News, Tutorials, Howtos for Ubuntu Linux
Wine, the popular free open-source compatibility layer for running Windows apps/games in Linux/Unix, announced new 10.0 major release on Tuesday!
The new release features Hi-DPI scaling support. Instead of exposing high-DPI sizes to applications that don’t expect it, it now automatically scale non-DPI aware windows.
Oracle announced new Virtualbox 7.1.6 release this Tuesday with various bug-fixes, performance improvements, and minor new features.
VirtualBox had heavy screen tearing and flickering issue in Linux VMs running with recent Kernel and Wayland for a period of time, that’s why I switched to QEMU/KVM.
Since the last 7.1.4, VirtualBox greatly improved the flickering, black screen and other screen update issues. In the new release, it also fixed issue with Linux guest screen flickering when guest was using VMSVGA graphics adapter.
Meaning now recent Ubuntu, Fedora Workstation and other Linux with Wayland work great again in VirtualBox virtual machines!
screen tearing and flickering issue finally fixed
Linux Kernel 6.13 is released! Linus Torvalds announced it in lkml.org on Sunday:
So nothing horrible or unexpected happened last week, so I’ve tagged and pushed out the final 6.13 release.
It’s mostly some final driver fixes (gpu and networking dominating – normal), with some doc updates too. And various little stuff all over. The shortlog is appended for people who want to see the details (and, as always, it’s just the shortlog for the last week, the full 6.13 log is obviously much too big).
The new kernel introduced many new drivers, performance improvements, new & updated hardware support!
For AMD, it features new AMD 3D V-Cache Optimizer driver, for Ryzen X3D CPUs with larger 3D V-Cache to help optimize performance, supports PCIe TPH that is found with new AMD EPYC 9005 “Turin” servers, and uses AMD P-State driver as default in these CPUs.
Kodi, the popular free open-source home theater software, released new 21.2 version today with many improvements and tons of bug-fixes.
First, the new Kodi 21.2 features significant speed increase of library scans (back to v20 level) as well as faster artwork caching.
Linux Mint 22.1, code-name “Xia”, is finally available to download after 1 month of beta testing.
Linux Mint 22.x is based on Ubuntu 24.04 with long term support until 2029! The first point release features Cinnamon Desktop 6.4, that includes new default theme with rounder design and flat style buttons.
Following GNOME and Plasma 6’s design, the start menu, indicator applets, and panel context menus in Linux Mint 22.1 are now rounder and floating away from the bottom panel, which looks more modern.
Enlightenment, the extremely lightweight window manager and minimal desktop, released new 0.27.0 few days ago.
According to the official release note:
“This is the latest release of Enlightenment. This has a lot of fixes mostly with some new features.”
Nothing else!
But if you’re interested in this new e27 release, here are the changes that I summarized by digging through the source page.
e27
Kdenlive, the popular KDE video editor, released the first maintenance update for the 24.12 series few days ago.
It’s not officially announced in its website at the moment of writing, but the source tarball is out for those who want to compile by themselves. And, the Flatpak package has been updated for most Linux users.
As you may know, Kdenlive 24.12 introduced Built-in Effects option in settings, which will automatically add the Flip and Transform effects to the video part, and the Volume effect to the audio part by when you dragging a clip into the timeline.
The build-in effects however miss “Presets” menu options, and this release brings it back!
Bring back presets for built-in effects
Shortwave, the modern free open-source internet radio player, finally adds background playback support!
Shortwave is an internet audio player designed for GNOME Desktop, though it also works in most other Linux desktops and even Linux phones.
The app features a station database with over 50,000 stations, custom library, automatic recognition of songs, recording, and play audio on network devices (e.g. Google Chromecasts).
Scribus, the popular free open-source desktop publishing software, announced new 1.6.3 version on Wednesday!
This is a maintenance release that contains primarily bug-fixes, though there are also a few new features included in the release.
RetroArch, the popular free open-source front-end for emulators and game engines, released version 1.20.0 a few days ago.
The new release added illuminance sensor support for Linux users. Meaning you can play Boktai with real light, just as intended. While, it’s also working on sunlight and camera support.
