OMG Ubuntu

Luna brings moon phases to your Ubuntu desktop with a simple GNOME Shell extension. Track current phase, illumination percentage, and upcoming changes right from your panel. You're reading Track Moon Phases From Your Ubuntu Desktop With Luna, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

At long last, Mozilla Firefox has native profile management features – and they don’t suck! The feature, which begins rolling out in today’s Firefox 138 update, is the latest “big ticket” feature the browser has belatedly sought to add, following recent long-requested supported for vertical tabs and tab grouping capabilities. Last month’s Firefox 137 release added the aforementioned tab grouping features, give its address bar a chip-laden overhaul, and flipped the switch on HEVC video playback on Linux. Firefox 138 has a number of notable changes to match those of its predecessor, so for a closer look at what they are, […]

If you’re looking for an easy way to “scrobble” music on Linux, no matter which music player you use, check out a new app called Turntable — and even if you don’t scrobble you should! Before I go any further I should bring those unfamiliar with what a “scrobble” is, up to speed. “Scrobbling” is—no, not one of those old fashioned British words I’m fond of using—the term given to logging the music you listen to, as you listen to it, on services like Last.fm and Libre.fm. When you play a track in a media player connected to a compatible […]

Of note, Ubuntu 24.04 developer images are now available for the new OrangePi RV2 RISC-V single-board computer (SBC). The news underscores Canonical’s on-going interest in the fledgling, open-source architecture. Last year, DeepComputing released Ubuntu-powered RISC-V tablet and laptop, and Ubuntu Server 25.04 was released last month with support for a myriad of RISC-V SBCs. “At Canonical, we believe that it’s important to do our part to help RISC-V succeed and gain acceptance as an open standard. Ubuntu’s availability on the OrangePi RV2 is a testament to the continued collaboration between [us] and the broader RISC-V community,” the company says. Adding […]

System76 has just announced the 7th alpha release of its Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment. As with earlier alphas, the focus remains adding features and functionality earmarked for inclusion in the first stable release (dubbed Epoch 1). What should you expect from that first stable release? Promise. It makes me sound a bit of a party-popper to say that but it’s worth keeping expectations grounded. It’s unfair and unrealistic to expect the first sable release of COSMIC developed in just a couple of years to feature-match desktop environments developed over decades. Nor will COSMIC’s native core apps, capable though they are […]

If you installed Ubuntu 25.04 (or upgraded from 24.10 before the gate was closed due to various pernickety issues) you might have noticed that window buttons in GTK apps. Ubuntu user Cristiano Fraga G. Nunes certainly did, filing bug report to report that “…on Ubuntu 25.04, the window control buttons (minimize, maximize, close) appear at inconsistent sizes across different GTK applications.” As he notes, GTK4 apps like Nautilus and Text Editor use smaller window buttons than in GTK3 apps, like Terminal which uses larger buttons (the same size GTK4 apps did in Ubuntu 24.10): Why the discrepancy? Ubuntu uses Yaru […]

Time is nearly up on support for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, with standard software, bug fix and security updates coming to an end on May 29, 2025. Users on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS should consider upgrading to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (or newer) if possible, but if unable should enable Extended Support Maintenance (ESM) as soon as possible in order to continue receiving critical security patches. ESM for Ubuntu provides “10 years of vulnerability management for critical, high and selected medium [security issues] for all software packages shipped with Ubuntu.” Enabling ESM is a bit of a no-brainer since it’s free for regular […]

Ghostty terminal fans needn’t fear an upgrade to Ubuntu’s latest release, as a community packaging effort just added Ghostty DEB packages for Ubuntu 25.04. The Ghostty Ubuntu project was set up was the aim of providing “Ubuntu/Debian (.deb) packages for Ghostty” so users on supported Linux distributions, including Ubuntu-based distros like Linux Mint and ZorinOS, can download, install and use the app properly. To date, there’s no official snap or Flatpak version of Ghostty available, and although compiling it from source isn’t hard, it’s more hassle than most are willing to go through to try a new app — yes, […]

The fourth major release in the Parallels Desktop 20 series has been released, bringing a stack of fixes for running Windows, macOS and Linux virtual machines on macOS. Yes, I did say macOS. I know; at first blush it seems odd for an Ubuntu blog to cover macOS app updates. But, Parallels is virtualisation software. It lets macOS users run Windows, macOS and Linux distributions as virtual machines so they can …Do whatever it is they need to. Scores of developers rely on Linux virtual machines in their day-to-day work since they aren’t able to run Linux on ‘bare metal’ […]

The Ubuntu 25.04 release is packed full of fresh features, updated apps and other upgrades that deliver a practical, pleasing out-of-the-box experience. —Perhaps not a perfect one, though. I just installed Ubuntu 25.04 on my “couch potato” laptop and there were a few “things” I had to do to make the experience better — albeit better for me! I didn’t do anything drastic: I didn’t remove Snap, uninstall GNOME Shell, or decamp to a 100% Libre Linux kernel and expunge proprietary drivers. Part post-install tasks and todos, part future-proof plumbing to setup a few things ahead of time so I […]

Do you currently run Ubuntu 24.10 on your computer but want to upgrade to the new Ubuntu 25.04 release to benefit from its (many) changes? As long as you’re full up-to-date and have a working internet connection, you can upgrade to Ubuntu 25.04 directly – no need to do download an ISO, flash it to a USB stick and do a clean install. And upgrading soon is a good idea. Ubuntu 24.10 supports ends in July, and those using it after that date will need to upgrade to Ubuntu 25.04 to continue receiving security updates. Those left cold by the churn of upgrading every […]

Pull the party poppers and unpack the cake as today is Ubuntu release day — and Ubuntu 25.04 ‘Plucky Puffin’ is now available to download. Ubuntu 25.04 is arguably the most polished & performant release to date! The latest short-term release of the world’s best-known desktop Linux operating system, Ubuntu 25.04 receives ongoing support until January 2026 — not long, but Ubuntu 25.10 is out in October, with direct upgrades available from this version. Over the past six months Ubuntu engineers, developers and community contributors have baked plenty of improvements into this release — arguably the most polished & performant […]

Ubuntu 25.04 is out this week and many will be turning to virtual machine to test, trial or tie the release into their development workflows — perfect timing for a new version of VirtualBox, then! Oracle today (April 15) issued the fourth maintenance update in the current VirtualBox 7.1 series. No new features were added but a flurry of bug fixes, stability boosts and integration buffs are present, which users across all supported OSes will benefit from. For Linux users frustrated at flakey wireless network adapter detection in earlier releases, the 7.1.8 update fixes the issue. Similarly, anyone ticked off […]

Drum roll your desks to help build some suspense because the Ubuntu 25.10 codename has been confirmed as …’Questing Quokka’. —Oh wait; I put in the headline so you already knew! As expected, the new Ubuntu codename keeps to convention, following on in alphabetical order—the previous release begins (it’s not out yet) with a ‘P’—and using a cute adjective and animal combo. Now, Canonical had teased the supposed new codename of Ubuntu 25.10 a few weeks back when it tweeted (or whatever the equivalent term is called on X) “Quizzical Quokka”. Except, it did that on April 1, aka April […]

A major new release of Rnote, an open-source app for taking handwritten notes, sketching out ideas and annotating documents and pictures, is out. Rnote 0.12 brings several new features, new customisation and configuration options, user experience buffs, bug fixes, and other lower-level tune-ups. For those unfamiliar with it, Rnote is a digital note-taking app built using GTK4 and Rust. It’s primarily intended to be used with stylus input (so includes pen pressure, stroke styles, button actions, etc) but supports typed text entry, shapes, importing images, etc too. Rnote offers a range of document layouts, from fixed pages to infinite canvases, […]

Indulging your casual creativity (read: making memes, defacing selfies, etc) using open-source tools is made easier with the long-awaited release of Pinta 3.0. Pinta, as long-time Linux users will be aware, is a cross-platform raster graphics tool with a feature set and user-interface partly inspired by popular Windows image editing tool Paint.NET. I previewed the Pinta 3.0 beta back in January and came away impressed. Pinta port to GTK4/libadwaita lends the UI a much-needed modern look – and is more than superficial: usability, performance and stability is bolstered by the toolkit bump. Pinta 3.0 switches to a button-based header bar […]

Finding the exact files you want in the Nemo file manager will soon be easier and faster. Linux Mint is bringing ‘enhanced’ search functionality to the next major version of its GTK-based Nemo file manager (which is likely to see release the same time as Cinnamon 6.5 and ship out-of-the-box in Linux Mint 22.2 in the summer). The new filters allow you search, sift and surface files using regular expressions (often abbreviated to simply ‘regex’) queried against filenames. While regex searching is already included in Nemo it doesn’t work on file names, only file contents. The next version of Nemo adds […]

Hate having to read an article and use your brain to understand what it’s about? Would you rather read what an AI says it (hopefully) says instead? If so, Mozilla has your back. Saltiness aside, current nightly builds of Firefox include an experimental link preview feature that shows an AI-generated summary of what the linked page is (purportedly) about, so you can check before you visit it, saving you time, a click, or the need to use critical thinking. Firefox generates its AI summaries locally, on device – great for privacy but not for speed No data about you or […]