After more than a year of development, the RawTherapee raw photo development program, was finally tagged the new 5.13 version.

The new version of this free open-source raw developer enhanced its built-in tools, improved HiDPI support, and added support for more cameras, raw formats, and color profiles.

This version enhanced the Gamut Compression tool with ability to set distance limits automatically and increased maximum values for the distance limits. And, the tool now shows the maximum red, green, blue, and achromatic values, as well as the estimated distance ratio between the working and target color spaces.

The Abstract Profile tool in Color Management now features adjustable highlight attenuation, new custom destination primaries option allowing to change the primaries by hue and saturation, and, the xy chromaticity diagram in the primaries adjustment shows the Rec2020 primaries for reference.

The Selective Editing’s Equalization & Pre-Tone Mapping tool, formerly Shadows/Highlights, Equalizer & GHS, now has new simple tone mapper called Michaelis-Menten.

The Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch (GHS) method in this tool has been improved with ability to set Black point and White point automatically. And, the Black point/White point section now shows the maximum red, green, and blue values and the dynamic range.

Several parameters can now be adjusted regardless of what the Stretch Factor (D) is set to; The Symmetry point shows a recommended value and can be set automatically; Middle gray, RGB maximum, and 3 sigma standard deviation are now displayed; And, there is now a choice of matrix conversions that affect the color handling.

Other tool enhancements include:

• New TRC based tone mapper in Selective Editing’s Color Appearance tool.
• New Recovery Based on Luminance Mask in Blur/Grain & Denoise tool.
• New Capture Deconvolution method in Selective Editing’s Sharpening tool.
• Crop tool now allows to show multiple guides simultaneously.
• Lens / Geometry tool can scale images horizontally or vertically.
• New Presharpening denoise option in Capture Sharpening tool.

Besides tool updates, it also improved HiDPI display support, making the editor preview and thumbnails sharp. By compiling with SIMDe, it features improved performance on ARM architecture. And, all preferences can be reset via a new button.

RawTherapee 5.13 also added or updated support for cameras, raw formats, and color profiles, including:

• Canon EOS M50 (white level)
• Canon EOS R5m2
• Canon EOS R6 Mark III (black level)
• Canon EOS R50 V (black level)
• Canon EOS R100 (white level)
• Canon PowerShot V1 (black level, white level)
• Fujifilm GFX 50S II (color matrix)
• Fujifilm GFX 50S II (color matrix)
• Fujifilm GFX 100 II (color matrix)
• Fujifilm X-M5 (color matrix, raw crop)
• Fujifilm X-T30 III (raw crop)
• Hasselblad CFV-100c (color matrix)
• Nikon Z5_2 (color matrix)
• Nikon Z50_2 (color matrix)
• Nikon Z f (white level)
• Olympus OM-3 (color matrix)
• Olympus OM-5MarkII (color matrix)
• Panasonic DC-G97 (color matrix)
• Panasonic DC-S1M2ES (raw crop)
• Panasonic DC-S1M2 (raw crop)
• Panasonic DC-S1RM2 (raw crop)
• Panasonic DC-S9 (raw crop)
• Samsung DNGs (black level, white level)
• Sony DSC-RX1RM3 (raw crop)
• Sony ILCE-1M2 (color matrix, raw crop)
• Sony ILCE-7M5 (black level, raw crop)
• Sony ILCE-6400A (color matrix)

How to Install RawTherapee 5.13

The source tarball for the new version is available to download in the Github page.

The installer package for Linux, macOS, and Windows will be soon available in the link below, though not ready at the moment of writing.

Linux user may also keep an eye on the community maintained Flatpak package.

For Ubuntu users who prefer native .deb package, the unofficial PPA has been updated with the package for Ubuntu 26.04, Ubuntu 24.04, and Ubuntu 22.04.

Auto-cpufreq, automatic CPU speed & power optimizer tool for Linux, released new 3.1.0 version an hour ago.

The new version of this free open-source tool improved its graphical user interface with some new functions, and fixed various bugs.

First, the new version introduced a Monitor Mode for its GTK UI. Without installing the daemon for automatically adjust CPU speed according to your profile, the monitoring mode allowing to monitor your CPU speed, utilization, and temperature on per-core basis with the similar layout from the CLI.

This can be useful for some desktops (e.g., GNOME) that has built-in power management, and you just want to monitor your CPU and battery stats.

After installed the daemon, the tool then automatically adjust your CPU frequency according to which governor (power-saving, default, or performance) you selected, and allows to manually toggle on/off the CPU turbo. And, experienced users can use auto-cpufreq.conf config file for more control, such as the minimum and maximum CPU frequency in kHz.

With the new 3.1.0 version, a new Advanced Settings section is added, allowing to control whether to enable Bluetooth on system boot.

This version also improved Lenovo laptops support. It changed the way looking for the control file that’s responsible for battery charging threshold.

Previously, it checked the fixed location for the control file. But different Lenovo models (e.g., ThinkPad, IdeaPad, Legion, Yoga) or different kernel/firmware versions, may expose the file in different locations. Now, it uses a new function to search several known locations, making sure the battery feature work on more Lenovo laptops.

For laptops with built-in hardware shortcut to change power profile, e.g., Fn+Q on Lenovo Legion, this version added new enforce_platform_profile configuration option that can be used in the auto-cpufreq.conf config file.

The options is default to true, meaning auto-cpufreq will override the change whenever user presses on the keyboard shortcut. When set to false, user can press that hardware shortcut to change power profile at anytime, but it will also be overridden when you switch profile in auto-cpufreq.

For developers who use poetry package management tool to test this tool, PyGObject is added as an optional poetry dependency and documented it in the README. It’s required for the GTK UI, but not for command line only interface.

Other changes in auto-cpufreq 3.1.0 are mostly bug-fixes. They include:

• Fix app crash on computers without a battery.
• Fix battery drain issue on laptops with NVIDIA discrete GPUs.
• Fix CPU frequency limit issue after turbo boost changes.

For more details, see the Github releases page.

How to Install auto-cpufreq

NOTE: Install auto-cpufreq daemon will automatically disable GNOME’s built-in power profile daemon. And, it’s recommended to remove TLP for using auto-cpufreq.

Auto-cpufreq has an installer script in the source for Debian, Arch, and RHEL based distributions. It’s also available in Ubuntu App Center (snap package and CLI only), Arch AUR repository, and Gentoo GURU Repository. See the official installation guide for details.

Don’t like the snap packages? Here’s the step by step guide shows how to completely remove and block them in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.

Snap is an universal Linux package format developed by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu. Similar to the Flatpak competitor, it runs applications in isolated sandbox environments, improving security and making possible to run most recent software in old Linux Distributions without worrying about dependency issues.

Snap itself is an open-source software, however the backend of the official Snap Store (aka App Center or Ubuntu Software) is proprietary. And, Ubuntu since 22.04 has some apps installed as Snap packages out-of-the-box.

What will be missing after removed Snap

There’s no security concern after removed all snap packages in Ubuntu, but you’ll miss some core applications, though there are a few workarounds.

After removed Snap, you’ll miss:

• Security Center – to manage Ubuntu Pro, disk encryption.
• Firefox web browser.
• firmware-updater – utility to check & install hardware firmware updates.
• App Center for install/uninstall applications.

Some have workarounds, you may use command line tool instead to manage Ubuntu Pro, install Firefox via Deb or Flatpak package, and use GNOME Software instead to install/uninstall applications.

Step 1: Remove Snap App Packages

To remove your snap app packages, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal, and run commands below one by one:

• Firstly, run command to list snap packages:

  snap list

• Then, remove apps one by one according to package names. For example, remove firefox via command:

  snap remove --purge firefox

• Or, remove multiple apps at once by adding more package names in the last command. For example:

  snap remove --purge firefox firmware-updater desktop-security-center

Tips: it does NOT allow to remove “snapd” until you removed all others. To make things simple, you may run the single command below to remove all except snapd.

sudo snap remove --purge $(snap list | awk 'NR>1 && $1!="snapd" {print $1}')

Finally, remove snapd daemon package:

sudo snap remove --purge snapd

After that, re-run snap list to verify, and delete the ‘snap’ cache folder in user home.

Step 2: Block Snap

Snap packages can be automatically installed back, when you trying to install Firefox, Chromium, Thunderbird etc even via native .deb packages. Because, Ubuntu built them as empty packages that automatically download & install the Snap versions.

To prevent snap from being installed back, simply remove the snapd daemon (Deb version) which provides the executable for installing snap packages, then add rule to block it.

1. First, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to remove the snapd deb package:

sudo apt remove snapd

Don’t worry if you see that it will also remove Firefox, Chromium. They are empty wrappers redirect to the snap versions.

2. Then, run command to create an apt config file and edit via nano command line text editor:

sudo nano /etc/apt/preferences.d/snapd

When file opens (in command line), add the lines below to set the snapd package priority to -1, so it won’t be automatically installed back.

Package: snapd
Pin: release o=Ubuntu
Pin-Priority: -1

After that, press Ctrl+S to save file and Ctrl+X to exit.

Finally, run sudo apt update to apply change. And, you may try to manually install snapd to see if it’s properly blocked.

Since apt v3.1, a new exclude method is added, so you can alternatively do the steps below to block (exclude from index) snap daemon.

• First, run command to edit the official sources:

  sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu.sources

• When file opens (in terminal), add the line below in both sections:

  Exclude: snapd

  In case you want to install Deb version of Firefox, use Exclude: snapd firefox to also block the empty firefox wrapper package.

Finally, save file (Ctrl+S, then Ctrl+X) and run sudo apt update to apply change.

Step 3: Clean up

After completely remove and block Snap, you may remove the caches to free up disk space.

They include snap folder in user home that contains user app data, /var/lib/snapd directory that contains the main system data used by snap daemon, and /var/cache/snapd that the snap daemon used for caches.

To remove them, open terminal and run the commands below one by one:

rm -rf ~/snap

sudo rm -rf /var/lib/snapd

sudo rm -rf /var/cache/snapd

There’s also Snap related extensions provided by the gnome-shell-ubuntu-extensions package.

You can’t remove them, as the package is associated with core Ubuntu package, but you may disable them by using Extension Manager (run command below to install if you don’t have it).

sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-manager

Step 4: Workarounds for missing Firefox, Ubuntu Pro, App Center

Firefox:

Firefox now provides official .deb package for Debian/Ubuntu, and, there’s a well-known Mozilla Team PPA maintains most recent Firefox .deb package.

However, both require Ubuntu-provided Firefox to be blocked. See this step by step how to install guide for details.

If you’re OK with Flatpak package, Firefox is also available to install from the flathub repository.

Ubuntu Pro:

For Ubuntu Pro, you may first visit ubuntu.com/pro/dashboard, then log in (create free account if you don’t have one), finally copy the token, and run the command below to enable Ubuntu Pro:

sudo pro attach TOKEN_HERE

And, you may run pro disable command to disable any service (esm-apps, esm-infra, or livepatch) you don’t want. For example, disable livepatch service via command:

sudo pro disable livepatch

Or, use pro enable to enable any service. And, use sudo pro detach to disable all Ubuntu Pro services.

For an alternative to the App Center and firmware updater, run the command below to install the Gnome Software as well as its firmware plugin:

sudo apt install gnome-software gnome-software-plugin-fwupd

And for Chromium user, either install the Flatpak package or follow this guide to install native DEB from other sources.

Wine, the free open-source software for running Windows applications and games in Linux, macOS, and BSD, released new 11.14 development version.

The new version added WoW64 support for FreeBSD, allowing to run 32-bit Windows applications on a 64-bit system without needing a separate 32-bit Wine installation environment.

Wine configuration dialog

It added support for the AES-GMAC cryptographic algorithm in its implementation of the Windows BCrypt API, which may help for some games with modern anti-cheat or networking security VPN/security software, enterprise applications, and other applications using newer Windows cryptography APIs.

It as well added support for converting between different 7.1-channel audio formats when implementing the Windows DirectSound API, allowing old DirectX games or multimedia applications to get the same multi-channel audio behavior under Wine as on Windows.

With Wine 11.14, Windows Explorer now shows icons beside items in the Start Menu, similar to real Windows. And, Windows Script Host now correctly handles Unicode UTF-16 LE scripts with BOM, for better non-English characters, special symbols, mixed-language text support.

This development release also includes various bug-fixes. They includes fixes for 3Impact Tech Demo collection crashed when starting its first demo, Adobe Reader 11 PDF portfolio search crashes, Heroes of the Storm crash on start, as well as Hedgewars 1.0.0, Falcon BMS 4.37, PCSX2 Nightly, XDefiant Beta, Anti-Virus/Spyware 4.0 driver crashes, and Microsoft Office Word 2016 hang.

Other fixes include:

• Adobe Reader 9.0 installer fails.
• Windows apps could unexpectedly lose keyboard focus.
• Amazing Adventures 2: mouse pointer flashes all over the screen.
• Age of Empires I and II blank screen in introduction cinematics.
• MSYS2 package updates got stuck.

For more about this version, see the official release note.

Get Wine 11.14

Wine provides official packages for Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and macOS, which are available in its download page:

Though the “WineHQ Binary Packages” section misses the “26.04” keyword, the Ubuntu installation guide do support Ubuntu 26.04 Resolute.

Ventoy, the popular solution for booting .iso images from USB, released new 1.1.17 version one day ago.

The new version of this free open-source software added two new Linux Distributions support, optimized Secure Boot process, and fixed many issues.

Different to the traditional bootable USB creator (e.g., Rufus, UNetbootin), Ventoy create a small (around 34 MB) EFI partition on your USB, while all other parts act as a normal USB storage.

Just move or paste .iso images into the USB drive, along with your photo images and other files. When booting from the USB, it will show you a menu with all boot-able iso images.

It supports most type of OSes, including WinPE, Windows 7 ~ 11, Windows Server 2012~2015, tons of Linux Distributions, many Unix, ChromeOS, VMware ESXi, Citrix XenServer, Xen XCP-ng, and support formatting the main USB partition to FAT32, exFAT, NTFS, UDF, XFS, Btrfs, or Ext2~4.

image from https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy

Ventoy is tested on 1300 iso files. With the new 1.1.17 version, two new Linux Distributions are support. They are:

• Athena OS, Arch/Nix-based Distro, that contains a collection of tools for penetration testing.
• EulerOS, commercial Linux distribution developed by Huawei based on RHEL for server and cloud environments.

Besides new Linux Distributions support, this version also improved the Secure Boot process. Previously, when SecureBoot enabled, Ventoy grub must be launched by Ventoy Shim.

With the new version, the following exceptions will also work when the Shim protocol doesn’t exist:

• Ventoy key was enrolled directly to the UEFI DB.
• Some UEFI firmware (MSI) has Image Execution Policy as Always Execute which means Secure Boot is effectively disabled.

Other changes in the release include:

• Fix the boot issue for latest GhostBSD.
• Fix the boot issue for some UOS release.
• Add log for live injection process.
• Fix fdisk detection on BusyBox systems.
• Fix proxmox-ve can not boot after install in grub2 mode.

For more changes, see the releases page in the Github source. And, see the official guide for how to install or update Ventoy.

GNOME, the popular Linux Desktop, finally added keyboard navigation support for its built-in screenshot UI in the main branch.

Meaning if everything goes well, the next Ubuntu 26.10, Fedora 45 Workstation and other Linux with GNOME 51, will be able to use keyboard arrow keys to move or resize the screenshot selection area.

use arrow keys to move/resize the screenshot selection area

As you know, GNOME since version 42 has a built-in screenshot/screencast UI that can be triggered via either PrintScreen key or top-right quick settings menu.

The developer team continues improving the feature with enhanced performance and hardware acceleration support. A contributor started working on keyboard navigation support on the selection UI 7 months ago. Now, it’s finally merged into the main branch.

With the feature, user can use arrow keys (left, right, up, down) to resize the selection area, press and hold Ctrl, then use arrow keys to adjust the size in small increments, or use Shift + arrow key to extend the selection to one of the screen edges.

And, it supports using Alt + arrow to move the selection area, pressing R to reset the selection area to the initial size.

This is useful for laptop users who are working without a mouse. At least in my case, touchpad tap-and-drag does not function well, instead, I need to press and hold the physical touchpad button for being able to drag moving/resizing.

In addition, the contributor has started working to announce area selection changes via keyboard shortcuts to screen reader, so that Orca can read out the changes when the area is reset, resized or moved using keyboard shortcuts.

When will the keyboard navigation in screenshot UI be available?

The feature has been merged into main branch, but not marked for any stable release at the moment of writing.

If everything goes well, it’s expected to be available in next GNOME 51, that will be default in Ubuntu 26.10, Fedora 45, etc Linux Distributions. And, it’s now included in GNOME OS Nightly for testing purpose.

LibreOffice, the office suite that’s default many Linux such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE, released new 26.2.5 version today.

The new version of this free open-source office suite is the fifth maintenance update for the 26.2 branch, which features only bug fixes and stability improvements.

For macOS and Windows, the open-source 2D graphics library Skia rendering that was introduced for better graphics performance since v7.0 is now disabled by default. It’s because that several users reported crashes and hangs due to that rendering library.

For those who want to re-enable it, go to Tools -> Options -> LibreOffice -> Advanced, and enable experimental features, then you will see the option in “View” settings page.

And, Linux (at least Ubuntu) may try setting SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen environment variable or enable Skia rendering in VCL backend using “Expert Configuration” dialog.

Besides moving Skia rendering to experimental mode, LibreOffice 26.2.5 also includes more many bug-fixes.

For the Writer app, it fixes the issues that empty paragraphs supposed to be hidden inside Microsoft Word DOC files became visible, editing a conditional text field could corrupt the field type, Shift + Enter (on the numeric keypad) crashed the app, AutoCorrect misbehavior, as well as small user-interface layout issue.

The Calc app also got some some fixes and stability improvements. It updated the currency formatting database to use the new symbol. And, it fixed an unicode matching regression, wrong result in DROP function, TAKE function edge-case problems, as well as TEXTAFTER() function misbehavior from Excel 365 when the optional match_end parameter was used.

For macOS, this version fixed the failure when opening multiple files at once, and, transparent backgrounds images or shapes became opaque in PDF export and printing.

Other fixes include:

• Malformed font in document can cause app crash or undefined behavior.
• UNO ColorPicker API regression caused setPropertyValues("Color", ...) no longer affected the color dialog.
• HTML export/save incorrectly handled mixed right-to-left (RTL) and left-to-right (LTR) text.
• Accessibility sidebar shortened long messages with “…” instead of wrapping into multiple lines.
• LibreOffice Base did not save column alignment settings in table-style subform.

Get LibreOffice 26.2.5

More about LibreOffice 26.2.5, as well as the download link are available in the official announcement.

Besides the official DEB/RPM packages for Linux in the downloads page, there are also official Flatpak package works in most Linux, and, the official Snap package available in Ubuntu App Center (or Ubuntu Software), though both are not updated at the moment of writing.

For those who prefer Ubuntu PPA, keep an eye on the LibreOffice Fresh PPA maintained by Ubuntu members, which provides DEB packages with better Ubuntu integration.

Ubuntu is finally going to remove the /etc/debian_version file to close a bug that was reported almost 21 years ago on July 31, 2005.

The Debian and Ubuntu developer, Benjamin Drung, announced the decision on Ubuntu Devel channel:

Hi everyone, any objection to remove /etc/debian_version from base-files? /etc/os-release has been the de-facto standard in the last 10 years. Tools that look at /etc/debian_version should look at /etc/os-release instead.

Please let me close this bug after 20 years:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/base-files/+bug/19353

What is /etc/debian_version file

The /etc/debian_version file from base-files package tells which version of Debian package base that the current Ubuntu system is based on.

As Ubuntu (during the development) mostly imports Debian packages from its Unstable branch (code-name sid), and, Debian Unstable is the development branch from which the next stable release is prepared. The file content usually looks like bookworm/sid, trixie/sid, or forky/sid.

For Ubuntu 26.04, /etc/debian_version file contains forky/sid, meaning the system is associated with Debian Unstable (sid) in the period that Debian 14 (forky) are prepared.

The file is mainly intended for scripts and programs to detect Debian-based system or check which Debian release the system is compatible with.

Why to remove the file?

As the Ubuntu developer announced, scripts and programs should look at /etc/os-release file, which has been the de-facto standard in the last 10 years, instead of /etc/debian_version. And, due to the favor of /etc/os-release, most recent build of base-files has removed /etc/lsb-release.

As Ubuntu has been one of the top popular Linux Distributions and it also includes so many libraries that are not available in Debian, most Linux programs now provide Ubuntu support without needing to know which version of Debian it’s based on.

If you have some tools that are still looking to /etc/debian_version file, then you may now ask developers to update, as the file will be possibly removed in the next Ubuntu 26.10.

For users switching from Windows, this tutorial shows you how to enable the Windows style “My Computer” (it’s now “This PC”) navigation item in the left pane of Ubuntu 26.04 default file manager.

Nautilus (aka GNOME Files) used to have a “Other Locations” item in left pane, allowing to take a quick glance at local disk volumes on your computer, access network drives, and connect remote sources.

“Other Locations” in Ubuntu 24.04 with old GNOME 46

The feature was however removed, not by Ubuntu, but the developer team of the GNOME Desktop.

Thus, Ubuntu 26.04, Fedora 44, and other Linux Distros with recent GNOME Desktop do NOT have a visible way for beginners to find out how much disk space is left on computer.

Network drives and remote sources can be accessed through a new “Network” bookmark in the left pane, and, non-system volumes are listed in the bottom left. But, the system volume is no longer visible.

Experienced users can workaround by typing / in address bar to access root of system volume, and view its properties to see how much disk space is left. It’s however NOT friendly for those who are new to Linux!

To make life easier, a free open-source extension nautilus-my-computer was born for GNOME Files.

It added My Computer label in the left pane of Nautilus. Like the one in Windows File Explorer, it displays user folders, network drives, as well as system volume and other volumes on computer with quick view of the total size and how much space is free.

Nautilus with “Computer” navigation item in left pane

The extension as well provides a setting dialog (right-click on “Computer” in left pane to access), allowing to toggle the visibility of My Computer page items, hide left pane locations (e.g., Home, Recent, Starred, Network, Trash), and change the color of volume bar.

It as well added Column View mode support, allowing you to browser files and folders in multiple vertical columns, though the feature is so far in Beta stage.

Other features of the extension include:

• Live refresh when removable drives connected or disconnected.
• Custom icons support for bookmarks in left pane.
• Support adding custom folders as Preferred Folders.
• Right-to-left (RTL) layout support.
• Support English, Arabic, Catalan, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish languages.

How to Install the Extension to Enable My “Computer” in Files

NOTE: The extension is targeted for GNOME Files, especially GNOME 50. It does NOT work for Ubuntu 26.04 with non-default desktop environment.

The developer team provides an official PPA that contains the Nautilus extension for Ubuntu 26.04.

To install it, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal, and run the commands below one by one:

• 1. Add PPA:

  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannmasoch/nautilus-my-computer

  

• 2. Refresh cache (optional, as the last command will do it automatically):

  sudo apt update

• 3. Finally, install the Nautilus extension:

  sudo apt install nautilus-my-computer

  

To apply change, run nautilus -q command and re-launch GNOME Files (aka Nautilus). And, other Linux can see the official installation guide.

Uninstall:

For any issue, you may open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run the command below to remove the extension:

sudo apt remove nautilus-my-computer

And, remove the command below to remove the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:yannmasoch/nautilus-my-computer

Also run nautilus -q command to apply change.

Thunderbird, Mozilla’s free open-source PIM (personal information manager) software, released new 153.0 version on Wednesday.

The new version is an ESR (Extended Support Release) release, with more than one year support, designed for organization and education use.

The new 153.0 release finally introduced native ThunderMail services support. Without installing a separate extension/add-on, user can now sign in via Thunderbird’s own ThunderMail email account for native account setup, full calendar and address book sync, and more.

Account Hub, the interface for adding/managing accounts, has been updated with a button to sign with ThunderMail. The Account Hub now also provides manual config option once you input a valid email account.

The release also added native Exchange Web Services (EWS) support, allowing to use Microsoft Email services without the standard IMAP, POP3 protocols, and more Microsoft services access such as calendar, contacts, tasks, folders, and more.

For security, it enabled support for DNS over HTTPS, so that DNS queries are encrypted that prevents your ISP, network administrator, and others from DNS logging and/or spoofing.

Instead of having to manually edit configuration files, it added graphical settings to choose and configure preferred OpenPGP key server that stores public keys used for email encryption and signing.

And, user can now create OpenPGP signed emails using unobtrusive signature, that are less visible so that secure messages to appear perfectly normal to recipients.

Thunderbird 153.0 also improved PDF support. It can now place a handwritten or image-based signature onto a PDF document directly from within Thunderbird. And, PDF pages can be reorganized directly in the PDF viewer.

It as well has some UI/UX improvements. They include ‘Copy Message Link’ option in More Actions menu, ‘Archive’ action in mail notifications, “Show Full Path” folder pane option for compact view modes, new option to reset custom folder sorting, as well as context menu option to move mail to favorite folder.

For advanced user, the Config Editor (Advanced Preferences) now includes new mail.useLocalizedFolderNames to control whether special mail folders (Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Trash, etc.) use translated names, and, mail.openpgp.load_untested_gpgme_version to load untested GPGME version.

Other changes include:

• Ability to copy address book cards to the clipboard as vCard.
• Custom accent color support in Appearance Settings.
• Stop shipping 32-bit Linux x86 binaries.
• Enable exporting selected address book cards.
• GMail OAuth updated to use PKCE.
• Yahoo, AT&T, AOL accounts migrated to OAuth 2.0 with PKCE.

There are as well many other changes and various bug-fixes. See the official release note for details.

How to Install Thunderbird 153.0

The Thunderbird website (see the release note link) provides official installers for Linux, Windows, macOS.

For Linux, it’s a .tar.xz tarball. Just grab it, extract, then run the executable file from in the folder to launch Thunderbird.

If you don’t like the tarball, then you may choose install the official Flatpak package, while, Ubuntu user may simply search & install the Canonical maintained Snap package in App Center (or Ubuntu Software).

Thunderbird Snap package maintained by canonical, the company behind Ubuntu

For users of Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint based Linux distributions, Mozilla also provides the official .deb package. And, the well known Mozilla Team PPA will possibly support the new 153.0 ESR version in near future.