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Ubuntu Studio opens Wallpaper Competition for Next 24.04

Last updated: February 18, 2024 — Leave a comment

Ubuntu Studio, the official Ubuntu flavor, opens wallpaper competition for the next 24.04 LTS release!

Ubuntu Studio is one of the official Ubuntu flavors, that features KDE Plasma desktop environment and aims to general multimedia production.

The developer team opens the wallpaper competition on February 16. All users (needs login) can submit their own artworks until March 11. And 5 winner images will be shipped (as optional wallpapers) in Ubuntu Studio 24.04 iso image.

image name Charge by Aaron Rainbolt

Like the Ubuntu 24.04 wallpaper competition, the AI generated artwork is NOT allowed in this one, due to active legal debates and license issue of the popular AI generation tools.

The competition rules include:

Submitter must own the rights to the image.
Full quality image must be 3840×2160 px. PNG and WebP recommended.
No watermark, name or logo in image.
image license CC BY-SA 4.0 or CC BY 4.0

Differently, this competition will NOT include any wallpaper that wins in the Ubuntu 24.04 Wallpaper Competition (see link above).

And, due to lack of time constraints, there will be no community vote this time, instead, Ubuntu Studio Project Leader and Art Leader will judge which images win.

The entrance of the contest:

Ubuntu Studio 24.04 Wallpaper Contest

In News art, Ubuntu Studio, wallpaper

Darktable 4.6.1 Released, New Documentation & Various Fixes

Last updated: February 18, 2024 — Leave a comment

Darktable photography workflow application and RAW developer released new stable 4.6.1 yesterday!

The release finished the documentation for the new 4.6 release series, include translations to Ukrainian, Polish and Dutch.

And, it now performs image discovery asynchronously in the import dialog. Meaning that long parsing due to huge number of sub-directories and
files can be easily interrupted by selecting another place or un-checking recursive mode.

The release now drops support for macOS versions older than 12.5. Other changes are mostly bug-fixes. They include:

Fix memory and resource leaks in the QOI image loader.
Fix RGBE image loader.
Fix crashes when running low on GPU or system memory.
Fix OpenCL startup for various cards.
Fix compatibility issues with HDR created DNG files.

For more, see the github releases page for details.

In News darktable, RAW processor

RawTherapee 5.10 Released! How to Install in Ubuntu via PPA

Last updated: February 17, 2024 — Leave a comment

RawTherapee, the free open-source raw photo processing program, announced the new 5.10 release this Friday!

It’s been more than 1 year since the last stable release. The new release can now add multiple custom external editors that can be chosen in the Editor tab.

The Preferences dialog now has new Favorites tab to add/remove favorite tools. And, it includes option to change Lensfun database directory.

RawTherapee 5.10 now uses Exiv2 to hanle metadata, and it supports CR3 medata. It can recognize ICC profiles in user configuration directory, and support Raw files from OM Digital Solutions cameras.

In News RAW processor, RawTherapee

Shotwell 0.32.6 Updated App Icon with Better HiDPI Support

Last updated: February 17, 2024 — Leave a comment

Shotwell photo manager released version 0.32.5, then 0.32.6 with quick fixes, few days ago.

The release has better HiDPI displays support, with new .svg app icon that looks way better (perfectly sharp).

The release also fixed that the viewer application always opens in maximized window size, as well as missing viewer app icon in dock, app switcher, and overview screen.

OAUTH authentication now is moved to external browser, so webkit2gtk-4.1 is no longer required as a dependency for building the binary package.

Other changes include remove “Import from Application” menu item, and translation updates.

In News photo manager, shotwell

HandBrake 1.7.3 Released with Bug-Fixes (Ubuntu PPA)

Last updated: February 15, 2024 — 2 Comments

HandBrake video transcoder announced a new update for the 1.7.x release a few days ago.

This release includes only bug-fixes and minor improvements. They include:

- Fix formatting leading zeros for timestamps in logs
- Incorrect input FPS detection
- tx3g to SSA subtitles conversion issue.
- “All Files” open file dialog filter not really show all files in Linux.
- add a new default audio track automatically set the gain to -20 dB
- VideoToolbox crashes on macOS Sonoma

In News handbrake, video

Power Profiles Daemon 0.20 Adds Multi Drivers, AMDGPU Power Saving Support

Last updated: February 15, 2024 — Leave a comment

power-profiles-daemon, the power mode settings backend in Gnome, released 0.20 today!

The new release added amdgpu panel power savings which uses dedicated hardware in systems with integrated Radeon graphics to decrease panel power consumption when the system is on battery.

This activates the DRM connector attribute panel_power_savings which takes a range from 0 to 4 to indicate how aggressively to enable panel power savings.

GNOME Power Mode settings page

In News AMD, power, power management, power saving

Wine Dev 9.2 Released with Mono Engine Updated to 9.0.0

Last updated: February 11, 2024 — Leave a comment

Wine, the popular free open-source software for running Windows apps & games on Linux, macOS, & BSD, announced a new development 9.2 release!

The new release updated Mono engine to version 9.0.0, included a number of system tray fixes, and exception handling improvements on ARM platforms.

There are as well fixes to a total of 15 bugs, including

crashes when using the Connect function in Quick3270 5.21
digikam 6.10 (& 7.1.0) crashes on start
Dolphin Emulator crashes from 5.0-17264
Elite Dangerous client gets stuck on black screen after launch
Microsoft Webview 2 installer hangs forever
Kodu game lab crashes
And more. See release note for details.

In News wine

Ubuntu 24.04 Wallpaper Contest is Open! Top 8 will be Included

Last updated: February 10, 2024 — Leave a comment

Wallpaper Contest for the next Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, Noble Numbat, is open! Top 8 winner images will be shipped in the iso image.

A bit different to the previous contests, this time the submissions are separated into 4 categories: Mascot Theme, Digital / Abstract Art, Nature, and Other. Each category will have 2 winners, and finally 8 mixed images will be made as optional wallpapers in Ubuntu 24.04 out-of-the-box.

The AI generated artwork is NOT allowed! Because there are active legal debates on the ownership of AI generated artwork and whether it can be copyrighted or not. And, many popular AI generation tools use a license that does not align with those for the contest.

image via meetdilip

In News ubuntu 24.04, wallpaper

Ubuntu 24.04 Aims to use Thunderbird Snap as Default

Last updated: February 8, 2024 — 1 Comment

Like Firefox, Thunderbird email client in Ubuntu is going to be replaced as a Snap app runs in sandbox.

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, is working on porting core apps to Snap package format in recent years. Firefox, Chromium (in system repository), and Ubuntu Software (App Center) are now Snap apps in current Ubuntu releases. Next will be probably Thunderbird!

Canonical has built Thunderbird as Snap package for a period of time. It’s a re-pack of the upstream binary, only available for amd64 (Intel/AMD CPUs), as alternative package for the pre-installed .deb package.

Just one day ago, the Ubuntu Desktop team announced that the Thunderbird Beta Snap now is building from source instead of repacking. Meaning it can be built on other CPU architecture types, such as arm64 and armhf.

And, the Thunderbird Snap built from source aims to be default in next Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

We are aiming at using the snap built from source instead of the deb in Noble. (the reasons are the same than for Firefox, making it easier to roll new versions on older supported series and reducing the maintenance efforts).

Meaning in future, there will be (mostly) NO .deb package for the Thunderbird email client in Ubuntu repository!

Thankfully, those who prefer the classic .deb to Snap can use the Mozilla Team PPA instead, which is maintained by members from Ubuntu Developer Team.

For more about the Thunderbird package format transition, see it in discourse.ubuntu.com.

In News thunderbird, ubuntu 24.04

Arduino IDE 2.3 Released, Debug Feature Goes Stable

Last updated: February 8, 2024 — 1 Comment

The Arduino team announced the 2.3 release of the Arduino IDE this Wednesday.

Since v2.3, the debug feature is now stable and fully incorporated into the IDE! It’s now based on a standard framework, and enabled for all the Arduino boards based on the Mbed™ core, include GIGA R1 WiFi, Portenta H7, Opta, Nano BLE and Nano RP2040 Connect.

Maintainers of Arduino cores can now add debugging for any board. And, the upcoming release of the Arduino-ESP32 core will support the new debug framework!

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