GNU/Linux Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 10, 2025

• It's FOSS ☛ 7 Privacy Wins You Can Get This Weekend (Linux-First)

  Take one step at a time to get your privacy right.

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Jupiter Broadcasting ☛ Duece Configalo: Desktop Gigolo | LINUX Unplugged 640

    We dive into your configs, the genius moves, the glorious blunders, and everything in between.

• Applications

  • XDA ☛ I can finally forget about Photoshop on Linux, and it's thanks to this app

    It wasn't that long ago that I wrote about using Photoshop for the web on Linux, and how it seemed like the best solution for a raster graphics editor on Linux. But I've already been proven wrong.

    Last week, Canva released the brand-new, free Affinity app, unifying the previous Affinity Photo, Designer, and Publisher apps into one. In doing so, the app was also made free to download, with a subscription service unlocking some additional features that are mostly unnecessary.

    The app was made available for Windows and macOS officially, but this is when I discovered the Affinity on Linux project. This is a community effort to bring the Affinity apps to Linux through Wine, with some additional tricks to get things working as intended. The project predates the unified Affinity app, but with the launch of this new version, it felt like the right time to give it a shot. And as it turns out, this may be exactly what I needed to satisfy my Photoshop needs.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • ✨ Mastering Bash Special Characters — The Real Power of GNU/Linux Terminal 🔥

    If you work in Linux, DevOps, Cloud, Cyber Security, or Automation, Bash special characters are your superpower.

    These symbols control execution, variables, redirection, scripting logic, and automation. Here is the complete cheat-sheet 👇

  • How to Install Surveillance Giant Google Cloud SDK & Login to GCP (All Methods) ?

    ✅ How to Install Surveillance Giant Google Cloud SDK & Login to GCP (All Methods)

    🌟 Step 1 — Install Surveillance Giant Google Cloud SDK

  • dwaves.de ☛ GNU/Linux bash magic how to stabilize (anti shake) a video

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

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • GSoC 2025 Final Submission: Re-architecting PyCups for a Modern, Pythonic Future

      (Please note this is still a draft of my final blog)

      And just like that, my Surveillance Giant Google Summer of Code journey with OpenPrinting is drawing to a close. This post serves as a final summary of my project: rebuilding pycups from the ground up for libcups3. While I still have a few things I plan to update, this covers the core of my work over the summer.

      It’s been an incredible experience, and I’m excited to share the architectural decisions, challenges, and “magic” tricks that went into creating the new pycups.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

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

    [...] This week, in our Questions and Answers section, we talk about the size of the Linux kernel. The kernel gradually gains new drivers and features over time and we discuss if and how this growth affects performance and stability. [...]

  • Jonathan Pallant ☛ 2025-11-08 · Installing and using HP-UX 9

    A few weeks back I got a note on Bluesky, linking me to a website offering a free computer. The owner was in Cambridge, not far from me, and the computer was an HP 9000/300 Series - a Model 340, specifically.

    The HP 9000 line of workstations and servers ran from the early 1980s through to the late 2000s (see this great history page at openpa.net for more details). It encompassed many processor architectures, including Itanium, HP's own Precision Architecture (aka PA-RISC), and their earlier FOCUS architecture. Alongside the early FOCUS machines, they also had a line of Motorola 68K based UNIX workstations - the 300 series. This is a machine from that series, and I thought a 68030 based UNIX workstation just sounded fascinating. Something of the same kind of processor and vintage as the Macintosh IIx, but part of the lineage that led to my beloved Visualize B132L+ and C3000 workstations.

    E-mails were exchanged with the owner, Ben, and I was invited to pop over and collect the machine. And then, whilst I was there, it turns out Ben had a few more machines he'd be happy to move on to a new owner, to free up some space. And. Well. I went home with: [...]

  • Fedora Family / IBM

    • Unicorn Media ☛ Red Hat Follows SUSE with EU Sovereignty Drive

      Red Hat follows SUSE’s lead with an EU support pledge -- raising the stakes in the race for European digital sovereignty.

  • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

    • XDA ☛ I used this app to optimize Ubuntu and make it run smoother

      Ubuntu has always been my favorite Linux distribution for its stability, good support, and out-of-the-box performance. I installed it in one of my older laptops because of all these qualities. However, like any other OS, it isn't immune to slowdowns, especially when I use it for most of my Linux experiments and testing. After several months of using Ubuntu 24 and testing various applications, I noticed my system wasn't as snappy as it used to be.

      Instead of going through the hassle of manually finding the culprit processes, services, and unused packages, I tried a free, all-in-one system optimizer tool, Stacer.

  • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

    • Lee Yingtong Li ☛ Inspecting Android app TLS traffic using objection and Frida

      In previous posts, I have discussed bypassing certificate pinning on Android using Xposed and apk-mitm. Another way of achieving this which is particularly flexible is using the objection runtime mobile exploration toolkit, which is powered by the Frida dynamic instrumentation toolkit.

      In this post, we will discuss an Android app which uses custom TLS certificate pinning in addition to the standard certificate validation performed by Android by default.