Emacs 26.1 Released, Linux 4.17-rc7, GNOME Foundation Receives Anonymous Donation and More

on May 29, 2018

News briefs for May 29, 2018.

Emacs 26.1 was released yesterday. New features include limited form of concurrency with Lisp threads, support for optional display of line numbers in the buffer, use of double buffering to reduce flicker on the X Window System, redesign of Flymake, support for 24-bit colors on text terminals and lots more.

Linus Torvalds had these remarks over the weekend on Linux 4.17-rc7: "This week we had the whole 'spectre v4' thing, and yes, the fallout from that shows up as part of the patch and commit log. But it's not actually dominant: the patch is pretty evenly one third arch updates, one third networking updates, and one third "rest". He also mentioned "The bulk of it is really pretty trivial one-liners, and nothing looks particularly scary. Let's see how next week looks, but if nothing really happens I suspect we can make do without an rc8."

The GNOME Foundation recently received a pledge for $1,000,000 over the next two years from an anonymous donor. The Foundation plans to use the funds "to increase staff to streamline operations and to grow its support of the GNOME Project and the surrounding ecosystem."

KDE Connect Development Sprint took place last week, and the developers worked on the ability to send SMS from the desktop, making the Run Commands interface more discoverable, improving the functionality of multimedia controls ("now it's possible to display album art from your desktop on your Android devices") and more.

A new desktop environment option has arrived. The Jade Desktop is built on Python, HTML5, CSS and JavaScript and uses GTK with WebKit2, Phoronix reports. For more info, see Sparky Linux, which is offering the new desktop to its users.

The Korora Project and BackSlash Linux are ceasing development due to time constraints and financial issues, respectively, It's FOSS reports. The Korora project is taking a sabbatical (the developers aren't saying how long that will be), and the BackSlash Linux distro is asking for donations to help get started again.

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.