GNOME 51, due out in September, could include a redesigned search experience. Presently, when you trigger a search from the GNOME Shell overview, a dedicated search results screen replaces the one you were looking at, either the workspaces or app picker. But a change targeted for GNOME Shell in v51 plans to change that. Modern GNOME Shell is designed around a ‘semantic’ model, where elements visibly enter and exit from a specific place (with animations providing cues) so you know how one screen relates to the next. Under this model, search results would appear in an overlay that ‘spawns out […]

You're reading GNOME 51 brings a floating search overlay to the Shell, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Ubuntu is moving hwctl from Deb package to snap-only distribution, a change Canonical says improves security and desktop integration.

You're reading Ubuntu’s turning another system Deb package into a snap, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS’s minimal cloud images have been missing curl – accidentally, it turns out, so Canonical has put it back. Curl is a commonly-used command-line tool for fetching files from remote servers. It’s called on in countless install scripts, CI pipelines and one-liners you’ve no doubt pasted into your terminal without thinking twice about. But the package has been missing from the server-cloud-minimal images of 26.04 to date. That caught those running pared-back cloud installs unawares, breaking expected workflows, has it had been available in previous versions. The manual fix is to install curl from the repos which, in […]

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Wondering if your laptop or desktop PC is Ubuntu Certified? Ubuntu 26.10 is adding a new way to check from the Settings app. A new row in Settings > System > About reads “check if this computer is Ubuntu Certified”. Clicking it opens a new page that will read the local/cached status from the com.ubuntu.hwctl service (the Canonical hardware API introduced in 2025). Ubuntu’s has had a command-line way to check certification for a while, using hwlib. In 26.10 (Stonking Stingray), you’ll be able to check it via Settings rather than through terminal command. The statuses which can be shown: There’s also an […]

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The Desktop Icons NG (aka DING) GNOME Shell extension Ubuntu uses to put icons on your literal desktop, has been busy – it finished its port to GTK4, patched memory leaks and improved a few of its lesser-known features. The GTK4 port landed in v51.0.0, released this month, alongside early support for GNOME 51 (since that’s the GNOME version Ubuntu 26.10 will ship with in October). Prior to that, there were other, smaller in June with fixes for memory leaks and buffs to usability. DING’s GTK4 port – not to be confused with a separate GTK4 fork I covered back in […]

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Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is getting a fix for Nautilus that restores ‘Delete’ as the focused button in the trash confirmation dialog, undoing an accidental swap that made ‘Cancel’ the focused button instead. That ‘unintentional’ focus flip meant you could no longer hit enter to action file deletion for Trash since it instead cancelled it. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve assumed I emptied the trash since upgrading to Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, only to find I hadn’t. My muscle memory has struggled to adapt to needing to explicitly click (or tab to) the delete button. Annoying, but thankfully not intentional. […]

You're reading Ubuntu 26.04 fixes trash dialog bug that defaulted to cancel, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is prepping a bug fix update to Papers, the document viewer that replaced Evince in 25.04, resolving several annoyances – including internal PDF links that jumped to the wrong page. The internal link snafu only occurred in some PDFs, not all, and typically took you to a page one off the actual target. Annoying. The fix stops two separate bits of code that both tried to set the zoom level when links jumped to fit-width or fit-page view. A knock-on quirk also saw the alt + p shortcut (which will jump back to the previous page) wouldn’t […]

You're reading Ubuntu 26.04 fixes Papers bug that sent PDF links to wrong page, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Ubuntu 26.10 is replacing its D-Bus implementation for the first time since 2004, swapping dbus-daemon for dbus-broker – a change end-users are unlikely to notice. Processes on your desktop talk to each other and to the host system using D-Bus, a ‘message’ bus. This is what the Ubuntu Dock uses to show unread-count badges for apps, what tells your desktop a USB drive has been plugged in, and so on. Two buses are in play. There’s aa system bus, shared across the whole device, handling hardware and background services, and a user session bus to handle desktop and app integrations […]

You're reading Ubuntu 26.10 retires dbus-daemon after 22 year run as default, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Support for Ubuntu 25.10 “Questing Quokka” ends 9 July 2026 – which is this week. If you’re still using it, you can upgrade to Ubuntu 26.04 LTS directly to keep receiving updates. Ubuntu 25.10 was released in October 2025. As an ‘interim release’ the desktop edition it receives only 9 months of ongoing updates. Ubuntu’s Long-Term Support versions get 5 years of updates on desktop, plus a further 5 years through an Ubuntu Pro subscription. Nothing dramatic happens when a release goes end of life. Your install keeps working. What stops is the flow of high-impact security updates and critical bug fixes […]

You're reading Ubuntu 25.10 loses security updates on 9 July, 2026, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Canonical wants ntpd-rs, a Rust rewrite of NTP (Network Time Protocol), to become Ubuntu’s default time sync client. To help get there, Canonical has become a Gold Sponsor of the Trifecta Tech Foundation, the non-profit behind ntpd-rs, committing €40,000 a year to help fund its memory-safe software projects. The goal is to make the Rust-based version the default time sync client and server in Ubuntu 27.04, and it will be made it available for testing in Ubuntu 26.10, out in October. Eventually, it’ll also replace chrony, linuxptp and gpsd for time-syncing use cases, according to Jon Seager, Ubuntu VP of Engineering at Canonical. Your Ubuntu system keeps […]

You're reading Ubuntu is swapping its time sync tool for a Rust-based version, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

If you installed Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and noticed video and music files weren’t showing image thumbnails in the file manager, a packaging oversight was to blame, not anything you did. It turns out that Ubuntu’s Default install option (aka minimal install) wasn’t pulling in the gst-audio-thumbnailer and gst-video-thumbnailer packages which generate media thumbnails when you open a folder full of compatible files. A metapackage doesn’t contain software itself, just a list of the packages that need to be installed for, in this case, an Ubuntu desktop experience. Confusingly, both thumbnailers were present in the full install’s meta file, so if […]

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Ubuntu is working on speech-to-text AI transcription so you can talk to type. It's powered by project Myna. Here's how it'll work and why it's adding it.

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Ubuntu 26.10 Snapshot 2 is available to download, the second of four snapshots planned for the ‘Stonking Stingray’ development cycle ahead of a stable release in October. As with the first snapshot, there’s not a lot “new” stuff to see or test out, so unless you’re a developer or an avid bug hunter there’s little reason to rush off and try it. Canonical’s Utkarsh Gupta, announcing the release on Ubuntu’s developer mailing list, warns of a “breaking change” – don’t panic: it’s not in the image itself, but the URL it’s accessed from. Over the past few weeks the Ubuntu […]

You're reading Ubuntu 26.10 Snapshot 2 is out (with a ‘breaking change’), a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Ubuntu has announced an ‘important policy update’, making beta releases mandatory for all Ubuntu flavours, no exceptions. Most flavours already hit the beta milestone every six months without issue. But until now a flavour that missed the deadline could still be granted a one-off exception. During the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS cycle, that’s what happened with Ubuntu Kylin, the Chinese-orientated spin that uses the UKUI desktop. It missed the Beta window but still made the final release. That won’t happen again. To get an official stable release, a flavour now must have a beta release out the same time as every […]

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Ever wished you could talk in to a text field rather than type? Ubuntu 26.10 hears you – quite literally. Canonical’s VP of Engineer Jon Seager, at the Ubuntu Summit, said the distro will soon lets users “press a button and talk into any field that you could previously type in”. A small, on-device AI language parsing model like Whisper will power the feature. It’s part of a wider push to integrate AI features in Ubuntu this year, with founder Mark Shuttleworth aiming to position Ubuntu as the ‘OS for agentic AI’. AI features in Ubuntu will be shipped as […]

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Canonical has released the first monthly snapshot of Ubuntu 26.10 ‘Stonking Stingray’. This is the first of 4 planned testing builds in the lead up to the final, stable release of Ubuntu 26.10 on 15 October, 2026. Utkarsh Gupta announced the release on the Ubuntu developer mailing list, noting that a couple of images – including the ubiquitous Intel/AMD64 build most of us use – are missing from the first snapshot. Those will return in time for Snapshot 2. Ubuntu monthly snapshots are not alpha builds. They exist as a way for Ubuntu’s engineers to fine-tune new, automated build processes. […]

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Daily builds of Ubuntu 26.10 ‘Stonking Stingray’ are now available for download, as development on the distro’s next major release kicks in to gear. As the name suggests, new ISOs are produced from development code on a (mostly) daily basis, giving those keen to test October’s release in advance the ability to do so. However, because package updates can break the ability for a bootable image to be created, it’s not unusual for there to be temporary gaps between new daily builds being available. Daily builds will continue to be produced for remainder of the Ubuntu 26.10 development cycle, right […]

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GNOME Sushi fans, rejoice: the spacebar preview feature is being fixed in Ubuntu 26.04. If you’re not familiar with it, GNOME Sushi is a file preview tool similar to Quick Look on macOS. Select a file in Nautilus, press space and a floating preview window appears. It works with images, video and audio files, PDFs, plain text files and more. GNOME’s Sushi isn’t preinstalled in Ubuntu but many users install it themselves as it makes it easier to find specific files when rooting through folders filled with samey-seeming documents, audio files and video clip. —Well, except it doesn’t (or rather, […]

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If you haven’t check in with Ubuntu’s app prompting feature for a while, there’s more reason to do so in the latest release. Recent improvements to the snap-focused security feature, which Canonical’s Oliver Calder has shared an update on, aims to “empower users” by letting them grant apps system and hardware access at runtime rather than retrospectively. Android or iOS use similar prompts, showing screen modals asking if users if they want to “allow Acme App to access the camera” with options to deny or “only while using the app”. Nifty stuff on mobile, but on a desktop? Well, Canonical […]

You're reading Ubuntu’s app permission prompting has got a lot better, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.