Desktop email client Thunderbird announced a move to monthly releases by default earlier this year, allowing new users to benefit from new features, sooner – as the new Thunderbird 136.0 release makes evident! Thunderbird 136.0 sees messages auto-adapt to dark mode (and adds a quick toggle to control this in the header) — no more searing-white e-mail shocks in dark rooms! Also added is a new Appearance setting to control message threading and sorting order globally. This is great if you always want, say, new messages at the bottom in all your configured folders. Some notable fixes include ensuring that addresses […]
Is Huawei planning to ship Linux on its upcoming MateBook laptops instead of HarmonyOS NEXT? A fresh leak out of China this week suggests so. Huawei is no stranger to selling laptops with Linux. Various models in its MateBook 13, 14, 15, and MateBook X Pro lines have been sold in both Windows and Linux configurations, with the latter typically exclusive to China and reloaded with Debian-based Deepin. The—somewhat contentious—company has previously said all PCs released in 2025 would run the newer home-grown, closed-source HarmonyOS NEXT (viewed as an effort to wean reliance off of western-led tech companies, solidify control, […]
Earlier this year Ubuntu announced plans to replace document viewer app Evince with Papers, a modern GTK4/libadwaita fork1 of the former, in Ubuntu 25.04—today, the swap was made official. Papers is a fork of Evince that is actively maintained and makes use of newer technologies (GTK4, THIS), that are already present in Ubuntu. Upstream, GNOME 48 (out in March) opts to keep Evince as a core app but GNOME 49 is expected to switch to Papers. Ubuntu feels no reason to wait. Dabbled with daily builds of the Plucky Puffin prior to now? You might have noticed Papers isn’t present […]
The new Mozilla Firefox 136 release delivers a number of notable new features—features Mozilla may be hoping help it re-earn some goodwill from users following last week’s privacy palaver. Last month’s Firefox 135 release rolled out a refreshed tab page to more users, added in-page translations from Simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, enforced certificate transparency, and ditched the ‘Do Not Track’ setting. This month sees a long-anticipated features make their stable release debut: vertical tabs! Right-click an empty space in the tab bar, select Turn on Vertical Tabs from the context menu and—bam!—they appear instantly as a a vertical strip of icons on the left-hand […]
The Cinnamon desktop app menu is being redesigned with a cleaner layout, modern look , and usability improvements ahead of the next Linux Mint release.
Skype, one of the best-known video chat/calling apps, is shutting down forever on May 5, Microsoft has announced today. Nothing gold can stay, and neither can VoIP services shorn their cultural zeitgeist it seems. Replacing Skype will be a free version of Microsoft Teams. Active Skype users can log in to the Microsoft Teams app and instantly see their Skype message history, group chats, and contacts without needing to create a(nother) account. Teams will no support ‘telephony’, i.e., Skype’s one remaining USP, after the transition period, meaning you won’t be able to make domestic or international calls to real numbers […]
February proved a bumper month for Linux software updates, seeing big release of productivity suites LibreOffice and ONLYOFFICE and, plus a crop of smaller app updates which didn’t merit a full-length article on this blog. Rather than skip over those updates entirely, I thought I’d resurrect my Linux Release Roundup thread1 to curate a monthly (perhaps twice-monthly, if there’s a lot) run-through of smaller software updates I think would still be of most interest to regular readers. For those of us on fixed-release Linux distribution like Ubuntu, such updates may fix a finicky flaw, improve integration, or add a niche […]
Hot off the back of its recent leadership rejig, Mozilla has announced users of Firefox will soon be subject to a ‘Terms of Use’ policy — a first for the iconic open source web browser. “Although we’ve historically relied on our open source license for Firefox and public commitments to you, we are building in a much different technology landscape today. We want to make these commitments abundantly clear and accessible,” say Mozilla. This official Terms of Use will, Mozilla argues, offer users ‘more transparency’ over their ‘rights and permissions’ as they use Firefox to browse the information superhighway1 — […]
The application picker (aka app grid) in GNOME Shell is pretty perfect as it comes, showing launchers for installed apps plus the ability to rearrange them using drag and drop and create custom folders to group apps together. Some folks prefer a little more order. I’ve spotlighted a few Ubuntu app grid tweaks over the years, from one that puts app shortcuts in alphabetical order to ones which restores ‘missing’ shortcuts for apps pinned to the Ubuntu Dock. And now a new app grid helper has appeared – one sure to appeal to those with a preference for keeping things […]
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: […]
