A week in KDE: The console also works on Windows
Significant news last days in the KDE project, which we already reported on, is the ability of Qt applications (that is, among other things, everything within KDE) to survive the crash of the Wayland composer – work is underway to make the same work, for example, for GTK. Otherwise, porting to Qt6 continues at a rather increasing pace as more people run or test the development Plasma 6.0.
From version 23.04, Konsole will also be fully functional on the Windows platform, which means, among other things, that the functionality of other applications built on it will also work, such as the terminal in the Kate editor. A pleasant novelty was added to Plasma 6.0, when in Kickoff it will be possible to use the tiled arrangement everywhere, not only in the favorite items.
Newly provisioned users now have a preset time of 15 minutes of inactivity before the system sleeps, and the correct consumption profiles for convertible machines are also generated (new in Plasma 5.27.3). The Discover and Welcome Center interfaces have also been improved, both look better on mobile devices. When running on Wayland, you can use Meta+Alt+Scroll up/down to switch between virtual desktops (the Meta key replaces the previously used Ctrl in the shortcut). The touch control of the login screen in SDDM is also improved. A total of 101 errors are then corrected.
PipeWire 0.3.67 improves wireless audio transmission
The new version of the PipeWire interface brings improvements to the Bluetooth plugin, which focuses mainly on reducing stuttering by using improved packet scheduling (may affect some Bluetooth devices that had the problem), improved compatibility for the PulseAudio server, MIDI support in the RTP module, and more things. More details on GitLab project.
Intel Graphics News for Linux Kernel 6.4
Linux is currently in the phase of versions 6.2.5 and 6.3-rc1, so as usual, the process of early preparation of patches for the (over)next version, i.e. Linux 6.4, is already running. Intel graphics team for her more news is coming, which will gradually appear in the DRM-Next branch in the coming weeks. As usual, these are partial improvements within the i915 driver, the primary news of the months this year will be the gradual activation of the GPU code for the next generation of Intel Core processors, i.e. Meteor Lake. It will carry a graphics core corresponding to the current large DG2/Alchemist architecture.
Furthermore, Intel is still fixing bugs. There will also be a partial activation of the Raptor Lake-U subplatform, i.e. the economical CPU variants of the current 13th generation Core. Patches correcting the behavior of MEI during suspend/resume, when the reactivation of the protected Intel Protected Xe Path (PXP) video path, were also headed for the next kernel. The Panel Self Refresh (PSR) will also be fixed, new PCI IDs will be added, and the temporary code for various development versions of the GPU will disappear from the driver. Running with dual displays connected via eDP+DSI will be fixed.
But let’s also remember that the developers are preparing a generational replacement for the existing i915 driver, a new driver for now usually known as “Xe / DRM”.
OpenBSD adds support for Guided Disk Encryption in the installer
Encryption of the whole disk, adjustable already during the installation of the OS, is a rather important feature, and OpenBSD does not yet have it. But this will change in a few months, because the relevant support has already arrived in the project and everything is more or less in the hands of the regular cycle of new versions of this OS.
OpenBSD adds this to its installer the so-called guided disk encryption preset, currently in development. For now, the option is only available on i386, amd64, sparc64 and riscv64 platforms (arm64 is being worked on) and is supported for interactive installations or updates from the previous version.
Linux 6.4 removes the old PCMCIA drivers
Unused or no longer maintained drivers for old PCMCIA devices disappear from Linux with the release of version 6.4. It is part of a wider effort to get rid of the now obsolete and unused code for PCMCIA, a technology from the time before the first version of Linux at all, something that also received a successor in the form of ExpressCard already 20 years ago.
Greg Kroah-Hartman so he put the removal of char: pcmcia: in the queue of activities around the 6.4 kernel, then comments everything Jiří Slabý from SUSE in the relevant commit: these char PCMCIA drivers are already buggy and receive only minimal care. So it was decided that we would try to remove most of them completely and start with the broken ones.
The matter was discussed at the end of last year, the deserving developer Arnd Bergman, then reminded that there are two more scenarios where PCMCIA drivers are used, namely with cardbus devices on old laptops and then with embedded systems using such connected CompactFlash cards as storage. At the time, he recommended separating these two things so that their support would not disappear.
