Ubuntu Desktop Weekly Update: June 23, 2017
Will Cooke
on 23 June 2017
GNOME
We’ve migrated ubuntu-session to a new unity-session package. This means that the default session is GNOME Shell and people can install Unity 7 and its related packages via unity-session. The migration is working well so far, but we still have some more work to do in order to make sure everything “just works”.
LivePatch
We’re now working on the update-manager UI to add the list of kernel CVEs which are handled by the LivePatch service and a brief description of each.
Snaps
We’ve done more work on getting desktop themes working better with Snaps. We’re documenting the problems we’ve encountered and are creating some sample Snaps help with making the improvements we need.
QA
We completed our review of the desktop test plan this week and have set our priorities for this cycle. This will cover installation, upgrades, some core application smoke tests, suspend/resume, Network Manager and translations. We will be publishing a blog on how you can get involved next week.
Updates
A new version of PulseAudio is in Xenial proposed (version 1:8.0-0ubuntu3.3). This brings fixes for Bluetooth A2DP audio devices. We’d appreciate testing and feedback.
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/1:8.0-0ubuntu3.3
Updated Chromium beta to 60.0.3112.32, dev to 61.0.3128.3.
Video Acceleration
We’ve got hardware accelerated video decoding working in a Proof-Of-Concept using a GStreamer and VA-API pipeline. The result is 3% CPU usage to play an h264 4K 60FPS video on Haswell. 4K h265 HEVC is also playable but requires a Skylake or later processor. This wiki page has been updated with information about how to try it yourself:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IntelQuickSyncVideo
Ubuntu desktop
Learn how the Ubuntu desktop operating system powers millions of PCs and laptops around the world.
Newsletter signup
Related posts
Meet our federal team at Space Tech Expo USA
As our collaboration with Space agencies strengthens, we’re looking forward to meeting our partners and customers on-site to discuss the critical topics for 2024
From sales development to product: Adrian’s career progression at Canonical
From sales development to product: Adrian Matei’s career progression at Canonical
Canonical releases Landscape 24.04 LTS
Landscape 24.04 LTS is Landscape’s first LTS release, with a modernised backend, web portal, snap management, and repository management features.