First thing first. Yesterday, I mistakenly sent the Local AI Weekly newsletter to everyone. That was not supposed to happen. I'll be more careful in the future.
Let's go with our regular dose of Linux and open source.
Snapdragon X2 processor support should be coming to Linux soon. Qualcomm has put out an early developer preview with Debian 13 as the reference environment.
PeppermintOS is switching from Xorg to XLibre for its upcoming Debian and Devuan ISO refreshes, with no plans to move to Wayland for the foreseeable future.
Mozilla and Mistral announced a partnership that adds Mistral Small 4 to Firefox Smart Window, swapping out the OpenAI model that was there before. Both of them believe that an independent browser and a European AI lab act as counterweights in the Big Tech-dominated browser ecosystem.
Valve has quietly open-sourced Lepton, the Android compatibility layer it built for Steam Frame. The tool runs Android games inside a container using Waydroid and LineageOS.
Garuda Linux has graduated its NixOS side project into a proper standalone distro. Garuda Nix now ships bootable ISOs for the Dr460nized and Mokka flavors.
After a decade of the open source Community Edition, Portainer is now changing things. CE stays frozen on 2.x with security patches and some backports, while Portainer 3.0, a Kubernetes-first rebuild, goes closed source.
GrapheneOS is publicly calling out Google for holding Android 17 QPR1 security patches back from non-Pixel OEMs until December.
After years of requiring a phone number even after adding username support, Signal is finally testing numberless registrations.
Then there are the two Ubuntu-related news items this week:
- Ubuntu 26.10 is changing how the desktop handles low memory, giving session-critical services like GNOME Shell a lower OOM score so your browser gets killed before your desktop does.
- Separately, the Ubuntu Wiki got its first comprehensive overhaul since 2010, now running on MediaWiki with niceties like dark mode, mobile support, and a WYSIWYG editor.
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🧠 What We’re Thinking About
Andy Nguyen, lead of the PS5 Linux project, is stepping away after a hypervisor exploit he'd been sitting on got reported to Sony's bug bounty program by someone else before he was ready.
Sourav Rudra
🧮 Linux Tips, Tutorials, and Learnings
Most KDE users open Konsole, type commands, and never bother tweaking it. We have some useful tips for you that will change how you use it.
Linux has had NTFS support for years, and it's never been great. NTFS-3G works but is slow and CPU-hungry. The ntfs3 driver is in the kernel but barely maintained. NTFSPlus is the attempt to finally do it properly.
Something broke on your Linux system, and you don't know where to start? Turns out systemd has been keeping detailed records the whole time. You just need to learn how to make good use of the tools that can help you read them.
Neville Ondara
👷 AI, Homelab and Hardware Corner
I got my hands on Elecrow's new HMI display, a 10.1-inch ESP32-P4 touchscreen built for homelab and maker projects, not for people who want something that works out of the box.
The recently released openKylin 3.0 comes with built-in skills that allow you to control and change system settings via AI agents.
Abhishek Prakash
✨ Apps and Projects Highlights
I did a fun project last weekend. I made a Wordle-like puzzle game with Linux terms. It's called Tuxdle.
Every day, you get a new word, and you have to guess the Linux term within 6 attempts. The term could be a distro, a command or popular terms like grub. Rules are explained here. Give it a try and let me know of your feedback, please.
Tasks.org is an open source Android to-do and reminders app that doesn't bombard you with ads nor does it trick you into a data collection scheme.
📽️ Videos for You
Make music listening more enjoyable with this GNOME extension? 👇
💡 Quick Handy Tip
Most of the time, you really don't need to install a fully-fledged theme to customize KDE Plasma. You can make do by installing a color scheme of your liking.
First, you need to download the .colors file for the theme of your liking. Then, inside the settings menu, go to Colors & Themes -> Colors. Here, click on "Install from file..." and select the theme file you want to install.
Ensure that the dropdown menu near the accent color palettes says "Accent color from color scheme," then click on the newly added theme, then on "Apply" to get it done.
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.
🎋 Fun in the FOSSverse
How well-versed are you with the jargon of today's AI age? We are getting back to posting puzzles regularly, so give this new one a try!
Abhishek Prakash
Linux Mint is one of the OG Linux projects that deserves more funding, you know. 🫠
🗓️ Tech Trivia: The first successful FORTRAN program ran at IBM on September 20, 1954, pioneering a way for programmers to express computations using algebra-like notation rather than machine code.
The programming language was formally released in 1957 and remains in use today, particularly in science and engineering.
🧑🤝🧑 From the Community: Daniel was facing an issue with YouTube playing back videos with a delay. He found an open source tool that did the job without much fuss.
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