Linux

I recently added a UPS to my server rack to keep my internet and home network running during a power outage. After unpacking it, I investigated its USB port and discovered it wasn’t for powering other devices. Instead, it connects to a host computer to provide information like battery charge status, remaining runtime, and current load.

A tape-based piece of unique Unix history may have been lying quietly in storage at the University of Utah for 50+ years. The question is whether researchers will be able to take this piece of middle-aged media and rewind it back to the 1970s to get the data off.

Professional Multi-Distribution Linux Environments for Android 🚀 Run Alpine, Debian, Ubuntu & Kali with full Android system integration

For those dealing with SquashFS compressed, read-only file-systems, a new version of the user-space tools were released this week.

MKVToolNix, a set of tools for creating, altering, and inspecting Matroska (MKV) files under Linux systems, has been updated today to version 96.0, a release that brings a couple of new features and several bug fixes.

I’ve been seeing a lot of people trying to find the perfect Linux distro to replace Windows 10 with, now that its support is ending, and Ubuntu is usually the first name that comes up. It makes sense since it is stable, beginner-friendly, and has a huge community that makes getting started with Linux easier.

Bottles, an open-source software tool built on top of Wine that helps users run Windows applications and games on Linux systems by providing a user-friendly GUI, has just released its latest version, 52.1.

On ACPI-enabled systems Linux users can enjoy PCIe M.2 connected peripherals that “just work” without any extra fuss. But for those relying on Device Tree (DT) handling by the kernel, new patches from Qualcomm are working on representing PCIe M.2 connectors within DT files.

Ryzen AI Software as AMD’s collection of tools and libraries for AI inferencing on AMD Ryzen AI class PCs has Linux support with its newest point release. Though this “early access” Linux support is restricted to registered AMD customers.

This week something that I know a lot of people have been wanting for a long time was implemented: the ability to limit virtual desktops to only the primary screen! Thanks very much to Kristen McWilliam for this long-awaited feature, which arrives in Plasma 6.6.

In addition to GNOME’s Mutter compositor removing its X11 back-end support to focus exclusively on Wayland while keeping around XWayland client support, another notable GNOME change this week was the GTK toolkit adding a “reduced motion” accessibility option

It’s been a while since having anything major to talk about with the NILFS2 file-system but it looks like that could be changing. NILFS2 as a reminder is a log-structured file-system with continuous snapshotting with its NILFS predecessor having been in the mainline kernel for two decades since the mid Linux 2.6 days.

German Linux hardware manufacturer TUXEDO has announced the launch of its new InfinityBook Max 15, a 15.3-inch business ultrabook that blurs the line between professional workstation and gaming laptop.

Posted last month were new Linux kernel scheduler-related patches rewriting the MM CID management code. The main takeaway for end-users from this set of 19 Linux kernel patches from an Intel engineer was seeing 14~18% improvement in a PostgreSQL database benchmark but that more benchmarks were needed. Curiosity got the best of me and I recently tested these patches on an AMD EPYC server to seeing some very enticing results for this in-development code.

It has been two years already since the Linux Containers project forked Canonical’s LXD project as Incus. Now joining the Incus family is IncusOS as an immutable Linux OS built atop a Debian base with OpenZFS file-system support and designed around running containers with Incus

Merged yesterday to the mainline Linux 6.18 development kernel were the latest round of x86 platform driver fixes. Mostly some small fixes but standing out is electronic privacy screen hotkey support for some Dell laptops.

Filesystems are complex and performance-sensitive beasts. They can also present security concerns. Microkernel-based systems have long pushed filesystems into separate processes in order to contain any vulnerabilities that may be found there. Linux can do the same with the Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) subsystem, but using FUSE brings a significant performance penalty. Darrick Wong is working on ways to eliminate that penalty, and he has a massive patch set showing how ext4 filesystems can be safely implemented in user space by unprivileged processes with good performance. This work has the potential to radically change how filesystems are managed on Linux systems.

LXQt 2.3 has been released today as the latest stable version of the lightweight desktop environment for Linux-based operating systems, an update that brings new features and improvements.

With Intel having sunset Clear Linux, when it comes to aggressive out-of-the-box Linux performance there is the Arch Linux based CachyOS as the leading contender. Given the recent releases of Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora Workstation 43, if you are curious about the out-of-the-box performance here are some fresh benchmarks of all three using the Framework Desktop.

CodeWeavers announced this morning a new CrossOver Preview that includes Linux ARM64 support for the first time. This commercial software built atop Wine is now comfortable with the state of running Windows x86/x64 apps on Linux ARM64 and even the ability ro enjoy many Windows games on ARM64 Linux devices like the System76 Thelio Astra.

Although Wayland has been GNOME’s default session since 2016, X11 has continued to linger in the codebase—until now. That changed with the recent merging of two PRs (here and here), which completely removed the X11 codebase from both Mutter, GNOME’s default window manager and compositor, as well as the GNOME Shell itself.

FEX 2511 is out today for this open-source emulator akin to Apple’s Rosetta that allows running x86/x86+64 applications on ARM64. But in the case of FEX, for ARM64 Linux devices and akin to other open-source projects like Box64.

Hey it’s me, the guy that posted here a couple weeks ago asking for bare minimum concepts new Linux users should understand. I really appreciate the responses I got last time, and now I’m back with my first draft! It’s not 100% complete, but I’d love some feedback from the Linux community, let me know if there’s anything I missed or that you think should be covered that I didn’t yet talk about.

Among the notable improvements, the driver introduces a new environment variable, CUDA_DISABLE_PERF_BOOST, allowing users to disable CUDA’s default behavior of automatically boosting GPU clock speeds to higher power states during compute workloads.

While NINJA GAIDEN 4 is Steam Deck Verified, it turns out on Desktop Linux it has some big problems that Valve have hopefully solved now.

The ARMEL and MIPS64EL architectures have been dropped from Debian unstable and experimental. This is the end of the road for these aging ARM and MIPS targets in the Debian world.

SUSE’s hardware enablement team has worked through proper U-Boot support for the Raspberry Pi 5 single board computer.

The KDE team has announced the release of Plasma 6.5.2, the second bugfix update to the major Plasma 6.5 series. While no new features are introduced, Plasma 6.5.2 focuses on refinement and reliability.

Does anyone know what’s going on at Framework?

Queued up in a TIP branch ahead of the Linux 6.19 merge window opening in about one month’s time is optimizing the Restartable Sequences “RSEQ” code for its exit to user-space code path.

Marketplaces and e-waste recycling centers are practically overflowing with the things: ARM-based streaming TV boxes that run some — usually very outdated and compromised — version of Android. While you can use them for their promised streaming purposes, they’re invariably poorly optimized and often lie about their true hardware specifications. Which leaves the most important question: can you install Linux on these SBCs and use them as a poor man’s Raspberry Pi alternative? The answer, according to [Oleksii’s Tech] on YouTube is ‘sorta’.

Scopri Recall for Linux, il progetto ironico che porta le funzionalità di registrazione continua dello schermo su Linux, ispirandosi a Microsoft Recall. Tra satira e riflessione sulla privacy. #Linux #Microsoft #Privacy #Software

Ubuntu Summit The Register FOSS desk sat down with Canonical’s vice-president for engineering, Jon Seager, during Ubuntu Summit earlier this month. This is a heavily condensed version of our conversation.

Debian’s APT package manager will have a “hard requirement” on Rust from May 2026. This move may make some rather big waves.

Devuan 6.0 “Excalibur” is now available as the fork of Debian GNU/Linux without the use of systemd. Devuan 6.0 is Debian 13 but for “init freedom” lets you use either SysVinit, OpenRC, or Runit as the init system.

Steam on Linux use has hit an all-time high! With the Steam Survey results for October 2025 coming out this evening, Steam on Linux has finally cracked the 3% threshold! A few months back Steam on Linux was close to 3% before stumbling a bit but now it’s above that elusive threshold. The only time Steam on Linux use was close to the 3% mark was when Steam on Linux initially debuted a decade ago and at that time the overall Steam user-base was much smaller than it is today. Long story short, thanks to the ongoing success of Valve’s Steam Deck and other handhelds plus Steam Play (Proton) working out so well, these October numbers are the best yet.

Hi all,

Open-source developer Joel Severin today announced his work on porting the Linux kernel to WebAssembly and has successffully gotten the kernel up and running within WASM-capable web browsers.

The kernel’s file-I/O subsystems have been highly optimized over the years in the hope of providing the best performance for a wide variety of workloads. There is, however, one workload type that suffers with current kernels: applications that perform many short reads, in multiple processes, from the same file. Kiryl Shutsemau has been working on a patch to try to optimize this case, but the task is turning out to be harder than one might expect.

AerynOS maintainer confirms that founder Ikey Doherty hasn’t been in contact for six months but assures the project remains stable and on track.

Restructuring to the Linux kernel’s PCI Resizable BAR “ReBAR” support is set to be submitted for the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel cycle.

Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!

Wine 10.18 is now available for capping off the month of October and working toward the code freeze for Wine 11.0 beginning in early December.

Always thought top was one of those programs frozen in time since the 70s, but apparently, it has a feature set comparable to htop and the like. The default configuration just doesn’t show much of it…

This was made for mobian with phosh. Not sure if it will work on other distros. You can always install a dct tool to decompile it and hand copy the opp-tables for the CPU and GPU or something for yours if this doesn’t work.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/introducing-architecture-variants-amd64v3-now-available-in-ubuntu-25-10/71312#p-184154-try-it-out

The Ubuntu Unity project is in trouble because its maintainer, a Linux whiz kid, has had less time to work on it due to his studies. Now other team members are appealing to the wider Ubuntu community for help.

https://kde.org/fundraisers/yearend2025/

The upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel cycle is expected to land initial support for USB3 with Apple Silicon devices.

Are you forced to work with Linux? Do you miss the convenience of Microsoft spying on you and keeping track of everything?

The Trend Micro Zero Day Initiative has uncovered three more security vulnerabilities affecting the X.Org Server and the derived XWayland source code.

Probably more Ubuntu enthusiasts have noticed that Unity, the official Ubuntu flavor that brings back the once-beloved Unity desktop for the first time since gaining official status, has failed to deliver a 25.10 release. Well, there’s a reason for that, and now its maintainers are publicly asking for help.

BPF lets users load programs into a running kernel. Even though BPF programs are checked by the verifier to ensure that they stay inside certain limits, some users would still like to ensure that only approved BPF programs are loaded. KP Singh’s patches adding that capability to the kernel were accepted in version 6.18, but not everyone is satisfied with his implementation. Blaise Boscaccy, who has been working to get a version of BPF code signing with better auditability into the kernel for some time, posted a patch set on top of Singh’s changes that alters the loading process to not invoke security module hooks until the entire loading process is complete. The discussion on the patch set is the continuation of a long-running disagreement over the interface for signed BPF programs.

https://github.com/flathub/flathub/pull/6985

Let’s walk through what Podman is and how to use it as a Docker alternative on Linux. Expect a straightforward guide on installing Podman, running containers with it, and understanding the basics.