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
- This is What the Slop Bubble Popping Can Look Like
- Maybe not an overnight collapse, but getting there gradually
- If You Don't Want "Linux" to Become "Windows", Then Follow GNU
- GAFAM isn't a friend of Linux; it's only a user in the same sense clients are "users" of a brothel
- More Confirmatory Rumours Regarding "Massive" Red Hat Layoffs
- Ecosystem and sales said to be targeted
- Office Meetings Are Most Useful to the Least Productive Workers
- In my "office life" days I really didn't like meetings
- Claim That the Board of Directors at IBM Isn't Happy With How the Company is Run
- IBM tries to project an image of strength to the whole world, especially to its clients
- 'Cancel Culture' Doesn't Work (in the Long Run)
- Despite all the attacks, I'm enjoying life, I'm keeping productive, and our audience continues to grow
-
- Slopfarms in Google News (at Least Three Today) With Fake 'Articles' About "Linux"
- Google itself is trying to promote its own slop ("Overview") at the expense of original and credible sources
- Links 19/01/2026: ChatGPT’s Defects and The Guardian on Why So-called "AI Companies Will Fail"
- Links for the day
- IBM Quiet About Its Plan for Red Hat Amid Accelerated Bluewashing
- Something is going on at Red Hat
- The "Alicante Mafia" - Part V - It Seems Like Some People Are Already Leaving "The Mafia"
- they have a rough idea of what's coming
- Microsoft Means War, Microsoft is on the Side of ICE
- Microsoft, people-ready
- Proprietary UNIX is What We'll Have If IBM Red Hat Gets Its Way
- IBM Red Hat wants to control everything, even if that means killing everybody
- Free Software in Times of Peace (and Times of War, Too)
- GAFAM and IBM are war companies
- Founder of GNU/Linux (RMS) Speaks in US University (College) This Week
- The auditorium has very high capacity and this is his "college comeback" talk in the United States
- LinuxSecurity and Linuxiac Are Still Slopfarms, Even Anthony Pell Does It
- We suppose waiting another month or another year won't change a thing
- Links 18/01/2026: Legal Trouble for xAI, Climate Concerns, Data Breaches and More
- Links for the day
- 'Vibe Coding', Chatbots, and Other Bots (e.g. "Agents" Disguised as "Superintelligence") Aren't Saving You Time
- False marketing, FOMO marketing tactics
- Gemini Links 19/01/2026: Analog Cameras and Plucker in 2026, US Losing Acceptability in Europe
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, January 18, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, January 18, 2026
- Links 18/01/2026: The "Deepfake Porn Site Formerly Known as Twitter" and Turkey to Block Kids' Access to Social Control Media
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 18/01/2026: Against English as Language of the Net, "Symposium of Destruction"
- Links for the day
- You Would Expect This Kind of Misleading Narrative Shortly Before Microsoft (or GAFAM) Mass Layoffs
- misleading PR
- FOSDEM 2026: democracy panel, GNOME & Sonny Piers modern slavery experiment
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Pump-and-Dump With IBM Shares, Courtesy of People Who Stand to Gain From the 'Pump'
- "3 Reasons to Buy IBM Stock Right Now"
- IBM: Spying on Staff Like Never Before and Implementing Silent Layoffs This Month, Say Insiders
- what we heard from whistleblowers seems to corroborate
- IBM is Not a Free Software Company (It Never Was)
- Red Hat's main product, RHEL, is full of secret sauce and has 'secret recipes' (it is basically proprietary)
- IBM Turning Up the 'RTO' (Stress) and 'PIP' (Fear) Heat on Workers, Rebellion May be Brewing
- Sometimes it feels like today's executives at IBM view IBM workers as a liability
- Links 18/01/2026: Indonesia Against Comedy, Media-Hostile (Censors Comedians) Convicted Felon in White House Defecting to Opponents of NATO
- Links for the day
- GNU/Linux Still up (statCounter Says to 6%) in Bosnia And Herzegovina
- Let's see where it is at year's end
- Making Layout Changes
- Feedback can be sent to us
- Behind an Economy of Fake 'Worths' and Fictional 'Valuations' or 'Market Caps'
- They normalise white-collar crime and say "everyone is doing it!"
- Links 18/01/2026: "South Africa is Running Out of Software Developers", Companies Spooked to Find Slop is a Major Liability
- Links for the day
- Eventually the Joke (and Financial Fraud) is on Microsoft, Stigmatised for Slop
- Is Microsoft trying to commit suicide?
- GNU/Linux Leaps to All-time Highs in Virgin Islands
- it seems to have started around the "end of 10"
- Place Your Bets: Who Will Die First? Microsoft or IBM?
- Not even joking; make a guess
- Making and Keeping the Sites Accessible
- Sometimes less does mean "more" (or "MOAR")
- The "Alicante Mafia" - Part IV - How Europe's Largest Patent Office Recruited Drug Addicts, Antisemites, and People Who Absolutely Cannot Do the Job (But Know the 'Right' People)
- To better overlap industrial actions we might delay/postpone/pause this series for a bit
- Restoring Professional Pride in the Tech Sector
- Rejecting slop isn't being a Luddite
- Benefiting by Adding Presence in Geminispace
- As the Web gets worse, not limited to bloat as a factor, people seek alternatives
- Google News Recently Started Syndicating Another Slopfarm, Linuxiac
- Even if Google is aware that there is slop there, it's hard to believe that Google will mind
- Slop Bubble "Is Worse Than The Dot Com Bubble"
- Edward Zitron Says It like it is
- Software Patents and USMCA (or NAFTA)
- We recently pondered going back to issuing 2-3 articles per day about patents and common issues with them
- IBM Sued Over PIPs
- PIPs are "performance improvement plans"
- Sites With "Linux" in Their Name That Are in Effect Slopfarms and Issue Fake Articles
- We try to name some of the prolific culprits
- Gemini Links 18/01/2026: Raising Notifications From Terminal and Environmental Sanity
- Links for the day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, January 17, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, January 17, 2026
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- Links 17/01/2026: Internet Blackout Normalised, Russian Attacks Civilians by Causing Massive Blackouts
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Lunduke Keeps Distracting From the Real Problems With Rust
- Microsoft Lunduke is stigmatising critics
- Linuxiac Has Become a Slopfarm, Calling Them Out Isn't Fixing That
- What a shame. A once-decent site about "Linux" bites the dust.
- Luzern Lion Monument, Albanian Female Whistleblowers: Swiss jurists were cowards
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- The Splinternet is Already Here, Owing to the Militarisation of Technology (Slop, Social Control Media, Back Doors, and More)
- you know what's gonna happen next...
- Stack Ranking Against IBM/Red Hat Staff and a Signal of Mass Layoffs (RAs) Justified by Red Hat and IBM as Poor Performance/Misconduct/Other
- Working in an atmosphere like this sounds like a nightmare
- Gemini Links 17/01/2026: Slow computing and Environment Leak
- Links for the day
- Links 17/01/2026: US Censorship and Violence Crisis, Growing Anger Levels Against Slop Sold as "Intelligence"
- Links for the day
- Microsoft's "valuation depends on infrastructure that does not exist."
- Indeed
- The Typical Trajectory: Datamation Began Experimenting With LLM Slop for Fake Articles. Then Datamation Died. (Last Month)
- It's always ending up this way
- Accounts or Devices (e.g. Phones) That Get 'Burnt' Have Many Pitfalls
- Embassies and consulates habitually fail at this
- Avoiding the Spooks (Nobody Watches the Watchers, They're Practically Unaccountable)
- If more people adopt encryption, it'll be easier for us to deal with whistleblowers
- Protecting Whistleblowers Requires Technical Knowledge/Skills
- even the highest media judges aren't aware of how to protect sources
- At Least 5 Women Quit Brett Wilson LLP in Recent Months. It's the Firm That Attacked My Wife and I on Behalf of Americans (One of Them Strangled Women).
- It seems like good news that the women escape this workplace
- Slop About Slop and Slop About "Linux"
- In short, avoid slopfarms
- Report/Benchmark Says 'Vibe Coding' Results in Security Holes
- There are risks they don't like talking about
- EPO Abuses Covered in Spanish
- Knowing what we know (and heard/saw), the sinister silence of the media is perceived by some to be complicity of the lower order.
- Richard Stallman Encourages "ICE Out For Good" Protests, His Opponents Do Not (Passive and Uncaring About Human Rights)
- He has done a lot philosophically, politically, and so on
- Record Traffic in Geminispace or Over Gemini Protocol
- it's never too late to join
- The "Alicante Mafia" - Part III - Europe's Second-Largest Organisation on Strike, Protests, Other Industrial Actions to Come Impacting Over 95% of the Workforce
- The EPO's management is highly evasive, weak, and vulnerable
- Claim That IBM Marked 15% of its Workforce for Potential Layoffs
- No wonder we keep hearing from Red Hat people who say they hate IBM
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 16, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, January 16, 2026