August flew by, but not before dropping off a batch of Linux app updates. In this post, I round up a selection of smaller app releases which hit my radar, but didn’t blip strongly enough to demand a full-feature article.
Plenty of updates did: Kdenlive 25.08 got 10-bit H.265 support; VirtualBox 7.2 rejigged its UI; HandBrake 1.10 added Discord-friendly presets; Flameshot returned; and Mastodon client Tuba 0.10 added seemingly everything it could think of!
I round up the smaller app releases which hit my radar, but didn’t blip strongly enough for a full article
On the AI front, IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2 delivered offline AI code completion, and productivity suite ONLYOFFICE baked in an AI ‘agent’ to write documents for you.
Monthly updates we expected: Mozilla Firefox 142 with new tab page topics, Thunderbird 142 with PDF signature support, and performance boosts galore in LibreOffice 25.8.
Beyond those, a slew of smaller updates also slipped out.
Rather than fire out multiple 200 word articles, I choose to cover what I didn’t cover in a single Linux App Release Roundup post, published on the first(ish) day of the new month.
Constrict 25.8.1
I spotlighted the GTK4/libadwaita video compression tool Constrict in July. It’s an app that could prove useful to anyone needing to squeeze a video down to fit a specific file size (sites like Discord have video size limits).
Since that article, Constrict got updated. It picked up major performance improvements (see below), a new app icon, and ironed out a variety of bugs, including an amusing quirk that sometimes meant compression progress bars went backwards!
Constrict now offers hardware acceleration support for “significantly faster compression speeds” — only on GPUs that support VA-API encoding for the selected video codec. Software encoding is always used if ‘Extra Quality’ mode is enabled.
Subtitle streams/languages are now retained in compressed videos, so long as the subtitles from video sources use text-only codecs to start with. It’s also now possible to use GIFs as video sources, should you want, of course.
A solid set of updates.
You can get Constrict on Flathub, or grab the source code from GitHub.
Zen Browser 1.15b
I did a big feature on Zen Browser last month, finding myself mighty impressed by the novel, innovative direction this Firefox fork is pursuing.
Hot on the heels of my review came an update to rebase on top of the latest Firefox 142.0 — and add new features!
Zen Browser 1.15b introduces folders in the tab sidebar. Right-click in the tab area, click add a folder, give it a name, a custom icon, and then drag and drop tabs and even other folders on it to stash.
You can rename and edit folders at any time, and drag links/tabs out of them. Folders are great way to organise tabs into thematic groups (however loose) to reduce visual noise.
Unlike pinned tabs, which persist across all spaces, folders are space-specific.
“Folders have been one of the most requested features since Zen’s launch, and they’re finally here”, the team say of the addition. They’ve also added monochromatic icons for folders, as well as spaces, for visual cues, which is neat.
Folders are optional, so if you (like me) rarely have more than a few tabs open, and rely on bookmarks for those “one day I might need to possibly refer to this, maybe” keeps, just don’t use ’em.
Zen Browser is free, open-source software available for Windows, macOS and Linux. Download the latest release from the project GitHub.
Gradia 1.10.0
Screenshot prettification and markup tool Gradia remains one of my favourite apps of the year. It’s superbly designed and super useful.
August saw a couple of updates roll out to Gradia, each adding new features and capabilities:
- Keyboard shortcuts for annotation options
- Improved Censor tool
- Text tool now supports multi-line annotations
- Hold shift with tools (e.g., arrow) for constrained drawing
- Redesigned gradient editor with support for 5 stops
- Support for radial and conic gradients
- Quick color selection for annotation tools
- Improved drag-and-drop support for loading from URLs
- Zoom in/out buttons
- Support for multiple instances
If you’ve not checked in with Gradia for a while, the changelog above ought to be reason to do so — and as it’s available on the Snap Store it is but a sudo snap install gradia away!
QEMU 10.1
The open-source virtualisation and emulation software saw another batch of buffs land this month, landing in the first update since its sizeable 10.0 release in April.
Support for Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) in KVM is the headline change, making it possible to run “confidential guests” using Linux 6.16 kernel or newer (6.17 is due shortly, and will ship in Ubuntu 25.10), and enables starting TDX or SEV-SNP virtual machines from IGVM files.
ARM platform support sees gains. The ARM ‘virt’ board now supports KVM nested virtualization and ACPI PCI hotplug functionality. CPU architectural features include FEAT_SME2, FEAT_SME2p1, and several SVE extensions, plus new board models.
Elsewhere, Qemu 10.1 adds live migration support with initial multifd and post-copy compatibility, “optimisations for pre-copy migration, and RDMA migration support for ipv6” — which will mean something to someone, I’m sure.
Other changes in Qemu 10.1:
- QEMU guest agent can query load of virtual machines running Windows
- ARM ‘virt’ board supports nested virtualisation under KVM & CXL
- RISC-V ISA/extension support for atomic instruction fetch (Ziccif)
- Support for RISC-V Kunminghu CPU and platform
- Improved scale handling on GTK
- Deprecated s390x machine types older than v4.1
- Fixed Windows NT MIPS BSOD on magnum
- Block operations optimised for sparse files
- TCG plugins gain register write functions
- VNC encoding fixes for different endianness
- Built-in AES implementation removed outside TCG
Download the latest QEMU release from the project website. There you can find more information on this update, along with details on how to install it, configure it, and work with it to get the near-native performance running other OSes on your current one.
Euphonica 0.96.3 (Beta)
When I spotlighted the slick MPD frontend Euphonica in July it attracted an agog-jawed reaction from readers (the good kind – so rare). Its fancy visual and modern layout has no-doubt helped renewed interest in MPD.
In August, Euphonica got a major update — though it remains in beta — that “should enable Euphonica to work with larger libraries”, with testing done on a 30,000 song, 2,000 album, and 1,000 artist ‘synthetic’ library.
The app switched its internal SQLite DB to use WAL journaling, and moved more SQLite operations off the main thread to help improve its resource efficiency and, in turn, its responsiveness.
Euphonica also adds lyric import, export and clear features, albeit only for LRC and without per-word timings or any tags except offset. The PipeWire visualiser backend is now able select which device to “capture” audio from.
Alas, there’s still no easy way to try Eurphonica on Ubuntu (unless you count building it from source easy, which, tbh, it kind of is). AUR and Nix packages are available, for those on relevant distributions or using Distrobox on Ubuntu.
Update: Euphonica is now available on Flathub.
PeaZip 10.6.1
I don’t know how many of you use PeaZip, but it’s one of those apps whose RSS feed has been in my reader for decades, so I’m always away it’s still out there, doing its thing.
PeaZip 10.6 now includes a set of Nemo Actions, so you can add context menu integration in the file manager on Linux Mint with the Cinnamon Desktop. Once the actions are installed, you can right-click on ZIPs et al to run tasks – easier than firing up the app.
The archive tool ships with an alternative 7z fork on Linux and macOS. This supports Brotli, Lizard, LZ4/5 and Zstd compression algorithms in .7z archive files. To enable it head to Options > Settings > Advanced and set “7z / p7zip alias” to “7zalt”.
Beyond that, the built-in file browser sees various changes, including better performance browsing large folders or archives. Opening a ZIP with 25,000 items in is reportedly 6x faster on Windows, 30x faster on macOS, and 2x faster on Qt6. GTK sees “negligible” impact.
A search box has been added to Settings to make finding options easier, multipart archive sizes are now correctly reported in the Progress screen, archive pre-parsing is improved, and free disk space is visible in the status bar hint box.
The changelog lists more detail on all improvements in this release. As free, open source software, you can download pre-built binaries of the app for all major operating systems from the PeaZip website or its GitHub page.
Others
Besides all of the above, a couple of others I should mention:
Typhoon weather app saw some new features blow in. The background colour is now fully customisable, should the preset hues or chameleonic matching not do it for you. There’s also new ‘Guess Location’ button was added for IP-based location setting.
Pinta issued a bug fix release to resolve a pesky packaging flaw in its macOS builds for Apple silicon; an issue where hiding a panel did not cause other panels to expand into the available space; and improving its Dithering effect.
Until Next Month…
That wraps up this month’s recap of smaller but noteworthy releases. These updates didn’t make headlines of their own, but they are dutiful improvements all the same.
Got a tip about an app update I should cover? The contact form is always open!