A new beta release of open source graphics editing app Pinta is available for testing. Pinta 3.0 (beta) gives fans of this cross-platform raster image editor, which is directly inspired by the iconic Paint.NET Windows app, an early opportunity to try out the changes it brings — and there’s a fair few! The most impactful change in Pinta 3.0 is the most obvious one: it’s revamped UI. Newly ported to GTK4 and libadwaita, Pinta 3.0 swaps a traditional window frame and text-based menu bar for a button-based header bar. Long-time users may might themselves taking a bit of time to […]
Did you ever own (or covet) one of those e-ink Pebble smartwatches of yore? Well, good news if you did: Google today open-sourced the PebbleOS operating system it used (minus proprietary bits) having acquired Pebble’s assets when buying Fitbit in 2021 (and Fitbit bought Pebble in 2016, but more on that in a mo’.) More open source code in the world is good news, and it means anyone can reuse PebbleOS to build their own smartwatches, or learn from perusing the code how the former Pebble team tackled building a solid real-time OS on such limited hardware. What made Google […]
A new version of the Varia download manager was released at the weekend – an update described by its developers as probably the “biggest since the first release”. I’ve written about Varia before and, as I said then, I appreciate that the idea of using a dedicated download manager app on the desktop isn’t as obvious today as it was a decade ago. Most people have fast internet connections, meaning even large downloads complete in seconds, and the built-in download tools in web-browsers are sufficient. Plus, we all tend to use streaming media services these days thus negating the need […]
Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS is scheduled for release on February 13th – in time for Valentines Day, aww. Canonical’s Florent Jacquet shares the date on the Ubuntu Developer mailing list today along with a note to developers to be mindful of their package uploads to noble in the coming weeks. As a result, if you’re using the latest long-term support release you may notice a slightly drop-off in the number of non-essential updates Software Updater bugs you to install between now and February 13. This allow devs to create a snapshot and test it properly. Ubuntu point releases rarely deliver new […]
Vivaldi web browser has just released its first major update of the year – a corker it is, too! Fans of the Chromium-based browser—though Vivaldi Technologies doesn’t appear to be part of the new Linux Foundation-led Supporters of Chromium Browsers project—will discover a bunch of improvements to the Dashboard feature Vivaldi 7.0 delivered. A new weather widget can be added to see current conditions and hourly and weekly weather forecasts for custom locations, plus the ability to set a preferred temperate, precipitation and wind speed unit (celsius, mm, and mph ftw). Keeping things scandi-cool, the Norway-based browser makes use of […]
I won’t lie: it’s easy to add or remove startup apps, commands, and scripts in Ubuntu. Just open the Startup Applications tool, click ‘Add’, and away you go. But while Ubuntu’s utility is adequate, it’s not as user-friendly as similar tools available elsewhere. Sure, Startup Applications is equipped with the critical customisation fields a user will need to curate a set of software/services to start at login — SSH agent, VPN app, password manager, backup script, resolution tweaks, and so on — but it’s rather rote. Take the way you add an app to start at login: Ubuntu’s Startup Applications […]
VirtualBox 7.1.6 is out, the third maintenance release to the VirtualBox 7.1 stable series first released in September of last year. Headline offering in this update is initial support for the recently released Linux kernel 6.13 in Linux Guest Additions, plus improved support for the Linux 6.4 kernel to fix graphics freezing when using VBoxVGA adapter, and Linux 6.12 fixes for vboxvideo. Linux guest screens no longer flicker when using VMSVGA graphics adapters, Windows 11 24H2 guests no longer throw BSODs, and entering a custom proxy server in a guest OS’ settings will now take effect, which some will be […]
A fresh stable release of Wine — the open-source compatibility layer that makes it possible to run Windows apps and games on Linux and macOS — has been uncorked. More than 6,000 thousand changes were distilled in Wine 10.0, changes collected, collated, and curated over the past 12 months of Wine 9.x development releases. For those who’ve supped the dev cycle builds, the bulk of what’s new in Wine 10.0 will be familiar. Wine is not the ‘everyday essential’ it was in years past. Back then, web-based services weren’t as capable, so folks were wedded to specific pieces of Windows software, […]
Ubuntu is mulling a switch to Matrix from IRC to handle real-time development discussion. Canonical’s Robie Basak has begun a discussion on the Ubuntu Developer Mailing list regarding a potential switch, in an effort to find consensus for or against such a move. But he urges devs in favour not to abandon Ubuntu IRC channels just yet. “First let’s discuss, and if we decide to move, then we can pick a date to move the “official” place for realtime Ubuntu developer conversation,” he writes. If Ubuntu’s development discussions — that is, discussions between approved Ubuntu developers, Canonical engineers, etc — […]
A clutch of new customisation and configuration options were added to Refine, a GTK4/libadwaita app in the vein of GNOME Tweaks (but better), over the weekend. Refine is compelling due to its goal of offering the “convenience to add or remove options without touching a single line of source code” — though for a GUI option to exist it must be hooking into a variable within GNOME, i.e., it can’t magic up a toggle to make it rain glitter! A brief bit of turbulence ensnared those attempting to run the tool on Ubuntu after I covered it in early January […]
The first new kernel release of the year has arrived — yes, Linux 6.13 has gone stable. Linux kernel 6.13 adds, as ever, a vast array of improvements, from an updated Raspberry Pi graphics driver promising speed gains, to lazy preemption logic, expanded Rust support and new drivers for a host of hardware, peripherals and digital doohickeys. Plus, as with all new kernel releases there’s ongoing work to support new and upcoming CPUs and GPUs from industry titans Intel and AMD. Linus Torvalds quietly confirmed the Linux 6.13 release in an email to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), noting that as […]
