Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma. And it’s going to be a big one, folks! This week, a familiar pattern played out: people upgraded to Plasma 6.8 and found all the bugs that nobody reported during the beta period, and the Plasma team worked incredibly hard to fix them! You’ll see the result below: tons of bug fixes.

Paywall?

What is the big chasmic difference?

Hey everyone,

I recently bought a brand new UPS for my local Linux desktop setup, and what should have been a straightforward afternoon project turned into an absolute nightmare of text files and terminal debugging. I decided to use Network UPS Tools (NUT), but as a desktop user with a single, locally connected USB unit, the onboarding friction was incredibly frustrating:

• Just trying to figure out which packages to install (nut, nut-client, usbhid-ups, upsd) felt fragmented.
• The official documentation is dense and heavily geared toward massive, multi-node enterprise network topographies rather than a single local workstation.
• I kept running into silent connection failures, driver mismatch errors, and permission blocks under /etc/nut/ that took hours to track down because there wasn't an easy way to diagnose what was actually failing.

Once I finally got the daemons running, I ran into my next disappointment: the lack of good, modern desktop GUI tools. The official legacy Python/GTK apps look like they were built in the 90s, and the modern web-based alternatives (like PeaNUT or Nutify) are strictly read-only monitoring dashboards. They expect you to do all the heavy configuration lifting in the CLI before you ever launch them. I originally sat down and started writing a tool just to solve my own frustration, but after getting it working, I realized it could be genuinely useful for a lot of people in the same boat.

I call it Voltwise (tentative name). It’s a native cross-platform desktop application built using .NET and Avalonia UI. Unlike read-only dashboards, it features a complete setup and diagnostic wizard designed specifically for single, locally connected UPS hardware. It acts as an automated guide through the exact pipeline I struggled with: it auto-discovers USB hardware IDs, maps drivers, handles configuration formatting, audits folder permissions, and validates live communication state rules. It handles on-demand system elevation securely and natively using pkexec (PolKit), meaning the app runs safely in user space and only requests root authentication when actively writing files to /etc/nut/.

Here is how it currently looks (I'm still actively refining and adding features))

The setup and diagnostic wizard:

The live monitoring screen (Completely customizable):

Events:

UPS Device settings:

Raw configuration file editing:

Here is the catch, and why I’m posting here before releasing it:

I am a solo dev, and a very large portion of this application was developed with heavy generative AI assistance to handle cross-platform boilerplate, XAML layout structures, and environmental path mapping. I manually architected the security boundaries, audited every line of code, and verified all the hardware loops against my physical desktop, but the AI footprint is undeniably there.

Given the current anti-AI climate, I’m feeling a bit hesitant. I’m strongly considering releasing the project under the MIT License so the homelab and Linux desktop community can freely use, fork, or dissect it. However, I’m trying to gauge if it is actually worth the hassle of dealing with the inevitable internet backlash from people who will instantly write it off as "AI slop" without looking at the functionality or utility.

• Would a streamlined, local-only native desktop NUT setup wizard like this be helpful to you?
• Is an MIT release the right path forward here?
• Should I bother putting this on GitHub, or is the AI-assisted development stigma going to completely bury a functional utility?

Appreciate any honest thoughts or feedback!

Hello everyone. I'm getting a hard time with Qualcomm Atheros AR8151 onboard LAN with Debian. It usually drops to 100Mb/s and freezes the network altogether

Settings for enp1s0: Supported ports: [ TP ] Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 1000baseT/Full Supported pause frame use: No Supports auto-negotiation: Yes Supported FEC modes: Not reported Advertised link modes: Not reported Advertised pause frame use: No Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes Advertised FEC modes: Not reported Speed: 100Mb/s Duplex: Full Auto-negotiation: on Port: Twisted Pair PHYAD: 0 Transceiver: internal MDI-X: Unknown Supports Wake-on: pg Wake-on: d Current message level: 0x0000003f (63) drv probe link timer ifdown ifup Link detected: yes [ 3.004591] atl1c 0000:01:00.0 enp1s0: renamed from eth0 [ 37.754972] atl1c 0000:01:00.0: atl1c: enp1s0 NIC Link is Up<100 Mbps Full Duplex> [ 45.071291] atl1c 0000:01:00.0: atl1c: enp1s0 NIC Link is Up<100 Mbps Full Duplex> [ 45.799689] atl1c 0000:01:00.0: atl1c: enp1s0 NIC Link is Up<100 Mbps Full Duplex> any tips of what can be done around here? I'm using kernel 6.12.111+deb13-amd64

There appears to be a few bad actors in the Lemmy community spreading ragebait for personal gain

In fact, the same mechanisms added at the beginning to catch bad human written code are the exact same that catch bad AI code

1. No, the Linux kernel won't use AI to auto approve code for inclusion. And no plans to do so
2. The Kernel actually has a huge number of maintainers. As part of the process, all patches are reviewed by a human who provide feedback as part of the process, and patches get bounced back and forth multiple time.
3. Patches don't just magically go straight to master. The maintainers generally have their own branches where it goes to, then it goes to staging trees like Linux-Next. It goes through many eyes, and many tests by the end. The idea that AI code is overrunning the kernel is rediculous
4. Maintainers also check that the code meets coding guidelines and is written properly, and solves the problem they are trying to solve. Yes, they also ensure the code isn't slop
5. LLM's though might be used to identify obvious problems (bugs / coding guideline issues) with the code. These don't generate "slop" just find issues
6. The only thing that matters is the human who submitted the code, as they should be checking the code submitted anyway (including LLM generated code).

Writing bad code isn't something new, and isn't unique to LLM's. Coders (and it seems some "journalists") have been writing slop since computers were invented.

The process hasn't gotten less stringent (probably even MORE stringent as there is an additional set of robotic eyes that can also check), and the same mechanisms that were put in place to catch badly written code 10 years ago, are still there now

Hi. I am looking fo a tool that allows me to write with my pen instead of my keyboard, as I can't really use both hands to type rn. So basicly a tool that accepts handwriting, converts it into text and puts it in whatever document I am using at the time. I am not sure what to search for/ how these tools are called. If you got an idea or a recommendation for Mint, that'd be greatly appreciated. Thx :)

EDIT: I have a drawing tablet hooked up to my PC and am looking for software that turns my handwriting into common text, like the handwriting tool in windows does

"Torvalds said that the time has come to make it harder for new people to contribute code to the kernel. People like Kroah-Hartman have spent years trying to teach people how to contribute; it is time to stop doing that, he said."

https://lwn.net/Articles/1099594/

It is difficult to summarize exactly how Linus got to this point. Most of the discussion at this years Summit appears to have been related to AI assisted code and how the maintainers are dealing with the increase in code submissions to LKML. Many of the maintainers expressed varying levels of frustration with AI assisted drive-by code submissions. Linus' train of thought is that they make it intentionally more difficult for humans to contribute. A later suggestion of his was to create an AGENTS. md that makes generating kernel code expensive in compute and token time.

A curated collection of technical resources for GNU/Linux users and system administrators: Manuals, books...

Linux won the world. Did Tanenbaum still win the argument? 30 years of containers, VMs and sandboxes are walls around a kernel with none inside. Team Torvalds or Team Tanenbaum?

So I’ve got a living room computer running Cachy OS/Plasma Bigscreen that has replaced my Xbox. (I’m calling it the Xbox None)

It’s an old Dell Optiplex I picked up for cheap - runs indie titles pretty well and I can stream from my main PC.

Anyway, that’s not why I’m posting..

I can’t seem to find a way to get it to turn the TV on and off when it goes to sleep and wake up. Can anyone help?

Edit: thanks for the answers! I don’t want to buy an adapter so I guess I’ll live with having to use the remote. 🤷‍♂️ I am going to see if the TV settings can help me out though.

Linux Networking Diverts 50+ Fixes To Next Kernel, Still Bombarded With AI Fueled Churn

RyanL Bitwarden Employee

Hello everyone!

Starting in the next release, the Bitwarden apps published to the various stores will be the commercially licensed builds. No action is needed, and the apps will work exactly as they do today.

Bitwarden remains committed to open source security and transparency
The GPLv3 OSS licensed version continues to be updated and published on GitHub
All current features are available in both versions
License details are on GitHub
Bitwarden remains committed to a robust, free forever plan for everyone

If you have any questions, please ask them in this thread. Thanks all!

EDIT:

Bitwarden is not going closed-source
You can still fork Bitwarden
No change to self-hosting, the licensing change affects those who are repackaging and reselling Bitwarden
The free plan is here to stay permanently

Python 3.15.0 has been released, bringing new features and improvements to the language.

Ubuntu 26.10 brings official desktop images for RISC-V hardware, with experimental Xubuntu Minimal images for testing in virtual machines.

The DesktopEditors github repo appears to have actual releases now, with multiple download options for various Linux distros, plus Windows and MacOS. While some refinement may still be needed, this represents a usable release without requiring manual building.

Steam Beta now defaults non-Steam Windows binaries to using Proton for improved compatibility on Linux systems.

Get rich, dudes.

Flathub has reversed its previous ban on AI-generated content, though developers must still explicitly state when they used AI tools. This policy shift impacts transparency requirements for open-source projects hosted on the platform.