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      Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS, EndeavourOS 2021.02.03 and Solus 4.2 out now

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Friday, 5 February, 2021 - 11:40 · 1 minute

    Multiple Linux distributions all had a brand new release in the space of week with Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS, EndeavourOS 2021.02.03 and Solus 4.2 all out now for downloads and upgrades.

    For Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS , this is the latest point release which gives a refresh for new downloads bundling all the updates since the initial release, and additionally bumps up a bunch of package versions for everyone. It brings in a brand new HWE stack (Hardware Enablement) that will bump the Linux Kernel from 5.4 to 5.8 and newer Mesa 20.2.6 graphics drivers, so that means better support for newer hardware. All users should get the HWE updates by default now too .

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    All the Ubuntu flavours that come with different desktop environments also saw updated releases including Kubuntu 20.04.2 LTS, Ubuntu Budgie 20.04.2 LTS, Ubuntu MATE 20.04.2 LTS, Lubuntu 20.04.2 LTS, Ubuntu Kylin 20.04.2 LTS, Ubuntu Studio 20.04.2 LTS, and Xubuntu 20.04.2 LTS.

    Download Ubuntu here and see the release announcement here .


    When it comes to my own personal current choice with EndeavourOS 2021.02.03 , it's a bit different. EndeavourOS is just Arch Linux which updates as much as you want it to, with a nice installer and a few custom bits so it's always up to date. However, their installation media was from September 2020 so it was seriously out of date so this is a huge upgrade for anyone downloading first time.

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    The main updates for this will be:

    • Linux Kernel 5.10.11.arch1-1
    • Mesa 20.3.4-1
    • Nvidia 460.39-2
    • Firefox 85.0-1
    • Calamares 3.2.34-10
    • Live environment and offline install updated to Xfce 4.16

    Release notes for EndeavorOS here and download here .


    Lastly, Solus 4.2 is also out now bringing with it the usual assortment of updates to various desktop environments, software updates and support for newer hardware. It's now shipping with Linux Kernel 5.10.12 and the Mesa 20.3.3 graphics drivers. Some multimedia updates included too like GStreamer 1.18 and Pulseaudio 14.1.

    Solus is also interesting as they also have their own custom desktop environment with Budgie, with Solus 4.2 now shipping with the latest Budgie 10.5.2 which has numerous enhancements like a new desktop icons implementation, a rewritten system tray implementation, a redesigned sound applet and more.

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    Solus is also now shipping with the latest GNOME 3.38.3, MATE 1.24, Plasma Desktop 5.20.5, KDE Frameworks 5.78, KDE Applications 20.12.1 and QT 5.15.2.

    You can download Solus 4.2 here and see the release notes here .

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      Get your big-screen Linux gaming on with a new GamerOS release

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Tuesday, 12 January, 2021 - 09:42 · 1 minute

    The SteamOS-like big-screen Linux gaming distribution GamerOS has a fresh release out, with some surprising new features integrated and it's looking slick.

    Providing an out of the box couch / sofa gaming experience, thanks to the Steam Big Picture interface along with their own homebrew integrations for using things provided outside of Steam, GamerOS continues to be a fine choice for a dedicated big TV box.

    GamerOS 22 went out on January 12 upgrading the main internals like Linux Kernel 5.10.5, Mesa 20.3.2, NVIDIA 460.32.03 and updates to their web-based Steam Buddy tool and the Steam Tweaks tool. It gets more exciting when you look at the rest of the work done which includes:

    • New Steam Buddy platforms: GOG, 3DO
    • Automatic download and installation of Proton GE
    • Added Boxtron compatibility tool for DOS games
    • Improved reliability of Steam Tweaks database file updates
    • Adjusted some default emulator configurations for better performance
    • Improved GameCube game compatibility
    • Fixed DualShock 3 configuration for emulated games
    • Added Xbox Series X|S controller configuration for emulated games
    • Added support for Hyperkin Duke Xbox controller
    • Improved handling of Bluetooth dongles
    • Compositor fix to allow Far Cry 5 (and possibly other games) to launch correctly
    • Compositor fix to hide system tray icons
    • Fixed failures when uploading many large ROM files
    • Added podman to allow for running additional background services

    With the GOG support now hooked up, it does include some caveats like DOS games not launching, no download progress and updating games not yet being supported. GOG support for GamerOS is only "preliminary", so hopefully we will see it improve in the next release.

    The developer has also "certified" more games to work with GamerOS, which means they've been setup and tested working properly (both native Linux supported titles and Windows games run through Steam Play Proton ) including: Children of Morta, Indivisible, Overcooked! 2, Shining Resonance Refrain, Spyro Reignited Trilogy, Gris, Struggling, Yuppie Psycho, Path of Giants, Ancestors Legacy and BattleBlock Theater.

    Want to download and try GamerOS? Find out how here .

    If you missed it, the developer did a talk at the last Arch Linux Conference to go over the main details. You can view the video below:

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      Linux Mint 20.1 released, will be supported until 2025

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Friday, 8 January, 2021 - 14:32 · 1 minute

    Linux Mint 20.1 has now been officially released, and this is an LTS version which means it will be supported for quite some time until 2025. Plenty of time to get comfy with Linux.

    Coming in three official flavours you can pick between the Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce desktop environments all supported by the Mint team directly. Cinnamon being Mint's own flagship desktop environment, which saw lots of attention this release including some big performance improvements and less resource use with 4K.

    2890677381610115583gol1.png Pictured - Linux Mint 20.1 Cinnamon edition.

    As of this release you will also see their brand new Hypnotix IPTV player, which comes with the Free-IPTV provider by default. There's also their very useful looking Web Apps manager, allowing you to turn any website into what almost looks like an actual dedicated desktop application with its own window and icon. Not just new applications though, lots of other improvements to be found throughout the entire release. Here's some of the highlights:

    • Better Flatpak support
    • Percentage in the sound volume OSD
    • The option to always show the panel when the menu is open
    • Scrolling in the window-quick-list applet
    • Configurable scrolling direction in the workspace-switcher-applet
    • The ability to assign a keybinding to mute the microphone
    • Zstd support in nemo-fileroller
    • Tiff support and PDF page numbers in nemo-media-columns
    • Thumbnails for files up to 64GB in nemo

    Linux Mint also continues to block the Snap store by default, due to issues the Mint leadership have with how the Snap system is being handled. Since on Ubuntu the Chromium browser is a forced Snap package, the Mint team are now also packaging Chromium for Mint themselves.

    See more on the Linux Mint website . Here's quick links for the release notes:

    Is Linux Mint a good choice for Linux gaming? Well, we know plenty of people using it who are very happy with it. Accessible for beginners due to the traditional interface and setup, with plenty of room for power users to do whatever they want. Based upon Ubuntu too, it makes things easy when you need to get a little help.

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      The Linux distribution I was most thankful for in 2020 - EndeavourOS

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Wednesday, 6 January, 2021 - 09:43 · 3 minutes

    How do you know when someone uses Arch Linux? They will tell you. Welcome to an article telling you about how I use Arch Linux, well sort of anyway. It's a running joke in the Linux community and now one I am very much a part of.

    Over the many years I've used Linux since discovering it properly about 17 years ago, I've seen many distributions rise and fall. With that in mind, I've obviously used quite a lot of different distributions. Like many people, early on in my Linux life I was a "distro hopper", someone who can't sit still and has to keep trying everything out. Moving between the likes of Mandrake (before it was Mandriva), Fedora Core (the original Fedora name), openSUSE and eventually feeling quite at home when discovering Ubuntu.

    A long time later, i wanted to be a bit more bleeding-edge and have all the latest bells and whistles so I settled on Antergos. It was based upon Arch Linux but gave you a nice installer, which eventually died like many distributions before it. Manjaro was an option too, which I used for a while (two times, years apart) but I found it to be too unstable for my liking due to the way they bundle updates, and they've made a lot of…odd decisions lately that I felt pushed me away from them.

    So what to do? I felt a bit stuck. Ubuntu was too safe, not particularly exciting and I didn't want another normal distro. I was told some tales of EndeavourOS , a fresh distribution that is the successor to Antergos. Giving an easy to use installer, with plenty of desktop environments to pick and unlike Manjaro, they are right up close to Arch Linux on the packaging with EndeavourOS sticking to Arch upstream but they have a few of their own extras. This was exactly what I wanted, Arch Linux but easy to install and get going.

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    Pictured above - EndeavourOS plus the MATE desktop. It's not fancy, and the MATE desktop isn't full of bling but that's why I like it. For the most part: it stays out of my way, it's highly configurable when I want it to be and it's easy to use.

    Here's the thing. EndeavourOS is absolutely not something I will recommend to new users, or to even reasonably confident Linux users because for most I still recommend other distributions talked about in this previous article . Why? You really do have to setup a lot yourself, sometimes annoyingly so and there are problems at times with Arch being so fresh with packages.

    The most annoying issue so far was a bug in the Arch packaging of libcairo, which caused the demo of APICO and all Paradox Interactive titles that used their launcher to fail to launch from Steam with the normal Steam Linux Runtime. The issues were reported ( #1 - #2 ), then to the libcairo developers too ( here ) and in less than 24 hours the fix was committed. Part of why I love open source and Linux so much at times, because finding issues is often nothing more than running something in terminal to see and then you can go and report it and help get it fixed. Issues like that are why I never suggest people go and use the likes of Arch Linux (or anything based on it) since the updates continually roll in and breakages can and will happen but you find them before other distributions do so it all balances out.

    That said, EndeavourOS has actually been great. Surprisingly so too. It's now my /home on Linux and I continue to learn more about Linux every day when going a little out of my usual comfort zone with it.

    If you're after something that's constantly up to date but easy to setup and you know what you're doing, EndeavourOS is the tip of the day.

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      Linux Mint 20.1 'Ulyssa' gets a first Beta release for their upcoming LTS

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Thursday, 17 December, 2020 - 10:26 · 1 minute

    Linux Mint, the beginner friendly Linux distribution is getting ready to release a big new upgrade with Linux Mint 20.1 'Ulyssa' that will be their new Long Term Support version.

    Coming across three official flavours that had their Beta release with the Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce desktop environments so you can pick what you're more familiar with. Each with their own special theming from the Mint team, along with plenty of other tweaks.

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    Pictured - Linux Mint 20.1 Cinnamon Edition

    With all editions being built on top of Ubuntu 20.04 for a solid and stable base, it brings with it linux-firmware 1.187 and the Linux kernel 5.4. Across each variant you will find Cinnamon 4.8, MATE 1.24 and Xfce 4.14. This release of Linux Mint includes their new Web App manager, which allows you to turn any website into a dedicated launcher to have it behave a bit more like a desktop application. There's also their new IPTV player Hypnotix, they now supply their own build of Chromium that does not use Snaps like Ubuntu does, an improved interface for their upload manager mintupload, the Celluloid video player now has hardware acceleration enabled by default for smoother playback and more tweak across the whole system.

    Linux Mint 20.1 will be supported until 2025 with security upgrades, and it will keep the same main package base of Ubuntu 20.04 until 2022 as their future release until then will be smaller point-releases making upgrades easier. As this is a Beta release, keep in mind it will have some rough edges.

    If you're after a Linux distribution perhaps as a newer user coming from Windows, the Cinnamon desktop which is the main edition of Linux Mint will offer a very familiar experience and it's one I quite like using personally.

    See more on the Linux Mint site .

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      Raspberry Pi OS has a big new release out switching to PulseAudio

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Friday, 4 December, 2020 - 12:57 · 2 minutes

    Time to warm up your little board as the Raspberry Pi OS has a big new releasing up for those of you sticking with the official Debian Linux based system. Sounds like it's a pretty huge update with a lot of work that went into it, which is great as the Raspberry Pi is a wonderful device for all sorts of uses (and yes gaming too!).

    For starters, this finally brings with it a major update to Chromium with version 84. They mentioned it took longer than they wanted but getting video hardware acceleration integrated takes a lot of work. Thanks to that you should see smooth video playback in browser and they've also paid special attention to the likes of Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom due to the pandemic. This is the last release they support Flash with too.

    One big background change is their move to the PulseAudio sound server. Since Linux audio can be a little…complicated, PulseAudio deals with most of the interfaces available and puts it under one roof. Most normal distributions use it by default and so with this change Bluetooth audio on the Raspberry Pi OS should now be easier too. They're also automating some of the Bluetooth stuff to make it simpler for users.

    They're also now including Printing support out of the box, along with CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) and the system-config-printer UI to make it a smoother experience.

    On top of all that they've improved accessibility support with the Orca screen reader, there's new system options to deal with units that have an LED like the Raspberry Pi Zero or the new Raspberry Pi 400 as well. If you missed it, they also recently announced a cheap and cheerful Raspberry Pi 4 Case Fan for $5 and the system settings have been updated in this new OS release so you can configure it.

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    Really nice to see the RPi team expand all areas of the system, as it's become a much more general-purpose unit for computing considering the amount of power it has now for the still very low cost.

    Let us know in the comments what distribution you're using if you have a Raspberry Pi and what you've been doing with it. I am tempted to hop on over to Ubuntu, now it's officially supported .

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      Manjaro Linux 20.2 'Nibia' is out now

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Friday, 4 December, 2020 - 12:13 · 1 minute

    Manjaro Linux, the middle-ground distribution for those who want regular updates but don't want to go to Arch directly has a brand new release out.

    For users who run Manjaro already, you just need to run updates as normal since it's something of a semi-rolling distribution that keeps updates flowing in. For new users, this releases serve as the entry point with new downloadable media with all the latest customizations sorted.

    Manjaro Linux 20.2 'Nibia' updates all editions and desktops available, with their GNOME 3.38 update being "possibly the biggest update" they've done so far. GNOME 3.38 was released back in September , bringing with it some great enhancements like better multi-monitor support.

    4269552681607083955gol1.png Pictured - Manjaro Xfce 20.2

    The Manjaro Application-Utility saw plenty of work with it letting you easily pick your favourite browsers, office suites, password managers and they've added in two window tiling options with Pop-shell and the touch friendly Material-shell. I'm a huge fan of the Pop-shell so it's nice to see that in.

    With this update their flagship Xfce edition pulls in Xfce 4.14, which they continue to say "only a few can claim to offer such a polished, integrated and leading-edge Xfce experience". For the KDE edition they've upgraded to the Plasma 5.20 desktop which much like the GNOME update, has a vast amount of improvements like better Wayland support.

    For the internals they're defaulting now to Linux Kernel 5.9, with Kernel 5.4 available with minimal-ISO downloads for older hardware support if needed. Their installer, Calamares, also now supports encrypted systems without encrypted /boot partition.

    Find it on the Manjaro website .

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      elementary OS 6 to get great looking multi-touch gestures

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Wednesday, 2 December, 2020 - 10:40 · 1 minute

    The upcoming release of the Linux distribution elementary OS 6 is going to be a big one, with a huge focus on usability it's getting another big feature. On top of system wide Flatpak support , and proper dark style system support that really sounds like a huge amount of effort is being put into to look great the elementary team have announced multi-touch gestures in elementary OS.

    A feature that is not particularly great on Linux usually but elementary OS 6 will have much expanded support for it. It won't be perfect and so more complex gestures won't be in yet until a much later release but it's coming. The elementary team are working with developer José Expósito , the creator of Touchégg which is a Linux multi-touch gesture recognizer. In elementary 6, they will be using the Touchégg Daemon to communicate with their own window manager.

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    Currently they're going over have a multitasking view gesture and one for switching workspaces directly. Each of which they say use "1:1 responsive, finger-tracking gestures that can be peeked or canceled at any time". Seems like it will be configurable too as they're adding bits into the System Settings so you can pick the gestures you like or turn them off.

    On top of that they're also hooking up Handy, a library developed for Purism in order to make these gestures work across different applications on the elementary OS 6 desktop rather than emulating keyboard shortcuts. They say it's a lot more work but will provide a "vastly superior experience".

    The amount of effort the elementary team put into the finer things is impressive as always.

    See their full post on it here . Check out elementary OS here .

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      Help out with FOSS as the Budgie Desktop team need translations help

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Tuesday, 17 November, 2020 - 10:54 · 1 minute

    Ever tried or heard of the Budgie Desktop? It's a modern and feature rich Linux desktop environment from the Solus Linux team and they need a little help.

    I'm quite a big fan of Budgie despite not using it directly myself, as their focus on keeping it clean really shows. That along with the slick sidebar to show off various applets like a calendar and media controls looks really good when you start using it. Developer Joshua Strobl who is the Experience Lead of the Solus project has issued a " Call To Action " as they're looking to get translations done for Budgie.

    2175631261605610061gol1.jpg Pictured - the Budgie Desktop and Raven sidebar. Credit - Solus.

    If you've wanted to dip your toes into helping a FOSS project, this could be a good starting point. Not everything is hacking away at code or doing graphics, there's tons of other areas to contribute like documentation and in this case translating your native language.

    The release of Budgie 10.5.2 is "around the corner" and they're looking to get help with these languages:

    • Belarusian (for Belarusian (latin))
    • Bosnian
    • Chinese (Hong Kong) and Chinese (Traditional): Same team as Chinese (Traditional)
    • Croatian
    • Esperanto
    • Finnish
    • Galician
    • Japanese
    • Latvian
    • Malay
    • Norwegian (Nyorsk): Same team as Norwegian (Bokmål)
    • Punjabi
    • Slovak
    • Slovenian
    • Spanish (Argentina), Spanish (Chile), Spanish (Mexico): Same team as Spanish and Spanish (American)
    • Tatar
    • Urdu
    • Vietnamese

    If you think you might be able to spend some time doing translations, you can head over to this linked forum topic to find out how you can get involved.

    Want to learn more about Solus Linux and the Budgie Desktop environment? Check out the Solus website .

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