For Linux veterans, printers can induce nightmares. Although, lately, printer support has vastly improved on Linux, at least for the newer models.
Last week, I got my hands on Jadens JD-166, which is very different from all the printers I have used so far.
It's a tiny device, almost a foot wide and only an inch tall and yet you can use A4 papers with it. There is no concept of ink here as it is a 'thermal printer'.
Think of the last time you needed a printed agreement or a form while traveling, and had to hunt for a print shop. This is the problem the JD-166 is trying to solve. The tiny form factor means that you can carry this printer with you easily.
It does that document printing job well enough, but there are trade-offs you should know about before buying one.
✅ Truly portable, prints full A4 pages without ink or toner ✅ Works over USB on Ubuntu once the right driver is installed ❎ Black and white only, no duplex, and needs special thermal paper ❎ Linux driver is only available as a .deb file
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Jadens sent me this printer for testing on Linux. Views expressed are my own, based on my experience.
The hardware
Here is what I know about the JD-166. I have left placeholders for the details I still need to confirm.
Spec
Details
Type
Thermal printer, no ink or toner
Paper size
A4 (also supports Letter-ish sizes in the driver)
Resolution
203 dpi (as listed in the Linux driver)
Color
Black and white only
Duplex
No
Connectivity (computer)
USB
Connectivity (phone)
Bluetooth (BLE), through the Jadens app
Weight and dimensions
~445 grams and 250x32x55 mm
Supported file formats
Word/Excel/PDF/TXT
Power / battery
1800mAh, charges via USB C port
Pricing starts at US $60 and the printer comes with 10 sheets of A4 thermal paper. That's important, and I explain it in the next sections.
What is a thermal printer?
A thermal printer does not use ink or toner. It heats the paper itself, which is coated to darken where the printhead touches it. That is why the JD-166 is small, and also why it prints only in black and white.
Text and simple graphics are fine. Photos get reduced to black and white, so do not expect anything close to a photo printer. You stick to document printing and that's what the Jadens also indicates in the official file format support.
You do save on ink, but you spend that money on paper instead. Jadens recommends its own special thermal paper, which has a cut at the top and a black mark on the back.
Since the paper is thermal, double-sided printing is out of the question. You get one side per sheet.
From what I see on Amazon, 200 sheets of Jaden A4 thermal printer cost $20. Which comes to 10 cents a paper. So the pricing is pretty much in the same range as a regular inkjet printer.
But the advantage here is the protability.
Portability is the whole point
For regular home use, a regular laser printer is more suitable, as you can print in color, utilize both sides of the paper, and won't have to hunt for a special kind of paper.
The advantage of JD166 is that it is small and you can take it with you. If you travel often and need to print documents for an agreement, forms or anything else that needs paper, you do not have to look for a printing shop. You plug it into your laptop (or connect your phone) and print.
If you only print a handful of pages a month while traveling, this makes more sense and could actually save you money and time.
Setting it up on Ubuntu
I plugged the printer into Ubuntu 26.04 over USB and turned it on. CUPS recognized it immediately. The printer showed up in the settings right away, which made me think everything was working.
It was not. CUPS had picked the HP Designjet T920 PostScript driver for it, which is a large-format plotter driver. Print jobs went into the queue, showed "Processing", and never finished. The status stayed stuck on a ppdFilterEmitJCL message in the CUPS logs.
To rule out the driver, I switched the queue to a raw queue and sent a few test files in different printer languages like ESC/POS, TSPL and ZPL etc. The jobs "completed" in CUPS, but nothing came out of the printer. CUPS marking a job as completed only means the data reached the printer. It does not mean the printer understood it.
Well, that was the indication that the generic CUPS is not going to work. Thankfully, Jadens provides drivers for Linux, or should I say Debian? Because there is only .deb file to download.
I installed it, unplugged the printer, and plugged it back in. The Jadens printer was recognized properly. After that, the printer worked and printed pages correctly. No issues at all.
Jadens printer correctly recognized after driver was installed
Print settings available in Ubuntu
The driver exposes a decent set of options through CUPS. You can check them with:
The ones that matter most are page size (A4 is w595h841), Darkness (0 to 4, default 2), Color Model (Gray or RGB), and a few image options like Threshold and Contrast.
You don't necessarily need to do this. You can also change the settings when you select something to print. Setting the defaults saves the trouble of changing the settings each time.
The mobile app has more configuration options for things like darkness and quality. I am not sure how many of them map to options in Ubuntu's printer settings.
Print speed
For some reasons, LibreOffice kept on printing the document in landscape mode, no matter how many settings tweaks I did. ONLYOFFICE was better as it printed in portrait mode.
Here's a demo of a single sheet print and you can see the printing speed for yourself and judge if it's good enough for a handy, portable printer or not.
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I also used Jadens app on my Samsung smartphone. Connected over Bluetooth, it printed documents without trouble.
Is it worth getting the Jadens JD-166?
If you want color, double-sided printing or fast, cheap pages for everyday use, this is not the printer for you. If you travel often and need to print the odd document without hunting for a print shop, the JD-166 could be worth considering for emergency printing. This could also be a good gift idea.
It is small, it prints full A4 pages, and once the driver is installed, it works well on Ubuntu and probably other Debian-based distributions. Since the printer has battery, no need to attach the USB cable all the time.
The Reuters proclaimed that the AI bubble has already burst in China. Chinese AI and chip stocks have lost about $480 billion in value. In the West, Amazon has put most of its Nova models on "keep the lights on" mode.
And yet, chip maker SK Hynix posted record profits of $29.7 billion in Q3. Their CEO says the memory shortage runs till 2030. So the bubble is popping for some, but not for the folks selling you RAM. Looks like we have to wait some more for the prices to come down for our homelab expansion.
This edition of Local AI Weekly is supported by PikaPods. You can self-host open source software in under a minute with PikaPods. New users get $5 free credit to try it out.
🔎 Discover AI tools
LokalBot records and transcribes meetings on your computer. No bot joins the call hete and you also get dictation and search, all with local models through llama.cpp on Vulkan or the CPU.
OpenNoteTaker does the same job inside a browser tab. Whisper runs as WebAssembly and your audio is never uploaded. Recording, transcripts and exports are free, no account needed. However, the AI-written minutes and translation are paid extras, though, and they send text to the developer's backend. It's Chrome and Edge only for now.
Subtitld 26.10 is the biggest release yet of this GPL-3.0 subtitle editor. You can go from raw video to timed, translated and dubbed subtitles in one window. It uses whisper.cpp or Vosk for speech, and Piper, Kokoro and others for voices. Many of these run fully offline.
🤖 The agents keep shipping
Gregory Kurtzer, the man behind CentOS and Rocky Linux, built Ginux in 11 days. It's a new kernel written mostly in Rust, and it's not Linux.
A Codex agent wrote about 139,000 lines while Kurtzer set the architecture and checked the work. The "G" stands for GPT, by the way, not GNU. Consider it as a research prototype.
Former GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke launched Entire, a Git forge for humans and agents working together. The pull requests become "Trails" here with eval scores that agents update on every push. The memory plugins are open source and local-first. The forge itself is hosted, so don't expect to self-host it.
🗞️ Open model news
Twitter's original founder, Jack Dorsey's Block showed off Dessa, a speech model that listens and talks at the same time. It was trained only on human speech, whereas most AI models are trained on text. Block says it runs on a MacBook Pro with M4 Max or better. There's no word on weights or a license yet, just a waitlist.
Mistral Large 4 is due on 31 October. Just in time for Halloween.
👀 Big Tech watch
China's STAR 50 index of AI and chip stocks fell 40% in under four months, as per Reuters. GPU makers MetaX and Moore Threads have each lost about half their value since July. Traders blame sky-high valuations and the threat of bans on Chinese systems in foreign data centers.
Amazon has moved most Nova models to "keep the lights on" mode, as Futurism reported. The money now goes into one frontier model.
SK Hynix posted record numbers: 83.3 trillion won (South Korean currency) in operating profit on 104.6 trillion won revenue. That's an 80% margin. The company expects demand to beat supply through 2030, and big contracts already cover more than half its 2027 and 2028 output. Consumer RAM gets whatever is left, so don't wait for cheap DDR5 😭
🗂 AI jargon: Open weights
You would have come across this term multiple times in this newlsetter itself. Open weights means the trained model file is public. You can download it and run it on your own hardware. That doesn't automatically make it open source. The training data and code usually stay private, and the license decides what you're allowed to do with it.
However, the good thing is that once the weights are on your disk, no company can "retire" them on you.
😆 Meme
⚡ Quick tip: Back up the models you rely on
If you use Ollama for local AI, run ollama list to see your models and their IDs. You can then copy the models folder to your backup drive for safekeeping. It's usually ~/.ollama/models for a user install, or /usr/share/ollama/.ollama/models if Ollama runs as a system service.
Ghostty is a terminal emulator from HashiCorp co-founder Mitchell Hashimoto that implements GPU acceleration while maintaining a native look on each supported platform.
On Linux, the app uses GTK, whereas on macOS, the app uses Swift.
The project claims it has millions of daily users, and many other terminal emulators have already adopted libghostty-vt, the C-based virtual terminal emulator library it offers.
The latest release, v1.4, is a major one with over 170 contributors and 2,800+ commits behind it. We will mostly focus on what Linux users get with a few changes from other platforms to get you up to speed.
What's new?
The reason why Ubuntu 24.04 LTS can't run native builds is that Ghostty 1.4 requires GTK 4.18 and libadwaita 1.7, causing an exit at startup if older libraries are loaded. The developers say that users can opt for an older build to get Ghostty running on their systems.
Anyhow, coming back to the release, the GTK app gets sharp text at fractional scaling, such as 125% or 150%, after it appeared blurry due to some upstream changes, and the rebuilt, triple-buffered renderer is expected to cut tearing.
Then you have the drag and drop ability for split windows, which macOS has had since 1.3, where a split can be dropped onto any other one, even in a different tab or window, with its running processes and working directory moving along with it.
Global keybinds on Wayland now use the vicinae-hotkey-v1 protocol on compositors like Hyprland 0.56 and newer and go through the desktop portal on the rest. This should improve hotkey behavior across different Wayland compositors.
Background blur now works on Niri, and a new +toggle-quick-terminal command helps window managers that can't register global shortcuts.
A few keyboard shortcuts have also been reworked in the GTK app:
Ctrl+Shift+PageUp and Ctrl+Shift+PageDown can be used to move the current tab sideways.
Jumping between the previous and next prompts can be done via Ctrl+Shift+Arrow-Up and Ctrl+Shift+Arrow-Down instead of only being handled by the jump_to_prompt action.
The clipboard value of copy-on-select now behaves differently, and anyone who relied on the old behavior is being told to switch to both. Off-screen scrollback is now compressed while the terminal sits idle, with the memory savings being estimated at 70% to 90%.
The compression has also made room for a higher default scrollback limit of 50MB, up from 10MB.
Some additional changes
Ghostty now implements the full Kitty graphics protocol, with the project claiming that no terminal besides Kitty itself has done that. There's also the new ghostty +ssh command that stands in for sshand installs Ghostty’s terminfo on the remote host before connecting.
Ten security issues were fixed, four of which affected macOS only, and the rest include a paste protection gap and a specially named directory that could get the zsh integration to send escape sequences, including ones that quietly replace your clipboard.
Mac users get support for macOS 27, while those with older Macs get macOS 13 support, which has been kept intact until the project drops it in a future release.
On Windows, the project has decided to drop GUI support from its roadmap and points downstream projects to libghostty and libghostty-vt, which are already built for Windows.
Get Ghostty 1.4
The Ghostty project only ships official binaries for macOS. On Linux, the various distributions package it themselves, with Arch Linux, NixOS, Alpine Linux, Gentoo, openSUSE and Ubuntu 26.04 being the ones that have it.
Community DEB, AppImage and Snap builds exist too, but building from source is recommended.
Gregory Kurtzer is no stranger to the Linux world. He created CentOS, and when Red Hat messed it up, he started Rocky Linux as the community replacement. He also co-founded CIQ, the company offering enterprise support around Rocky.
His latest project has nothing to do with rebuilding another Linux distro, though. He has built an entirely new operating system kernel, and he didn't write most of the code himself. An AI agent did.
Meet Ginux, Linux userspace without Linux underneath
The project is called Ginux. It's an independent, Rust-first x86-64 kernel. Which simply means it is NOT a fork of the Linux kernel.
It has its own memory management, scheduler, process model, filesystems, networking, and device support, all written from scratch.
The most interesting part is that even though it is not Linux, it is Linux-compatible. Ginux implements the Linux ABI (the binary interface compiled programs use to talk to the kernel), so existing Linux binaries can run on it unmodified.
In the project's own terms, Linux is a "personality" that Ginux exposes, not the kernel running underneath.
Now, the name Ginux may sound like a mix of GNU and Linux. I hate to disappoint you, it is not the case here.
The G in Ginux stands for GPT. Greg. Kurtzer jokes in the README that, to keep his ego within limits, the G officially stands for GPT. Why GPT? Because it was coded entirely by (Chat) GPT 5.6 Sol.
In 11 days, I built a new Linux-compatible operating system kernel that boots Rocky Linux 10 with systemd, all using Human-Directed Agentic Engineering (HDAE).
In 11 days, I built a new Linux-compatible operating system kernel that boots Rocky Linux 10 with systemd, all using Human-Directed Agentic Engineering (HDAE).
I call it Ginux. It is an independent, Rust-first x86-64 kernel (not a Linux fork) with its own memory management, boot…
Ginux builds as a single GINUX.EFI image that boots straight through UEFI, with no Linux host kernel involved.
It runs isolated "domains", each with its own processes, address space, filesystem, and lifecycle. The project describes these as stronger boundaries than OCI containers or Linux namespaces.
It can also pull and verify OCI container images and use them to assemble a domain's root filesystem. That's how it gets Rocky Linux 10 booted all the way to systemd's multi-user.target. Selected Alpine Linux programs (like the musl and BusyBox) run too.
Don't get too excited, though. Right now, Ginux runs only in a QEMU virtual machine, with no physical hardware profile, no GPU or NVMe support, and no independent security audit.
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Ginux is a research prototype released under the Apache 2.0 license. It is not meant for production or as a Linux replacement.
What is Human-Directed Agentic Engineering?
HDAE is the name Kurtzer gives to the development method, and to be honest, that's the real story here. He has documented it in a technical report on Zenodo.
The idea is a clear division of labour. The human decides the architecture, the constraints, the milestones, the acceptance criteria, and when to stop. The AI agent runs the implementation loop: write code, boot it, test it, diagnose failures, revise, and repeat against those executable checks.
For Ginux, that meant one persistent OpenAI Codex task running GPT-5.6 Sol for eleven days. It produced approximately 139,000 retained lines of implementation and test code, across more than 1,000 commits. Architecture documents kept the agent aligned, and real userspaces like Rocky Linux caught bugs that synthetic tests missed.
The "human-directed" part matters. This isn't as simple as typing "write me a kernel, don't make mistakes" into a chatbot. It's a person with decades of systems experience steering an agent that does the heavy lifting of coding.
One expert plus AI can go a long way
Kurtzer is careful not to oversell this AI achievement:
The larger lesson is that AI can generate complex systems software, but compatibility, security, hardware support, standards, community, and long-term maintenance remain the real moat.
I think that's only fair. Linux isn't going anywhere because a prototype boots systemd in a VM. Decades of hardware enablement, code review, and community are not something an AI agent produces in eleven days.
But let's take a step back to realize what happened here. A new kernel created from scratch, that runs an enterprise distro. And it took just 11 days with GPT 5.6 (not even 6.1, the latest model).
AI won't replace expertise. An expert who already knows how kernels work uses AI to squeeze years of grunt work into days.
When people with deep domain knowledge pair it with frontier AI agents, projects that once needed a large team and several years start to look like weekend side projects.
Ginux won't replace Linux, but it does show how far (and how fast) an skilled person can now go.
Tesco, the supermarket group with stores in the UK and certain regions of Europe, is hiring a Head of Software Engineering for its Edge Platform. The new hire would be responsible for carrying out the move away from VMware, the Broadcom-owned virtualization software, to Proxmox for the systems that run inside its stores.
The Register were the ones who spotted the listing first, and so far it's the only public sign of the Proxmox plan. Tesco has not said how many stores the move covers or how fast the rollout will occur.
What edge means for a supermarket
Edge computing puts servers and software near the place where the business operates instead of in a faraway central datacenter, and for a supermarket chain, that place is the brick-and-mortar store.
Tesco's listing describes its Edge Platform as the computing environment and software that lets applications run across its stores. Checkout, payments, stock management, and staff-facing apps all depend on it.
The platform covers Linux, server hardware, virtualization, and storage. Stores also need to keep working through connectivity disruptions or when local resources run short, as a badly handled change can interfere with store operations, staff, and customers.
The ask
The hire would handle two jobs. The first is the migration, and it involves defining repeatable setups for different kinds of stores, testing each version before a gradual rollout, and automating installs, upgrades, rollbacks, and recovery.
Along the way, they would also manage any migration dependencies and risks so that critical store operations are not affected.
The second job is a management platform for every store, built as an API-first system for provisioning, monitoring, patching, and remote diagnostics. It has to cope with stores going offline and with systems drifting from their intended setup.
That platform should also evolve independently of any one infrastructure technology where practical. The hire leads engineering managers and principal engineers, and the listed skills include Java, Python, and Terraform.
Where the exit stands
Tesco bought perpetual VMware licenses in 2021, but Broadcom stopped supporting them in January 2026. They have had to pay third-party providers for support since then.
In its lawsuit, Tesco accuses Broadcom of refusing to honor the 2021 agreement and of abusing its market power. They say the end of 2027 is the earliest it can be off VMware and calls that timeline a significant risk to its business.
Tesco also alleges that one Broadcom offer this year came in around 175 percent above what its 2021 contract entitled it to.
Ubuntu works reasonably well out of the box, but a fresh installation still leaves plenty of room for improvement. A few tweaks, some essential software, and a handful of lesser-known settings can help you get a more comfortable, productive, and personalized desktop experience from day one.
In this guide, let's look at some of the first things worth doing after installing Ubuntu 26.10.
Perform a System Update
Before installing new applications or customizing the desktop, it is a good idea to check for any available system updates. Ubuntu installation images are not updated daily, so there may already be security patches, bug fixes, and package updates waiting to be installed.
The easiest way is to launch Software Updater from the Activities Overview and let it handle the process.
This command refreshes the package repository information and installs the latest available updates. Taking care of updates first helps ensure a stable and secure foundation before moving on to other post-installation tasks.
Install Media Codecs
Due to licensing and copyright restrictions in certain countries, Ubuntu does not include support for some popular media formats such as MP3, MPEG-4, and AVI out of the box.
Fortunately, installing support for these formats is straightforward. The ubuntu-restricted-extras package bundles media codecs, Microsoft TrueType fonts, and a few additional components that improve compatibility with common audio, video, and office documents.
sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras
💡
If you are using an Ubuntu flavor such as Kubuntu, install the corresponding package instead. For example, Kubuntu users should install kubuntu-restricted-extras.
If you see the EULA or the license screen, remember to use the tab key to select between the options and then hit enter to confirm your choice.
Accept Microsoft EULA
Try the AI Voice Input
Typing isn't always the fastest way to get text into a computer. Whether you're taking notes, drafting an email, or quickly capturing an idea, speaking can sometimes feel more natural. Ubuntu 26.10 introduces Myna, an optional speech-to-text feature that brings local voice dictation directly to the desktop.
Myna AI Voice Input
What makes Myna particularly interesting is its privacy-focused approach. Speech recognition runs entirely on your machine, and once the required model is downloaded, no internet connection is needed for transcription. Simply place the cursor in a text field, press the configured shortcut, and start speaking. Do keep in mind that Myna is currently offered as a technology preview, so you should expect some rough edges while the feature continues to mature.
Change Wallpaper and Accent Colors
A different wallpaper and accent color can completely change the look of the desktop without installing any additional software.
To get started, right-click on an empty area of the desktop and select Change Background. From there, you can choose one of the included wallpapers or use the Add Picture button to select an image from your collection.
Change Wallpaper in Ubuntu
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It's possible to set a wallpaper directly from the file manager by right-clicking an image and selecting the wallpaper option. However, this is not always the best approach, as the image may later be moved or deleted from its original location, resulting in a missing background.
While you're there, consider exploring the available accent colors as well. Choosing an accent color that complements the wallpaper can give the desktop a more cohesive and polished appearance. 🎨
Enable Flatpak support
Ubuntu promotes Snap as its primary universal packaging format, and you'll find plenty of applications available through it. However, not every developer distributes their software as a Snap package. In the Linux desktop world, you'll frequently come across applications that are available only through Flatpak.
For that reason, it makes sense to enable Flatpak support early on. Start by installing the required package:
sudo apt install flatpak
Once installed, add the Flathub repository, which serves as the primary source for most Flatpak applications:
After adding Flathub, restart the system to ensure everything is integrated properly. You'll then be able to install and manage Flatpak applications from the command line.
We have a dedicated article explaining Flatpak support in Ubuntu. Give it a read, if you want more Flatpak setup requirements.
Familiarize Installing New Applications
At some point, you'll want to go beyond the default applications that come with Ubuntu. The good news is that Ubuntu has one of the largest software ecosystems in the Linux world, making it easy to find and install both open-source and proprietary software.
For those who prefer a graphical approach, open the App Center, search for the application you need, and click Install. Ubuntu's App Center supports both DEB and Snap packages, though it generally prioritizes Snap applications when both formats are available.
Install Application via App Center
Many software vendors also provide Ubuntu packages directly on their websites as .deb files. After downloading one, right-click the file and select Open With → App Center. From there, simply click Install to add the application to your system.
Open Deb file with App Center
Install Extension Manager
One of GNOME's biggest strengths is its extension ecosystem. Many of the desktop tweaks that Ubuntu users enjoy, including custom docks, app indicators, and advanced tiling features, are powered by GNOME extensions behind the scenes.
While extensions can be installed manually, managing them quickly becomes inconvenient once you start experimenting with a few. The Extension Manager application provides a much cleaner way to browse, install, update, enable, and disable extensions from a single place.
sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-manager
Add Your Favorite Apps to the Dock
The Dock in Ubuntu provides quick access to running applications and can also serve as a launcher for the programs you use every day.
Adding applications to the dock is simple. Open the application grid using the Show Apps button or press the Super key, then right-click the desired application and select Pin to Dock. Once added, applications can be rearranged by dragging and dropping them to your preferred position.
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Pin application to Dock in Ubuntu
The dock itself is also highly customizable. You can change its position, adjust icon sizes, enable auto-hide, and tweak other behavior from the system settings to better suit your workflow.
Customize the Dock
Ubuntu provides you a Dock that host the pinned and opened application on the left edge of your screen. Since it is based on a customized version of GNOME's Dash to Dock extension, there is plenty of room for customization.
For basic adjustments, head to Settings → Ubuntu Desktop → Dock. Here, you can change the dock's position, enable auto-hide, adjust icon sizes, and control how the dock behaves on your desktop.
Dock Settings
If you want more advanced options, open Extension Manager, select Ubuntu Dock, and access its settings. This exposes additional tweaks that are not available in the regular system settings, giving you greater control over the dock's appearance and behavior.
Extensive Ubuntu Dock Settings
Click to Minimize
Open Extension Manager, click the settings button next to Ubuntu Dock, and switch to the Behavior tab. Here, locate the Click Action option and change it to Minimize. Once enabled, clicking the icon of an open application will minimize its window.
Click to Minimize Settings
At this point, when you click on the icon of an opened app in the Dock, it will be minimized to the taskbar.
Or, you can set what I do on my system. Set the Click action to Focus, minimize or show previews.
This setting combines the best of both worlds. If an application has a single window open, clicking its dock icon minimizes it. If multiple windows are open, Ubuntu displays window previews instead, making it easier to switch between them.
Install Extensions
Extensions can add new features, improve existing workflows, or completely change how the desktop looks and behaves.
With Extension Manager installed, discovering new extensions becomes straightforward. Open the application, switch to the Browse tab, search for an extension, and click Install.
It's usually better to install a few extensions that genuinely improve your workflow and ignore the rest.
Get Familiar with Tiling
Recent Ubuntu releases have significantly improved the tiling experience. Simply drag a window by its title bar to the top of the screen to reveal available tiling zones. Dropping the window into one of these zones automatically snaps it into place.
What makes the experience particularly useful is the tiling assistant. After placing a window, Ubuntu can suggest other open applications to fill the remaining screen space, making it easy to create an organized workspace without manually arranging every window.
Ubuntu Tiling
If you prefer keyboard shortcuts, the traditional tiling keybindings are also available. And because Ubuntu's tiling functionality is powered by the Ubuntu Tiling Assistant extension, many aspects of its behavior can be customized through Extension Manager to better match your workflow.
Take Care of Your Wellbeing
Many of us spend hours in front of a computer without realizing how much time has passed. Whether it's work, studying, gaming, or binge-watching, it's easy to skip breaks and stay glued to the screen longer than intended.
The Wellbeing feature is designed to help with that. Similar in concept to digital wellbeing tools on mobile devices, it allows you to track screen usage and configure reminders that encourage healthier computer habits.
Wellbeing Settings
To get started, open Settings and navigate to the Wellbeing section. From here, you can set daily screen time limits, enable eyesight reminders, configure movement breaks, and even choose whether the display switches to grayscale once a screen time limit has been reached.
Use Your Monitor's HDR Capabilities
If you own a monitor with HDR functionality, then you can take advantage of the HDR support that works with displays of the BT.2100 standard. With this, you get perks like improved brightness, deeper contrast, and a wider color gamut for more vibrant visuals.
To enable this, you will first need to connect a compatible monitor. Then, go to Settings -> Displays page. If everything went well, then you will be shown the HDR and HDR Brightness options.
HDR Settings
Show Battery Stats in Panel
If you are a laptop user who is always on the go and cannot risk your device's battery dying out, then enabling the on-screen display for battery percentage is a must-have for quick battery charge level checks.
To enable this, go to Settings -> Power, then go to the General page and enable the Show Battery Percentage option.
That is not the only way you can spice up the top panel. There are some nice customizations that you can add.
Show Battery Percentage
Disable Automatic Screen Blank
Ubuntu enables automatic screen blanking by default to save power when the system is idle. While that makes sense for many users, it may not be ideal if you frequently step away from your desk, follow long-running tasks, or keep information visible on the screen for extended periods.
Similar to the previous suggestion, go into the Power settings, but instead of General, go into "Power Saving" and uncheck the "Automatic Screen Blank" option. You can also tweak the delay time before the screen goes dark if you prefer this behavior.
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This is not a good idea for shared spaces like offices, cafés, or a family home with nosy people around.
Hide the Home Folder
Ubuntu places a Home folder icon on the desktop by default. While some users appreciate the quick access, others prefer a cleaner desktop with an unobstructed view of their wallpaper.
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Hide Home Folder from Desktop
If you'd rather keep the desktop free of extra icons, right-click on an empty area of the desktop and select Desktop Icons Settings. From there, disable the Show Home Folder option.
Set What Shows in the Search
When you perform a search using GNOME Search, it include more than just applications and files. Categories such as characters, emojis, settings, and other providers may also appear, which can make the results feel a bit cluttered depending on how you use your system.
Search Results
To customize this behavior, open Settings → Search. From here, you can disable search providers you don't use and reorder the remaining ones based on priority. For example, if you never search for emojis through GNOME Search, you can disable the Characters provider entirely.
Search Settings
Install Curl and Git
Ubuntu does not come with curl or git installed by default. A bit curious, because curl is commonly used to download files, interact with web APIs, and fetch installation scripts directly from the terminal. Git, on the other hand, is the most widely used version control system and is often required when working with source code, cloning repositories, or following developer-focused guides.
You can install both packages with a single command:
sudo apt install curl git
Even if you don't need them immediately, having these tools available can save time later. Many open-source projects assume that curl and git are already installed and use them throughout their installation and setup instructions.
Learn Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts are one of the easiest ways to become more productive on Ubuntu. While almost everything can be done with a mouse, knowing a handful of shortcuts can make launching applications, managing windows, and navigating the desktop significantly faster.
The good news is that GNOME makes discovering shortcuts easy. In most modern GNOME and GTK applications, pressing Ctrl + ? opens a dedicated shortcuts window that neatly organizes all available keyboard shortcuts. Spending a few minutes exploring these can reveal useful actions that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Accessibility settings are often associated with specific needs, but several of them can be genuinely useful for everyone. Ubuntu includes a number of small quality-of-life features that can make interacting with the desktop more comfortable and efficient.
Locate the Cursor
If you work with multiple monitors or frequently have several windows open, there will eventually be a moment when the mouse pointer seems to disappear into the clutter. Instead of wasting time hunting for it, GNOME includes a built-in feature that highlights the pointer on demand.
Open Settings → Accessibility → Pointing and Clicking and enable Locate Pointer. Once enabled, pressing the left Ctrl key triggers a ripple animation around the mouse cursor, making it instantly visible on the screen.
Location Pointer Settings
Reduce Motion Animations
GNOME's animations generally look polished on modern hardware, but they are not essential to the desktop experience. If you prefer a more immediate feel or use older hardware, reducing animations can make the interface feel slightly more responsive.
To enable this setting, head to Settings → Accessibility → Seeing and turn on Reduced Motion. GNOME will minimize many of its transition and animation effects throughout the desktop.
Reduced Motion Settings
Don't expect dramatic performance improvements, especially on newer systems. However, on less powerful hardware, or if you simply prefer a snappier and less animated interface, this small tweak can make the desktop feel a bit more streamlined.
Get Overamplification
Ubuntu offers an accessibility feature that can boost audio output beyond the normal limit.
To enable it, open Settings → Accessibility → Hearing and turn on Overamplification. Once enabled, the system volume can be increased above 100% when needed.
Overamplification Settings
Keep in mind that this is achieved through software amplification, so pushing the volume too high may introduce distortion or reduce audio quality. Still, it can be a useful option when dealing with particularly quiet recordings, low-volume speakers, or headphones that need a little extra boost.
Wrapping Up
One of the things I appreciate about Ubuntu is that it works well with its default settings while still offering plenty of ways to tailor the experience. You don't need to apply every tweak mentioned here. Pick the ones that match your workflow and ignore the rest.
If you're new to Ubuntu, start with the essentials and explore gradually. Over time, you'll discover which settings, extensions, and tools genuinely improve your day-to-day experience, helping you build a desktop that feels truly your own.
Jordan Hubbard started FreeBSD in 1993 with two others, and he has now built Daemonarchy with help from OpenAI’s GPT AI model. The name plays on Omarchy, with the BSD daemon taking the place of Arch as the base.
As for Omarchy, it has grown considerably since we initially covered it as a one-command script for Arch. It now installs from an ISO and has managed to pull in massive amounts of funding.
Anyhow, Daemonarchy is only a few weeks old and already has several releases, with v1.3.1 being released a few hours ago.
Why does this exist?
A few people on LinkedIn were pestering Jordan, saying FreeBSD should be as easy to set up and as pretty as Omarchy. That got him wondering, “Why doesn’t that already exist?”
He was testing GPT Astra 6 at the time and used it to put the project together. The first pass took under two hours. That figure leaves out the Poudriere builds used to validate it. GPT also picked the name for the project.
The ports this distro needed went upstream to FreeBSD’s ports tree for review. The same ports also let you install Daemonarchy on top of an existing FreeBSD system.
Jordan also credits the Wayland, Hyprland, and Arch Linux projects for the layers the desktop sits on.
What does it offer?
The installer follows Omarchy’s own, and it asks for the usual basics like keyboard layout, account details, hostname, and timezone.
Daemonarchy can take over a whole disk or settle into a partition or free space you pick, with a minimum of 40 GB of storage required. A whole-disk install wipes the drive, while partition mode overwrites only the partition you select.
Because the installer won’t shrink existing filesystems, anyone dual-booting has to make room from the other OS first. Everything lands on ZFS with rollback support, and encryption is optional.
The desktop is Omarchy itself, ported over with only the changes FreeBSD requires, and it runs on FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT. Since CURRENT moves daily, each image is pinned to one snapshot.
A compatibility layer maps pacman to pkg, backs the Wi-Fi panel with wpa_supplicant instead of NetworkManager, and uses PipeWire to handle sound. Bluetooth also works for keyboards and mice via FreeBSD’s Bluetooth stack.
Apps come from FreeBSD’s own packages, installed with OctoPkg under Install > Packages or with pkg, and Chromium is preinstalled. Linux-only apps are being held back until specific versions have been tested under the Linuxulator, FreeBSD’s Linux compatibility layer.
Jails give you isolated FreeBSD environments that carry their own packages, and bhyve, the built-in hypervisor, runs virtual machines for guests like Linux and Windows.
And, if you run an upgrade through Omarchy’s update, it applies pkg upgrade to your applications and leaves the FreeBSD base and kernel alone. Daemonarchy’s own packages come from a signed repository and fixes land between ISO releases.
The wallpaper, wordmark, and login theme are the project's own creations.
📥 Get Daemonarchy
The latest 1.3.1 ISO release is a little under 2 GiB. Put it on a USB drive using dd or a live USB tool like Fedora Media Writer, then boot from that.
An internet connection is required during the installation while the installer downloads many packages as it progresses. The source code lives on GitHub.
