The GNOME desktop is the default graphical user interface for most of the popular Linux distributions and some of the BSD and Solaris operating systems. Currently at version 3, GNOME provides a sleek user experience, and extensions are available for additional functionality.

We've covered GNOME extensions at Opensource.com before, but to celebrate GNOME's 22nd anniversary, I decided to revisit the topic. Some of these extensions may already be installed, depending on your Linux distribution; if not, check your package manager.

Also: Happy anniversary GNOME: What's your favorite version?

How to record screencasts in GNOME 3

• Bastien Nocera: libfprint 1.0 (and fprintd 0.9.0)

  After more than a year of work libfprint 1.0 has just been released!

  It contains a lot of bug fixes for a number of different drivers, which would make it better for any stable or unstable release of your OS.

  There was a small ABI break between versions 0.8.1 and 0.8.2, which means that any dependency (really just fprintd) will need to be recompiled. And it's good seeing as we also have a new fprintd release which also fixes a number of bugs.

• libinput 1.14.0

  libinput 1.14.0 is now available.
  
  A flurry of patches over the last RC but most of these were CI related. Two
  new significant bugfixes: the calibration matrix is now returned correctly
  even when it is the identity matrix. And the tablet pressure range is scaled
  correctly into the available physical range. Previously, the bottom 5% where
  effectively missing and pressure offset on worn-out pens handling took some
  of the scale away from the top.
  
  Below is the text from the 1.14.rc1 announcement which lists the other big
  features added since the 1.13 release.
  
  We have new and improved thumb detection for touchpads, thanks to Matt
  Mayfield. On Clickpad devices this should make interactions where a thumb is
  resting on the touchpad or dropped during an interaction more reliable. A
  summary of the changes can be found here:
  https://who-t.blogspot.com/2019/07/libinputs-new-thumb-detection-code.html
  
  The Dell Canvas Totem is now supported by libinput. It is exposed as a new
  tool type through the tablet interface along with two new axes. Note that
  this is only low-level support, the actual integration of the totem needs
  Wayland protocol changes and significant changes in all applications that
  want to make use of it. A summary of the changes can be found here.
  https://who-t.blogspot.com/2019/06/libinput-and-dell-canvas-totem.html
  
  Touch-capable tablets now tie both devices together for rotation. If you set
  the tablet to left-handed, the touchpad will be rotated along with the
  tablet. Note that this does not affect the left-handed-ness of the touchpad,
  merely the rotation. 
  
  Tablet proximity out handling for tablets that are unreliably sending
  proximity out events is now always timeout-based. It is no longer necessary
  to add per-device quirks to enable this feature and it is completely
  transparent on devices that work correctly anyway. The blog post below has a
  summary:
  https://who-t.blogspot.com/2019/06/libinput-and-tablet-proximity-handling.html
  
  Tablets that send duplicate tools (BTN_TOOL_PEN and BTN_TOOL_ERASER) now
  ignore the latter. This is an intermediate fix only but at least makes those
  tablets more usable than they are now. Issue #259 is the tracker for this
  particular behaviour if you are affected by it.
  
  The handling of kernel fuzz has been slightly improved. Where our udev rule
  fails to reset the fuzz on the kernel device, we disable the hysteresis and
  rely on the kernel now to handle it. Previously our hysteresis would take
  effect on top of the kernel's, causing nonresponsive behaviour.
  
  Note to distribitors: the python-evdev dependency has been dropped, the
  tools that used it are now using python-libevdev instead.
  
  As usual, the git shortlog is below.
  
  Benjamin Tissoires (3):
        gitlab-ci: allow to run on unprivileged containers
        gitlab-ci: force using docker format for the generated images
        tests: increase the timeout for the subprocess to receive the quit signal
  
  Brian Ashworth (1):
        evdev: always store user calibration matrix
  
  Peter Hutterer (14):
        tools: record: fix segfault on exit
        tools: record: fix two memory leaks
        meson.build: drop explicit install:true from configure_file
        gitlab CI: replace the user:password with a netrc file
        gitlab CI: fetch the WAYLAND_WEB_TOKEN from a file
        tablet: point the pressure offset log messages to the right URL
        tablet: add a comment explaining why we adjust the pressure offset downwards
        Add the ck_double_eq_tol() macros to the backwards compat headers
        test: fix the pressure offset tests
        tablet: make the pressure-offset inclusive of the axis minimum
        tablet: reduce the pressure range by the offset
        test: don't test at the 100 y range
        tablet: scale the available pressure range into the pressure thresholds
        libinput 1.14.0
  
  git tag: 1.14.0

• Libinput 1.14 Released With Dell Canvas Totem Support, Touchpad Improvements

  Version 1.14 of the libinput library for unified input handling on Linux X.Org and Wayland systems is now available.

  Libinput 1.14 is notable for introducing support for the Dell Canvas Totem input device as a unique input device and we could be seeing more of these types of devices in the future.

• Khronos Releases OpenCL 2.2-11 While Still Waiting For OpenCL-Next

  The Khronos Group has released the OpenCL 2.2-11 specification to address various issues with the existing OpenCL specification while the next major release as "OpenCL-Next" is likely still a number of months away.

  OpenCL 2.2-11 was released overnight with various bug fixes, clarifications, better formatting of the documentation, and integration with the OpenCL reference pages. That updated specification is available from the Khronos.org Registry.

In my last post discussing changes in Pango 1.44, I’ve asked for feedback. We’ve received some, thanks to everybody who reported issues!

We tried to address some of the fallout in several follow-up releases. I’ll do a 1.44.4 release with the last round of fixes before too long.

Here is a summary.

Cinnamon is the principal desktop environment of the Linux Mint distribution and is available as an optional desktop for other Linux distributions and other Unix-like operating systems as well.

The development of Cinnamon began as a reaction to the April 2011 release of GNOME 3 in which the conventional desktop metaphor of GNOME 2 was abandoned in favor of GNOME Shell.

Following several attempts to extend GNOME 3 such that it would suit the Linux Mint design goals, the Mint developers forked several GNOME 3 components to build an independent desktop environment.

Separation from GNOME was completed in Cinnamon 2.0, which was released in October 2013.

Applets and desklets are no longer compatible with GNOME 3.