May has been and gone — but delivered another sizeable set of Linux app updates for us to enjoy, including a big update to system monitor tool Mission Centre and a long-awaited version bump for system cleaner BleachBit.
We also got saw new versions of web browsers Mozilla Firefox and Vivaldi, while NordVPN Linux app gained a long-awaited GUI.
But those weren’t the only releases of note in May 2025 — not in the least!
Which is why I do these Linux app release roundups: I like to highlight app updates that didn’t warrant a headline of their own, but are worth knowing about.
As always, if you hear about a notable app update I have yet to cover, tips through the contact form (link in header) help hugely!
Waffle over, let’s see what other appetising goodies were served up last month!
Plattenalbum 2.3.0
Any Music Player Daemon (MPD) fans in the house? Plattenalbum is a slick, artwork-orientated GUI (GTK4/libadwaita) frontend for browsing and playing your music collection, sans perpetual playlists – just load up the tracks you want to hear and hit play.
While I wrote about Plattenalbum app last year I’m pleased to say it’s improved a fair bit since then. A new version of the player was released in May, making the following changes:
- Reworked player pane
- Simplified connect workflow
- Improved drag and drop feedback
- Inhibit suspend on playback
- Reduced minimum window size
Sound good? You can find Plattenalbum on Flathub, or see if your Linux distribution packages the latest version (an older version is available to install from the Ubuntu 25.04 repos).
Shotcut 25.05
Shotcut is a free video editor for Windows, macOS, and Linux that offers an ever-expanding feature set, ranging from native editing (no import required) and multi-format timelines, to video effects, audio editing, and colour correction.
Chances are, though, that you know all that.
What you might not know are the changes the latest release, Shotcut 25.05, which include:
- New Alpha Strobe video filter
- Freeze Frame option on Timeline
- Timeline track header width is now adjustable
- Add Generator option added to Timeline toolbar
- Added Settings > Preview Scaling > 1080p
- HLG color transfer/gamma added to GPU Effects (HDR not ready yet)
- Obscure With Blur/Mosaic, and Mask: Apply better at concealing
- Dependency version bumps, including Qt 6.8.3
- Bug fixes
You can check out all of those changes first-hand by downloading the latest version of Shotcut for your OS of choice, full details of which can be gleaned from the project’s official download page.
Upscaler 1.5.2
Now, I’m being a but cheeky here as the only update to Upscaler in May were some minor revisions to its 1.5.x series, which popped out right at the end of April — but hey: it put out an update so it counts, right?
What is it? It’s a free, open-source and entirely offline AI image upscaling tool. Built in Python, it provides a straightforward GTK4/libadwaita frontend for the open-source Upscayl NCNN (algorithms designed for image enhancement).
It’s perhaps a bit more notable than the general image upscaling efforts you’ll find online in that it can enhance and enlarge images up to 4x the original size, and offers special, distinct modes for working with digital art or photos.
Results will vary, so it’s based to play around with the available settings to try and create an upscale quality you’re happy with. A decent Vulkan compatible dGPU is recommended but the app will run on iGPUs — just not super fast!
Recent changes to Upscaler include:
- You can now load multiple images prior to upscaling
- Images can be copied to the clipboard
- Option to only save images if successfully upscaled
- Reduced memory consumption
- Improve performance when loading images
Interested in checking it out? You can get Upscaler on Flathub.
VirtualBox 7.2.0 (Beta)
I try not to cover non-stable releases in this recaps but given a) it’s Virtualbox and b) a pretty major update, I figured what the heck!
Oracle is prepping the following new features for VirtualBox 7.2.0, and this beta build provides an early opportunity to sample them firsthand:
- UI tweaks: various tools moved out of menu and on to toolbars
- Windows Arm (host) support
- ARM hosts can now run Windows 11 on Arm VMs
- Guest additions for running Windows Arm (as guest)
- vboxwebsrv is now included in Arm host packages
- Arm VMs now support ACPI
- libIDL and IASL dependencies dropped
If you’re running VirtualBox on an Arm host, be aware that saved states of Arm VMs in VirtualBox 7.1 are incompatible with VirtualBox 7.2, so shutdown any VM prior to upgrading as you won’t be able to resume it after.
VirtualBox source code is now available on GitHub too, having previously been accessible via an official Oracle SVN. Whether it’s moved or merely merely, putting code on GitHub may help spur contributions from non-Oracle devs.
VirtualBox 7.2.0 Beta can be built from source code (!) but I think the regularly produced ‘testing’ and ‘development’ builds should offer most of what the beta has. Grab those here.
Plank Reloaded 0.11.128
Plank Reloaded, a revival of Linux desktop dock Plank, has seen plenty of development effort since I spotlighted it earlier this year. In past month, the following improvements have been added:
- Theme engine now supports badge theming options
- “Restrict to Workspace” functionality substantially reworked
- Option to disable tooltips
- Reveal logic updated when GapSize is above 0
- Pressure threshold for “Pressure Reveal” reduced
- Context menu window list now has close buttons
Although somewhat catering to users of the Cinnamon desktop, Plank Reloaded works on most desktop environments, and includes a decent set of new and improved ‘docklets’. If you want to play around with it, download the latest releases from the plank-reloaded GitHub.
Inkscape 1.4.2
Artists, illustrators and other digital creatives may want to make the effort to update to Inkscape 1.4.2, the latest point release in the 1.4.x series, as it includes important fixes, tool tweaks, and a couple of neat-sounding visual changes:
- New splash screen to provide ‘visual cue’ while Inkscape loads
- Support for importing Vectornator/Linearity Curve files
- New Clean up Paths extension
- Impoved Affinity Designer files (.afdesign) import
- More collapsible groups in toolbars to let Inkscape fit 720p screens
- 20 crash/freeze fixes, many affecting PDF import
- Bug fixes and improvements to boolean operations & layer selection
- Snap packages fixes, including working export dialog
In all, a solid set of improvements for this open-source artistry staple.
You can download Inkscape from the official website for Windows, macOS and Linux, where the latter is supported by an AppImage. Alternatively, you can find Inkscape on Flathub or the Canonical Snap Store – both official packages.
Thunderbird 139
Open-source email client Thunderbird continues to refine its feature set apace in its monthly releases, which are the default versions for new installs downloaded from the Thunderbird website.
Thunderbird 139 adds actions to notifications for new emails, letting you ‘Mark as Read’ or ‘Delete’ e-mails directly from the desktop toast about them — saving you time.
Elsewhere, if using the card view for emails you can now switch between 2-line and 3-line summaries by setting your preference in Settings > Appearance; and folders can now be manually sorted in the folder pane.
Plenty of bug fixes feature in this update, designed to finesse the overall experience and reduce frustration from errant errors. Among them, an issue to resolve folder tree message counts being incorrect (though this only happened under certain conditions).
The Thunderbird snap in Ubuntu is pegged to the slower ESR cadence, so if you want to use the release channel version you’ll need to swap to the beta channel (do that in App Center).
Alternatively, download Thunderbird from the official website, which provides installers for Windows and macOS, along with a standalone binary runtime for Linux.
Phew, another month’s roundup done! While not a comprehensive list of every single update put out in the past 30 days, these updates cover apps I have written about in the past, or that I know are popular with many of you reading.
Until next month!