Funding the Xubuntu Development Server

Thanks to the Ubuntu Community Fund, the Xubuntu web server has been funded for another two years. Elizabeth announced the news on Twitter early in September. If you want to sponsor Xubuntu and the other flavors, the community fund is the way to go. Other options are available on the Xubuntu website.

Thanks to the @Ubuntu Community Fund 💰 (https://t.co/2L3DIvWvnU) the @Xubuntu development server is funded for another two years! 🥳 #Ubuntu #Xubuntu

— Elizabeth K. Joseph (@pleia2) September 5, 2021

Wallpaper Update

On September 30, Pasi uploaded the new wallpaper for Xubuntu 21.10. This cycle's wallpaper features overlapping teal geometric shapes, continuing the tradition of calm and clean backdrops. The updated xubuntu-artwork package has been submitted and is currently awaiting acceptance into the 21.10 archive.

Package Updates

In September, the Xubuntu packageset saw only a few updates to Xfce and Xubuntu components.

• greybird-gtk-theme 3.22.15-1

• libxfce4ui 4.16.1-1

• sgt-launcher 0.2.7-0ubuntu1

• xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin 2.6.0-1

In other package-related (semi-Xubuntu-related) news, Ayatana indicators have replaced the original libappindicator and libindicator in Ubuntu, with the originals demoted from main to universe. libappindicator and libindicator have been removed entirely from Debian.

Xfce 4.17 PPA Update

Xfce 4.18 is still very early in its development, with Xfce 4.17 as its development series. Our Debian package manager, Unit 193, has started publishing Xfce 4.17 builds to the Xubuntu QA Experimental PPA for testing and development. There's not much to see here yet, but if you're curious (and don't mind the occasional breakage), check it out! If you prefer not to install bleeding-edge packages on your system, you can also use the XFCE Test docker image to try out the latest changes.

Upcoming Dates

If you're following along with the Release Schedule, you know that Xubuntu 21.10 "Impish Indri" is just around the corner! The BETA release notes are up on the Xubuntu Wiki. More than ever, please take the time to test Xubuntu to help us catch some last-minute bugs.

• October 7: Final Freeze, Release Candidate

• October 14: Final Release

Thanks for reading! Join the conversation with @Xubuntu on Twitter, the Xubuntu Users group on Facebook, or IRC!

xfdashboard-0.9.5 "Have beat the daemon" was released on 2021-10-02.

This is a development release.

• Fixed signal definition of "can-suspend" at XfdashboardCore which prevented it to return the correct value if suspend is supported. It always returned FALSE even if xfdashboard is run in daemon mode and stopped to run background and activating some plugin. (GH#197)
• Updated translations: be, bg, ca, da, de, el, es, et, eu, fr, gl, he, id, it, ja, ko, lt, nb, nl, pl, pt, pt_BR, ru, sl, sq, sr, sv, tr, zh_CN

Besides the bug fixes and feature updates listed below, this release migrates the source code from C to C++ in order to increase type-safety, to use reference counting and containers for semi-automatic memory management where possible, and to slightly improve source code readability.

• Update README
• New icons
• Lower the number of false positives in sub-optimal SMT scheduling
• Account for irregular core IDs in CPU topology (issue #25)
• Increase type-safety of the return types of callback functions
• Fix CPU topology initialization memory leak
• Replace author nicknames with real names
• Update and sort the list of authors
• Use C++ λ-functions for widget signal handlers
• Slightly improved CPU count detection in case some CPUs are offline
• Bump requirements to version 4.14
• Enable close button translations (issue #24)
• Fix compiler warnings on FreeBSD and SUN
• Bump properties dialog to Xfce 4.14 API
• Avoid FreeBSD "string.h" include file issue
• Translation Updates: Albanian, Arabic, Armenian (Armenia), Basque, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Eastern Armenian, English (Australia), English (United Kingdom), Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Interlingue, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Occitan (post 1500), Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Uyghur

[Please note that this is a development release.]

Providing another exo dev-release majorly to give proper trusted flag-support for testers

Changelog:

• Add typecheck to prevent Gtk-CRITICAL (Issue #63)
• Initialize modifier at the time of declaration
• Remove redundant code
• Fix AC_LANG_SOURCE macro
• Fix G_UNLIKELY check
• Fix memory leak
• exo_strdup_strftime: Support additional encoding (Issue #66)
• exo-die: Add trusted flag support

Translation Updates: Catalan, Galician, Indonesian, Kazakh, Spanish

What's New?

New Features

• Added diagnostics for failed menu loading
• Added support for GNOME-specific categories (#56)
• Added support for PrefersNonDefaultGPU (#50)
• Added support for unprefixed applications.menu (#67)
• Added support for X-GNOME-UsesNotifications (#79)
• Added support for XFCE-specific categories (#54)
• Enabled opening a root editor for root-owned files with pkexec (#62)
• Enabled searching for Exec key and desktop entry (#52)

General

• Added AppData file (#61)
• Documented intltool build requirement (#59)
• Switched to the MenuLibre Wiki for key descriptions (#48)

Bug Fixes

• Added valid types to validator, reducing false positives (#66)
• Fixed builds with newer versions of GTK (#77)
• Fixed history state when editing Name and Comment (#57)
• Fixed running with newer versions of GTK (#82)
• Fixed selection leaving screen while moving items (#25)
• Fixed typo in desktop file processing error
• Fixed msgfmt errors

Updated Translations

Arabic, Catalan, Chinese (China), Danish, Dutch, English (United Kingdom), French, German, Japanese, Lithuanian, Malay, Malay (Arabic), Polish, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian

Deep Dive Into New Features

Newly Added Keys

PrefersNonDefaultGPU was added to the FreeDesktop.org Desktop Entry Specification in version 1.4. It's a hint for the desktop environment to use a non-discrete, more powerful GPU, if it is available. Support for this key was recently added to Xubuntu and elementary, and is making it's way to other desktop environments as well.

X-GNOME-UsesNotifications is used by GNOME, elementary, and other GTK desktops (possibly others as well) to inform the environment that an app can send notifications. This enables management of those notifications through a single interface. This feature is seen in GNOME and elementary.

Improving Cross-Platform Support

Support for GNOME-specific and Xfce-specific application categories has been added. When running in a supported desktop environment, these categories are now available and should enable a tighter integration and more advanced menu management features.

Un-prefixed applications.menu files, as seen in Manjaro KDE, are now supported. Typically, a desktop environment will use prefixed versions of the applications menu to have separate menu options for different desktop environments. If a prefixed version of the menu cannot be found, the un-prefixed version will be used instead.

If you're using a desktop environment or distribution that is still unsupported, the new diagnostics dialog will help report the issue and get it resolved sooner. Everything I need to add support is included in the dialog, so just copy and paste or take a screenshot and report a bug on GitHub.

Find and Edit Faster

MenuLibre's search entry can now search using the Exec key and .desktop filename. This is in addition to the Name and Comment keys that were previously used. It should now be significantly easier to track down a long-lost launcher.

Menu validation received some much needed improvements. Valid types such as Link, Directory, and Service are no longer flagged for review. Invalid files that are owned by root can now be instantly edited with a root editor. pkexec is used to launch the editor will superuser permissions to make any needed adjustments.

Downloads

Source tarball (md5, sig)

This is a minor bugfix release correcting failed menu loading.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed making diagnostic text selectable on KDE
• Fixed loading from non-existent directories

• New upstream release.
• d/control, d/copyright, d/upstream/metadata, d/watch:
  • Switch to new upstream github.com/bluesabre/menulibre
  • Switch to new maintainer address
• d/control:
  • Bump Standards-Version to 4.5.1, no changes needed.
  • Bump debhelper-compat to 13
  • Update uploader email
• d/copyright:
  • Add data/metainfo/menulibre.appdata.xml
• d/upstream/metadata:
  • Add Bug-Database, Bug-Submit

[ Sean Davis ]

• New upstream release.

[ Diego M. Rodriguez ]

• d/control: drop mlocate recommends (transitional) (Closes: #992740)

[Please note that this is a development release.]

Yet another thunar development release, mainly to protect our testers from an annoying crash which can occur on clipboard operations (copy/paste)

Sorry for the inconvenience & happy testing !

The changelog:

• Reset sort_column if it exceeds THUNAR_N_VISIBLE_COLUMNS
• Avoid many 'Failed to open directory' windows (Issue #660)
• Add file & folder count on the properties dialog (Issue #395)
• Use basename instead of display_name for file duplication (#649)
• Fix signal disconnect in thunar_window_unrealize to prevent crash

• Don't go beyond THUNAR_N_VISIBLE_COLUMNS while parsing col widths

• Translation Updates: Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Armenian (Armenia), Asturian, Basque, Bengali, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Hong Kong), Chinese (Taiwan), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Eastern Armenian, English (Australia), English (United Kingdom), Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Interlingue, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Latvian, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Occitan (post 1500), Panjabi (Punjabi), Persian (Iran), Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Urdu (Pakistan), Uyghur, Vietnamese

General:

• Update "Searching…" Cursor

Bug Fixes:

• Sidebar background color bugfix
• Fixes for syntax, fulltext zip search, special files (fixes #62)
• Adds symbolic link icons, better icon updating (fixes #46)

Translation Updates: Albanian, Arabic, Armenian (Armenia), Basque, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Eastern Armenian, English (Australia), Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Interlingue, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian