Hello folks!
It’s our bi-weekly newsletter about open source news again.
Debian is the mother distribution for many Linux distributions out there, mainly Ubuntu and its derivative. They are all there thanks to the remarkable work of thousands of volunteers from all over the world.
Yesterday Debian 12 “Bookworm” was released, and it contained the following features:
Around 65,000 packages in official repositories.
Updated desktop environment packages such as: GNOME 43, KDE Plasma 5.27, LXDE 11 and MATE 1.26.
LibreOffce 7.4.
Linux kernel 6.1 LTS.
Thousands of other upgraded packages.
For a more detailed report, you can check the release notes of Debian 12. You can download it from the official website.
The existence of the Debian project is an invaluable addition to the Linux world; it works as a solid base that can be used for both desktops and servers at the same time, as well as a base distribution that can be used anytime to build further enhanced derivative Linux distributions.
Sometimes, it works also as a safety backup in case Ubuntu goes mad.
For example, Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) is a copy of Linux Mint which is based on Ubuntu, with the only exception of being based on Debian. The Linux Mint developers built this version many years ago in case Ubuntu stops functioning as they desire. In this case, they can instantly change focus towards the LMDE version without much further work or development effort.
In these times, it looks like the Linux Mint was right in doing this cautious step; Ubuntu is shipping more apps and things as Snaps and some changes are still controversial. Users wishing to enjoy Linux Mint without any bit of Ubuntu can use the LMDE version at any time.
LMDE 6 is expected to release in a couple of months after the Debian 12 release. So you might want to wait for the new version instead of using LMDE 5 (which is based on Debian 11).
In any case, congratulations to the Debian community and developers on their new release!
Latest Open Source News
We follow open source news from all over the Internet so you don’t have to.
openSUSE 15.5 Leap was released. It is a “no-features” release; just upgraded packages they say. But perhaps we should update our very old guide about things to do after installing openSUSE.
Firefox 114 was released with a few fixes and features.
Version 6.0 of Czkawka - the open source cleaning program we covered on FOSS Post - is now available with many new features.
Invidious is an open source alternative frontend to YouTube. It basically serves YouTube videos without ads or Google tracking. News has it that it has received a shutdown order from YouTube within 7 days, or Google threatens it will take legal action.
KDE 6 is starting to take shape and the devs say that it is “barely buggier” compared to KDE 5. Should be good when it is released.
Interesting Stuff from the Web
These other news, discussions and articles might be interesting for you, all related to either Linux or open source software:
Someone is developing a new Linux desktop environment called “Kera” - no idea why. One for sure must realize that developing fully-functional desktop environments is not a one-man work.
Red Hat developers say that they might drop LibreOffice from their supported packages in future RHEL releases (which will also affect Fedora). They say it is hard work, and don’t have time to maintain it anymore. Some people showed up to volunteer for maintaining these packages, but it’s not clear for how long they would keep it up. You can always install the Flatpak version of course, but it has some problems with reading/writing to files and integrating with 3rd-party software (because of the sandbox).
Hope you liked our newsletter!
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