OMG! Ubuntu!

Attack knocks Ubuntu websites, services and Snap store offline

Joey Sneddon — Fri, 01 May 2026 07:54:07 +0000

If you’re having trouble accessing the Ubuntu website, the Snap store or Launchpad then you’re not alone: Canonical’s websites are currently facing a “sustained, cross-border” attack. The company says it is “working to address” the attack and will provide more details shortly. Websites and services have been affected since around 6PM (UK time) 30 April. What is and isn’t affected right now The Ubuntu APT repos are not offline, as they’re mirrored across multiple locations, countries and servers, although the main archive.ubuntu.com is offline (at the time of writing). It’s still possible to download OS ISO images too, due to […]

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Linux App Release Roundup (April 2026)

Joey Sneddon — Fri, 01 May 2026 03:18:34 +0000

April 2026 has been and gone, but not before delivering an array of Linux software updates, including new versions of popular FOSS video editor Kdenlive and Oracle’s virtualisation offering VirtualBox. We also got Firefox 150 with GTK emoji picker support and split tab improvements, and a modest bug fix update to the GIMP image editor, albeit resolving an annoying on-canvas text tool quirk. Below, I list other notable Linux app releases to arrive in April. While these didn’t merit a dedicated article (hey, it was a busy month with the release of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS), they still brought nifty new […]

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Linux Mint’s new HWE ISOs improve hardware support

Joey Sneddon — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 19:50:18 +0000

Linux Mint’s switch to a longer development cycle – the next release is coming at Christmas – has a knock on effect for people trying to install it on newer hardware that requires a newer kernel. So, a solution has been found. A new set of ISO images dubbed HWE (Hardware Enablement have been published to “address compatibility issues with brand new hardware”, says Linux Mint project lead Clement Lefebvre. The new Linux 22.3 HWE image contains the Linux 6.17 kernel. The team will, from this point on, publish new HWE ISOs each time a new HWE kernel arrives in […]

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Someone got Ubuntu running on a PS5 – and played Steam

Joey Sneddon — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 02:37:22 +0000

A newly launched project lets you boot Ubuntu on a PlayStation 5 to play Steam games, though only if your console is on old enough firmware. The hack is the work of security engineer Andy Nguyen, who this week announced a public release of his ps5-linux-boot project so more people can turn their “…PS5 Phat console on 3.xx and 4.xx [Firmware] into a fully functional Linux PC gaming device”. Obviously, this is all unofficial. The project exploits a patched hypervisor vulnerability to give Linux direct access to the PS5’s hardware – which with its eight Zen 2 CPU cores (16 threads) […]

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Enabling Ubuntu Pro in Security Center is super easy

Joey Sneddon — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 21:59:28 +0000

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS dropped the Software & Updates utility from default installs and added Ubuntu Pro settings to the Security Center app. But is the setup experience any better? The short answer is yes, mostly. The range of options still mirrors what was found in the old Software & Updates > Ubuntu Pro tab, but the layout is less cramped, with more room for concise explanations of what each setting and toggle does. Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use on up-to five devices. A paid subscription is required for businesses, enterprises or anyone trying to managing a fleet of Ubuntu installs. Enrolling is improved. […]

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Ubuntu 16.04 LTS security support has ended – unless you pay

Joey Sneddon — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 14:53:00 +0000

If you’re still running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), heads up: Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) ended this month and your system is no longer receiving security updates. Having debuted in April 2016, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS received five years of standard support with a further 5 years of security coverage available through ESM by enabling Ubuntu Pro. ESM for 16.04 ended April 2026, meaning action is needed to stay protected. The most straightforward thing to do is to upgrade to a more recent LTS release – but there’s no direct route from 16.04, however. Instead, you’ll need to upgrade in stages: […]

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Canonical is ‘ramping up’ AI in Ubuntu this year

Joey Sneddon — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 14:10:30 +0000

AI features are coming to Ubuntu in 2026, though Canonical has made clear that the distro is not becoming an AI product. In a community post, Jon Seager, VP of engineering at Canonical, says the company is “ramping up its use of AI tools in a focused and principled manner” this year, with a bias toward local inference and open-weight models whose licence terms match Canonical’s values. AI features in Ubuntu will take one of two forms. Implicit features improve existing capabilities using on-device AI models, for things like text-to-speech and speech-to-text to bolster accessibility. Ubuntu will become a context-aware […]

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Firefox’s free VPN is getting the one feature it was missing

Joey Sneddon — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 19:47:04 +0000

Mozilla has attracted kudos since it added a free built-in VPN to its Firefox web browser, not least because of the generous 50 GB a month usage limit. Now it’s set to add another sweetener: server location choice. Mozilla began rolling out VPN integration in Firefox 149 for Windows, macOS and Linux to users in the UK, USA, France and Germany as a privacy shield: it hides your real IP address when browsing by routing traffic through a secure proxy server hosted by Fastly. Canada was added to that list with Firefox 150. The only hard requirement is that users must be […]

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Canonical finally gives Launchpad (a bit of) a glow-up

Joey Sneddon — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 17:38:32 +0000

Launchpad, the home of Ubuntu development, has finally received some design attention. Canonical last updated the site’s homepage back in 2024, but many of the pages that the distro’s developers actually use or reference on a regular basis have remained untouched for the best part of a decade. Now that’s starting to change. Canonical UX designer Enzo Deng has announced that the company has “begun […] a complete redesign of the series page” for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, describing it as the start of “the journey of modernizing the Launchpad user experience” (sic). Save for a line on how the company […]

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Ubuntu 26.10 (Stonking Stingray) release date & schedule

Joey Sneddon — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 23:31:33 +0000

Grab your diary and jot down the date, as Ubuntu 26.10 ‘Stonking Stingray’ is going to be released on 15 October, 2026. The Ubuntu 26.10 release date and those of other notable milestones in the next development cycle have now been shared by Canonical but, given the nature of development, should be considered tentative – plans can and do change. The most significant date in the 26.10 schedule, besides the final release, is that of feature freeze on August 10, 2026. This is the date at which (in theory) new features stop being added so that the focus can move to […]

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Ubuntu 26.04 LTS released: GNOME 50, Wayland-only and Linux 7.0

Joey Sneddon — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 16:20:42 +0000

Canonical has released Ubuntu 26.04 LTS ‘Resolute Raccoon’ – the first LTS in Ubuntu’s history to ship without an Xorg desktop session. It runs on the latest Linux 7.0 kernel with the GNOME 50 desktop, and includes new video player and system monitor apps. Deb package management features are available in App Center. Support-wise, Ubuntu 26.04 LTS receives a minimum of 5 years of updates, and an additional 5 years of security coverage with Ubuntu Pro. For a full rundown of what’s changed since Ubuntu 25.10, see my features overview. If you’re upgrading from Ubuntu 24.04 LTS my deeper-dive on […]

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Framework’s Laptop 13 Pro is its first Ubuntu Certified machine

Joey Sneddon — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 20:13:39 +0000

Framework’s new 13 Pro laptop is the company’s first to ship as certified for Ubuntu, who say you can buy it knowing you’ll get “guaranteed support right out of the box”. Framework hardware have been popular with Linux users for years, not just for the company’s ethos around upgradeable and repairable hardware but their kernel contributions and financial support for open-source projects and developers. Specs wise, the new Framework 13 Pro is powered by Intel Core Ultra Series 3 or AMD Ryzen AI 300 series processors. It uses LPCAMM2 memory (modular LPDDR5X), available with up to 64GB (higher densities will […]

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Ubuntu confirms the 26.10 codename, and it sounds strange

Joey Sneddon — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 16:28:28 +0000

Ubuntu has announced the codename for Ubuntu 26.10 is… “Stonking Stingray”. As codenames go it’s certainly unique. The distro gives each release a codename: an alliterative pairing of adjective and animal, the latter of which becomes the release mascot. The tradition dates back to the first Ubuntu release in 2004 (dubbed ‘Warty Warthog’). Ubuntu 26.04 LTS was ‘Resolute Raccoon’, making ‘s’ the next letter alphabetically, and ‘Stonking Stingray’ was the distro’s standout choice. But what does it mean? Stonking is a strange choice as (to my knowledge) it’s mainly used here in the UK as an informal term for something […]

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Ubuntu 26.04 LTS: What’s new since 24.04?

Joey Sneddon — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 13:57:38 +0000

If you plan to upgrade to Ubuntu 26.04 LTS ‘Resolute Raccoon’ from Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, you’re going to inherit two years worth of improvements. As an LTS-to-LTS jump, you don’t simply benefit from what’s new in Ubuntu 26.04, but everything else added in the 3 interim releases prior, namely Ubuntu 24.10, 25.04 and 25.10. Ubuntu 26.04 LTS does plenty of things that 24.04 didn’t, but drops several features too It adds up to a mammoth set of changes across the full stack, running right from the lower-level foundations up to the apps and desktop environment that run on top. Plus, […]

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Firefox 150 brings Linux emoji picker, PDF page ordering + more

Joey Sneddon — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 12:40:56 +0000

Firefox 150 is released this week with an enhanced Split View features, multi-tab sharing and a clutch of welcome PDF editor improvements. Split View debuted in Firefox 149 last month, letting you easily view two web-pages side-by-side in a single tab (no more juggling windows). In Firefox 150, you can right-click a link on a web page and choose Open Link in Split View to, well, do precisely that. Firefox’s Split View feature now includes an option to Reverse Tabs in the context menu (three dots at the bottom of a focused split). And when creating a new Split View without a […]

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GIMP 3.2.4 released with fresh set of bug fixes

Joey Sneddon — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 12:15:29 +0000

Bug fixes arrive in GIMP 3.2.4, the latest maintenance update for the current 3.2.x stable series. Assorted improvements made since GIMP 3.2.2 dropped in March include a variety of layer workflow tweaks, like ensuring certain actions, like ‘Layers to Image Size’ and ‘Resize Layer to Selection’ only on raster layers (not vector, linked or text layers). Similarly, the team says they “caught more cases where tools would accidentally rasterize link, text, and vector layers”. A layer naming issue broke what GIMP devs refer to as “the principle of least surprise”, so that’s been resolved. In earlier builds opening an XCF […]

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Type with your voice on Linux using this Whisper-based app

Joey Sneddon — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 02:48:53 +0000

Your mouth can (probably) say things quicker than your hands can type them, yet voice typing is rarely used as a primary input method on desktop, despite most of us thinking nothing of using it on mobile. That’s despite speech-to-text being available on desktop OSes for decades, natively and through dedicated apps. It never caught on because it was inaccurate and slow and typically hidden away as an assistive feature. (And because a lot of what you do at a keyboard is navigation and that is less efficient to speak, unless ‘arrow down, arrow down, arrow down’ is some trendy […]

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Thunderbolt is an open-source ‘AI client’ from Mozilla’s for-profit arm

Joey Sneddon — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 17:01:48 +0000

Thunderbolt is a new open source AI client from the Mozilla-owned MZLA Technologies aimed at enterprises who want to run self-hosted chatbots on their own infrastructure. MZLA Technologies is the for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that develops and maintains the Thunderbird email client. It says Thunderbolt was created with the support of a grant from Mozilla. Terrible name aside (Intel owns a trademark for ‘Thunderbolt’ which Apple markets heavily, so it’s not the best choice for clarity), the LLM that MZLA Technologies asked to write their press release says that Thunderbolt is a “sovereign AI client” for organisations who want their own AI infrastructure. […]

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