GNU/Linux and BSD Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 11, 2026

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • CubicleNate ☛ Linux Saloon 200 | Open Mic Night

    In a recent News Flight Night, discussions included Colin's use of his Surface Go with Cosmic Desktop, the release of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, and updates on Framework Computer's Laptop 13 Pro. Topics also covered containerized apps and various Linux-related news, emphasizing community engagement and technological advancements.

• Applications

  • HowTo Geek ☛ 3 life-improving Linux apps to try this weekend (May 8th–11th)

    The weekend is the best time to actually sit down and mess with your Linux setup. This time, I have for you a selection of three apps that are aimed at improving your quality of life and using Linux that much more convenient. Each app solves a different kind of friction you've probably just accepted as part of your workflow.

• Games

  • Arc Raiders Dev Tests New Kernel-Level Anti-Cheat Solution, Raising Questions About Linux Support

    Arc Raiders is one of only a handful of semi-competitive, shooters with a large player base that has a Platinum rating on ProtonDB, thanks to its Linux-friendly Easy Anti-Cheat implementation. In a recent blog post addressing the studio's plans to "ensure fair play," Arc Raiders developer, Embark Studios, confirmed that it is testing a new kernel-level anti-cheat solution that the studio expects "will sharpen both detection and precision throughout Speranza and the Rust Belt." The studio confirms that, in addition to the pre-existing kernel-level anti-cheat implementation, it relies heavily on machine learning tools and input telemetry data in order to catch cheaters. In spite of these existing efforts, Steam user reviews still complain bitterly about the presence of cheaters in Arc Raiders.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Distro Watch ☛ DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.

    [...] Our Questions and Answers column this week talks about fonts, particularly why some distributions ship so many font options and why there aren't more tools to filter out unnecessary fonts. How many fonts are installed on your main distribution? [...]

  • Barry Kauler ☛ Eye candy at early bootup

    Forum member l0wt3ch has implemented an animated gif on the screen in the very early stage of bootup, while execution is in the initrd: [...]

  • BSD

    • Dan Langille ☛ newsyslog – telling it not to compress, for anything

      In this post, I’m going to show you how I told FreeBSD’s newsyslog to ignore any compression directives and just rotate the file. I will also speculate about some historical items which may be widely incorrect. If you wish to correct any inaccuracies, I will update them here.

    • FreeBSD ☛ freebsd.org/security/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-26:13.exec.asc

      execve(2) is a system call is used to launch an executable image, including scripts prefixed with a path to the interpreter. The system call takes a path to the image as a parameter, followed by extra arguments and environment variables to be passed to the new image.

  • Arch Family

    • Fabio Akita ☛ NW-Omarchy: Bringing Omarchy to X11 with XLibre

      XLibre is a fork of xorg-server that started in 2025, after it became clear upstream had no energy left to evolve. X.Org itself was only taking critical security patches, and the historical primary funder of new development (Red Hat) announced it was stepping out of new X-server work as part of the RHEL 10 plans. XLibre took the codebase and went back to cleanups, security fixes, modernization and driver-ABI bumps. The first public release was XLibre 25.0, and the project lives at github.com/X11Libre/xserver.

  • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

    • Linux Phone Apps ☛ A Personal Note - Farewell

      In late June, I'll become a father to a new-born. This means, among other things, that I will not be able to keep working on LinuxPhoneApps.org.

      In fact, to be honest, I have not really been able to keep up with developments and changes since late 2025. Being back at $dayjob full-time and having learned to spot symptoms of incoming burn-out, I would allow myself to let LinuxPhoneApps.org just be 'a website' and take my time.