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
- The World Needs Activists With Social Skills and Perseverance
- An everyday activist makes life better for everybody, everywhere (not for personal gain or even credit)
-
- More Shutdowns at Microsoft, Hundreds of Workers Impacted Shortly
- It's not the entire wave, just part of it
- The Register MS: About 60 Mentions of "AI" in One Day Are Paid-for Spam (Sponsored Hype, Composed by the Companies Covered)
- The Register MS is a dying site
- Links 22/10/2026: MElon (Elon Musk) Election Interference and Perl/Raku Foundation by the Numbers
- Links for the day
- Techrights Audience Grew as a Function of the Intensity of Attacks on Its Existence
- We try to publish fewer stories but better (not necessarily long but at least important) stories
- TechRepublic is Becoming a Slopfarm
- It seems like TechRepublic became LLM slop (maybe all of it, maybe only some of it for now)
- Techrights is Not About GNU/Linux, Tux Machines Is
- When we say "GNU/Linux" we emphasise the GNU
- Intercontinental Brigading - Part XII - Lawfare to Cover Up Microsoft's Restricted Boot Calamity (Microsoft as Authority Over Linux), Garrett Wants to Talk About Penises Instead
- When lawsuits become a political weapon
- Without Microsoft's Monopoly (and Monopoly Rents) the Inevitable Microsoft Mass Layoffs Carry on Endlessly
- Microsoft Windows is not retaining the dominance it once had
- IBM's Debt Grew About $2 Billion in 3 Months
- The silent layoffs still seem to impact Red Hat
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 22, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, October 22, 2026
- Gemini Links 22/10/2026: Solar MiniBBS, Building Major Tom, and Zig
- Links for the day
- Links 22/10/2026: Busan’s Celebrity Shark in Canal Again
- Links for the day
- Links 22/10/2026: "Software Developers Have Been Promoted Into Incompetence"
- Links for the day
- Intercontinental Brigading - Part XI - Losing Over a Million Pounds (Borrowed Money) to Try to Silence Critics of Restricted Boot With Microsoft-Controlled "Certificates"
- Garrett is also very jealous of Daniel Pocock
- Links 22/10/2026: eBay to Lay Off a Tenth of Staff (Again), Node.js and PHP Security Crises, Climate News
- Links for the day
- Red Hat Layoffs Still Going on This Week (Whilst IBM's Debt Grows in Spite of Mass Layoffs)
- IBM is bluffing/cheating the shareholders again
- IBM's Debt Continues to Increase While the Company Rapidly Shrinks
- This is what a dying company looks like
- Linux Kernel Needs Diversity and Diversity of Good Code, Not LLM Slop
- Linux (and Linus) are kicking a can down the road
- Microsoft Shrinks Every Year
- Microsoft will try to spin or twist this as "efficiency"
- Gemini Links 22/10/2026: Holiday Inn and Emacs
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 21, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, October 21, 2026
- Techrights Was Right About a Fake Security Model Built Around Lies or Built Upon Trust in "Certificates" and "Authorities" (like Microsoft)
- We have begun to amass some media reports and blog posts from technical sites
- Windows Monopoly is No Longer Sustainable (the Case of Oceania)
- This is why Microsoft layoffs are happening all the time
- Some Downtime Possible Shortly (Router Work)
- We don't use PHP in the site anymore
- Mass Layoffs at Microsoft This Week and/or Next Week
- Cannot pull a bunny out of some hat
- With Its Future on the Line, EPO Management (Dictatorship) Resorts to Further Escalations to Fake 'Production' and Curtail Industrial Actions
- It's clear that with a yearlong campaign of industrial actions - including strikes - Campinos cannot save face anymore
- Gemini Links 21/10/2026: Summer Day in Tokyo (30c in Late October) and Whole Food for the Whole World
- Links for the day
- Links 21/10/2026: "Zelensky Took the Gloves Off This Time With Convicted Felon" and "Cellebrite iPhone Radio Zero-Day"
- Links for the day
- Reuters is Becoming Slop, Not a News Agency (Treat Reports From Reuters Sceptically)
- In their own words
- Disclosure/s Crisis at The Register MS (Promoting a Ponzi Scheme for Money)
- So now they sell several schemes/scams at the same time, not limited to the slop
- Links 21/10/2026: "The Tragic Death of the Republican Party" and "No War But Data Center War"
- Links for the day
- Internet Relay Chat Still Growing
- The numbers go up, not down [...] Don't believe the doomers
- Intercontinental Brigading - Part X - American Back Doors Inside Our Computers, With Transatlantic Swatting Against Critics Thrown 'Into the Mix'
- "If your Windows PC's Secure Boot certificates are out of date, your system is vulnerable to malware like rootkits."
- Gemini Links 21/10/2026: A Walk Through Amsterdam and Pythagorean Theorem
- Links for the day
- More Mass Layoffs at Microsoft Weeks From Now, Then Again Months From Now
- Microsoft's crisis is not limited to XBox
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 20, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, October 20, 2026