Nitrux 3.4.0, a package-based distribution, has been released. Debian, KDE technologies, and the OpenRC initialization system. The project offers its own desktop environment, NX Desktop, which is a superset of KDE Plasma. Based on the Maui library, the distribution develops a set of standard user applications that can be used on both desktop systems and mobile devices. A system of self-contained AppImages packages is promoted for installing additional applications. The full bootable image size is 3.4 GB. The project's work is distributed under open source licenses.
The NX Desktop offers a different styling, its own implementation of the system tray, notification center and various plasmoids, such as a network connection configurator and a multimedia applet for volume control and media playback control. Applications built using the MauiKit framework include Index file manager (Dolphin can also be used), Note text editor, Station terminal emulator, VVave music player, Clip video player, NX Software Center, and Pix image viewer.
The NX Desktop user environment will continue to use the KDE Plasma 5.27 branch and will not migrate to KDE Plasma 6. NX Desktop is a set of add-ons heavily tied to the Plasma 5 branch. Migrating from KDE Plasma 5 to KDE Plasma 6 would require a lot of work, as many widgets would have to be adapted to the changes in the new branch. Due to the fact that NX Desktop is not a priority project, it was decided not to waste time porting it to KDE 6, but to focus on bringing the Maui Shell to the desired state. Towards the end of the year, it was decided to switch the default distribution to the Maui Shell environment, which has already been ported to Qt6.
The user environment of Maui Shell is evolving in accordance with the concept of "Convergence", meaning the ability to work with the same applications on the touch screens of a smartphone and tablet, as well as on large screens of laptops and PCs. Maui Shell automatically adapts to the screen size and available input methods, and can be used not only on desktop systems, but also on smartphones and tablets. The project code is written in C++ and QML and distributed under the LGPL 3.0 license.
Maui Shell uses the MauiKit GUI components and the Kirigami framework developed by the KDE community. Kirigami is built on top of Qt Quick Controls 2, while MauiKit provides pre-built UI templates that allow you to create applications very quickly. The project also uses components such as BlueDevil (Bluetooth management), Plasma-nm (network connection management), KIO, PowerDevil (power management), KSolid and PulseAudio.
The output of information is provided by its own composite manager Zpace, which is responsible for displaying and placing windows and processing virtual desktopsThe underlying protocol is the Wayland protocol, which is implemented using the Qt Wayland Composer API. The Cask shell runs on top of Zpace, implementing a container that covers the entire screen content and provides basic implementations of elements such as the top panel, popup dialogs, screen maps, notification areas, the dock, shortcuts, the program launcher interface, and so on.
The same skin can be used for desktops, smartphones and tablets without having to create separate versions for devices with different form factors. When working on conventional monitors, the shell functions in desktop mode, with a panel fixed on top, the ability to open an arbitrary number of windows and control with the mouse. When equipped with a touch screen, the shell operates in tablet mode with vertical layout and opening windows in full screen or side-by-side layout similar to tiled window managers. On smartphones, panel elements and applications expand to full screen, as in traditional mobile platforms.
Changes in Nitrux 3.4:
- The kernel is enabled by default Linux 6.7.11 with Liquorix patches.
- Updated package versions, including Firefox 124.0.1, Distrobox 1.7.0.1, Touchegg 2.0.17.
- New versions of the AMD Vulkan driver 2024.Q1.3 have been proposed.
- Updated microcode for AMD and Intel processors. New firmware for many drivers for wireless adapters, GPUs and sound cards has been added to the linux-firmware package.
- The MauiKit library with components for building user interfaces, which is used as the basis for the Maui Shell and MauiApps applications, has been updated to version 3.3.0. It includes components such as MauiKit Accounts, MauiKit FileBrowsing, MauiKit TextEditor, MauiKit Calendar, MauiKit Documents and MauiKit Terminal.
- Release 2.1.3 of the NUTS (Nitrux Update Tool System) toolkit is used, which is used to update the distribution.
- Added a setting to the desktop-config utility that allows you to enable or disable opening directories in Maui Apps by double-clicking.
- The System Monitor application has added a display of processor temperature and frequency, and the page with GPU parameters has been updated.
- New applications are included: saferm (a wrapper over rm that protects against deletion of the root and home directory), ethtool (a utility for managing Ethernet devices), Powercap (a utility for accessing the powercap kernel subsystem), GeoClue (a D-Bus service for accessing to location data).
- The transition to using packages with KDE components from repositories has been made Debian, and not from the KDE Neon project repositories.
- Removed Agenda (Calendar Maui App) due to unresolved stability issues.
Source: opennet.ru
