Linux

Alex Gaynor recently announced he is formally stepping down as one of the maintainers of the Rust for Linux kernel code with the removal patch now queued for merging in Linux 6.19.

Alex Gaynor was one of the original developers to experiment with Rust code for Linux kernel modules. He's drifted away from Rust Linux kernel development for a while due to lack of time and is now formally stepping down as a listed co-maintainer of the Rust code. After Wedson Almeida Filho stepped down last year as a Rust co-maintainer, this now leaves Rust For Linux project leader Miguel Ojeda as the sole official maintainer of the code while there are several Rust code reviewers.

To not much official fanfare on Thursday, the Windows operating system turned 40 years old, marking four decades since Windows 1.0 debuted in the United States on November 20, 1985. Its midlife milestone comes with a crisis, though. Diehard Windows users are switching to Linux for a variety of reasons.

For one, gaming is finally better on Linux machines, which makes the moat Windows dug for itself a little more passable. Add to that the end of support for Windows 10 in October, the growing frustration among power users about Microsoft Recall, and the growing number of polarizing features, and power users are finding plenty of reasons to make the switch to Linux.

It's unclear if the wave of Windows power users loudly moving to Linux has crested yet, or if this is just the beginning. That said, the past year has seen a flood of articles like this one, scores of posts on Reddit, and YouTube videos documenting and occasionally evangelizing the conversion to Linux.

I tried to get Waydroid running on Mint and it was sub-optimal.

I have been using Mint for a few years and really like it.

So I installed Mint on the laptop I gave to my son; it has been a few years; but now he wants Minecraft education. It works well using Waydroid (tested on a VM on my big desktop).

What is the best way to get Minecraft Education (not regular Minecraft) on Linux?

Following approval of the /nix top-level directory with Fedora Linux, the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) has additionally signed off on allowing the Nix package tool to appear in the Fedora 44 repository.

The change proposal to add the Nix functional package manager developer tool to Fedora has been cleared today by FESCo. With Fedora 44, developers wanting to package for Nix can now have an easier time doing so from Fedora.

FreeBSD 15.0-RC3 shipped just a few days ago as what was expected to be the final release candidate before FreeBSD 15.0 stable is officially unveiled next week. But squeezing out today is FreeBSD 15.0-RC4 to address last minute issues.

FreeBSD 15.0-RC4 was issued today for what is hopefully some final testing before still managing to christen FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE next week.

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With Advanced Performance Extensions (APX) on upcoming Intel processors doubling the number of general purpose registers (GPRs) among other advantages, Intel engineers are beginning to think of possible kernel uses for the extra registers.

To date there hasn't been much thought given to kernel uses for these extra registers with the enablement thus far of APX primarily focused on user-space software. There is some thinking that these EGPRs (Extended General Purpose Registers) may be useful to help reduce kernel stack pressure. But it also needs to be decided among kernel developers just how much they plan to make use of these extra registers for knowing the best design for how to handle their use in sharing with user-space. Plus needing to keep assuming APX is optional for x86_64 Linux, maintaining legacy register use, etc.

Announced last month was the NTFSPLUS driver as a new NTFS file-system driver for the Linux kernel with better write performance and more features compared to the existing NTFS options. A second iteration of that driver was recently queued into "ntfs-next" raising prospects that this NTFSPLUS driver could soon attempt to land in the mainline Linux kernel.

Namjae Jeon as the exFAT Linux driver developer, KSMBD maintainer, and contributions to other Linux storage code is the one that has been leading the NTFSPLUS effort. The NTFSPLUS driver offers better performance, a cleaner codebase, and other improvements compared to Paragon's NTFS3 driver that is within maintenance mode in the mainline kernel and compared to the other NTFS read-only kernel driver.

While TUXEDO Computers recently ended their efforts for a Snapdragon X Elite Linux laptop, their Linux Intel/AMD laptop efforts continue going well and recently they have been posting patches working to enhance the upstream kernel support for those x86_64 devices.

Now that there's a Uniwill laptop driver set to appear in Linux 6.19, TUXEDO Computers has been working to build off that upstream-destined driver with some TUXEDO laptops being manufactured by Uniwill.

Fedora-based Ultramarine Linux distribution has been updated to version 43, a release built on top of Fedora Linux 43 and shipping with updated components and a few surprise features.

Highlights of Ultramarine 43 include a new theme called Orchis for the Xfce edition, the latest KDE Plasma 6.5 and GNOME 49 desktop environments for the KDE Plasma and GNOME editions, Pinebook Pro support, updated Raspberry Pi 4 images, and support for the CachyOS kernel as a tweak in umcli.

I know, this title might come as a surprise to many. Or perhaps, for those who truly know me, it won’t. I am not a fanboy. The BSDs and the illumos distributions generally follow an approach to design and development that aligns more closely with the way I think, not to mention the wonderful communities around them, but that does not mean I do not use and appreciate other solutions. I usually publish articles about how much I love the BSDs or illumos distributions, but today I want to talk about Linux (or, better, GNU/Linux) and why, despite everything, it still holds a place in my heart. This will be the first in a series of articles where I’ll discuss other operating systems.

Only a month after the previous 42 release, Ultramarine Linux 43 is now out, powered by kernel 6.17 and based on Fedora 43. Developed by Fyra Labs, the distro bets on the Btrfs filesystem under the hood, and it is now beginning with the retirement of Ultramarine’s long-standing “Flagship” designation.

With that said, the Budgie edition, which previously held that role, is no longer the recommended default. The project notes that its original rationale for choosing Budgie was that Fedora did not offer it at the time.

But now Ultramarine is formally recommending the Plasma Edition going forward. According to devs, this change doesn’t remove Budgie from the lineup; it simply becomes “Budgie Edition,” still fully supported and updated with the latest fixes as the desktop approaches its 10.10 release.

I recently purchased a LG OLED C2 TV, which supports 4k120Hz but only has HDMI 2.1 ports. I am aware of HDMI 2.1 being an issue on AMD, even though my GPU is Nvidia (RTX 3060Ti) I want to switch to AMD in the future, so I opted to invest in an AMD-friendly setup. I purchased the Cable Matters active DisplayPort -> HDMI 2.1 converter mentioned in this Reddit thread, which purportedly can do 4k120. However, when I change it from the default 4k60 modeline to 4k120, the TV shows a "no signal" message. In fact, to get 120Hz I need to drop the resolution down to 1440p.

Even though I'm not going for VRR (yet), I also tried flashing the VRR-enabled "Spyder" firmware just in case it fixes the refresh rate (it does not). I tested every DP port on the 3060Ti as well, with no changes. What might I be doing wrong?

The GNOME Project has officially released GNOME 48.7, a maintenance update for the old-stable GNOME 48 desktop environment series, describing it as a “boring bug-fix update”.

Many core modules in the GNOME stack received new version bumps: at-spi2-core moved from 2.56.5 to 2.56.7; Boxes from 48.0 to 48.1; Control Center from 48.4 to 48.5; Shell from 48.5 to 48.7; Mutter from 48.5 to 48.7; LibAdwaita from 1.7.7 to 1.7.9; GTK+-3 from 3.24.50 to 3.24.51; and others.

For those continuing to make use of the X.Org Server, a new point release is now available in the 21.1 series. While most often X.Org Server stable releases these days are driven by shipping new security fixes, the X.Org Server 21.1.21 release is to fix several regressions introduced for various functional issues.

Red Hat engineer Olivier Fourdan released X.Org Server 21.1.21 this morning and it simply consists of various code reverts in order to address some reported problems with the X.Org Server usage, particularly when using NVIDIA graphics.

WinBoat is a popular way to run Windows apps on Linux in a containerized environment that sorts all the configuration for you and a new update sounds great.

An interesting alternative to using the likes of Wine / Proton, to have Windows directly on your device inside Linux with containers. It's all quite clever, especially useful for things that won't run well or at all with Wine. Luckily, I have no need for it but I can see the appeal, far less annoying than dual-booting just for a few select things.

Release v0.9.0 arrived November 23rd with a number of big new features, plus some security improvements and bug fixes.

Bluetooth® audio has come a long way since 2001, when the Headset Profile (HSP) and Hands-Free Profile (HFP) first enabled bidirectional voice calls over Synchronous Connection-Oriented transport. The Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) followed in 2003, bringing high-quality audio streaming to our headphones and speakers. While these Bluetooth® "classic" profiles have served us well for over two decades, they come with fundamental limitations that have become increasingly apparent in modern use cases.

If you've ever wondered why your music quality drops dramatically when you answer a call on your Bluetooth® headset, you've experienced one of A2DP's key limitations firsthand. Its unidirectional nature means that enabling a microphone requires switching to HFP, resulting in that noticeably reduced audio quality. Beyond this, Bluetooth® classic exhibits high latency (100-200ms for A2DP) and high power consumption, by modern standards, which results in inadequate battery life for all-day use cases like hearing aids. These and many more limitations have led vendors over the years to drive this outdated technology to its limits and develop non-standard solutions such as Google's Audio Streaming for Hearing Aids (ASHA) profile and Apple's Made for iPhone (MFi) extensions.

Enter LE Audio, introduced with Bluetooth® 5.2 in 2020, which represents a fundamental shift in the Bluetooth® audio architecture. This post outlines what changes LE Audio brings, what its support status is on Linux, and what lies ahead for building great Linux-based products that make use of this functionality. The content of this post was originally a talk presented at the Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2025, which you can watch here

Ethan Sholly, the driving force behind selfh.st, one of the most recognized communities uniting self-hosting enthusiasts, has published the latest results of his annual survey on the community’s preferences, collecting 4,081 responses from self-hosting practitioners worldwide.

No surprise there: Linux is overwhelmingly dominant, chosen by more than four out of five self-hosters (81%). In other words, for self-hosters operating at bare-metal, virtualised, or container-based infrastructure, Linux remains the backbone.

In fact, this result aligns closely with broader trends: according to Wikipedia, Linux holds a 63% share of global server infrastructure. Aside from the hobby aspect, most respondents said privacy was their main reason for self-hosting, which, as you know, remains one of Linux’s strongest selling points. Now, back to the numbers.

iDescriptor is a brand-new app that introduces a new way for Linux users to manage iPhones without relying on macOS or iTunes, something that the Linux ecosystem has always lacked.

The project consolidates several capabilities that previously required separate command-line tools or weren’t available at all, turning them into a graphical, cross-platform application that is available for Linux as an AppImage.

Written in C++, iDescriptor is built on top of the libimobiledevice stack and extends it with features that are typically difficult to access from Linux systems. Users can browse their device’s filesystem, import photos and videos, and install applications directly from the App Store using their Apple ID.

Zypper is a command-line package manager (similar to APT for DEB-based systems or DNF for RPM-based ones) used in openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise, and their derivatives. It provides users with a fast and flexible way to install, update, remove, and manage software packages and repositories, giving you full control over your system’s software environment.

Under the hood, Zypper works with RPM packages—the same package format used across many RPM-based Linux distributions. It relies on libzypp, a backend library that resolves dependencies, manages repositories, and handles transactions securely and efficiently.

I want to sort of recreate macOS 15's dynamic wallpaper, and downloaded this set of 8 wallpapers which are most / all the colors it cycles through. On Hyprland, I want to cycle through them throughout the day, but also slowly transition from one wallpaper to another for an hour or longer, crossfading / blending them.

I did some searching, and neither timewall or adi1090x/dynamic-wallpaper can do it. I looked at making my own script to blend images once every 60 secs, but I'm not sure how to quickly crossfade images. This command takes ~15 secs, I feel this should possible much faster with or without imagemagick: magick composite -blend 50 wallpaper1.png wallpaper2.png output.png.