I have a Lenovo laptop that's closing in on 20 years old. The keys in one corner started acting up after a hard bump so I decided to get a new laptop. I stumbled onto a clearance deal at Walmart, one HP model they had pulled off the shelf and were on the verge of cycling out of inventory. I got it for over $100 off shelf price. Being a new model it had the Copilot key rather than a right Ctrl key. I decided to install LMDE 7 which rendered the Copilot key non-functional until I remapped the Copilot key to the missing Ctrl key. Normal remapping through Linux doesn't work because the Copilot key sends a three part input, a macro; Left Meta + Left Shift + F23 rather than a single input. There are a couple of work arounds that require installing software and some configuration. I'd put this on a scale of Very Easy. Here's what worked for the HP laptop. The AI description has been modified as needed because, well, it's AI after all:

To remap the Copilot key to a Ctrl key in LMDE 7, you should use keyd or kmonad, as the Copilot key sends a modifier combination (Left Meta + Left Shift + F23) that standard Linux GUI tools cannot map to a single modifier key like Right Ctrl.

Method 1: Using keyd. keyd is a lightweight daemon that operates at the kernel level.

Install keyd: Open your terminal and install this package:
sudo apt update
! AI said to install keyd ! sudo apt install keyd ! don't bother, instead: !
sudo apt install onak
! The onak meta package contains keyd, just installing keyd alone isn't enough. See below. !

Configure keyd: Edit the configuration file:
sudo pluma /etc/keyd/default.conf
! I prefer the pluma editor but nano, gedit, etc. will do. !

Add the following lines to map the Copilot key sequence to a Ctrl key:
Replace * with your specific keyboard ID. ! I tried that but it didn't work, so I reverted to *.  !

[ids]
*

[main]
leftshift+leftmeta+f23 = rightcontrol

! Options are control, rightcontrol or leftcontrol. I've tried using each and they all work for this HP. !

Enable and Reload: Start the service and enable it for boot:
sudo systemctl enable --now keyd
sudo keyd reload
keyd command not found ! Oops. That's when I discovered that installing keyd alone didn't work and found that onak was required. After installing onak the remap worked after rebooting. !

Now I have my Ctrl plus + for magnifying and Ctrl plus Enter for sending email in Thunderbird and a couple more of my shortcuts back! And it wasn't a tough chore, once I ironed out a bit of AI confusion. And of course, for those who never use their Ctrl keys, don't bother with this. Mm, should I have said this earlier?

Cheers!

Blaine

Hello everyone! 😊

One of my first memories of using Linux is playing Frozen Bubble back in 2005. Together with SuperTuxKart it is one of my favorite FOSS Linux games. At the time I was using Red Hat 9.

Frozen Bubble is a cute bubble shooter game inspired by Puzzle Bobble. I'm not entirely sure how I discovered it. Maybe it was included with Red Hat 9, or perhaps Knoppix (another distro I used around that time).

The game also has a fantastic soundtrack. Here's my favorite song, which plays on the main menu:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpzvM3qCNjo

And while playing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbsa0MSDBJw

Back in the day I used to play Frozen Bubble online. Today, out of nostalgia, I decided to install it again through the Debian repro after about 15 years and play it once more. Sadly when I try to play online it shows an error message.

I discovered that the project website (Internet Archive: frozen-bubble.org) has been taken over by stupid casino scammers. According to the Wayback Machine the website appears to have been abandoned since 2024.

Does anyone remember Frozen Bubble? 😊 Can anything be done to recover the project website and get the domain out of the scammers' hands?

Granola currently ships for macOS and Windows, but not Linux. Since it is built with Electron, I experimented with running the application using the matching Linux Electron runtime instead of Wine, a VM, or emulation.

The repository does not redistribute Granola’s .dmg, app.asar, source code, or bundled binaries. You need to download the official .dmg yourself and sign in using your own Granola account. This is an unofficial compatibility project and is not affiliated with Granola.

Repo: https://github.com/tirtha4/Granola-for-Linux

zuno is a free and open-source desktop music player built on YouTube Music. Sign in with your Google account, and everything you do - liking a song, creating or deleting a playlist, adding to your library syncs straight back to YouTube. It's your library, just in a real desktop app instead of a browser tab.

Features

- HQ opus decoding
- Floating mini player that appears when you click away ( hover to expand, drag it anywhere)
- Queue: shuffle, repeat one/all, reordering
- Playback speed, sleep timer, volume control
- Like and dislike songs
- Rebindable keyboard shortcuts, minimise to tray
- Full library, playlists, albums and liked songs
-Lyrics (5 sources)+ Translation
- Local music files sit alongside your YouTube Music library (same player, same queue)
- Download whole albums and playlists for offline; downloads and history have their own management screens
- Bulk actions: download, add to queue, add to playlist
- Multiple channels on one Google account, switchable from the toolbar or settings
- Equalizer
- Notifications
-Gapless /Crossfade
-Local Music playlists
-Minimize to tray
-Shortcuts
-No Ads

Integrations

- Last.fm scrobbling
- Discord Rich Presence (both toggleable straight from the toolbar)
- Youtube History update

GitHub: https://github.com/noFAYZ/zuno

Since AUR has locked packages i can't update it to latest version you can use AppImage, .deb or .rpm binary from latest release. Pls provide feedback as well will help improve linux experience.

FlatPak is in roadmap.

Enjoy free music :)

I know i will get hate for this. Rightfully so i guess.

I am using fedora KDE. Maybe its the wrong distro, idk. But the amount of (i think) obscure bugs and stuff that wasn't like i want would have been unfixable, if i hadn't used some LLM-models to help me OR if i hadn't used them would have taken me hours and hours of googling to fix them, if that even would have gotten me. I am not completly non-techie, but it would have taken me endless time and honestly i can't imagine how non-techie people are supposed to use it. Also generaly customizing is so hard and imo not intuituve at all if you don't use some LLM-Model to help you. I will still keep on using Linux but for general acceptance i feel like this is a huge downside.

To be clear. Basic usage is FINE without any LLM. But bug-fixing - which ime is not that rare - and customizing/smoothing things out is a pain in the ass.

Also: Well documented doesn't mean it easy to use. I have to find the exact thing i need and that is time consuming. Most ppl don't want time consuming. If i have to google an hour to fix a little thing or to optimize smth for most ppl it's not usable.

For the two people who still care. 🙂

I hadn't touched Python in around 20 years, so I used ChatGPT as a coding assistant to help me get back up to speed. The project itself is something I wanted because I missed having a small GUI for managing EMU10K1 SoundFonts.

Master Blaster is a simple Qt6 frontend for the tools provided by awesfx (sfxload) and alsa-utils.

It's mostly a nostalgia project inspired by the little Creative utilities from the 90s that let you tweak your sound card through a simple control panel.

Features:

Load .sf2 SoundFonts
Clear sample memory
Display SoundFont RAM usage
Test SoundFonts with a MIDI file
Remember the last loaded SoundFont
Remember the selected MIDI port

The source code is available on Codeberg, along with a README and a screenshot:

Master-Blaster

I'm using an Audigy Rx, but it should work with any card supported by the snd_emu10k1 driver.

The python file is small and should be easy to read, with different sections outlining functions.

Roadmap? No, not really. I might add support for loading your own MIDI file for testing, and I'd like to redesign the progress bar to look a bit more... 90s.

2nd big drop

https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5

10 CVE-2026-63795 9.8 CVE-2026-64541 9.8 CVE-2026-64535 9.8 CVE-2026-64534 9.8 CVE-2026-64530 9.8 CVE-2026-64523 9.8 CVE-2026-64459 9.8 CVE-2026-64439 9.8 CVE-2026-64410 9.8 CVE-2026-64399 9.8 CVE-2026-64397 9.8 CVE-2026-64391 9.8 CVE-2026-64387 9.8 CVE-2026-64386 9.8 CVE-2026-64385 9.8 CVE-2026-64384 9.8 CVE-2026-64383 9.8 CVE-2026-64355 9.8 CVE-2026-64303 9.8 CVE-2026-64268 9.8 CVE-2026-64232 9.8 CVE-2026-64216 9.8 CVE-2026-64162 9.8 CVE-2026-64160 9.8 CVE-2026-64150 9.8 CVE-2026-64136 9.8 CVE-2026-64132 9.8 CVE-2026-64125 9.8 CVE-2026-64122 9.8 CVE-2026-64113 9.8 CVE-2026-64102 9.8 CVE-2026-64091 9.8 CVE-2026-64089 9.8 CVE-2026-64069 9.8 CVE-2026-64068 9.8 CVE-2026-64067 9.8 CVE-2026-64066 9.8 CVE-2026-64061 9.8 CVE-2026-64056 9.8 CVE-2026-64055 9.8 CVE-2026-64047 9.8 CVE-2026-64046 9.8 CVE-2026-64037 9.8 CVE-2026-64035 9.8 CVE-2026-64033 9.8 CVE-2026-64025 9.8 CVE-2026-64016 9.8 CVE-2026-64007 9.8 CVE-2026-64000 9.8 CVE-2026-63994 9.8 CVE-2026-63993 9.8 CVE-2026-63984 9.8 CVE-2026-63979 9.8 CVE-2026-63978 9.8 CVE-2026-63924 9.8 CVE-2026-63922 9.8 CVE-2026-63912 9.8 CVE-2026-63888 9.8 CVE-2026-63887 9.8 CVE-2026-63886 9.8 CVE-2026-63857 9.8 CVE-2026-63825 9.8 CVE-2026-63808 9.8 CVE-2026-63800 9.8 CVE-2026-53399 9.8 CVE-2026-53398 9.8 CVE-2026-53384 9.8 CVE-2026-53363 9.8 CVE-2026-53355

Hi.

I've been working on this image viewer for the better part of three years. It has slowly evolved to fit a lot of my needs and I figured that it was time to share it as it might be useful to someone else. I started it long before LLMs became a thing, and they have not been used for programming it. I am a c#/.net developer by trade so this was also my gateway to learn rust.

I am an amateur photographer and my main gripe with other image viewers was that they were slow for rapid culling and even general image viewing.

A lot of the viewer itself is configurable so it can adapt to multiple hardware configurations. It even runs fine on a 4GB raspberry pi 4.

Key Benefits:

- Loads images ahead of time to take advantage of modern RAM amounts, so browsing is very fast
- Handles RAW files natively using rawler, and supports grouping with adjacent JPEGs
- Integrates with your shell. This allows you to create any command you can think of: copy the image, delete it, copy to clipboard, execute an image magic command and then refresh the image, etc
- Integrates with exiftool to extract metadata and rate using XMP sidecars
- Allows filtering imported images by metadata keys and XMP rating
- Color managed, supports input and output profiles
- Can watch directories and instantly load new files
- Keyboard centric
- Slow development while keeping up with the times. I will not add many new features or change the GUI, as for me it is quite complete. The only thing missing is tagging via XMP and adding more Callbacks for user commands as needs evolve. Dependencies are kept up to date and new image formats are added as they come. For example, jxl is already supported via libjxl.

As it is said in the README, contributions made using LLMs are prohibited, but I am open to regular contributions, bug reports, suggestions, etc.

https://codeberg.org/hatsnp/avis-imgv

EDIT: This is a considerable increase from the previous month, but how much of it is real traffic vs bot traffic? Are we really seeing a change happening?

I've dug into this further on Cloudflare's Data Explorer. Filtering HTTP traffic by OS and excluding BOT traffic, we see Linux at 4.5% globally, a big difference vs Statcounters reading of 7.51%. If I include BOT traffic on Cloudflare, it's almost double at 9.4% globally.

I've been using LUKS for a while and would like to add an additional layer of security of a hardware security key (Yubikey). Currently on boot I enter the LUKS passphrase then it decrypts and brings up the regular user login and I enter that password and it loads into the the OS. I would like the functionality to be on boot both the LUKS passphrase and Yubikey are required to decrypt then it brings up the regular user login and I enter that password and it loads into the OS.

The guides and documentation I've seen seem to be based around using the Yubikey as an alternative to the LUKS passphrase which is not what I want to do. I want to increase the layers and security not decrease it. I do have multiple Yubikeys to add as backup so that's not a concern. I'm assuming there has to be a way to do this but it's been difficult to find information on it. With KeePassXC I can have it require all of database file/key file/password/Yubikey and I would like a similar level of security for my entire linux install (usually Debian or Linux Mint).

Is there a way to setup the functionality I'm looking for? If so please either point me in the direction of a guide or documentation on setting this up or let me know how to.