FOSS Roundup #5 – Time to Test (Ubuntu Flavors)
This week's roundup features the Xubuntu 22.04 wallpaper contest, the Ubuntu Testing Week until March 10, and Linux Mint switching to Blueman.
The post FOSS Roundup #5 – Time to Test (Ubuntu Flavors) appeared first on Sean Davis.
xfce4-terminal 0.9.2 development release
xfce4-terminal 0.9.2 development release
A new xfce4-terminal development release is here, and this time it is special. This version serves also as the release candidate for xfce4-terminal 1.0.0. If you want to help keep xfce4-terminal bug-free, this is the time to test and report any bugs you find!
Changes
For this release I focused on fixing regressions and minor annoyances, so I have no fancy new features to write about in this post. Most improvements are related to accelerator-handling and most fixes related to UI/UX regressions (or accidental changes) that were introduced in the transition to XfceGtkActionEntry. You can see the full list of changes in our wiki.
I want to thank Gael and Theo for bringing a lot of these issues to my attention.
Future plans
If no major bugs are discovered, I will release xfce4-terminal 1.0.0 in a couple of weeks. After that I will focus on my long list of Thunar issues.
FOSS Roundup #4 – The Steamy Update
It’s the fourth edition of my Weekly FOSS Roundup! This week’s hottest news is the Steam Deck, an Arch-based handheld Linux gaming console. If that’s too hot, cool down with the OSTree-based XfIce desktop. Once you’re comfortable, send the Xubuntu team your best wallpaper for a chance to be included in the 22.04 release. Let’s get to it!
Steam Deck Released
Valve’s Steam Deck has finally been released. It runs Steam OS, based on Arch, with a KDE desktop. Hundreds of games are supported via Steam Proton. As more games become verified on the Deck, they’ll be supported on nearly any Linux distribution!
An OSTree-based Xfce desktop has arrived
Based on Fedora, the “XfIce” desktop is an immutable base operating system running Xfce. Immutable Linux distributions have gained popularity quickly, and now Xfce can be used with them.
The Xubuntu 22.04 Wallpaper Contest is Live
For every LTS release, Xubuntu holds a wallpaper contest for the community to submit their finest work for inclusion in the ISO release. The 22.04 contest is live until midnight March 13th (2022-03-13 00:00:00). There have already been 12 submissions! Send us yours!
A new guide for installing Xubuntu on the Raspberry Pi
One of the most popular articles on my website is a guide for installing Xubuntu 19.10 on the Raspberry Pi. This article is obsolete as I’ve published a new, in-depth how-to for the current supported and development releases. Check it out!
What I’m working on…
Last week I rolled out my new website. This week, I did some scans and found that I had a lot of broken links (bad migrations, services going away, the introduction of the Xfce GitLab, and deprecation of the Xfce build bot). Those have now been resolved, so any article you read on my site should take you to the right places. Here’s a relevant and time-appropriate goodie that would have been lost to time if not for archive.org…
Today, I am back to working on the Xubuntu documentation updates. There are only a few completed chapters left and a handful of chapters that we started updating a couple of years ago but stopped due to time conflicts (and, to some extent, probably burnout). That said, with the existing completed content, I may be able to wrap it as early as this week!
Thanks for reading!
If you enjoyed this newsletter, consider sending me a tip! I’ve added links to GitHub Sponsors, Ko-Fi, and Patreon to the Donate page on my website.
See you next week with some more Linux and Open Source news!
FOSS Roundup #4 – The Steamy Update
This week's roundup features the release of the Steam Deck, an immutable Xfce distribution, the Xubuntu 22.04 wallpaper contest, and more!
The post FOSS Roundup #4 – The Steamy Update appeared first on Sean Davis.
A better toolbar for Thunar
A better toolbar for Thunar
Welcome to my first Xfce development update for 2022. Happy new year!
Toolbar and Custom Actions
The problem
In the past, there have been quite a few discussions about the toolbar and which items it should contain. Both developers and community members wondered: "Should the reload button be removed?", "Why isn't the search button a toggle in the toolbar?", "Should toggle buttons exist in the toolbar?". As you might expect, there was no perfect answer to those questions. Some people liked one thing, other people liked the exact opposite.
You can see all that in the following links:
- Move the reload button
- Remove the reload button
- Move the search button to the toolbar
- Add Zoom buttons in the toolbar
The solution
Here comes Merge Request 173 which introduces the ability to customize the toolbar. That is done through a new "Toolbar Editor", which is based on the existing "Columns Editor", where the user can reorder and hide toolbar items.
The toolbar editor.
Instead of being satisfied with the ability to customize the toolbar using built-in items, I decided to take it a step further and give users the option to add their custom actions to it. Presently, only actions that are used on directories can be displayed as items in the toolbar but in the future we could expand that functionality if there is user demand.
A custom toolbar.
Other improvements
I have also been working on some smaller improvements. Thunar can now handle shortcuts that include the 'Tab' key and I am prototyping a spinner element to let users know when a search is ongoing.
Future plans
This is probably the last big feature that I will develop for Thunar 4.18. After this is merged I will probably focus on fixing regressions and bugs.
xfce4-terminal 0.9.1 development release
Welcome back! For the last two months, I've been working on fixing regressions introduced by 0.9.0 (thanks to all the people who use try the development releases) and a few new features and enhancements that the community has been asking for.
Enhancements
The `scrolling-on-output` preference has been slightly reworked. Previously, you were unable to scroll-up while the terminal was printing (the view would be immediately scrolled back down). The new, improved behavior follows the printed lines only if you haven't scrolled upwards. If you have, the view stays there and you can continue the automatic scrolling by going back to the current "end" of the terminal screen, i.e. by scrolling back down.
Additionally, as was promised in the previous release, I reworked the checkbox to disable the 'Unsafe Paste' dialog. Now you can disable the dialog temporarily instead of being forced to permanently disable it and then having to re-enable it (disabling it permanently is not advised).
New features
A new scrollbar type has been added, called overlay-scrollbar. This scrollbar is provided by GtkScrolledWindow which xfce4-terminal now uses for its terminal screens. Overlay scrollbars are slimmer, therefore they save some horizontal space. If you like the old scrollbar style that is still available (and will probably be the default in the final release).
This version also includes the XfceShortcutsEditor widget that I wrote about in a previous post. Keep in mind that you need libxfce4ui 4.17.2 (or greater) to use this feature, otherwise the entry will be hidden.
Last but not least, you can now customize what the right-click action. Instead of opening the context menu, you can configure xfce4-terminal to paste the clipboard or the current selection.
Release notes
You can find the full release notes at the following link: Release Notes
A shortcuts editor for Xfce and a couple of other things
A shortcuts editor for Xfce and a couple of other things
Welcome to another Xfce development update! In this one you will learn about the new Xfce Shortcuts Editor and a couple of upcoming Thunar features.
Shortcuts Editor
As you may know, I'm the maintainer of xfce4-terminal and a developer for Thunar. It just so happens that both of these programs have a ton of shortcuts. Until now, there was no GUI for changing shortcuts. Users had to manually edit the `accels.scm` file which is doable yet cumbersome.
Additionally xfce4-terminal, being a terminal emulator, has the problem of its shorcuts colliding with the shorcuts of terminal applications, rendering them unusable. To fix that issue users needed to once again dive into the `accels.scm` file and change the default shortcuts manually.
That is why I created a new widget called XfceShortcutsEditor in libxfce4ui. Applications that use XfceGtkActionEntries for their accelerators can easily integrate that editor in their UI and enjoy the benefits without any additional complexity.
The XfceShortcutsEditor integrated in Thunar's Preferences dialog.
The XfceShortcutsEditor as a separate dialog for xfce4-terminal.
Thunar improvements
As far as Thunar specific improvements go, I'm happy to announce that the next version of Thunar will have a customizable Statusbar. By right-clicking, users will be able to hide/show information that they (don't) need.
Additionally the folder properties dialog now displays the type of contents of the folder (i.e. the number of files and folders insdie the folder).
xfce4-terminal 0.9.0 development release
Welcome back! Since I became maintainer of xfce4-terminal I've worked on replacing deprecated parts of the codebase, closing old bugs and merging Merge Requests which have been sitting around for a while.
GtkActions
The majority of my time was spent on dealing with the, now deprecated, GtkActions/GtkActionEntries and GtkUiManager which were used for creating the menubar, toolbar, right click context menu and for handling the shortcuts. All of that logic was moved to Xfce's own XfceGtkAction entries which are supported by the Xfce team. As a nice bonus, this transition slightly reduced the size of the codebase. Some deprecated parts remain, like the UI for changing encoding from the menubar but I've decided to transition slowly to make sure that things remain stable.
Sending signals
The most exciting new feature is the ability to send signals to foreground processes. This is done either through the right click menu, or through the `Terminal` entry of the menubar. We have Cyrille Pontivieux to thank for the initial implementation of this, which I simplified and later transitioned to the new menu/shortcut system.
Release notes
You can find the full release notes at the following link: Release Notes
A couple of big features for Thunar
A couple of big features for Thunar
Welcome to my first post-GSoC blogpost. Google Summer of Code might have ended but I'm continuing my daily work on Thunar and Xfce Terminal (more on that later). This blog-post is accompanied by a video that showcases what is written here.
Recursive Search
I'm happy to inform you that my work on implementing a performant recursive-search in Thunar has been met with success. Users will be able to recursively search their filesystem (including remote folders and other special locations like Recent and Trash) and sort the results like they would in any folder. Presently, searching is depth limited but in the final version you will be able to select a custom depth or no depth at all, to make sure that this is useful even for older machines and at the same time makes use of the resources of faster systems. As this is a work in progress there are some bugs and crashes but it looks like the big issues have been solved at last. You can see for yourself at: link.
Shared Thumbnail Repositories
Additionally, I wanted to give users the option to create shared thumbnail repositories from within Thunar. That's why I've been working on creating a script to create Shared Thumbnail Repositories using any thumbnailer that implements the D-Bus thumbnailing spec (tumbler being an example of such a thumbnailer). You will be able to use this script from Thunar through a custom action.
Xfce Terminal
Lastly, I wanted to let you know that I've become the maintainer of xfce4-terminal. I've been working on resolving old issues, fixing bugs and merging MRs that have been sitting stagnant for months. I've got a lot of exciting things to show you on that front, so stay tuned.
Shiny new things in Thunar thanks to GSoC 2021
Shiny new things in Thunar thanks to GSoC 2021
GSoC 2021 is over now and I am happy to tell you that both students working on thunar did an excellent job. Alot of nice stuff has been added thanks to them !
In order to allow you to discover all these new features, Thunar 4.17.5 was just released. (Note that this is a development release. It still might have some rough edges)
For details about the new features check the summaries provided by Sergios and Yongha:
Besides these, here as well some more new features added during GSoC for which I thought they would be worth to mention:
Bookmarks got moved into a separate 'Bookmarks Menu' and a 'create bookmark' option was added (MR !109 and MR !71)
A new menu item "Set Default Application" was added to the "Open with" submenu (MR !79)
A new section 'Default Application' was added to the 'thunar-chooser-dialog' (MR !81)
On top there are still various open merge requests with partial finished features, most of them from GSoC students for which I did not find time so far. So expect more new stuff to arrive soon !
You as well might want to keep an eye on xfce4-terminal, which received alot of activity recently, since it is now maintained by Sergios Kefalidis.
If you find a bug on any of these new features, please make use of the xfce bugtracker.
Happy testing !