KDE has launched its own immutable Linux distribution in alpha. It acts as a 'reference implementation', offering atomic updates, Flatpak apps and more.
You're reading KDE Release First Alpha of its New Linux Distribution, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Asciinema is an open-source terminal recording tool that makes it super easy to share your command-line work with others. Unlike
The post Asciinema – Record and Share Your Terminal Sessions in Linux first appeared on Tecmint: Linux Howtos, Tutorials & Guides.When news broke that ConfigServer (Way to the Web Ltd.) would shut down on August 31, 2025, it sent shockwaves through the hosting community.
When working on a Linux system, every command you run returns a status code (also called an exit status or
The post How to Check Exit Status for Command in Linux first appeared on Tecmint: Linux Howtos, Tutorials & Guides.DNS (Domain Name System) is a fundamental facilitator of several networking technologies such as mail servers, Internet browsing, and streaming
The post How to Check DNS Server IP Address in Linux first appeared on Tecmint: Linux Howtos, Tutorials & Guides.Raspberry Pi has begun selling a 1TB M.2 2230 SSD for use with the Raspberry Pi 5. It joins the company's PCIe Gen 3 256 & 512GB SSDs announced earlier this year.
You're reading Raspberry Pi Launches Own-Brand 1TB SSD for $70/£67, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Firefox Nightly builds add CoPilot to the chatbot sidebar, expanding the browser's range of third-party AI service integrations. Plus: new New Tab Page widgets.
You're reading Firefox Adds CoPilot Chatbot, New Tab Widgets in Nightly Builds, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
The release candidate (RC) of GNOME Desktop 49 is out for testing purpose!
This is the final development release for GNOME 49, while the stable release is planned for September 17th. It added some new features, various bug-fixes, and improvements.
As you may know, GNOME 49 removed the ‘Gnome on Xorg’ session since the alpha release, which as well disabled X11 sessions in GDM.
In this RC release, it re-enabled X11 by default in GDM, meaning there’s NO “Gnome on Xorg”, but it still can load other X11 based desktop sessions, e.g., XFCE, MATE, and Cinnamon, from the login screen.
GDM 49 re-enabled ability to load other X11 desktop sessions.
Glycin, the image loading library, now has experimental JPEG 2000 loading support, though it’s disabled by default. And, since this RC, the GNOME background images are now loading by this library.
For GNOME Remote Desktop, the release added support for relative mouse motion events, which is commonly used in 3D apps, e.g., video games or design software, to control a virtual camera or object orientation.
The gnome-remote-desktop also added support for extending the desktop with a virtual monitor. I’m not sure how it differs to the virtual monitor functionality introduced since GNOME 42, but it should make mouse movement with embedded cursors more performant. See the merge request for details.
Other changes include:
Login~/ instead of ~ in Nautilus path-bar when pressing ~.And, below are the big changes introduced in last Beta & Alpha releases:
GNOME provides an installer image for testing and porting extensions. Along with the announcement, they are available via the link below:
For Ubuntu, GNOME 49 RC has been added for Ubuntu 25.10 Deb build, just launch “Software Updater” and install all available updates to get it. For Arch Linux, it has been added into the GNOME Unstable repository.
Imagine a world where every server, application, and network configuration is meticulously orchestrated via Git, where updates, audits, and recoveries happen with a single commit. This is the realm GitOps unlocks, especially potent when paired with the versatility of Linux environments. In this article, we'll dive deep into how Git-driven workflows can transform the way you manage Linux infrastructure, offering clarity, control, and confidence in every change.
GitOps isn't just a catchy buzzword, it's a methodical rethink of how infrastructure should be managed.
It treats Git as the definitive blueprint for your live systems, everything from server settings to application deployments is declared, versioned, and stored in repositories.
With Git as the single source of truth, every adjustment is tracked, reversible, and auditable, turning ops into a transparent, code-centric process.
Beyond simple CI/CD, GitOps introduces a continuous reconciliation model: specialized agents continuously compare the actual state of systems against the desired state in Git and correct any discrepancies automatically.
Linux stands at the heart of infrastructure, servers, containers, edge systems, you name it. When GitOps is layered onto that:
You'll leverage Linux’s scripting capabilities (like bash) to craft powerful, domain-specific automation that dovetails perfectly with GitOps agents.
The transparency of Git coupled with Linux’s flexible architecture simplifies debugging, auditing, and recovery.
The combination gives infrastructure teams the agility to iterate faster while keeping control rigorous and secure.
A well-organized Git setup is crucial:
Use separate repositories or disciplined directory structures for:
Infrastructure modules (e.g., Terraform, networking, VMs),
Platform components (monitoring, ingress controllers, certificates),
Application-level configurations (Helm overrides, container versions).
This separation helps ensure access controls align with responsibilities and limits risks from misconfiguration or accidental cross-impact.
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:
xapp-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.
