GNU/Linux and Free Software Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jul 28, 2025

• XDA ☛ These 5 Linux distros are perfect for reviving PCs that can't handle Windows 11

  If you have an older PC that just doesn't meet the hardware demands of Windows 11, you're not out of options. Several Linux distributions are designed specifically for lightweight performance, user-friendly interfaces, and compatibility with aging hardware. These distros can breathe new life into machines that would otherwise be collecting dust. Best of all, they’re free, secure, and surprisingly capable for daily use.

• Graphics Stack

  • Kentaro Hayashi: Switching from NVIDIA GPU to AMD GPU

    Introduction

    Recently, I've got a chance to try AMD GPU.

    I didn't have experience as a user with AMD GPU, but I felt it was very easy to switch.

    How to switch from NVIDIA GPU to AMD GPU?

    Here is the steps to migrate from NVIDIA GPU.

    (I'm using Debian sid as a daily driver, but the following instructions are also applicable)

  • Purge all nvidia packages from Debian sid

  Not only nvidia-driver, but also need to say good-bye to CUDA related packages. Anyway, it is important to clean it up.

• Games

  • Boiling Steam ☛ New Steam Games Playable on the Steam Deck, with The King is Watching - 2025-07-27 Edition

    Between 2025-07-19 and 2025-07-26 we selected 14 newly released games that are rated as Verified or Playable on the Steam Deck, and meeting specific criteria in terms of user ratings. A lot of good stuff, but I have a special attachment to what I have seen so far from the King is Watching, as it looks like a crazy mix of tower defense, roguelite and management all in one. On top of that, Nils is already reviewing Hell Clock at the time of writing, and I’m on Hey Hi (AI) Somnium: No Sleep for Kaname Date, so you will get to hear more about these 2 games in more details fairly soon.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Distro Watch ☛ DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.

    [...] We also talk about plans to introduce a pre-configured desktop install option for FreeBSD and share progress from the Wayback project. [...]

  • University of Toronto ☛ Unix had good reasons to evolve since V7 (and had to)

    There's a certain sort of person who feels that the platonic ideal of Unix is somewhere around Research Unix V7 and it's almost all been downhill since then (perhaps with the exception of further Research Unixes and then Plan 9, although very few people got their hands on any of them). For all that I like Unix and started using it long ago when it was simpler (although not as far back as V7), I reject this view and think it's completely mistaken.

  • SUSE/OpenSUSE

    • Ish Sookun ☛ openSUSE Conference 2025

      The openSUSE Conference 2025, was held from 26 - 28 June at the vibrant Z-Bau, House of Contemporary Culture, Nuremberg, Germany. I had the pleasure of attending with my colleagues Eddy Lareine and Alex Bissessur. It marked my third time attending and speaking at the openSUSE Conference in Germany, and my fifth international openSUSE talk, after the Africa Internet Summit 2019 in Kampala, Uganda and the openSUSE Asia Summit 2019 in Bali, Indonesia.

• Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

  • Web Browsers/Web Servers

    • Nicolas Magand ☛ Could I use the internet without a proper web browser?

      This is when I realised that the best web browser I could use, the one that would annoy me the least, would actually be the one I barely touch.

      The web browser is my most-used app, whether it’s on my laptop or my phone, so how could I “barely touch” the web browser? How would this all work in this alternate dimension? Well, I’m glad you asked.

      Let’s fall into the rabbit hole of how I would use a computer without a main browser, and consider the current use cases: [...]

    • Standards/Consortia

      • Yorick Peterse ☛ Three HTTP versions later, forms are still a mess

        The last few weeks I've been working on adding an HTTP 1.1 stack to the standard library of Inko as part of this pull request. The work is still ongoing but the initial set of changes will include an HTTP 1.1 server, client, basic cookie handling, generating and parsing of forms, and a request router. This work is based on the following RFCs: [...]

      • HTML Energy ☛ HTML Day – August 2nd, 2025

        On Saturday, August 2nd, 2025, we'll be gathering in places around the world to write and celebrate HTML.