Canonical and Intel have announced they’re making it easier for Ubuntu users to get cutting-edge drivers for Intel’s newest discrete GPUs. The effort brings “ray tracing and improved machine learning performance” for Intel Arc B580 and B570 “Battlemage” discrete GPUs to users on Ubuntu 24.10, building on that releases’ preexisting support for Intel Core Ultra Xe2 iGPUs. “For the past decade, Ubuntu has been one of the first distributions to enable the latest Intel architectures. Building upon this strong collaboration, Intel and Canonical are excited to announce the availability of an Ubuntu graphics preview for [24.10]”, they say. Users with […]
A sizeable update to the free, open-source video editor Kdenlive is now available to download. Kdenlive 24.12 arrives stuffed like a seasonal bird with bug fixes, performance tweaks, and usability enhancements. Additionally, the editor’s developers have removed support for Qt5 so that, as of this release, it is entirely Qt6. Subtitling gets a big boost with the arrival of Advanced SubStation Alpha (ASS) subtitle support. The key benefit of these subtitles (I’ll swerve calling them ASS) is greater customisation, including things like text strokes, drop shadows, margins, and even effects like masking. A new Subtitle Manager makes editing, ordering, and […]
Mozilla’s overall revenue saw a sizeable boost in 2023, despite a drop in income from its lucrative search engine deals. According to its latest financial report, Mozilla’s revenue in 2023 hit ~$653 million (US), up from ~$593 million in 2022. The cause of the increase? Not any flashy new products, services, or deals – just ol’ fashioned interest and dividends (~$47 million) and returns on its investments (~$24 million). In fact, Mozilla’s income from search engine deals actually fell by ~$15 million in 2023. Revenue from ads, sponsored links, and its own product subscriptions (like Pocket) also dipped by ~$9 […]
Broadcom has released updates for VMware Workstation Pro for Windows and Linux, the first to arrive since the software became entirely free to use. Earlier this year, Broadcom made VMware Workstation Pro and its Mac equivalent Fusion Pro free for personal usage, and later for commercial usage. Anyone can download and install VMware’s desktop virtualisation software to use for whatever they want. — Assuming they have the patience to wade through rerouting links, portals, checkboxes, and dense documentation sites to locate the actual download. A blog post from a VMware team member walks through the 11 step (!) process. As […]
A paint splatter, super-tired face, and a harp are among new emoji users of Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04 LTS will be able to see and type after installing an update to the Noto Color Emoji font. Ubuntu, which has shipped the font by default since 2017, is preparing to release an updated version containing the 8 new emoji added as part of the Unicode 16.0 standard. Unicode 16.0 went live in September, introducing a total of 5,185 new characters, including 7 new emoji code points and 1 new emoji sequence to create the official flag of the Island of Sark. The new […]
A new version of Tuba, the open-source Mastodon client for Linux desktops, is out – and it’s a whopper! Tuba 0.9.0 delivers a wide array of new features, enhancements, and general finesse touching nearly every aspect of the client’s top-tier Fediverse experience. Chief among the highlights for is the addition of support for scheduled and draft posts. Posts can be scheduled from the composer, and a list of scheduled (not yet shared) posts can be accessed from a new sidebar entry, where scheduled posts and be edited/amended. With no official draft posts API to use, Tuba instead uses scheduled posts […]
Christmas has arrived early for fans of the Xfce desktop environment, with the release of a major new version. Two years in development, Xfce 4.20 serves as the latest stable release of the revered lightweight desktop environment. New features, visual changes, and a sizeable set of foundational prep work furthering support for Wayland are included. Add in a slate of bug fixes, code cleanups, and performance tweaks, and Xfce 4.20 is a solid upgrade over the Xfce 4.18 release from 2022 – not revolutionary, but that’s not really Xfce’s USP: familiarity, reliability, and sticking with what works is. Note: some of the […]
A new version of Miracle-wm, a Mir-based tiling window manager, is out. Miracle-wm 0.4 continues to make inroads in fleshing out its support for i3 IPC, vital work needed to make sure popular tools like waybar, nwg-shell, etc work well as well here as they do in Sway, i3, hyprland, et al. Workspace improvements aplenty make it in, also. Workspaces can be assigned names and those names relayed to shell components, while new commands make it easier for users to change workspaces and/or move containers to workspaces. And there’s been a big focus on addressing ‘issues around stability and performance’ […]
A beta version of Linux Mint 22.1 “Xia” is now officially available to download, ahead of an anticipated stable release at the end of December. Linux Mint 22.1 is an in-series update to Linux Mint 22, released earlier back in July. As such, it continues to be based on Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS and powered by the Linux 6.8 kernel (although new kernel versions are coming as part of Ubuntu’s HWE, which Mint 22.x now tracks by default). But there are substantive changes elsewhere, not least to the default Cinnamon desktop environment, underlying package management tools, and burgeoning compatibility with the […]
macOS 15.2 is rolling out today (December 11), and my tech feeds are hyped with its highlights. Among the (non-AI) changes I spotted: the option to display weather info in the menu bar – native, built-in, ready to go. Seeing a “news peg” (as they’re called), I figured I’d use that as motivation to get around to writing about Advanced Weather Companion. It’s yet-another GNOME Shell weather extension to display temperature and current conditions in the top bar. Advanced Weather Companion doesn’t technically do anything existing weather add-ons don’t, it just surfaces information in a slightly different way. If you […]
Fresh off of adding support for automatic window snapping, the developers behind GNOME Shell’s most configurable and feature-packed window tiling extension are back with another update. Tiling Shell v15.1 introduces support for smart border radius. This is one a small sounding feature but it has a big impact on the way borders (which are an optional feature) are drawn around focused application windows, either in tiled mode or when free-floating on he desktop: Domenico Ferraro, the chief developer of the extension, explains the impetus in tackling this: “In GNOME, different windows may have different border radius. Drawing a border around […]
RPCS3 is an open-source emulator (and debugger) for the Sony PlayStation 3, making it possible for users to play and debug PlayStation 3 games on non-PS3 hardware, like Intel/AMD desktop PCs and laptops running Windows, macOS, or Linux. Now, RPCS3 is available for the Raspberry Pi 5 too. A major new version of of RPCS3 was released this week adding native ARM64 support for Linux, macOS (Apple Silicon) (although not ready yet) Windows too. As no architecture ‘translation’ tools are involved, gaming performance is better. “How far can we challenge the limits of emulating the console known for being the […]
Raspberry Pi today announced the Raspberry Pi 500, an updated version of its keyboard PC, this one powered by the guts of the Raspberry Pi 5. And it’s also announced a device many won’t have expected: an official monitor! Throughout 2024, Raspberry Pi has announced 20+ new and updated products, ranging from hardware add-ons like a AI accelerator and USB hub, to official branded SD cards and SSDs, to updated devices like the new Compute Module 5 and Pico 2 – plus more! It’s crazy to think there anything left for them to announce. Yet rumour has it the company […]
For high-quality screen recording and streaming from the desktop nothing comes close to matching the power and versatility of cross-platform and open-source OBS Studio – this weekend a new version went live. What’s new in OBS Studio 31.0? A slate of new features and capabilities, plus a bunch of bug fixes, performance tune-ups. Among them, the long-required addition of preview scrollbars. These make it easier to move items around the preview needing to hold the space bar and click, while new preview zoom/scale info lets users see if/when the viewpoint is zoomed in. Elsewhere, OBS Studio 31.0 adds a new […]
Last month’s Linux 6.12 kernel was a big update filled with new features, hardware support, and performance tune-ups. Now, it’s just gotten even sweeter: it’s an LTS! Those au fait with kernel development won’t be surprised by this news since, typically, the final stable Linux kernel release of the year becomes an LTS. But nothing is ever official until it’s official — and now it’s official! Kernel dev Greg Kroah-Hartman confirmed Linux 6.12’s LTS status in a message on the Linux Kernel mailing list (LKML) about an older kernel version, stating his sufficiently succinct style: Anyway, please move off to […]
Development on COSMIC, a new open-source desktop environment created by developers a Linux-based hardware company System76, continues at pace, with a 4th alpha now available. System76 said new alpha releases of the COSMIC DE would roughly appear once a month (give or take), a cadence that enables them flesh out the features planned for its first stable release and get feedback from users, developers, and distribution packagers. Alongside the new alpha is a freshly-spun ISO of Pop!_OS 24.04 (Alpha), making it easy to check out the changes for yourself on a spare partition, USB drive, or virtual machine. But the […]
Mozilla has finally unwrapped its new branding, describing the first refresh to its logo in over a decade as not merely ‘a facelift’ but an effort to lay foundations for the company’s next 25 years. If you read this blog regularly — thank you! — you know what the Mozilla’s new branding looks like because I first reported on it back in August. And then again in October when a reader tipped me to the design agency Mozilla had contracted to undertake the work and I shared some of the cool animated mascot art created for it. Personally, I love […]
Tab groups are a nifty productivity feature already available in web browsers like Google Chrome and Vivaldi — now they’re coming to Mozilla Firefox. Except, that isn’t news, is it? Mozilla announced a series of major new features coming to Firefox in the next 12 months, including long-requested features such as native profile management, an option for vertical tabs, and a more intuitive URL bar search experience, and tab grouping. However, Firefox’s new tab groups feature is not yet enabled out-of-the-box in the latest stable builds of the browser, nor is it offered easily activated through Firefox Labs (as other […]
A new crowdfunding project aims to revive the (oft-derided) MacBook Pro Touch Bar, this time as a standalone device that work with Windows, macOS and, potentially, Linux too. It’s called Flexbar, and it’s currently seeking cash through Kickstarter. Now, I don’t like writing about crowdfunding projects generally. If I do, they need to offer something novel, or have a track record of delivering. Flexbar is novel, but the campaign has red flags that make me doubtful it will ever exist – more on that in a mo. If you don’t know your Apple from your Orange Pis, the Touch Bar was […]
A new version of the Cinnamon desktop environment has been tagged for release – a sure-fire sign that the Linux Mint 22.1 beta is on the way! As the flagship desktop of Linux Mint, Cinnamon 6.4 will come preinstalled in Linux Mint 22.1 when it’s released at the end of December (though should beta testing reveal issues the date could slip into early 2025). But this post isn’t about Linux Mint 22.1, but Cinnamon. Linux Mint may develop, maintain, and cheerlead the desktop but it can installed on nearly every Linux distribution out there, including Ubuntu (which also has an […]
