Personally, I’m looking forward to native Wayland support for Wine and KDE’s port to Qt 6.
pop os new de
Yea, Cosmo Desktop sounds really cool.
If you’re not familiar with Linux and distros, this reads like a foreign language lol
Pop_OS!, a popular Linux distribution, is writing a new desktop environment. A desktop environment is basically the functionality of the desktop, think the taskbar and window snapping, etc. on Windows and the dock and top bar on macOS. A desktop environment also comes with its own set of apps, like how Windows comes with Explorer and Task Manager.
X12
The ever-improving ecosystem for NixOS as a desktop environment.
I switched over to Nix around a month ago, and in that time I’ve already seen several guides and sources of documentation improve themselves significantly. I could see NixOS documentation eventually becoming almost as impressive as the Arch Wiki, and it seems that process is in hyperdrive right now.
A patch for Lenovo Legion sound.
For now i just want color management on Wayland KDE.
SAME. I’m so keen to switch, but I can’t without this final piece.
Looking forward to seeing Cosmic get a alpha/beta release, I love what they’ve shown and since I can never get used to tiling window managers, it looks like a very nice middle ground between DE/WM. And seeing their Virgo laptop, I doubt I’ll get one since EU shipping is a nightmare (Though they’re supposed to open an EU warehouse soon-ish), but more repairable laptops, esp. one using GPLv3 for every bit, is amazing. Looking forward to seeing more about the FW16, not linux per se, but still cool.
Plasma 6, ofc. Way, way in the future (Probably) is seeing more DEs make their way to Wayland, like XFCE/Cinnamon/Budgie
KDE Plasma 6 for the resolution of so many issues; COSMIC DE as a brand new choice in the future; Guix System to have KDE and more packages shipped because it’s literally the best designed distro as of now.
AMD is planning to release OpenSIL in 2027, which should, in theory, accelerate the development of Coreboot and Libreboot and bring them to modern AMD motherboards
I’m curious, will that work with Motherboards released until then, or just new motherboards from that point onwards?
New motherboards. Unless AMD collaborates with board makers to push updates to their BIOS/UEFI to include OpenSIL compatibility, which is likely not going to be the case in my opinion
Kinda with ya on that one - Wayland maturing and becoming standardized across all features and platforms to replace X11.
Android app support, MacOS-grade font rendering, Graphical systemd manager A quick way to scroll to top (on iPhone you can double tap the status bar to jump to top in ANY app)
Have you seen Waydroid?
Waydroid is awesome!
MacOS font rendering is dreadful on non-Retina/HiDPI displays. If you want similar rendering on Linux, turn font hinting off, and set antialiasing to greyscale only, no subpixel rendering. It will look very similar, if not identical, to modern MacOS.
For non-Retina displays I vastly prefer FreeType’s subpixel antialiasing and “slight” hinting to what MacOS does.
Thanks, will give this a try. Any recommendations on which font to use?
The UI font in MacOS is called SF Pro. If you have access to a Mac you can simply copy the .otf font files over to Linux (they are in /System/Library/Fonts on MacOS) and install and use them there.
If you don’t have access to a Mac, Google Roboto Sans is a very similar design (it was the default Android UI font for several years) and if it’s not already installed by your Linux distro, it’s freely downloadable.
Linux phones are getting closer and closer to usability every day. I don’t care that they’ll always be less polished than iOS or Android, I want a Linux phone.
I’ve been curious about Linux phones. Can you recommended any devices or operating systems to watch? Thanks.
Your best bet right now IMO would be flashing PostmarketOS onto a used OnePlus 6, which is cheap, has good specs and none of the battery issues plaguing the Pinephone Pro. That said, it’s not 100% ready to be a phone yet- for now its best use case is as a mini-tablet / PDA kind of thing. Really feels like carrying a pocket laptop around, which is pretty fun as a starting point.
Cool, thank you!
Pinephone has a great active community, and the device itself is dirt cheap (also pretty low-specced). There’s a pro version with a much better specs in theory, but development state is much rougher. Not that the basic model is anywhere near daily driver material yet, but the progress is very appreciable every time i check in.
Linux phones
Will we be able to use messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Signal on Linux phones?
Yes, since you can run Android apps on them. They will be slower and have some quirks though I’m sure.
Two things at completely opposite ends of the “Linux world”:
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eBPF. It seems super promising for improving observability and security; especially performance of these concerns. It also strikes me as a risky architectural decision. Programmable privileged kernel code + JIT. What could go wrong… that validator sure is doing heavy lifting.
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Valve flexing more muscle in developing Proton as it comes to terms with the fact Microsoft’s vertical integration (and monopolistic practices increasingly unfettered by government) will eventually be an existential risk to it. It is now ridiculously easy to install and run so many games on Linux, so long as you accept the devil you know and it’s DRMy platform. Definitely not perfect but it’s so vastly improved I’m comfortable calling it “night and day”
The Valve one has been the most exciting for me. AFAIK Valve has been thinking about the issues with Windows controlling PC gaming since Windows 8 first came out. The Steam Machines were a flop at the time but in recent years they’ve been able to maks big moves for Linux gaming and instead of giving up has been doubling down on the importance of it.
Ahh yes the Steam Machines. Definitely contemporaneous with windows 8.
I think it’s likely Valve have intensified efforts recently for a number of reasons but not least of which is the ongoing encroachment of Microsoft turning the Windows PC experience into more of a walled garden across more segments. It can’t have gone unnoticed that Microsoft are 1) selling games on the Microsoft Store and 2) are normalising the concept of hardware root of trust etc with the windows 11 TPM requirement.
EFI secure boot was one thing. Setting conditions up so every PC in the world has hardware support for verifying that user space programs are signed by Microsoft is another. I’m not saying overnight they’ll flick a switch and every windows installation in the world is on S mode. But it’s clearly trending that way. That would be good night for Steam if they so chose. And clearly Microsoft believe they can fob off regulators well enough
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Flatpaks seaminglessly supporting all apps plus cli applications and drivers would be the holy grail.
Unfortunatly i don’t think thats gonna happen. Due to how flatpaks work things like drivers wouldn’t work without some serius workorounds.
x86box, Flashpoint Archive, Ruffle, and other tools to sustain the usefulness of the golden age of computing well into the future.
I like the kind of revival of nice TUIs that is going on right now. I just wish it continues !
