Gregory Kurtzer is no stranger to the Linux world. He created CentOS, and when Red Hat messed it up, he started Rocky Linux as the community replacement. He also co-founded CIQ, the company offering enterprise support around Rocky.
His latest project has nothing to do with rebuilding another Linux distro, though. He has built an entirely new operating system kernel, and he didn't write most of the code himself. An AI agent did.
Meet Ginux, Linux userspace without Linux underneath
The project is called Ginux. It's an independent, Rust-first x86-64 kernel. Which simply means it is NOT a fork of the Linux kernel.
It has its own memory management, scheduler, process model, filesystems, networking, and device support, all written from scratch.
The most interesting part is that even though it is not Linux, it is Linux-compatible. Ginux implements the Linux ABI (the binary interface compiled programs use to talk to the kernel), so existing Linux binaries can run on it unmodified.
In the project's own terms, Linux is a "personality" that Ginux exposes, not the kernel running underneath.
Now, the name Ginux may sound like a mix of GNU and Linux. I hate to disappoint you, it is not the case here.
The G in Ginux stands for GPT. Greg. Kurtzer jokes in the README that, to keep his ego within limits, the G officially stands for GPT. Why GPT? Because it was coded entirely by (Chat) GPT 5.6 Sol.
In 11 days, I built a new Linux-compatible operating system kernel that boots Rocky Linux 10 with systemd, all using Human-Directed Agentic Engineering (HDAE).
In 11 days, I built a new Linux-compatible operating system kernel that boots Rocky Linux 10 with systemd, all using Human-Directed Agentic Engineering (HDAE).
I call it Ginux. It is an independent, Rust-first x86-64 kernel (not a Linux fork) with its own memory management, boot…
Ginux builds as a single GINUX.EFI image that boots straight through UEFI, with no Linux host kernel involved.
It runs isolated "domains", each with its own processes, address space, filesystem, and lifecycle. The project describes these as stronger boundaries than OCI containers or Linux namespaces.
It can also pull and verify OCI container images and use them to assemble a domain's root filesystem. That's how it gets Rocky Linux 10 booted all the way to systemd's multi-user.target. Selected Alpine Linux programs (like the musl and BusyBox) run too.
Don't get too excited, though. Right now, Ginux runs only in a QEMU virtual machine, with no physical hardware profile, no GPU or NVMe support, and no independent security audit.
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Ginux is a research prototype released under the Apache 2.0 license. It is not meant for production or as a Linux replacement.
What is Human-Directed Agentic Engineering?
HDAE is the name Kurtzer gives to the development method, and to be honest, that's the real story here. He has documented it in a technical report on Zenodo.
The idea is a clear division of labour. The human decides the architecture, the constraints, the milestones, the acceptance criteria, and when to stop. The AI agent runs the implementation loop: write code, boot it, test it, diagnose failures, revise, and repeat against those executable checks.
For Ginux, that meant one persistent OpenAI Codex task running GPT-5.6 Sol for eleven days. It produced approximately 139,000 retained lines of implementation and test code, across more than 1,000 commits. Architecture documents kept the agent aligned, and real userspaces like Rocky Linux caught bugs that synthetic tests missed.
The "human-directed" part matters. This isn't as simple as typing "write me a kernel, don't make mistakes" into a chatbot. It's a person with decades of systems experience steering an agent that does the heavy lifting of coding.
One expert plus AI can go a long way
Kurtzer is careful not to oversell this AI achievement:
The larger lesson is that AI can generate complex systems software, but compatibility, security, hardware support, standards, community, and long-term maintenance remain the real moat.
I think that's only fair. Linux isn't going anywhere because a prototype boots systemd in a VM. Decades of hardware enablement, code review, and community are not something an AI agent produces in eleven days.
But let's take a step back to realize what happened here. A new kernel created from scratch, that runs an enterprise distro. And it took just 11 days with GPT 5.6 (not even 6.1, the latest model).
AI won't replace expertise. An expert who already knows how kernels work uses AI to squeeze years of grunt work into days.
When people with deep domain knowledge pair it with frontier AI agents, projects that once needed a large team and several years start to look like weekend side projects.
Ginux won't replace Linux, but it does show how far (and how fast) an skilled person can now go.
Tesco, the supermarket group with stores in the UK and certain regions of Europe, is hiring a Head of Software Engineering for its Edge Platform. The new hire would be responsible for carrying out the move away from VMware, the Broadcom-owned virtualization software, to Proxmox for the systems that run inside its stores.
The Register were the ones who spotted the listing first, and so far it's the only public sign of the Proxmox plan. Tesco has not said how many stores the move covers or how fast the rollout will occur.
What edge means for a supermarket
Edge computing puts servers and software near the place where the business operates instead of in a faraway central datacenter, and for a supermarket chain, that place is the brick-and-mortar store.
Tesco's listing describes its Edge Platform as the computing environment and software that lets applications run across its stores. Checkout, payments, stock management, and staff-facing apps all depend on it.
The platform covers Linux, server hardware, virtualization, and storage. Stores also need to keep working through connectivity disruptions or when local resources run short, as a badly handled change can interfere with store operations, staff, and customers.
The ask
The hire would handle two jobs. The first is the migration, and it involves defining repeatable setups for different kinds of stores, testing each version before a gradual rollout, and automating installs, upgrades, rollbacks, and recovery.
Along the way, they would also manage any migration dependencies and risks so that critical store operations are not affected.
The second job is a management platform for every store, built as an API-first system for provisioning, monitoring, patching, and remote diagnostics. It has to cope with stores going offline and with systems drifting from their intended setup.
That platform should also evolve independently of any one infrastructure technology where practical. The hire leads engineering managers and principal engineers, and the listed skills include Java, Python, and Terraform.
Where the exit stands
Tesco bought perpetual VMware licenses in 2021, but Broadcom stopped supporting them in January 2026. They have had to pay third-party providers for support since then.
In its lawsuit, Tesco accuses Broadcom of refusing to honor the 2021 agreement and of abusing its market power. They say the end of 2027 is the earliest it can be off VMware and calls that timeline a significant risk to its business.
Tesco also alleges that one Broadcom offer this year came in around 175 percent above what its 2021 contract entitled it to.
Ubuntu works reasonably well out of the box, but a fresh installation still leaves plenty of room for improvement. A few tweaks, some essential software, and a handful of lesser-known settings can help you get a more comfortable, productive, and personalized desktop experience from day one.
In this guide, let's look at some of the first things worth doing after installing Ubuntu 26.10.
Perform a System Update
Before installing new applications or customizing the desktop, it is a good idea to check for any available system updates. Ubuntu installation images are not updated daily, so there may already be security patches, bug fixes, and package updates waiting to be installed.
The easiest way is to launch Software Updater from the Activities Overview and let it handle the process.
This command refreshes the package repository information and installs the latest available updates. Taking care of updates first helps ensure a stable and secure foundation before moving on to other post-installation tasks.
Install Media Codecs
Due to licensing and copyright restrictions in certain countries, Ubuntu does not include support for some popular media formats such as MP3, MPEG-4, and AVI out of the box.
Fortunately, installing support for these formats is straightforward. The ubuntu-restricted-extras package bundles media codecs, Microsoft TrueType fonts, and a few additional components that improve compatibility with common audio, video, and office documents.
sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras
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If you are using an Ubuntu flavor such as Kubuntu, install the corresponding package instead. For example, Kubuntu users should install kubuntu-restricted-extras.
If you see the EULA or the license screen, remember to use the tab key to select between the options and then hit enter to confirm your choice.
Accept Microsoft EULA
Try the AI Voice Input
Typing isn't always the fastest way to get text into a computer. Whether you're taking notes, drafting an email, or quickly capturing an idea, speaking can sometimes feel more natural. Ubuntu 26.10 introduces Myna, an optional speech-to-text feature that brings local voice dictation directly to the desktop.
Myna AI Voice Input
What makes Myna particularly interesting is its privacy-focused approach. Speech recognition runs entirely on your machine, and once the required model is downloaded, no internet connection is needed for transcription. Simply place the cursor in a text field, press the configured shortcut, and start speaking. Do keep in mind that Myna is currently offered as a technology preview, so you should expect some rough edges while the feature continues to mature.
Change Wallpaper and Accent Colors
A different wallpaper and accent color can completely change the look of the desktop without installing any additional software.
To get started, right-click on an empty area of the desktop and select Change Background. From there, you can choose one of the included wallpapers or use the Add Picture button to select an image from your collection.
Change Wallpaper in Ubuntu
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It's possible to set a wallpaper directly from the file manager by right-clicking an image and selecting the wallpaper option. However, this is not always the best approach, as the image may later be moved or deleted from its original location, resulting in a missing background.
While you're there, consider exploring the available accent colors as well. Choosing an accent color that complements the wallpaper can give the desktop a more cohesive and polished appearance. 🎨
Enable Flatpak support
Ubuntu promotes Snap as its primary universal packaging format, and you'll find plenty of applications available through it. However, not every developer distributes their software as a Snap package. In the Linux desktop world, you'll frequently come across applications that are available only through Flatpak.
For that reason, it makes sense to enable Flatpak support early on. Start by installing the required package:
sudo apt install flatpak
Once installed, add the Flathub repository, which serves as the primary source for most Flatpak applications:
After adding Flathub, restart the system to ensure everything is integrated properly. You'll then be able to install and manage Flatpak applications from the command line.
We have a dedicated article explaining Flatpak support in Ubuntu. Give it a read, if you want more Flatpak setup requirements.
Familiarize Installing New Applications
At some point, you'll want to go beyond the default applications that come with Ubuntu. The good news is that Ubuntu has one of the largest software ecosystems in the Linux world, making it easy to find and install both open-source and proprietary software.
For those who prefer a graphical approach, open the App Center, search for the application you need, and click Install. Ubuntu's App Center supports both DEB and Snap packages, though it generally prioritizes Snap applications when both formats are available.
Install Application via App Center
Many software vendors also provide Ubuntu packages directly on their websites as .deb files. After downloading one, right-click the file and select Open With → App Center. From there, simply click Install to add the application to your system.
Open Deb file with App Center
Install Extension Manager
One of GNOME's biggest strengths is its extension ecosystem. Many of the desktop tweaks that Ubuntu users enjoy, including custom docks, app indicators, and advanced tiling features, are powered by GNOME extensions behind the scenes.
While extensions can be installed manually, managing them quickly becomes inconvenient once you start experimenting with a few. The Extension Manager application provides a much cleaner way to browse, install, update, enable, and disable extensions from a single place.
sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-manager
Add Your Favorite Apps to the Dock
The Dock in Ubuntu provides quick access to running applications and can also serve as a launcher for the programs you use every day.
Adding applications to the dock is simple. Open the application grid using the Show Apps button or press the Super key, then right-click the desired application and select Pin to Dock. Once added, applications can be rearranged by dragging and dropping them to your preferred position.
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Pin application to Dock in Ubuntu
The dock itself is also highly customizable. You can change its position, adjust icon sizes, enable auto-hide, and tweak other behavior from the system settings to better suit your workflow.
Customize the Dock
Ubuntu provides you a Dock that host the pinned and opened application on the left edge of your screen. Since it is based on a customized version of GNOME's Dash to Dock extension, there is plenty of room for customization.
For basic adjustments, head to Settings → Ubuntu Desktop → Dock. Here, you can change the dock's position, enable auto-hide, adjust icon sizes, and control how the dock behaves on your desktop.
Dock Settings
If you want more advanced options, open Extension Manager, select Ubuntu Dock, and access its settings. This exposes additional tweaks that are not available in the regular system settings, giving you greater control over the dock's appearance and behavior.
Extensive Ubuntu Dock Settings
Click to Minimize
Open Extension Manager, click the settings button next to Ubuntu Dock, and switch to the Behavior tab. Here, locate the Click Action option and change it to Minimize. Once enabled, clicking the icon of an open application will minimize its window.
Click to Minimize Settings
At this point, when you click on the icon of an opened app in the Dock, it will be minimized to the taskbar.
Or, you can set what I do on my system. Set the Click action to Focus, minimize or show previews.
This setting combines the best of both worlds. If an application has a single window open, clicking its dock icon minimizes it. If multiple windows are open, Ubuntu displays window previews instead, making it easier to switch between them.
Install Extensions
Extensions can add new features, improve existing workflows, or completely change how the desktop looks and behaves.
With Extension Manager installed, discovering new extensions becomes straightforward. Open the application, switch to the Browse tab, search for an extension, and click Install.
It's usually better to install a few extensions that genuinely improve your workflow and ignore the rest.
Get Familiar with Tiling
Recent Ubuntu releases have significantly improved the tiling experience. Simply drag a window by its title bar to the top of the screen to reveal available tiling zones. Dropping the window into one of these zones automatically snaps it into place.
What makes the experience particularly useful is the tiling assistant. After placing a window, Ubuntu can suggest other open applications to fill the remaining screen space, making it easy to create an organized workspace without manually arranging every window.
Ubuntu Tiling
If you prefer keyboard shortcuts, the traditional tiling keybindings are also available. And because Ubuntu's tiling functionality is powered by the Ubuntu Tiling Assistant extension, many aspects of its behavior can be customized through Extension Manager to better match your workflow.
Take Care of Your Wellbeing
Many of us spend hours in front of a computer without realizing how much time has passed. Whether it's work, studying, gaming, or binge-watching, it's easy to skip breaks and stay glued to the screen longer than intended.
The Wellbeing feature is designed to help with that. Similar in concept to digital wellbeing tools on mobile devices, it allows you to track screen usage and configure reminders that encourage healthier computer habits.
Wellbeing Settings
To get started, open Settings and navigate to the Wellbeing section. From here, you can set daily screen time limits, enable eyesight reminders, configure movement breaks, and even choose whether the display switches to grayscale once a screen time limit has been reached.
Use Your Monitor's HDR Capabilities
If you own a monitor with HDR functionality, then you can take advantage of the HDR support that works with displays of the BT.2100 standard. With this, you get perks like improved brightness, deeper contrast, and a wider color gamut for more vibrant visuals.
To enable this, you will first need to connect a compatible monitor. Then, go to Settings -> Displays page. If everything went well, then you will be shown the HDR and HDR Brightness options.
HDR Settings
Show Battery Stats in Panel
If you are a laptop user who is always on the go and cannot risk your device's battery dying out, then enabling the on-screen display for battery percentage is a must-have for quick battery charge level checks.
To enable this, go to Settings -> Power, then go to the General page and enable the Show Battery Percentage option.
That is not the only way you can spice up the top panel. There are some nice customizations that you can add.
Show Battery Percentage
Disable Automatic Screen Blank
Ubuntu enables automatic screen blanking by default to save power when the system is idle. While that makes sense for many users, it may not be ideal if you frequently step away from your desk, follow long-running tasks, or keep information visible on the screen for extended periods.
Similar to the previous suggestion, go into the Power settings, but instead of General, go into "Power Saving" and uncheck the "Automatic Screen Blank" option. You can also tweak the delay time before the screen goes dark if you prefer this behavior.
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This is not a good idea for shared spaces like offices, cafés, or a family home with nosy people around.
Hide the Home Folder
Ubuntu places a Home folder icon on the desktop by default. While some users appreciate the quick access, others prefer a cleaner desktop with an unobstructed view of their wallpaper.
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Hide Home Folder from Desktop
If you'd rather keep the desktop free of extra icons, right-click on an empty area of the desktop and select Desktop Icons Settings. From there, disable the Show Home Folder option.
Set What Shows in the Search
When you perform a search using GNOME Search, it include more than just applications and files. Categories such as characters, emojis, settings, and other providers may also appear, which can make the results feel a bit cluttered depending on how you use your system.
Search Results
To customize this behavior, open Settings → Search. From here, you can disable search providers you don't use and reorder the remaining ones based on priority. For example, if you never search for emojis through GNOME Search, you can disable the Characters provider entirely.
Search Settings
Install Curl and Git
Ubuntu does not come with curl or git installed by default. A bit curious, because curl is commonly used to download files, interact with web APIs, and fetch installation scripts directly from the terminal. Git, on the other hand, is the most widely used version control system and is often required when working with source code, cloning repositories, or following developer-focused guides.
You can install both packages with a single command:
sudo apt install curl git
Even if you don't need them immediately, having these tools available can save time later. Many open-source projects assume that curl and git are already installed and use them throughout their installation and setup instructions.
Learn Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts are one of the easiest ways to become more productive on Ubuntu. While almost everything can be done with a mouse, knowing a handful of shortcuts can make launching applications, managing windows, and navigating the desktop significantly faster.
The good news is that GNOME makes discovering shortcuts easy. In most modern GNOME and GTK applications, pressing Ctrl + ? opens a dedicated shortcuts window that neatly organizes all available keyboard shortcuts. Spending a few minutes exploring these can reveal useful actions that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Accessibility settings are often associated with specific needs, but several of them can be genuinely useful for everyone. Ubuntu includes a number of small quality-of-life features that can make interacting with the desktop more comfortable and efficient.
Locate the Cursor
If you work with multiple monitors or frequently have several windows open, there will eventually be a moment when the mouse pointer seems to disappear into the clutter. Instead of wasting time hunting for it, GNOME includes a built-in feature that highlights the pointer on demand.
Open Settings → Accessibility → Pointing and Clicking and enable Locate Pointer. Once enabled, pressing the left Ctrl key triggers a ripple animation around the mouse cursor, making it instantly visible on the screen.
Location Pointer Settings
Reduce Motion Animations
GNOME's animations generally look polished on modern hardware, but they are not essential to the desktop experience. If you prefer a more immediate feel or use older hardware, reducing animations can make the interface feel slightly more responsive.
To enable this setting, head to Settings → Accessibility → Seeing and turn on Reduced Motion. GNOME will minimize many of its transition and animation effects throughout the desktop.
Reduced Motion Settings
Don't expect dramatic performance improvements, especially on newer systems. However, on less powerful hardware, or if you simply prefer a snappier and less animated interface, this small tweak can make the desktop feel a bit more streamlined.
Get Overamplification
Ubuntu offers an accessibility feature that can boost audio output beyond the normal limit.
To enable it, open Settings → Accessibility → Hearing and turn on Overamplification. Once enabled, the system volume can be increased above 100% when needed.
Overamplification Settings
Keep in mind that this is achieved through software amplification, so pushing the volume too high may introduce distortion or reduce audio quality. Still, it can be a useful option when dealing with particularly quiet recordings, low-volume speakers, or headphones that need a little extra boost.
Wrapping Up
One of the things I appreciate about Ubuntu is that it works well with its default settings while still offering plenty of ways to tailor the experience. You don't need to apply every tweak mentioned here. Pick the ones that match your workflow and ignore the rest.
If you're new to Ubuntu, start with the essentials and explore gradually. Over time, you'll discover which settings, extensions, and tools genuinely improve your day-to-day experience, helping you build a desktop that feels truly your own.
Jordan Hubbard started FreeBSD in 1993 with two others, and he has now built Daemonarchy with help from OpenAI’s GPT AI model. The name plays on Omarchy, with the BSD daemon taking the place of Arch as the base.
As for Omarchy, it has grown considerably since we initially covered it as a one-command script for Arch. It now installs from an ISO and has managed to pull in massive amounts of funding.
Anyhow, Daemonarchy is only a few weeks old and already has several releases, with v1.3.1 being released a few hours ago.
Why does this exist?
A few people on LinkedIn were pestering Jordan, saying FreeBSD should be as easy to set up and as pretty as Omarchy. That got him wondering, “Why doesn’t that already exist?”
He was testing GPT Astra 6 at the time and used it to put the project together. The first pass took under two hours. That figure leaves out the Poudriere builds used to validate it. GPT also picked the name for the project.
The ports this distro needed went upstream to FreeBSD’s ports tree for review. The same ports also let you install Daemonarchy on top of an existing FreeBSD system.
Jordan also credits the Wayland, Hyprland, and Arch Linux projects for the layers the desktop sits on.
What does it offer?
The installer follows Omarchy’s own, and it asks for the usual basics like keyboard layout, account details, hostname, and timezone.
Daemonarchy can take over a whole disk or settle into a partition or free space you pick, with a minimum of 40 GB of storage required. A whole-disk install wipes the drive, while partition mode overwrites only the partition you select.
Because the installer won’t shrink existing filesystems, anyone dual-booting has to make room from the other OS first. Everything lands on ZFS with rollback support, and encryption is optional.
The desktop is Omarchy itself, ported over with only the changes FreeBSD requires, and it runs on FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT. Since CURRENT moves daily, each image is pinned to one snapshot.
A compatibility layer maps pacman to pkg, backs the Wi-Fi panel with wpa_supplicant instead of NetworkManager, and uses PipeWire to handle sound. Bluetooth also works for keyboards and mice via FreeBSD’s Bluetooth stack.
Apps come from FreeBSD’s own packages, installed with OctoPkg under Install > Packages or with pkg, and Chromium is preinstalled. Linux-only apps are being held back until specific versions have been tested under the Linuxulator, FreeBSD’s Linux compatibility layer.
Jails give you isolated FreeBSD environments that carry their own packages, and bhyve, the built-in hypervisor, runs virtual machines for guests like Linux and Windows.
And, if you run an upgrade through Omarchy’s update, it applies pkg upgrade to your applications and leaves the FreeBSD base and kernel alone. Daemonarchy’s own packages come from a signed repository and fixes land between ISO releases.
The wallpaper, wordmark, and login theme are the project's own creations.
📥 Get Daemonarchy
The latest 1.3.1 ISO release is a little under 2 GiB. Put it on a USB drive using dd or a live USB tool like Fedora Media Writer, then boot from that.
An internet connection is required during the installation while the installer downloads many packages as it progresses. The source code lives on GitHub.
Before announcing this Linux-based implementation, Amutable had released two open source tools. tine, a Buck2-based build system that composes OS images; available under MPL-2.0, and Quarry, a TUF-based tool that distributes those images to machines; available under Apache-2.0.
What Amutable Foundations brings to the table is a service where Amutable runs the images, update repositories, control plane and vulnerability fixes for organizations and individuals who operate their own systems.
No license has been stated for those company-run parts, and the preview announcement does not say how much of Foundations beyond tine and Quarry will be open source.
The system is immutable, with read-only system volumes protected by dm-verity, signed unified kernel images, and measured boot. Software and configuration both ship as signed images, and a machine boots only what is signed.
Because there is no package manager and no SSH or interactive shell, a change means giving every machine in your fleet a new signed image.
Its images are reproducible, come with an SBOM and are built from pinned inputs of whichever distribution you pick, with tine being able to import packages from Fedora or CentOS Stream.
How machines prove their state
Each machine sends a signed report that records what it booted, from the firmware and boot loader up to the kernel and OS, plus the configuration it runs.
Reports go out at regular intervals and at boot, and the signature is backed by a TPM or a CPU with confidential computing support. Machines without that hardware can fall back to a software key.
Amutable's control plane verifies reports from systemd-report, an experimental command in systemd 260 that the company helped build. It compares each one with the declared state and flags machines that deviate.
A rollout only continues while machines can show they are in a good state. Operators work through a structured interface instead of logging in.
Updates come from per-machine repositories that can link to one another, and downloads are checked against signed metadata for tampering, replay, and rollback attempts.
The same proof is meant to decide access, such as cluster joins and secrets. Amutable's provided example is withholding database credentials from a machine that runs outdated configuration.
Get into the preview
Amutable is looking for teams that manage Linux fleets and need to show what state each machine is in. It expects to start bringing the first 'design partners,' as it calls them, on board over the coming weeks.
Those partners will get early access, a direct line to the developers, and a say in what gets built next. The signup form asks for name, work email, company, role, country, industry, and company size.
Amutable is also targeting Kubernetes next, and if you are eager to learn more about that or Foundations, the team will be present at Booth 347 at this year's KubeCon North America in Salt Lake City.
If you have used Linux for a while, chances are you have used something Mirko Brombin built. He created Bottles, the app that takes a lot of the pain out of running Windows software with Wine. He founded Vanilla OS. And these days, he is building Singularity OS, an operating system with its own desktop and its own approach to immutability.
We last spoke with Mirko back in 2022. A lot has happened since then. He now works full time at fabricators, he is working on getting Microsoft Office running through Bottles, and he has some strong views on AI and on the recent wave of apps cloning Adobe and Microsoft interfaces.
I sent him my questions over email. Here are his answers, exactly as he sent them.
You have full time work at fabricators, Bottles, Sinty OS, and a long list of libraries and tools. How do you decide what gets your time?
I think anyone who's known me for a while knows that I'm not particularly good at sitting still, haha.
I've never really had a proper strategy for deciding what to dedicate my time to. Most of my projects are born from a problem I want to solve, an idea I want to experiment with, or simply the curiosity to find out whether something is possible.
Naturally, working full-time at fabricators and maintaining several open source projects, I've had to learn to set priorities. Not everything can receive the same attention, and not everything necessarily has to become a complete product.
You've written about using AI agents for the mechanical work, so how much has that changed what you can realistically take on?
Artificial intelligence has certainly changed a lot about the way I work, but I think it's important to explain how, because it's a topic I've really spent a lot of time thinking about.
When I wrote my articles about using AI agents in software development, I spent quite a lot of time just trying to find the right words. In open source, it's a particularly delicate subject, especially when you're someone with a fairly public presence and free software isn't just a passion, but also part of your work and your life.
It's very easy to be misunderstood, both by those who consider artificial intelligence the solution to every problem and by those who reject it completely, and honestly... I don't see myself in either position, because I've always had a rather complicated relationship with LLMs. At first I was very skeptical and, frankly, the more I tried to understand how they worked, the harder I found it to fully trust them.
The problem isn't the quality of the code they can produce, but understanding why they produced that particular code, because when I design software, I start from the architecture, I decide how the components should interact, what responsibilities they should have, how to handle errors, which compromises to accept and, logically, which ones to avoid. I document all of this very carefully, because I want to be able to understand every decision even years later, and it's a process I particularly care about and have absolutely no intention of delegating.
I want to give an example. A large part of the applications and infrastructure I develop every day, including for work, is written in Go. Over the years I've built my own set of libraries, defined my own patterns, and developed a fairly precise way of writing software. When I use AI, I don't ask it to invent an architecture, I give it mine, along with the documentation, conventions, and constraints it has to respect. I'm the one who decides how a project is born, how it evolves, and, eventually, when it's time to abandon it.
I still write a great deal of code manually, often because I need to work on particularly delicate components, other times simply because it's faster for me to do it myself. In any case, I review every single line of code written by AI. If it does something badly, it's because I accepted it.
What still doesn't convince me, though, is the very nature of how they work, because a language model can produce a correct answer, it can even explain the steps that seem to have led it to that conclusion, but this is... Well, illogical, at least from my point of view. An LLM can produce reasoning, but it doesn't necessarily possess an explicit, persistent, and causally verifiable representation of the knowledge it uses to express that reasoning. And this bothers me quite a lot.
If an agent decides to use a particular data structure, I want to know whether it did so because my documentation specifies that it's the correct solution, or because that solution is statistically plausible given the context.
To me, these are two very different things, and it's precisely for this reason that, for quite some time now, I've been researching and experimenting with an alternative approach to current language models, a project called Amus, with which I'm exploring a different way of representing knowledge and constructing answers, trying to make the relationships that lead to a conclusion more explicit and verifiable.
I don't want to reveal too much because it's still a research project, but the first results have been really encouraging, and I hope to be able to talk about it publicly in more detail soon.
So, going back to the original question, yes, AI agents have allowed me to take on an amount of work that would have been unthinkable for a single person just a few years ago, but by using them, I've started questioning the very technology they're based on and, well, perhaps that's the best way to describe my relationship with artificial intelligence, haha.
Your site now lists Vanilla OS as community-run. When we spoke in 2022, your goal was to make it sustainable enough to work full-time. What happened along the way, and how did it feel to step back from something you founded?
Not much has changed on this front. Vanilla OS continues to be maintained, it receives updates, especially when it comes to security and stability.
We recently released Vanilla OS 3 Reunion, which involved a huge amount of work to bring ARM support, along with writing the Vanilla OS SDK, which we used to rewrite many of the fundamental components of the operating system, so that everything could share a single common foundation.
Today, the project doesn't depend on my hands alone. There are several team members who make all of this possible, plus fabricators, which maintains its server infrastructure, and let's not forget all the contributors who report problems and provide solutions.
Over time, I've taken on a different role. I certainly still develop, in fact I developed Vanilla OS Continuity, the backup system included in Vanilla OS 3 Reunion, but... My role has started to become more political, both from the perspective of someone who finds ways to keep the project financially alive and from the perspective of making decisions about the architecture the project is built upon.
In short, I'm still holding the reins of everything :D
When you started Bottles in 2017, Wine, PlayOnLinux, and Lutris already existed. What gap did you see that made you build another one?
Well, probably because I wasn't satisfied with any of the three, haha.
Jokes aside, when I started Bottles, Wine was already an extraordinary technology, and PlayOnLinux and Lutris offered very useful tools to simplify its use. Actually, a special shout-out to Mathieu: "Hey look, I'm on It's FOSS, again!" D:
But none of them matched exactly my idea of "simplicity". My goal wasn't simply to create another launcher or a tool to install programs, but rather an environment where I could manage my applications without constantly having to touch the command line or place various DLLs here and there...
I've always found it curious how, in the Linux world, people so easily accepted the idea that technically complex tools necessarily had to be complicated to use as well. I think it's a stereotype, but also a fairly widespread one. The internal complexity of an application shouldn't automatically become the user's problem, and I'm saying this knowing that underneath Bottles there's literally a tangled mess making everything work.
And well, it's the same reason why I'm announcing Raven 😄
Many FOSS folks would say the effort is better spent improving LibreOffice or ONLYOFFIC. Why is getting Microsoft's own suite running worth it to you, given that Microsoft could break it with any update?
Frankly, I don't understand why the two things should be mutually exclusive. LibreOffice, ONLYOFFICE, etc. are fantastic pieces of software that I recommend first and foremost to anyone wanting to move from Windows to Linux.
But I can't be blind either. I see it every day at work. In my office I have the privilege of using whatever I want (mainly Singularity OS with its office suite), but almost all of my clients and partners use Microsoft Office for one reason or another, for support, certification, and all those things that a user less immersed in this kind of working environment might not see.
I'm the first to say that users should have a choice, and I create those choices myself... But that's the ideal world. The real world is that sometimes we simply can't afford to make the choices we'd like to make.
MS Office running on Linux with Soda project
Will this stay a Bottles thing, or do you expect the fixes to go upstream into Wine so that other projects benefit too?
My goal is to contribute as much as possible upstream. We'll have to see whether the Wine developers like my patches though, haha.
Jokes aside, I want this work not to remain something specific to Bottles. I'd like it to be adopted upstream.
First of all, I need to reach a point where Microsoft Office 365 works reliably, then I'll find a way to collaborate upstream. It would be pointless to do it now.
There's also a wave of apps that clone Adobe and Microsoft tools almost one-to-one. Is copying familiar interfaces the right way to win people over, or does Linux need its own ideas? And how do you see their effort of bringing MS Office clone to Linux?
Honestly, this is the recent news I like the least, I have to be honest. I've made some tweets about it, I don't like how the identity of other people's products is being violated.
There's talk of clean room... But objectively, what's the point of talking about clean room if you then unleash a swarm of AI agents on the code, forcing them to keep Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop open so they can replicate them down to the very last millimeter?
It's not illegal... The practice itself isn't. But stealing, because that's what this is, the visual identity of that project is, it's called copyright infringement, and in some cases even unfair competition.
And what makes me even angrier is that I really don't see the point. Do we really need another Microsoft Office, identical down to the very last pixel?
If they had created a new suite with exactly the same functionality, using exactly the same approach, that would have been great. I would have been the first to promote it. And yet... This scares me a little, and it says a lot about what the future of open source will probably look like, especially if this is allowed and a precedent is set.
You are also working on Sinty OS. Why build your own desktop environment and kernel platform from scratch instead of reusing GNOME or KDE pieces?
Sinty OS is everything that Vanilla OS cannot be, because of its principles.
With Sinty OS, I wanted the desktop environment to be a unique experience, tailored to my needs (and those of many others, apparently), while in Vanilla OS we use pure GNOME, vanilla, exactly as mother GNOME intended it, and it follows all its principles, its style, everything is libadwaita and consistent with that desktop environment.
On the technical side, the "behind the scenes", Sinty OS is a completely different challenge. I'm trying to build an operating system that stands on the shoulders of Atom Loops, a new immutable technology I'm working on, very different from ABRoot and anything else out there.
Atom Loops manages immutability from the very first second of boot. The bootloader, the initramfs, everything is managed by this component, which follows a strict chain of trust and update validation.
Sinty OS doesn't use partitions for the system root, it uses image files (EROFS for the rootfs and UKI for the kernelcache), which are mounted by Atom Loops during boot, which means that, well, all the disk space (formatted as F2FS) belongs to the user.
Unlike Vanilla OS, I don't use LUKS, but encrypt user files using their own unique key. It's, well, completely different. The init system isn't systemd, but an ultra-minimal solution compatible with systemd units.
Let's say the two operating systems are two very different ways of achieving very similar goals.
When can people expect a stable release of SintyOS?
Haha, Sinty is the face of the project, as well as part of its identity.
Sinty is the shortened form I came up with for Singularity, which refers to the family of software related to Singularity Desktop and Singularity OS. Unfortunately, the term was too generic, so I decided to favor the name "Sinty". Little by little, I'm migrating everything to that name, which, in any case, will continue to mean Singularity.
There will be a lot more about Sinty, very soon. Many more applications and platforms are coming, all connected to Sinty OS.
Anything you'd like It's FOSS readers to know?
I just want to reiterate that people need to experiment more, especially today, when we have the technologies to dream big.
It would be predictable to say that limits are made to be overcome. It's much more exciting to think about how to overcome them.
Thank you for having me in this interview, always a pleasure!
Wrapping up
I would like to thank Mirko for taking the time to answer my questions in such detail.
I like how he refuses to pick a side in the AI debate. He uses agents heavily, yet he reviews every line they write and is researching an alternative to LLMs altogether. Amus and Raven are two things I'll be keeping an eye on, and so should you if you follow his work.
I'd also like to hear what you think about his take on the Adobe and Microsoft clones. Is copying a familiar interface fair game, or does it cross a line? Share your views in the comments.
Real-world ZFS usable space is typically 3–8% lower than this figure due to metadata,
padding, and the pool's built-in reservation. Treat this as an upper bound.
Compare layouts
Same drives, different layouts. This is usually the decision that matters most.
Power, save & share
Copied
RAID terms explained
Here is a brief explanation of the terms used on this online RAID calculator.
Striping
Data is split into chunks and written across several drives at once. It is fast because every drive works in parallel, but nothing is stored twice, so losing one drive loses everything. This is RAID 0.
Mirror
The same data is written to two or more drives. If one dies, another still has a complete copy. Simple and safe, but you only get the space of one drive per mirror. This is RAID 1.
Parity
Extra data calculated from your files, like the answer to a sum. If one number goes missing, you can work it out from the rest. Parity lets the array recreate a failed drive without keeping a full copy, so it costs less space than mirroring.
Single parity
One drive's worth of space holds parity, spread across all drives. The array survives one failed drive. RAID 5 and RAIDZ1 work this way.
Double parity
Two drives' worth of parity, so any two drives can fail. That includes a second drive dying while the first is being replaced, which is when it is most likely. RAID 6 and RAIDZ2 work this way; RAIDZ3 adds a third.
Striped mirrors
Drives are paired into mirrors, then data is striped across the pairs. You get the speed of striping and the quick recovery of mirrors, but only half the raw space. This is RAID 10.
Rebuild (resilver)
After you replace a failed drive, the array recreates its data by reading the other drives. ZFS calls this a resilver. Until it finishes, the array has less protection than usual.
ZFS vs. traditional RAID
Traditional RAID, from a hardware card or Linux's mdadm, only sees blocks of data and cannot tell if a block has gone bad. ZFS is a filesystem and RAID manager in one. It checksums every block, so it spots silent corruption and repairs it from the redundant copy. It only rebuilds the space actually in use, and a read error usually costs one file rather than the whole array. In return, it likes plenty of RAM, and growing a pool is less flexible: adding a single drive to an existing RAIDZ only arrived in OpenZFS 2.3.
URE and drive class
A URE (unrecoverable read error) is a spot on a drive that cannot be read back. Manufacturers rate how often this can happen. Consumer drives are usually rated at 1 error per 10¹⁴ bits read (about 12.5 TB). NAS and enterprise drives are rated at 1 per 10¹⁵ (about 125 TB). A rebuild reads a lot of data, so the calculator uses this rating to estimate the chance of hitting an error mid-rebuild. These are spec-sheet worst cases; real drives often do better.
How is the power draw estimated?
Each drive type uses a typical average draw for a drive that is spinning or active but not under heavy load:
3.5" HDD: 6.5 W
2.5" HDD: 2.5 W
2.5" SATA SSD: 2.0 W
NVMe SSD: 4.0 W
The array total is that figure multiplied by the number of drives. The yearly figure assumes the drives run 24 hours a day, every day: watts × 8,760 hours ÷ 1,000 = kWh.
It counts the drives only. The CPU, motherboard, fans and power supply losses add more, while spinning drives down when idle lowers it. Treat it as a ballpark for comparing layouts.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are the answers to common questions you might have:
Should I use RAID 5 or RAID 6?
RAID 6 is the safer choice for arrays built with large modern drives (8TB and above). RAID 5 tolerates only one drive failure, and rebuilding after a failure requires reading every surviving drive in full. A single unreadable sector during that window can compromise the rebuild. RAID 6 adds a second parity block, so the array survives a second failure or read error during that window. The cost is one extra drive's worth of capacity. RAID 5 remains reasonable for small arrays of small drives or non-critical data.
Is ZFS RAIDZ better than a ZFS mirror?
Neither is universally better. RAIDZ (especially RAIDZ2) gives you more usable capacity from the same drives, while mirrors give faster resilvers, better random I/O performance, and simpler expansion, since you can grow a pool by adding another mirror pair. For most home NAS builds with 4 to 10 drives where capacity matters, RAIDZ2 is the common recommendation; for performance-sensitive workloads or pools you expect to expand gradually, mirrors are often the better fit.
Is RAID a backup?
No. RAID protects against drive hardware failure and nothing else. Accidental deletion, ransomware, file corruption, controller failure, theft, and fire all affect every drive in the array simultaneously. RAID keeps your system available when a drive dies; a backup lets you recover data you have lost. You need both, and the standard advice is the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of your data, on two different types of media, with one copy off-site.
How much usable space do I get from RAID 5?
RAID 5 gives you the capacity of all drives minus one, based on the smallest drive in the array. Four 4TB drives yield 12TB usable; six 8TB drives yield 40TB usable. Note that your operating system reports capacity in TiB (binary units), so 12TB will appear as roughly 10.9TiB. The space is not missing; it is a difference in units.
Can I mix different drive sizes in RAID?
Yes, but every drive in the array is treated as if it were the size of the smallest drive, and the extra capacity on larger drives sits unused. Mixing a 4TB drive into an array of 8TB drives effectively turns them all into 4TB drives. If you must mix sizes, replacing the smallest drive is usually the cheapest way to reclaim capacity. Some systems (like Unraid or Synology SHR) handle mixed sizes more gracefully than standard RAID.
