FOSS Weekly #26.28: Microslop Moment, Rustification, Brave New features, KDE Plasma Tips and Meme Distro and More

Recently, Microsoft reluctantly agrred that a bug was eating up uo to 500 GB of disk space in Windows 11. They knew about the bug for months, no fix came.

Germany may not have kicked right in the Paraguay match, but it sure has kicked out Microsoft Sharepoint. The state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern will be using Nextcloud for over 5,000 employees. We need wins like these, don't we?

There was a time when every other new distro was based on Ubuntu but that list is shrinking. Linux system vendor Tuxedo is moving to Debian for its TuxedoOS distro.

Firefox users have had containers (old article) for years. Brave 1.92 finally adds them natively, keeping cookies and site data separate per container even when visiting the same site.

You get four default categories, temporary containers are one right-click away, and the feature is also heading to Brave Origin, which as you might remember is free for Linux users.

Most office suites shipping AI right now have made it difficult to avoid. Collabora Office 26.04 goes the other way, keeping AI off by default. Turning it on means plugging in your own API credentials or self-hosted model.

In other news, Canonical is pouring in €40,000/year into the Trifecta Tech Foundation, and their next target is to rustify Ubuntu's time synchronization components.

🚧

Ubuntu 25.10 users should upgrade to 26.04 LTS sooner rather than later. July 9 is end of life for the interim release, meaning security patches stop that day and anything disclosed after goes unpatched on your system.

📚 Linux eBooks from O'Reilly

Humble Bundle has a new O'Reilly collection packed with Linux and Unix books, covering everything from shell scripting to system administration and kernel internals. Pay what you want for a few titles, or pay a bit more to unlock the entire bundle. If you have been meaning to deepen your Linux knowledge, this is worth grabbing before the deal expires.

Part of the money gets donated to Code for America.

Get the eBooks

🧠 What We’re Thinking About

Hannah Montana Linux is back, and yes, it's 2026. Noah Cagle, a developer, has rebuilt the legendary meme distro on Debian 13 with KDE Plasma.

Microsoft was caught lacking after a Windows 11 storage bug ate up to 500GB of disk space, with a fix quietly being slipped into a preview update.

🧮 Linux Tips, Tutorials, and Learnings

Three years with Obsidian and Logseq, and the conclusion isn't that one is better. They just solve different problems. Obsidian is a Markdown writing environment where files and folders are the organizing principle. Logseq is an outliner where every bullet is a referenceable block.

But then my colleague Sreenath is obsessed with note management and he also experimented using only Markdown and KDE's Dolphin.

KDE is actually quite versatile and we have covered plenty of KDE tweaks and tips over time. Sharing some of them here:

• Tagging feature in KDE's Dolphin file manager
• Dolphin file manager tweaks
• Customizing and twekaing Konsole terminal
• Theming KDE Plasma (properly)
• Explore KDE themes (a bit old)
• KDE customization tips

Enjoy KDE 😄

👷 AI, Homelab and Hardware Corner

Sipeed's NanoKVM-Go is a single USB-C KVM that carries video, audio, keyboard, mouse, disk emulation, and power pass-through over one cable with WiFi 6 for wireless connectivity.

PocketMage is a pocketable e-paper PDA with a physical QWERTY keyboard, a 3.1-inch e-ink main display, and a secondary 1.8-inch OLED strip for menus that need faster refresh.

Most USB-C hubs are fixed in what they offer. DockFrame has four slots that take in Framework expansion cards, alongside tool cards so the port lineup can be whatever you need it to be.

Valve quietly open-sourced the Inkterface this week, a DIY e-ink faceplate for the Steam Machine.

Why should you opt for It's FOSS Plus membership:

✅ Ad-free reading experience
✅ Badges in the comment section and forum
✅ Supporting creation of educational Linux materials
✅ Free Linux eBook

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✨ Apps and Projects Highlights

Lockpicker is a GNOME-native frontend for hashcat that lets you crack password hashes without you needing to memorize hashcat's syntax.

📽️ Videos for You

Your Linux terminal needs the oomph factor. These seven tools will get you there.

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💡 Quick Handy Tip

On a vanilla GNOME setup, you can assign keyboard shortcuts to an PWA.

First, you need to copy the command used to launch the web app. This is the value of Exec keyword in the desktop file.

Now, open the Settings app, go to Keyboard -> View and Customize Shortcuts -> Custom Shortcuts -> Add Shortcut. Here, you have to add a name for the PWA, and in the Command field, enter the command you copied from the Exec field (without the Exec=) and paste it.

Now input a keybind using your keyboard, and create the shortcut by clicking on "Add." This also works for AppImage files, btw.

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🎋 Fun in the FOSSverse

The Riddler can be a pesky character, can you help Batman solve a riddle and save Linux?

I spot an impostor here, I wonder who that is. 🤐

🗓️ Tech Trivia: On July 4, 1956, MIT researchers plugged a keyboard into the Whirlwind computer, letting programmers type commands directly instead of wrestling with punch cards, dials, and switches.

Whirlwind was already five years old at the time, but this simple addition changed how humans and computers would talk forever.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 From the Community: Pro FOSSer Neville has asked a very interesting question. Do computers need to be managed and can AI take over the job?

Valve refusal to support Linux distributions other than Ubuntu has raised eyebrows over the years, but a recent Reddit thread makes some convincing arguments.

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Avoiding Vendor Lock-in By Using KDE Plasma As Personal Knowledge Base

There is no shortage of personal knowledge management (PKM) applications available today if you use Markdown notes.

Be it Obsidian or Logseq or Tolaria, there is a pain point associated with almost all of them. They add a layer on top of the plain markdown files. From Wikilinks to custom properties, there is always something that makes the interprotability an issue.

It almost feels like a vendor like in despite Markdown being an open standard.

Recently, I started experimenting with a different idea. Instead of relying on a specialized application, I tried using the KDE Plasma desktop itself as the foundation for this workflow.

Let me share how we can use Dolphin, along with a few KDE tools, to build a simple Markdown-based knowledge management system. I

t is still an experiment, and it certainly has limitations (that I will discuss later), but it has been an interesting workflow to explore.

🚧

This is a highly experimental topic, and you are essentially taking the entire burden of note taking, organizing and interlinking.

Create Some Templates

The first step is to create a few Markdown templates that make taking notes faster.

Inside your ~/Templates directory, create two files:

• Markdown.md
• QuickNotes.md

0:00

/0:13

Create an empty templates file

Once these files are in the Templates folder, they become available from Dolphin's right-click context menu, allowing you to create new notes instantly.

Open QuickNotes.md in your preferred Markdown editor and add a simple structure such as:

## Core Concept

---

## Key Characteristics

---

## Examples

---

## Related Reading

---

This is the template I use for quick notes, but you can customize it as per your need.

From now on, you can create a structured Markdown note anywhere in your file manager with just a few clicks.

Create a Folder for Your Notes

Next, create a folder that will hold your entire note collection.

I created mine as ~/Documents/MarkdownSource, but you can choose any location you prefer.

🚧

Avoid spaces in file names. Spaces in files names can be a pain in Linux, speically when dealing with scripts in the command line.

Inside this folder, create sub-folders to organize notes. I also recommend creating two additional folders:

• Inbox, for notes that you haven't organized into a dedicated folder, yet.
• Attachments, for images and other files that your notes may reference.

Keeping attachments inside the root of your notes directory makes them much easier to manage later.Avoiding Vendor Lock-in By Using KDE Plasma As Personal Knowledge Base

Install a Markdown Editor

Since this workflow revolves around plain Markdown files, you'll need a Markdown editor.

I intentionally avoid recommending dedicated PKM applications such as Obsidian or Logseq here, because using one of those would defeat the purpose of this workflow.

I've tried the Ghostwriter Markdown editor from KDE, and it has worked very well for this experiment. Apostrophe is a similar editor, if you prefer a GNOME style application.

On Arch Linux, you can install it using:

sudo pacman -S ghostwriter

For other distros, use your package management commands.

Configure Dolphin to Open Markdown Files

Now make Ghostwriter the default application for Markdown files.

Open System Settings and navigate to Default Applications → File Associations.

Find the Markdown file type and move Ghostwriter to the top of the application list.

Ghostwriter for Markdown

This can also be done by right-click on a Markdown file, go top Properties. Here, select the open with option and change the application preference order in a similar interface as above.

From now on, double-clicking any Markdown file in Dolphin will open it directly in Ghostwriter.

Use Dolphin Tags for Organization

Tagging is one of the most useful features in any PKM system. Without it, finding notes later becomes much more difficult.

Fortunately, Dolphin already includes a simple tagging system.

Open Dolphin and enable the information panel by selecting Menu → Show Panels → Information.

A sidebar will appear showing details about the selected file or folder.

Here you'll find a Tags field where you can assign one or more tags to each note.

Using Tags in Dolphin

Once you've tagged your files, Dolphin's search function can quickly locate notes that share the same tag.

Using Tags in Dolphin

📋

Dolphin's tagging and file search features depend on the Baloo file indexing service. Make sure Baloo is installed and running before relying on tags for searching.

Interlinking Notes

We've now covered most of the essential parts of this workflow. The only major feature left is linking notes together.

This is one area where a file manager-based workflow is less convenient than a dedicated PKM application.

Since Dolphin doesn't understand wiki links or automatically manage relationships between notes, you'll need to create standard Markdown links yourself.

One improvement I would recommend is storing all your notes and attachments inside a single dedicated notes directory. Instead of using absolute file paths, create links using relative paths whenever possible.

Relative links are much easier to manage because the entire notes directory can be moved to another location without breaking the internal links, as long as the folder structure remains unchanged.

To make this easier, I created a small Bash function that generates the relative path between two files.

relpath() {
  local from_dir
  from_dir=$(dirname "$(realpath "$1")")
  realpath --relative-to="$from_dir" "$2"
}

I added this function to my .bashrc. I originally wrote this function for a terminal-based PKM workflow, but it fits this KDE-based workflow just as well.

Now, whenever I need to create a link from one note to another, I simply run:

relpath current_file distant_file

The command prints the relative path, which I can directly use in the Markdown link.

0:00

/0:21

Get relative path in terminal

A normal Markdown link looks like this:

[Link text](Link address)

It's a manual process, but once the link is created, you can easily navigate between your notes from within your Markdown editor.

And this way, you have a folder containing subfolders of markdown files. The interlinking is the hardest and boring part but once that is done, your knowledge base can be used on any OS, with any Markdown editor.

It Is Not Perfect (Obviously)

And that's not a surprise. You are not using a specialist tool so there are a few limitations worth knowing.

Strict Data Organization Is Needed

With this approach, your desktop environment effectively becomes your knowledge management system.

That also means you are entirely responsible for keeping your notes organized.

If you don't maintain a clear folder structure, your note collection can quickly become difficult to manage.

For example, a note may contain links to attachments stored in completely different folders. Without a consistent organization strategy, finding those files later can become frustrating.

Similarly, if you are linking notes to a PDF file, keep those files organized in a folder and don't mess up with its location. Else, interlinking won't work.

Distro and Desktop Environment Changes

This workflow is tied to KDE Plasma's tagging feature. Moving away from KDE Plasma would likely mean abandoning parts of this workflow altogether.

Link Fragility

You probably have already realized that this is the weakest link in the entire workflow.

The Markdown links point directly to file paths. If you rename or move a file or folder later, every note pointing to that location will break.

Unlike dedicated PKM applications, Dolphin doesn't automatically update links when files are moved. Any reorganization requires manually updating the affected links yourself and that would be a serious pain.

Wrapping Up

I know this approach is far from perfect. Compared to dedicated PKM applications, it places much more responsibility on you to organize your notes, attachments, and folder structure properly.

Personally, I think that's not necessarily a bad thing.

When you organize your notes yourself, you naturally become more familiar with your knowledge base. You're more likely to revisit, reorganize, and improve your notes over time instead of treating them as something you write once and never look at again.

At the same time, this workflow won't suit everyone.

If you depend on advanced features such as automatic backlinks, graph views, embedded queries, or seamless note linking, a dedicated PKM application will provide a much better experience.

On the other hand, if your priority is to keep everything as plain Markdown files while using lightweight tools that are already available on your desktop, this approach is certainly worth trying. In my opinion, this workflow also works well for people following the Zettelkasten method.

I'm still experimenting with this workflow myself, and I'll probably continue refining it as I use it more.

What do you think about this idea? Would you consider using your file manager as a personal knowledge management system, or would you rather stick with a dedicated application? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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Another German State Just Kicked Out Microsoft ...Kind Of

The German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is done with Microsoft SharePoint, ditching it for a self-hosted Nextcloud deployment that is already serving around 5,000 employees.

Eventually, that number will be scaled up to 50,000 public sector workers, covering agencies ranging from ministries down to municipal offices.

What's happening?

Currently, Nextcloud is handling file sharing, and features like chat, video conferencing, and groupware tools are coming next. The existing implementation as well as the expansion is being handled by DVZ M-V, the state's IT services provider.

The state's CIO, Marco Anschütz, says the SharePoint migration for the first 5,000 employees went smoothly, with no disruption or data loss, further adding that:

Together with DVZ M-V, we've built a platform that runs reliably today and is being expanded step by step.

The above quote was translated from Deutsch. 📝

Nextcloud isn't the only aspect of the open source push. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern also uses OpenProject as an alternative to proprietary project management tools and has built its own administrative AI assistant, LEA, that is based on OpenWebUI.

Not a solo effort

The northern state isn't figuring this out alone. In 2025, its Ministry of Finance and Digitalization signed a cooperation agreement (in Deutsch) with the State Chancellery of Schleswig-Holstein, specifically to strengthen digital sovereignty across both states.

That's a state which needs no introduction when it comes to adopting open source solutions to Big Tech problems.

Many of their governmental agencies have already migrated their email system off Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, made LibreOffice mandatory across their administration, and are expecting to save more than €15 million a year in licensing costs as a result.

Nationally, Germany backs the same direction with the Deutschland-Stack, a sovereign infrastructure framework. It limits public administration to two document formats, ODF and PDF/UA, excluding Microsoft's .doc, .ppt, and .xls entirely.

The framework also favors open source tools and European providers over foreign ones, aiming to cut vendor lock-in, and promoting digital sovereignty across public administration.

Wrapping up

None of this means Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is cutting ties with Microsoft entirely. SharePoint is out, sure, but that's the scope of what's actually announced so far.

Nonetheless, going from 5,000 employees to their stated target of 50,000+ is a massive undertaking, and with two states coordinating this move instead of migrating separately, their alliance might end up as an example for other German states to follow.

---

Suggested Read 📖: Austrian Ministry Kicks Out Microsoft in Favor of Nextcloud

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ORICO 88 Series 4-Bay USB4 NVMe SSD Enclosure Review: Fast Storage That Works Natively on Linux

Ever tried a DAS (Direct-Attached Storage) device?

Unlike NAS, where you have a bunch of hard drives available over network, DAS is directly connected to your computer.

I never used such a product because I never had the need. But then Orico sent me there new DAS 88 Series 4-Bay USB4 NVMe SSD Enclosure and I got the opportunity to use a DAS for the first time ever.

Sharing my experience and some benchmarking test that I did for the first time in several years.

Orico 8848U4 DAS Specification

Here's the quick hardware specifications for Orico 8848U DAS:

Spec	Details
Model	8848U4 USB4
Drive Bays	4 x M.2 NVMe (2230, 2242, 2260, 2280)
Interface	USB4 (40Gbps in total)
RAID Support	None
Max Capacity	8TB per bay / 32TB total
Cooling	Aluminum body + built-in fan
Power	12V/3A external adapter
Expansion Ports	None
Dimensions	167 x 101 x 119.5 mm
OS Support	Windows, macOS, Linux

Do note that there is also a SATA version of DAS in the same 88 Series lineup. It is older, bigger and has a RAID mode. The version I tested is M.2 NVMe SSD only and without built-in RAID functionality. That's intentional to give you the raw NVMe speed in a compact form factor.

Do note that this is a diskless enclosure. You bring your own M.2 NVMe drives. You cannot expect to get enclosures with SSD disks for under $200 in this age of AI slop.

Build Quality And Design

The first thing I noticed is how good this thing looks. The CNC-machined aluminum body has a silver finish that would blend right into a Mac-heavy studio desk. I am a Linux person, not an Apple person, but I will admit the build quality is quite impressive. Feels solid. My Terramaster NAS also has silver-gray aluminium chasis but this one is more "Mac looking."

All the ports and controls are on the back. There is a USB4 Type-C port, 12V DC power input, a dedicated power button, and a cooling fan.

The power button being on the back is a minor annoyance if the enclosure is tucked away. Worth planning your desk layout around it. The power button glows when pressed but difficult to look at it in the back.

The front has disk bay access with a slider button. It's a little bit stiff but not worth complaining about. The disk bay can host M.2 NVMe SSDs of various sizes. I only tested it with 2280 but guess that doesn't really matter.

The front also has 4 indicators at the bottom. They glow blue when the DAS is attached to a running computer.

Sides has nothing, just minimal branding.

The fan is there for active cooling, and ORICO claims it operates under 30dB. In my testing, the device felt completely silent. The fan does start running as soon as power is turned on but there is no audible noise unless you put your ear near the fan vent.

There is no fan speed control that I could find, which is a small omission. It would be nice to have a quiet mode toggle, but in practice it's a non-issue.

Keep in mind that the enclosure has no passthrough port. There is a single USB4 connection and that's about it. If you need to daisy-chain other Thunderbolt peripherals, this will consume your only port. On a laptop with limited Thunderbolt ports, this is something worth thinking about before buying.

Linux Compatibility

I noticed that the drive appeared as a native NVMe device. This means that each drive in the enclosure shows up as a separate NVMe namespace (nvme1p1, nvme1p2 etc) under a single controller.

$ cat /sys/class/nvme/nvme1/transport
pcie                             #output

And this detail matters because it means that the Thunderbolt PCIe tunneling is working correctly. The OS treats these drives as if they are plugged directly into the motherboard's PCIe bus, not as USB devices. My Sandisk external SSD comes up under /dev/sda that means it's treated as USB.

Performance Testing

I tested with a Crucial CT500P3PSSD8 (P3 Plus 500GB NVMe) installed in one bay. I only had one drive available for testing. Rest of them were being used in ZimaCube and Terramaster NAS. I have to buy new NVMe SSDs but the prices are not coming down. I ran benchmarks using fio and hdparm, and also timed some real-world file transfers.

Understanding The "40Gbps" Claim

It is easy to get excited with numbers but let's analyze the numbers. ORICO itself clarifies this in the product page: each drive achieves up to 10Gbps when all four bays are operating simultaneously. The 40Gbps is the total aggregate across all four drives. A single bay doesn't get 40Gbps.

In practice, even that 10Gbps per drive is rare achievement. Thunderbolt 4 tunnels PCIe 3.0 x4, which gives around 3500 MB/s of usable bandwidth total. Divided across four bays, each drive gets roughly 800-900 MB/s of real-world headroom. Mind the difference between bits and bytes.

My single-drive benchmarks came almost there, which indicates that the enclosure is performing exactly as it should. If I had 3 more spare SSDs, I would have tested the full 40Gbps claim.

Benchmark Results (ext4)

I tested with two filesystem configurations. The reliable numbers come from the ext4 run, where direct I/O (O_DIRECT) was fully confirmed working with no cache assistance.

Test	Result
Sequential Read	729 MB/s
Sequential Write	669 MB/s
Random 4K Read	71 MiB/s / 18.2k IOPS
Random 4K Write	103 MB/s / 26.3k IOPS
Raw device read (hdparm)	763 MB/s

Sequential read at 729 MB/s and sequential write at 669 MB/s are pretty good numbers. Pretty close to the numbers I discussed earlier. That's the advantage of using NVMe over a PCIe tunnel.

NTFS vs ext4

Since the Crucial drive I installed was previously formatted as NTFS, I benchmarked it in that state before reformatting to ext4.

Test	NTFS	ext4
Sequential Read	820 MB/s*	729 MB/s
Sequential Write	231 MB/s	669 MB/s
Random 4K Write	~2.3 MB/s	103 MB/s

NTFS sequential read was partially served from OS cache due to FUSE limitations and thus it is not a reliable number. Don't think that NTFS is somehow better than ext4 ;)

The NTFS write performance is inconsistent. Sequential writes drop to 231 MB/s and random 4K writes fall to around 2.3 MB/s.

Mind that this is not the DAS's fault. Linux accesses NTFS through the ntfs-3g FUSE driver, which adds overhead, especially on small random writes. The raw device speed (hdparm on the block device directly, bypassing any filesystem) was virtually identical in both runs at around 764 MB/s, which confirms the ORICO hardware is not the bottleneck.

📋

If you plan on using this enclosure exclusively on Linux, format your drives in ext4 format for better write performance. If you need Windows compatibility, exFAT is a better choice than NTFS for Linux users, as it avoids the FUSE overhead while remaining readable on all operating systems.

Real-World Transfers

I am not a fan of bechmarking tests. They do not capture how the device actually feels to use. So I ran two practical tests.

Copying a 5GB 4K video file to the DAS took just over 4.5 seconds.

A folder with nearly 2,800 photos and videos totaling 10.2GB transferred in under 12 seconds.

Note that Linux buffers writes in RAM before flushing to disk in the background, so these numbers reflect the immediate user experience rather than sustained disk throughput.

Things To Keep In Mind

The no-passthrough situation is probably the biggest practical limitation but only if you need to daisy chain multiple devices and only have few thunderbolt ports available on your system.

No RAID support is by design here, but something to keep in mind if you were hoping for redundancy.

Fan control would be a nice addition, perhaps? The device was silent in my use, but there is no software or hardware toggle to set a fan curve or force it off. Definitely not a dealbreaker, just something I noticed.

Another thing to note is that there is not enough space for a heatsink since the device has a compact size.

Also note that for $219 you are buying a diskless enclosure. Four decent NVMe drives to fill it will cost a lot more. That's an obvious thing but I still would like to state that.

Who Is This For Really?

The primary userbase for something like this is video editors and creative professionals who are constantly moving large files.

If you are working with 4K or 8K footage across multiple projects, you'll have TBs of data and your internal SSD would fill up fast. A 4-bay NVMe DAS sitting on your desk gives you that additional storage without the latency of a NAS. You plug it in and it just works like local storage, because over Thunderbolt 4, it effectively is.

It is also a good fit for you if you already have a handful of spare NVMe drives sitting around from previous hardware upgrades. Instead of those drives collecting dust in a drawer, you slot them in here and have a fast, compact multi-terabyte storage pool at your desk.

That said, this is not for everyone. If you just need an extra 1 or 2TB of portable storage, a simple USB-C external SSD will do the job at a fraction of the cost and with far less desk space and will also be portable. A dedicated 4-bay DAS only makes sense when you need the multi-bay capacity.

Some NAS devices offer a feature called direct attach, where you plug the NAS directly into your computer over Thunderbolt and use it as local storage rather than over the network. ZimaCube highlights this as a use case.

The difference here is that a NAS with decent specs will cost you significantly more than this DAS. If all you need is fast desk-side storage without the NAS software stack and network overhead, the ORICO DAS is a simpler and cheaper solution.

Conclusion

As a Linux user, the experience was better than I expected. No driver issues, no special configuration needed.

The drive showed up as native NVMe devices and behaved like internal storage. Format to ext4 and you get fast sustained speeds in both directions.

Do evaluate your needs and if it fits, you can get it from its official website or order it on Amazon:

ORICO 88 Series 4-Bay USB4 NVMe SSD Enclosure on Amazon

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TUXEDO OS is Ditching Ubuntu for a Debian Base That Never Goes Stable

TUXEDO Computers has announced that their Linux distribution is moving away from Ubuntu, with Debian taking over as its new base. TUXEDO OS is the default choice on every TUXEDO machine, but it's not exclusive to their hardware, and anyone can just grab an image and run it on their computer.

Going forward, the distro will be based on Debian Testing instead of an Ubuntu LTS release, under what the company calls the Continuous Debian approach. The move is permanent too, as TUXEDO OS will not follow Testing into the next Debian stable release.

Behind the switch is also a fair bit of frustration with how Canonical has been steering Ubuntu lately. Announcing the rebase, they stated that:

By moving to Debian, TUXEDO OS gains substantially more independence while reducing the effort required to maintain up-to-date software. The result is a robust operating system with a clear focus on digital sovereignty—for both TUXEDO customers and users running TUXEDO OS on third-party hardware.

Done with Ubuntu

Source: TUXEDO Computers

TUXEDO says that an aging LTS base makes backporting harder as time goes on, since newer dependencies are often missing or stuck on outdated versions. Things get worse when core libraries like Qt (which KDE Plasma runs on) get updated and break software pulled from Ubuntu's repositories.

Snaps are another pain point, as Canonical keeps moving toward packaging and delivering Snap-only software, making it harder for TUXEDO to keep those components out of their distribution.

Similarly, the Ubuntu AI roadmap hasn't offered much clarity on how it will actually work, and slow security updates were the final points of contention.

The new base

With Ubuntu now gone, Debian Testing, the development branch of Debian, becomes the new base. New packages arrive here from Debian Unstable, but only after proving they build identically from the same source, a requirement Debian made mandatory back in May.

The switch is already visible under the hood too, as the internal testing version of TUXEDO OS is pulling from Debian's repositories instead of Ubuntu's (as shown above).

Why should you care?

Don't think that this is only a rebase; TUXEDO Computers is also working on introducing some major upgrades.

Btrfs becomes the default file system on new installs, paired with Snapper for automatic snapshots before every update. That is the same setup openSUSE has used for years, so it is a proven solution.

They haven't detailed their kernel strategy yet. My guess, and it's only a guess until TUXEDO confirms otherwise, is something closer to how Ubuntu or Fedora handle it, shipping recent kernels quickly instead of sitting on an older one for stability's sake.

A visual overhaul is also on the way, though they haven't locked in the new look yet, and current builds still run the old theme over the new Debian base. Gaming and enterprise use cases are both getting attention too, with the specifics being shared later.

If you are already running the Ubuntu-based TUXEDO OS, there is no direct upgrade path here. A clean install will be required, and TUXEDO says a full migration guide is coming before the final release shows up.

Alternatively, if you would rather stay on an Ubuntu base, the company will be offering a transition path to Kubuntu 26.04 instead.

When to expect?

An extensive beta testing phase kicks off in the coming weeks, aimed at non-production setups. Expect things to shift based on feedback and whatever release blockers turn up along the way.

If you want a more complete look at what they are cooking up, the next FrOSCon happening in August is the place to be. The TUXEDO Computers team will be presenting this new development direction in a dedicated talk.

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LOL! Storage Bug on Microsoft Windows 11 Could Eat Up 500 GB Disk Space

We are used to hearing about Copilot eating storage space on Windows machines, showing up in applications it has no business in, and generally being a nuisance for anyone who prefers an AI-free computer.

Now, we have a Windows log file that has been silently eating up space on people's storage drives, with a Microsoft customer support agent even suggesting buying a new hard drive when a user complained about it.

What happened?

The file responsible is CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal, a write-ahead log for the database Windows uses to track camera, microphone, and location permission requests. It's supposed to stay a few megabytes and clear itself out after about a month. Instead, it can balloon past 500GB, sitting in a folder Windows won't even let you open to check.

Original pic via Agumon_Hakase.

The user who got the hard drive advice was Donald Gibson, who posted about it on Microsoft's Q&A forum in March 2026. His System and Reserved storage had ballooned to 111GB when it should have sat around 40GB, all thanks to a single 66.5GB CapabilityAccessManager.db-wal file eating up precious space on his 221GB drive.

When he contacted Microsoft support, the agent had never heard of the bug and had to loop in a supervisor before responding. The result was a suggestion to buy a new portable hard drive, and no help deleting the bloated file either.

This is not something new that has popped over the past few months, a Reddit thread from a year ago had the same file ballooning to 513GB on someone else's machine, with no folder anywhere to explain where the space went.

A quiet fix

The official fix didn't show up until June 29, quietly tacked onto the release notes under the "Change log" section for a preview update that had already shipped six days earlier.

But not everyone will have this now, as the full rollout is expected with the July 2026 Patch Tuesday update, which is well over a year after the first reports started showing up.

The same update also shipped a redesigned Start menu, a new point-in-time restore feature, and support for bigger local AI models, so it is not like Microsoft was short on engineering hours to spare.

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You Can Now Craft E-Ink Faceplates for the Steam Machine

The Steam Machine's swappable front panel just got a very useful upgrade that Valve has put out for free under an MIT License. Called the Inkterface, the e-ink faceplate replaces the stock panel with a small Bluetooth-connected display.

NaKyle Wright is the person behind this project, who has published all the design, CAD, and documentation for this under Valve's SteamHardware group on GitLab.

Wright has been working on this since at least October last year, with the repository covering everything you'd need to actually build the thing.

What's included?

You get a full bill of materials which includes an Adafruit ESP32 Feather, an eInk Breakout Friend, a 5.83 inch monochrome panel, plus assorted screws and magnets. The repo also includes STEP and STL files for 3D printing, a pin by pin wiring guide, and both a video and PDF walkthrough for assembly.

Finish the build and you get a panel that clips onto the Steam Machine's chassis with magnets, the same way the stock faceplates do, then pairs with the system over Bluetooth once you've installed the companion service.

The mockups for Inkterface's companion app.

That last bit is still under development, but once it's live on Steam (listing redirects to homepage), it will let you find Inkterface faceplates over Bluetooth and choose what shows up on its display. Whether that's live hardware stats or anything else the panel supports.

Related to that, the Inkterface comes with a handful of system statistics collectors, so you are not stuck with a dumb display with no metrics to show. If there's something else you'd rather track instead, the code is open enough that you can add it yourself.

Start building

The Inkterface repository has the actual build guide, which is backed up by a full assembly PDF and a video walkthrough for anyone who'd rather watch than read.

Inkterface

And, thanks to this being open source, any third-party accessory vendor can theoretically build new faceplates based on this. This only makes the case for open hardware that much stronger.

There's also news of JSAUX teasing a similar accessory since late last year. A swappable e-ink faceplate alongside a LCD and dot matrix version, with the launch happening sometime in 2026.

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