Slimbook Executive Laptop Focuses on Display and Power

Slimbook offers several Linux-powered machines for all types of users. Recently, the company released the Slimbook Titan (https://slimbook.es/en/titan-en), which was an all-out powerhouse for gamers (including an AMD Ryzen 5000 series CPU and NVidia RTX 30 Series GPU).

The new laptop, the Slimbook Executive (https://slimbook.es/en/executive-en), turns its focus on professional users with more than enough power to be productive and a display that should be brilliant enough to stand up against the competition.

The Executive is a 14 inch, 1Kg laptop that includes an Intel Core i7-1165G7 CPU and Iris X 1.30 GHz GPU that can power up to four displays. But the built-in display is pretty special. The Slimbook Executive includes a 14-inch display running at 3K resolutions, a 90Hz refresh rate with a 400 nits max brightness, 99 percent sRGB true color, 16:10 LTPS antiglare, and 89 percent viewing angles. So not only is this display beautiful, it can be viewed in most conditions and from numerous angles.

The Executive also includes all the ports you'll need, including 1 USB-C with video out, 2 x 3 USB 3.0, HDMI 2.0, and a USB-C Thunderbolt 4. You'll also enjoy a card reader and a two-in-one headphone/mic jack.

Battery life should run you up to six to eight hours of real-world work.

Purchase your Slimbook Executive (https://slimbook.es/en/store/slimbook-executive/executive-comprar), starting at EUR1299 (~$1534) with your choice of Kubuntu, elementary OS, Manjaro, Fedora, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Mate, Linux Mint, or KDE Neon.

KDE Plasma 5.22 Released with Better Stability and Usability Across the Board

The KDE Plasma developers have been incredibly busy this cycle, refactoring code, fixing bugs, and adding new features, all of which come together to bring even more performance to the desktop environment. The developers are so proud of this release (and the work they've achieved) that they created a showcase site (https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.22.0/) to highlight everything found in KDE Plasma 5.22.

The latest release is all about general eye candy and usability. And it shows.

One of the most exciting new features to be found in KDE Plasma is called Adaptive Transparency, which will transition between translucent to opaque, depending on if there are any maximized windows. So when an app window is maximized, the panel will be opaque. If there are no maximized windows, the panel will be translucent. Of course, users can opt out of this feature and make the panel always translucent or always opaque.

Other new features include a speed dial page for the System Settings app, which gives you direct access to your most commonly used settings. The System Tray will now house widgets that are much more consistent in appearance and a completely redesigned digital clock that improves the look of the widget and allows users to configure how the date/time is displayed. Users can also opt to disable offline updates, select audio device profiles from the volume widget, and see all clipboard contents (using the Super+V keyboard shortcut). In addition, KSysGuard has been replaced by the new Plasma System Monitor.

If you're interested in checking out the latest KDE Plasma desktop, it's now available in KDE Neon (https://neon.kde.org/).

Linux Kernel 5.13 Released

Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, has made the latest kernel available after what was one of the smoothest development processes in recent memory. Torvalds wrote in his weekly "State of the Kernel" post (http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/2106.3/02627.html), "So we had quite the calm week since rc7, and I see no reason to delay 5.13." Torvalds continued to say, "if the last week was small and calm, 5.13 overall is actually fairly large. In fact, it's one of the bigger 5.x releases, with over 16k commits (over 17k if you count merges), from over 2k developers."

What can you expect in the 5.13 kernel? Some of the features that saw the most commits include Apple M1 support, early support for Wireless Wide Area Networks, Microsoft's Azure Network Adapter, Advanced Configuration and Power Interface spec for laptops, early work for ARM64 Hyper-V guests, RISC-V enhancements, support for Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Tablet Thin Keyboard, support added for Apple's Magic Mouse 2, new drivers for Amazon's Luna game controller, support for AMD's Navi GPU, and new virtIO drivers for audio devices and Bluetooth controllers.

Although the 5.13 kernel is now available for downloading (https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/t/linux-5.13.tar.gz), you won't find it hitting the repositories for your distributions of choice for some time. For example, Ubuntu most likely won't see the 5.13 kernel appear until the 21.10 daily builds are released.