seand.xyz: A Fresh Start for My Work and Ideas

I’ve moved to seand.xyz—a new home for my open-source work and conversations around mentorship, community, and leadership in Linux and beyond.

Xubuntu Development Update February 2025

Better late than never, here's your Xubuntu February 2025 update! This month, Xubuntu 24.04.2 was released with a new Linux kernel and bug fixes in tow. 25.04 Feature Freeze is now in effect, with many package updates arriving just before the deadline. Xubuntu's

Xubuntu Development Update January 2025

Welcome to 2025, Xubuntu fans! Xubuntu's January update features Xfce 4.20, GIMP 3.0, and many updates to supporting libraries and components. MATE 1.28 is still on the horizon and expected before 25.04 launches in April. January Schedule The Plucky Puffin Release Schedule for January

Xubuntu Development Update December 2024

As the holiday season enters full swing, Xubuntu 25.04 is off to a quiet start. Xfce 4.20 is a mere 8 days away and will bring numerous updates expected to ship in Xubuntu 25.04. MATE 1.28 will also land in Ubuntu over the next few months.

Xubuntu 24.10 Released

Xubuntu 24.10, “Oracular Oriole,” is now available. This 38th release of Xubuntu features many updated applications from Xfce (4.18 and 4.19), GNOME (46 and 47), and MATE (1.26). In particular, the Xfce 4.19 components are prerelease software: Xfce 4.20 is the next stable release,

Xubuntu Development Update August 2024

August marks the fourth month of development for Xubuntu 24.10, “Oracular Oriole.” With the arrival of many Xfce 4.19 components, our next release is beginning to take shape. Let’s look at how things are progressing in this month’s Xubuntu development update. August Schedule The Oracular Oriole

The Best Browser You’re Not Using

Vivaldi may be the last browser that cares about its users. Has your favorite browser recently let you down or get on your nerves? Are sites not rendering correctly? Has the integrated AI nonsense gone too far? Or maybe your browser doesn’t innovate anymore and feels incredibly dated next

Xubuntu 23.10 "Mantic Minotaur" Released

Xubuntu 23.10, codenamed “Mantic Minotaur,” is due to climb out of the development labyrinth on Thursday, October 12, 2023. It features the latest apps from Xfce 4.18, GNOME 45, and MATE 1.26. There are not many exciting new features this time around. Instead, the overall theme of

Xubuntu Development Update September 2023

September has arrived, and cooler days are finally ahead in the northern hemisphere. The Xubuntu development update for September 2023 brings several exciting updates. Development on the 23.10 release, “Mantic Minotaur,” has been progressing nicely, with numerous updates to report. Color Emoji Have Arrived Font updates to the desktop-common

MenuLibre 2.3.2 Released

I’m excited to present MenuLibre’s latest development release, MenuLibre 2.3.2. This cycle featured a massive porting effort, numerous usability enhancements, and fixes for bugs that I didn’t know existed. This might be the largest update to date. Goodbye Glade Glade is a powerful design and

MenuLibre 2.3.1 Released

MenuLibre 2.3.1 is now available! Today’s development release features a new “Command Editor” dialog that makes it easy to build launcher commands. It also improves support for missing theme icons, as you might find on Fedora 37 and 38. The Command Editor Building application launchers can be

Enable Color Emoji on Xubuntu

Many of us are exiting another drab, grey winter season. As Spring ramps up and the world’s colors awaken all around us, maybe now is the time to make your Xubuntu desktop more colorful. Since Xubuntu uses GTK, you can quickly spice up your writing with emoji by using

Ubuntu 23.04

Xubuntu Minimal Visual Tour

Xubuntu Minimal provides a lighter-weight alternative to the full-size Xubuntu desktop. The core desktop experience allows you to build your very own version of Xubuntu with the tricky configuration already done for you. Scroll through the screenshots below to see it in action. When you’re done, download Xubuntu Minimal

Ubuntu 23.04

Xubuntu Development Update March 2023

We have much to report in the Xubuntu development update for March 2023! Xubuntu Minimal is finally available. The recently added Flatpak support has been removed. Xubuntu has embraced Mastodon as our latest social network. And we’ve updated a ton of packages! Read on for more. Xubuntu Minimal has

Flatpak

Enable Flatpak in Xubuntu

Out of the box, Xubuntu supports Debian, Snap, and AppImage packages with no additional configuration or installation packages. If you want to expand your options further, you can easily enable Flatpak in Xubuntu. Here’s how! What is Flatpak? Flatpak bills itself as “the future of apps on Linux.” It’

Ubuntu 23.04

Xubuntu Development Update December 2022

Time flies when you’re having fun. It’s the Xubuntu development update for December 2022! November was on track to be a quiet month for Xubuntu development. However, once-daily builds became available toward the end of the month, we were finally able to start publishing some changes. With a

Mastodon

Follow Me! Blog, RSS, and Social

Are you set up to receive the latest updates as I publish them? There are a few reasons you might not be: I recently moved this blog to a new platform and subdomain; Twitter is rapidly declining, and users are going elsewhere; my updates have been infrequent, and you thought

Ubuntu 22.10

Xubuntu 22.10 "Kinetic Kudu" Released

Xubuntu 22.10, “Kinetic Kudu,” has been released! The antelope-inspired release packs the latest and greatest GNOME 43, MATE 1.26, and Xfce 4.17 packages. Some long-running issues have finally been addressed, making for a better overall experience over recent releases. I hope this new release makes using your

Ubuntu 22.10

Xubuntu Development Update October 2022

In September, Xubuntu 22.10 Beta was released, various bugs were fixed, and our issue trackers received a powerful update. Xubuntu 22.10 Beta Xubuntu 22.10 “Kinetic Kudu” Beta ( download, release notes) was released on Thursday, September 29. It features the latest Xfce 4.17, GNOME 43, and MATE

Ubuntu 22.10

Xubuntu Development Update September 2022

We have some great news to report in the Xubuntu development update for September 2022. Xubuntu 22.10 “Kinetic Kudu” is set to arrive on October 20, 2022. It will include the latest updates from Xfce 4.17, GNOME 43, MATE 1.26, and the family of supported applications that

Darkbar

Darkbar 1.0.1 Released

Darkbar 1.0.1 improves support for Flatpak installations and extends support to GNOME and other desktop environments supporting the FreeDesktop.org dark style preference. And for the first time, Darkbar is available on Flathub! What is Darkbar? Darkbar is a tool for pixel perfectionists and dark mode users. It

MATE

MenuLibre 2.3.0 Released

MenuLibre 2.3.0 features experimental support for the MATE desktop environment and improves compatibility with other environments. What’s New? New Features * Added experimental support for the MATE desktop environment ( #40), as found in Solus and Ubuntu MATE * Added support for the Unity desktop environment, as found in Ubuntu

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Xubuntu 22.04 LTS "Jammy Jellyfish" Released

Xubuntu 22.04 “Jammy Jellyfish” will be released tomorrow, April 21, 2022. It features a modest set of updates for users coming from Xubuntu 21.10. If you’re coming from 20.04, there’s much more to take in. Check out the 20.10, 21.04, and 21.10

Documentation

The Road to New Xubuntu Docs

The new Xubuntu documentation is finally complete. Two years, eight contributors, and numerous Zoom meetings resulted in over eighty commits refreshing our user docs. Incredibly, we managed to land all of the updates in time for the Xubuntu 22.04 “Jammy Jellyfish” release. Here’s how we got here. Doing