Parole Media Player 1.0.0 Released
It’s here, it’s finally here! The first 1.0 release of Parole Media Player has finally arrived. This release greatly improves the user experience for users without hardware-accelerated video and includes several fixes.
What’s New?
Parole 0.9.x Developments
If you’ve been following along with the stable release channel, you have a lot of updates to catch up on. Here’s a quick recap. For everybody else, skip to the next header.
- Parole 0.9.0 introduced a new mini mode, boosted X11 playback, and made the central logo clickable. When your playlist is complete, the “play” logo changes to a “replay” logo.
- Parole 0.9.1 improved support for remote files and live stream playback. Older code was stripped away to make Parole even leaner and faster.
- Parole 0.9.2 introduced a keyboard shortcuts helper (Help > Keyboard Shortcuts), fixed numerous bugs, and included a huge code cleanup and refactor.
Parole 1.0.0: New Feature, Automatic Video Playback Output
- We’ve finally resolved the long-standing “Could not initialise Xv output” error (Xfce #11950) that has plagued a number of our users, both in virtual machines and on real hardware.
- In the past, we were delighted when we were able to implement the Clutter backend to solve this issue, but that API proved to be unstable and difficult to maintain between releases.
- Now, we are using the “autoimagesink” for our newly defaulted “Automatic” video output option. This sink provides the best available sink (according to GStreamer) for the available environment, and should produce great results no matter the setup.
Parole 1.0.0: Bug Fixes
- Fixed 32-bit crashes when using the MPRIS2 plugin (LP: #1374887)
- Fixed crash on “Clear History” button press (LP: #1214514)
- Fixed appdata validation (Xfce #13632)
- Fixed full debug builds and resolved implicit-fallthrough build warning
- Replaced stock icon by freedesktop.org compliant option (Xfce #13738)
Parole 1.0.0: Translations
Albanian, Arabic, Asturian, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (Australia), Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Occitan (post 1500), Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Uighur, Ukrainian
Downloads
Parole Media Player 1.0.0 is included in Xubuntu 18.04. Check it out this week when you test out the Beta!
sudo apt update sudo apt install parole
The latest version of Parole Media Player can always be downloaded from the Xfce archives. Grab version 1.0.0 from the below link.
https://archive.xfce.org/src/apps/parole/1.0/parole-1.0.0.tar.bz2
- SHA-256: 6666b335aeb690fb527f77b62c322baf34834b593659fdcd21d21ed3f1e14010
- SHA-1: ed56ab0ab34db6a5e0924a9da6bf2ee91233da8a
- MD5: d00d3ca571900826bf5e1f6986e42992
Xfce Settings 4.12.2 Released
Xfce has been steadily heading towards it’s GTK+ 3 future with Xfce 4.14, but that doesn’t mean our current stable users have been left behind. We’ve got some new features, bug fixes, and translations for you!
What’s New?
New Features
- Default monospace font option in the Appearance dialog
- Improved support for embedded DisplayPort connectors on laptops
- Show location of the mouse pointer on keypress (as seen in the featured image)
Bug Fixes
- Leave monitors where they were if possible (Xfce #14096)
- syncdaemon not starting with certain locales
- division by 0 crash from gdk_screen_height_mm()
Translation Updates
Arabic, Asturian, Basque, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Chinese (Hong Kong), Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (Australia), English (United
Kingdom), Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Occitan (post 1500), Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Uighur, Ukrainian
Downloads
The latest version of Xfce Settings can always be downloaded from the Xfce archives. Grab version 4.12.2 from the below link.
http://archive.xfce.org/src/xfce/xfce4-settings/4.12/xfce4-settings-4.12.2.tar.bz2
- SHA-256: af0e3c0a6501fc99e874103f2597abd1723f06c98f4d9e19a9aabf1842cc2f0d
- SHA-1: 5991f4a542a556c24b6d8f5fe4698992e42882ae
- MD5: 32263f1b704fae2db57517a2aff4232d
Development Release: Xfce PulseAudio Plugin 0.3.5
Activity is slowing down as the Xfce PulseAudio Plugin matures and heads toward the 0.4.0 stable release. With some usability refinements and bug fixes, users will find the latest release both easy and convenient to use.
What’s New?
New Feature: Move Streams on Default Output Change (Xfce #14157)
- Prior to this update, when a new output device was selected from the plugin menu, only newly opened applications would utilize the selected option.
- With this change, any active output streams will immediately be routed to the newly selected device.
New Feature: Management of Known MPRIS2 Players (Xfce #13903)
- Known media players can now be cleared or selectively hidden from the menu.
Bug Fixes
- Correctly reflect the current volume state at session startup (Xfce #14071, #13677)
- Clear stale data retained after a new Metadata signal (Xfce #14068)
Translation Updates
Catalan, Chinese (China), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Irish, Japanese, Kazakh, Lithuanian, Malay, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian
Downloads
Xfce PulseAudio Plugin 0.3.5 is already included with Xubuntu 18.04 “Bionic Beaver”. Check it out when you test the Beta next week!
The latest version of Xfce PulseAudio Plugin can always be downloaded from the Xfce archives. Grab version 0.3.5 from the below link.
- SHA-256: 25e7bc414edf6e16140c31ca4e7dcedd4e17d40ea23a2921beb799fed11a99bb
- SHA-1: 955268828ac53fdfbfa346fbec376aa4f6199385
- MD5: 30cd40be36895c4ced48c2433ff440c4
Exo 0.12.0 Stable Release
With full GTK+ 2 and 3 support and numerous enhancements, Exo 0.12.0 provides a solid development base for new and refreshed Xfce applications.
What’s New?
Since this is the first stable release in nearly 2.5 years, I am going to provide a quick summary of the changes since version 0.10.7, released September 13, 2015.
New Features
GTK Extensions
- Added
exo_gtk_dialog_get_action_area - Added
exo_gtk_dialog_add_secondary_button - Added support for the “insensitive” state in
exo_cell_renderer_icon(GTK+ 3)
Helpers
- WebBrower: Added Brave, Google Chrome, and Vivaldi
- MailReader: Added Geary, dropped Opera Mail (no longer available for Linux)
Utilities
exo-csource:Added a new--outputflag to write the generated output to a fileexo-helper:Added a new--queryflag to determine the preferred application
ICONS
- Replaced non-standard gnome-* icons
- Replaced non-existent “missing-image” icon
BUILD CHANGES
- Build requirements were updated. Exo now requires GTK+ 2.24, GTK+ 3.22, GLib 2.42, libxfce4ui 4.12, and libxfce4util 4.12. Building GTK+ 3 libraries is not optional.
- Default debug setting is now “yes” instead of “full”.
DOCUMENTATION UPDATES
- Added missing per-release API indices
- Resolved undocumented symbols (100% symbol coverage)
- Updated project documentation (HACKING, README, THANKS)
Release Notes
Downloads
The latest version of Exo can always be downloaded from the Xfce archives. Grab version 0.12.0 from the below link.
https://archive.xfce.org/src/xfce/exo/0.12/exo-0.12.0.tar.bz2
- SHA-256: 64b88271a37d0ec7dca062c7bc61ca323116f7855092ac39698c421a2f30a18f
- SHA-1: 364a9aaa1724b99fe33f46b93969d98e990e9a1f
- MD5: 724afcca224f5fb22b510926d2740e52
MenuLibre 2.1.5 Released
With improved support for Budgie, KDE, and MATE desktop environments, MenuLibre 2.1.5 continues to provide one of the best menu editing experiences for the Linux desktop.
What’s New?
New Features
- Added support for the Budgie and KDE Plasma desktop environments
- Improved support for the MATE desktop environment (LP: #1529406)
- Window identification for the StartupWMClass key
General
- Added manpage for the recently added menulibre-menu-validate command
Bug Fixes
- Fix icon used when creating new directory (LP: #1744594)
- Use ‘applications-
other’ instead of ‘application- default- icon’ for better icon standards support (LP: #1745840) - Ensure categories are saved in the model when updated (LP: #1746802)
- Fix incorrect display of newly created directories
Desktop Environment Support
MenuLibre is a FreeDesktop.org compliant menu editor for desktop environments implementing the Desktop Entry Specification. Some desktops are improperly configured and do not export the expected variables, and patches are included to infer the running environment in other ways. Some older desktops, such as IceWM, do not implement this specification and handle their menus in other ways.
MenuLibre has been tested with and known to work with the following desktop environments: Budgie, GNOME, KDE (Plasma), LXDE, LXQt (limited support, LXQt does not allow for non-alphabetical menu ordering), MATE, Pantheon, Unity, and Xfce. It is known not to work with IceWM and others that do not implement the Desktop Entry Specification.
If you come across an environment that should be supported but does not work as expected, let me know! It may require some additional patches to properly detect the environment and menu prefix.
Development Status
With this release, MenuLibre 2.1 is now in feature and string freeze for the 2.2.x series. I’m hoping for a stable 2.2.0 release sometime this month. This means two things.
- Translators, now it’s your time to shine! There’s been quite a few changes in the past few releases and it looks like some localizations could use a bit of a refresh. Make your way over to the MenuLibre Translations page to get started or pick up where you left off.
- Everyone else, take MenuLibre for a spin, and report bugs! If you are able to conclude that one of the existing bug reports has actually been resolved, leave a comment on the bug report so we can clean it off the list. Check out the MenuLibre Bugs page for more.
Window Identification Demo
Downloads
The latest version of MenuLibre can always be downloaded from the Launchpad archives. Grab version 2.1.5 from the below link. Debian Unstable and Ubuntu Bionic users should expect to see this latest version land in the archives sometime this week.
https://launchpad.net/menulibre/2.1/2.1.5/+download/menulibre-2.1.5.tar.gz
- SHA-256: ef05b2722bab2acb7070d6c8ed0e7bd58bd4a4540bf498af9e889944f9da08b5
- SHA-1: e380478a369a3a45eafc6bb9408366bc41972d16
- MD5: efc7edb49bb0e5fea49e158b40573334
Catfish 1.4.4 Released
I’ve got some great news for fans of Catfish, the fast and powerful graphical search utility for Linux. The latest version, 1.4.4, has arrived with performance improvements and tons of localization updates!
What’s New
This update covers both versions 1.4.3 and 1.4.4.
General
- Improved theming support
- Improved error handling with thumbnails
- Improved search performance by excluding .cache and .gvfs when not explicitly requested
- Improved locate method performance with the addition of the –basename flag
- Added keywords to the launcher for improved discoverability and Debian packaging improvements
- Updated included AppData to latest standards
Bug Fixes
- All search methods are stopped when the search activity is canceled. This results in a much faster response time when switching search terms.
- Debian #798074: New upstream release available
- Debian #794544: po/en_AU.po has Sinhalese (not English) translations for catfish.desktop
Translation Updates
Afrikaans, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, Kurdish, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian
Downloads
Debian Unstable and Ubuntu Bionic users can install Catfish 1.4.4 from the repositories.
sudo apt update && sudo apt install catfish
The latest version of Catfish can always be downloaded from the Launchpad archives. Grab version 1.4.4 from the below link.
https://launchpad.net/catfish-search/1.4/1.4.4/+download/catfish-1.4.4.tar.gz
- SHA-256: a2d452780bf51f80afe7621e040fe77725021c24a0fe4a9744c89ba88dbf87d7
- SHA-1: b149b454fba75de6e6f9029cee8eec4adfb4be0e
- MD5: 8fd7e8bb241f2396ebc3d9630b47a635
Development Release: Xfce PulseAudio Plugin 0.3.4
With each new release, the Xfce PulseAudio Plugin becomes more refined and better suited for Xfce users. The latest release adds support for the MPRIS Playlists specification and improves support for Spotify and other media players.
What’s New?
New Feature: MPRIS Playlists Support
- This is a basic implementation of the MediaPlayer2.Playlists specification.
- The 5 most recently played playlists are displayed (if supported by the player). Admittedly, I have not found a player that seems to implement the ordering portion of this specification.
New Feature: Experimental libwnck Support
- libwnck is a window management library. This feature adds the “Raise” method for media players that do not support it, allowing the user to display the application window after clicking the menu item in the plugin.
- Spotify for Linux is the only media player that I have found which does not implement this method. Since this is the media player I use most of the time, this was an important issue for me to resolve.
General
- Unexpected error messages sent via DBUS are now handled gracefully. The previous release of Pithos (1.1.2) displayed a Python error when doing DBUS queries before, crashing the plugin.
- Numerous memory leaks were patched.
Translation Updates
Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai
Downloads
The latest version of Xfce PulseAudio Plugin can always be downloaded from the Xfce archives. Grab version 0.3.4 from the below link.
- SHA-256: 43fa39400eccab1f3980064f42dde76f5cf4546a6ea0a5dc5c4c5b9ed2a01220
- SHA-1: 171f49ef0ffd1e4a65ba0a08f656c265a3d19108
- MD5: 05633b8776dd3dcd4cda8580613644c3
Development Release: Xfce PulseAudio Plugin 0.3.3
Development on the Xfce PulseAudio Plugin has been moving along at a steady pace, and the latest release marks the completion of another great feature for the Sound Indicator replacement applet.
What’s New?
New Feature: Multimedia Key Support
Multimedia keyboard support has been hit and miss in the Linux space for as long as there’s been multimedia keyboards. Support for these keys has been entirely dependent on support baked into each individual application. The best current example of this is the Spotify Linux client. Users can control the media player with various panel plugins, but not with their keyboards.
With the new multimedia key support in Xfce PulseAudio Plugin 0.3.3, the recently added MPRIS2 integration has been complemented with key bindings for the Play/Pause, Previous, Next, and Stop keys. When these keys are pressed, any actively running player known to the plugin will be notified, enabling keyboard playback control.
You can check out the new feature in the video below, where I very excitedly inundate my media players with playback commands.
General Improvements
- Simplified device menus: The bold section headers have been replaced in favor of a single menu per input and output device. If there’s only one option available, the menu is no longer displayed.
- Improved volume scale increments: The old defaults were steps of 6% and a max of 153%. These seemed a bit unusual, and have been replaced with a more sensible 5% and 150%.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed builds with clang (Xfce #13889) (0.3.2)
- Fixed panel icon size with high DPI (Xfce #13894) (0.3.2)
- Show volume change notifications when changed with another application (Xfce #13677)
- Change default device when changed with another application (Xfce #13908)
- Fixed flag in g_bus_watch_name_on_connection() method (Xfce #13961)
- Fix plugin size calculation with multiple rows (Xfce #13998)
Translation Updates
Chinese (China), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Swedish, Ukrainian
Demo
Downloads
The latest version of Xfce PulseAudio Plugin can always be downloaded from the Xfce archives. Grab version 0.3.3 from the below link.
- SHA-256: d6aae9409714c5ddea975c350b4d517e078a5550190165b17ca062d0eb69f9a6
- SHA-1: 5921f7c17b96dda09f035e546e06945f40398dc9
- MD5: d3d3e012369af6d2302d4b70a7720a17
Xubuntu 17.10 “Artful Aardvark” Released
It’s another great Ubuntu release day, with fresh versions of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Studio, and my personal favorite: Xubuntu.
This has been a comparatively quiet development cycle for Xubuntu. With increased development on Xfce as we prepare for Xfce 4.14, less Xubuntu-specific changes took place this cycle. Thankfully, there are still plenty of goodies to get excited about.
- Appearance Updates: Greybird‘s client side decorations (CSD) have been refreshed and now consume much less space. elementary-xfce, our preferred icon theme, has been updated and includes new device, mimetype, and panel icons. And we have a fancy new wallpaper.
- Application Updates: This is the first release of Xubuntu to feature GNOME Font Viewer, a handy tool for font management. LibreOffice, Firefox, and Thunderbird have been updated to their latest versions (5.4, 56, and 52.4 respectively). On the Xfce side, Dictionary, Genmon Plugin, Mount Plugin, Exo, and Tumbler have been updated to take advantage of the latest GTK+ version and continue the march toward Xfce 4.14.
- Technical Updates: GTK+ 3.26, Python 3.6, and Linux 4.13 are all included. Thanks to the Ubuntu Desktop team, hardware accelerated video, improved bluetooth audio, and driverless printing round out a solid development cycle.
Screenshots
Download
Download Xubuntu 17.10 from Xubuntu.org. It’s available in both 32-bit and 64-bit varieties.
What’s Next?
After the release festivities calm down, work will begin on Xubuntu 18.04, our next LTS release. These are always our most active cycles as we polish the work that we’ve been doing the past 18 months and prepare for a 3-year support window. A few things we already have planned…
- Replacing the Sound Indicator with the Xfce PulseAudio Plugin, a very capable replacement with more features landing soon.
- Replacing the Xfce Indicator Plugin with the Xfce StatusNotifier Plugin, a fully compatible and better maintained plugin with a few new tricks.
- Another wallpaper contest to showcase the community’s artful taste.
- And plenty more as we begin the blueprint process!
In Case You Missed It
- I had a nice chat with Igor at Dedoimedo about Xfce and Xubuntu.
- Simon just published a significant xfce4-notifyd release.
- Pasi refreshed the Xfce Bugzilla, and it’s so much better.
Development Release: Xfce PulseAudio Plugin 0.3.1
A new release, some handy new features! But, I’ve never posted about this plugin before, so we’ll start with a proper introduction.
Xfce PulseAudio Panel Plugin
This is a plugin for the Xfce panel that allows the user to easily adjust the audio volume of the PulseAudio sound system. As of the 0.3.0 release, this plugin was extended with support for controlling multimedia players via the MPRIS DBUS interface. And with this latest release, users can now easily toggle the default audio input and output devices.
Features
- Control device volume, from 0% to 100% and beyond
- Instantly mute volumes by middle-clicking the plugin or clicking the mute toggle
- Launch the configured audio mixer
- Open, raise, or control playback from known media players (since 0.3.0)
- Select default input and output devices (since 0.3.1)
Screenshots
Downloads
The latest version of Xfce PulseAudio Plugin can always be downloaded from the Xfce archives. Grab version 0.3.1 from the below link.
- SHA-256: 61a39f892e5e06723a08f919682362ebaf54792ed1076f5be828d0209a52f482
- SHA-1: 6db0e12f5f171bd57b1330c7996d503aca7a4883
- MD5: ab2a12283555db063db3abea26b3237e