As part of the GNOME @sovtechfund project we've been working on improving notifications in GNOME (and the wider free desktop) 🔔✨

In this blog post @jsparber gives an update on the current state, what's already landed in 46, and what's coming in the near future!

https://blogs.gnome.org/shell-dev/2024/04/23/notifications-46-and-beyond

#gnome #stf #freedesktop #flatpak

Orca the Linux screen reader now has a website!

https://orca.gnome.org/

Thanks to @snwh

And thank you Joannie, @igalia and the community for all the ongoing work and support.

#Linux #GNOME #freedesktop #a11y #accessibility

You can find some details here https://gitlab.gnome.org/sophie-h/key-rack/-/issues/7

The backend is oo7, a new Secret Service provider for the #freedesktop https://github.com/bilelmoussaoui/oo7/

Amongst others, you will be working with

@sophie Key Rack maintainer

and

@dhanuka oo7 contributor

GitHub - bilelmoussaoui/oo7: James Bond went on a new mission as a Secret Service provider

James Bond went on a new mission as a Secret Service provider - bilelmoussaoui/oo7

^GitHub

As of yesterday, I am officially maintaining the XDG Specifications (yes, yes, I make questionable choices ^^).
This means, if there's anything I should have a look at, or if you want to propose any addition/change, you know who to ping now! (even better if a MR/patch is attached, of course)
Thanks to everyone working on Freedesktop integration and projects, you rock!
#xdg #freedesktop #linux

https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/2024-March/014687.html

Anyone in my network interested in research and prototype network portal for Flatpak?

In the long run we are interested in:

• Give more control to users over app network access
• Allow apps that need network access to be considered “Safe”

We expect something like unsharing the network namespace and a bridge on the host for permissions / monitoring.

Boost welcome

1/2 🧵

#FediHire #Flatpak #Flathub #Linux #Snap #containers #Docker #freedesktop #Ubuntu #Fedora

About the true purpose of systemd

I've been involved with #GNOME, #KDE, #freedesktop and #postmarketOS, ...

I've met @pid_eins and other prominent figures behind closed doors

I can confirm from first-hand experience that systemd is indeed a conspiracy to make better operating systems with Linux

#systemd #Linux #postmarketOS

Version 1.2.1 of the xdg-utils is out!

With two of the most obvious bugs fixed.

Thanks to the people who helped finding and fixing!

#freedesktop #xdg #xdgUtils #xdg_utils #linux

xdg-utils v1.2.1 · xdg / xdg-utils · GitLab

xdg-utils 1.2.1 contains three bugfixes found following the 1.2.0 release: xdg-icon-resource: Fix for incorrect syntax documentation: Proper quoting of _MANUALPAGE and _USAGE sections....

^GitLab

Version 1.2.0 of the xdg-utils is out!

Please test them! (But don't deploy yet)

Thank you to everyone else who contributed and thanks to Simon for the trust and maintainer work!

We need more eyes on that code!

The xdg-utils are children of their time, shellscripts that by large don’t follow a “modern” scripting style …

… which means that there is a lot of work to catch up on and any changes should be reviewed by more people than they currently are.
In case you want to help:
Just pick something that seems interesting and doable for you and open an issue/merge request.

Things that need to be done:

• Read the code and try to find mistakes (Usage of external tools, escaping, …)
• Find mistakes in open merge requests.
• Review, research and fix issues.
• Improve tests
• Improve documentation
• Rebase old merge requests
• Improve Cygwin and MacOS support
• etc.

#freedesktop #xdg #xdgUtils #xdg_utils #linux

And while I’m at it i might also hijack #fosdem for this.

xdg-utils v1.2.0 · xdg / xdg-utils · GitLab

xdg-utils 1.2.0 contains contributions from over 20 people (thankyou) some of the highlights are listed below. better support for Plasma6, Deepin, LXQt partial...

^GitLab

Implementing battery charge limits in GNOME

By @jelly

https://vdwaa.nl/gnome-upower-charge-thresholds.html

It will mitigate battery loosing capacity over time.

#GNOME #Linux #LinuxMobile #FrameworkLaptop #freedesktop

It's a beautiful example of cross desktop collaboration on Linux, well done!

https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/pull/1175

#Flatpak #freedesktop

High Contrast hint on settings portal by dominichayesferen · Pull Request #1175 · flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal

Introduction High Contrast is a feature where, much as the name implies, the contrast of applications that support the feature is increased, whether it be adding more opacity to lines in applicatio...

^GitHub

Introducing Spiel - A New Speech API and Framework for Linux

https://blog.monotonous.org/2024/01/10/Introducing-Spiel/

By @eeejay

#Linux #accessibility #a11y #freedesktop #Flatpak #snap #GNOME #KDE

Building and coordinating a team to support the GNOME project is one of the most fulfilling job I've had.

I find these are some of the biggest challenges

• Lots of people and organizations to coordinate with 🗺️
• Some projects are cans of worms 🥫🐛
• So many things to do 🏃

But it's very rewarding and everyone is brilliant and passionate.

I think I'll start sharing more personal updates on our efforts

Context https://foundation.gnome.org/2023/11/09/gnome-recognized-as-public-interest-infrastructure/

#Linux #GNOME #accessibility #freedesktop #a11y

Hello Fediverse,

We are looking for Text-To-Speak (TTS) expertise to help or advise us on improving the default voice of the Linux desktop. 📣

Please reach out or boost

Thanks!

#Linux #tts #accessibility #a11y #GNOME #KDE #FreeSoftware #freedesktop #ml

This is @halfmexican; GNOME Outreachy student excited that their effort to make a modern and sandboxed Camera demo for Workbench has paid off 🛠️

Well done! 🎉

Thanks @philn and @slomo for your help!

#GNOME #Outreachy #development #students #GStreamer #PipeWire #Flatpak #freedesktop #libcamera #GTK

Tl'dr #rustlang is a great collaboration opportunity for @gnome and @kde.

A long long time ago, #freedesktop initiative was created for precisely this goal. While in many ways it was a success story (especially in terms of establishing standards), it came short in one specific aspect: code collaboration.

Most freedesktop (all?) projects were and are almost exclusively developed and maintained by GNOME folks. That's not very surprising, given that C (being that lowest common denominator) had to be the programming language of choice. Just like most GNOME folks wouldn't want to touch C++, KDE folks don't particularly enjoy coding in C either. I know both have their reasons and the point here is not to play the blame game here.

There is not much point in dwelling in the past here but if we decide to write all future infrastructure/non-UI projects (that would have otherwise been written in C or C++) in Rust, there's a great potential for collaboration, I believe.

Talk is cheap, you could say and I agree. Hence why I've taken some steps in this direction already: https://github.com/dbus2/

The future of D-Bus

The future D-Bus development happens here. The future of D-Bus has 3 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub.

^GitHub