GNU/Linux, Free Software, Coding Etc.

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Dec 19, 2024

GNU/Linux

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • One more striped wallpaper

      I recently saw one of my old branded “stripes” wallpapers in a screenshot of FreeBSD by someone on X, and that triggered me to make a new wallpaper in a similar style.

      There was a call for artwork for the next Debian release – Trixie, and I made a modified version of one of my old wallpapers for it.

• Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

  • Libre Arts ☛ LibreArts Weekly recap — 15 December 2024

    Week highlights: further progress with new PDF exporter in Inkscape, Scribus team is closing up on v1.7.0, new version of libwacom, new features in FreeCAD.

    I already discussed this topic in a recent weekly recap, but now there’s a video from Martin where he lists features supported by the new CMYK-capable PDF exporter in Inkscape.

    In short, it’s almost everything you expect: shapes, fills (including regular and mesh gradients), strokes, markers, masks and clipping paths, blending modes, symbols, page bleeds, margins, page labels. Images seem to present a bit of an challenge, so support is partial for now.

  • Web Browsers/Web Servers

    • Chromium

      • Google ☛ Making Chrome QUICer [Ed: Web becoming more proprietary]

        In October 2020, Chrome enabled HTTP/3 by default. HTTP/3 (RFC 9114) runs over IETF QUIC (RFC9000). Default-enabling HTTP/3 in Chrome resulted in improved performance compared not only HTTP/1 and HTTP/2, but also Surveillance Giant Google QUIC. Benefits included reduced Surveillance Giant Google search latency and fewer rebuffers for YouTube. The journey to optimizing performance did not end when HTTP/3 was default enabled. Recent advancements include the implementation of the HTTP/3 ORIGIN frame (RFC 9412) and Server's Preferred Address (RFC 9000 Section 9.6).

  • Programming/Development

    • Jussi Pakkanen ☛ Jussi Pakkanen: Meson build definitions merged into Git's git repo

      The developers of Git have been considering switchibg build systems for a while. No definitive decision have been made as of yet, but they gave merged Meson build definitions in the main branch. Thus it now possible, and even semi-supported, to develop and build Git with Meson instead of the vintage Makefile setup (which, AFAICT, remains as the default build system for now).

    • Rlang ☛ Introducing the rOpenSci Localization and Translation Guidelines

      Since 2022, rOpenSci has been developing tools and processes to localize and translate our content.
      As a result of this effort, we created a set of guidelines to assist our community in translating and localizing our resources.
      

    • Dirk Eddelbuettel ☛ Dirk Eddelbuettel: BH 1.87.0-1 on CRAN: New Upstream

      mirrors) show over 38.5 million package downloads.

      Version 1.87.0 of Boost was released last week following the regular Boost release schedule of April, August and December releases. As before, we packaged it almost immediately and started testing following our annual update cycle which strives to balance being close enough to upstream and not stressing CRAN and the user base too much. The reverse depends check revealed six packages requiring changes or adjustments. We opened issue #103 to coordinate the issue (just as we did in previous years).

    • Python

      • LWN ☛ Finally continuing the discussion over continue in finally

        In 2019, the Python community had a lengthy discussion about changing the rules (that some find counterintuitive) on using break, continue, or return statements in finally blocks. These are all ways of jumping out of a finally block, which can interrupt the handling of a raised exception. At the time, the Python developers chose not to change things, because the consensus was that the existing behavior was not a problem. Now, after a report put together by Irit Katriel, the project is once again considering changing the language.

        Like several other languages, Python has a try statement that allows catching exceptions. The optional finally block of a try statement allows the programmer to write code that should always run, regardless of whether an exception occurred in the try statement. This facility is frequently used to ensure a resource is always cleaned up, even if an exception is thrown. The Python documentation clearly describes what happens when an exception is thrown and a finally block that includes a control-flow statement executes: ""If the finally clause executes a return, break or continue statement, the saved exception is discarded"". But some people see this behavior as counterintuitive.