It's the weekend, and that means GNOME (and KDE after it) has released its weekly update notes. This time, it covers what's happened between March 27th and April 3rd, and there are quite a few new features for this time of year. Perhaps things will be quieter next week, but we'll have to wait another seven days for that.
What follows is the list with all those new featuresAmong which the ones introduced in Maps and Glycin stand out.
This week in GNOME
- Maps now shows delays in public transport journeys when a GTFS-RT real-time feed is available for the affected route.
- Glycin now supports built-in loaders. The main benefit is that Glycin should now work on other operating systems such as FreeBSD, Windows, or macOS.
- Glycin uses Linux-specific technologies to sandbox image operations. This means image processing is performed in a separate, isolated process. Replicating this technology on other operating systems would be very difficult or impossible.
- The glycin crate now compiles with external loaders on Linux and automatically uses built-in loaders on other operating systems. This means that libglycin should also work on other systems. For now, continuous integration only includes cross-builds for x86_64-pc-windows-gnu and testing in Wine. Further testing, feedback, and bug fixes are welcome.
- Image loaders written in C/C++, such as those for HEIF, AVIF, SVG, and JPEG XL, are not currently supported for use without a sandbox. Since AVIF and JPEG XL already have implementations in Rust, and rsvg may become independent of libxml2 in the future, this could allow for secure, built-in loaders for these formats later on.
- Pika Backup 0.8 has been released. After two years of development, this version introduces not only many small improvements but also a restructuring of the code dating back to 2018. This will help keep Pika Backup stable and maintainable for another eight years.
- Speed ​​of Sound, voice typing for the Linux desktop, is now available on Flathub. Key features:
- Offline transcription on the device itself using Whisper. No data leaves the device.
- Multiple activation options: press the application button or use a global keyboard shortcut.
- Write the output directly to any focused application using Portals for broad desktop compatibility (X11, Wayland).
- Multilingual support with dynamic switching of primary and secondary languages.
- It works as standard with the built-in Whisper Tiny model. Additional models can be downloaded from the app to improve accuracy.
- Optionally, it allows you to enhance the text with LLMs, with support for custom context and vocabulary.
- It supports self-hosted services such as vLLM, Ollama and llama.cpp (cloud services are supported but not required).
- Built with Java GI bindings, they invite you to participate in their community.
- They've released Embellish v1.0.0, a complete rewrite of the application from Gjs to Vala, leveraging the experience gained developing GTK applications over the past few years. The application now uses view models for the font list and a GridView for the icons. In addition to improved performance, the code is cleaner and easier to maintain.
- Design, the 2D CAD tool for GNOME, receives a new version with the following new features:
- Polyline trimming (TR).
- Polyline extension (EX).
- Chamfer command (CHA).
- Steak command (F).
- Inferred direction for the arc command (A).
- Diameter input for the circle command (C).
- Closing option for the line command (L).
- Close and undo options for the polyline (PL) command.
- Multiple copies with the copy (CO) command.
- Displays the angle in the distance command (DI).
- Performance improvements when scrolling.
- Nested elements with the shading command (H).
- Consistent format of toast-type messages.
- In addition to many corrections.
- Serigy has reached version 2, evolving into a minimalist clipboard manager. This version introduces significant improvements in functionality, performance, and user experience. It adds automatic expiration of old items, an incognito mode for privacy, and a grid view. Advanced features are accessible via context menus and tooltips, and global shortcuts allow for quick access to Serigy. Bugs have been fixed, stability has been improved, and the interface is now smoother. The application now remembers the window size and improves clipboard detection in Wayland. It also features a redesigned interface and adds support for Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, and Chilean Spanish.
- They have released Wildcard 0.3.5, which adds regular expression group matching, a sidebar with matching and group information, and a new quick reference dialog with common cases.
- They've created a Nautilus extension that adds an "Open in" context menu for installed IDEs, allowing you to easily open files and directories. It works with any IDE defined as such in its .desktop file, including containerized environments like Toolbx if a desktop file is created on the host system.
- Metadata Cleaner returns with more responsive designs, bug fixes, and new features.
- They have released Fractal 14.beta with the following new features:
- The file and location sharing feature is correctly disabled when editing or replying, as it was not working in those cases.
- Call rooms are identified by a camera icon in the sidebar and display a warning indicating that other users may not be able to read the messages.
- Although they still support SSO login, they have removed support for identity providers to simplify the code and get closer to OAuth 2.0.
- The map markers now use a darker variant of the accent color to improve contrast.
- It includes multiple internal changes, mainly dependency updates and the removal of some, along with minor improvements to the technical documentation.
- Flood It 2.0 has been released. It includes in-game dialogue, the ability to replay recent games, full translation support, and Ctrl+1…6 keyboard shortcuts for colors. It also incorporates internal improvements such as the transition from Gotk4 to Puregotk, an update to the GNOME 50 runtime, support for custom seeds, and more.
- They have released Bouncer 50, which uses the GNOME 50 runtime. It includes fixes related to NetworkManager reboots and the autoboot state, as well as Italian and Polish translations.
And this has been all this week in GNOME.
Images and content: TWIG.