Late Night Linux

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

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

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

Arduino’s new ToS has some people worried, some projects are starting to move away from GitHub for technical reasons, Raspberry Pi has a new model and prices are going up because of RAM costs, great news for OpenPrinting, old text adventure games get open source, and Joe’s foldable phone breaks in an unexpected way. News Arduino’s new terms of service worries hobbyists ahead of Qualcomm acquisition Migrating from GitHub to Codeberg Migrating Dillo from GitHub 1GB Raspberry Pi 5 now available at $45, and memory-driven price rises Sovereign Tech Agency is investing in OpenPrinting Preserving code that shaped generations: Zork I, II, and III go Open Source 1Password Extended Access Management Take the first step to better security by securing your team’s credentials. Find out more at 1password.com/latenightlinux and start securing every login. 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

KDE Plasma is finally moving on from X11, Tuxedo Computers abandons their Arm laptop project, Mozilla completely loses the room, but there might be a glimmer of hope. News Going all-in on a Wayland future Help us reach the inflection point Discontinuation of ARM Notebook with Snapdragon X Elite SoC Linux Device Trees For Cancelled Products? Don’t “Waste Time” Rewiring Mozilla: Doing for AI what we did for the web Mozilla’s ‘Rewiring’ to AI – Saving the Web or Saving Itself? Servo Announces Sponsorship Tiers To Get More Organizations Backing This Browser Engine 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