OMG! Ubuntu!

Arriving alongside the main Ubuntu 24.04 LTS release are new versions of the official Ubuntu flavours, including Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Ubuntu Cinnamon. What follows is a concise, top-level overview of the key new features and changes in some of the most popular Ubuntu flavours, plus the relevant downloads links to snag an ISO need should be tempted into trying a few flavors first-hand. Unless oth…

Among the many new features in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is the ability to access your Microsoft OneDrive files through the Nautilus file manager. No 3rd-party app downloads, no dodgy scripts to run, and no paid plans to cough up for because this nifty feature is part of GNOME 46 (and available in any Linux distribution using it, not just the latest Ubuntu LTS). OneDrive file access works the same way as …

After 6 frenzied months of development the final stable Ubuntu 24.04 LTS release has arrived and is available for download. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (codenamed ‘Noble Numbat’) includes a rich array of new features ranging from an enhanced desktop installer and a the latest GNOME desktop to gaming improvements and a new Linux kernel. As a long-term support release Ubuntu 24.04 LTS gets 5 years of select a…

A new version of Clapper, a GTK4-based video player for Linux desktop has been released — the first major update in nearly 2 years. I first wrote about Clapper back in 2021 having been seduced over by its slick user interface (a superficial reason to like a media player, I know), its use of GStreamer, and a small but focused feature set that wasn’t trying to distract me with features I’d never ne…

Those who upgrade from 22.04 to 24.04 LTS are in for a treat as the amount of improvements on offer is vast. In addition to getting to enjoy all of the great new features Ubuntu 24.04 brings LTS upgraders will finally get to experience all of the features introduced in the Ubuntu 22.10, 23.04, and 23.10 releases. Which amounts to a lot of changes! In this post I run-through 20 of the most impactf…

Next time you stop by the Flathub website you will notice it’s had a bit of a revamp. The latest UI refresh lands a year after its last big redesign and builds on that look by adding new on-page features. These changes make it easier for Linux users to find the apps they are looking for and come across new software they might not have heard of. — That is unless they regularly read sites like mine…

Using Linux on a 64-bit ARM device and longing to use Firefox Nightly builds? Well, you’re in luck — Mozilla has finally made ARM64 Linux builds available to download. As I understand it most Linux distributions that support ARM64/AArch64 offer a native ARM version of Firefox in their repos (in Ubuntu that’s via snap) though some Linux ARM distros only offer Firefox ESR, which is a long-term supp…

A new version of Audacity, a popular open-source audio workstation, is available to download. Audacity 3.5 introduces major new features and improvements, fixes a number of issues in earlier builds, and removes a number of older, less-used options. The headline addition is sure to be the new cloud-saving feature. This allows users to save Audacity projects to the audio.com website (requires a sig…

Among the many new features in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is out-of-the-box support for HEIF/HEIC images. Anyone using Ubuntu 24.04 won’t have to manually install any extra packages to be able to see HEIF/HEIC thumbnails previews in the Nautilus file manager or open HEIF/HEIC files in the default Eye of GNOME image viewer app. While HEIF (which stands for High Efficiency Image File Format) isn’t a super co…

You know the drill by now: a new month rolls around, and a new version of the inimitable Mozilla Firefox rolls off the release server for us all to enjoy. And bang on cue, Firefox 125 has arrived. The big-ticket new feature in this update is URL paste suggestions: Mozilla says this feature “provides a convenient way for users to quickly visit URLs copied to the clipboard in the address bar of Fir…

I think most of us are familiar with the way that APT, the package management tool underpinning Ubuntu and all other Debian-based Linux distributions, looks and behaves. But some (much needed) visual changes are coming in the next major stable release, APT 3.0 — and they look great. Hey, don’t pretend you’re not excited by fancier looking APT print outs, my friend! One of the (many) things I lov…

If you want to relax or need to concentrate on a task at your computer then listening to ambient sounds can often help — and the best Linux app for this task just got a big update! Blanket is a free, open-source GTK4/libadwaita app that comes packaged with a variety of ambient looping sounds. These range from classic nature tracks (rain, wind, waves, birds, etc) through to environmental buzz (cof…