Linux Mint is considering a change to its traditional six-month release schedule. Project leader Clement Lefebvre says moving to a longer development cycle would allow the team to spend more time developing features, rather than testing and releasing. Moving to a ‘when it’s ready’ model, likely ahead of the Linux Mint 23 release, would mean an end the Ubuntu-based distro’s traditional pattern of two new releases a year, plus LMDE. For fixed-release Linux distributions, like Ubuntu, a predictable release schedule helps focus engineering priorities and gives users a reliable cadence to track. Not all follow this. ElementaryOS is perhaps best […]
Codeweavers has announced the release of CrossOver 26, the latest version of their paid-for software that lets you run Windows games and apps on Linux and macOS. CrossOver 26 ships with Wine 11.0, which debuted last month with over 6,000 changes, fixes and major new features like NTSync support to provide faster performance. D3DMetal 3.0 (macOS), DXMT v0.72, Wine Mono 10.4.1 and vkd3d 1.18 also feature. This update to CrossOver is largely focused on macOS, shipping with compatibility for a slew of new games, including HELLDIVERS 2, God of War Ragnarök, Final Fantasy V1II Rebirth, CloverPit and Cronos: The New […]
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS will drop the Software & Updates utility from default desktop installs, with developers saying many of its features are “dangerous or too complex” for regular users. The concern centres on features like being able to disable access to the main Ubuntu repositories through the GUI, something that can leave users unable to install updates if toggled accidentally. Additionally, the upcoming version of the distro has moved Ubuntu Pro subscription options to the Snap-based Security Center app, according to Canonical’s Jean-Baptiste Lallement says. The move relieves the distro’s engineers of maintaining the GTK3-based tool for the duration of […]
Cine is a new GTK4/libadwaita video player for Linux using an MPV backend. We take a look at the app as Ubuntu 26.04 prepares to swap Totem for Showtime.
Linus Torvalds has released Linux 6.19, switching decades-old AMD graphics cards to the modern amdgpu driver and adding support for larger block sizes to ext4 among the changes. The AMD driver switch brings native Vulkan support to Radeon R9 290 and HD 7000 series GPUs, while the ext4 filesystem breaks the 4KB page size limit to improve write operations. As Linus delayed the release by a week the Linux 6.19 kernel benefitted from an extended eight-week development cycle. This is not the kernel version Ubuntu 26.04 LTS will offer (that’ll be the next one, Linux 6.20/7.10), but Ubuntu users can install Linux […]
A new version of the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B has been (quietly) introduced. The key difference? It now uses a dual-RAM configuration. The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.5 adopts a dual-RAM configuration to ‘improve supply chain flexibility’ and manufacturing efficiency, per a company product change notice document. Earlier versions of the Raspberry Pi 4 (v1.1 through 1.4) use a single RAM chip on the top of the board. This new revision adds a second LPDDR4 chip to the underside, with some passive components also moved over. Why use dual-RAM? Even those living under rocks will know that […]
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, here’s […]
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 […]
Handwriting and markup features have been added to Papers, GNOME’s – and since 25.04, Ubuntu’s – 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 don’t 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 […]
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 Firefox’s 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 don’t want any AI features in Firefox at all, a single ‘Block AI enhancements’ toggle acts as a kill-switch. But notice the framing here: you’re not ‘disabling […]
Yowch – 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? It’s not to goose any bottom lines but what the company describes as an “unprecedented rise in the cost of LPDDR4 memory, thanks to competition for memory fab capacity from the AI infrastructure roll-out”. “The cost of some parts has more than doubled over the last quarter. As […]
VLC 3.0.23, GIMP 3.0.8 and VirtualBox 7.2.6 were among January’s 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 didn’t get the full-blown article treatment. VLC 3.0.23 After a bit of “is it actually out” 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 […]
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