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Do a presentation at NTLUG.
What is the Linux Installation Project?
Real companies using Linux!
Not just for business anymore.
Providing ready to run platforms on Linux
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Show Descriptions... (Show All)
(Two Column)
- [$] Reviewing kernel patches with LLMs
In a plenary session atthe2026 Linux Storage,Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, the state of patchreview using large language models (LLMs) was discussed. It is a topic that has been swirling around in thekernel community for much of the year. The plenary, which was led by RomanGushchin, Chris Mason, Josef Bacik, and Sasha Levin, resulted in a quite bitof discussion, so much that a second filesystem-track-only (though otherssurely sat in) slot was used to continue it later in the day.
- Comprehensive Response to Bambu's AGPLv3 Violations (Software Freedom Conservancy)
The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC)published a newsitem on May 18 about its response to violations of the AGPLv3 by BambuLab in its 3D printers. The company has not provided the source code toits modifications to a 3D "slicer" program that was released under theAGPLv3 and it has also threatened Paweł Jarczak who created a fork of adifferent slicer (Orca Slicer) released under AGPLv3 in order to interoperate with hisBambu printer. Based on that, the SFC has created the baltobuproject aimed at reverse-engineering and reimplementing the Bambu codewhile also hosting the Orca Slicer fork.Bambu has behaved badly for years and made multiple, provably false public statements regarding the AGPLv3 and its requirements. The recent aggressive behavior toward Paweł Jarczak was a last straw for us: we have decided to launch a multi-pronged effort that will assist consumers and users in the short-term, and also work toward a long-term strategy to improve the software right to repair for all 3D printer consumers.
- [$] Tier-aware memory-controller limits
Joshua Hahn began his session in the memory-management track of the 2026 Linux Storage,Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit by saying that the memorycontroller for control groups is intended to provide resource allocation,accounting, and protection from interference by other tasks. Butit was not really designed for tiered-memory systems; he is looking for away to improve that situation.
- Security updates for Monday
Security updates have been issued by Debian (atril, evince, gnutls28, haproxy, haveged, jq, kernel, krb5, libgcrypt20, nodejs, and thunderbird), Fedora (aw-server-rust, awatcher, bind, bind-dyndb-ldap, chromium, composer, docker-buildkit, docker-buildx, dotnet10.0, dotnet8.0, dotnet9.0, evince, firefox, httpd, kernel, nodejs-aw-webui, nss, perl-Apache-Session-Browseable, pie, python-pulp-glue, python-requests, and python3.15), Slackware (kernel), SUSE (apptainer, chromium, cockpit, dnsmasq, google-guest-agent, hauler, iproute2, jfrog-cli, kernel, libecpg6, libsolv, libzypp, zypper, mcphost, oci-cli, perl-YAML-Syck, python-lxml, python-urllib3, python311-impacket, rqlite, rsync, util-linux, and xz), and Ubuntu (evince, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, linux-azure-fips, linux-azure-4.15, linux-azure-fips, linux-fips, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-oracle-6.17, node-path-to-regexp, and rclone).
- [$] Dirk and Linus discuss AI and kernel development
Linus Torvalds does not enjoy giving talks, but he does consent tothe occasional on-stage conversation with Dirk Hohndel at LinuxFoundation events. The pair held the 30th of their fire-less firesidechats during a keynote session on May 20, at the 2026 OpenSource Summit North America. Topics included 3D printing, guitarpedals, the recent 7.1-rc4 release of the kernel, and Torvalds'scomplicated relationship with AI tooling.
- Kernel prepatch 7.1-rc5
The 7.1-rc5 kernel prepatch is out fortesting. Quoth Linus:
I'm not entirely happy about it - most of this is totally trivial stuff to random drivers, which obviously makes it all less scary, but at the same time I'm really not convinced the churn is worth it at rc5 time. These things are "fixes", sure, but at the same time a lot of them are simply so irrelevant that I think they'd be better off in a linux-next tree and get merged during the merge window.
So I think I'll start being a bit more hardnosed about this kind of unnecessary churn this late in the game. We are supposed to look for *regressions*. Non-critical fixes to long-standing issues are simply not appropriate for this late in the release cycle. End result: this is too big, and this is the heads-up that I'll be pushing back on pointless pull requests with fixes that just aren't that important. And yes, several of these series were triggered by AI code review.
- [$] Custom page-cache policies with BPF
The kernel's page cache is charged with maintaining pages (or, morecorrectly, folios) containing copies ofdata from files in the filesystem; its performance has a big effect on theperformance of the system as a whole. One of the key decisions the kernelmust make is when to evict folios from the page cache. At the 2026 Linux Storage,Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, Tal Zussman ran amemory-management-track session on how the page cache could be bettercustomized for specific workloads. It will not be much of a spoiler to saythat it involves BPF.
- [$] Toward better handling of major page faults
A major page fault occurs when a process attempts to access a page that isnot currently present in RAM; satisfying such faults usually involves I/O, and can thus take some time. When many threadssharing an address space are generating page faults, the result can besignificant lock contention while that I/Otakes place. During the memory-management track at the 2026 Linux Storage,Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, Barry Song led a sessionto try, yet again, to find an enduring solution to this problem.
- Security updates for Friday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (firefox), Debian (chromium, nss, openvpn, and thunderbird), Fedora (cockpit, kernel, and linux-firmware), Oracle (gdk-pixbuf2, kernel, and libsndfile), SUSE (container-suseconnect, cpp-httplib, dnsmasq, firefox, glibc, GraphicsMagick, java-1_8_0-openj9, kernel, mozjs115, php8, python-urllib3, rekor, rootlesskit, rsync, tiff, ucode-intel, util-linux, and xz), and Ubuntu (bind9, bubblewrap, libarchive, linux-intel-iot-realtime, postgresql-14, postgresql-16, postgresql-17, postgresql-18, and xdg-desktop-portal).
- Comet A13 evaluation kit showcases Agilex 5 SoC FPGA with Linux support
The Terasic Comet A13 SoM and Evaluation Kit form a compact platform built around the Altera Agilex 5 E-Series SoC FPGA. The platform features FPGA fabric together with Arm Cortex-A76 and Cortex-A55 processor cores, LPDDR4 memory, high-speed transceivers, and expansion interfaces targeting edge AI, machine vision, robotics, industrial automation, and embedded applications. The Comet A13 […]
- Jetway BFNZASL2 supports pfSense and OpenWrt in a fanless form factor
The Jetway BFNZASL2 is a fanless embedded networking system built around Intel processors including the Intel Atom x7835RE (Amston Lake), Intel Processor N97, and Intel Atom x7425E. The platform features four 2.5GbE interfaces with optional Wi-Fi 6 and 5G connectivity for networking and edge applications. The primary configuration uses the Intel Atom x7835RE processor with […]
- SpaceX Launches 29 Starlink Satellites on Memorial Day
"The expansion of SpaceX's Starlink network of internet relay satellites continued Monday with a Memorial Day launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station," reports Spaceflight Now.The mission added another 29 Starlink satellites to more than 10,000 already in low Earth orbit:This was SpaceX's 60th orbital flight of the year, consisting of 59 Falcon 9 rockets and one Falcon Heavy rocket... Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, [Falcon 9 first stage] B1078 landed on the drone ship, 'A Shortfall of Gravitas,' positioned in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina. This was the 151st landing for this vessel and the 614th booster landing to date for SpaceX. Meanwhile, the second stage shut down eight minutes and 39 seconds into flight and entered a coast phase, before short second burn at T+52 minutes. The stack of Starlink satellites deployed 61 minutes and 26 seconds after launch. On X.com SpaceX shared footage of the booster rocket landing, and a longer video showing Starship's 12th test flight Friday.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Will Big Tech Layoffs Bring a Culture Shift to Anxiety and Job Insecurity?
Tech industry layoffs may be worse at large tech companies than the rest of the IT industry. The New York Times argues those layoffs have now shifted the culture at Big Tech companies, after interviewing more than two dozen of their workers. "Cooperation and collegiality are on the wane; chumminess between employees and managers has cooled as mutual suspicion pervades their relationships; and a throbbing economic anxiety infects almost every conversation. "Perhaps no site on the internet reflects this transformation more vividly than Blind, where users can post in private channels restricted to employees of a single company, or public channels visible to anyone..."Since 2022, large tech companies have collectively laid off more than 150,000 workers, unraveling what many tech workers once perceived as a guarantee of affluence and employability. The threat of being replaced by artificial intelligence has loomed over those who remain. This year alone, Amazon has indicated that it is laying off more than 15,000 workers, Block 4,000, Meta 8,000 and Oracle an estimated 30,000... By most measures, the sentiments that Blind tracks have taken a turn for the worse. During the nearly four years before tech companies began major layoffs in the fall of 2022, Meta and Microsoft employees posted about career success — topics like how to maximize their salary or win promotions — more than four times as often as they posted about job insecurity, according to Blind. Since then, the ratios have lurched in the opposite direction: Meta and Microsoft employees have posted about job insecurity roughly 1.5 times as often as they post about success... The shift has had practical effects. A Meta employee said in an interview that some workers on her team now used less vacation time and that, in a break with custom, people frequently checked on their projects while on vacation. They increasingly worry about getting a poor performance review or losing their job if they aren't constantly available. The employee, who declined to be identified for fear of retribution, said she and many of her colleagues frequently checked Blind because it could be comforting to see how many other Meta workers shared their anxieties. Employees at several companies said in interviews that their morale was further undermined by the feeling that the layoffs were abrupt and arbitrary, and executed with little empathy. Several tech workers said it was the scarcity of information about possible layoffs that raised their cortisol levels and made it difficult to focus on their jobs. They often fill the vacuum by turning to Blind, which, in addition to posts by workers, features a "tech layoff tracker" that lists both layoff rumors and those it has confirmed. "I was on Blind five days a week," said Faith Wilkins El, a software engineer who was laid off from Oracle in late March, after more than four years at the company. Wilkins El, who is part of the Oracle Workers Collective, a group seeking better severance agreements with the company, said navigating Blind was sometimes stressful because it was hard to know what was true or false. (Blind says it has a security team to weed out bad actors, like those who may try to register under fake email addresses.) Still, she found it more helpful than not because the layoffs came as less of a shock after she spent time on the site. "I was trying to get prepared mentally," she said. Blind is capitalizing on the increased interest with new products. It plans to unveil a service called Blind AI, which will allow employers to simulate their workers' reactions to certain changes, like a stricter in-office mandate. And it is close to releasing a feature to alert users that layoffs are imminent.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- It's Like the Olympics - But Steroids Are Allowed
"Think Olympics on steroids. Literally," quips the BBC, describing Sunday's controversial Enhanced Games event in Las Vegas featuring dozens of athletes "using performance-enhancing drugs to try and break world records in track, weightlifting and swimming. Some $25m (£18.6m) in prize money is up for grabs — with cash prizes for winners... The drugs they use must be legal, and approved by the Federal Drug Administration. But substances like testosterone and human growth hormone — banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency — are not only celebrated here, they're encouraged and for sale... Health experts warn that anabolic steroids and growth hormones can cause strokes and cardiovascular damage, among other risks. Event organisers claim Enhanced will push the limits of human performance while critics, especially in the Olympic movement, dismiss it as an affront to the spirit and founding principles of competitive sport... Earlier this month, the Enhanced Group — the company behind the competition — began trading on the New York Stock Exchange. And the competition is seemingly being treated as an opportunity for Enhanced to sell performance-enhancing medicine and supplements online. "The project was founded by entrepreneurs Aron D'Souza and Maximilian Martin in 2023," the artidcle points out, "and has attracted backing from prominent investors including billionaire Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr." And NPR adds that "Most of the participating athletes trained for the competition in Abu Dhabi, as part of Enhanced's own study."Enhanced did not break down what specific athletes used which drugs, but they announced on Wednesday in the lead-up to the event that 91% of the athletes competing used testosterone or testosterone esters, 79% used human growth hormone, and 62% used stimulants, such as adderall... The games have been largely panned by outside medical experts and sports governing bodies. Multiple recent studies assess the harm surrounding the Enhanced Games. Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, called the games a "dangerous clown show that puts profit over principle" in a statement. The International Olympic Committee said the games are a "betrayal of everything that we stand for." The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) last year urged U.S. authorities to stop the games. The International Federation of Sports Medicine said in 2024 that they see the medical oversight as "insufficient" to support theathletes.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- California Executive Order Directs Businesses and State Agencies to Prepare for AI-Driven Workforce Disruption
Thursday California's governor issued an executive order "directing state agencies to prepare workers and businesses for AI-driven workforce disruption," reports San Francisco's KQED. In a statement the governor said "This moment demands that we reimagine the entire system — how we work, how we govern, how we prepare people for the future."The order mandates agencies to explore a range of policy options, including severance standards, expanded unemployment insurance, job retraining programs aimed specifically at white-collar workers, worker ownership models and a concept the governor called "universal basic capital," giving all residents a stake in assets such as corporate stocks, bonds or wealth funds... Tom Kemp, executive director of the California Privacy Protection Agency, applauded the fact that the order named data privacy as a consumer protection concern and highlighted the CPPA's automated decision-making technology regulations, which he called "the nation's most comprehensive." Others are more skeptical. "Catastrophic job loss from AI is not inevitable, it's a political choice," Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO, wrote in a statement. However, Gonzalez noted one area of genuine agreement: the order's emphasis on collective bargaining as a tool for protecting workers from AI displacement... According to Stanford HAI's 2026 AI Index, software developers ages 22 to 25 are among those most likely to see their skills made redundant earliest. This year, U.S. employment fell nearly 20% from 2024, even as headcount for older developers continued to grow. Following the job cuts announced at Meta, a union of Alphabet workers in the U.S. and Canada released a statement that suggests Silicon Valley's own labor force may seek to organize... "It's undeniable that our whole industry is being transformed by the corporate push to adopt new AI tools," [Alphabet Workers Union-CWA Local 9009 said in a statement]. "It's hard not to feel anxiety and fear when we can see more and more tech companies cutting huge portions of their workforce both in anticipation of replacing them with AI, and to fund their multi-billion-dollar bets on AI as the future of the industry..." In February, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and Gonzalez delivered what amounted to an ultimatum to Newsom: regulate AI or lose labor's support for any future presidential run. Shuler called a potential AI-driven economic collapse a coming "crisis." In August 2025, Newsom announced a partnership with Google, Microsoft, IBM and Adobe to expand AI education in California schools and community colleges, a workforce preparation push that now looks like a precursor to Thursday's more sweeping order. The article notes that after signing the bill the governor shared this comment on X.com. "California will pursue new policies that make sure working Californians — not just Big Tech — benefit from the wealth and breakthroughs coming out of this space." Newsom telegraphed Thursday's order earlier this week, when he appeared at the Center for American Progress IDEAS Conference in Washington. "Businesses are going to make a fortune, and that's why you cannot continue to have a payroll tax system that taxes jobs and then subsidizes automation."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- AI 'Crashes the Party' at This Year's Cannes Film Festival - Including Multi-Year Meta Partnership
AI "crashed the party" at this year's Cannes Film Festival, writes The Hollywood Reporter. The festival exposed "the fault lines reshaping cinema," their article argues, including how "AI is here — and the industry has stopped pretending otherwise."A humanoid robot spotted marching up and down the Croisette seemed to sum up the worst AI fears of the film industry — the machines have arrived and they are taking your place. But inside the Palais and the market tents, the conversation over artificial intelligence had moved beyond fear into something more like uneasy acceptance. Fighting AI "is a battle we will lose," said Demi Moore, a Cannes jury member this year, at the festival's opening press conference, suggesting the film industry needs to "find ways in which we can work with it." That's not the official Cannes line. The festival has banned films using generative artificial intelligence from its competition lineup. But at the Cannes film market, and in discussions at industry events over the past two weeks, the tone has shifted. AI-friendly tech giant Meta signed on as an official partner to the festival in a multiyear deal. Its AI tools were used to help produce an [out of competition] festival entry: Steven Soderbergh's documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview. [Meta's press release announcing the partnership touts "our creator partnerships," their Meta AI assistant, and "our latest AI and wearable technologies" including Ray-Ban Meta AI features for smartglasses like "AI-powered translations that break down language barriers in real-time".] At the Marché du Film [film market], there was an "AI for Talent Summit" that took the AI revolution as given, focusing instead on ethical AI use, data sovereignty and on the ways the technology can be used to enhance, rather than replace, creativity. For the indie film industry, it felt like a turning point.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- FreeBSD Foundation Executive Director Tries Daily Driving FreeBSD On Laptop
Phoronix reports on a presentation about trying FreeBSD on modern Framework laptop from last week's Open Source Summit hosted by the Linux Foundation:With FreeBSD having worked on improving its laptop support over the past two years with some big changes and ongoing efforts for making a nice KDE desktop experience on FreeBSD, FreeBSD Foundation's Executive Director has been trying to daily drive FreeBSD on laptops... With the Framework Laptop, the touchscreen "just worked" as did other basic functionality from the KDE desktop on FreeBSD, including peripherals like a wireless mouse. Among the challenges were Zoom failing for video calls but eventually working, the web camera took steps to enable, and Microsoft Teams only partially worked. With the help of online resources, ultimately she was able to succeed in her journey of running FreeBSD daily on a laptop.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Canonical Is Shutting Down Ubuntu Pastebin
"Canonical says Ubuntu Pastebin will be decommissioned at the end of May 2026," writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli, "as part of an infrastructure modernization effort."The announcement only appeared this week, giving the Linux community barely any warning before a service that has been tied to Ubuntu support culture for years suddenly disappears. Ubuntu Pastebin has long been used for sharing logs, crash reports, config files, and terminal output across IRC, Ask Ubuntu, forums, bug reports, Reddit, and countless troubleshooting guides scattered around the internet. The bigger concern is link rot. Once the shutdown happens, years of old support discussions could lose critical debugging information overnight. Community members have already pointed out that some Ubuntu packages and scripts still reference paste.ubuntu.com directly. While it is understandable that aging services eventually get retired, the extremely short transition period is rubbing many Linux users the wrong way, especially in a community where old documentation and archived troubleshooting threads still regularly help people solve problems a decade later.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Mozilla Brings Web Serial Workflows to Firefox, Collaborates With Adafruit
The Web Serial API lets websites write to (and read from) serial devices using JavaScript, including USB and Bluetooth devices with virtual serial ports. And this week's Firefox 151 release introduced support for the Web Serial API on desktop. "Most folks won't use this API," acknowledges Mozilla's blog, "but for our community of builders and tinkerers, it unlocks the ability to use Firefox to communicate directly with compatible hardware devices like microcontrollers, development boards, and other serial-connected devices..."With Firefox's browser engine, Gecko, now supporting Web Serial, users can now connect, code, configure, and control compatible hardware directly from the browser in many workflows, often without additional software or complicated setup... As part of this week's launch, Adafruit, one of the internet's most beloved open-source hardware communities, is collaborating with us to test and validate what browser-based hardware development can look like in Firefox with Web Serial support... With Web Serial support in Firefox 151, Adafruit's browser-based hardware workflows now work directly in Firefox as well, with no additional software or complicated setup required for many projects. We invite you to give it a try... We want the web to be open, flexible, and shaped by the diversity of people building on it. If you're wiring up your first board, experimenting with hardware projects, or dusting off an old electronics kit, give Adafruit and Web Serial in Firefox a try. Build something amazing. Make something useful. Tell us what works. Tell us what breaks. Most of all, make it your own. Mozilla's "Hacks" blog demonstrates with an Adafruit ESP32-S2 based board "where messages sent from web code can be directly displayed on the device over Web Serial." And Mozilla engineer Alex Franchuk even built a handheld device that changes a web page's CSS properties.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Disney's 'Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu' Opens to 'Mixed' Box Office Results
It's "the first time in seven years that a new Star Wars film has launched on the big screen," writes CNBC. And Variety notes it's expected to earn $102 million through Monday:[B]ox office analysts are mixed on the results. On one hand, it's significant for any film to debut above $100 million in post-pandemic times. On the other, "Star Wars" is one of Hollywood's preeminent film properties, so there's an expectation of a certain level of box office. And this start is the worst for "Star Wars" since Disney bought the franchise in 2012. CNBC cites reports 41% of tickets were sold for more expensive large-format screenings like IMAX and DolbyCinema. So how's the movie? Rotten Tomatoes shows an 89% positive rating from moviegoers on its "popcornmeter" and a 62% average score from professional movie critics. And Ars Technica writes that "The plot is predictable, the fight scenes are meh, but you can't beat the charm of that little green Grogu." So while there's "a paint-by-numbers plot," they add that "the little green puppet pretty much carries the entire film."The new film is ... fine. It's an average Star Wars outing, and it will give families a solid Memorial Day Weekend entertainment option. It's just not the spectacular home run that might have helped launch the flagging franchise into an exciting new era, and diehard Star Wars fans hoping for more are probably going to be disappointed. Of course, not everyone agrees. "How many nails can we realistically drive into Star Wars's coffin before it's time to give up hope of resuscitation?" writes Clarisse Loughrey for The Independent, calling it "the dullest and most inconsequential 'Star Wars' ever made." (She argues that the movie "stitches together what is clearly three episodes of the previously planned fourth season of The Mandalorian and calls it a day. There's not a whiff of effort here.") And a reviewer at RogerEbert.com gave it one-and-a-half stars, complaining that "There's no reason for anything in this movie except the wish to make even more money...."I'm on record as despising the word "content," which was pushed by early tech moguls to devalue art as interchangeable goo in a virtual pipeline, but this washed-out, video-game-looking movie, with its murky night scenes and lack of visual depth, deserves the word. You've seen everything in it before, from the equipment, spacecraft, armor, and tactical maneuvers to the species and various types of terrain (earthlike, but cartoony)... Even Grogu taxes our patience. Some of his cute bits could've ended with him facing the camera and doing jazz hands.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Apple Preparing New 'Gen AI' Website Ahead of WWDC — and New AI Features?
Apple just registered a new subdomain record: genai.apple.com. The domain was spotted by a MacRumors contributing researcher, and though it doesn't yet lead to a live web page, they believe it's tied to Apple's annual developers conference WWDC which starts June 8, "where the company has promised to announce 'AI advancements' across its software platforms." The blog 9to5Mac speculates that "All signs point to WWDC 2026 being Apple's major AI renaissance, where the company will live up to the promises it made back at WWDC 2024, as well as a few additional new announcements."[I]it goes without saying that this is probably related to Apple's upcoming generative AI announcements at WWDC... Siri should finally be able to understand more personal context, have on screen awareness, and be able to take action in apps for you. This'll finally be made possible thanks to Apple's new partnership with Google, where Apple will be using Gemini-diffused models hosted on Private Cloud Compute to power Siri... Apple will also reportedly be introducing a new Siri app. This'll allow you to access your previous Siri conversations, as well as have text-based conversations with Siri. Other Apple Intelligence upgrades coming at WWDC 2026 include the ability to generate wallet passes from physical tickets, new editing features in the Photos app, and additional functionality for Visual Intelligence...
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Security: Why Linux Is Better Than Windows Or Mac OS
Linux is a free and open source operating system that was released in 1991 developed and released by Linus Torvalds. Since its release it has reached a user base that is greatly widespread worldwide. Linux users swear by the reliability and freedom that this operating system offers, especially when compared to its counterparts, windows and [0]
- Essential Software That Are Not Available On Linux OS
An operating system is essentially the most important component in a computer. It manages the different hardware and software components of a computer in the most effective way. There are different types of operating system and everything comes with their own set of programs and software. You cannot expect a Linux program to have all [0]
- Things You Never Knew About Your Operating System
The advent of computers has brought about a revolution in our daily life. From computers that were so huge to fit in a room, we have come a very long way to desktops and even palmtops. These machines have become our virtual lockers, and a life without these network machines have become unimaginable. Sending mails, [0]
- How To Fully Optimize Your Operating System
Computers and systems are tricky and complicated. If you lack a thorough knowledge or even basic knowledge of computers, you will often find yourself in a bind. You must understand that something as complicated as a computer requires constant care and constant cleaning up of junk files. Unless you put in the time to configure [0]
- The Top Problems With Major Operating Systems
There is no such system which does not give you any problems. Even if the system and the operating system of your system is easy to understand, there will be some times when certain problems will arise. Most of these problems are easy to handle and easy to get rid of. But you must be [0]
- 8 Benefits Of Linux OS
Linux is a small and a fast-growing operating system. However, we can’t term it as software yet. As discussed in the article about what can a Linux OS do Linux is a kernel. Now, kernels are used for software and programs. These kernels are used by the computer and can be used with various third-party software [0]
- Things Linux OS Can Do That Other OS Cant
What Is Linux OS? Linux, similar to U-bix is an operating system which can be used for various computers, hand held devices, embedded devices, etc. The reason why Linux operated system is preferred by many, is because it is easy to use and re-use. Linux based operating system is technically not an Operating System. Operating [0]
- Packagekit Interview
Packagekit aims to make the management of applications in the Linux and GNU systems. The main objective to remove the pains it takes to create a system. Along with this in an interview, Richard Hughes, the developer of Packagekit said that he aims to make the Linux systems just as powerful as the Windows or [0]
- What’s New in Ubuntu?
What Is Ubuntu? Ubuntu is open source software. It is useful for Linux based computers. The software is marketed by the Canonical Ltd., Ubuntu community. Ubuntu was first released in late October in 2004. The Ubuntu program uses Java, Python, C, C++ and C# programming languages. What Is New? The version 17.04 is now available here [0]
- Ext3 Reiserfs Xfs In Windows With Regards To Colinux
The problem with Windows is that there are various limitations to the computer and there is only so much you can do with it. You can access the Ext3 Reiserfs Xfs by using the coLinux tool. Download the tool from the official site or from the sourceforge site. Edit the connection to “TAP Win32 Adapter [0]
- The Nokia N8 has a brand new, modern, actively maintained, and regularly updated Symbian ROM
I have a Nokia N8, and its one of my favourite retro (?) devices I own. It was one of Nokias last efforts to make Symbian happen in the post-iPhone era, and while the hardware was quite nice, Symbian just wasnt made for multitouch devices. It didnt move the needle much for an already dying Nokia, and things just got worse from there. A bright spot with the Nokia N9, some decent Windows Phone devices, and then the end. We all know the story. The Nokia N8, though, seems to have been given a new lease on life recently. This smartphone, released in 2010, can be turned into a usable, capable device again, thanks to a brand new, modern custom Symbian ROM called Reborn. It takes the latest stock Symbian version for the N8, removes any and all applications/links/etc. that dont work anymore, and then proceeds to make a ton of things work again. Modern TLS for HTTPS support, updated certificates, modern email support, a brand new application store, a new update application with a steady stream of OTA updates to fix issues, a bunch of security fixes, a whole slew of quality-of-life touches, and so, so much more. This is absolutely amazing work. Clearly a labour of love, theres already been tons of updates over the past year since the ROMs initial release, and I obviously cant not install this on my own N8, assuming it still works. A video by Janus Cycle covering the project is also available, for the more visually-oriented among us.
- Microsoft continues beating the agentic! Windows drum
Were a mere €124 away from the first incentive during our fundraiser: making me use stock Windows 11 for a month. Since the writing appears to be on the wall, and the donation pulling us across the line can come in any moment, I figured Id better take a peek at how things stand with Windows. I came across a story about Yusuf Mehdi, an executive vice president and consumer chief marketing officer, who apparently became the face of Microsofts AI! push. After 35 years, hes leaving the company, but not after pledging to continue pushing AI! deeper into Windows 11. Despite this intense backlash, Mehdi is doubling down on the AI vision during his final months at the company. In his LinkedIn announcement, he stated: “I will work through the next fiscal year to help reimagine Windows for the agentic era, grow Microsoft 365 services, and bring our One Copilot vision to life.” Microsoft has recently scaled back on some intrusive Copilot features in Notepad, Snipping Tool, and Photos, but the executive leadership team still views AI agents as the inevitable future of the Windows desktop experience. ↫ Abhijith M B at Windows Latest The numbers for Microsoft and every other software company who dove head-first into AI! are clear: its one of the biggest bottomless pits of all time, and theyre all throwing money down the pit hoping itll eventually fill up and overflow. Meanwhile, 100 metres down in the pit, a dude in a leather jacket is holding out a bucket and collecting some of the money before it disappears into the void below. For Microsoft, AI! represents a $235 billion loss (so far!), so the company had to do something anything to stop the bleeding. They tried shoving Copilot buttons in every nook and cranny of its products, but users rightfully and understandably revolted. Theyre toning it down in Windows, and recently, theyve also had to tone it down in Office as users were horrified to discover a floating Copilot button in Word, Excel, and so on. People really do not want this shit, which puts these companies in a hugely precarious position: just how badly can they abuse the geese? Well see just how much Microsoft will actually roll back its force-feeding practices, and Im not excited to be partaking in the Windows 11 experiment soon.
- On C extensions, portability, and alternative compilers
Anyone whos written C knows that full ISO C standard-adhering code is an impractical rarity. Most real world C code out there relies on non-standard behaviors and language extensions to varying extents, and a lot of this isnt for extra features, but just to work around bugs and gaps in different compilers and libraries. A lot of codebases will try somewhat to support various environments, mostly through the use of preprocessor checks and guards, but these attempts are finicky at best and straight up broken at worst. I have ran into many of these situations while working on my C compiler, so heres a small list of some of them. ↫ lemon/Sofia Sometimes I wonder how computers even get anything done at all.
- Flatpak will depend on systemd
If you visit the Flatpak website today, it lists, as the very first advantage of the project: Build for every distro: create one app and distribute it to the entire Linux desktop market.! If you then move on to the list of supported distributions, youll see the usual suspects, but also distributions like Void Linux, Guix, and Alpine. These last three all have one thing in common: they use an init system other than systemd, because Flatpak doesnt care what init system you use. It seems that for the next major version of Flatpak, however, thats going to change: systemd will probably become a dependency for Flatpak. Speaking at the Linux App Summit, Arian Vovk and Sebastian Wick held a great talk about the future of Flatpak. The current version of Flatpak will continue to see a ton of improvements, but at the same time, the limits of what can be done with its decades-old design have become harder and harder to work around. As such, theyre also planning for and working on what they call Flatpak Next, or perhaps Flatpak 2.0, which is effectively a rewrite of Flatpak based on what theyve learned over the years, making use of modern technologies and ideas that have gained ground since the initial design of Flatpak 1.x. Its important to note that everything discussed during the talk is planning, and not a single line of code has been written yet. This means that all of these plans are subject to change, and as the work progresses over the coming years, the end result may turn out very different from whats been detailed in the talk. In addition, and I cant stress this enough: if anything in this discussion gives you even the smallest of inklings to go and harass, attack, insult, or otherwise bother anyone involved in Flatpak, systemd, or related technologies, please be so kind as to book an appointment for a yoga class or whatever. It seems like you need it. Right at the onset of the talk, Vovk and Wick explain that they want to move the permission management from Flatpak into the service layer, through a new service called systemd-appd. Systemd-appd gives applications an identifier and stores their permissions, and then this data can be queried by the rest of the system. In turn, this enables a slew of other features, not least of which is subsandboxing. At the moment, the plan is to introduce this feature in the current version of Flatpak, thereby introducing a dependency on systemd into Flatpak. From what I understand from Vovk, they were intending to be super considerate! of distributions and people not using systemd, which I take to mean wed eventually end up in a situation very similar to systemd-logind, which was extracted from systemd into a separate daemon, elogind, so that distributions using other init systems could still make use of desktop environments depending on systemd-logind. I imagine Flatpak developers wanted to make as many affordances as realistically possible for something similar to happen to systemd-appd, thus ensuring Flatpak would remain available on distributions not using systemd. Obviously, people who are using distributions like Void or Alpine were concerned about the future of Flatpak on their systems. If Flatpak gains a hard dependency on systemd, Flatpak would no longer work on distributions without systemd, so the talk raised questions sadly, it seems the questions were directed at someone not technically involved with Flatpak development, and his replies were not particularly helpful and often just downright insulting and inflammatory. Even though hes not involved in Flatpak development, enough people assumed that he was, and a toxic brew stirred. Users with genuine, friendly questions about the future of Flatpak on their systems were met with derision and insults, and it spiraled out of control from there, drawing in the rabid anti-systemd Red Hat conspiracy lunatics (and worse). Things got progressively worse for everyone involved, particularly for Flatpaks developers. And so we ended up at the situation where everyones mad and Flatpaks developers are not feeling inclined to spend time on that shit anymore! when it comes to accommodating and making affordances for distributions and people not using systemd. The end result will most likely be that any future Flatpak dependency on systemd will be stricter, and making any independent elogind-like daemon will be much harder than it was going to be. Nobody wins, everybody loses, all because some people thought it necessary and productive to be insulting and inflammatory. As things currently stands, its very likely that over the coming years, Flatpak will gain a dependency on systemd, possibly without any affordances for an independent daemon to replicate systemd-appd functionality on distributions that do not use systemd. In other words, Flatpak would no longer be able to boast that it enables Build for every distro: create one app and distribute it to the entire Linux desktop market.!, as it would no longer be distribution-agnostic. And thats a shame, because Flatpak fills a real need for users, regardless of whatever init system they use. Which is apparently something some people base their entire identity on, because theyre weirdos.
- Long-term support! does not mean what you think it does
You may think you know what long-term support! means when picking a Linux distribution and version, but judging by the multitude of utterly wrong takes and deeply confused users I come across online, Im starting to get the feeling that in fact, no, you dont know what it means. KDEs Nate Graham is seeing the same confusion, and has published a blog post going over what LTS really means in the Linux world. People seem to think that an LTS release means its going to be more stable, have fewer bugs, and receive support for a certain set period of time. The reality is that only that last one really applies, sort-of. LTS generally means youre going to be using a Linux distribution version where youll get security fixes and possibly maintenance updates for a set number of years, but you wont be getting updates with new features or other updates that arent security fixes. The purpose of an LTS release is to more or less freeze itself and its packages in time, so that users know exactly what theyre getting. However, part of being frozen in time means any bugs, crashes, and hardware support are also frozen in time. The end result is that LTS releases will often have wildly outdated package versions, and those outdated package versions will most likely contain a ton of bugs and issues that have long been fixed in subsequent releases subsequent releases youre not getting, because youre on an LTS release. LTS releases are fairly stable and reliable as long as you use the most popular software from their included software repositories. So in the circumstances when this stops being the case, I think sometimes people can feel betrayed. They think, “I thought this was supposed to be stable! Why didn’t anyone fix this bug yet? Where’s my long-term support?” But Debian, Ubuntu, and Kubuntu never promised any level of stability, reliability, or absence of bugs. They promised that the version-locked software in their repos would receive security fixes for a certain number of years. Ubuntu and Kubuntu also offered a certain amount of non-guaranteed best-effort hardware compatibility improvements and non-security bug fixes. ↫ Nate Graham This causes major problems for upstream developers. People who use an LTS release will be using versions of packages that are out of date and full of bugs that have already been fixed in later versions, but they dont know that, so they end up reporting these old bugs that have been fixed ages ago as if theyre new. If youre an LTS user and you experience a persistent bug and subsequent crash in Kwin, youre most likely going to complain at the Kwin developers, even if the Kwin developers have already fixed this bug 18 months ago. Every week theres at least a few developers in my Fedi timeline rolling their eyes at Debian users reporting bugs fixed ages ago and getting mad when told they should complain at Debian developers for not backporting the fix. So many LTS users seem to think that LTS equals increased stability, fewer bugs, and fewer crashes, but thats just not what LTS is for or what it claims to offer. Sticking to specific (major) versions of packages means not youre not only missing out on new features and changes which might be desirable for you but also on bug fixes. With LTS, as they say, the bugs are also stable.
- Gnutella: a protocol outliving the world that created it
Now thats a name I havent heard in a long time. Gnutella is a file sharing protocol that many have forgotten and it has the story of a decentralized technology adopted by millions of casual users who did not care to learn what a peer-to-peer system was. Users showed up because the protocol solved real problems at scale and the solution just so happened to be decentralized. No one ever pretended to use Gnutella in hopes their GnutellaCoinTM would go up in value later. They just downloaded MP3s. The network exploded in popularity, then plateaued for almost a decade, then settled into a permanent long tail state of continued but diminished use. Welcome to my overly enthusiastic love letter to Gnutella. ↫ Rick Carlino I genuinely didnt know or I had forgotten, more likely that Gnutella formed the backbone of LimeWire, another name I havent heard in a long time. Im quite sure I used LimeWire over 25 years ago, but details are fuzzy and I might be confusing it with other filesharing networks of a similar vintage. I was an avid CD buyer and MiniDisc user (I used MD well into the smartphone age), so I didnt have much need for downloading MP3s. Gnutella is also apparently still active, and there are still clients you can download and use. Of course, its a mere shadow of its former self, but this, too, was news to me. Im kind of inclined to see if its still hosting MP3s.
- Migrating from Ubuntu 16.04 to FreeBSD
Bruno Crocis blog had been running on Ubuntu 16.04 for a long time, well past the Linux distributions expiration date. As such, it was time to upgrade, but instead of opting for something standard like another Ubuntu release, he opted for FreeBSD instead. This blog has been running on a Digital Ocean VPS for over ten years. A machine hosted in New York City, running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. An LTS that hasn’t been in support for at least 5 years. It was about time to change it. After some considerations, I migrated to a Hetzner virtual machine that is way better than my old Ubuntu one, less than half the price of what I used to pay, and just across the country from me. Not only that, but I took the challenge to move my stack to FreeBSD. It’s a long text, but stay for a cool introduction of FreeBSD Jails with Bastille and some interesting site load benchmarks. ↫ Bruno Croci I absolutely adore the recent surge in people (re)discovering the BSDs as a valid alternative to Linux in both the server and desktop space. In this particular case, it was FreeBSDs Jails and ZFS support that won Corci over, and its easy to see why. While there are countless alternatives to Jails in the Linux world, ZFS is harder to come by as it cant be part of the kernel due to licensing issues. With how powerful and capable ZFS is, it makes sense to want to use it on your server, and in that case, FreeBSD is probably a better choice than most Linux distributions. There are countless reasons to choose one of the BSDs over a Linux distribution, and Im glad were seeing an uptick.
- Secure boot and Microsoft CA rollover: a heads-up for distributions
Weve already talked about the secure boot certificates from Microsoft that are about to become invalid, but Debian EFI team member and longtime Debian contributor Steve McIntyre published a blog post with more information for users and distribution developers alike. Why are Microsofts secure boot certificates relevant for the Linux world? Well, Linux distributions use shim to provide secure boot functionality, and this shim is signed with Microsofts certificates, because they are included in just about every single computer or motherboard ever shipped. The expiration of these oldest certificates should most likely not be a problem, as existing signed binaries should keep working. This is because the UEFI specification does not look at the expiration dates; it only cares that the signature is valid. Unless you have buggy firmware, your machine will continue to boot Linux just fine. Microsoft is already handing out new certificates, but they started the rollout of these way too late, so thats why its an actual issue today. New machines and updated older machines will most likely have all of these new CAs installed. New machines are already shipping that only include the new CAs; they will not trust older software and this has already started causing problems for some users. If you already have an old shim signed by Microsoft for your distribution from before October 2025, then it will only be signed using the older CA that expires soon. On newer machines, your users will already not be able to boot your distro with Secure Boot enabled. If you want your users to be able to use Secure Boot in future, you will need to get a new shim build submitted, reviewed and signed using the new CA. However, that signed build will not work on older machines unless they have had the new CAs installed. This is also likely to cause problems for some users. You should encourage your users to update their systems NOW before things break for them. ↫ Steve McIntyre I think the Linux world will be able to handle this just fine, but the fact that Microsoft started this process of replacement so late is a real shame. Im by no means an expert in this field, but I wonder if there isnt some better solution than relying on Microsoft. I understand their certificates will effectively always be installed on every motherboard, but shouldnt we be able to move that responsibility to a more independent entity?
- Googles plan for ads in its new AI! chatbot search engine is to let AI! generate the ads
After Google killed its search engine a few days ago, one question remained: how exactly does advertising fit into all of this? Google is obviously not going to move to chatbot search without somehow adding ads to your conversation with the pachinko machine, so everybody was wondering how that was going to work, exactly. Well, we have the answer, and its an obvious one. When researching a topic, consumers want to know exactly how a product suits their unique situation. In fact, 75% of people report making faster, more confident decisions using AI Mode in Search. 1 That’s why we’re testing two new types of ads, built with Gemini, that offer relevant product details along with helpful guidance. To help people evaluate their choices, both of these new formats will feature an independent AI explainer as part of the ad. Our Gemini model evaluates and synthesizes information about a product or service, and displays that context alongside the advertiser’s creative. This coherent, independent response ensures transparency and builds trust. These formats will also continue to be clearly labeled as “Sponsored.” ↫ Googles Ads 8 Commerce Blog Of course theyre going to just generate the ads with AI!, too. Google will offer two types of AI!-generated ads in their new chatbot search tool, the first of which will simply be an AI!-generated answer to a users question. If you ask the Google chatbot how can I clean my bed sheets of unintended nightly slop discharge?!, Google will generate an ad based on the features of a slopcleaner washing machine detergent product and show that to you. The second type comes in when a user asks something like what is the best way to kill a search engine?! Googles chatbot will then show a number of ways to kill a search engine, and one of the items in that list might be an ad generated by Google, alongside the customary unrelated information, wrong information, and made-up nonsense. Google claims both of these types of ads will be labeled as such, but I doubt that small label will be noticed by many, and of course, theres no way to know any of the other answers the chatbot generates arent paid-for either. Here, too, though, we must ask the question what the end game is. This new chatbot search engine is clearly trying to keep you on Googles website, but in doing so, itll deprive large numbers of websites of the traffic they need to survive. If they cant survive, theyre die. If theyre dead, they cant produce the content Google AI! needs to slobber up to spit back out in Googles chatbot search. Chatbot search is also an agent of its own destruction, because you cant generate improved slop with nothing but slop. Because, and I cant repeat this often enough, nobody has ever used AI! to produce anything of value.
- Twelve ways to be wrong about AI!-assisted coding
Suppose your manager asks you next week to demonstrate that the AI coding tools your company signed up for are worth the subscription cost. Would you measure lines of code generated, or tickets closed? Or would you send out a survey asking whether developers feel more productive? Each of those approaches is flawed in a different way; the sections below explain why. ↫ Greg Wilson Every single study that claims to prove AI! has a positive effect on productivity falls into one or more of these categories. Again, nobody has ever used AI! to produce anything of value.
- Alpine Linux Experiments with Systemd Compatibility While Keeping Its Lightweight Identity
by George Whittaker
Alpine Linux, one of the most recognizable non-systemd Linux distributions, is reportedly experimenting with an optional systemd compatibility layer, a move that has sparked intense discussion across the Linux community.
For years, Alpine has stood apart from mainstream Linux distributions by avoiding both glibc and systemd, instead relying on:
musl libc BusyBox OpenRC as its init system
Now, growing software compatibility pressures, especially around desktop applications, containers, and enterprise tooling, appear to be pushing Alpine developers to explore new approaches.
Why Alpine Linux Avoided Systemd for So Long
Alpine Linux built its reputation around simplicity, security, and minimalism. Unlike many mainstream distributions, Alpine intentionally avoided systemd in favor of the lighter and more modular OpenRC init system.
This design philosophy made Alpine extremely popular for:
Containers and Docker images Embedded systems Lightweight virtual machines Security-focused deployments
Its tiny footprint and reduced dependency chain became major advantages in cloud and container environments.
The Compatibility Problem Is Growing
Despite Alpine’s popularity, avoiding systemd has increasingly created compatibility challenges.
Many modern Linux applications now assume the presence of:
libsystemd systemd APIs glibc-specific behaviors
This has become particularly problematic for:
Desktop software Proprietary enterprise applications Monitoring agents Certain gaming and multimedia tools AI and container orchestration software
Historically, Alpine users often relied on:
Compatibility layers like gcompat Flatpak containers Docker workarounds Manually patched packages
The growing complexity of those workarounds appears to be one reason compatibility discussions are intensifying.
What the Experimental Compatibility Layer Actually Means
Importantly, Alpine Linux is not replacing OpenRC with systemd.
Instead, the project appears to be exploring:
Optional compatibility packages libsystemd support Improved API compatibility for software expecting systemd components
Experimental efforts already exist in the broader ecosystem. For example, unofficial projects have packaged portions of systemd, particularly libsystemd, for Alpine systems specifically to satisfy software dependencies without running full systemd services.
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- Debian Experiments with AI-Assisted Bug Triage as Open-Source Projects Face Growing Report Overload
by George Whittaker
The Debian project has begun exploring AI-assisted bug triage workflows, joining a broader movement across the open-source world to manage the rapidly increasing volume of software bug reports and vulnerability submissions.
While Debian developers are approaching the idea cautiously, the effort reflects a growing reality for large open-source projects: modern software ecosystems are producing more bugs, duplicate reports, and security findings than human maintainers can efficiently process alone.
The discussion arrives during a period of intense debate within Linux and open-source communities about how artificial intelligence should be integrated into software development and maintenance.
Why Debian Is Looking at AI-Assisted Triage
Debian is one of the largest and most complex Linux distributions in existence, maintaining tens of thousands of software packages across multiple architectures and release branches. Managing bug reports at that scale has always been challenging.
Now, AI-assisted vulnerability scanning and automated testing tools are dramatically increasing report volumes across open-source projects. Maintainers are increasingly facing:
Duplicate vulnerability reports Low-quality automated submissions Massive triage backlogs Security mailing list overload Increasing maintainer burnout
AI-assisted bug triage systems are being explored as a way to help organize, prioritize, and categorize incoming reports before human maintainers review them.
What AI-Assisted Bug Triage Actually Means
Importantly, Debian is not handing software maintenance over to AI systems.
Instead, AI-assisted triage generally focuses on repetitive administrative tasks such as:
Detecting duplicate bug reports Categorizing issues by severity Routing bugs to appropriate maintainers Summarizing lengthy reports Identifying missing reproduction details Prioritizing security-related submissions
The goal is to reduce the amount of manual sorting work maintainers must perform before actual debugging begins.
The Open-Source Community Is Divided
Debian’s experiments come during an ongoing debate about AI’s role in open-source development.
Some maintainers view AI-assisted tooling as necessary because software complexity has outpaced human review capacity. Others worry about:
Low-quality AI-generated reports Maintainer overload False positives Loss of contributor accountability “Drive-by” AI contributions with little human understanding
The Debian community itself has spent months discussing how AI-assisted contributions should be handled, but no final project-wide policy has yet been adopted.
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- BudsLink Brings Advanced Earbud Controls to Linux Desktops
by George Whittaker
Linux users have long faced a frustrating limitation with wireless earbuds: basic Bluetooth audio usually works, but advanced features often remain locked behind proprietary mobile apps. A new open-source project called BudsLink is trying to change that.
Designed specifically for Linux desktops, BudsLink adds support for battery monitoring, Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) controls, ambient sound modes, gesture customization, and other premium earbud features that are typically unavailable outside Android or iOS ecosystems.
For Linux users who rely on devices like AirPods, Sony earbuds, Samsung Galaxy Buds, or Nothing earbuds, this is a significant quality-of-life improvement.
What Is BudsLink?
BudsLink is an independent open-source application that communicates directly with supported Bluetooth earbuds using Linux Bluetooth protocols such as L2CAP and RFCOMM sockets. Instead of treating earbuds as simple audio devices, the application exposes many of the advanced controls usually hidden behind vendor apps.
The project currently supports multiple device families, including:
Apple AirPods and Beats Sony audio wearables Samsung Galaxy Buds Nothing and CMF earbuds
The application is available through Flatpak and can run across multiple Linux distributions.
Features Linux Users Normally Don’t Get
Traditionally, Linux Bluetooth support has focused mainly on audio playback and microphone functionality. BudsLink goes much further by exposing premium earbud features directly within Linux.
Current capabilities include:
Monitoring earbud battery levels Viewing charging case battery status Switching between ANC and ambient sound modes Conversation awareness support on compatible devices Automatic volume reduction during conversations In-ear detection for automatic pause/resume Gesture and stem control configuration Customizable icons and appearance settings
For many Linux users, these are features they’ve never had access to outside mobile apps.
Closing a Long-Standing Linux Gap
Bluetooth earbuds have become increasingly dependent on proprietary ecosystems. Features like adaptive audio, transparency modes, or touch controls often require vendor-specific mobile applications that are unavailable on Linux.
That has created a frustrating situation where:
The earbuds technically work on Linux But users lose many of the features they paid for
BudsLink aims to bridge that gap by reverse-engineering communication protocols and exposing those controls natively on Linux desktops.
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- Ubuntu 26.10 Development Officially Begins as ‘Stonking Stingray’ Takes Shape
by George Whittaker
Canonical has officially kicked off development planning for Ubuntu 26.10, the next interim release of the popular Linux distribution. Codenamed “Stonking Stingray,” the release is scheduled to arrive on October 15, 2026, continuing Ubuntu’s predictable six-month development cycle.
Although Ubuntu 26.10 is still in the early planning stages, the release roadmap already offers hints about what users can expect from the next generation of Ubuntu.
A New Interim Release After Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
Ubuntu 26.10 follows the recently released Ubuntu 26.04 LTS “Resolute Raccoon”, which introduced major platform changes including Linux 7.0, GNOME 50, Wayland-only sessions, and expanded TPM-backed security features.
Unlike the LTS release, Ubuntu 26.10 will be a short-term support release, receiving updates for nine months instead of the five years offered by LTS editions.
These interim releases are typically used to introduce newer technologies and prepare the groundwork for future long-term Ubuntu versions.
The “Stonking Stingray” Codename
Canonical confirmed that Ubuntu 26.10 will carry the codename “Stonking Stingray.”
As with previous Ubuntu releases, the codename follows the project’s long-running naming convention using:
An adjective An animal beginning with the same letter
The playful naming tradition remains one of Ubuntu’s most recognizable characteristics.
Development Schedule Already Published
Canonical has already published the preliminary roadmap for Ubuntu 26.10 development. Major milestones currently include:
Feature Freeze: August 20, 2026 Beta Release: September 24, 2026 Kernel Freeze: October 1, 2026 Final Release: October 15, 2026
The toolchain upload process reportedly began in late April, officially opening the development cycle.
Expected Technologies in Ubuntu 26.10
While Canonical has not yet finalized the complete feature set, several components are widely expected based on current development schedules.
GNOME 51
Ubuntu 26.10 is likely to ship with GNOME 51, which is expected to be released roughly one month before Ubuntu 26.10 itself.
This would continue Ubuntu’s strategy of tracking recent GNOME desktop releases in interim versions.
Linux Kernel 7.2 or 7.3
Reports suggest Ubuntu 26.10 may include either:
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- Linux 7.1-rc2 Released with Driver Fixes, Steam Deck OLED Audio Repair, and Growing AI Patch Trends
by George Whittaker
Linus Torvalds has officially released Linux kernel 7.1-rc2, the second release candidate in the Linux 7.1 development cycle. While Torvalds described the update as a “fairly normal” RC release, the kernel includes a broad collection of driver fixes, subsystem cleanups, and stability improvements that continue shaping the next major Linux kernel release.
Although still an early testing version intended mainly for developers and enthusiasts, Linux 7.1-rc2 already delivers several notable fixes—especially for graphics hardware, networking, and gaming devices like the Steam Deck OLED.
A Strange-Looking Release—But for a Good Reason
One of the first things Torvalds mentioned in the release announcement was the unusually large patch statistics. At first glance, the release appears much larger than expected, but there’s an explanation behind the inflated numbers.
Much of the activity comes from a large cleanup effort in the KVM selftests subsystem, where developers renamed variables and types to better match Linux kernel coding conventions. Because thousands of lines were renamed rather than fundamentally rewritten, the patch count looks dramatic even though the underlying functional changes are relatively modest.
Torvalds specifically advised testers not to overreact to the “big and strange” diff statistics.
Graphics and Driver Fixes Take Center Stage
As is common during early release candidates, a large portion of the work in Linux 7.1-rc2 focuses on hardware drivers. GPU and networking drivers account for a significant share of the meaningful fixes in this release.
Notable improvements include:
Additional fixes for AMD GPU support Intel Xe graphics driver adjustments and tuning Networking stability improvements Filesystem fixes, including NTFS driver updates Memory leak patches and race-condition corrections
These kinds of updates are critical during the RC phase because they help stabilize hardware compatibility before the final release reaches mainstream distributions.
Steam Deck OLED Audio Finally Gets Fixed
One of the more interesting fixes in Linux 7.1-rc2 addresses a long-standing issue affecting the Steam Deck OLED. According to reports, audio support for Valve’s handheld had been broken in the mainline Linux kernel for nearly two years, forcing Valve and some handheld-focused distributions to carry their own downstream patches and workarounds.
With Linux 7.1-rc2, an upstream fix for the audio issue has finally landed, potentially simplifying support for Linux gaming handhelds moving forward.
For Linux gamers and portable gaming enthusiasts, this is one of the more practical improvements included in the release candidate.
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- LibreOffice 26.4 Beta Experiments with AI Writing Features and Smarter Editing Tools
by George Whittaker
The upcoming LibreOffice 26.4 Beta is introducing early AI-powered writing capabilities, signaling a new direction for the open-source office suite. While LibreOffice has traditionally focused on privacy, local processing, and open standards, the beta release shows that The Document Foundation is now exploring how artificial intelligence can assist users without fully embracing cloud-dependent ecosystems.
The result is a cautious but notable step toward AI-enhanced productivity on Linux and other desktop platforms.
AI Writing Assistance Comes to LibreOffice
One of the biggest additions connected to LibreOffice 26.4 Beta is expanded support for AI-assisted writing tools through integrations such as WritingTool, an open-source LibreOffice extension designed to enhance editing workflows.
These AI features focus on practical writing assistance rather than aggressive automation. Current capabilities include:
Grammar and style suggestions Paragraph rewriting and refinement Text expansion and summarization Translation assistance AI-assisted content generation
Unlike many proprietary AI platforms, these tools can operate using local AI models, allowing users to avoid sending documents to external cloud services.
A Privacy-Focused Approach to AI
LibreOffice’s AI direction differs from the strategies used by many commercial office suites. Instead of tightly integrating mandatory cloud AI services, the project appears focused on:
Optional AI functionality User-controlled integrations Support for local inference servers Compatibility with self-hosted AI solutions
The WritingTool project specifically highlights support for local AI backends and OpenAI-compatible APIs, including self-hosted tools like LocalAI.
This approach aligns closely with the values of many Linux and open-source users who prioritize privacy and transparency.
What AI Tools Can Actually Do
The AI writing features currently being tested are aimed at improving productivity rather than replacing human writing entirely.
Examples include:
Grammar and Style Improvements
AI can analyze text for readability, awkward phrasing, and stylistic consistency.
Paragraph Rewriting
Users can ask the assistant to:
Simplify text Make writing more formal or casual Expand short sections Rephrase unclear sentencesContent Assistance
The tools can also help generate outlines, draft paragraphs, or suggest alternative wording for documents.
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- Linux Foundation Launches Open Driver Initiative to Strengthen Hardware Support Across Linux
by George Whittaker
The Linux Foundation has announced a new Open Driver Initiative, a collaborative effort aimed at improving the development, maintenance, and long-term sustainability of open-source hardware drivers across the Linux ecosystem.
The initiative reflects growing demand for better hardware compatibility in areas ranging from desktops and gaming systems to cloud infrastructure, automotive platforms, AI hardware, and next-generation networking. As Linux expands into more industries and devices, driver quality and openness have become increasingly important.
Why Open Drivers Matter
Hardware drivers are the bridge between the operating system and physical components such as:
Graphics cards Wi-Fi adapters Storage controllers Network devices Embedded and automotive systems
When drivers are open source, developers can:
Improve compatibility more quickly Audit code for security issues Maintain support for older hardware longer Integrate drivers more cleanly into the Linux kernel
Open drivers also reduce dependence on proprietary vendor software, which can become outdated or unsupported over time.
What the Open Driver Initiative Aims to Do
According to early details surrounding the Linux Foundation’s broader infrastructure efforts, the initiative is designed to encourage:
Shared driver development standards Better collaboration between hardware vendors and kernel maintainers Open governance models for driver ecosystems Improved testing, validation, and long-term maintenance
The effort appears aligned with the Linux Foundation’s long-standing role as a neutral organization coordinating open-source collaboration across industries.
A Push for Industry-Wide Collaboration
The initiative arrives at a time when Linux is increasingly used in:
AI and high-performance computing Automotive and software-defined vehicles Telecommunications and Open RAN infrastructure Embedded devices and edge computing
Several Linux Foundation-hosted projects already emphasize open infrastructure and hardware collaboration, including Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) and networking initiatives focused on open radio access networks.
By launching a dedicated effort around drivers, the Linux Foundation is attempting to reduce fragmentation and improve interoperability across hardware ecosystems.
Why This Matters for Linux Users
For everyday Linux users, better open driver support can lead to:
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- Canonical Unveils Ubuntu AI Strategy: Local Models, User Control, and Smarter Workflows
by George Whittaker
Canonical has officially revealed its long-anticipated plans to bring artificial intelligence features into Ubuntu, marking a significant shift for one of the world’s most widely used Linux distributions. Rather than rushing into the AI wave, Canonical is taking a measured, privacy-focused approach, one that aims to enhance the operating system without compromising its open-source values.
The rollout is expected to take place gradually throughout 2026, with early features likely appearing in upcoming Ubuntu releases.
A Gradual, Thoughtful AI Rollout
Canonical isn’t positioning Ubuntu as an “AI-first” operating system. Instead, the company is introducing AI in stages, focusing on practical improvements rather than hype-driven features.
The plan follows a two-phase model:
Implicit AI features: Enhancements running quietly in the background Explicit AI features: User-facing tools and workflows powered by AI
This approach allows Ubuntu to evolve naturally, improving existing functionality before introducing more advanced capabilities.
Local AI First, Not the Cloud
One of the most important aspects of Canonical’s strategy is its emphasis on local AI processing, also known as on-device inference.
Instead of sending data to remote servers, Ubuntu will aim to:
Run AI models directly on the user’s hardware Reduce reliance on cloud services Improve privacy and performance
Canonical has made it clear that local inference will be the default, with cloud-based options available only when explicitly chosen by the user.
This aligns closely with the privacy expectations of Linux users, who often prefer greater control over their data.
What AI Features Could Look Like
Canonical has outlined several potential use cases for AI inside Ubuntu. These include:
Accessibility Improvements
AI will enhance tools like:
Speech-to-text Text-to-speech Assistive technologies
These features aim to make Ubuntu more inclusive and easier to use for a wider range of users.
Smarter System Assistance
Future AI features may help users:
Troubleshoot system issues Interpret logs and error messages Automate repetitive tasks
This could significantly lower the learning curve for new Linux users.
Agent-Based Automation
Canonical is also exploring “agentic” AI workflows, where AI can take actions on behalf of the user.
Examples include:
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- Thunderbird 150 Lands on Linux: Smarter Encryption, Better Tools, and a Polished Experience
by George Whittaker
Mozilla has officially rolled out Thunderbird 150.0, the latest version of its open-source email client, bringing a mix of security-focused enhancements, usability upgrades, and workflow improvements for Linux and other platforms. Released in April 2026, this update continues Thunderbird’s steady evolution as a powerful desktop email solution.
For Linux users, Thunderbird 150 delivers meaningful updates that improve both everyday usability and advanced email handling, especially for encrypted communication.
Stronger Support for Encrypted Email
One of the standout improvements in Thunderbird 150 is how it handles encrypted messages.
Users can now:
Search inside encrypted emails (OpenPGP and S/MIME) Generate “unobtrusive” OpenPGP signatures that appear cleaner to recipients
These changes make encrypted communication far more practical, especially for users who rely on secure email for work or privacy-sensitive tasks.
New Productivity and Workflow Features
Thunderbird 150 introduces several small but impactful workflow improvements:
A new Account Hub opens automatically on first launch, simplifying setup Recent Destinations in settings can now be sorted alphabetically Address book entries can be copied as vCard files A new custom accent color option allows interface personalization
These updates make Thunderbird easier to configure and more flexible to use daily.
Improved Built-In PDF Viewer
Thunderbird’s integrated PDF viewer gets a useful upgrade: users can now reorder pages directly within the viewer.
This is particularly helpful for:
Managing attachments without external tools Editing documents quickly before sending Streamlining email-based workflows
Combined with ongoing security fixes, the PDF viewer becomes both more capable and safer.
Calendar and Interface Enhancements
Several improvements focus on usability and accessibility:
Calendar views now support touchscreen scrolling Fixed issues with calendar layouts and navigation Better screen reader support and accessibility fixes General UI refinements across the application
These changes contribute to a smoother, more consistent user experience across devices.
Bug Fixes and Stability Improvements
Thunderbird 150 also resolves a wide range of issues, including:
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- Linux Kernel 6.19 Reaches End of Life: Time to Move Forward
by George Whittaker
The Linux kernel continues its fast-paced release cycle, and with that comes an important milestone: Linux kernel 6.19 has officially reached end of life (EOL). For users and distributions still running this branch, it’s now time to upgrade to a newer kernel version.
This isn’t unexpected, Linux 6.19 was never intended to be a long-term release, but it does serve as a reminder of how quickly non-LTS kernel branches move through their lifecycle.
Official End of Support
The final update in the 6.19 series, Linux 6.19.14, has been released and marked as the last maintenance version. Kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman confirmed that no further updates will follow, stating that the branch is now officially end-of-life.
On kernel.org, the 6.19 series is now listed as EOL, meaning it will no longer receive bug fixes or security patches.
Why 6.19 Had a Short Lifespan
Unlike some kernel releases, Linux 6.19 was not a long-term support (LTS) version. Short-lived kernel branches are typically supported for only a few months before being replaced by newer releases.
Linux follows a rapid development model:
New major versions are released frequently Short-term branches receive limited updates Only selected kernels are designated as LTS for extended support
Because of this, 6.19 was always meant to be a stepping stone rather than a long-term foundation.
What Users Should Do Now
With 6.19 no longer maintained, continuing to use it poses risks, especially in environments where security and stability matter.
Recommended upgrade paths include:
Upgrade to Linux 7.0
The most direct path forward is the Linux 7.0 kernel series, which succeeds 6.19 and introduces new hardware support and ongoing fixes.
This is a good option for:
Desktop users Rolling-release distributions Users who want the latest featuresSwitch to an LTS Kernel
For production systems, servers, or long-term stability, moving to an LTS kernel is often the better choice.
Current LTS options include:
Linux 6.18 LTS (supported until 2028) Linux 6.12 LTS (supported until 2028) Linux 6.6 LTS (supported until 2027)
These versions receive ongoing security updates and are better suited for stable environments.
Why EOL Matters
When a kernel reaches end of life:
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