Desktop News Archives

FreeRDP as a leading open-source implementation of the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) has introduced experimental AV1 codec support.

The LXQt 2.4 desktop released today for joining the modern open-source desktop party alongside the likes of the recently debuted GNOME 50, KDE Plasma 6.6, and others.

In addition to the release today of Flatpak 1.16.4 for shipping new security fixes including a sandbox escape and the ability to delete host files, XDG-Desktop-Portal 1.20.4 is also now available with another security fix of its own to prevent sandboxed apps from being able to trash arbitrary host files.

Libinput devised a Lua-based plug-in system for modifying devices/events. The Lua plug-in support was introduced last year with libinput 1.30 but unfortunately some security issues have now come to light with the implementation.

FreeRDP as this open-source and cross-platform Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) implementation is out with FreeRDP 3.24 to ship new security fixes as well as other improvements.

Out today is Budgie 10.10.2 as the latest minor update to this open-source desktop environment that began as part of the Solus Linux project.

While System76 has been hard at work on a redesigned Thelio desktop chassis design, this hasn't slowed down their software work. Today they shipped COSMIC Epoch 1.0.8 as the newest work on their open-source, Rust-based desktop environment used by their in-house Pop!_OS Linux distribution as well as found in other Linux distributions too.

Red Hat's leading input expert Peter Hutterer announced the release overnight of libinput 1.31, the input handling library used by the Linux desktop on both X.Org and Wayland desktop sessions.

Following December's release of COSMIC Epoch 1 along with the Pop!_OS 24.04 release by System76, today they shared more of their feature plans for the next two major COSMIC desktop updates.

Following the Budgie 10.10 release from earlier this month, Budgie 10.10.1 is now here for closing out January.

FreeRDP 3.22 was just released as the newest version of this Apache-licensed open-source Remote Desktop protocol (RDP) implementation for interfacing with another computer over the network.

Xfce developers are using their donations from the community to fund a longtime core developer to create Xfwl4, an entirely new Wayland compositor for Xfce.

XDG-Desktop-Portal 1.21 is now available for testing with the latest features for this portal frontend service to Flatpak.

Following the December launch of Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS and the first major COSMIC desktop release, System76 software engineers have continued making improvements to their Rust-based desktop environment.

With Budgie 10.10 released this weekend, Budgie desktop developers have provided an update around Budgie 11 desktop development.

The Budgie 10.10 desktop has been officially released in marking the open-source project's transition from X11 to Wayland.

For fans of the IceWM X11 window manager, the project kicked off 2026 by releasing IceWM 4.0.

Two years and one week since the prior point release, Common Desktop Environment 2.5.3 is now available as the latest iteration of this Unix desktop environment built around the Motif toolkit. CDE has been open-source for more than a decade now but its development not exactly brisk. But for those resisting the likes of Wayland and other modern display tech -- especially with KDE announcing today Plasma 6.8 will be Wayland-exclusive -- CDE 2.5.3 is now available.

At the start of the year developers behind the Budgie desktop environment hoped for shipping Budgie 10.10 in Q1-2025. We are now in Q4 without a stable release but at long last a preview version is at least available. Budgie 10.10 is the point at which Budgie is going all-in on Wayland in leaving behind the X11 desktop session support.

Miracle-WM 0.8 was released on Wednesday as another step forward for this tiling Wayland compositor built atop Canonical's Mir software. Canonical engineer Matthew Kosarek continues driving new features into Miracle-WM as it works toward its v1.0 milestone.

EasyEffects is the open-source application formerly known as PulseEffects that transitioned to using native PipeWire filters for providing simple audio effects on the Linux desktop. EasyEffects makes it easy to apply different audio effects like bass enhancer, compressor, pitch shift, reverberation, and many more. With this week's release of EasyEffects 8.0, the user interface has been rewritten in Qt / QML / Kirigami rather than GTK4.

LXQt 2.3 is out today as the newest release of this lightwight, Qt-based desktop environment.

Cairo-Dock is back after a decade hiatus! From the early 2010's you may remember Cairo-Dock / GLX-Dock as a complementary dock for your Linux desktop. The last time writing about it was the Cairo-Dock 3.4 release in 2014 when it was working toward EGL/Wayland support. Since then it was rather inactive the past decade besides a small 3.5 update one year ago with a few fixes. But out this week is now Cairo-Dock 3.6 with the long-awaited port to Wayland, HiDPI display handling, and other improvements.

IceWM Is out this weekend as the newest feature release to this X11 window manager known for its speedy and simplicity.

FreeRDP as one of the leading open-source / free software implementations of Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is out with a new release. While FreeRDP 3.17 is primarily focused on shipping bug fixes, there is one noteworthy addition: fullchain support.

For those preferring an X11-based desktop experience on Linux, IceWM 3.8 released on Sunday as the newest version of this lightweight X11 window manager focused on speed and simplicity.

FreeRDP 3.16 is out today as the newest update to this open-source Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) library and client implementation. This Apache-licensed project continues to be one of the leading implementations of the Microsoft RDP protocol for use outside the confines of Windows.

The libinput input handling library that's used by both X11 and Wayland based environments on the Linux desktop is preparing to introduce a Lua-based plug-in system. Via Lua scripts it will be possible to modify evdev input events / input device behavior to deal with quirky/broken input devices and better workaround other problems that aren't currently easily addressable.

The Trinity Desktop Environment as a long ago fork of the KDE 3.5 desktop released TDE R14.1.4 on Sunday as the newest maintenance release with various bug fixes and minor feature improvements.

Following the COSMIC Alpha 6 release from February, System76 today released COSMIC Alpha 7 as their last planned alpha release for this open-source, Rust-written desktop environment designed around the needs of their Pop!_OS Linux distribution.

The FreeType library for rendering text onto bitmaps that is widely used by a variety of applications has landed a set of three patches today providing an important performance improvement to address a significant inefficiency within the existing FreeType codebase.

LXQt 2.2 was christened today as the newest stable update to this lightweight, open-source Qt desktop environment.

System76 engineers remain quite busy working on their Rust-written COSMIC desktop environment to be used by their Pop!_OS operating system as well as other Linux distributions moving forward.

The Shotcut open-source video editor is out with its first new release of 2025.

Just over one year since the release of the Enlightenment 0.26 window manager, this weekend Carsten Haitzler released the Enlightenment 0.27 window manager and Wayland compositor. Enlightenment continues going now 28 years in development by Rasterman!

Building off the COSMIC Alpha 4 release from early December, COSMIC Alpha 5 is now available as the newest stepping stone toward the first stable release of this Rust-based open-source desktop developed by System76 for their Pop!_OS Linux distribution.

For fans of the Budgie desktop environment that got its start out of the Solus Linux distribution, the Budgie 10.10 release expected later this quarter will be their first release that is Wayland-only.

In addition to all the GNOME advancements and KDE excitement with shipping Plasma 6 this year, other alternative open-source desktop environments enjoyed much success too this year... System76's Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment for their Pop!_OS Linux distribution reached alpha form, Xfce 4.20 released earlier this month, LXQt 2.0 and 2.1 debuted, and other improvements too.

Debuting as a new development release today was XDG-Desktop-Portal 1.19.1 as this portal front-end service for Flatpak sandboxed apps and other desktop containment frameworks. The XDG-Desktop-Portal 1.19.1 milestone is exposing new and expanded portal capabilities for dealing with various hardware devices and APIs.

System76 today released the newest development/testing version of their Rust-based desktop environment designed for their Pop!_OS Linux distribution.

VTE-based terminals on Linux like Ptyxis are now seeing support introduced to better display progress state for long-running processes with a more visually pleasing progress bar. Microsoft's Windows Terminal has already supported this feature while now with systemd beginning to support using these Operating System Command escape sequences, Linux terminal support is on the rise.

Following the Xfce 4.20 Pre1 release from one month ago, Xfce 4.20 Pre2 is ready for testing ahead of the planned desktop release in two weeks.

LXQt 2.1 is now available as the latest feature release to this Qt-based lightweight desktop environment. Most significant with LXQt 2.1 is the introduction of the lxqt-wayland-session component.

Right on schedule for releasing the Xfce 4.20 desktop in December, the "Pre1" pre-release was posted on Friday for testing.

As a nice Halloween treat for Linux desktop users, System76 has published their third alpha version of the Rust-written COSMIC desktop environment.

The Trinity Desktop Environment as a still-maintained fork of the KDE 3.5 desktop software is out with a new point release.

A roadmap/schedule has been published for the lightweight Xfce 4.20 desktop. If all goes well this next iteration of the Xfce desktop will be out before Christmas.

Following the release of the COSMIC Alpha desktop in early August, System76 is closing out September by issuing the second alpha release of their Rust-based open-source desktop environment.

System76 today is releasing an alpha build of Pop!_OS 24.04 that is built atop Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and making it very interesting is that it includes the alpha version of their Rust-written COSMIC desktop environment. I've been playing around with this Pop!_OS 24.04 alpha in advance of today's embargo lift and it's been working out quite well.

System76 continues working vigorously on COSMIC, their Rust-written Linux desktop environment being written for Pop!_OS and to see availability on other Linux distributions as well. They are finishing up last minute changes before putting the flag on a COSMIC alpha release.