Ghostty Update Adds Server-Side Decoration Support on Linux
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, 
#News #AppUpdates #Ghostty #TerminalApps
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/02/ghostty-update-adds-server-side-decoration-support-on-linux
LibreOffice 25.2 Released, This is What’s New
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 always important to remember that software like LibreOffice doesn’t appear out of thing air; it’s made by humans, many unpaid, others working on specific things. LibreOffice 25.2 features 6 months worth of development in total with 47 percent of code commits coming from devs employed by ‘ecosystem
#News #AppUpdates #Libreoffice
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/02/libreoffice-25-2-released-this-is-whats-new
Installing Ubuntu on WSL Just Got Much Easier
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) user? If so, you will be pleased to hear that Ubuntu is now available in Microsoft’s new tar-based distro format — no need to use the sluggish Microsoft Store. Canonical announced the news today, noting that “the new tar-based WSL distro format allows developers and system administrators to distribute, install, and manage Ubuntu WSL instances from tar files without relying on the Microsoft Store.” In not relying on the Microsoft Store for distribution, it’s less hassle for enterprises to roll out (and customise) Ubuntu on WSL at scale as images packaged in using the new
#News #Microsoft #Wsl
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/02/ubuntu-tar-based-wsl-install
Firefox 135 Brings New Tab Page Tweaks, AI Chatbot Access + More
Right on schedule, a new update to the Mozilla Firefox web browser is available for download. Last month’s Firefox 134 release saw the New Tab page layout refreshed for users in the United States, let Linux go hands-on with touch-hold gestures, seeded Ecosia search engine, and fine-tuned the performance of the built-in pop-up blocker. Firefox 135, as is probably intuit, brings an equally sizeable set of changes to the fore including a wider rollout of its new New Tab page layout to all locales where Stories are available: It’s not a massive makeover, granted. But the new layout adjusts the
#News #AppUpdates #Firefox
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/02/mozilla-firefox-135-released
How to Fix Spotify ‘No PubKey’ Error on Ubuntu
Do you use the official Spotify DEB on Ubuntu (or an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution like Linux Mint)? If so, you’ll be used to receiving updates to the Spotify Linux client direct from the official Spotify APT repo, right alongside all your other DEB-based software. Thing is: if you haven’t checked for updates from the command line recently you might not be aware the that security key used to ‘sign’ packages from the Spotify APT repo stopped working at the end of last year. Annoying, but not catastrophic as it—thankfully—doesn’t stop the Spotify Linux app from working just pollutes terminal output
#HowTo #Spotify
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/02/fix-spotify-gpg-error-not-signed-ubuntu-linux-mint
Papirus Icon Theme Updated
Fans of the Papirus icon theme for Linux desktops will be happy hear a new version is now available to download. Paprius‘s first update in 2025 improves support for KDE Plasma 6 by adding Konversation, KTorrent and RedShift tray icons, KDE and Plasma logo glyphs for use in ‘start menu’ analogues, as well as an assortment of symbolic icons. Retro gaming fans will appreciate an expansion in mime type support in this update. Papirus now includes file icons for ROMs used for emulating ZX Spectrum, SEGA Dreamcast, SEGA Saturn, MSX, and Neo Geo Pocket consoles; and Papirus now uses different
#News #EyeCandy #Papirus
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/02/papirus-icon-theme-update-feb-2025
GNOME Introduces New UI & Monospace Adwaita Fonts
GNOME has announced a change to its default UI and monospace fonts ahead of the upcoming GNOME 48 release — a typographic turnabout that won’t impact Ubuntu users directly, though. Should you feel a sense of deja vu here it’s because GNOME trialled a font switch last year, during development of GNOME 47. Back then, it replaced its home-grown Cantarell font with the popular open-source sans Inter font (trivia: used by Zorin OS). The change was reverted prior to the GNOME 47 due to various UI quirks, coverage issues, and compatibility (thus underlying the importance of testing things out prior
#News
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/02/gnome-introduces-new-ui-monospace-adwaita-fonts
Mozilla’s Nifty AI Detector Add-On For Firefox
Want to know if something you’re reading online was written by a real human or spat out by a large language model (LLM) pretending to be one? Though not foolproof, Mozilla’s Fakespot Deepfake Detector Firefox add-on may can give you an indication. Like other online AI detector tools, this add-on will analyse highlighted text (of 30 words or more) for patterns, traits, and tells common in AI generated text. To do this is uses Mozilla’s proprietary ApolloDFT engine and a clutch of open-source detection models. But unlike many online AI detection tools, Mozilla’s Fakespot Deepfake Detector browser extension is entirely
#News #Ai/Ml #Firefox #Mozilla
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/02/deepfake-is-an-ai-detector-firefox-addon
High Tide is a Promising New TIDAL Client for Linux
Linux users hunting for a native client to stream music from TIDAL will want to keep an eye on a promising new open-source app called High Tide. High Tide is an unofficial but native Linux client for the TIDAL music streaming service. It’s written in Python, uses GTK4/libadwaita UI, and leverages official TIDAL APIs for playback. TIDAL, often positioned as the ‘pro-artist music streaming platform’, isn’t as popular as industry titan Spotify (likely because it doesn’t offer a ‘free’ ad-supported tier) but is nonetheless a solid rival to it in terms of features and catalogue breadth. Windows, macOS, Android and
#News #Libadwaita #MusicPlayers #Tidal
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/01/high-tide-native-tidal-client-linux
Thunderbird Will Move to Monthly Updates from March 2025
The Thunderbird email client is making its monthly ‘release channel’ builds the default download starting in March. “We’re excited to announce that starting with the 135.0 release in March 2025, the Thunderbird Release channel will be the default download,” Corey Bryant, manager of Thunderbird Release Operations, shares in an update on the project’s discussion hub. Right now, users who visit the Thunderbird website and hit the giant download get the latest Extended Support Release (ESR) build by default. It gets one major feature update a year plus smaller bug fix and security updates issued in-between. The version of Thunderbird Ubuntu
#News #Thunderbird
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/01/thunderbird-release-channel-becomes-default-march
Ubuntu Dev Discussion Will Move to Matrix in March
It’s confirmed: Ubuntu is switching to Matrix as the primary platform for real-time development communications involving the distro. From March, Matrix will replace IRC as the place where critical Ubuntu development conversations, requests, meetings, and other vital chatter must take place. Developers asked to ensure they have a presence on the platform so they are reachable. Only the current #ubuntu-devel and #ubuntu-release Libera IRC channels are moving to Matrix, but other Ubuntu development-related channels can choose to move – officially, since some groups already prefer Matrix over their IRC channels. As a result, any major requests to/of the key Ubuntu
#News
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/01/ubuntu-dev-matrix-move-confirmed
Pinta 3.0 Beta Released with New GTK4/Libadwaita UI
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 find themselves taking a bit of time to
#News #AppUpdates #Beta #ImageEditors #Libadwaita #Pinta
Google Has Open-Source the Pebble Smartwatch OS – And a New Model is Coming
Did you ever own (or covet) one of those e-ink Pebble smartwatches of yore? Well, good news: Google has open-sourced the PebbleOS operating system it ran on (minus some vital proprietary bits like the Bluetooth stack), having acquired Pebble’s assets when buying Fitbit in 2021 (Fitbit bought Pebble for its IP in 2016). This means anyone—even you!—can use PebbleOS to use/build a smartwatch — albeit with a few hurdles in the way given Google had to (understandably) remove proprietary parts, like system fonts, Bluetooth stack, heart-rate sensor driver, etc, from the code. What made Google open source the Pebble OS
#Hardware #News #Pebble #Smartwatch
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/01/google-open-sources-pebble-smartwatch-os-new-watch-planned
Varia Download Manager Adds yt-dlp Support
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
#News #AppUpdates #DownloadManager #Varia
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/01/varia-download-manager-adds-yt-dlp-support
Ubuntu 24.04.2 Arrives Feb 13 with Linux Kernel 6.11
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 bring new
#News #PointReleases #Ubuntu24_04Lts
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/01/ubuntu-24-04-2-release-date
Vivaldi 7.1 Delivers Speed Dial Buffs, New Search Engine
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
#News #AppUpdates #Vivaldi
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/01/vivaldi-7-1-browser-changes
Ignition is a Modern Startup Applications Utility for Linux
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
#News #AppsOnFlathub #Libadwaita #Startup #SystemTools
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/01/ignition-startup-applications-app-linux-gtk
VirtualBox Update Adds Support for Linux Kernel 6.13
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 OSes’ settings does now take effect, which some will be
#News #AppUpdates #VirtualMachines #Virtualbox
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/01/virtualbox-7-1-6-update-changes
Wine 10.0 Released with New Drivers, Features & Changes
A cork has popped on a new stable release of Wine, the open-source compatibility layer that makes it possible to run Windows apps and games on Linux and macOS. Over 6 thousand changes were distilled in the Wine 10.0 release – changes collected, collated and curated during the past 12 months of Wine 9.x development releases. If you supped those dev cycle builds you’ll be familiar with the bulk of what’s new. 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, making
#News #Wine
Ubuntu Devs Debate Switching Discussion from IRC to Matrix
Ubuntu is mulling a switch to Matrix from IRC to handle real-time development discussion. Canonical’s Robbie Bask has has begin 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 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, adding that If Ubuntu’s development discussions — we’re talking discussions between approved Ubuntu developers, Canonical engineers,
#News
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/01/ubuntu-devs-matrix-switch
