News, Tutorials, Howtos for Ubuntu Linux
Free open-source software updates and Linux news
Audacity audio editor announced new major 3.6.0 release few days ago. Here are the new features and how to install guide for Ubuntu users.
The new release features new Master Effects. By clicking “Effects” button in app window, it will now show you Realtime Effects and Master Effects options for choice. While, the new Master Effects allows to apply effects to the entire project at once.
GNOME 47, the next release of the popular Linux Desktop environment, is in alpha stage now!
GNOME 47, which is scheduled to be released on Sep 14, 2024, will be the default desktop for next Ubuntu 24.10 and Fedora Workstation 41 if everything goes well.
The first alpha development release was out a few days ago. Which, introduced accent color support!
Ubuntu since 22.04 already has the feature out-of-the-box. Under “Appearance” settings page, there are some big dots with different colors under “Style” section. They are called accent colors. Choose one from there will apply the color to all toggle switches, check-boxes, slider-bars, selection borders, etc in the desktop.
Linux Kernel 6.10 was finally released a day ago on this Sunday. Linus Torvalds announced on this page:
“So the final week was perhaps not quote as quiet as the preceding ones, which I don’t love – but it also wasn’t noisy enough to warrant an extra rc. And much of the noise this last week was bcachefs again (with netfs a close second), so it was all pretty compartmentalized.
In fact, about a third of the patch for the last week was filesystem-related (there were also some btrfs latency fixes and other noise), which is unusual, but none of it looks particularly scary.”
OBS Studio, the popular free open-source live streaming software, announced new major 30.2.0 release a day ago.
The new release has some improvements for Linux support. They include native NVENC encoder interface for NVIDIA GPU hardware accelerated encoding, and NVENC AV1 support. And, Linux shared texture support to the NVENC encoder, QuickSync encoder, as well as VA-API encoder.
OBS Studio 30.2.0 also added multi-track video streaming support, aka Enhanced Broadcasting on Twitch.
To improve the experience for viewers with poor network conditions or those watching on older devices, the streaming service usually creates multiple video qualities of original high-quality source content.
Now, OBS Studio itself can produce multiple video qualities, though, it so far supports only Windows and requires NVIDIA GTX 900, GTX 10, or RTX 20 series GPU or newer or an AMD RX 6000 series GPU or newer. And, it will collect info, such as OBS version and audio/video settings, CPU, GPU, Memory, and OS info and set to the streaming service.
Firefox web browser announced new 128.0 release one day ago on Tuesday.
This is a new monthly release that introduces some handy new features. They include context menu option to translate a selection of text. Rather than translate full web page, user can now highlight single or a selection of text, then use right-click and select to translate the text.
Linux Mint, the popular Linux Distribution, announced version 22 Beta release this Monday!
The new release is based on Ubuntu 24.04, features Cinnamon Desktop 6.2, and supports until 2029.
Thanks to the upstream changes, the release now is powered by Linux Kernel 6.8 with updated drivers and modern hardware support. The default PulseAudio is replaced by the low latency Pipewire sound server. JPEG-XL (.jxl) is supported out-of-the-box with the default Pix image viewer. The boot splash and login screen have better HiDPI support.
The popular free open-source digital painting software, Krita, released version 5.2.3 a few days ago.
The release rework the build system, so the CI can be built in all 4 platforms (Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android).
Besides that, Krita 5.2.3 fixed various bugs, including crash on saving webp images, crashes when inserting keyframe columns when there’s a transform mask, animation playback freezes when pausing past the end of audio, batch exporter python plugin does not respect trimming flag, and various fixes to tool canvas input shortcut behavior.
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NVIDIA announced the first stable release of the 555 series driver for Linux few days ago.
It’s NVIDIA 555.58, the latest new feature branch version. The release now uses GSP firmware by default on all GPUs that support it (e.g., Tesla T4, T10, A100 series).
GSP, stands for GPU System Processor, acts like a CPU embedded into the GPU, it can be used to offload GPU initialization and management tasks. To disable this feature, user can just add NVreg_EnableGpuFirmware=0 kernel parameter to /etc/default/grub config file if boot with Grub2.
OpenShot released version 3.2.0 a few days ago with great performance improvements.
OpenShot is a free open-source Qt-based video editor works on Linux, Windows, and macOS. Due to its beginner friendly menu options, built-in title templates, and animated titles (Blender powered), I prefer it over Kdenlive and Shotcut.
However, the video editor was sluggish, froze frequently, and slow for video preview playback every time after made changes. It made me crazy quite often, so I turned to learn using Kdenlive for basic editing.
In OpenShot 3.2.0, the video editor has significant performance enhancements. It’s now running smoothly out-of-the-box in my Ubuntu 24.04 laptop!
Celluloid, free open-source GTK4 GUI front-end for MPV, released new 0.27 version hours ago.
Celluloid, formerly GNOME MPV, is a media player interacts with mpv via the client API, allowing access to mpv’s powerful playback capabilities, while providing a modern user interface that looks native in Ubuntu, Fedora Workstation, and other Linux with GNOME Desktop.
The new 0.27 release introduced floating header-bar in the windowed mode. It can be enabled, along with floating controls, either in “Preference” dialog or by running gsettings command. They only appear when moving mouse cursor over the video, so user can watch video without distraction.
Floating header-bar & controls only appear on mouse hover
