOffice had released an updated verstion of the 26.2 series – this one 26.2.5 – which includes 21 bug fixes for Writer, Calc, Base, and the user interface.

According to the article, notable fixes include resolving a crash triggered by pressing Shift+Enter on the numeric keypad and fixing a macOS issue where opening multiple files could fail due to incorrect path concatenation.

“Writer users gain from several document-handling fixes,” the article continues. “Hidden empty paragraphs in DOC files now display correctly, editing conditional text fields no longer deletes them, and spaces after one-letter words at the start of a paragraph are maintained under specific AutoCorrect settings.”

The article also states that LibreOffice 26.2.5 addresses an HTML export issue affecting punctuation and other weak-directionality characters inside right-to-left text spans. In addition, pictures and shapes with transparent backgrounds should now appear more consistently with the final document output.

“Calc compatibility and functionality have been improved as well, with the DROP and TAKE functions now handling edge cases correctly, and TEXTAFTER matches more closely with Microsoft Excel 365 when using the ‘match end’ option,” the article states.

For a full rundown of everything that’s been fixed in LibreOffice 26.2.5, the official announcement is here.

The article concludes that “The Document Foundation also reminds users that LibreOffice 25.8 has reached the end of its supported lifecycle, so an upgrade to the current 26.2 branch is highly advisable. The next update, 26.2.6, is scheduled for early September.”

KDE Plasma 6.8 introduces new tool

Michael Larabel at Phoronix reported on Saturday that developers at KDE “have been working on kscreenctl as a utility replacement to kscreen-doctor” for KDE Plasma version 6.8 “Plasma and related code has also seen a number of bug/crash fixes coming about this week too.”

This report comes from This Week in Plasma, where the latest issue sums up all of the interesting KDE Plasma desktop changes over the past week.

According to the Phoronix article, the primary highlight include “Plasma 6.8 is introducing ‘kscreenctl’ as a new screen control tool to eventually replace the kscreen-doctor tool. The kscreenctl tool provides various options to change the display output configuration.”

Other improvements in the next version of KDE Plasma are also available in the next version, and can be seen in the Phoronix article or the This Week in Plasma blog.

Faster on Linux? Well . . .

Yadullah Abidi at Make Use Of reported on Saturday that perhaps that Linux is not actually faster on various hardware, however it “seems” faster.

“Linux is often hailed as a magic fix for performance issues, especially on older hardware,” the article starts. “Dust off a decade-old laptop, slap on a Linux distro, and suddenly your machine will start feeling brand new. There is some truth to this, and compared to Windows, Linux will make your older machines feel much snappier, but responsiveness isn’t the same as newfound performance.”

Lately, Microsoft’s gaffes have led people to discover Linux, however “Linux isn’t going to make your hardware more powerful than it already is. Yes, it will feel snappier and will perform better, but it’s still limited by the hardware inside.”

So what’s the real deal here? “When people say Linux speeds up old hardware, what they’re actually experiencing is a reduction in overhead, not an increase in raw compute power,” the article explains. “Windows, especially post Windows 10, runs an entire army of background services including telemetry collection, update indexing, scanning routines, OneDrive syncing, Defender scans, and a handful of first-party apps that like to phone home even when you’re not using them.”

What is happening under the hood is a matter of system resources and how they are used. “As a result, you end up losing real performance as your machine is too busy running Windows instead of the apps, games, and browser tabs that make your daily life move,” the article explains. “If you’re installing Linux and your boot time drops to seconds instead of minutes, that isn’t happening because the CPU got faster — it just has fewer things to process.”

The article goes into detail and is worth a read.

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.

Bits & Bobs: KDE Plasma 6.8 adds server-side shadows

By Larry Cafiero

Bobby Borisov on Linuxiac reported on Friday that KDE Plasma 6.8 will improve the visual consistency of applications by adding server-side shadows to windows that do not draw them on their own.

The article reports that the upcoming KDE Plasma 6.8 release, which is scheduled for mid-October, introduces a Kwin feature enabling the window manager to add server-side drop shadows to applications that lack their own.

“Window shadows can generally be drawn either by the compositor or by the application itself,” the article explains. “Many GTK applications use client-side decorations and render their own shadows, while Qt applications commonly ask the compositor to draw both the window decoration and its shadow.”

Some applications do neither, resulting in windows with square corners, no shadow, and a visually inconsistent appearance compared to the rest of the Plasma desktop.

“This new functionality, recently merged into KWin for Plasma 6.8, fixes this issue,” the article continues. “According to KWin developer Vlad Zahorodnii, it lets users force compositor-drawn shadows on these windows, helping third-party applications integrate more fluently with Plasma.”

Plasma 6.8 automates this workaround with a new window rule, “Window manager draws titlebar, frame, and shadows,” which replaces the older “No titlebar and frame” option and delivers a more direct way to request compositor-side decorations or shadows for individual applications.

No GPL left for FreeBSD 16 release

Christine Hall at FOSS Force reported on Wednesday that with the release of FreeBSD in December 2027, the last of the GPL-based code will have been removed from the base system, giving the green light to create your own proprietary software system.

Actually, this is a technicality built atop another technicality, according to Hall.

“The removal of GPL code is important because a lot of BSD people have a different view on ‘software freedom’ than the rest of us,” the article states. “To many in the BSD crowd, ‘freedom’ means the freedom to make the software proprietary, as Steve Jobs did to create NeXTSTEP and OS X. To create a proprietary operating system out of a BSD operating system, GPL code must be removed because GPL code can’t be released under a proprietary license.”

Heady stuff. We’ll definitely keep an eye on this one.

DebConf26 starts today in Argentina

If you happen to be in the neighborhood of Santa Fe, Argentina, today, DebConf26 starts today at 9 a.m,, local time, and runs through Saturday.

Located at the Facultad de Ingeneria en Ciencias Hidricas at Ciudad Universitaria UNL in Santa Fe, DebConf is the Debian Project’s developer conference. In addition to a full schedule of technical, social and policy talks, DebConf provides an opportunity for developers, contributors and other interested people to meet in person.

The DebConf26 schedule can be found here.

DebConf has taken place annually since 2000 in locations as varied as Canada, Finland, and Mexico.

Previous Debian Conferences have featured speakers from around the world. They have also been extremely beneficial for developing key Debian software components, including the new Debian Installer, and for improving Debian’s internationalization.

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.

Bits & Bobs: Linux Mint to provide Wayland support for Cinnamon

By Larry Cafiero

Marcus Nestor at 9 to 5 Linux reported on Wednesday that full Wayland support is on the way for the Linux Mint Cinnamon edition version 6.8.

According to the article, “Linux Mint project Clement Lefebvre revealed today in the monthly newletter some of the new features and improvements coming to the next major version of the Cinnamon desktop environment, version 6.8, such as full Wayland support.”

Nestor continues that the “Linux Mint devs have been working hard on making Cinnamon’s Wayland session as stable as possible, and it looks like Cinnamon 6.8 will finally remove the ‘experimental’ status of the Wayland session and fully support Wayland.”

Wayland improvements and featuresinclude proper mapping for new windows, applet popup menus and context menus, proper focus stealing prevention, and improved support for multiple monitors and KVM switches, according to the article.

“There’s also full HiDPI support for crisp icons, smoother mouse cursor, and better handling of Chromium apps, as well as support for running root apps as Wayland clients, window progress to see, for example, Firefox download progress in the panel app button.,” the article says.

Tuxedo OS skips Ubuntu for Debian

Bobby Barisov at Linuxiac reported on Tuesday that Tuxedo Computers has made a major change for its in-house Linux distribution, Tuxedo OS, saying goodbye to its Ubuntu base and hello to Debian Testing.

“According to the company, the decision arrives after several months of reduced update cadence, especially around KDE Plasma updates,” the article states. “While Plasma 6.7.x is already available upstream, Tuxedo OS is still based on Plasma 6.5.x, and the company had not previously given a precise timeline for moving existing users to an Ubuntu 26.04 LTS base.”

So the reason behind this? It’s complicated.

“Until now, Tuxedo OS has followed a hybrid release model which combined a stable Ubuntu LTS base with more frequently updated components such as the Linux kernel, web browsers, NVIDIA drivers, the graphics stack, and KDE Plasma,” the article continues.

“However, Tuxedo says this model has become increasingly difficult to maintain as Ubuntu LTS releases age. According to the company, backporting modern software to an older package base requires more work over time, especially when newer applications depend on libraries that are either missing or outdated in the underlying distribution.”

But why switch to Debian Testing?

“Debian Testing . . . provides a more current package base,” the article states. “For Tuxedo, this gives the distribution a more flexible foundation while still staying within Debian’s well-established package ecosystem.”

KDE Plasma 6.6.6 released

Mark of the Beast or just plain happenstance? You decide.

Liam Proven at The Register reports Thursday that KDE Plasma has released version 6.6.6, which has a long list of upgrades featured on the KDE web page.

“KDE Plasma 6.6.6 is a release that really is just about bug-fixes, but while there are no headline-grabbing features coming out for this inauspicious version number, it’s worth remembering: in a world of bloated code, real-world software still depends on experienced maintainers,” the article states.

If you really like Plasma 6.6, you should hope that version 6.6.6 lasts longer than Linux kernel 6.6.6 did – that was only around for a couple of days before it was replaced with Linux 6.6.7.

“This version appeared precisely on schedule, but that planned release timetable holds some bad news. Under the heading Bugfix releases, it says: “Beginning with Plasma 6.3, stable ‘feature’ releases will each receive six (6) subsequent updates containing bug fixes.”

Interesting.

Later in the article, Proven writes that, “[w]e suspect that will matter more, because as we reported last month, the plan is that Plasma 6.7 will be the last version to support an X11 session. KDE Plasma 6.8 is currently scheduled for mid-October, in order to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the announcement of the ‘Kool Desktop Environment.’ The plan is still as it was in 2025: Plasma 6.8 will be Wayland-only. Already today, the default setup of Plasma 6.7 on most OSes uses Wayland, but it’s still possible to install the necessary package and have the option of running Plasma using X11 instead.”

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: Ultramarine 44 released

By Larry Cafiero

Marcus Nestor at 9 to 5 Linux reported on Friday about the release of Ultramarine 44 seven months after Ultramarine 43.

According to the article, “Jaiden Riordan released Ultramarine 44 today as the latest version of this GNU/Linux distribution built on top of Fedora Linux and featuring the KDE Plasma desktop environment by default.”

Based on Fedora 44, Ultramarine 44 comes with its default desktop, KDE Plasma 6.7.

“Apart from the KDE goodies, Ultramarine 44 also brings some love to the standalone Gnome, Xfce, and Budgie editions with upgrades to the latest Gnome 50, Xfce 4.20, and Budgie 10.10 desktop environments series,” the article continues.

While KDE Plasma edition is the recommended Ultramarine flavor for newcomers, “the team did some great improvements to the Gnome Edition, such as enabling the minimize and maximize buttons on all windows by default and adding calculator support to the overview search,” the article says.

New Arch Linux released

The latest Arch Linux ISO is out, according to Bobby Barisov in Linuxiac on Friday.

Included with the ISO is Linux kernel 7.0.14, Archinstall 4.4, systemd 261.1, fresh firmware and an updated core package.

“Arch Linux’s July 2026 ISO snapshot is now available for download, providing a fresh installation medium with Linux kernel 7.0.14 and updated packages from the distribution’s rolling repositories,” the article states.

While this is not a new “version” of Arch, “the monthly ISO images are intended mainly for new installations, delivering a more current starting point so users do not need to pull in as many updates right after the first boot,” the article continues.

This month’s image includes Linux kernel 7.0.14 and “[t]he Linux LTS kernel in the repositories has been updated to version 6.18.37. The firmware stack has also been refreshed with linux-firmware 20260622, covering AMDGPU, Intel, NVIDIA, Realtek, Broadcom, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Radeon, Atheros, and other supported hardware.” the article says.

KDE Linux offers ‘Developer Mode’

Michael Larabel at Phoronix reported on Wednesday that KDE Linux provides users a “Developer Mode” in its latest iteration.

“With the start of the new month comes a new progress report on the KDE Linux distribution for the prior month,” the article states. “Even with KDE developers being busy to ship Plasma 6.7 in June, they still accomplished a lot when it comes to KDE Linux.”

With that said, “KDE Linux has rolled out an initial ‘developer mode’ for showing various developer tools and options that are otherwise concealed by default to ease the end-user experience,” the article says. “Simply running toggle developer mode from the Konsole is all that’s needed to enable this initial developer mode.”

This makes for a clean experience for users that are not developers but where they may occasionally want to toggle additional features for helping to debug problems. “For now this toggle developer mode is quite basic but may be built upon in the future for further customizing the developer experience,” the article says.

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.