Your favourite obscure open source software in Voice of the masses. Plus whether AI is a load of old rubbish, and even if it is useful for some things we have to ask ourselves: at what cost?

Voice of the masses

What’s the best open source app or utility that no one else has heard of?

Kolide

Kolide ensures that if a device isn’t secure it can’t access your apps. It’s Device Trust for Okta. Visit kolide.com/latenightlinux to learn more.

See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

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Microsoft is tightening up SMB security in Windows which might break access to your old NAS, a Cogent root-server mysteriously goes out of sync without them spotting it, and protecting hard drives from electromagnetic pulses.

Plug

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News

Installing Windows 11 24H2 might mean binning that old NAS

A root-server at the Internet’s core lost touch with its peers. We still don’t know why

Free Consulting

We were asked about protecting hard drives from electromagnetic pulses.

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/25a and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required.

See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

A brief news segment with mostly good stuff from Mozilla and KDE. Plus some great discoveries including downloading YouTube and other videos, processing data and CSV files on the command line, controlling cycling workout gear and graphing your progress, and a top tip for following Mastodon accounts in a normal RSS feed reader.

News

Here’s what we’re working on in Firefox

Plasma 6.1 Beta out: Triple buffering, Wayland explicit sync & RDP access

Discoveries 

yt-dlp

miller

csvlens

GoldenCheetah

Flux

Kolide

Kolide ensures that if a device isn’t secure it can’t access your apps. It’s Device Trust for Okta. Visit kolide.com/latenightlinux to learn more.

See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

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Forks are a fundamental aspect of open source software so we get into the different types of forks, when and why you might want to fork a project, the maintenance burden that comes with a hard fork, the importance of winning mindshare for your fork, what exactly counts as a fork, when it’s not always a great idea to fork, and more.

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We look at OpenShift from an external perspective, including how it works in a multi-cloud environment, how it abstracts cloud resources, when administrators and developers still need to understand what is happening beneath the abstraction, combining OpenShift with cloud-managed services, some of the downsides of OpenShift, and where people should start if they want to learn.

OpenShift

OKD

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Linux kernel developers were infected with malware for 2 years, another nail in the coffin of proper federated email as Exchange Server moves to a subscription model, followup on zfsbootmenu and IPv6, and learning unfamiliar topics.

Plug

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News/discussion

Linux maintainers were infected for 2 years by SSH-dwelling backdoor with huge reach

Exchange Server SE to debut just before 2019 support ends

Newbie struggling with zfsbootmenu

Free Consulting

We were asked about learning unfamiliar topics.

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/25a and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required.

See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

In this episode:

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Kolide

Kolide ensures that if a device isn’t secure it can’t access your apps.  It’s Device Trust for Okta. Visit kolide.com/linuxmatters to learn more.

Tailscale

Tailscale makes creating software-defined networks easy: securely connecting users, services, and devices. Go to tailscale.com/linuxmatters and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required.

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We look back at what Linux and open source was like when we first got into it, and consider some of the ways that things have improved over all these years.

Entroware

This episode is sponsored by Entroware. They are a UK-based company who sells computers with Ubuntu and Ubuntu MATE preinstalled. They have configurable laptops, desktops and servers to suit a wide range of Linux users. Check them out and don’t forget to mention us at checkout if you buy one of their great machines.

See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

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How we make our Web experiences better with various plugins, websites and services. Plus the ethics of blocking ads, bypassing paywalls, and supporting creators.

uBlock Origin

archive.is

Better Twitter

Shut Up

DF YouTube

Youtube-shorts block

Consent-O-Matic

Privacy Guides

Pi-hole

Quad9

SponsorBlock

Kolide

Kolide ensures that if a device isn’t secure it can’t access your apps.  It’s Device Trust for Okta. Visit kolide.com/linuxafterdark to learn more.

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.

Subscribe to the RSS feed.