Debian CERN Win, Faster Firefox, Free Bash Course, Grub Customization and More Linux Stuff

Warp Terminal

Firefox 155 has arrived quietly, speeding up page loads with Happy Eyeballs v3 and QUIC v2. And the timing is perfect for you to switch. Google just removed uBlock Origin from the Chrome Web Store, leaving Firefox one of the last non-Chromium browsers still supporting it.

EndeavourOS ‘Triton’ is running late, so instead of that, the developers have introduced ‘Titan Nova‘ as a release mostly packed with hardware support enablement, misc fixes, Linux 7.1.8, and more.

Vanilla OS 3 ‘Reunion’ is out with first-class ARM64 support, reproducible images, and GNOME 50. New default apps include Ptyxis, Papers, and Resources, while snapshot backups come via the new Vanilla Continuity tool.

Virtual machines add a layer; containers share one kernel, but Multikernel’s approach avoids both. It gives each workload its own full kernel on real hardware. The first public release targets servers and SRE teams.

Do you own an Apple iPhone? Well, then you might be missing the Continuity feature on Linux. Luckily, a developer has managed to bring a comparable experience with Tether, an open source app that carries iMessage, SMS, and OTP codes to Linux over Bluetooth.

Debian 11 “Bullseye” has reached end-of-life, which means you have to either upgrade to a newer supported release, or stay on it, manually managing the security of your system.

Speaking of Debian, the CERN lab is migrating 2200 of its control systems to Debian 13. That’s a massive win for all of us Linux users.

LibreOffice 26.8 contains no AI features, on purpose. TDF proudly markets its stance, promising that its office suite doesn’t need to contact a server.

Germany’s Sovereign Tech Agency is putting €508,640 into Flatpak over two years, involving a few other stakeholders. Seems like Flatpak is going to get stronger and more widespread.

This edition of FOSS Weekly is supported by privacy service provider, AdGuard.

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🧠 What We’re Thinking About

AI crawlers are scraping the Linux kernel repo in a way that results in unnecessary compute usage, burning ~4.6 million times more compute for a worse copy of data that was always free to grab.

A community leader in open source, Debian, has voted to allow AI-assisted contributions, and the community response has been predictably split. One long-time Debian developer even quit over it.

Debian AI Vote has Divided the Community

Debian is a big name, a leader in the community, so the decision Debian made is going to set a precedent. It may lead to more projects embracing AI as Debian leads the way.

That’s not the only divide. Omarchy is now a foundation backed by several tech leaders, 1Password CEO being one of them. And that has created a divide in both its employees and users. This article provides context.

🧮 Linux Tips, Tutorials, and Learnings

How often do you think about which filesystem to install your OS on? Or swapping your kernel for a real-time build when you need it? Or moving your whole install to a different machine without a license headache?

We list ten things Linux does casually that Windows either can’t do or actively prevents.

Ubuntu’s built-in tiling is more capable than most people realize. We explore the various keyboard shortcuts, window gaps, and active window hints in the default Ubuntu Tiling Assistant, then go further into the Tiling Shell extension for proper layout management.

If you are absolutely new to bash shell scripting, we have a 10-part, hands-on bash learning series for you. Good starting point for Linux users.

Bash Scripting Tutorial for Beginners

Get acquainted with bash scripting in this course for beginners.

Grub Customizer is a handy tool that lets you change boot order in a multi-boot system.

Desktop Linux is mostly neglected by the industry but loved by the community. For the past 14 years, It’s FOSS has been helping people use Linux on their personal computers. And we are now facing the existential threat from AI models stealing our content.

If you like what we do and would love to support our work, please become It’s FOSS Plus member. It costs $49 a year (less than the cost of a McDonald’s burger a month), and you get an ad-free reading experience with the satisfaction of helping the desktop Linux community. And there are also free Linux ebooks.


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👷 AI, Homelab and Hardware Corner

Switched routers, and now your headless Raspberry Pi can’t go online? Pull the SD card, mount it on your Linux machine, then follow these steps. 👇

How to Change Raspberry Pi Wi-Fi Details From the SD Card

No need to connect the Raspberry Pi to a display and keyboard. Take out the SD card and modify the WiFi credentials directly.

Canonical has joined NVIDIA’s Open Secure AI Alliance, a coalition focused on building open tools for securing AI agents and the software stacks they run on.

✨ Apps and Projects Highlights

Image Toolbox is the app for you if your life revolves around creating and posting content on social media. It is fully open source, doesn’t sell you ads, and also has AI powers.

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