Ubuntu 24.10 (Oracular Oriole) Support #

Canonical completed their 20th Ubuntu release with Oracular this month. A beta of Regolith 3.2 is available for testing, see this discussion thread for details. As this is not a new Regolith release, but rather the addition of a new Ubuntu version on Regolith 3.2, the 3.2 release notes continue to be the latest.

Ubuntu Summit 2024 #

I submitted a lightning talk that was accepted at Ubuntu Summit 2024 in The Hague, Netherlands. I was able to attend in person and while present at the conference, had a wonderful time touring around a few of the many many parks by bike. The talk itself was intended to be a simple project status update. However during the conference a number of inspiring talks motivated me to try for more. In particular, it struck me during a demo of the new Cosmic Desktop, that rarely if ever did I hear anyone discussing why i3-like windowing environments are attractive to some users. So, I attempted to briefly explain my take during my brief talk:

Regolith 3.2 #

We’re currently on beta 4 of Regolith 3.2. It’s been a longer release cycle than hoped, as many users are wanting to run Regolith on the latest Ubuntu LTS: Noble. In this release, the items that come to mind that required more time than expected were the systemd init refactoring and integration of GNOME 46. Soumya initiated the effort to clean up and make our init code generally consistent with systemd, cleaning up some rather old ad-hoc shell script init code. This refactoring covers both Sway and i3 window managers. I expect this effort to provide a more robust and consistent start up process that in turn will allow users to more easily configure and reason about the execution of their desktop setup.

Summary #

For the Regolith 2.1 release, the host name of the URL from which apt pulls packages has changed. The new hostname is regolith-desktop.org. In order to update to Regolith 2.1 and get fixes and upgrades going forward kindly update your apt configuration.

The old apt URL:

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/regolith.list:

deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/regolith-archive-keyring.gpg] https://regolith-desktop.io/release-ubuntu-jammy-amd64 testing main
                                                                                                     ^
                                                                                                     |
                                                                                                     (this changes to '.org')

The new apt URL:

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/regolith.list:

deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/regolith-archive-keyring.gpg] https://regolith-desktop.org/release-ubuntu-jammy-amd64 testing main

All other aspects of the package configuration remain the same including the key used to verify packages.

Regolith 3.1 & Ubuntu Mantic Support #

Due to an issue associated with the Desktop Portal system and the GNOME implementation, that results in a severe usability regression, Ubuntu Mantic support has been delayed until it can be resolved. This change came into Regolith with the inclusion of GNOME 45 into Ubuntu Mantic. It looks like we’re getting some help from upstream, but it may be some time until we’re able to support GNOME 45-based distros if the solution ends up being that we need to implement our own portal backend to coexist with GNOME’s backend.

Introduction #

Regolith is a modern desktop environment designed to let you work faster by reducing unnecessary clutter and ceremony. It offers a keyboard based workflow and a tiling window manager that allows efficient management of windows, monitors and workspaces. Built on top of Ubuntu, GNOME Flashback, and i3, Regolith stands on a well-supported and consistent foundation.

In its current implementation, the use i3 window manager binds Regolith to X11. While X11 is fairly mature, it was never built for modern systems and is based on assumptions that are valid only for computers of the ’90s. Some of the issues present in X11 based window managers are low framerates, poor support for HiDPi panels, higher latency, screen tearing etc. Wayland is a display protocol that is written from scratch and aims at simplicity and extensibility Wayland has been in development for quite some time now and its implementations are now stable enough to be considered for daily usage. In fact, many desktop environments like gnome are now providing their wayland implementations as default. Sway window manager was introduced as a drop-in replacement for i3. It is based on wayland and is devoid of most of the issues present in X11 based window managers and compositors.

With the 2.0 release out the door, we’re looking for help to translate the index page and the “using regolith” section into languages other than English. In the past we’ve used a translation system, but it turned out to be too complex for many people to understand. For the Regolith 2.0 site we’ll rely on Hugo’s multilingual support.

For a given language translation the following files must be translated:

content/_index.md
content/docs/using-regolith/basics.md
content/docs/using-regolith/configuration.md
content/docs/using-regolith/first-launch.md

To provide a translation, simply copy the English file and add the two-letter language code to the end of the filename. Once the translation is complete, create a pull request and we’ll merge your translation. This allows other people to read about Regolith with your language translation.

Introduction #

Regolith 2 is the next major release of the Regolith Desktop environment. Here is a summary of the big changes in the release:

• Use i3 or i3-gaps interchangeably
• Simplify the loading of Xresources, discovery, and management of looks
• Support for i3 config partials, allowing for safer and richer extension capabilities
• Provide a package topography necessary for future changes including alternative sessions and backends
• Debian Bullseye support, along with Ubuntu Focal and Jammy
• Move to new custom desktop executor ilia from rofi for app and command launching, notifications, and more

Regolith 1.6 is the end of the line for the existing Regolith desktop. The new major version 2 provides for a simplification of Regolith as a whole, with some new features as well. This upgrade will not be backwards compatible with 1.x series (but as always, users may choose to specify their own i3 config). However Regolith 2 is not radically different than the previous version. This major version bump is to allow for users to upgrade on their own schedules. As such, the 1.x package repository (PPA) will not be used for Regolith 2 packages.

The Regolith Desktop exists as an integration of many open source projects and a little bit of glue code and some unique desktop components. The Regolith project is built upon many projects.

The following projects in particular deserve special mention:

• The i3 community, including Michael Stapelberg and Ingo Bürk.
• The Rofi community, including Dave Davenport.
• Picom, an actively maintained desktop compositor, including yshui.
• The Gnome Flashback project, supported by Alberts Muktupāvels and Dmitry Shachnev.
• Other i3-GNOME integrations by Jesús Castro and Alex Palaistras.
• The i3status community, including Vivien Didelot.
• Design innovation by Arctic Ice Studio and Ethan Schoonover and Ayu Theme.
• Proper nouns sourced from the fiction of Alastair Reynolds.
• The beautiful GTK themes by Eliver Lara.
• Wallpapers by Psiu Puxa, Lucas Bellator, and Luca Bravo.
• Icons by Sam Hewitt.
• Simple and powerful build tools via the Cubic project by PJ Singh.
• Infrastructure by Canonical and GitHub.