Heya folks! It's time for another weekly roundup!

The Linux kernels have been updated to the latest versions. Our current branch is now on 6.9.12, and the LTS branch is on 6.6.43. Additionally, SimpleDRM has been enabled in linux-current, replacing the legacy Linux frame buffer device (fbdev). This switch means that Wayland environments will work in cases where no DRM driver is in use.

Our NVIDIA GLX driver has been updated to 550.107.02. This release fixes a few bugs:

  • Fixed a race condition involving modeset ownership which could lead to flip event timeout errors when enabling the 'fbdev' kernel module parameter in nvidia-drm
  • Fixed a regression that caused nvidia-powerd to exit when nvidia-dbus.conf was not present in the /etc/dbus-1/system.d/ directory
  • Fixed a bug that could cause memory corruption while handling ACPI events on some notebooks
  • Fixed a bug that could cause external displays to become frozen until the next modeset when using PRIME Display Offloading with the NVIDIA dGPU acting as the display offload sink

The initrd extension has also been re-enabled in the mainline GLX driver.

In order to make it easier for users to install and use flatpaks, Flathub is now enabled as a repository by default. After installing this update to our Flatpak package, a systemd service will run during the next system boot to add Flathub as a configured flatpak repository if it does not already exist. Once completed, the service will not run again.

For XFCE4 users, xfce4-screenshooter has been updated to 1.11.1. In the 1.11.0 release, they removed built-in support for uploading screenshots to Imgur.

Peek, a simple tool for recording short, animated GIFs of your screen, has been deprecated. The author of the program discontinued it in January 2023.

Our Solus Cleanup Crew:tm: has been hard at work this week bringing the repository up to current standards:

Most of these tasks are beginner-friendly, and can be a great way to learn Solus packaging. We invite anyone that has the time and inclination to join us!

If you would like to join:

  1. Join Solus Packaging Room on Matrix
  2. Read and practice our packaging documentation
  3. Submit your first Pull Request. We recommend doing the homepage task
  4. Follow along the review process until your PR gets merged
  5. Continue on contributing!

Security updates

We have a few security updates this week. Make sure to install updates to have the latest vulnerability protections!

General updates

The full list of updated packages can be found here.

That’s all for this week, folks! We'll be here same time, same place next week for another roundup of the news!

How did the sync go for you?

This poll has ended.

    I got an error message during reboot telling me that it couldn't start flatpak something-or-other.

    After the reboot, Bluetooth was shut off, so no mouse and keyboard.

    I ignored the first, since I don't use flatpak, and knew how to fix the second.

    Another smooth update here on Plasma.

    EbonJaeger

    I processed 80 Solus updates (829,27 MiB) this morning and nothing special to report. Thanks!

    In order to make it easier for users to install and use flatpaks, Flathub is now enabled as a repository by default. After installing this update to our Flatpak package, a systemd service will run during the next system boot to add Flathub as a configured flatpak repository if it does not already exist. Once completed, the service will not run again.

    Should we to understand that flatpak updates will arrive now in Solus Software Center, or will we have to continue to look for them in Gnome Software Center?
    Are flatpak terminal commands still relevant?

        penny-farthing Please make a distinction betwen Flatpak and Flathub. The simple explanation is this: Flatpak is like a package manager (like eopkg) and Flathub is the repository (like we have shannon and unstable). Before this update, Flatpak was already installed by default after fresh install, but Flathub is not enabled. Users have to enable it themselves. After this update, Flathub is enabled by default automatically.

        Solus Software Center will not have any Flatpak support, not after this update or ever. If a user want to install/remove Flatpak via GUI, use either KDE Discover or Gnome Software. Flatpak CLI will keep working, doesn't matter if you ever use it or not.

            Issues on mine (GNOME). Got error message about Flatpak every booting. I don't know the complete message because it was disappear quickly. And then no sound, I see in Settings -> Sound = Dummy Output. Reinstalling sof-firmware is not solving that problem.

              Yoshi I had the dummy sound thing one time on update just rebooted and then
              selected ouput.

                On Budgie, no sound since last update in Sound - Output: dummy output

                No sound. Output device changed to dummy output as reported by others above.

                Does sound work if you switch to the previous kernel or downgrade pipewire?

                sudo eopkg it https://cdn.getsol.us/repo/unstable/p/pipewire/pipewire-lib-1.2.1-104-1-x86_64.eopkg https://cdn.getsol.us/repo/unstable/p/pipewire/pipewire-1.2.1-104-1-x86_64.eopkg

                  No sound. A few things to check.

                  1. Check if the services are active: 
                    systemctl --user status wireplumber
systemctl --user status pipewire
                  2. Are you on PipeWire LANG=C pactl info | grep '^Server Name'
                  3. Is something muted in alsamixer?
                  4. Headphones or other output devices are not enabled in pavucontrol in Output devices and the appropriate profile is enabled in Configuration.
                  5. And whether the card module is loaded inxi -A | grep Device

                  I saw 3 users report issues on the enable-flathub-repo one-off service startup, both on this thread and on Matrix.
                  to be safe, should I enable Flathub as repo first, before I do the sync for Week 31?