// ITS FOSS — LINUX & OPEN SOURCE
FOSS Weekly #26.32: Kittens, Feed Readers, Free Bash Course, No AI in Kernel Staging and More
The entire debate in the Linux and open source world these days is if AI generated code should be used or not.
As Linus told AI critics to fork the project or walk away, GKH took a more surgical approach. AI patches are fine elsewhere in the kernel, but drivers/staging is off limits.
The GNOME extensions review queue is still flooded with AI slop months after the no-AI rule went in. The latest attempt to slow it down is a guide written directly for the bots doing the generating, covering the bad patterns that keep showing up.
Keychron's doing for mice what QMK did for keyboards. ZGM is a GPL-3.0 open source firmware built on Zephyr RTOS, coming first to the G6 HE in Q1 2027. If it takes off, Linux users are the ones who gain most since practically no gaming mice ship with official Linux configuration support.
Another Ubuntu deb is becoming a Snap. hwctl, the CLI tool behind Ubuntu Pro and hardware certification checks, is going Snap-only for better sandboxing and tighter GNOME Control Center integration.
Nine months since the last release and nearly a decade in the 3.4 series, Rhythmbox 3.5.0 has finally arrived. Podcasts have seen the most work, where played episodes are now marked, notifications are better, and there's a new gPodder.net plugin for syncing feeds.
Following up on the LVFS sponsorship story from earlier. NVIDIA has now joined as a premier sponsor, bringing the total to four OEM sponsors and hitting the funding target the project set for itself.
GNOME Boxes hasn't looked modern in a long time. The rewrite, in beta now on GNOME Nightly, fixes that, moving to GTK4 and Libadwaita while opting for a Flatpak-only approach.
If you use Kitty and haven't touched its Kittens yet, then you are missing out! These are small built-in programs that extend the terminal without needing external tools, covering everything from an interactive theme switcher and font picker to a drop-down terminal, a fuzzy file chooser
If your Linux Mint desktop feels a bit plain, Cinnamon's extension manager provides a set of visual effects worth trying. Effects like burn my windows, wobbly windows, magic lamp, and a desktop cube for workspace switching are available.