Late Night Linux – Episode 366

Late Night Linux – Episode 366

Author: The Late Night Linux Family December 30, 2025 Duration: 24:27

It’s our 2025 review of Linux and open source news including great gaming news, the impact of AI, the disappointments from Mozilla, the year of Wayland on the desktop, the politics of open source, Intel’s lack of interest, and wins for KDE.

 

Gaming

Steam Machine, controller, VR headset incoming from Valve

Steam Deck LCD production is ending

 

AI bullshit

Open source devs say AI crawlers dominate traffic, forcing blocks on entire countries

Wikimedia Foundation bemoans AI bot bandwidth burden

ardour.org has banned 1.2M distinct IP addresses for trying to slurp from our git repository

Introducing CC Signals: A New Social Contract for the Age of AI

You should enforce your own existing licenses against AI mass crawling

Anubis guards gates against hordes of LLM bot crawlers

FSF calls Anubis malware

It seems like the AI crawlers learned how to solve the Anubis challenges

 

Mozilla

Updates on Mozilla’s Leadership and Growth Planning

Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

An update on our Terms of Use

Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic

Investing in what moves the internet forward

When I say that I can’t recommend third-party forks of either Firefox or Chrome for real world use, this kind of thing is why

Firefox is fine. The people running it are not

Mozilla Slammed Over Battery-Draining “Garbage” AI in Firefox

Firefox Adds CoPilot Chatbot, New Tab Widgets in Nightly Builds

Introducing AI, the Firefox way: A look at what we’re working on and how you can help shape it

Rewiring Mozilla: Doing for AI what we did for the web

Mozilla’s next chapter: Building the world’s most trusted software company

 

Wayland

Fedora 43 Cleared To Ship With Wayland-Only GNOME

GNOME Dropping X11 Support May Complicate Next Ubuntu LTS

Ubuntu 25.10 drops support for GNOME on Xorg

Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora 43 to drop X11 in GNOME editions

An update on the X11 GNOME Session Removal

Wayback Is Now Hosted On FreeDesktop.org

Wayback 0.3 released!

GNOME Mutter Now “Completely Drops The Whole X11 Backend”

KDE Going all-in on a Wayland future

 

Politics

The price of software freedom is eternal politics

Framework flame war erupts over Linux controversy

PSF Gets a Donor Surge After Rejecting Anti-DEI Federal Grant

 

Intel

All good things come to an end: Shutting down Clear Linux OS

Intel’s Open-Source Strategy Is Changing At Odds With The Ethos Of Open-Source

The Death Of Clear Linux, Other Intel Linux Engineering Setbacks In 2025

 

KDE

KDE Highlights from 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tailscale

Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/lnl and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.

 

 

Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes

 

 

 

 

 

 

See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

RSS: Subscribe to the RSS feeds here


There’s a particular kind of conversation that happens when tech enthusiasts get together after hours, and that’s exactly the vibe you’ll find on Late Night Linux. Each episode feels like pulling up a chair with Joe, Félim, Graham, and Will as they dive into the week’s developments, from kernel updates to major shifts in the open source landscape. Their discussions go beyond just the headlines, digging into the implications and trends that actually matter to users and developers. This isn’t a sanitized, corporate overview; it’s a genuine, often unfiltered exchange where strong opinions are welcome, the occasional drink is had, and the language can get a bit colorful. A recurring theme involves giving Félim a hard time about his views on AI and cloud computing, which always adds a layer of playful camaraderie. If you’re looking for a relaxed but insightful take on Linux and the wider tech industry, this podcast delivers that unique blend of expertise and informal banter week after week. It’s the kind of show that makes complex topics accessible and reminds you that the community behind the technology is full of real, opinionated people. The Late Night Linux Family has built something that feels less like a broadcast and more like a regular gathering of friends who just happen to know a tremendous amount about free and open source software. You come for the news and stay for the personality.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 100

Late Night Linux
Podcast Episodes
Late Night Linux – Episode 331 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 22:48
Cheap handheld retro gaming, F1 stats in the terminal, running binaries as if they were Python functions, websites that look like TUIs, basic graphics manipulation, strange old audio archives, and more. Discoveries POWKI…
Late Night Linux – Episode 330 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 24:11
Linus Torvalds’ other big project is 20 years old, new Ubuntu and Fedora releases, the downsides of permissive licences, a quick KDE Korner, and more. News Git turns 20: A Q&A with Linus Torvalds Fedora 42 Released As A…
Late Night Linux – Episode 329 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 30:52
Two very different approaches to setting up security cameras, an IDE-like experience for text adventure games, a glimpse of convergence on Pixel phones, a new LTS of the flight sim FlightGear, and more. Discoveries Friga…
Late Night Linux – Episode 328 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 30:44
AI crawlers are causing serious problems for open source projects, an example of disclosure by vagueposting, Zorin does something good and something bad, LibreOffice downloads are doing well, Thunderbird is planning new…
Late Night Linux – Episode 327 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 24:48
What if Google hadn’t come along in the late 90s? What would search, mobile devices, and the web in general look like? Plus a musical discovery, and why moving to a new distro just means moving to new little problems to…
Late Night Linux – Episode 326 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 25:07
Home Assistant gets even more credible and sustainable, open source users are entitled, changes in KDE land, Fedora says hello to Plasma and goodbye to X11, Ubuntu looks to drop GNU coreutils, GIMP 3 is out and still has…
Late Night Linux – Episode 325 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 27:08
Tracking WiFi devices with cheap ESP32 devices, using OSM and Google Maps together, deleting your Twitter data, “3D” images with any camera, forcing Ubuntu to give you all the available updates, efficiently importing pho…
Late Night Linux – Episode 324 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 29:30
Mozilla does another terrible job of communicating an important policy change, the movie made with Blender wins an Oscar, EA open sources some Command & Conquer games, the EFF releases a tool to detect cellular spying, a…
Late Night Linux – Episode 323 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 30:25
Remote desktop without a client, Macrodata Refinement, 3D plane tracking, Home Assistant’s new hardware voice assistant, a new version of Pi-hole is a touch buggy, and more. Discoveries Guacamole Lumon Industries (Macrod…
Late Night Linux – Episode 322 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 30:36
The kernel Rust drama nears an end but not without some collateral damage, you should back up your Kindle books while you still can, Mozilla so very nearly gets it, Chrome gets even worse, Apple takes its ball home, and…