Desktop News Archives

For those after in-depth hardware and system monitoring support from the Linux desktop, hw-monitor continues to advance as one of the modern options. Released on Monday was hw-monitor 0.6 with per-process GPU reporting metrics when using capable DRM drivers like the AMDGPU, Intel i915 and Xe, and Nouveau drivers.

Flatpak 1.18.4 is out today with a number of high profile security fixes for this app sandboxing and distribution tech.

Budgie 10.10.3 is out today as the newest point release to this open-source desktop.

COSMIC Epoch 1.9 was released last night as the newest version of the System76-sponsored, Rust-based desktop environment. COSMIC Epoch 1.9 release notes only became available today and it's a big one with new apps and improvements to existing offerings.

From a few months ago you may recall Starling as the new Linux desktop written with its own Wayland compositor, using the Swift programming language, and written in large part via AI with Claude Code. Out today is Starling 0.5 with this desktop now gaining an optional 3D desktop mode.

The Linux Mint project today published their August 2026 development report, including some new applications added to their XApp collection.

Released overnight was the newest version of the Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment developed by System76 as part of the effort on their Pop!_OS Linux distribution.

COSMIC Epoch 1.7 is out today as the newest update to this Rust-based open-source desktop environment with development led by System76.

COSMIC Epoch 1.6 was released this evening as the latest milestone for this open-source, Rust-based desktop environment led by System76 as part of the work on their Pop!_OS Linux distribution.

Omarchy as the Arch Linux distribution developed by David Heinemeier Hansson "DHH" / Basecamp is out today with Omarchy 4.0 as the distro's biggest release to date.

Flatpak 1.19 was released today as a new development release along with the Flatpak 1.18.1 stable point release. Both of these releases ship a number of newly-discovered security issues with this app sandboxing and distribution tech.

The System76 and Pop!_OS developers continue quickly iterating on their Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment.

There's yet another new open-source desktop option for Linux users in the era of new open-source projects largely written via AI/LLMs. Starling is this new project largely written via Claude and using the Swift programming language for the desktop while having its own Wayland compositor implemented in C. It also includes a built-in X11 server for handling X11 clients.

System76 developers today released COSMIC Epoch 1.4 as the newest stable release to their Rust-based desktop environment.

Ubuntu 26.10 is notably working on laying the foundation for a context-aware desktop and their initial deliverable being worked on is Myna as a speech-to-text solution for the Linux desktop. Interestingly there is already a promising voice dictation / speech-to-text solution for the Linux desktop called Vocalinux that continues advancing and is usable right now for those looking at their own speech-to-text desktop solution.

For those that were intrigued by the COSMIC desktop's "Frosted Glass" effect, it's now available in released form with today's COSMIC Epoch 1.3 release.

System76 developers have for the past number of weeks been working on developing a "frosted glass" appearance for the COSMIC desktop environment featured on their Pop!_OS Linux distribution. For Pop!_OS users this frosted glass feature is now available and will become more widespread for other Linux distributions once the next COSMIC release is formally tagged.

Just a week after the COSMIC Epoch 1.1 release with its slick new system monitor, COSMIC Epoch 1.2 is now available for this Rust-based desktop developed by System76.

For those using Vim with its GTK3 toolkit interface on Wayland, it soon should be delivering much better performance with pending patches.

System76 today released COSMIC Epoch 1.1 as the newest feature release as well as being their first time bumping the minor version number since the December release of COSMIC 1.0.

Over the past half-year, Xfwl4 has been developed as a Wayland compositor for the Xfce desktop environment. Released this weekend was the first preview release of Xfwl4 in alpha form.

Flatpak 1.18 is out today for providing the latest improvements to this leading open-source app sandboxing and distribution tech.

The libinput input handling library used by both X.Org and Wayland environments on modern Linux desktops is out with a new security fix release. A new vulnerability is now public allowing for arbitrary root code execution.

COSMIC Epoch 1.0.15 was released today and while it doesn't yet contain the new "Frosted Glass" option for the desktop UI, COSMIC Epoch 1.0.15 does contain some other notable enhancements.

Some of the latest feature work for the Rust and Wayland based COSMIC desktop environment is on creating their new "Frosted Glass" appearance. It's getting closer to release and giving off Windows Aero vibes for that design language from the Windows Vista days.

FreeRDP as a leading open-source implementation of the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) has introduced experimental AV1 codec support.

The LXQt 2.4 desktop released today for joining the modern open-source desktop party alongside the likes of the recently debuted GNOME 50, KDE Plasma 6.6, and others.

In addition to the release today of Flatpak 1.16.4 for shipping new security fixes including a sandbox escape and the ability to delete host files, XDG-Desktop-Portal 1.20.4 is also now available with another security fix of its own to prevent sandboxed apps from being able to trash arbitrary host files.

Libinput devised a Lua-based plug-in system for modifying devices/events. The Lua plug-in support was introduced last year with libinput 1.30 but unfortunately some security issues have now come to light with the implementation.

FreeRDP as this open-source and cross-platform Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) implementation is out with FreeRDP 3.24 to ship new security fixes as well as other improvements.

Out today is Budgie 10.10.2 as the latest minor update to this open-source desktop environment that began as part of the Solus Linux project.

While System76 has been hard at work on a redesigned Thelio desktop chassis design, this hasn't slowed down their software work. Today they shipped COSMIC Epoch 1.0.8 as the newest work on their open-source, Rust-based desktop environment used by their in-house Pop!_OS Linux distribution as well as found in other Linux distributions too.

Red Hat's leading input expert Peter Hutterer announced the release overnight of libinput 1.31, the input handling library used by the Linux desktop on both X.Org and Wayland desktop sessions.

Following December's release of COSMIC Epoch 1 along with the Pop!_OS 24.04 release by System76, today they shared more of their feature plans for the next two major COSMIC desktop updates.

Following the Budgie 10.10 release from earlier this month, Budgie 10.10.1 is now here for closing out January.

FreeRDP 3.22 was just released as the newest version of this Apache-licensed open-source Remote Desktop protocol (RDP) implementation for interfacing with another computer over the network.

Xfce developers are using their donations from the community to fund a longtime core developer to create Xfwl4, an entirely new Wayland compositor for Xfce.

XDG-Desktop-Portal 1.21 is now available for testing with the latest features for this portal frontend service to Flatpak.

Following the December launch of Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS and the first major COSMIC desktop release, System76 software engineers have continued making improvements to their Rust-based desktop environment.

With Budgie 10.10 released this weekend, Budgie desktop developers have provided an update around Budgie 11 desktop development.

The Budgie 10.10 desktop has been officially released in marking the open-source project's transition from X11 to Wayland.

For fans of the IceWM X11 window manager, the project kicked off 2026 by releasing IceWM 4.0.

Two years and one week since the prior point release, Common Desktop Environment 2.5.3 is now available as the latest iteration of this Unix desktop environment built around the Motif toolkit. CDE has been open-source for more than a decade now but its development not exactly brisk. But for those resisting the likes of Wayland and other modern display tech -- especially with KDE announcing today Plasma 6.8 will be Wayland-exclusive -- CDE 2.5.3 is now available.

At the start of the year developers behind the Budgie desktop environment hoped for shipping Budgie 10.10 in Q1-2025. We are now in Q4 without a stable release but at long last a preview version is at least available. Budgie 10.10 is the point at which Budgie is going all-in on Wayland in leaving behind the X11 desktop session support.

Miracle-WM 0.8 was released on Wednesday as another step forward for this tiling Wayland compositor built atop Canonical's Mir software. Canonical engineer Matthew Kosarek continues driving new features into Miracle-WM as it works toward its v1.0 milestone.

EasyEffects is the open-source application formerly known as PulseEffects that transitioned to using native PipeWire filters for providing simple audio effects on the Linux desktop. EasyEffects makes it easy to apply different audio effects like bass enhancer, compressor, pitch shift, reverberation, and many more. With this week's release of EasyEffects 8.0, the user interface has been rewritten in Qt / QML / Kirigami rather than GTK4.

LXQt 2.3 is out today as the newest release of this lightwight, Qt-based desktop environment.

Cairo-Dock is back after a decade hiatus! From the early 2010's you may remember Cairo-Dock / GLX-Dock as a complementary dock for your Linux desktop. The last time writing about it was the Cairo-Dock 3.4 release in 2014 when it was working toward EGL/Wayland support. Since then it was rather inactive the past decade besides a small 3.5 update one year ago with a few fixes. But out this week is now Cairo-Dock 3.6 with the long-awaited port to Wayland, HiDPI display handling, and other improvements.

IceWM Is out this weekend as the newest feature release to this X11 window manager known for its speedy and simplicity.

FreeRDP as one of the leading open-source / free software implementations of Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is out with a new release. While FreeRDP 3.17 is primarily focused on shipping bug fixes, there is one noteworthy addition: fullchain support.