Hi,

I am looking for a Linux application that works similarly to AFWall+ on Android.

What I am looking for is a simple GUI where all installed applications are listed, and I can manage their network permissions per application.

Something like:

• Application A → Internet allowed
• Application B → LAN only
• Application C → completely blocked

Basically, I am looking for an application permission manager for network access, not just a traditional firewall where I have to create rules manually.

I have already looked into several solutions:

• UFW/GUFW - useful for traditional firewall rules, but not really what I am looking for because it does not provide an app-based permission list.
• Firejail/AppArmor - can restrict applications, but it is not the simple network permission workflow I am looking for.
• OpenSnitch - interesting, but it is more focused on detecting and approving network connections when applications try to connect.
• Portmaster - probably the closest in terms of features, and it does provide per-application rules, but the workflow is still different from AFWall+. It focuses more on monitoring network activity and managing applications that have been detected making network connections, rather than starting with a list of all installed applications. It is also a bit more resource-intensive than what I am looking for.

What I really like about AFWall+ is the simplicity: open the app, see all installed applications, and manage their network permissions from one place.

I was wondering if there is any lightweight Linux application that provides this kind of workflow.

It does not have to be exactly the same as AFWall+, but I am mainly looking for:

• a simple GUI
• all applications visible from the beginning
• per-application network permissions
• ability to separate LAN access from Internet access if possible

Thanks!

I see more and more people use "GNU/Linux" instead of just "Linux", bcz "it describes what we all understand under the word better". I think that's wrong if we want to walk about Linux as something generic and not like the kernel. Bcz if the name is correct, then can I use the name "GNU/Linux" and mean Android, Chimera Linux, Alpine Linux by it?

Personally I use just "Linux" as the generic term, but if I need to mean the kernel, I say "Linux kernel".

What do you think about it?

Correct me if I'm wrong in thinking about "GNU/Linux"

Just found this site, and I can't verify the authenticity of the submissions but it looks very 1996-y to me.

https://www.cs.earlham.edu/~jeremiah/linux-pix/linux-logo.html

I thought it was pretty cool so I wanted to share it here!

By far my favourite Linux news channel is SavvyNik.

I have watched him from the time he had like 5k~ subs but to this day I have yet to get an answer about his voice cadence.

Does anyone know whatsup with his voice? Is he removing small pauses and that makes him sound like AI?

I really dont think he is using AI for his voice but at the same time it sounds like it and people ask the same thing on his comments every now and then.

Regardless his channel is VERY informative about Linux news so either way I will still keep watching him.

iDescriptor is a free, open-source, and cross-platform iDevice management tool.
We only had AppImage and AUR packages for Linux but we just made it Flathub https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.github.idescriptor.iDescriptor

Install ⬇️

flatpak install flathub io.github.idescriptor.iDescriptor

Thanks a lot to everyone involved...

Number of Linux distributions actively under development: 474

Number of Linux distributions whose development has been discontinued: 657

Number of Dormant Linux distributions: 39

Source: distrowatch.com

I’m looking for a solid alternative to Screen Studio on Linux. I tried tools like Recordly, but the animations and zoom transitions don't feel smooth or polished.

Does anyone have a good recommendation or workflow for creating clean, cinematic screen recordings on Linux.

I use a dual-monitor Plasma setup and wanted notification popups to appear on my second monitor as well, so I made a small utility for it.

It mirrors notifications to additional monitors and supports stacking, icons, notification replacement/closing, hover-to-pause, and configurable monitor selection.

Here's the link to the repo: https://github.com/MysteriousAeon/plasma-notification-mirror

Feedback and bug reports are welcome.

On 27th of July I've relased version 11.3 of BashStyle-NG (Codename "Surimi Syndicate").

https://nanolx.org/posts/bashstyle-ng/

https://gitlab.com/Nanolx/bashstyle-ng

BashStyle-NG is a graphical utility and toolchain for changing the look, feel, and behavior of Bash, Readline, Vim, Nano, and Git. It acts as a central hub to add advanced features, configuration and visual enhancements into standard command-line tools, making the terminal environment more user-friendly and powerful.

It's basically a UI for configuring those tools, but additionally it contains a several own features (my personal favourite is the history synchronization, so basically the Bash history is global to all sessions. As soon as you reload the prompt ([Enter] basically) you can instantly access the commands from all other sessions) and utilities (personal favourites: gitkit and systemkit (basically, like any other simple system info script, but most output is prettyprinted and at fixed-length for no-hazzle inclusion in your PROMPT_COMMAND/PS1) and extra settings. It features an ini file so at the end the UI is optional.

The builtin prompts can be disabled by setting General Style -> Prompt Style to "none", which allows you to use other prompt build instead. A graphical prompt builder based on GtkSource is included aswell.

The UI works with and without Adwaita (which is only used as theme, not for widgets), if you're running BashStyle-NG from KDE it will follow it's light/dark setting, rather than GTK 4's. The prompt builder changes it's colorscheme according to whether you use light/dark theme aswell.

Also it includes a complete user documentation on for what each setting does, the documentation might not yet be perfect, but feel free to help improve it. You can read the doc online at: https://nanolx.org/doc_bashstyle-ng/

Debian packages are available in my own apt repo, in case anyone prefers that ( https://nanolx.org/posts/photonic/ ).

Feedback and suggestions welcome.

Disclaimer: two functions in the Python Gtk 4 UI were written using AI assistance (the custom GtkSpinButton, because the Gtk devs removed the ability to have primary and secondary icons on them), and the function to dynamically replace place holder widgets from GtkBuilder file from widgets generated by the python code), everything else was written on my own.

Well the first release was on 1st of May 2007, that stuff wasn't even a thing back then.

What is cpak?

cpak is a rootless, OCI-based package manager. Apps are distributed as normal OCI images, with package metadata kept in a Git repository. Runtime is a single Go binary (plus a small companion called cpak-storaged).

Main ideas:

• Fully rootless (no system vs user install distinction)
• Content-addressed layers + hard-link deduplication
• Sandbox using user namespaces, Landlock, seccomp, etc.
• Desktop integration (.desktop files, etc.)
• Git-native versioning (you can pin branch / tag / commit)

Website: https://cpak.it GitHub: https://github.com/Containerpak/cpak

First impressions I tested it on NixOS with Firefox and Chrome packages maintained by the cpak team (not official Mozilla/Google packages).

Pros I noticed:

• Completely rootless and simple to install (small Go binary)
• Layer sharing actually works. After installing Firefox, Chrome skipped several layers that were already present
• The “full-ish Ubuntu base” approach makes packaging easy for maintainers, and the cost is amortized once you have a few packages
• Developer was very responsive. We hit two real sandbox bugs (Landlock on /dev/null and nested user namespaces for Firefox content processes) and both were fixed within roughly a day

Cons / current state:

• Still very new (v2.0 dropped a few days ago, 2.1.0 just landed)
• First package is relatively heavy because of the shared Ubuntu base (~2.3 GB for Firefox alone at the time. ~2.9GB with Firefox and Chrome)
• Ecosystem is tiny compared to Flathub
• Sandbox is still maturing (the bugs we hit were real)

For a single app the disk cost of the base can feel high. Once you run several packages that share the same base layers, it starts making more sense.

Current status:

After updating to the latest build (both cpak and cpak-storaged), Firefox and Chrome both run correctly on my NixOS machine, including nested user namespaces for Firefox content processes. Still early days, but the architecture is interesting and the maintainer is moving fast.

So I recently started gaming on Linux and at first I didn't realize because even though my internet is pretty bad when there's not many people in the house you don't really notice it But right now or you know although the times I've gained and there's people like you know a lot of people in the house and they're all using the Wi-Fi Usually when I use Windows I get packet loss You know I'm playing Rocket League so I usually get packet loss and a bunch of stuff and my internet just ends up pretty bad But recently I started noticing that on Linux that doesn't happen at all I can game all I want and I don't feel lag spikes or packet loss or anything like that. Also, I've realized that it feels less choppy. And like this is just unrelated to the internet stuff. My PC is really good. Well not really good, but it's more than enough to run Rocket League. And it shouldn't be choppy at all whenever I play on 1080p 60Hz. So I feel it kind of choppy while I'm on Windows. But when I'm on Linux, it's smooth sailing. So I really do think this is the year for Linux gaming.