GNU/Linux Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 19, 2025

• Graphics Stack

  • Fudzilla ☛ Intel questions open source generosity [Ed: Making drivers for its own hardware, which it sells, is not generosity; releasing source code is about others doing bug-fixing work for them]

    Troubled Chipzilla’s long-standing love affair with open sauce might be heading for rocky times after one of its top brass suggested it’s time to stop being everyone’s free R&D department.

• Desktop Environments

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • DebugPoint ☛ GNOME 49: Best New Features

      Here’s a quick rundown of the best new features of the latest GNOME 49 desktop environment. GNOME 49, code named “Brescia” is released a while back on September 19, 2025. This release mostly focusses on the software stack updates, concentrated on the native applications and core updates.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Logikal Solutions ☛ Setting CachyOS Environment Variables

    One of the massive problems with software development today, especially in the CachyOS and Linux world in general is that nobody does the documentation. Hack on the fly, make grand sweeping changes, and never update the doc!

  • Julian Andres Klode ☛ Sound Removals

    Problem statement

    If A was installed by a chain initiated by Recommends (say X Rec Y, Y Depends A), the solver sometimes preferred removing A (and anything depending on it until it got).

    [...]

    I have a fix pending to introduce eager Recommends which fixes the practical case, but this is still not sound.

    In fact we can show that the solver produces the wrong result for small minimal test cases, as well as the right result for some others without the fix (hooray?).

    Ensuring sound removals is more complex, and first of all it begs the question: When is a removal sound? This, of course, is on us to define.

    [...]

    This indicates that we should only allow removing A if the conflicts could not be solved by upgrading it.

    The other case to explore is package removals. If B is removed, A should be removed as well; however it there is another package X that Provides: B (= 1) and it is marked for install, A should not be removed. That said, the solver is not allowed to install X to satisfy the depends B (= 1) - only to satisfy other dependencies [we do not want to get into endless loops where we switch between alternatives to keep reverse dependencies installed].

  • Fedora Family / IBM

    • Kevin Fenzi: infra weekly recap: mid October 2025

      Another saturday recap of the last week for me in fedora infra.

    • oVirt Lives On: A Stronger, Community-Driven Future

      For many, oVirt’s roots with Red Hat established it as a cornerstone open source virtualization platform - powering thousands of workloads worldwide. Even though Red Hat has stepped back from oVirt development, the oVirt project is proving it’s not just alive - but thriving - with renewed community leadership, fresh innovations, and new contributors joining the mission. We’re excited to share that Oracle is among the active contributors helping to shape oVirt’s bright future.

  • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

    • Why I left Budgie

      I said when I made the announcement that there wasn’t any drama, and there still isn’t.

  • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

    • Matthew Weber ☛ Dumb Phones Are A Fad

      Going to a dumb phone feels a lot like this. For some, it will work just fine. It will be a revelation. But for most people, they’ll eventually go back to using an iPhone or an Android. They’ll learn how to make the smartphone life more minimal without going to the extreme. Maybe the experience will foster growth, but they will return. For one, most will be like the guy above and will just add things to their life that weren’t there before: an mp3 player, a journal, an e-reader, or whatever—additional things that need to be kept track of. Another thing, there are just things in this world that you need a smartphone to do. Things like ordering groceries or refilling prescriptions, checking in to the airport or paying for parking. Yeah, there are manual ways of doing those things still, but they’re being phased out quickly.

    • CS Monitor ☛ I was eager to cut the cord on my landline. Why I now regret it.

      Which is why, when the phone rang in my house when I was growing up, if you weren’t the first to answer it, everyone knew your business. “Are you friends with Amy again?” my sister would ask.

      If the phone rang and I happened to pick it up, I might end up talking to my mother’s best friend for just a few minutes. She always wanted to know how I was doing. That kind of connection never happens now when we only talk to the people whom we’ve meant to call or who meant to call us. It makes us a little more isolated from each other.