Linux Mint is getting automatic old kernel cleanup in the next release, a feature Fedora has handled through DNF's installonly_limit for years. And I did not even know that Mint doesn't do it.
The Document Foundation has put up a write-up (part 1 for now) of how the Austrian Military migrated 16,000 PCs from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice. The part worth noting is that ~8,000 users installed it on their own before it was mandated. Now that's a pleasant surprise.
CachyOS released their August update, and the two things that stand out are Shelly v3 and the Server Edition groundwork. Running a cutting edge distro on a server? Old school sysadmins will shiver at that thought.
Apparently, VLC takes around 30 seconds to play an MP3 on Windows. But don't blame VLC when it is Microsoft's fault.
Proxmox VE now officially runs on ARM64, with the same codebase, release cycle, and support window as the x86-64 build. NVIDIA Grace and Vera systems are fully validated, and other UEFI-based ARMv9-A hardware gets best-effort support.
An open source project called Xodus is working through the hardest parts of bringing Xbox Game Pass to Linux. They have already figured out Xbox authentication and game downloads.
KGamma is getting a Wayland replacement that works with Night Color, supports independent per-monitor values, and applies settings on the first frame.
Illinois signed the Children's Online Social Media Safety Act, which requires device makers and OS providers to collect a child's age bracket at setup and expose it via an API for apps to query.
Omarchy Linux is going all in one with AI with its version 4.0 releasing this week.
There are a few more AI-related stories that we covered this week. But I am not going to include all of them here. They get covered in the Local AI Weekly newsletter, and you can also read them if you follow the feed. I'll try to keep the AI buzz to the necessary minimum in FOSS Weekly.
🤝 This edition of FOSS Weekly is supported by TuxCare.
Rebooting after a kernel update is frustrating and results in downtime. Critical infrastructure should not suffer from reboots. TuxCare allows you to patch Linux kernels live. Works with more than 60 distros.
🧠 What We’re Thinking About
I had a good chat with Bianca Lewis, OpenSearch's executive director, talking about how OpenSearch has spent the past few years trying to shed the "Elasticsearch fork" label.
Abhishek Prakash
🧮 Linux Tips, Tutorials, and Learnings
A beginner's guide to installing software from source on Linux. It covers clone, configure, make, where to install things so cleanup isn't painful, and how to fix the missing compiler errors you'll almost definitely hit the first time.
A decade of hopping through Mint, Ubuntu, Kali, Arch, AntiX, and EndeavourOS, and the conclusion is that it was never really about the distro.
Six backup tools for different kinds of Linux users. The highlights include Déjà Dup for GNOME desktop with zero setup, Kopia if you want an open source GUI, Restic and BorgBackup for terminal-native control.
If you regularly deal with PDF, try a tool like PDF Arranger that allows you to split, merge, rearrange PDF docs.
In the same regards, in the situation where you have to convert multiple images into a PDF, use LibreOffice or gscan2pdf. I do this when I have to upload IDs and documents to a government portal.
👷 AI, Homelab and Hardware Corner
This corner may still have some local AI stuff for now. A practical setup guide for running Hermes agent on a Raspberry Pi as an always-on backend while controlling it from a laptop using Hermes Desktop's remote gateway feature.
Abhishek Prakash
🎓 Linux Foundation certification offer
Linux is turning 35 this month. The Linux Foundation, the official organization behind the Linux kernel project, has a catalog of industry-oriented training and certifications.
And they are offering 35% off on all of it, including the instructor-led classes that contain very technical topics like performance tuning. Popular certifications like LFCS and CKDA
✨ Apps and Projects Highlights
Censor is a PDF document redaction tool. When you want to hide part of information from a PDF, you can use this tool.
Robert Wolff
📽️ Videos for You
Enjoy customizing GNOME desktops with extensions. Take a look at some of the good ones in action in this video.
Desktop Linux is mostly neglected by the industry but loved by the community. For the past 14 years, It's FOSS has been helping people use Linux on their personal computers. And we are now facing the existential threat from AI models stealing our content.
If you like what we do and would love to support our work, please become It's FOSS Plus member. It costs $49 a year (less than the cost of a McDonald's burger a month), and you get an ad-free reading experience with the satisfaction of helping the desktop Linux community. And there are also free Linux ebooks.
💡 Quick Handy Tip
Ubuntu's Tiling Assistant has an experimental layout editor, which allows you to create tiles and assign windows to those tiles. First open the Extensions app and go into the settings for "Tiling Assistant."
Here, click on the "i" button and go into "Advanced..." and enable "Advanced/Experimental Settings." Now, inside the new "Layouts" page, you will find multiple layout entries without keybinds assigned.
Click on the "Disabled" box and enter a keybind, and use the downward arrow nearby to fine-tune the layout.
Once these are set, whenever you press any one of those shortcuts, any open windows can be opened in that layout for you. You can read how it works in the official documentation.
Local AI Weekly will start from first week of August. If you are interested in learning about open source AI, please subscribe to our upcoming Local AI Weekly newsletter.
🎋 Fun in the FOSSverse
Our Scrambled Linux Editors crossword will test your grasp of Linux editors.
Abhishek Prakash
Those pesky clankers sure do know how to trick us. 🤖
🗓️ Tech Trivia: On August 5, 1858, Cyrus West Field succeeded on his fifth try at laying a telegraph cable across the Atlantic. Queen Victoria and President Buchanan traded congratulatory messages soon after. Though the celebration was short-lived, as the cable died within a month.
🧑🤝🧑 From the Community: Pro FOSSer Xander is asking other FOSSers what they like about Linux; do you have anything to add?
If this helped you, consider supporting It's FOSS
It's FOSS has been helping people use Linux for the past 14 years. Help us stay independent from big tech. Become a Plus member, enjoy ad-free reading and get 5 eBooks.
