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GeckoLinux devs are kicking off 2022 with major new releases of their openSUSE-based distribution featuring some of the latest and greatest GNU/Linux technologies and Open Source software.
It’s been more than seven months since the last GeckoLinux update, and now it’s time for a new one that brings cool new features, the latest desktop environments, and many other improvements.
The GeckoLinux ROLLING edition is probably the most popular, so it now ships with the KDE Plasma 5.23.4, GNOME 41.2, Xfce 4.16, LXQt 1.0, Cinnamon 5.2.4, MATE 1.26, Budgie 10.5.3, as well as the Pantheon desktop environment from elementary OS 6.1.
Anther cool new feature of the new GeckoLinux ROLLING release is that it ships with support for the PipeWire audio framework, which includes a customized, out-of-the-box configuration that’s suitable for both professional low-latency (5.3ms) JACK apps and casual home audio.
To accompany the new PipeWire support, an optional systemd service is also available to allow users to set the processor governor in Performance mode on systems where realtime low-latency audio support is required. The new systemd service can be installed from the YaST Services manager by enabling the cpupower service.
For all GeckoLinux editions (ROLLING, STATIC and NEXT), the new release finally integrates the GRUB bootloader with Btrfs and Snapper snapshots, allowing for effective snapshot rollbacks without manual intervention to the GRUB bootloader or the default Btrfs subvolume layout, which required a major rework.
Talking about the GRUB bootloader, the new GeckoLinux releases promise more reliable GRUB bootloader updates thanks to the addition of an installation logic in the Calamares installer based on whether the system is running in UEFI or legacy BIOS mode, as well as to use Btrfs LZO compression on legacy BIOS systems.
On top of that, there’s now a workaround for a bug in openSUSE’s GRUB routine to improve the bootloader when generating entries for other dual-boot Linux systems on Btrfs subvolumes.
Among other changes, the GeckoLinux’s first release in 2022 also adjusts the repository URLs to use openSUSE’s new mirrorcache.opensuse.org system for more reliable package downloads from the openSUSE mirror network, and brings back the ROLLING-OBS Pantheon edition.
You can download the GeckoLinux ROLLING 999.22010 editions built from openSUSE Tumbleweed, as well as GeckoLinux STATIC 153.220104 editions and GeckoLinux NEXT Pantheon and Plasma 153.220105 editions built from openSUSE Leap 15.3 right now from the official website.
Last updated 2 years ago
