Late Night Linux

Redis finally picks the right licence but it's probably too late, the Ubuntu release process is being modernised, GNOME drops X11 for good and gets a new Executive Director, the Android Desktop mode is officially happening, and Linux Format magazine is no more. Plus a cool Frigate update, auto dark mode in Plasma, and Fender's... Read More

Mozilla kills Pocket and Fakespot, SteamOS is now available for devices other than the Steam Deck, Nextcloud's Android app was missing key functionality until they made a public stink about it, WSL is now open source, there's a new open source command-line text editor in Windows, and more.   News Investing in what moves the... Read More

Running an old version of Windows on a Wii for some reason, a nice way to learn programming languages, a couple of very different games, more documentation tools, and moving to a new Mastodon instance.   Discoveries entii-for-workcubes Learn C, Coding for Kids Isonzo Material for MkDocs markata mdq Moving to a new Mastodon instance... Read More

It's the wheel of misfortune! Roughly 50 (mostly) Linux-related things are on the wheel, we take turns spinning it, and we all have to say at least some positive things about the thing we land on. (It makes sense once we start).           Porkbun.com Go to https://porkbun.com/LNL25 to get $1 off your... Read More

The US government is trying to break up Google which sounds like a great idea, but it is potentially catastrophic news for Mozilla and Firefox. Alex from Open Web Advocacy tells us all about it. But first we talk about blocking ads on the web with Pi-hole, uBlock Origin, and AdGuard public DNS.    ... Read More

Wikipedia is attacked by Trump lackeys, Bluesky folds under pressure from the Turkish government, Linux YouTube is terrible as usual, Microsoft wants you to use the “proper” VS Code, Intel AI chips aren't selling well, yet another open source project has to deal with crawlers, TrueNAS goes Linux-only, and more.   News Trump DOJ goon... Read More

Cheap handheld retro gaming, F1 stats in the terminal, running binaries as if they were Python functions, websites that look like TUIs, basic graphics manipulation, strange old audio archives, and more.   Discoveries  POWKIDDY X55 ROCKNIX undercut-f1 WebTUI Astro Docs Pinta 3.0 python-sh Attention K-Mart Shoppers Techmoan r/LiminalSpace The Conet Project You are listening to... Read More

Linus Torvalds' other big project is 20 years old, new Ubuntu and Fedora releases, the downsides of permissive licences, a quick KDE Korner, and more.   News Git turns 20: A Q&A with Linus Torvalds Fedora 42 Released As A Fantastic Update To This Leading-Edge Linux Distribution – Phoronix The answer is 42! Fedora Linux... Read More

Two very different approaches to setting up security cameras, an IDE-like experience for text adventure games, a glimpse of convergence on Pixel phones, a new LTS of the flight sim FlightGear, and more.   Discoveries Frigate Coral TPUs daylight RPi Improved Pan Tilt Module The Visible Zorker Flightgear new LTS Bagels – TUI Expense Tracker... Read More

AI crawlers are causing serious problems for open source projects, an example of disclosure by vagueposting, Zorin does something good and something bad, LibreOffice downloads are doing well, Thunderbird is planning new services, a quick KDE Korner, and more.   News Open source devs say AI crawlers dominate traffic, forcing blocks on entire countries Wikimedia... Read More

What if Google hadn't come along in the late 90s? What would search, mobile devices, and the web in general look like? Plus a musical discovery, and why moving to a new distro just means moving to new little problems to fix.   Discovery Wilsonic MTS-ESP         Tailscale Tailscale is an easy... Read More

Home Assistant gets even more credible and sustainable, open source users are entitled, changes in KDE land, Fedora says hello to Plasma and goodbye to X11, Ubuntu looks to drop GNU coreutils, GIMP 3 is out and still has a terrible name, and new Pebble devices will be shipping soon™.   News Home Assistant officially... Read More

Tracking WiFi devices with cheap ESP32 devices, using OSM and Google Maps together, deleting your Twitter data, “3D” images with any camera, forcing Ubuntu to give you all the available updates, efficiently importing photos, counting lines of code, and more.   Discoveries espargos and demo video OSM2GoogleMaps Bookmarklet Cyd twitter-defollower Cross Views About apt upgrade... Read More

Mozilla does another terrible job of communicating an important policy change, the movie made with Blender wins an Oscar, EA open sources some Command & Conquer games, the EFF releases a tool to detect cellular spying, an official Debian VM on Pixel devices, a brief foldable update, and more.   News Introducing a terms of... Read More

Remote desktop without a client, Macrodata Refinement, 3D plane tracking, Home Assistant's new hardware voice assistant, a new version of Pi-hole is a touch buggy, and more.   Discoveries Guacamole Lumon Industries (Macrodata-Refinement) Skies-ADSB Home Assistant Voice PE Casio F91W to 5000m underwater Pi-hole v6 gammastep         1Password Extended Access Management Secure... Read More

The kernel Rust drama nears an end but not without some collateral damage, you should back up your Kindle books while you still can, Mozilla so very nearly gets it, Chrome gets even worse, Apple takes its ball home, and Matrix rattles the donation tin.   News Linux royalty backs adoption of Rust for kernel... Read More

What if Linus Torvalds hadn't written Linux? What if Canonical hadn't dropped Unity and the phone? Plus what we are self-hosting in Voice of the Masses.   Voice of the Masses What are you self-hosting, and what are you relying on others to host for you?           Tailscale Tailscale is an... Read More

Linux kernel drama with Rust raises the old question about developer succession, the Pebble smartwatch is making a comeback, great news for F-Droid, a movie made with Blender is nominated for an Oscar, RISC-V in a Framework, and loads more.   News Mixing Rust and C in Linux likened to cancer by kernel maintainer Asahi... Read More

What if Qt had been under a friendlier licence? Would KDE have become the standard desktop instead of GNOME? What if IBM hadn't bought Red Hat? Plus a self-hostable workflow automation platform, simple systemd management, and Redshift on Xfce in Discoveries. Then we wonder why there seems to be less in the way of interesting... Read More

We get angry about a new decentralised social media initiative that seems to ignore the Fediverse, and explain why foldable phones are cool but not the future. Then stitching photos together, analysing applications at the system call level, and an Innertune fork that breaks less often in Discoveries. Plus the details of BarCamp Surrey from... Read More

Molly White joins us to talk about the recent far right attacks on Wikipedia. We get into the lies and false assumptions about funding, reliable sources, objective truth, false equivalence in the media, and more. Plus our favourite discoveries from 2024.   Molly's personal website [citation needed] newsletter Elon Musk and the right's war on... Read More

SteamOS is coming to a new Lenovo handheld as well as getting a general beta release, the WordPress drama continues to roll on, the 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 makes no sense to at least one of us (who now owns an N100 mini PC), the Linux Foundation seems to think Chromium-based browsers need a helping... Read More

It's that time of year where we look back at our 2024 predictions, and make some new ones for 2025.         Sandfly Securitry Sandfly Security's agentless threat detection identifies Linux threats without requiring software agents, ensuring no performance impact or system risk.   ServerMania Get 15% Off dedicated servers – recurring for... Read More

It's our 2024 review of Linux and open source news including the end of Linux on Mars, the xz backdoor, great stuff from GNOME and KDE, the WordPress fiasco, why the idea of decentralised social media started to catch on, Raspberry Pi's IPO, and the inevitable Mozilla doom and gloom.   2024 Linux News in... Read More

Monitoring your house with security cameras, automating a 3D printer, yet another note taking app, a great FOSS digital audio workstation, browser automation, converting Office documents to markdown, markdown in Vim, and why we think Raspberry Pi OS shouldn't change its default desktop environment.   Discoveries  motion & frigate Octoprint PSU control with Home Assistant... Read More

SteamOS is probably going to ship on 3rd party hardware, there's a remote chance that games with anti-cheat will work better on Linux, new Raspberry Pi hardware divides opinion among us, AI security reports burden FOSS developers, Xfce gets a bit closer to a Wayland future, KDE Plasma's donation notification really worked, and more.  ... Read More

Whether you dual boot and why in Voice of the Masses, some of your feedback, Graham plays with an open source synth, and Danielle Foré tells us about the recent release of elementary OS 8.   Voice of the Masses Do you dual boot and why?   Feedback The Linux Foundation – Nonprofit Explorer gui-scale-applet... Read More

We are characteristically cynical about GitHub's token effort to improve FOSS security, more positive about FreeCAD 1.0 and elementary OS 8, somewhat ambivalent about the new OpenWrt router, understanding about Linux sanctioning the Bcachefs dev, and surprised that Félim is slowly starting to warm up to the idea of atomic distros (because KDE, obvs). With... Read More

Comparing laptop battery life with different desktop environments like Xfce, MATE, KDE Plasma, and GNOME. Plus processing scraped HTML, an easy to use web-based classic game IDE, reverse-engineered smart Rubik cubes, and more.   Discoveries pup 8bitworkshop 20 Year Anniversary of Halflife 2 BlinkenLights European Alternatives WisBlock Smart Cube Companion Graham's cubes Joe's battery test... Read More

Mozilla lays off another load of people and we offer to run the organisation for a fraction of what the current leadership earns, Fedora promotes KDE Plasma to the same status as GNOME, Félim's Neon update goes wrong, Will has network issues with Ubuntu 24.04, and Joe still can't get Apple devices to play nicely... Read More

Will went back to GNOME and made it exactly like Xfce, Félim used an unethical app ethically, and Graham had a great time at the Ubuntu Summit. Plus easily creating a customised Firefox profile, compiling Python, and what Mozilla would have to do for us to move to another browser.   Discoveries  firebuilder GNOME m.uber.com... Read More

Linux removes Russian maintainers and bungles the explanation, Flutter is forked due to Google's “labor shortage”, the OSI finally defines open source AI (and we don't take it very seriously), Hollywood uses loads of FOSS, an easy way to help out Home Assistant, and Thunderbird for Android arrives.   News Some Clarity On The Linux... Read More

Yet another to do list manager, reflashing abandoned IP cameras, first impressions of the Framework 13 laptop, organising your workshop with 3D printed storage, what the death of Windows 10 means for Linux adoption, and more.   Discoveries Taskfinder Thingino YouTube video on how to install it follow up videoon Neos Framework 13 DIY edition... Read More

The WordPress drama escalates, a great opportunity for Firefox to gain market share, Android will open up a little bit, the FOSS funding problem is solved, we laugh at WinAmp, a new release of Plasma, AAA gaming on Asahi, 20 years of Ubuntu, and more.   News WordPress saga escalates as WP Engine plugin forcibly... Read More

Loads of discoveries including Will's terrible way of flashing Android phones from a web browser, real-time database analytics, editing audio with text, a great way to deal with log files, and learning about the fundamentals of computer graphics. Plus the best way to manage data and backups, and a reason to add an old laptop... Read More

How the boss of WordPress spectacularly failed to read the room, why the CUPS vulnerabilities didn't live up to the hype, Mozilla disappoints once again, great news for home automation, Valve supports Arch, and a Raspberry Pi 500 looks imminent. With guest host Andy from Linux Dev Time.   News ​Know Before You Go –... Read More

Jason Evangelho tells us about the rosy state of Linux gaming, including a lot of games that perform as well or even better than on Windows. Plus feedback, and discoveries about interacting with GitHub via the command line, a handy DNS testing tool, and playing ancient games with accurate audio.   Discoveries GitHub CLI dug... Read More

We look back at the biggest news stories and trends from the last 7+ years and 300 episodes of LNL. With guest host popey from Linux Matters. Check out his newsletter.   Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   Seven and a bit years of news Google... Read More

Learning undergraduate level signal processing for free, a few more uses for KDE Connect, analysing audio for HiFi setups, deep inspection of Python objects, viewing HTTP archives, and more on the problem with micropayments.   Discoveries Signal Processing Course KDE Connect Friture wat HARview               1Password Extended Access Management:... Read More

Mono moves to the Wine project, the Internet Archive can't lend books but should have seen it coming, Mozilla adds unpopular AI to Firefox, and KDE asks for donations in Plasma. With guest host popey from Linux Matters. Check out his newsletter.   News A long, weird FOSS circle ends as Microsoft donates Mono to... Read More

To what extent can you avoid services and products from companies who do bad things? Plus whether we should try to convert WSL users to “proper” Linux, if so how, and if it's even possible in Voice of the masses.   Voice of the masses Should we try to convert Windows Subsystem for Linux users... Read More

Linux is 33 years old and we wonder what would have happened without it, Mozilla might be about to lose the sweet Google cash, Microsoft breaks dual boot, Google quietly drops support for Chrome on old Ubuntu, the Apple tax hits Patreon, and an exciting new Raspberry Pi.   News OggCamp Linux is 33 years... Read More

The easy way to learn IPv6, making shell scripts a lot prettier, a reverse-engineered watch with apps from the 80s, a cool tasks app, more details about OggCamp, and whether FOSS people are all old.   Discoveries IPv6 for IPv4 admins bashsimplecurses Reverse engineering an old Seiko UC-2000 taskfinder   OggCamp Gary tells us about... Read More

Open source myths, Graham gives us an update on the Open Documentation Academy, and why we don't really talk about mobile Linux anymore.   Open source myths Open Documentation Academy (GitHub repo)       Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our... Read More

Analysing MQQT data, getting domains unblocked from Cloudflare DNS, making ASCII animations, and why Joe is drawn to Linux Mint. Plus why we don't talk about Vivaldi even though it's quite good, why Félim was wrong about right click in PuTTY, and Will doesn't seem to understand Lemmy.   Discoveries MQTT decode Cloudflare DNS was... Read More

NVIDIA makes more of its drivers easier to install, the EU is probably going to redirect FOSS funding to AI, Mark Zuckerberg abuses the term “open source”, Proton jumps the shark, a trio of typical Google stories, and the shortest KDE Korner in history.   News NVIDIA Transitions Fully Towards Open-Source GPU Kernel Modules The... Read More

Testing the security of your Bluetooth devices, diffing databases, visualising MQTT data, running Linux VMs on an iPad or Iphone, org mode in Kate, and making point and click games. Plus whether we are too negative, or if we are just realistic.   Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early... Read More

The EU are close to adopting a law to scan messages, Switzerland blazes the public money public code trail, Chromium-based browsers have a “special feature” to interact with Google sites, Mozilla shows that it needs advertising, and openSUSE might be getting a new (terrible) name.   News EU chat control law proposes scanning your messages... Read More

An incredibly powerful hex editor for reverse engineering binaries, easily searching through snaphots for end users, streaming audio from phones to the Linux desktop, writing interactive fiction games, and how we makes notes and manage tasks.   Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Check out all the... Read More

Instead of the news which is all either boring or grim, we've come up with a fun Linux-themed game show that's definitely not completely fixed. Plus a great network tool, and what keeps us on Linux when most apps are available everywhere else.   Feedback IMUNES           1Password Extended Access Management:... Read More

Unlocking the full potential of Nvidia graphics cards, hacking the otherwise bricked Spotify hardware device, Félim realised that his Borg backups could be significantly smaller, making wiring diagrams using text, silly terminal effects and colours, using a ThinkPad as a WiFi dongle, great lightweight distros for an ancient netbook, better Google searches, and more.  ... Read More