Category: GIMP

Bits & Bobs: Gnome 51 released

Compiled by Larry Cafiero

Michael Larabel at Phoronix reported on Wednesday that Gnome 51 was released, complete with improved frame scheduling among it many improvements.

“Gnome 51 debuted today with many nice improvements to Mutter for bettering the desktop responsiveness and a smoother experience with improved frame scheduling,” the article says. “There are also new Wayland protocols supported (such as ext-background-effect-v1) and other optimizations there, including removal of legacy NVIDIA driver support with EGLStreams. Mutter also now has support for custom pointer acceleration profiles.”

The article continues to state that “Gnome 51 also brings a number of settings improvements, offline map support for Gnome Maps, faster startup of Gnome Software, the Gnome Calendar is also faster now too, and the Gnome File Previewer has a complete UI revamp.”

Debian 13.7 gets update

Bobby Borisov at Linuxiac wrote last Saturday that Debian 13.7 released 107 security updates and 106 bug fixes, as well as updates on the installer, kernel ABI, Cinnamon glbc, and other package updates.

“If you’ve been keeping your system updated through security.debian.org, there’s not much to do with this release, because most of the fixes were already included in earlier updates,” the article states. “13.7 just brings them together in one place.”

Notable changes include the Debian Installer, which has been rebuilt for the point release and now uses the Linux kernel 6.12.107. The audit package also gains support for the RISC-V 64-bit architecture. Desktop users will find a fix for Cinnamon that restores downloading and updating applets, desklets, extensions, and themes.

“At the system level, glibc fixes buffer overflow and underflow vulnerabilities and adds compatibility with Linux kernel 7.0 headers,” the article says. “Plus, several packages have been rebuilt against the updated glibc.”

Firefox enters public beta testing

Marcus Nestor at 9 to 5 Linux reports on Tuesday that Mozilla Firefox 157 has entered a period of public beta testing with the web browser’s new Nova design, with other improvements including audio/video synchronization and a vertical tabs sidebar.

“Firefox 157 looks like a small update, due to the newly adopted two-week release schedule, promising proper support for displaying HDR videos encoded in 8-bit color formats as HDR in most cases, which fixes several cases of dull gray-looking videos that should have been more vibrant,” the article states.

But continuing from there, the article also says that “Firefox 157 also promises to improve audio/video synchronization when changing playback rate on HTMLMediaElement, an improved Vertical Tabs sidebar to work better when the cursor moves to the edge of the screen in full-screen mode, and support for viewing recent searches on Android when tapping the search field.”

One interesting thing that could appear in the Firefox 157 release “is the brand-new design that we previewed in Firefox Nightly back in July,” the article says. “The new theme is called Nova and promises to make the popular open-source web browser feel cleaner, faster, adaptable, and warmer, according to Mozilla.”

Best window manager for Linux?

Linux Stans reported on Monday a very comprehensive and thorough report on the best window manager for Linux distributions.

We’re not joking. This is quite comprehensive. The article breaks down 12 – count ‘em, 12 – window managers, giving the positives and negatives of each, afterward providing a guide for users.

“If you’ve never used a tiling window manager before, start with i3 on X11 or Sway if you’re already on Wayland,” the article states. “Both have the documentation and community size to get you through the first frustrating week. If you want something that looks impressive with minimal effort, Hyprland is the current favorite, and Niri is worth a look if the scrollable layout appeals to you. If you want the smallest possible resource footprint and don’t mind compiling code, dwm is hard to beat. And if none of that appeals to you, Openbox or IceWM will get you a fast, familiar, floating desktop without asking you to learn a new workflow at all.

“There’s no wrong answer here. Try one, keep your old desktop environment installed as a safety net, and switch back anytime it stops working for you.”

Note to self: Take a look at some of the window managers other than Openbox, Fluxbox, and IceWM.

Fedora 45 beta released

Marcus Nestor at 9 to 5 Linux reported on Tuesday that the Fedora 45 Beta was released with the Linux 7.2 kernel, Gnome 51 and KDE Plasma 6.7, with the final release expected in late October or early November.

“Some interesting features in Fedora Linux 45 include fully reproducible package builds, kmscon as the default VT console, signature checking by default for RPM default package verification mode, disk images for Fedora Atomic desktops built with image-builder, and the new WebUI installer on all Fedora Atomic ISO images,” the article says.

Fedora 45 is also expected to bring “web-based remote installation support for Fedora Atomic desktops, LibreOffice help packages in HTML and noarch, systemd-oomd and zram swap by default for Fedora CoreOS, GRUB EFI support for confidential computing, PAM support in chpasswd and newusers, and IPv6 support in NetworkManager.”

Among other changes, “Fedora Linux 45 promises to relocate all packaged RPM repository configuration data from /etc to /usr, switch the default Secrets Service provider for Fedora desktops from KWallet and GNOME Keyring to oo7, restrict ptrace by default, and disable vendor change by default for DNF5,” the article says.

Seven eternal Linux applications

Umair Khurshid of How-To Geek wrote an article on seven pioneering Linux applications that never needed replacing, and for all intents and purposes he is spot on.

We’re not going to list all of them here, needless to say – read the article – but two of them are programs which in 20 years of Linux use by yours truly I absolutely swear by. And I will give you those – Vim and the GNU Image Manipulation Program, also known as GIMP.

“Linux has changed dramatically since the early days of the kernel,” the article starts. “Desktops have gone from X11 environments with primitive window managers to polished graphical shells. Containers, cloud computing, virtualization, and immutable operating systems have transformed how people deploy Linux. Even the hardware running Linux today would have seemed extraordinary to many of its earliest users.”

The article continues: “Yet some applications have barely budged from their place in the Linux ecosystem. You can install a modern Linux distro in 2026 and still find yourself using software whose origins stretch back decades.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the many reasons we use Linux, isn’t it?

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 with news over the week next Saturday.

Bits & Bobs: Pssst … want to save $60?

By Larry Cafiero

On Thursday, Sourav Rudra at It’s FOSS on Thursday gave the entire Linux universe a tip – a $60 saving tip, from the looks of it.

It seems that the new Brave web browser, called Origin, “is Brave’s stripped-down browser, built for people who never touch most of what the company packages with Brave Browser,” the article states. “It drops the AI assistant, the rewards program, the crypto wallet, and the VPN, leaving the ad and tracker blocking in place.”

But don’t let that fool you into thinking that Origin is a half-baked browser, because according to the article, “you still get regular security upgrades, Chromium-specific patches, and general browser updates.”

Here’s the kicker: For most users, Brave Origin costs $59.99 for a one-time license purchase for use across Windows, Android, macOS, and iOS. However, people running a Linux distro on their computer do not have to pay a dime or sign up for an account.

The article takes you through the paces of using Origin, as well as providing ways to download it – for free – on to your given Linux distro. This article is worth a read.

KaOS 2026.06 released with Dinit

Marcus Nestor of 9 to 5 Linux reported Wednesday that KaOS “has officially released KaOS Linux 2026.06 today as the first ISO snapshot of this independent distribution using Dinit as the default init system instead of systemd.”

As mentioned earlier, the KaOS Linux devs have decided to move away from systemd and the KDE Plasma desktop environment after more than 12 years of using them by default. In February, they dropped KDE Plasma for a Niri/Noctalia setup, but they were still working on replacing systemd with another init system.

“As of today, they have succeeded in delivering a stable ISO image that users can use to install the distribution without using systemd as the default init system,” the article states. “The replacement is Dinit, a modern and lightweight init system and service manager designed as a fast, dependency-based alternative to systemd.”

But apparently, KaOS isn’t completely systemd-free, according to the developers: “A move away from systemd as an init system is completed. KaOS now uses dinit > turnstile > seatd for the system startup, seats & services. This does not mean the system is systemd-free, a much-reduced systemd is still in use mainly for udev & tmpfiles,” the KaOS Linux development team was quoted in the article.

GIMP 0.54 goes on a test-drive

Well, this was inevitable. Someone makes and flatpaks software from 30 years ago, and someone else gives it a test drive and writes about it.

As we reported on Monday, 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.

Christine Hall at FOSS Force took the bait and gave it a test run because, well, it was there. Hall got it up and running on her Linux Mint rig, and Hall’s impression – overall – is that it should have stayed in the past.

“Playing around with it was fun — in a frustrating sort of way — but it mainly served to remind me how much better computing is now than it was back in the days when I was working in DOS with Windows for Workgroups sitting on top,” the article concludes.

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 Monday.

Bits & Bobs: Talk to me, Ubuntu says

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.