It’s not every day that a project gets noticed on the wider Linux internet, so imagine my surprise when Leonardo received a little “stub mention” over at LinuxLinks.
https://www.linuxlinks.com/leonardo-media-conversion-application/
Now, to be clear, this isn’t a full-length review where they dissect every line of code and award it a gold star for Linux nerd excellence. It’s what they call a stub — essentially a “Hey, this exists and it looks interesting” mention.
But you know what?
In the open-source world, that’s basically the equivalent of getting a nod from the Renaissance guild masters.
And if you look at the image above, Leonardo da Vinci himself appears quite pleased about it.
I assume he’s pointing at the tablet while yelling something like:
“Behold! My multimedia conversion apparatus has been acknowledged by the Linux scholars!”
Or something like that.
Leonardo 10.0.13: Fixing the TikTok Crop Madness
While all this excitement was happening, Leonardo version 10.0.13 quietly solved a couple of real-world annoyances.
First up: the TikTok crop feature.
If you’ve ever tried converting landscape video into something TikTok-friendly, you know the pain. Vertical video formats are basically the digital equivalent of trying to stuff a pizza into a Pringles can.
Earlier versions of Leonardo occasionally produced crops that were… let’s say artistically interpretive.
In 10.0.13 the crop logic has been cleaned up, so vertical output for TikTok, Shorts, and other 9:16 platforms behaves properly and consistently.
No more weird framing.
No more accidental close-ups of someone’s elbow.
Just properly formatted vertical video.
Leonardo would approve.
Fedora and FFmpeg: A Small Adventure
The second issue came courtesy of our friends in the Fedora Linux ecosystem.
Fedora occasionally updates system libraries that FFmpeg depends on, and when that happens software using FFmpeg can suddenly behave like a Renaissance inventor who forgot where he left his blueprints.
Leonardo was affected by one of these library shifts.
The good news:
Leonardo 10.0.13 now accounts for the Fedora changes, restoring compatibility and smoothing things out again.
In other words:
Leonardo is once again happily converting videos instead of staring blankly into the Linux void.
More Compatibility Improvements
Beyond the headline fixes, this release also includes general compatibility improvements to make Leonardo behave better across different Linux systems.
Linux is wonderful… but it also has roughly 4,000 different ways to package the same library, so software sometimes needs a little extra help navigating the ecosystem.
Leonardo continues getting better at that.
Slowly but surely.
Like a Renaissance workshop refining its latest invention.
A Small Mention, A Big Motivation
Getting noticed by sites like LinuxLinks — even in a small way — is encouraging.
Open source projects often start as one person tinkering with something because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Then one day someone else notices.
Then someone else downloads it.
And before long, you’ve accidentally built software people actually use.
Which is both exciting and mildly terrifying.
Try Leonardo
If you want to see what all the excitement is about, you can grab Leonardo here:
GitHub:
https://github.com/RossContino1/Leonardo
Project Page:
https://bytesbreadbbq.com/leonardo
And if LinuxLinks decides to do a full review someday…
I suspect the Renaissance celebration image above will look even more justified.