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.

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.