The interesting thing here is not that the keyboard and mouse part. It's that KeyMod does two USB jobs at the same time. Let me explain.
You plug it into the target machine, and it shows up as a USB composite device: a standard HID keyboard and mouse, and a USB network bridge using the CDC-ECM standard, basically working as a private USB Ethernet link. The target gets a fixed IP at 192.168.11.2, your phone lands on 192.168.11.1. No DHCP, no Wi-Fi hunting, no driver to install on most systems.
Because HID input works without an OS loaded, KeyMod reaches BIOS screens, boot menus, and recovery environments too. It is similar to what Openterface Mini-KVM covers, just without the video feed.
On the phone side, the KeyCmd app decides what KeyMod does next. Their description mentions that KM Basic gives you a wireless keyboard, touchpad, and numpad. KM Pro adds a Shortcut Hub and Compose & Send, which lets you draft a long command, API key, or license key on your phone, review it, then fire it off as real keystrokes.
There's also Macros for scripted key sequences, a Presentation mode for Keynote and Google Slides, a Gamepad mode for emulators, and ShortcutHub profiles for Blender, VS Code, etc.
Do note that KeyCmd is available only in APK format. It is not in Google Play Store. The iOS version has a 'coming soon' tag. I hope this thing is handled before the device gets shipped because Google plans to restrict sideloading of apps and Apple is notorious for raising fence to protect their walled garden.
Now, the network bridge is what makes Terminal (SSH) over BLE or USB possible, without needing a network setup. It works with macOS and Linux targets today. Windows support needs RNDIS instead of CDC-ECM, and that's still in development. Ah! That's so satisfactory as a Linux user ;)
Mini vs Plus
KeyMod Mini vs Plus
Mini and Plus run the same software, just connected differently.
KeyMod Mini is USB-C, BLE-only, and tiny enough for a keychain or phone lanyard at 25 x 15 x 5 mm and about 2.4 g.
KeyMod Plus is USB-A, adds a wired USB link to the phone for up to 10 Mbps (versus BLE's 2 Mbps), and is built more for staying plugged into servers, legacy PCs, or rack gear.
At $42, it lands close to InputStick ($34) and DexoPad ($39), but neither of those does SSH over BLE the way KeyMod does.
AI Agent Mode
Not only software, it seems like every hardware got to have AI these days.
So, there's also an experimental AI Agent Mode. You add your own LLM API key (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Ollama whatever you use), describe a goal in plain language like "check logs" or "restart service," and the model plans a sequence of terminal commands, presenting each one for your approval before it runs.
On newer iPhones (14 Pro and up), KeyCmd can also run a small local model instead, TechxArtisan says it has tested a 0.6B Qwen model under 1GB of RAM. It's clearly early, and TechxArtisan itself frames it as likely to stay experimental for a while.
Watch out for...
A couple of things you should know.
BLE encryption isn't turned on yet. The security design is finalized (Bluetooth LE Secure Connections, AES-128, ECDH P-256), but current beta and engineering kits ship without it enabled, with the actual switch-on coming through a firmware update before shipping.
If wireless exposure is a concern for your use case, KeyMod Plus's wired USB link bypasses BLE entirely during operation. CE and UKCA certification are also still in progress, though the company says both are committed before shipping.
On the open source side, KeyCmd for Android and iOS is in development for now and is slated to go fully open source on GitHub once the campaign wraps.
Hardware schematics and PCB files will be published as the project evolves, and OSHWA certification is planned, following Mini-KVM (CN000015) and KVM-GO (CN000022).
One more thing to set expectations on: this campaign's units will most likely ship in the current 3D-printed enclosure rather than an injection-molded one, since tooling would add at least two months to the timeline. Which, I think, means that the product may not look as smooth. If you have ever used 3D printed product, you will understand that.
Getting Openterface KeyMod
Openterface KeyMod is live on Crowd Supply. As of this writing it has raised $9,618 of its $15,000 goal (64%) from 149 backers, with funding closing on Oct 1, 2026.
Both the Mini and Plus are priced at $42, plus $8 shipping in the US or $18 worldwide. Orders placed now are estimated to ship Feb 14, 2027.
🚧
As with any crowdfunding campaign, treat the timeline as an estimate. Back it because you want to support the project, not because you're counting on the ship date.
We posted on X a few days back, calling Linux 7.3 one of the most performance-focused releases in years. And now, going through what has actually landed in the merge window since then, that claim does seem to hold up.
The merge window for this release opened right after Linux 7.2 arrived, staying open until the end of this month barring any last-minute happenings that move the closure.
So, here's what is confirmed to go into the 7.3 release so far.
Storage gets a serious speed boost
Btrfs picks up several changes at once. Direct I/O now runs through an IOmap bounce buffer instead of falling back to buffered I/O, taking a workflow that topped out around half of the theoretical maximum throughput up to close to 95 percent of it.
Two separate fixes in the logging and fsync paths add roughly 5x gains each, one from removing an unnecessary delay when multiple logging tasks run at once, the other from skipping unneeded hole detection during full fsync on files with lots of extents but no holes.
The default free-space cache also moves from v1 to v2, the safer and faster option that had not yet become the default.
EXT4 gets its own round of work too. Parallel direct I/O writes are now allowed where the filesystem used to be too restrictive, and the multi-block allocator skips unnecessary work through fallocate().
Underneath both filesystems sits a reworked IOmap layer built around a single iterator callback the compiler can inline instead of dispatching indirectly.
You don't need to do anything for any of this. It just works once you're on 7.3, and the IOmap change pays off the most on fast NVMe, pushing EXT4 from 1.92 million IOPS to 2.19 million in testing.
Important scheduler work
Peter Zijlstra's flatten-the-pick patches rework cgroup scheduling around a single runqueue instead of the old, hitch-prone design. Peter tested it on an aging Sandy Bridge box paired with an AMD Radeon RX 580, and both frame rate and frame-time consistency improved.
If you're gaming on hardware that's seen better days, this is the one improvement that should make it feel less choppy.
Intel hybrid CPUs get fixed too. Cluster-aware scheduling has not handled the P-core and E-core mix well, and Ricardo Neri's work closes that gap on Alder Lake, Lunar Lake, and Panther Lake.
Practically, that means less stutter when your laptop is juggling something heavy like a source build, a game, or a video export, while background tasks compete for the small cores.
Memory management fixes
ZTE engineers found a bug in KSM's reverse-mapping, the step where the kernel checks which memory areas point to a merged page before touching it. Under heavy load, one internal lock could stay stuck for hundreds of milliseconds, freezing other things trying to use it.
The fix drops the worst-case from around 700ms to under 2ms. Simply speaking, it means fewer random freezes on servers and containers under memory pressure.
Xiaomi engineer Wenchao Hao fixed a similar slowdown in zsmalloc, which zRAM and Zswap use to store compressed memory.
A Raspberry Pi 4B saw gains up to 1.83x in testing, a 20-core Intel system up to 1.4x. In plain terms, you get snappier performance on budget boards like the Pi and a smaller but real gain on beefier hardware.
Lower latency for real-time workloads
Every time one CPU core uses the kernel's SMP code to ask the others to run something right away, like flushing memory caches, the kernel used to freeze everything else on that CPU until all the other cores responded.
ByteDance engineers traced the slowdown to that wait and reworked it so other tasks can keep running instead of sitting frozen. On busy systems, that frozen wait could stretch out and stall high-priority tasks.
In fleet testing with DPDK, a framework built for fast networking, the worst-case delay for the slowest requests dropped from ~17ms to ~1.5ms. Most desktop users will not notice this one, but for networking and real-time software, it is an important fix.
Some smaller changes
RISC-V adds support for eleven newer ISA extensions.
EFI runtime calls now time out instead of stalling indefinitely.
RAID 5/6 gets a better benchmark-based algorithm selection at boot.
New AES library APIs clean up how the kernel handles common encryption modes.
Wrapping up. As you might have read recently, Linus Torvalds spent 18 kernel boots and 24 debug patches chasing a one-line Intel Xe driver bug. AI helped him along the way, and the fix is already merged, of course.
The merge window for Linux 7.3 will stay open for a few more days before the release candidates start rolling out, so there's still room for more to land, and the stable release is expected sometime in October.
David Heinemeier Hansson, aka DHH, has put a number on how serious he is about desktop Linux. That number is eight million dollars, and it's going into a brand new nonprofit called the Omacom Foundation.
DHH is incorporating the foundation now, set to cover the Omarchy trademark, its infrastructure and hosting, promotion for the project, and funding for the open source developers whose work it depends on.
He calls it a "moral obligation," not just to get Omarchy into more people's hands but to change how they use a computer in the first place.
Michael Dell of Dell Technologies, Patrick Collison of Stripe, Tobi Lütke of Shopify, Jack Dorsey of Block, Matthew Prince of Cloudflare, Jason Fried of 37signals, Brendan Iribe of Sesame, and DHH himself each put in a million dollars to make it happen.
People already like using Omarchy, DHH says, and he wants this money to last as long as possible instead of getting spent all at once while also making the most out of it.
Hyprland first to gain
Hyprland is the first project outside Omarchy to see any of this money. Omacom is extending an exclusive sponsorship to support Vaxry, the developer behind the Wayland compositor Omarchy runs on.
Under this, he is locked into an agreement for three years, with the possibility of extending for two more years.
This way Vaxry gets to work on Hyprland full time without needing to think about the money. As part of this arrangement, the €5/month Hyprperks subscription service will be discontinued, and everything offered under it will be provided for free.
DHH also joked about finding Vaxry a pookie, noting that:
Many thanks to 37signals (hello self! 😂), Butterfly, and Framework for helping Hyprland get to this point. Thrilled that the Omacom Foundation can take over from October 10, and give one of the best developers in this new Linux moment the chance to go all-in.
(* This deal does not include any direct assistance in getting Vaxry a girlfriend, but I’ll personally be available as a reference for any inquiries on the matter.)
Do you remember this?
We're happy to keep sponsoring and enabling more of the Linux ecosystem! We've also just recently joined @linuxfoundation and become (maybe the first?) corporate sponsor of LVFS (Linux Vendor Firmware Service). We've got a few other sponsorships we'll be announcing soon! https://t.co/OnzKyx1W8e
This isn't the first time we are talking about money and Hyprland. Back in 2025, Framework became a Gold tier sponsor of the project. But that didn't sit too well with many people, as soon after, a thread titled "Framework supporting far-right racists?" came up on the official forum.
The original poster called out Vaxry's old freedesktop.org ban and pushed Framework to explain why it was funding the project. Framework's own account made things worse that same day. It posted a tweet comparing Omarchy to the old Windows XP product key meme, and people read that as an endorsement of DHH.
While Framework did send hardware to people at Omarchy, the project itself never got any direct funding. Later, Framework had to start publishing a running list of its sponsorships after people kept asking exactly who the company was funding and why.
Where Omarchy's headed
Quattro, Omarchy's newest release, shipped recently, building AI agents into the desktop by default instead of treating them as an extra. While none of the eight patrons have said publicly that Omarchy's AI bet factored into their decision to back the foundation.
My read is that it's hard to ignore, especially with Michael Dell's company betting heavily on AI infrastructure elsewhere. A distro built around AI agents is exactly the kind of bet a company selling AI hardware would want to back.
And it all ties into what DHH said about truly democratizing Linux.
Whether that $8 million and a nonprofit structure are what bring about the "year of the Linux desktop" is a question for another time.
Built around servers people can host, TeamSpeak has been around since 2001, serving as a reliable communication tool that has gained a reputation for running light and reliably over inconsistent networks.
It has gone through many iterations that have seen it grow from a simple client-server voice tool into something that has a modern interface, built-in screen sharing, and the option to buy hosted servers.
TeamSpeak 6, currently in beta, is the most significant overhaul the platform has ever pushed, having entered testing in January 2025 and progressed through several builds to today's 6.0.0-beta4.1.
If you assume that the platform only focuses on mainstream OSes, then you would be wrong. The client and server software have supported Linux alongside Windows and macOS since the early versions.
Non-FOSS Warning! TeamSpeak is not open source software. But it has been available on Linux for years, and many Linux users use it, just the way Discord is used.
Direct calls will be possible
1-1 Direct Calls are coming to TeamSpeak
Your friends will be one call away. No Server required.
TeamSpeak is adding the ability to make 1-1 direct calls, letting two people call each other without setting up or joining a server first. It's not live yet since the devs are still testing it, but they say it's coming soon.
That's not the only thing direct calls are coming with. Screensharing is built right in, letting you share your screen, a game, or your camera straight from the call at up to 4K or full source quality.
Presets facilitate a quick setup, or you can select the resolution, bitrate, FPS, and audio if you'd rather configure it yourself. There's also a privacy setting so you can choose whether the stream is public, limited to contacts, or private, plus a toggle for capturing system audio alongside it.
Sourced from the X thread linked above.
Picture-in-picture comes with it too. Using the Shift key, you can drag up to four screenshares or cameras into a corner of another feed while sharing, arranging them according to your preference.
When asked about the possibility of making group calls, SYOX, the Community Manager at TeamSpeak, said that:
This feature focuses on 1-1 direct calls between two users in a private chat. It remains to be seen whether and to what extent we will introduce Group Calls. We are definitely keeping an eye on group calls as a feature addition, but the scope has not yet been discussed, as it was not the focus of this release/implementation.
Can I finally move away from Discord?
This change has me wanting to try TeamSpeak again. Direct calls without needing a server is precisely the thing that made my last test of it so brief, since spinning up a server just to talk to a person never felt worth the effort.
If the feature works as well as it looks in these previews, I might end up ditching Discord sooner than later. And if they can figure out group calls in the coming months, then I won't even need to host a server to talk to my friends, so that's a win too!
The GNOME Extensions ecosystem is packed with tools that let you customize almost every part of the desktop. Whether it's changing the appearance of the top panel, replacing the app launcher, adding visual effects, or making the interface behave exactly the way you want.
If there is one customization extension that deserves to be installed first on a fresh GNOME setup, it's Just Perfection.
As the name suggests, the extension lets you tweak countless parts of the GNOME Shell. From small visual adjustments to larger interface changes, it gives you an impressive amount of control without requiring you to edit configuration files.
In fact, the number of available tweaks is so extensive that it deserves an article of its own, which we already have and you can read it here.
The screenshot below contains effects of another GNOME Extension called User Accent Color which we will see in a later section.
Just Perfection
Some of the highlights include:
Change the position of the panel, clock, and notification indicators.
Adjust the size and corner radius of the Activities Overview.
Show or hide individual panel items.
And that's just a glimpse. I recommend checking the project's official README to explore its exhaustive list of features.
2. User Themes
Installing a GTK theme changes the appearance of your applications, but it doesn't affect the GNOME Shell itself.
That's because the Shell uses its own theme, separate from GTK. If you want to customize the top panel, Activities Overview, Quick Settings, and other Shell components, you'll need the User Themes extension.
Once installed, you can apply any compatible gnome-shell theme stored in your ~/.themes directory using the GNOME Tweaks application.
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Shell Theme applied to Tokyo Night
It's a small extension, but an essential one if you're interested in desktop theming.
3. Wallpaper Slideshow
If you like refreshing your desktop without manually changing wallpapers every few days, Wallpaper Slideshow is an excellent extension to have.
It automatically cycles through images from a folder of your choice at configurable intervals, turning your wallpaper collection into a dynamic slideshow. The extension also supports downloading Bing's Wallpaper of the Day if you prefer fresh backgrounds without maintaining your own collection.
Wallpaper Slideshow
Better yet, it automatically detects changes to your wallpaper folder, so newly added images become part of the rotation without any extra setup.
You can control the slideshow from the Quick Settings menu or the desktop context menu, and the extension even remembers its queue across reboots, allowing the slideshow to resume where it left off.
It's a simple way to keep your GNOME desktop feeling fresh with minimal effort.
4. User Accent Colors
One of the nicest visual touches in modern desktop environments is having the system's accent color automatically match your wallpaper. If you've wanted the same experience on GNOME, User Accent Colors is worth a look.
The extension extracts the dominant accent color from your current wallpaper and applies it across the desktop, including GNOME Shell, Adwaita applications, and adw-gtk3 themed GTK3 applications.
It can also generate matching tinted themes and even recolor supported icon packs, giving the entire desktop a much more cohesive appearance.
The result is a desktop that automatically adapts whenever you change your wallpaper, without manually tweaking themes or accent colors. If you're building a visually consistent GNOME setup, this extension is an excellent finishing touch.
5. Dash to Dock
By default, GNOME only displays the Dash while you're in the Activities Overview.
Many users, however, prefer having a dock that's always visible and keeps their favorite applications within easy reach.
Dash to Dock transforms the built-in GNOME Dash into a fully customizable dock that can be positioned on any edge of your screen. You can tweak its size, behavior, transparency, auto-hide options, and much more.
The only thing I personally miss is a ripple-style hover animation. Fortunately, the next extension offers a different take on desktop navigation.
6. Dash to Panel
While Dash to Dock focuses on creating a dock, Dash to Panel takes things a step further.
It merges the GNOME top bar and Dash into a single panel, giving the desktop a layout that feels much closer to Windows.
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Dash to Panel in GNOME
If you're switching from Windows 10 or Windows 11, this extension makes GNOME feel instantly familiar.
Beyond changing the layout, Dash to Panel offers a surprising amount of customization. You can:
Change the panel's color, opacity, and appearance.
Show or hide individual panel items.
Keep the original GNOME top panel while using only the dock functionality.
Customize various behaviors to suit your workflow.
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Dash to Panel as a dock
It's one of the most feature-rich panel extensions available for GNOME.
7. Dhruva Dock
Dhruva Dock is the newer addition to the GNOME extensions ecosystem, and it has quickly gained attention thanks to its polished appearance and smooth animations.
The dock supports true magnification effects, includes an integrated clock, and offers several preset themes alongside color customization options.
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Dhruva Dock
Unlike many dock extensions, Dhruva Dock isn't limited to the screen edges. You can position it almost anywhere on your desktop, giving you much more flexibility when designing your workspace.
Its fluid animations are easily one of its strongest selling points.
8. Blur My Shell
Few visual tweaks change the look of GNOME as much as adding blur effects, and Blur My Shell has become the go-to extension for that purpose.
What started as a simple blur utility has gradually evolved into a comprehensive customization tool. Besides adding blur to the Activities Overview and various Shell components, recent versions even allow blur effects to be applied to application windows.
Blur My Shell
The extension also lets you configure different blur pipelines, giving you fine-grained control over which parts of the desktop should be blurred and by how much.
While it doesn't offer the level of control found in Wayland compositors like Hyprland, and older hardware may struggle with the added effects, it's still one of the best visual customization extensions available for GNOME.
9. Dynamic Music Pill
If you frequently listen to music while working, Dynamic Music Pill is an extension worth checking out.
Instead of displaying a simple scrolling track title in the panel, it presents your currently playing music inside an elegant pill-shaped widget with playback controls.
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Dynamic Music Pill
You can place it either on the top panel or alongside the Dash, depending on your preferred layout.
Beyond its attractive design, the extension also includes several useful features:
Adaptive colors based on the album artwork.
Multiple visualizer modes.
Playback controls with configurable click actions.
Synchronized lyrics.
Transparency and appearance settings.
It's a great combination of functionality and visual polish.
10. Top Bar Organizer
If you've ever wished you could rearrange the items on GNOME's top panel, Top Bar Organizer makes that incredibly easy.
Unlike many customization extensions, it doesn't overwhelm you with dozens of configuration options. The interface is refreshingly simple.
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Top Bar Organizer
You simply drag and drop panel items between the three available sections:
Left Top Bar Box
Center Top Bar Box
Right Top Bar Box
That's all there is to it.
Whether you want the clock on the left, system indicators in the center, or a completely custom layout, this extension makes it possible in just a few clicks.
11. Arc Menu
GNOME's built-in search is one of its strongest features. It lets you quickly launch applications, find files, perform calculations, and much more, all from a single interface.
That said, many users still prefer having a traditional application launcher that's always available.
Arc Menu is much more than a simple Start Menu replacement. It offers an impressive collection of menu layouts inspired by different desktop environments and operating systems.
Arc Menu Layputs
Want a Windows 11-style Start Menu? That's available. Prefer a macOS-inspired launcher? You can switch to that with just a few clicks.
Beyond the layouts, Arc Menu provides extensive customization options. You can change icons, tweak the appearance, reposition the menu, customize categories, and fine-tune almost every aspect of the launcher.
If you enjoy experimenting with different desktop layouts, Arc Menu is one of the most versatile extensions you can install.
12. Burn My Windows
Even the developers describe Burn My Windows as a "useless" extension.
I couldn't disagree more.
If you enjoy desktop animations, this extension is pure fun. Instead of the standard open, close, and minimize animations, it lets you replace them with dozens of eye-catching effects.
Burn My Windows
Some of my favorites include Apparition, Broken Glass, Incinerate, and Matrix, though there are plenty more to experiment with.
It won't make you more productive, but it definitely adds some personality to your desktop.
13. Customize Clock on Lock Screen
The GNOME lock screen doesn't offer much room for customization out of the box.
This extension changes that by letting you customize the appearance of the lock screen clock.
Customized Clock on Lockscreen
One particularly interesting feature is the ability to display the output of shell commands. That opens up several possibilities, such as showing inspirational quotes, system information, weather updates, or any other text generated by a script.
For example, I used the command below to print the system details as shown in the screenshot above:
Whenever you move or resize a window, it behaves like a flexible sheet rather than a rigid rectangle, recreating one of the most iconic desktop effects from the early days of Linux desktop customization.
It certainly makes interacting with windows a lot more enjoyable.
15. Compiz Magic Lamp Effect
Continuing the nostalgia, Compiz Magic Lamp Effect recreates another classic animation from the Compiz days.
Instead of windows simply disappearing when minimized, they smoothly stretch and collapse into the dock using the familiar Magic Lamp animation.
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Magic Lamp Effect
The effect looks particularly good when paired with dock extensions like Dash to Dock, making window animations feel much more polished than the default GNOME behavior.
If you're already using one of those docks, this extension is a perfect companion.
16. Background Logo
Sometimes the smallest tweaks can make your desktop feel a little more personal.
Background Logo lets you place a logo or image directly on top of your desktop wallpaper without modifying the wallpaper itself. Whether you want to display your favorite Linux distribution's logo, your organization's branding, or a custom SVG, the extension makes it easy.
Background Logo settings
It may not be an essential customization, but it's a nice option for users who enjoy putting their own stamp on every part of their desktop.
17. Modern Clock
If you like the clean desktop widgets found in KDE Plasma, Modern Clock brings a similar experience to GNOME.
Instead of placing the time in the top panel, this extension adds a modern-looking desktop clock widget inspired by KDE's Modern Clock. It sits directly on your desktop and blends nicely with minimalist wallpapers, making it a subtle yet attractive addition to your workspace.
Modern Clock
Unlike the standard GNOME clock, this one is meant to be part of your desktop rather than the shell interface. If you're building a customized desktop with widgets and visual enhancements, Modern Clock fits right in.
Wrapping Up
One of GNOME's greatest strengths is the flexibility offered by its extension ecosystem. While the desktop intentionally keeps its default experience clean and minimal, these extensions allow you to shape it into almost anything you want.
Whether you're looking for a Windows-like taskbar, a macOS-inspired launcher, beautiful blur effects, playful window animations, or simply more control over the interface, there's an extension here that can help.
Of course, you don't have to install all of them. In fact, I'd recommend starting with a few that solve problems in your daily workflow and then gradually adding more as needed.
Did I miss one of your favorite customization extensions? Let me know in the comments. I'd love to check it out.
Let me tell you that this is a rare event. Not because Torvalds is using AI. Last Christmas holidays, Torvalds used AI for the first time for a personal, hobby project. He was averted to AI at first but made his peace with it, even for AI-assisted code contributions in the kernel project.
The event we are talking about is rare because Torvalds doesn't code on Linux kernel anymore. He is in the maintainer mode. He just reviews code and merges pull requests from various contributors to the kernel code.
So this is a rare occasion in recent time when he made a kernel patch himself. And he did that with the assistance of AI.
Fixing a one-liner bug with AI
Don't scoff at "one-line" code change. Speak to any software developer and they will telly you that often the bugs are easy, few line code changes. It's the process of finding the root cause that takes time, effort, and skills.
The bug Torvalds dealt with was in the Intel Xe graphics driver for Battlemage G21 cards. It caused GDM, the display manager, to restart endlessly.
Tracking it down with AI required 24 debug patches (did he just use "printfs?) and 18 kernel boots. Ultimately, the culprit turned out to be a single line where round_up() should have been round_down().
And this was a debug session from hell, enormously helped by an AI doing much of the grunt-work.
The AI "did the grunt work" for Torvalds by adding debug instrumentation, running analysis, and even writing the final commit message. I can feel the commit message part, it's a boring but necessary task.
But this debugging session was not all smooth sailing. Torvalds didn't just add "don't make mistakes" to his prompts. On the contrary, the AI told Linus multiple times that the problem was "impossible and unsolvable." Torvalds refused.
I suspect those things have been trained by people who may not be quite as stubborn as I am.
AI is a tool, use it effectively
Torvalds shared his views a few months back. Lot has changed since then
This is what many people in the software industry understand. AI is just a tool and it is essentially useful when there is a capable human driving the process.
Look at the example here with Torvalds. A vibe coder with no knowledge of what's going on with the code, would have left it to AI to make decisions, and AI would have called the bug unfixable and walked away.
But Linus Torvalds has experience. He could understand what the AI was doing right or wrong. He persisted and fixed the bug.
The patch will be in Linux 7.3 and has been marked to be backported to stable kernel branches.
The creator of Linux needed 18 boots to find a one-line fix. The AI helped him get there. Although, I think he would have gotten there all by himself as well, even if it would have taken a bit longer.
There is no information available on what model or tool he used. In his personal project, where he used AI for the first time, he had used Gemini from Google. I guess he is not into local AI for now. I hope he finds enough interest and gives us a new gift after Linux kernel and Git. Wishful thinking, I know.
Proton Mail (partner link), the service people turn to for escaping Big Tech, has rolled out "Categories" as a new inbox view that automatically sorts incoming email into six groups: Primary, Social, Promotions, Newsletters, Transactions, and Updates.
When you receive a new mail, it gets sorted automatically into one of six categories based on metadata, without Proton reading the contents of the message. This is what Gmail already introduced years ago and it does work for most parts.
How does it work?
By default, Primary houses personal and work-related messages along with any important updates; Social covers social media updates and activity notifications; Promotions covers discounts and sales offers; and Newsletters carries news content you signed up for.
The other two categories can be enabled via the Settings if you require them.
Of course, we are not claiming that this is something revolutionary. Gmail and Outlook have offered inbox tabs for years, but they achieved that by scanning the contents of emails that are hosted on their servers.
Proton's approach here is different, sorting mail by metadata instead of reading what's inside each message, since its zero-access encryption keeps that content unreadable even to itself.
Anant Vijay Singh, the Product Lead for Proton Mail, goes even further to note that:
Proton’s business model aligns our incentives with yours because we’re 100% funded by our community, not by advertisers. Enabling Categories doesn’t change any of this.
Your inbox remains protected by zero-access encryption, and emails you send with other Proton users (or using password protection) are end-to-end encrypted.
It's already live
If you haven't logged into your Proton Mail (partner link) account recently, then keep an eye out for a dialog titled "Your inbox, automatically organized." It will show you two options; go with "Yes, organize it" if you want to upgrade to the new category-focused inbox experience.
If you'd rather stay on the legacy, unified inbox system, then choose "Keep inbox as before."
Once enabled, you will see the categories all lined up at the top of your emails, with a useful blue dot appearing on the ones with unread messages.
Moving an email to a different category takes a right-click followed by "Move to category..." or a drag and drop. Going forward, Proton Mail sorts similar emails into that category automatically.
If the default category selection or the feature itself doesn't suit your preferences, then you can manage it from the Settings menu (gear button), where you could either disable it by clicking on the button near "Email categories."
Or, you could go into the "Email categories" settings page to enable or disable individual categories and toggle notifications for each one. I was content with the default selections, so I didn't bother changing anything.
You can see how Proton Mail categorized my mail. 👇
From left to right: Social, Promotions, and Newsletters.
Keep in mind that you cannot disable the "Primary" category as that one always stays on, catching anything that needs your attention along with emails from any category you've turned off.
And that's not all. Proton is also bringing full-content search to Proton Mail on mobile in the coming weeks. It'll let users search the actual contents of their emails, not just subjects and senders.
Proton says that the search will run entirely on the user's device rather than touch its own servers.
