Python has overtaken JavaScript as the most-used language on GitHub, according to the code-hosting platform’s latest Octoverse report. The company attributes this momentum to a massive influx of “data science and machine learning on GitHub”, which has seen a 59% increase in the number of contributions to generative AI projects. With Python being heavily used across ML, data science, and related fields, the rise makes sense – it’s less that traditional software developers are switching to Python but more that developers working with AI-related projects are needing to use it. Plus, it’s good news for open source, with GitHub reporting […]

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It’s hallowe’en, and there’s a frightfully good treat waiting for fans of the free, open-source racing game SuperTuxKart – a new beta! The first beta of SuperTuxKart 1.5 offers an array of improvements, touching everything from the underlying game engine to the user-interface through to networking features and score announcements during online multi-player races. No new tracks, karts, characters, or items included this time (those are planned for SuperTuxKart 2.0 along with a myriad of other major changes) but there is a new music track for the Das Luna Arena. Other SuperTuxKart 1.5 beta 1 changes: Naturally, there’s also a […]

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The latest stable update to Google Chrome improves its Memory Saver with new controls that could, depending on your workflow and hardware, help reduce the browser’s memory footprint. And some would say it needs it. Google Chrome has a rep for being a memory hog. But is it deserved? Once upon a time, perhaps. Yet whenever people do tests they tend to find that Chrome’s RAM usage is less egregious than popular opinion would contend. Anecdotally, many users still say otherwise. Which is perhaps why the latest update to Google’s dominant web browser introduces 3 new options to control the existing […]

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Ubuntu developers today announced that Ubuntu 25.04 ‘Plucky Puffin’ is officially open for development. There’s even a release date: Ubuntu 25.04 is out on April 17, 2025. Still, that’s a way off; there are 6 months of development stretching out ahead of us. But looking in to the distance one can’t help but wonder what new features Ubuntu 25.04 will offer. It’s too early in the release cycle to know, although GNOME 48, a newer Linux kernel (likely 6.14), and Snap app improvements are all-but a given. Still, would it be too much to hope that the Plucky cycle finally […]

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Music makers, podcast producers, and amateur audio enthusiasts alike will be pleased to hear a new version of Audacity is out – and it fixes a lot of bugs. Audacity 3.7.0 marks a new series of maintenance releases which will fix flaws, balm bugs, and nix niggles in the current editions. Big new features are in the works for Audacity 4.0, but as the Audacity 3.6 series earlier this year wasn’t without issues, some breathing space to focus on getting timely fix ’em up releases out, to benefit users now, feels like a sound approach. Audacity 3.7.0: Key Changes As […]

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Forget Amazon’s recent Kindle refresh, the most exciting e-ink device around is the PineNote from prolific open-source hardware makers Pine64. I reported last month that Pine64 had confirmed a new PineNote production run, the first in several years, now that it has a solid Debian-based OS to run. And now it’s begun taking pre-orders, with shipping expected to begin in mid-November. The PineNote has a 10.1-inch e-ink scratch-resistant display with up to 16 levels of greyscale at a resolution of 1404×1872 (227 DPI). Powered a quad-core RK3566 SoC with 4 GB RAM, 128GB storage, on-board Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a front-light, speakers, […]

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Being a Linux nerd I rarely go outside —that’s a joke— but knowing what the weather is doing beyond my basement walls —still a joke— is useful – if only because it usually gives me an excuse to stay at my desk compiling my own kernel —not a joke. Scores of Linux weather apps, widgets, and add-ons exist. These put current temperature, conditions, and (usually) near-term forecasts within easy reach, or permanently on show. And honestly? That’s all the weather data most of us care to know. It answers ‘will I need a jacket?’, ‘will it rain today?’, ‘can I […]

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A big update to ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors, a free, open-source office suite for Windows, macOS, and Linux is available to download. ONLYOFFICE 8.2 offers a clutch of new features, several performance gains, and a miscellany of smaller enhancements across the full suite, which is composed of a word processor, spreadsheet tool, presentation maker, form filler, and a PDF editor. For a lighter look, ONLYOFFICE 8.2 includes a new grey theme in its appearance settings. This is not enabled by default but can be applied to all apps in the suite from the main settings, or applied to just specific components, […]

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Mozilla Firefox 132 is available to download today, arriving a couple of weeks ahead of the browser’s big 20th anniversary1 milestone. But anyone hoping Firefox 132 would prove itself a veritable birthday piñata, fit to burst with a flurry of new features and eye-catching changes should temper their expectations. Although Mozilla’s engineering team has several exciting new features in the pipeline—vertical tabs, tab grouping, ‘new tab’ page changes, redesigned Settings interface, and a brand-spankin’ new profile system—these features aren’t ready to unwrap – not officially, anyway. Instead, Mozilla Firefox 132 arrives as a more serviceable update, delivering a smaller set […]

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I’m a fan of the Tiling Shell GNOME Shell extension because it’s both good at what it does, but good at not being one-size-fits-all: users can tile window using a mouse and drop zones, with keyboard shortcuts, or with both – options for everyone. And some extra options are on offer in the latest update, Tiling Shell v14: Being able to set a custom colour for the window border around the focused window is welcome addition. When the ‘Window Border’ setting is enabled —the width of which can be adjusted; I make it thicker in my screenshots so you can […]

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Ever feel a pang of a nostalgia for the way web browsers used to look, but don’t fancy the hiccups or hassle involved in trying to run old software on a newer OS? Honestly, you probably don’t – but after checking out what the Geckium project can do style-wise to Mozilla Firefox, that may change! Before I go on let me state upfront that this post is a spotlight, not a manifesto. I’m not here to persuade anyone as to why they should to do this since there is no need – it’s as ‘necessary’ as making Ubuntu look like […]

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Vivaldi 7.0 is out, and the makers describe it as not merely an update but ‘a new Vivaldi’ entirely. Those familiar with the browser will instantly see why, as Vivaldi finally gets an overdue UI redesign: there’s a new theme using pill-shaped floating tabs and a new set of in-app icons (which can be changed back to the old ones for those who aren’t a fan). On the new tab page (or “start page” in Vivaldi parlance) there’s an all-new Dashboard feature with widgets that users can customise to provide a more informative view-port than a static speed dial n’ […]

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One of the best things about the Raspberry Pi 5 (other than the performance boost over its predecessor) is how much simpler it is to add an SSD. And if you’re running a full desktop OS like Ubuntu you should use an SSD: startup times are blazingly fast, and the I/O performance blows even top-end SD cards out of the water (so to speak – you shouldn’t put SD cards in water). But finding the right NVMe SSD can be a mission. So many brands, so much choice, so many speed claims, so many issues since not all NVMe SSDs […]

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Open source ebook manager Calibre has a new release out. Calibre 7.20 ships with a brand new PDF input engine (used to convert PDF files into other ebook formats, such as EPUB or MOBI). It’s now able to handle “automatic detection of headers and footers based on document analysis”. Fans of the old engine needn’t panic as it’s still included and available to select from the PDF Input section of the Conversion dialog. The Calibre Manual has a detailed guide on converting PDFs to ebook-friendly formats. Calibre’s Read Aloud feature (which does exactly what it says on the tin) picks […]

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Remember Clementine music player? Well, it appears to be back – some 8 years after its last stable release. If Clementine feels like it’s slipped out of public consciousness it’s understandable: the last stable release was in 2016 (v1.3.1). Yet behind the scenes development continued and an awful lot of preview builds issued – indeed, the v1.4.0 release candidate has long been carried in the repositories of most major Linux distributions, including Ubuntu. But this weekend something changed. The Clementine GitHub tagged its first non-RC build, v1.4.1, in forever. It’s not listed as a stable release, instead marked as a […]

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Canonical has put the official Linux Intel NPU driver on the Snap Store. The new Intel NPU Driver snap “bundles many components […] including device firmware, a user space driver and compiler, and an application to validate the user mode driver and compiler”. Or to put it another way: everything needs to harness the AI inference accelerators now built-in to the latest Intel Core Ultra processors (‘Meteor Lake’ and above). The catch (for now) is that the Intel NPU Driver snap is currently in beta, ergo rock-solid reliability isn’t currently a given. It should also go without saying (but I’ll […]

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Oracle has released the second maintenance update for the latest VirtualBox 7.1 series. VirtualBox 7.1.4 includes a small set of improvements, bug fixes, and stability enhancements to this open-source, cross-platform virtualisation tool, though new major new features are included. Among the changes are 2 which affect the Linux Guest Additions package (installing this enables Linux VMs to integrate better with the underlying host OS and hardware, be it a Linux, macOS, Windows, or Solaris host). Firstly, Linux Guest Additions picks up initial support for the upcoming Linux kernel 6.12 release, which due out in the next few months. Adding initial […]

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Ubuntu 24.10 may have only just been released, but development on the next version is getting underway and the codename for Ubuntu 25.04 revealed. Since codenames are alphabetical (as of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS; restarted at ‘A’ with 17.10) it means the Ubuntu 25.04 codename will start with the letter ‘P’… Ubuntu 25.04 is the ‘Plucky Puffin’. Yup, it seems a fellow feathered mascot is following in the footsteps – or rather the talon steps – of the ‘Oracular Oriole’. The ‘Plucky Puffin’ is only the 2nd ‘P’ codename in Ubuntu’s 20 year history, the other one being Ubuntu 12.04 LTS […]

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When it comes to open-source vector graphics software there’s perhaps nothing else as well known or as well made for the task than Inkscape – and a brand new version is now released. Inkscape 1.4 adds a crop of new features and improves accessibility buffs, with bug fixes, code cleanups, stability tweaks, and performance tune-ups (including faster extensions) also included. A new Filter Gallery dialog is, Inkscape say, “your new entry point into the world of filters. Head to the Filters menu to find it and your favorites more easily, with previews by category or by typing key words in […]

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With the latest release stacked with new features, you may be looking to upgrade to Ubuntu 24.10 from Ubuntu 24.04 LTS but wondering exactly how. “I just wait for Ubuntu to tell me, right?” – Er, no. As Ubuntu 24.04 is a long-term support (LTS) release it will not ask you if you want to upgrade to Ubuntu 24.10. This is because LTS releases are configured to only notify of new LTS releases (next one is due 2026) and Ubuntu 24.10 is a short-term release. Fret not; you can do a direct upgrade to Ubuntu 24.10 from 24.04 LTS, but […]

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GNOME Shell shows now playing info in the notification shade, out of view but there when you want to check in. Most users like this approach, but perhaps you don’t? Personally, I do like seeing media info (album art, artist name, track title) in the top bar. If I listen to a playlist like Spotify Discover I can see which song/artist is playing by looking at the top of the screen. I find that easier than interrupting my workflow by having to switch apps or click on the notification shade to take a peek. Plus, having ‘now playing’ info on […]

You're reading Spotify Controls: GNOME Shell Extension Ideal for Music Addicts, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

KDE neon users can now upgrade to rebase their systems on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. For those unfamiliar with it, KDE neon is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that is something of a reference platform for KDE Plasma. It’s available in User, Testing, Unstable, and Developer editions. KDE neon (User Edition) is the ‘stable’ version but still described as suiting ‘adventurous KDE enthusiasts’ rather than those seeking a rock-solid, totally-reliable distro. KDE neon isn’t tested as a distro as throughly as, say, Kubuntu. But if you want the benefits of the Ubuntu 24.04 package set with the latest KDE Plasma 6.2 release […]

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