Google’s recent ‘structural simplification’ led to 200 people across many of its core development teams, including Python, Dart, and Flutter, losing their roles. With Canonical committed to using Flutter for its own desktop apps the news of layoffs in the team responsible for building the framework has left some in the wider Ubuntu community worried about its future viability. The new Ubuntu Installer, Firmware Updater, App Center, and the (currently MIA) Desktop Security Center are all built using Flutter, which is Google’s cross-platform Web-based UI framework underpinned by the Dart program ..read more

Canonical has published a draft release schedule for Ubuntu 24.10 ‘Oracular Oriole’. According to the timetable we should expect the final stable release of Ubuntu 24.10 to arrive on Thursday October 10, 2024. Six months of development lay ahead, with a beta release of the ‘Oracular Oriole’ set to take flight on September 19, followed by a release candidate build on October 3 to help identify extant issues. As a short-term or ‘interim’ release Ubuntu 24.10 will only get 9 months on support from its release. Short but sweet and it dovetails into the Ubuntu 25.04 release due in April […] You're ..read more

Canonical kernel engineer Juerg Haefliger has shared an update on Ubuntu support for the Lenovo ThinkPad X13s (Gen 1) laptop. The 13-inch Lenovo ThinkPad X13s is an ARM laptop powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx (gen3) processor with Adreno 690 GPU, 16 GB RAM, a 256 GB SSD, and claimed ~28 battery life. It comes preloaded with Windows 11 Pro for ARM by default. Last year a quasi-official (albeit experimental) Ubuntu 23.10 install image was released for this device, spearheaded by Juerg and the engineering effort he’d made to support it. The ISO was made available to download from the […] You ..read more

Fans of open-source racing game SuperTuxKart will be stoked to hear devs are busy in the pit lanes pepping the next major update — and it’ll launch this summer. SuperTuxKart 1.4 was released back in 2022 with a ton of improvements. Successive updates in that series have fine-tuned, fixed-up, and finessed performance and stability, but not put any new features in the tank (so to speak). But things shift up a gear in SuperTuxKart 1.5. This summer, SuperTuxKart 1.5 gets off the starting line with a welcome clutch —no, I’m sorry about these puns— of improvements and buffs across desktop […] You're ..read more

Media Progress is a new GNOME Shell extension that adds a real-time progress bar to the MPRIS notification/sound control doohickey that shows in the notification area. This extension doesn’t do else bar (heh) that, but as simple enhancements go it’s a nifty one. More than a mere indicator, the progress bar the extension adds is interactive and seekable. Click anywhere in the progress bar to jump to that position (which is handy if listening to something long, like a podcast or audiobook). As of writing the Media Progress extension supports GNOME 46. So to use it you will need to […] You're rea ..read more

Linux Mint 22 will include a Matrix web client preinstalled when released later this year. The IRC-based desktop chat app Linux Mint has been building, Jargonaut, to replace Hexchat and provide real-time communication for its users, will no longer be included (the status of any future development uncertain). Why the change? “Jargonaut […] works well and does exactly what we want. Its implementation was relatively easy and I’d say it’s now 75% complete,” Linux Mint lead Clément Lefèbvre says. But he adds that “feedback about Matrix” led to the team testing it, liking it, and deciding to switch ..read more

It seems that the popular command-line system info tool Neofetch is dead, Jim. The Github repo for the project was archived by its main developer last week and is now read-only, a sure sign that development has well and truly ceased to be. Not that this is a shock given that development on Neofetch had stalled a few years back, bug reports went unanswered, merge and pull requests ignored, and the last stable update issued back in 2020. I’ve been a long-time fan of Neofetch using it on all my installs since discovering it in 2015, showcasing it in scores […] You're reading NeoFetch Development ..read more

A new version of the open-source music player Amarok has been released, the first major update to the Qt-based media app since 2018. Amarok 3.0 is the first stable release to use Qt 5 and KDE Frameworks 5, and work to port the music player to the the newest Qt 6 and KDE Frameworks 6 is, its devs say, soon to get underway. “Common usecases should work quite well, and in addition to fixing KF5 port related regressions reported in pre-releases, 3.0 features many bugfixes and implemented features for longstanding issues, the oldest such documented being from 2009,” devs say. […] You're reading Ama ..read more

Mozilla devs are bringing more customisation options to the new tab page in Firefox. A number of modern web browsers, including Google Chrome, allow users to set a custom image as the backdrop for the new tab page: As the new tab page is (by default) set to show when a browser is launched and every time a new tab is opened it’s a highly visible (if often fleeting) part of users’ browser experience, making customisation a popular request. But while Mozilla Firefox offers an array of advanced features and settings that put it on a par with rival browsers […] You're reading Mozilla Devs Adding ‘N ..read more

Want to know the official codename of Ubuntu 24.10? Although Ubuntu 24.04 LTS has only just been released the pace of development marches ever on. Ubuntu developers are already beginning to bootstrap the base on which the next short-term release of the popular Linux distribution will be built. Ubuntu 24.10 will be released in October, 2024 and, upon release, receive 9 months of updates. Of course, as we all know: every new Ubuntu release gets its own alliterative codename made up of an adjective and an animal (real or mythological). For Ubuntu 24.10 they’ve settled on “Oracular Oriole”. Cute ..read more