OMG! Ubuntu!

BleachBit 6.0.4 offers faster scanning, improves Linux cleaners

Joey Sneddon — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 16:54:24 +0000

A new version of BleachBit, an open-source system cleaning tool, is out. BleachBit 6.0.4 brings everything I mentioned in my spot on the BleachBit 6.0.4 beta release, including macOS support for the first time – albeit in an early state, and including a Cleaner for Safari and a choice of the (neat) BleachBit CLI or an early GUI. Windows and Linux users all benefit from faster startup times and scanning speeds, and gain new cleaners for Android Studio, Gradle’s cache, fish and Zsh shells and Python CLI. Top-level log files are cleared by the Claude cleaner, and browser “super cookies” […]

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The $200 Firefox mechanical keyboard sold out

Joey Sneddon — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 21:37:32 +0000

Love Firefox enough to drop $200 on a branded keyboard? Tough, it’s sold it. It’s a full-sized, 108-key mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX switches, and has a unique keycap colour scheme and branding: a Firefox logo on the super/meta key and new Firefox mascot Kit on Esc. It works wired, via Bluetooth or 2.4g wireless. “Clean, clicky and finished in Firefox colors”, reads the Mozilla Store description, “this is a keyboard that looks good, feels better and sneaks in a little personality where you least expect it” (unaware the personality is exactly where one would expect it: on the keys). […]

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Ubuntu 26.10 reveals new official wallpaper, mascot art

Joey Sneddon — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 15:11:18 +0000

The official wallpaper for the upcoming Ubuntu 26.10 ‘Stonking Stringray’ release has been revealed, alongside artwork bearing the official mascot. No huge surprises to see the standard formula hole. The distro’s designers have, once again, opted for a dark purple/aubergine backdrop that bears a vectorised mascot in the middle, which for this release is a stingray: No illustrative nod to the “stonking” adjective of the codename, but as most people aren’t even aware it is a word, perfectly understandable. There are 4 variants of the default wallpaper for Ubuntu 26.10. The colour one you see above, plus dark and a […]

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KDE’s new Photos app offers a sleek alternative to Gwenview

Joey Sneddon — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 22:24:46 +0000

Photos is a new(ish) image viewer and organiser for KDE Plasma aiming to give Gwenview a run for its pixels. Linux distributions that use KDE Plasma typically ship Gwenview, which has been the KDE image app for over 25 years. It’s a solid, feature-filled and Qt-based tool that and many love and rely on to view, manage and edit images. But development on Gwenview has slowed – and its legacy could be to blame. As GNOME found during efforts to modernise the Evince document viewer, updating old software can require rewriting and rewiring large chunks of an antiquated codebase. It […]

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Ubuntu 26.10 daily ISOs now include Amd64-v3 installer

Joey Sneddon — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 15:51:41 +0000

Ubuntu 26.10 adds an amd64-v3 ISO to its daily builds, letting you to install the Linux distribution with packages optimised for the x86-64-v3 CPUs.

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Firefox Nova redesign is rolling out this month

Joey Sneddon — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 22:45:03 +0000

Firefox’s new ‘Nova’ redesign will be enabled for all users in Firefox 157, due the end of September – barring any last minute hiccups, of course. Mozilla’s engineers have been working on Nova since March. The original pitch was for rounded UI elements, floating toolbars, framed web content no longer flush with the edges of the browser window and, more strikingly, a lot of pastel gradients. Those changes have been refined and dialled down during the past few months, as you can see in this comparison (drag the handle to compare): Roundness was lightly reigned in, ‘gaps’ to segment and […]

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GNOME Sushi gets a GTK4 revamp, new features

Joey Sneddon — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 01:22:59 +0000

Sushi, the spacebar preview utility for Nautilus file manager, has been ported to GTK4 for GNOME 51. For anyone unfamiliar with it, Sushi is like Quick Look on macOS: you highlight a file (image, music, video, document, etc) in Nautilus, press the spacebar and an instant preview of its content appears. Press the spacebar again to dismiss it. For v51, Sushi’s GTK4 port means it looks nicer on newer GNOME releases. There’s a flatter headerbar, and overlay controls on certain file types (like media) that let content bleed through from underneath. Light/dark mode preference is also now respected. Earlier versions […]

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Ubuntu 24.04 splits firmware packages for faster updates

Joey Sneddon — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 14:31:00 +0000

Firmware updates on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS have got smaller, as Canonical has backported the split Linux firmware packages it introduced in 26.04. To make the change in noble, the linux-firmware package is now a meta-package that pulls in all of the individual firmware packages. Functionally, nothing changes; all installs get the full whack. The binary blobs the distro uses are now split across 18 vendor-specific sub-packages: Some non-default firmware was already available to install as a sub-package, e.g., linux-firmware-xilinx-vcu, so those don’t change (but aren’t looped into the new metapackage). The linux-firmware package was a bundle of mostly closed-source binary […]

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Ubuntu 26.10 Snapshot 3 is now available for testing

Joey Sneddon — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 23:24:32 +0000

The third, and potentially final, monthly snapshot of Ubuntu 26.10 is available for download. There were no monthly snapshots of the ‘Stonking Stingray’ in August or July – no reason has been given – and the Ubuntu 26.10 beta release is scheduled for release on 24 September. Thus, this could be the final snapshot of the, though Canonical’s Utkarsh Gupta says that a “surprise snapshot to test some changes to our machinery” might appear. Ubuntu’s monthly snapshots are strictly for testing. They aren’t alpha builds and they aren’t production ready. The team say to view them as “throwaway artifacts”. Their […]

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Vivaldi 8.2 is out with a calculator in the address bar

Joey Sneddon — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 22:46:26 +0000

Vivaldi 8.2 rolled out today (3 September 2026) and lets you do quick and private math calculations directly in the address bar. This may prove useful when you don’t want to open to a new tab or a calculator app. I’ve often narrowed my eyes at an online checkout page after applying a coupon code (don’t judge), muttering “that can’t be right”. A quick number crunch later and, of course, it always is. You can click to copy the the result to your system clipboard, ready to paste elsewhere. Previous versions Vivaldi let you do local calculations from the Quick Commands menu, […]

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Audacity 4.0 released with brand-new look, clip editing features

Joey Sneddon — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 14:52:11 +0000

Audacity 4.0 has been released with a new Qt user interface, a new clip editing model and project file format – as well as a swathe of smaller improvements. The Qt port of Audacity is more than a superficial – some would say much-needed – facelift, as the toolkit switch brings native HDPI scaling, light and dark mode support and is able to follow system accent colours in its UI. A new app logo compliment the refresh. Customising Audacity’s interface is now possible. Toolbars and panels can be moved, popped-out or closed. Users can create UI layouts to suit their […]

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Canonical joins the Open Secure AI Alliance

Joey Sneddon — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 01:02:37 +0000

Canonical recently joined the Linux Foundation’s Open Secure AI Alliance to help make open-source security tools for AI systems and autonomous agents. The alliance formed in July 2026 in response to the security breach at Hugging Face, when OpenAI models undergoing a safety test broke out of their sandbox to access Hugging Face’s systems – aided by config errors rather than super-intelligence. Commercial AI models refused to help in assessing attack logs due to their guardrails, so Hugging Face engineers had to run an open-weight model on their own infrastructure to complete their analysis – and underscore the need for […]

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Arduino’s Ubuntu-powered $299 edge AI board just sold out

Joey Sneddon — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 18:08:36 +0000

Arduino's VENTUNO Q went up for pre-order priced from $299. The development board runs Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is built around Qualcomm's Dragonwing IQ8 platform.

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LibreOffice 26.8 set a new first-week download record

Joey Sneddon — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 15:15:46 +0000

LibreOffice 26.8 was download more than 1 million times in its first week of release, which The Document Foundation say is the highest first-week figure of any release of the free office suite. Released on 26 August, LibreOffice 26.8 saw 1,031,162 downloads from the official website, which provides installers for Windows, macOS and Linux, during the first seven days. As many Linux users update via other sources, like the Snap Store, Flathub and PPAs, the real figure will be even higher than that. “This is the highest number of downloads in the first week of any LibreOffice release”, The Document […]

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Linux App Release Roundup (August 2026)

Joey Sneddon — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 22:18:27 +0000

August saw a number of slew of notable Linux app updates, and in this post I roundup a few that might have passed you by. But unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock you’ll have already heard about Firefox 153, the big OpenShot 4.0 release with colour grading and the latest update to the ebook manager Calibre letting you generate new book covers using online generative AI. August also saw the Mastodon client Tuba pick up a stack of new features and LibreOffice 26.8 debuted a new paragraph composer engine. We also saw NVIDIA GeForce NOW app leave beta while […]

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Firefox 155 brings AI-powered Smart Window to more countries

Joey Sneddon — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 02:34:22 +0000

Mozilla Firefox 155 is released, making Smart Window available in USA, Canada & France. Plus, blocked tracker counts, container reordering and Linux fixes.

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Ubuntu’s IRC support channels to be ‘sunset’, some aren’t happy

Joey Sneddon — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 22:25:00 +0000

Getting is planning to ‘sunset’ IRC as an official support method, and some long-time users aren’t happy. The recently Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS release announcement didn’t include a link to the Ubuntu Support IRC channel under its “if you have a question” section – though, from looking, the last announcement to list IRC was the one for Ubuntu 24.10). That led to questions on if the Ubuntu support IRC channel is still an official community support option (the Help app in Ubuntu 26.04 still has links to pages which mention IRC). Aaron Rainbolt, an Ubuntu Community Council member, said the omission […]

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Why Ubuntu 26.04 upgrades from 24.04 are delayed (until Sept)

Joey Sneddon — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 14:33:00 +0000

If you’re wondering why you can’t do a directly upgrade to Ubuntu 26.04 from 24.04 yet, despite the Resolute Raccoon’s first point release being live, there is a reason. Canonical’s Oliver Reiche said in the mailing list announcement for Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS that upgrades will be delayed by a few weeks to allow couple of backports to land. These will “address regressions in a recent version of rust-coreutils”. Users on Ubuntu 25.10 are not affected by this; upgrades from 25.10 went live in April. Unlike the ISOs, which target a fixed release date, upgrades don’t. When the ISO drops that doesn’t mean […]

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