OMG! Ubuntu!

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, strea…

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 beta for its homegrown mapping service Apple Maps in July. Initially, it only officially supported Safari on macOS and iOS, and Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge on Windows, macOS, and Android. Mozilla Firefox support was added i…

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 sunse…

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 the default Fira Sans isn’t your fav…

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 f…

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,…

The latest stable update to Google Chrome introduces an enhanced Memory Saver feature which could help you reduce the browser’s memory footprint. It’s fair to say that Google Chrome is infamous for being a memory hog. Is it deserved? Perhaps once upon a time; recent real-world tests suggest Chrome’s RAM usage is less egregious than popular opinion would contend. Anecdotally, many users say otherw…

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 k…

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 wit…

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 h…

Being a Linux nerd I rarely go outside —that’s a joke— but knowing what the weather is doing beyond my basement walls —still a joke— is useful – if only because it usually gives me an excuse to stay at my desk compiling my own kernel —not a joke. Scores of Linux weather apps, widgets, and add-ons exist. These put current temperature, conditions, and (usually) near-term forecasts within easy reach…

A big update to ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors, a free, open-source office suite for Windows, macOS, and Linux is available to download. ONLYOFFICE 8.2 offers a clutch of new features, several performance gains, and a miscellany of smaller enhancements across the full suite, which is composed of a word processor, spreadsheet tool, presentation maker, form filler, and a PDF editor. For a lighter look,…

Mozilla Firefox 132 is available to download today, arriving a couple of weeks ahead of the browser’s big 20th anniversary milestone. But anyone hoping Firefox 132 would prove itself a veritable birthday piñata, fit to burst with a flurry of new features and eye-catching changes should temper their expectations. Although Mozilla’s engineering team has several exciting new features in the pipeline…

I’m a fan of the Tiling Shell GNOME Shell extension because it’s both good at what it does, but good at not being one-size-fits-all: users can tile window using a mouse and drop zones, with keyboard shortcuts, or with both – options for everyone. And some extra options are on offer in the latest update, Tiling Shell v14: Being able to set a custom colour for the window border around the focused w…

Ever feel a pang of a nostalgia for the way web browsers used to look, but don’t fancy the hiccups or hassle involved in trying to run old software on a newer OS? Honestly, you probably don’t – but after checking out what the Geckium project can do style-wise to Mozilla Firefox, that may change! Before I go on let me state upfront that this post is a spotlight, not a manifesto. I’m not here to pe…