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Kodi Announced Discontinuation of its Ubuntu PPA

Last updated: March 30, 2024 — Leave a comment

The popular Kodi media player (formerly XBMC) finally discontinued its official PPA for Ubuntu users.

Meaning that there’s no official Kodi .deb package any more. Users are recommended to use Flatpak package instead!

Ubuntu PPA is a popular way to host up-to-date versions of software packages in .deb package format. And, Wolfgang Schupp has been maintaining the Kodi Team PPA for many years for Ubuntu users. The last version stuck at Kodi 20.2, though there are still add-on updates now and then.

Now, the developer team officially announced the discontinuation of the PPA:
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In News Kodi, XBMC media center

Fedora Linux 40 Beta is Released

Last updated: March 27, 2024 — Leave a comment

Fedora Linux announced the Beta release of the next version 40 one day ago on Tuesday!

Fedora is a popular free open-source Linux Distribution owned by Red Hat, which acts as an upstream release for CentOS Stream and RHEL. It features Iot, Cloud, Server, CoreOS, and Workstation defaults to GNOME (and other Desktops as spins).

Like Ubuntu, Fedora has 2 releases every year, but each has only about 13 months support! The next is Fedora 40, which now is in Beta stage!

Fedora 40 Workstation Beta

In News fedora

Blender 4.1 Released! New Nodes, Faster Performance and Python 3.11

Last updated: March 27, 2024 — Leave a comment

Blender, the popular free open-source 3D creation software, announced new 4.1 major release this Tuesday.

Blender 4.1 introduced new geometry nodes, including Index Switch, Musgrave, Split to Instance, Sort Elements, Rotate Rotation, Active Camera. It replaces mesh “Auto Smooth” option with a modifier node group asset, adds support for Blackbody shader node, new Manage panel in Geometry Nodes modifier.
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In News 3D Graphics, blender

Free Planetarium App Stellarium 24.1 Adds Low Graphics Mode

Last updated: March 27, 2024 — Leave a comment

Stellarium, the free planetarium app, release version 24.1 a day ago.

Stellarium is a free open-source desktop app for Linux, Windows, and MacOS. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.

The software released version 24.1 this Tuesday that features low-graphics mode support, which can be useful for users running into low FPS, freezing, or lagging issues. User can enable this feature either by passing --low-graphics or -L option when starting it from command line, or by adding the option in the corresponding .desktop file for Linux.
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In News free planetarium software, Stellarium

GNU Emacs 29.3 Released with Emergency Bug Fixes [Ubuntu PPA]

Last updated: March 26, 2024 — Leave a comment

GNU Emacs editor released new 29.3 as an emergency bug-fix release this Sunday.

The new release intended to fix several security vulnerabilities described below:

Arbitrary Lisp code is no longer evaluated as part of turning on Org mode. This is for security reasons, to avoid evaluating malicious Lisp code.
New buffer-local variable ‘untrusted-content’. When this is non-nil, Lisp programs should treat buffer contents with extra caution.
Gnus now treats inline MIME contents as untrusted. To get back previous insecure behavior, ‘untrusted-content’ should be reset to nil in the buffer.
LaTeX preview is now by default disabled for email attachments. To get back previous insecure behavior, set the variable org--latex-preview-when-risky to a non-nil value.
Org mode now considers contents of remote files to be untrusted. Remote files are recognized by calling file-remote-p.

In News Emacs

Dash to Panel Updates with GNOME 46 Support

Last updated: March 26, 2024 — Leave a comment

Dash-to-panel, the popular GNOME Shell Extension, got a update few days ago with the latest GNOME 46 support.

For those who don’t know about dash-to-panel, it’s a free open-source extension for GNOME, which replaces the default panel and dock with a single bottom bar. Along with ArcMenu, user can easily customize the desktop to Windows 10 or Windows 11 style layout.

Ubuntu 24.04 with Dash to panel and ArcMenu

In News Gnome

Kooha Screen Recorder 2.3.0 Has Better Area Recording Support

Last updated: March 25, 2024 — Leave a comment

Kooha, the small free open-source screen recording app, release new 2.3.0 version a few days ago.

Kooha is one of the first apps support Wayland, the default display server in recent Ubuntu and Fedora workstation releases. Since GNOME’s built-in screenshot/screencast tool does not support recording audio, it is a good alternative to record full screen or rectangular area with microphone and desktop audio support. And, it can record your desktop screen into WebM, MP4, GIF, and Matroska formats.

In last 2.2.x release series, Kooha added new area selection UI for better Wayland support. In the new 2.3.0 release, the area selection window now is resizable, so you can have a bigger view when selecting recording area. And, previous selected area is now remembered to make it easy to redo recording last area.

Kooha Area Selection Window

In News video recording

GNOME Considers Adding New Core Audio Player App

Last updated: March 24, 2024 — Leave a comment

GNOME Desktop considers adding a new core application for audio playback!

It’s Decibels, a basic free open-source audio player that is supposed to fill the gap of GNOME currently not having a Core app that is designed to open single audio files.

The app has a stupid simple user interface that works in both Linux Desktop and Mobile devices. It features:

Shows the waveform of the track
Adjust playback speed from 0.5x to 3.0x.
Easy seek controls – pause, play, skip back/forward 10s, volume up/down.

In News Audio, Gnome

GNOME 46 Released! New Global Search, Remote Login, and More

Last updated: March 21, 2024 — Leave a comment

GNOME, the popular Linux desktop environment, announced new 46 stable release this Wednesday!

The new GNOME 46, code-name“Kathmandu”, will be default desktop for Ubuntu 24.04 and Fedora 40 planned for next month, and optional for Arch, Manjaro, etc.

The Files, aka Nautilus, in the release features new global search, that can be triggered either by Ctrl+Shift+F or top-left search icon. It supports searching multiple locations simultaneously, including locations outside user home. Other changes for ‘Files’ include:
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In News Gnome

Oracle Announced the General Availability of Java JDK 22

Last updated: March 20, 2024 — Leave a comment

Oracle announced the release of JDK 22 GA this Tuesday.

“JDK 22 delivers 12 enhancements that are significant enough to warrant their own JDK Enhancement Proposals (JEPs), including seven preview features and one incubator feature. They cover improvements to the Java Language, its APIs, its performance, and the tools included in the JDK.”
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In News java, programming