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Template: Streamlining open source design contributions



As designers working at Canonical, we're always thinking about open source. We believe that encouraging more designers to contribute to open source  benefits everyone, from the project maintainers to the end users themselves.  

In the 2025 edition of FOSSBackstage conference, we presented our research findings on  and found a particular breakdown between designers and project maintainers. 

The truth is that designers often struggle to find projects they can contribute to. When they do find a project, the design requirements often are unclear or very limited. Meanwhile, project maintainers struggle to articulate their design needs or may not even know when to ask for design support. 

To bridge this gap, we created a template for a design contribution brief for open source projects.  This template will help maintainers to clearly articulate their needs and give designers the essential information they need to contribute. 

What's in the contribution brief?

The brief has 5 sections, one for each area that can cause friction when maintainers try to onboard a designer to a project. The brief includes questions and examples that help maintainers add context to their contribution requirements, so a designer can pick up a project more easily. Here's what each section covers:

• About the project: enables maintainers to get designers up to speed with a project overview, vision, target audience, and progress tracking. This section ensures everyone is on the same page about the project's goals and context.
• About the design contribution needed: here's where you detail the specific design contributions – from UX and UI, to graphic design and accessibility audits. Explain why you need the contribution, what user needs are, and what design skills are essential.
• Logistics: outline deadlines, priority levels, and timelines to keep everyone organized and on track.
• Team: introduce the project team and their roles, highlight any existing designers or contributors.
• Communications: specify how the team communicates (for example, asynchronously, synchronously), preferred communication platforms, preferred language, and any support for onboarding contributors.

Why use the contribution brief?
Benefits for project maintainers:

• Set clear expectations: the template breaks down project expectations to help maintainers articulate what they're really looking for, and help designers understand the expectations. This makes it easier to communicate design needs and expectations to potential contributors.
• Streamline your process: adding all the information to a centralized place makes it easy to reference and saves time and effort. The template addresses the most commonly asked questions, which reduces the need to repeat the same things in different channels. 
• Attract the right contributors: clearly articulating design needs helps attract people with the right skills and experience. Maintainers can tag their issues with specific labels and maximize their chance to reach the right audience.

Benefits for designers:

• Understand the project: designers can quickly grasp the project's vision, goals, and target audience, without getting in touch or looking for information in more than one place.
• Know your requirements: a specific scope makes it easier to know where to start and how much work will need to be done. The template helps clarify what design contributions are required and the expected outcomes.
• Streamline your onboarding: the template makes it easier to understand how the team communicates and where designers can get support quickly.

How to use the template

Open the template , make a copy and attach it to your project. We will continue to refine thetemplate , so try it out and tell us what you thought .

Join the Canonical design team

We're looking for designers who care about craft and how systems work under the hood. At Canonical, design sits at the intersection of UX, engineering, and open source where we shape cohesive, accessible experiences across cloud, desktop, and IoT products.

If you enjoy solving complex problems and turning technical depth into clarity, explore our open roles: canonical.com/careers

As designers working at Canonical, we're always thinking about open source. We believe that encouraging more designers to contribute to open source  benefits everyone, from the project maintainers to the end users themselves.   In the 2025 edition of FOSSBackstage conference, we presented our research findings on  why designers don't get involved in open source projects [...]


Categories: Design, open design, Open source
Source: https://ubuntu.com//blog/template-streamlining-open-source-design-contributions Jun 16, 2026, 04:09 PM

Beyond Mythos: responding to a new threat landscape

Canonical's security philosophy has always been built on the premise that vulnerabilities exist and will be discovered. Our response relies on defense-in-depth architecture, rapid patch deployment, and strict adherence to Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD).

AI changes vulnerability discovery volume and speed. We have a robust vulnerability management process that is backed by rigorous compliance certifications . These processes have demonstrated robustness in stringent ecosystems and we are adapting them with more exposure mapping, better customer guidance, and clearer remediation paths. This is where AI makes our customer service and internal responses more efficient.

To address real-world security we contain the blast radius of newly weaponized legacy bugs using our historically proven confinement tools, enforcing strict kernel-level boundaries with AppArmor and native container isolation (LXD). Building on this securely-designed foundation, we continue to modernize and harden Ubuntu by championing memory-safe languages like Rust.

We align our multi-tiered risk model with upcoming compliance requirements like the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) focusing on actual threat impact rather than blindly chasing raw CVSS scores. Because AI will continuously unearth decades-old dormant flaws, we secure this foundation and your long-term compliance with up to 15 years of security maintenance through Ubuntu Pro.

Additionally, through the Ubuntu Security Research Alliance Program  we're partnering directly with leading security scanning providers in order to improve how accurately our data is presented in scan results, and to ensure that every piece of open source software distributed by Canonical is properly assessed.

1. What is Canonical's  current awareness of the Mythos / Glasswing CVE disclosure? 

Canonical's Security Team is transforming its processes and infrastructure to adapt to the scale and speed of new frontier models, such as Mythos, GPT-5.5, and open-weight models. This ensures our incident response teams are fully prepared to triage and remediate the anticipated influx of AI-generated vulnerability reports.

2. Has Canonical conducted any internal AI-assisted vulnerability analysis across its own product estate? 

Yes, we are actively integrating agentic AI frameworks to conduct independent vulnerability analysis across our estate . This evolution builds directly on our strict, foundational quality management practices , such as the extensive package auditing required by our Main Inclusion Review process .

3. Do you have a list of products that you would consider most exposed to the latest frontier-model vulnerability categories? 

Because the foundational Linux stack is historically written in non-memory-safe C/C++, exposure to these classes of vulnerabilities is systemic across the entire open source ecosystem. Rather than maintaining a flat, theoretical "exposed list," Canonical mitigates these risks structurally. First, we enforce mandatory compiler-level protections that go hand in hand with Linux kernel features for application hardening  across the entire Ubuntu archive to reduce exploitability.

Furthermore, we evaluate exposure and prioritize our engineering response through a multi-layered risk model, ensuring that a massive influx of AI-discovered CVEs does not lead to a panicked, one-size-fits-all response. Instead, we right-size our response based on the component at hand:

• Critical Foundation: Core components that could have significant impact on a system. This includes the kernel, glibc, OpenSSL, systemd, sudo, PAM, and core container runtimes.
• Infrastructure & Orchestration: Canonical's management, isolation, and deployment layers. This includes snapd, AppArmor, cloud-init, LXD, MAAS, Juju, and MicroK8s. These tools govern how the infrastructure is secured and scaled.
• Application Ecosystem: The thousands of open-source applications and dependencies residing in the Universe repository, which are covered under Ubuntu Pro. While an AI-discovered CVE here might impact a specific business service, the threat might be contained by the structural protections (like AppArmor) established by the tiers above it.

and

• Custom Workloads: Customer-specific applications and proprietary code operating outside of Canonical's scope.

4. What is Canonical's typical turnaround time for releasing CVE fixes, and how do you prioritize which vulnerabilities get patched first?

While we do not treat every vulnerability with a uniform SLA, our focus is on rapid remediation for high-risk threats. We aim to prepare, test, and release the most vital security updates within 24 hours on average.

In the event of a true zero-day vulnerability or evidence of active exploitation in the wild, we push expedited, emergency fixes to our users as fast as possible.

Because we understand that not all CVEs carry the same real-world risk, we do not prioritize fixes based strictly on raw CVSS scores. Instead, we triage vulnerabilities based on their specific impact on Ubuntu users. Fixes are expedited for vulnerabilities that present the highest actual risk and affect the largest number of installations, ensuring that your most critical systems receive protection first.

5. Where a software patch cannot be deployed within the required window, what compensating controls or virtual patching capabilities does Canonical have available? 

Ubuntu's default implementation of AppArmor profiles and snap confinement act as strict structural compensating controls, isolating vulnerable services and protecting against privilege escalation or arbitrary file access. Kernel Livepatch applies permanent kernel vulnerability fixes in-memory without requiring a system reboot.

Furthermore, in instances where a formal fix is not yet available, we aim to provide clear, actionable mitigation strategies – such as specific system workarounds or configuration changes – directly on our CVE trackers (e.g., our published mitigations forCVE-2022-23960 ) to help you secure your environment in the interim. 

Finally, we frequently publish detailed blog posts  breaking down the vulnerabilities, including impact assessments, real-world scenarios, and potential mitigations, to help our users fully understand the risk and secure their environments.

6. What is Canonical's responsible disclosure process for Glasswing-identified vulnerabilities in your products? 

Canonical does not maintain a separate, specialized vulnerability management process specifically for Project Glasswing. Consequently, we do not provide exclusive early notifications, out-of-band updates, or bypass standard community embargoes for individual partners prior to the Coordinated Release Date (CRD). We adhere to the best-practices recognized by the security community in Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD) and we handle embargoes according to our Disclosure Policy .

Canonical's Security Team ensures that patches are actively developed, thoroughly tested, and pre-staged within the standard embargo window. These fixes are released globally and simultaneously with the public CVE disclosure, ensuring our customers and partners can confidently deploy updates at "day zero."

7. How is Canonical evolving its development and architectural practices to defend against the class of vulnerabilities that Mythos-like projects uncover?

Canonical is actively modernizing its products to address decades-old paradigms. We are championing the integration of memory-safe languages into the core OS by enabling Rust support in our kernels and providing the complete toolchain for developers. We encourage the community to build in Rust, and our own engineering efforts are focused on rewriting critical user-space components. 

For legacy C/C++ code that cannot be immediately rewritten, we rely on defense-in-depth. Assuming legacy code will inevitably have flaws, we engineer the Ubuntu environment to prevent those logic flaws from becoming viable, chained exploits. 

To achieve this, Ubuntu natively supports robust isolation technologies like snaps and LXD. When users wrap their legacy applications in these secure sandboxed environments, strict kernel-level boundaries – such as cgroups, namespaces, and AppArmor profiles – are enforced, ensuring that even if a legacy application is compromised, the blast radius is tightly contained and the underlying host remains protected.

8. Does the advent of Glasswing mean previously secure Ubuntu systems are now suddenly vulnerable?

The threat landscape timelines are compressing. AI tools are unearthing "N-days" and legacy logic errors that survived conventional human review.

However, a vulnerability does not automatically equal a system compromise. Canonical's fundamental security architecture, leveraging AppArmor confinement, minimal yet comprehensive images, strict namespace isolation, and proactive memory protections, was specifically designed on the assumption that zero-days and undiscovered flaws will always exist. This defense-in-depth approach is built to tightly contain the "blast radius" when a dormant bug is suddenly weaponized, preventing an attacker from escalating a single flaw into full system control.

Because AI will inevitably accelerate the volume of these historical bugs coming to light, the speed and duration of your patching lifecycle is more critical than ever. Ubuntu Pro provides up to 15 years of security maintenance and support. This ensures that when a decades-old vulnerability is suddenly surfaced with a working exploit, your infrastructure receives rapid, tested patches for years to come, without forcing you into disruptive, premature upgrades.

9. Is Canonical a direct participant in Anthropic's Project Glasswing or actively using Claude Mythos?

Canonical is currently not a direct participant in Project Glasswing. We engage with all major security initiatives through our established Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD) processes. We do not bypass these protocols or grant exclusive early access to any single AI vendor or participant. Our priority is taking security and vulnerability disclosures seriously, independent of the reporting source.

10. What happens if Canonical receives a severe vulnerability report that comes from an AI or model-based discovery tool?

We evaluate the technical merit of the finding, regardless of the entity or method that found it. If an AI tool discovers a severe vulnerability, Canonical conducts a risk assessment based on the specific environmental context of the open source project, and the actual exploitability of the bug. 

11. How should researchers or partners report vulnerabilities they discover in Ubuntu using AI tools?

Our process is governed by the officialUbuntu Security Disclosure Policy . Canonical Security Team participate in responsible disclosure and collaborate closely with the wider open-source community.

When a vulnerability is identified (whether internally, by a partner, or through a researcher, using AI or not), our protocol is as follows:

• Initial Response: We prioritize rapid assessment and prompt initial response to security reporters. 
• CVE Assignment: Canonical acts as a CVE Numbering Authority (CNA) and can directly assign CVE numbers.
• Embargo Adherence: Canonical's Security Team manages embargo vulnerabilities in coordination with the broader open source community. For issues that are not yet publicly known, we strictly abide by agreed-upon timelines and information-handling. This ensures patches can be safely developed and released simultaneously with the public announcement ("day zero") without tipping off malicious actors.
• Emergency Releases: We reserve the right to release fixes immediately if there is evidence of an embargo being broken that leads to a significant risk to our users.
• Transparency: All Ubuntu vulnerabilities fixed by Canonical's Security Team are publicly documented and credited via Ubuntu Security Notices (USNs), ensuring our customers have a clear, auditable trail of our security interventions.
• Accuracy: Information on all vulnerabilities affecting Ubuntu is distributed through industry-standard machine-readable data feeds: OSV , VEX , and OVAL .

Canonical's security philosophy has always been built on the premise that vulnerabilities exist and will be discovered. Our response relies on defense-in-depth architecture, rapid patch deployment, and strict adherence to Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD). AI changes vulnerability discovery volume and speed. We have a robust vulnerability management process that is backed by rigorous compliance certifications. [...]


Source: https://ubuntu.com//blog/responding-to-a-new-threat-landscape Jun 16, 2026, 02:45 PM

A look into Ubuntu Core 26: Building a local AI inference appliance in a virtual machine

Welcome to this blog series which explores innovative uses of Ubuntu Core. Throughout this series, Canonical's Engineers will show what you can build with this Core 26 release, highlighting the features and tools available to you. 

In this first blog, Farshid Tavakolizadeh , Engineer Manager for Canonical's Industrial team, will show you how to try Ubuntu Core 26 inside a virtual machine and turn it into a local AI inference appliance using Multipass and the gemma4 snap. Running Ubuntu Core in a VM is a useful starting point for developers who want to experiment before moving to dedicated hardware. You can explore the Ubuntu Core environment, install snaps, expose services to your host machine, and test how an appliance-style experience could work in production.

By the end of this blog, you'll know how to launch Ubuntu Core 26 with Multipass, install a local AI inference snap, access its WebUI from your host machine, and understand how this workflow maps to a production Ubuntu Core image.

Why start with Ubuntu Core in a VM?

Ubuntu Core is designed for production devices: appliances, gateways, robots, kiosks, industrial systems, and edge AI products. In the field, you would normally build a custom Ubuntu Core  image that includes the snaps, configuration, permissions, and update policy your product needs.

A virtual machine gives you a fast way to explore the system. You can launch Ubuntu Core from your laptop, install application snaps, test services, and understand how the pieces fit together before committing to a board or production image.

For this, Multipass provides a simple path. It has integrated support for Ubuntu Core images and can launch an Ubuntu Core VM with a single command. That makes it ideal for experimentation, demos, and local development workflows.

Turning the VM into a local AI appliance

We will use Ubuntu Core to create a local AI inference appliance. The idea is simple: Ubuntu Core provides the secure, minimal, appliance-like operating system, while the AI workload is delivered as a snap.

For this example, we'll use the gemma4 inference snap.

Because AI inference needs more resources than a minimal shell test, launch a VM with additional CPU, memory, and disk:

multipass launch core26 -n aibox --cpus 4 --memory 10GB --disk 16GB

Then enter the instance:

multipass shell aibox

The Ubuntu Core instance may update itself after first boot, and it may restart automatically. This is part of the experience you should expect from Ubuntu Core: the base system and snapd are managed, updated, and kept reliable.

Now install the AI inference snap:

sudo snap install gemma4

This installs the most suitable runtime and model for the machine.

Checking the inference endpoint

Once installed, gemma4 runs as a managed snap service. You can check its status with:

gemma4 status

The output includes the active engine, services, and endpoints:

engine: cpu
services:
   server: active
   server-webui: active
endpoints:
   openai: http://localhost:8336/v1
   webui: http://localhost:8337/

At this point, the inference server and WebUI are running inside the Ubuntu Core instance.

There is one important detail: localhost here refers to the Ubuntu Core VM, not your host machine. So while the service is active, your browser on your laptop cannot necessarily access it yet.

To make the inference server and WebUI available from the host, configure the service to listen on the VM's network interface:

sudo gemma4 set http.host=0.0.0.0 webui.http.host=0.0.0.0 --assume-yes

Then, from your host machine, find the VM's IP address:

multipass info aibox

The output includes an IPv4 address:

Name:           aibox
State:          Running
Snapshots:      0
IPv4:           10.100.120.150
Release:        Ubuntu Core 26

Use the IPv4 address to access the inference server and WebUI, in this case: 10.100.120.150.

The inference server's API is accessible at http://:8336/v1. This is an OpenAI compliant API that can be used with a wide range of clients. You can use an HTTP client like cURL to make a prompt:

curl http://10.100.120.150:8336/chat/completions -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{
"messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "What is the meaning of ubuntu?"}],
"max_completion_tokens": 100
}'

Of course, experimenting with an OpenAI API over the terminal is no fun. The WebUI that is provided by the gemma4 snap is a better entry point to try. Open in your browser: http://10.100.120.150:8337



You can also integrate the API with a tool such as Open WebUI or OpenCode to do more.

You now have an AI inference interface running inside Ubuntu Core.

What this demonstrates

This example may be running in a VM, but the architecture is the same pattern used for real devices.

The Ubuntu Core base system remains separate from the application workload. The AI server is delivered as a snap. The WebUI is delivered as a managed service. The inference endpoint runs inside the Ubuntu Core environment. Configuration is applied through snap options rather than by manually editing system files.

In other words, you are not just installing a package. You are assembling the foundations of an appliance.

This matters because production devices are rarely managed one command at a time. A finished product needs a predictable boot experience, controlled services, reliable updates, and a clear boundary between the operating system and the application layer.

Ubuntu Core provides that boundary.

From local experiment to production image

Installing gemma4 manually is useful for development, but it is not how you would normally ship a product.

In a production deployment, the AI snap and its configuration would typically be included in a custom Ubuntu Core image. That image would be described by a model assertion, which defines the snaps that make up the device image, including required or optional application snaps.

With that approach, the device starts directly into the experience you designed.

Your users do not need to install the snap manually. They do not need to log into the Core instance. They do not need to understand how the inference endpoint is configured. The product boots with the right snaps, services, permissions, and defaults already in place.

This is where Ubuntu Core becomes especially powerful. The same workflow you tested in a VM can evolve into a repeatable product image for hardware, production lines, demos, customer pilots, or fleet deployments.

Managing appliances over time

Once a device is deployed, the work is not finished.

You may want to update the AI model, fix a CVE in the inference server, adjust configuration, or deploy the same image to different customers with different workloads.

Ubuntu Core is designed for this lifecycle. Application snaps can be updated independently from the base system. Updates are transactional. If something goes wrong, the system can roll back to a known good state.

For larger deployments, snaps can also be installed, configured, and managed through fleet management. Landscape  provides centralized administration for Ubuntu deployments, including IoT devices.

This gives developers a flexible path: build the experience into the image from day one, or manage and evolve application snaps later across a fleet.

What's next?

With Multipass, you can launch a Core VM in minutes. With snaps, you can install and manage real workloads. With gemma4, you can turn that VM into a local AI inference appliance that exposes both an API endpoint and a web server.

This is a small example, but it shows the larger pattern.

You can separate your application from the base system. You can run services in a managed way. You can configure the product experience. And when you are ready, you can move from a pre-built VM image to a custom Ubuntu Core image defined by your own model assertion.

Below are some useful links for further reading:

• Discover inference snaps
• Getting started with AWS IoT Greengrass on Ubuntu Core
• Getting Started with Azure IoT Edge on Ubuntu Core

Welcome to this blog series which explores innovative uses of Ubuntu Core. Throughout this series, Canonical's Engineers will show what you can build with this Core 26 release, highlighting the features and tools available to you.  In this first blog, Farshid Tavakolizadeh, Engineer Manager for Canonical's Industrial team, will show you how to try Ubuntu [...]


Categories: AI, IoT, Ubuntu Core
Source: https://ubuntu.com//blog/ubuntu-core-26-ai-box Jun 16, 2026, 12:08 PM

A decade of Ubuntu on IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE



This year we celebrate a decade of Ubuntu Server support on the s390x architecture: marking a long-standing collaboration between Canonical and IBM that began at LinuxCon 2015 . The first release happened on April 21, 2016, bringing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) to IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE platforms. 

A first for Ubuntu on IBM

That release was a significant milestone: for the first time, enterprises could deploy the vast Ubuntu ecosystem directly on IBM hardware. IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE platforms handle a significant portion of the world's financial transactions, and power critical banking and healthcare systems. Native support ensured Ubuntu's availability and long term sustainability for development and production workloads from day one, in environments that have some of the strictest security requirements.

Engineering for architecture parity

Canonical's partnership with IBM allows organizations to modernize their mission-critical systems by bringing the Ubuntu developer ecosystem and Canonical's enterprise support to IBM mainframes. 

Through this collaboration, large enterprises can freely adopt open source tools and technologies. For example, Canonical provides Ubuntu Server  images for traditional installations, cloud images  for KVM, OpenStack, LXD, and other virtualized environments, as well as OCI images  for cloud native environments. This makes it easier for developers and organizations to develop applications on a different architecture, porting them to the IBM platform once it's time to go to production.

Ubuntu supports multiple deployment modes on IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE, including:

• LPAR (logical partitions)
• z/VM virtualization
• KVM
• LXD and OCI containers

These deployment models enable enterprises to efficiently run a large number of isolated Linux workloads on the same physical system, a core advantage of IBM's scale-up architecture. In environments where servers are often underutilized, this improves resource utilization, addressing common challenges such as data center sprawl, rising power costs and server consolidation needs.

How we partner to bring Ubuntu to more architectures

Ensuring a consistent Ubuntu experience in new systems, hardware and architectures requires dedication. To achieve this, our engineers work closely with both IBM and upstream developers to avoid forks and maintain high software quality. Some of the key highlights from our decade of collaboration include:

• Maintaining s390-tools from version 1.34.0 to 2.41.0
• Delivering early support for Secure Boot on IBM Z and LinuxONE
• Enabling IBM Secure Execution (TEE) to protect data in use

At the same time, Canonical:

• Ships a new version of Ubuntu every 6 months, and an LTS version every 2 years
• Provides up to 15 years  of support for LTS releases, one of the longest support life cycles in the market
• Maintains thousands of open source packages in a constantly growing ecosystem

Why should you use Ubuntu in your enterprise?

Ubuntu brings world-class open source software and enterprise-grade security and stability for the widest range of applications, use cases and industries. Through this partnership, IBM integrates Ubuntu as a strategic part of it's ecosystem, providing a high-performance, secure, and efficient foundation for mission-critical workloads on IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE.

Here are some core reasons why Ubuntu excels in enterprise environments:

• Pervasive security: complements IBM hardware with support for Secure Execution (TEE) and end-to-end encryption for data at rest and in use
• Maximum uptime: supports features like Kernel Livepatch  allowing critical updates to be applied between maintenance windows, eliminating disruptive downtime
• Streamlined compliance: simplifies regulatory requirements for the public sector through built-in support for FIPS and other industry certifications
• Future-proof cryptography: integrates quantum-safe algorithms (ML-KEM and ML-DSA) via the Crypto Express 8S module to protect against evolving digital threats
• Expanded security maintenance: with Ubuntu Pro , organizations get long-term stability with security patches for thousands of open source packages.

AI future-ready

Canonical is also working with IBM to ensure Ubuntu Server fully leverages the latest hardware technologies from IBM, including the IBM Telum® II processor and the IBM Spyre™ Accelerator. In that context, Ubuntu serves as the foundational ecosystem for modern AI development on IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE, bridging the gap between raw compute, multi-platform support, enterprise scale, and production-ready AI workloads. With a consistent environment across workstations and clouds, engineers and researchers can quickly transition from development to large-scale training and inferencing. 

What the future holds

It has been a successful 10 years with significant technical advancements, and we look forward to the next decade, and more. This collaboration has established a reliable path for enterprises to run Linux and Ubuntu on IBM infrastructure.

Today, Ubuntu continues to be fully certified across multiple generations of IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE systems, including IBM z17 and IBM LinuxONE 5, ensuring compatibility with modern enterprise hardware and cryptographic capabilities. As enterprise needs shift toward AI workloads, hybrid cloud architectures, and quantum-safe security, our unified stack provides the foundation required for the next decade of mission-critical computing.

Download Ubuntu Server for IBM Z and LinuxONE

Visit the IBM LinuxONE page

Or if you have any questions, contact us directly .

This year we celebrate a decade of Ubuntu Server support on the s390x architecture: marking a long-standing collaboration between Canonical and IBM that began at LinuxCon 2015. The first release happened on April 21, 2016, bringing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) to IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE platforms.  A first for Ubuntu on IBM That [...]


Categories: IBM, IBM LinuxONE, IBM Z, Infrastructure, Partner, Server, Ubuntu
Source: https://ubuntu.com//blog/a-decade-of-ubuntu-on-ibm-z-and-ibm-linuxone Jun 12, 2026, 09:13 PM

Ubuntu flavours now need a beta release to ship

Ubuntu has announced an 'important policy update', making beta releases mandatory for all Ubuntu flavours, no exceptions. Most flavours already hit the beta milestone every six months without issue. But until now a flavour that missed the deadline could still be granted a one-off exception. During the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS cycle, that's what happened with Ubuntu Kylin, the Chinese-orientated spin that uses the UKUI desktop. It missed the Beta window but still made the final release. That won't happen again. To get an official stable release, a flavour now must have a beta release out the same time as every [...]

You're reading Ubuntu flavours now need a beta release to ship , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.


Categories: News, Canonical, development, Ubuntu 26.10
Source: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/06/ubuntu-flavours-mandatory-beta-release Jun 18, 2026, 05:00 PM

Audacity 4.0 beta lets you test its new (nicer) Qt interface

Audacity 4's first public beta arrived this month with the biggest design change the iconic open-source audio editor has seen in decades. The audio editor's interface, built on wxWidgets since the project began, now runs in Qt. However, the audio engine which handles file I/O, project storage and the built-in effects, uses the older codebase, wired up to the new frontend via a module called au3wrap. In a sense, Audacity 4 is a new look atop the same core engine, although the Github changelog choose to frame it as a "ground-up rewrite" in Qt, that appears to be only relate [...]

You're reading Audacity 4.0 beta lets you test its new (nicer) Qt interface , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.


Categories: News, App Updates, Audacity
Source: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/06/audacity-4-0-beta Jun 18, 2026, 01:54 AM

Firefox 152 debuts with new-look Settings, odd way to mute tabs

Mozilla has released Firefox 152 with revamped Settings and faster ways to share web content – plus, a peculiar way to mute noisy tabs. The update is available from today (15 June, 2026) on Windows, macOS and Linux, as well as for Android and iOS (mobile versions have different features and are not covered in this post). Firefox 152's headline change is the revamped Settings page. We knew this was coming as Mozilla's been teasing it for over a year. The company says the new look offers "streamlined organisation, clearer groupings, and improved navigation for easier customisation". Since many users find [...]

You're reading Firefox 152 debuts with new-look Settings, odd way to mute tabs , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.


Categories: News, App Updates, Firefox, Mozilla
Source: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/06/firefox-152-released Jun 16, 2026, 06:35 PM

KDE Plasma 6.7 release brings per-monitor desktops, revives Oxygen

KDE Plasma 6.7 has been released, and it brings a feature many of its users have been requesting for decades: independent per-screen virtual desktops. The latest stable update also sees a classic KDE theme revived, supports simultaneous HDR and ICC profiles and packs in an assortment of usability, UI and performance tweaks. This release is dedicated to Eric Laffoon, a longtime KDE supporter who passed away in May 2026. Users of the Ubuntu-based KDE Neon and rolling-release distributions like Arch will be able to install Plasma 6.7 in the coming days. Kubuntu 26.04 LTS users should check the Kubuntu Backports [...]

You're reading KDE Plasma 6.7 release brings per-monitor desktops, revives Oxygen , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.


Categories: News, desktop environments, KDE, KDE Plasma, oxygen
Source: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/06/kde-plasma-6-7-released Jun 16, 2026, 04:43 PM

Firefox's free VPN lifts data limit, offers 28 server locations

You can now use Firefox's free built-in VPN without a monthly data limit – but only until August 31, 2026. Mozilla is also temporarily expanding the list of VPN server locations available to proxy your browsing traffic via, up from the current set of 5 locations to a more generous 28. The extra server locations during the promotion: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and Thailand. The Firefox 151 release in May added the option to select from a list of VPN servers (though it's [...]

You're reading Firefox's free VPN lifts data limit, offers 28 server locations , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.


Categories: News, Firefox, Mozilla, VPN
Source: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/06/firefox-vpn-unlimited-data-promotion Jun 15, 2026, 08:05 PM

Linux 7.1 brings new NTFS driver, Steam Deck OLED audio fix + more

Linux 7.1 arrives with a rewritten NTFS driver, Apple Silicon battery reporting, and Steam Deck OLED audio fixes alongside massive legacy code removals.

You're reading Linux 7.1 brings new NTFS driver, Steam Deck OLED audio fix + more , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.


Categories: News, exfat, linux kernel, ntfs, Valve
Source: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/06/linux-7-1-kernel-features Jun 14, 2026, 11:21 PM