Category: Ubuntu

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.

Bits & Bobs: Arch AUR still under fire

By Larry Cafiero

On Friday, Swati Khandelwal of The Hacker News reported that attackers originally took over more than 400 packages in the Arch User Repository (AUR) last week and rewrote their build scripts to install a credential stealer on any machine that built them.

According to the article, “[t]he malware is a Rust binary built to harvest developer secrets. When it lands with root, it can also load an eBPF rootkit to hide itself. The AUR is Arch Linux’s community package collection, and it is separate from the official Arch repositories, which were not affected.”

The article suggests that if you installed or updated an AUR package on or after June 11, check it against the current affected-package lists before trusting the host. “The list of names is large, still growing, and not yet complete,” said the article.

Christine Hall at FOSS Force wrote on Sunday that “[j]ust hours after Arch sounded the all clear on a massive AUR malware purge, a new, stealthier campaign is slipping malicious code back into user packages.”

Michael Larabel at Phoronix suggests shutting down the Arch Users Repository until this situation can be fixed.

“At this stage it’s a bit surprising they don’t completely shutdown AUR until they can better verify the security and safety of this user-supplied repository or at least implement new safeguards on changes,” the Phoronix article states.

More on this story as it develops.

Questing Quokka reaches end of life

Ubuntu 25.10, also known as “Questing Quokka,” is scheduled to reach its end-of-life in July 2026. After this date, the version will no longer receive security updates or support from Canonical.

For the unitiated, what that means is that the Isle of Man firm will no longer provide security updates for the distro after July 9, 2026.

According to an article in Linux Compatible, there is a simple solution to this: Update to Ubuntu 26.04 Resolute Raccoon.

“Running the standard upgrade tool early keeps the system stable and prevents the usual command line headaches that come with chasing dead repositories,” the article states. “Waiting until the last moment only guarantees a rushed migration and a potentially broken desktop environment.”

Well, there. You have been warned, Ubuntu users. Update early to avoid the last-minute rush.

Linux kernel 7.1 is on the clock

Marcus Nestor at 9 to 5 Linux reports Sunday that Linux kernel 7.1 is now available for download, featuring enhanced hardware support, filesystem and networking improvements, security enhancements, and several other changes.

“Probably the biggest change of the Linux 7.1 kernel series is a new NTFS file system implementation, which has been in the works for the last four years, featuring full write support with delayed allocation, iomap, and folio integration to improve write performance, better stability, and a new suite of userspace utilities called ntfsprogs-plus,” the article states.

The article continues to announce that “[a]mong other changes, Linux kernel 7.1 enables Intel’s Flexible Return and Event Delivery (FRED) feature by default, introduces CPU Memory (CMEM) Latency PMU support for NVIDIA Tegra410 SoCs, adds BPF fsession support for the IBM System/390 architecture, and adds seccomp () support to the Alpha architecture.”

Now that Linux kernel 7.1 is out, the merge window will soon open for the next major kernel series, Linux 7.2, which is expected in mid or late August 2026.

Now that Linux kernel 7.1 is out, the merge window will soon open for the next major kernel series, Linux 7.2, which is expected in mid or late August 2026.

And that’s all for today. Don’t forget: Distro of the Week appears Wednesday – and it’s a good one on hand – and Bits and Bobs will return on Friday.