November 1, 2023

New ISO for Steam Deck Edition released:
– Fixed wake from suspend being broken on Steam Deck after kernel 6.4+
– Updated HDR patches
– Added all necessary ROG Ally kernel patches, should work well ootb now
– Added Screen orientation fixups for Lenovo Legion Go
– Added udev rule to treat Lenovo Legion Go controls as xbox controller (works for now until we have real patches)

Lenovo Legion Go known issues:
– Power button short press does not put it in suspend, and 3 second hold does not bring up power menu, however manually navigating the power menu and putting it in suspend does suspend properly, and pressing the power button does wake from suspend as expected.
– “Guide” button or Legion button, whatever you want to call it, does not register — and since there’s currently no way to remap Steam’s ‘guide’ button — we have no way to bring up the in-game overlays (ie quick settings or to access steam while in-game)
– Color slider in gamescope session does not appear to do anything
– Currently no TDP controls have been added

Aug 30,2023

– All standard ISOs other than Steam Deck edition updated with recent repository fixes. This means no more excludes are being used and no more uninstallable packages listed as “upgrades” in various package/software managers. GNOME Software and KDE Discover should be usable now. There may be a few packages that get downgraded after a fresh installation (such as llvm), but that will be fixed in another update.

Why wasn’t the Steam Deck ISO updated?
> I’m currently working on updating the kernel with new HDR patches, as well as updating gamescope. I wanted those to be done before refreshing the Steam Deck ISOs.

What about the repositories from previous installations?
> Nothing needs to be done on previous installations other than updating as you normally would (using ‘Update System’. The repository fixes have already been applied via package updates. Current Nobara users have already received the updates, the ISO refresh was simply to reflect the updates within the latest ISOs.

*NOTE: In Nobara Package Manager under ‘Updates’, if there is a package listed that you cannot install, please let me know. This means the package is coming from fedora or fedora-updates when it should not be.

Aug 04,2023

– Fixed issue with Nvidia ISOs where Calamares GRUB options would not get written to /etc/default/grub during installation.

July 17, 2023

Changelog:
– Fixed brightness control not working on Steam Deck Edition
– Fixed SD cards not mounting on injection in GPD devices and similar
– Bonus: USB storage devices formatted as ext4 will automount the same way as sd cards now.
– Fixed power button not working properly on Steam Deck Edition
NOTE: On standard Steam Deck the power button’s press and hold registers properly (event 1 on press, event 0 on release), so with Steam Deck short press is sleep, long press is power menu. On some other devices the button is not designed as a press and hold, (such as the GPD Win 4). Instead that device registers both event 1 and 0 on release. For these types of buttons the power script has been modified to just go into sleep mode upon release because there is no registration of the press action.

July 16, 2023

Changelog:
– Added new ISOs with embedded Nvidia drivers + out of the box driver installation. These ISO should allow Nvidia users to have an easier installation experience, as nvidia drivers are working on both the ISOs as well as fresh installation post-reboot. Nvidia users no longer need to worry about using nomodeset to boot.
– Reverted the nvidia driver wizard to use akmods instead of dkms, as dkms was having repeated leftover header issues after updates which would break for some people.
– Added a line to the nvidia installer to make sure kmods service was enabled at boot
– Updated GPG key for nobara-appstream. Added line in system updater to refresh keys before performing any updates
– Updated mutter to 44.3
– Added fix for mutter not giving mouse proper window focus (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/2690)
– Added fix for mutter framebuffer test failures (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/2848)
– Fixed bug in calamares installer where it would create useless initramfs-freebsd.img file in /boot

July 9, 2023

Changelog:
SteamDeck Edition:
– Fixed an issue where in deck/game mode it would switch to desktop when a shutdown or reboot was issued
– Fixed an issue where in desktop mode it would switch to deck/game mode when a shutdown or reboot was issued
– Fixed scaling/DPI issue on GPD Win 4 after new install

All Editions:
– Fixed an issue where calamares would generate grub to /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg instead of the proper location /boot/grub2/grub.cfg.
———-
Hotfix for pre-existing new installs:
Remove the following files:

# rm /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg
# rm /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Reinstall the following packages:

# dnf reinstall shim-* grub2-efi-* grub2-common
———-

– Fixed corectrl not being available
– Fixed a kernel 6.3.10 regression that would cause games to be layered on top of mangohod within a gamescope session instead of mangohud on top of the game (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/2685).
– Fixed mangohud package not including mangoapp (it now includes it, required for gamescope session overlay)
– Fixed mangohud not working on nvidia gpus
– Fixed ROG Ally Wifi+Bluetooth mediatek chip not working (patch added to 6.3.12 kernel)

July 4, 2023

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!
– Nobara SteamDeck edition is now available! This version of Nobara is designed like that of SteamOS, using KDE as the desktop environment. It will auto-start in “Deck Mode”, and you can swap to desktop and/or back to “deck mode” at any time. It should be compatible with Steam Deck and other similar devices. Personally I have only tested on Steam Deck, GPD Win 4, GPD Win Max 2. I do not own an ROG Ally so I was not able to test on it.

Fixed:
– swapping between deck mode and desktop mode would crash after a few times
– steam deck and steam controller trackpad would no longer move mouse cursor when steam was opened under wayland
– Audio now properly swaps between headphone jack and speakers when plugged in or removed
– panel rotates horizontally and properly scales on steam deck now
– for non-steam deck displays scaling on the default display panel is set to 1.5 for better visibility (for example the GPD Win 4 has a tiny screen but it’s full 1080p and hard to read at 1x)
– sd card reader works as expected on steam deck
– TDP adjustment works

June 25, 2023

Changelog:

NOBARA 38 RELEASED!
New to Nobara: (also backported to Nobara 37 except AV1 and Davinci Resolve changes)
—————————-
/etc/profile:

– Davinci Resolve workaround: will detect if davinci resolve installer has been run from terminal, and after installation will prompt for user to run a wizard to perform additional actions. This wizard will perform the workaround required for Davinci Resolve to run (moving DR-shipped glib2 libraries to a backup folder): (https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=180116)

– payday 2 workaround: will detect if the native linux version of payday 2 is run, and if so will use the zink driver to run it, as the opengl implementation is currently broken, and the native version is no longer receiving official support. (https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/06/overkill-drops-linux-support-for-payday-2/) ()

udev rules:

– rule added so that 045e:028e “xbox 360” controller devices are forced to use the kernel xpad driver. this allows devices such as the gpd win max 2 and gpd win 4 (which report as this device for the controls) to retain controller support while still also allowing the optional xone/xpadneo driver to be installed when users need wireless dongle and/or better bluetooth support for xbox one controllers

– rules added to set specific io schedulers for different devices types:

nvme: “none”
ssd: “mq-deadline”
hdd/mechanical: “bfq”

– rules added to add rtc0 and hpet to the audio group for mitigating audio stutter/latency

gnome 44:

– variable refresh rate (vrr) patches updated/rebased and applied to mutter 44

obs/gstreamer:

– gstreamer 1.22 has been patched with av1 support (MR found here: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gstreamer/-/merge_requests/3015)
– obs-vaapi av1 support is now functional
– AMF av1 support is now functional (still requires AMD pro encoder: https://nobaraproject.org/docs/obs-studio/enabling-amds-amf-encoder/)

llvm/mesa:

– mesa 23.1.3 built on llvm 15. We shipped using llvm 15 instead of Fedora’s current llvm 16 due to llvm 16 causing breakage in Team Fortress 2 (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/8847)
– mesa patched to enable vaapi av1 encode support

Nobara Package Manager/yumex:

– now able to manage flatpaks
– cleaned up packages that would previously show upgrades available if overridden (for example we ship llvm 15 and override the default, but the default llvm 16 would show as available to update)
– ‘Update System’ button added for easy updating. Launches Nobara’s ‘Update System’ app.

Updates:

– ‘Update System’ app pinned in menu as the official way to update the system. Explanation here: https://nobaraproject.org/docs/upgrade-troubleshooting/how-do-i-update-the-system/

Blender:

– Blender has been patched so that it launches with WAYLAND_DISPLAY=””. This is because under wayland sometimes the menus can render incorrectly to where they are not easily clickable or navigatable. Running it with WAYLAND_DISPLAY=”” resolves the issue.

nautilus:

– Can now execute files and/or open folders as administrator within nautilis via right click menu

flatpak:

– fedora flatpak repos removed as they are largely unused.
**NOTE**:
If you are upgrading and you have flatpaks installed from the fedora repo you will need to remove them and reinstall them from the flathub repo. You can do this within Nobara Package Manager, GNOME Software, or KDE Discover.

– flathub flatpak repos are now the default and are also enabled for both system and users
– workaround for recent user update crash added (https://github.com/ostreedev/ostree/issues/2900)

welcome:

– davinci resolve wizard added to nobara welcome app under optional steps

All other Fedora 38 package changes are included.
—————————-

Why were the AV1 changes not backported?

– FFmpeg 6.0 is required. It has way too many other packages that depend on it that would need to be rebuilt and maintained. Nobara+Fedora 37 are still on FFmpeg 5.
– Gstreamer 1.22 is required. Nobara+Fedora 37 ship with Gstreamer 1.20 which is not compatible with the av1 encoder merge request.

Why wasn’t the Davinci Resolve change backported?

– The Davinci Resolve issue was caused by an update in glib2 which removed a function that was called in the previous version by libpango. Since Nobara+Fedora 37 are still on the old version of glib2, the function still exists in that version, therefore they are not affected.

April 28, 2023

Changelog:
– Updated ISOs with mesa 23.0.3 to fix issue with codec installer not pulling all mesa packages when updating, thus breaking the install
– Updated codec installer to pull all mesa package updates as a dependency
– Fixed issue with desktop icons not being executable
– Added nautilus-admin package to Official and GNOME builds, allows users to open a folder as root ‘Administrator’ via right click menu