How to See Bluetooth Device Battery Level in Ubuntu’s Quick Settings
A new GNOME Shell extension makes it easier to check Bluetooth battery status in Ubuntu 23.10. Emphasis on easier as we can already see battery level for connected Bluetooth devices from the Settings > Power pane, no extensions required. But they’re out of sight, and out of mind. GNOME developers enhanced the Quick Settings menus in the GNOME 44 release to make connect to previously-paired Bluetooth devices faster, but they didn’t add battery icons or percentages for connected devices, like mice, keyboards, headphones, game controllers, etc. Not so with the Bluetooth Battery Meter GNOME Shell extension. Once installed, it puts 
#News #Bluetooth #GnomeExtensions
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/01/see-bluetooth-battery-levels-ubuntu
Linux 6.7 Kernel Released
A new year, and an all-new Linux kernel to help power it along! Yes, the Linux 6.7 kernel is now officially release — and it’s hefty one packed with an assortment of new features, new hardware enablement, and more. By commit size alone Linux 6.7 is one of the largest in recent history, an indicator of just how much effort has been poured into honing the latest release. Linus Torvalds touches on this in his release announcement, writing: “We had a little bit more going on last week compared to the holiday week before that, but certainly not enough to make
#News #LinuxKernel
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/01/linux-kernel-6-7-new-features
System Monitor GNOME Shell Extension Made by GNOME
Keeping an eye on CPU, memory, and network activity in GNOME Shell is made easy, thanks to an array of community-built extensions tailored-made for the task. And soon there’ll be a new option for users to choose from, one designed, developed, and supported by GNOME itself. GNOME’s Florian Müllner explains: “A long time ago, we used to include a system monitor extension, that added CPU/memory graphs to the (long gone) message tray. However demand for this type of extensions hasn’t died down, to the point where RHEL includes a revived version of the old extension.” In light of the continue
#News #GnomeExtensions
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/01/gnomes-official-system-monitor-extension-for-gnome-shell
Intel’s AI Effects, Including Transcription & Music Generation, Available for Audacity
An array of new AI tools are now available to use with open-source audio editor Audacity, all courtesy of Intel. They’ve released a clutch of OpenVINO AI effects for Audacity designed to work offline and locally, with tools for editing spoken word audio like podcasts as well as music creation/production: OpenVINO stands for ‘Open Visual Inference and Neural network Optimization’. It’s a new, open-source toolkit developed by Intel to run “AI inference” tasks “locally” on Intel hardware. I hadn’t heard of it before, but it’s great to see it’s open-source and Linux friendly. Sadly, there is a catch. These new
#News
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/01/intel-ai-effects-audacity
Shutter on Wayland
Want to use legendary Linux screenshot tool Shutter in Wayland? Well, now you can. Upstream, Shutter remains under active development (2 releases last year). However, the app is yet to officially bake in support for Wayland sessions. You can use it via xWayland but some of its most compelling features don’t function — which sort of defeats the point, rather. Shutter user Maurizio V., long-time Linux user and IT developer from Italy, decided to do something about it. The result is Shutter on Wayland, a retooled version of this iconic tool that’s fully-functional under Wayland sessions, as demoed in this
#News
Open-Source Desktop Publishing Software Scribus Scores a Major Update
When it comes to free, open-source desktop publishing (DTP) there’s little as capable, as fully-featured, or as widely used in professional settings as Scribus. Now a brand new stable release of this powerful page-making tool is available, the first since 2019. Scribus 1.6.0 ships with “thousands of enhancements and fixes across all areas of the program”, with its development team noting it’s more featured, faster, and more stable than all versions prior. Used to create everything from newsletters to books, Scribus provides scores of features commonly found in paid-for, proprietary DTP software, allowing users to design and create complex layouts,
#News
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/01/scribus-desktop-publishing-software-major-update
GNOME Devs Improve Nautilus’ Custom Folder Icon Feature
A few months back I wrote a guide on how to set custom folder icons in Nautilus. Though not a new feature – the option to change a folder icon in Nautilus been there since time immemorial – it’s currently an underexposed, lesser-known capability. Unless you know to open a folder’s Properties dialog and then click on the directory icon at the top, there’s a good chance you’d never discover the feature. Custom folder icons can improve your workflow by letting you give important folders a more distinct precedes, or just scratch a personal itch, as was my case when
#News #Gnome
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/12/gnome-devs-improve-nautilus-custom-folder-icon-feature
Ubuntu 23.04 support ends January 25, 2024
Official support for Ubuntu 23.04 ‘Lunar Lobster’ ends on January 25, 2024 — just under a month away at the time I’m writing this post. As an interim/short-term support release, Ubuntu 23.04 receives 9 months of updates from release. Having been released in April of 2023, January 2024 is when the Lunar Lobster hits end of life (EOL). Do you run Ubuntu 23.04? If so, you should upgrade to Ubuntu 23.10 to ensure you get prompt security patches, critical bug fixes, and important updates to select software from Canonical. Since you’re able to upgrade directly —no downloading an ISO and
#News #Eol #Ubuntu23_04
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/12/ubuntu-2304-support-ends-january-2024
Enlightenment Desktop Sees New Stable Release
An early Christmas treat has arrived for those seeking Enlightenment — no, not spiritual concept, but the EFL-based desktop shell for Linux and BSD systems. Enlightenment 0.26.0 is modest uplift to Enlightenment 0.25, which was released in December 2021. For those unfamiliar with it, Enlightenment (sometimes referred to as just ‘E’) is a deft, lightweight window manager, compositor, and desktop shell built around the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL). It’s designed for X11 but an experimental Wayland mode is available. Enlightenment is famed for its low-resource usage, modularity, and unique look and feel, though the latter isn’t to everyone’s tastes. The Moksha desktop
#News
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/12/enlightenment-0-26-desktop-released
Give Your Ubuntu Desktop a Merry Xmas Makeover
It’s time to deck the digital halls as Christmas is just a few days away. By now you’ll have put up the tree (and the cat’s since stripped it), you’ll have wrapped the presents (all last-minute, I’m sure), and said HECK NO to the eggnog (wise, it is gross). But have you left your trusty Ubuntu desktop out of the festive festooning? If so, consider me your seasonal saviour (just not that one). I’m here to help you sprinkle some Christmas cheer onto your screen. With just 2 simple changes you can get your desktop looking as merry and bright
#HowTo #EyeCandy #GnomeExtensions #Xmas
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/12/ubuntu-desktop-xmas-makeover
Firefox 121 released, now defaults to Wayland on Linux
Mozilla Firefox 121 has been released, and it’s a notable one for Linux Wayland users. For the Ubuntu 23.10 release, the Firefox Snap runs in Wayland mode by default (and like many of you I’ve noticed nothing but bountiful benefits resulting from the switch). Mozilla’s workshop elves were clearly happy with the success of that trial as they’ve now chosen to make Firefox 121 run in Wayland mode by default for all Linux users (who use Wayland; the browser runs under Xorg/X11 as well as it ever did). Why is Firefox enabling native Wayland mode by default a big deal?
#News #AppUpdates #Firefox
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/12/firefox-121-released-now-defaults-to-wayland-on-linux
Ubuntu Working on Office 365, Google Workspace Snaps
Productivity is on the minds of the Ubuntu’s desktop developers as they plan what features to ship in the upcoming Ubuntu 24.04 LTS release. Given that many folks now use of web-based office tools like Microsoft Office 365 and Google Workspace (which is sometimes referred to as ‘gsuite’ by its fans), some time-saving convenience is on the cards. Though sadly we’re not talking web integration that’s as swish as Unity’s web apps of old, sob! “We’re creating a series of productivity snaps targeting gsuite and Office 365. When this is done it will be as simple as running $ snap install
#News #Office&ProductivityApps #Snaps #Ubuntu24_04Lts
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/12/ubuntu-office-365-google-workspace-snaps
Vivaldi 6.5 adds sessions panel, encrypted history sync + more
Hot on the heels of its quasi-official arrival on Flathub, a new version of the Vivaldi web browser has been released. Vivaldi 6.5 includes some nice new features, a few of which enhance and build on existing ones: Of these, the new ‘Sessions Panel’ is the standout addition — not least because it’s been one of the most requested features from Vivaldi users! Here’s what it looks like: Accessed from the sidebar, the Sessions panel lets save sessions, manage and restore saved sessions, name them, edit them, and sync them. Plus, there’s an automatic session backup option at bottom of
#News #Vivaldi
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/12/vivaldi-6-5-adds-new-sessions-panel-encrypted-history-sync-more
New Emoji Land in Ubuntu
A brown mushroom, a slice of lime, and a fiery phoenix — no, that’s not the start of a rubbish joke but a handful of the newest emoji added to the Unicode standard. And if you’re using Ubuntu, you’ll be able see and use them well before iPhone users, too. Rolling out to users on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and 23.10 is an update to the Noto Color Emoji font that includes support for the 118 new emoji in Unicode 15.1. As well as the aforementioned brown mushroom, lime, and firebird, it includes new nodding and head-shaking smileys, a broken link,
#News #Emoji #Fonts #Ubuntu22_04Lts #Unicode
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/12/ubuntu-noto-emoji-font-update-unicode-15-1
Geekbench’s Machine-Learning Benchmark App Now Supports Linux
Wondering how your current Linux system will handle AI and ML-related workloads? Well, now you can find out. Primate Labs, makers of the hugely popular Geekbench software, has released a new preview build of their AI benchmarking tool, Geekbench ML. And it now supports Linux. Geekbench ML launched on Android and iOS a few years back but now that PC hardware makers like Intel and AMD are putting neural processing capabilities into their latest chips, enabling ML-accelerated workflows on desktop and laptops, they’re branching out. So the latest Geekbench ML 0.6 preview introduces support for Linux, Windows, and macOS. The
#News
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/12/geekbench-ml-ai-benchmark-tool-supports-linux
Mission Center Now Shows Intel GPU Usage, Available as AppImage
Intel GPU support has been added to the Linux system monitor app Mission Center. I’ve written about this GTK4/libadwaita app a few times in the past and, to plagiarise myself, the reaction to it has been off the charts (in a good way). The app is written in Rust and uses OpenGL to render the animation graphs (in an effort to ensure it doesn’t cause a spike in system usage itself). Though on the resource usages point (as I’ve seen it come up) Mission Center isn’t the only graphical task manager-type app that does use a fair chunk of resources when
#News #AppUpdates #SystemTools
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/12/mission-center-intel-gpu-monitoring-linux
Linux Mint 21.3 Beta Released, Available to Download
Eager to get your hands on the next Linux Mint release? You can, as a beta build is now available to download. Linux Mint 21.3 beta isn’t production ready (it’s a beta) so in theory you shouldn’t be installing this as your main OS. However, chances are some of you will, and as this beta is still based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, a mature code base, and the stable Linux Mint 21.3 release is due in a few weeks… As the third major update in the Linux Mint 21.x series, this edition includes a couple of headline-grabbing capabilities, plus some
#News #Cinnamon #LinuxMint
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/12/linux-mint-21-3-beta-released
GNOME Shell 45.2 Update Rolling out to Ubuntu 23.10
The first point release to GNOME Shell 45 only hit Ubuntu 23.10 at the end of last month, and now a second one is already on its way! GNOME Shell 45.2 was released upstream at the start of December, now Ubuntu’s developers have packaged it up and pushed it out to users of Ubuntu 23.10. It hit the mantic-proposed repo today so assuming no unexpected issues are found in the coming days the update will be pushed out to all users through the regular update channel in the coming week or two. Think of it as an early Christmas treat
#News #Ubuntu23_10
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/12/gnome-shell-45-2-ubuntu-23-10
Calibre eBook App Now Supports Audio ePubs & Custom Notes
If Calibre, the popular open-source ebook manager, was a book itself it’d surely be a perennial bestseller, thanks to an exhaustive, multi-faceted feature set. And in the latest Calibre 7 release, the feature set expands yet further. The latest version introduces a clutch of new capabilities to the manager’s existing roster of ebook conversion, syncing, reading, and editing options. To me, the standout addition in Calibre 7.0 is the ability to store notes linked to various book attributes within your Calibre library. You can stash notes related to authors, publishers, book series, and more so you can keep track of
#News #AppUpdates #Calibre #Ebooks
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/12/calibre-ebook-manager-now-supports-audio-epub-notes
Double-Clicking on Apple Docs in Ubuntu 23.10 Now iWorks
Ubuntu ships with LibreOffice because it’s a powerful open-source office suite compatible with document made in rival software, such as Microsoft Office and Apple’s iWork. Thing is, while LibreOffice can open files made in Apple’s Pages (a word processor, saves as .pages) and Numbers (a spreadsheet app, saves as .numbers) the shared-mime-info package in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS misattributes both formats as ZIP archives: So if a user double-clicks on either document in Ubuntu 22.04 the Archive Manager tool is launched, rather than LibreOffice. Thankfully, this bug was fixed upstream last year, and the fix included in the shared-mime-info 2.2 release,
#News #Apple #Libreoffice #Papercuts
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/12/open-apple-pages-documents-ubuntu-fixed
