Some Linux desktop environments were developed over decades, others in just a few years. Starling, which made the rounds online this week, claims to have been built by just one person in six months using – what else; it’s 2026 – AI coding tools. What’s more, a preview build is available as a .deb to install on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. Yup, this isn’t a ChatGPT mockup but a real working demo. According to the project’s GitHub and website, a developer used AI to rewrite Flutter’s framework layer from Dart to Swift, but left its C++ rendering engine untouched. A traditional […]
Mosaic brings i3-style automatic tiling to GNOME Shell without asking you to choose it permanently. Turn it on when you want windows to arrange themselves, turn it off when you want floating windows back. The extension works with GNOME 45 and up, adding a toggle to Quick Settings to enable the auto-tiling mode. When off, you’re in floating mode (which still has tiling features). Expand the toggle to access more options or get at Mosaic’s settings. It’s the on-demand nature makes Mosaic more interesting. When the auto-tiling mode is active (the toggle is turned on) all your windows tile for […]
Ubuntu’s hardware enablement (HWE) effort has been expanded to make newer virtualisation tech available to users on the current LTS release. If you’re not familiar with the HWE, it’s what brings newer versions of the Linux kernel, GPU drivers and select other foundational pieces from the current Ubuntu release to older LTS releases, allowing it to work with and boot on newer hardware. This new virtualization HWE stack from Canonical will allow users to run newer versions of QEMU, libvirt and related firmware on top of a reliable LTS base, refreshed every 6 months for 2 years, without needing to seek […]
Notch support, a screenshot editor and a more modern web browser engine are among changes arriving with the latest update to Ubuntu Touch, the community-run mobile operating system based on Ubuntu. With many devices supported by Ubuntu Touch, like Fairphone and Volla handsets, using a notch cutout at the top of the display to house cameras, the new v24.04-20 update adds support for them, adapting the top panel indicators to cleanly space around them. Ubuntu Touch 24.04-2.0 also gains support for printing documents from handsets. Users can set this up via System Settings > Printing. It requires downloading some extra […]
The official OMG! Ubuntu article notifier is back for Firefox – albeit later than planned, sorry about that. If you’ve used our Chrome extension over the last decade, this add-on will be familiar as it’s the same experience, just in Firefox. Same look, same features (well…) and even the exact same code (it’s a port, so API name swaps and manifest tweaks). When installed, it gives you an easy way to stay on top of new articles without needing to keep a tab open 24/7 (an act which warms my heart) or needing to remember to click a bookmark (much […]
A new version of the slick Linux system monitoring app Mission Center is available for download with expanded hardware coverage and resource reporting. Notably, Mission Center v1.2.0 adds a new Battery page in the Performance tab, surfaces per-partition usage details on the Disk page with free and used space reporting and adds a new graph to the bottom of the CPU page to relay temperature, power draw or CPU frequency – you can change it. The Memory page now shows compression (zRAM/zswap) stats, while the GPU page lets you switch the middle graph between Encode/Decode activity, power draw, clock speeds […]
You can now install an official Google Chrome build on Arm64 Linux devices, including the Raspberry Pi. Back in March, Google promised Chrome for Arm64 Linux in “Q2 2026” allowing users on devices like the Raspberry Pi or the growing-fleet of Snapdragon laptops to use their flagship browser and all of its additional extras. It hasn’t said a whole lot about the effort since, but it appears that Arm64 builds of Chrome were recently added to the browser’s official Linux repos for Debian and RPM-based Linux distributions – thanks Steven H. Loading the official Chrome download page on my Raspberry Pi 5 (running […]
More widgets are coming to Firefox’s New Tab page, including an interactive crossword puzzle powered by the AI news service Particle. The mini crossword game is updated daily, with puzzles based around recent content from the AI summary app Particle, replete with links to articles from the service which you can read to help you deduce crossword answers from the clues provided. You click on a square to activate the row or column (clicking on it again switches between “Across” and “Down”). You read the clue at the bottom, and then you type in your answer. Use the hint button […]
Codeberg, the nonprofit alternative to GitHub used by FLOSS projects, will no longer host software that’s mostly AI-generated. A vote closed yesterday (22 July, 2026), passing 358 to 144 with 14 abstentions on roughly 50% turnout to stop hosting software that’s largely vibe-coded. A second motion, also passed, commits Codeberg to never training AI models on hosted code or user data. Not that it was ever likely to. A Terms of Use amendment now prohibits projects that “mostly consist of code written by” generative AI tools. In a blog post, Codeberg explains the economic need for a ban, explaining that […]
If Ubuntu 26.04 LTS hasn’t nagged you about pending updates in a while, there’s a reason for that. A Launchpad bug report and related discussion on the Ubuntu Discourse noticed that the distro’s update-manager no longer notifies when updates are pending unless the update notification tray icon is enabled. The rub? That tray icon as turned off in Ubuntu 26.04 (with no toggle in Settings to turn it back on). This is not as “risky” as it might sound, though. Ubuntu ships with unattended-upgrades enabled by default, which installs security updates in the background – you’re just not told about […]
Raspberry Pi has launched a 10-inch version of its Touch Display 2 with a 1200×1920 resolution and 10-point captive touchscreen for $80/£77. 5-inch and 7-inch variants of the Touch Display 2 have long been available, but Raspberry Pi’s Gordon Hollingworth says the new model gives makers a larger, higher resolution screen to make use of in projects. Like the smaller versions, the 10.1″ Touch Display 2 is portrait orientation by default (it can be used in landscape). The displays are often mounted on walls or in point-of-information setups, used for home automation dashboards, kiosks, digital signage, control panels, etc. The 10.1-inch […]
Wondering if your laptop or desktop PC is Ubuntu Certified? Ubuntu 26.10 is adding a way to check from the Settings app. A new row in Settings > System > About reads “check if this computer is Ubuntu Certified”. Clicking it opens a new page that will read the local/cached status from the com.ubuntu.hwctl service (the Canonical hardware API introduced in 2025). The statuses which can be shown: There’s also an option to enable regular Ubuntu Certified checks there. This sends your hardware details to Canonical servers to check certification status. As with all of Canonical’s opt-in reporting, no personal data gets […]
Mozilla has released Firefox 153 with built-in containers, QR code generation and more quick actions in the address bar. This is the final “monthly” stable release before Mozilla shifts to a faster releases cadence, with new versions of Firefox coming out every two weeks. Like all updates, you can get this one for Windows, macOS and Linux, as well as for Android and iOS (mobile versions have different features and are not covered in this post). Firefox gets built-in Containers Containers are the biggest new feature in Firefox 153. These, Mozilla say, let you “separate cookies by container so you […]
The Desktop Icons NG (aka DING) GNOME Shell extension Ubuntu uses to put icons on your literal desktop, has been busy – it finished its port to GTK4, patched memory leaks and improved a few of its lesser-known features. The GTK4 port landed in v51.0.0, released this month, alongside early support for GNOME 51 (since that’s the GNOME version Ubuntu 26.10 will ship with in October). Prior to that, there were other, smaller in June with fixes for memory leaks and buffs to usability. DING’s GTK4 port – not to be confused with a separate GTK4 fork I covered back in […]
The official Discord desktop app supports Linux but it doesn’t make much effort to fit in, which is why alternative clients are popular – not least because they can be themed. Discord GNOME Theme by developer ~ricewind012, is so named because, basically, that’s what it is: a custom theme that restyles Discord to look more like Adwaita and follow the GNOME HIG (well, as close as Discord’s CSS allows). A reminder: Ubuntu’s Yaru theme is based (heavily) on upstream Adwaita, so while this theme won’t give an exact match on Ubuntu, it’s closer than stock. As it’s all CSS, it […]
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