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LinuxGizmos.com

Blue Pill-Style STM32C5 Board Adds Oberon-2 Firmware Support

Norwegian-based Tenko has released an open-hardware development board based on STMicroelectronics’ STM32C5 microcontroller family. The compact board follows the familiar Blue Pill form factor while adding USB-C power, onboard USB-to-UART connectivity, and an alternative firmware environment based on Oberon-2.

ESP32-C6 Home Automation Kit with ESPHome and Modular Sensors

Apollo Automation has launched the ESPHome Starter Kit, a modular smart-home development platform built around an ESP32-C6 board and designed to let users create ESPHome devices without soldering, breadboards, or writing code. The kit operates locally and can be used independently or integrated with Home Assistant.

Internet Society

Advancing the Safer Internet Initiative for Everyone

When we launched the Safer Internet Initiative earlier this year, our message was clear: connectivity is essential, but it is not enough. Everyone needs to feel safe, protected, and empowered when they go online.

9to5Linux

KDE Frameworks 6.29 Released with Various Improvements and Bug Fixes

The monthly KDE Frameworks releases continue, and KDE Frameworks 6.29 is here to add an icon for Android app bundle files in the Breeze icon theme, improve the fancy Kirigami tab bars in QML-based apps to switch the active tab when scrolling over them or using a tab-switching keyboard shortcut, and improve the visual fidelity of small icons in Kirigami-based apps.

Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0.11 Adds Support for Multi-Frame Compressed Images

Coming almost two months after Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0.10, the Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0.11 release introduces support for newer multi-frame compressed images, the ability to lock the drive exclusively on Linux and Windows while writing so nothing else can interfere, and a proper “Erase/Format” command.

KDE Announces “Bulletproof” KDE Suite with Three Years of Support

Since the KDE Project dropped LTS support for the KDE Plasma desktop environment despite some demand from people, they teamed up with Linux hardware vendor Kubuntu Focus and Techpaladin Software to provide three years of bug and security fixes for the KDE Plasma 6.6 desktop environment series through Kubuntu 26.04 LTS.

news

I removed GNOME and my laptop battery lasted 40 minutes longer — this is what I replaced it with

posted by Rianne Schestowitz on Jul 16, 2026

Quoting: I removed GNOME and my laptop battery lasted 40 minutes longer — this is what I replaced it with —

Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents:

There’s a common misconception that battery life on Linux is far superior to that of Windows, which is plain untrue. The truth is, Linux installs can often get just as bloated over time, and this drastically affects battery life, just as it would on Windows.

To test this out, I ran a simple battery drain test across two popular desktop environments, using GNOME as a reference — in two separate installs: one “bloated” with extensions and another with barely anything on it. The results were eye-opening, to say the least.

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