• d/rules: Update sed rule to replace all occurrences, not just the first.

With Xubuntu 20.04 "Focal Fossa" due in less than two weeks (April 23, 2020), it's time to take a look at what's new. In this post, I walk through the installation process of the 20200412 daily image. These images show off the installation working completely as expected, with all components loading and installation completing successfully.

These screenshots are free to use, but don't hard link to them. Download them for yourself and share them on your publication!

Booting the Installation Media

Configuring the Installation

Finishing Up with the Slideshow

• New upstream bugfix release.
  • Fixes xfsettingsd crash with VNC (LP: #1837071)

• Include winners from the Xubuntu 20.04 Community Contest
• d/compat, d/control:
  • Bump debhelper to 12, drop d/compat
• d/control:
  • Bump Standards-Version to 4.5.0
  • Set Rules-Requires-Root: no
  • Drop Breaks/Replaces for 16.04

• Team upload.
• New upstream version 1.6.1
• d/control:
  • Update B-D: libexo-1-dev → libexo-2-dev, drop libxml-parser-perl.
  • Bump DH compat to 12.
  • R³: no.
• d/xfce4-clipman.install: Install appstream data.
• Trim whitespace from previous changelog entries.

• Team upload.

[ Debian Janitor ]

• Use secure URI in Homepage field.
• Set upstream metadata fields: Name (from ./configure), Repository.

[ Unit 193 ]

• New upstream version 0.8.9.2
• d/control:
  • Update homepage, goodies.xfce → docs.xfce.
  • R³: no.
• Update Standards-Version to 4.5.0.

• d/watch:
  • Update for upstream’s move to mirrorbit.
  • Use uscan special strings.
• New upstream version 0.4.3
• d/control:
  • Update Build-Depend, libexo-1-dev → libexo-2-dev.
  • Drop libdbus-glib-1-dev from Build-Depends.
  • Bump DH compat to 12.
  • Update homepage, goodies.xfce → docs.xfce.
  • R³: no.
• Update Standards-Version to 4.5.0.

• Team upload.
• New upstream release.

What's New?

General

• Exo 0.11 or newer is now required
• Fixed various memory leaks and warnings
• Removed unused dbus-glib include (Xfce #15343)
• Replaced g_type_class_add_private deprecations
• Updated copyright years
• Updated URLs from goodies.xfce.org to docs.xfce.org (Xfce #16173)

MPRIS Enhancements

• Support for filename icons (Xfce #14329)
• Support for single-string variants on xesam:artist
• Support for the DesktopEntry property (Xfce #14412)
• Support for the plasma-browser-integration plugin (Xfce #15487)
• Detection of artist and title from the track title

Preferences

• Fixed icon rendering for known players

Translation Updates

Albanian, Belarusian, Chinese (Taiwan), Galician, Interlingue, Slovenian

Plasma/Browser Integration

Plasma/Browser Integration is an extension for Firefox and Chromium-based browsers that better integrates those browsers with the Plasma Shell. It enables the following functionality for Plasma desktops:

• MPRIS2 media controls
• Sending links via KDE Connect
• Showing and controlling downloads from the notification area
• Finding browser tabs in the Run Command window

Thankfully, this extension does not require Plasma to run! With just a few adjustments to the Xfce PulseAudio Plugin, Xfce users can now also utilize the MPRIS2 media controls and link sharing.

How to Install

Instructions adapted and simplified from the KDE Community website. Check this link if these instructions no longer work.

The extension requires two components: the browser extension and the native host. Once both are installed and correctly configured, active streams should appear in the Xfce PulseAudio Plugin menu.

Browser Extension

Install the plugin appropriate for your browser. Most Chromium-based plugins support extensions installed from the Chrome Web Store.

• Chromium-based browsers including (but not limited to) Google Chrome, Chromium, Brave, and Vivaldi: Chrome Web Store
• Mozilla Firefox: Firefox Add-Ons

Native Host

Most distributions should now include a plasma-desktop-integration package in their repositories. Find yours here at Repology. If you're using Ubuntu or a derivative, installing the native host is as easy as:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install plasma-browser-integration

Once both components are installed, the extension should just start working!

Downloads

Source tarball

$ md5sum xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin-0.4.3.tar.bz2 
3d86032acb9364d47e0a144350c63e1a

$ sha1sum xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin-0.4.3.tar.bz2
5682fa1ed6976e94fa01c91fc5b7839bfe804241

$ sha256sum xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin-0.4.3.tar.bz2
5a518237e2137341d8ca6584938950525e20c28a0177e30ecaea3ba8e7a2615b

Xfce PulseAudio Plugin 0.4.3 is included in Xubuntu 20.04 "Focal Fossa", available in April. Users testing the daily images should be able to check it out right now.

• New upstream release.
• Merge from debian unstable (4.14.1-1).
• Remaining changes:
  • debian/patches:
    • xubuntu_ignore-gdm-lang.patch: do not set $LANG to $GDM_LANG, there’s already an xsession script to do that, and $GDM_LANG might not contain a valid locale code.
  • debian/systemd/*, debian/xfce4-session.install:
    • Add systemd user session. Note that this is not active for the XFCE session right now, it will just be used for xubuntu-default-setting’s Xubuntu session.
  • d/rules, d/startxfce4.user-session.upstart, d/xfce4-session.install:
    • Add Xfce upstart user session