solstone

Linux observer releases

these are the Linux observer's own changes: installation, systemd service, desktop integration, and sync behavior.

install solstone for Linux →

solstone for Linux 0.1.1

june 3, 2026

A focused maintenance release: two reliability fixes and a round of

install-instruction corrections from fresh-machine testing on Fedora,

Debian, and openSUSE.

Fixed

  • Idle monitors no longer silently drop observations. When a monitor produced no frames during a segment (a static screen with nothing changing on it), GStreamer still wrote a header-only WebM file. Those empty files were finalized, uploaded, and then failed to process in your journal — so that monitor's segment was lost without any signal. The observer now drops these empty recordings at the source and emits an observe.stream_silent event (logged at WARNING) so the gap is visible instead of silent.
  • Install no longer clobbers your system icon theme. On GNOME, install-service was writing a stray index.theme into the shared hicolor icon directory, which shadowed the system index and caused unrelated app icons to render as the solstone diamond. The installer now drops only the solstone status icons (the system index already declares their directory) and self-heals any previously broken install on the next install-service run. A foreign or unreadable index.theme is left untouched.

Documentation

  • Corrected the Fedora and Debian system-dependency lines after fresh-box install testing: dropped packages that do not exist in their repos (gstreamer1-plugin-pipewire on Fedora, gir1.2-gdk-4.0 on Debian) and hoisted the cairo / pycairo build toolchain onto the main install line so a fresh install succeeds in one shot. Added gstreamer1.0-tools to the Debian line — gst-launch-1.0 is required for screen recording and is not pulled in transitively.
  • Added a verified openSUSE dependency block and mirrored the corrected dependency lists between README.md and INSTALL.md.
  • Updated the install path to lead with pipx install solstone-linux, then solstone-linux install-service, then solstone-linux setup.

Internal

  • The release script now tags the commit and cuts a GitHub release only on a production PyPI run; a TestPyPI run no longer leaves a tag or public release behind.

solstone for Linux 0.1.0

may 19, 2026

First public release of solstone-linux — the Linux desktop observer

for your solstone journal.

solstone-linux runs as a systemd user service in your GNOME Wayland

session. It experiences screen and audio along with you, holds short

segments locally, and uploads them to your journal in the background.

Install paths

  • From PyPI: pipx install --system-site-packages solstone-linux, then solstone-linux install-service to register the systemd unit.
  • From a clone: git clone this repo and run make install-service for development or unreleased changes.

Both paths rely on host packages for PyGObject, GStreamer with the

PipeWire plugin, PipeWire itself, pactl, and xdg-desktop-portal

with ScreenCast support. PyGObject and the GStreamer bindings ride

along from system site-packages — that is why --system-site-packages

matters.