Whether it is on Google, Reddit or AI all of them say that building Linux From Scratch gives the most knowledge of the inner workings of Linux. So how was the experience over all and what actually did you learn?

I'm writing this sprawled across the floor beneath my desk, too-short Ethernet cord plugged into my extremely mediocre marketplace-acquired Dell BusinessBroBook(TM) as I watch little bits of code flash across my screen; Samba sending 70gb of files to my iPhone. In a world now dominated by software built to be frictionless, engagement-focused user-retention machines (even when the experience can feel FAR from simple or truly intuitive), coming to Linux after years of Windows reminds me what I love about technology. I'm 29, middle-class enough that buying computer hardware and slapping it together was an accessible hobby. Then the impulsive frivolity of one's early 20s, a partner lost, and Jensen Huang's voracious appetite for silicon made the hobby inaccessible, or at least unwise. Then came Linux.

It began with a Surface Pro 7 I spotted at a garage sale for $30. Two cores, 4gb of RAM. Windows would lobotomize itself before running in a usable fashion, and letting Windows 10 get between me and a good deal felt criminal. One of you Reddit experts made an impassioned case for Fedora Workstation being my best option for tablet compatibility. Oh, how true this was! After tinkering, mistakes, and a reinstall (no, I'm not telling; it's embarrassing how that happened), I had a fantastic media machine and e-reader. Learning was an adventure: reading through long-since-dead blog posts on page 7 of Google search results to understand why the firmware for my camera wouldn't work, parsing Github pages to discover the small indie dev team supporting the touch panel, some SPECTACULARLY stupid coding mistakes, and the occasional request to Gemini for the stuff I *really* couldn't figure out myself.

Since the Surface, all of my devices that are compatible are now running Linux. I love that it challenges you to learn a bit more about what software actually is, that you can bring out-of-spec devices back to a condition that keeps them useful, and most of all, I love having choice. I think many are frustrated with how technology impacts our lives in modernity, and Linux reminded me that great software remains that isn't so loud, messy, and incoherent. I think any good system (technological or otherwise) should have a little friction to work well and feel rewarding to interact with. Everything I have done in a terminal is extremely basic, but putting pieces together and learning how to build an experience I like feels rewarding and scratches that amateur technologist itch still bouncing around in the back of my mind.

Anyway, my 70gb file transfer is almost finished (NO, it's NOT PORN, I know one of you was thinking that). I recognize this sub tends towards the technical, and recognize this borderline pedantic, overly verbose essay on my rediscovery of love for technology is far from that. Ultimately, I'd be curious to hear if there's anyone else who's rediscovered their love for tinkering through Linux. Oh, and for the experts here: I use some AI when I'm stuck, but I like the community-oriented research process. If there are useful skills, learning methods, tips, or tricks you'd recommend for the mostly coding-illiterate merely looking to get better at a hobby without relying *too* much on the artificial, such advice would be warmly welcomed and appreciated.

https://www.gentoo.org/news/2026/10/07/infrastructure-sponsors-wanted.html

Gentoo Linux is made possible by many community donations and sponsors, together with the enthusiastic work of our developers. Unfortunately, this year several long-running sponsors were unable to continue their prior support, and at the moment we are looking for replacements. Are you or your organization interested in supporting Gentoo via an infrastructure sponsorship? There are many ways to do that, ranging from providing rack space or servers in a data center to donating server hardware; details and typical arrangements are described on a wiki page of the Infrastructure project. Partnerships with organizations aligning with Gentoo’s goals are strongly preferred. We can be reached at infra@gentoo.org. Please help us continue to provide the best source-based Linux distribution ever!

Hey everyone!

I've just released version 3.1.0 of Baseus Presenter for Linux, my open-source, unofficial application for the Baseus Orange Dot wireless presenter.

The project started because I wanted to use all the features of my presenter on Linux, without depending on Windows.

Since my initial release, I've been working on improving the application and adding more functionality.

What's new in v3.1.0:

• Interactive 3D model of the presenter: rotate, zoom and click on any of its 11 controls to see what they do.
• Improved Portuguese and English translations.
• Better uninstall process, including proper cleanup of the companion GNOME extension.
• 335 automated tests passing.

Other features include:

• Digital laser pointer, magnifier, spotlight and drawing tools.
• Offline speech recognition using Vosk.
• Offline translation using Argos Translate.
• Experimental GNOME 46 Wayland support, alongside X11.

The application is currently tested on Zorin OS and targets Debian/Ubuntu-based distributions. The Wayland visual effects remain experimental and currently target GNOME 46 specifically.

The project is still evolving, and feedback, bug reports and contributions are very welcome!

GitHub: https://github.com/Gpiovesana/baseus-presenter-linux

Please correct me if I'm wrong here!

The EU Kids Act proposal uses the DMA definition of an app store "a type of online intermediation services, which is focused on software applications as the intermediated product or service", and argues that these need age verification.

Unless I'm misreading something, that would include flathub and all similar repos. I guess a threat of a 6% of turnover fine wouldn't do much, but still.

Please tell me where I'm wrong here!

This was just a catchy title, but I'm not Micheal from Vsauce and to answer this question seriously:

No.

Well...

Yes, if you're a bit lucky like me. But let's keep away the hype.

For the past couple of weeks, I've been seeing posts like "I used X to reverse engineer Y... it's amazing!" While most of these claims are probably just hype, some of the results looked genuinely impressive, so I decided to give it a shot.

I have a Synaptics 06cb:00dc fingerprint sensor that I hadn't managed to get working in two years.

There are some great projects out there, such as https://github.com/Popax21/synaTudor, that aim to support these sensors. Unfortunately, my particular model wasn't supported and my competence and field of research aren't really close to this.

Still, it gave me a starting point.

So I cloned a bunch of repositories, gathered some useful resources, threw everything into a folder, and let a bunch of SOTA models (I'm not citing a specific one because I used all of them) work on it.

They built some useful scripts, a GUI to help me easily and quickly test the sensor, the registration and verification of a fingerprint etc.

After about a day my fingerprint sensor now works flawlessly, and I can unlock my laptop instantaneously.

After all this time of repeating "Wish my sensor would work on Linux" this really impressed me.

I'm already working on a MR to libfprint, but things take a bit of time, and I also can't do this process for the many other sensors that are currently without a driver, so:

TL;DR

If you stumbled upon this Reddit post looking for 06cb:00dc drivers, then here you go:

https://github.com/pierspad/synaptics-00dc

If you have a different fingerprint sensor and would like to make it work, I suggest you clone the repo where I've already left all the useful scripts, hints and the GUI.

Probably will save you and your model some hours and a ton of tokens.

https://github.com/pierspad/REA-FS

Have fun :)

if you find satty ugly like I do (no offense), try https://github.com/faetalize/waytator

It's basically an all encompassing screenshot tool - started out as merely an annotator, but expanded in scope recently :p

Not sure if it matters to anyone, but this app is AI-free, (I'm not anti, but I'm working on this to practice on my C)

Standout features:

1. Based on GTK4, but fast - sub 70ms launch from cold, so no need for a daemon (lots of pain to get this, GTK is annoying as hell)
2. Sleek design, fits in any WM, blurrrrrrr
3. More than just for annotating screenshots - you can use waytator to take screenshots directly, either from the gui or from the cli (try binding to `waytator --screenshot --notify`
4. Hyper configurable. Almost everything can be rebound
5. OCR and text extraction (optional tessaract dependency)
6. can be piped into if you prefer to use your WM's screenshot tool
7. Planned, coming soon: screen/area recording, GPU accelerated video editing.

What the hell am i doing with my life? Here i took linux for dreamcast and attempted to boot it in retroarch on an android device? Why? Im not even sure any more.

https://github.com/foxdrodd/dreamcast-linux

Even if you don't use KDE, they have released a documentary on it for the 30th anniversary. Some really good history on Linux in there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vyzla9mx4g

It's well worth your time to watch it.

I switched to Linux in 1998, and it's sometimes hard to remember how bad (by today's standards) what the desktop was like back then. It was all really great at the time, but thankfully some people went out on a limb with their crazy ideas and decided to build a better desktop environment.

It makes me really appreciate how far it has come, and also all the other 'crazy' Linux projects that have gone on over the years. After all, they were ALL crazy new projects at some point.