You might have noticed that I have not shared new puzzles and quizzes for some time. Actually, I am not sure if people are enjoying those fun units and thus uncertain about putting in the effort to make them. Personally, I like them and won't hesitate in creating more if I get positive feedback on continuing them.
Below is a simple poll. Click on it and vote Yes or No. After a week, if more than 60% people opt for yes, I'll continue the weekly puzzles again 😄
Here's the highlight of this edition of FOSS Weekly:
- A new trust-based system to fight AI slop.
- Gentoo kickstarts move away from GitHub.
- A potential change to Linux Mint's release schedule.
- Interview with Session co-founder.
- Weather in the terminal with twist.
- And other Linux news, tips, and, of course, memes!
Humble Bundle has brought back the "Linux for Seasoned Admins" ebook bundle offer (partner link). From the classic Linux Pocket Guide and my favorite, Efficient Linux at the Command Line, the bundle also has ebooks on Docker, Ansible, Kubernetes and other devops aspects of Linux.
And your purchase also supports the Code for America initiative.
📰 Linux and Open Source News
Here's a summary of the news this week.
It turns out shipping Linux Mint every six months doesn't leave much time for actual development. Lead dev says the team spends more time testing and releasing than building features. Longer release cycles are being considered, plus Wayland support is finally coming.
The guy behind Vagrant and Ghostty just launched Vouch to fight AI slop drowning open source projects. Contributors need vouching before submitting code and can accumulate trust across projects. Pretty timely after cURL killed their bug bounty program.
REMnux just released v8 after 15 years of fighting malware. Built on Ubuntu 24.04 with a new installer, loads of reverse engineering tools, and a MCP server that works with Claude or ChatGPT to automatically run analysis tools and write custom Python scripts.
Fed up with Microsoft pushing Copilot everywhere, Gentoo's ditching GitHub for Codeberg. The repository mirror is already live for pull requests, with the rest of their Git infrastructure moving over in the coming months.
AsteroidOS 2.0 is here after eight years to give your old smartwatch a second life. Always-on display, heart rate tracking, step counting now built in.
Warp has launched Oz to handle the messy infrastructure side of running AI coding agents. These agents can write code across repos, push commits, and open PRs autonomously while your team watches progress through shareable URLs.
🧠 What We’re Thinking About
Session's co-founder reckons privacy messaging should be an option for when you need it, not a full WhatsApp replacement. Governments asked them for user data 17 times last year, got nothing because their decentralized setup ensured there was nothing to hand over.
Sourav Rudra
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🧮 Linux Tips, Tutorials, and Learnings
Debian is called the "universal operating system" because it's been porting to every architecture under the sun since 1995. Started with m68k workstations, it now runs on everything from old SPARC servers to brand new riscv64 chips.
Our in-house novelist ditched MS Word for Emacs to write his next sci-fi book. Org-Roam handles research notes, LaTeX for manuscripts, Fountain for screenplays. He basically replaced Notion, Overleaf, and Final Draft with one editor that won't slop AI into his work.
Tired of wrestling with find and grep? Our roundup covers 9 GUI search tools for Linux that actually work.
👷 AI, Homelab and Hardware Corner
Murena has teamed up with German hardware maker Volla to launch a €698 de-Googled tablet running /e/OS. It packs 12GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 10,000 mAh battery.
Ships to Europe, the US, Canada, and a few other regions.
Sourav Rudra
✨ Apps and Projects Highlights
Want your weather forecast with ASCII animations? weathr is a Rust CLI tool that shows animated rain, snow, fog, and day/night cycles in your terminal.
Pulkit Chandak
Sabayon Linux's creator is back with matrixOS, an immutable Gentoo-based distro. It is built on OSTree with atomic updates and ships with the latest Mesa and NVIDIA drivers.
If you frequently download videos from various social media and websites, you'll like this open source video downloader app.
📽️ Videos for You
I shared this Firefox tweak video some months ago. It is still worth a look.
💡 Quick Handy Tip
In Firefox, you can take screenshots of a page or its individual elements and download them as PNGs. While visiting a page, right-click and select "Take Screenshot."
Now, you can do three things here: select an item and download it as an image, drag-select an area, or take a screenshot of the entire page. The drag and select action supports scrolling, so you can drag downward and select more areas for the screenshot too!
🎋 Fun in the FOSSverse
Seeing that there's a new KDE Plasma release, how strong is your grasp on KDE's lore?
Abhishek Prakash
🤣 Meme of the Week: Copilot cannot stop the inevitable. 🙃
🗓️ Tech Trivia: On February 19, 1971, the first warrant to search a computer storage device was issued in Santa Clara County, California. Targeting stolen proprietary source code stored on punch cards and magnetic drums, it established a landmark legal precedent.
🧑🤝🧑 From the Community: A new FOSSer has shared a terminal game they are working on.
