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SDDM Login Manager 0.21.0 Released! Improved Qt6 & Wayland Support

Last updated: February 26, 2024 — Leave a comment

SDDM, the Simple Desktop Display Manager, announced new 0.21.0 released a few hours ago.

It’s a free open-source display manager, aka login manager, for the graphical interface of Linux login screen. While, GNOME (Ubuntu/Fedora) uses GDM as default, and MATE/Cinnamon (Linux Mint) uses LightDM, SDDM is usually the default login manager for KDE Plasma and LxQT desktop environments.

SDDM aims to be fast, simple and beautiful. It’s extremely themeable, and supports using video background in login screen.

In News display manager, login manager, sddm

Kid3 Audio Tag Editor 3.9.5 Released with Webp Image Support

Last updated: February 25, 2024 — Leave a comment

Kid3, the free open-source Qt based audio tag editor, release new 3.9.5 version on Saturday.

The release brings keyboard shortcut support for its built-in player. Meaning user can specify custom shortcuts to control play/pause, stop playback, next/previous track playback actions.

The release also added new option to fix the audio output used. And, the code has been modernized for C++17 and now supports TagLib 2.0.

Configure Kid3 shortcut for audio playback

Other changes include:

Webp image format support.
arm64 support for macOS.
Snap package support (available in Ubuntu Software)
Clicking again on 1 star makes star rating disappear.
Support ‘\|’ to escape string list separators.
Support multiple values in APE text items.

In News audio tag editor, kid3

NVIDIA Driver 550.54.14 Released with Better Wayland Support

Last updated: February 24, 2024 — Leave a comment

NVIDIA announced the first stable release for 550 series Linux driver this Friday. It’s NVIDIA Driver 550.54.14 released as latest production branch version.

The release brings better support for Wayland, the more security touchscreen and HiDPI friendly display server, that’s already default in Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux with recent GNOME Desktop. They include:

NVIDIA VDPAU driver for hardware video acceleration can run in XWayland.
Support GNOME ‘Night Light’ and KDE ‘Night Color’ features on Wayland.
Support for PRIME render offload to Vulkan Wayland WSI.
Add support for virtual reality displays, such as the SteamVR platform, on Wayland compositors support DRM leasing.
Fix Source 2 engine games hang on Wayland session.
Fix that Wayland apps sometimes run at extreme low frame rate on Maxwell, Volta, and Pascal series GPUs.
Fix VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) not working with Wayland.

In News nvidia

Wine 9.3 is Out with New HID Pointer Device Driver

Last updated: February 24, 2024 — 2 Comments

Wine, the free open-source software for running Windows apps on Linux, macOS, & BSD, announced a new development 9.3 release this Friday.

The new Wine 9.3 improved proxy configuration reading and writing by using new option to query global proxy settings, and wininet functions to set proxy settings.

The release also introduced a new HID pointer device driver, but only matches with digitizer devices for now, it could later be used for HID mice but for now wine use a different path for that.

Other changes in the release include timezone database update, more exception fixes on ARM platforms, and a total of 23 bug-fixes for apps and games, including Free Download Manager, Final Fantasy XI, Solidworks 2008, Virtual Life 2, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, and more. For more, see the official release note.

In News microsoft, wine

Ubuntu 22.04.4 Released with New Arm64 ISO for Machine Learning

Last updated: February 23, 2024 — Leave a comment

The Ubuntu team announced the 4th point release of Ubuntu 22.04 this Thursday!

The new release comes with a new arm64+largemem ISO for ARM servers. The iso includes a kernel with 64k page size, which is typically used for machine learning, databases with many large entries, and high performance computing. However, it comes at the cost of increased memory use, only suitable for servers with plenty of memory.

For default kernel with 4k page size, user can switch to the new kernel, by installing linux-generic-64k-hwe-22.04 without re-installing the whole system.

“As usual, this point release includes many updates and updated installation media has been provided so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation. These include security updates and corrections for other high-severity bugs, with a focus on maintaining stability and compatibility with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.” said in the announcement.

In News

GIMP 2.99.18 Released as Last Dev for Next Major 3.0

Last updated: February 22, 2024 — Leave a comment

GIMP image editor announced the new 2.99.18 development release today. It’s marked as the last dev release for the next major 3.0 version.

The new release has a new welcome dialog, with Personalize tab to set your favorite theme, icon and font scaling, and select program language, Contribute tab with a few links for who want to contribute to GIMP, and Create tab with quick buttons to create, open, open recent images. It as well has an option to enable on every start.

In Howtos, News gimp, image editor

You can now Test Ubuntu 24.04 Desktop Installer in Web Browser

Last updated: February 21, 2024 — 1 Comment

For those who are interested in the development of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, the developer team has opened a channel for the desktop installer usability test.

Anyone can try out the desktop installer by simply visiting a page in web browser. It will ask to grant permission to share the screen of browser window (Screen Sharing), so developer team can know where you spend time, get stuck, and go smoothly.

Also it asks to enable Microphone, so you can tell what you’re thinking as you go. And, of course either or both can be disabled!
Continue Reading…

In News ubuntu 24.04

Mixxx 2.4 Finally Released! How to Install in Ubuntu via PPA

Last updated: February 20, 2024 — Leave a comment

Free and open source DJ software, Mixxx, finally released the new major 2.4 version few days ago.

The new release added support for exporting crates, playlists and the library to Engine DJ OS devices, including Denon and Numark standalone controllers.

Mixxx 2.4 added support for Saved Loops, which can be assigned to any Hot Cue slot. If you already have tracks from Serato DJ with Saved Loops, it will import them automatically.

The release also introduced Effect Chains, a set of effects which can be saved and reloaded with all their parameters and individual Meta Knob mappings. Effect Chains can also be exported and imported, which allows you to share them with other Mixxx DJs.

In News DJ software, Mixxx

gThumb 3.12.5 Released with Few Bug-fixes (Ubuntu PPA)

Last updated: February 20, 2024 — Leave a comment

gThumb image viewer and organizer released new 3.12.5 release this Sunday. It is a small release only contains translation updates and a few bug-fixes.

Bug fixes in the release include:

When the ‘Store metadata inside files if possible’ option is active, comment a picture will delete its Color Profile tag.
Build issue with libjxl 0.9 for loading JPEG-XL images.
In the “Add to catalog”, when “Keep the dialog open” button is checked, the “View the destination” checkbox becomes disabled.

Nothing else!

In News gThumb image viewer, image viewer, photo

Firefox 123 Released with New Report Tool, Search in Firefox View

Last updated: February 20, 2024 — Leave a comment

Mozilla Firefox web browser version 123.0 now is available to download!

In the new monthly release, Firefox View page now have “Search” function, allows to search a page from each tab of recent browsing, recent closed tabs, open tabs, tab from other devices, and history.