JRepin

This week's headliner change is something that I think will make a lot of people happy: better fractional scaling! Vlad and Xaver have been hard at work to snap everything to the screen's pixel grid, with the effect that using a fractional scale factor now results in a lot less blurriness as well as no more gaps between windows and their shadows. You'll see it in the screenshot below (which was taken at 175% scale) but the effects are subtly better everywhere. Really great stuff! And lots more too, of course.

Today KDE community are releasing KDE ⚙️ Gear 24.12 with new versions of classics such as Dolphin, our feature-rich file manager and explorer; Kate, the developer-friendly text editor; Itinerary, a travel assistant that will get you safely to your destination. …and much, much more!

These apps exist thanks to KDE's volunteers and donors. You too can contribute and express support for your favorite apps by adopting them!

Let's take a look at just a few of the applications — some updated and some brand new — which will be landing on your desktop in just a few days.

This week we of course continued the customary bug-fixing, but got some nice new features and UI improvements too!

Let me also remind folks about KDE's end-of-year fundraiser. We're 84% of the way to our goal, and it would be amazing to get all the way to 100% before December! Then we can focus on those stretch goals from December to January.

Anyway, enough of the sales pitch, back to the free stuff!

And isn't that amazing? Let's zoom out a bit here and remind ourselves just how incredible it is that this software is made available for free, with no contract or license agreement, to everyone. To you, to your school, to community organizations, businesses, governments, even our direct competitors to study and examine (which goes both ways, and helped me fix a bug in GTK this week; read on for details). It's kind of wild, if you think about it. But, here we are, and we want to keep on being a light in a tech world that sometimes seems to be darkening. Help us keep that light glowing!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22759126

New version 24.3 of the Mesa opensource 3D graphics library and drivers has been released. New features:

• Expose Vulkan 1.3 on v3dv, both rpi4 and rpi5
• VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer on nvk
• VK_EXT_post_depth_coverage on nvk
• VK_KHR_video_maintenance1 on radv
• VK_EXT_legacy_vertex_attributes on nvk
• GL_KHR_shader_subgroup on radeonsi
• VK_KHR_maintenance7 on nvk
• VK_KHR_dynamic_rendering_local_read on nvk
• GL_ARB_timer_query on Panfrost
• GL_EXT_disjoint_timer_query on Panfrost
• VK_KHR_pipeline_binary on RADV
• VK_KHR_compute_shader_derivatives on anv
• VK_NV_compute_shader_derivatives on nvk
• VK_KHR_compute_shader_derivatives on nvk
• VK_KHR_compute_shader_derivatives on radv
• VK_KHR_shader_relaxed_extended_instruction on anv, hasvk, hk, nvk, radv, tu, v3dv, lvp
• GL_OVR_multiview and GL_OVR_multiview2 on zink
• VK_KHR_shader_float_controls2 on radv
• VK_KHR_shader_float_controls2 on nvk
• VK_EXT_device_generated_commands on nvk, radv
• VK_EXT_host_image_copy on nvk/Turing+
• VK_EXT_depth_clamp_control on anv, hasvk, nvk, radv
• VK_KHR_shader_quad_control on nvk
• GL_EXT_draw_buffers2 on etnaviv/HALTI5+
• GL_ARB_draw_buffers_blend on etnaviv/HALTI5+
• VK_KHR_fragment_shading_rate on NVK
• GL_ARB_draw_indirect on etnaviv/HALTI5+
• VK_EXT_depth_clamp_zero_one on NVK
• GL_ARB_framebuffer_no_attachments on etnaviv

digKam, KDE's image organiser for amateur and pro photographers, releases version 8.5.0. This version of digiKam improves the Face Management system, adds colored labels to identify important items, increases its list of supported languages to 61, and fixes over 160 bugs.

Help keep projects like digiKam producing new releases with awesome new features by donating to KDE's fundraiser.

Welcome to a new issue of "This Week in KDE Apps"! Every week we cover as much as possible of what's happening in the world of KDE apps.

This week, we released KDE Gear 24.08.3 and we are preparing the 24.12.0 release with the beta planned next week. The final release will happen on December 12th, but, meanwhile, and as part of the 2024 end-of-year fundraiser, you can "Adopt an App" in a symbolic effort to support your favorite KDE app.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22205865

Ahead of tomorrow's availability of the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor as the first Zen 5 CPU released with 3D V-Cache, today the review embargo lifts. Here is a look at how this 8-core / 16-thread Zen 5 CPU with 64MB of 3D V-Cache is performing under Ubuntu Linux compared to a variety of other Intel Core and AMD Ryzen desktop processors.

The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D as previously shared is AMD's first processor leveraging 2nd Gen 3D V-Cache. The 64MB of cache is now underneath the processor cores so that the CCD is positioned closer to the heatsink/cooler to help with more efficient cooling compared to earlier X3D models.

The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D boosts up to 5.2GHz and feature a 4.7GHz base clock while total it provides 104MB of cache. Like with the prior 8-core Ryzen 7 7800X3D, all eight cores have access to the 64MB 3D V-Cache. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D features a 120 Watt default TDP. AMD's suggested pricing on the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is $479 USD.

The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D will work with existing AMD AM5 motherboards with a simple BIOS update. For my testing I was able to use the ASUS ROG STRIX X670E-E GAMING WIFI motherboard previously used for all Ryzen 9000 series testing after a simple BIOS update. AMD also sent out an ASRock X870E Taichi motherboard as part of the review kit. For these 9800X3D benchmarks I ended up testing both initially on the ASUS ROG STRIX X670E-E GAMING WIFI motherboard to match the previously tested Ryzen 9000 series processors and then repeated the run with the ASRock X870E Taichi motherboard as well for reference.

Petition Summary: The petitioner calls for the European Union to actively develop and implement a Linux-based operating system, termed ‘EU-Linux’, across public administrations in all EU Member States. This initiative aims to reduce dependency on Microsoft products, ensuring compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and promoting transparency, sustainability, and digital sovereignty within the EU. The petitioner emphasizes the importance of using open-source alternatives to Microsoft 365, such as LibreOffice and Nextcloud, and suggests the adoption of the E/OS mobile operating system for government devices. The petitioner also highlights the potential for job creation in the IT sector through this initiative.

The LXQt team announces the release of LXQt 2.1.0, the Lightweight Qt Desktop Environment.

Through its new component lxqt-wayland-session, LXQt 2.1.0 supports 7 Wayland sessions (with Labwc, KWin, Wayfire, Hyprland, Sway, River and Niri), has two Wayland back-ends in lxqt-panel (one for kwin_wayland and the other general), and will add more later. All LXQt components that are not limited to X11 — i.e., most components — work fine on Wayland. The sessions are available in the new section Wayland Settings inside LXQt Session Settings. At least one supported Wayland compositor should be installed in addition to lxqt-wayland-session for it to be used.

There is still hard work to do, but all of the current LXQt Wayland sessions are quite usable; their differences are about what the supported Wayland compositors provide:

• Labwc provides the most stable session, is very lightweight, neat and configurable, and has an extremely helpful and responsive team.
• Perhaps the most complete Wayland session is provided by KWin when extra KDE packages are installed. For now, it is the only Wayland compositor that supports LXQt Panel’s desktop switcher and LXQt Power Manager’s settings for turning off the monitor (see the Wayland Wiki for the latter).
• In additon to Kwin, fancy effects are also provided by Wayfire and Hyprland, the latter being one of the 4 tiling WMs to choose from.

Anyway, the best result is achieved by installing the latest stable version of the chosen Wayland compositor. Wayland users need to get familiar with Wayland counterparts of some X11 tools and the configuration of the compositor. They may use X11 apps through XWayland, but using apps that work directly on Wayland is the best choice. Also, see the Wayland Wiki.

Thanks to Valve's Linux graphics team, VK_EXT_device_generated_commands is now supported by the Radeon "RADV" Vulkan driver with the upcoming Mesa 24.3 release.

Prominent RADV developer Samuel Pitoiset at Valve has landed support for VK_EXT_device_generated_commands, the multi-vendor device generated commands "DGC" implementation. Last month with Vulkan 1.3.296 the VK_EXT_device_generated_commands extension was introduced to succeed NVIDIA's vendor-prefixed DGC extension. The device generated commands extension allows for the GPU device to generate a number of commands for command buffers. VK_EXT_device_generated_commands is a very big and important addition to the Vulkan API: Valve's Mike Blumenkrantz has argued that DGC is the biggest addition to Vulkan since ray-tracing.

Fedora Linux provides a wide variety of users with leading edge open source technology in a community developed and maintained operating system. The Fedora KDE Spin combines the reliable and trusted Fedora Linux base with the KDE Plasma desktop environment and a selection of KDE applications – simple by default, yet powerful when needed.

Back in April 2024, Fedora Linux 40 included the KDE “MegaRelease 6” – the Plasma desktop environment, Frameworks application libraries (with the underlying Qt platform), and Gear application suite were all upgraded to new versions in one fell swoop to deliver improved performance and reliability. Since then, continuous upstream updates by the KDE teams to fix bugs and deploy new features were quickly deployed to Fedora 40 users, including breakthroughs such as Explicit Sync in Wayland (which addressed the most prevalent graphical glitches on Nvidia devices)!

Now, as part of the Fedora Linux 41 release, the KDE Spin again includes the very latest with the recently released KDE Plasma 6.2, up-to-date KDE applications and core system packages, and new ways of using Plasma on different devices.

KDE are kicking off their 2024 end-of-year fundraiser just in time for Halloween!

Even if the spine-tingling horrors of the long dark night of Walpurgis are mostly imaginary, the sinister threats of predatory proprietary software providers remain all too real.

Fear not! We, the KDE community, will help you, your friends, family, company, and community banish all the creepy and insidious proprietary software that haunts your computers, phones, and household appliances.

But we can't do it alone! We need you to help us fight the good fight against the tech-ghouls from beyond. Use the form to donate any amount to our fundraiser (or become a regular donor to our community) and help us keep the dark forces of proprietary software at bay.