FOSS Weekly #26.42: AI in Kernel, Ubuntu 26.10 Firefox Business, Mint Release Changes and More Linux Stuff

AI's role in kernel work is looking more apparent now. Linus Torvalds' use of Claude Code has tripled read speeds for concurrent file access, while Sasha Levin proposed an agents directory to house AI skills for kernel work.

And that's just the way AI is progressing, for good or bad. Last week's most popular news was an open source project that used AI to reverse engineer Adobe's Photoshop and other tools. Now the same project has used AI to 'clone' Microsoft Office.

These days, 9 out of 10 new open source software I come across is created with AI assistance. My inbox is flodded with new software review requests. One glance and I can 'feel' that both software and the coverage request email used AI.

So, like Linus Torvalds, I have made my peace with it. Until now, I was trying not to recommend open source tools that were openly developed with help of Claude or other AI tools. I don't see the point of it anymore now. If an open source software is good and I feel that readers would find it useful, I will feature it regardless. You can then decide on your own if you want to use it or not.

And this is also the time to get moving towards local AI. Where AI and models live in your system locally instead of a cloud. Sure, it won't match the performance of Claude and other frontier models, but some smaller tasks can still be achieved with local AI. Ubuntu's AI-based voice input tool Myna is a proof of that.

Do subscribe to the Local AI Weekly newsletter if you want to stay updated and use the AI on your system in true open source spirit.

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📰 Linux news that matters

Ubuntu 26.10 is going to be released today. While we wait for Ubuntu 26.10 ISOs to appear, the next interim release already has a codename, "Tenacious T-Rex," marking the first time Ubuntu has ever used a dinosaur-themed mascot.

ONLYOFFICE Docs 10.0 brings AI assistance to every editor for text summarization and formula drafting, while adding collaboration features, spreadsheet speed improvements, and modular apps for forms and file management.

Strata is a new keyboard-first file manager for Omarchy and Arch that just hit 1.0, offering column view browsing, vi-key navigation, and a clever feature that remembers each folder’s sort order and icon size.

LibreOffice has come to the rescue after Microsoft's discontinuation of Publisher for 365 users. Using the Document Liberation Project’s reverse-engineered library, users can now open PUB files and migrate them to open standard formats.

Mozilla is targeting the commercial market with Firefox Enterprise, a product that would let organizations manage Firefox installations across employee devices through a self-hosted console.

Linux Mint has moved to an annual release cycle, with the next one, Linux Mint 27 "Adrien" arriving on Christmas. There won't be a Mint 23.x

The CachyOS team recently announced that Framework is increasing its support for the project, going from $250 per month to $850, taking the total figure up to $10,200 a year.

Open source boot firmware LibreBoot has a new release supporting more hardware now.

🧠 What We’re Thinking About

Six open source vendors have launched Open Productivity Software to expand openDesk from government use into the enterprise market.

🧮 Linux Tips, Tutorials, and Learnings

My Computer is a Shell extension that restores the unified "Computer" view that GNOME dropped from Files (Nautilus) in the GNOME 47 release. It displays drives, network locations, and removable media in one place rather than them being scattered across the sidebar.

Arch users run pacman -Syu for updates because it prevents dependency mismatches when the local package database is stale. Running just -S on an outdated system can leave you with incompatible package versions.

👷 Homelab and Hardware Corner

Pebble completed the full open source release of software, hardware schematics, and mobile apps in 2025, paving the way for its resurrection. Now the Pebble Round 2 smartwatch has entered production and begun shipping to preorders.

Zima, brand behind ZimaOS, ZimaBoard, and ZimaCube, is organizing a self-hosting event on Reddit where you can win homelab gadgets and AdGuard and PhotoPrism licenses just by sharing your self-hosting story. If you already self-host, why not try your luck? Or, at least explore how other people are self-hosting.

Self-hosting Day Event by Zima

✨ Apps and Projects Highlights

BentoPDF is a privacy-first, open source PDF toolkit that processes files locally in your browser instead of uploading to servers.

A new open source GIS tool is here; it lets you chat with an AI Assistant about map data and geographic workflows.

If you like what we do and would love to support our work, please become It's FOSS Plus member. It costs $49 a year (less than the cost of a McDonald's burger a month), and you get free ebooks, an ad-free reading experience with the satisfaction of helping the desktop Linux community.

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📽️ Videos for You

For people who are working extensively with git, this terminal-based git client is worth a try.

Subscribe to It's FOSS YouTube Channel

💡 Quick Handy Tip

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/0:15

In the Nautilus file manager, you can carry out a search in the current folder using Ctrl+F or search everywhere using Shift+Ctrl+F. When you find the item you were looking for, you can use the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+O to open its location.

Going further, you can also use the shortcut Ctrl+. to open a terminal at that location.

🎋 Fun in the FOSSverse

Call yourself a true Arch Linux fan? Are you bold enough to prove it?

A reality check for big names like Adobe. 🤭

🗓️ Tech Trivia: Long before IT became the industry we know today, British computing professionals were organizing themselves. On October 14, 1957, the British Computer Society was formally incorporated following a merger of two computing groups.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 From the Community: A very interesting thread surrounding NixOS and Nix has popped up, featuring replies from supporters and skeptics.

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Epic Games Wants Linux Gamers. It's Rebuilding EAC For Fortnite

Linux gamers have gotten used to hearing that yet another multiplayer title is cutting off the platform due to a variety of reasons, though most of their arguments usually sound lazy to me.

Take Ubisoft, for instance. They recently stopped For Honor from being playable on Linux and the Steam Deck, saying that they could not meaningfully deploy protection for the platform.

Now we have Epic Games swaying the other way, rebuilding its Linux anti-cheat under a new name while also offering a preview release for the long-requested native Epic Games Launcher.

Anti-cheat on Linux isn't some pipe dream

Easy Anti-Cheat has supported native Linux games since 2014 and Windows games running through Wine or Proton since 2021. Epic is now rebuilding that Linux implementation into EAC Linux v2, aiming to get much closer to Windows by leaning on security features Linux already has.

On Windows, EAC relies on a kernel driver that is active only during play. On Linux, EAC Linux v2 won’t have such a module acting in one of the most sensitive parts of the system.

That matters because kernel-level anti-cheat is a common sticking point for Linux gamers.

EAC Linux v2 runs a systemd service that stays active just for the length of a protected game session, alongside eBPF programs written by Epic that watch for tampering and cheats.

For players, this means a stricter boot setup, so Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 need to be on, the kernel has to be signed with a key Epic recognizes, and several other boot and kernel settings come into play.

EAC checks all of this only when a protected game launches, and failing the check brings up an error, not a ban. Players can also keep a separate boot entry for protected games and run their own keys elsewhere.

Testing the waters

Fortnite will be the first game to test EAC Linux v2, with plans to open it to other developers once the system is validated. Developers with games already on EAC for Linux can stay on the older version or switch.

Getting Fortnite itself onto Linux depends on distro support. It will arrive through the new launcher (shown below) once enough maintainers meet the security requirements.

Epic Games Launcher (preview)

The preview officially supports Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or newer, Fedora 43 or newer, and Debian 12 or newer, while other distros may work but are not officially tested.

The launcher itself runs natively, but many games are Windows-only, so they may need a compatibility layer like Wine or Proton to run.

The community needs to step in

Epic is reaching out to Linux community leaders and inviting distro maintainers to get in touch since protected games will only launch on systems booted with keys from a trusted list.

It is maintained in-house for now, with the goal of going open source sometime down the line.

They already seem to be in touch with Fedora, as a panel scheduled for later this year names Fedora Project Leader Jef Spaleta as a co-host, with the talk centered on enabling fair competitive gaming on Linux.

SteamOS is the next obvious name to bring up, but the Steam Deck doesn't meet the requirements yet. Talks with Valve are ongoing, with the aim of supporting the handheld later.

While it's still early, this is good news for gamers on Linux, as this is a platform that keeps getting shown the proverbial middle finger when it comes to gaming.

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Suggested Read 📖: Last month, I spent some time with GeForce NOW on Linux to see if it's gameable.

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A Joint Venture of Open Source Proportions! Open Productivity is Here

Collabora Productivity, Element, Nordeck, Open-Xchange, Univention, and XWiki have put their names behind a new Berlin-registered company called Open Productivity Software GmbH.

Leading the firm are the two managing directors, Dr. Gerald Pfeifer and Peter Ganten, who are tasked with making it all work. Pfeifer held leadership roles at SUSE before taking the job, while Ganten is the CEO of Univention.

If you were wondering what openDesk is, it is a suite of office and collaboration tools made up of open source apps from different vendors. The new company is meant to market it to critical infrastructure operators and businesses internationally.

The project itself is an offering by the German ZenDiS, which has focused on public administration so far and launched a private-sector partner program for the suite last month.

Two of the founding members, XWiki and Open-Xchange, are also part of the Euro-Office initiative, the ONLYOFFICE-based document project we covered earlier this year.

What's inside openDesk?

Each founder supplies a piece of the suite. Here's a brief summary of who does what:

• Collabora Productivity handles document editing with its online office suite.
• Element brings real-time communications on top of Matrix.
• Nordeck adds communication tools built around Jitsi and its NeoBoard whiteboard.
• Open-Xchange covers email, calendars, and collaboration.
• Univention looks after identity and access management.
• XWiki supplies the wiki system for knowledge management.

Nextcloud and OpenProject are part of openDesk too, handling files and project planning, but they are not among the founders. The company also names Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace as its competition, pitching openDesk as a flexible alternative that gives users full control of their data.

How the partner model works

Customers are meant to deal with a single contact per project, who covers everything from consulting and migration to day-to-day operations. Hosting on a customer's own infrastructure or in the cloud is still something that's being worked on.

Three launch partners are backing the newly formed company. Adfinis is a Swiss-headquartered open source firm, the msg group has served critical infrastructure operators, while the French firm Smile brings integration expertise.

Open Productivity has not disclosed whether more partners will be onboarded following the launch.

Speaking during the launch, Pamela Krosta-Hartl, the Managing Director of ZenDiS, added that:

We welcome the initiative of several openDesk vendors to support openDesk’s path into the enterprise market through Open Productivity. Open Productivity enables the distributors and systems integrators that ZenDiS is now addressing with its new partner program.

You can go through the press release to learn more about their intentions with this joint venture.

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Suggested Read 📖: openEuler wants Linux to treat AI clusters like a standalone machine.

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This Dev Built an Office Suite Because His Wife Kept Going Back to Microsoft Office

Gaël Duval has already put out two beta releases of ElixirOffice, a desktop app and a self-hosted server version, and he is asking early testers for feedback.

His wife, a teacher, has been facing a predicament many people usually face when using open source office suites. For her, the editors offered at school felt unfamiliar, the menu items and shortcuts felt out of place, and not to mention colleagues' documents also looked off.

ElixirOffice follows the Microsoft Office-style ribbon, menus, and shortcuts, and it opens OOXML document formats as well as their OpenDocument counterparts. It targets Linux, Windows, and macOS, with a server version aimed at teams.

This is what's in the beta

Both of those versions use the AGPL-3.0 license, where the desktop app works offline, while the server version runs through Docker on a machine you host.

ElixirOffice offers substitutes for the usual Microsoft Office apps. The document editor takes the place of Word, the spreadsheet editor of Excel, and the presentation editor of PowerPoint.

Each one opens the Microsoft format and its OpenDocument equivalent, so .docx and .odt files go to the document editor, .xlsx and .ods to the spreadsheet editor, and .pptx and .odp to the presentation editor.

The server version also lets you connect Murena Workspace and Nextcloud accounts through an optional start page, which stays disabled unless you switch it on, and the desktop editor has no support for accounts, mail merge, co-editing, version history, or password-protected files.

On Linux, the desktop beta comes as an AppImage and a DEB for Debian and Ubuntu, whereas Windows gets an installer and macOS a disk image for Apple Silicon devices only.

ElixirOffice

How did this come about?

Gaël started and supervised the project, while large language models handled the coding via AI agents, with tests and reviews being run on every change. ElixirOffice also has optional AI features that stay off until you connect a model of your own.

To keep layouts close to Word without Microsoft fonts, it ships free metric-compatible ones, plus Marelle, a font commissioned by the French Ministry of Education. The README file on the project's repo also claims that no telemetry is collected and sent.

Its roots

ElixirOffice is not written from scratch. It sits on top of Euro-Office, which itself comes from ONLYOFFICE, and the project's changes live inside the forks of the Euro-Office components.

The original copyright notices and license files are kept in place, and the project states that it is not affiliated with Ascensio System, the company behind ONLYOFFICE, or the Euro-Office project.

To provide you with some context, Euro-Office is an editor that European companies, led by Nextcloud and IONOS, are building to run inside other platforms. It launched on March 27, 2026, and shipped its first stable release on June 9.

Around that time, ONLYOFFICE had raised licensing and attribution concerns about Euro-Office and suspended its partnership with Nextcloud, which disputed the claims.

Who's Gaël Duval?

Gaël is best known as the creator of Mandrake Linux, a distro that later became Mandriva. He left the company in 2006 and went on to start Ulteo.

Later, he began work on eelo, which is now called /e/OS. It is a de-Googled, Android-based mobile OS from the nonprofit e Foundation, where Gaël is listed among the founding board members.

He is also the CEO of Murena, the company that sells phones running /e/OS and runs the Murena Workspace cloud service, which was previously called eCloud.

Could it end up in Murena Workspace?

Nothing in the project's documents or Gaël's announcement says Murena plans to offer ElixirOffice as part of Murena Workspace, so any such move can only be called speculation at this point.

The server version connecting to Murena Workspace accounts is a promising sign, but that doesn't really mean anything right now.

Back in 2022, ONLYOFFICE said that Murena Cloud used its editors, and the e Foundation's landing page for the service says Murena Workspace is powered by ONLYOFFICE too.

So my thinking is that, if ElixirOffice does mature to the level of ONLYOFFICE, there's not much stopping it from being adopted as the in-house base for Murena Workspace.

For now, the source code and the releases for ElixirOffice can both be found on GitHub. 👇

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Suggested Read 📖: Seeing that we are on the topic, ONLYOFFICE Docs 10.0 is out now with many upgrades.

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Linux Mint 23 is No More. A New Release Takes its Place

In the project's September monthly update, Linux Mint lead, Clement Lefebvre (clem), says that the distro's version number now reflects the upcoming year and that point releases aren't a thing anymore.

Releases will come once a year, so 28 follows this one, and users upgrade from the current year's to the next. This ought to make it simpler for the many beginners who use Linux Mint as a gateway to the Linux platform.

The codenames change too, as the girls' names Mint has used since 2006 give way to boys' names. Linux Mint 27 "Adrien" is the first release to follow these new conventions, though it did not start off that way.

Where did LM 23 go?

You see, the devs had no name or version number ready for the next release when work on it began earlier this year, so they picked temporary ones. This way, "Alfa" became the codename and "23" the version.

That was because the release strategy was unclear. The cycle length, the handling of minor releases, and the question of alpha releases were all undecided, and the strategy would also dictate how releases got numbered and named.

It all goes back to the January update, when Clem said shipping a new release twice a year while also looking after LMDE was leaving them with less time to actually build features.

By March, the team had locked in a longer development cycle and a Christmas 2026 target for the next release. The move we have been talking about so far marks the end of that long decision-making process.

Clem also points out that using the girls' names for releases all these years, from Ada to Zena, had made them run out of alphabet just as the schedule changed, which he found a funny coincidence.

He says the project has never spent a full year on one release before, and while the move away from six-month cycles was a tough decision, it is working out.

A year of development

The longer cycle gives the team room to attempt projects that would once have felt out of reach. The Clockenstein project, which gave Mint a calendar app in the August update, now has an alarm app called Clocks too.

Alerts from Clocks run through the Clockenstein daemon and agent that already handle the calendar's notifications, so they go off even with the app shut. It handles repeating alarms and lets you pick your own sounds, while its look and behavior are borrowed from Android.

Three more projects, Superlight, Unfold, and Velocitty, are also getting their finishing touches. The next update blog will feature them.

If you need a refresher of the development work carried out so far, then you can read about Linux Mint's kernel removal feature and how Wayland support has been achieved.

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This Rust File Manager Was Designed for Omarchy, but Arch Users Can Run it Too

A file manager is one of the most basic tools a Linux distribution comes with, and desktop environments ship their own, such as Nautilus on GNOME, Dolphin on KDE Plasma, and Nemo on Cinnamon.

It is where people browse folders, move and rename files, preview what is inside them, and clean up any cluttered directories. Thanks to the platform's openness, you can also install more than one file manager on your system and use whichever you prefer.

A new one that has made an appearance recently is Strata, which is tailored for Omarchy and, to some extent, Arch Linux. Other glibc-based distributions might be able to run it, provided they meet its library requirements.

This file manager is written in Rust with GTK4 and released under the MIT license, with its lead developer, Pierre, announcing its first stable release a few hours ago. He claims that in 45 days, the project has picked up over 30 contributors and 700+ commits, with ~300K lines of Rust now in the codebase.

Strata is Here

Sourced from Strata's Git repo.

It can show folders side by side, so opening one reveals its contents in a new pane to the right while its parents stay visible, like the column view in macOS Finder. Icon and list views are available too, and being a keyboard-first app, it supports navigation with the arrow keys or the vi-style h, j, k, and l keys.

Ctrl+K opens a fuzzy search over your Home folder and every mounted local drive, which matches file names and paths but not file contents. The 1.0 release adds exclusions in Settings for skipping folders like node_modules or a single directory.

Tabs are another new addition that let any folder be opened in a new tab, with keyboard support for switching/reordering them, and previously open tabs being restored after a restart.

Strata also stores sort order and icon size per folder, where one folder can be sorted by date with large icons while another stays alphabetical with small ones, and each opens that way the next time.

Pressing Space toggles a preview panel for images, camera RAW files, PDFs, source code, audio, and video.

It includes a diverse range of themes too, and an in-app editor lets you create your own and save them as TOML files. Code and config files also get language-specific icons based on Catppuccin, in brand colors or the theme's accent.

Install it

Strata has an interactive installer for Omarchy and Arch Linux that runs from a single cURL command:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lgse/strata/main/install.sh | bash

The installer detects the CPU architecture, the glibc version, and whether the system runs Omarchy 3 or 4 or Arch Linux. It installs the latest stable release for the current user in ~/.local/bin.

Optional extras such as a desktop entry, a default folder handler, SMB support, and Omarchy keybindings are also available. You can even feed Omarchy's onboard AI agent a specific prompt to get it installed on your computer.

If you just want to check out Strata before committing to it, the project's homepage has a demo that lets you play around with it. Building from source is also possible.

Strata

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This New Distro Wants to Achieve What Ubuntu Failed to Do Nearly a Decade Ago

Remember Ubuntu’s convergence dream? One operating system across your desktop, tablet, and phone, with apps that adapt to whichever screen you’re using.

Canonical pursued that vision with Unity 8 and Ubuntu Phone before pulling its investment in 2017. Now, a new project called Luma wants to tackle a similar ambition.

It’s early days, and only a desktop build is available to download. But its plans go well beyond becoming another desktop Linux distro.

The project's founder, Nick (nmcmil), has worked with a small group of people to achieve this, with the group answering to no shareholders or investors and taking all the key project-related decisions themselves.

When I tested it, it was built on Fedora 44 and ran a recent version of the Linux kernel. The team does say that they have reworked enough of the stack that it doesn't count as a typical distro.

Their blog on AI also points out that the distro features AI-assisted contributions, with contributors being held responsible for any work that carries their name.

🚧

This distro is still pre-release and should not be treated stable enough for daily use or production deployments.

Luma: Overview ⭐

The desktop is called Prairie, and the team describes it as a hard fork of GNOME. Its goal is to provide a shell, windows, fonts, and apps that all look and feel the same.

Apps are built with GTK and Libadwaita, with the project shipping LumaUI as a toolkit outside developers can use to make their software feel at home on the system. Luma’s original code is licensed under Apache 2.0, and anything taken from upstream retains its original license.

The distro comes with pre-installed apps built for it; these include Depot as the app store, Viola as the browser, Charlie as the email client, and Tide for any music needs, alongside the self-explanatory Filer, Notes, Photos, and Messages.

If you opt for the Creative Collection, you get access to Canvas for design, Focus for RAW photo editing, Grid for spreadsheets, Stage for slides, Write for documents, Reel for video edits, and Sessions for audio mixing.

You also get Ari, the built-in AI assistant that's meant to work with local models, so everything can stay on your own hardware.

Package support is covered too. I installed apps through DNF5, Flatpak, and Snap on the October 11 nightly, and all three worked.

Valet takes care of AppImage, DEB, EXE, and APK files, which is how Windows and Android apps are meant to sit alongside native ones. It also tells you who made an app and what it can access before you install it.

Android support comes from an optional subsystem based on Waydroid, and compatibility varies by app. Luma is meant to be one system across desktop, tablet, and phone, so apps adjust their layout and controls to the screen size and to touch or mouse input.

There's also the optional Luma Connect app that handles sync for apps, settings, and files across devices.

For Smartphones Too!

Luma also wants to be your smartphone's OS. The team names the Fairphone 6 and the Google Pixel 9 family as its targets and says it plans to support more phones and tablets.

With what I can see from the screenshots they shared with us, the interface looks like it's on par with modern Android and iOS offerings, while sticking to a very measured approach for the colors and elements it employs.

The Luma folks are directing people to their hub's bounty board to vote for the devices they want and pledge money towards getting them supported.

Test it Now

Luma's clean installation experience.

Luma's download page lists a single 7.2 GB x86_64 nightly ISO as the recommended way to try the distro out. It needs a 64-bit Intel or AMD processor with at least two cores running at 2 GHz or faster, 4 GB of RAM, and 40 GB of storage, with an SSD preferred.

An ARM64 build is yet to make an appearance here, so people on that platform will have to wait a bit. Similarly, creative apps like Grid, Stage, Reel, Sessions, and Canvas are also set for a later arrival.

Luma

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