It's almost summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and it shows. Linus Torvalds mentioned this in the release note for Linux 6.16-rc2, when he said that the tranquility of that RC could have something to do with the dates. In GNOME It's also been noticeable, and their weekly news article isn't particularly extensive. Still, not everyone slows down that much in the middle of the year.
What follows is the list with news which has taken place in the last week, from June 13 to 20.
This week in GNOME
- Maps now displays localized icons for subway and train stations in some locations.
- They've ported the GNOME Settings application to Blueprint. Interface definition files are much easier to read and write in Blueprint compared to the standard XML syntax used by GTK. Settings is one of the first major core applications to make the switch (along with Calendar), and while Blueprint is still considered experimental, the experience so far has been excellent. The small missing features in Blueprint haven't been a deal-breaker.
- GNOME Calendar has received a very nice visual makeover. Afterwards, the entire GNOME Calendar was ported to Blueprint. This should make it easier for more people to contribute to the Calendar interface.
- There was recently an interesting improvement in GLib, which makes sure that your trash is really empty, fixing a bug that resulted in residual files in
~/.local/share/Trash/expunged/. - A GNOME photographer experienced some issues and needed a solution. Thus, an app was born for photographers who no longer know if a camera has film loaded. The app is called Filmbook and is divided into four sections. The first tab, "Current," shows a list of cameras with film loaded. The "History" tab shows which cameras were loaded with which films. Additionally, camera-film combinations can be marked as developed. The third and fourth tabs show the cameras and films. The app is currently in a fairly stable state, but requires further testing on a Pinephone Pro running Phosh to explore weaknesses in the current design. The goal is also to connect with other photographers to gather their ideas and needs.
- This week, the stable version of the new BMI Calculator arrived. It now includes translations into German, Italian, and Dutch. The app remembers your most recent entries, and you can choose the color scheme.
- Pipeline version 2.5.0 has been released. Pipeline now displays random text when reloading the feed. This informs users about Pipeline fun facts, highlights features, and also recommends other good alternative YouTube clients. Examples include:
- Did you know that the first Pipeline commit was 1566 days ago?
- Feature Highlight: See something you don't like? You can hide videos from your feed based on the video's title and author.
- Also try: NewPipe.
- It may be a useless feature, but the developer says he had fun coding it, and maybe someone will enjoy reading the random text he invented. This release also adds debugging information to the About window, which can help developers debug issues by knowing the versions of key dependencies and settings. This release also fixes minor bugs, such as some buttons being hidden in narrow layouts on the video page, YouTube video descriptions with escaped characters, and a video not being added to the watched list if Pipeline was closed while it was still playing.
- This week, Fractal 11.2 was released, which updates the matrix-sdk-crypto dependency to include a fix for a high-severity security issue.
- A week late for TWIG, but almost on time for the blog, they have published the weekly report of the Foundation: elections, GUADEC, operations, infrastructure, fundraising, some fun meetings, and another feedback session for the CEO.
And this has been all this week in GNOME.
Images and content: TWIG.