Tim Paterson built what he initially called QDOS, short for Quick and Dirty Operating System, in 1980. Intel's 8086 chip was out, but CP/M, the dominant OS of the time, had no 8086 support. He wrote something to fill that gap, modeling the CP/M API so existing software would run on it.

Microsoft bought the rights to 86-DOS for just under $100,000, shipped it to IBM as PC DOS 1.0 in August 1981, and retained the rights to sell the same OS to other PC manufacturers as MS-DOS.

That single deal set Microsoft on the path to dominating personal computing for the next two decades.

Fast forward to now

On April 28, the 45th anniversary of 86-DOS 1.00, Microsoft published a blog post announcing that the earliest known DOS source code is now publicly available on GitHub, under the MIT license.

And the story behind it is an interesting one. Tim did not hand over a tidy source archive; instead, what he kept were physical assembler printouts and stacks of continuous-feed paper from 1981 that he had held onto over the decades.

Getting those into usable shape took effort, with historians Yufeng Gao and Rich Cini having to locate, scan, and transcribe the DOS-related portions into compilable code.

What's included are the 86-DOS 1.00 kernel, several development snapshots of the PC-DOS 1.00 kernel, utilities like CHKDSK, and the assembler Paterson used to write the OS itself.

Who's this for?

Honestly, seeing Microsoft open up old code is not that surprising anymore. 6502 BASIC went open source in September 2025. MS-DOS 4.0 in 2024. MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0 back in 2018. There is a clear pattern at this point.

If you are into retro computing or low-level systems work, this is genuinely worth digging into. The source code is compilable, and you will need a copy of Seattle Computer Products' ASM assembler, which you can pull from any 86-DOS or early MS-DOS release.

The GitHub repository's README has the necessary steps for you to follow.

Suggested Read 📖: Someone Turned a PS5 Into a Linux Gaming PC

Although, I am curious what kind of icon this new Projects directoy will get 😄

Here are other highlights of this edition of FOSS Weekly:

• Firefox quietly using Brave's ad blocker.
• A series of new Ubuntu releases.
• Warp terminal going open source.
• Hackers hijacking a package and publishing it to PyPI.
• And other Linux news, tips, and, of course, memes!

📰 Linux and Open Source News

Firefox 149 has quietly shipped Brave's open source adblock-rust engine with no mention in the release notes. It's disabled by default with no UI, but can be enabled via about:config.

MinIO's GitHub repo has been archived again after going into maintenance mode last year. If you're running it in production, then it is time for a change.

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS "Resolute Raccoon" is out. You get GNOME 50, Linux kernel 7.0, Wayland-only, five new default apps, deb packages back in App Center, and post-quantum crypto out of the box.

It's flavors have also gotten releases, and we have already checked out what Kubuntu 26.04 and Lubuntu 26.04 offer.

A flaw in Elementary Data's GitHub Actions workflow let an attacker push a backdoored version to PyPI in under ten minutes. If you have elementary-data 0.23.3 installed, you got work to do.

LVFS, the service behind Linux firmware updates, has one full-time developer and no security team. Vendors consuming millions of downloads without contributing now face download quotas and feature restrictions until they sponsor the project.

Fedora 44 is out after a two-week delay. It is powered by Linux 6.19, includes GNOME 50 and Plasma 6.6, has NTSYNC for better Windows game performance, and a completely refreshed Games Lab spin.

In related news, Microsoft might be looking to rebase Azure Linux on Fedora.

In an interesting development, AI-focused Warp terminal is now open source. Good to see them finally making the right decision.

🧠 What We’re Thinking About

AI is coming to Ubuntu, and Canonical's approach is local-first with open-weight models delivered via snaps.

There is a petition asking for a native Linux version of a 3D architectural modeling program Rhino 3D. If you can, please sign it. This may result in bringing a mainstream app to Linux, which may help grow Linux adoption.

🧮 Linux Tips, Tutorials, and Learnings

GSConnect is the GNOME extension that brings KDE Connect to your desktop, letting you share files, sync notifications, use your phone as a trackpad, and mount Android folders over Wi-Fi.

Forgot your Ubuntu root password? You can boot into recovery mode, use the dpkg repair option to get a root shell, and reset it with passwd. Work only on systems with a root password set.

If you are using KDE, check out lesser known features in Konsole terminal.

👷 AI, Homelab and Hardware Corner

LeafKVM is an open source KVM-over-IP device in a CNC aluminum case, built on Rust and Buildroot.

✨ Apps and Projects Highlights

WSL9x is a project that does the opposite of what you'd expect. Instead of running Linux apps on Windows, it runs a modern Linux kernel 6.19 inside Windows 95, 98, or ME

An It's FOSS reader shared a project he made that shows a map of where your computer is connects. If you are into networking or just plain curious, you could give it a try.

📽️ Videos for You

Resharing the terminal customization video for the new readers. It's a detailed, step by step tutorial on how to make your terminal look as beautiful as the ones you see in our screenshots.

💡 Quick Handy Tip

You can use the Vitals GNOME Shell extension to add more system monitor readings to the GNOME top panel. Click on Vitals in the top panel, and select the values you want in the panel.

Deselect the ones you don't need to hide them from the panel. Do note that the hidden ones are still visible when you are in the drop-down view. Hidden or not, these values are all still accessible in the dropdown view of the extension.

🎋 Fun in the FOSSverse

Test your Linux command line knowledge in this fun quiz.

This is just Microsoft thing 👇

🗓️ Tech Trivia: On May 2, 1983, Microsoft introduced its two-button Microsoft Mouse alongside the new Microsoft Word processor. Despite manufacturing around 100,000 units for IBM and IBM-compatible PCs, the company sold only 5,000 before eventually finding success with a much-improved version.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 From the Community: Pro FOSSer Dan is in a limbo where an update broke file thumbnails on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

And I am working on a complete overhaul of the It's FOSS Plus portal. Stay tuned for that.

The application was specifically developed to meet the needs of modern software development workflows. In my opinion, its standout feature is the seamless container support for tools like Podman, Distrobox, and Toolbox.

Ptyxis is rapidly gaining popularity across the Linux community. It has already become the default terminal for many modern distributions, including Fedora and the upcoming Ubuntu releases.

As I have been using it for some months now, let me share some of my favorite features in this new terminal. I hope you like them as much as I do.

Tabs and Overview

The first thing you notice when opening Ptyxis is the tabs and overview system. While other emulators like GNOME Terminal or Kitty use a standard tab bar, Ptyxis introduces a visual tab selector that feels very similar to the GNOME Activities overview.

If you have multiple tabs open, you can simply click the Show open tabs button in the top-right of the title bar.

This opens an interface where each tab displays its title alongside a small preview, making it easy to see exactly what is running before you click back into a full view.

The flexibility here is excellent because you can drag and drop tabs in the overview to rearrange them.

You can also pin important tabs to keep them visible at the top of the list at all times.

My favorite feature, however, is the ability to easily custom name your tabs and search through them later. By right-clicking a tab in the overview and selecting "Set title," you can choose to either prepend a name to the default process or create a completely custom title.

Once your tabs are named, you can use the search button in the top-left of the title bar to find exactly what you need. This is incredibly helpful when you are managing a large number of active sessions simultaneously.

Color Schemes

A standout feature of Ptyxis is the support for a wide range of preset color schemes. You can access these options by opening the preferences window through the three-dots menu in the top-right of the title bar.

Once inside the Appearance tab, click on the "Show all palettes" option to see the full list. The interface provides a neat preview for each selection, and your chosen theme is applied immediately.

In my opinion, the way these colors adapt is impressive. The scheme is applied intelligently to the tab bar as well, ensuring the entire terminal maintains a cohesive and professional look.

Among the vast list of options, I have a few specific favorites that I think look incredible. Omni, Pixiefloss, and Tomorrow Night, Ubuntu are all excellent choices that provide a very modern feel.

Scrollback Search

The ability to search through what appears on your screen is a massive help during long sessions. While tools like grep are great for text files, you often need to find specific information directly within the shell scrollback.

For example, if you have displayed a massive log file using the cat command, you can quickly find what you need without re-running the command. By pressing SHIFT + CTRL + F, a search interface opens at the bottom of the terminal.

The extra search filters provides better matching. You can choose to match case, match whole words, or even use regular expressions to narrow down your results.

The interface includes simple navigation buttons to move up and down through your search matches. This makes it incredibly easy to jump between different instances of a term within a long output.

Container Support

This is the flagship feature of Ptyxis. The terminal works directly with container technologies like Podman, Distrobox, and Toolbox to make your development workflow much smoother.

If your system has containers using these platforms, Ptyxis detects them automatically and provides a dedicated way to access them. You can simply click the dropdown button in the top-left of the title bar and select a specific container from the list to launch it instantly.

The ptyxis-agent coordinates with your system to handle the discovery and management of these environments. For example, if you are using Distrobox, Ptyxis will execute the proper run commands for you behind the scenes.

Profiles

Okay. This is not new. Almost all modern terminals support the profile feature and yet I think that profiles are the most underrated feature that many people often ignore.

How do they help? Let's say you want to try a new shell like ZSH, you can create a specific profile for it instead of changing your entire system shell. You could also create a dedicated profile for a terminal multiplexer like Zellij.

Ptyxis has excellent support for profile creation and management. You can find these options in the Profile section of the Preferences window.

By default, you will only see an Untitled Profile, but you can use the Add Profile button to create something new. The profile creation dialog is vast and offers many different options.

You can set specific color schemes, choose a custom shell, or even assign a default container to a profile. For example, I can create a profile that automatically opens my Ubuntu Distrobox container every time I launch it.

Once your profiles are set up, you can set one as the default for all future terminals. Alternatively, you can quickly switch between your different profiles using the dropdown menu in the title bar.

Context Awareness

Ptyxis can intelligently identify your current context, such as active root privileged windows or SSH connections. This provides immediate visual feedback about the environment you are working in.

For example, if you run a command using sudo, the title bar of the terminal turns red to notify you of the changed privilege level. If you log in as the root user, the title bar remains red until you finally log out.

Some hidden gems

Apart from the major features I mentioned above, Ptyxis also has a few more tiny functions that deserve attention. The Shortcuts option in the Preferences window allows you to alter existing keyboard combinations or add new ones for various terminal actions.

An advanced addition is the Terminal Inspector. This tool allows you to monitor exactly what is running in the terminal at any given moment, which is a massive advantage for developers.

You can use the inspector to track underlying shell processes, monitor mouse pointer locations, and even peek at OSC (Operating System Command) hyperlinks. It is a specialized feature that makes debugging terminal-based applications much easier than before.

I can see why Ubuntu and Fedora made it default

Ptyxis is a good upgrade from the classic GNOME Terminal. While the container integration might not be for everyone, the app has significantly improved many day-to-day features that improve the overall experience.

What do you think about this new terminal emulator? Will you use it as your main terminal, or are you sticking with your current favorite? Share your opinions in the comments section!

Proton turned a massive chunk of the Steam library into playable Linux titles thanks to Wine as its backbone, and purpose-built Linux gaming consoles are now a product category that actually exists.

We recently covered the Playnix Console, a $1,179 Linux gaming machine from the EmuDeck team that ships with a custom Arch-based OS and boots straight into Steam's gaming mode.

Today, we have a project that lets you run a Linux-powered operating system on Sony's PlayStation 5 console.

Running Linux on a PS5?

Andy Nguyen, the developer behind this, first posted about him running Linux on the PS5 back in March, where he demonstrated playing GTA V Enhanced with Ray Tracing enabled.

More recently, he posted that his project "ps5-linux" was live on GitHub, allowing gamers to turn their PS5 (non-slim) devices into a fully functioning Linux gaming PC.

You see, the PS5 does not run a Linux kernel. Sony's operating system is built on a heavily modified version of FreeBSD, which is a separate Unix-like OS altogether. What ps5-linux delivers is a genuine Linux port, not some tweak on top of what was already there.

In terms of what you actually get, it's a full desktop Linux environment. The PS5's 8-core, 16-thread CPU can be pushed to 3.5 GHz, the GPU to 2.23 GHz, and HDMI video output goes up to 4K at 60Hz. Steam runs on it, providing you with access to PC games and settings that Sony's own OS doesn't offer.

There are some gaps though; the PS5's onboard Bluetooth and networking hardware currently have no Linux driver support. You'll need a USB Ethernet or WLAN adapter for internet access and a Bluetooth dongle if you want to use a DualSense controller wirelessly.

It's also not a persistent install as the console's internal SSD is left completely untouched, so bricking your PS5 isn't really a concern. The trade-off is having to re-run the exploit from scratch on every single reboot.

Want to install it?

It works on PS5 (non-slim) consoles only. Devices running firmware 3.xx (3.00, 3.10, 3.20, 3.21) are supported but without M.2 SSD support. If you are on firmware 4.xx (4.00, 4.02, 4.03, 4.50, 4.51), you get the full package, including the ability to dedicate an M.2 SSD to Linux.

And you can run the following Linux distributions:

• Arch Linux (with Sway)
• Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
• Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
• Alpine Linux 3.21

Apart from that, you will have to follow the instructions closely and make use of the PS5 Linux Image Builder to get a Linux OS installed on your PlayStation 5 device. Andy also has a Discord server set up for people who can do a kernel exploit on his project and help him hack drivers.

Some thoughts

Is it practical? Not really. Using the exploit means starting the whole process over, and Sony will almost certainly DMCA the repos or employ some other legal mechanism at some point.

But someone built a full Linux port for a console that was never meant to run it, got Steam working on it, and put it all out for free. The Linux community has always been more interested in proving something is possible than in whether it's convenient, and this project is exactly that.

As a pilot program, it is going to support maintainers to actively participate in standards development at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

The problem they are trying to tackle here is of access. Participation in bodies like IETF, W3C, and ISO is relatively open, but the reality is different. Attending meetings, keeping up with working group discussions, and contributing meaningfully takes a lot of investment, both in terms of time and money.

Large tech companies are said to be sending people to these meetings as a routine business investment, but most independent open source maintainers simply do not have the time, resources, or sustained capacity to do the same.

Why is this an issue? Maintainers are the people who actually build software on top of these standards, and they know better than anyone where the specs fall apart in practice.

So, wouldn't it be reasonable to directly involve such talent with the standards themselves?

Sovereign Tech Agency ran a survey among maintainers who had worked with such standards and found that many of them relied on the specifications in their day-to-day work. Yet very few could afford to take part in their development in the long term.

During 2026's pilot run, up to ten maintainers will be selected for a cohort running from mid-June 2026 through June 2027. They will need to put in around ten hours a week on standards work at IETF, W3C, or ISO.

Every one of the selected developers will get a monthly stipend between €4,800 and €5,200, with things like SDO participation fees, travel to in-person meetings, and onboarding covered.

How to apply?

To be eligible, you need to be an active maintainer of an open source project whose work is related to standards at IETF, W3C, or ISO in some way. Prior experience with standards bodies is not required, and there are no geographic restrictions either.

The selection panel scores applications on how foundational the relevant standard is, what you are planning to work on, whether your perspective is missing from that working group, and your background as a maintainer.

You should go for it if you meet those requirements.

Applications are open now and close on May 19, 2026, at 11:59 PM CEST. Review and selection will happen during May 2026, with the applicants being notified in June 2026.

The program itself is set to kick off at the end of June 2026. You can also find some additional information on the program's official page.

They say that the main bottleneck in development right now is no longer writing code but the human-led tasks such as deciding on features and verifying the behavior of a piece of software.

They are looking towards agents to handle the implementation, while human contributors focus on ideas, spec work, and review. The developers are now confident enough that Oz-generated code, guided by their own rules and verification processes, puts contributors in a good position to get features right.

If you didn't know, Oz is Warp's cloud agent orchestration platform, announced earlier this year, which lets you run multiple coding agents in parallel in the cloud with full visibility and control over what they're doing.

Announcing this move, Zach Lloyd, the CEO of Warp, added that:

Open-sourcing is fundamentally coming from our desire to build a successful business. We are competing with other highly funded, closed-source competitors, and we think opening and providing the resources for the community to improve Warp is a smart way for us to accelerate product development.

As a refresher, Warp (partner link) is a modern terminal and agentic development environment built in Rust. It runs on Linux, Windows, and macOS, with a block-based command interface and built-in support for AI coding agents like Claude Code, Codex, and Gemini CLI.

Get the sauce

The client codebase is now live at github.com/warpdotdev/warp, and the licensing is split depending on the component. The UI framework, consisting of warpui_core and warpui crates, is under the MIT license, while the rest of the codebase is under AGPLv3.

OpenAI is the founding sponsor of the repository, and the agentic contribution workflows are powered by GPT models. Keep in mind that other coding agents are welcome too, but Warp would rather you use Oz, which already has the right context and checks baked in for this workflow.

Warp is also expanding open source model support with this announcement, bringing in Kimi, MiniMax, and Qwen, plus a new "auto (open)" routing option that selects the best open model for a given task. A settings file for programmatic control and easier portability across devices is shipping too.

Suggested Read 📖: Ubuntu is Betting on AI

According to official estimates, the project has shipped over 140 million updates from 150 vendors and is a requirement for most consumer-facing Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs), and Independent BIOS Vendors (IBVs).

But the project is moving towards a dilemma that most open source projects of its scale eventually face. To be a sustainable undertaking in the long term. 🗓📈

They need support

Right now, the Linux Foundation covers all of LVFS' hosting costs, and Red Hat funds Richard Hughes, the project's only full-time developer. Richard, along with a bunch of part-time contributors, keep over 20,000 firmware files in circulation.

Their sustainability plan flags some key issues that come with being this understaffed.

The project has no dedicated security response team, its sole maintainer has no backup, and the volume of critical work keeps growing with no one new stepping in to help.

Security vulnerabilities get handled on a best-effort basis (yikes ☠️), and very few companies are supporting fwupd core or the LVFS web service. You could call it a tragedy of the commons where everyone depends on it, but almost no one is paying for it.

The plan was published in August 2025, and LVFS has been rolling out restrictions in phases since then. April 2025 already brought in fair-use download utilization graphs to vendor pages. Fair use upload tracking came in July, and sponsorship tiers opened up in August 2025.

The April 2026 phase kicked in at the start of this month and has been live for nearly four weeks now. Any firmware page where a vendor is crossing 50,000 monthly downloads now shows an overquota warning.

Vendors below the "Startup" sponsorship level have also lost access to detailed per-firmware analytics. In August, custom LVFS API access will be cut for non-Startup vendors, with automated upload limits following in December.

How can you help?

LVFS is looking for vendors who use its infrastructure to pitch in. Presently, only two hold Startup sponsor status: Framework Computer and the Open Source Firmware Foundation.

What they actually need is either two full-time software engineers or $400,000 to fund the hires through the Linux Foundation, plus a separate $30,000 for hosting. The sponsorship tiers are as follows:

• Premier: $100,000 per year
• Startup: $10,000 per year (under 99 employees)
• Associate: Free, but only available to registered non-profits, academic institutions, and government entities.

Both Premier and Startup tiers require an LF Silver Membership (page 28) on top of the listed fees. There is no free option for commercial hardware vendors. Alternatively, vendors can contribute a full-time engineer to work on LVFS or fwupd directly.

Suggested Read 📖: Will You Pay $119 For An Open Source KVM?

As to why they get targeted, their attack surface is wide, maintainer bandwidth is limited, and one bad package can quietly reach thousands of users before anyone even notices.

When something slips through, developers have to yank releases, rotate credentials, and piece together what got out.

We now have a similar situation where Elementary Data's OSS Python CLI was compromised. And if you had the affected version installed, then you have some cleanup to do.

How it happened

The attack came down to a flaw in one of Elementary's GitHub Actions workflows. It was set up in a way where text from a PR comment could be passed directly into a shell command, so whatever the comment said, the runner would execute it.

At 22:10 UTC on April 24, the attacker posted a malicious comment on a pull request. The workflow ran it as code, handing over access to the runner's secrets, including the PyPI publish token and the GITHUB_TOKEN.

With those in hand, they created the branches and pull requests needed to stage a release, then kicked off Elementary's release workflow. By 22:20 UTC, elementary-data 0.23.3 was live on PyPI. A malicious Docker image was pushed four minutes later.

Who got hit

Only users who installed elementary-data 0.23.3 (now removed) from PyPI are affected, as well as anyone who pulled the compromised Docker image during the attack window.

However, Elementary Cloud is unaffected, the Elementary dbt package is unaffected, and every other version of the CLI is unaffected. That said, if you were running 0.23.3, the exposure is serious. The malware had access to anything the environment could reach.

The remedy

First check your installed version first:

pip show elementary-data | grep Version

If it shows 0.23.3, get rid of it and install the clean version:

pip uninstall elementary-data

pip install elementary-data==0.23.4

Update your requirements files and lockfiles to reflect that too.

You should also check for a marker file the malware leaves behind. If it's there, the payload ran on that machine:

• Linux/macOS: /tmp/.trinny-security-update
• Windows: %TEMP%\.trinny-security-update

If you find it, rotate every credential that environment had access to, and get your security team looking for any suspicious activity on those credentials.

On their end, Elementary has already pulled 0.23.3 from PyPI, GitHub, and the Docker registry on April 25.

They also decommissioned the compromised workflow, audited the rest of their GitHub Actions for the same type of vulnerability, regenerated all affected secrets, and moved to OIDC authentication.

They are currently working with an Israeli cybersecurity firm to conduct an investigation and step up their protection against such attacks going forward.

Rather than leave the community without a home, Red Hat partnered with contributors to launch Fedora as an open, community-driven distribution that would push new technologies forward.

That upstream-first philosophy has held ever since. Fedora consistently ships things before most other distributions dare to, from Wayland adoption to newer compiler toolchains, often serving as the real-world test bed for what eventually becomes Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Of course it is not limited to that; its various flavors serve all kinds of users, starting from desktop users to server administrators, hobbyist tinkerers, and anyone running containerized workloads at scale.

Now, to the topic at hand, a new Fedora release has landed, and as always, we must check out what it offers.

⭐ Fedora 44: What's New?

The release ships with Linux kernel 6.19, which introduces expanded hardware support, and some noteworthy improvements for gaming that we will talk about later. Both desktop variants, Workstation and KDE Plasma Desktop, arrive with fresh wallpapers, as is tradition with every Fedora release.

Workstation gets GNOME 50, which finalizes the removal of X11 from GDM and promotes variable refresh rate and fractional scaling to stable status. KDE Plasma Desktop bumps up to Plasma 6.6, which introduces a post-install setup wizard and swaps out SDDM for the new Plasma Login Manager as the default across all KDE variants.

Beyond the desktops, this release brings meaningful improvements to gaming through the NTSYNC kernel module, a reworked Games Lab spin, a freshly updated GNU toolchain, and a range of language runtime upgrades.

There's quite a bit packed in here! 😃

GNOME 50

GNOME 50 is the flagship desktop for Fedora Workstation 44, and it comes with a major change that has been a long time coming. X11 has been fully removed from GDM. The plan was originally to do this in GNOME 49, but a last-minute bug had caused it to be pulled back.

Then there are the two features, variable refresh rate and fractional scaling, that have been sitting behind experimental flags for an awkwardly long time are now stable. If you have a high refresh rate display and have been holding off, then this Fedora release is the right time to try them out.

Additionally, the Files app (Nautilus) picks up case-insensitive path completion in the location bar and switches to GNOME's sandboxed Glycin library for more efficient loading of image thumbnails.

KDE Plasma 6.6

KDE Plasma 6.6 powers Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop 44 in this release, with improvements like OCR support in Spectacle, the screenshot tool. You can now pull text directly out of a screenshot, which can be a genuinely useful thing to have when you are copying error messages or text from images.

Accessibility sees a solid round of additions too. There is a new on-screen keyboard called Plasma Keyboard, a grayscale filter in the Color Blindness Correction settings, and the Zoom and Magnifier tool gains a new tracking mode that keeps the pointer centered.

The release also adds the ability to save your current desktop layout as a custom global theme, ambient light sensor support for automatic brightness adjustment, and Wi-Fi QR code scanning from the system tray's Networks widget.

But wait, there are more KDE-related changes!

All Fedora KDE variants now include Plasma Setup, a post-install wizard that handles account creation and initial configuration separately from the OS installer, and Anaconda (the installer) has been updated to skip the setup stages that would otherwise overlap with it.

The other notable change for KDE users is the switch from SDDM to Plasma Login Manager (PLM) as the login manager, making Fedora 44 the first distribution to ship it by default.

Gaming is Better Now

Installing Wine, Steam, or open source game launchers (e.g., Lutris and Heroic Games Launcher) on Fedora 44 now quietly pulls in the NTSYNC kernel module as a recommended dependency. NTSYNC handles thread synchronization at the kernel level, which takes a chunk of work off Wine and Proton's plate.

The result is better Windows game (and software) compatibility and a performance bump in many titles, with no configuration work required from your side.

The Games Lab spin also gets a proper refresh. Xfce is out, KDE Plasma is in, specifically for the better Wayland support it brings to gaming workloads.

If you didn't know, this is one of Fedora's curated offerings that brings together a decent spread of open source games across genres like turn-based strategy, puzzles, and first-person shooters.

Toolchain Upgrades

Fedora 44 also brings a pack of toolchain and language runtime updates, keeping it well-positioned as a development platform:

• PHP 8.5
• LLVM 22
• CMake 4.0
• Golang 1.26
• Ansible 13 (Core 2.20)
• Ruby 4.0 (up from Ruby 3.4 in Fedora 43).
• MariaDB 11.8 as the new distribution default (up from 10.11).
• GNU Toolchain: GCC 16.1, glibc 2.43, binutils 2.46, gdb 16.3.

📥 Download or upgrade to Fedora 44

This release of Fedora is offered for Workstation, KDE Plasma Desktop, Server, IoT, and the various spins. You can either pick a relevant ISO from one of those or visit the official website for an overview of this release.

Existing Fedora users can upgrade through their software center. Open Software (Workstation) or Discover (KDE Plasma) and look for the upgrade notification banner to begin the process.

Users of other Fedora spins need to upgrade using DNF. We have a dedicated Fedora upgrade guide to help you.

For as long as I remember, Linux has always had a set of default folders under the home directory. Usually they are Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos and Downloads. Templates, Desktop and Public folders are also there.

Now we have a new addition in the form of "Projects".

Projects directory for your ...well...projects

The purpose of the Projects directory is simple. It gives you a place to keep your project files, the kind of files that do not necessarily go in Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos. For example, your coding projects, your 3D printing and CAD projects etc.

Why it is more than 'just another directory'

The addition of a standard Projects directory is not just about keeping your home folder organized. It has bigger implications.

For starters, it gives applications a predictable place to store project-related files. Just like image-related apps often default to the Pictures folder and video tools save into Videos, development tools, CAD software, hardware design suites applications could use Projects as their natural default.

This can also improve interoperability between tools. An IDE could offer to create repositories in Projects by default. Build tools could assume a sensible project workspace, and installation guides or README instructions could refer to a common location instead of telling users to create arbitrary folders like ~/dev, ~/code, or ~/projects.

Sandboxed applications such as Flatpak apps may also benefit because a standardized location is easier to recognize and grant permissions for.

Not to forget, backup tools, synchronization services could treat the Projects directory as a meaningful category of data, same as Documents or Pictures.

In other words, this is not 'just another directory'. It provides better desktop workflows. A small standardization like this may quietly improve usability across the Linux desktop over time.

This was an 11-year-old "request"

And interestingly, this isn’t a brand new idea. The concept has existed for over a decade.

Actually, the request to include a standard Projects directory was created in 2014. The reasoning from the original request still holds up today:

Currently XDG user dirs does not specify a directory for environments of projects. For software projects these usually include source code, version control, compiled binaries, test artefacts and downloaded dependencies. As they are much more than downloads and usually kept indefinitely, they do not fit in there. The benefit of defining a projects folder would be that when writing a README or install script for a project, one could automatically download the source to the user defined location, set up the build environment and install from there.

Like several instances in the recent past, GNOME/Freedesktop/KDE are paying attention to decades-old requests and implementing some of them.

The road ahead for this change

This new standard directory change came with the release of xdg-user-dirs version 0.20. As I mentioned earlier, people using rolling release distros might already have this change. You can see a screenshot of EndeavorOS:

As GNOME contributor Matthias notes, support for GLib will be added in the coming months so that Flatpak, desktops and applications can make use of the Projects directory.

I am looking forward to it. You?

I have always created a dev directory in my home directory. This is where my coding related project files are located. It's better than keeping them under Documents because technically, these are not documents.

I think that I am not the only one who does this. I guess most of us have a projects or dev directory under Home.

Including a standard Projects directory is a good move. Not only does it remove the guesswork about where to keep such files, various applications can also take advantage of this new directory.

It may look like a small addition, but standardizing something many Linux users already do can improve workflows, application behavior, and even documentation over time. For a simple extra folder, “Projects” could have surprisingly large impact.

On the user side, tools like Ollama and LM Studio have made it surprisingly straightforward to pull open-weight models and run them locally without requiring a cloud subscription.

For enterprises, solutions like RHEL AI and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server have been catering to organizations that want AI woven into their infrastructure.

Now, it looks like Canonical is jumping onto the bandwagon, as Ubuntu moves towards AI, and before you start calling it Ubuslop or something along those lines, understand how they are going about this.

What's happening?

Jon Seager, VP of Engineering at Canonical, has published a post on Ubuntu Discourse laying out the company's AI roadmap. The short version is that AI is coming to Ubuntu; it will be local-first, and it will be built around open-weight models and open source tooling.

He laid out a framework distinguishing between two kinds of AI features, implicit and explicit. Implicit AI is about making existing OS features smarter in the background without requiring users to learn anything new or interact with anything that looks like AI.

He gave the examples of speech-to-text and text-to-speech, both of which can be improved using local inference with open source inference tools and open weight models, running entirely on-device.

Explicit AI features are a different story. These are the more obviously AI-centric, agentic workflows that could automate troubleshooting, create documents or applications, and run scheduled maintenance on a fleet of machines.

Jon also gave everyone a look at what it could look like in practice:

Imagine being able to ask your Linux machine to troubleshoot a Wi-Fi connection issue, or to stand up an open source software forge that’s pre-configured, secured, and reachable over TLS.

One could easily imagine using such a capability as a gateway for controlling your Linux machine from other devices through a variety of mediums - be that a mobile app, text messaging, voice commands or otherwise.

The delivery mechanism for all of this is inference snaps. Rather than asking users to wrangle separate tools, sift through Hugging Face, and figure out which model format works on their hardware, Canonical wants a simple snap install to handle everything, with hardware-optimized builds served based on your silicon.

And since snaps carry the same confinement rules as everything else in the ecosystem, the models are sandboxed and cannot freely reach into your files or data.

Makes sense, I guess?

The local inference approach is what makes this worth paying attention to. The default is not a cloud call to some API that logs your prompts and charges you per token. It runs on your hardware, stays there, and does not require signing up for anything.

Of course, cloud and external services are still an option, but only as a fallback for people who specifically need them, not the assumed path. That is a bigger deal than it sounds, btw.

Most AI integration announcements from Big Tech players start from the opposite assumption—cloud first, local maybe someday.

Should you be worried?

When Linux and AI are mentioned in the same breath, your mind might naturally draw a comparison to Microsoft's infamous Copilot offering, where the default experience is cloud, the model is proprietary, and half the features quietly require a Microsoft account.

What Jon is proposing keeps the user-facing, agentic stuff strictly opt-in. The implicit features would run quietly in the background and improve things you already use. Nobody is bolting a chatbot sidebar into GNOME and calling it a "productivity feature."

But, as things go with roadmaps, decisions shift under pressure and user expectations change over time. I suggest keeping a close watch on how things develop for the rest of the year.

Azure Linux, which longtime followers of the Linux space may know better as CBL-Mariner, has been Microsoft's internal Linux OS powering Azure services, WSL, Azure Local, and more since 2020.

It is already RPM-based, so a move toward Fedora would not be a complete departure from its existing foundation, but it would represent a serious overhaul.

It all came to light from the recent Fedora ELN SIG meeting on April 21. During a discussion about a proposed Fedora change to build x86-64-v3 packages for Fedora 45, it was pointed out that Microsoft is one of the driving forces behind this proposal.

The change proposal was put forward jointly by Kyle Gospodnetich, a Linux engineer at Microsoft, alongside Lleyton Gray and Owen Zimmerman of Fyra Labs. Microsoft's interest appears to be tied to Azure Linux's need for x86-64-v3 performance gains, which is part of what is driving the rebase idea.

Fyra Labs, which is reportedly launching its own cloud service and wants x86-64-v3 support for Fedora and Ultramarine Linux, is also co-authoring the proposal.

It is worth noting that the x86-64-v3 change proposal still needs to be approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) before anything moves forward.

There had also been talk of forking the whole distribution to achieve this, but Microsoft was steered toward working within the Fedora ecosystem instead.

On the surface, all of this sounds promising. As a Redditor pointed out, since Fedora is effectively upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the move makes logical sense on paper.

That said, Microsoft has a history of open source commitments that lose steam over time. If they can properly follow through here, contribute meaningfully to Fedora, and not treat it as a one-way resource tap, this could genuinely be good for the ecosystem.

All of that is a big if, but it is worth watching closely.

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The message has been clear ever since they put the project in maintenance mode.

MinIO is one of the most widely used self-hosted object storage solutions out there. It is S3-compatible, lightweight, and runs as a single binary, integrating with pretty much everything in the cloud-native stack.

It's the kind of project you deploy once and forget about. Unless something breaks or a massive shift happens, like the move away from open source. Then you're left scrambling for alternatives.

How we got here

This didn't happen overnight. MinIO has been walking away from its open source community for well over a year.

It started in May 2025, when MinIO shipped a breaking release that removed most management features from the community edition's web UI, along with external IDP logins via LDAP and OIDC, moving them to their enterprise product.

Then in October 2025, MinIO stopped publishing Docker images and pre-built binaries for the community edition entirely. Users who needed to patch a CVE that dropped the same month couldn't just pull an updated image and had to build from source instead.

By December 3, 2025, the other shoe dropped when Harshavardhana, the co-founder of MinIO, pushed a commit to the repo's README, declaring maintenance mode (linked earlier).

And then the repo was first archived in February 2026 and again in April 2026.

What replaces it

If you're running MinIO in production today, your existing deployment still works. But you are on software that will get no new features, no compatibility updates, and no guaranteed security patches.

MinIO's official stance is to redirect people towards their proprietary AIStor solution, but that's a hard pass for anyone who prefers to stay open source. You don't need to go down that path.

Here are the three open source alternatives worth looking at. 👇

SeaweedFS

SeaweedFS is a distributed storage system written in Go, built around Facebook's Haystack architecture and a few other systems. It handles S3-compatible object storage alongside blobs and files.

Its main advantage is its O(1) disk seek time that performs regardless of how many objects you store, making it particularly strong when dealing with billions of small files.

Before you ask, it is Apache 2.0-licensed, production-ready, and the closest thing to a drop-in MinIO replacement available right now.

Garage

Garage is a Rust-based object storage system built by Deuxfleurs, a French small-scale self-hosting service provider. It's designed specifically for geo-distributed deployments on modest hardware; think multiple physical locations rather than a single high-performance data center.

It is small enough to run on various hardware, is simple to operate, and is well-suited for self-hosters and small organizations running storage across multiple physical locations. Not only that, but it is available under the AGPLv3 license.

RustFS

RustFS is the newest player in this space, written in Rust and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It positions itself as a direct MinIO successor, claims 2.3x faster performance than MinIO for small object payloads, includes a management console out of the box, and supports migration from existing MinIO deployments.

The catch here is that it's still in alpha. Still worth keeping on your radar if you are planning a migration over the coming months, but you could also take a gamble on it if you like taking risks.

In the end, MinIO's pivot to enterprise-only commercial software is its call to make. The open source community, for its part, is moving on.

However, an interesting addition had gone mostly unnoticed until now.

Firefox has Some Brave in it now

Shivan Kaul Sahib, the VP of Privacy and Security at Brave, has put out a blog post about something that didn't make it into the Firefox 149 release notes at all. The browser now ships adblock-rust, Brave's open source Rust-based ad and tracker blocking engine.

The change landed via Bugzilla Bug 2013888, which was filed and handled by Mozilla engineer Benjamin VanderSloot. The bug is titled "Add a prototype rich content blocking engine," and keeps the engine disabled by default with no user interface or filter lists included.

For informational purposes, adblock-rust is the engine behind Brave's native content blocker (aka ad blocker). It is written in Rust and licensed under MPL-2.0, handling network request blocking, cosmetic filtering, and features a uBlock Origin-compatible filter list syntax.

Shivan also mentions that Waterfox, the popular Firefox fork, has adopted adblock-rust, building directly upon Firefox's own implementation.

Want to test it?

Before starting, head to Enhanced Tracking Protection's shield icon in the address bar and turn it off for the website you will be testing this with. This way, adblock-rust is doing the work, not Firefox's existing feature.

Now open a new tab and go to about:config. Accept the warning when it shows up. Search for privacy.trackingprotection.content.protection.enabled and set it to "true" by clicking on the toggle. 👇

Next, search for privacy.trackingprotection.content.protection.test_list_urls, click on the "Edit" button, and paste the following value to add the EasyList and EasyPrivacy filter lists to Firefox:

https://easylist.to/easylist/easylist.txt|https://easylist.to/easylist/easyprivacy.txt

Remember to click on the blue-colored "Save" button before moving on.

Now visit a site with known ads, like Yahoo (as I did above). If it's working, ad slots will still render in the page layout, but the actual ad content will be blocked. In my test, the banner on Yahoo came up showing only the text "Advertisement" with the advert bit stripped out.

Take a KVM-over-IP device, for instance; it operates independently of the target machine's OS and network stack, letting you reach a system that is stuck in BIOS, frozen mid-boot, or completely offline.

That kind of access is crucial, and an open source device that delivers it without breaking the bank is rarer still. The LeafKVM is trying to be just that.

📝 LeafKVM: Key Specifications

Packed inside a CNC-milled aluminum enclosure, which also doubles as a passive cooling heatsink, the LeafKVM is powered by a Rockchip RV1126B SoC with a quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU and 512 MB of DDR3 RAM. Video capture is handled by a Lontium LT6911C CSI video bridge, and storage comes via a microSD slot.

There's also a 2.4-inch IPS capacitive touchscreen, which lets you configure networking, preview the HDMI input, manage USB emulation, and check device status without needing a separate computer.

For the software, it runs a clean Buildroot 2026.02 LTS-based Linux system, with a Rust backend handling everything from the video pipeline to networking and USB emulation.

The touchscreen UI is built on Slint, and the web frontend is a GPL-2.0 fork of the JetKVM project. OTA firmware updates are a few clicks away from the web dashboard and Tailscale VPN integration is also on board.

Since the LeafKVM presents itself as a standard USB keyboard, mouse, and mass storage device to the target machine, it works with pretty much anything that supports those, including Linux, Windows, macOS, BSD, and BIOS/UEFI screens.

You don't need to bother with drivers, as it is all plug-and-play! 🚀

The obvious audience for this device are IT engineers and server operators who want hands-off management after a one-time physical setup.

Robotics and embedded developers working with headless hardware can get a lot out of it too, since it removes the need to haul a monitor and keyboard to wherever the hardware lives.

And since the LeafKVM captures and streams HDMI video with under 100 ms latency at up to 4K/30fps or 1080p/90fps, it also works as a wireless video relay for camera setups where you want to preview a feed remotely on a tablet or laptop.

As for the ports and other doodads, they include:

• Ports: 1× HDMI (up to 4K@30fps), 2× USB Type-C, and 1× USB Type-A.
• Networking: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi 5 dual-band (433 Mbps), and 100 Mbps RJ45 Ethernet (with IEEE 802.3af PoE support).
• Weight: 195 g (6.9 Oz)
• Size: 90 × 65 × 25 mm (3.54 × 2.56 × 0.98 in)
• Power: USB Type‑C: 5 V / 1 A (both ports) and PoE (IEEE 802.3af 37-57 V)

Get Yours

At a price tag of $119, the LeafKVM is available on Crowd Supply, with units shipping mid-January 2027 if the funding goal is reached. Keep in mind that while shipping is free for buyers in the U.S., the rest of us will have to fork over an additional $12.

As of writing, 82%, that is, $8,222 of the $10,000 goal, had been reached thanks to 36 backers. With 40+ days remaining, I am sure that they will reach the funding goal sooner than later.

If you are looking for the schematics or the source code for the software, you can keep an eye out on the project's GitHub. It is set to host the full firmware source, build recipes, and hardware schematics before units ship.

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