OMG Ubuntu

Mozilla is shutting down Pocket, the “read it later” service it acquired in 2017 and integrated into the Firefox web browser. Pocket shuts down on July 8, but existing users and paying subscribers will be able to export saved stories until October 8, 2025. After that, finito. “Pocket has helped millions save articles and discover stories worth reading. But the way people save and consume content on the web has evolved, so we’re channeling our resources into projects that better match browsing habits today,” they say. Why kill it? The driver, they say, was so it could “…focus our efforts […]

Day-by-day we’re learning more on what to expect in Ubuntu 25.10 ‘Questing Quokka’, the next short-term release of Ubuntu due for release in October. Today, Canonical’s Kleber Souza, member of the Ubuntu Kernel Team, confirmed the plan is to ship the Linux 6.17 kernel in Ubuntu 25.10 – barring any unforeseen upstream hiccups, of course. As we’re yet to see the release of the Linux 6.15 kernel, and 6.16 is yet to enter development, committing to a version so far out may seem a bit optimistic. But it tracks. Last year Canonical made a major change to its kernel cadence […]

GNOME is looking to jettison X11 session support – as soon as this year, which may impact Ubuntu's plans for its next long-term support release. You're reading GNOME Dropping X11 Support May Complicate Next Ubuntu LTS, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

High Tide, an unofficial TIDAL client for Linux, now offers background playback, audio normalisation, synced lyrics and various visual improvements. You're reading High Tide (TIDAL Client for Linux) Gains New Features, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Fender Studio is a new free cross-platform DAW for Linux, backed by the iconic instrument maker. Learn what it can do and where to download. You're reading Fender’s New Music Creation Software Supports Linux, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Well here’s a turn up: Microsoft just released the source code for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), making the nifty tech open-source nearly a decade after development began. The tech giant announced the news at this year’s BUILD event, where it made some other open-source related announcements, including its own CLI text editor called Edit. Source code for WSL was quickly made available on the Microsoft GitHub. For those not familiar with it, WSL is a specialised virtualisation setup that lets Windows users run Linux distributions (like Ubuntu) inside of Windows, with tight system, software and hardware integration. Microsoft says […]

A new version of the Vivaldi web browser is available to download, carrying changes said to make our collective “everyday browsing smoother, faster, and just a little more delightful.” How does Vivaldi 7.4 make browsing the increasingly gamified, algorithmically manipulative and AI slopified modern web more ‘delightful’? Shortcuts. More specifically, Vivaldi 7.4 gives you the ability to “fine-tune” how shortcuts behave on a per-site basis. If you want a website’s shortcuts to take priority over Vivaldi’s, you can. “It’s about putting you in control, making sure your shortcuts work where and when you need them most”, says Jon von Tetzchner, […]

The elementary OS 8.0.1 release back in March brought an appreciable set of improvements with it, including a much-improved Files app, but as ever in development: the work never stops! Project founder, Danielle Foré, recently recapped a few smaller features that have been issued to users of the Ubuntu-based Linux distribution as software updates, including: If you run elementary OS 8.x, install your updates and eat your greens, you should be benefitting from the changes listed above (if you don’t have them, go update to get ’em). But Danielle also gave us an early-look at an exciting new app and […]

Ubuntu 25.10 'Questing Quokka' will ship Loupe and Ptyxis as default image viewer and terminal apps in the upcoming October release. You're reading Ubuntu is Replacing its Image Viewer and Terminal Apps, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

A number of new personalisation features have been added to the Firefox New Tab page in the past year, including the ability to pick a background image from a small set of hand-picked pics and solid colours. Pleasant though those curated images are, they’re not to everyone’s tastes. This is why Mozilla’s engineers have been beavering away on a few enhancements to provide greater customisation — you can “test” them in the latest stable release, which is Firefox 138 at the time I write this. The big change is that you can now “upload your own image” to use as […]

Canonical commits to donating $120k to the open source developers building the projects and tools that help power the Ubuntu ecosystem. You're reading Canonical Donating $120,000 to Open Source Projects This Year, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

NordVPN has announced a major update to its Linux app, adding a much-requested GUI front-end that makes it easier to control, configure and monitor secure connections. Linux users have been able to use an official, comprehensive command-line interface for NordVPN for many years. The addition of a graphical user-interface (which can be used alongside the command-line one) should help the company broaden access to its services by making it easier to use NordVPN without needing to look up commands and type them in. NordVPN say the Linux GUI provides “visually rich elements and ease of use without compromising advanced features. […]

If you’ve been itching to do an in-place upgrade to Ubuntu 25.04 from 24.10, your patience has paid off — upgrades have been re-enabled. For those unaware, Ubuntu was forced to halt upgrades to the new Ubuntu 25.04 release a few hours after its release on April 17 after major bugs were reported, affecting users across different Ubuntu flavours were discovered. Users were left with broken desktops (environments, that is – upgrading didn’t smash motherboards); had third-party packages removed that shouldn’t have been, and users on Qt-based flavours couldn’t upgrade using the GUI tool due to missing dependencies. Less Plucky, […]

A few months back I reported that Kagi, the company behind the paid, private and privacy-focused search engine of the same time, is porting its Orion web browser to Linux – now we have our first look at how its Linux GUI is shaping up. A recent development screenshot of Orion’s WIP Linux build was shared by Kagi devs—pictured in the hero image above—and it reveals that Orion for Linux will use GTK4/libadwaita for its GUI. A logical (and expected) choice: GTK4 is a modern, widely-used toolkit across Linux distros, with consistency at its core. And libadwaita provides widgets and […]

If you’re running Kubuntu 25.04 and want the latest fixes the KDE Plasma 6.3.5 release, you can use the Kubuntu backports PPA to get ’em. KDE Plasma 6.3.5 popped out a few weeks back, serving as the fifth and (likely) final bug-fix release prior to the next major release, KDE Plasma 6.4. Over the weekend, Kubuntu developers announced that the Kubuntu backports PPA has added the requisite packages for Kubuntu 25.04. Thus, Kubuntu users can add (or enable) the PPA to get the update now, rather than wait for the update to filter out through the usual software channels. The […]

Ubuntu is one of the leading Linux distributions for RISC-V hardware thanks to Canonical’s strategic partnerships with companies like DeepComputing – who just announced a powerful new RISC-V AI PC running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. The DC-ROMA RISC-V AI PC—apologies for the caps, it’s how it’s stylised—is built around the company’s new RISC-V Mainboard II, which is designed for use in the Framework 13″ and 14.2″ laptops. Though designed for Framework laptops, owning one isn’t a requirement. A nifty enclosure allows this mainboard to be used as a regular PC you connect to a monitor, keyboard and mouse. The board itself […]

Roll credits on Totem, roll camera on Showtime — GNOME developers have officially cast a new video player in GNOME 49, out in September. Per an upstream merge, GNOME has formally replaced the aged GTK3 Totem video player with the newer, fresher and all-the-more modern GTK4/libadwaita app Showtime in its Core Apps1 lineup. Like its predecessor, Showtime’s user-facing name in GNOME 49 will be changed to the generic moniker of Video Player (I’d wager most of us will continue to call it by its codename, the same way we refer to Files as Nautilus). Showtime may be new in GNOME’s Core Apps, but it’s […]

The Wellbeing controls available in Ubuntu 25.04 make it easy to get periodic prompts to move your butt or look away from your screen — you might not want them enabled all the time, though. Wellbeing controls were one of the flagship features of GNOME 48. As well as screen time monitoring (with controls to set a screen time limit, and turn the display greyscale when it’s reached), you can enable reminders to take a break and move. Alerts telling you to get up and move may be helpful during the day, but at nighttime when you’re, say, engrossed in […]