News, Tutorials, Howtos for Ubuntu Linux
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
OnlyOffice, the popular free open-source office suite, announced new 8.1 release for its desktop editors.
The Desktop Editors is the offline use version of OnlyOffice office suite. It’s made up of Document, Spreadsheet, Presentation, and PDF Form apps, and, supports collaborative editing by connecting to a cloud service.
The new 8.1 release finally added full-featured PDF editing support for the both online and offline apps. After opened a PDF file, go to Home -> Edit PDF to toggle between viewing and editing mode.
When in editing PDF mode, you’ll see the tool-bar options to edit text, add, rotate and delete pages, insert various objects, such as text boxes, shapes, images, hyperlinks, tables, and more.
Darktable, the free open-source raw image processing software, released new 4.8.0 version this Friday!
Darktable 4.8.0 introduced a few new modules. They include the color equalizer module, allowing to control hue, lightness, and/or saturation based on colors.
There are as well new Enlarge Canvas module, allowing to add areas on top, bottom, left, and/or right of the image, and fill with different colors, or some other part of the image by using Retouch module.
By drag-and-dropping from the filmstrip to the new Overlay module, it can now add overlay on top of current image. And, the overlay can be scaled, rotated and shifted horizontally or vertically.
Darktable 4.8.0 Enlarge Canvas and Color Equalizer
KeePassXC, the popular free open-source KeePass and KeePassX based password manager, released version 2.7.9 few days ago.
The new KeePassXC 2.7.9 installed as Snap finally uses new desktop portal for native messaging integration. Meaning without using an external script, it now has out-of-the-box browser integration support. However, KeePassXC seems no longer provides official support for Snap package.
So far, Firefox (native + Snap), Chromium Snap, Google Chrome native, Brave native are tested and work with KeePassXC installed as Snap. Though, user may need to grant permission by running the command below in terminal:
sudo snap connect keepassxc:browser-native-messaging
Since version 2.7.7, the password manager added basic Passkeys/WebAuthn support, and added a context menu option to import passkeys. In the new release, it improved the feature by adding a new “Remove Passkey from Entry” context menu option.
HPLIP, the free open-source HP developed Linux driver for HP inkjet and laser based printers, released version 3.24.4 today!
The development of HPLIP seems lagging behind. Rather than supporting for current Ubuntu 24.04, the new release adds installer support for Ubuntu 23.10, which will reach end of life next month.
It also added support for Debian 12 and Fedora 39, both of which were released in last year.
Besides new Linux Distributions support, HPLIP 3.24.4 also added new printers support! They include:
