Recently the release of the new version of Regolith 1.5 Desktop was announced and in this new version of the environment The inclusion of new themes, as well as keyboard shortcuts, stand out.
For those who are unfamiliar with the environment, they should know that it comes from the same developers of the Linux distribution of the same name «Regolith. The environment it is based on GNOME session management technologies and the i3 window manager.
The project is positioned as a modern desktop environment, Developed for faster execution of typical actions by optimizing workflows and eliminating unnecessary clutter.
The objective is provide a functional but minimalist interface that can be customized and expanded according to user preferences. Regolith may be of interest to those new to traditional window systems who want to try tiling window techniques.
The main features of Regolith:
- Support for hotkeys as in i3wm window manager for window tiles.
- Using i3-gaps for window management, an extended fork of i3wm.
- The panel is built using i3bar, and the i3blocks-based i3xrocks are used to run automation scripts.
- Session management is based on the gnome-flashback and gdm3 session manager.
- Components for managing the system, configuring the interface, automating drives, managing wireless connections have been ported from GNOME Flashback.
- In addition to mosaic, traditional methods of working with windows are also allowed.
Main new features of Regolith Desktop 1.5
Regolith 1.5 is a feature release that includes various enhancements and optimizations. In short, Regolith 1.5 includes workspace management simpler, a Rofi-based Look switch, and numerous internal optimizations and cleanups.
Keyboard shortcuts added: "super + '" to move to the next virtual desktop and "I knew + alt + '" to move the current window to the next free desktop. These combinations allow the user to do without searching the list of virtual desktops to determine which is the free one. The ability to change the appearance without manual Xresource editing has been added to the Rofi dialog.
To configure various GNOME parameters, the GSettings mechanism is used, which allows all changes to be made in a separate file that is used only in Regolith (previously settings were overridden globally and reflected in other user environments).
As for the new themes that have been proposed, we will be able to find: Dracula, gruvbox and pop-os, the new added themes differ in the palette, the fonts and the GTK theme.
Various versions of the package have been made with Regolith, differing in the components included in the composition: regolith-desktop-minimal, regolith-desktop-standard, regolith-desktop-mobile and regolith-desktop-complete.
Besides that the possibilities of adapting the environment have been expanded to your needs. For example, it is now possible to change temperature units, composite server parameters, and keyboard layout without copying the entire configuration file.
Of the other changes that stand out from this new version:
- The Remontoire Configurator has been updated to version 1.4 with improved support for multi-monitor configurations.
- i3-gaps has been updated to version 4.18.2.
- The new Picom Composite Server 8 is enabled by default.
- Integration with the td-cli note-taking program was implemented, which can now be accessed through the Rofi interface.
Finally if you want to know more about it of this new version of the environment, you can check the details In the following link.
Download and installation
We are going to open a terminal in the system with the key combination Ctrl + Alt + T or with Ctrl + T and we will type the following command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kgilmer/regolith-stable -y
After that we are going to install the desktop on the system with:
sudo apt install regolith-desktop
At the end of the installation, you will only have to close the session of your system and start a new one but this time choosing the Regolith session.
The developments of the project are distributed under the GPLv3 license.