The Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS hardware enablement stack (HWE) has finally hit the updates repo, bringing Linux kernel 6.17 and Mesa 25.2.7 to users on the current long-term support release. All users on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS can install this newer kernel version and updated GPU driver set as a regular software update. The stack will also be baked into the Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS ISO when released on February 12, 2026. I covered the HWE update (and the reason why they exist) back in January, when the key pieces began to arrive in the proposed repository. For those who missed it, hereās [ā¦]
JetBrains has announced that native Wayland support will be enabled in its IntelliJ-based IDEs starting with version 2026.1, letting Linux developers work without X11 compatibility layers. Moving its development suite away from legacy X11 is necessary now that major desktop environments and distributions (including Ubuntu) only officially run on or support Wayland out-of-the-box. Wayland support gas been available in preview in 2024. If you run IntelliJ IDEs on Ubuntu right now it likes runs through XWayland, the compatibility layer that allows legacy apps to run on Wayland desktops. While that bridge is functional, matching old X11 protocols on modern compositors [ā¦]
Handwriting and markup features have been added to Papers, GNOMEās ā and since 25.04, Ubuntuās ā document viewer app. The latest nightly builds of Papers let you draw on documents with ink tools to add callouts, doodles or your own signature to PDF files, and pepper tags with text boxes to type on forms that donāt otherwise support input. Papers already has text highlighting and an annotations sidebar, but it lacked freeform pen tools or moveable text boxes. Fleshing out the document editing tools is welcome as it will save the hassle of installing additional software. Adding the PDF Annotation [ā¦]
You will be able to disable AI features in Firefox 148, Mozilla has announced. The next major update of the web browser, scheduled for release in late February, will offer an AI feature kill-switch in its new AI Controls panel. You can turn off Firefoxās AI features at a granular level. If you want to use some features, like on-device translations, but not others, like Google Lens image search, you can: If you donāt want any AI features in Firefox at all, a single āBlock AI enhancementsā toggle acts as a kill-switch. But notice the framing here: youāre not ādisabling [ā¦]
Yowch ā Raspberry Pi has announced further price hikes to its single-board computers, bumping the cost of some models by as much as $60. The latest increases are on top of the ones announced late last year for certain memory capacity models of the Raspberry Pi 4 and 5. Why the rise? Itās not to goose any bottom lines but what the company describes as an āunprecedented rise in the cost of LPDDR4 memory, thanks to competition for memory fab capacity from the AI infrastructure roll-outā. āThe cost of some parts has more than doubled over the last quarter. As [ā¦]
VLC 3.0.23, GIMP 3.0.8 and VirtualBox 7.2.6 were among Januaryās Linux app releases, slipping alongside an open-source video editor, versatile command-line file manager and image flashing tool. I covered a number of software updates already, but below are software updates from January 2026 that didnāt get the full-blown article treatment. VLC 3.0.23 After a bit of āis it actually outā limbo, VLC 3.0.23 rolled out across all supported OSes in mid-January. Key highlight is dark mode support on Linux and Windows, with the UI adopting light or dark theme automatically when system dark mode preference is changed. Beyond that, the [ā¦]
The Tiling Shell 17.3 GNOME extension update introduces new āAdaptiveā and āGranularā edge-tiling modes, Wacom and touchscreen support, and layout reordering.
The third Ubuntu 26.04 snapshot is out, giving you an easy way to test the 'Resolute Raccoon' ahead of its stable release in April. Details and links inside.
Microsoft appears to be taking a cue from Linux with a new Command Palette Dock proposal for PowerToys. This would let Windows users add a second panel to their desktop with widgets, flexible positioning, and custom theming. Functionality that is standard across most Linux desktop environments (for decades), and a reminder of how inflexible Windows and its Taskbar are by default. The idea, posted by Microsoft designer Niels Laute on GitHub, is to add a Command Palette Dock in PowerToys to compliment the (popular) Command Palette. Command Palette is a newer PowerToys feature that provides a keyboard-driven launcher for extensions [ā¦]
Running out of disk space on Ubuntu? Before you start uninstalling applications or clearing caches, you might want to check your snap revisions. Iāve been getting low disk space warnings on a 40GB Ubuntu partition. The usual tips to free space on Ubuntu werenāt enough, so I opened Disk Usage Analyser and found nearly 8GB was eaten up by old snap versions (you can run sudo du -sh /var/lib/snapd too). Not active versions of Snaps I have installed; backups of every snap I have installed. There, idle, in the snapd folder consuming several gigabytes ājust in caseā I need to [ā¦]
COSMIC, the Linux desktop that can look and work however you dang well like, is adding more bling. System76 co-founder Carl Richell has given us our first look at the āFrosted Glassā effect coming to the COSMIC desktop in Epoch 2 (as the desktop releases are named): System76ās engineering team is opting to use a āmore performantā Dual Kawase blur, commonly used in gaming, to handle the dynamic effect. This apparently offers a āclose approximationā of Gaussian blur, but is not as resource intensive. Thatās important. Flashy UI effects often involve a performance hit and, more keenly, a knock-on effect [ā¦]
Linux lacks native versions of industry-grade creative tools like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, and while open-source options are capable, not everyone is willing to relearn and adapt to different tools. Thankfully, the gap in commercial design software is plugged with workarounds involving Wine, the Windows compatibility layer ā which is how you can run Affinity v3 on Linux. Affinity, acquired by Canva in 2024, moved to a freemium model in 2025. Photo, Designer and Publisher tools were merged into a unified app and made free to download and use on Windows and macOS (generative AI features cost, but are optional). [ā¦]
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