The biggest failure in seven years, right before a trip. What broke, how Chris pulled it back together, and how Wes would fix it right.

Sponsored By:

• Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking. A decentralized VPN built on the open-source Nebula platform that we love.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• Home Assistant Community Add-on: SSH & Web Terminal
• HomeAssistent Yellow: EmberZNet Zigbee: failed to flash firmware · Issue #146293
• HA Yellow/Zigbee Issue - Home Assistant Community
• Home Assistant Yellow Radio firmware - Home Assistant Community
• Home Assistant on X: "⚠️ WE'RE ENDING PRODUCTION OF THE HOME ASSISTANT YELLOW ⚠️
• READ: CrowdHealth - HedgeDoc
• Lenovo ThinkCentre M720q 10T7 Tiny Desktop
• Dell OptiPlex 3070 Desktop Computer
• Beelink Mini S13 Pro Mini PC,13 Generation Intel N150
• Minisforum MS-01 Work Station
• Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2
• Home Assistant - NixOS Wiki
• home-assistant/component-packages.nix at nixos-25.05
• READ: Unraid - HedgeDoc
• Pick: Hexecute 🪄 — Launch apps by casting spells!
• Pick: Lenspect
• Lenspect on Flathub — A lightweight security threat scanner intended to make malware detection more accessible and efficient.

We're back from Texas just in time to chat with Jon Seager, Canonical's VP of Engineering, and their new era with Ubuntu 25.10. On the way, we visit System76 in Denver where the COSMIC team has surprises waiting for us.

Sponsored By:

• Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking. A decentralized VPN built on the open-source Nebula platform that we love.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• COSMIC — Next generation Cosmic desktop environment. Use it on your favorite distro!
• System76 — Powerful Linux computers designed by nerds, engineered by experts, handcrafted by humans in the US.
• GitHub - pop-os/cosmic-epoch: Next generation Cosmic desktop environment
• GitHub - pop-os/cosmic-applets: WIP applets for cosmic-panel
• Pop!_OS 24.04 (with COSMIC Desktop) Just Hit Beta - OMG! Ubuntu
• Canonical releases Ubuntu 25.10 Questing Quokka
• Ubuntu Engineering in 2025: A Retrospective · Jon Seager
• Ubuntu 25.10 Fix Pending For Broken Flatpak Support - Phoronix
• LINUX Unplugged 634: Config Confessions
• Hybrid Pick: ncspot
• Pick: poop (Performance Optimizer Observation Platform) — This command line tool uses Linux's perf_event_open functionality to compare the performance of multiple commands with a colorful terminal user interface.
• sharkdp/hyperfine: A command-line benchmarking tool

Our cross-continent race to Texas Linux Fest culminates into fantastic meat, meetups, and more.

Sponsored By:

• Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking. A decentralized VPN built on the open-source Nebula platform that we love.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• 🤠 Texas Linux Festival Trip Support (Fake Boost)
• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• Texas Tracker
• Texas Linux Fest
• TXLF 2025 Sat Oct 4 - The Design & Implementation of the Darwin Operating System
• TXLF 2025 Sat Oct 4 - Getting Started with Ansible on Linux
• TXLF 2025 Sat Oct 4 - Lessons They Don't Teach You in School: A Year in High-Performance Computing
• TXLF 2025 Sat Oct 4 - I got Malware, BTW. A quick look at the rising trend of Linux Malware
• A Gift for the Open Source Community: Chainguard’s CVE-Free Raspberry Pi Images (Beta)
• Chainguard for Raspberry Pi
• Chainguard's Images
• Wes Payne - Mesh Network Sidecars for NixOS Services - Texas Linux Fest
• noblepayne/meshSidecar: Mesh network sidecars for NixOS Services
• Pick: isd — isd (interactive systemd) – a better way to work with systemd units.
• ISD 0.6 Released For Interactive Systemd Management

From finely tuned to total config carnage. We review listener homelabs to share what works, and what really doesn't.

Sponsored By:

• Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking. A decentralized VPN built on the open-source Nebula platform that we love.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• Texas Linux Festival 2025 - Austin, TX
• Texas Linux Festival Trip Support (Fake boost)
• JB Meetup: Austin Unplugged Birthday Lunch Party - Meetup.com — Saturday, Oct 4 - 12:00 AM to 01:30 PM CDT
• JB Meetup: Austin Unplugged Birthday Lunch Party - Colony Events
• Turnstile Coffee Beer Cocktails and Burgers - Austin, TX
• Dawarich — Automatically track your daily life with Dawarich. Never forget where you went or what you did. Relive your memories with precise location data.
• LINUX Unplugged 614: Self-Hosted Location Tracking
• Dawarich API Docs
• AlbinLind/dawarich-api — A python wrapper for Dawarich
• Texas Tracker — Real-time distance tracking and movement visualization
• JupiterBroadcasting/texastracker: — A static website that tracks our trip to Texas Linux Festival 2025.
• bitchat
• A Guide To bitchat version 1.2-1.3 : r/bitchat
• Geohash Converter - Find and visualize your Geohash
• Overland GPS Tracker on the App Store
• gpslogger: :satellite: Lightweight GPS Logging Application For Android.
• Zakk's (2kOS) nix config
• NotAShelf/nvf: Modular, extensible and distro-agnostic Neovim configuration framework for Nix/NixOS
• suderman's nixos — system configurations & dotfiles
• NixOS impermanence — Lets you choose what files and directories you want to keep between reboots - the rest are thrown away.
• numtide/blueprint: Standard folder structure for Nix projects — blueprint is an opinionated library that maps a standard folder structure to flake outputs, allowing you to divide up your flake into individual files across these folders. This allows you to modularize and isolate these files so that they can be maintained individually and even shared across multiple projects.
• gmodena/nix-flatpak — Install flatpaks declaratively
• Adam's (A Manzer) nix-config
• Prowlarr
• nzbhydra2: Usenet meta search
• Kieran dots
• Fortyduex's nix config
• Fortydeux's Firewire
• Brad's nix config
• Brad's SMB
• Monty's Ansible
• Monty's Nix
• Monty's NXC
• ChrisLAS/hyprvibe: A riced up Hyprland desktop running ontop of NixOS.
• Namespace nixosModules options under "hyprvibe" to avoid potential collisions - hyprvibe Issue #10
• Pick: vtunnel — vTunnel is a tool that proxies IP traffic between guest and host networks by using the VSOCK protocol.
• Pick: Tab-Session-Manager — WebExtensions for restoring and saving window / tab states

Can't get enough Linux? How about multiple kernels running simultaneously, side by side, not in a VM, all on the same hardware; this week it's finally looking real.

Sponsored By:

• Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking. A decentralized VPN built on the open-source Nebula platform that we love.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• nebula-tower — A user-friendly server to manage your Slack Nebula mesh network.
• Texas Linux Festival 2025 - Austin, TX
• JB Meetup: Austin Unplugged Birthday Lunch Party, Sat Oct 4 - Meetup.com
• JB Meetup: Austin Unplugged Birthday Lunch Party - Colony Events
• Turnstile Coffee Beer Cocktails and Burgers - Austin, TX
• bitchat
• Ad-Free Viewing By Showing Your Support During The Phoronix Oktoberfest / Autumn Sale — Through the end of the month (30 September), you can enjoy premium at the Oktoberfest rate. The normal Phoronix Premium rate is $45 USD per year or $250 for a lifetime subscription but for this year's Oktoberfest deal, you can go premium for just $30 per year or $150 for a lifetime subscription.
• GNOME 49 Release Notes — We code named the release “Brescia”, after a beautiful Italian city that hosted this year’s GUADEC.
• GNOME 49 Officially Released With Wayland Improvements, Showtime As Video Player
• Ubuntu 25.10 Beta Officially Released For Testing — Canonical today released the Ubuntu 25.10 Beta as they work toward the stable Ubuntu 25.10 release in mid-October.
• Ubuntu 25.10's Rust Coreutils Transition Has Uncovered Performance Shortcomings — Ubuntu 25.10's transition to using Rust Coreutils in place of GNU Coreutils has uncovered a few performance issues so far with the Rust version being slower than the C-based GNU Coreutils.
• base64 implementation almost 8x slower than GNU for some large files
• sort does not finish for large one line file
• Fedora 43 Beta ISOs Released For Testing — Fedora 43 Beta ISOs are now available for those wanting to help in testing.
• Omarchy 3.0 — Omarchy 3.0 is here — faster installs, big MacBook support, and lots of polish.
• systemd 258 Released With systemd-factory-reset & Other New Tools — Systemd 258 brings systemd-factory-reset to request a factory reset on the next reboot, systemd-pty-forward to allocate a pseudo TTY/PTY, UEFI firmware images can now be embedded in a UKI, and many other new features.
• systemd 258-rc1 Is A Massive Feature Release With New Tools, More Than 260 Changes
• Kernel RFC: Introduce multikernel architecture support — This patch series introduces multikernel architecture support, enabling multiple independent kernel instances to coexist and communicate on a single physical machine. Each kernel instance can run on dedicated CPU cores while sharing the underlying hardware resources.
• The Multikernel: A new OS architecture for scalable multicore systems [PDF]
• mirdaki/computer-config — Config for server and personal deployments
• My Ultimate Self-hosting Setup — Matthew shares their ultimate self-hosting setup built on NixOS, ZFS, and Tailscale, balancing privacy, data control, and usability for family and friends.
• basecamp/once-campfire — Campfire is a web-based chat application.
• Pick: savr: Read it later. Keep it local. No server needed. — Savr is an app for saving online content to read later. It is file-centric, offline first, future proof, and favors decentralization.

Our first look at KDE Linux, then Chris shares the latest on Hyprvibe, while Wes braves his first install.

Sponsored By:

• Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking. A decentralized VPN built on the open-source Nebula platform that we love.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• nebula-manager — Unified CLI tool to manage and maintain multiple Nebula VPN servers with ease.
• Nebula - Apps on Google Play
• Texas Linux Festival 2025 - Austin, TX
• JB Meetup: Austin Unplugged Birthday Lunch Party, Sat Oct 4 - Meetup.com
• JB Meetup: Austin Unplugged Birthday Lunch Party - Colony Events
• Turnstile Coffee Beer Cocktails and Burgers - Austin, TX
• bitchat — bitchat is a decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over bluetooth mesh networks.
• Texas Linux Festival Trip Support (Fake boost)
• Jupiter Broadcasting Garage - New swag available!
• KDE Linux
• KDE Linux - KDE Community Wiki
• Announcing the Alpha release of KDE Linux
• GitHub - ChrisLAS/hyprvibe: A riced up Hyprland desktop running ontop of NixOS.
• Hyprland 0.51 dropped! — The gesture system has been reworked and is now way more flexible.
• Nixtcloud: Self-Hosted Cloud in One Command — Nextcloud with NixOS in the backend and P2P connectivity enabled
• holesail-nix: Holesail package for the Nix package manager — A comprehensive Nix package and NixOS module collection for Holesail - the peer-to-peer tunnel that lets you create instant, secure connections between devices without port forwarding or exposing ports.
• Pick: lazyssh — A terminal-based SSH manager inspired by lazydocker and k9s — but built for managing your fleet of servers directly from your terminal.
• Pick: term.everything — Run every GUI app in the terminal!

Chris managed to turn low bandwidth into a lifestyle, and curated a batch of self-hosted apps that make near-offline living possible.

Sponsored By:

• Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking. A decentralized VPN built on the open-source Nebula platform that we love.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• Texas Linux Festival 2025
• Support our Texas Linux Fest Trip with PayPal, Venmo, On-Chain, or Lightning
• Pinchflat — Your next YouTube media manager
• ErsatzTV — ErsatzTV lets you transform your media library into a personalized, live TV experience—complete with EPG, channel scheduling, and seamless streaming to all your devices.
• Wes' ErsatzTV Flake — A Nix package and NixOS module for ErsatzTV
• Karakeep — Quickly save links, notes, and images and karakeep will automatically tag them for you using AI for faster retrieval. Built for the data hoarders out there!
• lup-0631 NixOS Config
• Home Assistant — Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts.
• Immich — Self-hosted photo and video management solution
• Jellyfin — The Free Software Media System
• audiobookshelf — Self-hosted audiobook and podcast server
• Paperless-ngx — Paperless-ngx is a community-supported open-source document management system that transforms your physical documents into a searchable online archive so you can keep, well, less paper.
• Paperless
• Paperless-ng
• Brother ADS-1800W
• Genius Scan
• QuickScan iOS scanner with OCR
• swift-paperless
• paperless-ai — An automated document analyzer for Paperless-ngx using OpenAI API, Ollama, Deepseek-r1, Azure and all OpenAI API compatible Services to automatically analyze and tag your documents.
• iPod parts from Elite Obsolete Electronics
• Pick: Rustnet — A high-performance, cross-platform network monitoring tool built with Rust. RustNet provides real-time visibility into network connections with enhanced state display, intelligent connection lifecycle management, deep packet inspection capabilities, and a responsive terminal user interface.

Google's sideloading lockdown has us pushing Wes' Pixel further than Google ever dreamed.

Sponsored By:

• Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking. A decentralized VPN built on the open-source Nebula platform that we love.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• DECbot/nebula-cert-maker: Simple yaml and python script to create certificates for your Nebula Mesh VPN — The Nebula Cert Maker will create a new Nebula CA certificates and then generate and sign certificates for all hosts in the host list.
• Texas Linux Festival 2025
• JB TXLF Matrix Room
• Jupiter Broadcasting Garage
• Linus Torvalds Marks Bcachefs As Now "Externally Maintained" — Linus Torvalds updated the maintainers file for Bcachefs and now reflects its upstream state as "externally maintained" rather than "supported".
• Google will block sideloading of unverified Android apps starting next year — Google says that only apps with verified identities will be installable on certified Android devices, which is virtually every Android-based device—if it has Google services on it, it's a certified device.
• Android Developers Blog: A new layer of security for certified Android devices
• Android developer verification
• nixos-avf: NixOS for Android Terminal — This profile contains the necesarry services and kernel configs to get it running under the Terminal app
• nixos-avf-image-app releases
• NixOS VM on my phone lol (Android Virtualization Framework) - NixOS Discourse
• Setup SSH and Tailscale on Android 15 Linux Terminal App
• droid-nixos — NixOS VM on the Android "Terminal" app
• ttyd: Share your terminal over the web
• Introduction - Book of crosvm
• crosvm: The Chrome OS Virtual Machine Monitor
• Android 16 New Feature Terminal (Debian 12) Actual Test: Network Configuration and Software Installation
• 💻 How to Install Android 16 Linux Terminal with GUI Mode on Your Android Phone Step-by-Step Guide
• Hands-on: We ran full desktop Linux apps on an Android phone!
• Android 16 Terminal Debian GUI Access Tool — This script is specifically designed for terminal environments on Android 16 systems, enabling quick configuration of graphical interface access for Debian 12. After configuration, you can access the native Debian 12 GUI environment within the Android terminal from your PC through the following steps
• wansview 2K Security Cameras Wireless — Outdoor-2.4G WiFi Home Security Cameras via Remote Control with Phone APP for 360º View, Color Night Vision, 24/7 SD Card Storage.
• Thingino — Open-source Firmware for Ingenic SoC IP Cameras.
• themactep/thingino-firmware: Open-source firmware for Ingenic SoC IP cameras
• paperless-upload-thunderbird — Add-On for Thunderbird to upload PDF directly to paperless-ngx
• distrostu's nix config
• Flameshot — Open source screenshot software
• Hyprshot — A utility to easily take screenshots in Hyprland
• blendOS — Arch Linux made declarative, immutable and atomic
• Frigate NVR — Frigate is an open source NVR built around real-time AI object detection. All processing is performed locally on your own hardware, and your camera feeds never leave your home.
• Pick: Kvaesitso — A search-focused, free and open source launcher for Android
• Jonas Hietala: I'll only buy devices with GrapheneOS — I use the Kvaesitso launcher.

Arch is under fire, two weeks and counting. We'll break down the mess, and share a quick fix. Plus, the killer new apps we've just added to our homelabs.

Sponsored By:

• Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking. A decentralized VPN built on the open-source Nebula platform that we love.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• nebula-manager — Unified CLI tool to manage and maintain multiple Nebula VPN servers with ease.
• Frigate NVR
• Coral USB Accelerator: ML Accelerator, USB 3.0 Type-C
• Arch Linux - News: Recent service outages
• Arch Linux takes a pounding as DDoS attack enters week two — For now, the Arch team is working to mitigate the attack's impact, which highlights a bootstrapping issue. Tools designed to shift traffic to mirrors in the event the main infrastructure is unavailable rely on a mirror list obtained from that same main infrastructure.
• DHH on X — "Omarchy 2.0 release might have to wait a little longer. The AUR DDoS attack has picked back up, but the upside is that we're building in all sorts of resilience for the installer to deal with the assault! And meanwhile, we'll build a complete Omarchy package mirror for all.
• DHH on X — "We're pulling AUR out of the Omarchy install hotpath. It's an incredible resource, but we actually only need a handful of packages for the initial setup, and we can just host those ourselves. AUR really needs a new mirror strategy to avoid this predicament."
• Arch Linux continues to feel the force of a DDoS attack after two brutal weeks — attackers yet to be identified as project struggles to restore full service
• Arch Linux Status Page
• Arch AUR Under Fire Once More as Malware Resurfaces
• aurpublish — PKGBUILD management framework for the Arch User Repository
• salvador — salvador is a bash script that will help you maintain your AUR packages.
• archlinux/aurweb — Hosting platform for the Arch User Repository (AUR), a collection of packaging scripts created by the Arch Linux community
• TaskTrove — Self-hostable task managment that respect your privacy.
• shuthost — A neat little helper that manages the standby state of unix hosts with Wake-On-Lan configured, with Web-GUI.
• Closing the Digital Divide: Q&A with Local Computer Upcycler Mike Kelly
• mkellyxp/nixbook — Convert your old computer (even chromebook) to a user friendly, lightweight, durable, and auto updating operating system build on top of NixOS.
• CachyOS — Blazingly Fast OS based on Arch Linux
• MOES Wireless Smart Scene Switch Button
• Minoston 800 Series Z-Wave Scene Controller, 4 ZWave Button
• Brent hates ricing PCs • Clip by @genebean
• add master branch nixpkgs overlay · nikolarobottesla/infra-nix-config
• Pick: WakeMyPotato — Restart a Linux server made of a potato laptop after power outages
• Pick: spectacle-ocr-screenshot — A simple utility to automatically extract text from spectacle on plasma desktops
• Pick: spectacle-ocr — Add OCR functionality to Spectacle

When personalities clash, the users come last. Meanwhile, Chris' hyper-tuned setup stops being a toy and starts looking like a daily driver.

Sponsored By:

• Managed Nebula: Meet Managed Nebula from Defined Networking. A decentralized VPN built on the open-source Nebula platform that we love.

Support LINUX Unplugged

Links:

• 💥 Gets Sats Quick and Easy with Strike
• 📻 LINUX Unplugged on Fountain.FM
• Toronto Meetup - JB Colony Events
• Linux is about to lose a feature – over a personality clash — A large and unfortunate mistake in the kernel development management process is underway.
• Re: [GIT PULL] bcachefs changes for 6.17 - Josef Bacik
• Ubuntu Developing New "Dangerous" Desktop Images Concept — Ubuntu is testing "Dangerous" Desktop Images, daily builds with all Snaps pulled from the edge channel.
• Ubuntu 25.10 Will Ship With Linux 6.17 Even If It Means An Unstable "-rc" Kernel
• syncthing 2.0 Released! — This is the first release of the new 2.0 series. Expect some rough edges and keep a sense of adventure! 🙏
• Z-Wave is not dead - Home Assistant — TL;DR: Z-Wave is alive and well, partly due to a strong community that is building new open-source resources.
• Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2 — The ultimate way to connect Z-Wave devices to Home Assistant.
• Z-Wave reborn - Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2
• Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2 Reveal Promo - YouTube
• Hyprvibe — A riced up Hyprland desktop running ontop of NixOS
• Keybinds Reverting to older config? · Hyprvibe Issue #2
• Errors at the top of the screen · Hyprvibe Issue #3
• Quinn's NixOS Setup: The Formatter
• Quinn's NixOS Setup: The Home
• Quinn's NixOS Setup: The Shared
• Quinn's NixOS Setup: The Hosts
• LibreNMS — A fully featured network monitoring system that provides a wealth of features and device support. LibreNMS is a fork of Observium.
• Observium — Observium is a network monitoring and management platform that provides real-time insight into network health and performance.
• Shift Systems / ShiftMon · GitLab — An open source monitoring and logging tool based on Ansible, Telegraf, Grafana, and a bunch of other tools
• sst/opencode — AI coding agent, built for the terminal.
• Lightning Grows Up | This Week In Bitcoin 68
• flatpak/xdg-native-messaging-proxy
• NativeMessaging portal for sandboxed browsers · flatpak Issue #655
• Pick: papra — The minimalistic document archiving platform.
• Papra - Demo
• Pick: lue — Terminal eBook Reader with Text-to-Speech
• Pick: wlgblock — This project replaces the usual password screen with a Gameboy emulator running a patched Pokémon game!