Apps Updates Round-up: Audacity 3.7.1, Octave 9.3, Scrcpy 3.1

Linux world got some big updates, such as XFCE 4.20, RHEL 10.0 Beta, and Linux Mint 22.1 Beta, in last days. While, many free open-source apps also released updates recently you may care about.

And, here I’m going to introduce some of them for you. They include Audacity 3.7.1, GNU Octave 9.3.0, Scrcpy 3.1, VS Code 1.96, and TeXstudio 4.8.5.

Audacity 3.7.1:

Audacity audio editor released 3.7.0 in October, but with primarily maintenance updates, while developer are working on Audacity 4.0.

The new v3.7.1 is a small but an important release that fixed following bugs. They include:

Effects can be applied to time-stretched clips.
Moving or renaming the installation directory no longer re-enables disabled modules.
Opening the “Adjust Playback Speed” dialog doesn’t crash Audacity anymore.

The Github releases page provides the Linux AppImage, macOS dmg, Windows exe, as well as source tarball under “Assets” section. While, Ubuntu users can get the native .deb package from this unofficial PPA.

GNU Octave 9.3.0:

GNU Octave, the free open-source scientific programming language, released version 9.3.0 after half a year of development.

Changes in the new release are mostly bug-fixes and improvements. They include:

jupyter-notebook: Avoid error if evaluated code closes an existing figure window. Use unwind_protect block to ensure figure and tempfile cleanup actions occur (bug #65644).
uitable: Fix updating value with combo box selection (bug #65873).
movfun: Correct output shape of n-D arrays when operating on dimensions higher than 2. This will affect all moving window functions (movmad, movmax, movmean, movmedian, movmin, movprod, movstd, movsum, and movvar) (bug #65927).
movvar and movstd: Use correct default value of 0 if an empty array is specified for opt to maintain consistent behavior with var and std. Improve input validation to ensure opt is one of 0, 1, or []. (bug #66021).
fopen: Convert identifier for locale charset to lower-case characters (bug #65963).
regexp: Avoid integer underflow with unsigned integers.
interp2: Provide a meaningful error message if the input reference array is a vector (bug #66086).
struct2hdl.m: Do not delete previously added axes children (bug #66221).
print: Fix regression in pdf fonts (bug #66306).
legend icons now inherit the “facelalpha” property to match appearance of patch and surface graphics objects (bug #66314).
barh properties now better match equivalent bar plot. Changing horizontal property for a bar or barh plot now consistently updates properties to match redrawn plot (bug #65671).
Tick mark labels are now correctly updated after changing x or y data for bar and barh plots (bug #65734).
hdl2struct.m: Fix missing legend markers (bug #65904).
Enable FLTK graphics toolkit on macOS if not multi-threaded (bug #66482).
Do not execute PKG_ADD script in current directory (bug #66477).
Translation, documentation, and build system/tests updates.

GNU Octave does not provides official Linux package. Besides building from source code, there are unofficial Flatpak and PPA available for choices. For Ubuntu, see this step by step tutorial.

Scrcpy 3.1:

Scrcpy on Ubuntu

Scrcpy is a popular free open-source application to mirror and control your Android screen on computer and laptop.

The app released version 3.0 few weeks ago with virtual display support. In the new release, it enhanced the feature by adding new --no-vd-destroy-content option, which keeps running apps when virtual display is destroyed, by moving them to the main display.

Scrcpy 3.1 also added dav1d support to decode AV1 streams, improved gamepad support in games, and fixed “turn screen off” on some devices. See the Github release page for details and download links.

If you’re new to this application, then here’s a step by step tutorial shows how to install and use it in Ubuntu.

VS Code 1.96:

Visual Studio Code announced new monthly release in last week. It’s version 1.96 that includes following key highlights:

Overtype mode – Switch between overwrite or insert mode in the editor
Add imports on paste – Automatically add missing TS/JS imports when pasting code
Test coverage – Quickly filter which code is covered by a specific test
Move views – Easily move views between the Primary and Secondary Side Bar
Terminal ligatures – Use ligatures in the terminal
Extension allow list – Configure which extensions can be installed in your organization
Debug with Copilot – Use copilot-debug terminal command to start a debugging session
Chat context – Add symbols and folders as context for Chat and Edits
Move from chat to Copilot Edits – Switch to Copilot Edits to apply code suggestions from Chat

VS Code provides official packages for Linux, Windows, and macOS. They are available along with the official release note in this page.

TexStudio 4.8.5:

TeXstudio is an integrated writing environment for creating LaTeX documents. It integrates editing, building and viewing into a single, user-friendly interface.

The latest v4.8.5 was released few days ago with mainly bug-fixes. They include:

fix false delimiter mismatch marker which gets stuck under certain circumstances
fix label stop working when using subfigure package
fix ai wizard conversation history
fix colspec parsing
fix user command handling in cached files
fix label detection on memoir class
fix crash when %Tex root document was not found
class are used for completion in documentclass
class names are not used anymore for package name completion
local packages can provide local cwl files
fix handling of user definition commands in subfiles
fix crash in preview tooltip if no pdflatex is defined
handle special columntypes (m[l],NiceMatrix) better
handle key/val completion in frame environment better
fix caching of newly defined colornames