The letter is addressed to the maintainers of Linux distributions who elect to ship custom GTK and icons themes by default in lieu of upstream defaults. From a report: By publicizing the issues they feel stem from the practice of "theming" it's hoped that distros and developers might work together to create a "healthier GNOME third party app ecosystem." So what's the actual rub here? It often feels like the ability to control how our desktop looks and works is part of some unwritten Linux constitution, one we're all secret adherents to.

But theming on the GNOME platform isn't all it seems. It's not without complications or compromises. As superficial as these changes might seem, usability is actually more than skin deep. Now, elephant in the room time: many leading Linux distros use custom GTK themes and icon sets as a way create a brand identity for themselves; an experience that feels uniquely their own. This includes Ubuntu (with Ambiance and Yaru), Linux Mint (with Mint-X), Pop OS (with Pop GTK) and Manjaro.

Fedora 30, the newest release of the venerable Linux distribution that serves (in part) as the staging environment for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, was released Tuesday, bringing with it a number of improvements and performance optimizations. From a report: he most exciting aspect, for workstation/desktop users at least, is the update to GNOME 3.32. Of course, that is hardly the only notable update -- the DNF package manager is getting a performance boost, for instance. In other words, this is a significant operating system upgrade that should delight both existing Fedora users and beginners alike. "Fedora 30 brings enhancements to all editions with updates to the common underlying packages, from bug fixes and performance tweaks to new versions. In Fedora 30, base updates include Bash shell 5.0, Fish 3.0, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) 9 and Ruby 2.6. Fedora 30 also now uses the zchunk format for data compression within the DNF repository. When metadata is compressed using zchunk DNF will only download the differences between earlier copies of metadata and the current versions, saving on resources and increasing efficiency," says The Fedora Project.

Canonical today announced the release of Ubuntu 19.04 "Disco Dingo." With Linux 5.0 and GNOME 3.32, Disco Dingo features performance improvements and visual tweaks. Whether or not you upgrade, Disco Dingo lays the groundwork for future long term support releases of Ubuntu. From a report: Keep in mind, version 19.04 is not LTS (Long Term Support), meaning it is only supported until January 2020. "Ubuntu 19.04 introduces GNOME 3.32 with higher frame rates, smoother startup animations, quicker icon load times and reduced CPU+GPU load. Fractional scaling for HiDPI screens is now available in X-org and Wayland. Installing Ubuntu on VMWare will automatically install open-vm-tools for bi-directional clipboard, easy sharing of files and graceful power state management," says Canonical. The Ubuntu-maker further says, "In Ubuntu 19.04, multiple instances of the same snap can be installed for CI/CD, testing or phased rollouts. For example, two versions of a database or two versions of the golang compiler can be installed at the same time. Snap epochs control when and how data migration happens between major version upgrades."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Today, Canonical's Ubuntu reaches a major milestone. You see, Ubuntu 19.04, which is named "Disco Dingo," has achieved Beta status. And yes, you can download it immediately. Fans of GNOME will be glad to know that version 3.32 is included in the standard Ubuntu Desktop release. Also cool? This is the first version of Ubuntu to use Linux kernel 5.

Longtime Slashdot reader ole writes: GNOME Internet Radio Locator 1.6.0 is now freely available for GNOME systems. The 1.6.0 release is a stable release with Internet radio stations from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, England, Scotland, France and Belgium, as well as U.S.A., Canada, Mexico and Guatemala, mapped for GNOME Maps and city text search interface with auto-completion for 76 world cities that are featured in this release. You may download the 1.6.0 release of GNOME Internet Radio Locator here and download packages for Fedora 28 and 29 on x86_64 here

An anonymous reader shares a report: This week, the Linux distro biz emitted Fedora 29 and RHEL 7.6, and in the latter's changelog the following appears, which a Reg reader kindly just alerted us to: "KDE Plasma Workspaces (KDE), which has been provided as an alternative to the default GNOME desktop environment has been deprecated. A future major release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux will no longer support using KDE instead of the default GNOME desktop environment." In other words, if you're using RHEL on the desktop, at some point KDE will not be supported. As our tipster remarked: "Red Hat has never exactly been a massive supporter of KDE, but at least they shipped it and supported you using it."

Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish, the latest version of Ubuntu, is now available to download. From a report: Under the hood, the Cosmic Cuttlefish boasts the 4.18 Linux Kernel. This updates comes with better support for for AMD and Nvidia GPU, USB Type-C and Thunderbolt, a way for unprivileged users to mount Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) can be mounted by, and CPUfreq performance improvements. On top of this, you'll find the freshest version of GNOME 3.30. You can, of course, use other desktops, but GNOME, since Ubuntu 17.10, is Ubuntu's default desktop. You'll be glad to know that GNOME is faster than it has been for a while. That's because some nasty memory leaks have been patched. Canonical has also added some performance tweaks that didn't make it into the GNOME 3.30 upstream. Ubuntu 18.10 also comes with a new desktop theme, the Yaru Community theme installed by default, for your visual enjoyment. Further reading: Ubuntu 18.10: What's New? [Video]; Ubuntu 18.10 Review; and Ubuntu 18.10 Flavors Released, Ready to Download.

British IT news outlet The Register looks at the myriad of challenges Apache OpenOffice faces today. From the report: Last year Brett Porter, then chairman of the Apache Software Foundation, contemplated whether a proposed official blog post on the state of Apache OpenOffice (AOO) might discourage people from downloading the software due to lack of activity in the project. No such post from the software's developers surfaced. The languid pace of development at AOO, though, has been an issue since 2011 after Oracle (then patron of the project) got into a fork-fight with The Document Foundation, which created LibreOffice from the OpenOffice codebase, and asked developers backing the split to resign.

Back in 2015, Red Hat developer Christian Schaller called OpenOffice "all but dead." Assertions to that effect have continued since, alongside claims to the contrary. Almost a year ago, Jim Jagielski, a member of the Apache OpenOffice Project Management Committee, insisted things were going well and claimed there was renewed interest in the project. For all the concern about AOO, no issues have been raised recently before the Apache Foundation board to suggest ongoing difficulties. The project is due to provide an update this month, according to a spokesperson for the foundation.

Jack Wallen, writing for TechRepublic: For a company to support Linux, they have to consider supporting: Multiple file systems, multiple distributions, multiple desktops, multiple init systems, multiple kernels. If you're an open source developer, focusing on a single distribution, that's not a problem. If you're a company that produces a product (and you stake your living on that product), those multiple points of entry do become a problem. Let's consider Adobe (and Photoshop). If Adobe wanted to port their industry-leading product to Linux, how do they do that? Do they spend the time developing support for ext4, btrfs, Ubuntu, Fedora, GNOME, Mate, KDE, systemd? You see how that might look from the eyes of any given company?

It becomes even more complicated when companies consider how accustomed to the idea of "free" (as in beer) Linux users are. Although I am very willing to pay for software on Linux, it's a rare occasion that I do (mostly because I haven't found a piece of must-have software that has an associated cost). Few companies will support the Linux desktop when the act of supporting means putting that much time and effort into a product that a large cross-section of users might wind up unwilling to pay the price of admission. That's not to say every Linux user is unwilling to shell out the cost for a piece of software. But many won't.

An anonymous reader writes: Current versions of Ubuntu and CentOS are disabling a security feature that was added to the GNOME desktop environment last year. The feature's name is Bubblewrap, which is a sandbox environment that the GNOME Project added to secure GNOME's thumbnail parsers in July 2017, with the release of GNOME 3.26. In recent years, security researchers have proven that thumbnail parses can be an attack vector [1, 2, 3].

Ubuntu Security Tech Lead Alex Murray said the Ubuntu team chose to disable Bubblewrap inside Ubuntu because they did not have the time to perform a security audit. Murray blamed the many CPU bugs (Spectre, Meltdown, etc.), which kept the team busy and prevented them to audit the feature.

"The GNOME Foundation is pleased to be able to offer paid employment to exceptional people who have the drive to help us complete our mission," reads a new announcement. Gnome.org explains: Today, July 6th 2018, the GNOME Foundation has announced a number of positions it is recruiting for to help drive the GNOME project and Free Software on the desktop.

As previously announced, this has been made possible thanks to a generous grant that the Foundation has received, enabling us to accelerate this expansion. "These positions are key to ensuring that the Foundation remains sustainable and that we are able to support the community in key areas," said Neil McGovern, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation.
The Foundation is currently recruiting for four posts:

• Development Coordinator. This will ensure that we receive sufficient funds to continue our work delivering free software.
• Program Coordinator. The Program Coordinator will free up time from those involved in organizational, administrative and logistical problems.
• Devops/Sysadmin. The systems and services we run need proper maintenance and care. As Flathub [An app store and build service for Linux] continues to grow, more support is needed to achieve this.
• GTK+ core developer. GTK+ is core to our entire platform. Investing in development and maintenance of this toolkit will benefit the whole GNU/Linux ecosystem.

"The Foundation is keen to hear from any person who is interested in applying for one of these posts."

An anonymous reader writes: An experimental reader mode will ship in the next version of GNOME Web, aka Epiphany. The feature is already available to try in the latest development builds of the GTK Webkit-based web browser, released this week as part of the GNOME 3.29.3 milestone. Reader mode (also known as "reader view") is a toggle option that strips a web page down to its bare text. All bespoke styling, background images, buttons, branding and page ephemera is removed. You get a distraction-free, text version of a web page. Because reader mode use its own custom .css to present web content it is (sometimes) possible to adjust a page's text size, background color, and/or layout for improved readability. There's no indication (yet) of customisation options being available in GNOME Web's version.

DuroSoft writes: Earlier this week an article ran about how Microsoft's multi-year refusal to rename its terabyte-scale Git extension "GVFS" (Git Virtual File System) had drawn the ire and dismay of the GNOME GVfs project (Gnome Virtual File System) which predates the Microsoft project by years. Thanks to Slashdot coverage and community pressure, Microsoft has now officially promised to rename GVFS to something else, and is asking the community for suggestions for a new name. Is this an official sign that MIcrosoft is finally listening to developers (albeit with a Slashdot-level of negative attention), or are they simply trying to appease the crowd while they are still in the news due to their acquisition of GitHub?

New submitter DuroSoft writes: It has been over a year since Microsoft unveiled its open source GVFS (Git Virtual File System) project, designed to make terabyte-scale repositories, like it's own 270GB Windows source code, manageable using Git. The problem is that the GNOME project already has a virtual file system by the name of GVfs that has been in use for years, with hundreds of threads on Stack Overflow, etc. Yet Microsoft's GVFS has already surpassed GVfs in Google and is causing confusion. To make matters worse, Microsoft has officially refused to change the name, despite a large public backlash on GitHub and social media, and despite pull requests providing scripts that can change the name to anything Microsoft wants. Is this mere arrogance on Microsoft's part, laziness to do a quick Google search before using a name, or is it something more sinister?

Brian Fagioli, writing for BetaNews: This week, The GNOME Foundation made a shocking revelation: a mystery donor has pledged $1 million dollars. We don't know who is promising the money -- it could be a rich man or woman, but more likely -- and this is pure speculation -- it is probably a company that benefits from GNOME, such as Red Hat or Canonical.

"An anonymous donor has pledged to donate up to $1,000,000 over the next two years, some of which will be matching funds. The GNOME Foundation is grateful for this donation and plans on using these funds to increase staff to streamline operations and to grow its support of the GNOME Project and the surrounding ecosystem. While the GNOME Foundation has maintained its position as a proponent of the GNOME Project, growth has been limited. With these funds, the GNOME Foundation will be able to expand and lead in the free software space," says The GNOME Foundation.

Canonical's Will Cooke on Friday talked about the features the company is working on for Ubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish" cycle. He writes: We're also adding some new features which we didn't get done in time for the main 18.04 release. Specifically: Unlock with your fingerprint, Thunderbolt settings via GNOME Control Center, and XDG Portals support for snap.

GNOME Software improvements
We're having a week long sprint in June to map out exactly how we want the software store to work, how we want to present information and to improve the overall UX of GNOME Software. We've invited GNOME developers along to work with Ubuntu's design team and developers to discuss ideas and plan the work. I'll report back from the sprint in June.

Snap start-up time
Snapcraft have added the ability for us to move some application set up from first run to build time. This will significantly improve desktop application first time start up performance, but there is still more we can do.

Chromium as a snap
Chromium is becoming very hard to build on older releases of Ubuntu as it uses a number of features of modern C++ compilers. Snaps can help us solve a lot of those problems and so we propose to ship Chromium only as a snap from 18.10 onwards, and also to retire Chromium as a deb in Trusty. If you're still running Trusty you can get the latest Chromium as a snap right now. In addition, Ubuntu team is also working on introducing improvements to power consumption, adding support for DLNA, so that users could share media directly from their desktop to DLNA clients (without having to install and configure extra packages), and improved phone integration by shipping GS Connect as part of the desktop, the GNOME port of KDE Connect. Additional changelog here.

Following an official beta release, Fedora 28 has been released today. From a report: Fedora 28 has many new features, but one in particular will surely excite desktop/workstation users -- GNOME 3.28, which introduces Thunderbolt 3 support and improved laptop battery life. Fedora has long used GNOME as the default desktop environment, and best of all, it is mostly a stock affair -- no silly tweaks enabled by default. In other words, you get a very pure GNOME experience, making Fedora Workstation the preferred OS for many hardcore fans of the DE. "GNOME 3.28 adds the capability to favorite files, folders, and contacts for easier organization and access. Additionally, the new application Usage is included to help users more easily diagnose and resolve performance and capacity issues," says The Fedora Project.

On Tuesday Red Hat announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 7.5. An anonymous reader writes: Serving as a consistent foundation for hybrid cloud environments, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 provides enhanced security and compliance controls, tools to reduce storage costs, and improved usability, as well as further integration with Microsoft Windows infrastructure both on-premise and in Microsoft Azure.

New features include a large combination of Ansible Automation with OpenSCAP, and LUKS-encrypted removable storage devices can be now automatically unlocked using NBDE. The Gnome shell has been re-based to version 3.26, the Kernel version is 3.10.0-862, and the kernel-alt packages include kernel version 4.14 with support for 64-bit ARM, IBM POWER9 (little endian), and IBM z Systems, while KVM virtualization is now supported on IBM POWER8/POWER9 systems.
See the detailed release notes here.

An anonymous reader writes: Ubuntu Linux 18.04 "Bionic Beaver" is almost here -- it is due on April 26. In the interim, today, the second -- and final -- beta becomes available. Bionic Beaver is very significant, as it is an LTS version, meaning "Long Term Support." This is important to those that prefer stability to bleeding edge and don't want to deal with the hassle of upgrades. In other words, you can install 18.04 and be confident that it will be supported for 5 years. In comparison, non-LTS Ubuntu versions get a mere 9 months.

There is plenty to be excited about with Ubuntu Linux 18.04 LTS 'Bionic Beaver' Beta 2, including the GNOME 3.28 desktop environment -- Beta 1 did not include GNOME at all. Of course, all the other DE flavors are available too, such as KDE and Xfce. The kernel is at 4.15, which while not the most current version, is still quite modern. Also included is LibreOffice 6.0 -- an essential tool that rivals Microsoft Office. Wayland is available as a technical preview, although X remains the default display server -- for now.

An anonymous reader writes: Today, version 28 of the Fedora finally achieves beta status. After a short delay -- it was scheduled to be available a week earlier -- the distro is back on track, and looking better than ever. As is typical now, there are three versions of the operating system -- Atomic Host, Server, and Workstation. While all three have their places, normal desktop computer users will want to focus on Workstation. While there are plenty of new features (and bugs), the most exciting aspect of Fedora 28 Workstation is the inclusion of the GNOME 3.28 desktop environment.