August saw a number of slew of notable Linux app updates, and in this post I roundup a few that might have passed you by.
But unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock you’ll have already heard about Firefox 153, the big OpenShot 4.0 release with colour grading and the latest update to the ebook manager Calibre letting you generate new book covers using online generative AI.
August also saw open-source Mastodon client Tuba pick up a stack of new features, LibreOffice 26.8 debuted a new paragraph composer engine (makes sense, promise). We also saw NVIDIA GeForce NOW app leave beta and OpenAI’s ChatGPT Linux beta launch in beta.
But apart from those, here’s what else August brought with it.
Liferea landed a GTK4/libadwaita port
Do you prefer to get your news via RSS, without algorithmic meddling? If you do, you’ve probably tried (or at least heard of) Liferea, a GTK client with a traditional UI (think old-school e-mail client).
August saw Lifrea 2.0 arrive, kicking off a new stable release series. Headline change is a GTK4/libadwaita port, which helps the app better ingratiate with modern GNOME apps. Modal dialogs are used throughout, and a header bar replaces the window titlebar and menu bar.
A WebDAV-based sync backend was also added, a standardised subscription dialog for ‘all node sources’ introduced and a new ‘update monitor’ included to surface details on background updating (which will help in troubleshooting feed errors).
Some of Liferea’s existing features didn’t survive the GTK4 port. Reduced feed list mode is no longer supported, item list view headers are gone (use the right-click context menu to sort feeds instead) and the tray icon no longer shows an unread counter.
Data remains compatible with the Liferea 1.6.x series. If you update to the new version and don’t like the changes (header bars aren’t universally adored) you should be able to downgrade to earlier version without issues.
Talking of issues, there are known crashes caused by dragging and dropping feeds or removing items, among others – the Github page lists them, so be aware.
Liferea source code is on Github – Snap and Flathub builds aren’t yet updated.
Kdenlive delivered goodies
A huge stack of improvements came to Kdenlive, the most comprehensive and capable open-source video editor for Linux, in August.
Kdenlive 2026.08 added drag-and-drop track reordering, and automatic audio track creation when dropping a clip with more audio channels than available tracks. It’s also possible to change the playback speed of multiple clips at the same time using Ctrl + drag.
Direct radius control of rectangle shapes is available in the Title Editor, which also supports canvas snapping and copy/pasting individual graphic and text elements within the canvas.
Effect changes see Transform gain adjustable rotation anchor points; Drawbox and Delogo support adjustments on the preview monitor; maths formulas (e.g., 1080 * 0.9) can be entered in numeric fields; and keyframes come to the Rectangular Alpha Mask.
Other changes include Alt + dragging to snap the playhead directly to clip edges, guides and markers, holding Shift and clicking the Solo button on audio tracks to isolate them at the same time, animated WebP image sequence import and…
Well; a lot more besides that – do check out the official release notes.
Download Kdenlive from the official website, or install it from Flathub.
Newelle AI assistant added catalogs
Newelle, the self-described AI assistant for GNOME, hit version 1.5.0 out in August, gaining extra capabilities.
A reminder for those unaware, Newelle a GTK frontend to interacting with cloud-based LLMs, like Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, et al, or local AI models running on your hardware via Ollama.
New in Newelle 1.5.0 is custom mode creation, which lets you tailor the prompts, tools and skills used for whatever task you need; persistent terminal sessions; and easier in-app connection to LLM providers like OpenAI and Anthropic.
You can also browse a ‘curated’ set of MCP servers from within Newelle. MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open protocol that lets AI models connect to external data sources, tools and local (!) software.
An ‘Extensions and Skills’ catalog is also built in. This lets you find and download, well, extensions and skills in Newelle to use with an LLM provider.
Rounding out the changes: citations (but check they aren’t hallucinated) and a compact mode for when you don’t need the full UI on show.
Newelle is on Flathub, source code on GitHub.
Audacity 4.0 made a new beta
Open-source audio editor Audacity continued working towards a stable release of its redesigned v4.0 build, with the fourth beta (but only second downloadable – don’t ask) build.
Audacity 4.0 Beta 4 made improvements to the clip editing experience following user feedback, including making the split tool work clip headers and in the Spectrogram view. It also returns ‘Join clips’ and ‘Split clip at silences’ options to the right-click context menu.
The Bass and Treble effect was reintroduced, making it possible to apply “gentle low and high shelves at appropriate frequencies” in the new version, and the payback cursor no longer jumps to the beginning of a clip when clicked.
As of this beta, users can import legacy Audacity projects saved in the .aup format and access additional options during Export, including custom sample rate and trim blank space.
Beyond that, the size of installers was reduced, Windows and Linux ARM64 builds added and accessibility changes factored in, though the team say the latter is “still far from perfect” and will continue to see improvements in future releases.
Audacity 4.0 beta 4 is available to download from Github for Windows, macOS and Linux
VirtualBox added FRED support
VirtualBox 7.2.16 was released on 18 August, 2026. Nothing too exciting on the features-front since it’s just a maintenance release in the current 7.2.x series, but there are bug fixes of note.
This update adds ‘graceful handling’ of inaccessible VMs (be they moved, deleted or offline) and improves the performance of VMSVGA 3D, VirtualBox’s VMware SVGA-compatible graphic adapter.
Hosts where the kernel runs with Intel’s FRED (Flexible Return and Event Delivery), running virtual machines no longe cause issues with the host.
For Linux hosts and guests, VirtualBox 7.2.16 touts better shared clipboard handling in Wayland. Being able to copy/paste to/from virtual machine and the desktop is handy, so that’s a welcome change.
Beyond that, updated Catalan translations, visible warnings during OVF import and RHEL 9.8 kernel fixes.
Download VirtualBox from the official website for Linux, Windows, macOS & Solaris.
Cine went on a loop
Cine media player received a couple of version bumps in August.
Bug fixes made up the bulk of the changes – jitter during scrubbing and subtitle files dropped on a paused video not applying among the ones resolved – but it also added a button to play videos on a loop, loop state persists between sessions.
Cine source code is on Github, or install it from Flathub.
Other updates
Qemu, the open-source emulation and virtualisation tool, issued v11.01.0 with support for Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 4.1 emulation, nested virtualisation under Apple’s hvf accelerator on ARM and custom cache layout options for virtual boards.
RISC-V support was expanded to include big-endian instructions and vector SHA instructions. For legacy systems, HPPA benefit from updated SeaBIOS firmware to resolve memory issues, and s390x bagged nested virtualization support under KVM.
Download manager Varia v2026.8.5 added libtorrent as its torrenting backend, which should greatly improve its usefulness for more than direct downloads. It also saw an overhaul to its video downloader backend, which is said to offer improved performance.
BleachBit v6.0.3 went live for testing unspecified ‘speed improvements’, new cleaners for Python and the Zsh and Fish shells and, albeit less notable for us on Linux, early support for macOS (BleachBit has hitherto supported Linux and Windows).
The Raspberry Pi Imager v2.0.11update added rpi-preseed support, can handle multi-frame .img.zst compressed images and made packaged and build changes to improve OS support across Windows, macOS and Linux.
That’s our look at August’s open-source version bumps. As we slide into the Autumn (Spring, for those down under), be sure to drop me a line during the month (using the contact form) if you see or hear of a Linux app releases you think merits a shoutout next month!