By Larry Cafiero
On Friday, Sourav Rudra on It’s FOSS reported that Canonical’s new AI tool wants to hear from you, literally.
The new AI tool is called Myna, and runs entirely on local hardware. It’s set for its debut with Ubuntu’s next release, which will be 26.10 scheduled for October.
According to the article, Jean-Baptiste Lallement, Canonical’s Director of Engineering for Ubuntu Desktop, posted the announcement, saying that voice dictation has become a common feature across modern platforms.
“For Ubuntu 26.10, the initial version of Myna is expected to be a desktop dictation tool built around Gnome and Wayland with a push-to-talk mechanism gatekeeping when your microphone accepts input.,” the article states.
The article also states that using Myna requires holding a hotkey, speaking, and letting go. A small activity indicator shows while it is listening, and the transcribed text lands wherever the cursor was sitting when dictation started.
PorteuX 2.7 released
Marcus Nestor at 9 to 5 Linux reported on Saturday that PorteuX, a Slackware-based distro, released its latest version – version 2.7 – with a wide variety of improvements.
“Coming almost four months after PorteuX 2.6, the PorteuX 2.7 release is powered by the latest and greatest Linux 7.1 kernel series, and features the latest KDE Plasma 6.7, Gnome 50.2, Xfce 4.20, LXQt 2.4, Cinnamon 6.6.8, Cosmic 1.0.16, MATE 1.28.2, and LXDE 0.11.1 desktop environments as standalone flavors,” the article states.
In addition, the article outlines how PorteuX 2.7 improves support for webcams, bumps overall performance by improving build and linker flags, improves NVIDIA GPU detection in the Xfce flavor, improves keyboard layout selection in the MATE flavor, improves the NetworkManager applet, and adds Noto fonts to fix some missing symbols.
Various packages also have been updated to their latest version based on upstream releases, so check out the release notes on the project’s GitHub page for extra reading.
GIMP 0.54 revived and Flatpaked
From the “that’s-great-but-why” desk, Michael Larabel on Phoronix reports on Saturday that a developer has revived an older version of GIMP – otherwise known as the GNU Image Manipulation Program – specifically, version 0.54 from 1996 and “Flatpak’ed” it for use by modern Linux desktops.
“What makes this version of GIMP from 1996 notable is that it was the last to use the Motif toolkit,” according to the article. It continues to state that GIMP 0.54 can now easily work on modern Linux desktops – complete with the Motif toolkit – thanks to a port to Flatpak for easy packaging and distribution.
The article also maintains the GIMP 0.54 port is hosted on the Gnome.org GitLab by developer balooii. “GIMP 0.54 isn’t useful in 2026 in practice besides those nostalgic over the old days with Motif and friends in the era before the GTK toolkit,” the article says. “I tried out this Flatpak’ed GIMP 0.54 and indeed was working out fine on a 2026 Linux distribution.”
And that’s all for today. Don’t forget: Distro of the Week appears Wednesday – and it’s always a good one on hand – and Bits and Bobs will return on Friday.