Hardware, GNU/Linux, and Free Software Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 28, 2025

• PR Web ☛ THIRDREALITY Unveils Linux Box Dev Edition: Open Smart Home Gateway for Developers and Solution Providers

  While end products like sensors and plugs are widely available, reliable and customizable gateways remain a challenge for many solution builders. The Linux Box Dev Edition fills that gap — offering a ready-to-use, open Linux platform that accelerates smart home gateway development and deployment.

• Kernel Space

  • Brendan Gregg ☛ Brendan Gregg: On "AI Brendans" or "Virtual Brendans"

    There are now multiple Hey Hi (AI) performance engineering agents that use or are trained on my work. Some are helper agents that interpret flame graphs or eBPF metrics, sometimes privately called AI Brendan; others have trained on my work to create a Virtual Brendan that claims it can tune everything just like the real thing. It sounds like my brain has been uploaded to the clown by someone else who is now selling it (yikes!). I've been told it's even "easy" to do this thanks to all my publications available to train on: >90 talks, >250 blog posts, >600 open source tools, and >3000 book pages. Are people allowed to sell you, virtually? And am I the first individual engineer to be AI'd? (There is a 30-year-old precedent for this, which I'll get to later.)

• Instructionals/Technical

  • HowTo Geek ☛ How to dual-boot macOS and Linux on Apple Silicon

    There aren't that many options for running Linux on an Apple Silicon Mac, but you can do it. Whether you want to install it on your internal SSD as a genuine dual-boot setup or run it inside a virtual machine, here's how to get started.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Open Hardware/Modding

    • CNX Software ☛ $19.90 XIAO Debug Mate ESP32-S3-based 3-in-1 multi-tool acts as a DAPLink debugger, serial monitor, and/or power profiler

      Seeed Studio XIAO Debug Mate is an inexpensive ESP32-S3-based multi-tool designed for the company’s XIAO boards, offering DAPLink debugger, serial monitor, and power profiler modes. The debugger comes with 8MB flash, 8MB PSRAM, a 2.01-inch display to display debugging/power information, two 14-pin headers to provide easy access to the XIAO’s module I/Os, a 36 LED matrix for status indication, and a couple of buttons, plus a srcoll wheel to navigate the menu.

    • Hackaday ☛ Stack N’ Rack Your Hardware With The HomeRacker Project

      Things are cooler when rack-mounted, and [KellerLab] aims to make that all far more accessible with the HomeRacker, a modular and 3D-printable rack building system designed to let you rack-mount to your heart’s content. While it can handle big things, it seems especially applicable to tasks like mounting one’s home network equipment and Raspberry Pi machines.

    • ROS Industrial ☛ ROSCon 2025 & RIC-AP Summit 2025 Blog Series: Singapore’s Defining Week for Open-Source Robotics

      From 27–30 October 2025, Singapore became the beating heart of the global ROS ecosystem.

      Over three days, **ROSCon 2025 (27–29 Oct) ** convened more than 1,000 participants from 52 countries maintainers, developers, startups, MNCs, public agencies and researchers—united by a shared belief in open-source as the fastest path to real-world robotics at scale.

• Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

  • It's FOSS ☛ Google Just Made Its Sleek New Font Open Source

    Everything you need to know about Google Sans Flex.

  • Events

    • Collabora ☛ Training open source LLMs at ESE Kongress 2025

      Collabora will be at Embedded Software Engineering Kongress! Catch our talk as we share our expertise in training large open source models.