Wine, the compatibility layer for running Windows apps / games in Linux, macOS & BSD, released new 11.19 development release today.

The new version of this free open-source software introduced some new features and fixed various bugs for many Windows games and apps.

First, the new wine 11.19 added support for vertical text rendering in GDIPlus. Meaning it can now draw text vertically when running Windows apps that use the GDI+ Windows graphics API for text drawing.

It can now remember the results of DNS lookups instead of performing a new lookup every time an application asks for the same hostname, which improves network performance.

And, the unicode character tables updated to Unicode 18.0.0, improving support for newer Unicode characters.

Other changes are mostly bug-fixes for apps and games, including Time clock SBE 1.2 and 2.2, ArcGIS Pro, Command Post, Zombie Army 4, Paint.net 5.2, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Desperados 2, and Final Fantasy XI Online.

For more about Wine 11.19, see the official release note.

How to Install Wine 11.19

Wine provides official packages for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and macOS, which are available to install through the official guide in the link below:

For Ubuntu users, the current 3 LTS releases (22.04, 24.04, and 26.04) are support. And, you need to install the winehq-devel package in the final step to get wine 11.19.

The Document Foundation announced the first maintenance release for LibreOffice 26.8 yesterday.

The new version of this popular free open-source office suite for Linux, Windows, and macOS introduced a few dozens of bug-fixes, focusing on the compatibility for Microsoft OOXML file format.

First in KDE Plasma and other Qt based desktop environments, the new LibreOffice 26.8.1 now uses native Qt widgets for its UI instead of drawing the widgets itself. So, the dialogs look and behave more like a native application.

For Calc app, it fixed wrong dimensions for rotated drawing objects and unable to edit database ranges in XLSX files.

It also fixed the issues that AutoFilter incorrectly treated the German character ß as equivalent to ss, and named hyperlinks were not working after exported as PDF.

It as well fixed the garbled Chinese text in the Text Import dialog when pasting unformatted text, and, “Text to Columns” feature was garbling Japanese text when it fails to detect a full-width space as the delimiter.

Other Calc fixes include special characters decoding issue in old Lotus 1-2-3 files, ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) detection when importing some CSV files, import of CSV files encoded as UTF-16BE, as well as a few crashes.

The Writer app in the release also got many fixes, including Table of Contents (TOC) hyperlinks could randomly stop working in DOCX files, and text alignment issue for DOCX documents containing multiple tab characters.

It also fixed the line spacing issue when opening some DOC/DOCX documents using CJK fonts, and fixed text highlighting not covering the full text height with Leading line spacing.

Other fixes include PDF export incorrectly displaying hidden paragraph numbering, Japanese full-width/half-width character conversion, paragraphs being incorrectly moved to the next page, as well as app freeze when using the vertical scrollbar on ARM-based macOS.

For Impress, it fixed the PPTX import crash caused by an unknown table style ID or malformed / unusual comment data.

There are as well many other fixes in LibreOffice 26.8.1, they include:

• LibreOffice Base incorrectly handling MySQL/MariaDB database names that contain dots (.).
• Error when using CoreReflection with nested arrays created from Split().
• Read-only documents not switching to editable mode after using Save As.
• Crash when creating Pivot Tables with multiple data fields.
• And more.

Get LibreOffice 26.8.1

LibreOffice provides official packages for Linux, Windows, and macOS, which are available to download at the link below:

For Linux, besides the native DEB/RPM packages, there are also universal Flatpak and AppImage available to download in the others page.

And, Ubuntu members maintain an Ubuntu PPA for LibreOffice, which however stuck at v26.2.x at the moment.

Ubuntu 26.10, code-name Stonking Stingray, is now available for beta testing!

The Beta was released last night, one week behind the scheduled date. The Ubuntu Team announced:

The Ubuntu Release team is pleased to announce the Beta release of the Ubuntu 26.10 Desktop, Server, WSL, and Cloud products.

Ubuntu 26.10, codenamed “Stonking Stingray”, continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.

What’s New in Ubuntu 26.10

Ubuntu 26.10 is a short term release expected to finally released on October 15, 2026. It features 6-month support until July 2027, GNOME Desktop 51 and Linux Kernel 7.3.

Thanks to the latest Kernel, it includes drivers and improvements for new hardware support, better performance, and various security and other fixes.

The Ubuntu Desktop features smoother desktop animation, out-of-the-box “New Document” context menu, automatic screen rotation for display with an accelerometer. 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.

Other changes include:

• amd64v3 iso image.
• Rust-based cp, mv, and rm.
• Support for multiple RVA23 RISC-V platforms: SpacemiT K3 boards (Pico-ITX, CoM260 kit), SiFive BigSky platform.
• Myna speech to text (only extension so far).
• GCC 15.2.0, .NET 10.0.112, Go 1.27, LLVM 22.1.6, 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.

And, Ubuntu 26.04 is now able to upgrade to the Ubuntu 26.10 Beta by following steps:

• 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 -d to get the “Upgrade” button in Software Updater, or run do-release-upgrade -d to upgrade from command line interface.

Audacity 4.0.1, the first maintenance update for the new major 4.0 series, was released yesterday.

The new version of this free open-source audio editor brings back some features missing from Audacity 3.x, and fixes various bugs.

First, the new version added back multi-file export, the options in “Export” dialog allowing to export audio tracks and or labeled regions as separated audio files.

add back export tracks as separated files

For Windows, the portable package is back. It’s .7z package that includes the executable as well as all runtimes, allowing to run the audio editor without installation. It as well fixed the non-ASCII text issues and app launch failure when Smart App Control is enabled.

Audacity 4.0.1 also includes some user experience and accessibility improvements.

The carousel dots (the small row of dots) in welcome dialog is now clickable, letting you navigate back/forward.

The project under “Cloud projects” in Home tab now provides an ‘Open in file manager‘ context menu option through the three vertical dots (⋮) menu.

image from https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/11801

For keyboard users, some missing AU3 shortcuts (such as W to play selection, Home and End for rewind to start / end) are added back.

The Tab navigation key can now move focus to track’s vertical ruler. And, when it’s focused, you may press Shift+F10 to open its context menu, and use Up/Down to move focus to the vertical ruler of the previous or next track.

Toast notifications are now announced by screen readers and reachable by keyboard. And, opening the Effects panel now focuses the “Add effect” button.

Other changes include:

• Add Liquid Glass icons in macOS.
• Fix AppImage launch issue in some Linux Distributions.
• Faster clip dragging and undo/redo experience.
• Various bug-fixes.

Get Audacity 4.0.1

The official release note as well as the installer packages are available in Github via the link below:

For Linux, scroll down and select download AppImage under Assets section, x86_64 for modern Intel/AMD or aarch64 for Snapdragon X Elite.

Then, add executable permission from file properties dialog. Finally, run to launch the software.

For Ubuntu user who prefer native .deb package, I’ve built the new version into this PPA for Ubuntu 26.04 and Ubuntu 26.10, though not well tested.

To add the PPA and install the package, launch terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run commands below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/audacity4

sudo apt update

sudo apt install audacity

For Ubuntu 24.04 LTS users, the channel for upgrading to the latest Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS is now enabled!

The Ubuntu Team announced the upgrade enable-ment yesterday on Sep 29:

The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce that upgrades from Ubuntu 24.04 LTS to Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS, codenamed “Resolute Raccoon”, are now enabled.

As with all LTS releases of Ubuntu, Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS represents the consolidation of fixes and improvements identified during the initial launch of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. That work is now complete, and users of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS will be offered an automatic upgrade to 26.04.1 LTS via Update Manager, rolled out progressively over the coming days.

Major Changes in Ubuntu 26.04 Since Ubuntu 24.04

Ubuntu 26.04 so far uses the same Linux 7.0 Kernel as Ubuntu 24.04.5. But as time goes on, 26.04 will have newer HWE Kernels, such as Linux 7.3.

The default GNOME desktop has been updated from version 46 to 50, while, the classic Ubuntu on Xorg session is completely removed. User who still rely on X11 needs to switch to another desktop environment, such as MATE, XFCE4.

The release features several new default applications. They include:

• Resources system monitor,
• Showtime video player,
• Ptyxis terminal emulator,
• and, new Security Center.

New Security Center

The Software & Updates (along with “Additional Drivers”) utility is no longer pre-installed, though it’s still available in App Center.

The Startup Applications tool has been removed, instead, it uses Settings -> Apps to manage the auto-start permissions. For scripts and custom auto-start options, see this guide for details.

Other changes include:

• New folder icons and fonts.
• New Rust-based sudo implementation.
• Screen time support and more parental controls.
• Battery charge limit support.
• Ubuntu Pro support on WSL.
• Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) for supported hardware.
• And, many toolkit updates.
• See release note for details.

How to upgrade from Ubuntu 24.04 to 26.04.1

NOTE: backup your important data before upgrading, as it has the potential (though rarely) to break you system, e.g., due to a power or internet interruption.

As mentioned in the announcement, the automatic update will be rolled out progressively over the coming days.

Without waiting for the upgrade pop-up, you can launch Software Updater, install all available updates, restart if it prompts and finally re-launch Software Upgrader for the Upgrade button.

While Ubuntu 24.04 Server can run the do-release-upgrade command instead to start the upgrading process.

This is a step by step guide shows how to install and try out Myna, Ubuntu’s new offline speech to text feature in Ubuntu 26.04 and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, is developing a voice typing application called Myna. It’s an opt-in feature in Ubuntu 26.10, while the current Ubuntu 26.04 can also try it out.

How it works

Just press a keyboard shortcut and speak naturally, the app will record what you said, then use an AI model to convert the voice to text, finally type the text in your application.

All the process works offline! And, myna is made up of three components:

• myna-config – the graphical configuration tool, responsible for choosing which AI model to use (Whisper, Parakeet, or FunASR), set keyboard shortcut, language, etc.
• myna client and AI models, installed as snap packages.
• Gnome Shell extension for dictation activity indicator.

Step 1: Install myna-config Graphical Configuration Tool

For user on modern Intel/AMD platform, Ubuntu developer maintains a PPA that contains myna-config package for Ubuntu 24.04 and Ubuntu 26.04.

To install the package, first press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to launch terminal, then run command to add PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:charles05/myna-config

Next, run command to install the configuration tool:

sudo apt install myna-config

If you’re following this tutorial in Linux Mint, then run sudo apt update to refresh cache first.

Finally, launch the tool from either Gnome Overview or by running myna-config in terminal.

Step 2: Install Myna Client and AI Models

Both the client app and AI models are available as Snap packages.

To install then, first launch terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) then run the commands below one by one:

• First, run command to allow snap packages to run background services as user:

  sudo snap set system experimental.user-daemons=true

• Then, install the myna client (so far available in edge repository):

  sudo snap install myna --edge

• Finally, download & install AI models (choose one that you prefer, or install all of them):

  sudo snap install --edge myna-parakeet

  sudo snap install --edge myna-whisper

  sudo snap install --edge myna-funasr

Step 3: Install GNOME Shell Extension (only for default GNOME Desktop)

For better integration, you may install myna-shell extension that can display small on-screen overlay showing the status of dictation.

The extension so far is not available in extensions.gnome.org, so you need to manually install it from source.

• First, launch terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to grab the myna source code:

  git clone https://github.com/canonical/myna.git

  Run sudo apt install git to install if git does not exist.

• Create the extension directory:

  mkdir -p ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/myna-shell@canonical.com

• Finally, copy the extension from source to the directory you just created:

  cp -r myna/extensions/myna-shell/* ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/myna-shell@canonical.com

After installed the extension, log out and back in. Then, launch “Extension Manager” (available in App Center / Ubuntu Software as Debian package) and enable that extension.

Configure and Use Myna

Now, launch myna-config, choose AI model, set a keyboard shortcut, your spoken language (e.g., en) and other.

Finally, launch a text editor or application to input, press the keyboard shortcut and speak naturally, and see if it works!

For issues, report to github.com/canonical/myna/issues.

Uninstall:

If you don’t like the new voice typing application, or it does not work properly for you, then launch terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and remove it by following steps.

• First, remove the extension either by using “Extension Manager” or by simply removing the source:

  rm -R ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/myna-shell@canonical.com

• Then, remove the client and AI models:

  snap remove --purge myna myna-parakeet myna-funasr myna-whisper

• Finally, remove the configuration tool:

  sudo apt remove myna-config

Also remove the PPA afterward by running command:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:charles05/myna-config

Firefox 157.0, the new biweekly release of this popular web browser, is available to download.

The new version of this browser features the biggest redesign of its user interface in years. As you see in the screenshot, the window corner, tabs, address bar, input box, menus, and almost everything with borders are more rounded than before.

The left-sidebar is now more compact. Toolbar and side-bar icons now look bolder. The address bar border is now highlighted when in focus. And, the settings page now use purple color for highlighted items.

In addition, the version features new built-in themes with light and dark variants.

And, a new “Window density” section is added in Appearance settings page, allowing to change the spacing around window elements like toolbar, tabs, and sidebar between standard, compact, and touch fit to different screens or devices.

WebRTC video calls can now use your GPU for hardware accelerated AV1 decoding if supported, instead of always decoding AV1 video in software.

When pressing Tab keyboard key, it now moves focus straight to the text field of the address bar and search bar instead of stopping on the search engine button first.

And, the Firefox Suggest feature in the address bar is now available for users in more Countries including Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.

Other changes in Firefox 157.0 include:

• Show warning when a website is set to allow other computer software to read encrypted web traffic.
• Exclude Amazon from the built-in search engine list.
• Enable the updated side-bar for everyone, though it can be disabled by set sidebar.revamp to false.
• Support the at-rule() function for @supports.
• Support the chain value for the CSS overscroll-behavior property.
• Various security and other fixes.

Get Firefox 157.0

The official release note as well as the download link will be soon available in Firefox website via the link below:

If you can’t wait, then get it from this Mozilla web-page.

For Linux Distributions, it’s recommended to wait your distro update. Though, there are also Flatpak package and Ubuntu PPA (need to set prority) available for choices.

gThumb, the open source image viewer and organizer application designed for GNOME, released new 4.0 version today!

The new version of this GNOME image viewer and browser is finally ported to GTK4 + LibAdwaita, making it a modern native app for recent GNOME desktops.

With the GTK4/LibAdwaita port, it features Gnome native file chooser, better UI rendering and animation, and modern input handling such as drag’n’drop and touchscreen support.

Besides that, the new gThumb 4.0 now supports playing animated WEBP and PNG images, as well as saving images to JPEG XL (.jxl) file format.

The image editor now includes new Censor filter that can mosaic or blur a rectangle image area. And, it now lets you control the strength/intensity of many image filters instead of simply applying each filter at a fixed level.

The new 4.0 is now more touchpad friendly. User can now use two-finger swiping left/right gestures to navigate between images in the viewer and slideshow (presentation) modes, as well use pinch gesture to zoom images.

The slideshow (presentation) mode now displays a simple fade-in animation when switching images. And, the editor now uses the first frame for the animated images.

Other changes in gThumb 4.0 include:

• Use a fast resize algorithm for big images.
• Support mouse side-buttons to navigate back / forward.
• Show more metadata information for videos.
• Swap video’s width and height metadata when it is rotated.
• Remove web albums, contact sheet, adjust time, find duplicates.
• Various fixes and translation updates.

How to Install gThumb 4.0

gThumb does not provide official package for Linux. Instead, most Linux distribution include the image viewer and organizer in their system repositories.

At the moment, Ubuntu 26.10 and Fedora 45 have built the new 4.0 version in their repositories, while, other distribution users may either build from source tarball or use community maintained packages.

For Ubuntu, I’ve built the new version into this unofficial PPA for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.

To add the PPA and install the package, launch terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run the commands below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/gthumb

sudo apt update

sudo apt install gthumb

UPDATE: gThumb 4.0 requires an updated version of libraw, that will break other apps (such as nomacs as report in comment) depend on the old system-provided version.

For Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 22.04, and Linux Mint 22.x, system provided LibAwaita libraries do NOT meet the minimum gThumb 4.0 requirement. The commands above will however install the latest 3.12.12 version, which was released on the same day as version 4.0.

(Optional) For any reason, you may uninstall the packages by running the command below in a terminal window:

sudo apt remove gthumb gthumb-data

And, remove the PPA repository by running command:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/gthumb

VLC, the free open-source and cross-platform media player, released new 3.0.24 version in last week.

The new version of this popular media player comes with more than 130 security fixes, some new audio/video codecs support, and various other fixes and improvements.

First, VLC 3.0.24’s contrib system now supports downloading and building FFmpeg 8.1.2 in bundle. Thanks to FFmpeg 8, it now supports decoding Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec, the videos captured by Samsung devices such as Galaxy S26 Ultra.

It also supports decoding ATRAC3 and ATRAC9, the Sony developed proprietary audio codecs mainly associated with Sony’s gaming consoles.

The new release now supports CEA-708 closed captions in MP4, a type of digital TV subtitle standard mainly used for television broadcasts. And, it can now read and display ID3v2 metadata information from the MPEG/MP3 stream.

For live audio/video streams, RIST input and output now use librist library with main and simple profile support. And, it now supports SRT listener mode, act as the receiving server waiting for the sender to connect to it.

And, the SFTP support has been improved with public key authentication and ED25519 hostkey support.

Other changes in VLC 3.0.24 include:

• Super Resolution scaling with Moore Threads GPUs.
• Support NV12 DirectShow capture in Windows.
• Add Linux Flatpak build support.
• Remove NPAPI browser plugin.
• Remove broken youtube.lua plugin.
• And various bug-fixes.

Install VLC 3.0.24

The official release note as well as the download links for Linux, Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS are available in VideoLan website via the link below:

For Ubuntu, the new version is available to install as the official SNAP package in Ubuntu Software or App Center.

I didn’t find the official Flatpak package, but the community maintained one is still at version 3.0.23 at the moment of writing, and you can get it in flathub.org.

For those who prefer native .deb package, I’ve built the new version into this unofficial PPA for Ubuntu 26.04, Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 22.04, and their based distributions, such as Linux Mint 22.x.

To add the PPA and install VLC deb package, launch terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run the commands below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/vlc

sudo apt update

sudo apt install -t "o=LP-PPA-ubuntuhandbook1-vlc" vlc

NOTE: The PPA packages were built with Ubuntu’s default FFmpeg libraries.

The PPA build farm has NO Internet access during the build process, meaning build FFmpeg 8.1.2 in bundle needs lots more uploads (FFmpeg plus its dependency libraries), making hard to maintain.

(Optional) To remove the PPA and uninstall VLC .deb package:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/vlc

sudo apt update

sudo apt install --autoremove vlc

Keep an eye on the terminal output before answering to remove VLC, because the --autoremove option will try to remove packages that were automatically installed as dependencies and are no longer needed.

Fastfetch, the popular tool for fetching system information and displaying in command-line interface (CLI), released new 2.69.0 version yesterday.

The new version of this free open-source NeoFetch like tool added more detection support for Linux, macOS, Windows, and Android users.

For Linux, it can now display CPU name and frequency on SPARC, the RISC CPU architecture designed by Sun Microsystems, mainly used in workstations and servers, especially systems running Solaris operating system.

It now detects the version of Umbriel Wayland compositor, counts the packages installed through rum in RakuOS, and, detects packages installed on CRUX Linux.

image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC

On the Android side, it now detects more Android ROM names including HarmonyOS, Flyme, OneUI, LineageOS, and many others.

For Android 11 or later, it can now show Wi-Fi interface, connection, standard, and security information. On Android 13 or later, it can also show display mode, physical size, rotation, and HDR information.

And, for devices with root or ADB access, it can show detailed battery information and also display information.

On Windows, macOS, as well as Android, the image logos are now rendering with system native image processing libraries instead of ImageMagick. So ImageMagick is no longer required as dependency in these platforms.

The --kitty command option, that can render a local image file as the main logo, now supports GIF and APNG animated images. By setting logo.animationFrame to 0 will play animations in compatible kitty terminals, while positive (e.g, 1, 2, 3) or negative (e.g, -1) values select a fixed image from animation.

Other changes in FastFetch 2.69.0 include:

• Add --logo-position auto that display logo at top, when terminal window is narrow.
• Sixel logos support in Windows terminal.
• Bluetooth Low Energy detection on Windows and macOS.
• Deprecate ImageMagick 6.
• Deprecate the experimental QuickJS format scripting.

Get FastFetch 2.69.0

There are also many other changes and improvements in the new 2.69.0 release. Along with the installer packages for Linux, macOS, Windows, and other supported platforms, they are available in the link below: