The upcoming GNOME 3.34 release is sure to ship with a stack of improvements, new features and core app updates — but it will also come with a brand new default wallpaper!

GNOME designer Jakub Steiner is, once again, diligently designing a new desktop drape for the revered free desktop to use by default.

And although the intended design is not final-final, it’s almost done! So here’s your first look at the brand new GNOME 3.34 wallpaper...

• Nextcloud Login Plugin for PlaMo

  With the completion of my first milestone for my GSoC project: Nextcloud Integration on Plasma Mobile, plasma mobile accounts settings now enables the users to add their nextcloud accounts via webview.

  Well! didn’t accounts setting already provide the method to add nextcloud/owncloud accounts? Yes, this functionality was already implemented by the owncloud plugin in kaccounts-providers project. Then, why did I re-implement the same thing?

  As I mentioned, now accounts can be added via webview.

• First week of GSOC, Piece Table Implement

  Hi! Last week was start of the GSOC coding period. So I started my project. Also I opened my code on the KDE git. https://cgit.kde.org/scratch/songeon/kmarkdownparser.git/

  If you are interested in my project feel free to look and give me some advices.

• KIOFuse: 32-bit Support

  The first two weeks of the GSoC coding period are now over.

  Firstly, a mapping between KIO errors and FUSE errors has now been established. Previously all KIO Job errors were simply sent back to FUSE as EIO, which isn’t entirely accurate. The mapping now provides more accurate error replies.

  A major new addition is 32-bit support. KIOFuse did not compile on 32-bit but these compilation errors have now been alleviated. They mostly stemmed from the fact that size_t has a different size on different architectures, and that file sizes should always be represented as off_t anyway.

• Kate & C++ Developer Survey

  While browsing the ISO C++ homepage I stumbled over the results PDF of the Second Annual C++ Foundation Developer Survey “Lite”.

  I was astonished that Kate made it into the “Which development environments (IDEs) or editors do you use for C++ development?” results.

  ;=) Seems not only I use it as my normal editor for working on C++ code.

• Sumaid Syed: First Two Weeks

  Jean Felder ( My mentor for GSoC project) and Marinus Schraal (GNOME Music Maintainer) suggested that I propose a plan of the whole project. Now trust me! This is the much more difficult than actual coding!
  I usually work on my personal projects and start working from scratch, but here the project involves so many different libraries, so I really struggled with making a plan with a proper timeline.

• What is my Project?

  In this case, all we need to do is extract those mbids and store them in tracker. Tracker is a file indexing and search framework, which GNOME Music relies on. Hence it’s necessary to extract and index mbids in tracker from file.

• Why Ubuntu MATE 19.10 Is Ditching VLC for GNOME MPV

  GNOME MPV (now known as Celluloid) will be the default media player in Ubuntu MATE 19.10.

  The app supplants the versatile VLC meda player, which the MATE-desktop-toting distro has shipped with since a community poll back in 2017.

  So why the change now?

  Better desktop integration. That’s according to Ubuntu MATE’s Martin Wimpress who revealed news of the swap in the latest Ubuntu MATE monthly update on Patreon:

  “We will be dropping VLC from the pre-installed applications and shipping GNOME MPV instead. GNOME MPV will soon be renamed to Celluloid. The reasons for switching to GNOME MPV are similar to swapping out Thunderbird for Evolution; better desktop integration.”

  Size is another factor. GNOME MPV takes up a comparatively svelte 27MB on the ISO image, whereas Qt5-based VLC requires closer to 70MB.

• Ubuntu MATE 19.10 Is Ditching VLC for GNOME MPV

 

• GTK 3 Frame Profiler

  I back-ported the GTK 4 frame-profiler by Matthias to GTK 3 today. Here is an example of a JavaScript application using GJS and GTK 3. The data contains mixed native and JS stack-traces along with compositor frame information from gnome-shell.

• Ubuntu keeping up with GNOME stable updates

  Recently Michael blogged about epiphany being outdated in Ubuntu. While I don’t think that a blog ranting was the best way to handle the problem (several of the Ubuntu Desktop members are on #gnome-hackers for example, it would have been easy to talk to us there) he was right that the Ubuntu package for epiphany was outdated.

  [...]

  Again the reality is a bit more complex. Snaps don’t have depends like debs do, so by nature they don’t have problems like being blocked by missing depends. To limit duplication we do provide a gnome platform snap though and most of our GNOME snaps use it. That platform snap is built from our LTS archive which is on GTK 3.22 and our snaps are built on a similar infrastructure.

  [...]

  And as a conclusion, if as an upstream or user you have an issue with a component that is still outdated in Ubuntu feel free to get in touch with us (IRC/email/launchpad) and we will do out best to fix the situation.

 

• Argos Is Like BitBar For Gnome Shell: It Shows Scripts Output On The Panel (Top Bar)

  Searching for a way to show a script output on the Gnome Shell panel (top bar), I came across Argos. This Gnome Shell extension does only one thing: it adds a new item with a dropdown menu to the panel, showing the output from a script and exposing functionality.

  The extension is inspired by BitBar, a popular program to put the output from any script on the macOS menu bar, and it's even compatible with most BitBar scripts.

• Hello new Konsole

  Konsole has been ready for many many years, and got almost 10 years without anything really exciting being added, mostly because the software is ready, why should we modify something that works to add experimental features?

  But then the reality kicked in, konsole missed some features that are quite nice and existed in Terminator, Tilix and other new terminals, but Tilix now lacks a developer, and Terminator is also not being actively developed (with the last release being it in 26 of February of 2017)

• Retiring ask.krita.org

  About a year ago, we created the ask.krita.org website. We wanted to have a stack-exchange like place, where people could report problems, after searching whether their problems had already been discussed, where people could help each other.

  Maybe it was the platform we were using, maybe it’s that people who are using Krita have a different mindset from people for whom stack-exchange like sites work, but we came to realize that ask.krita.org did not work out.

• Chrome 75 Released, ask.krita.org Website Retiring, LinuxGizmos Publishes Its Spring 2019 SBC Catalog, LibreOffice 6.3 Beta 1 Is Ready for Testing and Happy 15th to Phoronix

  The ask.krita.org website, a stack-exchange-like place for people to report problems and help each other, is being retired. According to the post, the problems were "Nobody seemed to be searching whether their problems had already been discussed and maybe solved, so the same questions were being asked again and again. Nobody seemed to stay around and engage with the people who were trying to help them, and nobody seemed to stay around to help other people." The team is looking for a replacement, but isn't sure quite what that will be yet.