GNU/Linux and BSD Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 28, 2025

• GNU/Linux

  • Desktop/Laptop

    • Tom's Hardware ☛ Lenovo Legion devices running GNU/Linux set to get new 'Extreme' mode that fixes previously-broken power limits — only approved devices will be able to run the maximum performance mode

      The power profiles on Lenovo Legion devices running GNU/Linux have been somewhat broken, where the highest-end Extreme mode would run on models that weren't ever designed to support it. A new proposed patch fixes this, corrects power profiles to work as intended, and makes it so that only explicitly approved models can get access to the Extreme mode easily.

  • Kernel Space

    • University of Toronto ☛ Modern Linux filesystem mounts are rather complex things

      Once upon a time, Unix filesystem mounts worked by putting one inode on top of another, and this was also how they worked in very early Linux. It wasn't wrong to say that mounts were really about inodes, with the names only being used to find the inodes. This is no longer how things work in Linux (and perhaps other Unixes, but Linux is what I'm most familiar with for this). Today, I believe that filesystem mounts in Linux are best understood as namespace operations.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Kevin Boone ☛ Kevin Boone: AppImage from scratch

    An AppImage is a single file that contains an entire Linux application. In most cases, it doesn’t require any particular installation – the user just executes the file, and the AppImage takes care of the rest. AppImage doesn’t automate the collection or installation of an application’s dependencies – the AppImage file is expected simply to provide them. All of them. Technologies like FlatPak and Snap are superficially similar, but these all require some management infrastructure on the computer where the application is to run. AppImage requires only the Linux desktop (sometimes not even that), and some fundamental Linux utilities.

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD ☛ FreeBSD now builds reproducibly and without root privilege

      The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce that it has completed work to build FreeBSD without requiring root privilege. We have implemented support for all source release builds to use no-root infrastructure, eliminating the need for root privileges across the FreeBSD release pipeline.

      [...]

      The changes are currently available in the FreeBSD development branch and, where possible, are being merged into the release branch for FreeBSD 15.0.

      Building FreeBSD release artifacts no longer requires root access to create device files, set proper ownership, and mount file systems during the build process. This has improved security and made automated builds simpler.

      Now, every FreeBSD release artifact can be built without root privileges: [...]

  • SUSE/OpenSUSE

    • OpenSUSE ☛ Planet News Roundup

      The below featured highlights listed on the community’s blog feed aggregator are from October 18 to 26.

  • Open Hardware/Modding

    • Hackaday ☛ Exploding The Mystical Craftsman Myth

      As a Hackaday writer, I see a lot of web pages, social media posts, videos, and other tips as part of my feed. The  best ones I try to bring you here, assuming of course that one of my ever-vigilant colleagues hasn’t beaten me to it. Along the way I see the tropes of changing content creator fashion; those ridiculous pea-sized hand held microphones, or how all of a sudden everything has to be found in the woods. Some of them make me laugh, but there’s one I see a lot which has made me increasingly annoyed over the years. I’m talking of course about the craftsman myth.