News, Tutorials, Howtos for Ubuntu Linux
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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Mozilla announced a new monthly release of its Firefox web browser on March 19.
In the new release, the caret browsing mode, keyboard navigating just like in text editor, also works in the built-in PDF viewer.
The Qwant search engine has been expanded to all languages in the France region along with Belgium, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland.
In MacOS, Firefox now uses the macOS fullscreen API for better user experience for fullscreen spaces, menubar and the Dock. In Windows, it populates the taskbar jump list more efficiently, for a smoother overall browsing experience.
Firefox Caret Browsing setting option
The default wallpaper for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, Noble Numbat, was finally released this Tuesday!
Similar to the one for current Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, the new wallpaper uses gradient color background (from purple in top-left to orange in bottom right?) with mascot in center.
I can’t say how it looks! Just see the image below for the new wallpaper:
For Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, the top 8 photo images that won the wallpaper competition are out! They will be shipped by default in the .iso image as optional wallpapers for Ubuntu 24.04 Desktop.
Ubuntu Desktop team started the wallpaper competition for Ubuntu 24.04 on Feb 8. The submissions are grouped into 4 categories, including Mascot Theme, Digital / Abstract Art, Nature, Other. Each category has 2 winners and they are:
NOTE: The images here are optimized for faster loading. For original images, please scroll down and go to the competition web page.
Fuwafuwa Nanbatto-san (Dark/Light Variants)
QMPlay2, the free open-source Qt media player, released version 24.03.16 few days ago.
QMPlay2 is a Qt based media player that uses FFmpeg as backend for most video and audio codecs support. It also supports Audio CD, raw files, Rayman 2 music and chiptunes, as well as ALSA, PulseAudio or PipeWire sound servers. And, it has built-in a browser to search & play YouTube videos.
The most recent 24.03.16 release added better support for FFmpeg 6.1, and experimental Vulkan Video decoder support. So, since this release, the media player now supports hardware accelerated video playback through following APIs:
QMPlay2 YouTube browser
GNU Octave, the free open-source application for numerical computations, released new major 9.1.0 version! Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 23.10, and Ubuntu 24.04.
The GNU website has not yet announced the new release, but it’s available in the download page.
According to the changelog, the new Octave 9.1.0 overhauled dec2base, dec2bin, and dec2hex. They now accept negative inputs and fractional inputs.
It re-architected the inputParser function to get a 60% performance improvement. And, the perms function has been made faster. The audiowrite function now supports writing to MPEG audio formats (including MP3) if the sndfile library supports it. The current directory of oruntests now changes to the directory containing the files with the tests for the duration of the test.
The release features new functions, including isenv, ismembertol, isuniform, tensorprod.
The disable_diagonal_matrix, disable_permutation_matrix, and disable_range functions have been removed! Replacements are optimize_diagonal_matrix, optimize_permutation_matrix, and optimize_range
Operators, such as .+, .+=, **, and .**= are removed. Replacements are +, +=, +=, ^, and .^=. And, following function are obsolete:
idx_vector::bool()all_ok(const Array&) in Array-util.h.octave_base_value::count
CopyQ, the popular free open-source clipboard manager, announced new 8.0.0 release today!
The new release features new arm64 build packages for MacOS, Debian, and Raspberry Pi. The packages for Windows and MacOS are now based on Qt6 framework. The 64-bit Windows packages now install the app to “Program Files” instead of incorrect “Program Files (X86)“. User has to remove the old path after installing the new version.
For Linux, CopyQ 8.0.0 adds cmake option -DWITH_X11=OFF to disable X11 support, and build option to disable auto-start, which is useful for Flatpak package so far does not support this feature due to permission issue.
For security, the release also disallows storing and processing data from password managers, such as KeePass, KeePassXC, 1Password, and some browsers in private mode.
CopyQ indicator and clipboard history editor
OBS Studio, the popular free open-source live streaming app, announced new major 30.1 release this Wednesday!
The new release enabled HDR for HEVC over the RTMP protocol, AV1 HDR is not currently supported by YouTube.
OBS Studio 30.1 reworked Image Slideshow source to load files asynchronously, and fixed an issue where the slideshow would loop before showing all images. Existing Image Slideshow sources will continue functioning as before. To change them to the new version, you have to re-create them.
The release also added AV1 support for VA-API video hardware acceleration, and AV1 support for WebRTC/WHIP output.
Kdenlive video editor released new 24.02.0 version this Monday!
The new release now takes use of Qt6 and KDE Frameworks 6 for its user interface. The port gets overall experience and better Wayland support for Linux users. And, it now runs natively on DirectX, Metal, and Vulkan respectively on Windows, MacOS, and Linux with substantial performance boost.
However, due to this change, the developer team discontinued supporting for the official PPA that contains the native .deb package for Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Now, it supports only AppImage & Flatpak for Linux.
Other downsides due to switched to Qt6 and KDE Frameworks 6 include:
Linus Torvalds announced Linux 6.8 stable as the latest Kernel series this Sunday.
For Intel, the new kernel now includes the IAA (Intel Analytics Accelerators) crypto compression kernel driver, Qualcomm WCD939X USB subsystem Altmode Mux driver. It added support for QAT 420xx devices, and Thunderbold support for next 16th gen CPUs, QAT 420xx devices. The intel_idle driver now supports ntel Meteor Lake 14th Gen CPUs. And, the issue that the maximum frequency of Core Ultra mobile processors is 100MHz less has been fixed.
AMD PMC (Power Management Controller) driver has been updated with next-gen Zen 5 CPUs support. And, the kernel now supports AMD MicroBlaze V soft-core RISC-V processor.
Kernel 6.8 also added many new devices support. They include Samsung Exynos Auto v920, Google GS101 (Tensor G1), MediaTek MT8188, Qualcomm SM8650 (Snapdragon 8 Gen 3), Qualcomm X1E80100 (Snapdragon X Elite), and Unisoc UMS9620 (Tanggula 7), as well as new Lenovo, ASUS, and Acer Chromebooks with Mediatek MT8183 SoC.
For gaming, the kernel adds driver for Adafruit Seesaw gamepad, and supports Lenovo Legion Go and Nintendo Switch Online (NSO) controllers, as well as new gaming handhelds, such as Anbernic RG351V, Powkiddy RK2023, and Powkiddy X55.
Other changes in Linux Kernel 6.8 include:
