Transmission, the free open-source BitTorrent client for Linux, Windows, and macOS, released new 4.1.4 version a few days ago.

The new version is a bug-fix release that introduced various security and other small fixes.

Transmission 4.1.4 unified launch and delegation between the Qt and GTK clients. When either client is running, you won’t be able to launch the other client!

For example, when the Transmission GTK client is running, the Qt client won’t launch from the app launcher. If you try to open a torrent file with the Qt client, it will fall back to the already-running GTK client.

However, due to this change, Transmission GTK and Qt client installed either from source or native DEB package won’t launch in Ubuntu 26.04 and 26.10 due to AppArmor permission. See the “How to Install” section below to workaround.

Besides this change, it also fixed a potential RCE vulnerability in the macOS client.

And, it now protects against malformed RPC requests by validating torrent-priority arguments before processing them, preventing invalid indices from causing out-of-bounds memory access.

The Qt client has been improved to use less CPU. The GTK client’s torrent list now re-sorts and reapplies filters when a torrent’s name changes. And, the macOS client raised its minimum requirement to macOS 12.0.

Other changes are mostly bug-fixes. They include:

• Fix regression that could cause torrents with zero-byte files to be handled incorrectly.
• Migrate Sparkle update signing from DSA to EdDSA.
• Fix GTK client app icon not found on some desktops.
• Update zlib and Qt versions in Windows build.
• Fix web client display issue that sometimes listed torrent names as ‘Unknown’.

How to Install Transmission 4.1.4

More changes about the release, as well as the source tarball, Windows and macOS packages are available in Github via the link below:

For Linux, besides building from source or waiting for your distribution updates, user can also choose install the community maintained Flatpak package, which runs in sandbox.

There’s also snap package that’s available to install in Ubuntu App Center (or Ubuntu Software), which however is not updated at the moment of writing.

For Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 26.04 and 26.10, I’ve built the native DEB package into this PPA.

Simply press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal, and run commands below one by one to add PPA and install the package:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/transmission

sudo apt update

sudo apt install transmission

To fix the app launch issue in Ubuntu 26.04/26.10, open terminal and run command:

sudo nano /etc/apparmor.d/local/transmission

The command will open (create if does not exist) a local override for AppArmor’s Transmission profile. When file opens, paste the lines below:

# Allow Transmission GTK to lock its configuration files.
owner @{HOME}/.config/transmission/** k,

Then, press Ctrl+S to save and Ctrl+X to exit. It grants the owner (usually yourself) file-locking operations to files under .config/transmission directory, needed to prevent running GTK & Qt clients at the same time.

Finally, reload the AppArmor profile to apply change.

sudo apparmor_parser -r /etc/apparmor.d/transmission

OBS Studio, the free open-source live streaming and video recording application, released new major 33.0.0 version today.

The new version updates its Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) from the old version 127 to version 150. This upgrade moves Chromium forward by 23 major versions, bringing numerous security fixes and web-compatibility improvements.

The release also overhauls the plugin loading system with new locations.

The plugins developed by OBS developers are now in a new core folder. Third-party plugins have an updated installation location and folder structure. While, existing third-party plugins will continue to load from the legacy locations until the next 34.0 release.

This version also improves the source snapping in the preview window.

It introduces visual indicators for snapping. A source’s top, bottom, left, or right edge can snap to the corresponding edge of another source. And, the default snap distance has been changed from 10.0 to 5.0.

Hidden sources can no longer be hovered or clicked in the preview to select them. And, when dragging a visual source it will no longer automatically align with a hidden source.

For ARM laptops with NVIDIA GPU, such as Dell XPS 16 and Surface Laptop Ultra, the new OBS Studio 33.0.0 now supports hardware accelerated encoding through NVENC. This is tested on on Windows on ARM, though it should also work on Linux.

And, it updates NVIDIA video FX SDK to 1.3.0 and audio FX SDK to 3.0.0, which adds ARM64 compatibility and fixes DLL loading.

Other changes in OBS Studio 33.0.0 include:

• Improve spinboxes number entering user experience.
• Check missing encoders on app startup.
• Do not start WebSocket server in Safe Mode.
• Remove Ubuntu 24.04 support.
• Remove support for FFmpeg 6.x / 7.x, Qt 6.4 ~ 6.9.

Get OBS Studio 33.0.0

The official release note, as well as the packages for Ubuntu 26.04, Windows, and macOS are available in Github via the link below:

Ubuntu 24.04 and earlier editions are no longer supported, but you can install the Flatpak package instead, which runs in sandbox environment, and works in most Linux.

Install OBS Studio in Ubuntu via Flatpak package

NOTE that the Flatpak requires many addons and plugins installed as separated packages, see the link above.

KDE Rounded Corners, the open-source project that rounds window corners in KDE Plasma desktop, released new 0.11.0 version today.

The new version of this popular Kwin effect fixed the compatibility issue with Plasma 6.8, and introduced a new toggle option to that can lower GPU usage.

KDE Window with rounded corners

First, the new 0.11.0 version fixed the flipped and misaligned rounded corners and window outlines in Plasma 6.8.0 due to a change introduced in the new Kwin.

And, it added a new option to control whether KWin treats windows with rounded corners as translucent (partially transparent).

The option is enabled by default, preserving the behavior of previous versions. In the case, The kwin window manager and compositor may repaint underlying windows and background blur effects behind rounded windows.

User can choose to disable the option to prioritize rendering efficiency or lower GPU usage. There’s no visual difference in most cases, but visual artifacts may appear in the transparent corners.

In addition, the release fixed the effect not working correctly on monitors with fractional scaling, outline flickers between active/inactive colors when animation is disabled, as well as the performance issue when running on Qt5.

For users who build KDE Rounded Corners from source, it fixed the issue that the test-install.sh script could run rm -rf ./* that delete users’ files if the expected build directory was missing.

Other changes include new Japanese translation and more. See the Github releases for details.

How to Enable KDE Rounded Corners

The Kwin effect is available in Arch Linux AUR repository as kwin-effect-rounded-corners.

Fedora can install it through this COPR repository. And, (K)Ubuntu 22.04, (K)Ubuntu 24.04, and (K)Ubuntu 26.04 users may run the commands below one by one to get it from PPA.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:matinlotfali/kde-rounded-corners

sudo apt update

sudo apt install kwin-effect-roundcorners

After that, launch Settings and navigate to Window Management -> Desktop Effects. Finally, enable “Rounded Corners (formerly shape corners)” and configure shadows, outlines, and roundness.

KeePassXC, the community fork of KeePass Password Safe, finally released new 2.8.0 version after a month of beta testing.

The new version of this popular cross-platform password manager finally migrated its UI from Qt5 to Qt6 for better graphics capabilities, HiDPI and HDR multi-monitor improvements, and robust Wayland support.

The “Import” dialog now includes a new Remote Database (.kdbx) option, allowing to access database files from remote computers through either sftp or scp protocols.

Not only accessing remote databases through secure shell file transfer protocols, it also support remote sync the database that’s accessed with the scp/sftp protocol. And, a configurable timeout for the remote process is available in settings.

For Linux Wayland, the session that’s default in recent GNOME and KDE Plasma desktops, it now has Auto-Type support by using XDG Desktop Portals.

It also introduced Polkit Quick Unlock feature. Parity with macOS Touch ID and Windows Hello, the feature allows Linux users to use fingerprint to unlock database quickly.

As well, it improved the AppImage package with better desktop integration, updated Snap package with Linux kernel keyring integration, and fixed a timing-related bug that could cause dark mode to be detected incorrectly.

For Windows, it added native Arm64 support. Meaning the password manager can now run in Surface, XPS 13, etc laptops with Snapdragon X Elite processors.

Other changes include:

• ARM64 version of AppImage support.
• Support generating SSH keys, so far RSA, ECDSA and Ed25519 supported.
• Configurable Keyboard Shortcuts.
• Fallback to Device Password when Touch-ID no available in macOS.
• More entry types in Proton Pass importer.

Get KeePassXC 2.8.0

The official release note as well as the installers for Linux, Windows, and macOS are available in the Github releases page via the link below:

For Linux, select download the AppImage, add executable permission from its Properties dialog, finally run to launch the password manager.

Though, Ubuntu since 22.04 needs to install libfuse2 by running the command below in a terminal window to enable AppImage support:

sudo apt install libfuse2

Fooyin, the foobar 2000 inspired music player, released new 0.14.0 version today for Linux and Windows.

The new version of this free open-source Qt based music player introduced drag and drop support for its layout editing mode.

By enabling “Editing mode” under Layout menu, you can drag and drop to rearrange existing layout items.

Or, move cursor to right corner to view the new palette, and add items by dragging from there.

Depending on the target area, it will show you either “fill empty area” or “split and place” when you drag and drop. And, you can hold ctrl while dragging to replace the target widget.

Keep in mind that your edit will override the current layout profile! It’s better to create a new layout before editing.

Besides new layout editing, it also added a new Track Viewer widget that works with Library Filter to display tracks matching the current selections.

Lyrics, Script Display, and Queue Viewer now supports custom backgrounds. Toolbar layout is customizable. And, a standalone Library Tree added as separated window.

For advanced users, it introduced a visual editor to create autoplaylists. There you can create and edit autoplaylist queries, with inline groups using AND, OR, and XOR rules.

The audio playback in Fooyin 0.14.0 has been updated with several new native decoders.

They include native decoders for Opus, Vorbis, MP3, as well as decoder for playing FLAC files that contain DTS multi-channel audio format.

Other changes include:

• JACK output.
• True Audio files (tta) playback.
• A-B repeat to loop a specific section of audio track.
• Per widget playlist settings.
• Drag and drop plugin install.
• Scriptable Playlist Tabs text.

Get Fooyin 0.14.0

There are also a large amount of other improvements and bug-fixes in the release. Along with the installer packages, they are available in the link below:

For Linux, select download .rpm or Fedora, .deb for Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint.

If you don’t know which one to choose, run cat /etc/os-release in terminal to tell your OS code-name, and uname -m to tell the CPU architecture type.

For choice, choose AppImage that can run without installation (just add executable permission, and run to launch the music player). or install the flatpak package that runs in sandbox environment in most Linux distributions.

qBittorrent, the popular qt-based bittorrent client, released new major 5.3.0 version a few days ago.

The new version of this free open-source application implemented several new libtorrent settings, introduced numerous improvements to its Qt and WebUI, and fixed various bugs.

First, the new version added I2P PeX (I2P Peer Exchange) support. It allows peers to share torrents over the I2P anonymous network discovering other peers by exchanging peer information directly, rather than relying only on trackers.

It implemented seeding_outgoing_connections libtorrent setting, allowing to control whether seeding or finished torrents can initiate outgoing connections to other peers.

It also implemented max_allowed_in_request_queue controls the maximum number of piece-block requests a peer is allowed to have queued at one time.

And, it added allow_multiple_connections_per_pid advanced settings that controls whether your client can accept multiple connections from peers using the same Peer ID.

qBittorrent 5.3.0 now allows banning IPs using ranges instead of being limited to single IP. For example, you can ban IP or IP range in the following format:

• 127.0.0.1
• 127.0.0.1/24
• 127.0.0.0 – 127.0.0.255

The seeding limits that determine when a torrent should stop seeding has been updated with AND/OR support.

Users can choose whether to stop seeding when any one of the three limits is reached (OR), or only when all three limits are reached (AND) through the new setting options.

For email notifications, it now displays Email examples as placeholder text (light-colored hint text) to prevent user accidentally really sending an email to the pre-filled server.

And, it now supports sending email notifications to multiple recipients instead of only single email address, by adding email addresses separated with either comma or semicolon.

• Comma (,) — Send one email to multiple recipients
• Semicolon (;) — Send separate emails to recipient groups

For webUI, virtual list is now enabled by default. So web browser renders only the visible rows on screen and updates them as you scroll, making the WebUI smoother and more responsive when managing large numbers of torrents.

It now supports downloading completed torrent files, pausing and resuming BitTorrent session, and exporting/importing RSS rules. And, new controls are added to start BitTorrent session paused and set session shutdown timeout.

Other changes in qBittorrent 5.3.0 include:

• Support so parameter in magnet links.
• JPEG and WebP support in HTTP server.
• Add “Contribution” column to Peers list.
• Display “Queued tracker announces” and “request latency” in Statistics dialog.
• Options to toggle display “free disk space” and “external IP” in status bar.
• Add ‘Open Destination Folder’ button to toolbar.
• Add “Force start torrents” context menu option to left pane.

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

Get qBittorrent 5.3.0

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

For Linux, besides the non-install AppImage (add executable permission and run to launch software), there is also the official Flatpak package that runs in most Linux Distributions in sandbox.

And, Ubuntu user may simply search & install community maintained Snap package from App Center (or Ubuntu Software), which also runs in sandbox.

Audacious, the lightweight Beep and XMMS fork music player, released new 4.6.2 version today. PPA updated for all current Ubuntu editions

The new version of this free open-source app improved its Qt version of Winamp interface to support the same features as the GTK version.

The Qt Winamp interface now provides an advanced skin selector with thumbnail preview in its settings dialog. And, user can now drag’n’drop skin files into the main window to install them.

The “View” menu now provides “On All Workspaces” option. With it enabled, the player window (winamp interface) will always on your screen no matter which workspace (virtual desktop) you’re working on.

The MPRIS plugin has been updated with OpenUri support. Meaning advanced users can tell Audacious to open a specified media URI through the MPRIS interface remotely.

For example, a music library manager can send a selected track to Audacious, while a radio directory or streaming application can send a stream URL. Scripts, launchers, and automation tools can also open a specific audio track or stream in Audacious.

Audacious 4.6.2 also added seeking support for SID music files used by the Commodore 64 (C64) home computer. Meaning you can click on the progress bar to jump to a specific point rather than only playing it from the beginning.

And, it can now read and extract more information stored in SID files, such as the song title, author, copyright information, and other available details.

Other changes in the release include:

• Use Tab & Arrow keys to navigate tool-bar buttons.
• Fix crash with Qt 6.12 on Wayland.
• More app icon sizes, e.g., 64×64, 128×128, 256×256.
• Other fixes and translation updates.

For more about Audacious 4.6.2 and source tarball, see the official release note.

Get Audacious 4.6.3

Besides building from source, Audacious provides official Windows packages in its download page.

For Linux, besides the distribution provided packages, there are also community maintained Flatpak package.

And Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 26.04 and 26.10 users may install the latest Audacious deb package from this PPA repository, by running the commands below one by one in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/apps

sudo apt update

sudo apt install audacious

The PPA package now explicitly set the same version of libaudgui7, libaudqt4, and libaudtag4t64 as dependency, so it should no longer install the latest Audacious while its shared libraries are still outdated.

Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux Kernel 7.3 on Sunday afternoon, October 18.

The new kernel release added many new hardware support, improved gaming performance for GPUs with limited VRAM, and introduced numerous other improvements.

What’s New in Kernel 7.3

Kernel 7.3 comes with many new and improved processors support. It now supports Intel Starfire SoCs, and identifies AMD’s upcoming low-power CPU cores.

For Apple, it added initial support for Apple M3 Pro, Max, Ultra, but not yet GPU. And, it optimized the power management for M1 Pro / Max / Ultra SoCs.

The Kernel as well adds initial enablement for IBM’s upcoming POWER12 processors, and supports new SoCs, such as Samsung Exynos 1580, Canaan K210, Sophgo SG2000, Qualcomm Shikra, and Altera Agilex72 using Cortex-A720 cores.

Image by Heiko from Pixabay

On the RISC-V side, it added the Smcsrind, Sscsrind, Smcntrpmf, Ssccfg, Smcdeleg, Zicclsm, Ziccamoa, Ziccif, Ziccrse, Za64rs, and Ssqosid extensions support, so the kernel can now recognize additional CPU capabilities for performance counters, memory access, cache bandwidth monitoring, and more.

Linux 7.3 also introduced initial improvements to video RAM (VRAM) management, led by Valve engineer Natalie Vock, which improves the gaming performance on GPUs with limited VRAM, especially 8GB vRAM.

It as well added DRM format modifier support for older AMD Radeon GPUs (from GFX6 to GFX9), improving compatibility between graphics APIs and Wayland compositors.

The AMDGPU driver supports the GPU’s graphics block reset without resetting the entire GPU. So that it can now recovery from hangs on on Kaveri and Kabini GPUs without system reboot, and, recover Hawaii and Bonaire GPUs without crashing the entire graphical session.

And for NVIDIA, the open-source nouveau kernel driver now supports H.264 hardware decoding on NVIDIA Turing (RTX 20 series) GPUs through Vulkan Video API, with support provided by the Mesa NVK driver.

The hardware monitoring subsystem has been updated with numerous new devices support.

Lenovo’s Yogafan driver now supports monitoring the Lenovo LOQ 15IAX9, XiaoXin Pro 13ARE 2020, IdeaPad 3 15ALC6, Legion Pro 7 16AFR10H, Yoga Pro 7 14IAH10, Yoga 7 16ARP8, and Lenovo LOQ 15IAX9 systems.

The EC sensor monitoring driver now supports the ROG STRIX Z390-E GAMING, ProArt Z690-CREATOR WIFI, ROG STRIX X870E-E GAMING WIFI7 R2, ROG CROSSHAIR X870E HERO, and ROG Maximus Z790 Hero motherboards.

And, the asus_rog_ryujin driver now supports the ROG Ryujin III liquid cooling product.

Other changes include:

• ARM64 BBML3 support.
• Scheduler improvements for hybrid CPUs.
• Improve zsmalloc performance for Zswap and zRAM.
• Per-CCD temperature monitoring on AMD EPYC Turin (Zen 5) server processors.
• Realtek RTL8261C and RTL8261D support.
• Initial 2026 Valve Steam Controller support.
• New MSI Claw Gamepad Driver.
• Logitech HID++ 2.0 reprogrammable button support.

For more about Linux Kernel 7.3, see either this kernelnewbies page or phoronix.com.

Get Linux Kernel 7.3

Some popular Linux Distributions, such as Ubuntu 26.10, Fedora Rawhide, and Arch Linux, have already included the new Kernel in their repositories.

For current Ubuntu 26.04 and 24.04, the Mainline Kernel PPA is broken again, but you may keep an eye on kernel.ubuntu.com/mainline to check if it’s back.

For users who have upgraded to or installed Ubuntu 26.10 Stonking Stingray, most of the PPAs maintained by ubuntuhandbook.org have been updated with the new Ubuntu edition support.

The PPAs contain the software packages, native .deb format, that are either not yet available in the Ubuntu repositories or the Ubuntu repositories only provide an old version.

So far, following PPA have been updated with 26.10 support:

• Annotator 2.0.3 – Elementary OS image annotation tool.
• Audacious 4.6.1 – music player with GTK, Qt, and classic Winamp interface.
• Converseen 0.15.2.9 – a batch image conversion application.
• Audacity 4.0.1 – popular audio editing software.
• Conky Manager 2.7 – GUI for managing Conky widgets.
• Darktable 5.6.2 – popular photography and raw developer software.
• GnuCash 5.17 – a personal and small-business finance manager.
• gThumb 4.0 – GNOME image organizer and viewer.
• Howdy 3.0.0 – Windows Hello style facial login.
• KeePass2 2.61.1 – password manager runs in Linux through mono.
• Krita 6.0.4.1 and Krita 5.3.4.1 – same version of Krita digital painting software but built aganst different Qt (qt5/qt6).
• NVIDIA VA-API driver 0.0.18 – VA-API implementation for NVIDIA GPU.
• open-fprintd – fingerprint driver for 06cb:009a, 138a:0090, 138a:0097, 138a:009d.
• RawTherapee 5.13 – raw photo processing software.
• Shotwell 33.0 – GNOME image organizer and viewer.

All the packages mentioned above install and launch in my case in Ubuntu 26.10, support amd64v3, but without well testing. Use them at your own risk!

The website also maintains many other software packages, though, the latest versions have already been included in Ubuntu 26.10’s own repository. They include:

• GIMP 3.2.6,
• Handbrake 1.11.2,
• MPV 0.41.0,
• GNU Octave 11.3.0,
• Scribus 6.6,
• Transmission 4.1.3,
• VLC 3.0.24.

In the case, I’ll update the PPAs when the newer versions are out!

Other PPAs are either discontinued because upstream development were abandoned, such as GDM Settings, broken (e.g., DVDStyler, Dolphin Emulator), or maintained for specific Ubuntu editions.

The Ubuntu team finally announced the release of Ubuntu 26.10 today after 6 months of development!

Ubuntu 26.10, codenamed “Stonking Stingray”, has now arrived. Building on the foundations of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, this release continues to advance security, performance, and hardware support while introducing new capabilities that look towards the future of Ubuntu.

What’s New in Ubuntu 26.10

Ubuntu 26.10 is a regular release with 9 months support until July 2027. It features Linux Kernel 7.3 with most recent hardware support and the latest GNOME Desktop 51.

Ubuntu Desktop now has amd64v3 ISO image. Installing this image on modern AMD/Intel platform will allow software to use more advanced processor instructions to speed up certain operations.

It as well introduces new official desktop images for RISC-V, with support for the SpacemiT K3 boards and QEMU.

Thanks to GNOME 51, the default desktop now features smoother desktop animation, out-of-the-box “New Document” context menu, automatic screen rotation for display with an accelerometer.

out-of-the-box “New Documents” context menu option, finally

However legacy NVIDIA driver may no longer work as GNOME 51 removed the code for it. See GNOME 51 Release note for details.

In addition, Ubuntu added new hwctl command line tool and option in “Settings -> System” to check if your computer is one of the certified devices that are tested for the best Ubuntu experience.

The window tiling system has been improved with a layout indicator. When you dragging a window to top center, it will show you the layout grid, allowing you to quickly snap the window into a specific grid section.

App Center (aka Snap Store) has been updated with unified app-details view for Debian and Snap package.

It now provides option to install additional media codec. And, a dedicated Drivers page is added (though I don’t see it in my case) where you can review the available graphics drivers, including NVIDIA driver branches.

Other changes include:

• Rust-based cp, mv, and rm.
• TPM-backed full-disk encryption for computers without a hardware root of trust.
• Change default D-Bus from dbus-daemon to dbus-broker.
• Toolkit updates, including GCC 15.2.0, .NET 10.0.112, Go 1.27, LLVM 22.1.8, OpenJDK 25.0.4, Python 3.14.7, Rust 1.97.1, Zig 0.16.

For more about Ubuntu 26.10, see the official release note.

Download Ubuntu 26.10

The images for Desktop, Server and WSL on modern Intel and AMD are available to download in the link below:

For amd64v3, arm64, and other CPU architecture types, they are available to download HERE.

The channel for upgrading from Ubuntu 26.04 seems not ready at the moment. You can try out by following the steps below:

• First install all available package updates via either “Software Updater” or sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade command. Then restart computer.
• Edit /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades file and change Prompt=lts to Prompt=normal, so it check every new Ubuntu releases rather than only LTS.
• Finally, either run update-manager -c to launch Software Updater and check if a new Ubuntu release is available, or run do-release-upgrade to do the job in CLI.