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Chrome OS is (Apparently) Merging with Android

Consider this post apropos of nothing given that nothing has been formally announced, but it seems that long-rumoured merger of Google’s two operating systems is indeed happening.

Sameer Samat, who works at Google as president of the Android Ecosystem division that oversees Android, casually mentioned the merger in an interview with TechRadar, saying:

“…we’re going to be combining ChromeOS and Android into a single platform, and I am very interested in how people are using their laptops these days and what they’re getting done.”

OMG! being read on Chrome OS in 2011

Combining operating systems would mean the end of one, since they are fundamentally different. It’d clearly be ChromeOS; Android is the brand with marketshare and mindshare, and does most of what ChromeOS can (Android 16 added GPU-accelerated Linux VM and a terminal).

Rumours about Google rebasing ChromeOS on Android have been kicking around for years, stretching as far back as 2014 when Google created ARC as a way to run Android apps via Chrome as ‘extensions’ (something you didn’t need ChromeOS for).

So why is a merger only being confirmed now, over a decade later?

Samat namecheck Apple in his chat, the blurring of iPadOS and macOS, and the productivity synergy of the Apple ecosystem (by virtue of running on All The Things™ – things Android could very easily run on too).

Anti-trust actions on the horizon may also hasten a merger.

If Google is forced to sell off its Google Chrome browser—and what happens to the Chromium codebase is unknown since Google is the biggest financial and technical contributor, idk—it would complicate Google’s ongoing involvement and support commitments to ChromeOS.

Users can already install Android apps on Chrome OS, but they run in a tightly-integrated subsystem and container (ARCVM). Users can also choose to enable Linux Developer mode to access a Debian-based container to install Linux apps on Chromebooks.

Why am I mentioning this news on a blog dedicated to a specific Linux distribution? Should I not blow the dust off mothballed sister-site1 OMG! Chrome and write about it there instead?

Ubuntu is not an island, and splashes made within the wider Linux ecosystem do ripple out. Plus, the news may still be of interest more generally. Google is a key contributor to Linux kernel development, and each new kernel release adds or improves support for Chromebook hardware.

In the early days of ChromeOS, Canonical was contracted to provide engineering support as ‘Chrome OS’ (back then, the brand used a space) was initially based on Ubuntu (‘Google OS’, the search giant’s internal system, was also Ubuntu-based).

Phasing out Chrome OS and Chromebooks in favour of a desktop-friendly Android OS with better desktop-style multitasking could lead to a glut of newer, cooler Linux-friendly hardware on the market (whether said hardware can be made to run regular Linux, unknown).

So Chrome OS is a Linux-based desktop operating system. It runs a (heavily-patched) Linux kernel, but it uses a read-only, signed system image and atomic updates from a single, Google-maintained source. There is no end-user package manager, heavily restricted shell access, and a custom desktop.

It is not what I class a Linux distribution, but other opinions are available2 ;)

Arguably, if this merger happens—no timelines, dates, other details have been revealed—it is overdue.

Chrome OS is directionless and without purpose. What began as a low-cost, thin-client and web-first OS has snowballed into a hodge-podge of containers and conflicting user experiences in an effort to appeal to everyone.

Chromebooks run web apps, Android apps and Linux apps, but none best-in-class.

Most Android apps are designed for phones; Linux apps behave, run and look better on a proper Linux desktop; the simplicity and opportunity of a web-focused OS is diluted by tacked-on subsystems running non-web apps.

In a sense, there is no point to Chrome OS: Android does everything Chrome OS, but better; Chrome OS does some of what Android does, but worse.

Being subsumed into a unified, more coherent Linux-based OS (even if it is more Android than Chrome OS) is clearly the smarter move — should this melding of machine systems happen, of course. Google does have a habit of having—or buying—a good idea only to fudge it.

  1. For those who don’t know, I launched a spin-off of OMG! Ubuntu called OMG! Chrome that ran between 2011 and 2016 (sporadic posts thereafter as my enthusiasm for Chromebooks waned). ↩
  2. As is Chrome OS Flex, which anyone can download to install Chrome OS on modern-ish Intel and AMD-based PCs and laptops. It lacks some of the more appealing features found in the mainline version preinstalled on Chromebooks, like Android containers. ↩

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Rio is a Fast, WebGPU-Powered Terminal for Ubuntu

Terminal emulator apps: ten-a-penny on Linux, right? All major Linux distributions (Ubuntu included) preinstall one, and most command line aficionados are loyal to their preferred client.

Because yes, every terminal emulator runs commands and displays output. They do the same thing in at first blush, which makes switching or swapping feel less urgent. Yet implementation choices, be it language and toolkit or convenient integrations, suit some more than others.

I often cover new or updated terminal apps, like Pytxis (the new terminal app in Ubuntu 25.10), speed demon Ghostty, and AI-infused agentic terminal-cum-IDE Warp.

Rio is yet-another terminal emulator that Linux (as well as Windows and macOS) users make kick the tyres on. Although not new—first release was in 2023—Rio was updated recently, and an even bigger update on the way.

Since I plan to cover that release when it lands, I ought to spotlight the who, what and why first.

What Makes Rio Different?

Rio on Ubuntu 25.04: split panes, background blur

Rio is described as a Rust-built, hardware-accelerated terminal emulator powered by WebGPU (itself, notable) with a focus on being “fast and efficient“. On Linux, it works with both Wayland and X11, and offers native ARM64 builds for Pi users.

It’s the use of WebGPU that makes Rio a little different. WebGPU is a new web standard and JavaScript API that lets web developers build apps which can use the underlying system GPU for computational tasks, as well as fancy graphics.

Of course, Linux isn’t short on hardware accelerated terminal apps these days either.

Rio carries a crop of features more advanced users will appreciate such as font ligatures (where characters like -> are combined into a single glyph ), terminal splits (multiple panes in one window), and iTerm2 and Kitty image protocol support.

Rio also reuses code from the legendary Alacritty for its ANSI parser, events, and grid system, plus borrows a few features, like a toggleable Vi mode.

Much like the carnival, the Rio terminal brighter look will be pleased to hear the terminal emulator supports themes and transparency (with or without background blur. On Ubuntu you need to install the Blur My Shell extension to see blur in action).

It also has a couple of novel (or gimmicky, depending on your viewpoint) features like being able to apply RetroArch shaders, if you fancy CRT-style aesthetics, and it handles the Sixel protocol for in-terminal bitmap images.

Rio Relies on Keyboard Shortcuts

Rio terminal config.toml file contents being shown in the Text Editor app.
Get used to using the keyboard – to navigate, and to configure

Rio is a cross-platform app so there is a hit to cohesiveness (a USP of the Ghostty terminal is that it uses native tool, despite also being cross-platform) versus native terminal tools.

Designed to be used with a keyboard, you also won’t find (m)any right-click menus in Rio and to customise the app (e.g., theme, behaviour, keybindings, default directory, etc) you need to edit the configuration file in a text editor as there’s no in-app preferences dialog.

Thus, using Rio requires learning a (fair) few keyboard shortcuts to get the most from it. The full list of key bindings on the Rioterm website is worth checking out, but here are few handy ones to swot up on off-the-bat (for Ubuntu):

  • Shift and Ctrl and R – creates a right split
  • Shift and Ctrl and D – creates a bottom split
  • Ctrl and D – closes the focused split
  • Shift and Ctrl and T – opens a new tab
  • Shift and Ctrl and ] or [ – switches left/right tab
  • Ctrl and - or + keys – change font size

Is it possible to resize splits in Rio? Per the list of keyboard shortcuts, no — for now, anyway!

How to Install Rio on Ubuntu

The purpose of this app spotlight is not to convince you to switch wholesale from what already works for you, but make you aware of choices – if not for you directly, so you can recommend and share the knowledge on with others.

While raw CLI utility can be had from a TTY, extra bells and whistles are appreciated by many. And for those whose command-line heavy workloads may benefit from the WebGPU speed, Rio is worth checking out.

Rio is open source software available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Its cross-platform nature should make it appealing to developers who routinely move between different operating systems.

As Rio is on Flathub, it’s easy to install on a wide range of Linux distributions. Ubuntu users may prefer to download a DEB installer from the Rio GitHub. The DEB will not add an APT repository, so you will not receive automatic updates.

Have you tried Rio? Share your experience with it — or any of its rivals — down in the comments!

You're reading Rio is a Fast, WebGPU-Powered Terminal for Ubuntu, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

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Calibre 8.6.0 Delivers a Dramatic Database Speed Boost

Calibre, the dependable cross-platform e-book viewer, manager, converter and more continues to publish new update regularly, the latest arriving this week.

Anyone managing a well-thumbed libraries of e-books, comics, PDFs and other supported files will appreciate hearing that the Calibre 8.6 release improves the performance of restoring the database by “an order of magnitude”, per Calibre’s development team.

It does this by using SQLITE savepoints when restoring individual books, netting big gains. One contributor said it “brings the time to restore my 5.5k book database from over 5 hours to only 5 minutes” – which really is ‘an order of magnitude’ faster!

Coupled with the 30% faster opening of large EPUB files in the e-book viewer (a change added in the Calibre 8.3 release a couple of months back), it’s great to see Calibre’s contributors making such sizeable performance gains.

Other changes in Calibre 8.6.0 include:

  • Content server user preference adds checkbox for password changing
  • Tweaks gains option to show sort value for series in Tag browser
  • Default output format for Kindle is now AZW3 (previously MOBI)
  • Manage authors/items pages add ‘Search “not in”‘ & ‘Filter “not in'”
  • Misc news source improvements

Plus, the usual bug fix footnotes are included, several focused on resolving regressions earlier builds introduced like broken fading of background images in the ebook viewer, and quirks in viewing PDF files in Calibre on Windows.

The tag browser also once again enables searching for books by the first letter of a series, and ensures that Next/Previous buttons in the metadata editor paginate to what the next/previous item in the order when the dialog was opened, not the order after a change gets made.

Installing Calibre 8.6 on Ubuntu

CLI is the official - but not only - way to get Calibre on Linux
CLI distribution is the official way to install Calibre on Linux

Calibre is free, open source software available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Official installers for Windows and macOS can download installers for the latest release from the project website, while Linux users can get the new release in a few ones.

To install Calibre on Ubuntu using the official Linux binary package, run the following command (taken from the Calibre website) to download the Calibre installer script and move the binary it fetches to the relevant system location to easy launching.

sudo -v && wget -nv -O- https://download.calibre-ebook.com/linux-installer.sh | sudo sh /dev/stdin

On Ubuntu, it may be required to install the libxcb-package, depending on which packages have been added/removed since you installed Ubuntu.

Alternatively, go to the Calibre Github releases page and download the latest Linux release from there under the ‘assets’ heading. Extract the TXZ, enter the folder, and double-click to run. This won’t create an app launcher or shortcut, however.

For less fuss, a Calibre Flathub listing is available, albeit unverified and a little tardy in updating to the latest binary release (at the time I write this it’s still on v8.5.0).

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Customise and Move Notifications on GNOME with this Extension

You may have noticed that Ubuntu (rather, GNOME Shell) does not provide many ways to customise notifications out of the box. If you want to change where notifications appear, or how long they stay on screen, you seemingly can’t.

Well, actually you can — via GNOME Shell extensions1.

Now, the way notifications look and behave in Ubuntu works well enough for most. Notifications appear at the top of the screen, slap-bang in the middle, right under the Date menu in the top panel — a menu that is also a notification hub where un-actioned notifications live.

But, if you want more control over the look and position of desktop notifications, like move notifications to the right of the screen, or a way to filter notifications before they even appear, there’s a brand-new GNOME Shell extension that can do it.

Meet the

GNOME Shell Notification Configurator

The Notification Configurator settings screens showing various options.
Move, colour and control alerts

Notification Configurator is a relatively new GNOME Shell extension, developed by Artem Prokop. As it’s designed solely for customising notifications, and nothing else, it’s pretty comprehensive — with a few caveats.

While there have been various extensions to manage notifications in GNOME Shell over the years—some of those still work with the latest GNOME releases, but many don’t—having a new option that is focused on the particular task, is nonetheless welcome.

It supports things I’ve not seen in similar extension, too.

Artem’s Notification Configurator extensions supports GNOME 46, 47 and 48 (ergo Ubuntu 24.04 LTS to 25.04) and allows you to do the following:

  • Set notification position – top fill, left, centre, right (it can’t move to bottom)
  • Set notification rate limiting to not see alerts from the same app within a set period
  • Block or hide notifications from apps, or alerts containing specific words
  • Customise notification colour including only for individual apps
  • Enable or disable notifications in fullscreen mode

It also has a ‘test notification’ feature, which makes it easy to preview/check changes you make, as you make then. If making use of the text-based notification filtering or custom themes, the test toasts are especially useful.

The notification tester allows you to preview changes

More features may be added in future updates, but there are underlying limitations to what this (or any) extension can do to the native notification system.

Try it Out

If you fancy installing this extension, it’s available on the GNOME Extensions website.

It is, as I’m sure you’re bored of be saying, easier to install (and browse, search, configure, remove) GNOME Shell extensions on Ubuntu if you use the desktop Extensions Manager app, which available in the Ubuntu repos.

Get Notifications Configurator on GNOME Extensions

  1. GNOME cops flacks for “not offering many settings” but that’s not quite fair: it does, most are simply hidden. GNOME curates an experience, and every toggle and switch it puts in the GUI would mean another potential combination it has to test and support when, arguably, it doesn’t want to since it has an opinionated vision on how things should work. Permutations scale! Thus, when we choose to install extensions or apps or otherwise change a hidden setting ourself we do so knowing we take responsibility if something breaks. ↩

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Ubuntu 24.04 Users Get Major Kernel, GPU Driver Update

Laptop running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on a desk

Existing users of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS will receive an updated hardware enablement (HWE) stack this month, ahead of the release of Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS next month.

Canonical backports the newer Linux kernel and graphics drivers from its latest interim release to its currently long-term support (LTS) version periodically. This update for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS uses components from Ubuntu 25.04, released back in April.

This means the Ubuntu 24.04.3 HWE is composed of the gaming-friendly Linux 6.14 kernel from Ubuntu 25.04, plus the Mesa 25.0.x series graphics drivers, a major uplift over the 24.2.x series users received in the 24.04.2 HWE update.

Related Post
What’s New in Linux kernel 6.14?

The graphics stack includes other components tied to GPU support, including new DirectX headers, spirv (headers and tools, glslang, wayland-protocols (newer build to satisfy Mesa, not a plucky backport).

The spirv-tools update carries a bug-fix required by the Intel shader compiler, while spirv-headers and glslang are included as build dependencies.

For those with older AMD, Intel and NVIDIA GPUs, there’s an updated mesa-amber package, which continues to provide support for legacy graphics cards. While those drivers don’t see many changes, they often include the odd fix – better than nothing.

Of note, Ubuntu’s developer say: “libglapi library got merged in mesa-libgallium but it can’t be directly used by external dependencies, so instead we’ll have mesa-amber build libglapi-amber which provides libglapi-mesa”.

What’s New in Mesa 25.0?

The Ubuntu 24.04.3 HWE ships with Mesa 25.0.7, which is the latest bug fix update in the 25.0.x series and a notable uplift over the 24.2.8 release that noble currently provides.

Given the leap from 24.2 – 25.0, there are a myriad of improvements provided for Ubuntu gamers and users running the distro on newer hardware, including:

  • Vulkan 1.4 API
  • Initial support for RDNA4 GPUs
  • AV1 video decoding in the ANV Vulkan driver
  • Improved NVK driver
  • Issues with VA-API, H.264 video decoding resolved

Plus, Mesa 25.0.7 rolls together a raft of remedies for glitches, quirks and performance issues across a wide range of Linux games, including Steel Rats, Cyberpunk 2077, Octopath Traveller II, Fenyx Rising, Tales of Arise, Elden Ring and Hogwarts Legacy.

Coupled with the gaming performance improvements provided by Linux 6.14, which can boost frame rates by 50-150% in some Windows games running on Linux, the 24.04.3 HWE combo looks set to deliver a significant uplift for LTS gamers.

When will users get this HWE?

The Ubuntu 24.04.3 release date is set for August 7, 2025.

That is the date when a freshly-spun ISO with Linux kernel 6.14 and Mesa 25.0 preinstalled, alongside hundreds of bug fixes and software updates released since the last ISO was generated, is made available to download.

Existing Ubuntu 24.04 LTS users won’t have to wait until then.

The Mesa updates and the Linux 6.14 kernel backport are currently in the noble-proposed repository for testing. They will be released to all users once this process is complete as a software update, likely sometime in the next few weeks.

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Mozilla VPN Linux App is Now Available on Flathub

Mozilla VPN Client screenshots taken on Ubuntu Linux showing VPN on, off, multi-hop locations, and privacy features screens.

Linux users can now install the official Mozilla VPN client from Flathub, making access to its paid-for, privacy-minded service more readily accessible to Linux users.

The Mozilla VPN Flatpak is current in the process of verification (reminder: Linux Mint does hides unverified Flatpak apps in its Software Manager by default, so if you’re reading from there, keep that in mind) but is an official upload, maintained by Mozilla directly.

The Mozilla VPN client is open source software and although it is already available to install on Ubuntu-based distributions as a DEB package from the Mozilla APT repo, packages for other Linux distributions were not provided, with such users advised to ‘compile it from source’.

That makes the arrival of the Mozilla VPN client on Flathub, the most popular desktop1 Linux app store, all the more notable — the official Mozilla VPN extension for Firefox is Windows only, too.

Using an official desktop client is not strictly necessary to use most VPNs on Linux, but having one is certainly convenient (hence the positive reaction to the recent NordVPN Linux GUI addition).

Is Mozilla VPN worth using? I haven’t used it, and it is but one of many VPNs available to Linux users and beyond. I won’t be acting as a marketing arm of Mozilla to upsell you on it being the best VPN for Linux, but its features are as follows:

  • Connect up to 5 devices
  • More than 500 servers in 30+ countries
  • Fast network speeds even while gaming
  • No logging, tracking or sharing of network data
  • No bandwidth restrictions or throttling
  • Device protection, multi-hop routing and more

Visit the Mozilla website to sign up for or otherwise learn more about Mozilla VPN. There’s only one “plan” available, costing from $9.99 a month or, for those willing to pay upfront for a year’s access, from $4.99 a month (offer price; will go up).

If you’re an existing subscriber and want to install the Flatpak build, you can install it through your preferred GUI or via the CLI (assuming you’ve setup it up):

flatpak install flathub org.mozilla.vpn

Once installed, launch the app, proceed to login, and configure things as you need.

Get Mozilla VPN on Flathub

  1. In terms of breadth of software and use across different desktop Linux distributions. Arguably, the Snap Store has to most widely used on account of 1) Ubuntu’s install base, 2) preinstalling snaps (which update automatically), and 3) Ubuntu’s IoT footprint that relies on snaps heavily. ↩

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