Sasha Levin, NVIDIA engineer and co-maintainer of the stable and long-term support kernel trees, has proposed a new patch that adds a mechanism called killswitch to the Linux kernel.It's pitched as a way for system administrators to disable a vulnerable kernel function on a running system, and the timing of it isn't a coincidence either. The patch follows the rising risk of Linux Privilege Escalation (LPE) vulnerabilities like Copy Fail and Dirty Frag.What is it?The Linux kernel is built out of ...
In recent times, Huawei has been China's best-standing answer to Apple's monopoly over the personal tech market. Smartphones, laptops, tablets, they do it all and they do it at a level on-par with the best companies currently working.This is not a dynamic that has been around forever, but a more recent shift as China has been seeing a huge surge in the usage of domestic software, such as operating systems and databases. The credit is given to a steady improvement in the smoothness and ease of us...
Backing up photos and videos is something most people think about only after losing something they can't get back. Local storage is still the most secure option, as long as the files are encrypted and access to the storage medium is under your control.The catch is that local storage doesn't help much when you need to pull up a file on the go. Being away from home and needing quick access to a specific photo or video is the kind of situation it fails to handle.Services from big tech players like ...
It is getting harder for Linux distributions to stay neutral on AI. Between enterprise-grade solutions like RHEL AI and the steady rise of local inference tools, the pressure to take a position has been building for a while.Canonical recently made theirs clear, moving Ubuntu toward a local-first AI approach built around open-weight models and open source inference tooling, keeping everything on-device rather than routing it through a cloud subscription.Now, Fedora has voted on an initiative call...
Only last week, we were talking about how LVFS, the firmware update service for Linux, had turned up the heat on vendors who didn't contribute their fair share.To tackle that, the project has been going through a phased restrictions rollout that includes things like introducing fair-use download utilization graphs and removing detailed per-firmware analytics.But that obviously wouldn't solve their lack of funding.Luckily, two vendors have stepped up. Lenovo and Dell have both signed on as Premie...
It has not been a week since we came across Copy Fail, the exploit that took advantage of an old logic flaw to escalate a local user to root, giving them all kinds of harmful access over a system they shouldn't have.A security researcher, Hyunwoo Kim (v4bel), has reported a new Linux kernel privilege escalation threat. This one is called Dirty Frag, and the disclosure of it has not gone as planned.Hyunwoo had set a five-day embargo after submitting details to the linux-distros mailing list, but ...
Let me start with two not so positive news.Ubuntu suffered a cyber attack for almost a week. Don't panick. It was a DDoS attack and makes a website unavailable by flooding the server with traffic. The ubuntu.com website, Snap store, Launchpad, and several other Canonical-owned services went offline or became unreliable. If you had trouble running snap install commands or pulling from a PPA last week, you now know why.But that was not the end of it. Today, the official Twitter account of Ubuntu w...
There are two kinds of Linux users. Those who live in the comfort of GUI and those who live in the adventurous world of terminal.I am neither of the two.I prefer the comfort of GUI and I jump into the terminal when required or when I am in the mood to explore something.This article is the result of one such adventure where I tried a file manager in the terminal. Yes! A file explorer in the terminal. If you are surprised, let me tell you that there are several terminal-based file managers availab...
It seems like Ubuntu cannot catch a break.Their entire web infrastructure was under continued DDoS attack for 5 days. Which seemed to be over now. But the misery is not.A few hours ago, there was a (now deleted) tweet from Ubuntu's official Twitter account. It announced the availability of Ubuntu's newest AI agent.At first glance, it looked legit until you dug deeper.Ubuntu's official Twitter account was compromisedBy the time I could take screenshots, the tweet was deleted. Thankfully, good fol...
The Google Home Mini launched in 2017 as Google's smallest, cheapest smart speaker. Millions were sold, handed out, and given away as promotional gifts.Many of them still work, but it being in the last phase of its lifecycle means that while it still functions for basic tasks, it doesn't have any kind of customizability or local processing capabilities.The hardware was fine for the time but has become less relevant in Google's lineup over time, with the Nest Mini, its successor, also discontinue...
The Google Home Mini launched in 2017 as Google's smallest, cheapest smart speaker. Millions were sold, handed out, and given away as promotional gifts.Many of them still work, but it being in the last phase of its lifecycle means that while it still functions for basic tasks, it doesn't have any kind of customizability or local processing capabilities.The hardware was fine for the time but has become less relevant in Google's lineup over time, with the Nest Mini, its successor, also discontinue...
Before we dive into the topic at hand, you should know that Euro-Office is a new European productivity project by Nextcloud and IONOS, which was forked from ONLYOFFICE.It is a self-hosted, web-based office suite built for organizations and governments that want collaborative document editing on their own infrastructure. A big part of it is to move away from an office suite with ties to Russia, which has triggered concerns over digital sovereignty.Following that, The Document Foundation (TDF), th...
đTLDR:- A 9-year-old bug was discovered recently.- The vulnerability is already patched in the Linux kernel.- Normal users could gain root access by running a small Python script.- Not much of a bother for regular desktop Linux users who keep their systems updated.- Could be problematic for cloud servers and containers if the kernel is not updated.A logic flaw that sat quietly in the Linux kernel since 2017 has finally been found and disclosed. For a brief window, it let any unprivileged local u...
đTLDR:- A 9-year-old bug was discovered recently.- The vulnerability is already patched in the Linux kernel.- Normal users could gain root access by running a small Python script.- Not much of a bother for regular desktop Linux users who keep their systems updated.- Could be problematic for cloud servers and containers if the kernel is not updated.A logic flaw that sat quietly in the Linux kernel since 2017 has finally been found and disclosed. For a brief window, it let any unprivileged local u...
Back in November 2025, Jan Vlug, a software engineer who writes for the Dutch government's developer portal, put out a detailed blog recommending which Git forge the Netherlands should adopt for its governmental source code hosting needs.His post came at a time when the Ministry of the Interior (BZK) was already setting up a dedicated Git instance, and the platform decision was still open.Currently, the Dutch government's code is spread across GitHub and GitLab, neither of which is under governm...
VS Code has been quietly appending a Co-authored-by: Copilot line to users' git commits, including ones written entirely without Copilot's involvement.The culprit behind this, git.addAICoAuthor, is a feature that was introduced in VS Code 1.110 back in March. It is designed to tag commits with a Copilot co-author trailer when AI-generated code is involved, and it launched with off as the default.So far good, right? đThat changed in April, when Courtney Webster, a Product Manager at Microsoft, su...
OpenSource Science B.V., better known as OS-SCi, is a Netherlands-based institution that has a pretty specific focus. To train the next generation of developers exclusively on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).They run bachelor's programs, modular courses, and student projects with partners that include LPI, UBports, the Rust Foundation, and the Python Institute.If the outfit still sounds unfamiliar, you are not alone. OS-SCi doesn't get a lot of coverage, even in FOSS circles. They are prima...
OpenSource Science B.V., better known as OS-SCi, is a Netherlands-based institution that has a pretty specific focus. To train the next generation of developers exclusively on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).They run bachelor's programs, modular courses, and student projects with partners that include LPI, UBports, the Rust Foundation, and the Python Institute.If the outfit still sounds unfamiliar, you are not alone. OS-SCi doesn't get a lot of coverage, even in FOSS circles. They are prima...
Earlier this year, the Linux Mint project announced a significant shift in how it shipped releases, hinting at a longer cycle.Project lead Clement Lefebvre had pointed out that the existing pattern of a new release every six months, on top of maintaining LMDE, was leaving the team spending more time on testing and release management than on actual development.By March 2026, a decision had been made, with Linux Mint 23 now targeted for a Christmas 2026 release, making it the longest gap between m...
Choice is one of the hallmarks of Linux, to the point that both âdistro feverâ and âdistro fatigueâ are alive in equal measure. Historically, Ubuntu has also been known the same. Different stroke for the wide range of folks who make Ubuntu their Linux home. Many of us see this wide selection of choices as a plus, and with good reason: we get to pick and choose our exact experience and tailor it to our needs.Ubuntuâs flavour ecosystem has long reflected this ethos rather well: Don't want GNOME? U...
Before Microsoft became the company that shipped Windows to corporate desks around the world, it had to start somewhere. That somewhere was a scrappy little operating system written by one guy at Seattle Computer Products.Tim Paterson built what he initially called QDOS, short for Quick and Dirty Operating System, in 1980. Intel's 8086 chip was out, but CP/M, the dominant OS of the time, had no 8086 support. He wrote something to fill that gap, modeling the CP/M API so existing software would ru...
The big news is that Linux distros are getting a standard Projects folder alongside Documents, Music, and Downloads. Most people already create one manually, but now it's official, and apps can start using it as a default location too. So it's more than just 'mkdir Projects", it has actual use.Although, I am curious what kind of icon this new Projects directoy will get đHere are other highlights of this edition of FOSS Weekly:Firefox quietly using Brave's ad blocker.A series of new Ubuntu releas...
Ptyxis is a modern terminal emulator built with GTK4 and libadwaita. It provides a cohesive look for the GNOME desktop, making it feel like a natural part of the system.The application was specifically developed to meet the needs of modern software development workflows. In my opinion, its standout feature is the seamless container support for tools like Podman, Distrobox, and Toolbox.Ptyxis is rapidly gaining popularity across the Linux community. It has already become the default terminal for ...
Linux gaming has been on a great trajectory these past few years.Proton turned a massive chunk of the Steam library into playable Linux titles thanks to Wine as its backbone, and purpose-built Linux gaming consoles are now a product category that actually exists.We recently covered the Playnix Console, a $1,179 Linux gaming machine from the EmuDeck team that ships with a custom Arch-based OS and boots straight into Steam's gaming mode.Today, we have a project that lets you run a Linux-powered op...
The Sovereign Tech Agency has launched a new pilot program called Sovereign Tech Standards, and it will be paying open source maintainers to get involved in the processes that actually shape how the internet works.As a pilot program, it is going to support maintainers to actively participate in standards development at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).The problem they are trying to tackle...
Warp has open-sourced its terminal client. The code is now on GitHub, and the company wants the community involved in building it out going forward, but the contribution model looks nothing like you would expect from an open source project.They say that the main bottleneck in development right now is no longer writing code but the human-led tasks such as deciding on features and verifying the behavior of a piece of software.They are looking towards agents to handle the implementation, while huma...
The Linux Vendor Firmware Service, or LVFS, is what makes firmware updates on Linux not a nightmare. Hardware vendors upload their firmware directly to it, and users get those updates delivered through fwupd and tools like GNOME Software.According to official estimates, the project has shipped over 140 million updates from 150 vendors and is a requirement for most consumer-facing Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs), and Independent BIOS Vendors (IBVs).Bu...
We have been routinely seeing open source projects getting hit by malicious actors with varying degrees of sophistication. Developers are often left scrambling to push out fixes in such situations.As to why they get targeted, their attack surface is wide, maintainer bandwidth is limited, and one bad package can quietly reach thousands of users before anyone even notices.When something slips through, developers have to yank releases, rotate credentials, and piece together what got out.We now have...
The Fedora Project has had an interesting journey since its inception in November 2003. It started as a community-backed effort spun off from Red Hat Linux, which Red Hat had decided to retire in favor of its commercial Enterprise Linux product.Rather than leave the community without a home, Red Hat partnered with contributors to launch Fedora as an open, community-driven distribution that would push new technologies forward.That upstream-first philosophy has held ever since. Fedora consistently...
If you are using a rolling release distro like Arch, you might have noticed that your home directory now has a new member, a new folder called "Projects".For as long as I remember, Linux has always had a set of default folders under the home directory. Usually they are Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos and Downloads. Templates, Desktop and Public folders are also there.Now we have a new addition in the form of "Projects".Projects directory for your ...well...projectsThe purpose of the Projects ...
AI has been creeping into everything, and the Linux ecosystem is no exception. Over the last couple of years, local AI has gone from a niche curiosity to something people can actually run on their machines.On the user side, tools like Ollama and LM Studio have made it surprisingly straightforward to pull open-weight models and run them locally without requiring a cloud subscription.For enterprises, solutions like RHEL AI and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server have been catering to organizations that w...
Microsoft's in-house Linux distribution, Azure Linux, may be heading for a significant overhaul. According to a recent report, the Big Tech giant is reportedly exploring the idea of rebasing Azure Linux on Fedora, which would be a notable shift in how the distribution is built and maintained.Azure Linux, which longtime followers of the Linux space may know better as CBL-Mariner, has been Microsoft's internal Linux OS powering Azure services, WSL, Azure Local, and more since 2020.It is already RP...
The MinIO GitHub repository was recently archived on April 25, 2026. But the thing is, it had been archived before, back in February, then briefly unarchived, and now it's locked again. Whether MinIO flips the switch again is anyone's guess, but it doesn't really matter at this point.The message has been clear ever since they put the project in maintenance mode.MinIO is one of the most widely used self-hosted object storage solutions out there. It is S3-compatible, lightweight, and runs as a sin...
Back in March, Firefox 149 was released with many changes, like a free built-in VPN, a Split View that allows the loading of two pages side by side, and the XDG portal file picker as the new default on Linux.However, an interesting addition had gone mostly unnoticed until now.Firefox has Some Brave in it nowShivan Kaul Sahib, the VP of Privacy and Security at Brave, has put out a blog post about something that didn't make it into the Firefox 149 release notes at all. The browser now ships adbloc...
KVM devices let you remotely control a computer by capturing its display output and emulating a keyboard and mouse without having a hypervisor in the mix. They are an important tool in a sysadmin's inventory.Take a KVM-over-IP device, for instance; it operates independently of the target machine's OS and network stack, letting you reach a system that is stuck in BIOS, frozen mid-boot, or completely offline.That kind of access is crucial, and an open source device that delivers it without breakin...
Ubuntu 26.04, the much anticipated LTS upgrade to 25.10 and 24.04, is here. This release promises to be one of the more daring and potentially revolutionary releases in quite some time, delivering on many much-awaited features, and laying the foundation for the next generation of Ubuntu and its derivatives. Still, this release is bound to be one of the most controversial, in that it's got quite a lot of good, but to some, a little bit of "bad". To be fair, how you see it is largely a matter of p...
Lubuntu is an official Ubuntu flavor that uses LXQt as its default desktop environment.It is one of the lighter options in the Ubuntu family, built around keeping resource usage low without stripping out the things people actually need from a desktop, and part of what makes it appealing is its approach to hardware.LXQt has a noticeably lower memory footprint compared to heavier environments like GNOME or Plasma, which makes Lubuntu a reasonable choice for people running older or low-spec machine...
Kubuntu is one of the longest-running Ubuntu flavors and also one of the more sensible ones to recommend.It ships the KDE Plasma desktop on top of an Ubuntu base and is maintained by a volunteer team that tracks the KDE release cycle closely and works to get the latest Plasma builds into each release.If you want the KDE experience without leaving the Ubuntu ecosystem, Kubuntu is the cleanest way to get there. Anyhow, with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS officially out, Kubuntu 26.04 LTS is also here alongside ...
Ubuntu doesn't need much of an introduction. It has been a reliable starter distro for people finding their way into Linux for years, and for good reasons as well. It installs without drama, runs on most hardware, and the surrounding community is large enough that almost any problem you run into has already been solved and documented somewhere. I ran it as my daily driver for a while, a few years ago, and the experience was just what I needed at the time. It was fast, familiar for someone comin...
Ubuntu 26.04 is releasing today. As a long-term support release, it will be supported till at least 2031, making it an important upgrade for many users.Curious about whatâs new? Iâve covered the key features and changes in this major release.If youâre currently on Ubuntu 24.04 or even 25.10, you probably have a few questions about upgrading. Should you do it now? Is it worth it? Iâve addressed those in a dedicated article.On a related note, Fedora 44 faced another delay but is now expected to re...
Ubuntu 26.04 is releasing today. It is natural to have questions about a new release, specially for beginners.I have tried to answer those frequently asked questions about Ubuntu 26.04 here. I hope it helps clear your doubts if you had any. And if you still have questions, feel free to ask in the comment section below.What are the system requirements for Ubuntu 26.04?Ubuntu 26.04 requires a 2 GHz dual core processor or better, a minimum of 6 GB RAM and at least 25 GB of free disk space. These st...
Linux has had a quiet takeover of computing. It powers all of the world's top 500 supercomputers and Android, which runs on billions of smartphones.It has also found its way into places that have nothing to do with traditional computing. Smart TVs run some variant of it. Cars run it. If something has a processor and a purpose, there is a good chance Linux is involved somewhere.Over the years, we have also seen some interesting experiments involving Linux and Windows together. loss32 runs an enti...
Carl Richell, the founder of System76, has shared that Colorado's Age Attestation Bill (SB26-051) is set to be amended to exclude open source software from its requirements.The proposed amendment would exclude open source operating systems and apps, code repositories like GitHub and GitLab, and containers like Docker and Podman.We covered this bill back in February, when it made no such distinction. Carl has been working directly with Colorado Senator Matt Ball, the bill's co-author, to push for...
Carl Richell, the founder of System76, has shared that Colorado's Age Attestation Bill (SB26-051) is set to be amended to exclude open source software from its requirements.The proposed amendment would exclude open source operating systems and apps, code repositories like GitHub and GitLab, and containers like Docker and Podman.We covered this bill back in February, when it made no such distinction. Carl has been working directly with Colorado Senator Matt Ball, the bill's co-author, to push for...
Before we get into the console, we must know some background information.EmuDeck is an installation script that simplifies setting up emulators on the Steam Deck and other SteamOS devices. It handles emulator configuration, hotkeys, and most of the tedious setup work that retro gaming on Linux would otherwise involve.Back in 2024, the project lead, Dragoon Dorise, launched an IndieGoGo campaign for EmuDeck Machines, a pair of Linux mini PCs built for couch gaming in a Dreamcast-inspired 3D-print...
If you've spent any time poking around the self-hosting world, you've likely come across containers. They let you run software in isolated environments that carry their own dependencies, keeping things clean and predictable without the extra weight of a full virtual machine.That's made them a staple for everything from running a home media server to deploying production applications. Spin one up, use it, and tear it down. The host machine stays clean all the way through.Docker is where most peop...
MZLA Technologies Corporation, the Mozilla Foundation subsidiary behind Thunderbird, has announced Thunderbolt, an open source, self-hostable AI client for organizations that want to run AI on their own infrastructure.The project is funded through investment from Mozilla and is a standalone product, separate from Thunderbird, built by a different team within MZLA that's focused on enterprise AI products.Offered under Mozilla Public License 2.0, Thunderbolt offers an AI workspace where users can ...
It started with one thing. I donât know why⌠but somehow, it turned into a debate no one expected.I could not help taking a walk in Linkin Park ;)Okay. Back to serious stuff. Weird but serious stuff.So, last month, Mozilla unveiled the new Firefox mascot, named Kit. That's a cute-looking macot, by the way.Mozilla shared a post in their official subreddit. A couple of weeks later, someone noticed the use of'pronouns in that post and all hell broke loose. What was supposed to bring "warmth and fam...
In Los Angeles this March, a jury did something US courts have long refused to do: it treated the feed itself as the harm. It felt like vindication, victory even, to those of us who are critical of big tech's outsized influence on every aspect of our lives. But there is need for cautious optimism, caution even, instead of celebration.Jurors found Meta and Google negligent for the way Instagram and YouTube are designed; not for any particular piece of content (the 20âyearâold plaintiff, identifie...
Okay, not a Linux bug in the kernel, but one that has existed in the Enlightenment window manager E16 since 2006, when Kamila Szewczyk was barely a year old.Kamila, now a 21-year-old graduate student at Saarland University in Germany, daily drives a window manager that predates most of her classmates. That alone is a fun fact. But what makes it remarkable is that she didn't just use it, she dug into its decades-old codebase, found a bug that had been hiding there since 2006, and fixed it.What is...
AI has been a mixed bag for the open source world. Some developers are using it to write faster, catch bugs, and review patches more efficiently. Others are watching the same tools get turned against the codebases they maintain.Cal.com, a popular open source scheduling platform and one of the more well-known self-hostable alternatives to Calendly, has found itself in the second camp. After five years as an open source project, the company has announced that it is switching to a closed-source mod...
Privacy in 2026 is a bit of a joke. Governments have turned surveillance into standard operating procedure, and Big Tech companies treat your personal data like a free-for-all buffet, helping themselves, then selling the leftovers to data brokers who do the same.That's pushed people toward privacy-first alternatives, and quite a few companies have stepped up to meet that demand. Tuta is one of the more recognizable names in that space, offering encrypted mail and calendar services to over 10 mil...
The big new, and itâs good, is coming from France. The governmentâs digital agency DINUM is moving its workstations from Windows to Linux, with every French ministry required to submit a plan by Autumn 2026 to reduce dependence on non-European software.Another major update, and not a pleasant one, is coming from the United States. A federal bill is now being discussed that proposes OS-level age verification. Until now, this was limited to a handful of states, but this could expand it nationwide....
Not all distros are created equal.In fact, not all distros are created at all.This quiz is simple. You'll be presented with a few Linux distros and their details. The twist is that they might not be a real thing. They could just be a fragment of my imagination.Of course, this is valid only at the time when I created this quiz. The way we move in Linux world, there could be some new distros coming up right after I publish this quiz đđ§Some browsers block the JavaScript-based quiz units. Disable yo...
The U.S. has been quietly building up a set of state-level laws that push operating system providers into the age verification plague.California's AB 1043, signed in October 2025, requires OS providers to collect age data at account setup and pipe it to apps through a real-time API. It kicks in on January 1, 2027.Colorado is working on something nearly identical. SB26-051 (which we covered when it was still a proposal) passed the state Senate 28-7 on March 3, 2026, and is now waiting on a House ...
Back in 2005, a bug report was filed by Kjetil Kjernsmo, then running KDE 3.3.2 on Debian Stable. He wanted the ability to have each connected screen show a different virtual desktop independently, rather than having all displays switch as one unit.Over the years, over 15 duplicate reports piled onto the original as more people ran into the same wall. And that's not a surprise, because multi-monitor setups have become increasingly common.The technical reason why this issue stayed open this long ...
Natalie Vock (pixelcluster), a developer who works on low-level Linux code and as an independent contractor for Valve, has published a fix for a VRAM management problem that has been making life difficult for Linux gamers on AMD GPUs with 8GB of VRAM or less.She has put together a combination of kernel patches and userspace utilities that stop background apps from stealing VRAM away from whatever game you're playing.The underlying issue is that when VRAM runs out, the kernel driver has no way to...
The Linux kernel project has spent quite some time navigating the use of AI tools, and the response usually has been somewhere between "figure it out yourself" and "we'll get back to you."Late last year, at the 2025 Maintainers Summit, Sasha Levin pushed for some documented consensus, and what came out of it was human accountability for patches being non-negotiable, purely machine-generated submissions not being welcome, and tool use being disclosed.He promised to put something in writing withou...
The development of the Linux kernel moves fast, and the 7.0 release is no exception. Around the same time as this release, a patch queued for Linux 7.1 has kicked off what will eventually be the end of i486 CPU support in the kernel.But that's a story for another time. For now, let's focus on what Linux 7.0 brings to the table.Head penguin, Linus Torvalds, had the following words to say regarding the release:The last week of the release continued the same "lots of small fixes" trend, but it all ...
Linux Mint is known for being simple and beginner friendly. It works out of the box with most essential features ready to use, so you donât have to spend time setting things up. One such basic task is taking screenshots, and Mint makes it very easy even if you are completely new to Linux.In this beginner's guide, we will look at the built-in screenshot tool in Linux Mint and the keyboard shortcuts you can use right away.đThis article is part of the Linux Mint beginner's tutorial series.The GUI s...
