Linux App Release Roundup (Feb 2025)

February proved a bumper month for Linux software updates, seeing big release of productivity suites LibreOffice and ONLYOFFICE and, plus a crop of smaller app updates which didn’t merit a full-length article on this blog.

Rather than skip over those updates entirely, I thought I’d resurrect my Linux Release Roundup thread1 to curate a monthly (perhaps twice-monthly, if there’s a lot) run-through of smaller software updates I think would still be of most interest to regular readers.

For those of us on fixed-release Linux distribution like Ubuntu, such updates may fix a finicky flaw, improve integration, or add a niche but coveted feature that is worth upgrading over.

Like before, the aim of these recaps is simply to group together recent software (and occasional distro) updates that I wouldn’t typically dedicate a full blog post to.

But why don’t I cover them individually?

Well, search engines don’t take kindly to blogs that put out a lot of short, to-the-point posts (unless they’re a partner publisher in Google News), so I can’t fire out regular <200 words posts without hurting my rankings (which I’d love to not care about but real world, innit).

Equally, I don’t want to waste your time. Making you read a 750 word blog post padded to the hilt with filler text and a hooky headline to disguise the fact that the “meat” of the update consists of mere non-critical bug fixes and translation updates…

A monthly or fortnightly curated recap feels a solid compromise.

So, here we go – on to the content!

Shortwave 5.0

Shortwave 5.0 packs in a lot

The latest update to internet radio streaming app Shortwave supports background playback in GNOME Shell, answering the “most popular” issue on its development tracker. When active, it appears in the Quick Settings menu ‘Background Apps’ section.

Shortwave’s radio station recording features—ever handy—also sees changes. You now get options to set: custom directory to save recordings; minimum and maximum duration of recordings; and a global recording mode:

• Save All Tracks – auto-saves all recorded tracks
• Decide for Each Track – record tracks temporarily but only saves the ones you want
• Record Nothing – nothing is recorded

Also neat are Shortwave‘s improved notifications. You are now notified when a new track gets played and given options to choose whether to save the track or not.

Beyond that, bug fixes, translation updates, and a few other tweaks (like changing volume with a keyboard shortcut) also go live in this release.

If the changes in Shortwave 5.0 sound good to you you can install the latest version on Ubuntu from Flathub, which is the developer’s ‘recommended way’ of getting the app

• Get Shortwave on Flathub

PeaZip 10.3

Most of you reading this post will make use of your desktop environment/distro’s bundled file archiving tool (which is file roller in Ubuntu) for extracting, compressing, and browsing the contents of archive files, e.g., ZIP, TAR, RAR, etc.

Those with advanced archive managing needs may prefer something more powerful, such as PeaZip – a new version of which was released this month.

PeaZip 10.3 brings 25% faster app startup times and reduced memory usage by 20%, offers context menu integration in GNOME and KDE Plasma desktops, and expands its TAR support with support for auto-browsing of compressed archives.

Elsewhere, the v10.3 update updates its bundled themes, improves error handling, progress display, and the managing of non-ASCII characters in passwords, and is able to open VMWare OVA and Minecraft container files (e.g., .mcpack, .mcaddon, et al).

In all, a solid update for this long-time, cross-platform, and open source file compression tool.

For details on where and how to install the latest release on Linux (Windows, or macOS) check the official website download page.

gThumb 3.12.7

gThumb 3.12.7 is out

Open-source image manager gThumb put out a new release this week, the first update in nearly a year.

Desktop photo managers have—or so it seems—been supplanted in everyday computing by cloud-based tools and mobile apps. Yet, these apps remain useful for organising, sorting, editing, and viewing large collections of images, including those which aren’t ‘photos’.

The gThumb 3.12.7 release adds a couple of minor enhancements for the (increasingly common) WebP image format handling, plus a couple of bug fixes:

• WebP: EXIF data saving
• WebP: ICC profile reading
• Fix for endlessly opening Preferences dialog
• System bookmarks now load in Flatpak build
• References to wiki.gnome.org pages removed
• Translation updates

Download gThumb source code from the project GitHub to compile the latest release by hand or, for an easier life, just grab the Flatpak — the package is ‘unverified’ but is is maintained by a gThumb contributor.

If the latest features/fixes don’t sound essential to you, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and 24.10 both offer gThumb 3.12.6 in its repositories – run sudo apt install gthumb to install it.

• Get gThumb on Flathub

HandBrake 1.9.2

If you’re an avid fan of the open-source video compression tool HandBrake the latest update adds a few important-sounding bug fixes and features which may be worth upgrading for.

HandBrake now supports muxing NVENC AV1 and VCN AV1 in WebM containers, improves support for SRT subtitle files with overlapping subtitles, fixes AC3 and EAC3 extradata in MKV, and updates its AVI1 video decoding library to libdav1d 1.5.1.

The HandBrake Windows version resolves quirks where titlebar and taskbar progress would incorrectly show multi-instance encodes; a crash that happened if importing chapters with a count mis-match; and crop controls that wouldn’t enable.

Want in? The easiest way to install the latest HandBrake release on Ubuntu is to install HandBrake from Flathub — an official, verified package that is actively maintained.

Don’t want to use Flatpak? A search for ‘HandBrake’ in Ubuntu’s App Center returns an unofficial HandBrake snap which hasn’t been updated since 2019 – switch to the ‘DEB’ filter to get a more recent(ish) build instead.

FastFetch 2.37.x

Fastfetch 2.37.2 (default config) in Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS

Updates to system info tool Fastfetch—arguably the best Neofetch alternative—come thick and fast, with this month’s flurry of releases adding an array of small fixes, system features, and general finesse.

Among them, ‘greatly improved’ support for Haiku systems; support for the Physical Memory module in NetBSD; and the weather module now respects the temperature unit configured, and some missing variable inits related to GPU report on Linux have been added.

Users on macOS with the latest M4 chips will now see CPU and GPU temperature stats returned; Linux users with older NVIDIA GPUs are looped in to VMEM size detection, while Tilix version detection on Linux is said to be more performant.

If you fancy fancier system stats then the high configurable Fastfetch is the go-to way to do it, regardless of which operating system you’re on.

To fetch the latest version of Fastfetch head to the project Github releases page (which has DEBs for Ubuntu users for all manner of architectures, including AMD/Intel, ARM64, and RISC-V). Alternatively, add the Fastfetch PPA.

Amarok 3.2.2

Music fans enjoying the recent(ish) revival of classic Qt music player Amarok will be pleased to hear a new version is available. Amarok 3.2.2 is the second bug-fix release in the Amarok 3.2 series, composed of (mostly) minor bug fixes.

However, this update finally answers a feature request filed back in 2009 by preserving collection browser order when adding tracks to playlist (including when drag and dropping tracks from the collection browser).

Amarok 3.2.2 is likely to be the last version with Qt5/KF5 support as development effort switches to Qt 6 and KDE Frameworks 6 ahead of the upcoming 3.3 series.

Want to try it out? You can fetch the source code to compile it by hand or, if you’re feeling a little pressed for time, you get Amarok on Flathub.

That’s it for this roundup. While it’s not comprehensive by any stretch—I can only recap app updates I’m aware of/hear about so send me news tips via the contact form—these apps are ones I’ve covered in the past so updates could be of interest.

Until next time!

1. Which I started back in 2017 for a bit, though infrequent roundups on this site go back as far as 2010 with my ‘newsbriefs’ (childishly illustrated on the front-page at the time by a rolled up newspaper wearing literal briefs) ↩︎