Ubuntu 26.10 is replacing its D-Bus implementation for the first time since 2004, swapping dbus-daemon for dbus-broker â a change end-users are unlikely to notice. Processes on your desktop talk to each other and to the host system using D-Bus, a âmessageâ bus. This is what the Ubuntu Dock uses to show unread-count badges for apps, what tells your desktop a USB drive has been plugged in, and so on. Two buses are in play. Thereâs aa system bus, shared across the whole device, handling hardware and background services, and a user session bus to handle desktop and app integrations [âŚ]
Anthropic has released a beta of its Claude desktop app for Linux, launching alongside an apt repo Ubuntu users can add for ongoing updates. According to the official docs, Claude desktop for Linux offers âthe same Chat, Cowork, and Claude Code experience as macOS and Windows: parallel sessions, visual diff review, an integrated terminal and editor, and live app previewâ. However, not all of the appâs features are yet available. The Linux beta lacks Computer Use, which lets Claude control apps directly, and voice dictation, both present on macOS and Windows. Anthropic says Computer Use support is coming to Linux [âŚ]
Linux Mint says Wayland support in its next release will no longer be considered experimental, but available as a fully-supported option. However, it will continue to provide and support X11, unlike other Linux distributions, Ubuntu included, which have jettisoned the legacy Xorg/X11 display server from their default installations. âWe worked really hard on Wayland and we got to the point where it feels solid and the experience is almost on par with X11â, Clement Lefebvre said in a blog post, confirming âboth X11 and Wayland will be fully supportedâ in the next release. Linux Mint 23 will be the next [âŚ]
TUXEDO Computers is rebasing TUXEDO OS on Debian, moving away from Ubuntu. The German Linux hardware company launched TUXEDO OS in 2022, using a fixed Ubuntu LTS base, KDE Plasma and scores of optimisations and first-party software to support its own hardware â though it was free to download and install on any machine. Four years into that approach, TUXEDOâs had enough. TUXEDO lists a number of reasons behind ditching Ubuntu for Debian. Among them, the LTS base. The company brings newer browsers, GPU drivers and Plasma desktop versions to users, but backporting core Qt packages can break Ubuntu-repo packages, [âŚ]
Support for Ubuntu 25.10 âQuesting Quokkaâ ends 9 July 2026 â which is this week. If youâre still using it, you can upgrade to Ubuntu 26.04 LTS directly to keep receiving updates. Ubuntu 25.10 was released in October 2025. As an âinterim releaseâ the desktop edition it receives only 9 months of ongoing updates. Ubuntuâs Long-Term Support versions get 5 years of updates on desktop, plus a further 5 years through an Ubuntu Pro subscription. Nothing dramatic happens when a release goes end of life. Your install keeps working. What stops is the flow of high-impact security updates and critical bug fixes [âŚ]
Canonical wants ntpd-rs, a Rust rewrite of NTP (Network Time Protocol), to become Ubuntuâs default time sync client. To help get there, Canonical has become a Gold Sponsor of the Trifecta Tech Foundation, the non-profit behind ntpd-rs, committing âŹ40,000 a year to help fund its memory-safe software projects. The goal is to make the Rust-based version the default time sync client and server in Ubuntu 27.04, and it will be made it available for testing in Ubuntu 26.10, out in October. Eventually, itâll also replace chrony, linuxptp and gpsd for time-syncing use cases, according to Jon Seager, Ubuntu VP of Engineering at Canonical. Your Ubuntu system keeps [âŚ]
Canonical is putting money behind a Rust rewrite of Ubuntuâs time-syncing tech, becoming a Gold Sponsor of the Trifecta Tech Foundation â a snip at âŹ40,000 a year â to help fund the non-profitâs memory-safe software projects. That includes ntpd-rs, its Rust-based rewrite of NTP (Network Time Protocol). Canonical wants to make this the default time sync client and server by Ubuntu 27.04, with testing starting in Ubuntu 26.10, due out in October. Eventually, itâll also replace chrony, linuxptp and gpsd for time-syncing use cases, per Jon Seager, Ubuntu VP of Engineering at Canonical. Your Ubuntu system keeps its clock right by checking in with time [âŚ]
Canonicalâs Snap Store will be shutting down for database maintenance this weekend, meaning users wonât be able to install or update snap software until itâs back online. The planned downtime starts on Sunday, 5 July 2026 at 22:00 UTC and is expected to last for four hours, coming back online on Monday, 6 July at 02:00 UTC. During the maintenance you will not be able to install or update snaps. If thereâs a snap app youâve been wanting to try, or your IoT or core device runs automated tasks during the affected window, youâll need to plan accordingly To make [âŚ]
If you installed Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and noticed video and music files werenât showing image thumbnails in the file manager, a packaging oversight was to blame, not anything you did. It turns out that Ubuntuâs default âminimalâ install wasnât pulling in the gst-audio-thumbnailer and gst-video-thumbnailer packages which generate media thumbnails when you open a folder full of compatible files. A metapackage doesnât contain software itself, just a list of the packages that need to be installed for, in this case, an Ubuntu desktop experience. Confusingly, both thumbnailers were present in the full installâs meta file, so if you picked the [âŚ]
June was sweltering, but the heat didnât seem to affect developers. A slew of updates to popular open-source Linux software made it out last month, some highlights of which I share in this roundup. Last month also saw Firefox 152 released with a new-look settings page, media converter HandBrake wrangled its WebM handling on Linux, and the Audacity 4.0 beta serve up its new modern UI for public scrutiny. Those werenât the only releases of note, as the following roundup shows. Cine adds Watch History I spotlighted the Cine Linux video player earlier this year. Itâs an MPV-based player with [âŚ]
June was sweltering, yet the heat didnât affect developers too badly as a slew of updates to popular open-source Linux software made it out last month. We saw Firefox 152 released with its new-look settings page. The media converter HandBrake wrangled its WebM handling on Linux. And the Audacity 4.0 beta made its brand-new design available for public scrutiny â mainly of the âfinally, it doesnât look badâ variety. But scores of smaller, minor and maintenance updates made it out too. Cine gained Watch History I spotlighted the Cine Linux video player earlier this year. Itâs an MPV-based player with [âŚ]
Firefox is adding hardware-accelerated Vulkan Video decoding, saving Nvidia users on Linux the hassle of manually configuring the nvidia-vaapi-driver package. The change will be included in Firefox 153, out July 21, but it will not be enabled by default â not to start with. Instead, users will be able to flip a pair of preferences in about:config to try it out, with the awareness that there may be hiccups and edge cases (especially on devices with hybrid graphics, mentioned further down). Given that Nvidia GPUs are capable (understatement klaxon), I was surprised to hear that this didnât already work. Turns out, Firefoxâs [âŚ]
As you will know, Ubuntu is adding AI features this year, and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth hopes the distro will become the OS for the âagenticâ era. But big ambitions begin with a small seed, and the first is planted is a speech-to-text tool dubbed Myna. Name: Myna. Age: Minus 4 months (itâll debut in Ubuntu 26.10, out in October). Appearance: A keyboard shortcut you press to avoid using your keyboard for typing. Whatâs this about? A âlightweight speech-to-text applicationâ powered by AI. You press a hotkey to activate it, talk at your computer and, like magic, your words appear on screen. Canonicalâs VP [âŚ]
Every wondered what GIMP looked like in 1996, before GTK? Well, now you can. Developer balooii has packaged GIMP 0.54 as a Flatpak that runs on modern 64-bit Linux desktops with Wayland. Itâs apparently the earliest version of the app with the source code still available to build. Itâs not an official GIMP effort, but an enthusiast project hosted on the GNOME GitLab. Itâs also something of a work-in-progress package of an ancient work-in-progress beta release, with the maintainer promising more plugins and tutorials in time. Before we get to the install bit, there is a bit of trivia-laden history [âŚ]
Ubuntu 26.10 Snapshot 2 is available to download, the second of four snapshots planned for the âStonking Stingrayâ development cycle ahead of a stable release in October. As with the first snapshot, thereâs not a lot ânewâ stuff to see or test out, so unless youâre a developer or an avid bug hunter thereâs little reason to rush off and try it. Canonicalâs Utkarsh Gupta, announcing the release on Ubuntuâs developer mailing list, warns of a âbreaking changeâ â donât panic: itâs not in the image itself, but the URL itâs accessed from. Over the past few weeks the Ubuntu [âŚ]
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