Steam stats suggest that gaming on Linux is more popular than ever, Wine improvements might entice even more gamers, Ubuntu might break things when it tightens up GRUB security and makes 6GB of RAM the minimum requirement for the desktop edition, and Ubuntu MATE is looking for new maintainers. News LAS 2026 Call for proposals extended till the 10th April Linux smashes past 5% on the Steam Survey for the first time Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at the kernel level, and the speed g...
Apr 07, 2026•20 min
It’s another hot questions episode. Whether we think better on our own or with other people, our non-standard debugging habits, favourite interview questions, coding at night, character encoding, and abolishing time zones. Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed...
Apr 05, 2026•24 min
The ugliest and jankiest hacks we’ve put into prod, and a few of the worst things we’ve seen other people get away with. Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Subscribe to the RSS feed .
Apr 03, 2026•23 min
Microsoft says Windows 11 is getting less rubbish but we are skeptical, vehicles with alcohol interlocks won’t start because the manufacturer’s server is down, and whether you should virtualise a router or a NAS. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes Five‑Year Storage Design with OpenZFS: Media Refresh, Rebalancing, and Hardware Independence News/discussion Our commitment to Windows quality Microsoft fixes broken Windows update days after vowing fewer b...
Apr 02, 2026•27 min
Making silly URLs, visualising complex weather data, a TUI network discovery tool, and an open source version of a classic synthesizer in discoveries, plus the sad reality that it’s more or less impossible to avoid code that’s been generated by “AI” these days. Discoveries creepy link Supercell Wx whosthere Ultramaster KR-106 AI in FOSS systemd 260-rc3 Released With AI Agents Documentation Added New Xfce Wayland compositor is being developed with genAI Automox Turnkey Results Endpoint management...
Mar 30, 2026•23 min
We decided to give openSUSE a try. We had a great time. Honest. Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed ....
Mar 27, 2026•25 min
The US government is drumming up fear about foreign routers, a pretty serious supply chain attack might be state-sponsored, and the safety of filesystems inside VMs. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes The Real Cost of Technology Dependence: Building Independence with Open-Source Storage News/discussion US bans any new consumer-grade routers not made in America National Security Determination on the Threat Posed by Routers Produced by Foreign Countrie...
Mar 26, 2026•27 min
Age declaration and verification in Linux gathers pace, Google blesses us with some hoops to jump through to install the software we want on stock Android, the FSFE lost their payment provider, great new KDE Plasma and GNOME features, and more. News Just over a month until OggCamp ! Piss up at The Shipwrights Arms (just next to London Bridge station) on Saturday 27th June from 6pm until late Age verification isn’t sage verification when it’s inside operating systems The Engineer Who Tried to Put...
Mar 24, 2026•26 min
In the wake of Discord’s recent announcement about age verification, Matrix recently came in for a lot of criticism by a lot of people who said it’s not a viable replacement. Andy works on Matrix for a living and Amolith is invested in the XMPP world so we get into secure messaging, trade-offs between security and user experience, federation, and more. Piss up at The Shipwrights Arms (just next to London Bridge station) on Saturday 27th June from 6pm until late Support us on Patreon and get an a...
Mar 22, 2026•25 min
Gary is concerned that he might have dug himself into a hole of on-prem vendor lock-in, despite using open source software. Plus why you should have PiKVM type device in your toolkit. PiKVM GL.iNet Comet HelloFresh Go to HelloFresh.com/hcs10fm to Get 10 free meals + a FREE Zwilling Knife (a $144.99 value) on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as discount on first box, new subscribers only, varies by plan. Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with ear...
Mar 20, 2026•23 min
Why passkeys aren’t the right solution to everything, Allan tells us why he loves his new Lithium Iron Phosphate UPS, Btrfs vs ZFS on root, and restricting Internet access for IoT devices on your network. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Designing OpenZFS Storage for Independence News/discussion Please, please, please stop using passkeys for encrypting user data Allan’s new Anker SOLIX C1000 Gen 2 Portable Power Station Free consulting We were...
Mar 19, 2026•29 min
Drama in the exciting world of office suites, new ThinkPads are properly repairable, hands on with the Android desktop convergence future, and more. News/discussion LibreOffice Online: a fresh start LibreOffice Online dragged out of the attic LibreOffice 26.2 is here: a faster, more polished office suite that you control Lenovo’s New T-Series ThinkPads Score 10/10 for Repairability Your Pixel phone can now become a full Android PC via USB-C You will be able to install “unverified” Android apps w...
Mar 16, 2026•24 min
May has actually been using her stack of laptops and learning that “legacy” distros make more sense, the Firefox flatpak performs better than other packages, Linux Mint is a fine distro, Linux has the best calculators, and GNOME’s scaling is really good now. Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed ....
Mar 13, 2026•21 min
Microsoft Authenticator will delete Entra credentials on phones that aren’t running stock ROMs, Jim’s nightmare experience trying to get a user back into their MS account, tracking vehicles via tire pressure monitors, using a ZFS pool in a degraded state, and keeping cold ZFS storage dataset snapshots in sync. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes ZFS Fast Dedup for Proxmox News/discussion Microsoft Authenticator to nuke Entra creds on rooted and j...
Mar 12, 2026•29 min
Our favourite smells, whether we use dark mode, and whether there’s any meaning to life. With Andy from Linux Dev Time , and Shane from Hybrid Cloud Show . Patrons got this this in their feed two weeks ago.
Mar 11, 2026•18 min
Discord delays their age-gating rollout but legislators are pushing for operating systems including Linux to verify ages, LLM licence laundering might mean the end of copyleft, and how and why you might want to detect Meta’s spy camera glasses. News Getting Global Age Assurance Right: What We Got Wrong and What’s Changing US state laws push age checks into the operating system California introduces age verification law for all operating systems, including Linux and SteamOS — user age verified du...
Mar 10, 2026•27 min
The importance of having and sticking to correct development processes, what can go wrong when you don’t, and how to fix the problems you might end up with. Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed...
Mar 08, 2026•24 min
We recently talked about backing up Shane’s homelab, but this time it’s the turn of enterprise backups. Risk management, cloud and hybrid environments, planning for realistic disaster scenarios, convincing the finance people what’s required, and more. Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Subscribe to the RSS feed ....
Mar 06, 2026•24 min
An exciting new cold storage technology seems to be getting closer, Nvidia seemingly wants a slice of the laptop hardware action, why you (and your users) should definitely not use LLMs to “generate” passwords , and whistleblowing when sensitive customer data isn’t being taken seriously. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes ARC and L2ARC Sizing on Proxmox News/discussion Data stored in glass could last over 10,000 years, Microsoft says Nvidia plan...
Mar 05, 2026•27 min
The freedom to install what you want on stock Android ROMs is still in jeopardy, an interesting update on SETI@home, Intel looks to contribute to graphics on Linux, and Mozilla works towards Web standards. Plus making a Wii U gamepad, UPS software, free NASA ebooks, and making cool posters with mapping data in Discoveries. News/Discussion The FDroid website has a new banner on top to remind visitors that #Google did not change course and Android will be locked-down in under 200 days Keep Android...
Mar 02, 2026•25 min
The end of Windows 10 and the terrible state of Windows 11 are driving more and more people to Linux. How do we help people actually manage the switch and stay with Linux? Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed ....
Feb 27, 2026•25 min
Hardware scarcity and price hikes spread to hard drives, the Bcachefs dev thinks his AI is ‘fully conscious’, an agent might have gone after a FOSS maintainer, Jim is disappointed with an Ars author, and ZFS and VMs in the homelab. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Piss up at The Shipwrights Arms (just next to London Bridge station) on Saturday 27th June from 6pm until late Pool and VDEV Topology for Proxmox Workloads News/discussion AI blamed ...
Feb 26, 2026•29 min
Discord’s new age gating policy might be a real opportunity for open source but it’s not clear that we have anything that can compete, the complex and bizarre tale of an AI agent writing a blog post attacking a FOSS maintainer, why we lost some trust in a major tech publication, the Firefox AI kill switch arrives, and a quick KDE Korner. News Piss up at The Shipwrights Arms (just next to London Bridge station) on Saturday 27th June from 6pm until late Discord Launches Teen-by-Default Settings Gl...
Feb 24, 2026•25 min
People often like to talk down Electron , but it is really that bad? There may be better ways to use Web technologies to make desktop apps, but isn’t having Linux versions of apps a good thing no matter how they are made? We mentioned Tauri and Wails . Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed...
Feb 22, 2026•23 min
Sean tells us about a recent catastrophe in his Kubernetes homelab (that’s really home prod). What went wrong, how did he fix it, and how can he avoid it happening again? HelloFresh Go to HelloFresh.com/hcs10fm to Get 10 free meals + a FREE Zwilling Knife (a $144.99 value) on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as discount on first box, new subscribers only, varies by plan. Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Subscribe t...
Feb 20, 2026•26 min
Jim and Allan disagree on how new hard drive tech is likely to work, more on storage and compute in the same box, and how we set up disk encryption on laptops. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes OpenZFS Monitoring and Observability News/discussion Western Digital doubles the performance of hard drives with dual-actuator High-Bandwidth, with path to 8X performance increase — Power-Optimized HDDs will reduce power by 20 percent Free consulting We ...
Feb 19, 2026•33 min
The professional-grade audio workstation Ardour has a great new version, LinkedIn does a shocking but not surprising amount of browser fingerprinting, Firefox is getting a button to turn off the AI nonsense, a new way to prevent slop “contributions” to your project, another tale of someone failing to switch to Linux, and why we should talk more about why open source software can be better than proprietary alternatives. With guest host Kevin from Linux Dev Time . News/discussion Ardour 9.0 — What...
Feb 16, 2026•25 min
With the price of RAM and storage through the roof, what are we going to do when it comes to supporting people who come to us for IT advice? Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed ....
Feb 13, 2026•22 min
Notepad++ falls victim to a state-sponsored attacker, AI agents talk nonsense to each other on an insecure vibe coded social network, and backing up a laptop properly. Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes ZFS vs Btrfs: Architecture, Features, and Stability News/discussion Notepad++ Hijacked by State-Sponsored Hackers AI agents now have their own Reddit-style social network, and it’s getting weird fas Hacking Moltbook: AI Social Network Reveals 1.5...
Feb 12, 2026•26 min
The best museums we’ve been to, the people we admire, and our weirdest train journeys. With Gary from Linux After Dark . Patrons got this this in their feed two weeks ago.
Feb 11, 2026•15 min
