Not surprisinhg. We get new Linux distributions almost every month, sometimes even every week.

This one is based on Debian. Again, not surprising. Debian has long been the mother of countless Linux distros.

But the interesting part isn’t the base. It’s the reason this distro exists.

It was created as a symbol of resistance.

That’s also not new in the Linux world. Many distros have been born out of disagreement or protest. For example, Void Linux emerged during the heated systemd controversy, offering a system that avoided systemd entirely.

The new distro, called Ageless Linux, follows a similar idea. It’s essentially Debian Linux but without age verification.

Age verification… what?

A new trend is quietly spreading across the United States: laws that require age verification at the operating system level.

It started with California, and states like Colorado, New York, and Illinois have proposed similar legislation. Reports also suggest that Brazil may be moving in the same direction.

What makes this development even more interesting is that Meta, the company behind Facebook, reportedly lobbied heavily for these laws.

Until now, governments mainly pressured social media platforms to verify users’ ages to prevent young children and teenagers from accessing certain services.

Meta’s proposal shifts that responsibility. Instead of every app or website verifying a user’s age individually, the operating system would verify it once.

Then, through an API exposed by the OS or its app store, applications could simply ask the system for the user’s age or age category.

In other words, your operating system becomes the age gatekeeper for every app you install.

And that idea has sparked a lot of debate in the tech community especially among Linux and open-source developers.

Why age verification is 'incompatible' with Linux ecosystem?

At first glance, age verification sounds reasonable. Governments argue that it helps protect children from harmful online content. But many developers and privacy advocates see serious problems with pushing this responsibility to the operating system.

The biggest concern is privacy. Linux distributions traditionally collect little to no personal information about users. Unlike Apple and Microsoft, you are not forced to create an online account before using an operating system. Introducing age verification could mean that operating systems must store or process sensitive identity data, something many Linux projects have deliberately avoided for decades.

Some critics suspect the push is less about child safety and more about control, warning that once operating systems begin verifying identity or age, it becomes easier to expand such systems to regulate broader online activity.

Another issue is security risk. If operating systems start storing age or identity information, it creates a new type of data that could potentially be misused, leaked, or exploited. Even if only age categories are shared with apps, it still introduces a form of system-level user profiling.

There is also a philosophical concern. Many of us in the open-source world believe an operating system should remain a neutral tool, not a platform that enforces identity verification or government regulations.

Because of these concerns, some developers and users see OS-level age verification as a step toward turning operating systems into identity gatekeepers, which runs against the long-standing Linux ethos of user freedom and minimal to no data collection.

Ageless Linux

Unsurprisingly, the age-verification proposal has raised serious discussions in the open-source world. From what it seems, most mainstream distros will enable this feature in one way or another. That includes Debian.

I anticipated this situation. I had a feeling that there would be some new distros offering “no age verification” as their main feature.

That’s precisely what Ageless Linux has done.

The project positions itself as a statement against OS-level age verification. Instead of building systems that identify and categorize users by age, Ageless Linux sticks to a much simpler idea: an operating system should run software, not act as a digital identity checker.

Ageless Linux is a registered operating system under the definitions established by the California Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043, Chapter 675, Statutes of 2025). We are in full, knowing, and intentional noncompliance with the age verification requirements of Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.501(a).

In practical terms, Ageless Linux is basically Debian with the age-verification pieces removed or avoided. The goal isn’t to reinvent Linux, but to ensure that users who oppose these laws still have a distribution that does not participate in age-verification frameworks.

More than just another Linux distro actually

I am glad that Ageless Linux did not stop at "Debian without age verification". Browsing the website, it seems they are more of a project that stands against age verification.

They have a dedicated page, and hopefully a database in the future, that lists the stance of various distros and organizations on the age verification issue. There is a page that lists US state laws that require operating system providers to collect age data from users.

So it’s not just a distro; it’s becoming a full-fledged portal documenting and opposing age-verification laws.

In addition to that, they also have an ambitious hardware project that is "designed to satisfy every element of the California Digital Age Assurance Act's regulatory scope while deliberately refusing to comply with its requirements."

This hardware is basically a $12 RISC-V ARM board. They have named it "Ageless Device" and the aim is to give it to children in schools.

And I’m glad they are not restricting themselves to just a distro, but are moving toward becoming a non-profit organization that educates people about the potential dangers of age verification turning into surveillance infrastructure.

Do check them out.

One of those tools is Orion, a web browser built on WebKit, the same engine that powers Safari, with a strong focus on privacy and customization.

Unlike most browsers you will come across on Linux, Orion is not a Chromium derivative or a Firefox fork. It is a fresh build that has earned a reputation for being fast, lightweight, and flexible, with support for extensions from Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

For a long time, that experience was exclusive to macOS and iOS users. But that has changed as Kagi has been working on bringing Orion to Linux. After an alpha phase limited to Orion+ subscribers, the team has opened things up with an early beta build for everyone to try out.

Orion for Linux: What to Expect?

The Beta build has basic browsing functionality in place, with additional bits like password management, browsing history, Dark Mode, and Focus Mode included.

The developers have also addressed a handful of stability issues, including crashes when closing pinned tabs, freezes in Website Settings, and a bug that prevented new tabs from being created on fresh installations.

That said, Kagi Sync and WebKit Extensions are still in development and not available in this beta, so do not go in expecting the full macOS feature set just yet.

A Quick Look

The user interface feels modern and fits in well with GNOME, though the toolbar is a bit cluttered at the top. Kagi Search is set as the default search engine, and you will need to log in to your Kagi account to use it or switch to one of the other search engines via the Settings menu.

Basic web browsing works for the most part, but every so often, Orion throws an "Orion can't open this page" error without much explanation. More bizarre is what happens when you open a page heavy with ads—Orion randomly launches the file manager.

Media controls work reasonably well on GNOME, though there were multiple duplicate entries for WebKit in the media panel. The one actually tied to whatever is playing was the last one, labeled "Playback Stream."

Many other features are either broken or inconsistent at this stage. The sidebar toggle on the top left, Focus Mode, the Share option, Page Tweaks, Website Settings, and Privacy Reports all fall into that bucket. Some of them do nothing and act as placeholders; others behave unpredictably.

The History page, while functional, refuses to open any of the listed webpages when an entry is double-clicked or even launched via the right-click context menu. It also failed to properly list quite a few of the webpages I visited during testing.

The in-built Password Manager works well, letting me add new entries with details like the website URL, username, and password. Searching through them is straightforward via the search bar on top, and importing/exporting passwords looks doable (I didn't test it tho).

If you have multiple windows and tabs open, Orion will prompt you with a warning to take note of the open content and that it will restore those the next time you launch the browser. This is a handy feature that worked decently during my use.

Download Orion Browser Beta

Kagi provides a direct download for the Flatpak package of this beta build, which should work on most popular Linux distributions that have Flatpak configured.

If you run into any issues, there is a dedicated category on Orion's Public Issue Tracker for bug reports and troubleshooting. Additionally, the project's GitHub repository hosts some open-sourced components.

As for the stable release, there is no official timeline yet, but with an early beta already out, in a few months time feels like a reasonable estimate.

Starting September 2026 (in certain regions), any app installed on a certified Android device will need to come from a developer who has gone through Google's new verification process. This applies regardless of where the app comes from: the Play Store, a third-party storefront, or a direct APK download.

To get verified, developers must register through a dedicated Android Developer Console and provide their legal name, address, email address, and phone number. In some cases, they will also need to upload a government-issued ID.

Organizations are additionally required to provide a D-U-N-S Number, a business identifier issued by Dun & Bradstreet that can take up to 30 business days to obtain.

There are two account tiers on offer: a Full Distribution account with a one-time $25 fee and a free Limited Distribution account for students and hobbyists that skips the government ID requirement. Installs via ADB and apps deployed through enterprise managed device systems are exempt from the requirements.

The requirement goes live in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand first in September, followed by a global rollout from 2027 onward. We covered the initial announcement back in August 2025, when the first alarm bells started ringing.

But is there any convincing justification behind this? Let's find out.

Does it make sense?

Kinda, Google's official position is that this is a security measure. The company points to its own research showing that apps from internet sideloading sources are over 50 times more likely to contain malware compared to those distributed through the Play Store.

The core idea is accountability. Right now, a developer caught distributing malware can be removed from the Play Store and come straight back under a different identity. Developer verification is meant to make that harder by tying app distribution to a verified real-world identity.

In theory, repeat offenders would have a harder time cycling through new accounts to keep spreading harmful content, so there's a reasonable argument here.

Anonymous distribution channels have historically been where a lot of malware activity takes place. Raising the barrier for bad actors to operate at scale is not, on its face, an unreasonable goal.

And for the average Android user who installs apps without thinking much about where they come from, more accountability in the ecosystem is not a bad thing.

Why it doesn't

Take F-Droid, the long-running free and open source Android app repository that has been around for more than 15 years now. It does not build apps in the traditional sense but rather takes publicly available source code, reviews it for compliance with open source principles, compiles it, and distributes it signed with its own cryptographic key.

Under the new rules, F-Droid has no workable path forward. Compelling volunteer contributors to register their identities with Google runs against what the platform stands for.

But claiming those app identifiers on developers' behalf is equally impossible, since that would give F-Droid a kind of exclusive ownership over apps it has no right to own.

F-Droid has been clear that if Google goes through this, it effectively ends the project as it currently exists. IzzyOnDroid, another third-party storefront that distributes developer-signed APKs also faces the same fate.

Enter the Keep Android Open initiative.

It is a community campaign built around stopping Developer Verification. It's open letter to Google so far has 56 signatories from 19 countries, including the EFF, FSF, Tor Project, Proton, KDE, LineageOS, CryptPad, Nextcloud, Vivaldi, and the Software Freedom Conservancy.

The letter argues that Google is overreaching into distribution channels outside its own store, that mandatory registration creates barriers for independent developers and researchers, and that centralizing developer data with Google raises serious surveillance and government access concerns.

The initiative is also urging developers to refuse participation in Google's early access program entirely and not to perform identity verification or accept an invitation to the new Android Developer Console, arguing that without developer buy-in, the verification program simply cannot succeed.

What this means for you

If a significant number of open source developers and smaller projects choose not to register with Google, or cannot do so because of privacy concerns, where they live, or the structural incompatibility of how their apps are distributed, their apps will simply stop working on certified Android devices.

The expected outcome for you is a narrower selection of apps and fewer alternatives to what is available on the Play Store.

There is also a broader principle at stake here. Centralizing all app distribution under Google's registration system hands one corporation the ability to cut off any app on any certified Android device globally.

That kind of consolidated authority over a platform used by billions of people is unsettling.

I think bad actors will always find new ways to distribute malicious apps. They did before developer verification, and they will after. Then there's nation-state spyware, which operates on a different level entirely, and the developer registration requirement was never going to touch that (makes you think, huh).

What Google could have leaned into instead is user education with clearer warnings, better guidance, and more effective communication about what a risky install actually looks like.

In the end, not everyone can be spoon-fed through this. At some point, it is on the person operating the smartphone to exercise a little judgment.

So, let's take a closer look at some of the things you can do on/with a Linux system that you just can't typically do on Windows.

1. Live USB/Live session

It goes without saying that this one deserves the #1 spot on this list. After all, for most of us, our first experience with Linux was at the welcome screen of a live session from a USB, SD card, or, in the past, CD or DVD. If you go even further back, some of us (myself included) first got to know Linux through the likes of Damn Small Linux running a live session inside Windows itself.

The crazy thing? Live CDs have been a part of the Linux experience since the early 90s, when we still regularly used floppy drives! And yes, live floppies were a thing, too. In fact, they still are.

Not only is there no official way to run Windows as a live session out the box, but Microsoft's own live session solution, Windows To Go, was an enterprise-only solution and has been discontinued. Non-standard solutions exist, but these are on shaky ground in that they rely on creating a Windows install on portable media, which is something Microsoft hasn't sanctioned.

2. Login screen customization

No lie, this one blew me away when I first switched to Linux from Windows. I'd always loved the idea of customising my system's visuals, and the fact I couldn't do this easily on Windows was a source of frustration. So to come from a world where I needed to risk malware or pay a fee just to put a wallpaper on the login screen to the full-scale flexibility of Linux has never stopped being amazing.

Not only can you change your wallpaper, but you can change the layout, even swap out the login manager altogether. Don't like the layout and style of GDM? Try SDDM or LightDM for greater flexibility, or even Ly, if you prefer something terminal-based. As a matter of fact, you can completely ditch the login manager altogether and boot straight to a TTY or desktop environment if you desire.

While you can change your wallpaper on recent releases of Windows, customising your login screen beyond this or changing your login manager altogether is simply not possible. After all, Microsoft wants you to log in with your Microsoft account going forward, so a third-party solution would somehow need to account for this.

3. Changing your desktop environment

Maybe I shouldn't even say "desktop environment" here, because let's be honest — Linux has way more than just desktop environments for us to play with. We've got a broad selection of window managers (compositors, with the rise of Wayland), desktop environments, desktop-independent panels, docks, you name it. Whether you want to do minimal bling with Wayfire or Hyprland, or sink your teeth into something beefy with Plasma or GNOME, the choice is yours.

You can customise your layout, app selection, software store, launchers, or whatever you like, and you won't be penalised for it, nor do you have to pay a dime or risk giving your data to a company that could go defunct and leave you hanging.

Can you change your desktop environment or window manager on Windows? Nope. Sure, you can use third-party tools to achieve some degree of customisation, but these methods are not officially supported and may even violate the operating system's terms of use. Many of these customisations break standard features in Explorer or other parts of the system and can easily fail when Microsoft releases routine updates.

4. Use the system without a GUI

Whether it's booting to the recovery session, running with the login manager disabled, or using a headless install through SSH, there are many ways you can use Linux on real hardware without ever using a graphical interface of any sort. While this option may not appeal to the majority of "average" users, it's still a pretty important distinction. You can use Linux as minimally as you need, even if it's as a temporary solution to bring up your graphical system just as you'd prefer.

For instance, this is the standard way to install Arch, by the way, and you can customise just about any distro to function in the same way even after installation. What makes this possible is the fact that what we know as "Linux" is actually a collection of software: the kernel, GNU utilities, init systems, and more. By choosing exactly what combination of software you're using, you can set up a minimal system that requires no graphical components whatsoever and still directly or remotely execute software from the system. It's even possible to set up such a system to display graphics over the network.

In the case of Windows (for consumers), this pathway isn't supported whatsoever. If something goes wrong, recovery is typically a graphical affair. Even Safe Mode is primarily designed around this. Running Windows as a text-based operating system just isn't something the average consumer can do.

5. Install it on just about anything

Linux on a fridge? A toaster? A toothbrush? Yes. And it probably can run Doom, too. The reality is, Linux is so flexible and portable, it can run on just about any device with a processor, even a tiny microcontroller. From the world's most powerful supercomputers to some of the smallest single-board computers and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, Linux has grown to basically power the majority of the digital world. There are even custom distributions for many non-standard devices, from game consoles to smartwatches, and the list just keeps growing.

On the contrary, while Windows has spread to some other devices over the years, it's not anywhere near the level of portability we have with Linux. You can't just grab a Windows ARM ISO and install it on a Raspberry Pi. You can't put Windows on a smart fridge either, unless the manufacturer happens to have an existing agreement and collaboration with Microsoft. Plus, since Windows is objectively not open-source, the community can't port it on their own.

Linux on the other hand, we can take wherever we want, not only because it's open-source but also because it was built with portability in mind. It can easily be stripped down and streamlined to fit just about any hardware. That's a freedom we just don't have with Windows.

6. Move your Linux install between systems

You might not have ever considered this, but really think about it. Let's say your current laptop or workstation goes down, maybe because the CPU burnt out or the motherboard got damaged, but the SSD is still working just fine. With Windows, it's time to get a new licence. You can certainly recover your files, provided your drive wasn't encrypted, but it's unlikely you're sticking that SSD in another system, booting it up, and continuing on like nothing happened. The bad news is, this is getting even harder with the introduction of mandatory Microsoft accounts attached to your system's TPM chip.

With Linux on the other hand, that's actually a pretty common workflow. I know this first-hand, because I've done it with multiple systems in the past. Sure, if you've got proprietary drivers installed, you may need to ensure that you remove them if your hardware differs too strongly, especially in the case of graphics cards.

Yet, Linux won't just automatically give up and quit if your drivers don't match your hardware. Instead, it'll choose a fallback method or fail to a command-line interface until you get that sorted out. It's a fascinating experience once you actually try it (or are forced to do it).

7. Customize or even swap your kernel

Imagine one day you wake up and decide you need to swap your kernel for a more optimised workflow. It could go something like this:

"Hmm, let's see here, should I run the Liquorix kernel today or the real-time kernel? How about the mainline kernel? Choices, choices..."

This is one thing long-time Linux users may take for granted, but it's actually a pretty big deal that we can do this in the first place. Again, this is made possible not only by the open-source nature of the kernel but also by the modular nature of most of the distributions we use. As a result of this modular nature, we can swap kernels any time we need to, especially so long as the distribution we're using provides a method for doing this.

Why might you need a different kernel? Well, it can be for any number of reasons, but typically, it's down to two main needs: better driver support and better performance. Newer kernels typically have broader support for new hardware, but sometimes an older kernel may also be needed for a specific device or quirk. Likewise, performance can vary with different kernel versions and build-time configurations.

Needless to say, this isn't something a normal user can do on Windows beyond applying standard updates. Yet on Linux, it's something so normal as to not even feel remarkable.

8. Choose different filesystems during installation

Windows supports a few filesystems for reading/writing files, including the typical FAT and EXFAT filesystems, NTFS, and more recently, ReFS, which is more used for server environments. However, when it comes time to actually install the system your options are pretty limited. You can install your main system on an NTFS filesystem, and with the exception of the FAT32 EFI partition, that's about it. No other filesystems are supported out the box, and while Windows setup supports loading third-party drivers, this doesn't cleanly open the door to installing Windows on any non-standard filesystems.

On the other hand, Linux supports many filesystems by default, and most distros give you the option to install on a much broader selection of them. Most offer at least the option of using ext4 or Btrfs, with some, such as Fedora, offering additional options, like XFS. In theory, you can even move your Linux install from one filesystem to another, provided you have the knowhow. For instance, btrfs-convert lets you convert an existing ext2, ext3, or ext4 installation to Btrfs.

9. Revive older hardware

Windows is notorious for its tendency to introduce seemingly unnecessary, forced hardware requirements that stop users from being able to keep using their older hardware, even when testing proves that Windows would run on it just fine. With Windows 11, things have never been worse. Perfectly powerful systems from as recently as 2017 or 2018 are somehow not supported all because of Microsoft's tighter hardware requirements, including requiring a TPM 2.0 chip, Secure Boot, and other platform features that can sometimes just barely edge a system out.

It gets worse when you consider the bloat that's been steadily creeping (or pouring) into Windows over the decades. Since users don't have any right to control what's in Windows by default or create their own official "Windows distribution", there's no way around this.

Not so with Linux, as many are discovering, and as you may have seen earlier with Linux running live off a floppy disk. In fact, there are Linux distributions especially built for this very reason, such as Puppy Linux and antiX, which the modern DSL 2024 is based on. Furthermore, Linux can be compiled specifically for older systems, even those with 32bit processors, unlike Windows, which typically drops older hardware with no way back.

10. Swap parts of your stack, as you wish

We've already talked about how you can swap your desktop environment, login manager, and kernel, but to end off this list, I think we should dig a little deeper. Unlike Windows which basically dictates what your operating system stack is from the ground up and provides few options for change, Linux gives you freedom change pretty much everything. For instance, let's say you're running Ubuntu and you really don't like snaps. Solution? Remove snapd.

You're probably thinking "But won't snapd just reinstall itself on the next update?", and the answer is no, but even if that were the case, you could block the update by locking the package. You can also change your init system, audio system, display system (betwen X11 and Wayland, and now the various forks of X11 that have popped up since it was all-but-abandoned).

Put simply, whatever you don't like about Linux, technically, you can change it. You just have to know how to do it and what to do if something goes wrong along the way. In some cases, there are even scripts that can automate the process for you, or distributions that do exactly what it is you're looking for already. For example, there's Devuan for Debian users who don't want systemd.

While unofficial "builds" of Windows exist, such as Tiny 11, most of these taking risk by distributing modified ISOs of Microsoft's intellectual property. It's legally gray at best, but it's pretty much the only option for many users.

Final thoughts: The narrative needs to flip

I could've kept this list going even longer, but I think the point is clear. While there are legitimate grievances like software that hasn't been ported yet, or challenges with hardware that vendors haven't provided drivers for, the reality is that Linux has a lot going for it if you stop to give it a fair shake.

If you've not yet tried Linux, maybe now's a good time to see what all the hype's about (and I don't just mean Hyprland, all though that's pretty sweet too). There's a lot you can do just fine on Linux that you can't actually do on Windows, or if you can, it's definitely not a walk in the park, whereas for us Linux denizens, it's just another part of daily life.

If you ask my advice, I say go for it: see what you've been missing, and you might just get hooked over this side too.

Which means you should be able to use Google Chrome on Raspberry Pi and other single board computers and laptops with Snapdragon processors.

Google highlighted this in the announcement:

Launching Chrome for ARM64 Linux devices allows more users to enjoy the seamless integration of Google’s most helpful services into their browser. This move addresses the growing demand for a browsing experience that combines the benefits of the open-source Chromium project with the Google ecosystem of apps and features.

But there is Chromium available already

Many FOSS purists prefer Chromium over Chrome, as it is the open-source project that serves as the foundation for Google Chrome. In fact, many Linux distributions, even on non-ARM devices, ship Chromium as the default browser.

However, Chromium is not the same as Chrome. DRM playback support is often limited, Google account sync typically requires workarounds to function properly, and several proprietary features are missing. It is undoubtedly a solid browser, but it doesn’t offer the same level of mainstream convenience and integration that users are accustomed to with Google Chrome.

Took a real long time due to Google's apathy towards Linux

Chromium has been available for ARM devices for years but Google did not care for offering Chrome for Linux users. Emphasizing on Linux because Google quickly released Chrome for Apple's ARM devices in 2020 itself and it was followed by Windows ARM devices in 2024.

This is when Chromebook with ARM perocessors have been in existence since 2012. Google's Chromebook run a cutsomized version of Linux in the form of ChromeOS. And these Chromebooks had Chrome browser. Surely, not much was required for bringing Chrome to Linux ARM devices.

Thank you, NVIDIA?

The announcement blog has an interesting mention of NVIDIA.

Last year, NVIDIA introduced the DGX Spark, an AI supercomputing device that packs its Grace Blackwell architecture into a compact, 1-liter form factor. Google is partnering with NVIDIA to make it easier for DGX Spark users to install Chrome.

So, was it NVIDIA who pushed/inspired Google to work on bringing Chrome to Linux ARM devices? Maybe.

Source: Chromium blog

By the way, not seeing new articles from It's FOSS in your feed reader? That's because there is an ongoing issue with the RSS feed as I am migrating to FeedPress. Please bear it with me.

Here are other highlights of this edition of FOSS Weekly:

• EA slowly moving towards Linux.
• Firefox's redesign has been leaked.
• Linux Mint keyboard shortcut video.
• MidnightBSD saying no to age verification.
• And other Linux news, tips, and, of course, memes!

📰 Linux and Open Source News

EA is hiring an anti-cheat engineer to bring Javelin to ARM64, and tucked into the job listing is a mention of exploring Linux and Proton support in the future. After ditching Linux for Apex Legends in 2024, it's a surprising turn. But I wouldn't hold my breath on this.

Firefox's Proton UI has been around since 2021 and honestly looks it. Leaked internal mockups show Mozilla is working on something called "Nova," a significant visual overhaul. Tabs, the address bar, and the toolbar are merged into a single floating strip; rounded corners are everywhere; flat grays are out in favor of gradients, and the private window gets a full dark-purple makeover.

MidnightBSD has updated its license to bar residents of Brazil and California from using the project, with Colorado, Illinois, and New York on the list if their respective pending age verification bills pass.

🧠 What We’re Thinking About

The age verification laws spreading across US states are making distro maintainers uncomfortable, and responses are all over the place. Ubuntu and Fedora are working on minimal local APIs to tick the compliance box without doing anything too invasive. MidnightBSD is outright banning people from using it (as mentioned above).

🧮 Linux Tips, Tutorials, and Learnings

Wordcloud is a Python tool that turns any list of words into a visual word cloud image, right from the terminal. You can feed it a text file, tweak the resolution, swap the font, change the background color, or use a mask image to shape the output around a custom silhouette.

Some practical privacy tips that don't require a computer science degree or a paranoia spiral. Our article covers the basics well, from securing your email and browser to picking better cloud storage and messaging apps.

Ever wanted a desktop that looks like it belongs on r/unixporn? We have an i3 customization guide that covers a lot, from basic keybindings and color schemes to transparent status bars and per-workspace app assignments.

GSConnect is the GNOME-friendly way to link your Android phone and Linux machine, built on top of KDE Connect. Once paired, you can transfer files, share the clipboard, get phone notifications on your desktop, and use your phone as a remote mouse.

👷 AI, Homelab and Hardware Corner

Prefer your local AI neatly containerized? This guide shows how to get Ollama running in Docker.

✨ Apps and Projects Highlights

FRANK OS is a full desktop operating system, complete with a Start menu, overlapping windows, Alt+Tab switching, and a ZX Spectrum emulator, running on an RP2350 microcontroller.

Foot is a minimal Wayland-native terminal emulator that focuses on speed and simplicity. A hidden gem worth exploring.

Keith Curtis spent a week building what he calls "Cursor for LibreOffice," an AI extension that lives in a sidebar and actually edits your documents.

📽️ Videos for You

Sharing some of the essential keyboard shortcuts for Linux Mint, this time in video format.

💡 Quick Handy Tip

On GNOME, first install Tiling Shell. Then, when you right-click on the titlebar of a window, you get various tiling options. Do keep in mind that not all apps will support this.

🎋 Fun in the FOSSverse

Match Linux apps with their functions in this puzzle. And yes, fresh new puzzles are coming soon 😄

🤣 Meme of the Week: Winslop doesn't know what consent means.

🗓️ Tech Trivia: On March 9, 1955, a program called "Director" was demonstrated on MIT's Whirlwind computer—automatically managing system resources while user code ran. It's considered one of the earliest rudimentary operating systems ever created.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 From the Community: Can you help one of our regular FOSSers decide whether to keep Secure Boot enabled or not?

This is about enterprise-oriented SUSE Linux. openSUSE, on the other hand, is community-managed but heavily funded by SUSE. I like to think of SUSE Linux as Red Hat and openSUSE as Fedora.

So any decision taken by SUSE Linux impacts openSUSE, more directly than indirectly. We will have to see what direction it takes if SUSE is sold again.

Notice how I am reusing the word 'again'? That's because this is not the first time SUSE Linux has been sold.

Long history of changing hands

SUSE was founded in 1992 and provided the distribution along with support and services to enterprises. In fact, it was the first company to market Linux to enterprises.

It was first purchased by Novell in 2004 for $210 millions. Novell did put a lot of effort in popularizing Linux, pitching it against Windows and Apple. They even ran ads that some veteran Linux users might remember.

It was a good run until Attachmate purchased Novell in 2011 for a hefty $2.2 billion. SUSE was part of Novell and thus Attachmate took the ownership of the project.

And then in 2014, Micro Focus acquired Attachmate for $2.35 billion and thus once again SUSE saw a new owner.

Come 2018 and a private equity group EQT bought Micro Foucs for $2.535 billions. Needless to say, SUSE was part of the deal.

Except for the first one, the rest of the deals were for the parent company, not necessarily for SUSE. However, the current report suggests that EQT is only selling SUSE this time for approximately $6 billion.

Red Hat went for $34 billions

Red Hat is often considered SUSE’s closest competitor, as both primarily focus on enterprise customers. In 2019, IBM acquired Red Hat for $34 billion, making it one of the largest software acquisitions in history. Since then, Red Hat has become a central pillar of IBM’s hybrid cloud strategy, helping drive growth in areas where IBM had been struggling to maintain momentum.

Who could buy SUSE?

We can only guess, and if it were up to me, here are a few big names that could take advantage of SUSE:

• Amazon: Although Amazon has its own Linux distros for deploying AWS internally
• IBM: It already has Red Hat in its kitty. Getting SUSE means near monopoly in enterprise Linux. But this could also be blocked by regulators.
• Oracle: Oracle has its own Oracle Linux for enterprise. With SUSE, it can expand its business.
• Broadcom: They have already gotten VMWare and thus they already have one foot in the enterprise Linux market. With SUSE, they will only consolidate their position.
• Microsoft: They have Azure but that's primarily for cloud servers. For a company like Microsoft, $6 billion is not a huge amount. They can expand their enterprise offering with SUSE.

These are all guesses. For all we know, an unknown player could enter the scene, or it might not be sold at all.

Your turn now. What do you think of SUSE being in the market again. Which company should buy it?

The regular terminal works but then there are terminals like Kitty and Ghostty that provide modern features and customization.

In the same regard, foot is also a good terminal worth having a look. It is not a new project. It has been an active player for sevaeral years and yet not many Linux user have heard of it.

Foot terminal

Foot is a fast and lightweight Wayland-native terminal emulator. Older terminal emulators were designed around X11 and later gained Wayland support, while Foot is a terminal emulator designed specifically for Wayland from the beginning. Modern GPU terminals like Kitty or Alacritty instead support both X11 and Wayland as first-class backends.

Let me show you some of the features of Foot terminal that provide significant value to the user.

Sixel image support

With the Sixel image support, terminals can display actual images. Foot supports the sixel protocol and thus you can view real images in it without extra effort.

What's the point? Well, if you are using terminal tools like fastfetch, you can display real images in terminal instead of the usual ASCII renderings. Look at the image below for example:

Also, terminal file managers like Yazi can show image file previews in a preview pane with the image support.

Scrollback search

Imagine you executed a command and it produced a long output. Normally, you cannot search in the command output displayed on the screen.

Foot supports scrollback search. If you have a huge scrollback of thousands of lines, the ability to search through it is a game changer.

Press CTRL+SHIFT+R to search a scrollback history. You will get a search prompt at the bottom-right of your screen. Enter search string and you can see that results are live updating.

Keyboard-driven URL detection

Some terminal output may contain URLs. For example, I use hyperlinks in markdown notes and preview them using Glow. In this case, I can press the shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+O to highlight links.

When you press the shortcut, you can see that small alphabetic characters are attached near the links. Press the associated character, and that link is opened in your default web browser.

You can press the ESC key to quit the URL mode.

Server-daemon mode

In server-daemon mode, one process hosts multiple windows. It offers reduced memory footprint, reduced startup time, etc.

But do remember, if the main process crashes, all windows go down with it.

To get server mode in Foot, start the foot server along with desktop login. That is, you need to auto-start the command:

foot --server

We have a dedicated guide on how to auto-start applications and commands at desktop login.

Once done, instead of opening new terminal instances using foot, use footclient.

Fallback font configuration

The user can configure which fallback font to use. If you use a lot of glyphs in the terminal, you can configure the fallback fonts as per need.

Also, it allows you to set one fallback font with a different style and size than another one.

Installing foot terminal

On Ubuntu and Debian-based distros, please use this command:

sudo apt install foot

On Fedora-based distros, use:

sudo dnf install foot

On Arch-based distros, use the pacman command:

sudo pacman -Syu foot

Basic foot configuration

Foot expects a configuration file at ~/.config/foot/foot.ini. When you install Foot, a default configuration will be added at /etc/xdg/foot/foot.ini.

So, you don't need to start from scratch but you still need to do a few things to get started with foot. First, create a config directory for Foot:

mkdir -p ~/.config/foot

Now, copy this default configuration to your local config location and start editing.

cp /etc/xdg/foot/foot.ini ~/.config/foot/
nano ~/.config/foot/foot.ini

How to know about modules

You cannot write a configuration if you don't know what modules are available for you to customize. Don't worry! Foot provides a concise description of available modules in a separate man page. Open a terminal and use the command:

man foot.ini

Read the page once before starting to configure.

Options that you may require

In this section, we will see some of the useful configuration keys.

Change the Shell

The shell option sets a different shell to the Foot Terminal without altering the default system shell.

The syntax is shell = /usr/bin/zsh. You can use the which command to find the path to the shell to use.

Change Font

Changing font is one of the most important parts of any customization. And Foot provides the font- variables for the purpose:

• font = IBM Plex Mono:size=14: Sets the font to IBM Plex Mono and sets the size to 14.
• font = Ubuntu Mono:wieght=bold:size=14: Sets the bold font to Ubuntu Mono and sets the size to 14.
• font = JetBrains Mono:weight=bold:slant:italic:size=14: set the bold-italic font to JetBrains Mono and size set to 14.

Include another config

Splitting up the configuration will enable you to maintain and modify it easily in a later stage. And this is the best approach for theme customization.

For example, let's see how you can set a Catppuccin Mocha theme to the foot terminal.

Visit the Catppuccin Foot theme GitHub repository. Go to the themes/catppuccin-mocha.ini file and download it using the download button at the top of the page, as shown in the screenshot below.

Now, create a directory with the command:

mkdir -p ~/.config/foot/themes/

Paste the downloaded catppuccin-mocha.ini file inside this directory. Assuming you have downloaded the file to the ~/Downloads directory, use the command:

cp ~/Downloads/catppuccin-mocha.ini ~/.config/foot/themes/

Now, we need a little troubleshooting. With the latest update, Foot color schemes need a [colors-dark] module, and the Catppuccin comes with [colors]. Just open the file:

nano ~/.config/foot/themes/catppuccin-mocha.ini

And edit the [colors] to [colors-dark] and save it.

One more step. Open the foot.ini config file in your favorite editor:

nano ~/.config/foot/foot.ini

Add the below line to the top of the file:

include=~/.config/foot/themes/catppuccin-mocha.ini

Also, comment out all the blocks, including and under [colors], [colors-dark] inside it the foot.init file.

That's it. Reopen Foot Terminal and enjoy the new themes.

I let you try it and discover more of its features.

There is also another side to this, where developments outside the platform affect it.

Steam, which is among the key drivers of that growth, has a new client update that offers many useful upgrades.

What do you get?

The most relevant fixes for Linux users address a bug where Proton games were incorrectly flagged as "Not valid on current platform" for users with huge libraries. A related instance of the same bug also affected offline mode specifically, so if you have a large library and have been running into these issues, both cases should now be sorted.

Moving on from that, the /store chat command has been updated to use the new Store trailer player (the video player that shows game trailers) instead of the old one.

On the library side, any game demos you have installed that are no longer available will now show a prompt to uninstall them rather than a play button. Plus, any new demos and free-to-play titles will appear at the top of your recent games list.

Steam is also rolling out opt-in anonymized framerate data collection, currently in beta with a focus on SteamOS devices. The data is stored without any connection to your Steam account but is tied to the type of hardware you are playing on. Valve says this will help improve game compatibility information.

Then there are Reviews, which are getting a small but useful addition. You can now include your hardware specs when writing or updating a user review on a game's store page, giving your review a bit more context for other gamers.

Depending on who you ask, this can either be a privacy headache or a genuinely useful signal for judging how a game runs on hardware similar to yours.

Finally, a fix went out for an issue where the game beta/version info was showing the date the beta was assigned to you, rather than the date the actual game build was created.

How to get Steam?

Officially, Valve only provides DEB packages for Linux, so you can get it installed on Debian, Ubuntu, and other derivatives without any issues. On Ubuntu, you just double-click on the package and click on "Install" to get it on your system.

There are some unofficial builds out there that do work, and if I had to suggest one, it would be the RPM Fusion version of Steam (available on GNOME Software). But again, this is not provided by Valve, so verify it before installing.

Brazil's Digital Statute of the Child and Adolescent takes effect on March 17, 2026, and explicitly names operating systems and app stores as entities that must implement age verification.

California's Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043), signed in October 2025 and effective January 1, 2027, requires OS providers to collect age data at account setup and pipe it to every app via a real-time API.

Colorado's Senate Bill 26-051, which passed the state Senate on March 3 with a 28-7 vote, would mandate the same and is currently awaiting a House vote before being set in stone.

They say they are doing it to protect the children; I think that is performative. Now we have a popular open source project outright banning people from using its offering just because they live in a region that has mandated age verification.

Age verification excludes

MidnightBSD, a FreeBSD-based desktop operating system, has quietly updated its README to reflect a new geographic restriction. The project has added a clause that bars residents of any country, state, or territory with OS-level age verification mandates from using MidnightBSD.

It is not a blanket ban but is directly tied to the existence of these laws, meaning the list grows as more regions pass similar legislation.

As it stands right now, it reads:

Residents of any countries, states or territories that require age verification for operating systems, are not authorized to use MidnightBSD. This list currently includes Brazil, effective March 17, 2026, California, effective January 1, 2027, and will include Colorado, Illinois and New York provided they pass their currently proposed legislation.

The project also urges anyone affected by this restriction to write to their local representatives and push for these laws to be repealed or replaced.

MidnightBSD has been around since 2006, when Lucas Holt forked it from FreeBSD 6.1 to build a desktop-oriented BSD for everyday users. It ships with Xfce and its own package manager, mport, targeting i386 and amd64 hardware.

It is a small, community-driven project with no corporate backing. The fines these laws carry, up to $7,500 per minor for intentional violations, are a serious risk for a team this size.

I wonder, though, how this would actually be enforced; maybe the official website and download mirrors for MidnightBSD will be out of reach for people in those regions. Of course, a tech-savvy crowd who uses MidnightBSD will know how to bypass such an embargo.

It makes you wonder how effective such age verification laws are. Oh wait, some of these so-called public servants are also pushing for VPNs to be banned.

Such a nice coincidence. 🙂

Suggested Read 📖: How Linux and BSD Distros Are Responding to the New Age Verification Laws

This is 'intended to help' apps filter content for minors, but it relies on self-reported ages without mandatory ID checks. Similar proposals exist in New York and Brazil.

While enforcement on community-driven distros remains unclear, several have begun addressing the laws through compliance planning, rejection, or exclusion strategies.

Here's the situation so far.

Some distros are planning to comply

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, is reviewing the legislation with legal counsel but has not announced concrete changes yet. Community developer discussions include proposals for an optional D-Bus interface (org.freedesktop.AgeVerification1) to handle age brackets locally without privacy-invasive telemetry, potentially influencing other distros if adopted.

Aaron Rainbolt, Ubuntu Community Council Member and contributor to Whonix, said:

We're currently looking into how to implement an API that will comply with the laws while also not being a privacy disaster...

elementary OS seems to be relying on Ubuntu's implementation too. Danielle Foré, elementary's lead developer and founder, was also in the same discussion expressing their willingness to address the issue before the law comes into effect.

The Fedora community is exploring non-intrusive implementations, such as a local API or an /etc/ file populated during setup to provide age brackets to apps without online verification or data sharing. Former project leader Jef Spaleta mentioned that it is not telemetry but a minimal adjustment to meet legal requirements.

System76, Linux system manufacturer and the company behind Pop!OS, noted that the laws do not mandate robust verification, only self-attestation and warned that non-compliance could lead to restricted app access for users. They are also considering minimal changes to provide age signals, focusing on avoiding unintended consequences like a "nerfed internet."

If there is any solace in these two laws, it’s that they don’t have any real restrictions. There is no actual age verification. Whoever installed the operating system or created the account simply says what age they are. They can lie. They will lie. They’re being encouraged to lie for fear of being restricted to a nerfed internet.

Some distros are resisting

The bold step came from DHH and his Omarchy Linux as it outright rejected compliance, with DHH stating that he had no plans to respond to the "retarded" California law.

Adenix GNU/Linux distro has declared it will not implement age checks, aligning with a principled stand against such requirements.

MidnightBSD has taken a firm stance against compliance by updating its license to explicitly exclude California residents from using it for desktop purposes starting January 1, 2027. The project's lead stated this is a temporary measure until a better solution emerges, emphasizing the impracticality of age verification for open-source OSes.

What about the rest?

There are no official statements from Linux Mint yet, so any conclusion here is merely speculative. Given its close alignment with Ubuntu, I think it will follow whatever direction Ubuntu takes, possibly adopting the same shared API approach.

Arch Linux has remained publicly silent on the issue as well. Some forum discussions briefly appeared in my web search results but they seem to be removed, leaving no clear indication of the project’s stance. SUSE has also not made any public comments so far. Since the legislation originates in the U.S., European-focused distributions like SUSE may not feel immediate pressure to respond.

Meanwhile, discussions in the NixOS community suggest that they are waiting to see what larger distributions decide. That is not surprising. Much of the Linux ecosystem ultimately traces back to Debian, Arch, Ubuntu, and Red Hat (Fedora). Whatever technical approach these major players adopt will likely influence dozens of downstream distributions.

And we should also see a few existing or new distros coming up with "no age verification" as their unique feature that distinguishes them from the rest. After all, Linux community is known to take a stance, right?

Because of their limited resources, they typically run either bare-metal firmware or a lightweight real-time operating system (RTOS) like Zephyr or Eclipse ThreadX.

And now, someone has decided that a microcontroller should have a graphical desktop interface. A tinkerer based out of Greece, Mikhail Matveev, has released FRANK OS, a desktop operating system built for the RP2350 microcontroller.

What is FRANK OS?

It is a desktop operating system built on top of FreeRTOS, the widely used open source real-time operating system that offers preemptive multitasking, a modest memory footprint, and support for 40+ processor architectures.

Building on that base, FRANK OS has its own windowed GUI, shell, filesystem stack, and application runtime in place. The result of that is a system that offers a Windows 95-style desktop with the ability to run ELF applications from SD cards and hard fault recovery in place.

The project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 and just got its first stable release a few weeks ago. On paper, the OS targets the FRANK M2 board, which is the developer's own RP2350B-based creation that has DVI output, PS/2 ports, PSRAM, and an SD card slot.

Running a windowed desktop on a microcontroller with 520 KB of on-chip SRAM is not a small feat. FRANK OS achieves it by splitting the workload across the RP2350's two cores.

Core 0 runs the FreeRTOS scheduler, window manager, input handling, and applications, while Core 1 is entirely dedicated to real-time DVI scanline rendering via the DispHSTX driver.

Applications are compiled as standalone ARM ELF binaries and loaded from an SD card. The OS also includes a MOS2 compatibility layer for running Murmulator OS 2 applications.

What can you expect?

Going into greater detail, FRANK OS comes with a proper desktop environment where app windows can overlap, be dragged, resized from edges and corners, minimized, maximized, or closed.

The taskbar sits at the bottom of the screen with a Start button, buttons for any currently open windows, and a system tray that shows a clock and the volume slider. Additionally, the Start menu can scan /fos/ on the SD card at boot to list applications.

The desktop supports up to 24 shortcuts via the right-click context menu that stay intact across reboots, and pressing Alt+Tab brings up a switcher overlay, letting you cycle through all open windows, including the minimized ones.

PShell is the built-in shell that runs inside the Terminal application. It can handle file operations, editing files with vi, a C compiler, and launching MOS2-compatible console applications from the SD card.

The Control Panel, accessible via the Start menu, has four applets covering background color, system info, mouse settings, and CPU/PSRAM clock frequencies.

On the audio side, FRANK OS can provide I2S stereo output with 4 concurrent sound channels, MP3 and MOD playback, MIDI/OPL FM synthesis, and even a startup sound.

Fret not, the OS also features nine pre-installed applications that include:

You will find detailed installation instructions, source code, and documentation on FRANK OS' GitHub repository.

Suggested Read 📖: 11 Interesting ESP32 Microcontroller Projects

Neither option feels particularly appealing when practically every other mainstream browser and several Firefox forks, have put real thought into what people expect from a modern web browser.

On top of that, its AIness and lack of genuinely user experience-centric additions have been making me wonder whether it is time to move on entirely.

But, it looks like there's some hope after all.

Firefox "Nova" might be a game-changer

Sören Hentzschel, a full-stack developer, cat dad, and blogger, has shared something very interesting (in Deutsch) on his personal website.

Under the internal project name "Nova," Mozilla is working on a significant visual overhaul of Firefox. Sören was the first to put out the internal design mockups, which show a very different version of Firefox than what you and me currently use.

The most obvious change is how rounded everything is. Tabs, the address bar, and the toolbar no longer sit as separate flat strips—they form a single floating island at the top of the browser.

The sidebar toggle and the web content area follow the same rounded design language, and even elements on the new tab page get the same treatment.

Flat, solid colors are also going away. Nova brings in subtle gradients across the interface, and the mockups show a clear lean toward violet as a color accent. Sören notes that this is likely tied to the active theme or what the user has chosen in the Appearance settings.

That menu, btw, also sees a redesign, where the various options are laid out neatly with rounded corners and possibly a different font for the text.

There is also a structural change in how web content is displayed. Rather than sitting flush against the window edges, pages are presented inside a rounded container, visually separated from the other elements of the interface.

The mockups also showcase vertical tabs that already exist on the current build of Firefox, but, again, with a more rounded appearance and a slightly more accessible layout.

Above, the dark mode mockup shows the split view feature in action, with two sites open side by side inside their rounded containers. The browser's interface is a black/red gradient, with the tab bar and toolbar housed in a single strip at the top.

The light mode mockup shows the browser menu open, which has noticeably rounded corners and floats as a panel rather than being pinned to the toolbar. You can also spot tab groups displayed as colored pills in the tab bar.

The private window mockup is the most visually distinct of the three. The entire interface is a dark purple, with large flowing curves and slightly varying shades of purple as the background.

Stay updated

If you want to follow development, Mozilla's Bugzilla page has an active set of entries tracking the work surrounding Nova.

Going through them, I came across several Figma links that presumably pointed to the actual design files. But none of them were accessible; my best guess is that they were taken down after the leak.

Also, there's no official announcement on this from Mozilla, but seeing that the mockups are now out in the wild, we can probably expect one shortly.

In the meantime, customize it yourself

We have a detailed video on customizing Firefox to give it a lean, minimal but efficient makeover. Perhaps you would want to give it a try before the new, redesigned version is released.

Right now, California's Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043) is all the rage right now, which targets not only websites and apps but also operating systems. Come January 1, 2027, every OS provider must collect a user's age at account setup and provide that data to app developers via a real-time API.

Colorado is also working on a near-identical bill, which we covered earlier.

The EFF's year-end review put it more bluntly: 2025 was "the year states chose surveillance over safety." The foundation's concern, which I concur with, is, where does this stop? Self-reported birthday today, government ID tomorrow? There appears to be no limit to these laws' overreach.

Governments across the world are pulling out the exact same argument (protect the children) to push through laws with consequences that go well beyond keeping a kid off a harmful website. All while attendees of a certain island roam about the world freely.

It's Not Just the U.S.

The UK moved first back in 2023. The Online Safety Act's child safety duties went into force in July 2025, where it required platforms to deploy age verification measures, blocking minors from accessing harmful material.

Australia followed in December 2025 with a ban on social media accounts for under-16s, requiring age checks for adults to use the platform. It is narrower in scope, targeting platforms rather than app stores or operating systems.

Brazil has gone further. The Digital Statute of the Child and Adolescent comes into effect on March 17, 2026, and it explicitly names operating systems and app stores by definition.

Article 12 requires both to implement auditable age verification, expose an age signal via API to third-party apps, and get parental/legal guardian consent before minors can download anything.

Singapore's approach skips the OS side of things and goes straight for the app stores themselves. Their IMDA requires the likes of Apple, Google, Huawei, Microsoft, and Samsung to implement age assurance by March 31, 2026.

Apple has already gotten it done, rolling out its Declared Age Range API on February 24, blocking 18+ apps in Singapore, Australia, and Brazil.

As usual, the EU is doing its own thing. In October 2025, the Commission introduced the second version of its age verification blueprint, which is a mobile app that lets users prove they're over 18 without revealing any personal data. It's built on the same technical foundation as the EU Digital Identity Wallets rolling out across member states.

Five countries are already in the process of customizing it for their needs: Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, and Spain.

The Fallout

Predictably, the Linux community has not taken this quietly. While there is a bunch of misinformation strewn about, some things are clear.

Take Ubuntu, for instance. Aaron Rainbolt, an Ubuntu Community Council member, posted on the Ubuntu mailing list raising this issue of age checks with a post titled:

On the unfortunate need for an "age verification" API for legal compliance reasons in some U.S. states

In the post, he proposed a D-Bus interface called org.freedesktop.AgeVerification1. Rather than storing raw personal data, it would only expose an age bracket to apps that request it. The goal is a spec loose enough that any distro can implement it however they see fit, while still satisfying what laws like AB 1043 actually require.

Then there's the thread up on Fedora's Discourse, where a user asked whether the developers were aware of California's age verification law. Jef Spaleta, Fedora Project Leader, chimed in with a measured approach, where no telemetry was required, and a local API would do the heavy lifting.

Here, apps would query Fedora for an age bracket, and the OS would provide it. He even suggested it could be as simple as a new file in /etc/ that would be populated during account creation.

As for what people think of this, take the example of a Redditor, who is going as far as hoarding ISO files for old builds of Linux and Windows once age verification-equipped versions start rolling out. I am sure many will follow in their footsteps.

Lastly, my take on this situation? This feels less like coincidence and more like a coordinated move being run under the guise of protecting children's rights. We already know how certain regimes around the world treat those rights.

As governments push age checks deeper into apps and operating systems, what once sounded like a safety measure is starting to feel a lot like surveillance.

And it’s not just happening in the U.S. Reports suggest Brazil is also moving toward similar regulations. While this model may fit ecosystems like Apple and Microsoft, where operating systems are tightly tied to online accounts, the Linux world works very differently. Yet developers from projects like Fedora and Ubuntu are already discussing how such requirements might affect Linux.

We’ll be keeping close eye on how this evolves. Stay tuned.

Here are other highlights of this edition of FOSS Weekly:

• Longer support for certain Linux kernels.
• systemd troubleshooting tools
• Xfce customization.
• Microsoft hates Microslop.
• LibreOffice quick tip.
• A new consortium to unify the Arm software ecosystem.
• And other Linux news, tips, and, of course, memes!

📰 Linux and Open Source News

The web's most popular UI library has outgrown Meta's ownership. React is now part of the Linux Foundation with neutral governance and eight platinum members on board. Technical decisions are independent from the board, of course.

Arm software got too complex for any one company to handle alone. CoreCollective just launched to fix that fragmentation problem. Free membership for anyone building on Arm. AMD, Google, Microsoft and Red Hat are already in.

LTS kernel support windows just got extended after being cut to two years back in 2023. Linux 6.6 and 6.12 now get four-years of support instead. Greg Kroah-Hartman updated the schedule after discussions with companies and maintainers.

AI's RAM appetite just killed another hardware project. Orange Pi and Manjaro spent two years building a Linux gaming handheld, cleared regulatory approvals, and got everything ready to ship. Now it's sitting on ice because DDR5 chip prices are absurd.

Motorola just partnered with the GrapheneOS Foundation, and it was announced at MWC 2026. The two plan to collaborate on research, software improvements, and new security features in the coming months. If you did not know already, Graphene is an Android distribution that ditches Google's data collection layer entirely and has long been the go-to for anyone serious about privacy.

And a funny thing happened this week when Microsoft locked down its Discord server because people kept on calling it Microslop.

🧠 What We’re Thinking About

Few Linux distributions attract as much criticism as Ubuntu. From Snap complaints to Canonical decisions, the internet seems to have a long list of reasons to dislike it. But Ubuntu may not deserve nearly as much hate as it gets.

🧮 Linux Tips, Tutorials, and Learnings

When stuff breaks on Linux, systemd already knows what happened. Systemctl shows which services crashed, journalctl has the error messages, and systemd-analyze tells you what's hogging boot time. Coredumpctl keeps snapshots of apps that died completely.

Got an old PC or Raspberry Pi collecting dust? Batocera, Lakka, and RetroPie turn them into plug-and-play retro consoles via USB or SD card.

A quick tip if you love to use LibreOffice. If a document has way too many images and you have to save multiple or all images from it, save it as an HTML document in a new folder. You'll get all the images from the document. Pretty neat 😄

By the way, we are working on a "Linux Mint Starter Pack" series for beginners. I'll share with you when it is done. In the mean time, you can get familiar with the Linux command line.

👷 AI, Homelab and Hardware Corner

Tired of feeding your photos to Google's AI? PhotoPrism runs locally on Docker, handles face recognition and tagging on your hardware.

✨ Apps and Projects Highlights

A Czech-based dev built a data center sim where you rack servers and run cables. No native Linux support but works with some FPS issues

📽️ Videos for You

Xfce can be customized to look (more) beautiful. This video shows how:

💡 Quick Handy Tip

Brave browser allows you to set a shortcut to copy the URL of the current tab. For this, go to Brave Settings -> System -> Shortcuts. Here, search for Copy URL and add a keybind to it.

In the screenshot above, CTRL+SHIFT+C is added as the shortcut. This overwrites the default inspect function, which it was mapped to earlier. So tread with caution and try to add a non-conflicting shortcut.

If your browser does not support this, you can use CTRL+L to access the address bar and then CTRL+C to copy the URL of the current tab.

📚 Don't Miss! Linux eBook bundle

Humble Bundle has brought back the "Linux for Seasoned Admins" ebook bundle offer (partner link). From the classic Linux Pocket Guide and my favorite, Efficient Linux at the Command Line, the bundle also has ebooks on Docker, Ansible, Kubernetes and other devops aspects of Linux.

And your purchase also supports the Code for America initiative.

🎋 Fun in the FOSSverse

Can you beat this crossword and become the Daemon Hunter?

🤣 Meme of the Week: The pain is real. 🥲

🗓️ Tech Trivia: On March 1, 1960, the first LISP Programmer's Manual was released by John McCarthy's group at MIT. McCarthy had built a recursive, symbolic language that would go on to become the foundation of AI programming and outlast nearly every other high-level language of its era.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 From the Community: FOSSers are talking about the upcoming secure boot changes, and how it might affect those on Linux.