Mozilla has released Firefox 152 with revamped Settings and faster ways to share web content – plus, a peculiar way to mute noisy tabs. The update is available from today (15 June, 2026) on Windows, macOS and Linux, as well as for Android and iOS (mobile versions have different features and are not covered in this post). Firefox 152’s headline change is the revamped Settings page. We knew this was coming as Mozilla’s been teasing it for over a year. The company says the new look offers “streamlined organisation, clearer groupings, and improved navigation for easier customisation”. Since many users find […]

KDE Plasma 6.7 has been released, and it brings a feature many of its users have been requesting for decades: independent per-screen virtual desktops. The latest stable update also sees a classic KDE theme revived, supports simultaneous HDR and ICC profiles and packs in an assortment of usability, UI and performance tweaks. This release is dedicated to Eric Laffoon, a longtime KDE supporter who passed away in May 2026. Users of the Ubuntu-based KDE Neon and rolling-release distributions like Arch will be able to install Plasma 6.7 in the coming days. Kubuntu 26.04 LTS users should check the Kubuntu Backports […]

You can now use Firefox’s free built-in VPN without a monthly data limit – but only until August 31, 2026. Mozilla is also temporarily expanding the list of VPN server locations available to proxy your browsing traffic via, up from the current set of 5 locations to a more generous 28. The extra server locations during the promotion: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and Thailand. The Firefox 151 release in May added the option to select from a list of VPN servers (though it’s […]

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’ll be able to customise the look of LibreOffice’s Tabbed UI in the free office suite’s next major release, which his due out in August 2026. LibreOffice 26.8’s Tabbed UI (also known as the Notebookbar and modelled after the Ribbon in Microsoft Office) can show a colourful background when application theming is enabled under Tools > Options > Appearance. A blue shade is used by default but you can pick or set any colour you like. In the ‘Customisations’ section, first selected the Writer, Calc, Impress or Data Notebookbar value, then use the dropdown to chance the colour. Click apply […]

Microsoft has released Coreutils for Windows, allowing a stack of familiar “Linux-like” command-line utilities to run natively on Windows. The project is based on uutils, the Rust-based reimplementation of GNU coreutils that Ubuntu (mostly) has adopted in recent releases. Microsoft’s package bundles uutils’ coreutils and findutils as well as a GNU-compatible grep in a single binary. It offers tools like cat, cp, ls, mv and uptime. Commands that use POSIX-only features are excluded, meaning chmod, chown, kill and others aren’t included. What’s notable – *nix tools working their way into the Windows ecosystem is notable – is that this isn’t […]

Mozilla is added support for Google’s Play Integrity API, known for blocking users of custom ROMs from accessing banking apps, to Firefox for Android. According to a resolved issue in Mozilla’s public tracker, a new lib-integrity-googleplay library has been added to Firefox’s Android codebase. It requests a Play Integrity token, which is then passed to Mozilla’s MLPA (Machine Learning Proxy) server. The token gates access to Firefox’s server-side AI tools, like Smart Window, for rate-limiting purposes. It means Mozilla can ensure that only unmodified, Play-installed copies of Firefox on Google-certified devices can use its compute resources. Per documentation, developers can: “…call the […]

Euro-Office launches its stable 1.0 release on June 9, billed as a ‘truly open’ sovereign alternative to Microsoft Office – a claim riling The Document Foundation, makers of LibreOffice. In an open letter published today, TDF’s Italo Vignoli takes issue with the upstart productivity suite’s pitch. He disputes Euro-Office’s marketing, which he says positions it as the first open-source office suite developed in Europe. It’s historically inaccurate as OpenOffice.org got there in 2001, followed by LibreOffice from 2010. But he calls out another issue. The European Union is making a big push for digital sovereignty, cutting down on how much […]

Proton has confirmed it is working on a Proton Drive client for Linux desktops. The announcement slipped out as part of a broader platform update. Proton has rebuilt Drive around a new shared SDK, with a single codebase powering its official apps on Windows, macOS, iOS, Android and web (rather than separate implementations as before). It’s this unified approach that makes it easier for the Swiss-based company to add new features and integrations across all its official apps – and make an official client for Linux, which is being build on the SDK “from the ground up”, they say. Not […]

A new version of HandBrake, the open-source and cross-platform media conversion tool, is available to download. HandBrake 1.11.2 is a maintenance update in the current 1.11.x stable release, which was released in March 2026 and added DNxHR and ProRes encoder support, and an AMD VCN AV1 10-bit encoder compatible with the company’s 9000 series GPUs and newer. This update is focused on fixes and finesse. A pair of bugs affecting 2-pass operations are resolved: a crash during 2-pass lossless x265 encodes, and a memory leak that occurred during 2-pass MPEG-4, MPEG-2, VP9 and FFV1 encodes. On Linux, HandBrake adds WebM […]

Reliving the glory days of the GNOME 2 desktop is but a browser tab away – well, kinda. The personal website of Benny Powers, a software developer at Red Hat, is not a traditional vertical column of text. Nor is it a slop-soup of purple gradients, rounded glassy cards and monospaced datapoints (a ‘vibe-coded’ aesthetic everywhere right now). No, it’s an interactive GNOME 2 ‘desktop’. He built it after digesting an essay on how websites used to be weird and playful and unique. Looking at his own site, he decided it wasn’t nearly wacky enough, so restyled it to resemble […]

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 […]

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’. The feature aims to bolster Ubuntu’s accessibility, but […]

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 (not yet, anyway), so Canonical bundles the Intel/AMD Steam binary with the FEX emulator. The stable release of the Steam snap for ARM64 exposes FEX’s configuration options to users, including its library forwarding (“thunking”) toggles, of which which Mitchell Augustin, a software engineer on Canonical’s NVIDIA DGX […]

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’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 […]

May 2026 delivered a sizeable set of Linux software updates, including the set I’ve rounded up for your reading pleasure in this post.  The month also saw a buffet of big browser updates, including Firefox 151 with new-look new tab page, Vivaldi 8.0 with a new-look generally and a new public beta of Kagi’s Orion. Elsewhere, Ubuntu 26.04 LTS support was added to VMware Workstation (and Fusion for macOS), while open-source system cleaner BleachBit debuted a TUI for interactive command-line based spring cleaning. Below, I run through a crop of other Linux app releases that landed in May and caught my eye. […]

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 are missing from the first snapshot but will return 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. Snapshots are useful jump-on points that help users test the next release, but […]

Google confirmed at Google I/O 2026 that Canonical is the new lead maintainer and ‘strategic steward’ of Flutter desktop for Windows, macOS and Linux. The announcement of an expanded partnership with Canonical came during the ‘What’s new in Flutter’ presentation at Google I/O 2026, where Kate Lovett, Engineer Manager on the Flutter Framework team at Google, touched on their existing work: “[The Flutter] desktop experience has reached a new level of maturity this year, driven by our incredible engineering partnership with Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu”. She later confirmed that Canonical’s ‘deep technical expertise’ will now oversee maintenance of Flutter […]

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 […]

The Raspberry Pi 6 won’t be released before 2028 and won’t feature an onboard NPU to handle AI compute when it does. Insight into their plans for the Pi 6 and when it’ll arrive were shared by three of the company’s key engineers and leaders in an AMA (ask me anything) session on Reddit on 21 May, 2026. Based on past launches the gap between major Pi models (Raspberry Pi 2, 3, 4 and 5) is around 3-4 years. The Raspberry Pi 5 launched in 2023. That should put the Pi 6 on course for launch in 2026 or 2027. […]

Linux Mint developers are building a new screenshot utility for the Cinnamon desktop, ahead of its next major release. The home-grown tool will give users more options when taking screenshots and will “accommodate the differences between CSD (Client Side Decoration) and SSD (Server Side Decoration) windows” to provide ‘cleaner’ looking screenshots. Currently, Cinnamon rolls with the GTK-based gnome-screenshot. That tool works fine, but it doesn’t render shadows in windowed app screenshots on Cinnamon. It does, however, include pixel artefacts around the rounded corners of windows, caused by the drop shadow peeking through: It’s not super pretty, and as someone who […]

Canonical will decommission its long-running text-hosting service Ubuntu Pastebin on May 31. The company is pulling the plug as part of a broader “infrastructure modernization and migration project”, according to Canonical Community Engineer Aaron Prisk. Ubuntu Pastebin works similarly to GitHub’s Gist, albeit without the revision history. It’s been available as a tool the community can use since late 2007. It originally lived at paste.ubuntu.com domain, with the pastebin.ubuntu.com domain being added later. The service was partly launched to help the distro’s official IRC support channels. They were often flooded with reams of terminal output from users requesting help. Pastes were […]

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 […]

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, […]

A new version of ONLYOFFICE, the open-source productivity suite, is out with a small set of improvements. The new release lands a couple of months after ONLYOFFICE suspended its eight-year Nextcloud partnership over Euro-Office, a fork by a European consortium that ONLYOFFICE says violates its AGPLv3 licence terms. Totally unrelated (yes, sarcasm), ONLYOFFICE 9.4 updates its licensing to tighten language around attribution, copyright notices and the labelling of modified versions. Viva le fork; it still permits modifications, but is more sniffy about any that use its trademarks. Features-wise, ONLYOFFICE 9.4.0 adds Croatian language translations across all editors and shuffles chart […]

A bold new look arrives in Vivaldi 8.0, the latest update to the Chromium-based web browser. The browser’s main UI elements (the bits that make a browser looks like a browser, so tabs, toolbars, panels, and content) drop their boundaries to form a continuous look. Hence the named Unified. Similar to Zen Browser, the canvas for web content is now ‘framed’ with rounded corners, rather than web pages flowing fully from edge-to-edge. “Unified is not a visual refresh. It is a rethinking of how the Vivaldi interface works as a system” the company says in a press release (invoking a […]

Canonical has released Ubuntu Core 26, a new long-term support (LTS) version of its immutable, snap-based OS. Among the changes Ubuntu Core 26 brings is smaller over-the-air updates, with download sizes reduced by up to 90% for most snaps thanks to a new snap-delta format. Updates to the Core base snaps specifically drop from 16 MB to 1.5 MB. Installation times are faster as the initramfs-based installer skips redundant reboots during provisioning. Core 26 also enables live kernel patching on ARM64 devices so that critical and high vulnerability kernel security fixes are applied without the need for a device reboot. […]

The new tab page has a (ever-so-slightly) new look and a new name in Firefox 151, the newest version of Mozilla’s famous open-source web browser that begins roll out today, May 19, 2026. Now called Firefox Home, the new tab page has a “new look and feel”, to quote Mozilla. It’s not quite that dramatic, though the rounded search bar draws from the upcoming Nova redesign with its rounded pill shape (it is also no longer sticky on scroll): Stories stay put, but the ‘follow’ topic button is now an plus-sign icon left of the section header. You can continue […]

Canonical has shared a new Ubuntu Concept image for the CIX P1, an Armv9 SoC powering single-board computers like the Radxa Orion O6 and Orange Pi 6 Plus. The image is based on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and ships with a Linux 7.0 kernel from CIX’s open-source GitHub tree using only open-source drivers. A set of patches sits on top of the mainline kernel, but the goal is for them to be upstreamed too. Canonical is using the same approach it took with its Snapdragon builds by letting the hardware describe itself to the OS at boot (ACPI) rather than per-device […]

A new version of Broadcom’s free virtualisation software VMware Workstation Pro is out with been support Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. VMware Workstation Pro 26H1, along macOS counterpart VMware Fusion Pro, both support the latest long-term support version of Ubuntu as host OS (what the software runs on) and a guest OS (a virtual machine inside the software). Fedora 43 and 44, SUSE Linux Enterprise 16 and openSUS 16.0 are similarly supported as both guest and host OSes, while FreeBSD 15.0 is supported as a guest only. Windows builds of VMware Workstation Pro 26H1 see “all binaries, libraries, installer components, and related […]

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS upgrades from 25.10 are officially live – and with Ubuntu 25.10 support ending in July, you’ll want to move soon. Ubuntu 26.04 LTS released on 23 April with GNOME 50, Linux 7.0 and new default apps. Snap store and web searching features were added to the GNOME Shell Overview and you can now enable Ubuntu Pro in the Security Center. Other changes in the ‘Resolute Raccoon’ include a fresh set of folder icons, visual password feedback for sudo commands and fuss-free access to NVIDIA CUDA and AMD ROCm for developer, as both now live in the archives, […]

Open-source cleaning tool BleachBit has gained a text-based user interface (TUI) as an optional alternative to its standard graphical frontend. Unlike BleachBit’s existing CLI, which is intended for non-interactive use in scripts, the TUI is fully interactive, you navigate the interface with your keyboard (there’s limited mouse support) to select, preview and clean out cruft. The BleachBit TUI caters to use cases the GUI doesn’t, be that headless Linux servers managed remotely or being available on lightweight desktop systems where adding the overheard of GTK dependencies isn’t wanted. Currently in alpha, the new TUI runs on the same backend as […]

KDE has announced it’s getting a €1.28 million grant from the Sovereign Tech Fund (STF) to help improve the Plasma desktop, KDE Linux and the communication frameworks used by both. The German government-backed fund, which sees its work as “strategic investments in the digital infrastructure of our economy and society”, will disburse €1,285,200 ($1,512,680) to KDE across 2026 and 2027. Like all grants the fund provides, the money is earmarked for a specific set of pre-approved projects. KDE developers can’t redirect cash toward the latest feature request gathering upvotes on r/KDE. Work the money will fund includes improving the Plasma […]

If you recently downloaded the Cemu emulator for Linux from the project’s GitHub, be aware: it may have added malware to your system. The team behind the Wii U emulator discovered that both Linux builds of Cemu 2.6 on Github, the AppImage and a standalone Ubuntu 22.04 ZIP, were “compromised”. Cemu’s Flatpak was not affected, nor were the GitHub installers for Windows and macOS. If you downloaded the Cemu 2.6 AppImage or Ubuntu 22.04 ZIP from the project’s GitHub, or used a third-party launcher that pulls from there, between 6 May and 12 May, 2026, you may have a compromised build. If […]

If your HEIC photos show a “Could not load image” error in Ubuntu 26.04’s Image Viewer, you’re not alone – it’s an intentional breakage, albeit one that’s easy to fix. HEIC files are a variant of HEIF which use H.265/HEVC compression. If you own an iPhone or a newer Android device, the stock camera app uses this format by default. But Ubuntu 26.04 LTS longer preinstalls a decoder library for HEIC (though more accurately, it’s tweaked dependency chains to ensure one is no longer pulled in). When you connect your smartphone to a computer running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS to browse […]

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 […]

If Canonical hadn’t burned through cash and goodwill during its smartphone detour in the mid-2010s, Ubuntu would likely still ship with the Unity desktop today – albeit in an evolved form. What would that form actually look like? Well, you don’t have to shut your eyes and imagine, thanks to Ubuntu community member Muqtxdir, who’s experiment in “re-building ubuntu’s unity shell in a wayfire session through gtk4-layer-shell and libadwaita widgetry” (sic) gives us a sideways glimpse. Muqtxdir, who help maintain and develop Ubuntu’s Yaru theme and contributes to the immutable Vanilla OS Linux distribution, recently shared a video of his […]

A new beta build of Orion for Linux is available, with the v0.3 update ready for ‘broader, real-world use and feedback’, according to Kagi, the company behind it. Orion for Linux is a native GTK4/libadwaita web browser powered by WebKitGTK, aiming for feature parity with established macOS version (platform-specific features notwithstanding). It launched an alpha in early 2026 and an initial beta in March. In the months since the last beta, Kagi say Orion for Linux has “evolved into a much more capable browser” with its core browsing features like tab management, a password manager, history tracking, focus mode and […]

gThumb, the open-source image viewer and organiser, has been rewritten in Vala and ported to GTK4/libadwaita – and compared to the old UI, it’s barely recognisable. An alpha build of gThumb 4.0 is available for testing. Alongside the visual revamp, this brings support for WEBP and PNG animations, lets you export images in the JXL format and includes a censor filter to pixelate or blur out parts of an image. But it’s the visual changes that mark this update out. Sure, any port from GTK3 to GTK4 will add a visage of modernity, but it’s not a “automatically looks amazing” […]

If you’re having trouble accessing the Ubuntu website, the Snap store or Launchpad then you’re not alone: Canonical’s websites are currently facing a “sustained, cross-border” attack. The company says it is “working to address” the attack and will provide more details shortly. Websites and services have been affected since around 6PM (UK time) 30 April. What is and isn’t affected right now The Ubuntu APT repos are not offline, as they’re mirrored across multiple locations, countries and servers, although the main archive.ubuntu.com is offline (at the time of writing). It’s still possible to download OS ISO images too, due to […]

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 […]

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 […]

Someone has hacked their PlayStation 5 to run Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and used it to play GTA V Enhanced on Steam at a smooth 60fps at 1440p – and now you can too. The feat was pulled off by security engineer Andy Nguyen, who announced a public release of his ps5-linux project this week to 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 […]

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS dropped the Software & Updates utility from default installs and added Ubuntu Pro settings to the Security Center app. But is the setup experience any better? The short answer is yes, mostly. The range of options still mirrors what was found in the old Software & Updates > Ubuntu Pro tab, but the layout is less cramped, with more room for concise explanations of what each setting and toggle does. Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use on up-to five devices. A paid subscription is required for businesses, enterprises or anyone trying to managing a fleet of Ubuntu installs. Enrolling is improved. […]

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: […]

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. The plan is to make […]

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 […]

Launchpad, the home of Ubuntu development, has finally received some design attention. Canonical last updated the site’s homepage back in 2024, but many of the pages that the distro’s developers actually use or reference on a regular basis have remained untouched for the best part of a decade. Now that’s starting to change. Canonical UX designer Enzo Deng has announced that the company has “begun […] a complete redesign of the series page” for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, describing it as the start of “the journey of modernizing the Launchpad user experience” (sic). Save for a line on how the company […]

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 […]