today's leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Aug 12, 2025

• Desktop Environments (DE)/Window Managers (WM)

  • Burkhard Stubert ☛ Running Wayland Clients as Non-Root Users – Burkhard Stubert

    Many embedded Linux systems use a Wayland compositor like Weston for window management. Qt applications act as Wayland clients. Weston composes the windows of the Qt applications into a single window and displays it on a screen. I still have to find a Yocto layer that does not start Qt applications as root. This violates the cybersecurity principle that every application should only run with the least privileges possible. Let us figure out how to run Qt applications as non-root users and make our system more secure.

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • GNOME ☛ Christian Hergert: Week 32 Status

      Foundry

      This week was largely around getting the new template engine landed so it can be part of the 1.0 Hey Hi (AI) Basically just racing to get everything landed in time to commit to the API/ABI contract.

      FoundryTextBuffer gained some new type prerequisites to make it easier for writing applications against them. Since Foundry is a command line tool as well as a library, we don’t just use GtkTextBuffer since the CLI doesn’t even link against GTK. But it is abstracted in such a way that the GTK application would implement the FoundryTextBuffer interface with a derived GtkSourceBuffer.

      FoundryTextSettings has landed which provides a layered approach to text editor settings similar (but better) than we have currently in GNOME Builder. There is a new modeline implementation, editorconfig, and gsettings backed settings provider which apply in that order (with per-file overrides allowed at the tip).

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Barry Kauler ☛ Random hanging with 6.12 kernel

    Easy Excalibur is currently using the 6.12.41 kernel, but the problem is also with earlier versions, such as 6.12.36. Easy boots OK a few times, success gets to the desktop, but then at another bootup, just after login (as root), there is a freeze.

  • Linux Magazine ☛ Upcoming Changes for MXLinux

    MXLinux 25 has plenty in store to please all types of users.

  • Developer Tools, Hardware Enablement, and Multitasking Futures

    Your monthly updates post is here! This month we have a couple of releases for our developer tools, plus plenty of improvements to Bluetooth, as well as a hardware enablement boost from Ubuntu and plenty to talk about in Early Access. Let’s dive in!

    The previously mentioned redesign of Bluetooth Settings has arrived! This redesign not only brings a bit more visual separation between paired devices and nearby devices, but also improves the keyboard navigation and screen reader experience. Plus, you can now double click rows to activate them. We resolved an issue where sometimes devices would be duplicated in the list and fixed issues when a pairing request requires entering passcodes—like with some keyboards. You’ll now also see fewer unnamed devices when discovering, enabling and disabling Bluetooth on devices that have been hardware locked should now work reliably, and to top it all off performance when listing lots of devices has also been improved.