Category: MocaccinoOS

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.

Mocaccino 26.06 KDE Plasma

Linux distro from Italy, based on Gentoo, hits all the right marks
The KDE Plasma 6.5.5 desktop graces the latest version of Mocaccino 26.06 KDE Plasma.

By Larry Cafiero

While it’s been a slow June so far – unless you’re an Arch user – this week we’ve spun the proverbial wheel and it looks like we’re going to test-drive Italy’s MocaccinoOS 26.06, released by its developers earlier this month.

MocaccinoOS is an independently developed Linux distribution based on – wait for it – Gentoo via Sabayon, using a custom-built package manager called Luet. The main features are both minimalism and a small footprint, as well as ease of use with support for the most important cloud technologies.

MocaccinoOS is offered in several variants, including live images with Gnome, KDE Plasma, MATE and Xfce desktop environments, as well as a command-line only “Minimal Desktop” version. For purposes of this review, we’re test-driving the KDE Plasma version.

The system requirements for MocaccinoOS are fairly low. The distro requires a minimum of 2 GB RAM at a minimum and a 64-bit processor, although more would be welcome for the distro to run efficiently.

Installing MocaccinoOS

The installation of MocaccinoOS is fairly simple, with the ISO weighing in at an average 2.4 GB. After roughly 10 minutes of download time, we were ready to place the ISO onto a USB drive. It all starts with the the distro’s version of the Calamares installer.

The installer asks for the standard Calamares details, like language, time zone, keyboard layout, and disk partition options (always go for “erase disk” unless you are experienced, and maybe a little adventurous). Once that’s done it’s time to set up a login/password after which it provides some software options to include in the installation.

These options include web browser – we chose Chromium and Brave – and Office software, which we opted for LibreOffice. If you’re a gamer, it offers software options for games like Steam and Lutris, before finally offering development options.

The About screen on MocaccinoOS 26.06 provides the user with valuable hardware information.

Then the installer will ask you if all that you’ve entered is what you really want. Once you agree to what you’ve put in to Calamares, if’t off to the races.

The install takes roughly 20 minutes, which is a little long. Once the user sees the “all done” window, he or she can click the restart box and hit close, and the MocaccinoOS distro takes care of the rest by rebooting into your newly downloaded distro.

The KDE Plasma 6.6.5 desktop environment welcomes the user upon reboot. Once you do an update – here again, because the distro is based on Gentoo via Sabayon, the rules are a tad different (remember Luet?) – the user is ready to delve into what MocaccinoOS has to offer.

Let’s talk installed software: At first blush, the software installation provided by MocaccinoOS is fairly adequate. Not only did it download the Chromium and Brave web browsers we checked in Calamares, but it may have been overkill since the distro comes with Firefox ESR. While this particular version is KDE-based, there’s a plethora of KDE tools available, like the Dolphin file manager, Discover software installer, and the Konsole terminal, to name a few.

Outside of the software checked off in Calamares, like the LibreOffice suite and the additional browsers, the distro – to its credit – included the VLC media player on the original install.

Time to hit up Discover for an email client, namely Thunderbird, and we also downloaded GIMP for good measure.

Taking MocaccinoOS for a spin

Once we had Mocaccino 26.06 KDE Plasma up to the way we wanted it, it was showtime.

As advertised, MocaccinoOS is both lightweight and modular, and works well with all applications. The Luet package manager is supposed to simplify software management, and after getting used to typing “luet” instead of “apt,” it worked flawlessly. The distro’s layered architecture allows for smoother upgrades and easier management of system packages.

Listening to a cool sounds of Norah Jones on the VLC media player on MocaccinoOS 26.06

Ease of use almost becomes an understatement with MocaccinoOS. The distro worked well while putting it through its day-to-day paces. Email and writing assignments were handled flawlessly, and resizing photos in GIMP went without a hitch. Listening to music on the VLC media player helped during the week. All of which is to say that the multitasking of normal daily use seemed to be nothing to the distro, and the distro rarely went above 3 GB of RAM usage at this reviewer’s busiest times.

Additionally, MocaccinoOS played nicely with online programs like Google Docs and Google Drive, and swapping documents and photos between each of the programs and the hardware was a breeze.

The final word

MocaccinoOS 26.06 KDE Plasma is an ideal distro for a wide variety of users. For beginners it checks all the proverbial boxes for ease of use, and the distro’s website is full of information should he or she run into problems.

For more experienced users, the wide variety of available tools augmented by the relatively small footprint of the distro itself is cause to consider this version, not to mention that the distribution’s support for cloud technologies and containerization might be a plus for developers and system administrators.

Using the neofetch command on Konsole, a user can get vital hardware information.

The Luet package manager takes a little getting used to, but that’s more of a “me” problem than that of a new or experienced user. In fact, arguably a new user – taking a little time with Luet – could master the package manager easily.

MocaccinoOS is a rarified breath of fresh air, as far as Linux distribution go. The distro addresses both modern computing needs while maintaining a user-friendly approach.

See for yourself: Download a MocaccinoOS ISO at the distro’s download page.

Do you have a distro you think would make a great feature for Distro of the Week? Don’t be shy—let me know! Email me at larry.cafiero@gmail.com and I’ll make an effort to make your choice available to the wider public … No suggestion is too mainstream!