The GTK3-ported Xfce 4.14 might see its long-awaited official release in the near future. In preparing for a hopeful August debut, the Xfce 4.14 pre-release is now available.

Xfce's Xfdesktop 4.13.4 was released on Friday as the newest stepping stone on the long and winding journey towards Xfce 4.14.

A few days ago I posted some Chrome vs. Firefox benchmarks using the latest Linux builds. Some readers suggested Firefox could be more competitive if forcing WebRender usage and/or moving to the latest nightly builds, so here are some complementary data sets looking at such combinations.

There still is no sign of Xfce 4.14, but this week marked the release of a big update to Xfce's screensaver component.

Given the recent releases of Chrome 73 and Firefox 66, here are some fresh tests of these latest browsers on Linux under a variety of popular browser benchmarks.

MATE 1.22 is now available as the latest feature update for this fork of the GNOME 2 desktop components.

Trinity Desktop R14.0.6 is being prepared as the latest update to this fork of the KDE 3 package set that continues providing bug fixes and maintenance for those still wanting to live on the KDE3 experience in 2019.

Raptor Computing Systems spent a lot of time last year working on Chrome's PPC64LE support to enable Google's web browser to run on the latest IBM POWER processors. Google was sitting on these patches without any action for months but finally they are beginning to be accepted upstream.

One of the latest feature additions for the Xfce desktop is support for the colord system service for managing/using color profiles for output devices (displays).

While Ubuntu may no longer be using Compiz by default as the compositing window manager, the Compiz project is still alive as marked by today's Compiz 0.9.14.0 release.

The Electron software framework that allows creating desktop GUI application interfaces using JavaScript and relies upon a bundled Chromium+Node.js run-time is notorious among most Linux desktop users for being resource heavy, not integrating well with most desktops, and generally being despised. For those that are fond of using web standards for creating desktop GUIs, now there is a way to create desktop application front-ends using HTML5 and Golang but with less baggage.

Over two years since the unveiling of the Awesome 4.0 window manager and one and a half years since the Awesome 4.2 release, out today is Awesome 4.3 for this X11 window manager.

There is a new version of the Catfish search utility, which is GTK3 based and part of the Xfce project, but works on other desktop systems as a Linux/Unix system search tool as well.

The LXQt team has announced version 0.14.0 of their lightweight Qt5-powered Linux desktop environment.

Inkscape on Thursday announced their 0.92.4 release that brought many stability and bug fixes but also some performance improvements and other enhancements. Most exciting though is the debut of Inkscape 1.0 alpha.

Entangle is the long-standing open-source software that allows you to control DSLR cameras from Linux. With various Nikon and Canon DSLRs, among others, it's possible to view a live preview, automatically download images, and snap pictures all over the USB connection to the camera.

At the end of 2018, Canonical's Alan Pope shared the most popular Snap packages for 2018. Now there's a similar list out of the folks maintaining Flathub for Flatpak packages. The list of popular applications is quite different between these app sandboxing/distribution means.

The Xfce 4.14 remains long overdue for release but with Xfce4-Panel 4.13.4 being released on New Year's Day gives us hope we could see this long-awaited desktop environment out in 2019.

Just in time for managing and enhancing any holiday photos, Darktable 2.6.0 was released this Christmas Eve as the latest feature release for this leading open-source RAW photography workflow software.

The latest feature on deck for the long overdue Xfce 4.14 desktop update is support for the RandR primary display/output functionality.

Linux Mint's Cinnamon desktop environment derived from GNOME/GTK components has tagged its v4.0.0 release in source and is already beginning to appear in distribution repositories from the likes of Manjaro.

As a new alternative over XScreenSaver or using other desktop environments' screensaver functionality, xfce4-screensaver has out its first release albeit of alpha quality.

Linux developer Simon Peter who has spent years working on application standards like AppImage and Klik recently presented on what he believes are the 2018 Desktop Linux Platform Issues and the unfortunate continually moving target of "the year of the Linux desktop" that never materializes.

A new release of xfce4-settings is out as another component update in the long road to Xfce 4.14.

The GIMP team has released a new point release today to GIMP 2.10 stable. While the version may not be indicative of significant changes, there are some prominent user-facing improvements with this release.

Hong Jen Yee, the developer of the PCMan File Manager that has long served as the default file manager on the LXDE desktop environment, presented at this week's Debian DebConf 18 event about the LXDE/LXQt desktop efforts.

The Catfish search utility now officially lives under the Xfce umbrella.

GIMP 2.10.4 was quietly released earlier this week as the latest stable release in the GIMP 2.10 series.

Sean Davis of the Xubuntu project has provided a status update about the ongoing work by this Xfce-focused spin of Ubuntu Linux.

NetworkManager now has support for 6LoWPAN devices.