Docker Compose Override, Claude Skills for DevOps, Solidtime and More

Table of Contents

Don’t we learn something new everyday? Something that might be obvious to others but feels like discovery to you?

I had that feeling when I learned about the concept of compose override in Docker. In my self-hosted Ghost CMS deployment, I made modifications in the compose file to introduce log rotation. But now the compose file was modified and any upstream change would complain about modified file. Git stash comes to rescue, but it’s an additional pain.

And that pain went away with the override compose file. It’s an excellent way of separating local and upstream changes, local and production compose files. I wrote about it here.

Claude (or other mainstream AI tools) can be an excellent help in troubleshooting your infrastructure issues. But if you just ask it “find me for this error message”, you’ll get generic answers. Yash who has recently started working as a DevOps engineer shares some of the Claude skills he uses. You can take inspiration and modify these skills as needed or use them as it is.

💡Quick terminal tip

In bash (and other readline-based shells), press Alt+Shift+3 (or Alt+#) while typing a command. It prefixes the line with #, submits it, and since # starts a comment, the command won’t execute.

It stays in your shell history for later. Handy for jotting down a command you’re not ready to run yet.

Now that you know this one, here are a few more shortcuts worth adding to your muscle memory.

Let’s find your next favorite software in this section.

Buzz: Self-Hostable Workspace for Humans and AI Agents

Buzz is an open-source collaboration platform from Block that brings team chat, Git repositories, and AI agents into a single workspace. Built on the Nostr protocol, it lets organizations self-host their collaboration platform while allowing AI agents to participate as authenticated team members with their own identities and permissions.

💬 Integrated Team Collaboration – Channels, threads, DMs, media sharing, and search in one workspace (voice huddles in progress).
🤖 AI Agents as Teammates – Agents hold cryptographic identities and can review code, submit patches, and collaborate alongside humans.
🌐 Self-Hostable & Open Source – Apache 2.0 licensed; deploy on your own infrastructure with full data control.
🛠️ Built-in Git Collaboration – Host repos, submit patches, and manage code review without external Git hosting.
🔐 Nostr-Based Architecture – Every event is signed via Nostr, giving verifiable identity and a full audit trail.

Solidtime: Modern Open-Source Time Tracking for Teams

Solidtime is an open-source time tracking platform built for freelancers, agencies, and teams that need an easy way to track work, manage projects, and generate invoices. It offers a polished web and desktop experience, supports self-hosting, and keeps activity tracking privacy-friendly by processing desktop activity locally before converting it into time entries.

⏱️ Time Tracking – Simple, modern interface to track work time.
📁 Projects & Tasks – Create projects and tasks, and assign them to team members.
👥 Clients – Manage clients and link them to projects.
💰 Billable Rates – Set rates per project, member, or organization.
🏢 Multiple Organizations – Manage several organizations from one account.
🔑 Roles & Permissions – Control access within organizations.
📥 Data Import – Import from Toggl, Clockify, or CSV.

📰 Linux news that matters

The Linux kernel CVE team published 432 CVEs over just two days, prompting concerns from security engineers about the practicality of reviewing and prioritizing individual kernel vulnerabilities. The surge reflects the kernel project’s policy of assigning CVEs to virtually every qualifying security-related bug fix in stable releases, with AI-assisted bug discovery also contributing to the growing number of reports reaching maintainers.
NetworkManager 1.58 adds support for IPv6-only deployments through RFC 8925 IPv6-only-preferred signaling and 464XLAT (CLAT), enabling legacy IPv4 applications to continue working on IPv6-only networks. The release also introduces GENEVE tunnel management for virtualized environments, 6 GHz Wi-Fi enhancements, persistent managed state across reboots for automation, and fixes multiple DHCP-related security issues, including CVE-2026-10805.
Cisco has released Antares-350M and Antares-1B, two open-weight small language models purpose-built to locate known vulnerabilities within large source code repositories. Unlike general-purpose coding models, Antares focuses on repository-level vulnerability localization. Can run locally without uploading proprietary code to the cloud, and Cisco claims it achieves comparable accuracy at up to 172× lower cost than leading frontier AI models while also releasing a benchmark to measure this task.
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is preparing its 2026-07-28 specification, replacing its stateful architecture with a stateless protocol core by removing session IDs and the initialization handshake while introducing a new extensions framework and stronger authorization mechanisms. The redesign allows MCP servers to run behind standard HTTP load balancers without sticky sessions or shared session stores, making large-scale deployments significantly easier, although existing implementations will require migration because of breaking protocol changes.
GitHub has made its redesigned Pull Requests Dashboard generally available, introducing an Inbox that surfaces review requests, CI failures, merge-ready pull requests, saved views, advanced search, and support for identifying AI agent-created pull requests. The update reflects a broader industry shift where AI coding assistants generate code faster than humans can review it, prompting GitHub to focus on review triage rather than code generation alone.

😂 Geek humor

💌 Keep on loving Linux Handbook

GitOps course is nearly ready. It should arrive next week.

Perfect time to become a Pro member and enjoy unlimited access to our eBooks, courses and in-depth tutorials.

Missed the previous editions? You can access the newsletter archives.

You may also contribute to Linux Handbook and share your experience and expertise with the community.

I like reading your messages, so just hit the reply button and share your thoughts 😄