A serious problem is brewing in Desktop Linux that hasn't impacted end users yet, but will soon. We break down why distribution makers are getting upset and explain what's next.

Plus, an update on Matrix and the recent upgrades we made to our server.

Special Guests: Brent Gervais and Joshua Strobl.

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Links:

• Building an Alternative Ecosystem | Joshua Strobl — While we have been consistent in this vision, though certainly not without flaws in its execution, we have seen a significant shift from GNOME’s development efforts and vision being focused from their desktop experience, to a heavier focus on mobile-to-desktop application scalability and a more touch-oriented, almost iPadOS like user experience that does not (in our opinion) provide the most optimized experience for laptop and desktop users.
• The Truth they are not telling you about “Themes” – Rust in Peace — There seems to be some confusion when it comes to libadwaita’s stylesheet and coloring APIs.
• Red Hat’s Upstream Contributions Are Making For A Great Fedora Workstation 35 - Phoronix — Fedora Workstation 35 will hopefully be out at the end of October (currently the beta is running behind schedule) and when it does ship it's once again at the bleeding-edge of Linux features.
• GNOME 41 has new multitasking settings!
• SeaGL is coming up soon, and is virtual this year — November 5th & 6th, 2021
• This Week in Matrix
• Spaces: The next frontier — Using Spaces and Subspaces to build hierarchies effectively turns Matrix into a global decentralised filesystem for conversations and other real-time data!
• toger5/TheBoard — A collaborative Whiteboard powered by the [matrix] protocol and infrastucture.
• Matrix Live
• Compressing Synapse database | Levans’ workshop — Anyone running a federating instance of the Matrix homeserver Synapse will likely have seen this: synapse is database-hungry. It tends to take a lot of space. In this post, I'm documenting how I shrunk my homeserver database from 100GB to a little under 8GB, during a long maintenance cleanup.
• Pick: Wayfire — Wayfire is a wayland compositor based on wlroots. It aims to create a customizable, extendable and lightweight environment without sacrificing its appearance.
• Garuda Wayfire Download