Today brings you some optional updates to the Raspberry Pi Desktop, which gains some modern features while keeping its simplicity. What is currently known as the Raspberry Pi Desktop has been around for over a decade now - it started out as a mildly customised version of the stock LXDE desktop, and over the years has slowly evolved into something with almost entirely different underpinnings, based on Wayland and labwc. The look has been refreshed on several occasions, with new icons, themes and desktop backgrounds, to the point where there is very little visually in common between today’s Raspberry Pi Desktop and the original LXDE. But one thing which has never changed is the overall feel of the desktop, which, with its taskbar, status icons and main menu launcher, is very reminiscent of the state of the art in desktop design from 30 years or so ago, with Windows 95 and Apple System 7.
There is a new disk cloner in this release. Wipe Free Space has been rewritten and no longer depends on an outside tool. Every other program I write has been read line by line and then run against real drives on a bench machine kept for that purpose, and the bugs that came out of it are fixed. Underneath all of that the base system has been rebuilt on Slackware 'Current', the desktop moved from Xfce 4.16 to Xfce 4.20, and the wallpaper changed for the first time in over ten years. The release is named differently too, and it is signed. Both are explained at the end. Parted Magic Clone is new. It copies a disk, a partition, or an image of either, and it produces evidence that the copy is right. The rule it is built around is that the source is never written. Not one byte, no matter what. The source is opened read-only, and every corrective action, whether that is filling in a later slice, repairing a filesystem, growing it to fill a larger disk or repointing a boot loader, happens to the copy, after the copy has been read back and verified.
Deblinux 6.2.1 “Fast Edition” is a lightweight 64-bit GNU/Linux distribution based on Debian 13 “Trixie”, focused on speed, responsiveness, and extending the life of older computers. This release brings a fully updated Gambas-based software suite, an enhanced Toolkit with maintenance, backup and cleanup tools, and a simpler Updater, while retaining multiple desktop options, advanced zRAM, an optimized kernel, Secure Boot support, and essential software preinstalled.
This release presents the new Linux kernel 7.2.4 as well as the new version 153.0.8010.36-1 of the web browser Google-Chrome-Stable. In addition, among other things, Starbuntu has improved its notification app about the upgradable system software.
Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS, code-named 'Noble Numbat', is here. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, together with the community and our partners, to introduce new features and fix bugs. As usual, this point release includes many updates and updated installation media has been provided, so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation. These include security updates and corrections for other high-severity bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.