FOSSBYTES
Audacity 2.2.0 released
with an improved look
and feel
Audacity, a popular open source
audio editing software, has received
a significant update. The new
version, dubbed Audacity 2.2.0,
comes with four pre-configured,
user-selectable themes. This enables
you to choose the look and feel for
Audacity’s interface. It also has
playback support for MIDI files, and
better organised menus. Around 198
bugs have been fixed in this newly
released version — one of the major
changes is the improved recovery
from full file system errors.
The menus are shorter and
clearer than in previous Audacity
versions, and have been simplified
without losing functionality. The
most commonly used functions are
found in the top levels of the menus.
The functions that have moved
down into lower sub-menus are
better organised.
You can download the update
from http://www.audacityteam.org to try it
out on Windows/Mac or any Linux
based operating system.Blender tool to be used in
French animation movie
The soon-to-be-made animated
movie ‘I Lost My Body’ will use
the open source Blender software
tool. The film will combine
Blender’s computer graphics with
hand-drawn elements.
At the recent Blender conference
in Amsterdam, French filmmaker
Jérémy Clapin and his crew gave a
presentation on the processes and
tools to be used in the making of
‘I Lost My Body’.
‘The film’ will start production
next year, with a likely release in
2019, adding to the open source
animation showreel, thanks to
Blender software. For more news, visit http://www.opensourceforu.comAll new Ubuntu 17.10 released
With the new release of Ubuntu, there is some good news for GNOME lovers. After
a long time, Ubuntu has come up with some major changes. The new release has
GNOME as the default desktop environment instead of Unity.
Ubuntu 17.10 comes with the newest software enhancements and nine months
of security and maintenance updates. It is based on the Linux Kernel release
series 4.13. It includes support
for the new IBM z14 mainframe
CPACF instructions and new
KVM features. 32-bit installer
images are no longer provided for
Ubuntu Desktop.
Apart from this, GDM has
replaced LightDM as the default
display manager. The login screen
now uses virtual terminal 1 instead
of virtual terminal 7. Window
control buttons are back on the right
for the first time since 2010. Apps provided by GNOME have been updated to 3.26.
Driverless printing support is now available for IPP Everywhere, Apple AirPrint
and Wi-Fi Direct. LibreOffice has been updated to 5.4 and Python 2 is no longer
installed by default. Python 3 has been updated to 3.6.
Ubuntu 17.10 will be supported for nine months until July 2018. If you need
long term support, it is recommended you use Ubuntu 16.04 LTS instead.End of Linux Mint with the KDE Desktop environment
Linux Mint founder, Clement Lefebvre, announced in a blog post that
the upcoming Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia operating system will be the last
release to feature a KDE edition.
In the post, Lefebvre said, “Users of the KDE edition represent a portion of
our user base. I know from their feedback that they really enjoy it. They will be
able to install KDE on top of Linux Mint 19 of course, and I’m sure the Kubuntu
PPA will continue to be available.
They will also be able to port
Mint software to Kubuntu itself,
or they might want to trade a
bit of stability away and move
to a bleeding edge distribution
such as Arch to follow upstream
KDE more closely.” He added:
“KDE is a fantastic environment
but it’s also a different world,
one which evolves away from us and away from everything we focus on.
Their apps, their ecosystem and the QT toolkit, which is central there, have
very little in common with what we’re working on.”
The bottom line is that Linux Mint 19 will be available only
in Cinnamon, Xfce and MATE editions.12 | DECEMBER 2017 | OPEN SOURCE FOR YOU | http://www.OpenSourceForU.com