A new version of miracle-wm, the Mir-based compositor/tiling window manager looking to rival Hyprland, is out with a welcome set of improvements.
You're reading Miracle-wm 0.7 Released, Completes IPC Implementation, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
It is time once again to share a list of the best free and open-source software I’ve come across in
The post 50+ Best Free and Open-Source Software for Linux in 2025 first appeared on Tecmint: Linux Howtos, Tutorials & Guides.As someone who has been using Linux for more than 12 years, I’ve often come across the same question: “Can
The post Why I Use LibreOffice and ONLYOFFICE Instead of MS Office first appeared on Tecmint: Linux Howtos, Tutorials & Guides.
This article explores how modern DevOps teams are redefining stability and reproducibility in production environments by embracing truly unchangeable operating systems. It delves into how NixOS’s declarative configuration model and OSTree’s atomic update mechanisms open the door to systems that are both resilient and transparent. We'll explain the advantages, technologies, comparisons, and real-world use cases fueling this shift.
Why the change happened: The traditional model, logging into servers, tweaking packages, and patching in place, has led to unpredictable environments, elusive bugs, “snowflake” systems, and configuration drift as environments diverged over time. Immutable infrastructure treats machines like fungible artifacts: if you need change, you don’t fix the running system, you replace it.
Key benefits:
Reliability at scale: Automated, reproducible deployments, no divergence across servers.
Simplified rolling back: If something breaks, spin up the previous, working version.
Security by design: Core systems are read-only, reducing the attack surface.
How it works: System configuration, including packages, services, kernels, is expressed in the Nix language in a config file. Rebuilding produces a new system “generation,” which can be booted or rolled back.
Why DevOps teams love it:
Reproducibility: Exact environments can be rebuilt from config files, promoting parity across development, CI, and production.
Speed and consistency gains: In one fintech case, switching to NixOS reduced deployment times by over 50 percent, erased environment-related incidents, shrank container sizes by 70%, and cut onboarding time dramatically.
Edge readiness: Ideal for remote systems or stateless servers rebuilt nightly to ensure fleet consistency with easy rollback.
Personalization meets immutability: With tools like Home Manager, even user-specific configurations (like dotfiles or shell preferences) can be managed declaratively, and consistently reproduced across machines.
Linux Mint, the popular Ubuntu LTS based Linux Distro, announced new 22.2 point release today.
Linux Mint 22.2, code-name “Zara”, is the second update for the 22 release series that’s based on Ubuntu 24.04 with support until 2029.
The release introduced new XApp called Fingwit, which provides a graphical interface to record and manage your fingerprints, and configure to enable fingerprint authentication for login screen (screensaver), sudo commands, and admin apps.
The app uses system default libfprint daemon to detect if your computer has a supported fingerprint reader. Meaning it won’t work (e.g., ThinkPad T480s in my case) for those using third-party libraries.
Besides new XApp, there are many improvements to other apps. The Sticky app now has rounded corners (top 2 corners), supports running in Wayland session, and a new d-bus method has been added to reload the notes.
The Hypnotix IPTV player app now has 2 new “Theater Mode” and “Borderless Mode”, allowing to toggle the app window to hide all the controls and menus, and even window borders. And, it’s now faster on startup and searching with large playlists.
Linux Mint 22.2 also improved its login screen (handled by LightDM display manager). It now displays user avatars, and applies blur effect to the panel and user selection dialog box for better appearance.
image from linuxmint.com
Linux Mint supports Flatpak out-of-the-box. As so many great applications use LibAdwaita for their modern user interface, the release patched LibAdwaita with theme support, and added it support for Mint-Y, Mint-X and Mint-L themes.
Some apps, e.g., gnome-calendar, baobab (Disk Usage Analyzer), and simple-scan (Document Scanner), have been updated with the new LibAwaita library, so they follow the themes mentioned above.
Other changes in the release include:
Loginxapp-aiff-thumbnailer thumbnailer for cover art in .aiff audio filesFor more, see the official release note.
The official Mint 22.2 .iso images for Cinnamon, MATE, and XFCE desktops, are available to download via the link below:
For Linux Mint 22.1, simply launch Update Manager, refresh and install new version of mintupdate or mint-upgrade-info. Finally, go to Edit -> Upgrade to “Linux Mint 22.2 Zara” to start the upgrading process.
GIMP 3.1.4, the second development release for next major 3.2, was released few days ago!
The new release of this popular image editor introduced some exciting new features, including link layers, vector layers, MyPaint brushes version 2, and more.
First, by using File -> Open as Link Layer... or press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+O on keyboard, user can now open an image as link layer.
In the case, you may make changes to the image file via any other image editors (e.g., Krita, Inkscape), and see it instantly updated inside GIMP!
You can also non-destructively scale and rotate the link layer without impacting the quality of the original image. And, use “Discard Link Information” context menu option to convert it to a normal raster layer.
GIMP 3.1.4 also implemented the vector layer feature. After drawing a path (via Paths tool), user can now click “Create New Vector Layer” button to generate a vector layer associated with that path, then set the fill and stroke colors and other properties.
You can continue to edit the path, as the vector layer will automatically update. It as well has a “Discard Vector Information” context menu option to convert it to a regular raster layer.
The release also updated MyPaint Brushes to version 2, along with 20 new brushes from the Dieterle set. They include the long requested arrow brush and Posterizer brush.
For Ubuntu users, GIMP is going to make official SNAP package, which can be installed directly from Ubuntu Software or App Center, and also be installed in other Linux.
The current GIMP Snap package is maintained by the snapcrafters developers. The GIMP developers are talking to them to pass over the ownership, so they can maintain it as official package.
GIMP Snap package in APP Center. GIMP to take over this community maintained package
Other changes in GIMP 3.1.4 include:
Gain slider in MyPaint Brush tool, to adjust strength of input pressure.Compare to current GIMP 3.0 stable, there are as well many changes introduced since 3.1.2:
For more about GIMP 3.1.4, see the official release note.
The official GIMP packages for Windows, Linux, and macOS are available to download at the link below:
Linux user may choose the non-install AppImage package, which can be run directly to launch the image editor, after adding executable permission.
NOTE: Ubuntu since 22.04 needs to run command in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) to install required library first:
sudo apt install libfuse2
Or, run the command below to install the Flatpak package instead which runs in sandbox environment.
flatpak install https://flathub.org/beta-repo/appstream/org.gimp.GIMP.flatpakref
If you already have GIMP 3.1.2 installed as Flatpak, then try the command below to update it:
flatpak update org.gimp.GIMP//beta
If you have both the Devel and Stable versions of GIMP installed as Flatpak, and don’t know which icon to use, then use the command below to start the GIMP 3.1.4 from terminal:
flatpak run org.gimp.GIMP//beta
For NVIDIA users with GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs (e.g., 4060, 4090), it finally supports Smooth Motion frame generation for better gaming performance in Linux.
NVIDIA Smooth Motion is a feature designed for games without native DLSS support. It uses AI to generate additional frames between two rendered frames for overall smoothness of game-play.
The feature was initially added for Linux via NVIDIA 575 driver series, but only for RTX 50 series GPUs. Now with NVIDIA 580.82.07, the feature also works for RTX 40 GPUs. While, Windows users will probably get it in 590 driver series.
As the latest production branch driver, NVIDIA 580 also added fifo-v1 protocol support to reduce visual inconsistencies and potential stuttering for apps/games running in Wayland with Vulkan backend.
It as well enabled RMIntrLockingMode feature by default, which can help reduce stutter especially when using virtual reality (VR).
There are as well new “OutputBitsPerComponent” MetaMode attribute, allowing to control the number of bits per color component transmitted via a display connector in Xorg with multiple displays.
Other changes in NVIDIA 580 so far include:
The official package and release note for NVIDIA 580.82.07 is available at the link below:
For Ubuntu, it’s HIGHLY recommended to wait the Ubuntu’s official package, though it’s still in proposed testing stage at the moment.
Or, use either the popular “Graphics Drivers” team PPA which now contains NVIDIA 580.82.07 for Ubuntu from 18.04 to 25.04, or “Canonical Kernel Team” team PPA for 22.04 and higher.
To add the Canonical Kernel Team PPA, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:canonical-kernel-team/nvidia-graphics2
Then, you may either use “Additional Drivers” (graphical tool) to install nvidia-580 for desktop, or nvidia-580-server for server computing use.
Or run one of the commands below instead in terminal to install the driver:
sudo ubuntu-drivers install nvidia:580
sudo ubuntu-drivers install --gpgpu nvidia:580-server
GNOME 49 re-enables X11 session support in GDM after it broke the ability to launch other desktop environments. It plans full removal in GNOME 50.
You're reading GNOME 49 Restores Ability to Launch X11 Desktop Sessions, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
The new Linux Mint 22.2 release is available for download. It features theme changes, fingerprint support, and updated apps. More details inside.
You're reading Linux Mint 22.2 Finally Released, This is What’s New, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Warp, the Agentic Development Environment, for Windows, macOS and Linux has launched a suite of new features to improve prompt-based coding.
You're reading Warp (AI Coding Tool) Touts New ‘Prompt to Production’ Workflow, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Since diagrams such as networks, organizational structures, system architectures, workflows, etc., have become an indispensable part of both technical and
The post Top 5 Diagram Tools for Linux Users in 2025 (Free & Open-Source) first appeared on Tecmint: Linux Howtos, Tutorials & Guides.US judge in antitrust case rules Google can keep paying Mozilla and other companies for default search placement, but bans exclusive contracts.
You're reading Google Can Keep Paying for Firefox Search Deal, Judge Rules, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
This is a step by step guide shows how to manually compile & install FFmpeg 8.0 from source with NVIDIA GPU acceleration support through cuda-nvcc and enable-libnpp in Ubuntu 24.04 & 22.04.
FFmpeg 8.0 so far is the latest version of this popular multi-media library, that features APV and ProRes RAW decoders, hardware accelerated VP9 and VVC encoding, and new Vulkan compute-based codecs support for FFv1 (encoding and decoding).
This tutorial is tested in Ubuntu 24.04 & 22.04, though it should also works in Debian, Linux Mint
FFmpeg now supports hardware accelerated NVENC encoding (AV1, H.264, HEVC) and NVDEC decoding (H.264, HEVC, MJPEG, MPEG-1/2/4, VP8/VP9, VC-1, AV1) through ffncodec, and scale_cuda filters to replace scale_npp.
They are usually enabled by default in FFmpeg packages from Ubuntu system repository or PPAs (e.g., my PPA and Rob Savoury’s PPA).
Meaning, you don’t need to build FFmpeg by yourself, just install it from one the previous sources, then you have the basic NVIDIA GPU acceleration support.
FFmpeg in Ubuntu & PPA repositories has nvenc & nvdec out-of-the-box
You ONLY need to follow this tutorial, when you need specific or more advanced CUDA-dependent features and/or scale_npp only filters.
And, you need:
ubuntu-drivers CLI tool. See the official guide.nv-codec-headers, the FFmpeg version of Nvidia Codec SDK headers, is available in Ubuntu repositories, but a bit old.
For the most recent version, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to clone the source code:
git clone https://git.videolan.org/git/ffmpeg/nv-codec-headers.git
Run sudo apt install git to install git first, if you don’t have it.
Then, run the command below to navigate to the source folder, and install it:
cd nv-codec-headers && sudo make install
To build the source, we need some dependency libraries.
First, run command in terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) to install the essential dependency packages:
sudo apt install build-essential nasm cmake libtool libc6 libc6-dev unzip wget libnuma1 libnuma-dev nvidia-cuda-toolkit pkg-config
For choice, you may install more via sudo apt install package-name (replace package-name) for more features, e.g.,
libvulkan-dev, for Vulkan compute-based hardware acceleration (the package in 22.04 is outdated).libjxl-dev, for JPEG-XL support (the package is not available in 22.04).libgme-dev, for Game Music Emu.libvpx-dev, for VP8, VP9 decoding and encoding.And, below are the packages I use for building FFmpeg into PPA:
libmp3lame-dev zlib1g-dev libvorbis-dev libsdl2-dev libxvidcore-dev liblzo2-dev texinfo libgcrypt-dev libx264-dev libtheora-dev libgsm1-dev libsnappy-dev libdc1394-dev libbs2b-dev libspeex-dev libopencore-amrwb-dev libfreetype-dev libopenmpt-dev nasm libopenjp2-7-dev libharfbuzz-dev libvdpau-dev libtesseract-dev libopencore-amrnb-dev libxfixes-dev libgl-dev libbz2-dev libssl-dev libass-dev libasound2-dev libva-dev libjack-jackd2-dev libvpx-dev frei0r-plugins-dev libvo-amrwbenc-dev libsctp-dev libopus-dev gnutls-dev frei0r-plugins-dev libsoxr-dev linux-libc-dev ladspa-sdk libaom-dev libfontconfig-dev libfdk-aac-dev libpulse-dev libzvbi-dev libiec61883-dev libavc1394-dev libleptonica-dev liblzma-dev libx265-dev libxext-dev libcaca-dev libopenh264-dev librubberband-dev libwebp-dev libgme-dev glslang-dev opencl-c-headers libshine-dev libfribidi-dev libxcb1-dev libxcb-shm0-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev libcdio-paranoia-dev libcodec2-dev ocl-icd-opencl-dev libzimg-dev libmysofa-dev libbluray-dev libzmq3-dev libaribb24-dev liblensfun-dev liblilv-dev flite1-dev librsvg2-dev libtwolame-dev libopenal-dev librabbitmq-dev libvulkan-dev libxavs2-dev libsrt-gnutls-dev libdavs2-dev libomxil-bellagio-dev libxml2-utils libsmbclient-dev libchromaprint-dev libunwind-dev libdvdnav-dev libdvdread-dev
Now download FFmpeg 8.0 source tarball from its website, decompress, then right-click on extracted folder and choose “Open in Terminal” to open terminal with source folder as working directory.
open FFmpeg source folder in terminal
For Ubuntu server without GUI, run the command below to download the source:
wget https://ffmpeg.org/releases/ffmpeg-8.0.tar.xz
Then, decompress and navigate to the source folder:
tar -Jxf ffmpeg-8.0.tar.xz && cd ffmpeg-8.0
Now, configure the source by running command:
./configure --enable-nonfree --enable-cuda-nvcc --enable-libnpp --extra-cflags=-I/usr/local/cuda/include --extra-ldflags=-L/usr/local/cuda/lib64 --disable-static --enable-shared
Here, you may add more configure options, e.g.,:
--enable-libvpx, need ‘libvpx-dev’ to be installed.--enable-vulkan, need ‘libvulkan-dev’ to be installed.--enable-libjxl, need ‘libjxl-dev’ to be installed.And even more. See either configure file, or run ./configure --help to list more choices.
Configure the source
If configure is done without error, you may then run the command below to build it:
make -j4
Here j4 means to start 4 threads in parallel. You may replace it with j8, or even j16 depends on your CPU, or use -j$(nproc) to use all CPU cores.
build with ‘make’ command
If everything goes well, finally install FFmpeg by running command:
sudo make install
install ffmpeg via ‘make install’
After installed FFmpeg, run the command below to print its version and configuration.
ffmpeg
If it said error while loading shared libraries, then run command to add /usr/local/lib as LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable, which works for current terminal session.
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
Or, write the command into end of .profile or .bashrc file in user home to make it permanent for current user.
Finally, try to transcode with GPU acceleration via command (replace input.mp4 with path to an existing media file):
ffmpeg -hwaccel cuda -i input.mp4 -vf scale_npp=-1:720 -c:v h264_nvenc -preset slow output.mkv
To uninstall, open the source folder again in terminal and run command:
sudo make uninstall
If you’ve already deleted that folder, then manually remove the executable files from /usr/local/bin and libraries from /usr/local/lib:
GIMP 3.1.4 is out, a fresh development snapshot of what will become the next major stable release. It introduces two long-awaited new features.
You're reading GIMP 3.1.4 Dev Release Adds Link Layers, Vector Support, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Zip is a command-line utility tool used for compressing files and folders. Compression of files & folders enables faster and
The post How to Install Zip and Unzip in Linux first appeared on Tecmint: Linux Howtos, Tutorials & Guides.Linux systems provide a variety of system services (such as process management, login, syslog, cron, etc.) and network services (such
The post How to List Running Services in Linux (systemctl Examples) first appeared on Tecmint: Linux Howtos, Tutorials & Guides.Rule of thumb / TL;DR:
If your system only uses swap occasionally and keeping swap demand within ~20–30% of your physical RAM as zram is enough, ZRAM is the simpler and more effective option.
This is a recap of Linux app releases in August 2025, taking in updates to Qemu, Constrict, Gradia, Zen Browser, PeaZip and more!
You're reading Linux App Release Roundup (August 2025), a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
