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System76 Launches First Stable Release of COSMIC Desktop and Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS

This week System76 launched the first stable release of its Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment, reports 9to5Linux.

Announced in 2021, it's designed for all GNU/Linux distributions — and it shipping with Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS (based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS):

Previous Pop!_OS releases used a version of the COSMIC desktop that was based on the GNOME desktop environment. However, System76 wanted to create a new desktop environment from scratch while keeping the same familiar interface and user experience built for efficiency and fun. This means that some GNOME apps have been replaced by COSMIC apps, including COSMIC Files instead of Nautilus (Files), COSMIC Terminal instead of GNOME Terminal, COSMIC Text Editor instead of GNOME Text Editor, and COSMIC Media Player instead of Totem (Video Player).
Also, the Pop!_Shop graphical package manager used in previous Pop!_OS releases has now been replaced by a new app called COSMIC Store.

"If you're ambitious enough, or maybe just crazy enough, there eventually comes a time when you realize you've reached the limits of current potential, and must create something completely new if you're to go further..." explains System76 founder/CEO Carl Richell:

For twenty years we have shipped Linux computers. For seven years we've built the Pop!_OS Linux distribution. Three years ago it became clear we had reached the limit of our current potential and had to create something new. Today, we break through that limit with the release of Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS with the COSMIC Desktop Environment.

Today is special not only in that it's the culmination of over three years of work, but even more so in that System76 has built a complete desktop environment for the open source community...
I hope you love what we've built for you. Now go out there and create. Push the limits, make incredible things, and have fun doing it!

'Free Software Awards' Winners Announced: Andy Wingo, Alx Sa, Govdirectory

This week the Free Software Foundation honored Andy Wingo, Alx Sa, and Govdirectory with this year's annual Free Software Awards (given to community members and groups making
"significant" contributions to software freedom):

Andy Wingo is one of the co-maintainers of GNU Guile,
the official extension language of the GNU operating system and the
Scheme "backbone" of GNU
Guix. Upon receiving the award, he stated: "Since I learned
about free software, the vision of a world in which hackers freely
share and build on each others' work has been a profound inspiration
to me, and I am humbled by this recognition of my small efforts in
the context of the Guile Scheme implementation. I thank my
co-maintainer, Ludovic Courtès, for his comradery over the years: we
are just building on the work of the past maintainers of Guile, and I
hope that we live long enough to congratulate its many future
maintainers."

The 2024 Award for
Outstanding New Free
Software Contributor went to Alx Sa for work on the GNU
Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). When asked to comment, Alx
responded: "I am honored to receive this recognition! I started
contributing to the GNU Image Manipulation Program as a way to return
the favor because of all the cool things it's allowed me to do.
Thanks to the help and mentorship of amazing people like Jehan Pagès,
Jacob Boerema, Liam Quin, and so many others, I hope I've been able
to help other people do some cool new things, too."

Govdirectory was presented
with this year's Award
for Projects of Social Benefit, given to a project or team
responsible for applying free software, or the ideas of the free
software movement, to intentionally and significantly benefit
society. Govdirectory provides a collaborative and fact-checked
listing of government addresses, phone numbers, websites, and social
media accounts, all of which can be viewed with free software and
under a free license, allowing people to always reach their
representatives in freedom...

The FSF plans to further highlight the Free Software Award winners
in a series of events scheduled for the new year to celebrate their
contributions to free software.

Applets Are Officially Going, But Java In the Browser Is Better Than Ever

"The entire java.applet package has been removed from JDK 26, which will release in March 2026," notes Inside Java.

But long-time Slashdot reader AirHog links to this blog post reminding us that
"Applets Are Officially Gone, But Java In The Browser Is Better Than Ever."

This brings to an official end the era of applets, which began in 1996. However, for years it has been possible to build modern, interactive web pages in Java without needing applets or plugins. TeaVM provides fast, performant, and lightweight tooling to transpile Java to run natively in the browser...

TeaVM, at its heart, transpiles Java code into JavaScript (or, these days, WASM). However, in order for Java code to be useful for web apps, much more is required, and TeaVM delivers. It includes a minifier, to shrink the generated code and obfuscate the intent, to complicate reverse-engineering. It has a tree-shaker to eliminate unused methods and classes, keeping your app download compact. It packages your code into a single file for easy distribution and inclusion in your HTML page. It also includes wrappers for all popular browser APIs, so you can invoke them from your Java code easily, with full IDE assistance and auto-correct.

The blog post also touts Flavour, an open-source
framework "for coding, packaging, and optimizing single-page apps implemented in Java... a full front-end toolkit with templates, routing, components, and more" to "build your modern single-page app using 100% Java."