Una vez finalizado el periodo de mantenimiento de Plasma 5.18 es hora de ir preparando el lanzamiento de la siguiente versión. Es por ello que me complace compartir con vosotros que ha sido lanzada la beta de Plasma 5.19, la próxima versión del escritorio de la Comunidad KDE que nos llega con muchas novedades. Es el momento de que esta beta sea probada y que se reporten los errores que se encuentren. ¡No pierdas la oportunidad de contribuir al desarrollo de Plasma!

Lanzada la beta de Plasma 5.19

El pasado 14 de mayo fue lanzada la beta de Plasma 5.19. En esta segunda versión liberada del 2020, no apta todavía para el usuario domésticos, se ha centrado en que el escritorio de la Comunidad KDE sea «más fácil y más divertido, y al mismo tiempo te permita hacer más tareas más rápidamente.»

Una pinceladas de algunas de las novedades más destacada son:

• Mejoras en los plasmoides: reescrito al pack de widgets de System Monitor o los de la bandeja del sistema, por poner un ejemplo.
• Completada la colección por defecto de avatares de usuarios.
• Mejoras en las Preferencias del Sistema.
• Rediseñado KinfoCenter.
• Mejoras en Kwin, Wayland y Discover.

Y muchas más pequeñas mejoras que hará las delicias de los usuarios de este entorno de trabajo.

Más información: KDE.org

Pruébalo y reporta errores

Konqi siempre se encuentra dispuesto, con nuestra ayuda, a buscar bugs y solucionarlos.

Todas las tareas dentro del mundo del Software Libre son importantes: desarrollar, traducir, empaquetar, diseñar, promocionar, etc. Pero hay una que se suele pasar por alto y de la que solo nos acordamos cuando las cosas no nos funcionan como debería: buscar errores.

Desde el blog te animo a que tú seas una de las personas responsables del éxito del nuevo lanzamiento de Plasma 5.19 de la Comunidad KDE. Para ello debes participar en la tarea de buscar y reportar errores, algo básico para que los desarrolladores los solucionen para que el despegue del escritorio esté bien pulido. Debéis pensar que en muchas ocasiones los errores existen porque no le han aparecido al grupo de desarrolladores ya que no se han dado las circunstancias para que lo hagan.

Para ello debes instalarte esta beta y comunicar los errores que salgan en bugs.kde.org, tal y como expliqué en su día en esta entrada del blog.

Tumbleweed es una distribución “Rolling Release” de actualización contínua. Aquí puedes estar al tanto de las últimas novedades.

openSUSE Tumbleweed es la versión “rolling release” o de actualización continua de la distribución de GNU/Linux openSUSE.

Hagamos un repaso a las novedades que han llegado hasta los repositorios estas semanas.

El anuncio original lo puedes leer en el blog de Dominique Leuenberger, publicado bajo licencia CC-by-sa, en este enlace:

• http://dominique.leuenberger.net/blog/2020/05/opensuse-tumbleweed-review-of-the-week-2020-20/

Esta semana tuvimos algunos cambios en la distro que pudieron causar algunos problemas (pequeños) al ejecutar zypper dup.

Consiste en cómo empaquetamos los enlaces simbólicos en nuestros paquetes RPM. Hasta ahora, brp-check-suse convertía los enlaces simbólico a enlaces absolutos, después el rpm alertaba de este hecho. No hay manera de satisfacer al empaquetador, verdad?

La política de brp ha sido actualizada y ahora todos los enlaces simbólicos son convertidos a relativos (casi todos, lo relativo a /dev sigue siendo absoluto. Por ejemplo: /dev/null).

Esto tiene algunas ventajas cuando se inspecciona chroots u otras diseños que podrían ser montado en otro lugar. Los problemas vistos fueron que no todo se recompiló a la vez, lo que resultó que zypper se quejara de los conflictos de archivos.

El error fue guardado para ser ignorado, pero sigue siendo incómodo. En total se han publicado 5 nuevas “snapshots” esta semana (0507, 0508, 0509,0511 y 0513) que entre otros cambios, se pueden destacar los siguientes:

• Cambio de enlaces simbólicos a relativos (como he intentado traducir más arriba, aunque no entiendo muy bien lo que significa)
• Mozilla Firefox 76.0
• Linux kernel 5.6.11
• KDE Plasma 5.18.5
• KDE Frameworks 5.70.0
• NetworkManager 1.24.0
• Libvirt 6.3.0
• GCC 10.1 (todavía no es el compilador predeterminado)

Entre los cambios que llegarán próximamente a los repositorios podemos encontrar:

• Inkscape 1.0
• TeXLive 2020
• Qt 5.15.0
• Guile 3.0.2
• GCC 10 como compilador predeterminado de la distro

Si quieres estar a la última con software actualizado y probado utiliza openSUSE Tumbleweed la opción rolling release de la distribución de GNU/Linux openSUSE.

Mantente actualizado y ya sabes: Have a lot of fun!!

Enlaces de interés

• • • ¿Por qué deberías utilizar openSUSE Tumbleweed?
    • zypper dup en Tumbleweed hace todo el trabajo al actualizar
    • ¿Cual es el mejor comando para actualizar Tumbleweed?
    • Comprueba la valoración de las “snapshots” de Tumbleweed
    • ¿Qué es el test openQA?
    • http://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/iso/
    • https://es.opensuse.org/Portal:Tumbleweed

——————————–

A seguir os comandos para download e aplicação do patch para compatibilizar o módulo dkms-bbswitch para o kernel 5.6.

$ wget https://gist.github.com/cabelo/14fc07faea8ed0905689754b339123b6/raw/4ed7f33199ff173d2a00de7eb882dfc45693b4a7/0001-Update-proc_create_call-for-5.6-kernel.patch

$ patch -s -p1 --fuzz=0 < 0001-Update-proc_create_call-for-5.6-kernel.patch

Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

This week we had some trickier changes entering our beloved distro, which might even have causes some (minor) problems for you while running zypper dup. It’s about how we package symlinks in our RPMs. So far, brp-check-suse converted the symlinks to absolute ones, then rpm warned about that fact. No way of pleasing the packager, right? The brp policy has been updated and symlinks are now all converted to relative ones (almost all – things to /dev stay absolute, e.g. /dev/null). This has some advantages when inspecting chroots or other layouts that could be mounted somewhere else. The issues seen were that not everything got rebuilt in the same go, which resulted in zypper complaining about file conflicts. The error was save to be ignored, but annoying. In total, we have released 5 snapshots this week (0507, 0508, 0509,0511 and 0513) containing these changes:

• Absolute->Relative symlink changes, as described
• Mozilla Firefox 76.0
• Linux kernel 5.6.11
• KDE Plasma 5.18.5
• KDE Frameworks 5.70.0
• NetworkManager 1.24.0
• Libvirt 6.3.0
• GCC 10.1 (still not the default compiler)

The staging projects are still filled up with these major changes:

• Inkscape 1.0
• TeXLive 2020
• RPM change: %{_libexecdir} is being changed to /usr/libexec. This exposes quite a lot of packages that abuse %{_libexecdir} and fail to build
• Qt 5.15.0 (currently release candidate is staged)
• Guile 3.0.2: breaks gnutls’ test suite, but it passes when built with gcc10
• GCC 10 as the default compiler

Seguimos con eventos virtuales, ahora que no se pueden hacer de forma presencial. Me complace invitaros a una nueva charla virtual de GNU/Linux València que lleva por título «Software libre, veganismo y la ecología sostenible» y en la que se hablará sobre la relación de estos tres conceptos.

Nueva charla virtual de GNU/Linux València – Software libre, veganismo y la ecología sostenible

De nuevo me complace compartir con vosotros los eventos de un grupo de personas que en Valencia está impulsado el Software Libre gracias a sus reuniones, aunque como es evidente, de forma online.

Se trata un nuevo encuentro organizado del grupo de GNU/Linux Valencia que el próximo 16 de mayo de 2020 realizarán una emisión con vídeo en directo.

El anuncio oficial es el siguiente:

Este sábado 16 de mayo a las 19:00 estás invitado a formar parte como oyente de nuestro nuevo programa de tertulias, donde hablaremos principalmente sobre el software libre y los beneficios que este tiene en nuestra sociedad.

En este primer programa, se hablará sobre la relación que hay entre el software libre, el veganismo y la ecología sostenible. Abarcaremos, junto con nuestros invitados, temas de importancia y gran necesidad para vivir en un mundo más libre.

Será transmitido desde nuestra pagina Web, utilizando Jitsi como sistema de videconferencia, OBS como Emisor del Streaming y SmashCast como plataforma de visualización.

Aprovecho para recordar que desde hace unos meses, los chicos de GNU/Linux Valencia ya tienen su menú propio en el blog, con lo que seguir sus eventos en esta humilde bitácora será más fácil que nunca, y así podréis comprobar su alto nivel de actividades que realizan que destacan por su variedad.

Y que además, GNU/Linux Valencia ha crecido y se ha ¡¡¡convertido en asociación!!! , de la cual soy un orgulloso miembro.

Si podéis asistir no os lo perdáis, seguro que no quedáis decepcionados.

Más información: GNU/Linux Valencia

Boletín de noticias relacionadas con el software libre publicado por la Free Software Foundation.

¡El boletín de noticias de la FSF está aquí!

La Free Software Foundation (FSF) es una organización creada en Octubre de 1985 por Richard Stallman y otros entusiastas del software libre con el propósito de difundir esta filosofía.

La Fundación para el software libre (FSF) se dedica a eliminar las restricciones sobre la copia, redistribución, entendimiento, y modificación de programas de computadoras. Con este objeto, promociona el desarrollo y uso del software libre en todas las áreas de la computación, pero muy particularmente, ayudando a desarrollar el sistema operativo GNU.

Además de tratar de difundir la filosofía del software libre, y de crear licencias que permitan la difusión de obras y conservando los derechos de autorías, también llevan a cabo diversas campañas de concienciación y para proteger derechos de los usuarios frentes a aquellos que quieren poner restricciones abusivas en cuestiones tecnológicas.

Mensualmente publican un boletín (supporter) con noticias relacionadas con el software libre, sus campañas, o eventos. Una forma de difundir los proyectos, para que la gente conozca los hechos, se haga su propia opinión, y tomen partido si creen que la reivindicación es justa!!

• En este enlace podéis leer el original en inglés: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2020/may
• Y traducido en español en este enlace (cuando este acabada la traducción): https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2020/mayo

Puedes ver todos los números publicados en este enlace: http://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/free-software-supporter

Después de muchos años colaborando en la traducción al español del boletín, desde inicios de este año 2020 he decidido tomarme un descanso en esta tarea.

Pero hay detrás un pequeño grupo de personas que siguen haciendo posible la difusión en español del boletín de noticias de la FSF.

¿Te gustaría aportar tu ayuda en la traducción? Lee el siguiente enlace:

• https://victorhckinthefreeworld.com/2016/12/22/quieres-ayudar-a-traducir-el-boletin-mensual-de-la-free-software-foundation/

Por aquí te traigo un extracto de algunas de las noticias que ha destacado la FSF este mes de mayo de 2020

Mejor que Zoom: Prueba estas herramientas de software libre para mantenerte en contacto

Del 3 de abril

La pandemia del COVID-19 ha causado un cambio enorme en como las personas trabajan, juegan y se comunican. Por ahora, muchos de nosotros nos hemos acostumbrado a la rutina de usar comunicacion remota o herramientas de videoconferencia para mantenernos en contacto con nuestros amigos y nuestra familia.

En tiempos como estos, es muy importante recordar que herramientas como Zoom, Slack y Facebook messenger no son servicios publicos benignos. Mientras el sentimiento que estas herramientas han expresado a la comunidad global al responder a la crisis puede ser sincero, esto no aborda los problemas eticos fundamentales que tiene una parte del software propietario.

No hay mejor tiempo que el presente para insistir en usar software etico en tu comunicacion remota con tus amigos y familiares. Al hacer eso tu estas extendiendo el alcance y el mensaje del software libre! Este articulo lista herramientas de video, audio, texto y otras de comunicación que te trataran a ti y a los que tu amas con el respeto que tu mereces.

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/better-than-zoom-try-these-free-software-tools-for-staying-in-touch

Manteniéndote “seguro” mientras transmites: Consejos del DBD para vivir sin DRM durante la cuarentena

Del el 7 de abril

Como la mayoría de nosotros estamos encerrados en nuestros hogares debido a la actual pandemia COVID-19, es algo natural que recurramos a las películas, la música y otros medios en línea para que nos ayude a pasar el tiempo.

Para la mayoría de la gente, esto implica recurrir a la transmisión por Internet para obtener servicios apropiados y “todo en uno” que prometen una serie interminable de recomendaciones para pasar las horas. Los maratones están muy bien de vez en cuando, pero debemos tener cuidado de que la forma en que las obtengamos no comprometan nuestra libertad.

Como ya hemos mencionado, Netflix y otros gigantes proveedores de medios son responsables de mantener viva la práctica de la DRM (Administración de Restricciones Digitales), y es importante no suministrarles las cuotas de suscripción que necesitan para seguir adelante.

También es importante, incluso en circunstancias menos graves, apoyar a las empresas y sitios web que proporcionan medios libres de DRM, y promoverlos entre nuestros amigos.

Así que para ayudar a proporcionarte una diversidad de lugares libres de DRM y a menudo gratuitos desde los que descargarte mientras conservas tus derechos, aquí tienes una selección de nuestra Guía de medios libres de DRM.

• https://www.defectivebydesign.org/blog/staying_safe_while_you_stream_dbds_tips_living_drmfree_during_quarantine

Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE): Cualquier aplicación de rastreo de coronavirus debe ser usada voluntariamente y ser software libre

Del 2 de abril por la FSFE

La FSFE exige que el uso de tecnologías de rastreo que tengan por objeto romper las cadenas de infección de enfermedades, sólo se fomenten de forma voluntaria, respetando los derechos fundamentales y que se publique el software bajo una licencia de software libre.

• https://fsfe.org/news/2020/news-20200402-02.en.html

Cómo organizar el stream de una conferencia en menos de una semana

Del 16 de abril

Por primera vez en la historia, LibrePlanet 2020 ha sido una conferencia totalmente virtual debido a los problemas actuales causados por la pandemia de coronavirus.

En nuestra última semana de preparativos antes del evento en directo, las cada vez más inquietantes noticias relacionadas con el virus nos hicieron darnos cuenta de que no podíamos celebrar nuestra habitual conferencia sobre la libertad de software en persona, protegiendo al mismo tiempo la seguridad de nuestros participantes y sus comunidades.

Así que le dimos la vuelta a todo para finalmente llevar 35 presentaciones de software libre a nuestra comunidad a través del filtro de una pantalla de ordenador.

Después de la conferencia, han habido muchas personas que nos han escrito para pedirnos más detalles sobre lo que hemos hecho, así que hemos querido aprovechar esta oportunidad para compartir cómo fuimos capaces de crear una experiencia virtual interactiva y educativa totalmente libre.

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/how-to-livestream-a-conference-in-just-under-a-week

Estas son solo algunas de las noticias recogidas este mes, pero hay muchas más muy interesantes!! si quieres leerlas todas (cuando estén traducidas) visita este enlace:

• https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2020/mayo

Y todos los números del “supporter” o boletín de noticias de 2020 aquí:

• http://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2020/

—————————————————————

Ninetynine seems to be a new norm for openSUSE Tumbleweed as the rolling release trends and posts stable ratings of 99 for every snapshot this month, according to the Tumbleweed snapshot reviewer.

Among the packages to arrive in this week’s updates were Curl, OpenConnect, KDE’s Plasma and Frameworks as well as a major version update of Redis.

KDE Frameworks 5.70.0 arrived in snapshot 202000511; these libraries for programming with Qt introduced a small font theme for Kirigami and improved icon rendering on multi-screen multi-dpi setups. KConfig added the standard shortcut for “Show/Hide Hidden Files” with the Alt+ keys. The text rendering bitmap package freetype2 updated to version 2.10.2 and dropped support for Python 2 in Freetype’s API reference generator; the version also supports Type 1 fonts with non-integer metrics by the new Compact Font Format engine introduced in FreeType 2.9. The 1.45.6 e2fsprogs package for maintaining the ext2, ext3 and ext4 file systems improved e2fsck’s ability to deal with file systems that have a large number of directories, such that various data structures take more than 2GB of memory; the new version uses better structure packing to improve the memory efficiency of these data structures. The libressl 3.1.1 package completed an initial Transport Layer Security 1.3 implementation with a completely new state machine and record layer. TLS 1.3 is now enabled by default for the client side, with the server side to be enabled in a future release. The changelog noted that the OpenSSL TLS 1.3 API is not yet visible/available. RubyGem had a plethora of packages updates in ; rubygem-fluentd 1.10.3 had some refactored code and enhancements like adding a set method to record_accessor. The rubygem-activerecord-6.0 6.0.3 package fixed support for PostgreSQL 11+ partitioned indexes and noted a recommendation in the changelog that applications shouldn’t use the database Keyword Arguments (kwarg) in connected_to. The database kwarg in connected_to is meant to be used for one-off scripts but is often used in requests, which is a dangerous practice because it re-establishes a connection every time. It’s deprecated in 6.1 and will be removed in 6.2 without replacement.

The Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) client freerdp had multiple Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures fixes in the 202000509 snapshot; the 2.1.0 version improved server certificate support, made various fixes for the wayland client and had fixes for leak and crashing issues. The 6.3.0 libvirt toolkit now supports use of the VirtualBox 6.0 and 6.1 APIs. The new version also added support for ‘passthrough’ hypervisor feature, which is a Xen-specific option new to Xen 4.13 that enables PCI passthrough for guests. It must be enabled to allow hotplugging PCI devices. The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol package openldap2 2.4.50 have fixes for the stand-alone LDAP daemon and several YaST packages updated to version 4.3.0.

One major version update of shared-mime-info 2.0 was delivered in snapshot 202000508. The package, which allows for central updates of Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions information for all supporting applications, installs ITS file to allow the internationalization and localization (i18n and l10n) system gettext to translate mime-type descriptions. A new experimental MQTT protocol was added with curl 7.70.0. The ghostscript 9.52 package forked LittleCMS2 into LittleCMS2mt “multi-thread”. SSL VPN client openconnect 8.09 fixed a CVE regarding an OpenSSL validation for trusted but invalid certificates. An updated version of the wireless-regdb package, which is a database package of legal regulations on radio emissions, to 20200429 change the rules for the United States on 2.4/5G.

The 202000507 snapshot that started off the week brought several package updates like ImageMagick 7.0.10.10, Mozilla Firefox 76.0 and Thunderbird 68.8.0. The new Firefox strengthens the protection of online account logins and passwords and automatically generates secure, complex passwords for new password preferences. A major version update of Redis 6.0.1 arrived in the snapshot as well. The new release of the in-memory data structure store has the ACL GENPASS command and now uses HMAC-SHA256 and has an optional “bits” argument, which means it can be used as a general purpose “secure random strings” primitive. Plasma 5.18.5 update arrived in the snapshot a had many fixes in the minor release for KDE’s Long-Term Support version. Some of the packages remove a too strict Qt/KF5 deprecation rule and KWin had a fix to avoid a potential crash for Wayland. Other packages updated in the snapshot were the terminal multiplexer tmux 3.1b, mail client mutt 1.14.0 and the 5.6.11 Linux Kernel.

Lamentablemente, seguimos estando muchas horas pendientes de nuestro ordenador, por lo que no es mala idea personalizarlo hasta que es visualmente perfecto para su gusto. Evidentemente, los cursores son parte de esa personalización y hoy toca hablar de un tema muy particular. Se trata de Coffee Cup, un pack de cursores más que originales que dotará a Plasma de un aspecto simpático y agradable.

Coffee Cup, cursores para los más cafeteros

Nacidos de la mano y de la mente de Elsmackatan nos llega Coffe Cup, un tema de cursores que «para aquellos que necesitan su ración diaria de cafeina», es decir, para los muy cafeteros.

Y es que con un diseño original y muy simpático nos convierte nuestro cursor en una taza azulada que se puede llegar a convertir en un dispensador de leche caliente o un grano de café, según el caso.

Y como siempre digo, si os gusta este conjunto de cursores Coffee Cup podéis “pagarlo” de muchas formas en la página de KDE Store, que estoy seguro que el desarrollador lo agradecerá: puntúale positivamente, hazle un comentario en la página o realiza una donación. Ayudar al desarrollo del Software Libre también se hace simplemente dando las gracias, ayuda mucho más de lo que os podéis imaginar, recordad la campaña I love Free Software Day 2017 de la Free Software Foundation donde se nos recordaba esta forma tan sencilla de colaborar con el gran proyecto del Software Libre y que en el blog dedicamos un artículo.

Más información: KDE Store

Cómo cambiar el tema de los cursores en Plasma

Al igual que con los iconos hay varias formas de cambiar el tema de cursores en Plasma, pero la más fácil es:

• Abrir las Preferencias del Sistema
• Ir a la sección Tema de Cursor
• En esta ventana pinchar en “Obtener nuevos temas”
• Buscar Coffe Cup y dar a instalar.
• Seleccionar el tema y aplicar.

Si tenéis dificultad, simplemente se debe descargar y extraer el tema en «/usr/share/icons» o «~/.icons».

Rápido, sencillo y efectivo, como la mayoría de cosas en en el escritorio Plasma de la Comunidad KDE.

openSUSE Leap 15.2 has entered the Beta phase on the 25th February 2020. I have recently installed this on my laptop to check it out. Leap 15.2 will coincide with SUSE Enterprise Linux Desktop 15 Service Pack 2. Both Leap and SLED share a lot of underlying packages, so this will be (again) a rock solid release.

openSUSE Leap 15.2 features many big updates. This includes a new version of the KDE desktop environment, a new version of the GNOME desktop environment and a new Linux kernel. In the Leap 15.2 column of the table below, I have highlighted in green the packages that are significantly changed in comparison to Leap 15.1. And in blue, I have highlighted the packages that are changed compared to Leap 15.1 at time of its release, but which are now also available in updated Leap 15.1 installations.

openSUSE Tumbleweed is a rolling distribution, so it will always change. The Tumbleweed column features a snapshot of the situation at the end of April 2020. I have only highlighted in green the packages that are significantly newer than the packages in Leap 15.2. This shows the areas where Leap 15.2 is behind the software development curve. Staying a bit behind the curve is not necessarily a bad thing. You install openSUSE Leap because you don’t want to deal with constant change. You install openSUSE Tumbleweed if you want to stay on the cutting edge. They both have their own audiences. This comparison helps (future) openSUSE users understand the main differences between Leap 15.2 and Tumbleweed, so they can figure out which of these distributions is right for them.

Software package updates

Chromium moved from version 73 to version 81 and a lot has changed. Important new features include a Forced Dark Mode that enables dark mode on every website, the Silent Notification Popup feature contains notifications under a special icon in the URL address bar, the Tab Freezing feature unloads tabs that are not used for 5 minutes (saving CPU and RAM). A lot of security improvements were made, including DNS over HTTPS (experimental) where DNS (domain lookup) requests are send over a secured connection. Mixed HTTP/HTTPS content is now auto-upgraded to HTTPS, the Password Checkup utility checks if your saved passwords have been breached and the Predictive Phishing feature warns users if they are about to enter their passwords in a phishing website.

Digikam 6.4 features a lot of changes in comparison to Digikam 6.0. The 15 year old KIPI plugin interface is swapped for the much improved DPlugins interface. This allows plugins to work on all aspects of the Digikam application and accompanying tools. And a lot of new plugins take advantage of that. There is a new plugin to use images as your desktop wallpaper. The GMic-Qt plugin adds a lot of filters (comparable to GIMP and Krita). A RAW import tool plugin allows configurations from Darktable, Rawtherapee and Ufraw to be imported via the Image Editor. And finally a new Clone Tool Plugin allowing you to clone parts of an image. The new LibRaw 0.19.3 library allows for more RAW formats to be imported into Digikam.

Flatpak 1.6.3 has changed the protocol and API for handling authentication, making it more secure, flexible and futureproof.

Gimp 2.10.12 is a major update compared to Gimp 2.08.22. It has a new image processing engine called GEGL. This image processing engine makes use of multi-threading, making Gimp much faster. Gimp now works in a linear RGB color space. Color management is also a core feature of Gimp. Gimp 2.10 has better file formats support, including reading and writing TIFF, PNG, PSD and FITS files. The interface of Gimp is also improved. It now has HiDPI support and the icons are more stylized. Gimp 2.10 has better transformation tools, better selection tools, an improved text tool and a number of digital painting and digital photography improvements. If you want a detailed description of all improvements, check the release notes.

The GNOME desktop and applications are updated from version 3.26 to 3.34. That is a difference of 4 major releases. The GNOME Shell has seen many performance/speed improvements, so it feels much more responsive. The Adwaita theme has gotten an overhaul and now features a flat style and more beautiful icons. openSUSE Leap 15.2 also allows you to install the Yaru theme (Ubuntu) and the Pop!_OS theme (System 76). The touch keyboard is much improved and now features emoji’s. And finally you can group apps into folders in the Activities overview.

Many GNOME applications feature UI improvements, including Web, Settings, Contacts, Notes and Terminal. The Photos application features new editing tools. The Files application features a new unified navigation/search bar. Web also features a new reader mode and the option to enable hardware acceleration. GNOME Software features a faster search engine. There are many improvements to the Boxes virtualization application, but according to a recent Arstechnica article it is still less usable than Virt-manager. There are also 3 new application introduced. Fractal is a Matrix Chat client. Matrix works similar to WhatsApp and Telegram but it’s Open Source and decentralized. It is co-developed and heavily used by the French government to make sure that their conversations stay private. Usage is a new (basic looking) performance monitor tool. And Podcast (obviously) is a Podcast player.

GNUCash 3.9 features many improvements for your accounting needs. Usability is improved, by adding better tooltips, multi-selection in the import transaction matcher and the ability to assign a single target account to more than one transaction in the import matcher. It features improvements to reporting, including a full rewrite of Customer/Employee/Vendor reports, improvements to the Transaction report and the introduction of a user-customizable CSS based stylesheet. It features currency handling improvements, including using the default currency for the summary bar currency. And using the customer and vendor currency instead of the default currency when generating bills, invoices or credit notes.

Hugin 2019.2 can now convert the RAW images to TIFF with a new RAW converter.

Inkscape remains on version 0.92.2. Which is unfortunate, as Inkscape 1.0 was just released and contains many new features.

KDE Applications were updated from 18.12.3 to 19.12.3. Which equals 3 releases. A lot of improvements were made over the course of that year. Dolphin (file manager) can now be launched from anywhere via the Windows + E keyboard shortcut. Dolphin handles the rendering of tumbnails much better and now includes previews of .cb7 files. Gwenview (image viewer) has better touchscreen and HiDPI support. Its tumbnails load faster. It has a new share menu to share images via email, phone, NextCloud or Twitter. And Gwenview now integrates with Krita out of the box. Okular (document viewer) has improved touchscreen support. It now supports viewing and verifying digital signatures in PDF files. It also adds support for LaTex documents. It improves ePub support. And it has improved annotation features.

In terms of productivity, Kmail (e-mail client) has seen some improvements. It now has unicode color emoji and markdown support. It has grammarly integration for better grammar checking. And it detects phone numbers, which can be dialed via KDE Connect. Korganizer (calendar) improved its support for Google Calendar. A new application was added, which is called Kitinerary, a travel assistant.

In terms of multimedia, Kdenlive (video editor) has seen a big code re-write. It should now be faster and more performant and easier to use. It features new keyboard-mouse shortcuts to make you more productive. And it comes with a new sound mixer to help you synchronize music with video clips. Elisa is a new KDE music player. It looks quite similar to Amarok, which was my go-to music player for the last 10 years. It looks interesting enough to give it a try. Amarok didn’t have any new releases over the last 2 years. So maybe it’s time to switch.

In terms of utilities, Spectacle (my new favorite screenshot tool) now allows you to configure what happens when you press the screenshot button while the application is open. It features a neat taskbar indicator, showing you (if you choose to delay it) when the screenshot will be taken. And you can now use the touchscreen to select the area that you want to screenshot. Kate (text editor) added a quick open feature to open your most recent files. Konsole (terminal) now has an awesome tiling feature, that allows you to split panes horizontally and vertically as many times as you like. Calligra Plan (planner) finally gets a new release. It helps you plan your projects Gantt style. KDE Connect now has a new feature to write and read SMS messages from your desktop. Also, you can now control the volume of your phone from your desktop. The Plasma Browser Integration plugin gained a nice multi media feature, giving you the ability to blacklist sound sources from certain websites.

The Plasma desktop has changed from version 5.12.8 to version 5.18.4. Which are 6 major releases, so there are many changes to look forward to. A lot of effort has gone into the look and feel of the desktop. The login screen and lock screen were completely redesigned and look much better. The system settings are also totally redesigned, making them better suited for small screen (read mobile) devices. The Breeze icons also have seen some adjustments to make them look sharper. GTK support is much improved. GTK applications now respect KDE settings, KDE color schemes, have shadows on X11 and support the KDE global menu. The Color scheme and Window Decoration pages were redesigned. And you can now set a ‘Picture of the Day’ as your wallpaper. Which is a really cool feature.

If you say KDE 5, you say widgets. And widgets are now easier to rearrange then ever. You can put the desktop into Global Edit mode and easily drag and resize all widgets. The notifications system has been completely rewritten and now includes a ‘Do not disturb’ feature. The system tray now shows a warning whenever audio is recorded, enhancing your privacy. A new widget for display configuration is useful if you have multiple monitors or if you often work from different places. The power widget now shows the battery status of Bluetooth devices. The network manager widget now includes support for WireGuard VPN tunnels. And it is now faster to refresh WiFi networks. And a new system tray widget lets you control the Night Color feature.

The Discover software manager is much improved. Which was really necessary. I intend to address the current state of KDE Discover and Gnome Software on Leap 15.2 in a separate post. You can now sort lists and category pages, including by release date. There are progress bars and spinners added to various parts of the application. It has a new updates page with sections for ‘downloading’ and ‘installing’ applications. You can also deselect updates in the update page. Discover can update your firmware via the ‘fwupd’ project. This is a very nice feature, but only works on supported hardware. It can also update a full Linux distribution. However I can imagine that this feature works better on KDE Neon than on openSUSE (YaST is most likely superior). Discover can auto-install the Flatpak back-end if it’s not installed by default and now supports Snap channels.

KDE Plasma 5.18 has much improved Wayland support (the new display manager). Including initial support for proprietary Nvidia drivers. KWin (the Window manager) now supports fractional scaling on Wayland, which is useful on HiDPI screens. Night Color is now available on X11 (the old display manager). You can now manage your Thunderbolt devices from the system settings. And the desktop is much more responsive.

Krita is now on version 4.2.9 and now supports painting in HDR. The brush speed is much improved, the color palette is easier to use, the artistic color selector has been cleaned up and a new color gamut feature was added. A lot of bug fixes make the application more stable than ever.

LibreOffice moved from version 6.1.3 to version 6.4.2. The tabbed user interface (which looks similar to Microsoft Office Ribbon interface) moved out of the experimental stage and is now fully baked. Writer has seen many improvements. You can now place comments on images / charts. You can now mark comments as resolved. You can now hide tracked changes. You can set the text direction in text frames. You can avoid overlapping shapes, by selecting an auto-detection mode. Handling of tables is much improved. And the sidebar now has a panel for Table actions. Calc has gained a new multivariate regression analysis. Data validation now supports custom formulas. Which is very handy. In Impress, you can now consolidate multiple text boxes into one text box. Overall improvements in LibreOffice are better support for (and faster opening of) Microsoft Office document formats.

The Linux kernel was updated to version 5.3.18. Since the last version, a lot of improvements have gone into the Linux kernel. However, some of these improvements were already backported into the openSUSE 4.12.14 kernel. In this paragraph I will detail some of the major changes between the official kernels 4.12 and 5.3. Intel has added Comet Lake, Cannonlake and Coffeelake support. Intel Icelake Gen11 graphics are now supported. Intel Icelake and Geminilake now support HDR displays. Nouveau, the open source NVIDIA driver, has gained support for GeForce GTX 1650, GeForce GTX 1660 and GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. It also gained support for HDMI 2.0. AMD added various Ryzen laptop and Threadripper improvements. AMD added support for Radeon RX Vega M and for Navi GPU’s (including Radeon RX 5700). AMD added FreeSync display support (for supported GPUs and Displays).

The Linux kernel has improved Btrfs performance and features, including Swap files and Zstd compression support. Realtek WiFi drivers were added for the RTW88 and RTL8822BE chips. The Realtek R8169 driver was updated. The Linux kernel now has full support for Raspberry Pi 3B and 3B+. The kernel also added support for the Raspberry Pi Touchscreen driver. The kernel now has MacBook and MacBook Pro keyboard support. Significant power savings were accomplished for certain hardware by optimizing idle time. And mitigations for the Spectre vulnerability were added for most hardware architectures.

Mozilla Firefox (Extended Support Release) was updated from 60.6 to 68.6. This is a relatively old version, as the regular release of Firefox is now on version 76. I advice everyone to add the Mozilla repository and change Firefox to the non ESR version. But if you use Firefox 68 ESR, there are some nice improvements. On the user interface the new Firefox Home (which you see when you open a new tab) allows users to display up to 4 rows of top sites, pocket stories and highlights. You can now select multiple tabs from the tab bar and close/move/bookmark/pin them all at once. The toolbar now shows your Firefox Sync status. Firefox now prevents websites from automatically playing sounds. The Dark theme has seen some improvements, including a dark mode for the reader. And you can now save passwords in private browsing mode. There are various technical enhancements. Most noticeable are the performance improvements (due to Quantum CSS improvements and Clang Link Time Optimization) and smoother scrolling. Firefox now supports CSS Shapes and CSS Variable Fonts. It now supports the WebP image format. And it now uses TLS 1.3 by default. Another nice improvement is that WebExtentions now run in their own process on Linux.

Mozilla Thunderbird moved to version 68, which is the most recent version. There are some small improvements in comparison to Thunderbird 60. You can now mark all folders of an account as read. Language packs can now be selected in the advanced options. Only WebExtension themes and WebExtension dictionaries are supported in this new version.

Rapid Photo Downloader is now on version 9.22. A notable addition is the support for Canons CR3 RAW format. However this is not supported on openSUSE Leap 15.2 because it uses an older ExifTool version. A (future looking) addition is the support for the HEIF / HEIC file format.

Scribus is updated to version 1.5.5. Most of the changes are under the hood. However there are some nice improvements, such as the ability to use Scribus with a dark UI color scheme. And the possibility to search for a particular function (like in GIMP).

Telegram Desktop has now moved to version 2.0. Notable improvements are the ability to organize chats into chat folders, the ability to pin an unlimited number of chats in each folder, a picture-in-picture mode to watch videos, the ability to rotate photos/videos in the media viewer, an autoplay function for videos, the ability to schedule a message to be send at a later time and the ability to set reminders for yourself in the saved messages chat.

Installation options

The standard installer comes as a full DVD image (with lots of included packages for offline installation) and as the (smaller) Network installer image. You can download these images for PC (X86_64) for ARM (AArch64) and for OpenPower (ppc64le) hardware.

Live images are available for GNOME and for KDE. These images allow you to try openSUSE Leap 15.2 Beta without installing it to your hard drive. There is also a (live) Rescue image available. JeOS can be used in a virtualized (Cloud) environment and images are available for KVM, Xen, HyperV, VMWare and for the OpenStack Cloud. You can find all images for openSUSE Leap 15.2 Beta here.

Published on: 13 May 2020