The latest interim release of Ubuntu is here, complete with kernel 7.3 – even though it isn't officially out yet. It also includes a new speech-to-text system that is intriguing but not fully useful. Ubuntu 26.10 "Stonking Stingray" arrived on time. This is just a couple of weeks after the beta version that we looked at earlier this month, suggesting that the team didn’t encounter any show-stopper bugs. The faster kernel release cycle that Canonical adopted in 2024 has slightly bitten them this time around: the Linux kernel’s new faster AI-boosted release cycle means that 7.2 is relatively old now, but 7.3 isn’t quite ready yet; at the time of writing, it’s on Release Candidate 7 – but Canonical has jumped the gun and used it anyway. So, the release version of Ubuntu 26.10 comes with a pre-release kernel, and machines will get updated to the completed 7.3 as soon as it’s available. We tried the default GNOME edition, with GNOME 51. It looks identical to the beta version. The most visible difference in this release is in the window-tiling assistant, which now displays a Windows-like transient pop-up box offering various tiled arrangements when you drag a window to the edge of the screen. The Myna speech-to-text tool, whose announcement we covered back in June, is now available – albeit as a technology preview. We tested the beta on an old ThinkPad, and while the pre-release OS ran perfectly, Myna didn't work. (Incidentally, after switching to a non-GPU LLM, it does work in the release version – just very slowly.) So, we tried the release version on our newer testbed machine, a Dell XPS 9370. The installation process is more straightforward now, with some official instructions, and as the Dell doesn't have an unsupported Nvidia GPU to complicate things, it worked fine. The installation pulls in nearly a gigabyte of dependencies and language model files: since the installation ISO is already 6⅔ GB, it's probably a good thing that it’s not included. We tested it in the Writer module of LibreOffice 26.8. Invoking it is as simple as pressing Super+J, and then talking. Using the laptop’s built-in microphone, accuracy was poor, but with a USB headset, it improved markedly. It’s a little odd to watch as the model revises the text as you go along, going back and altering words as later ones resolve ambiguities, but it did the job. It doesn’t understand punctuation or commands: words such as "comma," "full stop," "new line," "delete," and so on, were entered into the document along with other text. For a preview, though, it's impressive, and for those who have problems with the use of their arms – such as the Reg FOSS desk just three years ago – this is a seriously useful extra. Ubuntu now just has to catch up with macOS and Windows, both of which have offered speech input for several years – but it's finally entered the race. This is one use of LLMs of which we heartily approve. Alongside the flagship GNOME edition, all the flavors have been updated, which hasn't happened for about a year. For some flavors, this means new versions of their respective desktops, depending on the release cycle of the respective environment. As we said when we looked at the beta release, Kubuntu 26.10 comes with KDE Plasma 6.7.5, which is the final Plasma release to support X11. Although Ubuntu MATE skipped the LTS release earlier this year, it's back with the Stonking release: Ubuntu MATE 26.10 will come as good news for fans of this retro GNOME 2 style desktop. A year ago, Ubuntu Unity missed the 25.10 release, and 26.04 is not an LTS, so fans of Canonical's in-house desktop should take a close look at Ubuntu Unity 26.10. A visible change from previous releases is that it's picked up some accessory apps from the Lomiri desktop, which is the community continuation of what was going to be Unity 8. Ubuntu Unity 26.10 uses the Lomiri terminal emulator by default, and Lomiri's File Manager is available as an alternative to the default Nemo file manager. The "minimal" installation of this release is even more stripped back than Xubuntu Minimal – this version doesn't have the Snap subsystem installed at all. Ubuntu Budgie 26.10 has the very latest Budgie desktop version 10.10.3, which brings some accessibility improvements. Ubuntu Cinnamon 26.10 has an updated version of Mint’s Cinnamon environment, too – it includes the very latest Cinnamon 6.6.9, released in June. Lubuntu 26.10 includes the latest LXQt 2.4, which arrived too close to the release of Lubuntu 26.04 to be incorporated. The other 26.10 flavors are more modest releases, which just pick up the latest versions of their components. Under the hood, there are some deeper changes that affect all editions. As we mentioned in the beta version, more core CLI tools have been replaced with new Rust versions, now including the NTP-sync daemon. Stonking replaces dbus-daemon with dbus-broker, and it uses systemd 261.3. The server version has been updated as well, and now includes AMD ROCm 10.0, OpenSSL 4, OpenSSH 10.5, and the Rust upki tool for revoking security certificates. Canonical’s home-grown TPM-backed full disk encryption is present, but intrepid experimenters who have enabled that on 26.04 can't upgrade for now – this should follow later. One of the benefits of increasingly mature FOSS desktops is that upgrades are increasingly routine, so long as you haven't rolled up your sleeves, lifted the hood, and started customizing the OS. If you just install packages from Snapcraft and leave the OS alone, interim versions are pretty safe these days, and so is the upgrade process. It's one way to avoid being nagged about Ubuntu Pro, if that irks you. Pro is not available on interim releases. By default, LTS versions don't automatically offer to upgrade to interim ones – if you want it, you must opt in. We suggest leaving it until the final version of the kernel, but otherwise, it’s already in good shape. ®

It might not be the Year of the Linux Desktop yet, but it could be the Year of Corporate Compliance on the Linux Desktop as Microsoft releases Defender for Linux Workstations. The product is an extension of Microsoft's existing Defender for Endpoint. According to the Windows behemoth, it brings "enterprise-grade protection, detection, vulnerability management and response capabilities to Linux workstations." Linux desktop users will get services including Defender's anti-virus functionality. The penguin-primed product also has management tools for inventory and security settings, as well as device isolation. "The result," said Microsoft, "is broader Linux protection, delivered through the tools and processes security teams already trust." The release is currently in public preview and requires the standalone Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 or Microsoft 365 E5 and E7. Support is based on the underlying Linux distribution and kernel version, with RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu LTS, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and Oracle Linux among others on the list. There's no separate desktop agent to deploy or maintain. Defender works the same way as it does on Linux servers, so administrators shouldn't face many challenges. End users… well… that's another story. As enterprises gain visibility into Linux workstations alongside the rest of their endpoint estate, some friction is possible and it won't be technical. For some, compliance through Microsoft's tooling is anathema, no matter how penguin-friendly it claims to be nowadays. As for the why, we're told it's simple business and customer demand. Microsoft noted that more developers are using Linux desktops, which in turn makes them more attractive to attackers. "As Linux adoption expands beyond the datacenter, organizations need a consistent approach to protecting Linux wherever it is used," Microsoft said. The idea of Microsoft Defender being able to peer at Linux desktops may alarm some, but Microsoft announced Defender ATP for Linux back in 2020. The better question is: why has it taken so long? We'd also quibble with the premise "As more developers begin to use Linux desktops." Many already do: the 2025 Stack Overflow survey had Windows leading for professional work at 49.5 percent, but Ubuntu wasn't far behind at 27.7 percent. So less "begin," more "enthusiastically continue." ®

Tiny11 Builder, a tool for creating less-bloated Windows 11 installation images, now has a desktop app preview that makes the process less reliant on PowerShell know-how. As the author explains: "Tiny11 Builder aims to be the de facto standard for creating lightweight, safe and efficient Windows images." The tool creates an ISO image for Windows installation, stripping out bundled apps and selected system components. It accepts Windows 11 installation media from 22H2 onward, including 26H2, and the result is something a good deal more compact than Microsoft's original. The major visible change is a WinUI 3 desktop application that uses a new C# image builder rather than merely running the existing PowerShell scripts behind a graphical interface. Those scripts remain available, but the new interface is considerably more polished. There are three basic build modes: Tiny11, which removes bundled apps while retaining Windows Update, Defender, and recovery tools; Tiny11 Core, which disables updates and Defender and irreversibly removes components, including the recovery environment; and finally a custom option where users can decide which Windows elements to keep or drop from the ISO image. Tiny11 remains an impressive technical achievement, but it carries an important health warning: the ISOs it creates are definitely not supported by Microsoft, and if you opt for Tiny11 Core, the author recommends sticking to test VMs only. This is for enthusiasts who understand that a smaller installation can come with missing functionality, security trade-offs, and support complications. There is also no guarantee that attempts to bypass some of the more onerous aspects of Windows 11 installation will work. As the author notes in the project's repository: "Local-account and hardware-check settings are best effort, not guaranteed bypasses on new builds." In other words, don't count on it to bypass Windows 11's hardware requirements or account demands on newer builds. Tiny11 is all about stripping fluff and fripperies from the Windows 11 installation image. As with earlier versions, a license is still required. While the ISO might have been debloated, this is still Microsoft Windows 11 after all. "No modification bypasses Windows licensing or activation," the author notes. The appeal of removing Microsoft's excesses is clear. Whether the reduced footprint is worth the loss of components and potential support headaches depends on what users choose to strip out. ®

NetBSD seems to be thriving of late: as the Linux world goes pro-AI, some of the AI-averse are turning to this explicitly AI-free project. The NetBSD project’s Mastodon feed reports that it received a record 120 donations last month, and it has far exceeded its target: “We received $120,282 USD in total. Naturally, this has completely filled up our donations target bar which was set at $50,000. Time to fund some projects!” It’s a welcome contrast to the usual stories of under-funded FOSS projects, and it follows a visible uptick in people asking about NetBSD in the FOSS Unix groups we read, ever since Emperor Penguin Torvalds said that Linux was not an anti-AI project back in July, and the following month, the Debian project polled its developers on AI use, and they chose to permit AI-generated contributions. This is the moderate, centrist stance. The most recent Ubuntu Summit was heavily AI-flavored. The heads of Red Hat Global Engineering sent out a memo about transitioning to an Agentic Software Development Lifecycle. But once it’s in the kernel, then no distro can totally avoid it. This stance is profoundly offputting to those who prefer hand-crafted code. Last week, the Reg FOSS desk attended the Open Source Summit Europe in Prague. This event reflects the tendencies of the increasingly mainstream open-source world: Linux is pretty much the only OS in evidence, although many attendees tote around (and present from) MacBooks, and both Microsoft and Windows were visible. The event overlaps with Embedded Linux Conference, so the Zephyr RTOS was also visible on some robots and other gadgets. The Open Source Summit gives the overall impression that Linux is the only general-purpose FOSS OS. We saw no mention at all of any of the BSDs; indeed, when we mentioned NetBSD, some of the folks from Let’s Encrypt looked puzzled and asked us “What’s ‘net bee ess dee’?” Sadly, this is probably a reasonably fair representation of its presence at the event and in the FOSS mainstream. For us, the single most dominant theme in the talks, the materials, the stands, and even the T-shirts was AI. It’s everywhere, and every exhibitor was keen to talk about how they’re using AI, deploying AI, scaling AI, or managing AI. The louder the noise about AI gets, the stronger grows the aversion of those of us who actively wish to avoid it. The NetBSD project, on the other hand, came out early and strongly: it banned AI-generated code back in 2024, just a month after the project celebrated its 30th anniversary. This vulture attended the project’s talk at that year’s FOSDEM: NetBSD 10: Thirty years, still going strong!. As ever, the question of differentiation between the BSDs, and between Linux and the BSDs, came up. NetBSD’s slogan is “Of course it runs NetBSD,” but in 2024, its ubiquity was looking threatened: Linux is comparable, and FreeBSD boast close integration with ZFS, Linux-compatible Podman containers, and more. The following year, though, FreeBSD 15 appeared, dropping support for 32-bit x86 (and 32-bit POWER). Debian 13 dropped x86-32 too, as well as MIPS CPU support. That year, the RHEL 10 release went further: it not only requires 64-bit x86, it demands x86-64-v3. This cut off so many older machines, it forced CERN to start switching to Debian. From within the BSD world, the differences between the various projects are fairly clear. NetBSD is minimal, highly portable, and takes great pride in its very friendly, welcoming community. We can personally attest to this: in the course of our review of NetBSD 11, we tried to install the veteran CDE desktop. We couldn’t get it working, but the folks on the NetBSD mailing list tried very hard indeed to help. Although it also has very broad platform support, OpenBSD’s focus is on security, to the extent of dropping the entire Bluetooth subsystem because it didn’t measure up. Its community is far less tolerant: indeed, when this vulture’s latest OpenBSD review was posted on the OpenBSD sub-Reddit, we were banned from the group for pointing out errors in their negative assessments of a very positive article. OpenBSD project lead Theo de Raadt has said it cannot accept AI-generated code: any submitter lacks the right to place a license on it, because it’s impossible to trace which humans originally wrote any code that LLMs regurgitate. However, this guideline seems permeable: the tmux app, the terminal multiplexer included in OpenBSD, has already accepted AI-assisted changes. We asked de Raadt for official comment on this and he declined. FreeBSD is the 362.87 kg gorilla of the BSDs, to the extent that the mainline OS has its own distros, such as GhostBSD, plus MidnightBSD. There’s also the recently-revived experimental NextBSD, and a couple of NAS distros. There’s a live OS called NomadBSD too, although we had little success with this. However, FreeBSD’s central committee has been debating whether to permit AI-generated code for over a year now: we first reported on it in September 2025, and there’s still no consensus. We are sure there is a large helping of “AI is just a tool”, and we suspect side-dishes of “AI is here to stay” and “don’t get left behind.” If anyone dares point out failings, doubtless they’re using the wrong model, or not prompting it correctly. NetBSD’s position is clear: “Do not commit tainted code to the repository. “Code generated by a large language model or similar technology, such as GitHub/Microsoft’s Copilot, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, or Facebook/Meta’s Code Llama, is presumed to be tainted code, and must not be committed without prior written approval by core.” So far, this seems to be serving it well. If as a result, it remains relatively tiny and minimal, and gets left behind by the AI wave, we plan to be right there with it. Long may the project continue. Bootnote We won’t wish to omit anyone. There is another BSD: Dragonfly BSD, which is experimenting with the kernel and filesystem design. We gave version 6.4 a spin in 2023 and since then there have been only two minor point releases: version 6.4.2 was nearly a year and a half ago, although development is still active. We are not aware that the project has made any statement for or against LLM code generation. Perhaps it should. ®

Microsoft has closed a loophole that let users sidestep the need for an account during setup for consumer versions of Windows 11. If users clicked "Learn More" when the setup process prompted for a Microsoft account, the Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE) skipped directly to the point where they just had to enter a name and password. Windows prodder "Bob Pony," who first documented the loophole, reported its removal. We tried the original trick on real Intel hardware and found it was possible to skip the Microsoft account requirement by clicking a link, but no longer. Other hacks – for those who dare to use unofficial Windows setup routes – still exist, though they are beyond the skill set of the average user. Microsoft requires an account during initial setup of Windows 11 Home and Pro for personal use. For consumers, using Windows 11 without an account can be tricky because services such as OneDrive require authentication. Microsoft is far from the only operating system vendor to demand an account during setup, but many Linux distributions, by contrast, don't require one. According to Bob Pony, the loophole was "quietly patched server side," which makes sense. Microsoft was hardly likely to leave it flapping open for long. Microsoft has won this round of account workaround Whac-a-Mole, though another bypass may yet pop up. ®