Synex Semi-rolling 26.09.16
Synex Semi-rolling 26.09.16
Table of contents
Synex has rolled out a fresh Semi-rolling image dated 26.09.16, and it's a release that says a lot about where the project's priorities currently sit: tidying up, consolidating, and adding one genuinely handy new tool rather than chasing headline features for their own sake.
The star of the show is Synex Connections, a new SSH manager built into the desktop, alongside a bump to COSMIC Epoch 1.8.0 and a fairly thorough spring clean of the package base shared across all four editions. Let's have a proper look.
Synex Connections — SSH management, the tidy way
If you've ever found yourself juggling a scrappy collection of shell aliases or a half-remembered list of hostnames just to SSH into your home server, your NAS, and a couple of cloud boxes, Synex Connections is aimed squarely at you. It's a brand-new application, launching at version 0.2.0, built to manage SSH connections through a proper graphical interface rather than muscle memory and a terminal history search.
What's refreshing about the design is what it deliberately doesn't do. Synex Connections doesn't reinvent the SSH protocol or try to be clever about how it talks to remote machines. Connections are handled entirely by OpenSSH itself, which means you get all the usual behaviour and security mechanisms you'd expect, host key verification included, without any surprises from a bespoke implementation sitting in between. The application's job is to manage the bits around that: saving and organising your servers, letting you open multiple sessions in tabs, and giving you an integrated VTE-based terminal to work directly from.
Authentication is flexible, too. You can set a profile to use your automatic OpenSSH configuration, plain password authentication, or point it at a specific identity key, depending on how a given server is set up. And when a password does need storing, Synex Connections doesn't keep its own credentials file sitting on disk somewhere. Instead, it hooks into Secret Service, meaning your desktop's own secrets manager takes care of it: KWallet on KDE Plasma, GNOME Keyring on the other three editions. That's a sensible bit of restraint. Rather than adding yet another password store to worry about, it simply plugs into infrastructure that's already there and already trusted.
The overall philosophy here is worth calling out, because it's a pattern you'll see recur elsewhere in this release: Synex Connections solves an everyday annoyance without trying to replace the tools Linux already does well. The interface handles profiles and sessions, OpenSSH handles the actual connection, and the desktop environment handles keeping your passwords safe. Nobody's reinventing any wheels, and that's exactly as it should be for something living this close to your system's security boundary.
A tidier shared base, COSMIC 1.8.0, and GNOME's Wayland-first shift
Behind the scenes, this release involved something that won't show up as a flashy screenshot but matters quite a lot for the project's long-term health: a full review of what actually goes into the KDE Plasma, GNOME, XFCE and COSMIC editions. Over time, as each image evolved somewhat independently, small differences crept in across system packages, hardware support, and other common components. Some of those differences were genuinely necessary, dictated by what a particular desktop environment needs to function properly. Others, though, were just accidents of drift, the natural result of four images being maintained without a hard line drawn between "general Synex base" and "desktop-specific bits."
This release draws that line more clearly. The work touched graphics and multimedia support, storage, printing and scanning, system services, hardware integration and input methods, along with dependencies that had been sneaking in indirectly rather than being pulled in on purpose. To be clear, the goal isn't to turn four distinct desktop editions into four reskins of the same thing. KDE Plasma, GNOME, XFCE and COSMIC all keep their own tools and their own integrations. What's changed is that the shared foundation underneath them is now genuinely shared, rather than four slightly diverging copies of roughly the same idea. As a nice side effect, this also makes it considerably easier to spot future divergence caused by the constant churn of Debian Testing, which is no small thing when you're tracking a moving target like that.
COSMIC gets a proper update to go with the tidy-up, moving from 1.5.0 to COSMIC Epoch 1.8.0. That's a meaningful jump covering the compositor, session, panel, settings application, COSMIC Files, and the various applications that make up the desktop as a whole.
A new package, synex-cosmic-wallpapers, arrives alongside it, and it's a small but sensible fix: Synex wallpapers now install into the location COSMIC naturally expects them, rather than relying on paths that technically belonged to a different desktop environment. Anyone who's poked around a COSMIC install's wallpaper settings and wondered why some backgrounds looked a bit orphaned will appreciate the tidiness here. Synex's visual identity, initial setup and the various bits of glue needed to make COSMIC feel properly integrated all carry over as before.
GNOME users should note a genuine behavioural change: the classic GNOME Shell on X11 session no longer ships in these images, a consequence of how Debian Testing and GNOME itself have evolved. In its place, the GNOME edition now includes GNOME Flashback, giving GDM a choice between the regular Wayland session and Flashback for anyone who still specifically needs X11.
It's a pragmatic swap rather than a downgrade, and it keeps an X11 option on the table for people with drivers, extensions or workflows that still depend on it.
Rounding out the desktop-facing changes is Synex Package Manager 1.3.0, which introduces a new Maintenance section geared towards restoring and migrating installations.
The import/export functions for software lists, previously tucked away under Settings, have moved here and been expanded to cover repositories as well as packages.
The clever part is how restoration actually works: rather than copying raw APT source files or keyrings from one machine to another, which tends to age badly, SPM recognises a known repository during import and reconstructs it using a current, maintained recipe. That means a restore performed months or years down the line pulls in the repository configuration as it exists today, not a potentially stale snapshot from whenever you first exported it. Anything added manually or outside the known catalogue gets flagged during export but isn't silently restored, which is the right call for anything SPM can't vouch for. The restoration sequence itself has been reordered too: SPM prepares the necessary support, refreshes APT metadata and recalculates what's actually available before touching your package selection, and if Flatpak entries are involved, it makes sure Flatpak support and its remotes are ready before processing them. There's also better detection for a handful of commonly added repositories, including recent changes affecting Microsoft Edge, Spotify and Devolutions RDM, plus more detailed logging throughout the process for anyone who likes to see exactly what's happening.
What's under the bonnet, and getting it installed
Synex Semi-rolling 26.09.16 is built on Debian Testing, and the version numbers reflect that fast-moving foundation: Linux 7.1.13, systemd 261.2, OpenSSL 3.6.4, Mesa 26.1.6, PipeWire 1.6.8 paired with WirePlumber 0.5.17, and Firefox ESR 140.15.0.
Editions that ship Flatpak carry Flatpak 1.18.2.
Installation continues to run through Calamares 3.4.2 with calamares-settings-synex 1.0.31, and all four editions include Synex Package Manager 1.3.0, Synex Connections 0.2.0 and grub-btrfs as standard.
Per edition, KDE Plasma sits at 6.7.4, with KWin 6.7.4 and Dolphin 26.08.0. GNOME runs GNOME Shell 50.4, GDM3 50.2 and Nautilus 50.2.2. XFCE is at version 4.20, made up of xfce4-panel 4.20.8, xfce4-session 4.20.4, xfwm4 4.20.0 and Thunar 4.20.9. And COSMIC, as covered above, lands on Epoch 1.8.0.
Spending a bit of time with a fresh install makes the release notes feel concrete rather than abstract. On COSMIC, Synex Center opens to the familiar Welcome, System Health and Tools tabs, correctly reporting the new version string and confirming the environment underneath. Synex Connections' Add Connection dialogue is refreshingly uncluttered: name, host, user, port, and a straightforward authentication dropdown between Automatic, Password and Identity file, exactly the fields you'd want and nothing you wouldn't. Over in Desktop settings, the Wallpaper panel now lists Synex-branded backgrounds sitting comfortably alongside COSMIC's own defaults, a small but satisfying confirmation that synex-cosmic-wallpapers is doing its job properly. Synex Package Manager's new Maintenance tab lays out repository and software-list import/export in one place, exactly as described, and a quick search for a COSMIC-specific package like synex-cosmic-wallpapers confirms it's present and correctly attributed to the desktop it was built for. On the GNOME side, the login screen's session picker now offers a plain choice between GNOME and GNOME Flashback (Metacity), and switching between the two behaves exactly as you'd hope, with fastfetch confirming the window manager change accordingly. Across KDE Plasma, GNOME, XFCE and COSMIC alike, the About panels and terminal output all consistently report the shared Debian Testing base and matching component versions described above, which is a decent practical confirmation that the cross-edition consistency work has actually landed rather than just being a nice idea on paper.
All four editions, KDE Plasma, GNOME, XFCE and COSMIC, are available to download now. As ever, verify the checksums of whatever image you grab before you burn it to a USB stick or spin up a virtual machine, and if you hit a snag along the way, the Synex forum is the right port of call for support.
A final word
This is a release that rewards a closer look rather than a glance at the changelog headline. Synex Connections is a genuinely useful addition that respects the tools already doing their jobs well, and the cross-edition base clean-up is the kind of unglamorous groundwork that pays off every single release afterwards. Add a proper COSMIC bump and a smarter Package Manager restore workflow, and 26.09.16 quietly earns its place as a solid, sensible update.
Disclaimer
Synex, its logos, and any other trade names, trademarks or registered marks mentioned in this article belong to their respective owners, including the Synex project and Linus Torvalds' Linux® trademark, and are referenced here purely for identification and informational purposes. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information presented, drawing solely from official Synex sources at the time of writing, though software projects evolve quickly and readers are encouraged to verify details against the official channels before acting on them. As always, please use open-source software responsibly and in accordance with its respective licence terms.
References
🗣Synex Semi-rolling 26.09.16 📢
Comments
Post a Comment
Hello and welcome to The Distrowrite Project! We appreciate your engagement and value diverse perspectives. Our community thrives on respectful and constructive discussions. Please ensure your comments align with our guidelines: no hate speech, personal attacks, or spam. Let us foster a positive environment where everyone feels comfortable to share their thoughts and insights. Kindly direct any complaints and suggestions for any software/hardware directly, clearly and politely to the respective developer(s). Thank you for being a part of our community!