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
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 43 Out of 200: Garrett and Graveley Particulars of Claims Almost Identical and 5RB Needs to Investigate Its Barristers (Its Reputation is at Stake)
- Scrolling up and down in social control media
- The Central Staff Committee of the EPO Explains Late March Meetings Coinciding With Commencement of the Non-Stop Strikes at Europe's Second-Largest Institution
- The fifth meeting report and sixth meeting report show some of the concerns leading up to the mass strikes
- thenextweb.com (TNW) Appears to Have Become a Slopfarm, Fake Articles About France and GNU/Linux Flood the Web
- If you're not against slop, you're part of the problem
- Almost 3 Days Later, Still Zero Press Coverage (Except One Publisher) About Mass Layoffs at Red Hat, Almost 500 People Laid Off (Over 400 for Sure)
- "A document posted by FOSS advocacy site Techrights appears to be that memo and explains that Red Hat has devised a location strategy under which it has identified key sites for prioritized hiring and strategic workforce investment."
- The Register MS, About 6 Million Pounds in Debt, Helps Promote Microsoft's Gartner Group and Prop Up the Ponzi Scheme of Slop Plagiarism, Fake Article Mentions "AI" About 20 Times
- What was now known as The Register UK not only works against the interests of the UK; it works for charlatans and frauds
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- Links 12/04/2026: Mass Rebellion Against Slop, UK Crackdown on Nudification by Slop
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 12/04/2026: "Objective Truth" and Flutter
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 11, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, April 11, 2026
- Red Hat: We Kill People, But Please Obey the CoC or We'll Banish You
- From Red Hat's own site
- Gemini Links 11/04/2026: Floppy Disks on Linux and Junix
- Links for the day
- statCounter: Microsoft Windows Falls to All-Time Low This Month in France
- French government agencies are ordered to move to GNU/Linux
- Disgruntled IBMers Explain Why IBM is Circling Down a Death Spiral, Gerstner (Recently Deceased) Destroyed IBM in April 1993, and IBM Now Weaponises PIPs to Attack Its Own
- We've just checked if anyone has covered mass layoffs at IBM Red Hat. Nope.
- Gemini Links 11/04/2026: Critique of Delta Chat and Why Trying to Emulate Centralised, Addictive "Facebook" is Misguided
- Links for the day
- Links 11/04/2026: Scam Altman’s Trust Issues at OpenAI and EFF Quitting Twitter
- Links for the day
- Links 11/04/2026: Twitter Presence Considered Harmful to News Sites, "The Future of Everything is Lies"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 10, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, April 10, 2026
- Three Years Ago We Disconnected From the United States, Now France Does the Same
- Maybe in the coming months France will recruit loads of UNIX/Linux specialists
- While Thousands of EPO Workers Are on Strike the President of the EPO, Who Bribes His Voters, Gives Himself Millions of Euros and 5,000 Euros Per Month in Housing Allowance
- Campinos is immune, inherently corrupt, and habitual briber of his 'voters'
- IBM and Red Hat Whistleblowers Versus a Dying Fourth Estate (Journalism Seems to Have Died as Silently as IBM RAs Go)
- What a crazy world we live in!
- Slopfarms We Forget About Because They Silently Die
- The hard reality (for slobs and sloppers) is, slopfarms have no future
- Gemini Links 10/04/2026: Flexiveganism, What Happened to Twitter, and Algorithm Fetishes
- Links for the day
- Links 10/04/2026: Indonesia's Social Control Media Bans Extend to Google YouTube, "I.M.F. Says Iran War Will Drag Global Growth Lower"
- Links for the day
- Media Blackout Regarding Mass Layoffs at Red Hat
- To be very clear, what happened is certainly real
- IBM 'Value' Fell 20%, The Executives Took Bonuses and Bonus Hikes
- IBM is paying more and more money to the executives
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 42 Out of 200: Getting the Very Basic Technical Concepts Very Wrong, or Where Miscomprehension Begets "Plausible Deniability"
- It's difficult to argue with people over things that they do not even understand
- This Coming Weekend and Next Week We'll Cover EPO Scandals a Lot, There Are Still Perpetual Strikes That the Media Intentionally Avoids Covering
- Expect our focus on EPO corruption to grow again
- More Information on IBM Red Hat Layoffs in April 2026, Hundreds of Skilled GNU/Linux Engineers Laid Off (300+ Simultaneously)
- How long can the corporate media ignore IBM layoffs for?
- Raw: Extensive Evidence of Red Hat's Mass Layoffs in China (IBM Meets Geopolitics)
- This has nothing to do with workers' performance
- We'll Never Ever Do Social Control Media, Nate Silver's Article Helps Explain Why
- If you want to research and publish, stay away from it
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 41 Out of 200: More Misuse of UK-GDPR (for US Citizens), More Copy-Pasting for Garrett and Graveley, Alleging That Publishing Unflattering Information is a 'Privacy' Issue
- No wonder his own colleagues thought poorly of him (the junior barrister)
- Links 10/04/2026: Pseudoscience and "Amazon Pulls Support for Perfectly Fine Older Kindles" and More Attacks on American Journalism
- Links for the day
- Dr. Andy Farnell Blasts Misuse of the Term "AI" to Describe Plagiarism, Plunder, and Misinformation
- Dr. Stallman wrote about it back in the early 1980s
- A Sign of Progress?
- We'll solve war hunger and colonise Mars soon, according to men who never graduated from College
- The Slop Delusion: This Morning We Broke Story on Red Hat Layoffs in Two Posts, Google is Already Plagiarising Them With Slop and Getting the Basic Facts Wrong
- Google does not have "AI"; it has slop, which means it scrapes other people's work, then imitates it poorly
- "IBM is Constantly Laying Off People" (Not Just in Red Hat)
- IBM as a company is collapsing
- Many Layoffs at IBM Red Hat, as the Rumours Said
- Red Hat mass layoffs [...] "this was a difficult decision to make."
- Microsoft, Drowning in Net Debt, Will Make Many More Cuts
- The company is a net negative to society
- April 15: Richard Stallman to Speak at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas
- Next Wednesday in the afternoon Dr. Stallman will speak in a US college for the second time this year and for the second time in nearly 8 years
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 09, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, April 09, 2026
- Gemini Links 10/04/2026: Cycling, Slop, and Software to Keep Photos Organised
- Links for the day
