Linux 7.1 arrives with a rewritten NTFS driver, Apple Silicon battery reporting, and Steam Deck OLED audio fixes alongside massive legacy code removals.

You're reading Linux 7.1 brings new NTFS driver, Steam Deck OLED audio fix + more, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Dynamic Music Pill, the blingy GNOME Shell extension that adds now playing track info, media controls and even real-time lyrics to your desktop, has gained some new options. “Like what?”, you ask… If you don’t want to see the name of the artists in the panel pill, you no longer have to: a ‘show artist’ toggle lets you hide it. The extension already has an option to dynamically hide artist labels if there’s not enough room to display it alongside the title. On that topic, when long artist names and track titles combine, the pill will scroll the labels from […]

You're reading New options land in Dynamic Music Pill GNOME extension, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Canonical has bumped its Steam Snap for ARM64 to the stable channel. First announced in January, the snap has been tested across ARM64 hardware including the NVIDIA DGX Spark, Radxa Orion O6 and Lenovo ThinkPad X13s, with Canonical now reporting ‘solid performance’ across many popular games. Valve doesn’t provide a native ARM Linux client (edit: they began quietly publishing Linux ARM builds in April, but these aren’t linked to on the main website). Canonical’s snap version of Steam uses the Intel/AMD Steam binary with the FEX emulator. This stable release of the Steam Snap for ARM exposes FEX’s configuration options to […]

You're reading Canonical’s Steam Snap for ARM64 is now stable , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

El Poblador is a fully playable Settlers of Catan clone that runs entirely in your terminal. Written in Go by developer vicho, El Poblador is a compete rendition of the iconic competitive board game, which is all about resources, trading, building settlements and blocking your opponents. All of Catan’s core mechanics are accounted for, albeit free of the tactile joy of handling and placing tiny wooden blocks in the real game. It’s a game designed for 3-4 players, so you’ll want to huddle around a laptop or on a PC to play it. You use arrow keys to navigate the […]

You're reading Play Catan in your terminal with El Poblador, a TUI clone, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Canonical has released Workshop, a new open-source tool to create reproducible development environments with a single command. Using YAML files, the same development setup can be reproduced across different hardware and devices, reducing dependency headaches and configuration drift. Environments in Workshop are built from SDKs (packages that install languages, frameworks and tools). Most of these come from the SDK Store, which supports versioned channels similar to the Snap Store so that projects can define specific SDK versions to use. Canonical offers SDKs for Ollama, OpenCode, NVIDIA CUDA and AMD ROCm at launch, but users can create and define project-specific SDKs […]

You're reading Canonical’s Workshop: sandboxed, reproducible dev environments, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

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, […]

You're reading GNOME Sushi spacebar preview fix coming to Ubuntu 26.04, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

April 2026 has been and gone, but not before delivering an array of Linux software updates, including new versions of popular FOSS video editor Kdenlive and Oracle’s virtualisation offering VirtualBox. We also got Firefox 150 with GTK emoji picker support and split tab improvements, and a modest bug fix update to the GIMP image editor, albeit resolving an annoying on-canvas text tool quirk. Below, I list other notable Linux app releases to arrive in April. While these didn’t merit a dedicated article (hey, it was a busy month with the release of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS), they still brought nifty new […]

You're reading Linux App Release Roundup (April 2026), a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Linux Mint’s switch to a longer development cycle – the next release is coming at Christmas – has a knock on effect for people trying to install it on newer hardware that requires a newer kernel. So, a solution has been found. A new set of ISO images dubbed HWE (Hardware Enablement have been published to “address compatibility issues with brand new hardware”, says Linux Mint project lead Clement Lefebvre. The new Linux 22.3 HWE image contains the Linux 6.17 kernel. The team will, from this point on, publish new HWE ISOs each time a new HWE kernel arrives in […]

You're reading Linux Mint’s new HWE ISOs improve hardware support, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

A newly launched project lets you boot Ubuntu on a PlayStation 5 to play Steam games, though only if your console is on old enough firmware. The hack is the work of security engineer Andy Nguyen, who this week announced a public release of his ps5-linux-boot project so more people can turn their “…PS5 Phat console on 3.xx and 4.xx [Firmware] into a fully functional Linux PC gaming device”. Obviously, this is all unofficial. The project exploits a patched hypervisor vulnerability to give Linux direct access to the PS5’s hardware – which with its eight Zen 2 CPU cores (16 threads) […]

You're reading Someone got Ubuntu running on a PS5 – and played Steam, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

If you’re still running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), heads up: Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) ended this month and your system is no longer receiving security updates. Having debuted in April 2016, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS received five years of standard support with a further 5 years of security coverage available through ESM by enabling Ubuntu Pro. ESM for 16.04 ended April 2026, meaning action is needed to stay protected. The most straightforward thing to do is to upgrade to a more recent LTS release – but there’s no direct route from 16.04, however. Instead, you’ll need to upgrade in stages: […]

You're reading Ubuntu 16.04 LTS security support has ended – unless you pay, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Mozilla has attracted kudos since it added a free built-in VPN to its Firefox web browser, not least because of the generous 50 GB a month usage limit. Now it’s set to add another sweetener: server location choice. Mozilla began rolling out VPN integration in Firefox 149 for Windows, macOS and Linux to users in the UK, USA, France and Germany as a privacy shield: it hides your real IP address when browsing by routing traffic through a secure proxy server hosted by Fastly. Canada was added to that list with Firefox 150. The only hard requirement is that users must be […]

You're reading Firefox’s free VPN is getting the one feature it was missing, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Framework’s new 13 Pro laptop is the company’s first to ship as certified for Ubuntu, who say you can buy it knowing you’ll get “guaranteed support right out of the box”. Framework hardware have been popular with Linux users for years, not just for the company’s ethos around upgradeable and repairable hardware but their kernel contributions and financial support for open-source projects and developers. Specs wise, the new Framework 13 Pro is powered by Intel Core Ultra Series 3 or AMD Ryzen AI 300 series processors. It uses LPCAMM2 memory (modular LPDDR5X), available with up to 64GB (higher densities will […]

You're reading Framework’s Laptop 13 Pro is its first Ubuntu Certified machine, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Firefox 150 is released this week with an enhanced Split View features, multi-tab sharing and a clutch of welcome PDF editor improvements. Split View debuted in Firefox 149 last month, letting you easily view two web-pages side-by-side in a single tab (no more juggling windows). In Firefox 150, you can right-click a link on a web page and choose Open Link in Split View to, well, do precisely that. Firefox’s Split View feature now includes an option to Reverse Tabs in the context menu (three dots at the bottom of a focused split). And when creating a new Split View without a […]

You're reading Firefox 150 brings Linux emoji picker, PDF page ordering + more, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Linux Mint has confirmed it is switching to a longer development cycle, in order to give the team more time to ‘fix bugs and improve the desktop’. As a result, the Linux Mint 23 release is now slated to launch in December 2026. It will, among other planned changes, use the same installer as LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) as this offers better OEM install, SecureBoot and LVM/LUKS support. Project lead Clement Lefebvre intimated that upending the distro’s standard twice-yearly release model was needed in February, noting that “…one of our strengths is that we’re doing things incrementally and changing […]

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The first point release to Zorin OS 18 is now available for download, arriving six months and some 3.3 million downloads after the original launch. Zorin OS 18.1 is a point release update. It’s still based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS-based but adds a variety of desktop refinements, updated software and a new kernel (courtesy of the recent Ubuntu HWE from Canonical). A new Zorin OS Lite also launches today. This nimble edition is aimed at older, lower-spec hardware and is based around a customised Xfce desktop rather than the GNOME Shell desktop the main edition uses. If you already run […]

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Ever wondered what a GTK4/libadwaita version of Linux music player Rhythmbox might look like? A new app in development imagines just that. Tributary is billed as a “high-performance, Rhythmbox-style media manager written in pure Rust with GTK4 and libadwaita”. It’s more than a way to play local audio files. Tributary can also access and stream music from Jellyfin, Plex, DAAP/iTunes shares, and Subsonic/Navidrome setups, and makes it easy to browse and play internet radio stations – all from a UI that looks like a GTK4 Rhythmbox. Explaining his decision to create ‘yet another music player’ (no longer a historical meme […]

You're reading Tributary is the GTK4 Rhythmbox port of your dreams, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Quick Lofi is a GNOME Shell extension that puts a lofi radio player in your top bar. If you’ve ever opened a new browser tab to load a “lofi beats to study to” stream on YouTube — lofi girl, perhaps – to act as an ambient backdrop to work to, the appeal will be evident. If not, all you need to know is that mellow, lyric-free, low-tempo sounds are reputedly ideal for focus. A wedge of research backs up the benefits of playing background music (or ambient noise or frequencies, including binaural beats) when studying. A 2022 study showed students who […]

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Linux 7.0 kernel improves swap performance, turns on Intel TSX for newer CPUs and supports the Rock Band 4 Bluetooth guitar – more details inside.

You're reading Linux 7.0 kernel brings faster swap & Rock Band 4 controller support, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

A clutch of new features are available in Dynamic Music Pill, the slick now playing and media controller extension for GNOME Shell. The “big” new addition is lyrics support. When you listen to a track with synced lyrics in a compatible player, you can view those lyrics by opening the applet controller and clicking on the album art inside of it: The lyrics are shown in a freely scrollable widget, with the active line bolder in white for more emphasis. You can scroll up and down whilst tracks are playing. If you click a lyric line, your music player jumps […]

You're reading Dynamic Music Pill brings lyrics to your GNOME desktop, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.