GNU/Linux and BSD Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Apr 24, 2026

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • The BSD Now Podcast ☛ BSD Now 660: I just work here

    Proxmox to FreeBSD, Hidden values of CPU-Intensive Compression, Cells for NetBSD, OpenBSD 7.8 on RPIs, and more...

  • Sacha Chua ☛ YE20: Emacs Carnival: Newbies/starter kits :: Sacha Chua

    Outline [...]

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

  • Make Use Of ☛ This tiling window manager won me over by not being a config nightmare

    Tiling window managers were never an easy concept, nor were they meant to be. In a way, freeing yourself from the confines of a traditional, floating layout is much like rewiring your brain, and it demands patience.

    That being said, not all tiling window managers are unapproachable, arcane puzzles. i3, for example. This window manager is absolutely rock-solid and has a very easy-to-understand configuration file. If not, you could always choose to use someone else’s config as your template — no judgment there.

    Still, i3, despite its many strengths, is based on Xorg. Since I needed a Wayland alternative, the answer was quite obvious. Sway was the need of the hour, and I’ve comfortably rocked a config for a few years now that has seen minimal changes.

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • Sam Thursfield: Status update, 23rd April 2026

      Hello there,

      You thought I’d given up on “status update” blog posts, did you ? I haven’t given up, despite my better judgement, this one is just even later than usual.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • SUSE/OpenSUSE

    • OpenSUSE ☛ openSUSE.Asia Summit 2026 Announces Venue at Universitas Gadjah Mada

      The openSUSE.Asia Summit 2026 team is excited to announce the official venue for this year’s conference. The summit will be held at Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

  • Debian Family

    • Tor ☛ New Release: Tails 7.7 | The Tor Project

      Since 2023, Microsoft has started replacing the Secure Boot certificates originally issued in 2011. These older certificates begin expiring in June 2026.

      Tails now notifies you if the computer that you are using has outdated Secure [sic] Boot certificates and needs an update.

  • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

    • University of Toronto ☛ The various steps of a UEFI network install from an Ubuntu server ISO

      Suppose, not hypothetically, that you have a locally customized Ubuntu server install ISO image (and have for a while), and you also now have a number of UEFI based machines that it would be convenient to (re)install over the network without having to visit them in person (and they don't have IPMIs/BMCs that support virtual media). It turns out that you can take an Ubuntu ISO and install from it over the network, but how the various steps and stages connect together isn't obvious. Here are my notes on this, before I forget them all. I'll assume that you already have a modern Ubuntu server installer configuration setup, but you can also do this with a stock ISO image that will walk you through the full set of server installer questions.