Go language (aka Golang) released new major 1.27 version in last week, six months after the last 1.26.

The new version of this popular programming language added support generic methods, which can now declare their own type parameters, making generics more flexible.

As an example, Rand now supports a generic method N, matching the behavior of the top-level N function.

func (r *Rand) N[Int intType](n Int) Int

N returns a pseudo-random number in the half-open interval [0,n). The type parameter Int can be any integer type. It panics if n <= 0.

The new 1.27 version also expanded the standard library with many new packages.

It now has a new encoding/json/v2 package with stricter defaults and significantly faster unmarshaling. While, the existing encoding/json API remains compatible and is now backed by v2 internally.

There’s also new crypto/mldsa package that implements ML-DSA (FIPS 204), with ML-DSA support added to X.509 and TLS 1.3. TLS also adds ML-KEM-1024.

It as well added new uuid package for generating and parsing UUIDs, and, experimental simd package plus expanded simd/archsimd support for AMD64, ARM64 NEON, and WebAssembly.

Go 1.27 also features many toolchain updates.

Compiler tools now support @file response files, compatible with GCC’s format. go test runs the stdversion vet check by default, helping detect use of APIs newer than the module’s declared Go version. And, go doc gains package@version and executable-example support.

For macOS, Go 1.27 now requires macOS 13 Ventura or newer. While, the big-endian 64-bit PowerPC port in Linux now uses the ELFv2 ABI, with cgo, PIE, and external linking supported.

Other changes include:

• Specialized allocation routines can reduce the cost of some small allocations by up to 30%.
• goroutineleak is now a generally available.
• go tool trace -http=:port now listens on localhost only by default.
• Direct fetching from Bazaar repositories is removed.
• time channels now always synchronous/unbuffered.
• The unicode package support updated from v15 to 17.

For more about Go 1.27, see the official release note.

How to Install Golang 1.27

The packages for Linux, macOS, and Windows, as well as the source tarball is available to download in go website via the link below:

For Linux, select download the tarball for your CPU architecture type, then extract. For beginners, see this step by step guide for how to set up the environment variables.

Looking a tool to manage your iPhone or iPad in PC or laptop? Try the free open-source iDescriptor app that works in Linux, Windows, and macOS.

It’s a Rust written and Qt-based application that allows to manage and interact with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod through either USB or Wi-Fi.

With it, you can quickly get an overview of your device information, including device name, iOS version, jailbroken or not, model name, serial number etc information, as well as battery health and disk usage.

It also supports browsing and exporting your photo images, files, and app data (need app side support) from your iPhone/iPad to computer, or importing files from your computer to iOS devices.

Besides the basic file management, it also supports downloading and installing apps from App Store, though you need login with an Apple account.

And, it provides many useful tools to interact with your iOS devices. They include:

• AirPlay – cast your iOS screen on computer screen with sound.
• Live Screen – for device that does not support AirPlay.
• Simulate Location – simulate GPS location on your iDevice!
• iFuse Mount – mount your iOS filesystem and use it as a regular drive, with read & write permission.
• backup and restore device.
• Speed Test – measure download and upload speed to the device.

It as well allows to SSH to your jailbroken iDevice, enable developer mode, and shutdown, reboot, and enter recovery mode. For more about the app, see the Github project page.

How to Install iDescriptor

The application provides official installer packages for Linux, Windows, and MacOS, which are available to download at the link below:

For Linux, select download the AppImage (X86_64 for AMD/Intel, arm64 for RasPi or SnapdragonX), add executable permission and run to launch the app, though Debian/Ubuntu needs to install the libfuse2 library first:

sudo apt install libfuse2

It’s also available to install as Flatpak package, which is available in Linux Mint Software Manager and Fedora GNOME Software, while other Linux needs to enable Flatpak support and run the command below to install the app as Flatpak package:

flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/io.github.idescriptor.iDescriptor.flatpakref

KDE Rounded Colors, the kwin effect for KDE Plasma Desktop 5 and 6, released new 0.10.0 version today!

The new version of this open-source project introduced gradient outlines support, which draws window borders with color gradually changes from one color to another, rather than having a single solid color.

Each outline (primary, second, or outer outline for active or inactive window) can independently have its own gradient settings. Besides choosing the first and second color for an outline, user can also change the angle that controls the direction in which the color changes.

Same to the first color, the second color also support alpha channel (available in color chooser dialog), so the gradient can fade toward transparency.

In addition to the new gradient colored outline, the new 0.10.0 version also fixed the compatibility for the upcoming KWin 6.8 (Plasma 6.8).

It also changed the way it detects the maximized window, so it will less likely show outline for app windows that are maximized. It now asks kwin the actual maximize area and compare the window against it. And, it adds 1-pixel tolerance for tiled windows and the case for fractional display scaling.

Other changes include:

• Fix the issue that shader failing to load on Plasma 6.7+, especially on some NVIDIA systems.
• Add vulkan-headers dependency for Arch on Plasma 6.7, or it won’t build.
• Fix rounded corners and outlines appearing on KDE’s logout screen.

For more, see the official release note in the Github project page.

How to Install KDE Rounded Colors 0.10.0

KDE Rounded Corners is available to install through this copr repository for Fedora 43/44/45/Rawhide, Ubuntu PPA for Kbuntu 22.04, KUbuntu 24.04, and KUbuntu 26.04.

And Arch Linux can get the package from the AUR repository, though it’s not updated at the moment of writing.

After installed the kwin effect, go to Settings -> Window Management -> Desktop Effects to enable and configure the rounder corners.

Mesa 3D graphics library released 26.2.1 version a few days ago, making the new 26.2 release series stable enough for production use.

Mesa announced 26.2.0 a few weeks ago with many exciting new features. Now, it’s ready for use by the first 26.2.1 bug fix update.

Mesa 26.2.0 is a new development release. People who are concerned with stability and reliability should stick with a previous release or wait for Mesa 26.2.1.

Mesa 26.2 updated its Rusticl OpenCL implementation with OpenCL 3.1 capability across Apple AGX, Intel, AMD, Vulkan-based, and CPU software backends. It introduced many new extensions support for AMD Radeon, Arm Mali, and PowerVR GPUs, as well as some improvements for NVIDIA and Intel GPUs support.

The new 26.2.1 release includes tons of fixes and improvements. For AMD GPU, it fixed a color-splitting artifact when playing YouTube AV1/VP9 videos with hardware decoding on RX 7900 XTX.

It also fixed 26.x regressions that HEVC/H.265 hardware decoding through VA-API stop working on Stoney Ridge AMD GPUs, and, H.264 hardware encoding through VA-API to produce corrupted recordings in gpu-screen-recorder.

It as well includes fixes for RadeonSI OpenGL and RADV Vulkan driver crashes, a rendering problem in Insurgency: Sandstorm where some geometry becomes black because of Z-fighting, and texture-filtering rendering bug in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus.

image from Wikipedia.org

On the Intel side, it fixed a regression for Intel Arc B70 GPUs that caused some llama.cpp unit tests to sometimes pass and sometimes fail, Intel GPU hang on certain Alder Lake-HX integrated GPUs when using OpenGL, and a bug how they handle vkCmdWaitEvents2.

For NVIDIA, it fixed the NVK driver for older NVIDIA Kepler GPUs can crash inside its shader compiler when running a wgpu application such as Zed.

Other changes include:

• Fix for a graphics-rendering problem in Witchfire.
• Firefox malfunction fix in Raspberry Pi 5.
• Fix AMD BC250 GPU detection.
• Add data integrity checks (CRC) support for for Arm GPUs using AFBC.

There are as well numerous other bug-fixes and improvements, see the official release note page for details.

Get Mesa 26.2.1:

The source tarball is available to download in mesa website via the link below:

Besides building from the source, Fedora has made the new 26.2 release for next 45 and Rawhide, and, Arch Linux includes the new 26.2.1 in its official Extra/Multilib repository.

Debian has accepted Mesa 26.2.1 into experimental. It will be possibly put in Unstable and Ubuntu 26.10.

While, Ubuntu 24.04/26.04 user may keep an eye on this popular PPA maintained by Valve developer.

Proton, Valve Software’s tool for running Windows games in Linux through Steam, released new 11.0-2 version a few days ago.

The new version of this popular Wine based software makes 9 more games playable in Linux!

The new playable games in Linux through Proton include:

• AsteroidsHD, a arcade-style space combat game features single-player, multiplayer, real-time space based physics.
• Heroes of the Three Kingdoms 7 (aka《三国群英传Ⅶ》), a Chinese historical strategy/RPG based on the Three Kingdoms period.
• Konkan Coast Pirate Solutions, a cozy logic/puzzle game about helping pirate ships do pirate things.
• Otherworld Legends 战魂铭人, a pixel-art roguelike action RPG.
• Plain Sight, a multiplayer arcade game about suicidal ninja robots.
• Portal_Worlds, an anime-style idle RPG.
• SMILE_GAME_BUILDER, a 3D RPG game-making tool.
• Tetrageddon Games, a collection of games, strange rabbit holes, tangents, and a comedic digital nightmare about the internet of old.
• Warhammer_Dark_Omen_Classic, a 1998 real-time tactical strategy game set in the Warhammer Fantasy universe.

In addition to the new playable games, the new version also includes a large amount of bug-fixes and improvements.

Numerous games that worked better on Proton 10 now work correctly again, including Terraria, Arma 3, Natural Selection 2, Crysis 2 Remastered, Borderlands GOTY Enhanced, and several Command & Conquer games.

It fixed for games that stopped working after their own updates, including Diablo IV, Metal Gear Solid V, Marvel Rivals, Helldivers 2, Arc Raiders, and Forza Horizon.

It also fixed performance regressions in Terraria, Exanima, and KeepUp Survival, plus memory leaks in The King of Fighters XIII Global Match and HITMAN.

For Wayland (default in recent GNOME / KDE Plasma) with NVIDIA GPUs, the new version also fixed problems involving Vagante and No Limits 2. And, it fixed full screen issue for Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered, and Forza Horizon 4, 5 and 6 blank screen issue on SteamOS.

This version also improved multi-monitor support for Call of Duty: WWII and Space Engineers, fixed audio issues Portal 2, DRAGON QUEST BUILDERS, Warhammer 40,000: Dakka Squadron – Flyboyz Edition, as well as video playback Psycho-Sleuth Demo, STAR WARS Starfighter, and Legend of Mana.

Moreover, Proton 11.0-2 includes major component updates, including Wine Mono 11.2.0, FEX-2607, vkd3d 2.0, dxvk-nvapi 0.9.2, vkd3d-proton v3.0a-252-g212991fc2c26, and dxvk v2.7.1-498-ga6764047e587.

For more changes, see the release note in Github project page.

Get Proton 11.0-2

For steam users, simply enable Steam Play under Settings -> Compatibility and choose proton version from the drop-down box.

Other game launchers, such as Lutris, Heroic, and Faugus Launcher, can also install the most recent Proton and its forks (e.g., proton-ge, proton-cachyos, and umu-proton) from their download manager.

KDE Gear 26.08, the new release of KDE’s official collection of applications, is available after four months of development.

The new version of this KDE app collections includes many new features and improvements to the Dolphin file explorer, KDE connect, Kdenlive video editor, Konsole terminal emulator, and others.

Dolphin

The Dolphin file explorer app has been updated with a dedicated “Focus Other View” action. It’s a replacement of “Switch between views with Tab key”, that moves the keyboard focus to the inactive split view. When there is no other view, split view is triggered instead.

The Filter Bar now explicitly supports Plain Text, Glob, and Regular Expression matching, plus case-sensitive matching, while providing visual feedback for invalid patterns.

When exploring files on your phone from Dolphin, you can now click on the new Open KDE Connect button at the top of the window to open the KDE Connect app.

Other Dolphin changes include new Close Tabs to the Left/Right context menu option to quickly close all tabs on one side from the current, new restore view properties to defaults button, ability to group files and folders independently, and directory-specific zoom level support when global view properties are disabled.

Dolphin filter bar now explicitly supports Plain Text, Glob, and Regular Expression matching

KDE Connect

The KDE Connect app now supports for modifier keys as special keys, and supports sending the Meta key through its Remote Input/Remote Keyboard feature.

It added a KDE Connect Devices category to remote:/, making KDE Connect devices discoverable and accessible through KIO-based file managers, including the new Dolphin button mentioned above.

Other changes include display battery and network information, connection timeouts to prevent port leaks, drag-and-drop fix on macOS, and support building against OpenSSL 4.0.

KDenlive

The KDenlive video editor in the release has been updated with “Copy Selection to New Sequence”, “Replace Clip” context menu option, and duplicate clip action in timeline editing.

It added gap detection, ability to insert timeline content at a specified timecode position, as well as moving tracks up/down while keeping associated audio/video tracks together.

It as well added copy/paste support for elements in the title editor, per-channel support to the Curves effect, WebP image-sequence support, 1366×768 profiles, as well as many other exciting new features.

Kdenlive title editor

Konsole

The terminal app now has Kitty keyboard protocol support, which can be enabled and configured in profile settings.

It improved hyperlink interaction by allowing to copy, open, and drag URLs detected through terminal escape sequences, while normal URL and color-filter hotspots gain copy and drag actions.

It as well added the ability to paste using the right mouse button, badge overlay feature allowing a visual indicator/badge to be displayed on a terminal/session. And, user profiles can now automatically switch based on the system light/dark theme.

Okular

The document viewer application features safer and more robust PDF signing. It now prevents saving, adding signatures, or selecting the current document while a signing operation is in progress.

It improved handling of untrusted certificate roots and made warnings about untrusted signatures more noticeable. It also improved PGP certificate display and export handling and added support saving certificates as .asc files.

For annotations and text selection, it added a new Open action for embedded files, copy and paste annotations support, and ability triple-click to select an entire line.

Other changes in KDE Gear 26.08 include:

• Add .desktop file for Akonadi’s integration with KDE Online Accounts.
• Add Python bindings for Akonadi PIM data service.
• Alligator gains support deleting old articles after a feed reaches a specified number of stored articles.
• Ability to hide holidays in the calendar month view.
• Add even start and end times control in the calendar month view.
• Add a limit on how many podcast episodes Kasts can download simultaneously.
• KSMTP RFC 6532 support for non-English headers.
• Add option to quit KTorrent to shutdown plugin.

There are as well tons of other changes and improvements, see either the official announcement or changelog for details.

Get KDE Gear 26.08

The new version of these KDE applications have been made into Fedora 45/Rawhide and Arch Linux repositories. And, Ubuntu will likely build them for the next Ubuntu 26.10.

For the source tarballs, go to KDE website via the link below:

Want to display your lovely photo images as desktop widget, here’s an extension that can do the job for Ubuntu and other Linux with recent GNOME Desktop.

It’s Desktop Frames, a GNOME Shell extension that can create multiple desktop widgets that display random images from user selected folders.

It is a remake of the original Picture Desktop Widget, but with support for multiple widgets and more flexible customization.

User can create as many desktop image widgets as possible. And, each widget has its own image folder, size, position, corner radius, aspect ratio and refresh interval, as well as toggle to show or hide without deleting it.

Features of the extension include:

• Multiple desktop image widgets.
• Customize image folder, size, position, corner radius, and aspect ratio on per widget basis.
• Adjust how often new images are selected.
• Supports JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, and WebP.

How to Install this Desktop Image Widget Extension

The extension so far support GNOME from version 46 to 50. Meaning you can install it on Ubuntu 24.04 ~ 26.04, Debian 13, current supported Fedora Workstation, and Arch etc Linux with GNOME Desktop.

1. First, search for and install Extension Manager app from your system software app, such as Gnome Software, Ubuntu App Center.

Install Extension Manager in Ubuntu Software/App Center

2. Then, launch the app and use it to search & install the “Desktop Frames” extension from Browse tab.

Once installed, switch back to the Installed tab and click open the extension preferences dialog to add widget and configure image folder, size, position, etc.

For choice, you may visit the extension page via the link below:

Then use the ON/OFF toggle to install the extension. You however need to install browser extension (if it prompts), and, Debian/Ubuntu need to install the agent package via the command below and finally refresh.

sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell

Liferea, the reliable and lightweight Linux Feed Reader, released new major 2.0 version a day ago.

The new version of this more than 20 years old application is finally ported to GTK4 + LibAdwaita, with a modern user interface that’s well integrated with recent GNOME desktops.

The app now features a CSD header-bar that includes only a few navigation buttons, while most others are merged into hamburger menu (≡).

It still changes its UI automatically between 3-panel, 2-panel, and even single pane layout according to window size. And, it switches between light and dark mode automatically depends on system color scheme.

Besides adding source from Planet, BlogRoll, OPML, Google Reader API (e.g., TheOldReader, FeedHQ, and Miniflux), Reedah, Tiny Tiny RSS, the new version also added WebDAV source support to get RSS subscriptions from a remote WebDAV server.

To improve performance, the unread count numbers are now lazy updated in every 500 ms. The update monitor has been overhauled that gives deeper insight into the background updating and node source synchronization.

This version also introduced a new Python Console plugin for advanced users or developers to interact with the application window.

Other changes in Liferea 2.0 include:

• Reduced feed list mode is not supported anymore.
• Remove status bar in favor of raising toasts.
• Tray icon has lost the ability to indicate the unread counter.
• Ability to make search folders show the total count instead of the unread count.

Get Liferea 2.0

The official release note as well as the source tarball are available in Github source page via the link below:

Fedora Rawhide has already include the new Liferea release in its repository, while, other users may wait for either their distribution updates or the community maintained Flatpak package.

For Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, you may try building it from source via the steps below one by one:

• Install build depends:

  sudo apt install build-essential meson gsettings-desktop-schemas-dev, libgtk-4-dev, libadwaita-1-dev, json-glib-tools, libjson-glib-dev, libxml2-dev, libxslt-dev, libwebkitgtk-6.0-dev, libpeas-2-dev, intltool, libgirepository1.0-dev

• Download the source tarball, extract, and open the source folder in terminal.
• Finally, run the commands below one by one to compile and install it.

  meson setup build --prefix=/usr/local

  meson compile -C build

  sudo meson install -C build

COSMIC Epoch, the Linux desktop environment that’s default in Pop!_OS, released new 1.6.0 version today.

The new version added the wl-dmabuf-v6 Wayland protocol support improving compatibility with the latest Wayland GPU-buffer handling.

It also added Ei Wayland protocol support for applications such as remote-desktop software and input emulation to send keyboard, mouse, and touch input through the compositor in a standardized way. This allows COSMIC compositor to receive and handle input generated by software rather than directly by physical input devices.

COSMIC desktop in Ubuntu 26.04

The greeter that handles the login screen has been improved with JPEG XL (JXL) and AVIF image support. It now ignore empty password so it won’t freeze a second, for the submitting and authenticating process, when you pressing Enter without any password input.

And, it now checks at runtime whether logind is actually present or running, then either uses logind functionality when it is available, or falls back appropriately when it isn’t.

The 1.6.0 version also includes new features and improvements for the settings daemon.

It fixed a bug where the currently open settings page could be unloaded while searching, fixed a crash when an error occurs while determining the maximum brightness. And, it now uses UPower to reliably detect when the AC charger is plugged in or unplugged, by monitoring the system’s line_power device.

The daemon now keeps track of individual audio playback streams. For each playback stream, it tracks information such as what application producing the audio, media info, and which audio output (sink) the stream is currently using.

And, it now provides per-app sound settings allowing to mute/unmute, adjust volume, and switch audio output device for individual application.

Per app volume control

The file manager app in the release now supports context menu for text input fields, providing standard text-editing actions such as copying, pasting, selecting, etc.

Some previously non-selectable text in the file information/context drawer can now be selected and copied. As well, it fixed an infinite error-dialog loop when opening a failed network mount.

The terminal app now has a new “Show pane borders” toggle under the Splits settings. With it enabled, split terminal panes get visible borders between them, borders appear only when there is more than one pane, while a single terminal pane remains borderless.

Other changes in COSMIC Epoch 1.6.0 include:

• Fix oversized icons in status-area menu items.
• Wait 128 ms before applying the latest volume change.
• Fix newer Chrome incorrectly exit fullscreen mode.
• Fix COSMIC launcher flickering and unexpectedly closing when using the Ctrl key.
• Fix a popup positioning problem in COSMIC Notifications.

For more changes as well as the source tarball, see the official release note.

Get COSMIC Desktop 1.6.0

Besides building from the source, Arch Linux and Fedora users may need to wait for their distribution updates, while the last 1.5.0 version is already available in their system repositories.

For Ubuntu, there’s a community maintained PPA that contains the COSMIC 1.6.0 for the current Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. See this guide for how to install instruction.

Oracle VirtualBox 7.2.16, the eighth maintenance update for the 7.2 series, was released on Tuesday.

The new version of this virtualization software contains only some fixes and performance improvements.

For Linux host running on recent Intel platform with FRED (Flexible Return and Event Delivery) enabled (e.g., Fedora 44 on Core Ultra Series 3 laptops), there was and incompatibility causing the host system freeze.

It was because Virtualbox used the old x86 mechanism to pass NMI (Non-Maskable Interrupt) to host kernel, but the host kernel uses FRED and rejects causing kernel panic.

The 7.2.16 version fixed the issue by adding a patch that detects whether the host CPU is currently using FRED, and in that case, use Linux’s FRED-specific mechanism to re-deliver a NMI instead of the old x86 mechanism.

For RHEL 9.8 and its based distributions such as AlmaLinux running in virtual machines, VirtualBox 7.2.16 also fixed the guest addition install failure issue due to kernel internal API change.

Other changes include build failure in Linux host with OpenSSL 4.0, such as the next Ubuntu 26.10 and Fedora 45, as well as:

• Improve clipboard share handling in Linux Wayland.
• Fix a hang in video recording.
• Improve VMSVGA 3D performance.
• Add graceful handling of inaccessible VMs.
• Fix OVF import warning visibility.

For more about VirtualBox 7.2.16, see the official ChangeLog page.

Get VirtualBox 7.2.16

The installer packages for Linux, Windows, macOS, and Solaris hosts, as well as the extension pack are available in VirtualBox website via the link below: