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today's howtos
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Filipe Rosset: Brother DCP-T420W (workaround for GNU/Linux aarch64 and macOS 27 Golden Gate)
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TecAdmin ☛ How to Install PHP 8.5 on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
PHP 8.5 is the newest major release of the PHP language, published by the PHP development team in November 2025.
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Linux Foundation ☛ Why Your Backups Are Too Big: A Practical Guide to Content-Defined Chunking
You change one line in a large file. Your “incremental” backup re-uploads the whole thing anyway.
Nine times out of ten, it’s not the network, and it’s not your storage backend. It’s the algorithm deciding where to cut your data into pieces.
Every deduplication system works the same way: split data into pieces, hash each piece, keep one copy per distinct hash. A piece is named after its own content, so two identical pieces are, by definition, the same piece. Snapshot a filesystem today and again tomorrow, and if most of the data hasn’t changed, most pieces are already in the store. The second snapshot costs you almost nothing.
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Barry Kauler ☛ Improve low-battery warning
Easy 7.4.7 has powerapplet_tray version 3.1, which added a beep when battery discharges below 10%, repeated every 15 seconds (and only when discharging, not on charge).
One of the tester guys commented that it wasn't very noticeable, and unfortunately I also discovered the same. Running the laptop in my tent, it wasn't on charge, and I did hear the beep, but didn't connect that with the battery being low. The tray icon also flashes, but I didn't notice that either. Then the laptop suddenly died.
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HowTo Geek ☛ A 55 year-old Linux tool revived: ChatGPT is driving me back to man pages
While I like messing around in Linux, it's not my daily-driver operating system. I tend to use it for specialized projects, or when I have no other choice, such as using a Linux Netbook in college, or with handheld gaming systems that work best with Linux for various reasons.
AI-generated commands look more trustworthy than they are Written with confidence, executed with errors