Sync Updates for Week 4, 2024

EbonJaeger

Heya folks! It's Friday, and you know what that means. Update news!

There are some new packages in the repository this week. The first one is input-remapper, an easy-to-use tool to change the behavior of your input devices. It supports X11, Wayland, combinations, programmable macros, joysticks, wheels, triggers, keys, mouse-movements and more.

For Plasma users, maliit-keyboard is now in the repository. This provides a virtual keyboard you can use for any 2-in-1 or tablet devices, greatly improving the Plasma experience for that class of hardware.

Also included this week are the GNOME Software and KDE Discover software centers. Our goal with these is to replace the current Software Center, for a couple of reasons:

Software Center is written in Python 2, which reached end-of-life years ago. Updating it to Python 3 is not a trivial task, given its integration with eopkg, which is also Python 2.
We have limited manpower, so the fewer graphical applications we have to maintain and develop, the more time and energy we can spend on bringing you the best Linux distribution that we can.
When we move over to the Serpent tooling and package manager, the Software Center would need major changes anyway. These applications also enable us to finally have Flatpak and eopkg management in the same place. fwupd is also integrated in GNOME Software and KDE Discover, enabling users to update firmware on supported devices such as Wacom tablets, touchpads, and more.

Note that GNOME Software and KDE Discover in Solus are still experimental. We needed them included as packages in order to continue testing and facilitate easier fixes and updates to them. Should you wish to help us test these software centers, please head on over to their respective tracking issues:

GNOME Software:
- https://github.com/getsolus/packages/issues/717
- https://github.com/getsolus/packages/issues/718
KDE Discover:
- https://github.com/getsolus/packages/issues/715
- https://github.com/getsolus/packages/issues/716

Security updates

@joebonrichie updated Firefox to 122.0 this week. In addition to the other fixes and features in this update, Mozilla addressed a good number of security issues; too many to list here. Likewise, @Harvey updated Thunderbird to 115.7, which also addresses several security issues.

Likewise, @Harvey updated Vivaldi (Stable and Snapshot) to 6.5.3206.57 and 6.6.3250.4, respectively, which inherits security and other fixes from updated Chromium versions.

Lastly, @agent pushed an update to Jasper, a JasPer Image Processing (JPEG) tool kit to 4.1.2 to address CVE-2023-51257.

As always, install all the updates to get the latest security fixes!

Media updates

Our FFMpeg package was updated by @ReillyBrogan to 6.1.1. This is pretty significant since we were previously on version 4.4.4; two major versions old! The full upstream changelog can be found here. Many other packages have also been updated or rebuilt as a result of this update.

SFML was updated to 2.6.1 (@nelsontkq)

Gaming updates

Add AppStream metadata and fix desktop file for Heroic Games Launcher (@malfisya)
Add AppStream metadata for maelstrom (@malfisya)
minigalaxy was updated to 1.2.6 (@Harvey)
Fixed AppStream metadata for lutris (@malfisya)
perl-sdl was patched to fix an issue with frozen-bubble (@Harvey)
visualboyadvance-m was updated to 2.1.8 (@malfisya)

CLI tool updates

clustershell was undeprecated and updated to 1.9.2 (@Justin and @Harvey)
emacs was updated to 29.2 (@nazar)
eza was updated to 0.17.3 (@EbonJaeger)
Numix icon themes were all updated (@EbonJaeger)
rclone was updated to 1.65.2 (@Harvey)
weechat was updated to 4.2.0 (@EbonJaeger)

Other desktop updates

Our gedit-plugins package has been split into a separate package for each plugin. The previous gedit-plugins package remains as a sort of metapackage which will install all the other plugin packages. This way, users that already have it installed won't have to re-install all of their plugins one-by-one. Splitting the plugins fixes an issue in the Software Center (and the upcoming GNOME Software and KDE Discover) where the package name would show up as the name of one of the plugins due to each plugin shipping its own metainfo file, thus confusing the software center.

Running SDDM (the display manager for Plasma) under Wayland is now possible with the sddm-wayland-experimental package, for Plasma users interested in using Wayland. As the name suggests, the package is still experimental and may have issues. People testing this are encouraged to file issues on our development tracker.

Discord was updated to 0.0.41 (@Harvey)
Add missing runtime dependency to KDE Connect for non-Plasma systems (@EbonJaeger)
nextcloud-client was updated to 3.10.4 (@silkeh)
papirus-icon-theme was updated to 20231201 (@EbonJaeger)
rpi-imager was updated to 1.8.5 (@Harvey)
qdirstat was updated to 1.9 (@algent)
winff was updated to 1.6.2 (Rick Campbell)
variety was updated to 0.8.12 (@algent)
Added AppStream metadata for NVIDIA 470.xx driver
Improved AppStream metadata for NVIDIA driver

System updates

btrfs-progs was updated to 6.7 (@silkeh)
fwupd was updated to 1.9.12 (@joebonrichie)
glib2 was updated to 2.78.4 (@joebonrichie)
Updated mesalib to 23.3.4 & enabled xcb-keysyms support (@joebonrichie)
Backported fix for PipeWire to fix audio popping and crackling issues
thermald was updated to 2.5.5 (@davidjharder)

That’s all for this week, folks! Check back next week for another weekly roundup.

Solarmass

InputAdaptive addon for Kodi is gone after update, I still see it on another system that wasn't updated yet.
Issue reported on github.

WetGeek

@EbonJaeger ,Both of these links:

point out that testing is to be done on the unstable repository. Yet Discover is now available in Shannon.

When I start Discover, before I can do anything at all, an error appears about a missing file. Presumably it's a dependency that's not included. I'm very unclear whether it's a known issue, or I need to report it as a bug, and in the latter case, shall I do that in the bug tracker?

EbonJaeger

WetGeek Ideally, testing would be done on Unstable, since that is where fixes to the software centers and related plumbing would happen the quickest, allowing for the most efficient feedback. It being available on Shannon as well is just a consequence of how our repository system functions.

If you are getting an error, that should indeed be filed on the issue tracker.

Harvey

opera-stable 106.0.4998.66 cherry-picked.

WetGeek

EbonJaeger If you are getting an error, that should indeed be filed on the issue tracker.

Gotcha. Today's just about over for me, but I'll fire up my workstation tomorrow and connect it to unstable. I've used Discover on other distros, and I'm happy to see it available on Solus.

joluveba

So far so good, thank you very much!

JossephKerr

Woo! Experimental shit, time to destroy my installation!

JossephKerr

Whenever I Upgrade, my audio devices typically my speakers lose sounds and do not come back on until I restart my PC also my turned off Audio devices come back onto the list.

Never mind, changing the output in settings and going back fixes it is still a mild annoyance.

UncleSlacky

Just noticed that while my laptop upgraded OK, the "tap-to-click" function was disabled on my wife's (same model) - I think because I'm using the synaptics driver instead of the (default) libinput. I had something similar happen recently when the logind.conf file was deleted without me realizing (thus losing my lid-close config setting) so I had to recreate the file.

topolojack

UncleSlacky also on synaptics here, my tap to click was also disabled, but i reenabled it via the settings.

andrewnoonan2004

Thank you so much for backporting that pipewire fix! It has vastly improved my experience on my laptop!

bubba66

Same with my Budgie set up tap-to-click was toggled off after the sync, once switched back on all is well.

tflovik

Tap to click had to be enabled again + i had to deselect natural scrolling. Those two setting was changed on my laptop.

qk4-li3

Spouse's Asus vivobook, Touchpad, right click button didn't work after update until I changed setting at Budgie Control center: Touchpad Click Method ; Use the touchpad default. Can't recall what the setting were.

MetaNorm

qk4-li3
Right click option is gone as well under GNOME. How can I get it back?

FAb7D

First of all many thanks ( @ReillyBrogan) for updating g'mic!!! I use it with Gimp, but (for curiosity) I wanted to try out g'mic for Krita and to me (I use kde) it goes into crash (when I open gmic filter from krita):

krita
kf.config.core: Watching absolute paths is not supported "/usr/share/color-schemes/KritaDark.colors"
krita.lib.pigment: Replacing color space factory "LABA" "L*a*b* (interi a 16 bit per canale, non gestito)" with "LABA" "L*a*b*/Alfa (16 bit interi/canale)"
krita.lib.pigment: Replacing color space factory "RGBA" "RGB (interi a 8 bit per canale, non gestito)" with "RGBA" "RGB/Alfa (8 bit interi/canale)"
krita.lib.pigment: Replacing color space factory "RGBA16" "RGB (interi a 16 bit per canale, non gestito)" with "RGBA16" "RGB/Alfa (16 bit interi/canale)"
QObject::startTimer: Timers cannot have negative intervals
/usr/lib/krita-python-libs/krita added to PYTHONPATH
*** stack smashing detected ***: terminated
19 -- exe=/usr/bin/krita
13 -- platform=xcb
11 -- display=:0
14 -- appname=krita
17 -- apppath=/usr/bin
9 -- signal=6
9 -- pid=3280
17 -- appversion=5.2.2
18 -- programname=Krita
KCrash: Application 'krita' crashing...
KCrash: Attempting to start /usr/lib64/kf5/drkonqi
*** stack smashing detected ***: terminated
Unable to start Dr. Konqi
Re-raising signal for core dump handling.
org.kde.drkonqi: Unable to find an internal debugger that can work with the crash backend
Annullato (core dump creato)

Does anyone else have the same problem?

ReillyBrogan

FAb7D Could you open up an issue for it on our Github, including detailed reproduction steps?

presianbg

Great update.

One issue with thermald - it's crashing (known bug):
Release 2.5.6

Fix crash with GDBus port

davidjharder

presianbg I have 2.5.6 in unstable, I'll see about cherry picking