My neverending Linux desktop adventure is one helluva ride. Up and down, sideways, and then we loop again, skidding precariously along the monorail of nerdy emotion, missed opportunities, tragicomic ego games, and a complete disregard of what product is meant to be. Case in point, me Slimbook Titan machine. Linked here you have the last report. Use that to go back in time, all the way to the moment of purchase. You will see my satisfaction seesawing, going from abysmal to solid to great to pointless to silly to nice, many which ways.

In my latest report, I mentioned a workaround to intermittent system freeze issue via general purpose event (GPE) interrupt blocking or masking, which seem to have resolved said freezes, with the added bonus of having no sound notification when the battery charger is plugged in or out. But it does resolve a stupid and unnecessary issue, which bugged me greatly. Now, we shall see what gives a month later.

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When I first saw The Matrix roughly a quarter of a century ago, like many a young nerd at the time, I was thoroughly impressed. The movie was visually spectacular and quite revolutionary, with its slick use of bullet time and AI-related philosophy. Indeed, thanks to The Matrix, lots of FOSS developers still think oppressive dark themes with a glaring green tint are the correct way of doing user interfaces. The notion of life inside a simulation is another rather popular theme. Quotes, check. Red pill, blue bill, golly! I remembered the film as entertaining, fast-paced, tense, nice. Then, I watched it again several weeks ago, and, ugh, it didn't age well.

To me, nowadays, the techno-grunge leather, neon lighting and pseudo-philosophy look all utterly outdated. The concept of yet another AI robotic apocalypse seems cliche. There's no romance whatsoever between Neo and Trinity, the conversations feel stilted, and the action isn't as actiony as I remembered. Far from it. But the worst part is the use of humans as fuel. I can't honestly say what my impression of this bio hazard was back then, but I'm sure feeling mightily skeptical now. So I thought, let's actually calculate whether humans would ever make for a practical fodder for robots and alike.

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Weird problems rarely manifest solo. To wit, I recently encountered several issues running my virtual machines in VirtualBox on top of Kubuntu 24.04. These problems occurred after I upgraded my system to Kubuntu 24.04, and then added a new kernel into the mix. First, I couldn't run any guests because the program's drivers weren't loaded into memory. I had to install headers manually, and recompile the kernel. Whatever.

Then, as soon as I solved this issue, there was a fresh one. It read: VT-x is being used by another hypervisor (VERR_VMX_IN_VMX_ROOT_MODE). VirtualBox can't operate in VMX root mode. Please disable the KVM kernel extension, recompile your kernel and reboot (VERR_VMX_IN_VMX_ROOT_MODE). Uh oh. Lots of words. Kernel compilation? Sounds very naughty. Well, let's debug.

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Every few weeks, this question comes up (via email), usually after I publish a negative review of yet another of my bittersweet Linux endeavors, which almost always revolve around Ubuntu and its derivatives, or, more specifically, Kubuntu, my distro of choice. These articles prompt my readers to challenge my choice of software. In parallel, the readers also usually recommend I try a different distro or two, which could hopefully resolve my angst and my usage problems.

The recurrence of this phenomenon prompted me to write this piece. I want to explain my rationale into why Ubuntu is the best desktop choice (and it is), why other distros aren't as optimal, and why Linux is in a bad state, regardless of what you select. Hopefully, this will settle the debate. Or perhaps make you write me even more, with yet more suggestions, so you push through my stubbornness. Well, let us commence.

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Here's a simple yet juicy topic. Muscle memory is both a blessing and a curse. How so, you ask? Well, I've gotten myself a Macbook Pro. Nice machine and all that. Then, since I'm also a pretty serious Linux user, I've set up an Ubuntu + Plasma virtual machine, using VirtualBox, for my Tuxy needs. So far so good. Where things go ever so slightly off the tangent is once you start typing or using keyboard shortcuts.

Being an long-time PC person, my fingers are accustomed to standard PC keyboard, with the Ctrl button as the outermost one, followed by Fn, and then some. The usage of these keys is so ingrained in my brain that I actually remapped the Mac's own modifier keys to match the Windows/Linux usage. But now, there's a fresh problem. The Linux virtual machine obeys the keys as is. What to do? Well, there's a simple solution.

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Apart from a short stint with Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, I've been a PC user my whole life. Until late 2025, I've never used the Mac. Not even once. And now that I have gotten meself a nice device, there's 30+ years worth of muscle memory and productivity optimization working against the Mac usage paradigm. Every time my fingers touch the keyboard, something strange happens.

I have two options before me. Adapt to the Apple way of doing things, or try to make the Macbook behave more like a Windows/Linux system. My choice is the latter. I'm still an active user of those two operating systems, and, in a way, the majority wins. Also, if there's a way, then why not. If macOS lets me implement a few simple changes that will make my life immediately better, I want to try them. In this guide, I will outline a bunch of tweaks and tricks for Windows and Linux converts with ingrained reflexes. Let us commence.

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Linux. Things work, until they don't. Nothing like getting a horrible error JUST when you need to do some actual work, or some important task. Case in point, as outlined in my Slimbook Executive report 12, VirtualBox suddenly wouldn't launch any guests. The error said: Kernel driver not installed (rc=-1908). The VirtualBox Linux kernel driver is either not loaded or not setup correctly. Please try setting it by executing ... Yes, indeed. This popup suddenly showed when I tried to fire up one of the virtual machines. Annoying and frustrating, especially since I've not really made any changes to VirtualBox in quite a while.

As instructed, I ran the /sbin/vboxconfig command, and it informed me that my system was missing the necessary kernel headers to compile the driver for the running kernel. I then remembered I had recently upgraded the kernel on the box, from 6.8 to 6.14, but for some reason, VirtualBox hasn't been auto-configured with this change. Anyway, let me show you quickly the issue, all of the interesting details, and then how to fix this, so you can be on your merry way.

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I always thought I was the grumpiest person on the Internet. Was I wrong. As it turns out, there are people far more talented than me in harboring grudge, disliking technology and writing about it, all in one lovely curmudgeon package. Indeed, if there were a place called Grudge R Us, it would probably be owned by Homo Ludditus, a blogger with an angry mission, funny style and useful content.

When it rains, it pours. You discover one grumpster, you discover many. Should Homo Ludditus keep you hungry for more, worry not. JWZ to the rescue. What can I say about this weird 90s-looking site? Well, it's obvious the owner loves The Matrix. And that they have developed grumpiness into an art form. It ain't empty grump, neither. We're talking hard-earned decades of major tech experience, the only kind that can breed this level of sweet bitterness and insight.

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If there's one thing the Windows desktop does not need more of, it's the mobile-like features. And yes, every time, Windows 11 manages to surprise me with yet more stupid gimmicks, ported straight out of the touch-based smartphone world. Case in point, adaptive brightness on battery power. I was using my test instance, and I noticed the screen brightness changing. The display would dim or lighten up, depending on what I was doing, but I couldn't quite pinpoint it.

Then I realized, maybe the operating system is adjusting the brightness in a contextual manner, based on what's shown up. So I went back into the settings, and indeed. There it was. Stupidity. The system was configured to change brightness based on content (on battery power). What the ... Well, I changed this, and my screen assumed its expected brightness level, and stayed so ever since. I will shortly show you how to do the same, but also discuss this meaningless feature a bit more. After me.

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Sometimes, no news is good news. And early news is bad news. The fact I'm writing my 12th report on this laptop so quickly after I've published the 11th piece means that there be old and new and colorful problems in the software stack, big and juicy enough to warrant a fresh article. Indeed.

My Slimbook Executive is a wonderful piece of hardware. It's slick and sexy, it's got a great keyboard, and it's fun to use. For a while, it was simply flawless. A true joy to behold and handle. But then, badly executed [sic] updates ruined its spotless record. Firmware "fixes" that I didn't ask for and kernel patches that I can't really filter out of my list of updates brought in an instability that I'm fighting to this day. I won't bore you with links, you can check my Linux section and peruse the dozen reports about this machine. Today, we shall talk about what happened in the last month, and, good sirs and madams, was it eventful.

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Typically, over the years, I've mostly used "big names" distros for my serious workloads. Initially, SUSE, later on, flavors of Ubuntu. There's one exception to this rule: MX Linux. I've used it mostly on my low-end devices, like the eeePC, and it has delivered quite admirably so far. The reason why I was willing to step out of my rather strict norm is the combination of many various qualities that MX Linux has.

You can get a sense of what I'm on about from my latest MX-23 review. No, it ain't perfect. But, over the years, the distro team has worked hard on improving the system, with tangible results, contrary to most other distros that have shown a deterioration in quality. It comes with a session save option during the live testing and installation, something very few other distros offer. It's lean and fast. It uses init rather than systemd, which is completely unnecessary in the home environment, nor does it bring the hallowed speed improvements that were sold as systemd's major advantage over its crummy predecessor. Well, MX-25 is here, and it's time for a fresh adventure. New Debian base, big changes. Let's begin.

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Wait, what. Mic drop? Dedoimedo built his own distro? No, nothing of the sort. And yet. Well, let me intrigue you. But also, let me explain. Some time ago, I got myself a Macbook. This is one of those Apple Silicon systems, meaning ARM architecture. I also want to use Linux on this box, through virtualization. And this instantly creates a "problem", because there's a relative dearth of Linux distributions and software readily available and compiled for the ARM processors. For example, there's no ARM version of Kubuntu, which would be my favorite option.

Emulation, i.e., going from x86 to ARM is possible, but there's a major performance penalty. Thus, I need a native build. But, "shopping" around, I couldn't find what I wanted. The most enticing option was the server build of Ubuntu. No GUI. Hm. Could this be a baseline upon which I might add a desired desktop option, and enjoy Linux on this Mac? Well, let's find out, shall we?

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Every few months (or years), I get a bout of nostalgia, and I revisit my old DOS classics. More recently, I've played the lovely Panzer General turn-based war game and the spectacular F-16: Combat Pilot simulator. In both cases, I used DOSBox installed in Linux. While the former doesn't really change much, Linux distros come and go, and they bring somewhat different levels of support for the emulator along the way.

Just days back, I decided to strap myself into the cockpit of WW2 planes in the amazing 1942: PAW simulator. In 2007, it worked splendidly. In 2025, I encountered a multitude of issues with both the sound and actual performance, which may sound surprising, but here we are. In today's tutorial, I would like to give you some tips on how you can enable music and sound in various games, especially if they have a somewhat flaky out-of-the-box experience. So let's commence.

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Hello there, dear readers. I would like to inform you of a nice three-week sale gala, commencing today, and ending on January 7. What is it about, you ask? Well, my career-focused book, aptly named How to Make Your Career Suck Less. Indeed, this fine, cheekily named title will be available at a handsome 50% discount through all Draft2Digital stores for 21 merry days.

I also want to take this opportunity to briefly inform you on my recent writing endeavors. Things are going rather well. I'm working on getting my military history, new sci-fi and new fantasy books published. In parallel, I'm (still) writing the AI ethics piece and romantic novel, side by side. The mind exercise of jumping between the two totally disparate themes in quite invigorating. Hopefully, quite soon, you shall have a plethora of good, engaging subjects to peruse. Stay tuned for updates.

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Commence to popcorn. I am quite certain this article will draw its due share of flak, praise and unrelated commentary focused on a tiny word on line 56. But as you probably know I really like the Plasma desktop environment. It's my default Linux desktop, when I use Linux, and it's awesome. Still, there are lots of issues, current and future. The implementation across Kubuntu editions isn't that good, and it's getting worse. The 6.X family is a bit meh so far, with Wayland problems and less than ideal presentation layer.

Hopefully, the recently unveiled Plasma 6.5 release will redeem KDE's hard work over the years. While my soul still harbors a lot of skepticism and disappointment toward Linux, I'd like to see the operating system succeed, on some reasonable level. The Tux ship seems rudderless, but the Plasma team is trying to break that. With some good mojo from the Steam Deck work, there just might be light at the end of the tunnel. To that end, we must take 6.5 for a spin. After me, most gingerly and grumpily, then.

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Ah, I jinxed it. Mega jinxed it. Remember my ninth report, basically the big One UI 8.0 update? Well, that one went most smoothly, and I had no negative things to report whatsoever. Smooth sailing all the way. Alas, as it turns out, too much optimism and hope can be detrimental to one's mood. Especially if there's a sudden squall of fresh problems.

Happy go lucky me, I had not planned on writing a new Samsung A54 report that soon, but as it turns out, I must. Within days of the Android 16 update, I encountered a whole bunch of new issues on this device. From my most positive experience with this smartphone yet, to a rather ragged state of affairs. But enough teasers. Come with me, dear fellas, and feast your eyes.

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When I first tested Kubuntu 24.04, I was rather dismayed. The system felt like one giant regression. Since, I tested the distro multiple times. Each review revealed improvements, alongside various old and new bugs and problems. Even a fresh install of the 24.04.2 release, the second LTS bundle, wasn't as pristine as it could possibly be. But it was a lot better than the early attempt, for sure.

Then, I upgraded my Slimbook Executive, going from 22.04 to 24.04. Boy oh boy was this a rough experience. There were sooooo many upgrade issues, as outlined in my tenth long-term usage report for this laptop. Never before have I had a Linux upgrade with so much cruft and noise. Some of these are Kubuntu-specific, but some, like the format change for the apt sources files, it's 100% Ubuntu, and it's 100% nonsense. Anyway, in today's article, which I hope won't be too acerbic, I want to share some fresh findings from my 24.04 usage, across several physical and virtual systems, all of which serve a different, unique purpose. Let's begin.

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Recently, I encountered a fresh problem in my virtualization adventures. I wanted to export one of my Linux virtual machines, so I could use it on a different host. On paper, the functionality is there in VirtualBox. File > Export Appliance. Then, you choose the desired virtual machine, decide what format you want to use, configure MAC addresses, and let VirtualBox generate the ova file. On the target host, you import this appliance.

I tried to do this and encountered an error. The GUI said E_INVALIDARG 0x80070057, without too many details. Reading through tickets on the VirtualBox forum, I learned that there could be many various issues for the failure in the import process. Rather than try to solve these potential problems one by one, I chose a different route. A manual machine import, without using the OVA process. Let me show you.

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You would think Windows is annoying when it comes to its updates. But at least there's one entity doing the updating, and if you handle it, you're sorted. Not so in Kubuntu, or most Plasma systems, I'm afraid. Recently, especially since I installed and/or updated a bunch of systems to 24.04, I've been seeing more and more restart required prompts. But not one. Nope. A torrent. A barrage of notifications popping, one after another, sometimes three, sometimes eleven. And they would happen without my intervention, which is alarming.

As it happens, I don't like automatic updates, so I keep them off. Or so I thought, because no matter what I chose through the Discover GUI, Kubuntu would still ignore my wishes and occasionally run a background update, and then annoy me with pointless messages, always when I don't want or expect them. I found a second place to cull this unwarranted noise, but still, this wasn't enough. Then, a third place. My oh my. In today's tutorial, I will show you how to get rid of the KDE Daemon update reboot message deluge. After me, if you please.

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Uh oh. Bring out your popcorn. Strap in and get ready for a spectacle. For today's article can only have two possible outcomes: utter genius or total failure. There is no middle ground, I'm afraid. When a curmudgeon, a Linux nerd and an embittered long-time Windows user, ergo me, decided to splurge money on an expensive posh laptop that will elevate him from the status of peasantry to sweet nobility, there can be no other option. My actions will either vindicate me, or I shall become a total idiot for wasting hard-earned dough on an over-expensive slab of metal and plastic.

To wit, a Macbook Pro! So, this is a review. But there's a lengthy introduction. If you need context and understanding as to why I chose to buy this gadget, you will need to read the first few paragraphs. If you only care about the spec and the use, feel free to skip the why part. Still, for pure entertainment value, I suggest you do savor all the bits and pieces. Let us commence then, most gingerly, forward.

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The eternal tragic hero the likes of those mentioned in Greek mythology reports for duty. That would be me, that is. Once more, I must test my Slimbook Executive, a Linux-only laptop that I use for serious stuff. Or try to use, provided how benevolent the muses of software feel at any given day. Were my experience with the Linux desktop only positive, you would not be reading these articles. But that's not the case.

The Executive is a beautiful machine, and for a while, it worked impeccably, until bad updates made it bad. Since I've battled a range of silly problems, including power management, session management, keyboard behavior, and then some. They come and go. It's a complex story that involves tons of different components of the Linux ecosystem, with each somewhat to blame for the fiasco. Over the last year or so, I was able to get rid of many of the problems. Most notably, I upgraded the operating system. This report shall tell you whether that bold move helped eradicate the last traces of this annoying affliction. Follow me.

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Welcome to my latest installment of weird. To wit, you use Linux, say Ubuntu or Fedora or whatnot. You use a virtualization product of some kind. In my case, VirtualBox, but the issue applies to a range of hypervisors. You start a virtual machine, and now and then, it stutters. Along the way, your entire system (the host) becomes unresponsive. I noticed this problem in VirtualBox 7.X onwards, in Kubuntu 22.04 onwards.

It took me a lot of troubleshooting, but I think I've finally figured out the root cause. As it happens, this is another pointless issue slash bug, stemming from a combination of things: kernel bugs, Spectre-family mitigations, host-hypervisor clashes, and then some. In other words, yet another issue that ought to prevent ordinary people from using the Linux desktop in a serious manner. But at least there are funny characters like me who try to make it work. So, if you please, take a look at this tutorial. After me.

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Visual bling-bling and raw speed are usually opposing forces. Sure, if you have a super-duper computer, you can probably run the system with all the settings on ultra, and everything shall be jolly. If you have an average machine, or a potato machine, you might want to dispense with some of the cool visual effects and focus on performance. But here's a twist. With ALL modern operating systems, Windows, Linux or even Android, if you disable all these fancy effects and transitions that make the experience more "vivid", you gain on performance, no matter how beefy or powerful your machine is. Boom! And we represent.

I have written about this in my Nvidia Wayland vs X11 piece. With compositing off and all the desktop effects disabled, the Plasma desktop (X11) flies even on 11-year-old hardware. The article above even includes a mini video of the result. I then also showed what happens when you disable animations in Gnome. Then, I also showed you how you can achieve better responsiveness and greatly improve your battery life in Android, by, yes, you guessed it right, disabling animations and transparency. Today, we shall do the same thing in Windows 11, with the same expected benefits. After me.

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Just a few days ago, I encountered a rather silly problem. I opened the Play Store. It showed the main view, and then, withing a second, it closed. I tried again. It closed again. Then, on the Home Screen, the phone displayed a message that read: Google Play Store keeps stopping. What they should have written was crashing, but no matter. Thus, a problem. One of the most critical pieces of software on an Android phone will not launch and open correctly.

Naturally, I followed all of the usual boilerplate "fixes", and as expected, none of them worked. Reboot the phone, clear cache, clear data, check for updates, uninstall updates, install any system patches, check permissions, and then some. None of these suggestions helped. After one of the Play Store resets, it stayed put, and it seemed as if the problem had been resolved, but no. After I changed a few small things in the app's settings, it crashed again. Well, there's a workaround, let me show you.

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Smartphone, the final frontier. These are the ... Well, you get the idea. Long story short, I have a device in me possession. It's one Samsung A54. I got it in 2023, and ever since, it's annoyed me ever so. But then, a couple of months back, it received its Android 15 upgrade, and the process went quite smoothly. I was surprised, in a most positive way, and I changed my stance somewhat.

A few days back, I received a notification that there was a new update available. One UI 8.0, Android 16. What. So soon? Well, as it turns out, my phone received its '15 upgrade a bit late, hence the short time span between the two Android versions. In other words, the '16 is right on time, whereas the previous edition arrived months behind the would-be expected schedule. Not that it matters much to me, but hey. All right. Let's see what gives. Typically, I dread upgrades, so I wasn't keen on this endeavor, but proceed we must.

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Over time, Microsoft Windows has steadily become more annoying, less fun. Windows 11 is the epitome of this sad trend, exhibiting tons of smartphone-like "experiences" that completely ruin the very idea of what the desktop ought to be. You can work around many of these nonsense features, but it takes time and patience.

In the past couple of years, I've written tons of tutorials on how to tame this unruly beast, how to make Windows 11 less stupid. All of these articles were made for the typical desktop use, with interactive changes via the Settings, Control Panel, services and some registry. As it turns out, there's a superior way. You can actually install your Windows "enterprise style", in an unattended mode, which lets you clean and prune about 90% of useless garbage without any interaction whatsoever. Let me show you how you can accomplish this.

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Here's an interesting little conundrum for you. Or a philosophical question, if you will. After I posted my article on how the Windows 10 ESU for EEA users isn't good enough, as it still mandates the use of a Microsoft account and the potential limitations for Pro users aren't spelled out in a clear manner, I received and/or came across some rather interesting commentary. Rather than debating the article's merit itself, most of the focus was on my definition of the use of software, especially my resistance to online accounts. Do I actually use or not u

While the questions themselves aren't that important, what intrigues me is the different nuances of understanding people have for seemingly clear or obvious topics. But, they are clear and obvious to me. When a person writes something and posts that material online, they can never control how others perceive it. So I thought it would be nice to compose a fresh article, one that would explain my definition of what constitutes actual usage. It ought to be elucidating. I hope.

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Ah. Linux. iPhone. The perfect match. Or rather, not. Over the years, I've occasionally dabbled in iPhone support in various Linux distributions, usually with mixed results. More recently, as I briefly mentioned in my Slimbook Executive report 9 and report 10, there's been some improvement in this functionality. But then, a mere week after I published the latter report, I upgraded the iPhone 11 to iOS 26, and boom, the iPhone wouldn't mount in Kubuntu 24.04 any longer. To be more precise, the file manager, Dolphin, would show the device in the side bar, but any mount option, view option or anything alike would either result in an error of some kind, or nothing at all would happen. Awfully dejecting. A mere week.

Well, it's time to try to fix the problem. I've talked about this before, so you can look at my existing guides as the starting point. If these suggestions work for you, awesome. But you're more likely going to need what I have today. So strap in, and let's see if we can figure out a way to copy data off the iPhone. Begin.

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We must talk about my for-Linux-only laptop, one Slimbook Titan. I've had this machine for about two years and change. I bought it with the explicit mission of migrating away from Windows for good. The machine and its operating system, Kubuntu with its 22.04 LTS + pro edition (currently), needs to be able to do all sorts of wonders, including gaming, Windows software and whatnot. So far, it's doing well, but it's hobbled by completely unnecessary and randomly introduced software bugs.

Indeed, since I got the laptop, my big problem was the lack of consistency in the experience. If it were totally bad, I could ditch it. If it were totally good, I could enjoy it and forget about it. But no. In a typical Linux fashion of casual disregard to QA and the fullness of the desktop usage philosophy, issues come and go with every update, things break, and no one really cares. But for me, to be able to embrace this system, to rely on it for important activities, I need that reliability, I need that consistency. Stability and predictability are a must. And as I documented over the past six long-term reports, the Titan has not met these seemingly simple goals. Okay, let's see what the seventh endeavor shall reveal before us. After me.

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OK, let's do a car review, shall we. Passat is no stranger, as I've driven and reviewed this car before. Now, this is going to be a super-interesting test. The last time I tried this vehicle, it was the B8 model, the current minus one. The "final" version before touch technology took over cars and ruined everything. It had a good balance between analog and digital commands.

Recently, I had a chance to drive a more modern, facelifted edition. Still not the latest B9 model, mind! 'Tis the old one, so to speak, plus a mid-life update (from 2019 onwards), which brings various interior changes, new safety features and improved engines. So, I find this test extremely valuable, as you shall soon discover. To make it extra fun, it's a 2.0 TDI Evo, with 150 horses, 340 Newtons of torques, and a seven-speed DSG. Let's start, shall we.

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In the dwindling world that is the Internet, I have some fine websites to recommend. Two fresh entries for ye. Entry one: Are you a worldly person? Good. That means you often watch foreign movies. Now, if you don't speak said foreignese, there are two ways you can enjoy the language and understand what happens in the plot. You can have the original audio muted and dubbed over (shudder), or you can use subtitles (good). If your watching repertoire is limited to the English language and major studio productions, you probably won't care about this problem. But it is something that affects tons of indie movies and content from less glamorous places, as well as older movies, before the streaming era. The only question is, what do you do if you have foreign films but no corresponding subtitle files?

Entry deaux: You have Windows, you have Linux. Windows supports many computer games. Linux, not so many. This has changed a lot recently, thanks to Steam and their Proton compatibility layer, which lets Linux folks play all sorts of "unsupported" non-native games, well, almost natively. Sounds great. Behind the scenes, all this is possible due to WINE.

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Ah, Windows 11. The gift that keeps on punishing the user. All right, I'll try to keep my rants to a minimum. Don't use this operating system, it's pointless. Also, I showed you an in-depth guide on how to minimize the modern, low-IQ noise that comes with it, so that you can enjoy a modicum of normal productivity without being profiled or cloudified or whatever you call this pseudo-touch Web 2/3/4 nonsense or such.

Speaking of cloud, I also wrote a guide on the minimal set of services for your Windows 11. But even with all these fine tweaks in place, there are always, always fresh stupid surprises, new things that show how bad and silly Windows 11 is. Case in point, I have Edge disabled, via IFEO, but here and there, various Settings links will still try to open this program (and fail of course, hihi). So, I wanted to see what gives, Edge wise, in the Start menu, and lo and behold, it tried to offer me various Web search, even though I also have this aspect disabled via registry. So, we need yet more taming and pruning. Let me show you.

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Going from one major release of Ubuntu to another. Should be a simple affair, shouldn't it? After all, this is an officially supported method of upgrading your Ubuntu system. Over the years, I've bumped my various Ubuntu setups multiple times. Predictably, over the years, the quality of the procedure had deteriorated, much in line with the rest of the Linux world. When I moved Trusty to Bionic, things were fine. When I upgraded 18.04 to 22.04 on my Slimbook Pro2, there were some issues and annoyances, but nothing major.

But then, just recently, I upgraded my Exec from 22.04 to 24.04, and the process was quite messy. This stands to reason, as Kubuntu 24.04 was ultra-buggy when released, and it took a very long time for it to find its footing. Even now, though, we're on the dot-three release, and still, there are lots and lots of problems. So I thought, let me write an article detailing the various upgrade adventures I've had with the Ubuntu distro family lately. I want to share my findings, so you understand that Linux needs rework. Primarily, it needs less speed, less development, and far more focus on stability, quality and predictability. Let's commence.

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Slow down. You're telling me there ought to be a tutorial on how to achieve this seemingly trivial thing? Well, yup. As it turns out, if you want to set a custom tune as your ringtone on your iPhone, i.e., use a funky piece of music from your own MP3 collection or alike, then you will need to do some mild homework before you enjoy the final result. Since the steps to get there ain't so simple, I felt compelled writing this article.

Now, I don't consider myself a typical iPhone user, nor should you treat me as one. I merely have a second-hand device, which I mostly use for testing, but through these escapades, I'm discovering all sorts of problems and interesting phenomena which occasionally compel me to write a piece or three. For example, most recently, we talked about the amazing UBlock Origin Lite extension for Safari, and how to minimize the effects of Liquid Glass in iOS 26. Now, I wanna show you how to use custom music for your ringtone.

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Modern displays come with lots and lots of pixels. Old programs were built before this plenty existed. End result, quite often, various programs look "bad" on HD+ monitors. Sometimes they are too tiny, sometimes they look blurred, and sometimes both. The problem exists in Windows and Linux. For the latter, I've actually written a very long and detailed tutorial on how to scale most applications for 2/3/4K screens.

Then, I launched KeePass2 in Kubuntu 24.04, and it was all too small. To make things worse, before the upgrade, in the previous LTS, everything was all right. The program had decent scale. Indeed, my migration from 22.04 to 24.04 on my Slimbook Executive has resulted in lots of bugs and problems. And no matter what trick I tried, this little utility would not budge. It refused to scale up, and it stayed tiny. So I spent hours and hours digging. To wit, a guide that will fix that.

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Dramatic intro. Long story short, after I upgraded my system on the Slimbook Executive, and after I correctly configured the VirtualBox repo, I decided to upgrade my virtualization tool from version 7.0 to 7.2. Indeed, the installation went smoothly. But thereafter, things did not. Namely, not a single virtual machine guest had networking. It simply did not work, at all.

I quickly reverted to version 7.1, and everything was peachy. All the guests had proper networking. I then upgraded a second time, same problem. I then went reading through VirtualBox bug reports, and found some rather interesting issues raised for version 7.1, which are, apparently, still applicable to the latest edition. So, let me show you how you can fix and work around the broken networking issue in VirtualBox 7.2. After me.

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Okay. So, ArmA 3 remains the finest first person shooter and war simulator ever made, despite the fact it was released back in 2013. If you wanna do some serious military team work in the comfort of your home, you launch a server, and you and your friends embark on a Dynamic Recon Ops (DRO) mission. Automatically generated each time, this scenario offers an endless number of possible fighting situations. Sometimes you need to find and eliminate an HVT, sometimes clear an area, destroy a weapons cache, defend an area, and then some. The options are limitless. And always unpredictable and fun.

I've been playing various DRO missions for years now, and they have resulted in some rather spectacular articles. If you're interested, then you might want to check my Normandy report, my Alamo article or perhaps the Chernarus Winter story. All highlight the colorful nature of recon ops, each attempt similar and yet so vastly different from one another. Well, as it happens, my buddies and I just recently successfully finished another DRO adventure on Altis. Perhaps the most chaotic, hardest we've ever had. Now, perhaps most people would rather watch a clip than read an article about this (the video would take some two hours), but if you're inclined to gobble some words, then read on.

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As time goes by, more and more software interfaces are becoming less and less ergonomic. This stems from the fact both the desktop and the mobile form factors are mature. There's little left to innovate, or if there is, we're talking boring details under the hood. So changes come for the sake of it, and they are usually aesthetic. Case in point, the Liquid Glass makeover in iOS 26.

I have an old iPhone 11, which I mostly use for testing - ideal for this kind of scenario. I upgraded the operating system, spent a little bit of time using it, and then figured that the whole transparency and blurring stuff is so 2008 ( Compiz, amirite), and they don't add or help in any way. By and large, so far, my impression of the iOS look and feel was positive. For example, in my opinion, the iPhone has the best font clarity of all the different systems I tried, especially in low light conditions. For Windows, the peak was Windows 7. For Android, it was Android 10. With the iPhone, the 18.X family had the right mix of cool and sleek. Now, Liquid Glass is the new chic, and in this guide, I'd like to show you how you can somewhat reduce its effects, for improved usability and clarity. Let's commence.

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Manufacturing lines come to a standstill. Airport flights get delayed. A healthcare provider gets hacked. A telco provider gets pwned. An EV charger provider suffers a loss of data. The list of fabulous and scandalous goes on and on. You would think this is the plot line of a new cyber-action thriller starring Jason Statham and Steven Seagal. Nope. This is just the last month of IT security bloopers in the sordid reality we live in.

To call the state of digital affairs appalling is an insult to the word appalling. Catastrophically, apocalyptically abysmal would be more like it. You would say, maybe we need to reassess the situation? Maybe put the brakes on the digital "revolution" a little, try to make it more manageable? Ah, no. Quite the contrary! The powers that be are even more keen on taking away your analog controls and replacing them with digital crap. Welcome to the ever-hackable future.

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The new tabbed File Explorer in Windows 11 is an annoying, pointless thing. A typical modern tool. One, it's ugly, with bad ergonomics and low contrast. Two, it does not respect my accent color. Three, it's actually quite slow. Rendering the window always takes at least a second. Open a new tab, another second. The reason is, Windows 11 recreates the "command bar" or the "action bar" where the handful of quick command buttons sit, every single time you open a new tab or window. To get rid of this nonsense, you must go classic Explorer. But how, you ask?

I've written about this topic several times in the past. Alas, the old tricks on how to restore the classic view stopped working at some point. This led me on a mission to find new methods of restoring sanity, of gaining speed and responsiveness back. After a lot of trial and error, the fix comes in a couple of registry keys. Let me show you, plus address some potential caveats.

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The title of this article may sound extremely weird to you. Let me explain. DD, or rather, lowercase dd, is a Linux utility that lets you copy data from source to target. Simple, effective. It's great for say writing disk image files to USB media or alike. You can also use it to zero hard disks before disposal. It has many usecases. But, if you don't know how to use it, you might find it frustrating. Notably, it may appear slow, and there doesn't seem to be any progress information (by default).

Today, I'm going to show you a couple of quick tips that will help you make best use of your dd. Notably, how to improve write performance, and how to see the progress of your data writing operations. This will make the experience of dd-ing more enjoyable. So, let's begin, shall we.

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With every Firefox update, Mozilla introduces some cosmetic changes, small or large. For the most part, in the past decade or even longer, these changes have mostly been anti-ergonomic. This has been the case with all browsers, with so-called "modern" interfaces, but since I use primarily use Firefox, this is where my focus is. Indeed, I've already shown you numerous times how to tweak the UI layout for optimized contrast and usability in this modern era of drab, flat, soulless pseudo-minimalistic interfaces that have no place on the desktop.

Come Firefox 143, the address bar tweak no longer works. Namely, I have changed the pointless gray background to white, so there's more contrast between the URL text and the canvas on which it is written. The whole gray on gray nonsense is exactly that. But alas, Mozilla decided to make my life harder, and based on the emails in my inbox, yours too. Well, we shall rectify this. Let me show you the code you need to introduce to your CSS to tweak the address bar background color to anything you like. After me.

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You may have heard or read. Microsoft blinked. With only weeks before Windows 10 goes out of mainstream support, the company has added an amendment, a concession to their software patching offering, whereby the Windows 10 Extended Security Updates (ESU) will become available free of charge for the users in the European Economic Area (EEA). Sounds nice, except, it isn't.

I read about a dozen articles on this topic, and all them call this a "no strings option", or at the very least a good thing. Requirements? You still need a Microsoft account. Blimey. And so, I decided to write this article and tell you not to consider this ESU even if you may geopolitically qualify, unless it changes again, and Microsoft drops the online account clause. The ramifications are long-reaching, and in your nerdy naivety, you may ignore them until it's too late. Commence to read.

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Reading the title of this guide, your initial thought might be, dude, why this piece? After all, there are official instructions on how to do this, there's no need for yet another tutorial. Ah. Well. As it turns out, at the time of writing, the official VirtualBox howto does not take into account the third-party apt repo sources change introduced in Ubuntu 24.04 onwards. Indeed, if there's one thing Linux does well, it's to break backward compatibility.

Case in point, additional repo sources in the latest LTS aren't managed like before. Previously, you would simply add lines to the /etc/apt/sources.list file. Now, these have moved to the /etc/apt./sources.list.d/ directory, with each source its own file. Cleaner perhaps? Yes. Compatible with the old methods? Of course not. Furthermore, there's no automatic conversion from old to new. Hence, if you seek to install VirtualBox in your Ubuntu and family, you will need to manually manipulate the apt files. Let me show you.

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Brace yourselves. Today, I shall show you the results of my operating system upgrade on the Slimbook Executive. We shall go from Kubuntu 22.04 to 24.04, in vivo. Now, since I use the pro functionality on this system, there really isn't any urgency to do the upgrade. But as I showed you in my ninth report, I am not too happy with the software side of things. There are too many bugs, and a firmware blob delivered a while back, plus perhaps regressions in the kernel too, messed up my laptop to some degree. Occasionally, it would go into a silly loop of multiple suspend & resume cycles, the screen would blank, the keyboard would go all crazy, and then, it would return to normal. Very frustrating and pointless.

Okay, so let's do that. Perhaps Kubuntu 24.04 will make my Executive awesome again. I mean, it's a beautiful machine, but the random-beta-quality of Linux mars its capabilities. The upgrade ought to be interesting, as my system uses a lot of third-party programs. We have WINE from upstream, Chrome, Edge, VirtualBox, standalone Firefox, a couple of Flatpaks, and such. I expect all these to work seamlessly once the upgrade completes. So let's begin.

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We all want our computers to start quickly, right. You reboot a machine, you want to see the login prompt or the desktop within a few short seconds. Well, what do you do when the numbers won't cut it? You sort of cheat. Hence, the so-called fast boot or fast startup in Windows. It's a sort of weird, hybrid hibernation but not quite hibernation mode. You think you've shut down your system, but effectively you haven't.

I detest these kind of solutions. Furthermore, if you dual-boot your machines, then the fast boot can make it harder and sometimes impossible to access Windows partitions or write onto them from the other operating systems. This fast startup method will mark your disks as "dirty", and other operating systems may refuse to mount the partitions, or will mount them as read only. Inconvenient, and pointless. Let me show you how to disable this thing.

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It's been a while since I last talked about my Slimbook Executive laptop. I've had the machine for two years now, and early on, the experience was blissful. Superb really. But then, a firmware update, which you get as normal part of your Linux update process, plus maybe a kernel change or two, messed up the lovely stability and peace of my device. I've talked about this a lot, most recently in the eighth report. I am not very happy about this issue.

It would be easier to cope if I didn't commit myself to moving fully, or let's be more precise, as much as possible, to Linux. I don't want to use Windows 11, and with Windows 10 EOL soon, my recourse now includes buying an expensive Macbook of some kind, or using Linux, with physical and virtual setups, and a couple of compromises here and there. But I don't want to compromise, and any setback, big or small, on either the hardware or the software side makes me quite angry. And makes me look silly, too. So, let's see if today's article is going to redeem my Quixotic enthusiasm for the Linux desktop. After me, fellas.

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Recently, I encountered a weird little problem. An inconsistent little problem, too. On a Linux host, I have two Linux virtual machines configured in VirtualBox, both Kubuntu 24.04. One uses LUKS encryption, set up as part of the operating system installation, the other does not. Both use Guest Additions, installed from the official repositories. The former throws an error.

It reads: vmugfx 0000:00:02 .0: [drm] *ERROR* vmugfx seems to be running on an unsupported hypervisor. This configuration is likely broken. Please switch to a supported graphics device to avoid problems. Now, this error only shows during the boot sequence. And it does not seem to affect the functionality of the virtual machine in any way. Screen resizing, screen lock, none of it. But still, let's get rid of it, shall we.

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Ah, the hubris. I won't be the first nor the last person in the nerdville who thinks they have the golden formula on how to tweak operating systems for sane, normal, pure desktop usage. But here I am. I will attempt to do the same. I want to try to give you a formula on how to make your Windows 11 desktop behave like a desktop and not as a data-pumping machine for the cloud overlords.

Long story short, I don't like Windows 11, and don't want to use it. Recently, I did a lot of testing. This masochistic endeavor resulted in my fresh install and reset articles, which detail a great deal of cleanup and pruning. Then, there's CDP, right. Okay. So perhaps, I ought to consolidate everything into one piece, and give you a sort of definitive list of things you can "safely" disable in Windows 11, and still retain a normal system for intelligent use. I'm under the illusion that I can accomplish this. Let's see what gives.

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The Year of the Linux (desktop). Can it happen? Will it happen? For about two decades, the Linux desktop market share hovered around the magical underdog figure of about 1%. No matter what the Tux folks did, the needle wouldn't budge. More recently, there's been some growth in the desktop share. This is primarily thanks to Steam and their hard work on the Proton compatibility layer, which lets you play Windows games as if natively on Linux. As a result, with that one major obstacle removed, more and more people are slowly, gradually switching to Linux. My own journey shows some rather nice results. It would seem we have finally turned a page.

Alas, just as we've reached some small level of stability, some small level of progress, there's a good chance all of this effort will have been in vain. What do I mean by this? Well, the Linux world is fragmenting once more, on several levels. Rather than consolidate powers, or at least, not add more chaos into an already chaotic market, we shall now see a proliferation of new package formats, new distributions, new everything. This repeating of history comes at the most inopportune moment, and jeopardizes the Linux success story.

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If you use the iPhone, your browser choices are somewhat limited. Under the hood, it's all Safari, one way or another. But. Safari itself can use adblockers, like the lovely UBlock Origin Lite. Crucial for sane Internet usage. Firefox, on the other hand, does not have those. Shame, because Firefox is my preferred browser choice everywhere. Firefox Focus sort of does the job, but in a limited fashion.

This brings me to Brave, which I tested in Zorin OS, i.e., its Linux version. As far as Chromium-based browsers go, it was okay. Pretty decent. It did quite well, it has a built-in adblocker, and you can also add Manifest V2 extensions. In iOS, things are a bit different, but you still get a browser that promises to keep your Internet quiet and clean. Well, let's see what gives.

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Let me explain the fourth law of thermodynamics to you. Now, you could say, Dedo, there ain't one. Yes, there is. It goes as follows: if a description of an entity, intended to explain what an entity does, makes one's understanding of the intended functionality even more cryptic, then such an entity should be immediately discarded as pure garbage. Indeed, we don't want to mess with entropy. Case in point: Connected Devices Platform.

Rummaging about in Windows 10/11, I stumbled upon a service called the above. CDP, in short. What does it do? Ah. Ah! Well, I read the service explanation, I felt my eyelids flutter, and I said, okay, I don't want this. Apparently, this thing goes hand in hand with"user activities" so there's that, too. Confused? You should be. But let me explain, and show you what you can do.

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On paper, the world of smartphone is big and rich. There be hundreds of device models on offer. Alas, the reality is not quite so liberal and rosy. Throw in any sort of sensible requirement, and the list narrows down to maybe one or two devices, sometimes zero. Physical dual SIM? 3.5mm audio jack? Replaceable battery? Five or more years of support and upgrades? If you combine all these, you get exactly ZERO hits. Yup. This problem has plagued me for a while now, and whatever phone I choose, it's going to be a compromise of some sort.

Well, wifey said she needed a new phone, as her old one would occasionally turn itself off, plus the casing is a bit battered. Potential choices: Samsung of some sort, Google Pixel, iPhone, or Fairphone. There really isn't much else, believe it or not, if you wanna hit as many of the requirements I outlined above. But I own a Samsung A54, unfortunately, and I don't like it that much. Google Pixel could be a decent choice, but after Google pushed the SafetyCore prude filters onto one of my other devices, without my consent mind, I don't really feel like giving them money as a reward for that. Apple's devices are posh and extremely expensive, and while I've grown to like them quite a bit more in the recent years, such a choice is still a bit of a hurdle. That pretty much leaves the Fairphone as the only choice, even though it doesn't quite check all the boxes. On its own, that does not sound like a great selling point, but despair not. This smartphone has a few neat tricks up its sleeve. Indeed, I decided to bite the bullet, and get it. This review shall explain more. To wit.

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For many years, I strongly opposed the idea of using the iPhone, for two primary reasons. One, I couldn't find an easy way to sync my local, offline MP3 music to the device without using the iTunes. Two, there was no effective adblocking. And in my book, browsing the "modern" Internet without adblocking is like swimming through sewage with your eyes and mouth wide open.

In the recent years, I was able to resolve these issues. You can use VLC (and optionally KDE Connect) to copy your MP3 songs onto the iPhone. Sweet. Then, there's also the Adblock Plus extension for Safari, which lets you, well, block ads. Now, my preferred browser is Firefox, which doesn't support similar functionality on iOS (but it does so in Android, better than anything else, as it happens), but you could try Firefox Focus, or perhaps use Brave (I shall do that test soon). Yes, solutions. Happy me. Obstacles removed. Well, now, great news! UBlock Origin Lite, from the creator of the fantastic UBlock Origin (UBO), is now available on iOS, starting with version 18.6. Sweet. Let's explore.

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Wait, what. Yes, KDE is developing its own Linux distro called, well, KDE Linux. The project is still in extremely early phases, hence no big public announcement. But it is an interesting idea, and you might be tempted to test it. But, would you risk installing such an alpha-quality system on your physical hardware? That's what virtualization is for.

The only problem is, the KDE Linux installation instructions don't mention anything of this kind. The requirements call for a UEFI-based system, which means, it won't support old, legacy machines. Okay. Makes sense for a tool being developed in 2025. Another hardware restriction is that you won't be able to use Nvidia cards older than GTX 1650. This feels too limiting. It will also be Wayland only, most likely. Hm. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Early work. Indeed, we're here so I can show you how you can set up this distro in a virtual machine, safely. This will allow you to test the system without sacrificing precious hardware or risking major bugs. Let's commence.

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Over the years, I have owned (and/or own) a variety of Android smartphones. For the most part, they all exhibited reasonably long battery time in between charges, more so than what you normally hear reported in various articles. My Motorola One Zoom could do about a week, even with several hours of video calls, video playback, music, browsing and alike. More recently, a Samsung A54 in my possession can do four days.

This latest report triggered a bunch of emails, with people asking me what kind of magic I'm using to get such results. Well, I thought, ain't it obvious? After all, if you've followed my rather long Android privacy guide, you will have already taken a lot of steps toward improved battery life. But, for the sake of completeness, let me show you what I do, how I do it, and what you can do to extend the charge time.

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AKA alternative search engines. Here's one for you. In 2025, you know that your online habits are being profiled. All the time, by almost everyone, a million times over. Indeed, when you do any sort of search anywhere, your queries (your questions) tell a great deal about you to whomever you ask. Thus, if you tend to utilize Google or Bing for your search, you're "disclosing" tons of personal information. On its own, this ain't a big problem, because the actions are voluntary (if unavoidable in the modern world). But then, throw in the slew of Google and Microsoft services everywhere, and your search becomes a virtual mirror of your identity. If you're keen on privacy, you might want to consider not doing so, or to minimize your interaction with these search engines.

Well, question no.1: doable? The answer is: yes and no, mostly no. As it happens, there are very few search engine indexes out there. Whatever route you take, you're most likely going to end up with one or the other. Question no.2: why bother then? Well, privacy. And you're in luck! You can use search without giving too much away. Proxy search engines. So, no, you don't avoid Google or Bing, but yes, you use these proxies, and they make your search somewhat more private. Sounds cool. Let's explore, shall we?

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Over the years, the Linux desktop has become easier to use, more accessible. One "victim" of this progress is Linux Mint, in a way. Created as the ultimate pimped-up version of Ubuntu with everything available and working out of the box, for a long time, Mint offered Windows converts the most convenient Linux desktop experience out there. You wanted it, Mint had it. Then, Linux improved across the board, and Mint lost some of its advantage.

It's been quite a while since I tested any version of Mint. Overall, it's still a nice distro, and the flagship Cinnamon desktop does its work reasonably well. But it's not as shiny and awesome as it used to be. Well, you can read all about those impressions if you check the review of Uma, and then go back. Now, I wanna do a fresh test of the latest available version, Cinnamon edition. Let's see what gives.

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In a few short months, Windows 10 will reach the end of life (EOL) of mainstream consumer support. Without additional steps and remedies, by October 2025, roughly 50% of all Windows machines out there will no longer receives updates and patches. Yes, almost half of all boxen running Microsoft's operating system will become proverbial e-waste. If there's a better indicator to how much of a failure Windows 11 is, I can't name any. Never before has a "dying" version of Windows held such massive market share come its end of life. For that matter, the good ole Windows 7 was used by about 25% of all users when it was retired.

The reason I decided to write this tutorial is to help you with the conundrum. What do you do come October 2025? Should you upgrade to Windows 11? What if you cannot upgrade? Or don't want to upgrade? Are there any extended support options available? Should the end user be worried about the security implications of this change? Well, let's talk about all this, and then some.

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What do you do if you don't want or cannot use Microsoft Office? A legitimate question. There are many options, of course. You could try the free LibreOffice, for instance. You could try maybe Google Docs and alike. But what if you're really keen on document fidelity and accuracy, and you just must have good Microsoft Office format support, plus you actually want a proper desktop program?

Well, OnlyOffice sounds like a nice candidate. Having tested it before several times, I can indeed say it's a pretty decent program. It could be a bit speedier, the UI could be a bit more ergonomic, but it works well, and it renders Office documents quite alright. Not perfect, but good. Well, a major new version is out there, so we should test it! Now, I'm going to examine this program in Linux. One, why not. Two, as a cross-platform suite, OnlyOffice should work well on any of the supported systems, so Linux is as valid as any. Three, I do want to stop using Windows, so this is an important aspect of the test, for me. Sure, there might be Linux-specific niggles. Do take that into account while reading. Now, let's.

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Howdie. Many a Linux nerd is under a wrongful impression that I have some rancorous emotional investment toward different components of the operating system called Linux, Gnome in particular. Nope. My dislike of certain technologies is purely technological, ergo if a supposed solution doesn't do what it should, does it badly, or compromises heavily on important ergonomic aspects of DESKTOP usage, then, yes. In my case, it comes purely down to functionality, not ideological affiliations.

Ever since Gnome 3 became a thing, I was opposed to its visual minimalism, excess of mouse clicks to get things done, hiding of information, and lack of easy customization. That said, it's not a blanket verdict. Indeed, as I tested the latest version of Fedora Workstation, I discovered a few interesting pieces. Some good, some bad. I didn't elaborate too much in the review, so let's have a little piece focused on the aspects of desktop usability. Good things, bad things, lessons in Tux. Follow me.

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Windows 11, the curse that keeps on giving. First, my take, don't use. Now, if you must, read on. Should you happen to have been inflicted with the Home edition of this operating system, you're in for a treat. And by that, I mean you will need to spend way more time fixing things than a Pro edition would toll you. Whereby in the latter can just toggle a bunch of group policies to make things ever so slightly less stupid, Home edition users must suffer more.

Case in point, I tested the reset option in Windows 11 recently. A week after the procedure, Windows merrily reinstalled a bunch of crappy apps that I've explicitly removed from my system. Moreover, I've already toggled off pretty much all and any options available, as I've shown you in my usability guide. And still, still, Windows 11 ignored my choices and foisted a bunch of crayony apps that no one wants or needs onto me. Well, let me show you how you can stop the noise.

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My old but feisty Lenovo IdeaPad Y50 laptop has seen quite a bit of action lately. After I replaced the original HDD with a brand-new SSD not that long ago, I infused this 11-year-old chassis with a strong, minty breath of fresh fair. I tested Kubuntu 24.04 on it, with lukewarm initial results and a solid experience after several iterations and much bug fixing.

But then, I tested MX Linux MX-23.6, separately, and I liked it so much that I decided to try it on this machine, too. Basically, I reused the entire disk, displacing Kubuntu. This endeavor was good but not perfect. There were lots of small, annoying problems in the desktop, and the hybrid graphics supports seems a bit iffy. At the very least, there's no GUI way to configure PRIME for the Nvidia card, and this bothered me a lot. Well, I decided to restore Kubuntu onto the disk, a fresh install. And so I must report how this effort went.

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I've been using MX Linux for a long time now, mostly on elden hardware. My impression thereof changed from a lukewarm, average distro to a serious operating system, steadily improving, with a clear message and a rather recognizable feel. But in all my endeavors, I've mostly tested MX Linux on machines with Intel or AMD integrated graphics. Today, we shall change that.

My IdeaPad Y50 is an old machine - 11 years now. But with an SSD under the hood, and running Kubuntu, it works reasonably well. The early distro setup was somewhat rough, but things have become much better since. Excellent hybrid graphics support, decent performance. About as good as you can expect. But perhaps MX Linux can raise the bar even further? Well, with so many other distros pushing for Wayland/systemd as the future so to speak, MX Linux doggedly keeps using init and X11 (and yet, lets you systemd if you want), and that's a refreshing approach. So I wondered, if push comes to shove, would this work? Could I use MX Linux on Nvidia systems? Let's explore.

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For years, the smartphone users have enjoyed a simple "truth" - their rootless devices, combined with the use of sanctioned gilded cage stores, offered them superior security, especially compared to the Wild West of the desktop world. But then, things got more complicated. Today, the online stores are inundated with crapware, and attacks have become quite sophisticated. An improvement in the security posture is warranted, no?

Indeed. A few months back, I wrote my review of the iOS Lockdown Mode. I loved it. It was fantastic. In fact, I think it should be the DEFAULT security state. Not because it reduces attack risks, which it does, but because it reduces the noise and spam factors that are the milieu of the everyday smartphone life. Now, I want to take a look at Android's Advanced Protection mode, not to be confused with the similarly named Chrome browser or Google account mechanisms. And I'm going to take a look at the Samsung version thereof, because that's the device that I have. So follow me, if you will.

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Here's a wee situation you're facing. You want to change the run state of a Windows service. For example, you wish to change a specific service to be started manually rather than automatically when the system boots. Or you may want to disable it. You launch the Services tool (services.msc), you open the desired service, you change its state, and you click Apply/OK. You see an error: the parameter is incorrect.

I've encountered this issue when trying to disable the Windows Defender Web Threat service. This is a real-time component of Windows Defender, which I don't use, don't want to use, and refuse to use. On any Windows box that I have, it's disabled, any which way. If I can't do it through group policies, then I fully and complete delete the relevant program folders, as I mentioned multiple times. But even with Defender gone, the Web Threat service kept running, and I couldn't toggle it off using the Services utility. Let's rectify this, shall we.

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It is time to expand my testing some more. Now that I'm committed, it is time for fresh benchmarks. The story trail is somewhat long, so let me remind you. I tested Plasma 6.4, I got worried, I showed you various Wayland problems. To put my words where my mouth is or whatever, I decided to run a bunch of checks. First, I showed you Plasma idle desktop figures, two separate articles. Second, I did another experiment on an Nvidia hybrid graphics laptop, and added load tests - 4K video playback and some WebGL action.

Then, I went back to my AMD-powered, AMD-graphics laptop and redid the load tests in Plasma. All of my power, CPU, GPU, and FPS results show that X11 offers a superior, leaner performance, both in Plasma 5 and 6, both on AMD and Nvidia graphics. To make my testing complete, I am now going to redo everything in Fedora 42 Workstation Gnome. As Wayland as it gets. So let's see what gives. Beware, this is a very long, exhaustive article with tons of data. Do dedicate a nice chunk of time to read it.

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YOLO. When I did my Plasma 6.4 review, I didn't really have any idea how much time I was going to invest into actually testing and benchmarking Wayland and X11 performance. But post that review I did, received some feedback I did, and so I began doing more and more and more testing. First, I showed you idle system GPU numbers on an AMD graphics laptop. Then, CPU and power data on that same machine. Then, as I had some spare brain cycles, I went further, and I showed you idle and loaded system performance benchmarks on a different laptop with hybrid Intel-Nvidia graphics.

Now, I want to go back to my IdeaPad 3 machine, with its AMD integrated graphics and repeat the tests from my Nvidia adventure. Namely check the CPU, GPU and power utilization while playing a 4K 60FPS video clip and running a WebGL simulation in Firefox. I will do this for both Wayland power efficiency (PE) and color accuracy (CA) modes, and for X11 session with compositing on and off. I'll do this on a fully updated KDE neon desktop, but I want to let you know already, I shall endeavor to redo this test in Fedora 42 Gnome very soon. Now, let's commence.

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Yo, remember when I did my Wayland vs X11 benchmarks on an AMD-powered machine, and then, I said that I could expand my testing but might not do it due to a lack of free time? Surprise! I uncovered a fresh bucket of free time, and so I decided to run another round of benchmarks. But check this out, a laptop with hybrid graphics, Nvidia plus Intel. Should be interesting!

If you missed the drama, I did my Plasma 6.4 review recently, and discovered a bunch of alarming things, including subpar Wayland performance, even on an idle desktop. I confirmed this in my GPU tests and also power & CPU tests. Now, I will (try to) repeat my checks and benchmarks on a different machine, one with Nvidia hardware. And then, expand on those. Begin to commence to start, we shall. After me.

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Back in 2017, Canonical decided to stop the development of its homegrown Unity desktop. Instead, they chose Gnome 3 as the next platform, and even since, Ubuntu simply hasn't been as good as it was before. I often wonder what would have happened if Canonical had chosen, well, pretty much anything else.

Recent news in the Linux world around the forced deprecation of the X11 session in upcoming Gnome and, consequently, Ubuntu releases prompted me to write this article. I feel sad and alarmed, and I want to take a look at the Linux tech landscape, to see where we are, why we are where we are, and if perhaps the future holds anything good and bright and meaningful for the Linux folks. Let's chat.

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I love me a good mystery. Although I'm not happy and I'm rather worried about the direction the Linux home desktop is going, AKA forced deprecation of X11 before its would-be successor Wayland is truly ready, there's some small joy in telling a good story, replete with numbers. Indeed, after I published my Plasma 6.4 review, which showed Wayland being less optimized even for truly basic stuff, I decided to dig in and expand more on that early test and its troubling findings.

A few days back, I published some GPU benchmarks, very rudimentary, Wayland vs X11 in Plasma 6.4. I did it on the same test box, with its integrated AMD graphics, using the radeontop utility. The results explains why you may expect to see GPU spikes with Wayland, simply because it is less optimized, less efficient than the X11 session. Now, I want to back those numbers up with additional data, namely CPU and power figures.

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It hasn't been that long since I last reviewed MX Linux. Some nine months or so. In a way, at the risk of repeating myself, I wanted to try and test this lovely distro once again, and see what gives. The reasons are varied. But among them, the recent announcement about Wayland/X11 thingie in Gnome, Ubuntu and the birth of Xlibre, and my rather recent test of Plasma 6.4, all gave me added impetus to experiment with MX once more. After all, in the world of "modern", how does a simple, init-based, X11-running, not-big-company distro stack against the competition?

My journey with MX Linux has been interesting. I drew a lot of flak for my early, negative review of this system and its associated brethren distros. But I persevered, and so did the distro team. Fast forward a bunch of years, MX Linux has found its true calling. It's a simple system with no frills, friendly, accessible, and it puts the end user in focus, first and foremost. Like the fact you STILL get 32-bit builds for ancient hardware. In my book, that means a lot. Well, let's see what gives. Plasma version, mind!

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Last Thursday, I published my review of the latest version of the fantastic Plasma desktop environment. It wasn't without flaws or problems, including notable issues with Wayland, the new display protocol thingie that's supposed to drive the desktop. On its own, this wouldn't be anything cardinal, except both Gnome and KDE teams are pushing heavily for having Wayland as the default display protocol, even though it still kind of beta, and it severely lacks in numerous areas, including basic usability, as I noted in my article. So we're heading toward a no-choice Linux future that's deeply, deeply troubling.

What makes the whole story even more interesting is the predictable range of response to my writing. You get the usual gamut of ad hominem nonsense, the "it works for me so it's a-ok" school of thought, and some reasonable discussion to and fro. Well, I thought, I did report a few problems, perhaps I can shed some more light on the issues. As I always said, I have nothing against Wayland, and if we can make it better, great! The only problem, the ONLY problem is the forced deprecation of X11 BEFORE Wayland is ready. Now, let me show you some more info on the AMD GPU 100% spikes under Wayland.

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