Ever since it first appeared as a credit card-sized computer, the Raspberry Pi has quietly reshaped how we think about cheap, hackable hardware. Its ability to run fully-fledged Linux distros and GPIO pins for wiring up sensors and motors all while being cheap is what drew people in.
Of course, recent hikes across its lineup have made things harder for tinkerers, but that's the price they have to pay for access to a well-established ecosystem.
That ecosystem covers a lot of ground too. Between the standard boards, the Zero line, and the Compute Modules meant to sit inside custom carrier boards, there is a Pi suited for nearly every kind of project.
Makers and small companies have leaned on this range to build all sorts of things, and some of the results barely look like the underlying device anymore.
With this list, we will be taking a look at a few handhelds that will make you wonder what more a Raspberry Pi can do.
The List
Device
Price
Powered By
Status
Hackberry Pi CM5
$158 to $1,049
Raspberry Pi CM5
In Stock
PocketTerm35
$87.99 to $181.99
Raspberry Pi 4B / Pi 5
In Stock
Pi Slate
$299 to $749
Raspberry Pi 5
In Stock
uConsole
$249
Raspberry Pi CM4
Partial Stock
Cybert.
$199
Raspberry Pi CM5
Sold Out
SpecFive Strike
$434.99
Raspberry Pi CM4
Sold Out
1. Hackberry Pi CM5
The Hackberry Pi CM5 is an open source handheld built by Zitao, an engineering student at the Technical University of Dresden in Germany.
At the front sits a 4-inch 720x720 touchscreen, paired with a repurposed BlackBerry keyboard (Q10, Q20, or 9900 layouts), and the keys can be remapped through Vial if the default mapping does not suit you.
Powering it is a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5, running on a quad-core Cortex-A76 chip clocked at 2.4GHz, and a 5000mAh battery keeps it running for roughly five hours on standby or three to four hours of active use.
There are two ways to get one. Elecrow sells a barebones kit for $158 to $168, but you will need to source your own Compute Module 5 and put it together yourself. If you want it ready to use, Carbon Computers sells a fully assembled version starting at $449, with prices climbing to $1,049 for higher RAM and storage.
You will notice further on that most handhelds on this list trade the standard Raspberry Pi board for a Compute Module to save space. The PocketTerm35 is Waveshare's pocketable Linux terminal, built around a full Raspberry Pi 4B or Pi 5.
It features a durable 3.5-inch 640x480 display and a 67-key silicone keyboard that can be used for code entry, command execution, and general editing. An RP2040 chip handles input, screen brightness, and volume control.
The device itself measures 93.5 x 168.5 x 37mm, with an aluminum faceplate on the front and a plastic cover on the back.
Prices on the Waveshare store start at $87.99 and go up to $181.99. The cheap end is the bare accessory kit, useful if you already have a spare Pi board to drop in. The higher end gets you a fully loaded setup with a Pi 4B or Pi 5, a 64GB card, and a 5000mAh battery.
The Pi Slate is Carbon Computers' take on a portable cybersecurity workstation, built around a Raspberry Pi 5 in a shell slim enough for daily carry. Two integrated antenna mounts sit at the top corners, so GPS, LoRa, or SDR radio modules can be bolted on without modifying the case.
The 5-inch touchscreen runs at 1920x720, and below it sits an RGB backlit keyboard with a gyroscopic cursor built in for pointer control. You get a 10,000 mAH battery as well, which is rated for 3 to 5 hours of use.
Carbon Computers sells the Pi Slate fully assembled, starting at $449 for the 2GB/32GB Pi 5 configuration, climbing to $749 for the 16GB/128GB version with more storage. A barebones kit without the Pi 5 goes for $299, and a separate radio kit with GPS, LoRa, and SDR support costs $149.
The uConsole does not lock you into one chip. ClockworkPi sells four interchangeable core modules for the same shell, and which one makes sense depends entirely on what you want to do with the thing.
The Raspberry Pi CM4 core is the ideal choice for daily use, coding, emulators, and anything that benefits from Raspberry Pi's software support. Complementing that, you get a 5-inch display running at 1280x720, with a 74-key backlit keyboard, a trackball that doubles as a mouse, and a D-pad with four buttons wired in for emulator controls.
An optional 4G LTE module adds cellular data, and the whole thing runs on replaceable 18650 Li-Ion batteries rather than a sealed battery pack. Plus, schematics and other design-related files can be found on GitHub.
Cybert. is yet another Carbon Computers offering; this one traces back to a concept called the MC01. Initially, it was built around the Raspberry Pi CM4, but later versions added support for the CM5 along with a custom QMK-compatible keyboard and a BlackBerry touch sensor for a cursor.
The handheld is now at v3.2, powered by a CM5, offering two additional USB 3.0 ports along with a standard M.2 SATA slot for adding things like an SSD, AI accelerator, LoRa, or a 4G LTE module.
For the display, it features a 4-inch 720x720 touchscreen and has wide Linux distro support, ranging from Raspberry Pi OS, Kali Linux, to other popular distros.
It is sold as a bare PCB and case, not a finished device, priced at $199 when in stock. You will need to source your own Compute Module, the display, a LiPo battery, and even a BlackBerry 9900 touch sensor separately to finish the build.
This handheld has a built-in SX1262 LoRa radio, letting you join Meshtastic mesh networks and talk to ATAK, the tactical mapping software used by military and first responder teams.
None of the other handhelds on this list have a radio like this built-in.
A Compute Module 4 sits inside, powering it all, with a 4.3-inch touchscreen and a QWERTY keyboard for tackling daily use, and GPIO, I2C, and SPI headers for anything else you want to wire up.
There are two editions on offer; the Base Edition ships without an SD card, and you have to manually install an operating system like Raspberry Pi OS, RetroPie, or emteria.OS, while the Ready Edition comes preloaded with Raspberry Pi OS and Meshtastic already configured.
At the time of writing, SpecFive only listed the Ready Edition of Strike for $434.99, though every color is currently sold out.
Firefox is my daily driver, my main browser. I have been using it for years and I also pay attention to the features it adds with new releases.
I find it surprising that many people use it just for browsing websites but not utilizing many other features it offers. Trust me, you will be surprised by just how much power and convenience is packed into this browser beyond simple web surfing.
From clever productivity hacks to handy built-in tools, it is packed with features that can help enhance your online experience. You don't need to visit third-party websites for several day-to-day tasks.
Let me share these "lesser known" (if I may call that) features of my favorite open source browser.
💡
In multiple places, I mention "add item to toolbar". Toolbar can be customized using Menu -> More Tools -> Customize Toolbar. Here, drag and drop items to the toolbar to add them.
Tab Split View
For a long time, the lack of a native split-screen viewing mode was a notable gap in Firefox's feature set. However, modern ultrawide monitor users can now view two tabs simultaneously side-by-side without needing to arrange separate OS windows.
While the feature is currently limited to splitting two tabs at once, rather than tiling multiple layouts, the implementation is clean and works exactly as intended.
To use it, simply hold CTRL key and click on the two tab titles you want to view together. Right-click either of the selected tabs, and choose Open in Split View from the context menu.
Once active, you can easily swap their positions or resize the dividing line to allocate more screen real estate to a specific page.
Split tab in Firefox
💡
Firefox-based Zen browser doesn an even more excellent at split tab views as it can have multiple tabs in multiple layouts.
PDF Viewer and Editor
Firefox offers more than just viewing PDF files. It allows annotating PDF documents with tools such as adding highlights, hand-drawings and texts. The browser also enables signing PDF documents and inserting images within PDF files.
Ensure that the last page of the current document is selected for appending. Once all PDFs are added, save the file to create a merged PDF without relying on external websites.
Merge PDF in Firefox
This capability makes Firefox an attractive option for managing and editing PDF documents, as it provides a convenient and accessible way to annotate, sign, and merge files.
I mostly use Firefox as the PDF viewer, because it can highlight and comment PDFs, that is accessible everywhere, like inside my Obsidian PDF viewer.
Built-in Color Picker
Web developers and designers frequently spot colors they want to capture while browsing. Having a color picker built directly into the browser eliminates the need for third-party extensions.
Firefox includes a native Eyedropper tool that allows you to easily pick colors from any webpage. To access it, open the main Firefox application menu, navigate to More Tools, and select Eyedropper.
Open Eyedropper from Menu
Once activated, your cursor transforms into a magnified circle with a precision pointer at the center, making it easy to isolate specific pixels. Simply hover over the exact color you want to capture and left-click. Firefox will instantly copy the corresponding hexadecimal color code directly to your clipboard.
Eyedropper in action
If you find yourself using this tool frequently and want to bypass the menus, you can add the Developer item directly to your main Toolbar.
Select Eyedropper from Developer Tool
This gives you one-click access to the Eyedropper whenever you need it.
Screenshot Tool
Firefox features a powerful, built-in screenshot tool that removes any need for separate screen-capture extensions or external utilities. To activate it, simply right-click on an empty space within any webpage and select Take Screenshot.
Click on Take Screenshot
One of the tool's best feature is its ability to intelligently align to individual DOM elements on a page. For instance, if you hover your cursor over an image, a specific text block, or a column, the tool automatically snaps its bounding box to perfectly capture that exact element.
Taking screenshot in Firefox
Click on the Download button to save that selection as a PNG file.
Beyond element snapping, the tool offers great flexibility:
Click and Drag to manually select a specific region of the page.
Save Visible button to capture exactly what is currently shown on your screen.
Save Full Page is the standout capability. It captures the entire webpage from top to bottom, even the portions buried far below the fold.
I absolutely loved the full website screenshot, which allow us to capture everything all the way to the very bottom of the page. This is best used when you enable Firefox's reading mode.
Whenever I find an important article, I usually take a full screenshot in reading mode and then annotate the important parts later! It is such a cool feature.
Text and Websites Translation
Newer versions of Firefox have the capability to translate website contents to your favorite language. While translations cannot always be top notch, as far as I read, those are decent and get the job done well enough.
It provides a considerable amount of languages to translate to and from, making it easy to parse international sites.
Translating an It's FOSS article from English to Spanish
Also, when you go to Menu -> More Tools -> Translate, you can translate specific words or sentences of your choice to other languages.
Custom Translations
This is incredibly handy when you don't need the whole page converted but just want to figure out a specific phrase.
Reading Mode
Firefox has a reading mode, which removes most of the distracting components and gives you a nice readable text. It really cleans up the page, stripping out messy blocks and sidebars so you can just focus on the content.
Article in Read Mode in Firefox
It takes this even further, too! You can adjust the font, the width of the text, and line spacing by using the Text and Layout settings right inside the reading mode.
Font and Layout settings in Firefox Read Mode
Also, you can set a different reading theme like Sepia, Dark, or Light depending on your environment and what's easiest on your eyes.
Theme settings in Firefox Read Mode
There is a read it aloud feature as well, which is useful when you want to listen to the article while multitasking.
When you are on articles that can be read in a reader mode, a reader mode button appears on the address bar adjacent to the URL of the article.
Click on it to enter the reading mode, and simply click on it again when you want to exit.
AI Summaries
AI summaries are helpful when you are in a hurry and want to know what an article is all about without reading the entire piece word for word.
AI Summary
Firefox now includes an AI button that allows you to quickly summarize contents and get AI help right inside your browsing workflow. A major advantage here is flexibility.
It lets you choose from and connect to multiple different AI service providers rather than locking you into a single model.
Select other AI providers
You can sign into your existing accounts with these chat services, which means you can seamlessly access your chat history and previous conversations while you work.
You can enable this feature in the General Settings under the Browser settings section. Once you toggle it on, it will take a few seconds for the initial setup.
AI related Settings
You will also see a noticeable increase in memory usage when it's running, which happens because a small model is executing entirely locally on your machine rather than sending your data to a cloud server.
Once it is up and running, you can simply left-click and hold on any link for a second to pull up a quick preview of the destination page along with its core keypoints.
Link Preview with Key points
If you want to tweak how these features behave, there is now a dedicated settings section specifically for AI-related configurations inside the main Firefox Settings menu.
Tab Group and AI
Firefox offers a powerful tab grouping feature to help you manage numerous open tabs efficiently.
You can manually create tab groups, for instance, by gathering all "It's FOSS" links into an "It's FOSS" group and assigning it a distinct color.
Manually group selected tabs
Even more interesting is the AI-powered tab grouping. If you have many tabs open and want to organize them quickly, Firefox's AI can assist with the heavy lifting.
To use this feature, right-click on any tab and select the "Add tab to a new group" option. Choose "Suggest more of my tabs".
Wait for the AI to analyze your open tabs. If related tabs are found, the AI will present a selectable list. You can then toggle which tabs to include in the group, provide a name for the group, and click "Done" to finalize it.
AI powered tab grouping
Picture in Picture Mode
Firefox makes it super easy to watch videos without getting distracted. Picture-in Picture (PiP) mode lets you shrink your video down to a little window that floats on top of everything else.
Watching video in Picture-in-Picture mode
To turn it on, head to the Firefox settings and look in the "General" section under "Browser". You'll find an option to enable PiP mode there.
Picture-in-Picture Mode Settings
You can also choose to automatically switch videos to PiP when you switch tabs. This is handy if you want to keep a video playing while you work on something else.
Switch to Picture-in-Picture mode on tab change
My personal favorite way to use PiP is during online courses; it keeps the video right there in my view while I code alongside searching documentation in tabs.
Vertical Sidebar
Firefox gives you the option to switch up your tab layout with a handy vertical sidebar.
To turn it on, just right-click anywhere on the tab bar and choose "Turn on vertical tabs".
Turn on Vertical Sidebar
Then, click the settings icon at the bottom of the sidebar. From there, you can customize it to expand and collapse when you hover your mouse over it.
Expand Sidebar on hover
I personally find this layout helps me keep track of a lot more tabs without feeling cramped. Plus, it looks pretty cool!
Quick Forget
To quickly erase browsing history of a short period, Firefox has a quick solution, Forget!
You can access this feature by clicking on the Forget toolbar item in your browser's toolbar. You have to add it first to the toolbar by customizing the toolbar.
From there, you have three options to choose from:
Forget the last 5 minutes: Removes your browsing activity from the past 5 minutes.
Forget the last 2 hours: Removes your browsing activity from the past 2 hours.
Forget the last 24 hours: Removes your browsing activity from the past 24 hours.
Quick Forget
Keep in mind that once you clear your history, it cannot be undone, and you will be logged out where ever you signed in.
Browsing History Dashboard
The Firefox View dashboard is like a personal history book for your browsing. It gives you more than just a simple list; it lets you see all your recent activity in detail!
Here's what you can do with it:
Get a clear view of every site you visited, including tabs from other devices.
Organize your history based on which sites you visit most often or those that are important to you.
Easily remove specific browsing history if you need to clean up your online activity.
Per site history in Firefox View
These are some of the cool features I use frequently, that make Firefox View a great way to keep your browsing organized and in control!
Multiple Profiles
Firefox natively supports using multiple profiles, which makes it incredibly easy to manage your home and work browsing in completely separate environments.
Profiles can be created by going to the main Menu and selecting Profiles -> New Profile. From there, you just give the profile a name, select a distinct color theme if you want to visually distinguish it, and click on Done Editing.
Profile Creation
Creating multiple profiles and switching between them is incredibly seamless with Firefox, allowing you to keep your cookies, history, and extensions completely isolated between your different workflows.
Switching Profiles
Task Manager
With the built-in task manager, you can easily view exactly which tab is consuming your memory, CPU, and other system resources. Being able to sort sites according to these metrics is incredibly useful.
Especially when you are running heavy AI tabs and video streams together and need to track down what's lagging your system.
Task Manager
To pull up the task manager instantly, you can use the keyboard shortcut Shift + Esc. It is also available via the main application menu if you prefer using your mouse.
Copy Link to Highlight
A feature that was absent for a long time, Firefox now supports link to highlights!
You can select a part of the text on a webpage, right-click on the selection, and select Copy Link to Highlight.
Open Link to Highlight
When you share this link with others, it will take them directly to that exact spot on the page and they can see the highlighted text instantly in the shared article!
It's incredibly convenient for pointing people straight to the most relevant information without making them scroll through a massive page.
Keyboard Based Controls
Did you know that there's more to the Firefox address bar than meets the eye? By pressing a few key combinations, you can access a set of powerful actions that can help you customize your browsing experience.
To get started, press CTRL+L to focus on the address bar. Next, enter > and press a space. You'll see that an Actions criteria is enabled.
This feature offers several useful actions, including Open a private window, Restart Firefox, etc.
To access these actions, simply use the keys as shown in the table below:
Key Combination
Use case
> space
Opens the Actions interface
^ space
History search
% space
Search among tabs
* space
Search among bookmarks
Using various keyboard actions
Built-in Game
Are you looking for a fun way to pass the time while waiting for your internet connection to kick in? You're not alone! Many browsers have hidden games that can keep you entertained.
Google Chrome has its popular Dino game, and Microsoft Edge has Surf. But what about Firefox?
The answer is yes, Firefox does have a game mode! But it's not as obvious as the others. To find it, follow these steps:
Go to Menu -> More Tools -> Customize Toolbar. Drag all the items in the bottom of the toolbar to the overflow section. What remains will be the Flexible spacer.
Play Game in Firefox
And that's when the magic happens! Click on the small game button in the bottom. The interface transforms into a ball game, where you can bounce the ball and have fun.
It may not be as flashy as some other games, but it's a cool way to pass the time while waiting for your internet connection to stabilize.
Experimental Settings
Now, let's see some experimental settings. Be cautious when using these, as these are either in experimental stage or cause unexpected issues.
Get a rounder corner
Firefox has an experimental feature that allows you to round off the corners of your browser, giving it a more cohesive look across all devices and operating systems, like GNOME desktop.
However, be cautious when using this feature, as it may cause unexpected issues or affect other parts of your system. To enable it, follow these steps:
Open Firefox and type about:config in the address bar. Press Enter to access the experimental settings page. You'll be warned that changing these settings can have serious implications. So proceed with caution!
About Config
In the search bar, enter rounded and find the setting called widget.gtk.rounded-bottom-corners.enabled. Toggle its value to true to enable rounded corners.
Set Rounded Corner
Now, go to Menu -> More Tools -> Customize Toolbar and disable the titlebar, as shown below.
Disable native titlebar
After making this change, close and restart Firefox.
Customize Keyboard Shortcuts
Want to take control of your browsing experience with custom keyboard shortcuts? Firefox allows you to do just that!
To get started, open Firefox and type about:keyboard in the address bar. This will bring up the experimental page for keyboard shortcut settings.
Change Keyboard Shortcuts
From here, you can alter key combinations for actions, remove existing keybindings and make any other changes you like.
Firefox Labs
Want to get a sneak peek at some cutting-edge features before they're widely released? Firefox has a section called "Firefox Labs" right in the settings menu.
Firefox Labs Settings
This is where you can experiment with experimental features that are still under development. Don't worry, your usage data isn't automatically shared just for trying these out. It only gets sent if you have technical and interaction data turned on in Privacy settings.
I'm currently running Firefox 151, and there are a few cool new features I can try.
Tab Notes seems really handy, but the List and Timer features are also pretty neat. They remind me of the homepage widgets in Vivaldi.
Wrapping Up
As you can see, Firefox is packed with a surprising number of features that go far beyond basic browsing, making your daily online tasks smoother and more efficient.
You don't need to go to Google Translate and copy paste text there. Simple right click works. Need quick screenshot, that' there. PDF reading and editing capabilities are additional blessings.
I can go on and on but I have to stop somewhere. So I stop here and I also let you explore lesser known features of DuckDuckGo search engine. I have a feeling that if you liked this article, you'll like that one too.
And don't forget to share your favorite Firefox feature in the comments below.
Halfbrick Studios reached out to us recently, and they were hyped to show off their newest project, Guncrypt, a dungeon crawler built around loading bullets in the right order instead of chasing better gear.
If that name sounds familiar to you, they are the ones behind a string of popular mobile games like Jetpack Joyride, Fruit Ninja, and Dan the Man.
In-game, the weapons system has three guns with over 60 bullet types and 80 relic types that can be combined to change the gameplay according to your playstyle.
Load a Corrosive Shot right before a Heavy Shot, and it lands completely differently than loading the Heavy Shot first. Fuse two bullets together for a new combined effect, or rearrange your whole magazine between rooms if your current setup isn't working.
First few minutes of gameplay after finishing the tutorial.
Tarot cards add passive bonuses to your starting loadout between runs, and the Curse Level pushes things further across five tiers once a run stops feeling threatening. All of this plays out across four procedurally generated floors, each with its own enemies, hazards, and a boss waiting at the end.
The demo plays nice
Some lore info before we dive in.
I got the demo version of Guncrypt up on my Nobara Linux setup, and the game ran without downloading any additional files. So this was simply Steam Play leveraging Proton to get the game running on this non-native config.
Anyhow, the opening cutscene sets the stage. The town of Guncrypt used to be a quiet, well-off town, until an evil wizard showed up, cursed it, and stole everyone's souls, leaving the townsfolk busy bickering among themselves to actually act (sounds like current events ☠️).
Resulting in the job being handed to the player instead. ⚔️
Then came the tutorial, and it was a curveball since I'm used to WASD movement. There's none of that here; instead, I had to hold down left-click and drag to move my gunslinger around while shooting at whatever was in front of him.
Once I was in, I interacted with a few NPCs like the Pirate and the Blacksmith, then I entered a crypt, which immediately showed me the quest list with some quests visible. The main one was to uncover the mystery behind the curse put on by the evil wizard.
Starting a run and getting rekt.
I entered a dungeon, where it was straight into combat, dodging enemies while keeping an eye on my reload timer between rooms. At the end of a run that got the best of me, I was shown a scoreboard with info like the floor I died on, the bullets used, and a detailed list of the various scoring criteria.
A few things that I unlocked.
Bullet pickups work similarly. I ran into three options at one point and picked Spark, a 110-damage round that throws lightning on enemies during reload. A bit further in the game, the pirate, "Plunderin' Pete" handed me bombs, a useful right-click ability for blowing up enemies and obstacles.
Release, when?
RIP Dusty, the clanker got ya.
As of writing, Guncrypt doesn't have a release date or price yet. The Steam page just lists it as "Coming soon." Meanwhile, you could try out the demo, which ran just fine on my test setup.
In April, Jon Seager of Canonical laid out the company's plan for handling AI in Ubuntu. The framework split things into two groups, implicit AI that quietly improves what you already use and explicit AI that are features you'd actually summon on purpose.
Back then, Jon gave speech-to-text and text-to-speech as one of the examples of what an implicit feature could look like. Weeks later, one piece of that puzzle has materialized in the form of Myna.
While the tool is early in the development cycle, it is set to debut with Ubuntu 26.10, due out in October.
AI-powered accessibility begins
Jean-Baptiste Lallement, Canonical's Director of Engineering for Ubuntu Desktop, posted the announcement, saying that voice dictation has become a common feature across modern platforms.
For Ubuntu 26.10, the initial version of Myna is expected to be a desktop dictation tool built around GNOME on Wayland with a push-to-talk mechanism gatekeeping when your microphone accepts input.
Using it means holding a hotkey, speaking, and letting go. A small activity indicator shows while it is listening, and the transcribed text lands wherever the cursor was sitting when dictation started.
How will it work?
Source: Canonical
Recognition itself happens inside a sandboxed component called the Canonical Inference Snap, while a Speech Orchestrator manages the session and an Audio Adapter handles whatever the microphone picks up, denoising and chunking it before it ever reaches the model.
The snap is meant to carry speech models in three sizes, lightweight, default, and quality, along with a runtime to match whatever hardware is being used to run Myna. May it be an NVIDIA GPU, an Intel NPU, or just a CPU.
And before you yell, "my data would be sent to cloud servers!" know that speech recognition will happen locally, and an internet connection is not needed once the appropriate model is installed.
Moreover, text only appears once it is finalized, so you won't see half-formed words flicker the way some assistants show live captions. The audio data won't be sticking around either, being stored in a small in-memory buffer that gets discarded the moment the session ends.
Features like dictation into password fields, wake words, continuous listening, voice assistants, voice commands, translation, speaker identification, and automatic language detection are all off the table.
The fine print
None of this is locked in yet. The GitHub repository holds nothing more than a license, a README, and a folder for the documentation and architecture specs.
And, going by how past features have landed on interim Ubuntu releases, we could see Myna show up in the daily builds of Ubuntu 26.10 in the coming weeks.
You should also know that Canonical is looking for feedback before the specs for Myna are finalized, especially from people who already rely on dictation or assistive tools on Linux.
Epic Games used its State of Unreal 2026 keynote to announce Lore, an open source version control system the company built in-house and is releasing for free.
You see, game and film projects have a workflow where they have to mix source code with large binary files such as build inputs, big data files, and other generated content. The problem is that most existing version control tools were not built to handle that kind of combination well.
Git handles large binary files through an add-on called Git LFS, rather than treating them as a built-in part of the system. Perforce manages binaries better, but it needs a live connection to its server for routine tasks, and it is a closed, proprietary system that other companies cannot build tools on top of.
Epic Games says none of the available systems combine binary handling, offline work, and a fully open specification together, which is why it built its own.
Lore keeps a server running as the authority for who can access a project and how conflicts get resolved, but everyday work like saving changes, recording a commit, or switching branches happens entirely on your machine, without needing an internet connection.
Every piece of content is given a unique fingerprint and stored only once, so identical data is never duplicated across files or branches.
It also has a verification system, so the structure of every revision can be checked for tampering or corruption. Large files are broken into smaller pieces, so editing one part of a multi-gigabyte file does not require re-uploading the whole thing.
And, by default, your machine only holds the files you are actually using, since Lore pulls down a file's data only when something asks for it.
The core library, server, and CLI are all written in Rust, with official SDKs for JavaScript, Python, C#, and Go. Everything routes through the same interface, so the CLI is not a special, privileged way of using Lore.
Any tool built using the same interface can do everything the CLI does.
Get started quickly
The project has not reached a stable release yet, with the most recent release being 0.8.3, and Epic Games is warning that interfaces and storage formats could fluctuate from release to release.
You do not need to have Rust installed or set up a container to try it out. One install script does the whole process of grabbing the CLI and server binary, dropping them into your PATH, and spinning up a server on your machine.
The official guide lists the script to get it configured on Linux:
Beyond that, if you have any questions or are just looking to have a conversation surrounding it, there's a Discord server you can join that has people from the development team and the Lore community.
Last week I shared something personal and something I was way too hesitatnt to share. It was the fact that the ad-driven model that kept It's FOSS running for 14 years is breaking down, and that YOUR support is the most direct way to keep this going.
The response was overwhelming and I cannot thank you enough to all the well wishers and supports. From what I see, so far 112 readers opted for the lifetime Plus membership. Several readers, even existing paid members, bought coffees (a metaphor for donation).
Several readers wrote in to share how It's FOSS helped them make the switch to Linux, sometimes years ago, and that it finally felt like the right moment to "give back". Thank you 🙏
There were a few concerns raised as well so let me answer them here for everyone.
"Will It's FOSS continue to publish? Will it survive?"
Fair concern. Here is the thing: the 112 people who joined last week made a real difference. They showed their confidence in It's FOSS, in the work we do and that's a huge confidence booster for me. It shows that there are good people out there who are willing to actively support us and no big tech can take this community support from us. The more Plus member we have, the stronger we become. So, yes, We are not just going to survive, we are going to thrive. Just keep supporting us 💪
"I already get the newsletter and content for free. What do I actually gain by paying for the Plus membership?"
Honestly, not a lot of extra features. There are a few eBooks to download, though. But this is intentional. I never wanted to lock Linux content behind a paywall. The tutorials, the news, this newsletter, they stay free. What the Plus membership does is make sure they stay free, for you and for everyone else too. You are not buying a product for yourself, you are doing it for everyone. For students who canot pay, for someone who has just lost a job, for people who do not even earn $119 in an entire month.
The $30 discount on lifetime membership will continue till 25th June. If you have been on the fence, this is the week to get off it. Our goal is to reach 200 lifetime member by the next week. Do help us please.
If you made a payment for the LIfetime membership and has not heard from me, please reach out to me (support@itsfoss.com) and share the transaction detail. I have manually enabled it for 97 people. Sent mail to 14 people to clear the confusion about email address. There is at least one Wise payment that has no email address associated and thus no way for me to know who sent it. Please send me an email on support@itsfoss if it was you and share the deatils of the transaction.
📰 News That Matter
Linux 7.1 does a lot for a feature release. The new NTFS driver is the main talking point here, but Intel FRED switching to on-by-default and a long-overdue Steam Deck OLED audio fix are worth knowing about too.
Another new release this week is KDE Plasma 6.7. There are a few improvements here and there and the two vintage themes make a comeback.
With Ubuntu, Fedora, and soon KDE all dropping X11, yserver is a strange but interesting counter-move, arriving as a new X11 server, written in Rust, assisted by Claude. It intentionally drops decades of cruft to focus on what modern desktops actually need.
Session, the private messaging service that doesn't require a phone number, has managed to avoid getting shut down thanks to the community stepping up and donating the funds required to keep things running.
A new open standard called DocLang wants to be the format AI pipelines actually need instead of fighting with PDFs and DOCX files that were designed for human eyes. This vendor-neutral working group has already released v0.6 of the specifications with more work already underway.
In contrast, a compromised Fedora contributor account let an AI agent run loose across Bugzilla unsupervised, mass-reassigning bugs to the wrong person, closing reports it had no business closing with hallucinated LLM-generated comments.
It is always better to install packages from official repoistories your distro provides.
If you are erelying on AUR, looking at the PKGBUILD is more important than ever.
There is little end users like you and I can do in case of supply chain attacks. It is up to distributions to secure the users.
Supply chain attacks are going to be a bigger problem for the open source ecosystem. No wonder IBM-Red Hat is coming up with a $5 billion project Lightwall for this purpose.
Proton has launched Easy Switch for Business, a six-step migration tool that moves a company's emails, calendars, and contacts from Google Workspace to Proton Mail (partner link) seamlessly.
🧮 Linux Tips, Tutorials, and Learnings
CachyOS swapped out Octopi for a homegrown Rust package manager called Shelly, and it looks like a useful upgrade. One window handles repos, AUR, AppImage, and Flathub together; search spans all four at once; and it just looks like something built in 2026.
If that doesn't interest you, then we have a list of GTK themes that cater to a wide variety of tastes, ranging from the warm retro tones of Gruvbox to the macOS-inspired looks of WhiteSur and McMojave, and even a pitch-black option in Flat Remix for OLED screens.
If you use GNOME, explore this list of GNOME Extensions. Perhaps you will find some good ones for your usecase.
And here is the Dank Linux review I mentioned in the last newsletter but forgot to add the link.
👷 AI, Homelab and Hardware Corner
Raven Resonance has come up with something they call an ambient computer, which can easily be passed off as a smart glass. It is Linux-powered, not open source, and is called Raven Prism.
There's also a Linux cyberdeck that was in the news recently that you might've missed.
✨ Apps and Projects Highlights
Unhappy with KDE ditching X11 on Plasma? There's a fork that looks to preserve the experience while being init system agnostic.
If you are using the Clipboard Indicator extension on GNOME, then you can go into its settings, and under the "Behaviour" tab, enable "Paste on select." This allows you to automatically paste the selected clipboard item directly into your active text field when you click on it in the clipboard menu.
🗓️ Tech Trivia: Last time we talked about Alan Turing and his unfortunate passing, but what often gets overlooked is Tommy Flowers' contribution to building Colossus.
Using 1,800 thermionic valves, his breakthrough dramatically shortened World War II while also proving that vacuum tubes could be reliable, forever changing modern computing history.
He did get some recognition in 2023, when a blue plaque went up at Dollis Hill in London, the former Post Office research site where he built Colossus using mostly spare telephone parts.
