GNOME developer team finally announced the 49 release of this popular Linux Desktop environment!
If everything goes well, GNOME 49 will be the default desktop for Ubuntu 25.10, Fedora Workstation 43, and optional for Arch, Manjaro, etc Linux distributions.
The new desktop release introduced Showtime to replace Totem as the default video player, and Papers to replace Evince as the default document viewer.
Both use the GTK4 plus LibAdwaita libraries for the modern user interfaces with native look and touch friendly experience in today’s GNOME desktop.
Showtime video player
Gnome on Xorg (or Ubuntu on Xorg) is finally removed in the release, meaning there’s no longer Xorg/X11 session but only Wayland for GNOME. Though, the GDM login screen still can load other Xorg sessions, e.g., XFCE and Cinnamon.
It as well features new accessibility menu in login screen, with Quick Settings style buttons to toggle access to screen keyboard, screen reader, etc tools.
And, user can now control music playback and power-off/restart (though not enabled by default) from the lock screen.
GNOME 49 also improved Remote Desktop support, by adding multi-touch input support for client device with touch-screen, relative mouse input for better 3D app or gaming experience, and ability to have additional virtual monitors even when there aren’t additional displays physically present.
The image loading and the background wallpaper now are handled by the Glycin library, which is sandboxed to help prevent security exploits.
And, the release now supports changing the display brightness in the Quick Settings when HDR is enabled. While, these new HDR brightness controls support external displays, and allow multiple displays to be adjusted at the same time.
There are also many improvements to the Gnome Weather, Gnome Maps, Gnome Calendar apps, as well as following changes:
For more about GNOME 49, see the official release note.
As mentioned above, GNOME 49 will be available in Ubuntu 25.10, Fedora Workstation 43, etc Linux Distributions. And, Arch has already made the new release into GNOME Unstable repository.
For choice, there’s GNOME OS Nightly available for trying it out in either virtual machine (only support Gnome Boxes) or real hardware.
If you’ve ever managed a hosting server, you know that cPanel & WHM is one of the most popular control
The post How to Install cPanel & WHM on AlmaLinux 9 first appeared on Tecmint: Linux Howtos, Tutorials & Guides.
If you’ve ever run a Linux system in production or even just kept a personal server, you’ll know that running
The post A Shell Script to Monitor Disk Usage and Send an Alert if it Exceeds 80% first appeared on Tecmint: Linux Howtos, Tutorials & Guides.Steam’s monthly Hardware & Software Survey, published by Valve, offers a window into what operating systems, hardware, and software choices its user base is making. It has become a key barometer for understanding trends in PC gaming, especially for less dominant platforms like Linux. The newest data shows that Linux usage among Steam users has edged downward subtly. While the drop is small, it raises interesting questions about momentum, hardware preferences, and what might lie ahead for Linux gaming.
This article dives into the latest numbers, explores what may be pushing them to abandon Steam, and considers what it means for Linux users, developers, and Valve itself.
June 2025 Survey Outcome: In June, Linux’s slice of Steam’s user base stood at 2.57%, down from approximately 2.69% in May — a decrease of 0.12 percentage points.
Year-Over-Year Comparison: Looking back to June 2024, the Linux share was around 2.08%, so even with this recent slip, there’s still an upward trend compared to a year ago.
Distribution Among Linux Users: A significant portion of Linux gamers are using Valve’s own SteamOS Holo (currying sizable usage numbers via Steam Deck and similar devices). In June, roughly one-third of the Linux user group was on SteamOS Holo.
Hardware Insights:
Among Linux users, AMD CPUs dominate: about 69% of Linux gamers use AMD in June.
Contrast that with the Windows-only survey, where Intel still has about 60% CPU share to AMD’s 39%.
Though the drop is modest, a number of factors likely combine to produce it. Here are possible causes:
Statistical Noise & Normal Fluctuation Monthly survey results tend to vary a bit, especially for smaller share percentages. A 0.12% decrease could simply be part of the normal ebb and flow.
Sampling and Survey Methodology
Survey participation may shift by region, language, hardware type, or time of year. If fewer Linux users participated in a given month, the percentage would drop even if absolute numbers stayed flat.
Language shifts in Steam’s usage have shown up before; changes in how many users set certain settings or respond could affect results.
Latency or delays in uploading or processing survey data might also contribute to anomalies.
External Hardware & Platform Trends
Two days ago I ran the command hostnamectl status and noticed that my laptop’s firmware date was Tue 2023-08-08.
Dolphin, the free open-source GameCube and Wii game emulator, released new 2509 version today after another 3 months of development.
The new release of this game emulator revamped the settings UI, added some new features, and, it can finally emulate Toy Story 3, Cars 2, and Disney Infinity on powerful hardware at full speed.
It seems that Avalanche Software, the team behind the 3 games, don’t like Dolphin Emulator.
However, we’re going to go out on a limb and say that Avalanche Software, the team behind the Trio of Destruction
While Toy Story 3 took a few years to get working, the writing was on the wall for quite some time that eventually it would be solved. So, for Avalanche’s next two games, we believe that they left a trap specifically designed to defeat Dolphin: the dcache suicide pill.
As the announcement said, the team added a trap in the games designed to stop Dolphin from running them in PC or mobile phone. But with the 2509 release, it finally fixed the issue by adding a patch allowing to run the Trio of Destruction fluidly on powerful hardware.
Besides that, the release revamped the settings UI, and introduced new “Map and Calibrate” button, allows to simply map and calibrate joystick at the same time.
It also added “Correct Time Drift” option under Advanced setting page. It pursues accurate overall elapsed time by running fast after stutters, which is useful for internet play.
Dolphin-emu 2509 also improved the general performance for Bluetooth Passthrough. It added the ability to load Realtek firmware, when trying to use a Realtek adapter with the feature for the first time.
Meaning now the Bluetooth Passthrough now supports modern Bluetooth adapters, such as TP-Link Bluetooth 5.3 Nano and Asus USB-BT500.
Other changes include:
In addition, the Nintendo Switch 2 NSO GameCube Controller is not supported yet in the release, as it’s not fully implemented by the upstream SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer).
The software website provides official installer packages for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android, which are available to download via the link below:
For Linux, it’s Flatpak package that runs in sandbox environment. Download either X86_64 for Intel/AMD or aarch64 for ARM64 platform, then install via command:
flatpak install /path/to/flatpak-file
NOTE: Ubuntu does NOT support Flatpak out-of-the-box, run the command below to install the daemon first:
sudo apt install flatpak
For Ubuntu users who prefer the native .deb package, I’ve made the packages into this unofficial PPA for Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, and Ubuntu 25.04 on amd64 (Intel/AMD) and arm64 (e.g., Raspi, Snapdragon processors) platforms.
Simply open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run 3 commands below one by one to add PPA, refresh cache, and install the emulator:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/dolphin-emu
sudo apt update
sudo apt install dolphin-emu
A fresh flurry of fixes have arrived for Thunderbird, the open-source desktop e-mail client. The v143 release resolves a number of annoying issues.
You're reading Thunderbird 143 Release Delivers Mailbag Full of Fixes, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
A new version of the GNOME desktop environment has been released with new default video and document apps, Lock Screen features, and more - exciting!
You're reading GNOME 49 Officially Released, This is What’s New, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
It isn’t easy to figure out which of the many Linux apps out there are actually worth installing. Between endless
The post Top 6 Linux Apps You Should Install This Week (Sept 15-21) first appeared on Tecmint: Linux Howtos, Tutorials & Guides.
VLC, the popular free open-source media player, rolled out the new 3.0.22 version few days ago.
This is the twenty-third release of VLC 3.0 branch, code-name “Vetinari”, with the work of more than a year of development.
VLC qt dark interface
For Windows user, the release added official ARM64 build (for e.g., snapdragon processors), though it needs at least Windows 10 RS5 17763 / 1809.
It fixed the support for Windows XP SP3, though restricted the SystemParametersInfo calls. And, now it allows to rename, move, or delete the playing files on Windows.
The UI now can be build with Qt6, while Qt5 is still supported. And, it introduced a dark palette for the Qt interface.
For user with AMD graphics card, VLC 3.0.22 added AMD Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF) support. It’s a video enhancement technology that use AI to generate and interpolate frames between existing frames in a video, resulting more fluid and high frame rate video.
It also added dav1d-all-layers option for the dav1d decoder, to control whether or not to display all spatial layers. The feature is disabled by default, but you may enable it to make the decoder output every available spatial layer in the video higher-quality playback experience.
Other changes include A_ATRAC/AT1 (Sony ATRAC1 Codec) support in matroska, handle pictures in FLAC, as well as:
VLC 3.0.22 is not officially announced yet, though the source code now is available to download via the link below:
For Debian, the Deb Multimedia repository has made the package for Debian Unstable. And I’ve uploaded the new release package into this unofficial PPA for Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04 and 25.04.
To add the PPA and install VLC 3.0.22 in Ubuntu, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run commands below one by one:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/vlc
sudo apt update
sudo apt install vlc -t "o=LP-PPA-ubuntuhandbook1-vlc"
Firefox 143.0, the new monthly release of the popular free open-source web browser, is available to download.
The new release of Mozilla’s web browser added support installing websites as web apps for Windows user.
For running website, there’s a new “Add tab to taskbar” icon in the right corner of address bar. By clicking on it, will install the website as web app, and pin it into task bar.
The web app uses the website’s favicon as app icon. It runs in a separate header-less browser window without losing access to your installed add-ons. The features so far is only available for Windows, but not for Firefox installed from Microsoft Store.
For AI users, the new Firefox release added Microsoft Copilot support. It so far supports “Quick response” and “Smart (GPT-5)” chat mode in my case, with ability to generate text, image, and code, and analyze image. It’s free without login required, though a pad version is available for choice that needs an account.
Also for Windows, the browser release added support Windows UI Automation, which improves support for accessibility tools such as Windows Voice Access, Text Cursor Indicator and Narrator. Though, it’s a progressive roll-out feature that may be not ready for you.
When downloading a file in the Private mode, Firefox now asks whether to keep or delete it after that session ends. You have the choice to disable this behavior, by navigating to “Files and Applications” in Settings page.
Other changes in Firefox 143.0 include:
As well there are some change for developers, including:
Login<input type=color> now recognizes the CSS <color> format in addition to the color hex formatGroup Similar Messages now prevents successive similar messages from being grouped.display property on <details> elements, added a ::details-content pseudo-element to style the expandable/collapsible contents of those elements.”,The official release note and download link are available in Firefox website via the link below:
The link is not ready at the moment of writing, and this tutorial is written according to the Github release note.
For Ubuntu, user may either choose download the official package, or install it via Snap, Flatpak or Ubuntu PPA.
Kdenlive developers are working on keyframes dopesheet, UI changes, per‑project layouts and titler animations to improve this free video editor.
You're reading Kdenlive Devs Plan New Pro Editing Features, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Mozilla Firefox 143 brings new features and improvements, including access to Microsoft's AI chatbot, date info in the address bar, and web app support.
You're reading Firefox 143 Released with Copilot Chatbot, Web App Creation + More, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
