GNU/Linux Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jan 25, 2026

• Desktop/Laptop

  • Ruben Schade ☛ Choosing a Plus! 95 theme

    It’s hard to belive given the current state of the industry, but there was a time in the 1990s when even large commercial software companies allowed you to customise your desktop. The horror! Even moreso, some of these companies even offered first-party visual enhancement packs with themes you could install.

• Graphics Stack

  • Neowin ☛ CachyOS newest release drops X11 for Wayland in Live ISOs

    CachyOS's first release of the year is out, with the Plasma Login Manager replacing SDDM in Plasma environments and Wayland replacing X11, among other changes.

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

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Adriaan de Groot ☛ In praise of memory-leak-detection

      Nicolas Fella wrote a bit about enabling memory leak detection in KDE CI, and I thought I’d add some comments from a different software engineering environment (e.g. my work-work).

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • Sam Thursfield: Slop or so-called Hey Hi (AI) predictions for 2026 [Ed: Automated plagiarism isn't AI and isn't a revolution; it's plunder and a Ponzi scheme]

      Its a crazy time to be part of the tech world. I’m happy to be sat on the fringes here but I want to try and capture a bit of the madness, so in a few years we can look back on this blogpost and think “Oh yes, shit was wild in 2026”.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • The Register UK ☛ China's Deepin Linux has built-in AI, snazzy desktop

    It's not profoundly technologically radical, but Deepin does the job while looking fresh and modern and attractive. If this is a showcase of the state of the art of Chinese domestic desktop Linux, it really is not bad at all. China has taken FOSS tech developed in the West and used it to create its own OSes with its own desktops and its own tools and apps – which run on its own processors, too.

  • Arch Family

    • Distro Watch ☛ Distribution Release: Liya Linux 2.5

      The Liya Linux distribution is an Arch-based project which runs the Cinnamon desktop and features the Pamac package manager. The project has published a new snapshot which introduces integrated AI chat and improved support for connecting with Windows file shares. [...]

    • Distro Watch ☛ Distribution Release: CachyOS 260124

      The CachyOS team has announced the release of an updated ISO image of CachyOS, a Arch-based Linux distribution with the latest KDE Plasma as the chosen desktop on the live image. The new version 260114 comes with a reworked system installer, new Plasma login manager, and Wayland as the preferred display server: [...]

  • Fedora Family / IBM

    • Kevin Fenzi: misc fedora bits for third week of jan 2026

      Another week another recap here in longer form. I started to get all caught up from the holidays this week, but then got derailed later in the week sadly.

    • Oracle Linux 7 (ARM) support ended—actions for OKE customers

      Oracle Linux 7 (OL7) support for ARM (aarch64) ended on January 1, 2025 and is not covered by OL7 Extended Support. As a result, security patches and bug fixes for OL7 on ARM have not been issued since. To align with this upstream status, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Kubernetes Engine (OKE) will begin deactivating the capability to create new OL7 ARM worker nodes. OKE will no longer build or ship new OL7 ARM images or support OL7 ARM platform images for creating new worker nodes. This change does not affect OKE control planes and applies only to worker node OS images on ARM.