Xfce's "xfdesktop" desktop manager rolled out version 4.15 this week as the newest albeit unstable update.

LibVNCServer is the cross-platform library allowing the accelerated development of VNC server / Remote Framebuffer Protocol functionality into applications. LibVNCServer 0.9.13 is out as the first update to this library in more than one year and now comes with better cross-platform support.

Carsten Haitzler has released Enlightenment 0.24 as the latest significant update to this X11 window manager and Wayland compositor.

You may recall towards the end of last year when the Pango layout engine library dropped support for bitmap fonts, causing frustrations among some users. There now appears to be another Linux font debacle brewing.

The FreeType library that is used by many open-source projects for font rendering and other font operations, is out with their first release of the year.

Xrdesktop, the Valve-funded Linux desktop support for VR headsets and making the likes of GNOME and KDE window managers VR-aware, is out with a new release.

Last month marked the release of FreeRDP 2.0 for implementing the Microsoft Remote Assistant Protocol v2. FreeRDP 2.0 also brought RDP proxy support, font smoothing by default, Flatpak packaging support, better scaling for Wayland, and other improvements. Today now marks the release of FreeRDP 2.1.

The first alpha release of the Enlightenment 0.24 window manager / Wayland compositor with new features and other improvements.

Three years after the FreeRDP 2.0 release candidates began, version 2.0 of this Free Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) implementation is finally available. FreeRDP remains one of the leading RDP remote desktop solutions for Linux users and is finally ready to lead with its shiny new release.

Added over a year ago to the mainline Linux kernel was the high resolution mouse wheel scrolling support. While the support landed on kernel-side for to provide "buttery smooth" wheel scrolling, the work has yet to be wrapped up on the user-space side for making this a reality on the Linux desktop.

Complementing the Firefox 73 vs. 74 vs. 75 Beta benchmarks on Ubuntu Linux from AMD Ryzen this week, here are those numbers side-by-side with the Google Chrome 80 web-browser for putting the performance into more perspective.

While GIMP 3.0 remains elusive as the long overdue GTK3 port of this leading open-source image manipulation program, the GIMP 2.10 stable series continues seeing a lot of decent improvements in their subsequent point releases. GIMP 2.10.18 is out today following a botched GIMP 2.10.16 release.

PipeWire is the Red Hat engineered project aiming to offer better audio/video stream handling on Linux that integrates well with Flatpak and can optimally handle use-cases currently covered by the likes of PulseAudio and JACK. This week marked the release of PipeWire 0.3 as another big step forward for the effort.

If the likes of GIMP and Krita aren't satisfying your digital drawing/painting needs, MyPaint 2.0 has finally been released as a big update to this simplicity-minded, cross-platform and open-source program.

Several months ago we learned of the Xfce 4.16 plans to drop GTK2 support and explore client-side decoration goals among other changes for this lightweight desktop environment release expected in late 2020.

It's 2020 and GIMP remains one of the last holdouts for a major software application still relying upon the GTK2 tool-kit even with GTK4 potentially coming around the end of the calendar year. Fortunately, at least, the GIMP 2.99.x development releases on the path to the GTK3-based GIMP 3.0 should be starting up soon.

Latte Dock, the dock designed for KDE Plasma desktops, is working on a v0.10 feature update due out next summer while out this weekend is the first development release.

On Friday I published two years worth of Mozilla Firefox benchmarks in re-testing every browser release from Firefox 57 through Firefox 71 stable as well as the latest beta/alpha releases. One of the questions that came out of that was seeing the current Chrome performance on Linux against Firefox, so here are some fresh numbers there.

The W3C put out an interesting status update this week on web games technologies and the various standardization efforts at play.

Over a decade ago all the Linux desktop rage was over the likes of Compiz, Beryl, Compiz Fusion, and the like... Ah the memories. But to much surprise, Compiz saw a new release today. Compiz 0.9.14.1 isn't the most exciting update, but the project is still alive.

The inaugural release of Glimpse is now available, the fork born out of calls for renaming The GIMP project to something not considered offensive.

While we long to finally see GIMP 3.0, GIMP 2.10.14 is out as the newest stable update for this leading open-source image manipulation program.

Cleaning up of the Pango layout engine library as some much needed housekeeping by GNOME developers resulted in shifting to the Harfbuzz library for font loading. That quietly meant dropping support for bitmap fonts from Pango, which is now reaching Linux desktop users when upgrading to the Pango 1.44 stable release.

Prominent Xfce developer Simon Steinbeiß has shared more of the group's plans for the planned 2020 release of Xfce 4.16.

As a change for next year's Xfce 4.16, the xfce4-panel now exposes a preferences option for those preferring "dark modes" of GTK themes.

Following last month's release of Xfce 4.14 that transitioned from GTK2 to GTK3 as its tool-kit, old remnants of GTK2 support are now being nuked.

While PipeWire may be seeing a lot of investment by Red Hat for improving audio/video streams on Linux, PulseAudio isn't letting up yet as the de facto Linux desktop sound server. Quietly released last week was PulseAudio 13.0 as the newest feature update and their first big update in some fifteen months.

It has been almost two years since the release of Enlightenment 0.22 while surprising E23 has now surfaced.

With Xfce 4.14 having finally been released last week following a four year development cycle, prominent Xfce developer Simon Steinbeiß has begun talking about the now-started Xfce 4.16 development cycle.

After more than four years in development there is finally the release of Xfce 4.14.