Flathub Updates: Tuesday May 24, 2022

New Apps

It’s been a few days with no new applications landing in Flathub. Then, just like London busses, a bunch land all at once. Here’s what’s arrived in Flathub in the last couple of days. It’s another game-heavy update, with a couple of utilities thrown in.

Bombermaaan

Bombermaaan 2.1.8.2208 was published

Bombermaaan should be clearly recognisable as a clone of “Bomberman” – the ever popular Nintendo classic. We installed Bombermaan and gave it a quick shake. It’s a very familiar, fast and fun game, with cute 8-bit retro graphics and sound effects.

Our only minor issue, which seems to occur with many SDL based games, is when going full screen it messes with the Linux multi-monitor settings. So once exiting the game, you may need to rearrange your windows and configure primary monitor each time.

One minor comment about the flathub entry for Bombermaan worth noting is there’s no screenshots uploaded. Typically any desktop application published on flathub has one or more screenshots, but there’s none for Bombermaan. This makes it less appealing for new people discovering the game.

Writernote

Writernote 4.0.1h was published

Writernote is a novel note-taking application for the Linux desktop or tablet. While other applications exist for taking notes, Writernote is interesting by recording audio from the computer while notes are written. This could be used to capture lecture audio or voice annotation to augment the written notes and diagrams.

The problem, however, is – for us – it flat out doesn’t work. While we were able to take some scribbled notes, any effort to record and playback audio failed completely. Error popups would appear, and corrupt video files were stored on the disk.

We aren’t sure if it’s too early in development, or there’s a bug with this release, or perhaps some flatpak confinement is the cause. Whatever it is, Writernote isn’t quite ready for prime-time.

JAG

JAG 0.3.8 was published

JAG is a simple match-3 puzzle game. It’s easy to get into and a potential time-sink if you let it!

Salawat

Salawat 1.0.3 was published

Salawat is an open-source application for tracking Islamic prayer times.

LGeneral

LGeneral 1.4.4. was published

LGeneral is a turn-based strategy engine heavily inspired by Panzer General.

LTris

LTris 1.2.1 was published

LTris is a Tetris clone. Differently shaped blocks are falling down the rectangular playing field and can be moved sideways or rotated by 90-degree units with the aim of building lines without gaps which then disappear (causing any block above the deleted line to fall down).

It even has a zero player mode where you can watch your CPU playing while enjoying a hot beverage!

juk

JuK 22.04.1 was published

JuK is an audio jukebox application, supporting collections of MP3, Ogg Vorbis, and FLAC audio files. It allows you to edit the “tags” of your audio files, and manage your collection and playlists.

KBibTex

KBibTex 0.9.2 was published

KBibTex is a reference management application which can be used to collect TeX/LaTeX bibliographies and export them in various formats.

KNights

KNights 2.6.22041 was published

KNights is a chess game, but you probably guessed that! As a player, your goal is to defeat your opponent by checkmating their king.

KsirK

KsirK 22.04.1 was published

KsirK is a computerized version of the well known strategic board game Risk. The goal of the game is simply to conquer the world by attacking your neighbours with your armies.

That’s all for today!

Flathub Updates: Wednesday May 18, 2022 Game Day!

New Apps

On Flathub variety really is the spice of life. Some days there’ll be large applications from well-known publishers released, and other times, small independent development teams make their creations available for Linux. Today, games seem to be the order of the day.

There are a few non-game applications published too, but more on those later. Let’s get into the entertainment first.

OpenTyrian

OpenTyrian 2.1.20220318 was published 🕹

Oftentimes on Linux, when you see an application or game with the prefix “Open” it implies this is a free software (re-)implementation of an existing proprietary product. True to the name, OpenTyrian is an open-source implementation of the DOS shoot-em-up Tyrian.

OpenTyrian is very much of its time. Colourful pixel art and a thumping synth soundtrack & sound effects, combined with relentless waves of aliens and power-ups for your ship. It ticks all the boxes. Pew pew!

Dune Legacy

Dune Legacy 0.96.4 was published 🕹

Bucking the previously asserted “Open” prefix, Dune Legacy is an open-source, cross-platform re-implementation of the real-time strategy game, Dune II. You’ll need game files which you may be able to pick up in the second-hand market.

SDL-Ball

SDL-Ball 1.04 was published 🪩

SDL-Ball is a standard “bat, bricks and balls” like Arkanoid and Batty from the old days of computing, before the Internet ruined everything. It’s a small download and easy to pick up.

Use the mouse to move the bat left and right to deflect the ball (or balls) back up and knock the bricks down. Balance keeping the ball in the air with collecting power ups and enhancements.

The game is a little slow to start, but the mouse sensitivity is so acute that it’s very easy to miss the ball and lose a life. Well, it was for us.

Warsow

Warsow 2.1.2 was published 🔫

Warsow is a fast and fun competitive first-person shooter without hard graphical violence – Warsow has no blood or guts flying around. Red stars instead of blood indicate hits and coloured cubes replace guts as gib effects.

Atomix

Atomix 3.34 was published

Atomix is a puzzle game where your goal is to assemble molecules from compound atoms by moving them on the playfield. However, atoms don’t just move wherever you want to move them, they slide until they hit either a wall or another atom.

Try to build the molecules as fast as you can on each level to earn a higher score.

That’s all for today!

Flathub Updates: Tuesday May 17, 2022

App Updates

The updates to applications in Flathub are coming thick and fast. Today, we’ve reformatted this update to include a screenshot and the short application description. While we’ve had some feedback that it’s useful to have these posts to discover something new, we feel the screenshot makes it less of a “wall of text” and thus more interesting.

Feedback is welcome as always! Anyway, on with the updates for today!

RedNotebook was updated from 2.24 to 2.25

Modern desktop diary and personal journaling tool. It lets you format, tag and search your entries. You can also add pictures, links and customisable templates, spell check your notes, and export to plain text, HTML, LaTeX or PDF.

Protontricks was updated from 1.8.1 to 1.8.2

This is a wrapper script that allows you to easily run Winetricks commands for Steam Play/Proton games among other common Wine features, such as launching external Windows executables. This is often useful when a game requires closed-source runtime libraries or applications that are not included with Proton.

Note: To access Steam libraries on another drives, you need to grant access to them:

flatpak override –user –filesystem=/path/to/other/Steam/Library com.github.Matoking.protontricks

Astronum was updated from 1.0.1 to 1.0.2

The application allows you to calculate the numbers of the name and birth, the psychomatrix and the signs of some horoscopes.

Dynamic Wallpaper Creator was updated from 1.0.3 to 1.0.4

A program for creating dynamic wallpapers from a sequence of individual static images. As a result of the program, a file in XML format is obtained, which can be specified as wallpaper in the additional settings of the GNOME environment.

Date of Catholic Easter was updated from 1.0.1 to 1.0.2

Program for calculating the date of Catholic Easter

Forgetpass was updated from 1.0.0 to 1.0.1

You don’t need to remember passwords anymore! All you need is a website name and a keyword that is easy to remember. The program will generate a strong password, and if you need it again, just enter the above data and you will get the same password.

Sudoku was updated from 1.0.2 to 1.0.3

The goal of Sudoku is to fill in a 9×9 grid with digits so that each column, row, and 3×3 section contain the numbers between 1 to 9. At the beginning of the game, the 9×9 grid will have some of the squares filled in. Your job is to use logic to fill in the missing digits and complete the grid. A move is incorrect if:

Any row contains more than one of the same number from 1 to 9
Any column contains more than one of the same number from 1 to 9
Any 3×3 grid contains more than one of the same number from 1 to 9

gplaces was updated from 0.16.14 to 0.16.15

gplaces is a light Gemini client with a high power to weight ratio. In a tiny package, it features:

A VT100-compatible shell with completion, history and hints
.gmi subscriptions
TOFU
Generation of client certificates
Slightly prettified Gemtext output

gplaces should be fairly straightforward to use for anyone used to the command-line and man pages.

Splash was updated from 0.9.16 to 0.9.18

Splash is a free (as in GPL) modular mapping software. Provided that the user creates a 3D model with UV mapping of the projection surface, Splash will take care of calibrating the videoprojectors (intrinsic and extrinsic parameters, blending and color), and feed them with the input video sources. Splash can handle multiple inputs, mapped on multiple 3D models, and has been tested with up to eight outputs on two graphic cards. It currently runs on a single computer but support for multiple computers is planned.

RubyMine was updated from 2022.1 to 2022.1.1

RubyMine is an integrated development environment that helps you be more productive in every aspect of Ruby/Rails projects development – from writing and debugging code to testing and deploying a completed application. This section will give you a brief overview of some of the most essential features available in RubyMine.

NOTE: This wrapper is not verified by, affiliated with, or supported by JetBrains s.r.o.

Logseq was updated from 0.6.8 to 0.6.9

Logseq is a platform for knowledge management and collaboration. It focuses on privacy, longevity, and user control.

Your data are plain text files and we currently support both Markdown and Emacs Org mode (more to be added soon).

Mattermost was updated from 5.0.4 to 5.1.0

Mattermost is a secure collaboration platform that is open, flexible, and deeply integrated with the tools you love. An alternative to SaaS collaboration solutions, Mattermost is built explicitly for developer teams, tools, and workflows. It is written in Golang and React and runs as a production-ready Linux binary under an MIT license with either MySQL or Postgres.

Caprine was updated from 2.55.3 to 2.55.5

Caprine is an unofficial and privacy-focused Facebook Messenger app with many useful features.

Slack was updated from 4.25.0 to 4.26.1

Slack offers chat rooms organized by topic, private groups, and direct messaging capabilities to facilitate conversation and help your team get things done. All content inside Slack is searchable, including files, conversations, and people, so it’s easy to stay organized. Integration with several third-party services allows use of their features directly within your Slack discussions.

NOTE: This wrapper is not verified by, affiliated with, or supported by Slack Technologies, Inc.

Steam ROM Manager was updated from 2.3.36 to 2.3.37

Steam ROM Manager is a super flexible tool for adding non-Steam games to steam in bulk and managing their artwork assets. Added games could be ROMs for emulators, games from other stores such as Epic or GOG, or even not games at all. Have you always wanted your notes from junior year as a category in steam? If so that’s pretty weird! But now it’s possible.

Bottles was updated from 2022.5.14-trento to 2022.5.14-trento-1

Run Windows software on Linux with Bottles!

Bottle software and enjoy at your leisure!

Our built-in dependency installation system grants automatic software compatibility access. Use the download manager to download the official components: the runner (Wine, Proton), DXVK, dependencies, etc.

Bottle versioning keeps your work safe now and lets you restore it later!

Features:

Create bottles using preconfigured environments or create your own
Run executables (.exe/.msi) in your bottles, directly from the context menu of your file-manager
Automated detection of applications installed in your bottles
Add environment variables quickly
Override DLLs directly from per-bottle preferences
On-the-fly runner change for any Bottle
Various gaming-performance optimizations (esync, fsync, DXVK, cache, shader compiler, offload … and much more.)
Automatic installation and management of Wine and Proton runners
Automatic bottle repair in case of breakage
Integrated dependency-installer based on a community-driven repository
Integrated Task manager for Wine processes
Access to ProtonDB and WineHQ for support
System for bringing your configuration to new versions of Bottles
Back up and import bottles
Import Wine prefixes from other managers
Bottles versioning (experimental)
… and much more that you can find by installing Bottles!

XnView MP was updated from 0.99.7 to 1.00

XnView MP is a versatile and powerful photo viewer, image management, image resizer. XnView is one of the most stable, easy-to-use, and comprehensive photo editors. All common picture and graphics formats are supported (JPEG, TIFF, PNG, GIF, WEBP, PSD, JPEG2000, OpenEXR, camera RAW, HEIC, PDF, DNG, CR2).

Path of Building (Community) was updated from 2.16.0 to 2.17.1

Path of Building Community Fork – A powerful build planner for Path of Exile

This is a fork of Openarl’s Path Of Building that includes many extra features not in the base version of PoB

Jameica was updated from 2.10.1 to 2.10.2

Jameica is an Application-Platform written in Java containing a SWT-UI. It provides different services (GUI-Toolkit, Logging, Security, Backup, Lifecycle-Management, Message-Bus) to the installed plugins. It’s a kind of runtime environment similar to OSGi.

AAAAXY was updated from v1.2.27 to v1.2.34

Although your general goal is reaching the surprising end of the game, you are encouraged to set your own goals while playing. Exploration will be rewarded, and secrets await you!

So jump and run around, and enjoy losing your sense of orientation in this World of Wicked Weirdness. Find out what Van Vlijmen will make you do. Pick a path, get inside a Klein Bottle, recognize some memes, and by all means: don’t look up.

GeForce NOW Electron was updated from 1.6.0 to 1.7.0

Unofficial Linux Desktop client for Nvidia’s GeForce NOW game streaming service.

Meridius was updated from 2.4.16 to 2.4.17

Meridius is an absolutely free application for listening to music on VK. Meridius offers a wide range of functionality similar to the functionality of the social network.

No tricks – the program is absolutely free and without advertising and any commercial purpose! The program was made by the same music lover as you.

Key features:

Low usage of system resources
High app performance
Modern beautiful and clear design
Support for color schemes
Easy management and quick access to music and playlists
Search for music, playlists, artists, users and communities
Download audio and entire playlists to your computer
Mini-player that is displayed on top of windows
Built-in equalizer with presets
Built-in track volume normalizer with adjustable threshold
Embedded web server to integrate your applications with Meridius

GrandOrgue was updated from 3.6.6-1 to 3.6.7-1

GrandOrgue is a virtual pipe organ sample player application supporting a HW1 compatible file format.

Siril was updated from 1.0.1 to 1.0.2

Siril is an image processing tool specially tailored for noise reduction and improving the signal/noise ratio of an image from multiple captures, as required in astronomy.

Siril can align automatically or manually, stack and enhance pictures from various file formats, even images sequences (movies and SER files).

Déjà Dup Backups was updated from 43.2 to 43.3

Déjà Dup is a simple backup tool. It hides the complexity of backing up the Right Way (encrypted, off-site, and regular) and uses duplicity as the backend.

Support for local, remote, or cloud backup locations such as Google Drive
Securely encrypts and compresses your data
Incrementally backs up, letting you restore from any particular backup
Schedules regular backups
Integrates well into your GNOME desktop

Déjà Dup focuses on ease of use and recovering from personal, accidental data loss. If you need a full system backup or an archival program, you may prefer other backup apps.

utm_no was updated from 1.60.30 to 1.60.32

You know how when you get a link from somewhere it’s got all that utm_source=exploiter, utm_medium=banner rubbish in it? And as a service when you’re pasting this oh-so-hilarious link to your friends so they can share in the joy, you remove all that stuff?

What if the computer did it for you?

Yeah. Clearly it should. Now it does. utm_no sits in your panel and automatically removes tracking rubbish from links that you copy.

Tiled was updated from 1.8.4 to 1.8.5

Tiled is a general purpose 2D level editor with powerful tile map editing features. It’s built to be easy to use and is suitable for many type of games.

The Tiled map format is supported by a large amount of game engines and libraries. In addition, Tiled supports plugins to read and write map formats other than its own map format.

Firefox was updated from 100.0 to 100.0.1

When it comes to your life online, you have a choice: accept the factory settings or put your privacy first. When you choose Firefox as your default browser, you’re choosing to protect your data while supporting an independent tech company. Firefox is also the only major browser backed by a non-profit fighting to give you more openness, transparency and control of your life online. Join hundreds of millions of people who choose to protect what’s important by choosing Firefox – a web browser designed to be fast, easy to use, customizable and private.

QOwnNotes was updated from 22.5.1 to 22.5.2

QOwnNotes is the open source (GPL) plain-text file notepad with markdown support and todo list manager for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and Windows by Patrizio Bekerle, that (optionally) works together with the notes application of ownCloud or Nextcloud.

Ryujinx was updated from 1.1.129 to 1.1.130

Ryujinx is an open-source Nintendo Switch emulator written in C#

This emulator aims at providing excellent accuracy and performance, a user-friendly interface, and consistent builds.

Cider was updated from v1.4.6.2277 to v1.4.7.2545

Cider. A new look into listening and enjoying Apple Music in style and performance with Features such as Discord and Last.fm integration, spatial audio support, equalizers, and remote control using the companion app.

That’s all for today!

“$N things to do after installing $DISTRO_NAME”

The last one will blow your mind

We’ve all seen these listicles, detailing the various tweaks, installs, and removals you must do after installing whatever Linux distribution you’ve chosen. They’re easy fluff pieces that bloggers and YouTubers can crank out every couple of months to coincide with whatever flavour of the month distro has just been released.

Most are just lists of the author’s favourite applications and adjustments, or things they culled from other sites, and recycled from past articles. Indeed some are plucked out of the air by authors who don’t even daily drive that distribution at all. Shocking, I know.

Never one to shy away from a passing bandwagon though, let’s join in. We’ll attempt to do this topic justice with an evergreen, generic article that could apply to anyone, anywhere so that we never need to update it. 🤞

Here’s what we think you should do after installing whatever Linux distribution you chose to install, in the form of a list you’ll scroll through nod in agreement and then forget about.

Install Software

Install all these cool applications!

Or you know, don’t, we’re not the boss of you.

It turns out most desktop Linux distributions of the modern age will ship with a pretty functional set of applications that the average user can get going with. We’re not aware of any reputable distro that fails to ship a working web browser in whatever year you’re reading this.

So much these days can be done in the browser, is there even any need to install more junk? Possibly not. Spotify, Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp, Google Keep, YouTube and tons more all work just fine with no local software installation. So maybe, at least initially, don’t bother hunting down new software, and just try using the distro as nature intended, naked and basic.

Hey, it works for Chromebooks!

Make something

What’s your creative passion?

Uh-huh, cool! Use Linux to do that!

You don’t have a creative passion? Well, Linux can help you here, as there’s a ton of software and documentation you could consume to start a new creative journey. Whether you have ambitions of creating music, writing a book, developing a game or more desktop software, it’s all possible on desktop Linux.

Figure it out for yourself, it’s uniquely rewarding to be creative on a free platform.

Get Involved

You almost certainly got this Linux distro with no or minimal financial outlay, right? How does that feel? Pretty awesome huh? Now think of all those designers, artists, supporters, translators, advocates, programmers, packagers, release engineers, and more who made this distro come to life. They can’t do it on their own, they need help.

Maybe, if something doesn’t work, the best course of action might not be to write an angry Reddit post, Tweet at the developer or maybe phone them up? It’s possible the person or people responsible for the heinous crime of not delivering desktop perfection are asleep, so they might miss your tweet.

So it’s probably best to let them know in a respectful and kind way in a place where they’ll look, as soon as they wake up. Where do developers go, after they’ve had their morning coffee? Why the issue tracker of course!

You could revive some long atrophied brain cells by finding the right bug form for your issue. Then use your words to articulate how the problem manifests itself, what your expectations were and what you tried to solve it already. You never know, there may already be an issue filed, that you could positively contribute to with additional data.

There are so many, many ways to get involved in whatever Linux distribution or application you’re having trouble with. Indeed even if you’re not having issues, and everything is peachy, you can still help! Developers love people who help.

Share the Love

Tell all your friends and family about how amazing desktop Linux is!

Nah, we’re kidding, nobody cares, honestly. They’re just humouring you, like that time you got a clarinet.

Just use the computer, learn how to use it well, and do something with it. Show the people you care about the thing you actually made, whatever it is. If they want to discover desktop Linux, they’ll find it in their own time. Linux has plenty of advocates, and they don’t really need any more right now.

Go Outside

Turn the computer off now and then, and go outside. Spend some time with other humans, or animals if you prefer. Start conversations with people about things that aren’t Linux.

Life is short, make the most of it. Your desktop Linux installation will still be there when you get back.

Peace 🕊️

Flathub Updates: Monday May 16, 2022 – Late Edition!

New Apps

Three “new” packages landed in Flathub so far today. We say “new” in scare quotes, because while one is a brand new application, having only existed for five days, the other two are a bit older. Let’s dive in!

Recorder

Recorder 1.0.0 was published 📼

Another day, another fresh application published by Alex Kryuchkov – no biggie! We’ve written previously, previously about Alex’s small, but perfectly formed Linux desktop applications published in Flathub. Recorder is his latest, a simple audio recording app.

Once launched, Recorder shows an empty window and a bunch of pretty obvious buttons in the toolbar. Hit the record button to start recording, and press again to stop. Once recording is complete, the auto-generated name can be edited to something more useful or friendly.

Clicking on the play button plays the highlighted recording back, simple. The recordings are saved on disk, and can be easily found by clicking the folder icon in the toolbar. Recordings can either be removed in the folder, or using the delete button on the toolbar.

This is another great, easy to use application from Alex. We can’t wait for the next one!

Pentobi

Pentobi 20.0 was published 🟥

Pentobi is a computer opponent for the board game Blokus. It has a strong Blokus engine with different playing levels. The supported game variants are Classic, Duo, Trigon, Junior, Nexos, Callisto and GembloQ.

Players can determine their strength by playing rated games against the computer and use a game analysis function. Games can be saved in Smart Game Format with comments and move variations.

Goat Attack

Goat Attack 0.4.5 was published 🐐

Goat Attack is a multiplayer 2D platformer pixel art shooter game. You can play it in a local network or over the Internet. Six gameplay modes are supported. Deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, speed race, catch the coin and goat of the hill.

Launch the game, spin up a server on your local network or public Internet and get your Goat on! The game comes with sixteen maps from “Astrogoat” to “Goats In Space” and “I Have Goat To Kill You!”. Goat Attack supports controllers or keyboard, and the keys can be configured for optimal Goat melee.

The Linux build is available in Flathub, of course, but the Goat Attack site has builds for Windows and macOS, with the source code available on GitHub. The game has been around a while now, but only just got a Flathub upload. So maybe now is the ideal time to spin up a server and Go At-Attacking. Go Attacking. Goat Attacking. You know what we mean! 🐐

That’s all for now!

Flathub Updates: Monday May 16, 2022

App Updates

Over the weekend there was a giant pile of updates to applications published in Flathub! Clearly many of these are minor point releases, which contain the usual “bug fixes and performance improvements”. However, there are a few developers who’ve clearly been very busy this weekend. There’s a load of KDE application updates, and the JetBrains products have all had a bump too. Worth a scroll through to see what you can discover!

Developers be developing! 🤓

Parallel Launcher was updated from v6.6.0 to v6.6.2
Quadrix was updated from 0.9.0 to 0.9.3
Revolt was updated from 1.0.3 to 1.0.4
SchildiChat was updated from 1.10.4-sc.1 to 1.10.12-sc.1
ATLauncher was updated from 3.4.13.2 to 3.4.13.9
Vorta was updated from v0.8.3 to v0.8.4
Brave Browser was updated from 1.38.111 to 1.38.115
ungoogled-chromium was updated from 101.0.4951.54 to 101.0.4951.64
Spotube was updated from 2.0.0 to 2.1.0
Sioyek was updated from 1.1.0.fl1 to 1.3.0
Desktop Files Creator was updated from 1.0.9 to 1.1.0
Soma Radio was updated from 1.1.3 to 1.1.4
PDF Stitcher was updated from 0.5 to 0.6.2
MoonPlayer was updated from 3.9 to 4.0
gplaces was updated from 0.16.11 to 0.16.14
Rnote was updated from 0.5.1 to 0.5.3
audok was updated from 1.0.15 to 1.0.17
Bada Bib! was updated from 0.7.0 to 0.7.1
Whaler was updated from 1.0.1 to 1.1.0
Tauon Music Box was updated from 7.1.3 to 7.2.0
Video Downloader was updated from 0.9.6 to 0.9.7
jdAppdataEdit was updated from 3.0 to 3.1
Google Chrome (unstable) was updated from 103.0.5042.0-1 to 103.0.5056.0-1
Heroic Games Launcher was updated from 2.2.6 to v2.3.1
CLion was updated from 2022.1 to 2022.1.1
DataGrip was updated from 2022.1.3 to 2022.1.4
GoLand was updated from 2022.1 to 2022.1.1
IntelliJ IDEA Community was updated from 2022.1 to 2022.1.1
IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate was updated from 2022.1 to 2022.1.1
PhpStorm was updated from 2022.1 to 2022.1.1
PyCharm-Community was updated from 2022.1 to 2022.1.1
PyCharm-Professional was updated from 2022.1 to 2022.1.1
WebStorm was updated from 2022.1 to 2022.1.1
draw.io was updated from 18.0.1 to 18.0.4
Logseq was updated from 0.6.7 to 0.6.8
Microsoft Edge was updated from 101.0.1210.39-1 to 101.0.1210.47-1
EternalModManager was updated from 2.0.5 to 2.0.6
QQmusic was updated from 1.1.3 to 1.1.4
ZapZap was updated from 2.4 to 2.5
SGDBoop was updated from 1.0.13 to 1.1.0
Steam ROM Manager was updated from 2.3.33 to 2.3.36
Bottles was updated from 2022.5.2-trento-3 to 2022.5.14-trento
VSCodium was updated from 1.67.0 to 1.67.1
XIVLauncher was updated from 1.0.0.4 to 1.0.0.9
RPMLauncher was updated from 1.0.6+904 to 1.0.6+907
Guilded was updated from 1.0.9134613 to 1.0.9136306
Beyond All Reason was updated from 1.1459.0.1 to 1.1487.0.0
BibleTime was updated from 3.0.2 to 3.0.3
Conduktor was updated from 2.20.3 to 2.21.8
GDLauncher was updated from 1.1.21 to 1.1.23
Clash for Windows was updated from 0.19.17 to 0.19.18
CudaText was updated from 1.163.1 to 1.164.0
Muezzin was updated from v2.4.3 to v2.5.8
BoilR was updated from 1.3.0 to 1.3.5
UnCiv was updated from 4.0.14 to 4.1.0
LibreWolf was updated from 100.0-2 to 100.0.1-1
Smile was updated from 1.5.5 to 1.5.7
SLADE was updated from 3.2.0 to 3.2.1
Minetest was updated from 5.5.0 to 5.5.1
PCSX2 was updated from v1.7.2718 to v1.7.2746
RPCS3 was updated from 0.0.22-1-5b8f1053 to 0.0.22-1-2ba437b6
dmidiplayer was updated from 1.5.3 to 1.6.0
Veloren was updated from 0.12.0-2f76785 to 0.12.0-d69f764
Briar was updated from 0.2.0 to 0.2.1-beta
Chromium Web Browser was updated from 101.0.4951.54 to 101.0.4951.64
Cockpit Client was updated from 267 to 269
Coolero was updated from 0.10.2 to 0.10.3
Fedora Media Writer was updated from 5.0.0 to 5.0.1
Gajim was updated from 1.3.3 to 1.4.0
Ghidra was updated from 10.0.3 to 10.1.3
Builder was updated from 42.0 to 42.1
Crosswords was updated from 0.1.0 to 0.3.0
GNOME Sudoku was updated from 40.2 to 42.0
Pika Backup was updated from 0.3.5 to 0.4.0
Akregator was updated from 5.20.0 to 5.20.1
Ark was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Artikulate was updated from 1.0.0.22040 to 1.0.0.22041
Blinken was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Bomber was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Bovo was updated from 21.12.3 to 22.04.1
Cantor was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Dolphin was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Elisa was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Granatier was updated from 1.4.22040 to 1.4.22041
Gwenview was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KDE Itinerary was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KAlgebra was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Kalzium was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Kamoso was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Kanagram was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Kapman was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KAtomic was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KBlackbox was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KBlocks was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KBounce was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KBreakOut was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KBruch was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KCachegrind was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KCalc was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KColorChooser was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Kdenlive was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KDevelop was updated from 5.8.220400 to 5.8.220401
KDiamond was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KFind was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KFourInLine was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KGeography was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KGet was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KGoldrunner was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KHangMan was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Kig was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Kigo was updated from 0.6.22040 to 0.6.22041
Killbots was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Kiriki was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Kiten was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KJumpingCube was updated from 2.1.22040 to 2.1.22041
KLettres was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Klickety was updated from 2.1.22040 to 2.1.22041
Kolor Lines was updated from 1.6.22040 to 1.6.22041
KMines was updated from 4.0.22040 to 4.0.22041
Naval Battle was updated from 2.1.22040 to 2.1.22041
KNetWalk was updated from 3.3.22040 to 3.3.22041
Kolf was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KolourPaint was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Konquest was updated from 2.4.22040 to 2.4.22041
Kontact was updated from 5.20.0 to 5.20.1
Kontrast was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Konversation was updated from 1.9.22040 to 1.9.22041
KPatience was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KRDC was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KRuler was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KSquares was updated from 0.6.22040 to 0.6.22041
KSudoku was updated from 1.4.22040 to 1.4.22041
KTorrent was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KTouch was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Potato Guy was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KTurtle was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Kubrick was updated from 1.1.22040 to 1.1.22041
KUIViewer was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KWordQuiz was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
KWrite was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Lokalize was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Marble was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Minuet was updated from 0.4.0.22040 to 0.4.0.22041
Okular was updated from 22.04.0 to 22.04.1
Palapeli was updated from 2.1.22040 to 2.1.22041
LÖVE was updated from 11.3 to 11.4
Play! was updated from 0.52-6-g0f9af71b to 0.52-10-g4db18f9e
QGIS Desktop was updated from 3.24.2 to 3.24.3
QOwnNotes was updated from 22.5.0 to 22.5.1
Ryujinx was updated from 1.1.119 to 1.1.129
Signal Desktop was updated from 5.42.0 to 5.43.0
Wireshark was updated from 3.6.0 to 3.3.1
osu! was updated from 2022.509.0 to 2022.515.0

That’s all for today! 🎉

Dig Deep, Discover Desktop Diamonds or Detritus?

Flathub contains over a thousand applications for the Linux desktop. Some are built by huge teams of developers, paid by corporations with deep pockets – like Google Chrome. Others are created by a one-person-band or a small team of independent developers, scratching an itch.

Many desktop Linux users are looking for the big names like Spotify, Discord and Skype, to service their needs, but there’s also a ton of relatively unknown applications. These unknowns might be lucky in a year to get the same number of downloads a corporate backed app gets in a day!

So we thought we’d shine a light on some of these lesser-known applications, to see if we can help raise their profile, get more users, and for the open source applications, perhaps convince users to turn into contributors. We can but hope!

We’re going to use the publicly available metrics from Flathub to identify applications which have single to double-digit downloads per day, as a measure of popularity. Some of them may have been quite popular at launch, or had “good days” in the past. The general rule of thumb for these posts is that the application gets less than fifty installs in a typical a recent day to warrant inclusion.

With that preamble out of the way, let’s dive in!

KopiaUI

KopiaUI is a cross-platform backup tool.

We’re always being told by the technical experts in our lives that we should keep backups of our important data. Well, KopiaUI seems like just the tool to get them off our backs! KopiaUI is a graphical frontend to the included kopia command-line utility, abstracting away the numerous options to buttons and fields, making it more friendly for “normies”.

KopiaUI supports backing up to a variety of different locations it calls repositories, such as a local file-system, SFTP server, Rclone remote and WebDAV server. It also supports commercial storage providers like Google Cloud Storage, Amazon S3, Backblaze B2 and more.

On first launch KopiaUI guides the user through setting up a repository, password protecting it and then taking a first snapshot. While the user interface won’t win any awards for design, it’s functional and comprehensive. The graphical UI can even expose the underlying kopia command-line options, should the user outgrow the GUI and want to drive things from a terminal, or schedule snapshots using other tools.

KopiaUI supports multiple repositories and different snapshots, and is very flexible about how and where to backup to. We think KopiaUI is a great way to introduce backups to users, even if it’s just to take a snapshot now and then to an external USB drive. Grab KopiaUI from Flathub, and backup something today!

Gittyup

Gittyup is a graphical front-end to manage source code projects held in git repositories.

To some, git is a mystery of baffling command line options. Gittyup aims to ease that pain with an easy to understand graphical interface. Gittyup can open existing local repositories, and connect to online repos at GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket and Beanstalk.

The interface has a light and dark theme, and can reflect the user selected desktop theme too. Functionally it’s very easy to pick up, with a clean interface that shows branches, committed changes, and diffs very clearly. Some of the most commonly used features are quickly accessible via a toolbar, with the rest in a series of menus.

There are plenty of graphical frontends to git available these days, but many are proprietary or lock some features behind a paywall. Gittyup is MIT licensed, hosted on GitHub and supported via LibrePay. If you’re like us, and git gets you all a muddle, try Gittyup over on Flathub, and see if that can help get control of your source.

Delta Chat

Delta Chat is a messaging app built on top of your existing email account.

Delta Chat‘s user interface will be familiar to users of Telegram or WhatsApp. It shares similar features such as image and audio file sharing, and the familiar conversation view. Where Delta Chat differs is there’s no backend infrastructure, no servers to spy on you and no accounts to create.

The reason for this is the innovative use of your existing email account for communication. Put simply, if you have an email address, you have a Delta Chat address, and can start chatting with other Delta Chat users immediately. Indeed, you can even chat without using Delta Chat, but by simply sending and receiving emails.

So Delta Chat is essentially a contemporary user interface on top of your already existing email infrastructure. There’s not only a desktop client, but also applications for Android and iOS too.

We think Delta Chat is a great way for people to stay in touch using a modern interface, without the modern pitfalls of corporate tracking and centralised control. It’s a brilliant concept executed well. Grab Delta Chat from Flathub now to try it out.

BlockOut II

BlockOut II is a free implementation of the classic 1980’s arcade game.

BlockOut II is free version of the classic 3D block-falling game from the late 1980’s. It was popular in arcades and with home computer conversions of the era. The goal is much the same as Tetris, fill the bottom of a 3D pit with falling blocks, clearing lines to make room.

This version implements three modes – Flat, 3D Mania and Out of Control, each with different pit sizes and block shapes. There’s also a custom mode where the player can make their own pit and block combinations.

The game is fun, addictive and just like Tetris, frustrating when you run out of space and the “wrong” piece comes up next. All in all, a faithful re-implementation of a classic game, which is fun to play, easy to pick up and difficult to master.

However there’s a minor elephant in the room, not with this game, but how it’s delivered.

Unmaintained Flatpaks

At the top of this post we mentioned that these applications/games have a low number of installs per day. The interesting thing about BlockOut II is that it used to have a fair number of downloads each day, but that dropped through early 2020, as shown by the graph on the beta flathub page for this game.

Now, we’re not saying this graph shows a huge drop from thousands a day to nothing, but it’s certainly noticeable. We have a theory why this might be happening. When users install BlockOut II they will be presented with this, on the command line:

Info: org.freedesktop.Platform//19.08 is end-of-life, with reason:
The Freedesktop SDK 19.08 runtime is no longer supported as of September 1, 2021. Please ask your application developer to migrate to a supported version
Info: org.freedesktop.Platform.VAAPI.Intel//19.08 is end-of-life, with reason:
The Freedesktop SDK 19.08 runtime is no longer supported as of September 1, 2021. Please ask your application developer to migrate to a supported version
Info: org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.default//19.08 is end-of-life, with reason:
The Freedesktop SDK 19.08 runtime is no longer supported as of September 1, 2021. Please ask your application developer to migrate to a supported version

These messages are pretty self-explanatory to a nerd, and are labelled “Info”, meaning this isn’t catastrophic, a warning or error. But it’s still a bit alarming to see this wall of text when installing the application. This isn’t something the user can do much about, other than make the executive decision to continue installing despite this warning, or abandon the install.

To us there seems to be a correlation between when the runtimes became unsupported, this message appearing, and a drop-off in installations for this game. This is already reported as an issue against the flatpak packaging for BlockOut II. Indeed it’s the only issue currently open for BlockOut II.

At the time of writing the issue is approaching eight months old. In theory the fix should be straightforward, just update the runtimes (as has previously been done), check it works, and publish the updated application. But nobody, so far, has taken on the task and completed it.

BlockOut II is a simple retro game with limited appeal, and is available elsewhere for download including in traditional desktop Linux native repositories, so isn’t massively adversely affected by this. It is indicative of a potential systemic issue with Flathub though.

How many other applications are built on old, unsupported runtimes? A quick scan of the Flathub repository on GitHub suggests there’s a fair number. These all will spew out the scary informational message shown above, (rightly) dissuading them from being installed.

There are clearly many more packages (~1400 or so) in Flathub than there are developers who maintain them. Many applications are published in Flathub by well-meaning and enthusiastic contributors, and not the original upstream author.

Some of the applications published on Flathub are completely abandoned upstream, but may still be useful to users. As we mentioned on Friday, Flathub can be used to “preserve” applications – such as Kino. However with nobody contributing to them, the motivation for packagers to maintain these low-user flatpaks is typically lower than for high profile, well maintained packages.

All it takes is for a Flathub contributor to change job, have a baby or some other significant life event to mean they no longer have time or inclination to commit to their packages. The packaging is all hosted on the Flathub GitHub organisation though, meaning anyone could potentially pick this work up, but they haven’t.

So it seems to us that the Flathub maintainers need to work on building a pipeline of new contributors, so applications like this, and others, don’t fall behind. Perhaps the Flathub maintainers should highlight these issues as potentially good “first issues” for new contributors to get involved with.

If they don’t then we’re going to see more of these drop-offs in users of packages that packagers have spent valuable time making available.

The future of software packaging for the Linux desktop is bright, but it needs new blood to stop packages from atrophying.

Flathub Updates: Sunday May 15, 2022

New Apps

After a bumper set of new applications landed in Flathub on Friday, we’ve got more over the weekend!

Public Transport

Public Transport 0.1.1 was published 🚌

First up today we have Public Transport, a desktop and mobile app for tracking real-time public transportation information. It is Maeve’s first publication on Flathub, and is being used as a means to learn Rust. It currently only supports transport info from Germany, but that could change, especially if people in other regions contribute to the open source project.

Crow Translate

Crow Translate 2.9.7 was published 🗣️

Crow Translate is a very handy open source translation tool which uses Google, Yandex, Bing, Libretranslate and Lingva to provide the translations. We tested Crow Translate on our system, and we’re very impressed by how functional and useful it is out of the box.

Simply type a phrase in the left box, configure which language(s) to translate to, and the right box will show the translated text. Even better, press the play button and you’ll get a clear audio rendition of the translation.

Meridius

Meridius 2.4.16 was published 🎶

Meridius is a proprietary music player for the popular Russian social media giant, VK. The user interface will be familiar to anyone who has used Spotify. The developers promise Meridius has “No tricks” and that it “is absolutely free and without advertising and any commercial purpose”.

Floorp

Floorp 8.7.2 was published 🧭

Floorp claims to be a “Firefox based browser with excellent privacy” and is developed by a Japanese community of students. Floorp has a more Chromium-like user interface, but built on the underpinnings of Mozilla Firefox.

utm_no

utm_no 1.60.30 was published 🕵🏽‍♂

utm_no is a background application which intercepts the clipboard to strip tracking information from URLs. That’s it, it’s very simple and unobtrusive, doing exactly what it claims. It’s the second application from Stuart Langridge – we previously mentioned Pick earlier this week.

Solarus Launcher

Solarus Launcher 1.6.5 was published 🎮

Solarus Launcher is a lightweight, free and open-source game engine for Action-RPGs. Games are downloadable from the Solarus Games website.

Crankshaft

Crankshaft 0.1.4 was published

Crankshaft is a tool for managing plugins installed into the Steam client from Valve. Once installed there’s some additional steps required which are detailed on the Crankshaft website. Plugins installed via Crankshaft can install custom versions of ProtonDB (the Windows compatibility tool, built on WINE, popular with gamers). Plugins can also tweak the lock screen and supplement the Steam user interface with other useful information.

That’s all for today!

Flathub Updates: Friday May 13, 2022

New Apps

It’s Friday, and what better way to end the week than with a bunch of brand new flatpaks landing in Flathub. Today we’ve got Yet Another Browser, a utility for streamers, a classic game, and a dead video editor 💀

Boatswain

Boatswain 0.1.1 was published 🔘

Boatswain is a new application by prolific GNOME contributor Georges Basile Stavracas Neto. It is a configuration tool for the popular external hardware array of illuminated buttons from Elgato – Stream Deck. The upstream hardware manufacturer provides software for Windows and macOS, and there are already 3rd-party Linux tools to do this. We hope Boatswain similar or indeed better functionality than the existing tools. It’s a good start!

WickEditor

WickEditor 1.19 was published 🧩

WickEditor is an open-source cross-platform multimedia creation tool, mainly targeting game developers to create games and animations.

Vieb

Vieb 7.2.0 was published ⌨️

Vieb is apparently a “Vim Inspired Electron Browser” which is a combination of words we weren’t expecting to type today! It’s a web browser with privacy, security, accessibility and importantly – vim-style navigation as priorities. Worth a look, if your hands hover over j k l and ;mostly.

Urban Terror

Urban Terror 4.3.4 was published 🔫

Urban Terror is the best kind of terror. Pew pew!

Kino

Kino 1.3.4 was published 🎥

Kino is a “dead” video editor. Not the kind of thing we usually celebrate, but Flathub can also be used to preserve applications, even if they no longer get updates, as they may be useful to someone.

That’s all for today!

Flathub Updates: Thursday May 12, 2022

New Apps

Yesterday was a quiet one for new applications being published to Flathub. Although there were a ton of updates to existing applications. Today we have a bit of both! First up, some new applications to Flathub.

Warp

Warp 0.0.1 was published 🔄

Warp is a simple graphical application for sending and receiving files between local or remote computers. Under the covers, it uses “magic wormhole” which does the actual transfer. A handy alternative to USB keys, SAMBA shares, and SCP. Worth a look!

Dust Racing 2D

Dust Racing 2D 2.1.1 was published 🏎

Dust Racing 2D is a great little overhead 2D racing game. You control a car, zipping around a track, racing against a bunch of AI players. We gave it a quick spin and it’s very easy to get into. It has a very Super Sprint/Micro Machines vibe, but with a decent framerate and appropriate particle effects. We especially enjoy the dirt getting kicked up when we (frequently) went off-track! Vroom vroom!

Dayon

Dayon 11.0.5 was published 🖥️

Dayon is a remote desktop solution designed to be usable over very low-speed connections and requires no router configuration to operate. Dayon means “Come in”, in the “Visayas” Philippine dialect, where the author – Marc Polizzi was living at the time. A very handy utility for supporting remote users who may not be technically able to fiddle with router configuration.

DB Browser for SQLite

DB Browser for SQLite 3.12.2 was published 💾

DB Browser for SQLite is a graphical user interface for managing SQLite databases. It’s an easy-to-use tool for managing the popular file-based database system which is often used embedded inside other applications.

App Updates

As well as those new applications, there’s another batch of updates to already-published applications! Here we have utilities, code editors, full IDEs, browsers, and more!

karlender was updated from 0.4.0 to 0.4.2
BlueJeans was updated from 2.27.0.130 to 2.28.0.69
Dropbox was updated from 147.4.4800 to 148.4.4519
gplaces was updated from 0.16.8 to 0.16.11
Android Studio was updated from 2021.1.1.23 to 2021.2.1.14
Google Chrome was updated from 101.0.4951.54-1 to 101.0.4951.64-1
TickTick was updated from 0.0.5 to 1.0.11
Code – OSS was updated from 1.67.0 to 1.67.1
VSCodium was updated from 1.66.2 to 1.67.0
XIVLauncher was updated from 1.0.0.3 to 1.0.0.4
Element was updated from 1.10.11 to 1.10.12
RPCS3 was updated from 0.0.22-1-2b325de6 to 0.0.22-1-5b8f1053
Veloren was updated from 0.12.0-b930724 to 0.12.0-2f76785
nuclear music player was updated from eac584 to 2ec701
Kolibri was updated from 2.1.1 to 2.2~devel
Play! was updated from 0.52-3-gd49fd267 to 0.52-6-g0f9af71b
Shotcut was updated from 22.04.22 to 22.04.25
Insomnia was updated from 2022.2.1 to 2022.3.0

That’s all for today!