News About Desktop Environments: Enlightenment, KDE, GNOME, and Others
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-04-02 10:13:07 UTC
- Modified: 2014-04-02 10:13:07 UTC
Enlightenment
With the latest Git development work for the Elementary tool-kit and library, applications can run directly from the DRM driver interface without any display server / compositor / window manager. Applications can be created to run in DRM and by setting the ELM_ENGINE=drm option the apps will run in a standalone mode without anything else underneath.
Current support work is being done to enable client-side applications (as opposed to making a Wayland compositor itself - that is a future plan). Currently EFL applications that use the lower-level Ecore-Evas and higher level Elementary API's will work and display correctly in Wayland, handle input, resizing and moving. Client-side frames are already provided. Both Shared-memory buffers AND EGL/OpenGL-ES2 buffers are supported. The Shared-memory buffers are purely CPU-rendered, meaning that they will work with or without OpenGL hardware acceleration support. They are fast and usable. The OpenGL-ES2 display is fully accelerated with all primitives being rendered by OpenGL (Hardware acceleration) and already work fully due to a long history of supporting this under X11 and other embedded EGL/OpenGL-ES2 environments.
KDE
April 1, 2014. Today KDE makes available the first beta of Frameworks 5. This release is part of a series of releases leading up to the final version planned for June 2014 following the previous alpha last month. This release marks the freeze of source incompatible changes and the introduction of the Frameworks 5 Porting Aids.
And KDE knows what happens when you alienate a group of users since the moment when the anger of some people over KDE 4 lead to the first prominent fork of KDE software, the Trinity Desktop Environment.
Today KDE released updates for its Applications and Development Platform, the fourth in a series of monthly stabilization updates to the 4.12 series. This release also includes an updated Plasma Workspaces 4.11.8. Both releases contain only bugfixes and translation updates, providing a safe and pleasant update for everyone.
Part of the KDE PIM group is meeting over this weekend in Barcelona in the spacious BlueSystems offices, hacking on all sorts of things. Me and David Edmundson took the oportunity to do some super huge changes to our KPeople library that are needed and as the library is in its dawn, it's better to do it sooner than later. These are all internal and boring changes, but one of the changes we've been working on here is really cool and worth mentioning.
The CD and DVD era is coming to an end and developers don't really bother to innovate when it comes to applications that deal with this media. There are quite a few apps that are capable of writing to DVDs available for the Linux platform, and K3B is one of the best.
The fourth beta of digiKam Software Collection 4.0 is now available for photographers interested in testing out this popular KDE software component.
digiKam team is proud to announce the fourth beta release of digiKam Software Collection 4.0.0.
Qt3D is the Qt component that adds 3D support to Qt Quick for easily integrating 3D functionality. Qt3D has been in development for some time and was going to be an "essential" module to Qt 5.0 before being moved to just an add-on as part of Nokia's Qt changes prior to selling it to Digia. Qt3D offers up a lot of potential for 3D user-interfaces and applications, but hasn't seen too much work recently -- the last time we got to mention it was when talking about OpenGL taking on a greater role within Qt in late 2012.
The KDE Project developers have just released the first Release Candidate of Applications and Platform 4.13, and it's all about fixes and improvements.
“KDE has released the release candidate of the 4.13 versions of Applications and Development Platform. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing,” said the KDE developers.
“The Calligra team has released version 2.8.1, the first of the bugfix releases of the Calligra Suite, and Calligra Active in the 2.8 series. This release contains a few important bug fixes to 2.8.0 and we recommend everybody to update,” reads the official announcement.
GNOME
Announcing her departure, Karen said: “Working as the GNOME Foundation Executive Director has been one of the highlights of my career.” She also spoke of the achievements during her time as Executive Director: “I’ve helped to recruit two new advisory board members… and we have run the last three years in the black. We’ve held some successful funding campaigns, particularly around privacy. We have a mind-blowingly fantastic Board of Directors, and the Engagement team is doing amazing work. The GNOME.Asia team is strong, and we’ve got an influx of people, more so than I’ve seen in some time.”
Zukitwo, a beautiful theme designed for GNOME 3.12 that makes use of the GTK2 engine Murrine and the GTK2 pixbuf engine, is now at version 2014.03.29.
The Zukitwo theme was updated shortly after the release of GNOME 3.12 and it’s probably the first theme to support the new version of GNOME. A lot of other themes will probably follow soon but, coincidentally, Zukitwo is also one of the best ones around.
Our dedication towards Wayland has pushed us to build a cleaner architecture overall. What used to be a proliferation of X-specific video and input drivers is mostly culminating in centralized, standardized code. For input, we have libinput, which we’re using from Weston, mutter, and Xorg as well. What used to be a collection of chipset-specific video plugins for doing accelerated rendering have now been replaced by glamor, a credible chipset-independent acceleration architecture. What used to be large monolithic components heavily tied to Xorg and the Xorg input and video architectures have now been split out into separate, easily-reusable libraries with separate, easily-maintainable codebases. New, experimental features can be prototyped faster than ever before.
One of the great things about Linux distributions is the customization. In contrast, an operating system like Windows 8 is rather limited. Sure, you can change some colors, wallpapers and sounds, but pretty much, it is what it is. What you see is what you get. That is probably fine for most people, however, Linux users are not most people.
Itching to get your hands on the latest goodies from Gnome? Look no further… If you’d like to see the project’s latest efforts, including getting the best look at the latest Gnome core apps (Music, Weather, Maps, Videos), Matthias Clasen has a special gift for you. He’s made a special live CD containing a complete Gnome 3.12 atop Fedora 20.
Review When the GNOME 3.x desktop arrived it was, frankly, unusable. It wasn't so much the radical departure from past desktop environments, as the fact that essential things did not work properly or, more frustratingly, had been deemed unnecessary.
THE GNOME PROJECT has released Gnome 3.12, the latest version of the heavyweight Linux desktop environment, which adds support for better displays and faster startup times.
Earlier today GNOME 3.12 has been released, bringing major new features, several redesigned programs and three new applications: Logs, Sound Recorder and Polari.
Misc.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Don't Use the Future Tense to Discuss the Slop Bubble
- Wall Street does not react to reality; it reacts to panic, which is related to expectations
- The Broken Window Industry and Its Ongoing Desires to Make Technology Less Dependable
- Reliable computing is becoming harder to find
- New XBox CEO Typecast in Social Control Media
- Microsoft apologists will fall back on (or shuffle between) the "racist" and "sexist" angle
- Sites Without JavaScript Deserve Your Visits
- We're not arguing that the Web should be as simple or barebones like Gemini Protocol/GemText
- EPO Strikes Are Already Working
- Campinos is already going "into hiding"
-
- IBM Layoffs Definitely Still Happening
- Contrary to what some apologists try to say
- More and More Projects Quit Microsoft GitHub This Year, XBox Will See the Same
- Microsoft GitHub's embrace of slop as "strategic" gives us a clue of what'll happen to XBox very soon
- Google "Intelligence": Despite Slam-Dunk or "Smoking Gun" Proof, Drug Abuse in EPO Leadership is "Unverified Allegations"
- Google's slop (so-called 'AI') lacks intelligence
- 8,000 Pages/Articles Per Year
- We're eager to maintain a good production/publication pace and illuminate the sinister attempts to interfere with Freedom of the Press in the UK
- Gemini Links 22/02/2026: Okonomiyaki and Midcrunch Crisis
- Links for the day
- Freedom Means Accepting He or She Who is Different
- In the Debian community we're sadly seeing some authoritarian overreach this month
- Microsoft Windows Falls to Another New All-Time Low in Guatemala, It is a Bottomless Pit
- Maybe users come to realise that Windows means back doors and those doors are open to a regime that ought not be trusted
- "XBox" Will Become Slop After Mass Layoffs
- When all else fails, "AI it"
- Links 22/02/2026: Hardware Price Hikes Across the Board, "Microsoft Issues Statement on Potential Layoffs"
- Links for the day
- Microsoft "Layoffs Incoming"
- This transition isn't about promoting games; it's about canning the console
- Links 22/02/2026: "Bloat of Modern Fitness Apps" and Wikipedia Deprecates Archive.today
- Links for the day
- Our IRC 5-Year Anniversary (for Self-Hosted) is Fast Approaching
- A week from now it's March already
- Gemini Links 22/02/2026: Dream Job Gone and Slop in Taskwarrior
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 21, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, February 21, 2026
- GNU/Linux Grew a Lot in Nicaragua
- We've not noticed until today
- Techrights Has Over 1,000 Good Articles 'in the Tank'
- Drafts, notes, and lengthy documents
- New Article Challenges Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) for Choosing the Wrong SLAPP Cases to Investigate
- The one point we can agree on is that SRA does not know how to correctly select the worst culprits/offenders
- The Brand 'Watsonx' is a Terrible Name for IBM 'Hey Hi' (Chatbots) Because Watson Agreed With Adolf Hitler
- Almost a century has passed and IBM still believes that selling "intelligence", chatbots in particular, should be done under the name "Watson"
- Why IBM is Still Scary and Dangerous
- Keep a distance from "Big Blue" Bully
- Measuring the Growth of Our Mission and Community
- Something between experiment and prototype
- Richard Stallman in the United States - Part III - Georgia Tech Did a Fine Job Upholding Free Speech Principles
- The real problem was social control media (toxic)
- Debian's Master is Deleting Criticism of SystemD and Other Things (On-Topic and Published by Debian Developers), Resorts to the Excuse Messages Are "Too Long"
- Censorship serves nobody except the masters that control this censorship
- Digg's Latest Incarnation Already Failed, It's Infested With LLM Slop
- Many submissions go to slopfarms and some get summarised by slop
- Gemini Links 21/02/2026: Veganism and DeskPi RackMate T0
- Links for the day
- On The Web, XBox Already a Dying Breed
- Down to about 0.05% on large machines, based on statCounter [...] Microsoft will never publicly admit or say how many billions it lost on the XBox
- 2026 a Year of 'Top-Down' Microsoft Layoffs (Management First)
- Stay tuned for what comes next
- Your "Likes" Aren't Yours and They're Mostly "Worthless Clicks"
- Social hermits are not popular, irrespective of how many "Facebook friends" or "likes" they get
- Waggener Edstrom/Frank Shaw Lied, There Are Definitely Microsoft Layoffs
- Microsoft never issued a formal statement, it made allusions by proxy
- Microsoft-Controlled Media With Embargo and Press Operatives
- This won't be the last example of media manipulation for narrative control or face-saving "damage control"
- Slop Hype Makes Our Core Technology Less Reliable and Far Less Resilient (We Pay for the Catastrophe That Follows)
- Only slop-free projects can be trusted
- Going for 1,000 (Days of Uptime)
- universal records are vastly better
- Firefox is No-Go in China, Not Even 1% "Market Share" Anymore
- Given Mozilla's utterly rubbish marketing these days (politics over technical aspects), set aside the cheerleading for slop, there's hardly a chance of Mozilla Firefox reaching or exceeding 10% again
- EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part III - It's in His Eyes
- Workers are free to draw their own conclusions
- Links 21/02/2026: Tensions Over Iran and Illegal Cheeto Tariffs, Presidential Approval Sags
- Links for the day
- Links 21/02/2026: "Moving Away From Cloudflare", Many Layoffs or Shutdowns in Games (Including XBox/Microsoft)
- Links for the day
- GNU Linux-libre is a Grown-Up Today
- "before that, every distro that wanted to respect its users' freedom had to remove itself all of the binary blobs that were distributed as part of the kernel Linux's so-called sources"
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 20, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, February 20, 2026
- Gemini Links 21/02/2026: "The Evil of Action" and Slop Bots Causing Great Harm Online (Not Just the Web)
- Links for the day
- Like a Shell
- Overreactions can backfire
- Not Only Leaders of XBox Got Sacked (Layoffs)
- Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond got laid off
- 9PM on a Friday Night: Microsoft Says the Layoffs Are Not Layoffs
- We've said for a long time that XBox is doomed this year
- Gemini Links 20/02/2026: Misfin Server and Magic in Programming
- Links for the day
- Former Debian Project Leader Branden Robinson Cautions Against Cover-up and Censorship in Debian
- Debian drama. Again.
- analytics.usa.gov Reckons Windows "Market Share" Fell to Just 38%, Vista 11 Not Even a Third of Windows Users
- This coming summer Vista 11 turns 5
- The New Digg.com is Slop
- Slop "summaries" and Serial Sloppers are drowning out the site with fake 'articles' (plagiarism)
- Linus Torvalds: Bill Epsteingate Good Enough for Me to Wine and Dine With
- Torvalds is more connected to Jeffrey Epstein than Richard Stallman ever was
- Our Uptimes Are Always Better Than Any Site That Uses Clownflare
- Clownflare as a company operates like a cult
- GNU/Linux Apparently Rose to 6% in Uzbekistan
- If accurate, this represents a new problem for Microsoft and a big win for Software Freedom
- Sponsored Videos and 'Articles' in The Register MS, Stenography as a Service/Product
- They should more accurately label these actors
- It's Friday Again and Many People Leave IBM for Good (IBM Should be Reported for Illegal NDAs That Hide Layoffs)
- we very seldom see anyone deviating a lot from the "template-like" narrative, let alone mentioning "layoffs" or "RA" or some other term that implies non-consensual departure
- The Little Clique of Sloppers/Spammers About "Linux" Got Even Smaller
- Thankfully there are still genuine and legit GNU/Linux sites out there
- Links 20/02/2026: Microsoft Intentionally Kills Older Hardware, "The Story of XBox" Shows How Defective Microsoft Hardware Really Was
- Links for the day
- Turkmenistan One of Many Countries Where Microsoft Fell to Distant Third in Search
- We expect many layoffs in Bing some time soon
- Don't Wait for "Red Hat Layoffs" Because After Bluewashing They're IBM RAs and Don't Wait for "IBM Layoffs" Because They're Perpetual
- IBM layoffs are silent and "forever" (small trickle that never ends and is widespread - after all IBM is a very global and ubiquitous firm)
- Links 20/02/2026: Standards, Science, and Politics
- Links for the day
- What Do People Ever Buy From Microsoft Anyway (Not PCs)?
- Microsoft sells two things these days: 1) vapourware/promises. 2) its stock.
- Gemini Links 20/02/2026: "Mainstream Unix, Underground Unix", Slop Staging DDoS Attacks Against Small Sites
- Links for the day
- IBM Inclusivity: Red Hat Summit is for Rich Sponsors Like Microsoft and Rich Guests Who Pay $500 a Day
- Nothing signals societal tolerance more than paying a large military contractor
- GNU/Linux Adoption is Higher in Richer Countries
- Is it because freedom is actually expensive - something that only privileged people can pursue?
- Links 20/02/2026: Windows TCO Versus Deutsche Bahn, Europe Seeks More Independent Digital Future
- Links for the day
- IBM, Red Hat and Fedora: Don't Say "Master", It Offends People. Also IBM, Red Hat and Fedora: "Master Podman".
- The hypocrisy at Red Hat and Fedora shows no boundaries
- IBM Layoffs Aren't Just in IBM 'Proper'
- Who is still using Lotus after the HCL move?
- The Register MS Gets Paid by Gartner to Promote a Ponzi Scheme for Gartner, Microsoft, and Others
- The credibility of that site will suffer because it tries to sell a major scam to its audience
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 19, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, February 19, 2026