Late Night Linux

The sad reality of the AI crawler bot arms race, the baddies seem to be obsessed with Xorg, but Wayland will soon be a reality for older smaller desktops (hopefully). Plus controlling a silly Red Dwarf thing, software releases with feature flags, a massive list of cheat sheets, another way to avoid the likes of Reddit, old skool CPU monitoring, and an update on Joe’s KDE experiment.   N...

Mixed gaming news, Google’s AI is seemingly inescapable, SUSE offers Europe-only support, Ubuntu is dropping support for loads of RISC-V boards in favour of future ones, a quick KDE Korner, and more.   News Stop Killing Games consumer movement hits some major milestones DOGWALK Official Release Unless users take action, Android will let Gemini access third-party apps SUSE to roll out So...

Joe can’t decide which distro to use for a proper KDE Plasma test, an easy way to develop Home Assistant integrations, automating lights, fixing the Telegram snap on Wayland, some AI bollocks, and a browser extension to automatically use privacy-preserving versions of big websites.   Discoveries Home Assistant Developer Environment xLights QLC+ Telegram snap issue faff PrivacyPlease Jac...

Linux gaming goes from strength to strength but puts off the inevitable death of 32-bit x86, devs are sick of companies expecting free fixes, Creative Commons disappoints on AI, and more.   News Steam Beta finally enables Proton on Linux fully, making Linux gaming simpler Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds Fedora Linux devs discuss dropping 32-bit packages –...

Making music with code in real time, fancy rsync, an open source real time strategy engine, advanced print debugging, EU-based DNS resolvers, and European government departments moving away from Microsoft and they might stick with Linux and FOSS this time.   Discoveries Strudel rsyncy Spring IceCream DNS4EU   News/discussion Two city governments in Denmark are moving away from Microsoft...

X11 is basically dead (again) and we are quite pleased, the Linux Foundation sets out to fix the WordPress mess and some of us are cynical, custom ROMs for Pixel phones are going to be much more difficult to make, Apple is adding proper OCI containers to macOS, and more.   News Ubuntu 25.10 drops support for GNOME on Xorg Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora 43 to drop X11 in GNOME editions An update on t...

Redis finally picks the right licence but it’s probably too late, the Ubuntu release process is being modernised, GNOME drops X11 for good and gets a new Executive Director, the Android Desktop mode is officially happening, and Linux Format magazine is no more. Plus a cool Frigate update, auto dark mode in Plasma, and Fender’s new audio workstation is released for Linux.   News Re...

Mozilla kills Pocket and Fakespot, SteamOS is now available for devices other than the Steam Deck, Nextcloud’s Android app was missing key functionality until they made a public stink about it, WSL is now open source, there’s a new open source command-line text editor in Windows, and more.   News Investing in what moves the internet forward Firefox Source Code Now Hosted On GitHub...

Running an old version of Windows on a Wii for some reason, a nice way to learn programming languages, a couple of very different games, more documentation tools, and moving to a new Mastodon instance.   Discoveries entii-for-workcubes Learn C , Coding for Kids Isonzo Material for MkDocs markata mdq Moving to a new Mastodon instance is very easy             Tails...

It’s the wheel of misfortune! Roughly 50 (mostly) Linux-related things are on the wheel, we take turns spinning it, and we all have to say at least some positive things about the thing we land on. (It makes sense once we start).           Porkbun.com Go to  https://porkbun.com/LNL25 to get $1 off your next desired domain name at Porkbun!       Tailscale Tai...

The US government is trying to break up Google which sounds like a great idea, but it is potentially catastrophic news for Mozilla and Firefox. Alex from Open Web Advocacy tells us all about it. But first we talk about blocking ads on the web with Pi-hole , uBlock Origin , and AdGuard public DNS .           Tailscale This episode is sponsored by Tailscale. It’s an ea...

Wikipedia is attacked by Trump lackeys, Bluesky folds under pressure from the Turkish government, Linux YouTube is terrible as usual, Microsoft wants you to use the “proper” VS Code, Intel AI chips aren’t selling well, yet another open source project has to deal with crawlers, TrueNAS goes Linux-only, and more.   News Trump DOJ goon threatens Wikipedia Bluesky restricts acce...

Cheap handheld retro gaming, F1 stats in the terminal, running binaries as if they were Python functions, websites that look like TUIs, basic graphics manipulation, strange old audio archives, and more.   Discoveries  POWKIDDY X55 ROCKNIX undercut-f1 WebTUI Astro Docs Pinta 3.0 python-sh Attention K-Mart Shoppers Techmoan r/LiminalSpace The Conet Project You are listening to     &nb...

Linus Torvalds’ other big project is 20 years old, new Ubuntu and Fedora releases, the downsides of permissive licences, a quick KDE Korner, and more.   News Git turns 20: A Q&A with Linus Torvalds Fedora 42 Released As A Fantastic Update To This Leading-Edge Linux Distribution – Phoronix The answer is 42! Fedora Linux 42, that is Ubuntu 25.04 Release Now Available for Downloa...

Two very different approaches to setting up security cameras, an IDE-like experience for text adventure games, a glimpse of convergence on Pixel phones, a new LTS of the flight sim FlightGear, and more.   Discoveries Frigate Coral TPUs daylight RPi Improved Pan Tilt Module The Visible Zorker Flightgear new LTS Bagels – TUI Expense Tracker Pixel 9 desktop mode pinchflat fixing locale KIO...

AI crawlers are causing serious problems for open source projects, an example of disclosure by vagueposting, Zorin does something good and something bad, LibreOffice downloads are doing well, Thunderbird is planning new services, a quick KDE Korner, and more.   News Open source devs say AI crawlers dominate traffic, forcing blocks on entire countries Wikimedia Foundation bemoans AI bot bandwi...

What if Google hadn’t come along in the late 90s? What would search, mobile devices, and the web in general look like? Plus a musical discovery, and why moving to a new distro just means moving to new little problems to fix.   Discovery Wilsonic MTS-ESP         Tailscale Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks...

Home Assistant gets even more credible and sustainable, open source users are entitled, changes in KDE land, Fedora says hello to Plasma and goodbye to X11, Ubuntu looks to drop GNU coreutils, GIMP 3 is out and still has a terrible name, and new Pebble devices will be shipping soon .   News Home Assistant officially Matters Everything you say to your Echo will be sent to Amazon starting on Ma...

Tracking WiFi devices with cheap ESP32 devices, using OSM and Google Maps together, deleting your Twitter data, “3D” images with any camera, forcing Ubuntu to give you all the available updates, efficiently importing photos, counting lines of code, and more.   Discoveries espargos and demo video OSM2GoogleMaps Bookmarklet Cyd twitter-defollower Cross Views About apt upgrade and ph...

Mozilla does another terrible job of communicating an important policy change, the movie made with Blender wins an Oscar, EA open sources some Command & Conquer games, the EFF releases a tool to detect cellular spying, an official Debian VM on Pixel devices, a brief foldable update, and more.   News Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox An update on our Terms o...

Remote desktop without a client, Macrodata Refinement, 3D plane tracking, Home Assistant’s new hardware voice assistant, a new version of Pi-hole is a touch buggy, and more.   Discoveries Guacamole Lumon Industries ( Macrodata-Refinement ) Skies-ADSB Home Assistant Voice PE Casio F91W to 5000m underwater Pi-hole v6 gammastep         1Password Extended Access Manageme...

The kernel Rust drama nears an end but not without some collateral damage, you should back up your Kindle books while you still can, Mozilla so very nearly gets it, Chrome gets even worse, Apple takes its ball home, and Matrix rattles the donation tin.   News Linux royalty backs adoption of Rust for kernel code Passing the torch on Asahi Linux [PATCH 1/1] MAINTAINERS: Remove myself On communi...

What if Linus Torvalds hadn’t written Linux? What if Canonical hadn’t dropped Unity and the phone? Plus what we are self-hosting in Voice of the Masses.   Voice of the Masses What are you self-hosting, and what are you relying on others to host for you?           Tailscale Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build si...

Linux kernel drama with Rust raises the old question about developer succession, the Pebble smartwatch is making a comeback, great news for F-Droid, a movie made with Blender is nominated for an Oscar, RISC-V in a Framework, and loads more.   News Mixing Rust and C in Linux likened to cancer by kernel maintainer Asahi Linux Lead Developer Hector Martin Steps Down As Upstream Apple Silicon Mai...

What if Qt had been under a friendlier licence? Would KDE have become the standard desktop instead of GNOME? What if IBM hadn’t bought Red Hat? Plus a self-hostable workflow automation platform, simple systemd management, and Redshift on Xfce in Discoveries. Then we wonder why there seems to be less in the way of interesting Linux news these days.   Discoveries  n8n isd redshift  ...