Late Night Linux is a podcast that takes a look at what’s happening with Linux and the wider tech industry. Every week, Joe, Félim, Graham and Will discuss the latest news and releases, and the broader issues and trends in the world of free and open source software.
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To celebrate 400 episodes, we look back of the last (almost) ten years of positive Linux and FOSS news. Plugs Piss up at The Shipwrights Arms (just next to London Bridge station) on Saturday 5th September from 5pm until late Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes 9.5 years of good news Thunderbird Is Thriving: Our 2022 Financial Report (May 2023) Asking for donations in Plasma (Aug 2024) I think the donation notification works (Dec 2024) Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora 43 to drop X11 in GNOME editions (Jun 2025) An update on the X11 GNOME Session Removal (Jun 2025)
Guest hosts Chris from Linux After Dark and Sean from Hybrid Cloud Show tell Joe and Félim about bootc desktop Linux distros, how they build, deploy, and update them, and why this modern approach is so powerful. Plus another system information tool, cutting edge upscaling on the Steam Deck, and why Chris has switched to the KDE Plasma desktop. Bootc desktops bootc Using Bootc to Manage Ubuntu Hosts ubuntu-summit-26-demo ubuntu-bootc Mono repository for all bootcrew images How Steam Play/Proton makes Gaming on Linux Awesome Discoveries HWall ProtonPlus KDE Plasma desktop Support us on patreon a
Reports of desktop Linux adoption numbers are probably exaggerated, the Steam Frame seemingly gets closer, Valve’s European logistics partner leaks people’s data, Proxmox gains Arm64 support, GNOME Boxes makes some changes, and a quick KDE Korner. With guest hosts Chris from Linux After Dark, and Sean from Hybrid Cloud Show. News Piss up at The Shipwrights Arms (just next to London Bridge station) on Saturday 5th September from 5pm until late Linux Desktop Market Share Surpasses 10% in North America Steam On Linux Use Back Above 4% In July Valve may be putting the finishing touches to the Stea
Initial Steam Machine reviews are broadly positive, Jellyfin is losing some key project leaders, Sony deletes more movies that people “bought”, why you probably shouldn’t wipe your phone when the US authorities ask for access, Graham repurposes some discarded crypto hardware to play arcade games, Félim gets that old game working, a great terminal music player, and more. News Steam Machine with SteamOS Linux – initial thoughts Jellyfin Project Leadership Changes Sony Deletes A Bunch More Movies From The Accounts Of People Who ‘Bought’ Them US government targets Cop City protester over phone ope
With several open source figures taking a stance on either side of the generative AI debate, we have another argument about it. This time we actually come to something closer to an understanding of each other’s views, even if we still end up disagreeing. News/discussion Piss up at The Shipwrights Arms (just next to London Bridge station) on Saturday 5th September from 5pm until late “Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues with that, they can do the open-source thing and fork it” Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs General Resolution: LLM usage in Debian Suppo
Some of the tech from early on in our lives that inspired where we are today. Plus discoveries including and old game that doesn’t work, professional audio hardware that now works on Linux, Arch on easy mode, and an old chip that can do a surprising amount. Discoveries Celebrating 55 years of the 555 timer chip (flashing alert) open-apollo Ovine EndeavourOS Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes See our contact page for ways to get in touch. RSS: Subscribe to the RSS feeds here
Mozilla is paying for Firefox to be on the front of Wrexham football shirts, SCO vs IBM might not be dead after all, Red Hat will support RHEL forever if you are willing to pay, OpenMandriva discovers why distros need good governance, Félim awaits his statue, and a quick Kagi update. News Wrexham AFC and Firefox announce a multi-year, front-of-kit partnership Zombie ‘who owns Unix?’ lawsuit comes alive again Red Hat Enterprise Linux Long-Life Add-On: Your path to RHEL with no pre-determined end date OpenMandriva Statement regarding attempted distribution sabotage KDE at 30 Support us on patreo
A great example of accessibility features benefitting more than the target audience, a new version of the classic game Nethack, checking for bufferbloat, and Windows 10 limps on in discoveries. Then Félim’s question about the perceived value of open source goes in unexpected directions. Discoveries quick drag Nethack 5 check your bufferbloat opnsense help Microsoft extends extended updates for Windows 10 in the most muted way imaginable Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes See our contact page for ways to get in touch. RSS: Subscribe to the RSS feeds here
We finally have pricing for the Steam Machine, but they are very hard to actually buy, and very expensive. SteamOS is now supported on your own hardware now though, and Joe gives it a go. Plus Ubuntu makes moves to tighten up the flavours situation and announces speech to text on the desktop, and a quick KDE Korner. News Valve opens Steam Machine pre-orders with queue lottery and hefty prices amid AI squeeze Valve’s Steam Machine ships June 29 for $1,049, but you probably won’t be able to buy one yet Gamers Nexus long review Valve will finally let you build your own Steam Machine with SteamOS
Our favourite little things about Linux and open source. This is a short episode because Joe is having a summer break. Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes See our contact page for ways to get in touch. RSS: Subscribe to the RSS feeds here
The new Steam hardware is getting close, Arch Linux’s AUR is compromised, and curl is having a month off from vulnerability reports. Plus updates on using the Kagi search engine, retro handhelds, and 3D printing. Plugs Piss up at The Shipwrights Arms (just next to London Bridge station) on Saturday 27th June from 6pm until late Graham’s talk Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes News Steam Machine and Steam Frame are shipping this summer Valve just imported 13 tons of VR headsets in one day [archived] 2 Arch Linux’s AUR Sees More Than 400 Packages Compromis
A new Firefox release confuses Félim, Plex makes no sense in a world where Jellyfin exists, Will considers paying for the Kagi search engine, and another small Android tablet for your wall. Plus what we learned at the recent Ubuntu Summit. News/discussion Firefox 151.0, See All New Features, Updates and Fixes New Lifetime Plex Pass Pricing Kagi Shelly Wall Display Ubuntu Summit Ubuntu Summit 26.04 Timetable Ubuntu Summit videos See our contact page for ways to get in touch. RSS: Subscribe to the RSS feeds here
Steam Deck price rises point toward high prices for the new Valve hardware, Lenovo puts its name to a cheap retro handheld and regrets it, Wikipedia management seems to be acting like a typical big tech company and the workers are organising, Bambu pisses off its 3D printer customers and Joe got given a free unrelated 3D printer, and we don’t believe that the Raspberry Pi 6 will arrive as late as 2028. News Steam Deck back in stock, with updated pricing The golden age of handheld gaming is already over [archived] Lenovo pulls its controversial G02 retro handheld from sale – starting a chain re
Debian’s ambitious aim to make all packages reproducible pushes us closer to a better future, yet more talk about age verification for VPNs, Firefox gets more users on mobile thanks to regulation, Opera’s gaming browser comes to Linux, Valve releases CAD files for the Steam Controller, and the Steam Frame might be coming soon. With guest host Andy from Linux Dev Time. News/discussion Debian Release Team: Debian Must Now Ship Reproducible Packages EU calls VPNs “a loophole that needs closing” in age verification push EU browser choice rules send millions more users Firefox’s way Opera GX Lands
Great funding news for LVFS and KDE, why Europe probably needs some more home-grown distros, a conspiracy theory about Cloudflare seems unlikely, and we wonder what can be done about all the irresponsibly disclosed vulnerabilities that new tools are discovering. With guest host Andy from Linux Dev Time. News LVFS Sponsorship Announcement Sovereign Tech Fund invests over €1 million in KDE software development KDE bags €1.3M as Europe realizes it might need an OS of its own Can Someone Please Explain Whether Cloudflare Blackmailed Canonical? ‘Dirty Frag’ Linux flaw one-ups CopyFail with no patch
Voice to text, visualising CSVs in the terminal, managing software from releases on GitHub, a mini Android tablet for your wall, and Amiga music on Linux in Discoveries. Plus Ubuntu embracing AI makes us wonder if we should just stop having the same old arguments. Discoveries VoxType Tennis tooler SONOFF NSPanel Pro Gen2 Unix Amiga Delitracker Emulator News/discussion The future of AI in Ubuntu I wanted to reply with some clarifications The Pulse: token spend breaks budgets – what next? Anthropic joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron Upcoming Blender Development Fund and AI Po
There’s a new Ubuntu LTS release and quite a lot is new, Canonical’s infrastructure was taken down and we disagree about whether it could have been avoided, two recent examples of irresponsible vulnerability disclosure, and the Steam controller finally arrives with a hefty price tag. Plugs Piss up at The Shipwrights Arms (just next to London Bridge station) on Saturday 27th June from 6pm until late SeaGL 2026 Call for Presentations Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes News Canonical releases Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Resolute Raccoon Ubuntu 26.04 LTS: What’s New Si
Whether you can trust small new distros, Amazon is officially abandoning Android on its new TV sticks in favour of their new Linux-based OS, and we have another pointless argument about AI bollocks. News/discussion Amazon won’t release Fire Sticks that support sideloading anymore Eternal November — this new influx of users may be better than the last one Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with some early episodes See our contact page for ways to get in touch. RSS: Subscribe to the RSS feeds here
The French government makes a start on moving to the Linux Desktop, the EU has a terrible but open source age verification app, some clarity on one of the exciting office suite dramas, the media swallows Anthropic’s nonsense about their new magically powerful model, a quick KDE Korner, and more. News France’s digital agency dumping Windows desktops for Linux Brussels launched an age checking app. Hackers say it takes 2 minutes to break it Microsoft locks out VeraCrypt and WireGuard devs, blames verification process You cannot use the GNU (A)GPL to take software freedom away AGPLv3§7¶4 Empowers
Raspberry Pi prices have gone up yet again, more drama in the exciting world of open source office suites, Red Hat looks to be going all in on “AI”, Cloudflare vibe codes a WordPress rip off, and GIMP shares some interesting download numbers. News/discussion A new 3GB Raspberry Pi 4 for $83.75, and more memory-driven price increases Forking frenzy ensues after Euro-Office launch sparks OnlyOffice backlash TDF ejects its core developers Let’s put an end to the speculation Memo: Red Hat Global Engineering plans to lean in to AI If you thought the speed of writing code was your problem – you have
Steam stats suggest that gaming on Linux is more popular than ever, Wine improvements might entice even more gamers, Ubuntu might break things when it tightens up GRUB security and makes 6GB of RAM the minimum requirement for the desktop edition, and Ubuntu MATE is looking for new maintainers. News LAS 2026 Call for proposals extended till the 10th April Linux smashes past 5% on the Steam Survey for the first time Wine 11 rewrites how Linux runs Windows games at the kernel level, and the speed gains are massive Ubuntu 26.10 could drop btrfs, ZFS and LUKS support from GRUB Ubuntu quietly raises
Making silly URLs, visualising complex weather data, a TUI network discovery tool, and an open source version of a classic synthesizer in discoveries, plus the sad reality that it’s more or less impossible to avoid code that’s been generated by “AI” these days. Discoveries creepy link Supercell Wx whosthere Ultramaster KR-106 AI in FOSS systemd 260-rc3 Released With AI Agents Documentation Added New Xfce Wayland compositor is being developed with genAI Automox Turnkey Results Endpoint management tailored to your specific environment. Know the plan. Trust the result. Learn more at www.automox.c
Age declaration and verification in Linux gathers pace, Google blesses us with some hoops to jump through to install the software we want on stock Android, the FSFE lost their payment provider, great new KDE Plasma and GNOME features, and more. News Just over a month until OggCamp! Piss up at The Shipwrights Arms (just next to London Bridge station) on Saturday 27th June from 6pm until late Age verification isn’t sage verification when it’s inside operating systems The Engineer Who Tried to Put Age Verification Into Linux A small set of people are merging changes to various Linux components to
Drama in the exciting world of office suites, new ThinkPads are properly repairable, hands on with the Android desktop convergence future, and more. News/discussion LibreOffice Online: a fresh start LibreOffice Online dragged out of the attic LibreOffice 26.2 is here: a faster, more polished office suite that you control Lenovo’s New T-Series ThinkPads Score 10/10 for Repairability Your Pixel phone can now become a full Android PC via USB-C You will be able to install “unverified” Android apps with ADB Automox Turnkey Results Endpoint management tailored to your specific environment. Know the
Discord delays their age-gating rollout but legislators are pushing for operating systems including Linux to verify ages, LLM licence laundering might mean the end of copyleft, and how and why you might want to detect Meta’s spy camera glasses. News Getting Global Age Assurance Right: What We Got Wrong and What’s Changing US state laws push age checks into the operating system California introduces age verification law for all operating systems, including Linux and SteamOS — user age verified during OS account setup I have actually read the text of California law CA AB1043 and, honestly, I don
