A recent development in the VirtualBox source tree introduces an early but usable KVM backend for Linux hosts. According to a comment by contributor Alexander Eichner, the new backend is now in a workable state, or at least when running modern guest operating systems. Older or more unusual guests, such as DOS, have not yet been tested.

And if you’re wondering what benefits this brings, the main one is that having a KVM backend allows VirtualBox to continue running virtual machines even when its own kernel modules (vboxdrv, vboxnetflt, vboxnetflt, vboxnetflt) cannot be loaded.

This is especially relevant on modern Linux systems, where Secure Boot, kernel hardening, or distribution-specific policies can block third-party kernel drivers. In such cases, VirtualBox will now automatically fall back to using KVM if it is available on the host system.

“Hey, man, is that GNU/Linux on your computer?”, “Yes.”, “Great, but I use Microsoft Windows.” You get the idea. A “heavy” academic exchange like that would sound comical, to say the least. And that’s exactly the point of this article. One of the long-running debates in the Linux ecosystem: whether the system should be called GNU/Linux or simply Linux.

First, let’s start with the dry technical facts, which you’ve probably heard a hundred times already, but they’re still worth mentioning here. Strictly speaking, Linux refers only to a single component of the operating system, namely the kernel written by Linus Torvalds. That’s it. It’s no coincidence that, if you’ve noticed, most distributions name their kernel packages accordingly, following conventions like linux-6.18.2.x64.

Today, the KDE Project released KDE Gear 25.12.2 as the second maintenance update to the latest KDE Gear 25.12 series of this collection of open-source applications for the KDE ecosystem and other platforms.

I am thinking of switching from Fedora 43 KDE to EndeavourOS during the holidays, mostly to try out new stuff, it being Arch-based and rolling release. It would also give me an excuse to finally overwrite my dual boot Windows partition that I now never use (initially set up for playing Minecraft Bedrock with my little brother, but with a PaperMC server w/ Geyser and Floodgate, Windows is no longer necessary). This would be my first "distro hop" (technically I switched from GNOME to KDE, but that's not really a distro hop since I didn't reinstall the whole OS), so I have a few questions.

1. I have a self-hosted Nextcloud, so how do I make sure that my files will sync properly after I hop? (i.e. avoiding reuploading the same files twice when I set it up in EndeavourOS, not losing any of my files) Similar question on Forgejo/Codeberg and git, does it automagically figure out where the remotes are, or is there something else I have to do?

2. How do I properly move program data/settings/etc? (e.g. default templates for LibreOffice, preferences in Godot, Minecraft worlds and mods installed with Prism Launcher) I understand that some programs have some of that built-in (see settings json in VSCodium, exporting bookmarks from Firefox/using Mozilla account to sync settings) but many programs don't have that functionality.

3. I am currently very happy with KDE Plasma. I do have to ask, is there another option aside from KDE that is equally or more customisable? Or would it be better to stick with KDE for better support, compatibility, etc.?

4. Are there any Arch/EndeavourOS-specific quirks that I need to know before making the move?

5. Finally, does anyone have any tips for distro-hopping? That is, how do I not screw up and lose all my data? I do know that I have to back up all my files before doing this (obviously) in multiple locations.

edit: I have tested a bit in a live boot version of EndeavourOS, and it seems that everything works. Trackpad, Bluetooth, WiFi, sound, etc. all work. One thing I found weird was scaling didn't work (is that just a live boot thing?). Another thing, EndeavourOS uses X11 rather than Wayland like on Fedora. Will that break any programs? (probably not, usually it's the inverse, but just checking)

Starting from version 2026.1, IntelliJ-based IDEs will run natively on Wayland in supported desktop configurations. This follows Wayland’s ascendance to the position of primary display server across contemporary Linux distributions.

By making this change in our EAP releases first, we hope to be able to give more Linux users the opportunity to try the native Wayland mode in their IDE, gather their feedback, and prepare more comprehensively for the general rollout in one of the upcoming major versions.

RE: https://mastodon.uno/@esseci77/116018513557396185

@linux@programming.dev @ufficiozero @linux @linux@lemmy.ml @osi

I've been having a big think over Linux distros. See, I've been looking back at my still-new Linux experience of nine months, and wondering how my own journey can help other people get started with FOSS operating systems. Whenever the topic of a Windows refugee-friendly OS came up, I would recommend Linux Mint because, first, it's the one everyone says, and second, it was the Linux OS that I started with, fresh off Windows.

I always follow that up with a comment about how you don't have to stick with Linux Mint if you don't want to. You can do what I did, which is to dip your toe into the Linux distro water and find something that suits you better. But if I'm setting up Linux Mint as "my first Linux distro," why not just skip the middleman and get right into the distros that have a bit more meat on them?

I recently switched from Windows to Linux and couldn't find a music player that suited my taste. I searched for weeks with no luck. Then I stumbled upon a YouTube video where someone was 'vibecoding' Linux apps, so I decided to try it myself. The result is the start of a music player that has exactly the features I want, without any unnecessary bloat. The program is 100% built by AI—I simply guided it on the features I needed. From start to this stage, it only took a few hours. It's pretty crazy.

Have you noticed that disk space is filling up fast even when your Linux computer's trash folder is empty? There's a strong possibility that VS Code is responsible for it.

A not-so-recent issue in the Snap version of VS Code has cropped up again, and there's no fix in sight.

An Absurd Bug

When you normally delete a file, it goes into the trash folder, located at ~/.local/share/Trash. GNOME has supported automated emptying of the trash at selected intervals through its settings for quite some time now.

So, let's say you delete trash every seven days.

Linux input expert Peter Hutterer of Red Hat announced today the first release candidate of libinput 1.31, the input handling library used by both modern X.Org Server and Wayland desktop environments.

One of the most notable end-user features with the upcoming libinput 1.31 release is enabling support for fast 3-finger swipes when 3-finger drag is enabled. Hutterer explained of the fast three-finger swipes event:

"Related to touchpads: we now support fast 3fg swipes when 3fg drag is enabled. Previously, enabling 3fg drag meant 3fg swipe was no longer available since the finger movement for both is physically identical. However, swipe gestures are tightly integrated into some desktops so we now support a "fast swipe": three fingers that move quickly and [immediately] trigger a swipe, not a 3fg drag. The timeout is intentionally quite short, the drag is still the primary feature. The above applies to 4fg swipe/drag if enabled."

The GNU project has announced the release of coreutils 9.10, a new stable version of the essential collection of basic file, shell, and text manipulation utilities that form the backbone of nearly every Linux and Unix-like system.

The release addresses several regressions introduced in version 9.9, affecting cp, install, and mv when copying sparse files using SEEK_HOLE. This issue could surface on filesystems such as ext4 when sparse files were actively updated, and copy offload was unavailable.

While there is the Linuxulator as a kernel-level solution on FreeBSD for running unmodified Linux binaries that can even work for gaming on FreeBSD, running BSD applications on Linux isn't talked about as much. But developers have found that for those wanting to run BSD applications in Linux environments, the urunc lightweight container runtime can work out rather well for efficiently handling BSD apps on Linux.

For those that happen to have software that is only tailored to the BSDs and not Linux environments or cases like select network workloads that may perform better under BSDs, developers have got the urunc container runtime to work out rather well for BSD environments running efficiently on Linux hosts.

The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee "FESCo" has signed off on the latest batch of Fedora 44 change proposals as they work toward nearing the end of feature work for this spring update to Fedora Linux. Plus some early changes for Fedora 45 have also been granted.

Announced back in October was NTFS Plus as a new Linux driver for NTFS based on the former NTFS kernel driver prior to Paragon Software contributing the NTFS3 driver code. The intent with this new driver is for better performance. more features, public user-space utilities around it, and all-around a nice step forward for those reliant on this Microsoft file-system. Out this week is the sixth iteration of this remade NTFS driver.

This remade NTFS driver has continued picking up more features and as of yesterday is now up to its sixth round of revisions with various fixes, code improvements, and tacking on extra functionality. Namjae Jeon has been leading the work on this cleaner and more performant NTFS open-source driver. With supporting IOmap, no buffer head usage, public utilities like fsck / mkfs, idmapped mount handling, and more while performing better, it's looking destined to eventually be mainlined as the de facto NTFS Linux driver.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/45148310

Supac - a declarative package manager written in Rust, scriptable in nushell

Supac is a declarative package manager written in Rust fully scriptable in nushell. It's meant to make it easy to use the native package managers in existing distros without going through the associated headaches of using Nix, while maintaining the ergonomics of structured data in nushell.

Currently supported backends are:

• Archlinux and derivatives
• flatpak
• cargo/cargo-binstall
• uvx (packages only for now)
• rustup toolchains

I daily drive it, and it works well. Feel free to give it a try!

Fish, a popular user-friendly command-line shell, has announced version 4.4, a new release that builds on the 4.0 series.

One notable change is the deprecation of the default fossil prompt, which is now disabled. Interactive behavior has also been refined in several areas.

The bind builtin now lists mappings from all modes when --mode is not specified, making keybinding inspection more predictable. Fish no longer displays line-wise autosuggestions that do not begin with a command, reducing visual noise during input.

The X.Org Foundation has announced that this year's X.Org Developers Conference will be taking place in Toronto, Canada and hosted by Arm.

XDC2026 is scheduled to run from 28 to 30 September in Toronto at the Daniels Spectrum cultural hub in Toronto. Arm has stepped up to organize this year's conference.

In time for next month's GNOME 50 release are some improvements merged today for the Mutter compositor code adding HiDPI and monitor mode emulation support to the screen-casting API and DevKit.

GNOME 50 is coming in quite heavy on the new features. The latest code to land in Mutter is a merge request that had been in the works by Jonas Ådahl the past three months for HiDPI and monitor mode emulaiton to benefit GNOME's virtual monitor and remote desktop capabilities.