Weekly Forum Summary

Our Community
70

This week in our forums…

Key Stats

In the past week, our Linux forums had the following activity and key statistics:

  • Total New Posts: 102
  • Total New Topics: 9

Top Contributors

Interesting Topics

In #arch, @on5 shared a significant contribution in Brought a couple Cachy apps to the arch masses - scx-manager & kernel-manager. They describe how they forked, unbranded, and extended CachyOS’s kernel and scheduler managers so Arch users can build Cachy kernels with custom specs and switch SCX schedulers more easily. The thread includes feedback from @Brian_Masinick about using the tools on EndeavourOS, discussion of dependency hurdles, and a follow‑up from @on5 announcing convenient -bin packages for quick installation.

In Our Community Benjamin joins our moderator team announced that @benowe1717 is joining the moderator group. @hydn explains why Benjamin’s tone, patience, and alignment with the community’s code of conduct made him a natural fit, and shares a concise “manifesto” that captures how the forum approaches moderation and member interactions. The responses from members, like @Ben, are warm and supportive as the community welcomes another helping hand.

@ugnvs started a playful but thoughtful discussion in General Discussions with How to review and modify AI-generated code. What begins as a joke about using rm -rf to “fix” AI‑generated projects quickly turns into a safety conversation, with @Brian_Masinick and @ericmarceau highlighting the real danger of destructive commands and the responsibility experienced users have when posting them. @shybry747 adds a broader reflection on power, humor, and how AI can both help and harm, making the thread a nice mix of levity and caution.

In Our Community members took a step back from tech to reflect in Remembering 9/11, 25 years later. @hydn invites everyone to share where they were and how they were affected, and several members including @ericmarceau, @tmick, and @toadie describe their personal memories from different parts of the world. The conversation focuses on empathy, the importance of listening across differences, and how global events shape lives far beyond the immediate impact zone.

In Ubuntu, @Jymm brought visual news with The Default Wallpapers for Ubuntu 26.10 is Out [Download Link]. The topic links to the announcement of the new Ubuntu 26.10 wallpaper set, highlighting the stingray mascot and origami‑style background. @guiverc chimes in with details about the Ubuntu MATE “stonking” wallpaper package, including a small terminal snippet listing newly installed background images for those who enjoy customizing their desktop.

From news, Debian 13 Is Taking Over 2,200+ Control Systems Across CERN, shared by @Jymm, caught the attention of many Debian fans. The thread discusses CERN’s move from the Red Hat ecosystem to Debian 13 for thousands of industrial control systems and what it signals about long‑term stability, licensing, and hardware requirements. @Brian_Masinick, @on5, and @ericmarceau each explore different angles, including corporate vs community governance, hardware lifecycle pressures, and why Debian’s approach may be better aligned with research institutions.

In General Discussions, @tmick opened Is it possible to make an ISO of a working computer? to figure out how best to image a dual‑boot Debian and Windows 10 system. The replies from @tkn and @ugnvs cover practical tools like Clonezilla, Rescuezilla, and raw dd disk images, along with caveats around ISO formats, partition layouts, and why it is safer to boot from live media before cloning. The thread is a compact reference for anyone wanting full‑disk backups that span both Linux and Windows partitions.

Over in news, @Jymm linked to an interesting piece of tech history in How did a publicly humiliated Japanese electronics firm turn a failed CD partnership with Nintendo into a console that outsold every rival of the 1990s?. The article recounts how Sony turned a failed collaboration with Nintendo into the original PlayStation, leveraging cheap CD manufacturing and publisher‑friendly terms to dominate a hardware generation. It is a nice off‑topic read for gamers and hardware enthusiasts in the community.

In #arch, @DeLinuxCo announced a fresh distro snapshot in DeLinuxCo ISO release - 260911. The new Arch‑based Cinnamon ISO ships with Linux kernel 7.2.3 and focuses on an AppImage‑centric workflow. Around 30 AppImages ship or are available through the package manager, covering daily‑driver tools like Firefox, LibreOffice, OBS Studio, creative apps like GIMP and Kdenlive, and utilities such as Duplicati and Rustdesk, which makes the system appealing to users who like portable, self‑contained application bundles.

In Our Community the infrastructure itself took a leap forward in Scheduled maintenance—September 20th, 2026. @hydn updated the original maintenance plan to say that the Discourse upgrade to v2026.7 ESR was being performed early, during a quieter weekend. The post outlines expected downtime, reassures members that posts and accounts remain intact, and notes interface changes such as a more unified responsive layout and optional rich‑text editing. After the work, the topic is edited to confirm that the upgrade is complete and invites bug reports for anything that looks off.

Activity by the @staff Group

Staff kept busy this week across moderation, infrastructure, and member support.

Best Reply or Topic of the Week

The standout reply this week is @Itachixkurosaki’s detailed explanation of their vulnerability scanning approach in Just asking for a little feedback on what I can do better.

They walk through running OpenVAS from three different network positions (DMZ, internal server segment, and VPN mesh), explain how to interpret “zero findings” as evidence of working firewall rules, and distinguish between external exposure and insider threat scenarios. It is a clear, real‑world example of thinking about security architecture rather than just tool output, and other members like @toadie have already picked it up as something to try themselves.

Thanks for reading. See you again next week! :penguin:

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Better Stack offers infrastructure observability services, uptime monitoring, logging, incident management, and a free tier worth checking out. Visit Better Stack

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4 Likes
71

This week in our forums…

Key Stats

In the past week, our Linux forums had the following activity and key statistics:

  • Total New Posts: 147
  • Total New Topics: 8

Top Contributors

Interesting Topics

In General Discussions, @ugnvs invited everyone to think about language design in What would make a programming language better?. The thread quickly turned into a rich compare‑and‑contrast of C, Python, Go and more. @tkn argued for strong backward compatibility and less bloat, while @Itachixkurosaki focused on predictable behavior and good tooling, using Rust and Go as positive examples. Others, like @Brian_Masinick, reflected on Go’s growing role for scalable and secure systems and how it compares to long‑lived C workflows.

Also in General Discussions, Let’s talk about web browsers by @ClaudioDC used a meme about “every browser being Chromium” as a springboard to discuss engine monoculture. @andreas highlighted how much engineering it takes to maintain a modern browser engine and why that pushes many vendors toward Chromium, while stressing the importance of Firefox for diversity. @Jymm and @tkn shared their own browser stacks, with a clear preference for Firefox‑based options like LibreWolf and Mullvad, and @Jymm gave a practical explanation of Firefox’s powerful about:config.

In #help, @ericmarceau opened Editing of EPUB files - Mass correction - Removal of mid-word breaks to look for tooling that can intelligently fix broken words such as excel lence in ebooks. Suggestions from @benowe1717 and @Itachixkurosaki explored combinations of Calibre, Python NLP libraries, and utilities like dehyphen and pd3f, along with discussion of tradeoffs between shotgun automated fixes and more “finesse” approaches that propose manual joins only where context makes sense.

Over in mate, accessibility and visual ergonomics were front and center in MATE Themes Advice or Reccomendations from @jmarkus. Dealing with vision loss and diabetic retinopathy, they described how darker themes and careful color choices make systems usable. @ugnvs shared a tweaked Human/TraditionalHumanized theme, larger fonts and low LCD brightness, while @ericmarceau suggested exploring specialized assistive software and even formalizing a highly customized setup using PolicyKit. The thread is a solid reference for anyone tuning MATE for low‑vision use.

Still in mate, @jmarkus also contributed some visual flair in Ubuntu MATE Resolute Raccoon Wallpaper?. They created and shared a custom 1920‑pixel wallpaper based on one of their own photographs for Ubuntu MATE 24.04 “Resolute Raccoon,” giving MATE users a polished community‑made background option.

In #linux-support, @ericmarceau started Local capture of entire discussion topic as a single PDF, documenting an extremely handy Discourse trick. By using the browser’s print dialog with Ctrl+P, you can have Discourse render a whole topic as a single page and then “print” it to PDF. @Norm24 noted using this method to preserve useful discussions from the old Ubuntu MATE site, and @ericmarceau suggested it could be used for building curated “choice topics” archives.

In #security, @DeLinuxCo published Sync your Passwords - No Cloud!, linking to a detailed tutorial on pairing KeePassXC with Syncthing. The guide walks through setting up an encrypted password vault that syncs across devices over your own infrastructure, removing the need for any hosted password service. It is a practical blueprint for users who want portability and redundancy without giving up local control.

Within desktop, the long‑running Dual-Boot Linux and Windows: 5-Minute Install Guide saw timely updates on dual‑boot decisions. @hydn shared that once Windows 11 hits EOL they will likely stop using Windows, and explained why a dormant Windows installation still lives on their system for GPU tuning and occasional testing. @andreas and @Norm24 contrasted that with their own setups, from retiring dual‑boot entirely to keeping a separate Windows machine for rare tasks like Garmin updates.

Also in desktop, 10 Best Linux Desktop Environments in 2026 (My Picks) got new perspective from @67Steve, who has spent years “DE hopping.” They explained why Xfce remains their home, especially for how easily it lets you create panel launchers via the GUI. @hydn agreed and pointed out how dependence on brittle GNOME extensions can hurt stability compared with simpler, long‑lived panels and applets.

In #our, the evergreen Welcome! Introduce yourself thread continued to bring in new members from around the world. This week saw introductions from @Abcin, @SatoriSatyriasis, @Bekah1573, @TheBigRedLimo, @Meeaver1111, @Dantonav, @goatherd, @mateusbacral and others. Regulars like @Brian_Masinick, @andreas, @Bombilla, @ericmarceau and @hydn kept the welcome wagon rolling, often tailoring advice to each newcomer’s interests, whether that is Python, homelabs, charity IT setups or choosing a first distro.

Finally, in #help, @ericmarceau shared a small but valuable productivity tip in Copying Files Between Linux Machines, where the discussion resurfaced about USB filesystem choices. @Jymm noted that formatting removable drives as ext4 led to confusing permission issues and that switching back to FAT solved cross‑system portability problems. The thread is a useful reminder to match filesystem choice with how you actually share media between Linux and non‑Linux systems.

Activity by the @staff Group

Staff were active across both community‑building and support topics this week.

In #our, @system published the previous Weekly Forum Summary, highlighting last week’s key stats and standout discussions. This automated roundup continues to serve as a reference point for members who want a quick overview of what they might have missed.

In the infrastructure space, @hydn posted an update in Scheduled maintenance—September 20th, 2026 about running Discourse ESR v2026.7 for a week without issues and enabling new mandatory features. The post walked through backend changes and showed front‑end examples, including the rollout of Whispers for @staff and trust level 3 and above. It keeps transparency high around platform changes that affect how conversations work.

Staff also spent time in welcome and support threads. In Welcome! Introduce yourself, @andreas, @Bombilla and @hydn each greeted new members and drew out extra detail, such as asking @Bekah1573 about preferred distro and desktop combinations. This kind of engagement helps quickly connect newcomers with relevant areas of the site. In Linux haqqinda sualim var, @Bombilla replied bilingually to guide @zhrabunyatova859-cmd toward using translation tools so they can get more help in English, while @ericmarceau followed up with a Turkish explanation about how English functions as the community’s working language.

On the help and troubleshooting side, @hydn dropped a useful upstream link in Problem with zoom 7.0.0 for @NullVoxPopuli, pointing to a likely Zoom regression affecting performance on some Arch‑based systems. In Dual-Boot Linux and Windows: 5-Minute Install Guide, @andreas added context about Windows licensing and how they eventually removed their Windows partition once gaming on Linux became good enough, offering a practical path away from dual‑booting.

In General Discussions, staff presence was felt around broader ecosystem questions too. @andreas joined Let’s talk about web browsers with a thoughtful explanation of why Chromium has become the default engine for so many vendors and why that concentration is worrying, reinforcing support for Firefox as a strategic choice. Staff also contributed to distro and DE conversations, with @hydn sharing long‑term impressions of KDE and GNOME extensions in 10 Best Linux Desktop Environments in 2026 (My Picks) and giving practical reflections on Windows 11 and dual‑boot longevity in Dual-Boot Linux and Windows: 5-Minute Install Guide.

Finally, @system curated the latest Saturday Showcase: Built & Shared by Members This Week roundup. The post spotlighted @DeLinuxCo’s KeePassXC + Syncthing tutorial, @Itachixkurosaki’s Kubernetes homelab notes, and updates on tools like scx-manager and kernel-manager, which helps surface member projects to a wider audience.

Best Reply or Topic of the Week

Featured reply: @Itachixkurosaki in the programming‑languages discussion

This week’s standout contribution is @Itachixkurosaki’s detailed reply in Editing of EPUB files - Mass correction - Removal of mid-word breaks. The post breaks down why traditional spellcheck tools fail on split words like excel lence, surveys real options such as LanguageTool and symspellpy, and outlines how to approach the problem with NLP and dictionary‑based heuristics. It balances practical tool suggestions with clear explanations of underlying limitations, making it useful to anyone dealing with messy text data, not just EPUB editing.

Top Contributor

Congratulations to @Brian_Masinick on earning this week’s Top Contributor badge! :trophy:

Thanks for reading. See you again next week! :penguin:

Our community remains free of banner ads thanks to our partnership with Better Stack.

Better Stack offers infrastructure observability services, uptime monitoring, logging, incident management, and a free tier worth checking out. Visit Better Stack

:warning: Important: Avoid replying to this topic. Instead, reply to the topics linked within. Or, if you have questions or comments related to this weekly summary, please post them in the #site-help or Our Community forum category.

4 Likes
72

This week in our forums…

Key Stats

In the past week, our Linux forums had the following activity and key statistics:

  • Total New Posts: 200
  • Total New Topics: 14

Top Contributors

Interesting Topics

In Showcase, @Bitpainter75 introduced a major new photography workflow tool in FerrumPix: bringing photo management, RAW editing and image editing together on Linux. Members like @jmarkus, @tkn, @Norm24 and @andreas put it through its paces, comparing results with Lightroom and Negative Lab Pro, probing privacy and “phone home” behavior, NAS workflow via /etc/fstab, and the limits of RAW/infrared support. The follow‑up posts from @Bitpainter75 detail rapid 0.9.50 and 0.9.52 releases with a GPS map view, RAW comparison against embedded JPEG previews, a redesigned dehaze tool, improved brush performance, and red‑eye removal, making this one of the week’s deepest technical app threads.

@goatherd shared a retro‑friendly terminal audio setup in Showcase with A TUI music player written in Go. The “goatplayer” uses mpv as its backend and sparked discussion with @tkn and @Halano about trusting binaries versus building from source, safe hosting on GitHub/Codeberg, and handling terminal quirks. The debugging back‑and‑forth around libtag_c.so.0, terminal escape sequences and minimum terminal sizes turned the thread into a mini case study on distributing TUI applications cleanly across different environments.

Also in Showcase, @Halano published XCropper - Fast Linux image cropping tool, a tiny 90K X11 cropper aimed at being faster than heavyweight editors for quick cuts and resizing. Members compared it with tools like GIMP, Shotwell, Mirage and Krita, while @Halano explained why startup latency and responsiveness pushed them to build yet another cropper. The thread is a compact look at “do one thing fast” utilities on the Linux desktop.

In Showcase, performance‑minded users got something new from @on5 with RamSleuth — RAM telemetry + memory benchmark for Linux. The tool offers live DDR timing and controller telemetry, SPD decoding and AVX2/AVX‑512 bandwidth/latency benchmarks, all via GUI and TUI frontends. Early Intel timing bugs are being chased down, and the thread invites people with newer Intel systems to contribute diagnostics, making it a useful place to follow if you care about memory tuning on Linux.

In General Discussions, browser enthusiasts continued a lively debate in Let’s talk about web browsers. @Jymm argued for classic Firefox with a full toolbar and deep about:config tweaks, while @svhs27102 and @Itachixkurosaki described reluctantly keeping Chromium around for “Chromium‑only” government and school portals. @on5 contributed a long piece on Brave, Pi‑hole setups, and the looming risk of platform integrity APIs locking down user‑controlled browsing. The thread is a great snapshot of the current browser monoculture concern from practical Linux users.

Another General Discussions discussion from @Jymm, Do you prefer classic/simple or modern/interactive shells?, explored command‑line preferences prompted by a DistroWatch poll. Several regulars, including @tkn, @ericmarceau and @andreas, made the case for sticking with POSIX‑style shells like sh and bash for scripting portability and documentation, while still acknowledging the appeal of modern interactive features in shells like fish and zsh. The thread highlights how many here lean conservative on shell tooling for reliability.

In General Discussions, nostalgia and Linux history surfaced in Are you a Registered Linux User? where @ClaudioDC asked who remembered the old Linux Counter project and its “Registered Linux User #12345” signatures. @pavlos and @JohnWick recalled participating, and @hydn dug up the original developer’s website and closing announcement archived on the Wayback Machine. The conversation doubles as a small oral history of early Linux community culture.

The Debian category saw detailed troubleshooting in Blue Tooth mouse disappeared, but it’s there?. Running MX Linux under VirtualBox, @jmarkus reported an invisible pointer while mouse actions still worked. After initial suggestions from @hydn, @Itachixkurosaki walked through how Liquorix kernels and mismatched VirtualBox Guest Additions can leave integration half‑broken. The recommended path involved switching back to a stock Debian kernel, checking module builds and avoiding premature kernel purges, all laid out in accessible steps for VM users.

In Ubuntu, @Pramit_Regmi posed a conceptual question in How to make ISO file empty about building an ultra‑minimal, immutable “naked Linux” ISO. @ugnvs clarified terminology around “completely blank” versus minimal, then pointed to Linux From Scratch as a learning route, while @Brian_Masinick and @ericmarceau suggested real‑world options such as antiX Net/Core setups and Canonical’s Ubuntu Core with its own image‑building tools. The thread is a concise pointer map for anyone interested in DIY minimal distributions.

In #help, @Watford asked why Thunderbird reports a 16 MB attachment as 22 MB in Email size under TBird. @ericmarceau and @tkn provided clear explanations of Base64’s 33% overhead and how MIME multipart emails duplicate plain text and HTML bodies. Their replies include intuitive bit‑level reasoning and give a practical mental model for why email size limits feel tighter than file sizes suggest.

Finally, in mate, desktop users continued to track project direction in Mate 1.30 development?. @Norm24 cited Fedora 45 notes mentioning a potential 1.30, and @ericmarceau outlined how incomplete handover of accounts and infrastructure from long‑time lead Martin Wimpress complicates visible progress. The thread ties into the broader Probing for status of handover discussion, where @ericmarceau shared a polite but pointed status request on Ubuntu’s discourse and @Norm24 and @Jymm echoed the desire for more transparent updates about Ubuntu MATE’s future.

Activity by the @staff Group

In Showcase, @hydn gave practical publishing advice in A TUI music player written in Go, recommending that @goatherd host both source and binaries on Git forges like GitHub or Codeberg, attach static binaries to tagged releases, and document mpv as a dependency. This guidance helped steer the project toward a more standard, trustable release process.

Within Arch Linux, @hydn joined Would you consider Arch to be for more experienced users? to ground the discussion in Arch’s own documentation. By quoting the official “Why would I not want to use Arch?” section and elaborating on the expectations around self‑maintenance, they provided a concise reality check for newcomers considering a switch from more automated distributions.

In Debian support, @hydn contributed concrete commands to the VirtualBox cursor issue in Blue Tooth mouse disappeared, but it’s there?. Their suggested sequence to install stock Debian kernels, boot them via GRUB’s “Advanced options,” reinstall Guest Additions, and later remove Liquorix packages gave @jmarkus a safe, ordered plan for recovering a working VM without losing the fallback kernels.

The News & Shares section also saw @hydn open ZOOM reading everything written to X11 clipboard after a link surfaced in the weekly news roundup about Zoom’s clipboard behavior. They coupled understandable concern with an explanation of how the topic was split using Discourse’s “Reply as linked topic” feature, which both highlighted a privacy‑relevant issue and modeled good use of the platform’s discussion tools.

In server, @hydn continued to iterate on their pfSense series with a follow‑up in pfSense Firewall 2.8: Install & Config – Settings Walkthrough. They detailed how adjusting Intel N100 CPU energy performance preferences from “balanced” to more energy‑saving modes dropped firewall temps by about 20°C in a hot Caribbean environment without impacting throughput. The post includes concrete screenshots and notes about idle versus load behavior that are useful for anyone running low‑power fanless firewalls.

Around meta‑forum topics, @hydn also helped members make better use of Discourse features. In Local capture of entire discussion topic as a single PDF they pointed to the keyboard shortcuts overlay and the Ctrl+P export behavior, and in ZOOM reading everything written to X11 clipboard they showcased Discourse AI’s “Related” tab and the standard “Suggested” topics list, explaining how each is powered and when they are most useful.

Lastly, in Arch Linux, staff member @andreas stayed active both as a developer and community voice. They engaged across threads such as Laser – A simple CD ripping application, clarifying that their Laser CD ripper uses MusicBrainz for disc and track lookups, and participated in general discussions about browsers, MATE development, and hardware setups, reinforcing the blend of staff support and peer‑level participation that defines much of the forum’s tone.

Best Reply or Topic of the Week

The standout reply this week is @Itachixkurosaki’s detailed VirtualBox diagnosis in Blue Tooth mouse disappeared, but it’s there?.

In that post, they:

  • Explain how VirtualBox’s mouse integration hides the guest cursor and what happens when Guest Additions fail to rebuild against a new kernel.
  • Suggest a quick test using the mouse integration toggle, then walk through inspecting the running kernel with uname -r and checking loaded modules via lsmod | grep -i vbox.
  • Describe how Liquorix kernels can outpace VirtualBox’s module support and why the in‑kernel vboxguest driver can leave things half‑working.

The reply is practical, clearly written, and uses minimal but effective commands, making it very accessible for anyone running Linux guests in VirtualBox.

You can read it directly here: Blue Tooth mouse disappeared, but it’s there? – post #4.

Top Contributor

Congratulations to @Brian_Masinick on earning this week’s Top Contributor badge! :trophy:

Thanks for reading. See you again next week! :penguin:

Our community remains free of banner ads thanks to our partnership with Better Stack.

Better Stack offers infrastructure observability services, uptime monitoring, logging, incident management, and a free tier worth checking out. Visit Better Stack

:warning: Important: Avoid replying to this topic. Instead, reply to the topics linked within. Or, if you have questions or comments related to this weekly summary, please post them in the #site-help or Our Community forum category.

2 Likes
73

This week in our forums…

Key Stats

In the past week, our Linux forums had the following activity and key statistics:

Total New Posts: 246
Total New Topics: 15

Top Contributors

@ericmarceau: 26 posts, 69 likes received
@tkn: 27 posts, 67 likes received
@Brian_Masinick: 24 posts, 74 likes received
@JohnWick: 17 posts, 58 likes received
@Bitpainter75: 13 posts, 49 likes received
@jmarkus: 16 posts, 49 likes received
@Jymm: 7 posts, 29 likes received
@Norm24: 8 posts, 26 likes received
@goatherd: 11 posts, 23 likes received
@Bitpainter75: 13 posts, 49 likes received

Interesting Topics

  1. Ubuntu MATE 26.04 → 26.10, LTS confusion, and practical upgrade advice

    In mate, @DeanHighland, @tkn, @bornagainpenguin, @suivue and others spent a very active week unpacking what it really means to be on Ubuntu MATE 26.04 / 26.04.1 and how that differs from the LTS base. The long-running thread “26.04.1 release” captured real-world upgrade experiences, issues like broken screenshots and menu editing, ESM/Ubuntu Pro interactions, and the emerging consensus that many users may be better off either staying on 24.04 LTS or moving to 26.10 once it lands. There is also clear signposting from @suivue about where maintenance effort is going and how fixes will be backported.

  2. Ubuntu MATE 26.10 beta lands

    Also in mate, @Norm24 highlighted that the next interim release is now available in “Ubuntu MATE 26.10 beta has been released”. @Jymm immediately raised a sharp UX question about branding, noticing that the beta image shows the standard Ubuntu logo even though it is a MATE spin. The thread is short but important as an entry point for anyone considering testing the beta instead of staying on 26.04.

  3. Screenshot and Eye of MATE problems on 26.04.1

    Still in #linux-support territory for Ubuntu MATE users, @Watford opened “Problem with Screenshot” after finding that area screenshots appear to work, but saving the image causes the app to stall. Follow ups from @tkn and @suivue explain that this is a known bug fixed in 26.10 and likely to be backported, while @DeanHighland confirms that even alternative tools like Flameshot then hit issues when viewing with Eye of MATE. The thread has concrete error logs and serves as a good reference for others hitting the same behaviour.

  4. Specifying and using USB storage “quirks”

    In #linux-support, @ericmarceau documented a subtle but important storage reliability issue in “Specifying and using hardware “quirks””. After seeing intermittent read failures from a WD MyBook over USB2, they tracked the fix down to adding the correct usb-storage.quirks parameters for each WD device in the GRUB kernel command line. The solution post explains both the original failure (including the du error) and the final stable configuration, which is likely to be useful to anyone relying on WD USB disks for backups.

  5. Recovery from a failed boot involving systemd-modules-load.service

    Also in General Discussions, @ericmarceau shared a detailed war story in “Recovery from failed boot - systemd-modules-load.service”. After repeated boot failures that dropped the system into maintenance mode, careful use of journalctl -xb, filesystem checks, and some targeted systemd investigation ultimately restored a working configuration. The narrative is a helpful example of how to methodically approach scary-looking boot errors without immediately resorting to a full reinstall.

  6. A simple readline in a Linux CLI or TUI

    In #help-support, @goatherd is designing a TUI in Go and wanted a minimal line-editing mechanism in “A simple readline in a Linux CLI or TUI”. The question digs into how to correctly handle backspace and control characters across terminals. @ugnvs pointed first to C examples (fgets, GNU Readline) and then to Go equivalents, eventually suggesting the github.com/chzyer/readline package, which the OP tested and confirmed works well. The discussion balances minimalism against robustness and includes side tips about shell read and stty behaviour.

  7. How to print (or save to PDF) entire Google AI response

    In #help-support, @ericmarceau raised a practical browser issue in “How to print (or save to PDF) entire Google AI response”. Google’s AI math output would not render correctly in printed or PDF form. @ClaudioDC experimented with Firefox print settings like “Print backgrounds” and system dialog printing, sharing screenshots showing which LaTeX-rendered equations appeared or vanished. The thread illustrates the difficulty of printing complex web-rendered math today and hints that the underlying problem lies in how Google serves the equation images.

  8. Sometimes I doubt my sanity

    In General Discussions, @tkn started a lighthearted thread “Sometimes I doubt my sanity” with a classic oversight: troubleshooting Ubuntu Studio update errors for 15 minutes before realising the laptop was not connected to a network. Replies from @pavlos, @ericmarceau, @Jymm, @Norm24 and @shybry747 turn this into a relatable discussion about aging, distraction and the importance of checking cables and simple causes first, all framed with humour.

  9. Severing old connections? Why not consider “Disroot.org”

    In news, @ericmarceau introduced privacy‑focused hosted services in “Severing old connections? Why not consider “Disroot.org””. @tkn expanded with a concise overview of Disroot as a Dutch foundation, their use of Triodos Bank, and a Nextcloud‑based stack hosted in the EU. The post also compares Disroot’s model to Proton services, emphasising GDPR compliance and immunity from the US CLOUD Act, which makes it relevant for members looking to move away from big tech providers.

  10. ESP32 project for those who play with uControllers

    In Showcase, @pavlos shared a hands‑on embedded example in “ESP32 project for those who play with uControllers”. Using Wokwi’s online simulator, the project links an ESP32 with a BMP180 sensor, providing a working virtual environment that others can fork and tinker with. It is a nice practical complement to the more desktop‑ and distro‑focused discussions elsewhere in the week.

Activity by the @staff Group

Staff were active across several areas this week, from publishing guides to steering tricky support threads.

Best Reply or Topic of the Week

Best Reply: @Bitpainter75’s deep FerrumPix update and support response

The standout contribution this week is @Bitpainter75’s detailed follow‑up on FerrumPix 0.9.56 in the showcase thread “FerrumPix: bringing photo management, RAW editing and image editing together on Linux”.

Read the reply here

In that single reply, Patrick lays out a clear, structured changelog that is unusually accessible for non‑developers:

  • Explains new manual chromatic aberration sliders in plain language and notes when to use them.
  • Describes performance improvements in RAW development and lens correction that users will actually feel.
  • Details improvements to masks, retouching tools (including larger brushes and better healing behaviour) and editor workflow options like compact adjustments.
  • Connects the changes back to real feedback from @jmarkus and others earlier in the thread.

It is a model of how to communicate complex application changes to a mixed audience of photographers and Linux users, and it effectively turns the forum post into documentation that others can reference when deciding whether to try or upgrade FerrumPix.

Top Contributor

Congratulations to @JohnWick on earning this week’s Top Contributor badge! :trophy:

Thanks for reading. See you again next week! :penguin:

Our community remains free of banner ads thanks to our partnership with Better Stack.

Better Stack offers infrastructure observability services, uptime monitoring, logging, incident management, and a free tier worth checking out. Visit Better Stack

:warning: Important: Avoid replying to this topic. Instead, reply to the topics linked within. Or, if you have questions or comments related to this weekly summary, please post them in the #site-help or Our Community forum category.

2 Likes
74

This week in our forums…

Key Stats

In the past week, our Linux forums had the following activity and key statistics:

Total New Posts: 217
Total New Topics: 15

Top Contributors

@mr_mcbride: 35 posts, 131 likes received
@Brian_Masinick: 20 posts, 54 likes received
@tkn: 15 posts, 50 likes received
@Bitpainter75: 15 posts, 49 likes received
@Norm24: 13 posts, 38 likes received
@J_J_Sloan: 7 posts, 33 likes received
@Jymm: 9 posts, 33 likes received
@jmarkus: 10 posts, 29 likes received
@taki_at_gamma_linux: 7 posts, 19 likes received
@taki_at_gamma_linux: 7 posts, 19 likes received

Interesting Topics

  1. FerrumKix joins the Ferrum family

    In Showcase, @Bitpainter75 introduced a new project, FerrumKix: a lightweight audio player, CD ripper, tagger, converter and Lyrion client for Linux. FerrumKix combines local playback, CD ripping, tag editing, conversion and Lyrion Music Server control into one desktop app, aiming to simplify what usually requires several separate tools. @tkn and @Norm24 tested early builds and discussed the target audience, album cover handling, and how it compares aesthetically and functionally to favorites like Sayonara and MusicBee.

  2. Gamma Linux on truly old hardware

    @taki_at_gamma_linux continued a very hands-on conversation in Showcase about I Built Gamma Linux to Give Old PCs Another Life :algeria:. This week, @tkn reported detailed testing on a Pentium 4-era Medion box and an Asus EeePC, uncovering DNS quirks, installer GPT/MBR pitfalls and missing NTP configuration. The thread now reads like a mini field report, including tips for adding firmware and configuring systemd-timesyncd so that Gamma runs smoothly even on 1 GB RAM machines.

  3. “The Adobe replacement” debate: ArtCraft enthusiasm and skepticism

    In General Discussions, @Halano kicked off ArtCraft - The new adobe creative alternative, sharing an overview of the ArtCraft suite that mirrors many of Adobe’s tools with Linux support and open development. @ugnvs and @tkn added links to in‑depth coverage and shared first impressions after testing components like SoundCraft, noting that the apps feel promising but not yet production ready. In parallel, @DeLinuxCo shared packaging work and screenshots in The Adobe Suite replacement for Linux is here?, showing how these AppImages are being made easy to try through a curated repo.

  4. Legal and ethical questions around AI‑cloned apps

    Also in General Discussions, @shybry747 opened ArtCraft Legality to explore whether AI‑generated “clones” of commercial software cross lines from inspiration into theft. The discussion digs into the ethics of vibe‑coding proprietary interfaces, how it might feel to have your own work cloned, and whether copying workflows and layouts without source access qualifies as stealing. @ClaudioDC took a strong stance that this kind of cloning feels like being “robbed,” while @andreas examined how the absence of Adobe source code and explicit branding might affect the legal picture.

  5. New tooling for HTML decks and one‑time sharing

    In Showcase, @nosworkspace presented NOS: a hosted workspace for AI-made HTML decks and reports. NOS is aimed at people who end up with AI‑generated single‑file HTML reports or slide decks and want a place to lightly edit and host them. The topic explains the free‑forever plan, shows an example deck, and clarifies that the service focuses on hosted editing rather than self‑hosted software. Follow‑up from @hydn and @Brian_Masinick helped surface questions about long‑term free access and how Linux users might integrate NOS into their workflows.

  6. New Linux users stepping into security

    In #our, @doffer-cyber introduced themselves and asked for learning pointers in New at Linux Need some advice. After a warm welcome from @andreas and @Bombilla, @Jymm shared a practical overview of security‑focused distributions and how to filter them on DistroWatch, distinguishing everyday privacy uses from full‑blown penetration testing environments. The replies are a good starting point if you are exploring both Linux and cyber security tools at the same time.

  7. Ubuntu MATE upgrade pitfalls and fixes

    The mate category saw continued real‑world upgrade feedback in 26.04.1 release, where @DeanHighland documented side effects of in‑place upgrades, such as fortune-mod being tied to ubuntu-mate-core and the new paged output behavior in apt. @guiverc clarified that some “glitches” are actually packaging design decisions, while @Norm24 and @suivue contributed concrete workarounds, including a PPA to fix mozo and an explanation of why MATE 1.28 has only partially landed yet in Debian and Ubuntu. The thread now doubles as a small troubleshooting guide for others moving to 26.04.1.

  8. Tuning MX Moksha and expectations for “lightweight” distros

    In General Discussions, @tkn shared benchmark‑style observations in MX Moksha, not as light and snappy as expected after testing MX Moksha on an EeePC. Memory and swap usage numbers show MX Moksha not outperforming a stripped‑down Ubuntu MATE setup on the same hardware, and certainly not matching Bodhi’s Moksha responsiveness. @taki_at_gamma_linux chimed in on expectations for different MX editions, and the thread is useful if you are evaluating ultra‑light options for very constrained laptops.

  9. Fine‑tuning the site navigation for heavy readers

    In #our, @hydn announced a quality‑of‑life improvement in Change to the “Topics” link in the sidebar. The Topics link now goes straight to your New/Unread list when there is something to catch up on, and falls back to Latest when you are up to date. @andreas reported that this better matches their habit of working through New sequentially, and the post includes a short how‑to for anyone who prefers the original behavior.

  10. Saturday Showcase roundup

    The Showcase index topic Saturday Showcase: Built & Shared by Members This Week was updated again by @system. This week’s edition highlights FerrumKix, NOS, and the Release State Reconcile CLI by @LaimaWu as projects worth a look. If you want a single jumping‑off point to explore what members are building, this recurring thread is increasingly valuable.

Activity by the @staff Group

Staff members were active across multiple areas of the forum this week, both in moderation and as regular participants:

Collectively, staff participation this week focused on smoothing the user experience in the forum itself, encouraging new members, and curating links and resources around performance, firmware, and community projects.

Best Reply or Topic of the Week

The standout reply this week is @tkn’s detailed tuning and configuration guide for Gamma Linux on low‑spec hardware in I Built Gamma Linux to Give Old PCs Another Life :algeria:.

In this post, @tkn documents how to get smooth video playback and proper time synchronization on an Asus EeePC with only 1 GB of RAM, including exact package names and systemd-timesyncd commands.

The reply walks through installing AMD firmware for OpenGL/DRI/VAAPI acceleration and then sets up NTP with systemd-timesyncd, timedatectl set-ntp true, and verification steps. It also includes real free -h output and observations about desktop responsiveness, making it an excellent, concrete resource for anyone trying to revive similar netbooks or tune Gamma Linux on very limited hardware.

You can read it here: Gamma Linux EeePC tuning and NTP setup.

Top Contributor

Congratulations to @mr_mcbride on earning this week’s Top Contributor badge! :trophy:

Thanks for reading. See you again next week! :penguin:

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75

This week in our forums…

Key Stats

In the past week, our Linux forums had the following activity and key statistics:

Total New Posts: 200
Total New Topics: 15

Top Contributors

@Brian_Masinick: 40 posts, 88 likes received
@machiner: 33 posts, 78 likes received
@ericmarceau: 9 posts, 35 likes received
@goatherd: 13 posts, 33 likes received
@ugnvs: 7 posts, 32 likes received
@Jymm: 9 posts, 29 likes received
@J_J_Sloan: 5 posts, 28 likes received
@tkn: 7 posts, 24 likes received
@shybry747: 4 posts, 21 likes received
@tkn: 7 posts, 24 likes received

Interesting Topics

  1. Artificial Wickedness?
    In General Discussions, @goatherd kicked off a wide ranging discussion on whether so called AI agents can be morally or even legally responsible, or if accountability must always rest with their creators. Members including @ugnvs, @tkn, @J_J_Sloan, @ericmarceau, @andreas and @lah7 debated tool-versus-user responsibility, copyright and training data, the role of guardrails, and media narratives that treat AI as an autonomous villain. The thread also digs into recent reported incidents of agents breaking containment and accessing government systems, making it one of the week’s most thought provoking reads.

  2. ArtCraft Legality
    Also in General Discussions, the ongoing ArtCraft conversation took a legal and ethical turn, with @ugnvs, @Jymm, @shybry747, @jaymo_chicago, @NothingConspicous and others examining whether Adobe like “vibe coded” clones cross the line from inspiration into infringement. Concepts like trade dress, reverse engineering, clean room implementations, and the impact of AI generated clones on proprietary business models are all unpacked in detail, along with perspectives on why Linux users gravitate to these tools when vendors ignore the platform.

  3. DistroWatch List new Ubuntu Flavor Releases - Ubuntu Mate
    In Ubuntu, @Jymm shared that DistroWatch is now listing the latest Ubuntu 26.10 flavor releases, including Ubuntu MATE. @guiverc added valuable background from the flavor teams’ side, explaining how well the relatively new Ubuntu MATE crew navigated the release process, while later posts touch on upgrade timing, meta-release files, and the still archived state of the old Ubuntu MATE forum. It is a good snapshot of how release engineering and community support intersect.

  4. Echo on calls from the desktop
    Over in #help, @Watford asked for help with callers hearing echo when using WhatsApp Web on Ubuntu MATE 26.04.1. Suggestions from @pavlos and @Norm24 include checking for rogue microphone sources such as webcam mics and referencing a similar case from the archived Ubuntu MATE forum. Follow up posts clarify that the issue is specific to WhatsApp Web, not Signal or the phone client, so there is still room for further troubleshooting input from audio and PipeWire enthusiasts.

  5. Linux installation
    In another #help topic, newcomer @Cupid-Inno described losing Wi-Fi and Bluetooth after installing Kali on a Dell Latitude 5420, with Ubuntu live media only partially detecting hardware and reporting a probe error -110. @Jymm stepped in with several resource rich tutorials on diagnosing wireless problems under Linux, and @Brian_Masinick encouraged follow up once those steps are tried, making this a useful reference thread for similar post install networking issues.

  6. A restore script for Debian delivering bespoke desktop kung-fu
    In Showcase, new member @machiner introduced DORiS, a two part restore script that turns a fresh Debian net install into a lean Openbox based workstation with heavy keyboard control, Alacritty, custom themes, and lots of scripted conveniences. Follow up conversation with @Brian_Masinick digs into how DORiS handles user config backups, restores, and even timezone handling, and led to quick improvements such as a new doris-backout rollback helper. It is a nice example of collaborative iteration on a community shared tool.

  7. George: a silly thing that nobody wanted that is awesome
    Staying in Showcase, @machiner also unveiled George, a Jetsons inspired terminal command center built with urwid and tmux that can manage notes, events, RSS feeds and even random TV and music launches from a single TUI. Designed to run in Alacritty without an installer, it grew out of the quirky idea of auto starting random “Leave it to Beaver” episodes. The thread offers a fun glimpse into highly personalized workflows that many terminal fans will appreciate.

  8. Unix Was Right. We Made Linux Too Complicated
    Back in General Discussions, @Brian_Masinick shared a YouTube talk reflecting on the original Unix philosophy of simplicity and how modern Linux stacks compare. The discussion with @ugnvs and @Jymm spans over engineering in today’s systems, the desire for “just works” experiences versus tinker friendly environments, and how locked down platforms are changing expectations. It is a good companion to ongoing debates about init systems, compositors, and “bloat.”

  9. Gamma Linux 2.7.2 Roadmap + Website Feedback — And a Look Ahead to 2.8! :algeria:
    In Showcase, distro author @taki_at_gamma_linux outlined the roadmap for upcoming Gamma Linux 2.7.2 and 2.8 releases, focused on reviving older hardware under the motto “No PC deserves to die.” Plans include better legacy BIOS handling, clearer edition naming, memory optimizations, and a switch from Enlightenment to Moksha for the Legacy edition. @Brian_Masinick chimed in with encouragement and mentioned antiX Linux as a kindred “lean and mean” project, giving helpful context in the lightweight distro space.

  10. Mousiki Plus - a TUI music and internet radio player incl. lyrics/oscilloscope/spectrogram
    Rounding out Showcase, @StSchwerdtfeger introduced Mousiki Plus, a cross platform terminal based music and radio player with visualizations, karaoke mode, and metadata tools. It supports a wide range of formats (including tracker modules and C64 SID files), plus time shifted radio recording. @goatherd, who is working on a TUI player in Go in another thread, showed interest in trying the original Mousiki on Linux, hinting at a growing mini ecosystem of terminal audio tools in the community.

Activity by the @staff Group

Staff members were active across the forums this week, welcoming new users, steering discussions, and offering technical guidance.

In General Discussions, @system published the latest Linux Weekly News: Key Stories Ahead of This Week update, curating important upstream security advisories and distro news for kernel, X.Org, and desktop stacks. These summaries continue to be a central jumping off point for members who want to keep current without tracking every individual feed.

Within #our, @system also posted last week’s Weekly Forum Summary, highlighting key stats and notable threads. This provides helpful continuity for anyone returning after a break and is part of an ongoing effort to surface good conversations beyond the front page.

In several help and support topics, staff offered targeted suggestions or context:

Staff also continued to make newcomers feel at home. @Bombilla greeted several new members, including @curio in Welcome! Introduce yourself and @StSchwerdtfeger in the Mousiki Plus showcase, reinforcing the welcoming tone of the community.

Finally, in Ubuntu release related topics, @guiverc contributed insider perspective on Ubuntu MATE and 26.10 upgrade flows in DistroWatch List new Ubuntu Flavor Releases - Ubuntu Mate and on RC testing in Ubuntu 26.10 RC’s are ready & Ubuntu 27.04 tenacious. These posts help bridge the gap between official release processes and everyday users.

Best Reply or Topic of the Week

Best Reply: @tkn in the “Artificial Wickedness?” discussion

In Artificial Wickedness?, reply post #15 by @tkn stands out for clearly explaining how large language models work and grounding the AI “wickedness” debate in input and responsibility rather than mystique.

“Output of LLMs of today is the most probable path based on a statistical average of the total amount of input over time.

Feed it an encyclopedia and you have the behaviour of a luxuary knowledgebase

Feed it the commentsection of facebook and youtube and you have the behaviour of a sociopathic gossip generator.”

From there, the reply neatly ties this behavior back to human choices about training data and deployment, drawing an effective analogy to heat seeking rockets and who is actually liable when things go wrong. It is concise, technically accurate, and accessible, which made it particularly helpful in a long, opinionated thread.

Top Contributor

Congratulations to @Brian_Masinick on earning this week’s Top Contributor badge! :trophy:

Thanks for reading. See you again next week! :penguin:

Our community remains free of banner ads thanks to our partnership with Better Stack.

Better Stack offers infrastructure observability services, uptime monitoring, logging, incident management, and a free tier worth checking out. Visit Better Stack

:warning: Important: Avoid replying to this topic. Instead, reply to the topics linked within. Or, if you have questions or comments related to this weekly summary, please post them in the #site-help or Our Community forum category.

7 Likes
76

This week in our forums…

Key Stats

In the past week, our Linux forums had the following activity and key statistics:

Total New Posts: 259
Total New Topics: 16

Top Contributors

@Brian_Masinick: 31 posts, 111 likes received
@machiner: 22 posts, 79 likes received
@tmick: 18 posts, 58 likes received
@Frentan: 13 posts, 55 likes received
@JohnWick: 15 posts, 55 likes received
@tkn: 13 posts, 52 likes received
@Jymm: 12 posts, 52 likes received
@ericmarceau: 9 posts, 36 likes received
@ugnvs: 6 posts, 29 likes received

Interesting Topics

  1. If you could magically cure the Linux community of one bad habit, what are you eliminating?
    In General Discussions, @hydn opened a reflective thread on the worst habits in the Linux world, from misuse of chmod 777 to treating SSH and root access casually. @tkn argued for abandoning SMB habits in favor of SSH everywhere, while @ugnvs and @tmick focused on unsafe root logins and running commands without understanding them. Several members including @Brian_Masinick and @Jymm pushed for a culture that balances “do your own homework” with kindness toward newcomers instead of blunt “RTFM” replies.

  2. What’s the most overrated thing in the Linux world?
    @hydn also started a lively General Discussions discussion on overrated trends: running the absolute latest software, “atomic desktops,” and certain gaming expectations. @JohnWick voiced doubts about Omarchy and some security models, while @Frentan and @Brian_Masinick contrasted their own “update mania” with an interest in simpler BSD systems. Others like @Jymm questioned the way the terminal is presented to beginners, and @nate weighed in later on atomic desktops in related posts.

  3. What Linux opinion(s) will get you downvoted on Reddit the fastest?!
    Still in General Discussions, this thread by @hydn collected “cursed” Linux takes. @Frentan cheerfully nominated “systemd is fine,” while @tmick and @machiner defended enabling and using a root account more directly, arguing that sudo itself can be a risk if misconfigured. @Brian_Masinick reminded everyone that deliberately trying to break things can be a good learning strategy as long as you have backups and know what you are doing, and the conversation drifted into best practices for hardening sudo and avoiding root logins over SSH.

  4. DistroQuest: Built a Linux distro recommendation quiz because I wasn’t satisfied with the existing ones
    In Showcase, @Frentan shared a custom distro recommendation quiz aimed at giving more nuanced results than typical “which distro” tools. @ugnvs compared it with the community’s own Distro Fighter and suggested refinements to make options more mutually exclusive and less intimidating to newcomers. @Jymm and @tmick tested it and reported that it did a solid job surfacing distros they already use, while also exposing a few interesting outliers like SUSE.

  5. SpeakoFlow: offline voice typing and a voice assistant for Linux
    In Showcase, solo developer @AbhishekBarali introduced SpeakoFlow, a cross‑platform, MIT‑licensed voice app that does on‑device dictation, on‑screen text actions and a local assistant that can read your screen, using models you download from Hugging Face. Members such as @machiner showed immediate interest in trying it to voice‑control their workflows, while @tmick raised practical questions about Rust toolchains on existing systems. The thread highlights growing interest in privacy‑friendly voice tools that do not depend on cloud APIs.

  6. PHP2Shell (CVE-2026-109618 / 109619): critical PHP RCE, patch out today at 14:00 UTC
    In news, @hydn posted a detailed, time‑sensitive advisory about two critical PHP core vulnerabilities affecting a huge slice of the web. The follow‑up update walked through enumerating every PHP runtime on a machine, verifying patched versions across distros and popular stacks, and reloading services safely. @Halano and @benowe1717 chimed in with NVD references and real‑world patching experiences, including temporarily locking down nginx and reconciling multiple PHP versions for self‑hosted apps.

  7. Troublesome transition
    Over in Debian, @Syl described issues after moving disks to new hardware, including an RTX 5060, where MX Linux would boot to a black screen while Windows 10 continued to work. @hydn and @ericmarceau walked through hardware compatibility, GRUB placement and testing with Intel graphics, and eventually @Syl pivoted to Linux Mint when MX continued to fail from live media. The thread is a useful case study in GPU driver maturity and when it may be simpler to reinstall than to keep fighting an old kernel.

  8. Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (“Resolute Raccoon”) - and most of its flavors - released yesterday (23rd April 2026)
    In Ubuntu, @goatherd asked whether newly installed Ubuntu 26.04 is safe in light of an AF_UNIX vulnerability. @tkn responded with a clear breakdown of the CVE’s scope, what container escapes really mean, and how to mitigate risk by disabling or limiting snaps until patched kernels ship. The discussion evolved into firewalling unused ports with GUFW or iptables and then into upgrade paths for moving from 26.04 to 26.10 once upgrades are officially opened, with @guiverc providing distro‑level background.

  9. Linux spotted on movies and tv
    In a lighter General Discussions thread, @ClaudioDC invited everyone to share sightings of Linux on screen after spotting Ubuntu in the film Nobody. @tkn followed up with screenshots from anime and Mr. Robot featuring Debian, Kali and Mint, while @ugnvs linked to a broader list of Linux appearances in film. @hydn pointed out examples from The Matrix Reloaded and Who Am I, and @lah7 added a fun cameo of Ubuntu MATE for Raspberry Pi in the K‑drama Start‑up.

  10. SpeakoFlow, V-tools, Mousiki, MySQL Monitor and more in Saturday Showcase
    The latest curated Showcase roundup by @system highlighted several member projects posted or updated this week, from @AbhishekBarali’s SpeakoFlow and @V_privacy’s early privacy tools, to @StSchwerdtfeger’s terminal music player and @hydn’s revamped MySQL Monitor. It is a handy single stop if you want to discover and test new community software without following every individual project thread.

Activity by the @staff Group

Staff were active across support, security and community welcome threads this week:

Best Reply or Topic of the Week

Best Reply: @tkn’s clear, practical explanation of the Ubuntu AF_UNIX vulnerability and real‑world risk in this reply in the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS thread stands out.

tl;dr : disable snaps until the vulnerability is fixed.

From there, @tkn breaks down what AF_UNIX domain sockets are, how container isolation works, why this class of bug enables container escape rather than direct remote internet attacks, and which kinds of systems should be most concerned. The reply bridges kernel‑level details with actionable advice that regular desktop users can follow, and is followed up later with a link to the CVE record and Ubuntu’s own tracking page so readers can monitor patch status themselves.

Top Contributor

Congratulations to @benowe1717 on earning this week’s Top Contributor badge! :trophy:

Thanks for reading. See you again next week! :penguin:

Our community remains free of banner ads thanks to our partnership with Better Stack.

Better Stack offers infrastructure observability services, uptime monitoring, logging, incident management, and a free tier worth checking out. Visit Better Stack

:warning: Important: Avoid replying to this topic. Instead, reply to the topics linked within. Or, if you have questions or comments related to this weekly summary, please post them in the #site-help or Our Community forum category.

6 Likes
77

This week in our forums…

Key Stats

In the past week, our Linux forums had the following activity and key statistics:

Total New Posts: 192
Total New Topics: 13

Top Contributors

@Brian_Masinick: 25 posts, 82 likes received
@Jymm: 11 posts, 45 likes received
@tkn: 10 posts, 38 likes received
@Itachixkurosaki: 12 posts, 37 likes received
@Watford: 11 posts, 29 likes received
@Frentan: 7 posts, 27 likes received
@Bitpainter75: 5 posts, 26 likes received
@svhs27102: 7 posts, 25 likes received
@RokeJulianLockhart: 8 posts, 23 likes received

Interesting Topics

  1. Typed ed instead of cd - 404 moment (brain not found)
    In General Discussions, @hydn admitted to a classic terminal slip, launching ed instead of cd and briefly panicking at the unfamiliar prompt. The thread turned into a collection of “oh no” stories, from @tkn running commands in the wrong SSH window to @Frentan repeatedly typing cwd instead of pwd. The discussion also became practical, with @andreas asking how to visually distinguish SSH sessions and members recommending color‑coded tools like Termius, Remmina profiles, custom SSH background helpers, and informative prompts to stay oriented across multiple servers.

  2. Ubuntu Core Desktop
    @Jymm started a timely Ubuntu discussion on Canonical’s revived Ubuntu Core Desktop and whether anyone wants a snap‑only, immutable system. The thread quickly broadened into a thoughtful debate. @Itachixkurosaki highlighted the benefits of an atomic desktop model, phone‑style permissions, and the KDE collaboration, but questioned the app story when strictly confined snaps are mandatory. Others like @tkn and @Brian_Masinick weighed trade‑offs around snaps, installers, flavor options, and long‑term direction, while @guiverc provided useful detail about flavor choices and snap‑free install options already available.

  3. Need Urgent Help - USB Stick recovery
    In #help-support, @ericmarceau faced a failing USB stick throwing I/O errors and refusing to mount. The community rallied with layered recovery advice. @benowe1717 suggested filesystem checks and Photorec, which immediately started showing promise. @ClaudioDC shared a successful workflow using ddrescue to image an “unreadable” stick, then mount the image to recover files with their original structure. @Jymm added diagnostics around lsblk, lsusb, dmesg, plus realistic expectations for physical flash failures. Follow‑ups from @ericmarceau documented ddrescue behavior and limitations, giving this thread long‑term value for anyone hitting similar storage issues.

  4. SourceDock – I built an open-source Linux package manager with GTK 3
    In Showcase, @aliafacan introduced SourceDock, a GTK 3 desktop application that unifies APT, Flatpak, Snap, and local .deb management behind a single responsive interface. After a warm welcome from members including @Bombilla and @Brian_Masinick, the thread evolved into a hands‑on feedback loop. @tmick tested SourceDock on Debian Testing with MATE, reported bugs and behavior around sudo and GTK recursion, and then verified that the subsequent v1.4.7 release fixed those issues across multiple Debian versions. It is a good example of community testing directly improving a fresh project.

  5. Unzipping options
    @Watford opened a General Discussions conversation asking who uses PeaZip versus other archive tools. Members compared approaches from GUI‑first to terminal‑only workflows. @Frentan described PeaZip as a feature‑rich “gold standard” yet still relies on Ark under KDE for convenience, while @Jymm adopted PeaZip after issues with Engrampa’s 7zip handling. Others, like @Halano, stick with 7z and unzip from the command line. A side discussion about Flatpak versus .deb, and the risks of third‑party PPAs such as XtraDeb, turned the thread into a broader practical look at how people prefer to handle compressed files.

  6. A MUST read: Debunking zswap and zram myths
    In news, @hydn shared Chris Down’s detailed article on when to use zswap versus zram. The post pulls out key operational points that matter for both desktop users and server admins: why zswap is often the safer default, why combining zram with disk swap can backfire, the cgroup accounting problems zram brings to servers, and the importance of coupling zram with a userspace OOM daemon. @tkn chimed in to confirm zswap is already enabled in their environment, making this a succinct jumping‑off point for anyone revisiting their swap strategy.

  7. XorMon: open source, on-prem monitoring for pretty much your whole stack
    Also in Showcase, @hydn highlighted XorMon, a free on‑prem monitoring suite from Xorux that targets a broad mix of servers, storage, SAN/LAN gear, backup platforms, databases, hypervisors, and cloud or container platforms. The overview outlines how XorMon unifies metrics and capacity planning across technologies many members run at work or in homelabs. Combined with @pave1’s earlier note about XorMon in the long‑running monitoring tools topic, this gives operations‑focused readers a concrete project to explore beyond the usual Prometheus and Grafana stack.

  8. Why has flatpak search been so slow, a few times?
    In #fedora, @RokeJulianLockhart dug into an instance of flatpak search taking over three minutes to complete, backed by timing data and strace output. @Brian_Masinick suggested wider network turbulence as a possible factor, while @tkn raised the idea of problematic modem chipsets. @Itachixkurosaki then provided a highly technical analysis, showing from the real/user/sys times and ppoll behavior that Flatpak was mostly blocked waiting on a single file descriptor, likely a slow or rate‑limited Flathub connection during appstream fetches. Practical commands for future debugging rounded out a strong example of collaborative troubleshooting.

  9. Another Way to Clear the Terminal Screen
    In the mate category, @DeanHighland shared It’s FOSS’s tip that Ctrl+L clears the terminal screen while keeping scrollback accessible, in contrast to the usual clear. @jaymo_chicago quickly confirmed it works at least in konsole, and @Itachixkurosaki stepped in with a clear explanation that this shortcut is provided by the shell, not the terminal emulator. The reply covered how clear and clear -x differ, why shells behave consistently across terminals and SSH sessions, and even reminded users about reset when a binary dump scrambles the display.

  10. Linux installation
    In Debian, a previously opened thread on getting Kali Linux running on a Dell Latitude gained a key follow‑up this week. Building on earlier advice from @machiner, @Itachixkurosaki tracked down a Fedora thread with the same Intel AX201 Wi‑Fi card and timeout error, and pointed to Intel AMT in the BIOS as the root cause. The recommended fix was simply to disable AMT under BIOS manageability, which frees the wireless card so Linux can claim it. The reply illustrates how cross‑distro research can solve stubborn “device is unclaimed” errors without resorting to kernel downgrades or manual driver hacks.

Activity by the @staff Group

Staff remained active across support, infrastructure, and project feedback topics throughout the week.

In #help-support, @benowe1717 gave detailed recovery guidance in Need Urgent Help - USB Stick recovery, covering safe use of e2fsck, filesystem‑specific tools, and introducing Photorec as a practical option when hardware is failing. Their input helped @ericmarceau move from stalled dd attempts toward viable recovery steps.

In Showcase, @tmick spent significant time testing and improving new tools. In SourceDock – I built an open-source Linux package manager with GTK 3, they reproduced problems on Debian Testing with MATE, opened bugs upstream, and then verified that SourceDock v1.4.7 corrected GTK and privilege handling issues on multiple Debian versions. In :rocket: Tired of GDebi crashing? I built a lightweight, visual wrapper for local .deb installs!, they helped debug launch issues on Debian Testing, eventually tracing them to graphics driver and EGL problems with Nouveau.

On the site operations side, @hydn handled a subtle content issue in Onebox preview images do not render in #site-help. After @RokeJulianLockhart noticed that onebox thumbnails rendered correctly in the composer but not in the final post, investigation showed Discourse had cached failed image downloads and stopped retrying. Clearing the failed records and rebaking topics restored previews, and @hydn enabled the Solved plugin in that category to make resolutions easier to find in future.

Staff also continued shaping the community’s monitoring and tooling conversations. In Free and open-source Monitoring tools for Linux, @hydn acknowledged @pave1’s suggestion of XorMon and then followed up with a dedicated showcase thread XorMon: open source, on-prem monitoring for pretty much your whole stack so the project has a clearer home. In SourceDock – I built an open-source Linux package manager with GTK 3 and other showcase items, staff welcomed new builders and encouraged deeper integration testing.

Finally, @system continued its regular editorial work, publishing automated roundups such as Saturday Showcase: Built & Shared by Members This Week and Linux Weekly News: Key Stories Ahead of This Week. These highlight member projects like SourceDock and Riff, as well as notable kernel and distro news, helping keep the community aligned on what is new and worth exploring.

Best Reply or Topic of the Week

Best Reply: @Itachixkurosaki’s deep dive into flatpak search slowness

In Why has flatpak search been so slow, a few times?, @Itachixkurosaki provided an exceptionally clear, evidence‑based explanation of what was happening under the hood. By interpreting real/user/sys timings and strace output, they showed that flatpak search was spending almost all its time blocked in ppoll on a single file descriptor, likely waiting on a slow or rate‑limited Flathub connection during metadata updates. The reply also recommended concrete diagnostic commands (strace -f -tt -T -yy, flatpak --log-session-bus) for future incidents and clarified which logged signals were noise. It stands out as a model for turning a frustrating, intermittent performance issue into an understandable and debuggable scenario for other users.

Top Contributor

Congratulations to @Itachixkurosaki on earning this week’s Top Contributor badge! :trophy:

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This week in our forums…

Key Stats

In the past week, our Linux forums had the following activity and key statistics:

Total New Posts: 136
Total New Topics: 11

Top Contributors

@Brian_Masinick: 22 posts, 63 likes received
@tkn: 17 posts, 71 likes received
@ericmarceau: 10 posts, 39 likes received
@Bitpainter75: 7 posts, 30 likes received
@jmarkus: 6 posts, 23 likes received
@tmick: 6 posts, 21 likes received
@Itachixkurosaki: 8 posts, 20 likes received
@ugnvs: 4 posts, 18 likes received
@aliafacan: 4 posts, 17 likes received
@andreas: 1 post, 5 likes received

Interesting Topics

  1. PeerBrush on Ubuntu: painting and layered PSD editing on a shared canvas
    In Showcase, @Ilai_Perez introduced PeerBrush, a GPLv3 image editor that focuses on painting, layers and masks while working directly with layered PSD files. The post explains how PeerBrush can collaborate with a local MCP client so human painters and automated edits can safely share a canvas, and invites feedback from Ubuntu 24.04 users, especially on brush responsiveness and re‑opening saved projects.

  2. How master Linux command shell basic to advance
    In Debian, @rashidblox asked how to move beyond basic shell commands into more advanced Linux command line skills. Members including @ugnvs, @ericmarceau and @Norm24 shared curated learning paths and references such as the Linux Resources Mega Thread, Bash scripting material and the freely available “The Linux Command Line” book, while @Itachixkurosaki suggested project‑driven learning like log parsing, scripting backups and playing OverTheWire Bandit to build real confidence.

  3. Moxnox: NT-Like, POSIX-Compatible Hobby OS Running Atop Btrfs
    In news, @Jymm surfaced a story about the newly released Moxnox 1.0 and asked what people might actually use such a hobby OS for. @Itachixkurosaki explained why projects like this matter for learning, pointing out that Moxnox is already self‑hosting with GCC, Git and CMake, exposes NT‑style ideas in an open codebase, and makes for an interesting weekend experiment in a VM for anyone curious about OS internals.

  4. Faster Pacman (Lightning Memory-Mapped Database Solution)
    In #arch, @Halano described work on a Pacman fork that replaces the traditional local filesystem database with a Lightning Memory‑Mapped Database in an effort to eliminate a known I/O bottleneck. The thread compares performance with existing Pacman behavior, notes how other managers like dnf5, zypper and nix have modernized, and includes follow‑up from @Brian_Masinick on whether apt could eventually benefit from similar ideas.

  5. Debian testing and Unbuntu has an apt vulnerability
    Over in Debian, @tmick alerted others to a critical APT man‑in‑the‑middle issue and linked to coverage of CVE‑2026‑109518 alongside the recommendation to move to APT 3.3.6 or distro‑patched versions. Replies from @Brian_Masinick, @tkn, @ClaudioDC and @ugnvs walked through version checks on Debian and Ubuntu, showed example apt policy output, and compared fixed versions across different releases so readers could verify their own systems quickly.

  6. Configuring size of dedicated /tmp partition
    In #help, @ericmarceau considered creating a dedicated /tmp partition for a fresh Ubuntu MATE 24.04.5 desktop and asked what minimum and maximum sizes would be sensible. @ugnvs offered a detailed explanation of why the benefits of a separate /tmp on a modern desktop are debatable, while @tkn contributed a reference about when isolating /tmp can still make sense. The discussion eventually led @ericmarceau to keep /tmp on the root filesystem.

  7. GPG (OpenPGP) - Recommended length of key strings (public/private)
    Also in #help, @ericmarceau started working on a more serious OpenPGP workflow and asked whether elliptic curve keys are the best modern choice and how to manage keys safely across use cases. @Brian_Masinick collected several practical guides on GPG usage and key management from Linux security resources, the GnuPG forums and Superuser, giving a useful starting bundle of best‑practice material for anyone refreshing their crypto setup.

  8. CVR-2026-98432 IPv4 use-after-free vulnerability and mitigations
    In General Discussions, @tkn continued tracking the high‑profile IPv4 TCP use‑after‑free bug (CVE‑2026‑98432), sharing checks and mitigations such as disabling MPTCP when it is not needed. @ericmarceau demonstrated commands like ss -Mani -p and nstat -asz | grep MPTcpExt to see if MPTCP is in use, while @guiverc linked to Ubuntu’s advisory and kernel versions in proposed and released updates, and @tkn later confirmed when fixes landed in Ubuntu 24.04 and 26.10 kernels.

  9. Fedora 45 Released
    In #fedora, @shybry747 reported an early upgrade to Fedora 45 on the Sway spin, noting a brief first‑boot issue with an older AMD Radeon R5 card that resolved after a reboot. The follow‑up highlights a subtle application migration problem where gLabels files from Fedora 44 needed manual gzip decompression before opening in 3.4.1, with a workaround sourced from a Debian bug report and additional scripting tips from @Itachixkurosaki for batch fixing multiple label files.

  10. How master Linux command shell basic to advance
    As a complementary highlight to the earlier shell‑learning thread, @Itachixkurosaki’s reply in Debian gives a very practical roadmap for going from “I know the basics” to real command line fluency. Suggestions include building a breakable VM lab, mastering text pipelines with tools like grep, sort, uniq, awk and sed, leaning on system tools such as systemctl and journalctl, automating everyday tasks with simple scripts, and using wargames like OverTheWire Bandit as structured practice.

Activity by the @staff Group

In #our, @system published the previous Weekly Forum Summary, recapping key stats and noteworthy discussions, which continues to give members an easy entry point into the latest activity.

In #our, @hydn announced the second round of forum swag in New t-shirt designs in our shop!, introducing the “Kernelspace Collection” with bold, back‑printed designs like “SUDO MAKE ME A HELPER” and “UPTIME > EGO” and linking to the updated shop collection for anyone wanting to support the community.

Staff were also active welcoming new project authors and members. In Showcase, @hydn engaged with self-host: a TUI and agent skill for trying self-hosted apps, asking @ajnart about target users, how the shared canvas of post‑install automation fits into real workflows, and where packages for more distros might land. In the long‑running Welcome! Introduce yourself thread, @hydn greeted several newcomers, while @system and @shybry747 each appeared among the week’s most active staff, contributing moderation, summaries and technical experiences across multiple sections of the forum.

Finally, @andreas from staff shared a refreshed Debian desktop look in Share your Debian desktop with Neofetch/Fastfetch (optional) Screenshots, which helped keep the Debian category lively and showcased a clean, practical setup that others can draw inspiration from.

Best Reply or Topic of the Week

Best Reply: @Itachixkurosaki’s practical roadmap for advancing your Linux shell skills

In the Debian topic “How master Linux command shell basic to advance”, @Itachixkurosaki delivered a concise but highly actionable answer for learners stuck at the “I know the basics” stage. The reply goes beyond listing commands and instead recommends a problem‑driven approach: create a safe VM to experiment freely, practice real‑world text processing with logs and network data, get comfortable with essential system tools like systemctl, journalctl and ss, write small scripts to automate tasks you already perform by hand, and use OverTheWire Bandit for structured practice. It stands out this week as both immediately useful for the original poster and easily reusable as guidance for future newcomers who want to level up their shell skills.

Top Contributor

Congratulations to @tkn on earning this week’s Top Contributor badge! :trophy:

Thanks for reading. See you again next week! :penguin:

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Better Stack offers infrastructure observability services, uptime monitoring, logging, incident management, and a free tier worth checking out. Visit Better Stack

:warning: Important: Avoid replying to this topic. Instead, reply to the topics linked within. Or, if you have questions or comments related to this weekly summary, please post them in the #site-help or Our Community forum category.

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