Do you waddle the waddle?
Darktable 5.0 brings major UI/UX improvements like camera-specific styles for more than 500 camera models to more closely approximate the out-of-camera JPEG rendition, an optional splash screen showing startup progress, a high-contrast theme with bright white text on a dark gray background, more new-user hints on an empty Lighttable, and a global preference to swap the left and right side panels in the darkroom view.
Powered by the latest and greatest Linux 6.12 LTS kernel series, the CachyOS release for December 2024 enables AutoFDO (Automatic Feedback-Directed Optimization) for the default linux-cachyos kernel on all supported architectures for a slight performance boost.
Based on the software repositories of the upcoming Debian 13 “Trixie” operating system series (a.k.a. Debian Testing) and powered by Linux kernel 6.11, the Grml 2024.12 (codename “Adventgrenze“) release is here to introduce support for 64-bit ARM AArch64 (ARM64) architectures, UEFI 32-bit boot to support 64-bit PCs with 32-bit firmware, and a new Grml flavour naming schema.
DXVK 2.5.2 is here to add an implementation of D3D9 shader validation interfaces, which is needed for The Void and several other D3D9 games, add support for VK_FORMAT_A8_UNORM to fix warnings in various games, as well as rendering issues in TopSpin 2K25, and optimize the behavior of disabled clip planes for D3D9 games.
As 2024 concludes, the Rockchip RK3588 platform has seen substantial progress in upstream support. Collabora’s latest announcement highlights advancements in kernel integration, hardware enablement, and foundational software, driven by the open-source community.
The LILYGO T7-C6 is a compact development board built around the ESP32-C6-MINI-1 module, offering versatile features designed for IoT and wireless communication applications. The board is available with either an onboard PCB antenna or an external antenna and supports modern wireless protocols, including 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5 (LE), and IEEE 802.15.4.
November was on track to be a quiet month in terms of Xubuntu development. Once daily builds became available toward the end of the month, we were finally able to start publishing some changes. With a handful of updates and the introduction of PipeWire and Flatpak, November became a much more exciting month.