We’re officially in Christmas season, but even the endless loop of xmas music in shopping centres isn’t enough to fudge the flow of Linux releases.
This week’s round-up of recent updates includes a popular USB image writer, a modern email client, and an app designed for real audio enthusiasts.
Etcher 1.2.0
Etcher is a popular Electron-based image writer for Windows, Mac and Linux. It’s superbly designed, is totally open-source, and (rather importantly) works writes like a champ.
In the very latest release, Etcher 1.2.0, the utility’s authors have made a couple of modest improvements, including:
- Displays write speed
- Show progress and status in window title
- Uses sudo-prompt when opening app on Linux
- Adds optional progress bars to drive-selector drives.
- Increases the flashing speed of usbboot discovered devices
Refer to our how to install Etcher on Ubuntu post for more details on getting the tool up and running on your system.
PulseEffects 3.0.9
We wrote about PulseEffects, an advanced PulseAudio settings app, earlier in the year.
Since our initial post the app has recieved a couple of updates, the latest of which arrived just a few days ago.
PulseEffects 3.0.9 adds 30 fully configurable bands to the equalizer for unparalleled audio customization. An “all apps” switch has been added to the main menu to ensure effects apply globally. Helping to improve usability for new users is a prominent off/off switch listed beside all detected applications.
PulseEffects is available to install as a Flatpak application from the Flathub app store.
If you’re a fan of more traditional install methods you can all install the app from an unofficial repository.
VidCutter 5.0.5
Vidcutter is an excellent free video trimmer app for Linux, Windows, and Mac. It scored a big update a few weeks back, picking up frame-accurate cutting and interface tweaks.
While it worked fine for those installing it from the PPA the AppImage provided for Linux users had a couple of bugs that affected its overall usability.
And so VidCutter 5.0.5 has been released. It fixes issues with the Linux AppImage, bundles in the latest version of FFmpeg so that the new ‘SmartCut’ feature works properly, and solves a couple of other minor niggles related to OpenGL.
If you have the VidCutter PPA enabled on your system you can get the latest version through your Update Manager app. Otherwise, grab the App Image linked below:
Mailspring 1.0.9
Mailspring email client is a stylish alternative to traditional desktop email clients like Evolution and Thunderbird.
The interface is built using Electron, but the mail processing engine is native C++ code.
Mailspring 1.0.9 is a minor update. It offers:
- Better progress/status reporting
- Sync and search improvements
- Choice of spellcheck language
- Send email with inline image attachments
- Email rendering tweaks
- Undo send no longer closes composer window
- Analytics removed
You can download the latest release of Mailspring from the project’s official website:
DVDStyler 3.0.4
If you’re someone who likes to make DVDs on Linux the latest release of DVDStyler will appeal.
DVDStyler 3.0.4 is an incredibly modest update to this free DVD authoring tool. It features the following improvements:
- Handle files with multiple video streams
- Play video from internal file browser
- Updated VBR plug-in
The following unofficial PPA lets you install DVDStyler on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS or later:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/dvdstyler
sudo apt update && sudo apt install dvdstyler