GNU/Linux and BSD Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Aug 09, 2026

• Desktop/Laptop

  • HowTo Geek ☛ Linux loads my apps faster than Windows, so I calculated just how much time it saves me every year

    If you've ever dual-booted a PC, you've probably noticed a pretty marked difference between how quickly apps launch on Linux compared to Windows. On Linux, everything seems to snap open instantly, while on Windows there is a perceptible hesitation. Installing Linux on an old PC only exaggerates that even more.

    To find out how much time I was wasting every year, I used a single machine with a dual-boot configuration. Using the same NVMe drive, CPU, and RAM removes the hardware confounds that usually make these comparisons useless. If you compare two different PCs, you aren't measuring the operating system; you're measuring which one has the faster SSD.

• Kernel Space / File Systems / Virtualization

  • [Old] Kopper ☛ get real. linux does not give a shit about your old hardware

    driver devs only care about the newest, shiniest generation and we should collectively stop pretending otherwise and leading newbies in before swiftly abandoning them to their own once they actually go though the installation process.

• Graphics Stack

  • Video Cardz ☛ Intel HDMI 2.1 FRL Linux support returns for Meteor Lake and newer CPUs

    Intel has submitted a new set of Linux driver patches adding HDMI 2.1 Fixed Rate Link support for Meteor Lake and newer processors. The series contains 44 patches and marks the return of work Intel originally started several years ago.

    FRL increases the available HDMI bandwidth beyond the limits of the older TMDS signaling method. Intel says the current implementation already works with modes such as 4K at 120Hz. Testing has so far been limited to Meteor Lake and Panther Lake systems.

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

  • NetBSD ☛ Google Summer of Code 2026 Reports: Port the Enlightenment desktop environment to NetBSD

    Enlightenment desktop is a low on resources desktop environment without sacrificing on visuals. NetBSD support for this BSD-licensed desktop has been left a few years behind. The aim of this project is to port the newest version of the desktop to pkgsrc and commit upstream portability fixes when necessary to ease future versions updates for NetBSD.

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Kai Uwe ☛ Reworking KSSHAskPass

      KDE has a little utility called ksshaskpass that is invoked by SSH to prompt the user for credentials. It can then store them in KDE Wallet so you don’t have to type them again next time. The other day I had to set up an elaborate SSH configuration with jump hosts and what not and found that it actually couldn’t handle some of the prompts I encountered along the way.

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • Ubuntu Handbook ☛ GNOME File Previewer “Sushi” 51 Ports to GTK4 & Adds New Click Actions

      Sushi, the file previewer for GNOME desktop environment, released version 51 Beta in last week. GNOME Sushi was revived several months ago. With the latest 51 development version, it’s finally ported to GTK4 with some new functions and API updates.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • SUSE/OpenSUSE

    • Measuring binary function coverage of openSUSE integration test

      Let’s be clear about what this is and what it isn’t.

      A typical openSUSE Tumbleweed installation has roughly 2,600 ELF executables in /usr/bin and /usr/sbin (more or fewer depending on the installation pattern). Our test repository has 2,343 test modules. We measure coverage on 141 of those binaries using 98 of those test modules. That’s a fraction of the whole picture and we’re not claiming this is the total test coverage of the distribution.

  • Fedora Family / IBM

    • Kevin Fenzi: misc fedora bits: first week of aug 2026

      Another saturday spent dealing with scrapers, so now time for a recap of the previous weeks events.

  • Debian Family

    • Barry Kauler ☛ Continuing getting APT to work in a layered filesystem

      The problem is fundamental; Debian's APT has no concept of a layered filessystem such as overlayfs. Getting it to work in such an environment is a major challenge. The issues started with EasyOS 7.0, that introduced APT as the underlying package manager, with PKGget (PPM) is a GUI frontend.

    • Barry Kauler ☛ Remove user-installed package if builtin

      The previous blog post explained how APT is sync'ed with what is actually installed in the overlayfs layered filesystem: [...]

  • Open Hardware/Modding

    • CNX Software ☛ MaTouch ESP32-S3 MaUWB board integrates 3.95-inch touchscreen and UWB module for indoor positioning and ranging

      Makerfabs MaTouch ESP32-S3 MaUWB is a development board that combines an ESP32-S3 wireless MCU, a 3.95-inch touchscreen display, and a UWB module for indoor positioning and ranging applications. The board can be used as a portable positioning terminal. It uses a trilateration algorithm with up to three fixed UWB anchors to calculate the tag’s coordinates in real time.

    • CNX Software ☛ LILYGO T-Echo Card – A weatherproof, solar-powered, nRF52840-based LoRa + GPS development kit

      LILYGO T-Echo Card is a thin development kit based on Nordic Semi nRF52840 wireless MCU and a Semtech SX1262 LoRa transceiver with a solar panel for charging an 800 mAh battery. It supports Bluetooth 5, NFC, Bluetooth Mesh, ANT, 802.15.4 (Zigbee/Thread), LoRaWAN, and GNSS (L76K module) connectivity. The board also features a 0.42-inch OLED information display, a magnetic USB interface, a 9-axis motion sensor, a digital microphone, a speaker, and an RGB LED for status/notifications.