today's leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Feb 15, 2026

• Kernel Space / File Systems / Virtualization

  • XDA ☛ Linux 7.0 may receive a self-repairing feature that automatically fixes your XFS filesystem

    As a long-time Windows user, I always dreaded the CHKDSK screen when I signed back in. I remember back in the late-90s to early-2000s, when it'd start up if you didn't shut down properly, and it usually took an age to complete. These days, it's not so intrusive, but you still need to reboot to actually repair your filesystem.

    Fortunately, it seems that Linux 7.0 may get a new feature on the XFS filesystem that will automatically perform a similar task while you're still using your PC, and while it's not guaranteed to be in 7.0 just yet, it's in the final stages and just waiting for Linus himself to give it a thumbs-up.

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

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • XDA ☛ 6 GNOME extensions that made me stop missing Windows entirely

      Moving away from Windows 11 after living on it for such a long time can be difficult, and especially so if you're switching to Linux and using Ubuntu, one of the most popular Linux distros out there. I've mentioned before that Ubuntu is one of the major reasons why more Windows users don't switch to Linux, and a big part of that is the GNOME desktop environment being so different. You wouldn't be blamed for missing the familiarity of Windows.

      But that's where GNOME extensions come in. The interface in GNOME is extremely customizable once you set up an extension manager (sadly, Ubuntu doesn't come with one, but it's easy to install), and with that, you can easily make it so that you never have to miss Windows at all. I used the extensions below to stop missing Windows, and you might want to do the same.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

    • ZDNet ☛ Why my favorite Linux distro is slowing down - and I'm thrilled about it

      My favorite Linux desktop distribution, Linux Mint, is considering slowing down its release cadence. That's because, as lead developer Clement "Clem" Lefebvre explained, while releasing often has worked very well, it produces "these incremental improvements release after release. But it takes a lot of time, and it caps our ambition when it comes to development. … [so] We're thinking about changing that and adopting a longer development cycle."

• Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

  • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

    • Make Use Of ☛ This free app replaced my entire office suite without any learning curve

      Rather than owning the licenses to these programs, Microsoft now wants users to sign up for yet another subscription service to access the Microsoft Office suite of products. It doesn't matter if it's Photoshop or anything else, I'm not going to pay a monthly subscription to use computer software. That's when I stumbled upon a worthy competitor for the Office crown. Open-source, feature-packed, and most importantly? Free for everyone who needs software like this.

      [...]

      In my search to replace most of the paid programs on my PC with open-source alternatives, LibreOffice checked all the boxes for things that I needed. It gives me a chance to write and create documents and export them in .docx, pdf, or other Microsoft-accessible file formats. And it all works nearly identically to the programs that I wanted to replace.

  • Programming/Development

    • Python

      • HowTo Geek ☛ 5 powerful Python one-liners that will make you a better coder

        Most Python programmers have a common reason to love the language. It lets you get more done with less code. Over time, this leads to a culture of “why write ten lines if one will do?” Let's look at a few everyday programming tasks and see how Python can compress them into elegant one-liners.

        List comprehension

        Let’s start with one of the most iconic Python features: list comprehensions​​​​​​. At a basic level, list comprehensions let you build a new Python list by applying an expression to each element of an existing iterable, optionally with a condition. In other words: transform and filter data in a single, readable expression.