Free, Libre, and Open Source Software Leftovers
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Applications
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Neowin ☛ Top 10 must-have apps for new GNU/Linux users in 2025
If you are new to Linux, this guide is for you! I list some of the key apps (and services) that you'll want to use to make your GNU/Linux transition more comfortable.
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Videos
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Harish Pillay ☛ Clever tools for managing your video viewing time
It is undeniable that youtube.com has become the main site for video content. A lot of those who create videos are also depending on the monetization aspects of that site. All of that is fine.
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a) yt-dlp: a command line tool that is a feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader with support for thousands of sites. That project is a fork of youtube-dl based on the now inactive youtube-dlc. yt-dlp is in the public domain under a “unlicense license” which is pretty much like CC0.
b) yt-x: Browse YouTube from your terminal plus other sites yt-dlp supports. It is on an MIT License – which is just fine. yt-x is a very well written bash script of about 1,600 lines. Really clever and really well done.
What this has enabled me is complete control of my time in consuming videos – whether for leisure or for learning. I am far more productive and not being distracted by advertisements helps to keep me focused.
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SaaS/Back End/Databases
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Carnegie Mellon University ☛ Databases in 2024: A Year in Review
There is much to cover from the past year, from 10-figure acquisitions, vendors running wild in the streets with license changes, and the most famous database octogenarian splashing cash to recruit a college quarterback to impress his new dimepiece.
I promised my first wife that I would write more professionally this year. I have also been informed that some universities assign my annual blog articles as required reading in their database courses. Let's see how it goes.
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Content Management Systems (CMS) / Static Site Generators (SSG)
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Joost de Valk ☛ WordPress comments, cookies and caching
This post explains how WordPress uses comment cookies and why that is detrimental to your site’s caching. It then shows you how to fix this.
When I wrote my previous post about WordPress leadership, I had anticipated getting a lot of comments. It turned out there were even more than I expected. This led to some issues with my (admittedly rather aggressive) caching settings on my blog. When I approved a comment it didn’t clear my Cloudflare edge cache of my post, so people couldn’t see them.
A few days after fixing that, I was alerted to the fact that Cloudflare was caching the details of the last commenter on a post. This led me down a rather deep rabbit hole. I was reading code that I’d not seen in quite some time, in the WordPress comment system.
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Education
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BSDCan ☛ BSDCan 2025
12 February 2025: Proposal submissions ends
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Licensing / Legal
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Federal News Network ☛ Agencies required to share custom software under new law
Biden signed the “Source Code Harmonization And Reuse in Information Technology Act” on Dec. 23. Known as the “SHARE IT Act,” the bill was first introduced by Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Gary Peters (D-Mich.) in January 2024.
In introducing the legislation, lawmakers pointed to the $12 billion agencies spend on software annually. That figure includes both commercial software and custom-developed products.
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