OpenAI has announced a preview release of the official ChatGPT Desktop app for Linux. Compared to using ChatGPT in a browser tab, the GUI desktop app can run Codex in your local repos, hook into and control other apps via extensions, handle ChatGPT Work-related tasks and probe your local files without you having to upload things elsewhere. In an email, OpenAI said that ‘Linux has been one of the most-requested platforms’ for its desktop app, and with this launch it’s finally available on all major operating systems. ChatGPT desktop app for Linux joins Anthropic’s Claude desktop app for Linux, which entered […]
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When Flathub banned AI-coded app submissions last month, some critics warned the platform was denying the future by dismissing a new wave of “vibe-coded” software as out-and-out “slop”. Well, new data suggests otherwise, as nearly three-quarters of the rejected apps are already dead, existing only a few months. Linux developer Evangelos Paterakis, developer of Tuba, Turntable and others, did the digging, looking at 120 code repositories whose pull requests for inclusion on Flathub were rejected because of their heavy AI usage and given an “AI Slop” tag. Of those rejected, 88 are no longer under active development, many having deleted their […]
Anthropic has released a beta of its Claude desktop app for Linux, launching alongside an apt repo Ubuntu users can add for ongoing updates. According to the official docs, Claude desktop for Linux offers “the same Chat, Cowork, and Claude Code experience as macOS and Windows: parallel sessions, visual diff review, an integrated terminal and editor, and live app preview”. However, not all of the app’s features are yet available. The Linux beta lacks Computer Use, which lets Claude control apps directly, and voice dictation, both present on macOS and Windows. Anthropic says Computer Use support is coming to Linux […]
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.
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 […]
You’ll have to sift through fewer vibe-coded apps on Flathub in future, as the store has announced a policy change on software made using AI tools. Flathub, the de-facto place to find and install Flatpak applications, is banning the use of “AI” coded applications and automated submissions going forward. It’s not a blanket ban – mature projects with AI code are allowed A change to the store’s policy note says “applications containing AI-generated or AI-assisted code, documentation, or other content are not allowed”. A carve out will allow “mature, well-maintained projects” to include AI generated code and use AI tools […]
AI features are coming to Ubuntu in 2026, though Canonical has made clear that the distro is not becoming an AI product. In a community post, Jon Seager, VP of engineering at Canonical, says the company is “ramping up its use of AI tools in a focused and principled manner” this year, with a bias toward local inference and open-weight models whose licence terms match Canonical’s values. AI features in Ubuntu will take one of two forms. Implicit features improve existing capabilities using on-device AI models, for things like text-to-speech and speech-to-text to bolster accessibility. Ubuntu will become a context-aware […]
Your mouth can (probably) say things quicker than your hands can type them, yet voice typing is rarely used as a primary input method on desktop, despite most of us thinking nothing of using it on mobile. That’s despite speech-to-text being available on desktop OSes for decades, natively and through dedicated apps. It never caught on because it was inaccurate and slow and typically hidden away as an assistive feature. (And because a lot of what you do at a keyboard is navigation and that is less efficient to speak, unless ‘arrow down, arrow down, arrow down’ is some trendy […]
Thunderbolt is a new open source AI client from the Mozilla-owned MZLA Technologies aimed at enterprises who want to run self-hosted chatbots on their own infrastructure. MZLA Technologies is the for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that develops and maintains the Thunderbird email client. It says Thunderbolt was created with the support of a grant from Mozilla. Terrible name aside (Intel owns a trademark for ‘Thunderbolt’ which Apple markets heavily, so it’s not the best choice for clarity), the LLM that MZLA Technologies asked to write their press release says that Thunderbolt is a “sovereign AI client” for organisations who want their own AI infrastructure. […]
Several Intel NPU fixes land in the latest update to Resources, which Ubuntu is making the default system monitor in 26.04 LTS. Resources is a GTK4/libadwaita tool that shows more system usage, processes and hardware details than GNOME System Monitor, which it is replacing as Ubuntu’s default in the new LTS. The Resources v1.10 release at the start of February added (among other changes) support for AMD Neural Processing Units (NPUs). The app has supported usage for Intel NPUs since its v1.7.x release in late 2024. The v1.10.2 changelog resolves what is described as “implausible” usage values in Intel NPU […]
The Firefox 148 update sees its stable release today, bringing with it a much-request ‘AI kill switch’ to easily disable all AI-powered features within the browser. Mozilla has said future updates to the browser will not re-enable AI features once disabled. Given that Mozilla now measures its success by how much revenue it makes from AI features in its products, Firefox included, that’s a reassuring stance. To disable AI features in Firefox go to Settings > AI Controls. Slide the ‘Block AI Enhancements’ toggle to turn off ChatGPT and other chatbots in the sidebar, AI link previews, the (supposedly) smart […]
Firefox 148 adds a new "AI Controls" panel to granularly disable or entirely block AI features with a kill-switch. Opt out of AI when the update drops in February.
Canonical will package AMD ROCm directly in the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS repos, making it much easier to get GPU-accelerated workloads running on the distro.
ONLYOFFICE 9.2 is out. The free, open-source office suite now includes a built-in AI Agent for document generation, content analysis, and more. Feature details inside.
Mozilla says its AI 'rewiring' is a moral crusade to save the web from Big Tech. Our snarky explainer asks if the real goal is to goose revenue instead.
Canonical announce beta DeepSeek and Qwen AI inference snaps for Ubuntu, both optimised to deliver better performance on Intel and ARM Ampere systems. 
Google Chrome is to become an AI browser powered by Gemini and agentic abilities to 'fundamentally change the nature of browsing', the search giant has announced.
Faster AI-powered face recognition and an AI powered image rotation plugin are among new features in an update to open source photo manager digiKam.
Mozilla Fakespot Deep Fake Detector shuts down on June 26 2025. It says it's to save money, but is it a sign Mozilla is moving away from its original ideals?