New Linux-based Gaming Device, €203k to GStreamer, COSMIC Road to Alpha, and more!
Sovereign Tech Fund invests €203,000 in GStreamer
After investing €1M in GNOME, the Sovereign Tech fund also decided to finance the development of the "general multimedia processing framework" GStreamer. The goal, according to the Fund, is to "Re-implement a multimedia framework’s low-level network protocol for increased security, maintainability, and sustainability".
The Fund is quite transparent; in the webpage linked below, you can see why this project was awarded the sum. Even better, a precise list of tasks the SVT is financing is at the bottom of the page.
Another SteamOS-based Gaming Console?
Ever since the release of the SteamDeck, Valve has made it clear that they'd be happy to see other products featuring their open-source operating system. This would surely benefit them, but it would also be great news for the Linux community. The device pictured above is the newly-announced AYANEO NEXT LITE (yes, all uppercase), and you can easily see a SteamOS interface. The software is called "HoloISO", which CEO Arthur Zhang defines as a "non-official", "third-party" version of SteamOS. Could he mean, "fork"?
We do know that the system is open source and available on their GitHub page. The "About" section of the project describes it as "SteamOS3 (Holo) archiso configuration", which makes the SteamOS-based nature even more evident. The main goal seems to be to "bring SteamOS redistribution into a generic, installable format, and provide a close-to-official SteamOS experience". Nowhere does the page mention Ayaneo, as the project does not seem to be developed by them.
Even under a different name, I happily welcome more Linux-based gaming devices; I think it's clear proof of the amazing work done both by Valve and the developers of the technologies SteamOS uses and relies on.
COSMIC announces Road To Alpha
Breaking news: we have a roadmap for the COSMIC alpha!
System76 is currently aiming at a summer release. The remaining work is mostly in remaining features, design matching and bug fixes, and even more bug fixes and .iso files. We don't have an exact list of tasks for each of these sections, but we do get a lot of information about recent changes in the system.
Firstly, there's now a terminal application called (you guessed it) COSMIC Terminal. Features include bidirectional rendering, desktop themes, syntax themes, and GPU rendering. The project relies on the alacritty_terminal framework. The app also is now packaged in NixOS!, amongst many other.
There's also a new screenshot tool that's quite similar to the very professional GNOME one: you can select what you want to screenshot, and you save it to a clipboard or to a file. There's also the design for a tiling applet that would allow you to turn on/off tiling, select which workspaces to tile in, tell you keyboard shortcuts, and allow you to customize it a bit.
You can read about all of this and more here:
KDE selects Plasma 6 wallpaper, publishes MegaRelease, starts hiring!
There's so much to cover on the KDE side of things!
Firstly, there's now an official wallpaper for the Plasma 6 release. It has been selected through a competition that lasted 5/6 months! I'm happy to say I was a judge for it, and lots of great options were available. I feel confident about this pick, which I truly love! Agree or disagree?
niccolove
Secondly, KDE has released a new beta MegaRelease. As a reminder, a "MegaRelease" is when Plasma (the desktop), Frameworks (various frameworks), and Gear (apps) are all released on the same day. This is the approach that has been chosen for Plasma 6, and we recently got a new beta for it. You can try it out to make sure there are no bugs, which will help development a lot. The final release will be towards the end of February. You can read more about it here:
Finally, KDE is hiring! The project has recently received a grant for sustainable software and is thus searching for somebody to promote lead in that area. This is a part-time paid position, 10 hours/week. It does require to know German. If you are interested you can learn more here:
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