mastodon 4.7.2Mensch mit starkem Datendrang • Markdown Connaisseur • latenz-unverträglich • ::) • he/him
Yesterday at the hackerspace, a friend had forgotten the password to their (demo / showcase) computer.
Luckily, the convenient new sysadmin tool “copy.fail” saved the day! With one line, we could get a root shell and set a new password 😂
Way easier than rebooting into init=/bin/bash. So convenient! 2026 is truly the year of Linux on the desktop :P
Amazing: #Debian is now shipping reproducible packages 💪
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2026/05/msg00001.html
Thanks to everyone who helped make this happen!
See https://reproducible-builds.org/ if you are not familiar with the topic
Signal Boost: If you are willing to fix any of the #Wayland related issues I describe in https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2026-01-04-wayland-sway-in-2026/, I am willing to sponsor the hardware you need for it, e.g. high-res monitor, GPU, PC, etc. and/or pay a bounty for the fix itself.
See https://lobste.rs/s/5pkjai/wayland_set_linux_desktop_back_by_10_years#c_4cpf8q for details and reach out; thanks in advance.
My goal is that #Linux works better, but I can’t do it alone. Let’s improve it together!
TIL: kiwix can serve wikipedia locally quite easily. For English and German wikipedia with articles and images, you need 165 GB of disk space.
Now I can do all the queries I want without straining Wikipedia servers :) Nice!
One of the great pleasures of #NixOS is that you can just… run any software, without having to install it.
Just like in Arch Linux (which I used before), software I read about online is generally already available through nixpkgs-unstable, but contrary to Arch Linux, I don’t have to upgrade my system before I can try out software :)
(This happened to me regularly and it’s just not supported in Arch. You have to update. A simple model, but not good enough for how I use computers.)
In case you were wondering: #gokrazy kernels are not vulnerable to copy.fail because they do not include the vulnerable code 🥳
In any case, 7.0.3 is available, so maybe update regardless (it’s always good to be up-to-date) :)
If you are not familiar: https://gokrazy.org/ is my Go appliance platform based on the Linux kernel and a 100% Go userspace :)
oh no!
having one consistent style beats “steering your formatter” for personal preference
I was around when formatters became a thing, and it was always painful in C (multiple variations), but a no-brainer in Go (one style).
The most exciting Wayland development I have ever read: Separating the Wayland Compositor and Window Manager
https://isaacfreund.com/blog/river-window-management/
Maybe this way, we can avoid all the fragmentation and duplicate effort among niche window managers
Found this Donald Duck comic from 1972: “Byte Makes Right” (or: The Computer, or: Too Intelligent a Robot)
https://scrooge-mcduck.fandom.com/wiki/The_Computer
The opening line is:
“This Magic Brain is Scrooge’s new Superthink XL! Just slopping over with artificial intelligence, it should simplify office work pronto…”
Slopping over with AI! Coincidence or ahead of its time by over 50 years?!
Wow, in case you missed it:
I just watched the Framework 13 Pro launch video, and their goal is to make “the MacBook Pro for Linux users”!
https://youtu.be/GnOpIQJnYWU?si=TbZbKQHxiKgrOFav
To which my reaction was:
Shut up and take my money! :D
Finally a computer built for #Linux developers / power-users 🥰
For my fellow #NixOS users:
To fix https://copy.fail/ (CVE-2026-31431) on NixOS 25.11, switch your Flake input to :
nixpkgs.url = "github:nixos/nixpkgs/release-25.11";
(Until the `nixos-25.11` tag is updated, too.)
See also https://discourse.nixos.org/t/is-nixos-affected-by-copy-fail-edit-yes-it-is/77317/26 for copy-pasteable instructions to check / fix / verify
Great news! Apparently #Linux users soon get to enjoy more HDMI support (with AMD): https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMDGPU-HDMI-2.1-FRL-Patches
My framework desktop arrived!
https://frame.work/ch/en/desktop
It was a pleasure to build! Everything is clearly labeled and there are instructions. The only issue were CPU fan screws / tolerances, which seems to be a known issue.
I ran out of capacity on my previous Mini PC server, so I decided to max out the specs on this one 🙈
If you’re Nix-curious and want to talk to other people about it (no matter your skill level), coming to a meetup is a great opportunity!
The next Nix events in Switzerland are:
Nix Bern Meetup (@ Puzzle)
Wednesday, Apr 22, starting 18:00
https://www.meetup.com/nix-bern/events/313001700/
…and then, one month later:
Nix Zürich ZHF meetup (@ OST Rapperswil-Jona)
May 16th-17th
I have attended both meetups personally and can strongly recommend them! 😊
Oh wow, these fake story titles are just👌😂
Picked a really unlucky day to take some time off to do some private projects with claude 😞
Also if Anthropic are interested in someone who knows how to build and run reliable systems at large scale, my contact details are on my website…
Okay, I got one ticket, but need two.
Will retry on Sunday :)
Tip: Is your coding agent stuck on Go 1.23 or Go 1.24 because of its training corpus cut-off date?
Teach it about the state of the world by summarizing release notes docs like https://go.dev/doc/go1.25 into your CLAUDE.md (or similar).
Verify your change worked by quizzing your agent (see screenshot):
“Upgraded” my MacBook to macOS 26.3
How can I get back the old mouse cursor and turn off the system menu bar icons please? :-/
If you know people at Apple ask them what the heck is up with these changes, and why isn’t there an option to turn the icons off?! We’re at minor version 26.3 by now, I would have expected such stuff to be fixed by now 😞
Boo 👎
Opus 4.5+ as a PCI accelerator card, when??
(On-prem appliance is also okay with me. Anything where I’m the responsible person when it’s down.)
Wow the Mattermost UI is so buggy, it’s no fun to use at all.
What are your favorite self-hosted chat solutions? Need good UX on browsers, android, iphone, open source. Bonus if written in Go ;)
Aside from the article itself, there’s also a repository to illustrate the technique at https://github.com/stapelberg/stampit a README where we can collect language ecosystem build stamping status, and an agent SKILL.md to audit your fleet! :)
And of course, I researched the Nix full picture diagram (see attached) for this article 🤯
It’s amazing that Apple ships a “Watch” app on the phone, and yet! You cannot fully configure the watch from the “Watch” app on your phone.
For example, to turn off notifications about what Apple thinks of my sleep quality, I had to fumble with the watch display instead of going via the Watch app.
Can’t wait until all software is fully declarative. Why are we accepting this nonsense?!
