At one time, Linux dock apps were a plentiful species, with innovative ‘panel painters’ like GNOME Do/Docky to unashamed bling-kings AWN, DockBarX and Cairo Dock. Yet it was the modest Plank which stayed the course and outlived them. Thing is, the Plank dock hasn’t seen any major development effort in years, and though it still works, there’s scope for some modern improvement, surely? One developer thinks so, and they’ve decided to do something about it. Enter, Plank Reloaded. Plank Reloaded: Plank Fork Plank Reloaded is a new fork of the original Plank Linux dock, albeit with a twist: it’s focused […]
The KeepassXC snap package now “just works” with web browsers like Firefox, as the latest update gains support for native messaging through secure desktop portals. KeePassXC is a cross-platform, open-source password manager billed as a ‘community-driven port of the Windows application ‘Keepass Password Safe'”. It’s available on Linux (including CLI) and a snap package has been available since 2017. Yet, until now users who installed the KeePassXC snap app to make use of browser integration (e.g., auto-fill usernames and passwords on websites they visit, or saving credentials for new accounts they create back to KeePassXC) haven’t been able to easily. […]
A set of four cool new window opening and closing animations got added to gaudy GNOME Shell extension Burn My Windows this weekend. A veritable Linux eye-candy essential, Burn My Windows makes it easy to apply a variety of visual effects to Ubuntu when opening and/or closing app windows, dialogs, and modals. Its sole purpose is to make using Linux a bit more entertaining. Burn My Windows v45 is the latest update. It adds support for the upcoming GNOME 48 release (which will ship in Ubuntu 25.04 this April), fine-tunes effect filtering in Preferences, and improves its Incinerate effect with […]
A new alpha release of System76’s emergent Rust-based COSMIC Desktop environment is out with a clutch of important improvements, bug fixes, and new features in tow. Although COSMIC is very much a work-in-progress (i.e., unfinished, feature incomplete, and lacking polish) some intrepid folks already use it as their daily driver —though most folks eager to sample it will get a better impression from the upcoming COSMIC beta. Still, these monthly(ish) alpha milestones provide a an easy way to peer through the portal to see how the COSMIC desktop UI, UX, and burgeoning app ecosystem is shaping up. Below, I recap […]
The Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS release is now available to download, albeit one week later than initially planned. Serving as the second point release in the current Ubuntu 24.04 LTS series, Ubuntu 24.04.2 compacts the slew of security, bug, and software updates pushed out to the Noble Numbat since the last point release ISO was spun in August 2024. Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS also brings an updated hardware enablement stack (HWE). This is composed of a newer Linux kernel and updated graphics drivers—Linux 6.11 and Mesa 24.2.8 respectively—back-ported from Ubuntu 24.10. Why do point releases exist? Ubuntu LTS versions are supported for a […]
Mozilla Corporation’s president, Mark Surman, today announced plans to tackle what he says are ‘major headwinds’ facing the company’s ability to grow, make money, and remain relevant. “Mozilla’s impact and survival depend on us simultaneously strengthening Firefox AND finding new sources of revenue AND manifesting our mission in fresh ways,” says Surman. To do this, Mozilla plans—no groaning—to ‘diversify’ its efforts. How? It will continue to invest in privacy-respecting advertising; fund, develop and push open-source AI features1 in order to retain ‘product relevance’; and will go all-out on novel new fundraising initiatives to er, get us all to chip in […]
A new version of the Mesa graphics library has been released. Mesa 25.0 features Vulkan 1.4 support, which the team bill as the ‘flashiest addition’ in this new development release as it spans Anv (Intel), Asahi (Apple), Lavapipe (software), NVK (NVIDIA), PanVK (Mali), RADV (AMD), and Turnip (Qualcomm). The OpenGL 4.6 API also sees implementation in Mesa 25.0 though the version reported will depend on the hardware driver in use since not all drivers support all features OpenGL 4.6 requires. AMD RDNA4 graphics sees initial support in the RadeonSI Gallium3D (OpenGL) and RADV (Vulkan) drivers is present, the former worked […]
A new version of the Power Profiles Daemon (PPD) was uploaded to the Plucky archives today, and should soon make its way out to Ubuntu 25.04 daily builds —but what’s changed? The power-profiles-daemon is what those of who run Ubuntu (or Linux Mint 22.1, which finally added PPD) interact with when we switch power mode on the fly, be it using a GUI button, setting, or toggle, or the command line. The latest 0.30 release adds a couple of notable changes, though nothing as substantive (to end-users) as the various AMD-targeted tune-ups the previous release delivered. Still, improvements are improvements. Some […]
This week sees the (belated) release of Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS, the first point release update in the noble series to bring an updated hardware enablement (HWE) stack with it. Ubuntu’s HWE backports newer1 Linux kernel and Mesa GPU drivers to LTS users to ensure the latest LTS release works with the latest hardware. Soon, HWE updates may bundle a wider range of Intel graphics driver updates. Canonical engineer Shane McKee this week put forward a proposal to expand Ubuntu HWE updates to loop in a broader set of graphics driver packages specifically supporting Intel hardware in LTS releases2. The move […]
When you log in to the Ubuntu 24.10 desktop an audio clip greets you —a lengthy audio clip slowly building to a plinky-plonky crescendo that you (and those around you) might tire of having to listen to! You can turn the Ubuntu startup sound off, or swap it for an audio clip more to your taste/amusement. For a sizeable part of Ubuntu’s early years musical startup and login sounds were a staple feature. The distro decided to disable them in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS following feedback that, actually, they can be rather annoying or even embarrassing at times! 12 years later, […]
A new version of Tiling Shell, the flexible window snapping assistant for GNOME Shell, is available. Tiling Shell v16.2 now surfaces nifty ‘Window Suggestions’, a feature introduced in last month’s v16.0 release, when using edge tiling. Edge Tiling (as no doubt you well know) is triggered by dragging a window to the sides of the screen. Ubuntu’s “Enhanced Tiling” feature shows a Tiling Popup when window snapping to make it faster to tile other open apps to the remaining tile spaces without needing to manually drag them to screen edges. Window Suggestions is the same idea, but arguably more useful: […]
Ever looked at Ubuntu’s default icon theme Yaru and found yourself thinking: “Eh, some of those icons look too big”? —No, can’t say I had either! But it turns out some of Yaru’s icons are marginally oversized. Yaru uses 4 different shapes across its app, folder and mimetype (file) icons, with the shape used based on what works best for whatever ‘design motif’ fits. (e.g., a vertical rectangle is used for document file icons as it is more analogous to a sheet of paper). The shapes are: Of the 4 shapes the most common in Yaru is the ‘square’ (with […]
If you were expecting Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS to drop February 13, I come bearing some a punch of awk news: the release has been delayed. Canonical’s Utkarsh Gupta reports that an ‘unfortunate incident’ resulting in some of the newly spun Ubuntu 24.04.2 images (for flavours) being built without the new HWE kernel on board (which is Linux 6.11, for those unaware). Now, including a new kernel version on the ISO is kind of the whole point of the second Ubuntu point release. It has to be there so that the latest long-term support release can boot on and support the […]
GNOME rolled out a huge revamp to its official website today, and I have to say: it’s a solid improvement over the old one. The official GNOME website has an important role, serving as both showcase and springboard for those looking to learn more about the desktop environment, the app ecosystem, developer documentation, or how to get involved and support the project. Arranging, presenting, and meeting all of those needs on a single landing page—and doing it in an engaging, encouraging way? Difficult to pull off—but GNOME has. The new design looks flashy and modern. It’s more spacious and vibrant, […]
A new version of the slick Clapper media player is out with several neat improvements Not newly new, I should say. I hadn’t run a flatpak update in Ubuntu I an age so I only jus noticed an update pending for this nifty little media player. But I figured I’d write about it since it’s been around 10 months since its last major release (save a bug fix release last summer). So what’s new? Well, Clapper 0.8.0 intros a new libpeas-based plugin system in its underlying Clapper library (which other apps can make use of to playback media, as Mastodon client […]
A new version of the KDE Plasma desktop environment is out and, as you’d expect, the update is packed with new features, UI tweaks, and performance boosts. KDE Plasma 6.3 is the fourth major update in the KDE Plasma 6.x series and it also marks the one-year anniversary of the KDE Plasma 6.0 debut – something KDE notes in its announcement: One year on, with the teething problems a major new release inevitably brings firmly behind us, Plasma’s developers have worked on fine-tuning, squashing bugs and adding features to Plasma 6 — turning it into the best desktop environment for […]
A new version of ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors, a free, open-source office suite for Windows, macOS, and Linux, is now available to download. ONLYOFFICE 8.3 brings a bunch of new features and nimble enhancements spread throughout the full suite, which is composed of word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, form, and PDF editing apps. Such as? Well, the headline feature is the ability to open and work with Apple iWork documents (.pages, .numbers, .key) and Hancom Office files (.hwp, .hwpx) . Opening these documents will convert them to OOXML to support editing. It’s not possible to edit the native files themselves, nor export/save edits back […]
Finding yourself annoyed at those ‘window is ready’ notifications which pop-up when you open some apps in GNOME Shell on Ubuntu? If so, you can disable them by installing a GNOME Shell extension. Now, notifications are helpful—heck, vital when they inform, alert, or indicate that something requires our immediate attention or actioning. But “app is ready” notifications? I don’t find them anything other than obvious. I’m not amnesic; I know the app is ready – I just opened it! They aren’t predictable either. Some apps show them, others don’t. It depends on the app’s metadata, how fast app initialisation is (you’ll see them more […]
A new version of Ghostty emerged this week and in this post I run-through the key changes. For those unfamiliar with it, Ghostty is an open-source terminal emulator written in Zig. It offers a “fast, feature-rich, and native” experience — doesn’t claim to be faster, more featured, or go deeper than other native terminals, just offer a competitive combo of the three. Given it does pretty much everything other terminal emulators do, fans faithful to more established terminal emulators won’t find Ghostty‘s presence spooks ’em into switching. It’s a passion project there to be used (or not) depending on need, taste, […]
LibreOffice 25.2 has been released, this year’s first major update to the leading open-source office software for Windows, macOS, and Linux. As you’d expect, the update delivers a sizeable set of changes spread throughout the productivity suite, including notable UI changes, accessibility improvements, and more important interoperability buffs to support cross-suite workflows. It’s important to remember that open-source software like LibreOffice doesn’t appear out of thin air; it’s made by humans, many unpaid, others paid to work on specific parts only. We all have personal wish-lists of features and changes we want our favourite open-source apps to add, but we […]
