Heya folks! It's that time of the week, again! Here's the latest Solus news.
KDE Plasma has been updated to version 6.0.4 this week by @Justin. This release contains three weeks of bugfixes and translation updates. Fixes include exporting urls to the Desktop Portal on drag and copy in Fodlermodel, fixing the column configuration dialog being too small on the overview page in System Monitor, and checking the actual battery for charge state workaround in the battery applet. You can read the entire changelog here.
If you've been wondering on how to use HDR on Plasma, @ReillyBrogan has just the thread for you! Note that HDR is still experimental, and is not supported by either Plasma or Solus devs. If you would still like to check it out, read Reilly's guide on it here.
On a somewhat related note, libxcb and xcb-proto were both updated, bringing us closer to explicit sync support. If you haven't heard of explicit sync before, it is a feature recently integrated into Wayland, finally solving the biggest issues with using NVIDIA and Wayland together. Explicit synchronization promises to refine the interaction between applications, the operating system, and graphics hardware, promising to lead to smoother and more reliable graphics performance across a variety of devices. If you would like to read more about this, check out this blog post by Bobby Borisov. All that we need now is support in Mesa, XWayland, and the NVIDIA driver.
The current branch of the Linux kernel has been updated to the latest in the 6.8 series (6.8.7 at the time of writing). With this update, @ReillyBrogan enabled the xe GPU driver, bcachefs, several new Zen patches, and an ntsync patch. As a part of updating the kernel, v4l2loopback was updated to v0.13.1. At the suggestion of @ermo, self-owned, stable kernel and initrd symlinks have been created in /usr/lib/kernel. While this doesn't have a direct benefit to the end user, it does enable us to come up with quick and easy methods to test invasive changes to the Solus configuration that will work across kernel updates.
PAM was updated to 1.6 this cycle. This release brings many bugfixes, and a few new features. If you want to view the full changelog, check out the release pages for 1.6.0 and 1.6.1. Alongside this update, faillock has been made to persist across reboots, meaning if you lock yourself out of your computer, you can no longer reboot to reset it. This improves security as someone can't reboot your machine to keep trying different passwords.
The LibreOffice office suite has been updated to version 24.2.2.2. Many improvements have been made, the full list of which can be found here. With this update, the Qt6/KF6 backend has been enabled, replacing the old Qt5/KF5 version. This should improve the look and feel of LibreOffice applications on Plasma 6, with native Qt6 dialogs, controls, better HiDPI support, and better platform integration.
OpenJDK 21 landed in the repository this week. This is the latest LTS release of the open Java platform. It contains a bunch of new features, including sequenced collections, pattern matching for switch, virtual threads, and more. The official announcement can be found here.
Lua has also been updated to 5.4.6, from 5.3. This release features a new generational mode for garbage collection, const variables, a new implementation for math.random, and more. Read the announcement for more information.
@joebonrichie has been working on the update for GNOME 46. GNOME 46, codenamed "Kathmandu", was released last month, but as always, we wanted to wait for 46.1 before updating on Solus. While 46.1 doesn't officially release until the 20th of this month, release tarballs have been trickling out so work can start on updating our packages. If all goes well, GNOME 46.1 will land in Unstable next week for testing. It has not yet been determined if next week's sync will be deferred. We'll update you once we know for sure.
Security updates
We have 5 security fixes this week:
As always, make sure you're up-to-date to have the latest protections against vulnerabilities!
Multimedia updates
Gaming updates
CLI tool updates
System updates
- bbswitch was updated to 0.8-328 (@ReillyBrogan, @ReillyBrogan).
- bluez was updated to 5.75-52 (@ReillyBrogan, @ReillyBrogan).
- broadcom-sta was updated to 6.30.223.271-397 (@ReillyBrogan, @ReillyBrogan).
- harfbuzz was updated to 8.4.0-70 (@ReillyBrogan).
- libeconf was updated to 0.6.3-7 (@ReillyBrogan).
- libplacebo was updated to 6.338.2-25 (@aleksvor, @ReillyBrogan).
- libxcb was updated to 1.17.0-34 (@ReillyBrogan).
- libxmu was updated to 1.2.1-14 (@ReillyBrogan).
- linux-current was updated to 6.8.7-286 (@ReillyBrogan, @ReillyBrogan).
- linux-lts was updated to 6.6.28-241 (@ReillyBrogan, @ReillyBrogan).
- linux-headers was updated to 6.8.6-106 (@ReillyBrogan).
- linux-tools was updated to 6.8.6-97 (@ReillyBrogan).
- nvidia-glx-driver was updated to 550.67-516 (@ReillyBrogan, @ReillyBrogan).
- nvidia-470-glx-driver was updated to 470.239.06-78 (@ReillyBrogan, @ReillyBrogan).
- nvidia-beta-driver was updated to 550.54.14-266 (@ReillyBrogan, @ReillyBrogan).
- nvidia-developer-driver was updated to 550.40.55-282 (@ReillyBrogan, @ReillyBrogan).
- oath-toolkit was updated to 2.6.11-3 (@ReillyBrogan).
- open-vm-tools was updated to 12.3.5-298 (@ReillyBrogan, @ReillyBrogan).
- openrazer was updated to 3.8.0-314 (@ReillyBrogan, @ReillyBrogan, @ReillyBrogan).
- openssh was updated to 9.7_p1-56 (@ReillyBrogan).
- packagekit was updated to 1.2.8-28 (@joebonrichie).
- pam was updated to 1.6.1-34 (@ReillyBrogan, @ReillyBrogan).
- pipewire was updated to 1.0.5-100 (@ReillyBrogan).
- python-eopkg was updated to 4.0-2 (@joebonrichie).
- rtl8852bu was updated to 1.19.3-20 (@ReillyBrogan, @ReillyBrogan).
- snapd was updated to 2.62-80 (@zyga).
- sqlite3 was updated to 3.45.3-54 (@ReillyBrogan).
- suricata was updated to 4.1.5-26 (@Tracey Clark).
- util-macros was updated to 1.20.1-9 (@ReillyBrogan).
- v4l2loopback was updated to 0.13.1-290 (@ReillyBrogan, @ReillyBrogan).
- vhba-module was updated to 20240202-250 (@ReillyBrogan, @ReillyBrogan).
- wireplumber was updated to 0.5.1-27 (@Tracey Clark).
- xone was updated to 0.3-61 (@ReillyBrogan, @ReillyBrogan).
- ypkg was updated to 31-184 (@joebonrichie, @joebonrichie).
- zstd was updated to 1.5.6-31 (@ReillyBrogan).
Programming and language updates
Other desktop updates
That’s all for this week, folks! Join us again next time for another roundup of the news!
