KDE Plasma 5.13 Now Available, OpenGear's New NetOps Automation Platform, New Zynthian Raspberry Pi Synthesizer and More
News briefs for June 12, 2018.
KDE released Plasma 5.13.0 today. The team has "spent the last four months optimising startup and minimising memory usage, yielding faster time-to-desktop, better runtime performance and less memory consumption. Basic features like panel popups were optimised to make sure they run smoothly even on the lowest-end hardware. Our design teams have not rested either, producing beautiful new integrated lock and login screen graphics." New features in Plasma 5.13 include Plasma Browser Integration, redesigned system settings, new look for lock and login screens, improved KWin graphics compositor and more. See the release announcement for links to download pages for live images, distro packages and source.
OpenGear announced its new NetOps Automation platform, which "provides a solution for automation of NetOps workflows, enabling the management of the network from a central location, and eliminating the need for human intervention on the data center floor or at the edge of the network". NetOps is currently available as a beta product for select customers, and will be generally available in Q4 2018.
There's a new open-source Raspberry Pi synthesizer called Zynthian, which is a "swiss army knife of synthesis, equipped with multiple engines, filters and effects", Geeky Gadgets reports. The synthesizer is completely hackable and "offers an open platform for Sound Synthesis based on the awesome Raspberry Pi mini PC and Linux". See the main website for a video demo and to order.
Wine development release 3.10 is now available. New features include Swapchain support in direct 3D, updated Vulkan support, debugger support for Wow64 processes and more. See the announcement for more details and to download.
Devuan 2.0 ASCII has been released. Devuan is based on Debian Stretch, doesn't use systemd and it lets you choose between SysVinit and OpenRC init systems. With this release, Devuan provides various desktop environments, including Xfce, KDE, MATE, Cinnamon and LXQt. See the Devuan release notes and the It's FOSS post for more information on the distro.
Jill Franklin is an editorial professional with more than 17 years experience in technical and scientific publishing, both print and digital. As Executive Editor of Linux Journal, she wrangles writers, develops content, manages projects, meets deadlines and makes sentences sparkle. She also was Managing Editor for TUX and Embedded Linux Journal, and the book Linux in the Workplace. Before entering the Linux and open-source realm, she was Managing Editor of several scientific and scholarly journals, including Veterinary Pathology, The Journal of Mammalogy, Toxicologic Pathology and The Journal of Scientific Exploration. In a previous life, she taught English literature and composition, managed a bookstore and tended bar. When she’s not bugging writers about deadlines or editing copy, she throws pots, gardens and reads.
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