Proton has been on a roll lately. The Swiss company keeps expanding its privacy-focused ecosystem with tools that actually work for regular people. Take Lumo AI, for instance, their privacy-respecting AI assistant that doesn't feed your prompts into some data-hungry training pipeline.
And now, they are taking a big swing at Big Tech's productivity services dominance by launching Proton Sheets, an encrypted spreadsheet tool that isn't interested in mining your data.
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Launched as a feature of Proton Drive, Sheets is rolling out gradually to all users, even those on the free tier. If you don't see it on your account, you will soon enough. Anant Vijay, Product Lead at Proton, says that with this addition, Proton Drive is now a clear alternative to Google Drive.
Getting started with it is quite easy. Just sign into your Drive and click on the "New" button, then select "New spreadsheet."
In terms of features, you will find all the usual ones you might expect from an online spreadsheet tool. There's real-time collaboration where multiple people can edit the same spreadsheet, built-in support for formulas to handle math problems, import and export of CSV and XLS files, and strong access control to shared sheets.
Proton Sheets collaboration options and screen size too small warning.
Everything is encrypted end-to-end. That means Proton can't see your data. Neither can anyone else unless you explicitly share access with them. Plus, the interface works across devices, so you can access your spreadsheets securely on the go.
And here's something interesting: Proton Sheets warns you when your browser window is too small. It is a thoughtful design choice that prevents you from mangling your spreadsheet on a tiny screen or window.
But this warning can get annoying. Sometimes you just want to quickly check a number or verify a formula on a sheet...
Wrapping Up
Proton now has a complete productivity suite. Email, calendar, file storage, documents, and spreadsheets. All encrypted. All private.
Add Proton Pass for password management, Proton VPN for secure browsing, and Lumo AI for private AI assistance into the mix, and you will find that the Proton ecosystem is a reliable Big Tech alternative that doesn't treat you as the product.
Valve has been quietly funding an Arm emulation project for seven years now. Pierre-Loup Griffais, who helped build SteamOS and the Steam Deck, told The Verge (paywalled) about it recently.
While most of us already knew of their work on Proton, the popular compatibility layer for running Windows games on Linux, their behind-the-scenes support for FEX-Emu, an x86-to-ARM64 emulator, has come as a surprise.
Valve's Approach to Open Source
The company began recruiting developers for Arm compatibility back in 2016 and 2017 with a focus on bringing Windows games to the platform. Ryan Houdek, who leads FEX-Emu development, made the first prototype in 2018 after interactions with Pierre around that time.
Valve has funded all of FEX-Emu's core developers since then. Ryan told The Verge that Valve pays enough to make FEX his full-time job. Marking the project's seven-year anniversary, Ryan thanked Valve for trusting him to design the project for long-term use, and not just for them, but as an open project anyone can adapt.
Pierre adds that they don't want game developers wasting time porting games to different architectures and that they want them improving games or working on their next game. He called porting work "essentially wasted work".
When asked about Arm-powered SteamOS devices, he didn't limit his answer to what Valve could do. He mentioned ultraportables, laptops, handhelds, and even desktop chips as potential Arm platforms.
Plus, Pierre also shared that Valve doesn't have a specific plan for attracting manufacturers yet and that they will ship their hardware first and see what happens.
Closing Thoughts
I like how Valve approached this. Instead of building proprietary in-house tools, they found the right developers and funded them to work openly.
Short-form content has ruined attention spans for many people, including myself. Those little dopamine hits feel good in the moment. But over time, they make you impulsive, easily irritated, and exhausted.
Let it control you long enough, and it becomes like any other addiction. Your brain gets used to constant stimulation. Normal activities feel boring. You need more just to feel okay.
Your ability to focus on anything substantial crumbles. Work becomes harder. Relationships suffer, and if you are on the spectrum, then all of this hits even harder.
But there are many ways out. One of them is Mental Math, an app that tests your arithmetic skills while keeping you productively engaged. No endless scrolling, no algorithm deciding what you consume, and no brainrot.
Just math problems that actually make you think.
Mental Math: Keep the Brainrot Away
The home page, sidebar menu, and history page of Mental Math.
Mental Math is a free and open source arithmetic training app developed by Alexander Goy (HeldDerTierwelt). The app is written in Kotlin and respects your privacy. It collects no data, requires no permissions, displays no ads, and works completely offline.
Key features include:
Customizable tests (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) with 9 difficulty levels.
Two game modes: Task Mode to complete 10-50 problems and Timed Mode to tackle problems in 1-5 minutes.
You can share games with friends using identical problems or preset configurations to challenge them.
Difficulty calculation happens using algorithms based on column addition, column subtraction, long multiplication, and long division.
For testing Mental Math, I loaded this up on an Android smartphone to see how it worked. The home page immediately lets you select which arithmetic operations to practice and at what difficulty level.
I set middle ground difficulty for all operations and tried tests with 10 and 30 problems, and Task Mode seemed like the right place to start.
The arithmetic tests are quite diverse!
My arithmetic skills need work. But the interface makes going through tests easy. You see the problem above; you type the solution using the number keypad below.
Correct answers flash green before the next question appears. Wrong answers show red. Simple feedback that keeps you moving.
When a test ends, you get a results page with useful metrics like accuracy, speed, and score. The developer encourages sharing these with friends to compare performance on identical tasks.
My expertise in arithmetic is rivaled by many.
The app has more than just arithmetic skill testing. A sidebar menu gives access to settings and additional features. Tap the bar graph icon on the top right to see your top 10 scores for each difficulty combination.
There is also a history page where you can browse all your past games and sort them by time or score.
Install Mental Math
This app is only available for Android users. You can get it from F-Droid, the Play Store, or directly from the releases page of the project's repository on Codeberg, where the source code is also available.
Fedora is known for pushing boundaries when it comes to adopting new tech, almost always staying near the bleeding edge of what's currently available. The project doesn't really wait around for things to become "accepted" before jumping in.
That approach now continues as the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) just gave the green light to replace a very old system component with something more modern.
What's Happening?
Fedora 44 is ditching fbcon, the kernel framebuffer console, in favor of kmscon, a more modern userspace console based on Kernel Mode Setting (KMS).
If you have ever pressed Ctrl+Alt+F2 on your Linux computer and seen a full-screen text interface, that's what we are talking about. It is also the same text-only screen that shows up when you boot up your system.
Currently, the old console runs inside the kernel itself. The new approach moves it to userspace, where regular programs live instead of deep in the sensitive core.
Why the Change?
Jocelyn Falempe, who came up with this proposal, laid out some very good reasons for this. The first one is obvious, fbcon is showing its age. It lost scrolling support years ago when developers had to yank the feature due to a security bug.
It still relies on fbdev emulation, even though modern GPU drivers moved to the newer DRM interface. This creates an unnecessary component that shouldn't be there.
Then there is the security issue. fbcon runs in kernel space, so when it crashes, your whole system goes down with a kernel panic. This makes recovering a system painful.
What to Expect?
kmscon brings back what fbcon left out. Scrolling works again. Keyboard handling is considerably better with xkbcommon support. Multiple layouts, proper shortcuts, and more are included.
There is also the ability to change fonts, use more Unicode characters, and the keyboard layout is mirrored with what a user has on their graphical environment.
Don't worry about things breaking. If kmscon gives out, your system falls back to the old Getty/fbcon setup automatically. You can switch back yourself too if needed.
The end game is to eventually do away with both fbcon and fbdev emulation completely. If Fedora pulls this off without issues, other distros could probably follow along soon.
You can go through the conversation surrounding this change on Fedora Discussion.
Session is an open source encrypted messaging app that requires no phone number or email address to sign up. Instead of routing messages through centralized servers, Session uses a decentralized network of over 2,000 nodes running the onion routing protocol, similar to Tor, ensuring that no single server knows both the message origin and destination.
The Session Technology Foundation took over stewardship of Session back in October 2024, succeeding the Australia-based Oxen Privacy Tech Foundation (OPTF).
Alexander Linton, who worked as a journalist before joining the Session project, now serves as President of the Session Technology Foundation.
In an email interview, we discussed his transition from journalism to privacy advocacy, Session's approach to trust and safety without centralized moderation, and the threats that surround encrypted communication.
How Did You Get from Being a Journalist into Leading the Session Technology Foundation?
When I was working in a newsroom, it became very clear to me, both from my own experience and from observing my peers, that there was a real gap when it came to secure communication. Journalists handle sensitive information every day, and yet the tools available to us were never built with our safety or our sources’ safety in mind. You could feel that vulnerability.
So when I heard there was a team in my hometown building a secure messaging tool, I knew I had to be involved. I joined the project seven years ago with the simple belief that people deserve the ability to communicate without surveillance or unnecessary exposure.
Over the years, I applied myself in every way I could, learning from the team, contributing wherever I added value, and helping shape Session into what it has become.
Leading the Session Technology Foundation today feels like a natural continuation of that same mission: making truly private, secure communication accessible to the people who need it most. It started as a personal frustration and turned into a global responsibility, and I’m grateful for that journey every day.
What's Been the Biggest Surprise in Session's Growth Since You Became President?
Day to day, when you’re building secure tools, it can sometimes feel like you’re working on an island. There’s a lot of noise, skepticism, and concern about people who push for real privacy. You hear so much about the pressure against secure communications and against the teams who build them, and it can feel isolating at times.
Stepping into a more public role changed that perspective for me completely. The amount of support, encouragement, and alignment coming from every corner of life has been overwhelming in the best way. It’s been a reminder that people do care about privacy, safety, and ownership of their communication, and they’re grateful for tools that protect those things.
The most incredible part has been hearing the individual stories of how Session has helped people in times they needed a messenger they could trust to have a conversation in safety. Those stories make everything worth it. They remind us who we’re building for and why this work is important.
How Has Switzerland Been as a Home for the Foundation and Have There Been Any Regulatory Issues?
Switzerland has been a great home for the Session Technology Foundation. It’s a place that understands the value of digital rights and open source innovation, and it provides a stable environment for stewarding a global project like Session. Being here has allowed us to focus on long-term development rather than short-term noise.
This is not unique to one country; it’s happening everywhere as governments try to understand how to regulate emerging technologies. We are watching it closely.
What's the Relationship Between Session Technology Foundation and OPTF Now That You are Independent?
The two organizations are now entirely independent. The Session Technology Foundation is the steward of Session; it manages the open source repositories, handles app publishing, and provides development support to contributors across the ecosystem.
OPTF’s role today is mostly historical. It played a meaningful part in Session’s early years, and it continues to be a supporter of digital privacy more broadly.
How Does the Foundation Aim to Close the User Base Gap to the Likes of Signal and Telegram?
Signal and Telegram grew to their current popularity because they were able to fill a need that people have. Similarly, Session is filling a need that people have now and will continue to have in the future, the ability to communicate securely and privately without attaching their identity to a phone number.
Communication and privacy are universal needs, and as we continue improving the application and the overall platform experience, more people naturally choose Session because they want to communicate safely, privately, and without being turned into a data point.
For us, the focus isn’t on chasing user numbers for the sake of it. It’s on building something genuinely valuable and reliable. If we stay focused on that mission, the audience will follow. We’re already seeing that growth as awareness of privacy and metadata risks becomes more mainstream.
How Would You Convince People That Session Token Isn't Just a Cash Grab?
Session Token is the mechanism for creating a sustainable future for Session. It is not short-term thinking — but long-term. If we want private messaging infrastructure to be owned and operated by the community rather than a company, there needs to be a secure and decentralized way to incentivize and support that infrastructure. That’s the role of Session Token.
The purpose of Session Token is not to fill the pockets of some people. It’s about creating an ecosystem where the public good of private messaging can be owned by the public. Instead of relying on a private enterprise to run essential communication infrastructure, we are building a model where people who support the network and contribute value are the ones who benefit from it.
Session's Architecture Makes Content Moderation Nearly Impossible. How Do You Think About Trust and Safety?
Encryption is foundational to our model for trust and safety. Often, security and privacy are demonized in the conversation around online safety, but in reality they are safeguards.
There is no future for online safety without privacy and security; these are first principles.
Session is built so that people have control over their own experience.
There are user controls around message requests, participation in open communities, and contact discovery, which give people agency over who is talking to them and what can be shared with them. Session is a tool, and as there is no ‘one person’ running the platform, the STF cannot claim to be the arbiter or moderator of your specific conversation.
Instead, Session enables community-level moderation; people set norms for the spaces they participate in, and those norms are enforced locally rather than through platform-wide scanning or surveillance.
At a technical level, there is no way to conduct full, platform-wide moderation on an encrypted platform without backdooring the encryption. We believe that weakening encryption would ultimately make everyone less safe, not more. Our approach to trust and safety is about empowering people, strengthening privacy, and giving communities tools to protect themselves without compromising security.
In These Polarizing Times, Is the Bigger Threat to Privacy Government Overreach or People Just Not Caring Anymore?
Part of the attack against encryption is trying to convince people not to care. If the public becomes apathetic, it becomes much easier to undermine privacy without resistance. Apathy is not a solution; ignoring the issue of online privacy only makes the problem worse and leaves everyone more exposed.
Government overreach is a real concern. Some proposals around the world target both the technology and the people building secure tools, often through mechanisms that could weaken encryption or introduce scanning systems. It is important to remain vigilant, specifically with respect to backdooring encryption (such as through scanning mechanisms, i.e.,chat control).
Technology itself can also be an enemy of privacy when it is designed without security in mind. The prevalence of AI, particularly when it is embedded at the operating system level, presents an existential threat to secure communication and online security in general.
💬 Are you a Session user? Thinking of trying it out? Do let me know in the comments below!
Ubuntu's community wikis have long been an essential resource for people looking to troubleshoot issues, find guides, and learn more about the popular Linux-powered operating system.
For over two decades, these wikis have served countless users and developers globally.
Canonical has announced that it is working on building a new Ubuntu wiki from the ground up. This is being done to address the many issues plaguing the existing wikis that have gone unaddressed for years.
The current wikis at wiki.ubuntu.com and help.ubuntu.comwill be decommissioned in August 2026. The first one has been around since 2004, the same year Ubuntu's first release, Warty Warthog, came out.
A small team at Canonical is now working on a replacement.
What Can We Expect From the New Wiki?
The team brings together technical authors, platform engineers, community engineers, designers, and Ubuntu engineers who are already at work developing and testing the new wiki on a private test instance.
Canonical is targeting an Alpha release sometime in 2026. Throughout the development process, the team will be consulting the community and taking their feedback into account.
But, you might be wondering, why go through all this trouble?
Shane Crowley, a Technical Author at Canonical who announced this, lays out some pretty convincing points.
For starters, the existing wikis run on an older version of MoinMoin with Python 2, which no longer receives security patches. This is a major concern for anyone using or contributing to the wikis, and it is not something that can be ignored.
Then there's the content quality issue. The wikis are filled with outdated information that often shows up in search results instead of the official Ubuntu documentation.
This can be frustrating for users who stumble upon old pages when they need current solutions (I have personally faced this when I was an Ubuntu user).
Usability has also taken a hit. Users frequently face issues with registration and login. Page loads are very slow. The styling doesn't meet modern web standards and performs poorly on mobile devices. All of these issues collectively make for a very poor user experience.
In future updates, Canonical plans to share more about their thinking behind the undertaking and provide details on how community members can get involved. So, if you are interested in contributing, keep an eye out for those announcements over on the Ubuntu Community Hub.
Want to Master Ubuntu?
Whether you’re new to Ubuntu or have been using it for years, The Ultimate Ubuntu Handbook offers a wealth of practical tips, time-saving tricks, and insider insights that will help you get even more out of your Ubuntu experience.
Recently, Linus Torvalds and Linus Sebastian come together for a YouTube video collaboration. There, Torvalds said that the infamous blue screen of death in Windows is not a software issue in most cases. Hard to disagree with him.
Also, if you like It's FOSS and rely on Google search, please add us as your preferred source in Google. This way, you get reliable and more accurate information on Linux in this age of AI slop.
Here's the highlight of this edition of FOSS Weekly:
A new open source font by Google.
KDE Plasma dropping X11 in the future.
The Linux kernel 6.18 release.
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is dropping some default apps.
Firefox based browsers.
And other Linux news, tips, and, of course, memes!
This week of FOSS Weekly is supported by the awesome folks at Prepper Disk.
With privacy and Internet stability more challenging than ever, Prepper Disk is a private offline stash of over 500 GB of vital websites in any emergency. Wikipedia, iFixit report guides, StackExchange, world road maps, HAM radio repeater information, and much more are inside a compact, easy-to-carry device.
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Being the most prominent and official organization behind Linux and many other Enterprise open source projects, Linux Foundation's certifications hold good value in the job market. Their Kubernetes certifications helps you land DevOps jobs.
Linux Foundation is running Cyber Monday offer, and you can get upto 65% off on certification exams and training courses. So, if you are looking for a career in Linux sysadmin and DevOps field in 2026, take the advantage of the sale as the exam period is valid for one year. Get it for discount today, prepare for the certification exam and attempt it in a few months. You can take two attempts at the exam.
We are in December now and I can safely say that Christmas is here. This may sound likeMariah Carey, butall I want for Christmas is...your support.
As one of the rare few publications with a special focus on desktop Linux users, we have been functioning for the past 13 years with the support of readers like you, not corporate backers.
If you believe in our work, if we ever helped you, do consider upgrading to anIt’s FOSS Plus membership— just $3/month or a single payment of $99 for lifetime access.
Most new distros don't offer anything of substance other than a few themes perhaps. This is why ObsidianOS is different as it offers the innovative concept for system wide rollback with the classic Ext filesystem..
It is nearly a year since I have been using Zen as my primary browser. It is based on Firefox but feels so different to use. Watch me use Zen in the latest video.
In Firefox, you can use @ in the address bar to access various searching areas.
These search areas include things like searching among tabs, your bookmarks, the history, a different search engine, and more. This works in other browsers too, but the availability of search areas will differ.
🎋 Fun in the FOSSverse
Governance in open source is an important thing. Can you beat this crossword to prove your knowledge?
🤣 Meme of the Week: Musings of a wise ape... No offense to Manjaro users or users of other Arch-based distros.
🗓️ Tech Trivia: On December 3, 1968, Control Data Corporation unveiled the CDC 7600, a machine often hailed as the first true supercomputer. Engineered by Seymour Cray, the system pushed boundaries with performance nearing 40 megaflops, an extraordinary achievement for its era.
Raspberry Pi just launched the 1GB version of the Pi 5 for $45. At the same time, they've increased prices across the Pi 4 and Pi 5 lineups to offset rising memory costs.
The hikes are significant. The 8GB Pi 5 now costs $95, up from $80. The 16GB variant jumped from $120 to $145. Even the 4GB Pi 4 sees a $5 increase to $60.
According to Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton, the LPDDR4 memory shortage driven by AI infrastructure demand is the culprit. He calls it "painful but ultimately temporary" and promises to roll back prices once the market stabilizes.
The new 1GB Raspberry Pi 5 certainly appears to represent an entry point into the ecosystem. But $45 for 1GB in 2025 raises questions about value, especially seeing that there are competing brands with a better value proposition.
This is nothing new; two years ago, a redditor put out a post asking, "What's the point of a Raspberry Pi above $50?." They argued that rising prices betrayed Raspberry Pi's mission to democratize technology.
Fast-forward to today, and that sentiment is still in the minds of hobbyists and tinkerers.
So, is the $45 Raspberry Pi 5 1GB worth it? Let's explore what other single-board computers (SBCs) that money can get you in 2025.
What Else Can You Get in $45?
The single-board computer market has grown competitive. Several manufacturers offer boards with better specs than the Pi 5 1GB at similar or lower prices.
These alternatives often pack more RAM, faster processors, or even additional features. However, they will probably lack the polish and ecosystem support that a Raspberry Pi provides.
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The boards listed below are priced at $45 or less, excluding taxes and shipping. Prices may vary by retailer.
ArmSoM Forge1
At just $23, ArmSoM's Forge1 is the budget option here. It targets industrial and IoT applications rather than general computing. The board uses the Rockchip RK3506J tri-core Cortex-A7 processor with 512MB of DDR3L RAM and 512MB of NAND flash.
It features dual 100 Mbps Ethernet ports, MIPI DSI display support, and RS-485/CAN Bus interfaces. ArmSoM promises 10 years of production support, as this SBC is set to remain in production until at least May 2035.
The Radxa Rock 3A starts at around $30 for the 2GB model. It uses the Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor clocked at 2GHz that is paired with an Arm Mali-G52 GPU.
The board supports M.2 NVMe storage, PCIe 3.0, and includes a 0.8 TOPS NPU. It has HDMI 2.0 output supporting 4K@60fps, 2x USB 3.0 ports, and a Gigabit Ethernet port.
The ROCK64 offers 4GB of RAM for $44.95. That's more memory than the Pi 5 1GB at roughly the same price. It is powered by the Rockchip RK3328 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor with Arm Mali-450MP2 graphics.
The board includes USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, and 4K digital video output. If you have doubts, then you should know that PINE64 has a strong community and decent software support.
The Le Potato costs $45 for the 2GB model. It positions itself as a direct Raspberry Pi 3 hardware replacement.
The board uses the Amlogic S905X quad-core Cortex-A53 at 1.5GHz with Arm Mali-450 graphics. It excels at media playback with hardware decoding for H.265, H.264, and VP9 up to 4K@60fps.
The Raspberry Pi 2/3 Model B/B+ compatible form factor and 40-pin GPIO header make it easy to use with existing Pi accessories.
The alternatives may offer better specs on paper. However, Raspberry Pi's ecosystem provides advantages that raw specifications don't accurately reflect.
Raspberry Pi OS is polished and officially supported. The distribution receives regular updates and includes pre-configured software for common use cases. The Raspberry Pi Imager tool makes setup trivial, even for beginners.
The HAT (Hardware Attached on Top) ecosystem is massive. Hundreds of expansion boards exist for everything from touchscreens to motor controllers. Most work without driver hassles or compatibility issues.
Educational resources are everywhere. Official documentation is comprehensive. Third-party tutorials cover a wide range of projects. The Raspberry Pi community is very welcoming, and the official forum has many helpful users and active moderators.
This ecosystem matters more than specs for many users. A board with 4GB RAM means little if you can't get your project working because documentation is sparse or the community is inactive.
Sourav Rudra
Ankush Das
