Framework make the most exciting laptops around —I don’t own one to be able to say they’re good, but the modular components, and upgradeable and repairable ethos is unlike anything else. As news earlier this year that owners would be able to swap their Intel-based mainboard for a RISC-V mainboard underscores. Well, there’s now an update on that front. DeepComputing (who make the Ubuntu-powered DC-ROMA II laptop & Pad II tablet) has launched an early access program for its DC-ROMA RISC-V Mainboard for the Framework Laptop 13. The mainboard is also compatible with the Framework and Cooler Master Case (which […]
Back in the spring, VMware did something unexpected: it made its desktop hypervisor software free to download and use on Windows, macOS, and Linux. No trial period, no in-app purchases, no feature limitations; the full version of VMware Workstation Pro (Windows, Linux) and Fusion Pro (macOS) for free. The “catch” was that it was only free for personal use. Businesses, educators, freelancers, and developers who planned to use the software for so-called ‘commercial’ purposes were asked to be honest and pay for a license. Now, that’s no longer needed. Why is VMware Workstation Pro Now Free? Both VMware Workstation Pro […]
MPRIS is something most of us associate with music apps and movie players, but a new app makes use of this freedesktop standard for something less entertaining: timers. Yes, timers. Timing your pizza in the oven, setting a deadline for a task, dedicating time to a hobby, or obsessively counting down to a date (figurative or romantic), MPRIS Timer does it just as well as anything else – with a twist: it shows your timer using MPRIS. MPRIS stands for ‘Media Player Remote Interfacing Specification’. It is a Freedesktop standard that gives app makers an accessible, consistent API to target […]
For a pinch more personalisation of Ubuntu 24.10 check out Auto Accent Colour, a new GNOME Shell extension that changes the system accent colour based on your current desktop wallpaper. Accent colours are a headline feature in GNOME 47, although not new to Ubuntu users since Ubuntu added its own approach to accent colours back in 2022. Now aligned with upstream, this new GNOME Shell extension is going to interest Ubuntu users who don’t wan the hassle of handpicking an accent colour to suit their wallpaper – instead, letting their wallpaper pick the accent colour! Auto Accent Colour GNOME Extension […]
Calibre ebook manager, converter, and reader is out with a new update, and it adds an enticing sounding new feature. For a while now Calibre has offered a ‘read aloud’ feature that does exactly what you think it does: a computer voice reads the text of an ePUB book. Calibre 7.21 intros a “new tool to create an audio overlay in EPUB files for all text using the Read aloud facility”. This, it says, enables readers to listen with sentence tracking, and assign different voices to different parts of the book’s text. Interestingly, Calibre say using the new tool can […]
GNOME 47 ‘Denver’ proved a decent update to the GNOME desktop, delivering a hearty dose of new features, UI refinements, and app improvements. As those of you using Ubuntu 24.10 are no-doubt enjoying. But as one release goes out, work on the next begins… GNOME 48: Release Schedule GNOME 48 ‘Bengaluru‘ (named after the host city of the GNOME Asia Summit taking place in December) is scheduled for release on March 19, 2025. And these are the dates for important development milestones along the way, offering opportunity to implement, add, and integrate changes, the necessary “freeze” to solidify the desired […]
Raspberry Pi has unveiled another low-price own-brand product, this time a 4-port USB 3.0 hub compatible with most of its single-board computers. In the past few months we’ve seen the company expand its range of official accessories and add-ons to encompass everything from AI HATs to SD cards and SSDs guaranteed to contain the right tech to ensure Pi owners get the best possible performance. Most popular Pi models include a number of on-board USB ports, some folks need or want more, which is why the company is launching an official Raspberry Pi USB 3 Hub. Cheekily, it pitches this as […]
It’s been a while since the gorgeous (if admittedly gimmicky) Burn My Windows GNOME Shell extension added a new effect to appease fans of over-the-top window closing and opening animations. I.e., folks like moi ;3 But the latest release, Burn My Windows v44, now rolling out through the GNOME Extensions website, dutifully delivers one – and a rather dreamy one at that! Called Focus, the new effect is a subtle, more considered offering compared to other animations available in the app. It combines a blur and fade effect on close (or open), as you may glimpse in the GIF embedded […]
Sweeping staffing cuts have fallen at The Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit arm of Mozilla tasked with advocating for web standards, internet privacy, and open-source. A huge 30% reduction in head count at the foundation cleaves away the entirety of the dedicated advocacy division, according to an internal memo seen by TechCrunch (and since confirmed to them and other press outlets by Mozilla). “The Mozilla Foundation is reorganizing teams to increase agility and impact as we accelerate our work to ensure a more open and equitable technical future for us all,” Brandon Borrman, vice president of communications at Mozilla is quoted […]
If it feels like the next major release of open source image editor The GIMP has been in the works forever, know that anticipation for its arrival has been building longer still – yet the wait will soon be over. Today, a GIMP 3.0 release candidate was tagged for release. This gives creatives eager to see what new features Wilber has in store for them the opportunity to find out first-hand, with fewer bugs and quirks getting in their way than development and beta builds. This post isn’t going to provide a blow-by-blow rundown of the best new features in […]
Raspberry Pi has announced a new version of its 7-inch ‘Touch Display’ accessory. And given that the previous model was announced 9 years ago, some kind of update was arguably due for this device. The Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 runs at a higher-resolution display than its predecessor, and uses a slimmer form factor now that the display driver board is integrated into the enclosure itself, streamlining the end setup. Yet despite those upgrades, the price point hasn’t changed: it still costs $60/£56 No details on the brightness, contrast, etc for the new model, and it’s notably described as offering […]
Something to file under “won’t please many Linux users, but is nonetheless a good thing™ for choice”, Apple Maps on the web now works on Linux. Apple launched a web-based version of Apple Maps in beta in July, bringing its mapping service to non-Apple platforms for the very first time (the app comes preinstalled on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS). In an ideal world, any web-based service should work everywhere. But in the less-than-ideal world we actually live in, it often doesn’t. Initially, ‘Apple Maps on web’ (as Cupertino is calling it) only worked in Safari on macOS and iOS, and […]
Linux Mint has announced it’s adding a native Night Light feature to the Cinnamon desktop. Earlier versions of Linux Mint included a third-party app called Redshift to provide similar ‘blue light’ filtering functionality. However, when the Mozilla location service shut down earlier this year the geo-location capabilities powering Redshift (which allowed the feature to automatically start at sunset for a user’s location) stopped working. Linux Mint’s developers felt asking its users to work-around the breakage by entering their location’s longitude and latitude coordinates manually in the app was a tough ask given its a distro focused on and famed for […]
System76’s COSMIC desktop environment continues to take shape, with a third alpha snapshot now available for testing. The first alpha brought the core essentials, the second alpha delivered stack of new features, and this third alpha fills in gaps, fixes issues, and finesses the user experience further. Of note, COSMIC now lets you set a custom system font (if Fira Sans isn’t your fave), and boosts accessibility with initial support for the Orca screen reader, albeit not in native COSMIC apps just yet – accessibility is a priority, so “soon” hopefully. Other things I noticed: COSMIC Files gains a hover […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
