Announcement of LibreOffice 25.8.1
Announcement of LibreOffice 25.8.1 - The Document Foundation Blog
Berlin, 29 August 2025 – LibreOffice 25.8.1, the first minor release of the free, volunteer-supported office suite for personal productivity in office environments, is now available at https://www.libreoffice.Italo Vignoli (The Document Foundation)
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Introducing loftly.social – Post Across the Fediverse & More in One Go 🚀
I wanted an easier way to post across Mastodon, Pixelfed, Lemmy, and Bluesky, but couldn’t find a tool that did it all. So I built one: loftly.social
It lets you share posts everywhere in one go, saving time and keeping your networks in sync.
I’d love feedback from the community—what features would you like to see next, or any improvements you’d suggest?
How can I disable the GNOME alt tab popup?
alt+esc
Thanks and farewell to Steven Deobald
Steven Deobald has been in the post of GNOME Foundation Executive Director for the past four months, during which time he has made major contributions to both the Foundation and the wider GNOME project. Sadly, Steven will be leaving the Foundation this week. The Foundation Board is extremely grateful to Steven and wish him the very best for his future endeavors.
The Executive Director role is extremely diverse and it is hard to list all of Steven’s contributions since he has been in post. However, particular highlights include:
- energetic engagement with the GNOME community, including weekly updates focused on the Foundation’s support of GNOME development, and attention to topics of importance to our contributors, such as Pride Month and Disability Pride
- the creation of a new donations platform, which included both a new website, detailed evaluation of payment processors, and a strategy for distributing donations to GNOME development
- a focus on partner outreach, including attending UN Open Source Week, adding postmarketOS to our Advisory board, and the creation of a new Advisory Board Matrix channel, alongside many conversations with partner organisations
- internal policy and documentation work, particularly around spending and finances
- the addition of new tooling to augment policies and documentation, such as an internal Foundation Handbook and vault.gnome.org
- assistance with the board, including recruiting a new treasurer and vice-treasurer
We are extremely grateful to Steven for all this and more. Despite these many positive achievements, Steven and the board have come to the conclusion that Steven is not the right fit for the Executive Director role at this time. We are therefore bidding Steven a fond farewell.
I know that some members of the GNOME community will be disappointed by this decision. I can assure everyone that it wasn’t one that we took lightly, and had to consider from different perspectives.
The good news is that Steven has left the Foundation with a strong platform on which to build, and we have an energetic and engaged board which is already working to fill in the gaps left by his departure. I’m confident that the Foundation can continue on the positive trajectory started by Steven, with a strong community-based executive taking the reins.
To this end, the board held its regular annual meeting this week, and appointed new directors to key positions. I’ve taken over the president’s role from Rob McQueen, who has now joined Arun Raghavan as one of two Vice-Presidents. The Executive Committee has been expanded with the inclusion of Arun and Maria Majadas (who is our new Chair). We have also bolstered the Finance Committee, and are looking to create new groups for fundraising and communications.
Steven has been very helpful in working on a smooth transition, and our staff are continuing to work as normal, so Foundation operations won’t be affected by these management changes. In the near future we’ll be pushing forward with the fundraising plans that Steven has set out, and are hopeful about being able to provide more financial support for the GNOME project as a result. If you want to help us with that, please get in touch.
Should you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to president@gnome.org.
On behalf of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors,
– Allan
Executive Committee
Current members: Allan Day (President, ex officio), Robert McQueen (Vice President, ex officio), Arun Raghavan (Vice President, ex officio), Maria Majadas (Chair, ex officio), Julian Sparber. Commi...GNOME Project Handbook
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Syncthing setup that is suitable for a battery powered Linux device
GitHub - Bill-Stewart/SyncthingWindowsSetup: Syncthing Windows Setup
Syncthing Windows Setup. Contribute to Bill-Stewart/SyncthingWindowsSetup development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
This Week in Plasma: Saved clipboard items and tablet touch rings
Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!
This week saw huge improvements to the Plasma clipboard, KRunner, and drawing tablet support — not to mention a bunch of UI improvements in Discover, and plenty more, too! So without further ado…
Notable New Features
Plasma’s clipboard now lets you mark entries as favorites, and they’ll be permanently saved so you can always access them easily! This is very useful when you find yourself pasting the same common text snippets all the time. The feature request was 22 years old; this may be a new record for oldest request ever implemented in KDE! (Kendrick Ha, link)
Plasma now lets you configure touch rings on your drawing tablet! (Joshua Goins, link)
Discover now lets you install hardware drivers that are offered in your operating system’s package repos! (Evan Maddock, link)
KRunner and KRunner-powered searches can now find global shortcuts! (Fushan Wen, link)
Notable UI Improvements
Plasma 6.5.0
KRunner and KRunner-powered searches now use fuzzy matching for applications. (Harald Sitter, link)
Discover now lets you write a review for apps that don’t have any reviews yet. (Nate Graham, link)
On operating systems using RPM-OSTree (like Fedora Kinoite), there’s no longer an awkward red icon used in the sidebar and other places you’d expect black or white icons. (Justin Zobel, link)
KDE Gear 25.12.0
Opening a disk in KDE Partition Manager from its entry in Plasma’s Disks & Devices widget no longer mounts the disk, which is annoying since you’ll then have to unmount it in the app before you can do anything with it. (Joshua Goins, link 1 and link 2)
Notable Bug Fixes
Plasma 6.4.5
Fixed a critical issue that could cause the text of a sticky note on a panel to be permanently lost if that panel was cloned and then later deleted. This work also changes handling for deleted notes’ underlying data files: now they’re moved to the trash, rather than being deleted immediately. Should be a lot safer now! (Niccolò Venerandi, link 1 and link 2)
Fixed a very common KWin crash when changing display settings that was accidentally introduced recently. (David Edmundson, link)
Made a few strings in job progress notifications translatable. (Victor Ryzhykh, link)
Fixed an issue that could allow buttons with long text to overflow from System Monitor’s process killer dialog when the window was very very small. (Nate Graham, Link)
Fixed an issue in the time zone chooser map that would cause it to not zoom to the right location when changing the time zone using one of the comboboxes. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
The warnings shown by System Settings’ Fonts page in response to various conditions will now be shown when you adjust all the fonts at once, not only when you adjust one at a time. (Nate Graham, link)
Plasma 6.5.0
Fixed a case where Plasma could crash while you were configuring the weather widget. (Bogdan Onofriichuk, link)
Fixed an issue that could cause System Settings to crash while quitting when certain pages were open. (David Redondo, link)
Plasma is now better at remembering if you wanted Bluetooth on or off on login. (Nicolas Fella, link)
Panels in Auto-Hide, Dodge Windows, and Windows Go Below modes will now respect the opacity setting. (Niccolò Venerandi, link)
Frameworks 6.18
Fixed an issue that caused Plasma to crash when dragging files from Dolphin to the desktop or vice versa when the system was set up with certain types of mounts. (David Edmundson, link)
Other bug information of note:
- 4 very high priority Plasma bugs (down from 5 last week). Current list of bugs
- 26 15-minute Plasma bugs (down from 27 last week). Current list of bugs
Notable in Performance & Technical
Plasma 6.5.0
Implemented support for “overlay planes” on single-output setups, which have the potential to significantly reduce GPU and power usage for compatible apps displaying full-screen content. Note that NVIDIA GPUs are currently opted out because of unresolved driver issues. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Implemented support for drag-and-drop to and from popups created by Firefox extensions, and presumably other popups implemented with the same xdg_popup system, too. (Vlad Zahorodnii, link)
Fixed an issue that would cause V-Sync to be inappropriately disabled in certain games using the SDL library. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Undetermined release date
The annotating feature in Spectacle has been extracted into a re-usable library so that it can also be used in other apps in the future! Such integration is still in progress (as is working out a release schedule for the git repo that the library lives in now), but you’ll hear about it once it’s ready! (Noah Davis and Carl Schwan, link)
How You Can Help
KDE has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we need your support to keep KDE sustainable.
You can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved somehow. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE — you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to be a programmer, either; many other opportunities exist, too.
You can also help us by making a donation! A monetary contribution of any size will help us cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keep KDE bringing Free Software to the world.
To get a new Plasma feature or a bugfix mentioned here, feel free to push a commit to the relevant merge request on invent.kde.org.
Add support for installing hardware drivers (!1048) · Merge requests · Plasma / Discover · GitLab
This is a patch that we created for Solus to enable users to use Discover to install hardware drivers when using the PackageKit backend. By having this in...GitLab
- Plasma now lets you configure touch rings on your drawing tablet! (Joshua Goins, link) -> screenshot
I am not a graphics designer, but i have a graphics tablet with such a touch ring. Wanted to use it for some photo editing and this really bugged me in the past. Finally its solved and hopefully the ring can be used to change brush size or zoom in and out in example.
What kind of sorcery is this? Why can't I see that comment when I am logged in, despite the fact that I am a mod?
cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/36767445
Post.
This is happening even on my alt account(Reddthat).
What the heck is happening?
What kind of sorcery is this? Why can't I see that comment when I am logged in, despite the fact that I am a mod?
Post.
This is happening even on my alt account(Reddthat).
What the heck is happening?
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What kind of sorcery is this? Why can't I see that comment when I am logged in, despite the fact that I am a mod?
cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/36767445
Post.
This is happening even on my alt account(Reddthat).
What the heck is happening?
What kind of sorcery is this? Why can't I see that comment when I am logged in, despite the fact that I am a mod?
Post.
This is happening even on my alt account(Reddthat).
What the heck is happening?
What kind of sorcery is this? Why can't I see that comment when I am logged in, despite the fact that I am a mod?
cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/36767445
Post.
This is happening even on my alt account(Reddthat).
What the heck is happening?
What kind of sorcery is this? Why can't I see that comment when I am logged in, despite the fact that I am a mod?
Post.
This is happening even on my alt account(Reddthat).
What the heck is happening?
What kind of sorcery is this? Why can't I see that comment when I am logged in, despite the fact that I am a mod?
Post.
This is happening even on my alt account(Reddthat).
What the heck is happening?
‘What you feel is valid’: Social media is a lifeline for many abused and neglected young people
::: spoiler Comments
- Hacker News.
:::‘What you feel is valid’: Social media is a lifeline for many abused and neglected young people
Young people who are being abused or neglected are more likely to turn to informal online support systems than to authorities.The Conversation
Safety and space at risk as SUVs reach 30% of car market in English cities, researchers warn
Safety and space at risk as SUVs reach 30% of car market in English cities, researchers warn
Campaigners call for Paris-style parking charges amid fears big vehicles are taking up excessive public spaceHelena Horton (The Guardian)
So short, and thanks for all the flinch | From Gnome Foundation's recently departed Executive Director
So short, and thanks for all the flinch
As the board announced earlier today, I will be stepping down from the Executive Director role this week. It's been an interesting four months. If you haven't been following my work with the...Steven Deobald (The Everyone Environment)
I bricked my drive. Help.
I wanted to install Aeon. In a youtube video, the dev said it's increadibly easy. It even asks if you want to backup existing users and it leaves their home folder as is. This info was backed up by the docs.
Once I clicked on "install now" it reminded me that there is no going back once it starts installing the system. I clicked on OK because usually the installation process starts at the end of the configuration phase.
It then loaded, and I feared that it really erases everything now and not after configurartion. I stopped the process by shutting down the computer.
The computer does not detect any filesystem. It should be ext4 if I remember correctly. fsck yields no result. It suggests using two different blocks but with no success. I can't mount anything. Hence I also can't fix grub.
Did I just erase my disk within one second? If so, I can just continue. If not, I'd like to backup some stuff. (Most is backed up, but not the most recent stuff)
Fsck is not a tool to find lost partitions or partition tables. Start from a Live USB stick (or one of the data rescue linux systems) and see what your harddisk/ssd looks like. Maybe the data is still there. If it's gone, try if a tool like testdisk finds your old partitions / old data.
There are some recovery tools available: wiki.archlinux.org/title/File_…
" conversationalist"?
You're using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.
Thanks and farewell to Steven Deobald | Gnome Foundation's Executive Director leaves after just 4 months
Thanks and farewell to Steven Deobald
Steven Deobald has been in the post of GNOME Foundation Executive Director for the past four months, during which time he has made major contributions to both the Foundation and the wider GNOME...Allan (Form and Function)
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He probbaly didn't realise the committment involved.
Sitting in someones front garden, on the edge of a pond with a red pointy hat, with a fishing rod, for days on end, can be very tiring.
Then you got the cats pissing on you and the birds landing on your head.
Its no fun, I can tell you.
Its tough being a gnome
Who is the guy and how did he get that position?
I'm guessing he's just a businessman that was hired based on connections or "credentials"? Does he have any connection with the free software space at all?
We need to keep scumbags like that as far away from the ecosystem as possible. They are leeches and will take advantage of our ignorance if we let them.
I have practically no respect for the gnome project at this point, so it wouldn't surprise me if this guy was brought in because the gnome foundation wants to emulate proprietary software companies.
Looking at his list of contributions, he didn't do much but probably sucked up a fat paycheck.
Russia & China are destroying us, openly, and we haven't done anything about it
- The Israel-Hamas conflict (and a genocide) is a distraction from Russia and Iran (yes, they disregard human lives that much), to avoid people from figuring out their plans, keeping a far-right Israeli government, and distracting from Ukraine. It also allows for Iran (and thus Russia) to test against missile and drone defense systems in Israel (that are the best anyway, therefore anything that passes will shred through any Western nation).
- Climate change isn't ignored; rather, it is done purposely. If farming fails, we will be in starvation, allowing them to take us out/dominate us much more easily. Additionally, there are studies that prove an increased temperature leads to lower productivity, thus proving this hypothesis further — and Russia won't feel as big of an impact there, especially in winter.
- The “AI” hype is being funded by both Russia and China, to lower our critical thinking, also allowing us to be tricked and attacked more easily. Furthermore, it increases the speed of climate change, and takes away even more clean water from us. This allows them to be able to poison our waters much more easily, since only a select few freshwater points will be out there,
Everytime I try to start something with Linux I fail.
I just want something as a proof of concept that this can be for me. I am aware I am the problem.
But everything is wildly difficult for me. I pulled back from docker after realising it was above my skillset, I just want to try home assisstant with a few lights but fair enough it is beyond me.
I opted to install a game, fail. Learn about wine and bottles. Start a bottle and get told I only have 8gb free in directory, I cannot for the life of me see where it is getting that from.
Please god someone tell me there is a step by step for the fucking imbeciles out there on where to start!?
I have fucked up my computer so many times.
- Accidentally uninstalled the graphical environment, because i didn't notice my package manager was asking me if i wanted to uninstall 200 packages, along with whatever i actually wanted to uninstall.
- Tested a fork bomb (it worked!)
- Installed a dual boot system incorrectly.
- Installed a dual boot system correctly, but Windows had an update.
- Tried to switch out a working component with Something Really Cool™
- I have spent days troubleshooting an issue that turned out to be a simple syntax error.
- And, while technically not fucking with the computer itself, this deserves a mention; Fucking up the wifi/network SO MANY TIMES.
I have also succeeded with some really cool stuff, but that's the thing about working with computers; you fail completely, until it works perfectly.
This is of course a gross simplification, but it also has a lot of truth to it. There's just not a lot "this is not great, but it will do", it either functions or it fails (until you get it working and start fine tuning it for the rest of you life)
Just laugh at the absurdity of the situation when you realize you were just missing a comma in a JSON file, and don't let it bother you that you didn't notice before you paid to have your second floor covered in aluminium foil trying to fix the issue.
Try creating a VM in GNOME Boxes (if you use GNOME) or Virt-manager, take a snapshot, so you can easily repeat this process, and break it. Just make it stop functioning. Do it in an interesting way, and look up more ways on the internet.
Be curious, have fun and don't feel bad about getting sick of that stupid computer, you can come back later and it won't care that you even left.
I have fucked up my computer only once but I did it on purpose - to see what will happen. I had already created a clonezilla backup of a working system, so I was free to experiment and... I decided to uninstall both kernels (rolling and LTS) and reboot. There was no kernel panic because there was no kernel to begin with. 😆
Why did PinePhone fail?
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‘What you feel is valid’: Social media is a lifeline for many abused and neglected young people
- Hacker News.
:::
‘What you feel is valid’: Social media is a lifeline for many abused and neglected young people
Young people who are being abused or neglected are more likely to turn to informal online support systems than to authorities.The Conversation
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Need some opinions on my next Laptop and Linux Distro
Hi, im searching for a new Laptop and i was tempted to buy the framework 13.. BUT..
Usually i would search for a used or refurbished Laptop to give it a second life u know. And after it broke down in like 4-6 years usually, i would buy a new used one again.
So my first question is: Is the framework 13 really worth my money for the repairability and upgradability in comparison?
My prefered Laptops are the Surface like ones 2in1 with a stand and detachable keyboard...
But im okay with it to switch to a normal laptop Formfactor.
I would prefere 16:9 or 16:10 for multimedia but im used to a 3:2 so it would be kinda okay for me to stick with it.
How good can i implement linux on some surface like laptop?
I switched from win10 to linux Mint on my desktop this year. But i think im going to switch to another distro, because i need the ASHA-protocoll as fast as possible. Maybe not that important on my desktop but definetly on my next Laptop.
Someone switched from surface like laptop to FW13?
Im not a coder. More like a gamer with og cheat codes in gtaSA on a cracked Version of the game, which runs in deamon-tools as an ISO, lol.
Main use would be Multimedia and some gaming, if possible.
Another use would be AI.. but as far as i know linux doesnt support the build in NPU of the FW13 yet. Maybe ai tinker in a few years then?
And im something like a crypto bro i would say. So how good are crypto tools implemented in linux? Some cold wallet support for exampel.
Which distro would serve my needs the most?
Is there a better choice for me than FW13 ?
So all in all im hopelessly lost and cant decide shit ^^
My only hope is to ask some Linux OGs to help me out on dis.
plz halp.
I have the latest Framework 13 and I had a ThinkPad before this. I can recommend either of them. The Framework is one of my favorite computers I’ve had, but it’s not cheap. You will save some money if you ever have to make repairs, but I don’t know how the TCO works out for upgrades. It’s more about empowerment and reducing waste though.
Linux runs fine on both the Framework and the ThinkPad. You can pretty much just take your pick of distros and they should work, although you may want to stick with one of the more up to date distros on Framework because it has new hardware. Fedora, Arch-based, Tumbleweed all work well.
Salesforce sacrifices 4,000 support jobs on the altar of AI
Salesforce sacrifices 4,000 support jobs on the altar of AI
: Benioff boasts bots now handle half of customer chats as doubts over reliability lingerLindsay Clark (The Register)
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Introducing ActivityPub.Space
The in-person events at FediCon in Vancouver lit a fire in the Canadian ActivityPub community. One of the louder calls were for a place in the fediverse for ActivityPub discussions; a place for groups to form and for long-running discussions to be had.
I was more than happy to get involved. I also wanted such a place, and I've discussed it on and off for the past year. ActivityPub development discussions are fragmented across multiple disconnected channels, and none of them fully capture the entirety (or a majority, or even a sizeable minority) of the AP developer community. ActivityPub.Space is my answer to that call.
One constant about ActivityPub is that all ActivityPub developers are on the fediverse, and so it only makes sense that discussions about AP development should also take place on the fediverse.
At the same time, the "fediverse" isn't one singular entity. jaz@mastodon.iftas.org famously quipped "There is One Fediverse. There are a Million Fediverses." While I can't make guarantees about this site connecting with a million fediverses, I can say that it does connect with the microblogiverse, the blogiverse (WordPress blogs!), and the Threadiverse (Lemmy/Piefed/MBin/NodeBB/Discourse).
So how does it work?
The site is divided up into several categories:
- General Discussion is for any non-technical discussions about ActivityPub
- Technical Discussion is for technical deep-dives
- Meta contains discussions about this site itself
- Random is for everything else (there's always a "Random" category on a forum, isn't there...?)
We also pull in content direct from Fediverse news outlets such as "Week in Fediverse", "Connected Places", and "Relay, by We Distribute".
On the threadiverse side, we directly link to several other fediverse-focused communities on Lemmy and Piefed.
We utilise a number of relays to both distribute local content out and receive content from the wider microblogiverse. When content comes in via microblogs, they're not usually categorized, so we check for relevant hashtags and automatically categorize them into one of the local categories.
The wonderful thing about this site is that it fully federates, which means you can follow all of these categories from your app of choice. You don't even have to register a local account if you don't want to, but you definitely can (and should!) if you want the best experience browsing the categorized topics.
The categories today are rather broad, but over time I hope to split them up into smaller topics based on user demand. Give the site a try today!
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Here's instructions I wrote up for another NodeBB site with how to follow stuff from Mastodon - discussions.thenexus.today/top…
How to follow and participate in discussions here from your Fediverse and ATmosphere accounts
Another way you can load discussions here into Fediverse is to copy the address bar, but add a post index to the end. For example, /topic/123 might not load,...The Nexus of Discussions
[RESOLVED] Looking for a way to make links to posts that don't leave the instance.
I know I've seen it before, some website that translated a link to a post into a link to that same post, but on the instance of the user clicking the link. I cannot for the life of me seem to find it again, though.
It was not a browser extension.
How do I check the wifi connection in Whonix?
Skip the flavour text by going to the bold text
In my sky high arrogance I thought 'I have never let Linux grace my devices, how hard can Qubes/Whonix truly be?' and I learned my lesson within minutes.
So I come here before you, humbly and beaten by 0s and 1s, to ask for your help.
How do I open a window where it neatly lists available connections and, if so, my current connection?
Usually when I am connected, it has a wifi symbol on the top right where the rest of my panels are. It disappeared.
I tried searching on the internet for answers. My mental capacity is basically non-existent, otherwise I wouldn't be here (probably).
Please. I just want to connect my device via wifi. I do not own an ethernet cable.
Thank you.
You title says whonix, but the text mentions QubesOS. Which one? This distinction is very important.
Edit: in QubesOS the networking is handled by the sys-net qube. If the networking icon does not show up in the tray make sure the sys-net qube is started. If it is, check what programs are available for the sys-net qube in the start menu (hopefully some networking software is available. But I dont have QubesOS in front of me so I cannot check) otherwise try and start a terminal in sys-net and run the command nmtui
Believe me, I wish I could tell you what I've done :') I wanted to get Whonix, but I think the website eventually led me to QubesOS? All I can say is that at startup it shows the Qubes symbol, so it's likely I got that.
When I try to start sys-net it can't start and says that the Qube sys-net has shut down. I'll provide the error message in a moment if I can't get it up with your other suggestion. Thanks!
eta:
Cannot connect to qrexec agent for 120 seconds.
When I want to check the logs, some other qubes cannot start. Bizarre. I even tried creating a qube without the offending qubes (sys-net etc.) yet it still fails.
You can be against Zionism and isreals genocide against Palestinians without being antisemitic. Criticism of the actions of a government =/= hatred of a race/religion.
False equivalency.
According to Israel, the only credible authority on anything and everything, you are Antisemitic Hamas.
Expect a live missile on your local hospital's doorstep for your crimes against semitism.
Nazis are antisemitic, zionists are nazis, Netanyahu is an nazi asshole and supported by an US nazi asshole. Sheldon Cooper had the best idea with moving Israel to the US.
Rwanda accepts seven people from US as part of deportation deal
Rwanda accepts seven people from US as part of deportation deal
Trump administration pushing controversial deal to send people to non-home countries including South Sudan and EswatiniGuardian staff reporter (The Guardian)
Oh wow. That means there's a non-zero chance they're lying about treating the extraordinarily renditioned well.
Edit: thank you for answering.
Xi Unleashes China’s Biggest Purge of Military Leaders Since Mao
cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/35116322
Xi Unleashes China’s Biggest Purge of Military Leaders Since Mao
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-xi-china-military-officials-purge/
US manufacturing activity contracts for sixth straight month in August: 'It's survival'
cross-posted from: lemmy.ca/post/50889682
Respondents to the ISM's survey widely cited tariffs as putting pressure on their planning, sales, and costs.
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Review of the Star Labs Starbook7: thanks i hate it
Hey, folks. I wanted to share my findings about the Star Labs StarBook 7 (AKA mk7 AKA mark vii). I've been daily driving this laptop for about 6 months.
Hardware
- Intel® Core™ Ultra 7 165H × 22
- 32.0 GiB memory
- 1TB storage
Display
I have historically been against hidpi displays for laptop because they just don't work 100% of the time on Linux. No matter how many brittle workarounds I've applied, hidpi displays have always hurt more than helped.
However, the StarBook 7 laptop absolutely nailed the display resolution. 3840x2160 is perfect for 2x integer scaling. When I ran Arch, I never ran into an app that was tiny or blurry. From Bitwarden to Claws Mail to Reaper. I'm happy to report everything worked fine. The ONLY app I was able to find that looked blurry was Cambalache for GNOME dev. All of this with ZERO workarounds, ZERO tweaks. It Just Works.
This has been the best hidpi support I've experienced. However, it's still not as good as running standard dpi. Despite the apps not being blurry, some apps like Bitwarden would forget the size of the window when I closed the app. This means, sometimes, some apps, would start in a tiny, little window, and I would have to grab a corner to stretch it out. Annoying.
When I switched to Guix Linux. UUff. This was bad. Almost all non-wayland apps did not respect GNOME's integer scaling. And when I got GTK apps working, QT apps were still broken.
So even though the Starbook 7 has the best hidpi support I've ever experienced, I will gladly take a more stable system, with less workarounds, and a larger amount of supported software over a slightly crisper screen.
Keyboard
The display was the best part of the laptop. The keyboard might be the worst.
This is easily the worst keyboard I've ever used anywhere, by far.
The keyboard is backlit, which is nice. The keys themselves feel a little light and wobbly, not great, but fine.
However, the actual output signals coming out of the keyboard hardware are trash. VERY often a key signal is sent more than once. The space bar in particular VERY often emits two spaces. But this happens with other keys too. I thought I just had to get used to typing on this keyboard, but no, it's not me, it's the keyboard.
The other trash thing about the keyboard is the placement of "home", "pgup", "pgdn", "end", and the freaking ~~print screen~~ sysrq key. This vertical row of keys is not very visible in the product pics on the website. But the placement of the ~~print screen~~ sysrq key in particular is HORRIBLE because it's right next to the right arrow key. And since the arrow keys blend together (another bad layout choice), I very frequently press the ~~print screen~~ sysrq key on accident.
And other thing. I keep saying ~~print screen~~ sysrq because there is no print screen key on this laptop. If you press the sysrq key, you may be fooled into thinking it's print screen. Do not be fooled. It actually sends a totally different keyboard event signal. This means you loose the ability to use GNOME's built-in screenshot tool. I never found a way to fix this.
The keyboard is so bad, that sometimes it interferes with entering my password. I frequently have to toggle the switch to view the password in plaintext that way I can see when the keyboard doubled up a character.
Other things
Cons:
- About 1 out of 30 times I startup the computer, Linux fails to boot. Like the laptop doesn't even try to boot the kernel. It gets stuck on the boot screen. There are no errors. I just have to force power off and try again.
- There is no fwupd support on non-official distros (Ubuntu is official).
- The laptop has BRIGHT ASS pure blue LED lights on the side and right in front of your face. The front facing LED in particular is horrible at night.
- The headphone jack is absolute trash, specifically the mic input. It is extremely noisy. Unusable even with software tweaks.
- Laptop is heavy.
- Laptop gets HOT, fans frequently need to go on.
- Battery life is abysmal
- Shits expensive
Meh:
- The trackpad is all right. It clicks.
- Coreboot is cool for being open source... but I didn't really notice any performance gains compared to the other big, bloated, firmwares.
Pros:
- Port selection is good.
- No barrel jack for power, just plain ol' USB-C
- The camera is decent.
- Wifi works.
- Bluetooth works...
like this
Am I the only one that thinks that USB-C power delivery is a con?
Having the option to charge with usb-c in a pinch is a really nice feature, but for longterm use I'd really rather usb-c plus a seperate barrel jack for power.
The barrel jacks on business line laptops are usually a separate module that if it breaks from catching the cord with your foot and ripping it out of the laptop, you can replace the module. I'm not sure I've really seen replaceable usb-c power jacks very commonly, they're usually part of the motherboard because it's a combined power delivery/thunderbolt port or something. Now if you rip the cord out the jack is totally fucked And you have to solder a new one on.
I guess how much people care also depends on whether they tend to use laptops in ways and places that are prone to causing damage to the ports. I've never damaged any port on any laptop I've ever owned, and it's unlikely I ever will because I like to keep the cables organized and out of the way (so it would require conscious effort to tug on them), and when I want to pick my laptop up, I always quickly run my hand around its perimeter to make sure everything is disconnected.
I do not claim that this is the correct way to use a laptop or that others should do the same, it is a tool that should be used the way its user needs, I just want to point out that for some usecases, this is simply a non-issue in the same way a non-replaceable CPU is - nothing's going to happen to it.
Also, my current laptop does have both a barrel jack (probably works, I've never used it) and a USB-C charging connector, so it's not necessarily an either-or proposition.
Sorry you hate it. Thanks for being honest.
I avoid all of those kinds of devices because the price in no way reflects the mediocre hardware that we'll be getting.
When we can get 4070 Lenovo laptops at Walmart for $1,000, it just doesn't make sense to be spending a comparable price on something without a fucking GPU.
We're lining the pockets of businessmen at that point. And don't be fooled: it's all business at the end of the day.
[Solved] My OpenSUSE Tumbleweed install broke and I can't rollback
Update #1
I fixed my boot issue, but now I have to fix the issue with snapper not working right.
The boot issue: Something—I don't know what—added a removable drive to fstab, and the error was that drive couldn't be mounted at boot. I have two guesses:
- I formatted a microSD card using YaST Paritioner sometime before doing the distro upgrade.
- The drive might have been mounted during the distro upgrade, though I don't think it was.
At any rate, I commented out that line in fstab and it booted right up.
Mullvad is working fine when I boot normally. I guess it was only broken when booting a snapshot from before I upgraded it.
Update #2
I also fixed /.snapshots by adding it to fstab. Now it gets mounted on every boot, and this version of fstab will be in all future snapshots. I just took a manual snapshot for good measure.
I don't know which action caused the issue, so I'm going to list everything I did. I'm new to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, and I haven't used Linux since like Linux Mint 17.
- I disabled KWallet because I got tired of typing in a password every time my desktop launched just for wifi passwords. I decided to just let Linux store them in plain text since my whole system is encrypted with LUKS.
- I did a distro update. (
zypper dup) After that succeeded, I logged off and back on. - I noticed Mullvad had a new version. They don't officially support OpenSUSE, so I downloaded the new RPM. I ran
rpm -e mullvad-vpnto remove the old one. That might have been a mistake since my notes say I used zypper to install it the first time. I installed the new one with zypper. It launched and connected just fine. - I had some trouble getting network settings to store/retrieve my wifi password, so I decided to reboot my system since I changed so much stuff.
- It wouldn't boot. I see a few "BIOS" and "ACPI" errors.
- Time to try out Snapper! I reboot and choose the most recent snapshot from before tonight.
- It boots, but when I try
snapper rollbackI getIO error (.snapshots is not a btrfs subvolume) - I get the same error trying to open the YaST snapshot viewer.
- I check
btrfs, and I see@/.snapshotsplus a bunch of numbered snapshots, of course. - I check
fstab, but I don't see an entry mounting anything on/.snapshots. - I do see a directory at
/.snapshots, but it appears just be an empty directory.
Mullvad seems broken with this snapshot. I can't connect to the internet. The mullvad-daemon won't start, so I think the killswitch is active. I've had to type all this on my phone.
What can I do to fix this? I just want to rollback to this good snapshot, and then I can worry about fixing Mullvad when the filesystem isn't read-only.
One month. That's how long it took me to break my system. ☹️
Is it possible that you didn't enable snapshots during installation of TW, and then turned it on later?
That seems to be a common explanation on the openSUSE forum when .snapshots is missing from fstab (found by searching for the error you are hitting). There are some threads with workarounds. Basically, mount the .snapshots subvol manually, re-try the rollback and then add .snapshots to fstab so it works in the future.
LTT Labs blog + benchmarks for linux vs windows performance AMD/Intel/NVIDIA
Part 2: lttlabs.com/blog/2025/06/30/is…
LTT Fourm discussion as well linustechtips.com/topic/161659…
They approached this from a noob perspective and the benchmarks seemed pretty rough. The blog has an overall positive tone on linux which is nice even though it got murdered in performance.
I'd like to see a follow up with optimizations, get some of the linux community involved to help setup an optimized linux test bench to go toe to toe with their "golden image" windows 11 benchmark setup.
They benchmarked a few distros against each other and it was very samey which I expected, the real difference is between the drivers/kernel and desktop environment since most distros come very light in terms of installed software.
Not bad. I take issue with the part of the article called "distro wars". There is no war, but I dont expect them to "get it". These cringelords seem to have a need to meme-fi everything, really dings the tone of the reviews. Am I reading a tech review or an opinion article?
Eeh
using the 24.04lts was an odd choice.
and it did prove odd when they noticed the drivers were out of date.
LTT Labs blog + benchmarks for linux vs windows performance AMD/Intel/NVIDIA
Part 2: lttlabs.com/blog/2025/06/30/is…
LTT Fourm discussion as well linustechtips.com/topic/161659…
They approached this from a noob perspective and the benchmarks seemed pretty rough. The blog has an overall positive tone on linux which is nice even though it got murdered in performance.
I'd like to see a follow up with optimizations, get some of the linux community involved to help setup an optimized linux test bench to go toe to toe with their "golden image" windows 11 benchmark setup.
They benchmarked a few distros against each other and it was very samey which I expected, the real difference is between the drivers/kernel and desktop environment since most distros come very light in terms of installed software.
Forget Linux vs Windows, the real question I have is why is Black Myth Wukong so poorly optimized that on a 4060 or 5060 it can't reach 60 FPS at 1080p even on Windows? Freaking unacceptable.
You would think coming from the mobile world, Game Science would be used to low-spec hardware, e.g. phones, but this game can't run well even on pretty new GPUs on PCs??? I had no idea this game had such abysmal performance. I wish people hadn't bought it, so it could've flopped
After about 8 months, I love this Android browser. Not Chrome, FF, or Edge based.
UPDATE: THIS USES GOOGLE WEB VIEW. DO NOT USE.
I can't figure out why nobody talks about this. I see all kinds of alternative browsers on here, but never this one. I especially like the color coded bookmarks for different categories (my news is gray, my searxng/swisscows and other search engines green, my tech solutions purple). It has anti-fingerprinting and a quick toggle for if you need to quickly adjust javascript or cookie setting to make a quick exception. There are lots of features. If anyone else has tried it, it would be interesting to hear your feedback too.
I've seen this when bopping around in the F-Droid catalogue. Never took it seriously because it didn't seem to communicate well what it was doing.
In general; I usually dislike using Chrome anyways....so much so that I hard disable Chrome on my device, oftentimes via ADB, and download a wide range of alternatives; Kiwi (Plugin enabled), Hermit ([Closed source] Forced Isolation of all domains/sites along a side of ad-blocking and web-app caching baked into the app wrapping it's renderer; which is, of course System Webview. Unfortunately this one is not open source, so I do not often recommend it here and while I trust it; your decisions may be different.) and Firefox (Plugins installed, seems to be replacing Kiwi because it's likely a dead/gone/depreciated/archived project.) I even use URLCheck from F-Droid itself as my "Default Browser" so that I have the power to review each URL and open it in a browser I feel is most appropriate to the context of my browsing and choose the browser I feel can best protect my privacy for a given site. One-off visits often go to Hermit; which promptly isolates away and forgets I ever visited the site while blocking ads with a lighter touch than most plugins I've seen that exist. If a site often breaks in Hermit; usually due to ad-blocking hostile scripts; I kick it over to Firefox where I have extensive plug-in tooling to defang the beast...including tools like JShelter, Canvas Blocker, LocalCDN, Chameleon, Decentraleyes and uBlock Origin.
What I do know is that Android System Webview is far more configurable than you might realize; and that it is absolutely possible to build a browser on top of it. Most importantly; Android System Webview IS NOT Chrome! Yes, it is extremely similar and it behaves mostly the same; but it is based on the Chromium project; which is basically what Chrome is before Google applies all of its own Branding, Customization, Policies and Application touches on it. Does Chromium project mirror what Chrome needs? Absolutely yes, but it does not follow Chrome exactly. In general; Android System Webview is a Web rendering component that other applications can call on and wrap their own code around. This means you are basically free to implement whatever other features you want around the webview; including adding plugins and other things like ad-blocking. My favorite closed-source lite-app browser Hermit does this; and I'm not seeing any significant privacy concerns with that one.
Republicans get court win over "green bank" funds
A federal appeals court sided with the Environmental Protection Agency in its effort to freeze billions of dollars and terminate contracts for nonprofits charged with running a "green bank" to finance climate-friendly projects.
The decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, handed down in a 2-1 ruling, shifts the dispute away from the federal district court and into the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which handles contract matters. For the nonprofits involved, including Climate United Fund, the ruling represents a major setback in their push to regain access to roughly $16 billion in frozen funds.
Trump Administration Gets Court Win Over 'Green Bank' Funds
The decision stands as a high-profile win for the Trump administration's EPA and a stinging blow to climate groups.Gabe Whisnant (Newsweek)
copymyjalopy likes this.
What distro do you game on?
What was the update? Getting address not found on both calyos.org and calyxinstitute.org which doesn't bode well
Edit: came back up. Update if it's down when viewed
Update: August 27 2025We are concerned that some users may have not seen the important message in this letter about CalyxOS’ current hiatus. Therefore, we are rolling out one last OTA update to devices currently running CalyxOS to reach as many active users as we can. You can read our post for more details about this update.
Ninguém
in reply to mikeydowsett • • •What I allways felt we needed was a federated identity system. Then all posts on a platform could just be followed on any other platform.
Now, joe@one.site has to create a separate account on other.site, but joe@other.site is already taken, so he has to go with doe@other.site and resort to solutions like this one to post to several locations at once.
What I whould suggest is to just create some kind of federated identity provider so that Joe can just be joe@joe.site and post on one.site, other.site or whatever.site he wants and have his posts federate magicaly throughout the fediverse.
Of course, moderation would have to be based more on user accounts than on nodes, I gess...
Wasn't there something already close to this? "OpenId"?...
Ninguém
in reply to Ninguém • • •Just stumbled upon this: wedistribute.org/2025/08/socia…
Let's just hope...
Couldn't IpenId fulfill this need? Do we really need to reinvent the wheel?
We Distribute
2025-08-29 22:53:02