ConnexionMicrosoft Open-Sources Windows Subsystem for Linux
Well here’s a turn up: Microsoft just released the source code for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), making the nifty tech open-source nearly a decade after development began. The tech giant announced the news at this year’s BUILD event, where it made some other open-source related announcements, including its own CLI text editor called Edit. Source code for WSL was quickly made available on the Microsoft GitHub. For those not familiar with it, WSL is a specialised virtualisation setup that lets Windows users run Linux distributions (like Ubuntu) inside of Windows, with tight system, software and hardware integration. Microsoft says […]
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A new version of the Vivaldi web browser is available to download, carrying changes said to make our collective “everyday browsing smoother, faster, and just a little more delightful.” How does Vivaldi 7.4 make browsing the increasingly gamified, algorithmically manipulative and Ai slopified modern web more ‘delightful’? Shortcuts. More specifically, Vivaldi 7.4 gives you the ability to “fine-tune” how shortcuts behave on a per-site basis. If you want a website’s shortcuts to take priority over Vivaldi’s, you can. “It’s about putting you in control, making sure your shortcuts work where and when you need them most”, says Jon von Tetzchner, […]
The elementary OS 8.0.1 release back in March brought an appreciable set of improvements with it, including a much-improved Files app, but as ever in development: the work never stops! Project founder, Danielle Foré, recently recapped a few smaller features that have been issued to users of the Ubuntu-based Linux distribution as software updates, including: If you run elementary OS 8.x, install your updates and eat your greens, you should be benefitting from the changes listed above (if you don’t have them, go update to get ’em). But Danielle also gave us an early-look at an exciting new app and […]
Ubuntu 25.10 'Questing Quokka' will ship Loupe and Ptyxis as default image viewer and terminal apps in the upcoming October release.
A number of new personalisation features have been added to the Firefox New Tab page in the past year, including the ability to pick a background image from a small set of hand-picked pics and solid colours. Pleasant though those curated images are, they’re not to everyone’s tastes. This is why Mozilla’s engineers have been beavering away on a few enhancements to provide greater customisation — you can “test” them in the latest stable release, which is Firefox 138 at the time I write this. The big change is that you can now “upload your own image” to use as […]
Canonical commits to donating $120k to the open source developers building the projects and tools that help power the Ubuntu ecosystem.
NordVPN has announced a major update to its Linux app, adding a much-requested GUI front-end that makes it easier to control, configure and monitor secure connections. Linux users have been able to use an official, comprehensive command-line interface for NordVPN for many years. The addition of a graphical user-interface (which can be used alongside the command-line one) should help the company broaden access to its services by making it easier to use NordVPN without needing to look up commands and type them in. NordVPN say the Linux GUI provides “visually rich elements and ease of use without compromising advanced features. […]
If you’ve been itching to do an in-place upgrade to Ubuntu 25.04 from 24.10, your patience has paid off — upgrades have been re-enabled. For those unaware, Ubuntu was forced to halt upgrades to the new Ubuntu 25.04 release a few hours after its release on April 17 after major bugs were reported, affecting users across different Ubuntu flavours were discovered. Users were left with broken desktops (environments, that is – upgrading didn’t smash motherboards); had third-party packages removed that shouldn’t have been, and users on Qt-based flavours couldn’t upgrade using the GUI tool due to missing dependencies. Less Plucky, […]
A few months back I reported that Kagi, the company behind the paid, private and privacy-focused search engine of the same time, is porting its Orion web browser to Linux – now we have our first look at how its Linux GUI is shaping up. A recent development screenshot of Orion’s WIP Linux build was shared by Kagi devs—pictured in the hero image above—and it reveals that Orion for Linux will use GTK4/libadwaita for its GUI. A logical (and expected) choice: GTK4 is a modern, widely-used toolkit across Linux distros, with consistency at its core. And libadwaita provides widgets and […]
If you’re running Kubuntu 25.04 and want the latest fixes the KDE Plasma 6.3.5 release, you can use the Kubuntu backports PPA to get ’em. KDE Plasma 6.3.5 popped out a few weeks back, serving as the fifth and (likely) final bug-fix release prior to the next major release, KDE Plasma 6.4. Over the weekend, Kubuntu developers announced that the Kubuntu backports PPA has added the requisite packages for Kubuntu 25.04. Thus, Kubuntu users can add (or enable) the PPA to get the update now, rather than wait for the update to filter out through the usual software channels. The […]
Ubuntu is one of the leading Linux distributions for RISC-V hardware thanks to Canonical’s strategic partnerships with companies like DeepComputing – who just announced a powerful new RISC-V AI PC running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. The DC-ROMA RISC-V AI PC—apologies for the caps, it’s how it’s stylised—is built around the company’s new RISC-V Mainboard II, which is designed for use in the Framework 13″ and 14.2″ laptops. Though designed for Framework laptops, owning one isn’t a requirement. A nifty enclosure allows this mainboard to be used as a regular PC you connect to a monitor, keyboard and mouse. The board itself […]
Roll credits on Totem, roll camera on Showtime — GNOME developers have officially cast a new video player in GNOME 49, out in September. Per an upstream merge, GNOME has formally replaced the aged GTK3 Totem video player with the newer, fresher and all-the-more modern GTK4/libadwaita app Showtime in its Core Apps1 lineup. Like its predecessor, Showtime’s user-facing name in GNOME 49 will be changed to the generic moniker of Video Player (I’d wager most of us will continue to call it by its codename, the same way we refer to Files as Nautilus). Showtime may be new in GNOME’s Core Apps, but it’s […]
The Wellbeing controls available in Ubuntu 25.04 make it easy to get periodic prompts to move your butt or look away from your screen — you might not want them enabled all the time, though. Wellbeing controls were one of the flagship features of GNOME 48. As well as screen time monitoring (with controls to set a screen time limit, and turn the display greyscale when it’s reached), you can enable reminders to take a break and move. Alerts telling you to get up and move may be helpful during the day, but at nighttime when you’re, say, engrossed in […]
More details on the makeup of the upcoming Linux Mint 22.2 release have been revealed, including its new codename (for those who track those). Linux Mint 22.2 (due to be released in late July or early August) has been officially named ‘Zara’, so continuing distro lead Clem’s codename convention of choosing female names in (somewhat) alphabetical order for each new version. I only say somewhat since Linux Mint 22.1 release was dubbed ‘Xia‘, while Linux Mint 22.2 jumps straight to ‘Zara’. Even with my lackadaisical attention to letter ordering, I know a ‘Y’ comes between ‘X’ and ‘Z’. Perhaps Clem […]
Get early access to Ubuntu 25.10 'Questing Quokka' through official daily builds. Download, test and contribute to Ubuntu's development before its October release.
Raspberry Pi has reduced the price on all 4GB and 8GB Compute Module 4 boards by $5-10, making embedded projects more affordable to try out.
Huawei has unwrapped its latest Linux notebook, the MateBook X Pro 2024 Linux Edition — alas, it’s only available in China. The Windows-free MateBook X Pro 2024 uses the same hardware as the Windows version, but clocks in at CN¥300 cheaper thank to a lack of Windows license fee and a government subsidy discounting tech that, from what I can gather, use a domestic OS. Chinese consumers can reportedly claim an extra discount of CN¥2000 on the purchase price as part of a national subsidy to promote usage of homegrown tech in general. With US sanctions in play, Microsoft is reportedly not […]
Open source system cleaning app BleachBit has put out its first major update in more than a year, adding improved cleaning capabilities, security fixes, and stability buffs. For the benefit of those with dusty memories, BleachBit is a free, open source system cleaner for Windows and Linux, written in Python and GTK 3. Similar to other apps of its type, BleachBit helps free up disk space by cleaning out caches, cookies, and other transient cruft. It can also delete files securely, wipe unallocated disk space, and squeeze Firefox and Chrome’s SQLite databases to improve performance. BleachBit 5.0, released this week, expands its […]
Google’s search deal with Mozilla is such a sizeable portion of its overall income that without it, Firefox would struggle to compete – or even survive, say Mozilla. It’s no secret that Google has paid Mozilla handsomely for its search engine to be set default in the Firefox web browser for decades. Mozilla’s financial report for 2023 revealed that the amount of money accrued from its “search deals” that year made up roughly three quarters of its entire income (specific amounts and from whom is confidential; it’s lumped together). While that figure is a bit less than it used to be, […]
Linux system monitoring app Mission Center has put out its first update in 6 months – and it’s a big one! Mission Center 1.0 adds new hardware tracking, UI tweaks, and refactors its backend to provide palapble performance improvements, boost the app’s responsiveness and minimise ‘time deviations between refresh cycles’. The latter may sound a tad dry on the ‘excitement’ scale but, arguably, it’s a big thing: a real-time monitoring app is used for, well, real-time monitoring and those tweaks ensure hardware and system process info shown is more precise. For a closer lookout the “visible” changes in this release, […]
If you use the Papirus icon theme on Ubuntu, you’ll be pleased to hear a new version is available to download. Frequent updates are a major reason why the Papirus icon set is so popular with Linux users. After all, it’s annoying to switch to a stylish icon set that doesn’t have icons for most of your apps, ruining the vibe. Not so with Papirus. It’s perpetually expanding its coverage through regular updates. Papirus’s second update this year adds 69 new icons—nice—and 18 updated ones. It also includes packaging and DE changes, and deprecates its ePapirus variants since elementaryOS 8 […]
Canonical has announced the first official Ubuntu desktop image for the Qualcomm DragonWing platform. A beta image of Ubuntu 24.04 desktop compatible with Qualcomm Dragonwing QCS6490 and QCS5430 processors, and specifically tailored for the Qualcomm RB3 (Gen 2) Vision Kit and RB3 (Gen 2 Lite) Vision Kit is available for testing. Ubuntu 24.04 server images were previously available for the same model vision kits, so it’s the addition of desktop builds that is an interesting development. Canonical say marrying a full Ubuntu desktop experience married with “powerful AI acceleration with high-performance graphics” in the Dragonwing devices provides “a powerful development environment […]
April saw a solid set of software updates land for an slew of popular Linux apps. In this post, I run through a number of recent releases that didn’t get the “full article” treatment on this blog. Sometimes it’s a challenge to cover everything I want to (especially in an Ubuntu release month, as April was), and some updates are rather minor and hard to say too much about. Also, covering updates relies on me knowing they’re out in a timely fashion. I track as much as I can, as best as I can. But it’s easy for things to […]
Luna brings moon phases to your Ubuntu desktop with a simple GNOME Shell extension. Track current phase, illumination percentage, and upcoming changes right from your panel.
At long last, Mozilla Firefox has GUI profile management features – obvious, easy to use and don’t require poking around the browser’s backend and creating custom shortcuts. The feature, which begins rolling out in today’s Firefox 138 update, is the latest “big ticket” feature the browser has belatedly sought to add, following recent long-requested supported for vertical tabs and tab grouping capabilities. Last month’s Firefox 137 release added the aforementioned tab grouping features, give its address bar a chip-laden overhaul, and flipped the switch on HEVC video playback on Linux. Firefox 138 has a number of notable changes to match those […]
If you’re looking for an easy way to “scrobble” music on Linux, no matter which music player you use, check out a new app called Turntable — and even if you don’t scrobble you should! Before I go any further I should bring those unfamiliar with what a “scrobble” is, up to speed. “Scrobbling” is—no, not one of those old fashioned British words I’m fond of using—the term given to logging the music you listen to, as you listen to it, on services like Last.fm and Libre.fm. When you play a track in a media player connected to a compatible […]
Of note, Ubuntu 24.04 developer images are now available for the new OrangePi RV2 RISC-V single-board computer (SBC). The news underscores Canonical’s on-going interest in the fledgling, open-source architecture. Last year, DeepComputing released Ubuntu-powered RISC-V tablet and laptop, and Ubuntu Server 25.04 was released last month with support for a myriad of RISC-V SBCs. “At Canonical, we believe that it’s important to do our part to help RISC-V succeed and gain acceptance as an open standard. Ubuntu’s availability on the OrangePi RV2 is a testament to the continued collaboration between [us] and the broader RISC-V community,” the company says. Adding […]
System76 has just announced the 7th alpha release of its Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment. As with earlier alphas, the focus remains adding features and functionality earmarked for inclusion in the first stable release (dubbed Epoch 1). What should you expect from that first stable release? Promise. It makes me sound a bit of a party-popper to say that but it’s worth keeping expectations grounded. It’s unfair and unrealistic to expect the first sable release of COSMIC developed in just a couple of years to feature-match desktop environments developed over decades. Nor will COSMIC’s native core apps, capable though they are […]
If you installed Ubuntu 25.04 (or upgraded from 24.10 before the gate was closed due to various pernickety issues) you might have noticed that window buttons in GTK apps. Ubuntu user Cristiano Fraga G. Nunes certainly did, filing bug report to report that “…on Ubuntu 25.04, the window control buttons (minimize, maximize, close) appear at inconsistent sizes across different GTK applications.” As he notes, GTK4 apps like Nautilus and Text Editor use smaller window buttons than in GTK3 apps, like Terminal which uses larger buttons (the same size GTK4 apps did in Ubuntu 24.10): Why the discrepancy? Ubuntu uses Yaru […]
Time is nearly up on support for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, with standard software, bug fix and security updates coming to an end on May 29, 2025. Users on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS should consider upgrading to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (or newer) if possible, but if unable should enable Extended Support Maintenance (ESM) as soon as possible in order to continue receiving critical security patches. ESM for Ubuntu provides “10 years of vulnerability management for critical, high and selected medium [security issues] for all software packages shipped with Ubuntu.” Enabling ESM is a bit of a no-brainer since it’s free for regular […]
Ghostty terminal fans needn’t fear an upgrade to Ubuntu’s latest release, as a community packaging effort just added Ghostty DEB packages for Ubuntu 25.04. The Ghostty Ubuntu project was set up was the aim of providing “Ubuntu/Debian (.deb) packages for Ghostty” so users on supported Linux distributions, including Ubuntu-based distros like Linux Mint and ZorinOS, can download, install and use the app properly. To date, there’s no official snap or Flatpak version of Ghostty available, and although compiling it from source isn’t hard, it’s more hassle than most are willing to go through to try a new app — yes, […]
The fourth major release in the Parallels Desktop 20 series has been released, bringing a stack of fixes for running Windows, macOS and Linux virtual machines on macOS. Yes, I did say macOS. I know; at first blush it seems odd for an Ubuntu blog to cover macOS app updates. But, Parallels is virtualisation software. It lets macOS users run Windows, macOS and Linux distributions as virtual machines so they can …Do whatever it is they need to. Scores of developers rely on Linux virtual machines in their day-to-day work since they aren’t able to run Linux on ‘bare metal’ […]
The Ubuntu 25.04 release is packed full of fresh features, updated apps and other upgrades that deliver a practical, pleasing out-of-the-box experience. —Perhaps not a perfect one, though. I just installed Ubuntu 25.04 on my “couch potato” laptop and there were a few “things” I had to do to make the experience better — albeit better for me! I didn’t do anything drastic: I didn’t remove Snap, uninstall GNOME Shell, or decamp to a 100% Libre Linux kernel and expunge proprietary drivers. Part post-install tasks and todos, part future-proof plumbing to setup a few things ahead of time so I […]
Do you currently run Ubuntu 24.10 on your computer but want to upgrade to the new Ubuntu 25.04 release to benefit from its (many) changes? As long as you’re full up-to-date and have a working internet connection, you can upgrade to Ubuntu 25.04 directly – no need to do download an ISO, flash it to a USB stick and do a clean install. And upgrading soon is a good idea. Ubuntu 24.10 supports ends in July, and those using it after that date will need to upgrade to Ubuntu 25.04 to continue receiving security updates. Those left cold by the churn of upgrading every […]
Pull the party poppers and unpack the cake as today is Ubuntu release day — and Ubuntu 25.04 ‘Plucky Puffin’ is now available to download. Ubuntu 25.04 is arguably the most polished & performant release to date! The latest short-term release of the world’s best-known desktop Linux operating system, Ubuntu 25.04 receives ongoing support until January 2026 — not long, but Ubuntu 25.10 is out in October, with direct upgrades available from this version. Over the past six months Ubuntu engineers, developers and community contributors have baked plenty of improvements into this release — arguably the most polished & performant […]
Ubuntu 25.04 is out this week and many will be turning to virtual machine to test, trial or tie the release into their development workflows — perfect timing for a new version of VirtualBox, then! Oracle today (April 15) issued the fourth maintenance update in the current VirtualBox 7.1 series. No new features were added but a flurry of bug fixes, stability boosts and integration buffs are present, which users across all supported OSes will benefit from. For Linux users frustrated at flakey wireless network adapter detection in earlier releases, the 7.1.8 update fixes the issue. Similarly, anyone ticked off […]
A major new release of Rnote, an open-source app for taking handwritten notes, sketching out ideas and annotating documents and pictures, is out. Rnote 0.12 brings several new features, new customisation and configuration options, user experience buffs, bug fixes, and other lower-level tune-ups. For those unfamiliar with it, Rnote is a digital note-taking app built using GTK4 and Rust. It’s primarily intended to be used with stylus input (so includes pen pressure, stroke styles, button actions, etc) but supports typed text entry, shapes, importing images, etc too. Rnote offers a range of document layouts, from fixed pages to infinite canvases, […]
Indulging your casual creativity (read: making memes, defacing selfies, etc) using open-source tools is made easier with the long-awaited release of Pinta 3.0. Pinta, as long-time Linux users will be aware, is a cross-platform raster graphics tool with a feature set and user-interface partly inspired by popular Windows image editing tool Paint.NET. I previewed the Pinta 3.0 beta back in January and came away impressed. Pinta port to GTK4/libadwaita lends the UI a much-needed modern look – and is more than superficial: usability, performance and stability is bolstered by the toolkit bump. Pinta 3.0 switches to a button-based header bar […]