Applications, Games, Hardware, and Distributions

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 04, 2025

• Desktop/Laptop

  • University of Toronto ☛ How I handle URLs in my unusual X desktop

    I have an unusual X desktop environment that has evolved over a long period, and as part of that I have an equally unusual and slowly evolved set of ways to handle URLs. By 'handle URLs', what I mean is going from an URL somewhere (email, text in a terminal, etc) to having the URL open in one of my several browser environments. Tied into this is handling non-URL things that I also want to open in a browser, for example searching for various sorts of things in various web places.

• Kernel Space

  • Melissa Wen: Kworkflow at Kernel Recipes 2025

    This was the first year I attended Kernel Recipes and I have nothing but say how much I enjoyed it and how grateful I’m for the opportunity to talk more about kworkflow to very experienced kernel developers. What I mostly like about Kernel Recipes is its intimate format, with only one track and many moments to get closer to experts and people that you commonly talk online during your whole year.

• Applications

  • It's FOSS ☛ I Used Instagram from the GNU/Linux Terminal. It’s Cool Until It’s Not. [Ed: Proprietary]

    The stunts were performed by a (supposedly) professional. Don't try this in your terminal.

  • OMG Ubuntu ☛ Linux App Release Roundup (October 2025)

    Read on for a recap of smaller GNU/Linux app releases in October 2025, including updates to BleachBit, Bazaar, Calibre, DigiKam, Resources and more!

• Games

  • PCLinuxOS Magazine ☛ DOSBOX Pure: Run Your Old DOS Games On PCLinuxOS

    So, friends, the famous Disk Operating System, also known as PC-DOS, IBM-DOS, or MS-DOS, depending on who sold the computer/system, was one of the most famous operating systems that ever existed. And it still exists. DOS is still being developed, such as FreeDOS, and there is still equipment, whether embedded electronics, handhelds, or industrial computers that still run on the DOS standard.

    We cannot estimate, either humanly or with AI (and I tried), how many programs have been made for DOS, and thanks to the almost unlimited library of programs for this operating system, it is still very popular among computer users. I bet that you, reading this now, have a favorite DOS game that you occasionally play to satisfy your urge to game and remember the good old days (when Microsoft still had some competence).

    The options we have today to revive old DOS programs are DOSEMU and DOSBOX. DOSEMU is somewhat complicated to get working, so that leaves us with DOSBOX.

• Desktop Environments (DE)/Window Managers (WM)

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • GNOME ☛ Christian Hergert: Status Week 44

      Red Hat

      In October I celebrated 10 years at Red Hat. I don’t think I ever worked somewhere for more than a few years before that. Considering I started working professionally in tech after I barely escaped high school, that’s nearly half of my career.

      It is also a reminder to reflect on the people who helped me get there. All the people on IRC that helped me learn programming in the early days of #gtk and #gnome-hackers IRC channels. And Miguel specifically for all the random demo code he would send my way to read how something could be done.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • BSD

    • Jamie Montgomerie ☛ Setting up a very simple (but IPv6 capable) home router with OpenBSD 7.7

      Why BSD? I guess I’d have to admit that I have an affinity for oddball setups - but I also wondered if it’d be simpler than a Linux solution. I love Linux - in fact, this router is running in a VM on a Linux system that’s also running Home Assistant (more about that in the future, perhaps), but over time distros have become super complicated. BSD has a reputation for being ‘simpler’.

      Often, my oddball setups mean a bunch of wasted time and a return to the mainstream, but I’m happy to say that I do not regret this choice at all. OpenBSD is wonderful for this task. It’s small. I allocated 512MB of RAM to the VM, and it’s using 183MB of it. It’s using about 2G of disk space, without really any attempt on my part to keep it small beyond the obvious (no windowing system or games installed). Installation was super simple3.

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

    • PCLinuxOS Magazine ☛ PCLinuxOS Screenshot Showcase

    • PCLinuxOS Magazine ☛ From The Chief Editor's Desk...

      If you want more hours of sunlight, get yo’ assets out of bed earlier … like when the sun comes up. If you sleep in, the wasted hours of daylight are solely on YOU. You snooze, you lose! It’s really that simple.

      Oh, over the years, they’ve touted the “benefits” of DST. It was made a “permanent” albatross here in the U.S. during the oil crisis in the late 70s and early 80s. We were told that it would lessen energy usage, except, there really was no discernable difference in energy usage when they went back and looked at the numbers.

  • Debian Family

    • Bisco ☛ Birger Schacht: Status update, October 2025

      At the beginning of the month I uploaded a new version of the sway package to Debian. This contains two backported patches, one to fix reported WM capabilities and one to revert the default behavior for drag_lock to disabled.

    • HowTo Forge ☛ Update the ISPConfig Perfect Server from Debian 11 to Debian 12

      This tutorial will take you through updating a server managed by ISPConfig from Debian 11 (bullseye) to Debian 12 (bookworm). This guide works for both single- and multiserver setups. Just repeat the same steps on every server.

      Be aware that the update process may cause some downtime.

  • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

    • OMG Ubuntu ☛ Ubuntu 25.10 Offers x86-64-v3 Architecture Variant Packages

      Ubuntu 25.10 now offers amd64v3 optimised packages. What does x86-64-v3 mean for your CPU, and will the modest performance improvements be noticeable?

  • Open Hardware/Modding

    • Hackaday ☛ Regular Old Diodes Can Be More Photosensitive Than You Think

      [Dhananjay Gadre] happened across a useful little trick the other day. Take any old 1N4148 or 1N914 glass-package signal diode and wire it up right, and you’ve got yourself a nifty little IR detector.

    • Hackaday ☛ Dual-Arm Mobile Bot Built On IKEA Cart Costs Hundreds, Not Thousands

      There are many incredible open-source robotic arm projects out there, but there’s a dearth of affordable, stable, and mobile robotic platforms with arms. That’s where XLeRobot comes in. It builds on the fantastic LeRobot framework to make a unit that can be trained for autonomous tasks via machine learning, as well as operated remotely.

    • Connor Tumbleson ☛ Halloween Candy Wheel

      Kids kept coming and we were running so low on candy we had like 6 pieces left and a few larger king sizes. We even had a few people come back with a larger group as word had spread about the wheel, Jell-O and king size candy. Unfortunately with our candy supply at the end and the night approaching 8:30pm we noticed a gap of no kids visiting. With nothing to offer anymore and the wheel a shell of former gifts we started packing things up and turned off the lights to call it a night.

      Looking back it was an overwhelming success with tons of great feedback during the event with a checklist of things to iterate on for next year: [...]

    • Arduino ☛ This electronic paddle improves table tennis training

      Alexander put serious effort into making the smart paddle useful for real players and real training, so it has proper balance and rebound. But embedded within the handle’s grip is an Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense Rev2 board that monitors the paddle’s movement. It uses that information to detect different kinds of strokes, keeping a tally of each that the player can then review on the OLED screen.