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 […]
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Ubuntu is moving hwctl from Deb package to snap-only distribution, a change Canonical says improves security and desktop integration.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
Grab your diary and jot down the date, as Ubuntu 26.10 ‘Stonking Stingray’ is going to be released on 15 October, 2026. The Ubuntu 26.10 release date and those of other notable milestones in the next development cycle have now been shared by Canonical but, given the nature of development, should be considered tentative – plans can and do change. The most significant date in the 26.10 schedule, besides the final release, is that of feature freeze on August 10, 2026. This is the date at which (in theory) new features stop being added so that the focus can move to […]