Practical Linux tips and tricks – terminal shortcuts, productivity hacks, and configuration tweaks for Ubuntu and other distros.
Since Ubuntu 17.10, networking is configured with Netplan rather than the old /etc/network/interfaces file. You write a short YAML description of how each interface should behave, and Netplan translates it into configuration for the back end that actually manages the network. This keeps the configuration in one place and makes it easy to read, but…
TUXEDO Computers has announced that their Linux distribution is moving away from Ubuntu, with Debian taking over as its new base. TUXEDO OS is the default choice on every TUXEDO machine, but it’s not exclusive to their hardware, and anyone can just grab an image and run it on their computer. Going forward, the distro…
Mesa 26.2 was branched today from Mesa Git and in turn Mesa 26.3-devel is now open on mainline. Mesa 26.2 is working toward a stable release in August while until then the weekly release candidates have commenced. Mesa 26.2 brings a number of optimizations to the Intel ANV and AMD RADV Vulkan drivers, continued work…
Void Linux users looking for a GUI alternative to command-line package management now have yet another option. Called Caerus, the application is a GTK4 front end for the distribution’s XBPS package system, inspired by the well-known Synaptic Package Manager. Written mainly in Rust, Caerus exposes both routine and advanced XBPS operations through a desktop interface….
Almost every networked application on your machine uses TCP or UDP, either directly or through a protocol built on top of one of them. TCP tracks a connection and delivers an ordered byte stream, at the cost of extra round trips and bookkeeping. UDP sends independent datagrams without transport-level recovery, giving the application more control…
Mindgard just disclosed an unpatched 0-day in Cursor yesterday, where a poisoned repository could trigger arbitrary code on Windows systems without the developer needing to do anything on their end. The bug lives in how Cursor resolves Git binaries when a project loads. Cursor checks several locations for git, and one of them is the…
Overnight Linux creator Linus Torvalds wrote another well crafted message that reaffirms the Linux kernel position of not being against AI and lashing back against some kernel developers that are against AI/LLM usage within the kernel project. Linus Torvalds once again states that the Linux kernel is not “anti-AI” and that AI/LLMs should be viewed…
Mozilla plans to shorten Firefox’s release cycle, launching new major versions every two weeks as part of an experiment starting in September 2026. This change will affect both Firefox Desktop and Firefox for Android. Currently, Mozilla releases a major version every four weeks, so the new schedule will double the release frequency. The first affected…
AppImages are designed to be simple. Download one, make it executable and run it. On Ubuntu, though, there’s an extra step: Ubuntu ships FUSE 3 by default, but some AppImages still need FUSE 2 (libfuse2t64) to run. AppManager is a new(ish) GTK4/Libadwaita app which fixes that particular annoyance by mounting AppImages through uruntime instead of FUSE. It…
12 Arjun’s Systems Brief: RISC-V boards have a firmware problem. They boot into a black screen with no display output, no setup utility, and no visual feedback. The Harmonic Firmware Initiative (HFI) changes that by extending U-Boot with a POST-like power-on screen and a classic BIOS setup utility. I spent the last week digging through…
