Linux

The GNOME.org Extensions hosting for GNOME Shell extensions will no longer accept new contributions with AI-generated code. A new rule has been added to their review guidelines to forbid AI-generated code.

Due to the growing number of GNOME Shell extensions looking to appear on extensions.gnome.org that were generated using AI, it's now prohibited. The new rule in their guidelines note that AI-generated code will be explicitly rejected

Today we're installing a modern Linux... on a single 1.44mb floppy disk!

🍎 Guide: https://github.com/w84death/floppinux

Merged during this second week of the Linux 6.19 feature merge window were the many x86 platform driver changes. As usual, much of the x86 platform driver activity surrounds bettering Linux hardware laptop support but also a growing number of handheld computers / gaming devices.

The x86 platform driver changes for Linux 6.19 include new drivers like for Uniwill OEM laptops as well as improving handheld support for ASUS ROG, Lenovo Legion, and Ayaneo, among other changes

The LoongArch CPU architecture changes have been merged for the Linux 6.19 merge window. This domestic Chinese CPU architecture inspired by MIPS and RISC-V began with 64-bit LoongArch64 but with Linux 6.19 the foundation is being laid for LoongArch32 as a 32-bit variant.

While most CPU architectures went from a 32-bit to 64-bit world, Loongson is working back from 64-bit to 32-bit. They've been working on the LoongArch32 ABI and with Linux 6.19 that initial kernel port is being wired up.

Together with my then-colleague Kalev Lember, I recently added support for pre-installing Flatpak applications. It sounds fancy, but it is conceptually very simple: Flatpak reads configuration files from several directories to determine which applications should be pre-installed. It then installs any missing applications and removes any that are no longer supposed to be pre-installed (with some small caveats).

The Network File-System (NFS) client changes were merged today for the Linux 6.19 kernel with the most notable feature addition being initial support for basic directory delegations.

NFS directory delegations allow for an efficiency win by knowing if nobody else modified the directory on the NFS server then there are some re-validation shortcuts than can be subsequently taken by the NFS client. This work was pursued by Oracle to allow for better NFS efficiency when knowing a particular directory hasn't changed from underneath the client. For Linux 6.19 the directory delegation is hooked up for ACCESS, CREATE, UNLINK, and RENAME operations.

pearOS, a Linux distro that aims to look and behave like Apple’s macOS, is once again in active development with a new base, design, installer, and more.

French developer David Tavares initially created Pear OS back in 2011, based on Ubuntu and featuring the GNOME 3 desktop environment. The initial release, Pear OS 3, was based on Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) operating system and shipped with Linux kernel 3.0.

While Ubuntu was using the Unity interface back then, Pear OS offered a Mac OS X look-alike with a dock. In 2012, David Tavares released a Debian Edition of Pear OS, and a month after that, the developer renamed Pear OS to Comice OS, and the next version was renamed once again to Pear OS Linux a few months later that year.

I am writing POSIX shell scripts quite often, mostly for speed and portability. Though, that might not even be needed, as bash might have gotten a speed increase compared to dash, ash and whatnot.

Here are some tests I plan to run to see if the speed difference is still the case

As my normal user shell I use fish since quite some time. I enjoy

• a simple PS1 that shows the git branch, git status, truncated path where I am
• autocompletion based on history
• autosuggestions from -h or --help even if the tool has no autocompletions in other shells
• abbr instead or alias is quite cool to not forget the actual commands. But I can live without

I dont use more features really. I have a couple of fish functions, and fish might just be a better bash with easier syntax. But bash is the standard, so I never use them anyways.

I wouldnt want to switch to zsh because it is weird permissively licensed. But if it is faster or better than bash, maybe?

I also like that fish is completely rewritten in rust. There is rusty-bash aka. sushi shell, anyone use that? Is is compatible with modules?

Are these extensions just scripts that you run on startup of the shell?

Rust for Linux lead developer Miguel Ojeda posted the patch a short time ago to "conclude the Rust experiment". The "experiment" of Rust programming language code in the Linux kernel is over as it's now accepted to be a success and "Rust is here to stay" in the kernel.

Following discussions at the Linux Plumbers Conference this week in Japan, Miguel Ojeda is now comfortable in declaring Rust for the Linux kernel a success in being able to drop the "experiment" flag on the effort. Ojeda wrote this evening on the kernel mailing list

Edit: I want a graphical window switcher that's fully keyboard controlled, so I can see the windows before switching them.

The screenshot is from hyprland-easymotion which only shows labels for visible windows. I want a switcher that allows for both switching to windows or the same, or from any app, using just the keyboard and no mouse.

Ideally I could go to a window without pressing tab or another key a bunch of times, perhaps select any window (visible or not) with a letter like easymotion.

Following last week's Wine 11.0-rc1 release that marked the feature freeze as well in working toward Wine 11.0 in January, out today is Wine 11.0-rc2.

Wine 11.0-rc2 provides a week's worth of bug fixing. With all the attention on bug/regression hunting ahead of Wine 11.0, there are 28 bug fixes that were collected over the past week.

Wine 11.0-rc2 has game fixes for titles like Indycar Series, Incoming, Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun, Breath of Fire IV, Mario Multiverse, Splinter Cell, Worms Revolution, and various other games.

Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!

This week the team made significant progress on KWin’s Wayland screen support. Specifically, better mirroring and custom modes — both items on the “Known Significant Issues” page — have been implemented for Plasma 6.6! The remaining items on that page are areas of active focus, too, as we race towards the Wayland finish line.

Grml, a live bootable Linux distro based on Debian and designed for system administrators and users of text tools, has been updated today to version 2025.12, a release that introduces new and updated tools.

Powered by Linux kernel 6.17 and based on Debian Testing/Forky repositories as of December 11th, 2025, the Grml 2025.12 (codename Postwurfsendung) release updates the grml-live build system for creating Grml (based) Linux live systems with a new TOR class, support for the grml-desktop package, and Debian Bookworm as the minimum host OS.

Grml 2025.12 also updates the grml-scripts console scripts to remove support for old scripts, including grepc, grepedit, iimage, logview, mailhops, notifyd, osd_server, qma, dirvish-setup, grml-iptstate, make_chroot_jail, and grml-swapon, and updates the grml-zshrc Zsh configuration with support for syncing global aliases from zshrc.local

In the open-source ecosystem, funding has long been a central challenge, often determining whether a project can grow sustainably or slowly fade away. And while many initiatives continue to struggle for financial support, it’s encouraging to see others, like KDE, not only maintain a stable foundation but even surpass expectations.

I say this because, according to the latest data, KDE has surpassed its 2025 fundraising goal by a wide margin, reaching €276K—an impressive 276% of the original €100K target. Updated daily, the campaign’s progress bar now stretches far beyond its intended limit, reflecting an exceptional wave of support from users and contributors across the open-source community.

A new patch series from an NXP engineer optimizes the secure erase performance for certain Kingston eMMC devices. Currently with the Linux kernel performing a secure erase on 1GB of data can take around ten minutes. With these new patches that 1GB secure erase can be done in around two seconds.

Some Kingston eMMC devices will consume a fixed two seconds per secure erase operation regardless of the erase size. When the Linux kernel is currently performing a secure erase it is limited by the max discard size and thus will issue around 300 operations to erase 1GB. Today's patches from NXP engineer Luke Wang will drop that secure erase process into a single command and thus consuming just around two seconds of time.

All of the PCI subsystem updates were merged last week for the nearly-over Linux 6.19 merge window. Standing out this cycle are Resizable BAR improvements as well as introducing a few new PCIe controller drivers.

The PCI pull for Linux 6.19 brought Resizable BAR (ReBAR) improvements. Among the Resizable BAR improvements were for preventing resource tree corruption when BAR resize fails and restoring BARs to the original size of a BAR resize fail. There are also changes for the Intel Xe and i915 drivers as well as AMDGPU driver so that PCI core can properly restore BARs if the resize fails.

Compare with 2024: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#1-operating-system

NetworkManager, a system service and set of tools for managing network connections, widely adopted by most Linux distributions, is rolling out version 1.54.3 today as the second maintenance update to the 1.54 series.

One change affects private connections that specify a user in the connection.permissions property. NetworkManager now verifies that the designated user actually has access to the 802.1X certificates and private keys configured for that connection.

This additional check prevents situations where a connection profile references credentials that the intended user cannot read, reducing the risk of misconfigurations and unexpected connection failures, especially in multi-user or enterprise setups.

Kali Linux 2025.3, a Debian-based distribution designed for advanced penetration testing and security auditing, is now available for download, marking the fourth quarterly release of 2025.

All supported desktop environments have been updated. GNOME moves to version 49, bringing refreshed Kali theming and smoother visuals. Plus, the newer Showtime application has replaced the Totem video player, and the application grid now mirrors the menu structure, grouping Kali tools into folders.

A dedicated terminal shortcut using Ctrl+Alt+T or Win+T is now enabled by default. Most notably, GNOME in Kali no longer supports X11 sessions, making Wayland the sole display server.

So, I installed Linux Mint not too long ago, and while I've been able to do what I want to do without touching the Terminal, I am a bit curious how it works, and whether it could help me.

In particular, I am slowly getting into programming, and I've heard some people talk about strange, otherworldly things, like Vim, and Shell Scripts.

There was this PDF I downloaded called "The Linux Command Line" by William Shotts, but it is 570 pages long, and glancing through it, it seems to go into many different things, and I am afraid I'll end up learning a hundred things while only ever using ten of them, if you get my meaning.

So yeah, anyone who has some tips, or resources for a Linux newbie, please let me know.