Leftovers: GNU/Linux and Free, Libre, and Open Source Software News

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Dec 09, 2025

• Applications

  • XDA ☛ These command-line tools replaced my entire GUI monitoring setup

    If you work in DevOps or systems engineering, you have probably noticed the slow and steady shift away from GUI dashboards. The industry spent a decade pushing you toward Electron apps for everything from Docker to Kubernetes, convincing you that heavy graphical interfaces were the only way to monitor modern infrastructure.

    But the truth is far from that. I recently ditched GUI dashboards and returned to the terminal, not because it feels nostalgic, but because modern terminal tools are finally good enough to replace GUI monitoring entirely.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • HowTo Geek ☛ 6 retro Unix platforms that shaped the Linux we know today [Ed: The start suggests there's some Microsoft spin thrown in there; Xenix never had any considerable impact]

    Today, downloading a free Unix-like system for a PC or a single-board computer like a Raspberry Pi is routine. In the late '80s and early '90s, as computer hardware improved, these systems brought Unix power down from minicomputers and workstations to the personal level before the arrival of Linux.

  • SUSE/OpenSUSE

    • Open Source For U ☛ openSUSE Empowers Linux Developers With Intel NPU Access

      Linux developers can now leverage Intel’s Neural Processing Unit via openSUSE, enabling faster, more efficient, and more accessible AI development on everyday hardware.

      The openSUSE project has begun distributing packaging for the Intel Neural Processing Unit (NPU) driver, enabling small-scale AI development on Linux. Support is available through openSUSE’s Tumbleweed rolling-release distribution, giving developers direct access to Intel’s built-in CPU accelerator for AI workloads on laptops and PCs.

      NPUs offer better performance and lower power consumption than traditional CPUs and GPUs on smaller hardware, making AI more practical for everyday devices. To utilise the NPU fully, developers require OpenVINO user-space software, developed by Intel and optimised for low power, low latency, and edge deployment. This allows AI applications to run on existing hardware without costly upgrades.

  • Fedora Family / IBM

    • The Register UK ☛ IBM drops $11B on Confluent to feed next-gen AI ambitions

      IBM has cracked open its wallet again, agreeing to shell out $11 billion for Confluent in a bid to glue together the data sprawl underpinning the next wave of enterprise AI.

      The deal, announced Monday and just weeks after IBM laid off thousands, hands IBM a heavyweight in real-time data streaming as Big Blue bets that future generative and agentic AI systems will live or die on how well they can move and govern data across clouds, data centers, and legacy estates.

      IBM will pay $31 a share in cash for Confluent, whose Kafka-based platform has become a staple for organizations trying to pipe clean, consistent, and reusable data into applications and analytics engines.

• Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

  • HowTo Geek ☛ 5 open-source projects that secretly power your favorite apps

    You've heard that the world's infrastructure runs on Linux, and how important Free and Open Source (FOSS) software is to just about all the technology we enjoy every day, but there are some (to bring out the old cliché) unsung heroes of FOSS without which your stuff just wouldn't work—and you should at least know their names.

    [...]

    I'm not going to sugar-coat it—databases are boring. However, they are super-useful and entirely necessary for many apps to function. SQLite is a FOSS database solution that allows for a self-contained database stored in a single file. It's a self-contained database solution that doesn't require a separate database management system or servers. It's the world's most deployed database solution and it's all over your applications. From web browsers to messaging apps, it's probably using SQLite. According to the official site, SQLite is in:

    "Every Android device. Every iPhone and iOS device. Every Mac. Every Windows10 machine. Every Firefox, Chrome, and Safari web browser. Every instance of Skype. Every instance of iTunes. Every Dropbox client. Every TurboTax and QuickBooks. PHP and Python. Most television sets and set-top cable boxes. Most automotive multimedia systems. Countless millions of other applications."

    Without SQLite, most of the software you use would probably be quite a bit slower, and fewer apps would be made because developers can't all roll their own database solutions.