omg! ubuntu

A new desktop launcher concept hit the Snap Store this week, made by a Canonical dev. It's an interactive mockup simulating tasks that could use optional, on-device AI model to action things, rather than just find – like creating a calendar itinerary from clipboard history.

My calculator history leaking would be 1000x more humiliating than my browser history.

See all your drives and partitions – and their free space – on one page in Nautilus file manager with a community add-on. It also includes a Miller columns view, for browsing folders in columns.

Ubuntu's web infrastructure is undergoing its second major DDoS attack year. Canonical is working to resolve the incident. Core services, like Snap updates, ISOs, PPAs and Single Sign-On for Ubuntu Pro enablement are NOT affected.

Blanc is a new open-source web browser built on Electron. Instead of a tab strip and toolbar it uses a 'dynamic island' that expands on demand. Its creators say their aim is to make web pages "the main event again".

Ubuntu 26.10 has entered beta, with ISOs of the release dubbed the 'Stonking Stingray' available to download. Highlights include Linux 7.3, GNOME 51 and a new window snapping experience.

Ubuntu 26.10 Beta was supposed to be released on 24 September, but the 'Stonking Stingray' has proven slippery – it'll now be out in a week's time, 1 October. #ubuntu

Ubuntu 26.10 adds a new way to tile your app windows. A layout picker will slide in from the top of the screen when you drag and hold a window. Drop it onto a zone to instantly tile it. The concept should be familiar if you’ve used Windows 11.

Ubuntu's been working on a new voice to text tool called Myna, powered by local voice speech recognition models. This week, the various components were added the Snap Store, making it possible to try the tech out early.

Ubuntu kernel security updates will soon be arriving weekly. Canonical has changed it cadence to keep pace with what it says is an 'explosion' in vulnerabilities being found and reported by researchers using AI tools. The changes take effect from the end of this month.

A new system monitor app that runs on Linux, but from an unlikely author. TMOG is the work of David Plummer, a developer who created the original Windows Task Manager in the mid-90s. While his new apps is free to use, it's not open-source and some features require a $40 license to use.

Used The GIMP, but never gelled with it? This (very enjoyable) article does a good job at articulating why. Spoiler: it's not you, and it's not the software, it's just about expectations.

Obscura VPN now has a desktop app for Linux. While VPNs aren't rare, this one does something most don't: it routes your traffic through two different providers: it acts as the 'entry' node, and Mullvad the 'exit'. Neither gets a 'full' profile. It's also made its source code GPLv3, which is nice.

Geary e-mail client, reborn? Kinda! Convey is built from the same code, but adds new features and a UI port to GTK4. It's available to install from Flathub.

Calibre has been updated with a “create your own adventure” game, powered by AI. You design a world, create a character and shape the story by your choices to the text (and images) the AI generates. Just what users of a *checks notes* /ebook manager/ will be clamouring for

GNOME 51 is out with smoother animations, new settings added and improvements across core apps, including the ability to add handwritten signatures in the document viewer. Highlights in the link. GNOME 51 will be included in Ubuntu 26.10, which is out on 15 October. #linux

Ubuntu 26.10 will come with a newer kernel than initially planned, with distro engineers now targeting v7.3 to power next month's new release. #ubuntu

Liquid Glass comes to GNOME, after a developer who liked the look, but didn't own an Apple device, decided they wanted it. It uses real refraction shaders, not just a simple blur, so there's a fairly noticeable performance hit – but still pretty cool! www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/09/liqu...

I just dug to the bottom of my Big Box of Cables to find two cables that I needed for something. They've been in the bottom for 10+ years. So, "when are you ever gonna use these?" was today. Don't ever let anyone take your Big Box of Cables away.

As other office suites pile on AI features, LibreOffice's decision to /not/ join in isn't hurting its appeal…

Audacity 4.0 has landed, and the new Qt UI delivers quite the glow up! New clip editing features, project file format and better system integration are also included in the update.

Ubuntu's adding an AI voice dictation feature that uses local AI models and keyboard shortcut to let you "talk" into any text field or app – yup, even the app launcher. As the feature still isn't in daily builds of the distro, I decided to wrangle it from source code to try it out early.

Firefox 155 is out today, and it makes its AI-powered Smart Window available to users in USA, Canada and France – entirely opt-in (mercifully). Plus, blocked tracker counts appear in the address bar, you can re-order containers and a few pesky Linux bugs were squashed.

Calibre, the open-source ebook manager, has added a button to 'edit' the cover of ebooks using AI. It includes preset prompts, or you can write your own. "Never judge a book by its cover, but if you do, use AI to generate a better one" ~ 2026.

A good error dialog should tell you what failed, why it failed and what to do next. Ubuntu's App Center prefers a shoulder shrug, saying it's 'not sure what the error is'. With features like driver management coming in 26.10, maybe it's time for its error reporting to be more clued-in?

Pine64 has stopped making Linux hardware because of soaring RAM and storage prices. PineNote, PineTab 2 and all single-board computers are affected. It will continue to make microcontroller devices, like the PineTime smartwatch, since data centre appetites don't extend to 16 MiB pSRAM chips – yet.

Linux 7.2 is out. The latest kernel adds cache-aware scheduling, device-to-device data transfer over USB4 cables and a glut of ext4, NTFS and btrfs filesystem boosts. One much-hyped GPU change didn't make it over the line, pulled at the last minute due to performance regression.

Raspberry Pi owners – and anyone running Linux on a 64-bit Arm devices – can now install a native build of Google Chrome for the first time. #chrome

Everyone loves a crossword, right? Firefox is adding one to the browser's new tab page, powered by AI news app Particle (with links to their summarised content for clues). It's one of several widgets in the works, others include to-do list, timer, world clock, picture of the day and stocks.

Semi-related, Firefox has resumed posting on X, having paused interaction on the platform in early 2025. It said it was "glad to be back on X" to interact with its users as the web changes.

Firefox 153, the final monthly release before the release schedule speeds up, is out! This version enables container tabs for all, QR code link sharing and – at long last – rounded bottom window corners on GTK. Details and screenshots ⤵

Ubuntu is hopping aboard a modern system message bus, with 26.10 replacing dbus-daemon with dbus-broker – years after other distros did the same. Users won't notice much (if any) difference, but that's a good thing. www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/07/ubu...

We dig into Ubuntu's first planned AI feature, a speech to text tool, using our explainer format. The what, how and why – without the hype. #ubuntu #linux

O/t, but @404media.co's deconstruction of how the social media hustlebro grift /grifts/ is a real hoot. Get rich quick scams used to clog up Spam folders, now it's aspirational algo fodder.

Canonical has announced a new tool that lets developers quickly create reproducible isolated dev environments made from SDKs and defined by a YAML – and they'll let users run agentic tools in a 'harmless' way. www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/05/can...

Upgrades to Ubuntu 26.04 LTS finally go live for those running 25.10 (users on 24.04 get to upgrade from August), nearly a month after the stable release. www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/05/ubu... #Ubuntu #Linux #Opensource

"openai.com" was once the personal homepage of a guy named glenn (2001), and "tiktok.com" was the quaint shared homepage of a couple as their relationship progressed from dating to married with a baby (2000). THREAD!!!

A 'sustained, cross-border' DDoS attack on Canonical service has taken Ubuntu websites, Snap Store and Launchpad offline. www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/05/ubu...

Canonical is 'ramping up' AI in Ubuntu this year, as part of a bolder plan to make the Linux distro a context-aware OS supporting agentic integrations. #ubuntu

This Raccoon is going to be /very/ busy, as Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is out today! #ubuntu

What's new in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS versus 24.04 LTS? You better sit down for this, as with 4 releases over 2 years, there's 1 huge set of changes on the way. #ubuntu

ICYMI: Ubuntu 26.10 (the one /after/ the one that's releasing on Thursday) has been given its official codename. If you're not British, it could seem a little odd…

Hey, checkout this great post by @omgubuntu.co.uk about the Skyscraper TUI command line tool!! https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/04/skyscraper-bluesky-terminal-client-linux Fun fact, the Explore tab on the iOS app has a command line text UI “emulator” if you’re on iOS and want to try.

Orion is a GTK4/libadwaita WebKit browser that isn't GNOME Web, made by Kagi (of paid search engine fame). An 'early beta' build is now available for testing on #Linux, and while it's not ready for daily use - missing features ahoy – the bones are solid. One to watch, for sure.

I took @firefox.com's new AI-powered 'Smart Window' for a test in a beta build of the browser (so WIP). It's a prompt-based browsing experience powered by your choice of LLM from OpenAI, Alibaba or Google. "Yay". #firefox

Firefox is getting a new look called 'Nova'. The redesign, the first revamp since 'Proton' in 2021, sees the browser's UI embrace curves, colour and containers around web content. www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/03/fir... #firefox #Mozilla #Nova

Ardour, Lutris and Firefox fork Zen were among notable #opensource app updates last month. I run through February's highlights. www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/03/lin...