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How to Upgrade Manually to Ubuntu 26.10 "Stonking Stingray"

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  With the development cycle for Ubuntu 26.10 officially underway, Canonical has published stonking/snapshot-1 . For early adopters, developers, and enthusiasts looking to ride the absolute edge of the open-source wave, the temptation to jump from the stable shores of 26.04 LTS, Resolute Raccoon, into the development stream is strong. Because the automated release pathways are not populated so early in the cycle, the standard do-release-upgrade -d tool will politely decline to find the new branch. To make the leap, we must step past the guardrails and manage our repository tracking manually. > Important Prerequisite: Upgrading to a day-one snapshot moves your environment into a highly experimental space. Ensure all core personal files, configurations, and local development repositories are thoroughly backed up before executing these steps. Ubuntu 26.04 has transitioned to a modern, structured deb822 formatting layout for core package sources. This means standard mod...
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Sneaking Early Gemini Features Into Google Home

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Gemini for Home still isn’t officially rolled out, but there’s a workaround floating around that lets you access part of the Gemini experience early: the upgraded Gemini voice pack, which is normally tied to the upcoming Home assistant revamp.

On your phone, pop this into your browser:


This deep-link forces the Google Home app to launch the new Voice Setup UI — the same one Google is reserving for the Gemini transition.

If you’re using Chrome, pick the second option when it appears. The first one is just a Google search.
You might see a “Continue to Home?” prompt,  hit Continue.

You’re immediately given a choice of ten new voices, polished, ultra-natural, and clearly modeled after the more expressive Gemini TTS engine:

Amaryllis – soft, airy, almost therapeutic

Calathea – deeper, grounded

Croton – bright, youthful

Yarrow – calm, articulate

They have that Gemini warmth, the same energy Google used in its AI Studio demos, not the old robotic Assistant voices. You can hear the difference instantly.

After choosing a voice, you’re taken through sections like:

Response Filtering 

Voice Access to Camera History 

The assistant still introduces itself as Google Assistant, and none of the actual Gemini reasoning or conversational intelligence is active.
It’s like you’ve installed the skin, not the soul.

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