Microsoft restored an account including files that it initially claimed wasn’t possible, Apple might lock down phones if people don’t keep up their lease payments, ZFS scrubs shouldn’t be painful, and accessing another network from a locked-down work machine.

 

Plugs

Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes

ZFS vs Ceph: Do You Actually Need Ceph?

 

News/discussion

Microsoft restores player’s 25-year-old account following widespread backlash

iOS 27 code suggests Apple could restrict leased devices after missed payments

If Scrubs Hurt, Your ZFS Design Is Broken

 

Free consulting

We were asked about accessing another network from a locked-down work machine.

 

Teleport Community

Apache Guacamole®

Linux After Dark – Episode 120

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Initial Steam Machine reviews are broadly positive, Jellyfin is losing some key project leaders, Sony deletes more movies that people “bought”, why you probably shouldn’t wipe your phone when the US authorities ask for access, Graham repurposes some discarded crypto hardware to play arcade games, Félim gets that old game working, a great terminal music player, and more.

 

News

Steam Machine with SteamOS Linux – initial thoughts

Jellyfin Project Leadership Changes

Sony Deletes A Bunch More Movies From The Accounts Of People Who ‘Bought’ Them

US government targets Cop City protester over phone operating system

David Potter, the man who put Psion in the palm of your hand, logs off at 82

 

Discoveries

AMD BC250 Documentation

Cholo

kew

Screenshot of kew in action

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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We got a lot of feedback about choosing a distro for the friends and family we support, but a lot of suggestions didn’t make sense to us. We get into why we pick boring and safe choices instead of interesting and exciting ones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Google wants you to use a selfie video for account recovery, LG will stop apps turning their smart TVs into residential proxy nodes, we disagree about how serious OpenAI’s agent hacking Hugging Face is, FreeBSD removes the last bits of GPL software and suffers an embarrassing git flub , and backing up to an encrypted NAS without ZFS.

 

Plug

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News/discussion

Introducing selfie for sign-in: a new, easy way to access your Google Account

LG to Ban Residential Proxies from Smart TV Apps

OpenAI says its AI agent broke out of testing sandbox to hack Hugging Face

FreeBSD 16 Retires The Last Of Its GPL Code From Its Base System

Ports Repository Freeze

 

Free consulting

We were asked about backing up to an encrypted NAS without ZFS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With several open source figures taking a stance on either side of the generative AI debate, we have another argument about it. This time we actually come to something closer to an understanding of each other’s views, even if we still end up disagreeing.

 

News/discussion

Piss up at The Shipwrights Arms (just next to London Bridge station) on Saturday 5th September from 5pm until late

“Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues with that, they can do the open-source thing and fork it”

Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs

General Resolution: LLM usage in Debian

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Does language choice actually matter?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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It’s another hot questions episode! Tech we’d use if we rebuilt everything from scratch, career advice to our past selves, how much of our jobs we could do from our phone, and the qualities we’ve seen in great managers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A new HTTP caching standard looks promising but might struggle to get adopted, a terrible space mirror idea is actually happening, cars will spy on us all, and picking a VPN for use with an IP that doesn’t change very often.

 

Plug

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News/discussion

HTTP gets a QUERY method so complex searches can stop pretending to be POST

FCC grants approval for sun-reflecting space mirror that’s been widely criticized by astronomers

Feels like all of us need to pay way more attention to the new rules affecting EU and US folk, requiring all new cars to include a driver monitoring camera aimed at your face

 

Free consulting

We were asked about picking a VPN for use with an IP that doesn’t change very often.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the tech from early on in our lives that inspired where we are today. Plus discoveries including and old game that doesn’t work, professional audio hardware that now works on Linux, Arch on easy mode, and an old chip that can do a surprising amount.

 

Discoveries

Celebrating 55 years of the 555 timer chip (flashing alert)

open-apollo

Ovine

EndeavourOS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Having seen some technologies come to a definite end, Chris wonders if we should be willing to draw a line under open source software sometimes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Microsoft really wants your Windows settings data, secure boot has been useless for a decade, our thoughts on (the idea of) Incus and IncusOS, and configuring ZFS for a Lightning Memory Mapped Database.

 

Plugs

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Jails, Not Containers: FreeBSD Isolation Done Right

 

News/discussion

Microsoft flips Windows Backup to on by default unless you’re in the EU

Microsoft’s Secure Boot has been broken for a decade and no one noticed until now

IncusOS

Incus

 

Free consulting

We were asked about configuring ZFS for a Lightning Memory Mapped Database.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mozilla is paying for Firefox to be on the front of Wrexham football shirts, SCO vs IBM might not be dead after all, Red Hat will support RHEL forever if you are willing to pay, OpenMandriva discovers why distros need good governance, Félim awaits his statue, and a quick Kagi update.

 

 

News

Wrexham AFC and Firefox announce a multi-year, front-of-kit partnership

Zombie ‘who owns Unix?’ lawsuit comes alive again

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Long-Life Add-On: Your path to RHEL with no pre-determined end date

OpenMandriva Statement regarding attempted distribution sabotage

KDE at 30

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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With an increase in the number of security bugs being disclosed irresponsibly, we dig into how the process should work, the differences between normal bugs and security bugs, the complexities of coordinating patches, the human issues involved, and more.

 

 

 

 

 

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Is the industry now better or worse than when we got into it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Follow-up on rebooting to update, portable power stations, glass storage, and objective news sources. Plus whether to use one ZFS pool per vdev, or just one large pool.

 

Plugs

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Native inotify in FreeBSD

 

Feedback

Anker SOLIX EV Charger Adapter (For F3000, J1722 only)

EcoFlow EV Charger to Portable Power Station Adaptor (SAE J1772 to 5P8 Port, 50A)

WattCycle First-to-Market: WattLINK – EcoFlow Delta 2/3 Series PPS E

 

 

Free consulting

We were asked about whether to use one ZFS pool per vdev, or just one large pool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The condiment we’d pick if we could only have one. With Allan from 2.5 Admins, May from Linux After Dark, and Shane from Hybrid Cloud Show. This is a short episode because Joe is having a summer break.

Patrons got this this in their feed two weeks ago.

 

 

 

 

 

A great example of accessibility features benefitting more than the target audience, a new version of the classic game Nethack, checking for bufferbloat, and Windows 10 limps on in discoveries. Then Félim’s question about the perceived value of open source goes in unexpected directions.

 

Discoveries

quick drag

Nethack 5

check your bufferbloat

opnsense help

Microsoft extends extended updates for Windows 10 in the most muted way imaginable

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Chris is struggling to decide which distro to install on his new work laptop, and he and Gary want to pick a new distro for the people they support. Plus Joe wonders what moving on from Xfce would look like.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Why setting up commercial email and VPN services is incredibly hard, avoiding TrueNAS’s move from FreeBSD to Linux, why we avoid virtualising storage systems, and bridging WiFi to an external building.

 

Plugs

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Using Object Storage with OpenZFS and SeaweedFS

 

Discussion

Jeff Moss explains why setting up private email and VPN services are so difficult

 

Feedback

XigmaNAS

 

Free consulting

We were asked about bridging WiFi to an external building.

Point-to-point Wi-Fi bridging between buildings—the cheap and easy way

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We finally have pricing for the Steam Machine, but they are very hard to actually buy, and very expensive. SteamOS is now supported on your own hardware now though, and Joe gives it a go. Plus Ubuntu makes moves to tighten up the flavours situation and announces speech to text on the desktop, and a quick KDE Korner.

 

News

Valve opens Steam Machine pre-orders with queue lottery and hefty prices amid AI squeeze

Valve’s Steam Machine ships June 29 for $1,049, but you probably won’t be able to buy one yet

Gamers Nexus long review

Valve will finally let you build your own Steam Machine with SteamOS for desktop [archived]

$100 Steam Machine GPU Unlocked! PS5 APU (ASRock BC-250)

Ubuntu Flavors Now Mandated To Participate In Beta Releases For Official Status

Introducing Myna: Speech to Text for Ubuntu Desktop

 

KDE Korner

KDE e.V. COMMUNITY REPORT

Plasma 6.7

Get started with Union, Plasma’s new theming engine, in 2 minutes or less: a FAQ

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The bit of code we admire most and why. This is a short episode because Joe is having a summer break.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The one tool in our IT tool belt that we value the most. This is a short episode because producer Joe is having a summer break.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The one tool in our IT tool belt that we value the most. This is a short episode because Joe is having a summer break.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our favourite little things about Linux and open source. This is a short episode because Joe is having a summer break.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The most precious machine in our stack of laptops and PCs, excluding anything we actually use regularly. This is a short episode because Joe is having a summer break.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Wiring up a house for networking including cables, access points, connectors, and racks. Plus Google is found liable for what its AI overviews say.

 

Plugs

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Managing Cache and DirectIO for Databases on ZFS

Webinar: June 30th @ 11am EDT: FreeBSD After Hours AMA

 

News/discussion

Landmark German ruling declares Google’s AI Overviews are Google’s own words and makes it liable for false answers

 

Free consulting

We were asked about wiring up a house for access points etc.

Jim’s guide to Wi-Fi AP placement

Monoprice 24-port Cat5e Patch Panel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The new Steam hardware is getting close, Arch Linux’s AUR is compromised, and curl is having a month off from vulnerability reports. Plus updates on using the Kagi search engine, retro handhelds, and 3D printing.

 

Plugs

Piss up at The Shipwrights Arms (just next to London Bridge station) on Saturday 27th June from 6pm until late

Graham’s talk

Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes

 

News

Steam Machine and Steam Frame are shipping this summer

Valve just imported 13 tons of VR headsets in one day [archived] 2

Arch Linux’s AUR Sees More Than 400 Packages Compromised With Malware 4.5

Arch Linux Now Believes Malware Incident Under Control: More Than 1,500 Affected Packages

Arch Linux AUR Hit By Another Wave Of Now More Sophisticated Malware Attack

Arch Linux locks down AUR signups amid wave of malicious commits

curl summer of bliss

 

Retro gaming handhelds

R36S

Fakes

R36H

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We get into the process of working on and with formal protocol specifications, something Andy is familiar with from his work on Matrix.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Having recently moved house, Gary wonders how to reconfigure his homelab and network setup. Plus Shane is fed up with GitHub’s outages and formulates a plan to move away… somewhere…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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People were locked out of their password managers to stop a brute force attack, Coreutils come to Windows, a FreeBSD PR effort backfires, and the best simple consumer WiFi gear.

 

Plugs

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Why ZFS Is the Ideal Filesystem for Multi-User/Department Media Production

Webinar: June 30th @ 11am EDT: FreeBSD After Hours AMA

 

News/discussion

Password manager Dashlane suspends customer accounts amid brute-force attacks

Microsoft Announces Coreutils For Windows: Derived From Rust Coreutils

Coreutils for Windows

FreeBSD Foundation Executive Director Tries Daily Driving FreeBSD On Laptop

 

Free consulting

We were asked about the best simple consumer WiFi gear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Late night snacks, and the books we love and hate. With Félim, Gary, Jim, and special guest Shane from Linux Lads.

Patrons got this this in their feed two weeks ago.

 

 

 

 

 

A new Firefox release confuses Félim, Plex makes no sense in a world where Jellyfin exists, Will considers paying for the Kagi search engine, and another small Android tablet for your wall. Plus what we learned at the recent Ubuntu Summit.

 

News/discussion

Firefox 151.0, See All New Features, Updates and Fixes

New Lifetime Plex Pass Pricing

Kagi

Shelly Wall Display

 

Ubuntu Summit

Ubuntu Summit 26.04 Timetable

Ubuntu Summit videos

 

 

 

 

 

 

We revisit the topic of the dire situation with hardware prices, this time with a focus on getting the most out of machines with limited resources.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Microsoft threatens a security researcher for disclosing vulnerabilities publicly, bricks old versions of Office, and announces their version of OpenClaw. Plus keeping up with the latest technology.

 

Plugs

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Which ZFS Storage Metrics Matter for Database Performance

Webinar: June 25th @ 11am EDT: Understanding AnyRAID with Jon from HexOS

 

News/discussion

Microsoft under fire for threatening security researcher with criminal investigation

The researcher is a former MS employee says Krebs

Microsoft reaches for olive branch after public dustup with 0-day researcher

Microsoft is intentionally bricking all Office for Mac 2019/2021 installations

Introducing Microsoft Scout: Your always-on personal agent

 

Free consulting

We were asked about keeping up with the latest technology.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steam Deck price rises point toward high prices for the new Valve hardware, Lenovo puts its name to a cheap retro handheld and regrets it, Wikipedia management seems to be acting like a typical big tech company and the workers are organising, Bambu pisses off its 3D printer customers and Joe got given a free unrelated 3D printer, and we don’t believe that the Raspberry Pi 6 will arrive as late as 2028.

 

News

Steam Deck back in stock, with updated pricing

The golden age of handheld gaming is already over [archived]

Lenovo pulls its controversial G02 retro handheld from sale – starting a chain reaction that could decimate the retro gaming market

Sellers circumvent Lenovo’s retro handheld ban with cheap wholesale storefronts

Big Tech’s Anti-Labor Playbook Has Come for Wikipedia

We’re Wiki Workers United, a global solidarity union for the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation

Wikipedia editors plot strike and banner sabotage after Wikimedia layoffs

Comprehensive Response to Bambu’s AGPLv3 Violations – Software Freedom Conservancy

‘Fuck you, Bambu’: How one private message could change the face of 3D printing [archived]

No Raspberry Pi 6 before 2028

Don’t expect a Raspberry Pi 5 in 2023, says Eben Upton [21st Dec 2022]

Introducing: Raspberry Pi 5! [28th Sep 2023]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What makes a good library?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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It’s a Linux Dev Time style hot questions episode. Is “cloud native” more about where the workload is going or how you deploy it? What is a skill that is really important in your job that may surprise people? Is the cloud more or less secure than a company-controlled data centre or on-prem?  Would you recommend what you do to your kids/nephews etc?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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It looks like Bitlocker had a back door in it, how a listener accidentally broke Gitea for users of the snap version, Google accidentally published an unpatched exploit for Chromium-based browsers, why people are starting to ditch Bitwarden, and moving a tech stack away from large corporations.

 

Plugs

Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes

How Klara and TrueNAS fixed ZFS’s longest standing limitation

Webinar: June 25th @ 11am EDT: Understanding AnyRAID with Jon from HexOS

 

News/discussion

YellowKey Bitlocker Bypass Vulnerability

Microsoft shares mitigation for YellowKey Windows zero-day

How I Broke Gitea for Everyone

Google publishes exploit code threatening millions of Chromium users

The Quiet Renovation at Bitwarden

 

Free consulting

We were asked about moving a tech stack away from large corporations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Debian’s ambitious aim to make all packages reproducible pushes us closer to a better future, yet more talk about age verification for VPNs, Firefox gets more users on mobile thanks to regulation, Opera’s gaming browser comes to Linux, Valve releases CAD files for the Steam Controller, and the Steam Frame might be coming soon. With guest host Andy from Linux Dev Time.

 

News/discussion

Debian Release Team: Debian Must Now Ship Reproducible Packages

EU calls VPNs “a loophole that needs closing” in age verification push

EU browser choice rules send millions more users Firefox’s way

Opera GX Lands on Linux

Steam Controller and Puck CAD files officially released under a Creative Commons license — Valve encourages users to create accessories for the device

Steam Frame coming soon?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We all seem to be moving away from Ubuntu, but there are still quite a few reasons to keep using it.

 

WG Tunnel

PiVPN

Charlie’s OggCamp talk about infrastructure as code

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Why a proposal for an alternative to IPv6 is unlikely to be viable, Microsoft really doesn’t want you to run Exchange Server on-prem, Google will finally stop being a proper search engine, setting up an email server for internal use, and mitigating DDoS attacks without Cloudflare.

 

Plugs

Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes

Tuning ZFS for Databases

Webinar: May 27th at 11am EDT: Database Performance on ZFS with Tom Lawrence

 

News/discussion

Veteran network architect proposes IPv8 – to improve IPv4, not leapfrog v6

Exchange Server zero-day vulnerability can be triggered by opening a malicious email

Google Search as you know it is over

 

Free consulting

We were asked about setting up an email server for internal use, and mitigating DDoS attacks without Cloudflare.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great funding news for LVFS and KDE, why Europe probably needs some more home-grown distros, a conspiracy theory about Cloudflare seems unlikely, and we wonder what can be done about all the irresponsibly disclosed vulnerabilities that new tools are discovering. With guest host Andy from Linux Dev Time.

 

News

LVFS Sponsorship Announcement

Sovereign Tech Fund invests over €1 million in KDE software development

KDE bags €1.3M as Europe realizes it might need an OS of its own

Can Someone Please Explain Whether Cloudflare Blackmailed Canonical?

‘Dirty Frag’ Linux flaw one-ups CopyFail with no patches and public root exploit

Dirty Frag gets a sequel as Fragnesia hands Linux attackers root-level access

Linux kernel maintainers pitch emergency killswitch after CopyFail and Dirty Frag chaos

DirtyCBC: When Linux Kernel Decrypt-Before-MAC Turns Authenticated Encryption Into a Page-Cache Write

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Andy has been taking the One Billion Row Challenge, and has been thinking about the broader question of what makes software fast.

 

Andy’s videos on Peertube and YouTube.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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We get into some homelab updates. Sean has been consolidating hardware, Gary has been implementing high availability with Proxmox, and Shane has been working hard to get Home Assistant working with Kubernetes, as well as downloading YouTube videos.

 

Shane’s homelab

 

 

 

 

 

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People trying to return defective hard drives and RAM are finding out why consumer protection laws would be good, GoDaddy accidentally gave someone’s domain name away, and when and how to fix ZFS fragmentation.

 

Plugs

Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes

Fast Dedup Economics: When Deduplication Beats Buying New Disks

 

News/discussion

Toshiba refuses to replace large hard drive that was under warranty — company offers refund at the purchase price, not the higher current retail price

GoDaddy Gave a Domain to a Stranger Without Any Documentation

 

Free consulting

We were asked about when and how to fix ZFS fragmentation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Light bulb colour temperatures, doing nice things for ourselves,  pulling faces while playing guitar, and surreal experiences. With Allan from 2.5 Admins, May from Linux After Dark, and Shane from Hybrid Cloud Show.

Patrons got this this in their feed two weeks ago.

 

 

 

 

 

Voice to text, visualising CSVs in the terminal, managing software from releases on GitHub, a mini Android tablet for your wall, and Amiga music on Linux in Discoveries. Plus Ubuntu embracing AI makes us wonder if we should just stop having the same old arguments.

 

Discoveries

VoxType

Tennis

tooler

SONOFF NSPanel Pro Gen2

Unix Amiga Delitracker Emulator

 

News/discussion

The future of AI in Ubuntu

I wanted to reply with some clarifications

The Pulse: token spend breaks budgets – what next?

Anthropic joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron

Upcoming Blender Development Fund and AI Policies

 

 

 

 

 

 

How we get back to our home LANs when we are away travelling etc. It mostly involves WireGuard and Tailscale. We also get into blocking ads, mostly with Pi-hole.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Microsoft is encouraging employees with the most experience to leave the company and letting users pause Windows updates forever, some of the best features you’ll get in the version of ZFS that ships with the new Ubuntu LTS, and backing up data from cloud services.

 

Plugs

Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes

Extending ZFS Performance Without Hardware Upgrades

 

News/discussion

Microsoft tackles quality control issues. Just kidding, it’s encouraging experienced workers to leave

Your Windows update experience just got updated

zfs-2.3.0

zfs-2.4.0

 

Free consulting

We were asked about backing up data from cloud services.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s a new Ubuntu LTS release and quite a lot is new, Canonical’s infrastructure was taken down and we disagree about whether it could have been avoided, two recent examples of irresponsible vulnerability disclosure, and the Steam controller finally arrives with a hefty price tag.

 

Plugs

Piss up at The Shipwrights Arms (just next to London Bridge station) on Saturday 27th June from 6pm until late

SeaGL 2026 Call for Presentations

 

News

Canonical releases Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Resolute Raccoon

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS: What’s New Since Ubuntu 24.04?

An update on rust-coreutils

Pro-Iran group turns Ubuntu DDoS into shakedown

The most severe Linux threat to surface in years catches the world flat-footed

Carrot disclosure: Forgejo and follow-up

Steam Controller: The Ars Technica review

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s yet another hot questions episode. Colour schemes, syntax highlighting, code patterns, fonts, and keyboards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A recent attack shone a light on some of the problems with GitHub Actions, and CI/CD more generally. As tempting as it might be, going back to shell scripts probably isn’t the answer.

 

1K+ cloud environments infected following Trivy supply chain attack

2.5 Admins 292: Trivyally Infected

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hitting the limit for hard links, a parent struggles to get back into their teen’s compromised Discord account, the demise of tower PCs and general purpose computing in general, and changing the properties of existing ZFS pools.

 

Plugs

Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes

Compensating for RAM Constraints with L2ARC on ZFS

 

News/discussion

How Jennifer Aniston and Friends Cost Us 377GB and Broke ext4 Hardlinks

Dad stuck in support nightmare after teen lied about age on Discord

Apple’s last tower topples… and the others will follow

 

Free consulting

We were asked about changing the properties of existing ZFS pools.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whether you can trust small new distros, Amazon is officially abandoning Android on its new TV sticks in favour of their new Linux-based OS, and we have another pointless argument about AI bollocks.

 

News/discussion

Amazon won’t release Fire Sticks that support sideloading anymore

Eternal November — this new influx of users may be better than the last one

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chris ended up with a managed M4 Macbook Air at work with no sudo or root. So how does a Linux user get on with his first ever Mac? Turns out pretty well, thanks to lots of open source software and a terminal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Microsoft locks devs out of important accounts, the foreign router ban exemptions make even less sense, Backblaze shows that “unlimited” never means that, and attempting to avoid software that’s written with AI.

 

Plugs

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Do More with Less: Cost-Efficient Storage on the New TrueNAS with Enhanced Fast Dedup

The Hidden Value of CPU-Intensive Compression on Modern Hardware

 

News/discussion

Microsoft locks out VeraCrypt and WireGuard devs, blames verification process

Action Required: Account Verification for Windows Hardware Program Begins October 16, 2025

FCC exempts Netgear from ban on foreign routers, doesn’t explain why

Backblaze has quietly stopped backing up your data

 

Free consulting

We were asked about avoiding software that’s written with AI.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The French government makes a start on moving to the Linux Desktop, the EU has a terrible but open source age verification app, some clarity on one of the exciting office suite dramas, the media swallows Anthropic’s nonsense about their new magically powerful model, a quick KDE Korner, and more.

 

News

France’s digital agency dumping Windows desktops for Linux

Brussels launched an age checking app. Hackers say it takes 2 minutes to break it

Microsoft locks out VeraCrypt and WireGuard devs, blames verification process

You cannot use the GNU (A)GPL to take software freedom away

AGPLv3§7¶4 Empowers Users to Thwart Badgeware

Project Glasswing: Securing critical software for the AI era

On Anthropic’s Mythos Preview and Project Glasswing

UK gov’s Mythos AI tests help separate cybersecurity threat from hype

Mythos and Cybersecurity

A few notes about the massive hype surrounding Claude Mythos

Breathless parroting of Anthropic’s bullshit from the graun

NSA using Anthropic’s Mythos despite blacklist

 

KDE Korner

KDE at 30

Tighter KDE Connect Integration

KDE Gear 26.04

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We get into dependency management. The pros and cons of tools like Dependabot, the varying approaches with different languages and standard library sizes, the times when pinning dependencies makes sense, and more.

 

Turn Dependabot Off

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Aaron and Shane share some thoughts about attending Kubecon, including the push for European sovereign cloud, how platform engineering might mitigate some of the problems AI is causing, the sense that Kubernetes is mature and boring in a good way now, and our concerns about scope creep.

 

Announcing the AI Gateway Working Group

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Why putting data center satellites in orbit is a terrible idea, Google might show people a made-up version of your website, and ZFS on really old Dell servers.

 

Plug

Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes

 

News/discussion

Orbital data centers, part 1: There’s no way this is economically viable, right? 11 mins edited

Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea

Google Just Patented The End Of Your Website

 

Free consulting

We were asked about ZFS on really old Dell servers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Raspberry Pi prices have gone up yet again, more drama in the exciting world of open source office suites, Red Hat looks to be going all in on “AI”, Cloudflare vibe codes a WordPress rip off, and GIMP shares some interesting download numbers.

 

News/discussion

A new 3GB Raspberry Pi 4 for $83.75, and more memory-driven price increases

Forking frenzy ensues after Euro-Office launch sparks OnlyOffice backlash

TDF ejects its core developers

Let’s put an end to the speculation

Memo: Red Hat Global Engineering plans to lean in to AI

If you thought the speed of writing code was your problem – you have bigger problems

Introducing EmDash — the spiritual successor to WordPress that solves plugin security

Interesting GIMP numbers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May wants to make a space heater out of an old computer, and Joe is thinking about buying a new (used) laptop. The heater will be pretty straightforward but finding the right laptop will be much harder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Arm announces its first CPU, Anthropic accidentally leaks the source for Claude Code and it’s terrible, and setting up a backup for a friend’s photos.

 

Plugs

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FreeBSD and OpenZFS in the Quest for Technical Independence: A Storage Architect’s View​

 

News/discussion

Arm expands compute platform to silicon products in historic company first

Anthropic exposes Claude Code source by accident

 

Free consulting

We were asked about setting up a backup for a friend’s photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What we do when we get stressed, cinema vs theatre, our mentors, and if we’ve tried being vegetarian. With Gary from Linux After Dark, Andy from Linux Dev Time, and Shane from Hybrid Cloud Show.

Patrons got this this in their feed two weeks ago.

 

 

 

 

 

Steam stats suggest that gaming on Linux is more popular than ever, Wine improvements might entice even more gamers, Ubuntu might break things when it tightens up GRUB security and makes 6GB of RAM the minimum requirement for the desktop edition, and Ubuntu MATE is looking for new maintainers.

 

News

LAS 2026 Call for proposals extended till the 10th April

Linux smashes past 5% on the Steam Survey for the first time

Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at the kernel level, and the speed gains are massive

Ubuntu 26.10 could drop btrfs, ZFS and LUKS support from GRUB

Ubuntu quietly raises its minimum system requirements

Windows 11 has lower requirements

Ubuntu MATE – seeking maintainers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s another hot questions episode. Whether we think better on our own or with other people, our non-standard debugging habits, favourite interview questions, coding at night, character encoding, and abolishing time zones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The ugliest and jankiest hacks we’ve put into prod, and a few of the worst things we’ve seen other people get away with.

 

 

 

 

 

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Microsoft says Windows 11 is getting less rubbish but we are skeptical, vehicles with alcohol interlocks won’t start because the manufacturer’s server is down, and whether you should virtualise a router or a NAS.

 

Plugs

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Five‑Year Storage Design with OpenZFS: Media Refresh, Rebalancing, and Hardware Independence

 

News/discussion

Our commitment to Windows quality

Microsoft fixes broken Windows update days after vowing fewer broken updates

Cyberattack on vehicle breathalyzer company leaves drivers stranded across the US

 

Free consulting

We were asked about whether you should virtualise a router or a NAS.

 

 

 

 

 

Making silly URLs, visualising complex weather data, a TUI network discovery tool, and an open source version of a classic synthesizer in discoveries, plus the sad reality that it’s more or less impossible to avoid code that’s been generated by “AI” these days.

 

Discoveries

creepy link

Supercell Wx

whosthere

Ultramaster KR-106

 

AI in FOSS

systemd 260-rc3 Released With AI Agents Documentation Added

New Xfce Wayland compositor is being developed with genAI

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Automox Turnkey Results

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We decided to give openSUSE a try. We had a great time. Honest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The US government is drumming up fear about foreign routers, a pretty serious supply chain attack might be state-sponsored, and the safety of filesystems inside VMs.

 

Plugs

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The Real Cost of Technology Dependence: Building Independence with Open-Source Storage

 

News/discussion

US bans any new consumer-grade routers not made in America

National Security Determination on the Threat Posed by Routers Produced by Foreign Countries (pdf)

1K+ cloud environments infected following Trivy supply chain attack

Self-propagating malware poisons open source software and wipes Iran-based machines

 

Free consulting

We were asked about the safety of filesystems inside VMs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Automox Turnkey Results

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Age declaration and verification in Linux gathers pace, Google blesses us with some hoops to jump through to install the software we want on stock Android, the FSFE lost their payment provider, great new KDE Plasma and GNOME features, and more.

 

News

Just over a month until OggCamp!

Piss up at The Shipwrights Arms (just next to London Bridge station) on Saturday 27th June from 6pm until late

Age verification isn’t sage verification when it’s inside operating systems

The Engineer Who Tried to Put Age Verification Into Linux

A small set of people are merging changes to various Linux components to make sure every application knows your birth date

When you tell me to just not implement age declaration, do you understand you’re asking me to risk thousands of dollars in fines?

I traced $2 billion in nonprofit grants and 45 states of lobbying records to figure out who’s behind the age verification bills.

meta-lobbying-and-other-findings

Android developer verification: Balancing openness and choice with safety

450 FSFE supporters affected: Payment provider Nexi cancelled us

This Week in Plasma: Press-and-Hold for Alternative Characters

Introducing GNOME 50, “Tokyo”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Automox Turnkey Results

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In the wake of Discord’s recent announcement about age verification, Matrix recently came in for a lot of criticism by a lot of people who said it’s not a viable replacement. Andy works on Matrix for a living and Amolith is invested in the XMPP world so we get into secure messaging, trade-offs between security and user experience, federation, and more.

 

Piss up at The Shipwrights Arms (just next to London Bridge station) on Saturday 27th June from 6pm until late

 

 

 

 

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Gary is concerned that he might have dug himself into a hole of on-prem vendor lock-in, despite using open source software. Plus why you should have PiKVM type device in your toolkit.

 

PiKVM

GL.iNet Comet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HelloFresh

Go to HelloFresh.com/hcs10fm to Get 10 free meals + a FREE Zwilling Knife (a $144.99 value) on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as discount on first box, new subscribers only, varies by plan.

 

 

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Why passkeys aren’t the right solution to everything, Allan tells us why he loves his new Lithium Iron Phosphate UPS, Btrfs vs ZFS on root, and restricting Internet access for IoT devices on your network.

 

Plugs

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Designing OpenZFS Storage for Independence

 

News/discussion

Please, please, please stop using passkeys for encrypting user data

Allan’s new Anker SOLIX C1000 Gen 2 Portable Power Station

 

Free consulting

We were asked about restricting Internet access for IoT devices on your network.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Drama in the exciting world of office suites, new ThinkPads are properly repairable, hands on with the Android desktop convergence future, and more.

 

News/discussion

LibreOffice Online: a fresh start

LibreOffice Online dragged out of the attic

LibreOffice 26.2 is here: a faster, more polished office suite that you control

Lenovo’s New T-Series ThinkPads Score 10/10 for Repairability

Your Pixel phone can now become a full Android PC via USB-C

You will be able to install “unverified” Android apps with ADB

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Automox Turnkey Results

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May has actually been using her stack of laptops and learning that “legacy” distros make more sense, the Firefox flatpak performs better than other packages, Linux Mint is a fine distro, Linux has the best calculators, and GNOME’s scaling is really good now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Microsoft Authenticator will delete Entra credentials on phones that aren’t running stock ROMs, Jim’s nightmare experience trying to get a user back into their MS account, tracking vehicles via tire pressure monitors, using a ZFS pool in a degraded state, and keeping cold ZFS storage dataset snapshots in sync.

 

Plugs

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ZFS Fast Dedup for Proxmox

 

News/discussion

Microsoft Authenticator to nuke Entra creds on rooted and jailbroken phones

Jailbreak/root detection in Microsoft Authenticator

Jim Microsoft MFA rant

Vehicle Tire Pressure Sensors Enable Silent Tracking

 

Free consulting

We were asked about purposely using a ZFS pool in a degraded state, and keeping cold ZFS storage dataset snapshots in sync.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Automox Turnkey Results

Endpoint management tailored to your specific environment. Know the plan. Trust the result. Learn more at www.automox.com

 

 

Our favourite smells, whether we use dark mode, and whether there’s any meaning to life. With Andy from Linux Dev Time, and Shane from Hybrid Cloud Show.

Patrons got this this in their feed two weeks ago.

 

 

 

 

 

Discord delays their age-gating rollout but legislators are pushing for operating systems including Linux to verify ages, LLM licence laundering might mean the end of copyleft, and how and why you might want to detect Meta’s spy camera glasses.

 

News

Getting Global Age Assurance Right: What We Got Wrong and What’s Changing

US state laws push age checks into the operating system

California introduces age verification law for all operating systems, including Linux and SteamOS — user age verified during OS account setup

I have actually read the text of California law CA AB1043 and, honestly, I don’t hate it

Do you really think that circumventing these things will always be a simple firmware mod or hardware hack?

Relicensing with AI-assisted rewrite – Tuan-Anh Tran

Chardet dispute shows how AI will kill software licensing, argues Bruce Perens

No right to relicense this project

Hide from Meta’s spyglasses with this new Android app

Dear Meta Smart Glasses Wearers: You’re Being Watched, Too

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The importance of having and sticking to correct development processes, what can go wrong when you don’t, and how to fix the problems you might end up with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The end of Windows 10 and the terrible state of Windows 11 are driving more and more people to Linux. How do we help people actually manage the switch and stay with Linux?

 

 

 

 

 

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Hardware scarcity and price hikes spread to hard drives, the Bcachefs dev thinks his AI is ‘fully conscious’, an agent might have gone after a FOSS maintainer, Jim is disappointed with an Ars author, and ZFS and VMs in the homelab.

 

Plugs

Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes

Piss up at The Shipwrights Arms (just next to London Bridge station) on Saturday 27th June from 6pm until late

Pool and VDEV Topology for Proxmox Workloads

 

News/discussion

AI blamed again as hard drives are sold out for this year

Hard drive pricing in the UK is so high someone flew to the US to buy drives, saving money despite flight and hotel costs

Bcachefs creator claims his custom LLM is ‘fully conscious’

An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me

An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – More Things Have Happened

An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout

An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

Editor’s Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

Sorry all this is my fault

 

Free consulting

We were asked about ZFS and VMs in the homelab.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Discord’s new age gating policy might be a real opportunity for open source but it’s not clear that we have anything that can compete, the complex and bizarre tale of an AI agent writing a blog post attacking a FOSS maintainer, why we lost some trust in a major tech publication, the Firefox AI kill switch arrives, and a quick KDE Korner.

 

News

Piss up at The Shipwrights Arms (just next to London Bridge station) on Saturday 27th June from 6pm until late

Discord Launches Teen-by-Default Settings Globally

Discord Voluntarily Pushes Mandatory Age Verification Despite Recent Data Breach

Hackers Expose Age-Verification Software Powering Surveillance Web

I Verified My LinkedIn Identity. Here’s What I Actually Handed Over.

An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me

An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – More Things Have Happened

An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout

An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward

The obnoxious GitHub OpenClaw AI bot is … a crypto bro

Editor’s Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

Sorry all this is my fault

Firefox 148 Now Available With The New AI Controls / AI Kill Switches

 

KDE Korner 4

A quick anti-FUD FAQ to debunk “the KDE is forcing systemd!” hoax

KDE endorses the UN’s Open Source Principles

Plasma 6.6

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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People often like to talk down Electron, but it is really that bad? There may be better ways to use Web technologies to make desktop apps, but isn’t having Linux versions of apps a good thing no matter how they are made?

 

We mentioned Tauri and Wails.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sean tells us about a recent catastrophe in his Kubernetes homelab (that’s really home prod). What went wrong, how did he fix it, and how can he avoid it happening again?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HelloFresh

Go to HelloFresh.com/hcs10fm to Get 10 free meals + a FREE Zwilling Knife (a $144.99 value) on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as discount on first box, new subscribers only, varies by plan.

 

 

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Jim and Allan disagree on how new hard drive tech is likely to work, more on storage and compute in the same box, and how we set up disk encryption on laptops.

 

Plugs

Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes

OpenZFS Monitoring and Observability

 

News/discussion

Western Digital doubles the performance of hard drives with dual-actuator High-Bandwidth, with path to 8X performance increase — Power-Optimized HDDs will reduce power by 20 percent

 

Free consulting

We were asked about how we set up disk encryption on laptops.

A quick-start guide to OpenZFS native encryption – Ars Technica

Keeping Data Safe with OpenZFS: Security, Encryption, and Delegation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The professional-grade audio workstation Ardour has a great new version, LinkedIn does a shocking but not surprising amount of browser fingerprinting, Firefox is getting a button to turn off the AI nonsense, a new way to prevent slop “contributions” to your project, another tale of someone failing to switch to Linux, and why we should talk more about why open source software can be better than proprietary alternatives. With guest host Kevin from Linux Dev Time.

 

News/discussion

Ardour 9.0 — What’s new

Linkedin-extension-fingerprinting

AI controls are coming to Firefox

Introducing Vouch: explicit trust management for open source

I went back to Linux and it was a mistake

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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With the price of RAM and storage through the roof, what are we going to do when it comes to supporting people who come to us for IT advice?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Notepad++ falls victim to a state-sponsored attacker, AI agents talk nonsense to each other on an insecure vibe coded social network, and backing up a laptop properly.

 

Plugs

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ZFS vs Btrfs: Architecture, Features, and Stability

 

News/discussion

Notepad++ Hijacked by State-Sponsored Hackers

AI agents now have their own Reddit-style social network, and it’s getting weird fas

Hacking Moltbook: AI Social Network Reveals 1.5M API Keys

 

Free consulting

We were asked about backing up a laptop properly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The best museums we’ve been to, the people we admire, and our weirdest train journeys. With Gary from Linux After Dark.

 

 

 

 

Patrons got this this in their feed two weeks ago.

 

 

 

 

 

Pricing and release dates for the new Steam hardware are delayed, Xfce is getting a new Wayland compositor that’s written in Rust but it might take a while, the Sudo dev could do with sponsorship, Lennart Poettering and friends are cooking up something (but it’s not exactly clear what that is), KDE Linux is progressing nicely, and more. With guest host Kevin from Linux Dev Time.

 

News

Steam Hardware: Launch timing and other FAQs

Xfwl4 – The Roadmap for a Xfce Wayland Compositor

Xfwl4 (Xfce’s Wayland Compositor) FAQ

Xubuntu Development Update February 2026

Sudo’s maintainer needs resources to keep utility updated

Ikea’s new Matter smart home devices are having connection problems

Introducing Amutable

Busy months in KDE Linux

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The career progression options you have as a software engineer, moving from junior to senior dev, other paths you can go down like architecture or tech lead, and why management isn’t for everyone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Why we have doubts about the new AWS European Sovereign Cloud, what it would take to build a proper European cloud that could compete with AWS, and why it’s such a difficult undertaking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Antigravity A1

The Antigravity A1 is the world’s first all-in-one 8K 360 drone. It’s a real game-changer. You get full immersive flight with the goggles, intuitive controls, and endless creative freedom in editing. If you’re thinking about buying a drone, make it this one. Learn more at antigravity.tech

 

HelloFresh

Go to HelloFresh.com/hcs10fm to Get 10 free meals + a FREE Zwilling Knife (a $144.99 value) on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as discount on first box, new subscribers only, varies by plan.

 

 

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Outlook’s autodiscover feature is leaking data again, our thoughts on the cycle of cloud and on-prem (centralised and local computing), and why you probably shouldn’t use NMVe to SATA adapters.

 

Plugs

ZFS in Production: Real-World Deployment Patterns and Pitfalls

Modern VDI on Proxmox: ZFS Reliability and GPU Acceleration at Lower Cost

 

News/discussion

Why has Microsoft been routing example.com traffic to a company in Japan?

 

 

Free consulting

We were asked about SATA to PCIe adapters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Malware in the Snap store highlights the risks of modern package management, but users accidentally ending up with a totally different desktop environment shows the perils of the older approach. Plus the UK government wants to do more age-gating, and we hear about a project to get kids into Free Software.

 

News

Malware Peddlers Are Now Hijacking Snap Publisher Domains

Linux Mint user gets Gnomed

It looks like they followed these instructions to install Proton VPN (including selecting gdm)

They aren’t alone

AWS flips switch on Euro cloud as customers fret about digital sovereignty

UK government rolls back key part of digital ID plans

Lords back UK social media ban for under-16s

Under-16 social media ban would expand age-gating for millions and silence young people

UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs

 

Mission:Libre

Carmen tells us about her project that aims to get kids into Free Software.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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How do you convince people to stop using unethical technology like generative AI?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Why you might not want your Windows encryption keys to be backed up to Microsoft, some Bluetooth devices are vulnerable to snooping and tracking, a lesson in the need for backups,  and the best practices and stack for setting up a mail server.

 

Plugs

Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes

Klara’s Expert Perspective on OpenZFS in 2026 and What to Expect Next

Modern VDI on Proxmox: ZFS Reliability and GPU Acceleration at Lower Cost

 

News/discussion

Microsoft Gave FBI Keys To Unlock Encrypted Data, Exposing Major Privacy Flaw

How to encrypt your PC’s disk without giving the keys to Microsoft

WhisperPair: Hijacking Bluetooth Accessories Using Google Fast Pair

When two years of academic work vanished with a single click

 

Free consulting

We were asked about the best practices and stack for setting up a mail server.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wikipedia is 25 years old and has found a good way to deal with the AI scraping problem, the Python Software Foundation funds the security work they had planned, curl’s bug bounty program is ending, Raspberry Pi has new underwhelming hardware, and European AWS hasn’t won Félim over. Plus a reminder about the upcoming OggCamp event, and a call for participation.

 

News

Wikipedia celebrates 25 years of knowledge at its best (and does deals with more AI companies)

Wikipedia volunteers spent years cataloging AI tells. Now there’s a plugin to avoid them

Anthropic invests $1.5 million in the Python Software Foundation and open source security

The end of the curl bug-bounty

Introducing the Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ 2: Generative AI on Raspberry Pi 5

Raspberry Pi Flash Drive available now from $30: a high-quality essential accessory

AWS flips switch on Euro cloud as customers fret about digital sovereignty

 

OggCamp 2026

OggCamp crew lead Andy Piper tells us about the upcoming unconference.

Call for volunteer crew

Call for papers

Check out Andy’s podcast

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Software complexity is a complex topic, so we dig into it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Shane is worried about backups for his janky Kubernetes homelab. The rest of us advise him on exactly what to back up, how to go about picking an offsite backup location and setting it up, how best to back up databases, and more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Antigravity A1

The Antigravity A1 is the world’s first all-in-one 8K 360 drone. It’s a real game-changer. You get full immersive flight with the goggles, intuitive controls, and endless creative freedom in editing. If you’re thinking about buying a drone, make it this one. Learn more at antigravity.tech

 

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The last method to activate Windows without the Internet has gone away, malware that tricks users with a fake blue screen of death, and recovering from bad RAM with ZFS.

 

Plugs

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Understanding ZFS Scrubs and Data Integrity

 

News/discussion

Windows activation by phone is seemingly dead

How Fake BSODs and Trusted Build Tools Are Used to Construct a Malware Infection

 

Free consulting

We were asked about recovering from bad RAM with ZFS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We cover your feedback including follow-up on old tablets as clocks, Firefox alternatives, and moving off Gmail. Plus building synths in Rust, FOSS isometric diagrams, a powerful network analysis tool for Android, and some cool ambient music in discoveries.

 

Discoveries

CAW

FossFlow

Félim’s bad diagram

Blade Runner Radio

LUX on Bandcamp

Network Survey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We follow up on episode 104 from September last year when we promised to tackle some Linux projects including moving to Immich and Jellyfin, learning about Docker Compose and Python, and ditching Synology.

 

 

 

 

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Cisco network gear fell over when it shouldn’t have, yet another security flaw is found in Microsoft Copilot, the US military is letting Grok into all its networks, and managing LVM snapshots.

 

Plugs

Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes

Unwrapping ZFS: Gifts from the Open Source Community

A New Year, A New ZFS: What 2.4 Brings to the Table

 

News

Cisco routers knocked out due to Cloudflare DNS change

Reprompt: The Single-Click Microsoft Copilot Attack that Silently Steals Your Personal Data

Musk’s AI tool Grok will be integrated into Pentagon networks, Hegseth says

 

Free consulting

We were asked about managing LVM snapshots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The normal things we’ve never done. With Andy and Kevin from Linux Dev Time.

 

 

 

Patrons got this this in their feed two weeks ago.

 

 

 

 

 

Hype is really starting to build for Valve’s upcoming Steam hardware and other great gaming news, Stack Overflow is losing to LLMs, old men like Félim don’t want to lose middle click paste, our optimism about Google continuing to release Android source code was misplaced, and Bose demonstrates how to kill a product.

 

News

The Steam Machine’s Price Might Have Just Leaked And It’s Not What We Hoped For

Canonical Builds Steam Snap For Ubuntu ARM64 Leveraging FEX

Revised Steam Survey For December 2025 Puts Linux Gaming Marketshare At 3.58%

GeForce NOW coming to Linux

Stack Overflow graph

GNOME dev gives fans of Linux’s middle-click paste the middle finger

Google will now only release Android source code twice a year

Bose open-sources its SoundTouch home theater smart speakers ahead of end-of-life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dealing with a crisis as a developer, how to keep everyone in the loop while you fix systems and code, why pointing the blame isn’t useful, some of our horror stories, and more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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What to consider when making a big move to a new technology for your on-prem or private cloud estate, for example when a provider suddenly hikes their subscription or license prices.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Antigravity A1

The Antigravity A1 is the world’s first all-in-one 8K 360 drone. It’s a real game-changer. You get full immersive flight with the goggles, intuitive controls, and endless creative freedom in editing. If you’re thinking about buying a drone, make it this one. Learn more at antigravity.tech

 

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The many reasons why email shouldn’t be trusted. Plus how to stop your kids accessing inappropriate content online, and why the answer probably isn’t a technical one.

 

Plugs

Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes

What We Built: Top ZFS Capabilities Delivered by Klara in 2025

 

Discussion

Please STOP trusting email

 

Free consulting

We were asked about blocking adult content at the network level. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s that time of year where we look back at our 2025 predictions, and make some new ones for 2026.

 

Will mentioned The Enshittifinancial Crisis and an article about solar panels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We look back at what we wanted to happen in the Linux and FOSS world in 2025, and talk about what we want to happen in 2026.

 

 

 

 

 

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Why you should probably keep paying for your old domains, the perpetual problem of typo squatting, a machine learning expert’s take on BS from LLMs, and whether to separate compute and storage in a home setup.

 

Plugs

Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes

Can You Have Too Many VDEVs? A Practical Guide to ZFS Scaling

 

News/discussion

Digital Trust in Danger: When Authorities Forget Their Old Domains

Most Parked Domains Now Serving Malicious Content

LLMs are bullshitters. But that doesn’t mean they’re not useful

 

Free consulting

We were asked about whether to separate compute and storage in a home setup.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s our 2025 review of Linux and open source news including great gaming news, the impact of AI, the disappointments from Mozilla, the year of Wayland on the desktop, the politics of open source, Intel’s lack of interest, and wins for KDE.

 

Gaming

Steam Machine, controller, VR headset incoming from Valve

Steam Deck LCD production is ending

 

AI bullshit

Open source devs say AI crawlers dominate traffic, forcing blocks on entire countries

Wikimedia Foundation bemoans AI bot bandwidth burden

ardour.org has banned 1.2M distinct IP addresses for trying to slurp from our git repository

Introducing CC Signals: A New Social Contract for the Age of AI

You should enforce your own existing licenses against AI mass crawling

Anubis guards gates against hordes of LLM bot crawlers

FSF calls Anubis malware

It seems like the AI crawlers learned how to solve the Anubis challenges

 

Mozilla

Updates on Mozilla’s Leadership and Growth Planning

Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

An update on our Terms of Use

Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic

Investing in what moves the internet forward

When I say that I can’t recommend third-party forks of either Firefox or Chrome for real world use, this kind of thing is why

Firefox is fine. The people running it are not

Mozilla Slammed Over Battery-Draining “Garbage” AI in Firefox

Firefox Adds CoPilot Chatbot, New Tab Widgets in Nightly Builds

Introducing AI, the Firefox way: A look at what we’re working on and how you can help shape it

Rewiring Mozilla: Doing for AI what we did for the web

Mozilla’s next chapter: Building the world’s most trusted software company

 

Wayland

Fedora 43 Cleared To Ship With Wayland-Only GNOME

GNOME Dropping X11 Support May Complicate Next Ubuntu LTS

Ubuntu 25.10 drops support for GNOME on Xorg

Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora 43 to drop X11 in GNOME editions

An update on the X11 GNOME Session Removal

Wayback Is Now Hosted On FreeDesktop.org

Wayback 0.3 released!

GNOME Mutter Now “Completely Drops The Whole X11 Backend”

KDE Going all-in on a Wayland future

 

Politics

The price of software freedom is eternal politics

Framework flame war erupts over Linux controversy

PSF Gets a Donor Surge After Rejecting Anti-DEI Federal Grant

 

Intel

All good things come to an end: Shutting down Clear Linux OS

Intel’s Open-Source Strategy Is Changing At Odds With The Ethos Of Open-Source

The Death Of Clear Linux, Other Intel Linux Engineering Setbacks In 2025

 

KDE

KDE Highlights from 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tailscale

Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/lnl and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.

 

 

What we are likely to be doing when you hear this, and why it’s unlikely to involve much in the way of development. This is a short episode because Joe is having a break for the Christmas period.

 

 

 

 

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What we love most about the cloud and cloud native technologies. This is a short episode because (producer) Joe is having a break for the Christmas period.

 

 

 

 

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The one bit of advice we’d give to someone wanting to become a professional sysadmin. This is a short episode because Joe is having a break for the Christmas period.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good news for custom Android ROMs, Rust is here to stay in the kernel, an open source success story in Germany, and a new version of elementary OS is out. Plus discoveries is back including better Firefox history, migrating from Windows to Linux, automating telescopes, turning old tablets into clocks, and more.

 

News

Good news for custom ROMs: Google just released the Android 16 QPR2

The (successful) end of the kernel Rust experiment

New Linux Patch Confirms: Rust Experiment Is Done, Rust Is Here To Stay

Goodbye, Microsoft: Schleswig-Holstein relies on Open Source and saves millions

elementary OS 8.1 Available Now

 

Discoveries

Better History

Operese

commodore64 is back!?

Making History: Signing the Commodore Contract + C64 Ultimate Production Update

PiFinder

Fullscreen Clock

Clasp

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tailscale

Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/lnl and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.

 

 

We tell stories from some of the tech support nightmares we’ve found ourselves in. This is a short episode because Joe is having a break for the Christmas period.

 

 

 

 

 

Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes

 

 

 

 

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Apple deletes a person’s entire digital life, PornHub Premium user data is leaked, Mozilla’s new CEO wants to ruin Firefox, Tech Force in the USA is alarming, and fine tuning storage for databases.

 

Plugs

Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes

Is DWPD Still a Useful SSD Spec?

 

News/discussion

20 Years of Digital Life, Gone in an Instant, thanks to Apple

PornHub extorted after hackers steal Premium member activity data

Mozilla’s next chapter: Building the world’s most trusted software company

Rest assured, Firefox will always remain a browser built around user control

Tech Force

Trump administration launches Tech Force hiring push

 

Free consulting

We were asked about fine tuning storage for databases.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Steam machine will use an older HDMI standard because of arbitrary rules, more details about running X86 Windows games on Arm Linux, and the Steam Controller lives on. Plus Calibre is adding “AI”, and we laugh at another LLM.

 

News

Why won’t Steam Machine support HDMI 2.1? Digging in on the display standard drama

Steam Machine today, Steam Phones tomorrow

Remember Google Stadia? Steam finally made its gamepad worth rescuing

Talk to your Fedora system with the linux-mcp-server!

Calibre adds AI “discussion” feature

Because the Calibre ebook library software just acquired AI garbage it has *already* been forked

AI and GNOME Shell Extensions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tailscale

Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/lnl and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.

 

 

How far you can go with eliminating global variables, forcing everything you ever need to be passed in as arguments.

 

 

 

 

Tailscale

Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/ldt and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.

 

 

Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes

 

See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

Subscribe to the RSS feed

How to connect your public environments across clouds and into your datacenter infrastructure – using official options, VPNs and new ideas like mTLS. Plus container networking, CNIs and other ways to plug extras into Kubernetes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Antigravity A1

The Antigravity A1 is the world’s first all-in-one 8K 360 drone. It’s a real game-changer. You get full immersive flight with the goggles, intuitive controls, and endless creative freedom in editing. If you’re thinking about buying a drone, make it this one. Learn more at antigravity.tech

 

 

Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes

 

 

 

 

 

Subscribe to the RSS feed.

The Crucial brand of consumer SSDs and RAM is going away, AMD and Intel memory encryption can be bypassed with cheap hardware, more AI buffoonery, and monitoring users’ usage on a network.

 

Plugs

Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes

When RAID Isn’t Enough: ZFS Redundancy Done Right

 

News/discussion

Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

Cheap Hardware Module Bypasses AMD, Intel Memory Encryption

Google’s vibe coding platform deletes entire drive

One day, AI might be better than you at surfing the web. That day isn’t today

 

Free consulting

We were asked about monitoring users’ usage on a network.

 

 

 

 

 

Tailscale

Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/25a and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.