This is a roundup of articles from the openSUSE community listed on planet.opensuse.org. This community blog feed aggregator lists the featured highlights below from Nov. 6 - 12.

This week highlights the 2026 Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit, a malware warning about a third-party Plasma wallpaper, the openSUSE News announcement that Agama is coming to Tumbleweed, the community stepping up to keep the Packman repository alive, and the six Tumbleweed snapshots for week 45 headlined by GNOME 51.1, KDE Plasma 6.8.2 and Linux Kernel 7.3.1. It also covers the latest syslog-ng Insider newsletter, the November Tumbleweed ARM update, a revived Plasma 6 uptime widget, Plasma 6.8 system monitoring and control features, KDE Gear 26.08.3 and the KDE Gear 26.12 release schedule, Nate Graham’s widget-focused This Week in Plasma, a tribute to Aaron Swartz, Linux Saloon 227 and a look at a 128 GB AI workstation.

Here is a summary and links for each post:

Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit 2026

openSUSE News reports on the 2026 Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit, held in Munich from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1, where openSUSE was represented alongside the Uyuni project. The post shares takeaways on navigating cultural differences in mentoring, the debate over AI-generated contributions and proposals such as AI acceptable-use policies, plus advice on working with GSoC contributors through daily updates and open communication.

Neonova Wallpaper, a Third-Party KDE Plasma Extension That Includes Malware

Victorhck’s blog warns that malware was found in Neonova Wallpaper, a third-party Plasma extension hosted on GitHub, citing David Edmundson’s report and the KDE security team’s review. It explains how a hidden base64 script downloads a shared library into .config/Plasma6Library.so and loads it through LD_PRELOAD, and advises affected users to delete the file and the package while trusting only official repositories or reputable sources.

The syslog-ng Insider 2026-11: Tor; Java; Elasticsearch

The blog of Peter “CzP” Czanik shares the 143rd issue of the syslog-ng Insider newsletter, covering how Tor can harden a central syslog-ng server, the project’s scaling back of Java support and a guide to using syslog-ng with Elasticsearch 9.5 and Kibana. It also points readers to upcoming webinars and invites feedback and news tips for the next issue.

Tumbleweed ARM Monthly Update – November 2026

openSUSE News rounds up a month of openSUSE Tumbleweed ARM development, with snapshots on Oct. 18 and 20 and Nov. 5 and 8 bringing GRUB2 2.16, the first Linux kernel 7.3-series release at 7.3.1, u-boot 2026.10 for 64-bit Raspberry Pi boards and QEMU 11.1.3. The update covers ARM fixes for the Raspberry Pi camera and graphics stack, a broad Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Tegra firmware refresh, the move to NVIDIA’s open 620.70.06 driver and gdb 17.2. It also notes the arrival of Plasma 6.8.2 and the GNOME 51 stack, plus security fixes in the kernel, curl, dnsmasq, expat and Firefox.

The Community Will Keep Maintaining the Packman Repository

Victorhck’s blog reports that the Packman repository will not be discontinued on Jan. 1, 2027, as previously announced, because long-time contributors have stepped forward to take it over. The service will continue as before while infrastructure, builds and repository transfer details are worked out in the background. The post thanks both the outgoing maintainers and the people who picked up the project after 25 years of service.

Thanks to Sam Altman… ;-)

The blog of Peter Czanik explains how a statement about RAM from Sam Altman motivated him to return to Linux and AI experiments on his 128 GB AI workstation. He describes updating Fedora from 44 to 45, applying gigabytes of openSUSE Tumbleweed updates, reinstalling ROCm after dependency problems and testing ollama with Open WebUI. The post includes sample output from llama3.2, gemma3:27b and granite4, and promises more useful experiments later.

Show Your System Uptime with This Plasma 6 Widget for KDE

Victorhck’s blog introduces a Plasma 6 port of Martin Kotelnik’s classic uptime widget, which displays system uptime with colorful circles. Victorhck kept the original GPL 2.0 license, published the updated code on Codeberg and added configuration options for visible elements, colors and transparency. The post includes download and installation instructions for the .plasmoid file and notes that an LLM helped with the code changes.

Agama Is Coming to Tumbleweed

openSUSE News announces that openSUSE Tumbleweed will switch to the Agama installer before the end of the year, with Agama-based images expected to replace the legacy YaST installer on get.opensuse.org in the coming weeks. Two test images are available, including a new offline installer with a pre-filled package cache and a network-based installer. The project is asking users to test RAID, LVM, multi-disk, serial-console and offline setups, and notes that the new installer offers curated patterns instead of individual package selection.

Widgets Widgets Widgets – This Week in Plasma

The KDE Blog translates Nate Graham’s latest “This Week in Plasma,” a widget-focused edition covering Plasma 6.9, Plasma 6.8.3 and Frameworks 6.32. Highlights include a new “picture of the day” wallpaper plugin featuring David Revoy’s artwork, configurable OSD popup positions, Glide browser integration, better keyboard interaction with the calculator widget, natural sorting in launcher menus and numerous widget styling and bug-fix improvements. The post also covers performance work such as faster Spectacle startup and a faster accessibility settings page.

More Aaron Swartz and Less Elon, Altman, Zuckerberg

Victorhck’s blog marks what would have been Aaron Swartz’s 40th birthday on Nov. 8, 2026, by reflecting on his legacy as a programmer and information activist. The post contrasts Swartz’s work to free knowledge for the common good with the practices of modern technology billionaires such as Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg. It closes with a recommendation for “The Internet’s Own Boy,” the documentary about Swartz’s life and legal battle.

KDE Gear 26.12 Release Calendar

The KDE Blog shares the release schedule for KDE Gear 26.12, the next collection of KDE applications. The first beta is planned for Nov. 13, followed by the release candidate on Nov. 27, tagging on Dec. 3 and the final release on Dec. 10. The post explains why a published schedule matters for coordinating development and highlights KDE’s four-month release cadence with monthly bug-fix updates.

Linux Saloon 227 | Devario OS

Nathan Wolf’s blog recaps Linux Saloon 227, which features PapalPenguin’s return after several years and his new Skytech gaming PC running CachyOS and Mass Effect. The episode also covers Devario OS, Linux power management, system tools and community projects, and it shares resources mentioned by the participants. Next week’s show is Open Mic Night, with suggestions welcome by email, Telegram or Discord.

System Monitoring and Control News in Plasma 6.8

The KDE Blog presents the system monitoring and control improvements in Plasma 6.8, including the ability to assign CPU-intensive tasks to specific CPUs directly from System Monitor. The release also makes VRAM load easier to read by displaying it as a percentage. Baltasar Ortega frames the changes as part of Plasma 6.8’s 30th-anniversary release and its focus on giving users more control over system performance.

Tumbleweed – Review of the Week 2026/45

Dominique Leuenberger and Victorhck go over the six snapshots released this week (1030, 1031, 1101, 1102, 1103 and 1104), led by the full arrival of GNOME 51.1 with Mutter, GNOME Shell, Control Center, GDM, GTK 4.24 and updated applications. KDE users received Plasma 6.8.2 in the same snapshot, while the long-running SWIG 4.5.1 effort finally landed in snapshot 1031 after libstorage-ng resolved its Ruby garbage-collection interaction. Other arrivals include Linux Kernel 7.3.1, Screen 5.0.2, PipeWire 1.6.11, WirePlumber 0.5.19, Valkey 9.1.3, Wayland-Protocols 1.50 and Hyprland 0.57.1, with KDE Gear 26.08.3, systemd 262.2, OpenSSH 10.6p2, Mesa 26.2.6 and Box2D 3.1.1 among the updates being prepared in staging.

Third KDE Gear 26.08 Update

The KDE Blog announces the third update to KDE Gear 26.08, bringing another round of bug fixes, translation improvements and small enhancements to KDE applications. Examples include a fix for an akonadi crash involving an unknown tracker, a correction for audiocd-kio reporting unsaved changes after reset or apply, and a fix for krfb starting its VNC listener for desktop sharing. The post explains KDE’s approach of major releases every four months followed by monthly maintenance updates.

View more blogs or learn to publish your own on planet.opensuse.org.

Every year, the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) Mentor Summit brings together open source maintainers, community leads, and mentors from across the globe.

It is an energizing unconference where the diversity of open source can be touched. This is a unique occasion to share what works (and what doesn’t) across diverse communities for mentoring new contributors, but not only.

The 2026 edition took place in Munich from October 30 evening to November 1st in the afternoon.

Even if this was the tenth mentor summit I attended (I had to count the T-Shirts), it is always amazing to feel the positive vibe there.

I attended the 2026 edition together with Michele and Eugen from the Uyuni project, representing openSUSE.

Here are a few notes of what we are taking back.

Handling intercultural differences

One standout session focused on navigating cultural differences.

A key recommendation was Erin Meyer’s book The Culture Map, which explores how different cultures decode feedback, hierarchy, and disagreement.

In practice for us:

• Explicit on boarding on feedback: instead of assuming contributors know how to receive technical critiques, projects benefit from holding a dedicated session at the start of GSoC on “How we ask for, interpret, and act on feedback.”

• Align mentors culture: a lot of the GSoC contributors are from India, and most of our mentors are from Western countries.

  Involving an Indian mentor to mentor with a western mentor usually makes a difference to bridge between the cultures.

• Draft Pull Requests: new contributors may be more at ease to work on pull requests which are flagged as draft.

  This usually helps with the feedback loop on the code.

• Show that mentors need help too: showing the new contributors that even mentors need to handle comments in pull requests and ask questions helps them feel more at ease.

AI-related sessions

Many of the sessions where about AI and the impact it has on Google Summer of Code and open source in general.

There were mixed feelings about AI in the attendance: from anti-AI to found of AI with sceptics in the middle.

Here are some points, that we took away:

Software Freedom Conservancy still warns against the possible copyright issues on generated code.

Karen Sandler recommended to take a look at their LLM-backed generative AI recommendations.

The sustainability of the use of generative AI has also been a concern in several discussions.

I came back with a nice introspection question: “To what extent could you now stop using AI?”…

I will let you think about it for yourself.

I liked the idea that some other organizations have: “we’ll put as much effort in reviewing than you put in creating the PR”.

So basically, why would we want to spend time on reviewing an AI-generated change that the author did not review himself?

Some organizations have automation to detect fully AI-generated contributions and automatically prepend a robot icon (🤖) to the PR title.

I any case, defining an AI acceptable use policy will be needed for open source projects.

There may even be a link to such a document to set in next Google Summer of Code organization applications, so that this would be clear to applying contributors. Of course, this means that maintainers should not feel bad in ignoring code submission which are not matching these defined rules.

Working with GSoC contributors

Here are some notes in random order about how to improve how we work with contributors during GSoC.

• One of the interesting points for the GSoC admin team, is that it is acceptable to fail a contributor producing good code, but not involved in the community. GSoC is more about on boarding new contributors than code production.

• Communicating once a week with the contributor is not enough. Many organizations ask to provide at least a short status update every day. This would also help to know if they are sick or blocked on something. Some organizations even use this to produce a bi-weekly blog post on the overall GSoC progress.

• We need to ask contributors to first use the product to get familiar with it. This is specifically true for Uyuni as this is a complex beast. They could also be involved in the user channel to try to help users.

• In the past we invited GSoC students to become mentor next year. We probably didn’t do it enough, specially on Uyuni, and should try it more.

• Only using open channels for the communication with the GSoC contributors helps other mentors to chime in if needed. Using private discussions doesn’t help taking part in the community.

• Some organizations require the GSoC contributors to publish a weekly blog post with their progress, learning and blockers. This could be a good idea, but adds quite some work load.

Unclassifiable

We had a nice session and hallway discussions on mechanical keyboards. A question from people who don’t know about them: why did you really want to go down that rabbit hole!

We had a few emotional moments sharing our memories about Robert Kaye. He had a significant impact on Google Summer of Code and open source. Robert was really good at connecting people together and has been the one taking care of the chocolate room at the GSoC mentor summit for more than a decade.

It is also good to reconnect with mentors that I met at the past mentor summits and discover new people and projects.

The week-end also had plenty of occasions to celebrate, with a Halloween costume contest and a karaoke.

Thank you Stephanie, Mary, Lucy, Max and Erin for the organization of that amazing event!

Dear syslog-ng users,

This is the 143rd issue of syslog-ng Insider, a monthly newsletter that brings you syslog-ng-related news.

NEWS

Syslog-ng hardening using Tor

For many years, I didn’t think that Tor could be useful for me. However, I’ve recently found a Gist on GitHub that describes how you can use it to harden your central syslog-ng server. And while I have yet to try it, at least now I have a reason to actually test Tor.

https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-hardening-using-tor

Syslog-ng end of August news, and about scaling back Java support

Most of August, I was on vacation, but now I’m back and I try catching up on the events of the past weeks, just like my colleagues do. Currently, we are fixing issues and reviewing contributions, but we also discussed scaling back our efforts on Java support.

https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/syslog-ng-end-of-august-news-and-about-scaling-back-java-support

Using syslog-ng with Elasticsearch 9.5

Recently, I heard complaints within the syslog-ng community that using Elasticsearch is not that easy anymore. I installed Elasticsearch 9.5 with Kibana to verify these claims.

https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/using-syslog-ng-with-elasticsearch-9-5

WEBINARS

• You can learn about upcoming webinars and browse recordings of past webinars at https://www.syslog-ng.com/events/

Your feedback and news, or tips about the next issue are welcome. To read this newsletter online, visit: https://www.syslog-ng.com/syslog-ng-blog/

This past month has brought several software package updates for openSUSE Tumbleweed ARM with less than a handful of snapshots reaching the ARM port.

The second half of October brought a two-version jump of GRUB2 to 2.16 with serial console and NVMe boot features, a security-focused Linux kernel 7.2.11 and Plasma 6.8.0, while the first half of November opened the 7.3 kernel series, moved u-boot to 2026.10 for the Raspberry Pi, delivered QEMU 11.1.3 with emulated ARM hardware fixes, and refreshed Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Tegra firmware across the SBC spectrum.

Raspberry Pi

The u-boot update to 2026.10 moves the bootloader behind the 64-bit Raspberry Pi images to the newest upstream release, picking up a quarter’s worth of fixes for boot, USB and PCIe device handling; the full changelog is available now that the package pulls its source from GitHub after the denx FTP server went down. Keeping U-Boot current matters on the Pi because it enumerates devices before the kernel loads, so quirks with USB storage or NVMe hats are often fixed in the bootloader rather than the kernel. As with any Pi bootloader update, it pays to keep a spare boot medium within reach the first time a new version reaches your board.

GRUB2 2.16 is the biggest bootloader change of the window, and several of its new features matter directly on ARM boards. Native NVMe disk support improves booting a Pi 5 with an NVMe drive on the PCIe slot, and AMBA PL011 UART support brings bootloader output to the serial console that the Pi and most other ARM SoCs expose, which makes a failed boot far easier to diagnose without a display attached. New btrfs-info, btrfs-list-subvols and btrfs-get-default-subvol commands let users inspect snapper-style btrfs layouts straight from the GRUB shell, and a one-shot efibootnext module simplifies booting a different entry the next time around. The release also adds DHCPv6 support with network configuration from the UEFI device path, plus ML-DSA post-quantum signature support for appended signatures.

The Linux kernel 7.2.11 update fixed two vc4 driver issues that touch the Raspberry Pi graphics stack: binner slot allocation no longer fails on an idle GPU, which could previously break rendering that resumed after a quiet period, and the V3D interrupt is now disabled across runtime suspend so the GPU does not keep waking the SoC. Both apply to the Pi boards served by the vc4 KMS driver and the V3D GPU, so display and 3D work becomes steadier after idle periods and suspend cycles.

libpisp 1.8.0 fixes a detail in the Pi 5 camera and video pipeline: the GStreamer backend now always applies smart resize and crop when configuring a stream, so hardware-accelerated scaling and format conversion through the PiSP backend honors the requested geometry consistently. Anyone capturing or converting video on a Pi 5 gets more predictable output dimensions and fewer surprise crops.

Rockchip & Other SBCs

The Nov 8 snapshot carried a broad kernel-firmware refresh that reached deep into the SBC world. Rockchip boards gained PCIe3 PHY firmware for the Synopsys snps-pcie3 controller, the fast lanes RK3588 boards like the Rock 5B and Orange Pi 5 use for NVMe drives and PCIe cards, plus the first panthor firmware for Mali GPUs of Architecture 14.8, the generation behind the RK3588’s Mali-G610. Qualcomm firmware refreshed ADSP, CDSP and LPAICP images for the shikra platform, the Rubik Pi 3 and qcs615 boards, added GPU firmware for the Nord chipset, and enabled CDSP support for the Snapdragon x1e80100 Lenovo Yoga Slim 7. Wireless silicon was refreshed across the spectrum: MediaTek MT7922 and MT7925, Realtek rtw89 8852c and 8922d, ath10k WCN3990, ath11k QCA2066, ath12k WCN7850, Microchip wilc1000/WILC3000 at v16.5.2, and a first drop for NXP’s IW610. The Bluetooth package added the AIC8800D80 combo chip and updated QCA2066, so boards carrying those chips get matched fixes on both radios.

Kernel 7.2.11 also cleared a batch of SBC-relevant security fixes. The Samsung Exynos power-management-unit code no longer triggers a use-after-free (CVE-2026-98415), which matters for Exynos-based boards like the ODROID family, and the TI K3 UDMA glue driver avoids a NULL dereference when receive-channel setup fails (CVE-2026-98416), protecting K3-family boards such as the BeaglePlay. Wi-Fi saw two corrections: the Marvell mwifiex driver stops leaking MSI-X interrupts during cleanup (CVE-2026-98426), and Redpine rsi SDIO hardware avoids a heap out-of-bounds write when a key is removed (CVE-2026-98407). The Dialog DA9063 watchdog now also handles suspend and resume correctly (CVE-2026-98410), a fix for the many boards built around that PMIC.

The first 7.3-series kernel, 7.3.1, arrived in the Nov 5 snapshot with a Bluetooth fix that refuses adding an L2CAP channel that already has a connection, preventing the confusion that could follow when the same channel was registered twice. Bluetooth audio and pairing on boards using the BlueZ stack becomes steadier as a result. SDL3 3.4.20 rounded out the gaming side with controller fixes: Nintendo Switch controllers that failed because of missing stick and IMU calibration now work, the 8BitDo Ultimate 2C Wireless is supported through HIDAPI, and the Flydigi Vader 5 Pro gained rumble and trigger-rumble support. These fixes land on ARM handhelds and SBC-based consoles where a single controller quirk can ruin a gaming session.

NVIDIA Jetson & Tegra

The nvidia portion of the Nov 8 firmware refresh updated and added missing firmware files for Tegra SoCs, closing gaps that could leave Jetson modules without blobs their drivers expect. Tegra boards rely on these files for peripheral blocks, so filling in the missing pieces improves out-of-the-box behavior on the Jetson family. The open NVIDIA GPU driver made a large branch jump from 595.112.07 to 620.70.06, built against kernel 7.3.1, and the update supersedes the compatibility patch that the older 615.71.09 series needed for kernel 7.3 (boo#1289478). The CUDA variant made the same jump, so aarch64 systems pairing NVIDIA discrete GPUs with the 7.3 kernel stay in step.

aarch64 Virtualization, UEFI & Toolchain

QEMU 11.1.3 is the virtualization highlight, backporting the upstream stable-queue fixes, and the full list is available for digging. Emulated ARM hardware got direct attention: the Samsung Exynos interrupt combiner now range-checks its group registers, the Raspberry Pi bcm2835 clock manager treats an invalid mux source as ground instead of producing garbage clocks, and GICv5 redistributor ID reads return their actual values. Guest memory translation now follows the 52-bit TTBR table layout when TCR.DS is set and clears the reserved low bits from a 52-bit base, matching ARM CPUs that address beyond 48 bits. A long list of USB fixes covers MTP heap out-of-bounds reads and use-after-frees, XHCI reentrancy, OHCI endpoint mismatches and usb-host cleanup, and the emulated NVMe controller stops leaking memory when SR-IOV-capable controllers are removed. QEMU also dropped libpmem support (bsc#1288103) and fixed a block-layer read-modify-write atomicity bug that could corrupt images.

The 7.3.1 kernel packaging adjusted the spec for the 32-bit ARM arch rename, specifying both the OBS and rpm architecture variants, so armv7 kernel packages keep building cleanly. gdb 17.2 follows the 16.3 series with the GDB 17 feature set, including Debug Adapter Protocol completions and attach requests that accept a core file parameter, plus openSUSE testsuite stabilization patches. xfsprogs 7.2.0 landed for XFS users with quota and mkfs configuration rework and fixes for an rtreflink validation off-by-one, a 32-bit pointer arithmetic bug and growfs reporting, with the 32-bit fix the one most relevant to ARM systems.

UEFI and boot tooling saw useful maintenance. efivar 39 fixes a stack overflow in device path node parsing that could crash UEFI variable tools on malformed paths (CVE-2026-6862), and ipxe gained TLS 1.3 support while fixing virtio-net PXE boot on legacy BIOS virtual machines (bsc#1271200), which matters for network-booted VMs on ARM hosts. iPXE also added AES acceleration using the Arm Cryptographic Extensions, so encrypted network boot costs less CPU on ARM hardware. dtc 1.8.1 ported its build system to Meson, added fdt_get_property_namelen_w and fdt_setprop_namelen APIs, improved decompiling with label and phandle restoration, and added overlay checks that warn about missing #address-cells for interrupt parents.

Desktop users saw two refreshes: Plasma 6.8.0 in the Oct 18 snapshot, tightened by 6.8.2 in Nov 5, and the GNOME 51 stack with GTK4 4.24.1, gnome-shell 51.1, libadwaita 1.10.0, harfbuzz 15.0.0 and gvfs 1.62.0. Mesa 26.2.5 was a steady bugfix release for the graphics stack that backs Panfrost, vc4 and the other ARM drivers.

Snapshots at a Glance

Snapshot	Kernel	Headline changes
2026-10-18	7.2.11	grub2 2.16 (PL011 UART, NVMe boot, btrfs commands), kernel vc4 and Exynos/K3/Wi-Fi CVE fixes, Plasma 6.8.0, curl 8.23.0 security batch, Mesa 26.2.5
2026-10-20	7.2.11	Firefox 158 MFSA security fixes, GraphicsMagick CVE fixes, mozilla-nss 3.130
2026-11-05	7.3.1	first 7.3-series kernel, u-boot-rpiarm64 2026.10, GNOME 51, dnsmasq/expat/brotli/efivar/unbound/cups CVE fixes, dtc 1.8.1, ipxe TLS 1.3, SDL3 3.4.20
2026-11-08	7.3.1	QEMU 11.1.3 ARM fixes, libpisp 1.8.0, Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/Tegra firmware refresh, nvidia-open-driver 620.70.06, gdb 17.2, KDE Gear 26.08.3

Conclusion

The second half of October and the first half of November kept the ARM port moving with the Linux kernel advancing from 7.2.11 into the 7.3 series at 7.3.1, GRUB2 2.16 adding AMBA PL011 serial output and native NVMe boot support, and u-boot 2026.10 landing for the 64-bit Raspberry Pi boards. QEMU 11.1.3 hardened emulated ARM hardware from the Exynos interrupt combiner and the Raspberry Pi clock manager to 52-bit address translation, while the Nov 8 firmware refresh reached MediaTek, Qualcomm, Realtek, NXP, AIC and Tegra silicon and delivered the first panthor firmware for RK3588-class Mali GPUs. gdb reached 17.2, GNOME 51 and Plasma 6.8.2 refreshed both desktops, and libpisp 1.8.0 polished the Pi 5 camera pipeline.

Security updates covered the Linux kernel, curl, dnsmasq, expat, brotli, unbound, cups, GraphicsMagick, libsndfile, freetype2 and Firefox, with curl 8.23.0 clearing 23 CVEs and dropping SMB support, dnsmasq fixing five flaws across its TFTP, TCP DNS, DHCPv6 and DNSSEC handling, and the kernel batch aligning ksmbd’s SMB2 session expiration with the specification (CVE-2026-98420). If any snapshot causes trouble on your board, snapper can roll the system back to the previous state from the boot menu, which keeps the jump to the 7.3 kernel low-risk.

ARM Resources

For ARM-specific discussions and support, subscribe to the openSUSE ARM mailing list and check the openSUSE ARM wiki for device support information, image downloads, and documentation. New and existing ARM users can also join the openSUSE ARM IRC channel for real-time help.

Your contributions and feedback make openSUSE Tumbleweed ARM better with every update. Whether reporting bugs, suggesting features, or participating in community discussions, your involvement is highly valued.

Wow. Sam Altman did something fantastic. He motivated me. I’m using my AI workstation to work on Linux and experiment with AI!

Last winter I bought a new machine to edit my photos and learn AI on Linux. I’m still doing the photo editing part, but not the AI part. I wanted to keep going, but with my new work responsibilities I was too tired to spend energy on Learning. However, the statement about RAM by Sam Altman turned out to be a good motivation. No promises for regular new articles tough…

First of all, some RAM p*rn :-) 128 GB of RAM, from that 8 GB is set to be video RAM (but it could be set to anything from 512 MB to 96 GB…). The price of the little box doubled within a month of purchase simply due to the amount of RAM included. Sam & Co. have made RAM pretty much unaffordable…

root@fedora:~# free -h
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           117Gi       2.2Gi       115Gi       8.0Mi       1.1Gi       115Gi
Swap:           39Gi          0B        39Gi

And finally, I’m working on Linux and AI again. Fedora is now updated from version 44 to 45 on the machine. And openSUSE Tumbleweed has also seen gigabytes worth of updates. Next up: getting AI workloads running again. I had to remove ROCm during upgrade: dependency problems, as far as I could see. I have just reinstalled the packages, and checking documentation…

I have Open WebUI installed from half a year ago, together with ollama. I tested both from the command line and from the Open WebUI: they work. Next time I will try to do something actually useful. :-)

root@fedora:~# ollama list
NAME               ID              SIZE      MODIFIED       
llama3.2:latest    a80c4f17acd5    2.0 GB    24 minutes ago    
gemma3:27b         a418f5838eaf    17 GB     7 months ago      
granite4:latest    4235724a127c    2.1 GB    7 months ago      
root@fedora:~# ollama show granite4
  Model
    architecture        granite    
    parameters          3.4B       
    context length      131072     
    embedding length    2560       
    quantization        Q4_K_M     

  Capabilities
    completion    
    tools         

  License
    Apache License               
    Version 2.0, January 2004    
    ...                          

root@fedora:~# ollama --verbose
>>> who are you?
I am Hermes, a language model created by IBM to assist with a variety of tasks and answer questions on many topics. I strive to provide helpful, informative, and engaging responses 
while being respectful and avoiding any harmful or unethical content.

total duration:       1.111554719s
load duration:        42.916831ms
prompt eval count:    12 token(s)
prompt eval duration: 23.637941ms
prompt eval rate:     507.66 tokens/s
eval count:           47 token(s)
eval duration:        1.020660833s
eval rate:            46.05 tokens/s
>>> print the first 10 prime numbers
The first 10 prime numbers are:

1. 2
2. 3
3. 5
4. 7
5. 11
6. 13
7. 17
8. 19
9. 23
10. 29

total duration:       1.434860225s
load duration:        47.052753ms
prompt eval count:    75 token(s)
prompt eval duration: 106.452539ms
prompt eval rate:     704.54 tokens/s
eval count:           58 token(s)
eval duration:        1.254814127s
eval rate:            46.22 tokens/s
>>> Send a message (/? for help)

You can read my older posts about my AI box under the toy tag.

The openSUSE Project’s rolling release Tumbleweed will switch to the Agama installer before the end of the year, according to an announcement on the Factory mailing list.

Agama-based images are expected to replace the legacy YaST installer as the main download on get.opensuse.org within the coming weeks.

The project is asking users to test the new installer now and report any problems before the cutover.

Two Agama images are available to test. An offline installer with a pre-filled package cache was released late last week and can install Tumbleweed without a network connection. A network-based installer has been available for some time, but it was placed outside the standard ISO directory, so many users likely never saw this. The netinstall image is in the appliances ISO directory on download.opensuse.org, and the offline installer is at https://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/iso/TW-offline-installer-x86_64.iso. The traditional image remains available for now.

The switch depends on test results. Release managers will link the new images on get.opensuse.org once openQA testing and the staging workflow show the new installer is as stable as the YaST-based one. Full openQA coverage is still being built, and Agama tests are being added to the staging workflow, where the groundwork exists but the tests don’t yet run.

Less common setups are especially valuable before the cutover. These include RAID and LVM disk layouts, systems with several disks, serial console installs, offline installs and unusual hardware. Any behavior that differs from the YaST installer should be filed as a bug. Documentation is also needed, because profile-based installs and console access are not yet widely covered in guides.

The most visible change for users is that the installer no longer lets them pick individual packages. Only a curated set of patterns is offered, and not every pattern in the repository appears. The decision is a deliberate choice to simplify installation.

Tumbleweed usually adopts new technology before openSUSE’s other releases, but it held back on the installer on purpose. Leap 16.0 has used Agama since its first release, while Tumbleweed waited until the new installer either matched YaST’s features or dropped them deliberately. The project says the move is now needed because YaST is no longer under active feature development and receives only minimal maintenance. As the software it depends on keeps changing, relying on it carries growing risk. YaST, which stands for Yet another Setup Tool, was first released in April 1995.

The project plans another announcement when get.opensuse.org is ready to switch.

The Linux Saloon episode features PapalPenguin’s return after several years, discussing his new Skytech gaming PC running CachyOS and Mass Effect. It also covers Devario OS, Linux power management, system tools, community projects, and participant resources. Next week’s event is Open Mic Night, with listeners invited to submit suggestions via email, Telegram, or Discord.

Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

This week saw the release of 6 snapshots (1030, 1031, 1101, 1102, 1103, and 1104).

A major desktop transition anchored the week as GNOME 51.1 arrived in full force in snapshot 1030, bringing refreshed core components including Mutter, GNOME Shell, Control Center, and GDM alongside the broader GTK 4.24 stack and updated applications. KDE users were not left waiting either, picking up the KDE Plasma 6.8.2 bugfix release in the same snapshot. Another satisfying milestone was the resolution of the long-standing SWIG 4.5.1 saga, which successfully crossed the finish line after libstorage-ng resolved its Ruby garbage-collection interaction in snapshot 1031.

Beyond the desktops, several other outlook items cleared out smoothly: Valkey 9.1.3, Wayland-Protocols 1.50, Hyprland 0.57.1, and kernel-source-longterm 6.18.60 all joined the repository. Under the hood, Linux Kernel rolled out 7.3.1, GNU Screen saw a major version jump to 5.0.2, and audio tooling received tandem updates with WirePlumber 0.5.19 and PipeWire 1.6.11.

These 6 snapshots delivered the following updates:

• Expat 2.10.0
• FreeRDP 3.33.0
• GNOME 51.1
• GTK4 4.24.1
• Hyprland 0.57.1
• ImageMagick 7.1.2.35
• iproute2 7.3
• KDE Plasma 6.8.2
• kernel-source-longterm 6.18.60
• libadwaita 1.10.0
• libarchive 3.8.10
• Linux Kernel 7.3.1
• PipeWire 1.6.11
• python-Twisted 26.10.0
• rdma-core 65.0
• Screen 5.0.2
• SVT-AV1 4.3.0
• SWIG 4.5.1
• Valkey 9.1.3
• Wayland-Protocols 1.50
• WebKitGTK 2.54.2
• WirePlumber 0.5.19
• Xen 4.22.0_08
• xf86-input-wacom 1.2.0

Turning our attention to the horizon, here is a look at what is currently brewing across the staging projects:

• KDE Gear 26.08.3
• systemd 262.2
• OpenSSH 10.6p2
• Telegram Desktop 7.4.0
• Docker Compose 5.7.0
• Ansible 14.6.0
• Mesa 26.2.6
• ICU 79.1: Currently breaking nodejs24 (nodejs/node#66987).
• Box2D 3.1.1
• fmt 12.2.0: Still blocked by dnf5 plugin rebuild issues (boo#1285868).

This is a roundup of articles from the openSUSE community listed on planet.opensuse.org. This community blog feed aggregator lists the featured highlights below from Oct. 30 - Nov. 5.

This week highlights the release of openSUSE Leap 16.1, which unites traditional and immutable installations in one release, six Tumbleweed snapshots for week 44 headlined by Linux Kernel 7.3.0, KDE Plasma 6.8.1 and MariaDB 13.0.2, and the October Tumbleweed monthly update. It also covers the sixth Plasma 6.7 update, Plasma 6.8 accessibility and internationalization features, the October KDE Linux report, syslog-ng 4.13 testing, a GNU/Linux València event, the FSF’s November newsletter, Linux Saloon 226 and a journey to the openSUSE Asia Summit in Yogyakarta.

Here is a summary and links for each post:

Test syslog-ng before the 4.13 release

The blog of Peter Czanik asks readers to test nightly builds of syslog-ng ahead of the 4.13 release expected in the coming weeks. He notes that automated tests cannot cover every real-world configuration across RHEL 8, Fedora Rawhide, FreeBSD, macOS and many destinations, and highlights changes such as JSON key ordering control, GELF fixes, an AWS CloudWatch Logs HLC destination and exponential reconnect backoff with jitter.

Sixth Plasma 6.7 Update

The KDE Blog announces the sixth bugfix update to Plasma 6.7, released by the KDE Community on Nov. 3, 2026, as part of the extended support for that branch. It explains why such updates are recommended for every user and recaps Plasma 6.7 features such as per-screen virtual desktops, microphone level testing, a quick light and dark theme switch, the Vietnamese lunar calendar and drag-and-drop favorites.

Free Software Foundation Newsletter Roundup – November 2026

Victorhck’s blog translates and summarizes the Free Software Foundation’s November 2026 newsletter, linking to both the English original and the Spanish edition. It highlights the FSF’s argument that election integrity requires free software, the FSFE’s response to the European Commission’s public procurement proposal and GNU Taler’s preparations to operate in Germany.

News for Users Around the World in Plasma 6.8

The KDE Blog looks at the internationalization work in Plasma 6.8, including support for the Bikram Sambat calendar used in Nepal and the Amharic language on the virtual keyboard. Baltasar Ortega notes that Plasma is translated into more than 60 languages and explains how the Region & Language settings let users combine locale, calendar and input-method choices.

openSUSE Leap 16.1 Released

Alessandro reports in Portuguese on the release of openSUSE Leap 16.1, the first minor release in the Leap 16 series, which folds Leap Micro into Leap through a new Immutable Mode. The article walks through the traditional and immutable installation paths, Agama 24, the move to Plasma 6.6 with Qt 6.11 and Frameworks 6.25, the Linux 6.12 base, SELinux and the new openSUSE version diff tool.

Leap 16.1 Unites Traditional and Immutable Linux in One Release

openSUSE News announces openSUSE Leap 16.1, the first minor release in the Leap 16 series, which brings Leap Micro’s immutable, transactionally updated model into Leap as an installation mode selected in Agama. The announcement covers the desktop updates to Plasma 6.6 and Qt 6.11, Agama 24, the stable Linux 6.12, systemd 257 and glibc 2.40 core, the x86-64-v2 and SELinux baseline and how Leap Micro 6.2 users can migrate.

openSUSE Leap 16.1 Published

Victorhck’s blog announces the publication of openSUSE Leap 16.1, noting that users can choose between a traditional or an immutable GNU/Linux system. It explains that Immutable Mode replaces the abandoned MicroOS and Leap Micro line, covers the Plasma 6.6, Qt 6.11 and Frameworks 6.25 updates and points readers to the osdiff version comparison and openSUSE migration tools.

This Month in KDE Linux: October 2026

The KDE Blog summarizes Nate Graham’s October 2026 report on KDE Linux, a month focused on infrastructure work such as migrating OS images and the update system to KDE’s new S3-based storage and moving OpenQA to a dedicated server. It also notes a basic installer slideshow, a fix for the disk-encryption passphrase indicator, the ntsync kernel module enabled by default for Wine and Proton gaming, and new linting checks for contributors.

Ternary Compression and Speculative Token Generation

Alessandro examines the Swift Bonsai 2 Katana + MTP project, which combines ternary-weight compression, reasoning-efficiency tuning and speculative decoding in a roughly 6.40 GB GGUF model derived from Qwen3.8-27B. It separates what each component contributes, reviews the published benchmark caveats and explains how to interpret the mixed PTQ1_0 and Q8_0 file format and its memory requirements.

An Avalanche of Performance Improvements and Bug Fixes – This Week in Plasma

The KDE Blog translates Nate Graham’s latest “This Week in Plasma,” covering the bug-fix push that followed Plasma 6.8 and the work heading into Plasma 6.9. Highlights include a fix for a gaming performance regression, a cheaper zoom effect in KWin, accurate progress reporting when copying to external disks, faster network-share copies and a long list of Plasma 6.8.2 and 6.8.3 fixes.

Free Software as a Response to Techno-Oligarchy, a Talk Organized by GNU/Linux València

The KDE Blog announces a GNU/Linux València talk titled “Free software as a response to techno-oligarchy,” held with the Bloc de l’Estudiantat Agermanat on Nov. 12 at 18:00 in the Casa de l’Alumne at the Universitat Politècnica de València. The free event will cover free-software concepts, practical tools, strategies for regaining digital sovereignty and an open political debate.

Tumbleweed Monthly Update – October 2026

openSUSE News recaps October in Tumbleweed, when 23 snapshots delivered KDE Plasma 6.8.0 and 6.8.1, KDE Frameworks 6.31.0, Qt 6.12.0, Firefox 157.0.1, 158.0 and 158.0.1, and the Linux kernel’s move from 7.2.9 through 7.3.0. The monthly roundup covers major package updates such as tmux 3.8, HarfBuzz 15.0.0, MariaDB 13.0.2 and a post-quantum GnuPG, the removal of YaST from default patterns and a long list of security fixes.

Linux Saloon 226 | News Flight Early Edition

Nathan Wolf’s blog recaps Linux Saloon 226, a news-focused “early edition” episode covering topics such as Shykle’s TPM encryption work with Ubuntu, a major code-execution flaw affecting servers and Fortnite’s arrival on Linux. It also discusses Canonical’s accelerated Ubuntu Core Desktop development and shares links to the community projects mentioned on the show.

Accessibility News in Plasma 6.8

The KDE Blog reviews the accessibility improvements in Plasma 6.8, led by the new “click by dwell” feature that sends a mouse click when the pointer stops moving. Baltasar Ortega also lists the desktop’s existing aids, including visual bell alerts, sticky, slow and bounce keys, the Orca screen reader, full-screen and magnifier zoom, color inversion, pointer-location help and keyboard-only navigation.

My Plasma Desktop for October 2026 #viernesdeescritorio

The KDE Blog presents the 76th installment of its monthly “My desktop” series, showing Baltasar Ortega’s Plasma setup on a Slimbook Evo ultrabook running KDE Neon with Plasma 6.8.2, Frameworks 6.31.0, Qt 6.11.1 and Wayland on Linux 7.0. It describes the left-side panel layout, the Hanabi wallpaper created by Krystian Zajdel for KDE’s 30th anniversary and the Bare Weather widget.

Tumbleweed – Review of the Week 2026/44

Dominique Leuenberger and Victorhck detail the six snapshots (1022, 1023, 1024, 1026, 1027 and 1028) and major arrivals such as Linux Kernel 7.3.0, KDE Plasma 6.8.1, MariaDB 13.0.2, LAME 4.0, HarfBuzz 15.0.0, Ruby 4.0.9 and Firefox 158.0.1. They also cover VirtualBox 7.2.22 and zypper 1.14.102 with libsolv 0.7.41, which makes repository cache loading about 20% faster, plus staging work on GNOME 51.1, Mesa 26.2.6, Valkey 9.1.3, Wayland-Protocols 1.50, Hyprland 0.57.0 and Telegram Desktop 7.3.4.

My Journey to the openSUSE Asia Summit (oSAS) 2026 in Yogyakarta

Jim’s Computing Blog recounts James “Jim” Ed Randson’s trip from Bandung to Yogyakarta for the openSUSE Asia Summit 2026, including his first in-person meetings with contributors he had known online and his talk introducing GNU/Linux to the next generation. It also covers the conference keynotes, sessions on the Open Build Service and community building, the one-day trip and his invitation to speak at openSUSE Conference 2027 in Prague.

I Am Playing Grid Right Now!

Jakub Steiner’s blog explains how he revisited Race Driver: Grid through the RPCS3 emulator after feeling nostalgic for its arcade handling, damage model, camera work and soundtrack. The post doubles as a note to himself on making a PS5 DualSense controller work in GNOME OS, with a udev rule for the USB and Bluetooth models and commands to reload the rules and verify the device from inside the Flatpak sandbox.

View more blogs or learn to publish your own on planet.opensuse.org.

Version 4.13 of syslog-ng is expected to be released in the coming weeks. There are fixes and enhancements even in the core of syslog-ng. Testing of the latest nightly builds is much appreciated.

Thousands of automatic tests check each source code change before they are merged. Still, nothing can replace some manual testing with real-world configurations. Syslog-ng runs on a wide variety of systems, from RHEL 8 to Fedora Rawhide, FreeBSD, MacOS and others. It supports everything from simple file destinations to various network destinations, including not just syslog, but also OpenTelemetry or ElasticSearch. No automatic testing can fully cover all these variations.

I collected below just some of the highlights:

• JSON Key Ordering Control
• gELF Format Fixes
• AWS CloudWatch Logs HLC Destination
• Exponential Reconnect Backoff with Jitter
• PKCS#12 Password Support
• Debug Macro Storage Control

Read more at https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/test-syslog-ng-before-the-4-13-release