Linux Matters 31: Searching for a New Voice

It’s our 2025 review of Linux and open source news including great gaming news, the impact of AI, the disappointments from Mozilla, the year of Wayland on the desktop, the politics of open source, Intel’s lack of interest, and wins for KDE.   Gaming Steam Machine, controller, VR headset incoming from Valve Steam Deck LCD production is ending   AI bullshit Open source devs say AI crawlers dominate traffic, forcing blocks on entire countries Wikimedia Foundation bemoans AI bot bandwidth burden ardour.org has banned 1.2M distinct IP addresses for trying to slurp from our git repository Introducing CC Signals: A New Social Contract for the Age of AI You should enforce your own existing licenses against AI mass crawling Anubis guards gates against hordes of LLM bot crawlers FSF calls Anubis malware It seems like the AI crawlers learned how to solve the Anubis challenges   Mozilla Updates on Mozilla’s Leadership and Growth Planning Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox An update on our Terms of Use Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic Investing in what moves the internet forward When I say that I can’t recommend third-party forks of either Firefox or Chrome for real world use, this kind of thing is why Firefox is fine. The people running it are not Mozilla Slammed Over Battery-Draining “Garbage” AI in Firefox Firefox Adds CoPilot Chatbot, New Tab Widgets in Nightly Builds Introducing AI, the Firefox way: A look at what we’re working on and how you can help shape it Rewiring Mozilla: Doing for AI what we did for the web Mozilla’s next chapter: Building the world’s most trusted software company   Wayland Fedora 43 Cleared To Ship With Wayland-Only GNOME GNOME Dropping X11 Support May Complicate Next Ubuntu LTS Ubuntu 25.10 drops support for GNOME on Xorg Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora 43 to drop X11 in GNOME editions An update on the X11 GNOME Session Removal Wayback Is Now Hosted On FreeDesktop.org Wayback 0.3 released! GNOME Mutter Now “Completely Drops The Whole X11 Backend” KDE Going all-in on a Wayland future   Politics The price of software freedom is eternal politics Framework flame war erupts over Linux controversy PSF Gets a Donor Surge After Rejecting Anti-DEI Federal Grant   Intel All good things come to an end: Shutting down Clear Linux OS Intel’s Open-Source Strategy Is Changing At Odds With The Ethos Of Open-Source The Death Of Clear Linux, Other Intel Linux Engineering Setbacks In 2025   KDE KDE Highlights from 2025                   Tailscale Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/lnl and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.     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. RSS: Subscribe to the RSS feeds here

What we are likely to be doing when you hear this, and why it’s unlikely to involve much in the way of development. This is a short episode because Joe is having a break for the Christmas period.         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

What we love most about the cloud and cloud native technologies. This is a short episode because (producer) Joe is having a break for the Christmas period.         Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes           Subscribe to the RSS feed.

The one bit of advice we’d give to someone wanting to become a professional sysadmin. This is a short episode because Joe is having a break for the Christmas period.             See our contact page for ways to get in touch.  

Good news for custom Android ROMs, Rust is here to stay in the kernel, an open source success story in Germany, and a new version of elementary OS is out. Plus discoveries is back including better Firefox history, migrating from Windows to Linux, automating telescopes, turning old tablets into clocks, and more.   News Good news for custom ROMs: Google just released the Android 16 QPR2 The (successful) end of the kernel Rust experiment New Linux Patch Confirms: Rust Experiment Is Done, Rust Is Here To Stay Goodbye, Microsoft: Schleswig-Holstein relies on Open Source and saves millions elementary OS 8.1 Available Now   Discoveries Better History Operese commodore64 is back!? Making History: Signing the Commodore Contract + C64 Ultimate Production Update PiFinder Fullscreen Clock Clasp             Tailscale Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/lnl and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.     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. RSS: Subscribe to the RSS feeds here

We tell stories from some of the tech support nightmares we’ve found ourselves in. This is a short episode because Joe is having a break for the Christmas period.           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.

Apple deletes a person’s entire digital life, PornHub Premium user data is leaked, Mozilla’s new CEO wants to ruin Firefox, Tech Force in the USA is alarming, and fine tuning storage for databases.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes Is DWPD Still a Useful SSD Spec?   News/discussion 20 Years of Digital Life, Gone in an Instant, thanks to Apple PornHub extorted after hackers steal Premium member activity data Mozilla’s next chapter: Building the world’s most trusted software company Rest assured, Firefox will always remain a browser built around user control Tech Force Trump administration launches Tech Force hiring push   Free consulting We were asked about fine tuning storage for databases.                 See our contact page for ways to get in touch.      

The Steam machine will use an older HDMI standard because of arbitrary rules, more details about running X86 Windows games on Arm Linux, and the Steam Controller lives on. Plus Calibre is adding “AI”, and we laugh at another LLM.   News Why won’t Steam Machine support HDMI 2.1? Digging in on the display standard drama Steam Machine today, Steam Phones tomorrow Remember Google Stadia? Steam finally made its gamepad worth rescuing Talk to your Fedora system with the linux-mcp-server! Calibre adds AI “discussion” feature Because the Calibre ebook library software just acquired AI garbage it has *already* been forked AI and GNOME Shell Extensions               Tailscale Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/lnl and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.     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. RSS: Subscribe to the RSS feeds here

How far you can go with eliminating global variables, forcing everything you ever need to be passed in as arguments.         Tailscale Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/ldt and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.     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

How to connect your public environments across clouds and into your datacenter infrastructure – using official options, VPNs and new ideas like mTLS. Plus container networking, CNIs and other ways to plug extras into Kubernetes.               Antigravity A1 The Antigravity A1 is the world’s first all-in-one 8K 360 drone. It’s a real game-changer. You get full immersive flight with the goggles, intuitive controls, and endless creative freedom in editing. If you’re thinking about buying a drone, make it this one. Learn more at antigravity.tech     Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes           Subscribe to the RSS feed.