News
News
In the news: System76 Developing a New Desktop Environment; Hetzner Opens New Location in the USA; KDE Plasma 5.24 Introduces Fingerprint Reader Support; Ubuntu 21.10 Released and Finally Includes Gnome 40; Hive Ransomware Hitting Linux and FreeBSD Systems; and SUSE Reaches Beyond the Edge with SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 5.1.
System76 Developing a New Desktop Environment
System76 is never one to settle. Consider what they've done to the Gnome desktop environment with their COSMIC treatment. Effectively, the company has made Gnome their own. But that wasn't enough, so the developers have set out to create a brand new DE, from scratch, using Rust.
Why? Michael Murphy, Pop!_OS maintainer for System76, said, "There are things we'd like to do that we can't simply achieve through extensions in Gnome. Extensions in general feel like a hack. And what we want to do with our desktop differs from Gnome, so it's not like the option to merge pop-shell and COSMIC into Gnome Shell would be a welcome thing."
Although the new desktop will not be a fork of Gnome, the developers do plan on reusing some of the current Gnome tooling, such as Mutter, KWin, and Wlroots. On this issue, Murphy said, "We're already using gtk-rs for all of our stuff. My assumption is that it's likely to see some components in GTK for the foreseeable future." Murphy continues, "The shell itself though is lower level than a traditional desktop GUI toolkit. It'll use primitives from the window manager it builds upon. If a mature Rust GUI turns up, then it could be used in the future of course. I'd generally like to use the best tools where possible."
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.
-
IBM Announces Powerhouse Linux Server
IBM has unleashed a seriously powerful Linux server with the LinuxONE Emperor 5.
-
Plasma Ends LTS Releases
The KDE Plasma development team is doing away with the LTS releases for a good reason.
-
Arch Linux Available for Windows Subsystem for Linux
If you've ever wanted to use a rolling release distribution with WSL, now's your chance.
-
System76 Releases COSMIC Alpha 7
With scores of bug fixes and a really cool workspaces feature, COSMIC is looking to soon migrate from alpha to beta.
-
OpenMandriva Lx 6.0 Available for Installation
The latest release of OpenMandriva has arrived with a new kernel, an updated Plasma desktop, and a server edition.
-
TrueNAS 25.04 Arrives with Thousands of Changes
One of the most popular Linux-based NAS solutions has rolled out the latest edition, based on Ubuntu 25.04.
-
Fedora 42 Available with Two New Spins
The latest release from the Fedora Project includes the usual updates, a new kernel, an official KDE Plasma spin, and a new System76 spin.
-
So Long, ArcoLinux
The ArcoLinux distribution is the latest Linux distribution to shut down.