In practice, that means being able to look up an agent and check who's actually operating it, what it's cleared to do, and whether anything in its code or history has changed.

Citing a research paper, the Linux Foundation says 82% of executives plan to adopt AI agents within the next one to three years, and most still have no reliable way to authenticate or govern them once they're running in production.

Right now, nothing stops an agent from claiming to be support-agent.acme.com as there is no way for anyone to check if that's true.

Finding the right one is just as hard. Nothing today links an agent's name and capabilities to a specific, verified version you can actually reach. ANS is built to address both problems at once.

How does it work?

Every agent registered under ANS gets a DNS-style name with a version number built in, something like ans://v1.0.0.my-agent.example.com. That name only comes with an identity certificate once the agent's domain passes the same DNS and ACME checks a website goes through to get an ordinary TLS certificate.

Every registration, renewal, or revocation gets recorded in a tamper-evident log (append-only Merkle log), so nobody can edit an agent's history after those events. A separate offline tool called ans-verify can check those records without even needing a live connection to the registry.

And before you assume this is something new they cooked up, it is not. GoDaddy already had ANS up and running months before the Linux Foundation got involved, building on an existing IETF draft.

Rather than build new certificate and DNS systems from the ground up, GoDaddy's engineers reused infrastructure they already had in production. That is the same certificate service handling over 100 million active SSL and TLS certificates, plus their existing DNS systems.

What's already live?

The agentnameservice organization on GitHub currently hosts eight repositories. The main one is ans, an MIT-licensed Go codebase that implements the whole stack, including the registry, the logging, and the verifier as a working reference anyone can run.

It's still early days, of course, but the whole stack reportedly comes up in around 60 seconds with nothing more than Go, openssl, curl, and jq installed.

The company is registered as a Social Purpose Corporation, dedicating its existence to upholding the privacy, security, and freedom of its users, even when that conflicts with maximizing shareholder profit.

That philosophy carries through their lineup of offerings like the Liberty Phone, the Librem series of phones, and Post Quantum Cryptography hardware.

Just recently, they announced the Librem 16 laptop, positioned as the direct successor to the Librem 15 and an upgrade over the Librem 14 in both performance and expandability.

📝 Librem 16: Key Specifications

At the heart of the Librem 16 sits a 13th Gen Intel Core i7-13620H, which is a 10-core, 16-threaded chip. Its performance cores turbo up to 4.9GHz, while the efficiency cores cap out at 3.6GHz. Sadly, there's no discrete GPU onboard, just Intel's integrated UHD Graphics handling display duties.

Memory tops out at 64GB, split across two DDR4 SO-DIMM slots. Storage comes from two M.2 bays that handle both NVMe and SATA drives, for a maximum of 16TB.

PureOS is the Linux distribution of choice here. It is Purism's own Debian-based distro that has endorsement from the Free Software Foundation, and there's no telemetry or advertisements involved.

Firmware leans in the same direction, with the Librem 16 featuring coreboot and a disabled Intel Management Engine. Then there are the two kill switches; one cuts the camera and mic, the other cuts wireless and Bluetooth; both can be flipped off manually.

The rest of the specs include:

• Display: 16-inch, 1920x1200 (16:10 aspect ratio).
• Ports: 2x USB-C (USB 3.2 Gen 2, DisplayPort Alt Mode, USB-PD up to 100W), 2x USB-A (USB 3.2 Gen 1), 1x HDMI 2.0, 1x memory card reader, and a 3.5mm combo audio jack.
• Dimensions: 360 x 26 x 240mm (W x H x L), 1.8kg.
• Connectivity: 1x Gigabit Ethernet over RJ45, Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 with two antennas, and Bluetooth.
• Battery: A single 3-cell, 54.2Wh pack rated at 11.55V and 4.7Ah

Get Yours

The Librem 16 is sold in three pre-configured tiers, plus a build-your-own option for anyone who wants to tailor the specs to their needs.

• The Base model is the entry point at $2,899, with 16GB of RAM and 500GB of storage.
• The Plus model bumps that to 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage for $4,199.
• The Max model with 64GB of RAM and 16TB of storage across two 8TB drives tops the range at $9,799.

If none of those fit, the build-your-own option starts at $2,870 and lets you configure memory, both storage slots, the wireless card, anti-interdiction service, and warranty length individually.

Push every option to its highest value, and the final tally lands at a whopping $11,944.

Anyhow, every configuration ships within 10 business days, with optional anti-interdiction service ($249) and an extended 3-year warranty ($399) available as add-ons.

Linux preloaded laptops have never been cheaper. And Purism has a privacy at hardware level angle so these laptops are not affordable by general public (like me).

From supercomputers to CERN labs, handling some of the greatest discoveries of humankind and accelerating particles beyond imagination, open source software has provided the framework for all necessary technological usage.

Bringing it down to a simpler level, KDE's Step provides you a platform to test out some of the most important basic concepts in physics, like simple motion, electrostatics and gravitation, and even things like spring (harmonic) motion.

Developing an intuition about these phenomena can finally bridge the knowledge gap that students need. So if you are a physics teacher (or student), KDE Step is worth your attention.

Interface and Experience

Using the basic KDE design kit, the application looks quite familiar as it is. It is arranged in a very efficient manner, with all the usable objects on a panel on the left side of the window, while the right side holds the panel that can be used to modify any of the attributes of those objects as well as a panel that shows the history of the steps (no pun intended) made by the user. On the top of the window, all the menus are present with the undo/redo buttons, and most importantly, the button that allows you to start the simulation.

To demonstrate the elements and how they're used in the best way possible, I'm going to show different simulations that incorporate said elements. It is the most efficient and vivid way, since it is, after all, a simulation app.

Simple Harmonic Motion

As a very famous quote from Sidney Coleman says, "The career of a young theoretical physicist consists of treating the harmonic oscillator in ever-increasing levels of abstraction." Keeping up with that sentiment, I will show a very basic demonstration of a simple harmonic motion.

The elements used here are two particles, a spring, a graph, weight field and an anchor. Particles in Step are simple zero-dimensional point objects with modifiable position, color, velocity, mass, momentum and kinetic energy.

Springs are simple, you can attach both ends to objects, you can change the stiffness. Anchors are utilities that can be used to fix the position of an object to the scene. No matter what, it will not move from where it is placed.

A weight field simply simulates the gravitational force of earth for all the objects placed on the scene, but again, you can modify the gravitational acceleration to suit whatever kind of simulation you're trying to run (for example, trying to simulate the gravitational force on the moon).

Finally, the graph utility can be used to plot any property of any object on the scene against any other property.

Soft Body

While sounding like a promise made by a moisturizer, soft body is not that but a category of objects in physics that are not rigid but that deform and change shape according to the parameters set.

More accurate, and as shown in the app itself, it can be thought of as an object made of small particles connected to each other by springs that deform according to the force provided.

Two new elements are used here, a soft body (that has already been described) and a box. A box is just that, a rectangle with modifiable dimensions, where apart from what you can already change in a particle, you can also change the angular velocity, angular momentum, inertia, and so on.

Orbit

Another basic simulation that can really help is that of an orbit. Step provides a gravitational field simulation, in which the universal law of gravitation starts holding true and applying within the canvas.

In this simulation, I've modified the value of the gravitational constant to something that allows my particle to orbit the central particle (because I finally can), and I'm using a controller to change the mass of my central particle while the simulation is going on to show how that changes the velocity and distance of the revolving particle.

As you can see, for the first part of the video, it is making a calm orbit but as soon as I start increasing the mass, the particle comes closer (as one would expect) and when I decrease it, the particle goes out the frame (a little dramatic, but still expected).

Compound Pendulum

Have you ever wondered what an oscillating lambda would look like? Well wonder no further because Step allows you to make any kind of polygon that you would like to make with the polygon tool, and then you can use a pin to fix the position of one point in that body to the canvas. And some weight force to the scene, and there you go. A lambda pendulum:

This kind of pendulum that isn't one concentrated mass but distributed instead is called a compound pendulum in physics, which can be quite difficult to visualize sometimes.

Linear-Angular Parallels

Students often struggle with the equations for the motion of a disk, or anything that has to do with rotating rigid bodies, but it is only a matter of translation of the values in the usual linear equations of motion into those that concern rotating bodies. For example, mass gets replaced with moment of inertia, velocity with angular velocity, same with acceleration and so on. In the following simulation, that's exactly what we're showing:

In this simulation, the particle and the disk have mass and moment of inertia with the value 1, velocity and angular velocity with value 6, acceleration and angular acceleration -2 respectively.

As you can see, the changes happen hand-in-hand, making it clear how the equations work practically parallelly. I have used a linear motor to apply a linear force to the particle and a circular motor to apply a torque to the disk. The values on display can be shown using the meter utility.

Stable and Unstable Equilibrium Positions

In the first case, I've fixed two positive charges of equal magnitude on the canvas with anchors. Another positive charge was placed right in between them. The charge, of course, will be in equilibrium just by the virtue of being smackdab right in the middle of the positive charges. What happens if I slightly move the central charge from its position?

The charge starts oscillating. In a real life scenario where there are losses due to friction and so on, this will return to the equilibrium position right in the middle. But what if my central charge is negative? What happens then?

As you can see, the charge moves on to the side of movement, as you would expect. In this case, the equilibrium was unstable, meaning even the slight change in position on one side will result in absolute ruin of the equilibrium state. I've used charged particles, which are similar to normal particles but with the added option of adding a charge to them. Similar to how we did with gravitation, you need to add the Coulomb field to the canvas in order for the law of electrostatics to start applying.

Constraints

A lot of basic physics is based on constraints, which can be of different sorts. The most basic one is where the distance between two bodies is fixed, so that the motion of one of the bodies impacts that of the other. So in this simulation, I've done that exactly with a massless stick, which connects two bodies in Step. I've given a certain velocity to one of the particles, and you can see here how it impacts the other one:

Perfect Gas Simulation

Finally, Step has a tool that lets you simulate a perfect gas, following the basic principles of kinetic theory of gases. When applying it on the canvas, you can configure the area that the gas will exist in, the number of particles inside that area, the concentration, the temperature, particle mass and mean velocity. Sure, some of these things are dependent on each other and all of them being configurable individually does seem a little counter-intuitive, but if you change one of the values that another depends upon, it changes automatically. There's no disregard for the physics of it here.

Wrapping Up

There are some very obvious points at which Step breaks. Not even showing an error, it just breaks. For example, if you configure the mass of a particle to be 0 or very close to it, for any simulation that involves forces or collisions, the canvas just disappears. Obviously, massless particles are not in the scope of scenarios which Step can simulate.

Overall, Step has some excellent options that can really help students visualize their physics lesson up to an elementary undergraduate level.

As a student of Physics, I have been using it for years to clear my doubts, but it is only obvious that the simulation can only be as helpful and accurate as you are careful with setting it up. More than that, it helps you explore possibilities that aren't possible in the physical world, such as completely ideal conditions of zero friction, the ability to change fundamental and universal constants and so on.

On a related note, you may want to check out the list of distros for schools and education.

I hope this article was helpful and that you have fun seeing the answers to your physics doubts come to life. Cheers!

I hope you enjoy this conversation.

It's FOSS: iodé sits at an interesting crossroads of privacy and sustainability. For those who haven't come across the project before, what is it and what is it trying to accomplish?

Brian: iodé is a project that is interested in making sure that there's a privacy-based Android distribution that is also very easy to use. Very easy for normal users to feel they can use it conveniently.

We also feature a tool which is a tracker blocker, so both your apps and your browser when you're browsing the internet have a sort of firewall that allows you to know exactly which connections your device is making, which connections the apps are making, the browser is making when you're visiting websites, and it prevents ads and trackers from following you around the internet.

That's the main goal and while it's not a Linux device in the classic sense of a Linux mobile device, it's an Android device, it gives you all the usability of an Android device.

It's FOSS: App compatibility is usually the first thing that worries someone considering a de-Googled phone, especially banking apps and anything they'd normally get from the Play Store. Since iodé doesn't ship with Google Play, how do you handle that?

Brian: We have two app stores. We have F-Droid, which is a free software app store that comes by default. And we also have Aurora Store, which is basically a front end for the Google Play Store.

So you can install any app that's on Google Play without Google knowing which apps you're installing it doesn't track you the same way Google Play does, but still gives you all the usability of Google Play.

And the difference is you can also spoof different devices. So if something is not available for your device, you don't have to go to some random APK store and risk downloading something that maybe is a dangerous file. You can just simply change the device settings and spoof another device and download that.

So it gives you all the usability of Google Play, maybe even more so. And like all of our pre-installed apps, you can uninstall any of them and install another app store if you want. You can even install the official Google Play if you want.

It's FOSS: If a non-technical person, someone who just wants their phone to work, switched to iodé tomorrow, what would their day-to-day experience actually look like?

Brian: There may be issues with some banking apps because Google has this integrity API, it's more about monopoly than it is about security.

So there are a few issues users may find with some apps not playing well with Play Integrity API. What we have is called MicroG. It's a Google Play Services emulator, and that usually works for almost any app. All the common apps that you would expect,Instagram, TikTok, all these things, they still work on iodé as you would expect.

So for the average user, unless you have problems with a banking app, and that's not that common, most banking apps continue to work. The only occasional thing I've seen is some apps that are from OEMs, like Samsung Watches, may not work. But in general, most users won't notice a big difference moving over from Android.

The difference you will notice is you don't get a lot of notifications and advertisements and just junk you get in a standard Android distribution, there's an incredible amount of bloatware and ads, especially if you're on something like Xiaomi or OPPO.

It's FOSS: Sustainability is something that sets iodé apart from a lot of other privacy-focused Android projects. You offer refurbished devices alongside new ones. Can you walk us through your thinking on that?

Brian: We're very interested in sustainability and so we encourage people to use refurbished devices when possible. Even some of the Fairphones we offer are refurbished. When you're using a very minimalistic image like iodé, it doesn't have a lot of the bloat and unnecessary software, things that you can't uninstall on a regular stock Android device, which is just running in the background and using up your CPU and using up your RAM.

The system itself is much bigger on stock because of Google Play Services and any other add-ons that OPPO or Xiaomi or any other manufacturer puts in. Because iodé is more minimal, it can run on older hardware, on hardware with lower specifications. So that's why we encourage people to use refurbished devices.

But people are asking, saying, "hey, we want new devices as well." So we have begun to add more new devices to our shop. Initially, we only wanted to work with Shift and Fairphone because they're sort of ethical manufacturers. They look at the entire supply chain, the conflict minerals that are involved in building the phones, and make sure that workers get paid well and that the materials are fairly sourced, and try to make a more sustainable model. Because obviously the best device you can always use is a device that's already been built, in terms of sustainability and ecology. So this is why we focused on refurbished.

It's FOSS: The privacy Android space isn't exactly crowded, but there are notable players like /e/OS, LineageOS, GrapheneOS. Do you see them as part of the same broader community, or more as competitors?

Brian: Honestly, I think anything that's good for any of these projects is going to help the other projects. Of all the Android hardware that's out there, there are very few devices to choose from, probably less than 1% of all Android devices can be de-Googled. There was more interest in custom ROMs back in the day when Android wasn't as useful and when people wanted to customize it. With Play Integrity and the Google Play APIs coming out that made it more difficult to use banking apps and things like that, there was a loss of interest. And also people began to see it as a security problem with unlocked bootloaders.

Now, we try to respect the locked bootloader, which makes us different from other projects like Lineage. Whenever we can relock the bootloader, we do. We have relocked bootloaders on four or five manufacturers. The rest of the manufacturers simply don't allow it. We're trying to work with these other operating systems. We have an agreement through the unified attestation to try to come up with an alternative to Google Play Integrity.

I think there's a big market for these devices. A lot of people just don't know that they can get a device that isn't spying on them, that isn't constantly sending data back to Google or to Apple. And just the fact that these devices exist and work out of the box, many people don't even know or realize this, or they think that it's going to be a huge amount of work to install it. That's why we have a shop, that's why we sell our devices. And if we can help these other projects, I think that's great.

I'd like to see more collaboration, and it would be really good if these groups didn't see each other as competitors. I think the same thing is true of Linux distributions. It would be very absurd for Fedora to be attacking SUSE Linux or Linux Mint. People often distro-hop, and I think the same will be true of privacy-based Android distributions.

It's FOSS: GrapheneOS has at times been quite critical of other projects in this space, including iodé, particularly on security grounds. How do you view that?

Brian: Graphene has been very vocal about saying that we've been attacking them. Actually, I don't think we have. This is probably the first time we'll ever say anything about Graphene. And I think the only thing I will say is that they have a great project, and that it's only available on Pixels. There are some people who want other devices. It is important to have a locked bootloader, but not all hardware manufacturers permit it. While we do lock bootloaders when possible on every system that allows bootloader re-locking, we also want to offer other hardware. And that can lead to security issues on those people's devices.

As for whether we also support end-of-life devices — we do. There's a billion people in the world who are running end-of-life devices, and those devices are vulnerable to attacks that have been found in the code base and aren't getting fixed by manufacturers. We continue to support those devices. I think people should know that if they are worried about security, they shouldn't be running end-of-life devices. But we also don't want people to throw them in the bin. They may have other uses for the device and they may not want that device to be constantly sending data back to Google. So there's a balance here.

There's also the question of the firmware. The firmware is updated by the manufacturer and a lot of those device drivers are actually closed source. We don't have access to be able to change it even if we wanted to. This is kind of one of the problems with the Android ecosystem. It's the same problem that the Linux mobile space is also facing.

We do want to support 60 devices; we don't just want to support Google Pixels. All power to them. I hope that Graphene can also make an agreement with Motorola to allow re-locking bootloaders on their devices. We've already begun to support Motorola devices. We do provide monthly security updates, and we're much more up to date than some of the other custom Android distributions out there. All of these projects are working with very limited resources, and it would be wise if we didn't do any sort of infighting. There's no custom ROM developer that has 30 developers. We're all working with very limited resources.

It's FOSS: Without tracking your users, getting a real picture of adoption must be tricky. What do you actually know about how many people are running iodé?

Brian: We do not really get any information on our user base. We don't keep any information. We just know what happens on the forum. We do know that in the last two years there's been a quarter of a million downloads. There's probably well over 10,000 people running iodé as a daily driver. It's almost doubled in the last year, we think, because there's been a great increase of users, including in the United States. We don't actually sell our devices in the US, so this is a bit of a surprise.

Basically the only thing we can see is the IP of the person downloading the file, and we log this in the sense that we just keep some statistics on which countries are downloading. We have people in the United States, in Germany, and France. And we wipe out these IPs. We just know which country it's coming from.

It's FOSS: To close, if someone is weighing iodé against other privacy-focused Android options, what's your pitch? What makes it worth choosing?

Brian: Aside from monthly security updates and the fact that you can install it on many different devices, we have over 60 devices supported now. I think one of the big things that's really going to interest people, like why to choose iodé over something like Lineage, is that you get an iodé blocker. So you get an integrated tracker blocker, and it's also not going to fill up your VPN slot. On most operating systems, if you install a DNS blocker or an ad blocker, those will usually take up your VPN slot and the VPN slot is also useful for your privacy. So you get kind of the best of both worlds.

One of the things we also focus on is we want there to be a complete suite of apps that's pre-installed, and we want all of those apps to be uninstallable. If you don't like our music player, you just uninstall it. If you don't like the default map app, we use Comaps as a default map app, you can install Google Maps if you want, you can have them both. And you still get all of the privacy advantages of Lineage, because our base is Lineage, with some more improvements. The standard Firefox browser doesn't have any connections back to Google, for instance. But if you wanted to use a different web view, you can also do that.

So you have a lot of choice. But for the average user who doesn't know anything about configuring a device besides "I want to install these four apps," it will still give you much better privacy than a standard stock Android, privacy by default, and the choice to do whatever you want to do with the phone.

I would like to thank Brian for sharing interesting insights about the iodé project. I strongly recommending checking it out, who knows perhaps your next smartphone is powered by iodé.

And if it interests you, you may checkout:

• List of Linux-based smartphons
• Other de-googled Android distros
• and choice of open source smartphone OS

I have shown this with KDE Konsole tweaks earlier and now I am here to do the same with KDE System Monitor.

Like most other parts of the Plasma desktop, the System Monitor offers plenty of customization options that are easy to overlook.

Let me show you how to transform the default KDE Plasma System Monitor into a clean and powerful system monitoring dashboard.

Understanding the System Monitor Layout

Before we start customizing the System Monitor, let's first understand how KDE Plasma System Monitor arranges sensors on the page.

Take a look at the sample layout diagram below.

This gives you a general idea of how different elements are organized inside the System Monitor.

At the top is the window layer, where everything is arranged in rows. Inside each row is a column layer, where items are arranged into columns.

Within each column, you'll find sections. These sections hold the individual widgets that display system information.

When you enter the System Monitor's edit mode, which we'll cover in the next section, you can hover over the layout to identify these different layers.

As you add or modify widgets, clicking on a particular layer only shows the options available for that layer.

For example, clicking the column layer lets you add more columns, but not sections.

Likewise, clicking the section layer lets you add additional sections, but not columns.

Keeping this layout in mind will make it much easier to customize the System Monitor without any confusion.

As mentioned earlier, KDE Plasma's default System Monitor includes a few pre-built pages that display essential system information.

If you look closely, you'll notice that each item on these pages is essentially a widget, similar to the widgets you can place on the Plasma desktop.

In other words, the System Monitor app works like a canvas where you can add widgets and configure them however you like.

Add a New Page

By default, the Plasma System Monitor includes four pages:

• Overview: A dashboard that displays multiple system statistics.
• Applications: A list of running applications and their resource usage.
• History: Live graphs for CPU, GPU, memory, and network activity.
• Processes: A list of running processes and their resource usage.

For this guide, we'll create a new page instead of modifying the existing ones.

Click the menu button in the top-left corner and select Add New Page.

In the dialog that appears, enter a name for the page and choose an icon.

Next, set Load this page to During application startup.

Finally, click Add.

The new page will now appear in the sidebar. Select it to open it.

You'll be greeted with an empty page. This is where we'll build our custom system monitoring dashboard.

Edit the Page

Now that the new page is ready, it's time to customize its contents.

Open the new page and click the Edit Page button in the top-right corner.

Since the page currently contains only one system monitor widget, click on it. This opens a sidebar where you can configure the selected widget.

Let's turn it into a horizontal bar chart that displays the load on each CPU core.

In the sidebar, change the following settings:

• Title: CPU Load Graph (or any name you prefer)
• Display Style: Horizontal Bars
• Sensors: Select the usage percentage for all CPU cores, as shown in the clip below.

Selecting Sensors

Choosing the right sensors is the most important part of building your dashboard. Most System Monitor widgets work similarly to Plasma desktop widgets and let you display different types of system information.

Depending on the widget, you'll usually find two sensor fields:

• Sensors: Displays the selected sensors as charts, graphs, or other visual elements. You can select multiple sensors.
• Text-only Sensors: Displays the selected sensors as plain text instead of charts or graphs.

Clicking either field opens a categorized list of available sensors.

For example, CPU-related sensors, such as usage percentage, per-core statistics, and CPU temperature, are available under the CPU category.

Likewise, RAM-related sensors are grouped under Memory → Physical Memory.

Here are some of the main sensor categories you'll come across:

• CPUs: CPU usage, per-core statistics, temperature, and related metrics.
• Disks: Disk usage, free space, read/write activity, and other storage information.
• GPU: GPU usage, temperature, video memory, and related statistics.
• Memory: RAM and swap usage.
• Network Devices: IP address, download and upload speed, and other network statistics.
• Operating System: Kernel version, hostname, uptime, and other system details.

The exact sensors available will depend on your hardware and system configuration.

Adding a New Row

Now that we've added the first widget, let's create a new row to add another one.

While still in edit mode, click Add Row. A new empty system monitor widget will appear below the existing one.

This time, we'll configure it as a pie chart to display used and free physical memory (RAM).

If you'd like to see the complete process, check out the short clip below.

Otherwise, configure the widget with these settings:

• Title: RAM Usage
• Display Style: Pie Chart
• Sensors: Used Physical Memory Percentage and Free Physical Memory Percentage

You can also customize the chart colors if you like, but we'll leave them at their default values for this guide.

Add a Column

If the first section looks a bit too wide, you can split the available space by adding another column.

While in edit mode, click the topmost layer of the widget. This opens the menu for that layer.

From there, select Add → Add Column. The process is shown in the clip below.

A new system monitor widget will appear to the right of the existing one. At the same time, the original widget will automatically resize to make room for the new column.

Using the same editing process as before, I configured this new widget with the Color Grid display style to show additional system information.

Change the Position of a Widget

After setting up the dashboard, I felt that the Color Grid would look better before the CPU Load graph.

To move it, I clicked the topmost part of the widget to open that layer's menu.

From there, I clicked on Move and simply dragged the widget to the left of the CPU Load graph.

That's all there is to it.

Organize Widgets with Sections

So far, we've added rows and columns and rearranged widgets.

There is one more organizational feature in the System Monitor called Sections.

Sections let you group related widgets together. For example, you can keep all hardware-related sensors in one section and system information in another.

Let's see how it works. I'll demonstrate this on a new page. By now, you should already know how to create one.

In edit mode, click the top part of the section layer, located just above the widget title.

From the layer menu, select Add → Add Section. A new widget will be added to the right of the existing one.

Both widgets now belong to the same section and share a single section header.

To separate them visually, click the section header and select Add → Add Separator.

Save Your Changes

Once you're happy with the layout, click the Save Changes button in the top bar.

This saves all your modifications and exits edit mode.

Your newly created pages and customized widgets will now be available whenever you open the System Monitor.

Start with Your Custom Page

After creating your custom dashboard, you may want the System Monitor to open with that page by default. Fortunately, that's easy to set up.

Click the menu button in the top-left corner and select Edit or Remove Pages.

In the Start with drop-down menu, select the page you created.

Click OK to save the changes.

From now on, the System Monitor will open directly to your custom page every time you launch it.

Remove a Page

If you no longer need a page, you can remove it at any time.

Click the menu button in the top-left corner and select Edit or Remove Pages.

A dialog listing all available pages will appear. Click the Delete button next to the page you want to remove.

Once you're done, click OK to save the changes.

If you don't want to delete a page completely, simply uncheck it in the list. This hides the page without removing it.

Download Community Pages

You don't have to build every dashboard from scratch. The KDE community has created many custom System Monitor pages that you can download and use.

As with any third-party content, install these pages with caution. They are community-created and may not have been tested by the KDE developers for security or stability.

To browse available pages, click the menu button in the top-left corner and select Get New Pages.

This opens the online catalog, where you can click the Install button next to any page to download and add it to your System Monitor.

Export or Import Pages

If you frequently switch between systems, exporting and importing pages can save you from recreating your custom dashboards every time.

To export a page, first open the page you want to save. Then click Menu → Export Current Page. Choose a file name and click Save.

The page will be saved with the .page extension in your chosen location.

To use it on another system, open the System Monitor and select Menu → Import Page. Then choose the exported .page file to add it to your System Monitor.

Wrapping Up

KDE Plasma's System Monitor is much more than a tool for checking CPU and memory usage. It offers a level of customization that many graphical system monitors simply don't provide.

Despite being a GUI application, it gives you plenty of flexibility to build dashboards that suit your workflow.

Have you customized the KDE Plasma System Monitor before, or do you prefer a different system monitoring tool?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Don't let that fool you into thinking that this is some half-baked browser; you still get regular security upgrades, Chromium-specific patches, and general browser updates.

Though, for most users, Brave Origin costs $59.99 for a one-time license purchase for use across Windows, Android, macOS, and iOS. However, people running a Linux distro on their computer do not have to pay a dime or sign up for an account.

Announcing Origin earlier this month, Brave explained that they:

Built Brave Origin in response to requests from users who wanted to support Brave’s industry-leading work on Web privacy and open-source adblocking, without having to manage or remove features they weren’t interested in using.

I wanted to see for myself what Brave Origin was about while also comparing it to their flagship offering. So, would you like to come along as I explore it? 🤓

This is what's on offer

The first thing Origin showed me was a choice built right into onboarding; pay for a license to support Brave, or proceed for free since I was on Linux. I went with free, and right after came the usual first-time setup screens.

First came the prompt to set it as my default browser.

Next came the request to import settings from other browsers, offering to pull bookmarks, extensions, and saved passwords over from whatever browser Brave found on the system (Firefox in my case).

After that came the reporting of crashes or freezes (aka Stability) dialog; basically some telemetry that would be sent over to Brave when Origin behaved erratically during use.

Good to see that it was disabled by default. 😄

Those were the only things asked of me during onboarding, and I started browsing right away. Brave Search is the default here, same as any other Brave install, though it can be swapped out for something else if you prefer something like DuckDuckGo or Ecosia.

I left it as is during testing, and it held up well. Searching for "YouTube" even pulled in recent coverage from high domain authority sites like the BBC and Google's own blog under the news results.

Brave Shields performed quite well too! It did its job without me needing to configure anything. While playing a video on YouTube, it caught 16 trackers and ads on that one page alone, with fingerprinting protection switched on by default.

Nothing about the page felt broken or stripped down because of it either.

I also ran a Speedometer test on BrowserBench, running Origin inside my test setup of an Ubuntu 26.04 LTS virtual machine, and it scored a 23.3 without any extensions or themes installed.

For a comparison, I ran the same test on my daily driver Vivaldi installation on Fedora Workstation 44 (non-VM setup), and the score came in at 23.2, close enough to call a tie.

While it's tempting to say this proves Origin is incredibly lightweight, Speedometer mostly measures responsiveness of Web applications, where modern virtual machines actually perform nearly as fast as real hardware.

Because the two tests ran on entirely different operating systems, the near-tie mostly shows that both browsers handle web code at the same fundamental speed. To truly prove Origin is lighter, I'd need to test them side-by-side on the exact same setup.

I didn't have the chance to do that while working on this piece. 😅

Why not Brave Browser?

Well, the regular Brave Browser already does almost everything Origin does, plus a lot more. Out of the box, it bundles in features like:

It also has an opt-out telemetry system, which, if skipped, will quietly send back a daily usage ping, crash logs, and P3A analytics in the background.

If you use even a couple of those extras, like asking Leo a quick question, the VPN, or the rewards program, stick with regular Brave, since it already does this for free on all platforms.

Brave Origin, on the other hand, removes every item on that list, either compiling them out of the build entirely or switching them off by default, depending on how it's installed.

Simply speaking, Origin is for people who never touched most of those features and want them gone rather than just tucked away in a menu. It's also for the ones who skipped Brave Browser altogether because of all that extra stuff (or bloat).

Running both side by side isn't a problem either. I ran the standalone Origin install alongside a Brave Browser install during testing, and neither one interfered with the other at any point.

Installing Brave Origin on Linux

There are two ways to get Brave Origin running on your Linux computer.

The first is installing the standalone app (we talk about this in detail a bit later), where a dedicated application is downloaded into your system, and you just launch it to use it.

The second method is to upgrade your existing Brave Browser installation by going into Settings > System and scrolling down to the "Brave Origin" entry.

Here, you only need to click the "Proceed with Origin for free on Linux" button, and the browser switches over to the Origin experience, with the option to manually re-enable any of the disabled features.

Switching back to the normal browser doesn't need a reinstallation either. You can do that by disabling the Brave Origin flag at brave://flags.

Ubuntu

If you already have Brave Browser installed via apt, then you can skip the last step in this section.

If not, then you can follow these steps to get Brave Origin. First, you have to ensure that you have cURL installed via the following command:

curl --version

If it shows an error, run:

sudo apt install curl

Next, you have to add the GPG keyring for Brave's APT repository to your system:

sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg

Then, you have to add Brave's APT repository to your system's sources list:

sudo curl -fsSLo /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.sources https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/brave-browser.sources

And refresh apt's package index:

sudo apt update

Now, it is just a matter of installing the browser using:

sudo apt install brave-origin

Fedora

On Fedora 41 or later machines with DNF5+ (non-atomic), you can run the following commands to get Brave Origin:

sudo dnf install dnf-plugins-core

sudo dnf config-manager addrepo --from-repofile=https://brave-browser-rpm-release.s3.brave.com/brave-browser.repo

sudo dnf install brave-origin

Arch Linux

For Arch Linux and derivatives, the way to get Brave Origin is via an AUR helper like yay or paru. The official instructions mention how to get it using yay:

yay -Sy brave-origin-bin

There's also a cURL command that handles installation on most Linux distros that goes like:

curl -fsS https://dl.brave.com/install.sh | FLAVOR=origin sh

You won't find the source code for Origin in a separate repository on Brave's GitHub, and that's because there isn't one. Origin is just a stripped-down build of brave-core, and doesn't have its own codebase.

And now with the PineVoice, they are stepping into the smart speaker space, going the Home Assistant way instead of bundling Alexa or Google Assistant.

What does it pack?

Built specifically as a voice satellite (basically a relay) for Home Assistant and not a general-purpose smart speaker, the PineVoice's horsepower comes from the Bouffalo Lab BL606P.

Which is a RISC-V SoC that pairs a 480 MHz 64-bit T-Head C906, a 320 MHz 32-bit T-Head E907, and a 150 MHz 32-bit T-Head E902 core.

For the memory, PINE64 includes 32 MiB of pSRAM and 788KB of SRAM, along with 16 MiB of XSPI NOR flash for storage, and wireless connectivity is handled via 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 5.2 (BT+BLE).

Wake word detection runs locally through MicroWakeWord, currently using the "Hey Jarvis" model from ESPHome instead of routing audio through a cloud server. The firmware speaks the Wyoming Protocol, which is how Home Assistant's voice interface talks to satellite devices like PineVoice.

A dual microphone array handles audio capture, a built-in speaker outputs audio with physical buttons for volume, and a hardware switch handles mic mutes. A center LED ring shows what PineVoice is doing at any given moment, and these light patterns are said to replace spoken responses from the speaker for most actions and states.

The whole thing measures 65 mm x 65 mm x 66 mm and connects over a single USB-C port that handles both power and data.

Get one

PineVoice is in stock now for $49.99 at the Pine Store's community price, with a $59.99 retail price for those buying elsewhere. It ships with a USB-A to USB-C cable in the box (as shown above), and PINE64 backs the device with a 30-day warranty.

Additionally, the source code for PineVoice's firmware can be found on Codeberg and the specification sheet on the documentation portal.

Suggested Read 📖: ArmSoM Sige6 is The First Sige Board to Ditch Rockchip

It is available for users on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Ubuntu Core 26, and if this sounds familiar, that's because Canonical has already talked about this before. The first time was when the Ubuntu 26.04 release was out, back in April, and the second instance was when Ubuntu Core 26 arrived.

We are covering this now because they have put out a dedicated writeup explaining the effort that went behind getting this ready.

Work started back in 2023, where the company ran a gap analysis (a study of what's missing) on what ARM64 needed to support live kernel patching, and the results weren't very encouraging.

The issue was that the upstream ARM64 kernel lacked a stable implementation of reliable stacktraces, a feature livepatching depends on to know when it's safe to swap code in a running kernel.

The compiler toolchain wasn't ready either, with GCC, objdump, and Kpatch all missing stable ARM64 support at the time. Work picked up through 2024 and into this year as Arm processors became more common in cloud and edge deployments.

Upstream kernel maintainers, hardware vendors, and Canonical's own engineers had to step up for closing those gaps. By late February, the ARM64 Livepatch client was already applying patches in Canonical's test environments for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Ubuntu Core 26.

Why should you Livepatch?

Livepatch comes as part of Ubuntu Pro, Canonical's subscription that bundles security patching, support, and compliance tools all while also covering the kernel by patching critical and high-severity vulnerabilities.

You don't need to pay for any of this if you just want to try it out, since Canonical offers Livepatch free for personal use on up to five machines. That should cover most home setups and small server fleets without forking over payment details.

The real advantage shows up once you are managing more than a handful of machines, because instead of scheduling downtime to patch a kernel vulnerability, Livepatch applies the fix in-memory and lets administrators decide when each machine gets the update.

It isn't a complete replacement for patching, though, since Livepatch only touches the kernel. Canonical still recommends rebooting every so often regardless, because long uptimes pile up memory leaks and other state issues that a livepatch can't clear.

None of this really matters if you are a desktop user who restarts their machine fairly regularly, since Livepatch is built for systems where a reboot means real downtime and risk of cost overruns.

But after a few weeks of daily driving it and pairing it with the excellent Dank Linux desktop suite, I have a lot to say.

What Exactly Is Niri?

Niri is not your typical tiling window manager. It describes itself as a "scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor," and that one word, scrollable changes everything.

Traditional tiling WMs like i3 or Sway divide your screen into a fixed grid. Every time you open a new window, all the existing ones get reshuffled and resized. If you have ever lost track of your editor because Firefox decided to squish it into a 200-pixel-wide column, you know exactly how jarring that can be.

Niri works differently. Windows are arranged in columns on an infinite horizontal strip that extends to the right. Opening a new window never causes existing windows to resize. You simply scroll sideways to bring other windows into view, much like flipping through pages on a tablet.

The project is inspired by PaperWM, a GNOME Shell extension that brings scrollable tiling to GNOME. The motivation behind writing a standalone compositor, rather than another GNOME extension, was to isolate workspaces per monitor properly. With Niri, each display has its own discrete set of workspaces that never bleed into one another.

And crucially, it is written entirely in Rust. Which could be a deciding point for some.

Installing Niri

Niri's availability varies across distributions. I found it packaged on Fedora, Arch Linux, and Ubuntu.

If you are on Ubuntu, you will need to install it from a custom PPA or build it from source.

On Ubuntu 25.10 and above, there is a PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:avengemedia/danklinux
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:avengemedia/dms
sudo apt install niri dms

On Fedora, installation is as simple as:

sudo dnf install niri

On Arch:

sudo pacman -Syu niri alacritty dms-shell-niri
systemctl --user add-wants niri.service dms

Once installed, you can get a first impression of Niri by simply running a command niri while staying in the current Gnome or XFCE session. Later, you can launch Niri from your display manager (login screen).

At first boot, you are greeted by a hotkey overlay, a quick cheat sheet of default keybindings that I found genuinely useful. If you prefer to skip it on subsequent launches, a single config line handles that.

To get a feel, you can start pressing Alt+T a couple of times. This will open multiple instances of your default terminal emulator, allowing you to navigate different windows by pressing Alt + arrow keys, the Alt+hl Vim binding, or using the mouse scroll button.

The Scrollable Tiling Experience

I discovered the real appeal of Niri only after I stopped trying to use it like a traditional tiling WM. This mental model shift is important.

Rather than dividing my screen into regions, I started thinking in terms of a horizontal timeline of work. On the left, my text editor. Scroll right a bit in the terminal. Further right, browser, documentation, another terminal. Each workspace is its own infinite strip, and each monitor has its own independent set of workspaces. It felt a lot like having a very wide desk that you can slide across.

In traditional tiling setups, every time I opened a new window, I would mentally recalculate where things had moved. In Niri, nothing moved. What was on the left stayed on the left. New things appeared to the right.

Window resizing is still possible. You can adjust column widths and toggle preset sizes with keybindings. Niri also supports floating windows, which can be toggled per window via a keybinding or set as default through window rules. I used floating windows for things like file manager dialogs and calculator apps that feel awkward in a tiled layout.

The workspaces are dynamic and arranged vertically (similar to GNOME's workspace model), while windows scroll horizontally within each workspace. It is a two-axis system, and I experienced it as surprisingly intuitive once the initial learning curve passed.

Configuration

Niri uses a KDL-based configuration file, typically located at ~/.config/niri/config.kdl. KDL is a document language similar in spirit to JSON or TOML but with a different syntax. I found it clean and readable, though it is not something every user will be familiar with right away.

The configuration is comprehensive. You can define:

• Keybindings for almost every action
• Window rules to set default sizes, floating state, or opacity per application
• Animations for window open/close, workspace switching, and scrolling
• Input settings for keyboard, touchpad, and mouse
• Output configuration for multi-monitor setups, including scale, mode, and position

There is dedicated documentation on configuration. It walks through the config format with clear examples. Hot-reloading the config works via niri msg action reload-config, which makes tweaking much less painful than the "restart and hope" workflow of some other WMs.

One area I noted needs third-party tools: bars, notification daemons, and app launchers are not included. Niri is strictly the compositor. You bring your own Waybar, your own mako or dunst, your own wofi or rofi-wayland.

For experienced users, that modularity is a feature. For newcomers, it can feel like a lot to wire up.

That is precisely where Dank Linux comes in.

Enter Dank Linux: Turning Niri Into a Complete Desktop

Setting up a full Niri desktop from scratch, including bar, launcher, notifications, and theming, can take hours of configuration. I discovered Dank Linux as a project that elegantly solves this problem.

Dank Linux is not a distribution. It is a modern desktop suite built primarily around Niri (with also support Hyprland, Sway, MangoWC, labwc, and Miracle WM). At its heart is DankMaterialShell (DMS), a complete desktop shell featuring dynamic theming, smooth animations, a spotlight-style launcher, a control center, a system monitor, and beautiful widgets.

Getting started is almost embarrassingly easy:

curl -fsSL https://install.danklinux.com | sh

That single command brings up an interactive installer that handles dependencies, sets up DMS, configures your chosen compositor (I selected Niri), and even lets you pick your preferred terminal from the list: Ghostty, Kitty, or Alacritty.

Step 1

At first glance, the Dank Linux installer will ask you to choose your favorite window manager. Currently, it provides you with two options, i.e., Niri and Hyprland. Of course, I'll go with Niri this time.

Step 2

Next, choose your default terminal emulator from the list.

Step 3

It will provide you with a dependency check if any additional necessary needs need to be installed. You can toggle your selection for installation with the Space key.

Step 4

Dank Linux installer will prompt for privilege escalation. I'll go with the sudo option.

Step 5

The installer will also prompt you to replace the existing Niri config.kdl file.

Step 6

Finally, after the setup is complete, you'll get to see the message saying "Your system is ready" and be provided with a couple of commands to view its logs.

Now, it's time to log out and log back into our new Dank Linux environment. You can even first test the whole setup while staying on the Gnome desktop environment.

I tried booting directly into Niri and got stuck on the black screen issue for a couple of days. The issue was that I had been testing it in a VM, and I first needed to enable 3D acceleration in the VM.

Make sure to set Listen type to None and tick the checkbox next to OpenGL in Display Spice options to enable 3D acceleration if you're using QEMU/KVM.

Also, you need to make changes to Video Virtio.

What DankMaterialShell Brings

After the installer finished, I experienced one of those rare moments where a Linux desktop setup just looks good out of the box. Here is what DMS provides:

Dynamic Material You Theming

Powered by matugenDMS extracts a colour palette directly from your wallpaper and applies Material Design 3 colour schemes across the entire desktop, including system applications. Switch your wallpaper, and the whole UI recolors itself. It supports automatic light/dark mode switching too, and I found the color transitions genuinely elegant.

Dank Dash

A sidebar dashboard that surfaces media controls, weather, a calendar, and system information at a glance. It is the kind of widget panel that looks like it belongs on a premium Chromebook, not a tiling WM.

Spotlight Launcher

An application launcher that supports filesystem search and is extensible through plugins. I discovered it launches apps noticeably faster than rofi on the same hardware.

Settings

Quick toggles for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, night light, and other system settings. It mirrors the kind of control center you see in macOS or GNOME.

System Monitor (Dank GOP)

Real-time monitoring of CPU, memory, GPU, disk, and network is presented in a clean overlay that does not require opening a separate terminal window.

Dank Search (dsearch)

Though you need to install it manually, it's a blazingly fast filesystem search tool, available both from the launcher and as a standalone CLI. When using from the launcher, you can use / to begin file search.

Dank Greeter

A polished login screen (greetd greeter) that matches the rest of the DMS aesthetic, so the visual consistency starts from the moment you boot.

In case you're still getting the default gdm3 login screen or failed to install Greeted at the installation prompt, you can do so with the following command:

dms greeter install
sudo systemctl start greetd

The DMS documentation is well organized and covers compositor-specific setup, keybind configuration through IPC, theming, plugin development, and CLI usage. Running dms setup After installation, it generates starter configs for both Niri and your chosen terminal, and dms doctor runs a diagnostic if something goes wrong.

For Niri specifically, DMS integrates tightly, including IPC-based keybind hooks and compositor blur support. The Niri community maintains a Discord server, and DankMaterialShell has its own subsection there, which I found active and helpful.

In The End...

Niri's scrollable tiling approach solves real friction in the traditional tiling workflow. It gives you a compositor that is both memory-safe (It's Rust afterall) and impressively stable.

Paired with Dank Linux's DankMaterialShell, it becomes a complete, visually coherent desktop that can genuinely compete with mainstream desktop environments on aesthetics while leaving them far behind on efficiency.

Is it for everyone? Nah! If you are new to Linux desktops, the setup complexity (even with Dank Linux's one-liner) assumes some familiarity. But if you are a tiling WM user who has ever been frustrated by windows jumping around when you open something new, Niri is worth your afternoon or night, depending on whether you are a day or night person.

If you liked horizontal scrolling but don't want to go with Niri window manager and Dank Linux together, you can consider two actively maintained projects like Scroll (a fork of Sway enabling horizontal scrolling) and PaperWM, the GNOME Shell extension I mentioned in the beginning.

Enjoy the variety in the Linux desktop offering 😸

So what do we need again? Physical and/or offline digital media players. At the same time, the technology encoding these files have enhanced exponentially, bringing the need for software that can adequately process all that information.

And so, I bring to you Astra: an open source music player that can play your high quality, high fidelity audio without breaking a sweat, and show you information about it that you had no idea you wanted.

First, the Abilities

Formats

Astra is quite versatile, supporting all the major formats natively, which include FLAC, MP3, WAV, OGG, AAC, M4A, OPUS, WMA and AIFF. FLAC, WAV and MP3 are the most common formats that high definition audio is available in. If you wish to play audio of any other format, there's a background FFmpeg net it falls back to support it, so you'll be taken care of, anyway.

Dolby Atmos

"Dolby Atmos" is probably something that you've heard of, it is technology that makes your music sound more three-dimensional, giving it a more surround feel. Astra claims to decode audio made for that even if your hardware doesn't support it. It adapts the audio settings to the output you own. I don't have Doly Atom speakers but I felt that the sound was pretty surround quality.

Playback Continuity

Offline audio players often tend to cross-fade between tracks, or buffer before the next track plays which is really annoying, but Astra deals with that by pre-buffering the next track before the one playing ends. The audio flows the way it was meant to, like how it would on a physical vinyl. A beautiful touch, if you ask me.

Parametric Equalizer

"Parametric EQ" are two words that get every producer's tail wagging. First off, there are presets already that include a flat EQ, vocal focus, bass focus, treble focus and so on. The parametric part is that you can configure the EQ manually with up to 10 bands, which is a lot of control for a music player. Usually something like that is present in a production setup. In any case, the volume of the frequencies are displayed in the background of the EQ panel to help you find your settings even more easily.

Visualizers

Moving on to the most visually engaging (or distracting, take your pick) elements of Astra, it offers three visualizers, each highlighting a different element of the music you're listening to. Each of these visualizers are configurable, with technical settings which you can choose depending on how much your system can handle before it becomes too much to handle.

Spectrum Analyzer

The spectrum analyzer shows the relative volume of the frequencies in the audible range that the song has, which go from 20 Hz to 20000 Hz. In other words, it shows you how loud the bass is on the left of the spectrum, and how loud the treble is on the right. It changes with the audio in real time, being extremely helpful for finding problematic frequencies and creating an equalizer profile.

Oscilloscope

As we know, sound is all made of waves. These waves can be visually depicted as a simple graph, denoting the frequencies, wavelengths and amplitudes. In pure physics terms, all sounds can be made of adding different sorts of sine waves, one of which looks like this:

If you add enough of them in the right way, you can even make a square wave, which looks like this:

So all in all, every sound can be seen visually as this sort of wave, which is made by "superimposing" many sine waves together, and the oscilloscope shows the wave that you're hearing when you play it. As a physics nerd, this is really fun. As a producer, this is really helpful for spotting clipping or distortion and monitoring dynamics.

Vectorscope

The vectorscope shows stereo correlation, meaning it shows how well spread out the audio is. A straight diagonal line means a mono signal, but a diagonal blob means a standard stereo mix. If it is wider or something very abstract, or vivid patterns, it means there are stereo, reverb or phase effects. This helps gauge how well spread out the audio is.

Interface

The interface is quite remnant of an older style that was trying to be futuristic, think GOM Player or some VLC skins. It comes with 5 themes inbuilt, which doesn't change any of the elements, just the color schemes. A little tile on the home page shows a new text every time you start the app, which are sometimes genuinely hilarious, that adds a lot of personality to it.

The home, the library, the equalizer, the playlists are all very easily accessible. All the music you add are automatically categorized by album and artist. The favorites and history of the playback are automatically tracked. The bar on the bottom shows the usual name of the track, the seek, volume, and the unusual EQ curve and the technical data such as the bitrate, format and the sampling frequency. It even shows the resources being consumed on top of the window.

The interface is a little too low-contrast on the dark mode, however. Combined with the small font, there comes a need for some squinting to see what is where on the window.

Playback

The fullscreen view of the playback is rather pleasing with a clean frequency graphed seek, the information of the track and the lyrics (if enabled). The accent colors of the background are picked up from the album art, making it even more immersive.

Alternatively, or rather oppositely, there's also a mini player that you can use to keep control of your music playback while working on something else.

Integrations

Astra provides the integration of several services to make your life even easier, some of which are:

Last.fm

You can connect your Last.fm account on Astra, where it "scrobbles" (which is Last.fm lingo for tracks and records) your listening history, with the ability to keep up with it right within the app.

Lyrics

The most important thing to me personally, Astra can show you embedded lyrics within a song, which, if missing, will be retrieved from LRCLIB. Synced lyrics are available for most of the fairly known songs, but the interface of the scroll of the lyrics (in the non-fullscreen mode), unlike the rest of the interface of Astra is a little lackluster. But you know, if it ain't broke and all that.

Discord

You can sync your Discord Rich Presence, showing what you're listening to on your Discord profile along with the cover art.

Local API

You can even play media from any local servers you might have through the local API option, including Jellyfin and Navidrome media systems.

Get Astra

Astra is available as an AppImage (don't worry about it being an on Electron framework because that's what Astra is built on anyway, no matter how you install it) for the easiest installation method. Other than that, there is also a .deb package available.

Cuing the Outro

Astra delivers very well on every single thing it claims. The playback is flawless, the interface is gorgeous, the visualizers are spot on accurate and very helpful and all the configurations available exceed the possibilities even more.

It is a little heavy on the resources with everything going on (Claude, make no mistake and optimize the code), but won't break your system (or so do I hope).

This is when I find the good old music players available for Linux a better fit.

If you're looking for a cutting-edge, high-performing music player, this might just be the one that will satisfy your needs. Try it out and let yourself drown in the music. Cheers!

Of course, recent hikes across its lineup have made things harder for tinkerers, but that's the price they have to pay for access to a well-established ecosystem.

That ecosystem covers a lot of ground too. Between the standard boards, the Zero line, and the Compute Modules meant to sit inside custom carrier boards, there is a Pi suited for nearly every kind of project.

Makers and small companies have leaned on this range to build all sorts of things, and some of the results barely look like the underlying device anymore.

With this list, we will be taking a look at a few handhelds that will make you wonder what more a Raspberry Pi can do.

The List

1. Hackberry Pi CM5

The Hackberry Pi CM5 is an open source handheld built by Zitao, an engineering student at the Technical University of Dresden in Germany.

At the front sits a 4-inch 720x720 touchscreen, paired with a repurposed BlackBerry keyboard (Q10, Q20, or 9900 layouts), and the keys can be remapped through Vial if the default mapping does not suit you.

Powering it is a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5, running on a quad-core Cortex-A76 chip clocked at 2.4GHz, and a 5000mAh battery keeps it running for roughly five hours on standby or three to four hours of active use.

There are two ways to get one. Elecrow sells a barebones kit for $158 to $168, but you will need to source your own Compute Module 5 and put it together yourself. If you want it ready to use, Carbon Computers sells a fully assembled version starting at $449, with prices climbing to $1,049 for higher RAM and storage.

2. PocketTerm 35

You will notice further on that most handhelds on this list trade the standard Raspberry Pi board for a Compute Module to save space. The PocketTerm35 is Waveshare's pocketable Linux terminal, built around a full Raspberry Pi 4B or Pi 5.

It features a durable 3.5-inch 640x480 display and a 67-key silicone keyboard that can be used for code entry, command execution, and general editing. An RP2040 chip handles input, screen brightness, and volume control.

The device itself measures 93.5 x 168.5 x 37mm, with an aluminum faceplate on the front and a plastic cover on the back.

Prices on the Waveshare store start at $87.99 and go up to $181.99. The cheap end is the bare accessory kit, useful if you already have a spare Pi board to drop in. The higher end gets you a fully loaded setup with a Pi 4B or Pi 5, a 64GB card, and a 5000mAh battery.

3. Pi Slate

The Pi Slate is Carbon Computers' take on a portable cybersecurity workstation, built around a Raspberry Pi 5 in a shell slim enough for daily carry. Two integrated antenna mounts sit at the top corners, so GPS, LoRa, or SDR radio modules can be bolted on without modifying the case.

The 5-inch touchscreen runs at 1920x720, and below it sits an RGB backlit keyboard with a gyroscopic cursor built in for pointer control. You get a 10,000 mAH battery as well, which is rated for 3 to 5 hours of use.

Carbon Computers sells the Pi Slate fully assembled, starting at $449 for the 2GB/32GB Pi 5 configuration, climbing to $749 for the 16GB/128GB version with more storage. A barebones kit without the Pi 5 goes for $299, and a separate radio kit with GPS, LoRa, and SDR support costs $149.

4. uConsole

The uConsole does not lock you into one chip. ClockworkPi sells four interchangeable core modules for the same shell, and which one makes sense depends entirely on what you want to do with the thing.

The Raspberry Pi CM4 core is the ideal choice for daily use, coding, emulators, and anything that benefits from Raspberry Pi's software support. Complementing that, you get a 5-inch display running at 1280x720, with a 74-key backlit keyboard, a trackball that doubles as a mouse, and a D-pad with four buttons wired in for emulator controls.

An optional 4G LTE module adds cellular data, and the whole thing runs on replaceable 18650 Li-Ion batteries rather than a sealed battery pack. Plus, schematics and other design-related files can be found on GitHub.

5. Cybert.

Cybert. is yet another Carbon Computers offering; this one traces back to a concept called the MC01. Initially, it was built around the Raspberry Pi CM4, but later versions added support for the CM5 along with a custom QMK-compatible keyboard and a BlackBerry touch sensor for a cursor.

The handheld is now at v3.2, powered by a CM5, offering two additional USB 3.0 ports along with a standard M.2 SATA slot for adding things like an SSD, AI accelerator, LoRa, or a 4G LTE module.

For the display, it features a 4-inch 720x720 touchscreen and has wide Linux distro support, ranging from Raspberry Pi OS, Kali Linux, to other popular distros.

It is sold as a bare PCB and case, not a finished device, priced at $199 when in stock. You will need to source your own Compute Module, the display, a LiPo battery, and even a BlackBerry 9900 touch sensor separately to finish the build.

6. Strike

This handheld has a built-in SX1262 LoRa radio, letting you join Meshtastic mesh networks and talk to ATAK, the tactical mapping software used by military and first responder teams.

None of the other handhelds on this list have a radio like this built-in.

A Compute Module 4 sits inside, powering it all, with a 4.3-inch touchscreen and a QWERTY keyboard for tackling daily use, and GPIO, I2C, and SPI headers for anything else you want to wire up.

There are two editions on offer; the Base Edition ships without an SD card, and you have to manually install an operating system like Raspberry Pi OS, RetroPie, or emteria.OS, while the Ready Edition comes preloaded with Raspberry Pi OS and Meshtastic already configured.

At the time of writing, SpecFive only listed the Ready Edition of Strike for $434.99, though every color is currently sold out.

Suggested Read 📖: 11 Interesting ESP32 Microcontroller Projects

I find it surprising that many people use it just for browsing websites but not utilizing many other features it offers. Trust me, you will be surprised by just how much power and convenience is packed into this browser beyond simple web surfing.

From clever productivity hacks to handy built-in tools, it is packed with features that can help enhance your online experience. You don't need to visit third-party websites for several day-to-day tasks.

Let me share these "lesser known" (if I may call that) features of my favorite open source browser.

Tab Split View

For a long time, the lack of a native split-screen viewing mode was a notable gap in Firefox's feature set. However, modern ultrawide monitor users can now view two tabs simultaneously side-by-side without needing to arrange separate OS windows.

While the feature is currently limited to splitting two tabs at once, rather than tiling multiple layouts, the implementation is clean and works exactly as intended.

To use it, simply hold CTRL key and click on the two tab titles you want to view together. Right-click either of the selected tabs, and choose Open in Split View from the context menu.

Once active, you can easily swap their positions or resize the dividing line to allocate more screen real estate to a specific page.

PDF Viewer and Editor

Firefox offers more than just viewing PDF files. It allows annotating PDF documents with tools such as adding highlights, hand-drawings and texts. The browser also enables signing PDF documents and inserting images within PDF files.

One of its most interesting features is merging multiple PDF documents directly within the application. To do this, navigate to the Pages view, click on the Plus button to select additional PDF files.

Ensure that the last page of the current document is selected for appending. Once all PDFs are added, save the file to create a merged PDF without relying on external websites.

This capability makes Firefox an attractive option for managing and editing PDF documents, as it provides a convenient and accessible way to annotate, sign, and merge files.

I mostly use Firefox as the PDF viewer, because it can highlight and comment PDFs, that is accessible everywhere, like inside my Obsidian PDF viewer.

Built-in Color Picker

Web developers and designers frequently spot colors they want to capture while browsing. Having a color picker built directly into the browser eliminates the need for third-party extensions.

Firefox includes a native Eyedropper tool that allows you to easily pick colors from any webpage. To access it, open the main Firefox application menu, navigate to More Tools, and select Eyedropper.

Once activated, your cursor transforms into a magnified circle with a precision pointer at the center, making it easy to isolate specific pixels. Simply hover over the exact color you want to capture and left-click. Firefox will instantly copy the corresponding hexadecimal color code directly to your clipboard.

If you find yourself using this tool frequently and want to bypass the menus, you can add the Developer item directly to your main Toolbar.

This gives you one-click access to the Eyedropper whenever you need it.

Screenshot Tool

Firefox features a powerful, built-in screenshot tool that removes any need for separate screen-capture extensions or external utilities. To activate it, simply right-click on an empty space within any webpage and select Take Screenshot.

One of the tool's best feature is its ability to intelligently align to individual DOM elements on a page. For instance, if you hover your cursor over an image, a specific text block, or a column, the tool automatically snaps its bounding box to perfectly capture that exact element.

Click on the Download button to save that selection as a PNG file.

Beyond element snapping, the tool offers great flexibility:

• Click and Drag to manually select a specific region of the page.
• Save Visible button to capture exactly what is currently shown on your screen.
• Save Full Page is the standout capability. It captures the entire webpage from top to bottom, even the portions buried far below the fold.

I absolutely loved the full website screenshot, which allow us to capture everything all the way to the very bottom of the page. This is best used when you enable Firefox's reading mode.

Whenever I find an important article, I usually take a full screenshot in reading mode and then annotate the important parts later! It is such a cool feature.

Text and Websites Translation

Newer versions of Firefox have the capability to translate website contents to your favorite language. While translations cannot always be top notch, as far as I read, those are decent and get the job done well enough.

It provides a considerable amount of languages to translate to and from, making it easy to parse international sites.

Also, when you go to Menu -> More Tools -> Translate, you can translate specific words or sentences of your choice to other languages.

This is incredibly handy when you don't need the whole page converted but just want to figure out a specific phrase.

Reading Mode

Firefox has a reading mode, which removes most of the distracting components and gives you a nice readable text. It really cleans up the page, stripping out messy blocks and sidebars so you can just focus on the content.

It takes this even further, too! You can adjust the font, the width of the text, and line spacing by using the Text and Layout settings right inside the reading mode.

Also, you can set a different reading theme like Sepia, Dark, or Light depending on your environment and what's easiest on your eyes.

There is a read it aloud feature as well, which is useful when you want to listen to the article while multitasking.

When you are on articles that can be read in a reader mode, a reader mode button appears on the address bar adjacent to the URL of the article.

Click on it to enter the reading mode, and simply click on it again when you want to exit.

AI Summaries

AI summaries are helpful when you are in a hurry and want to know what an article is all about without reading the entire piece word for word.

Firefox now includes an AI button that allows you to quickly summarize contents and get AI help right inside your browsing workflow. A major advantage here is flexibility.

It lets you choose from and connect to multiple different AI service providers rather than locking you into a single model.

You can sign into your existing accounts with these chat services, which means you can seamlessly access your chat history and previous conversations while you work.

Link Previews

Firefox uses small local models to create link previews and keypoints of links.

You can enable this feature in the General Settings under the Browser settings section. Once you toggle it on, it will take a few seconds for the initial setup.

You will also see a noticeable increase in memory usage when it's running, which happens because a small model is executing entirely locally on your machine rather than sending your data to a cloud server.

Once it is up and running, you can simply left-click and hold on any link for a second to pull up a quick preview of the destination page along with its core keypoints.

If you want to tweak how these features behave, there is now a dedicated settings section specifically for AI-related configurations inside the main Firefox Settings menu.

Tab Group and AI

Firefox offers a powerful tab grouping feature to help you manage numerous open tabs efficiently.

You can manually create tab groups, for instance, by gathering all "It's FOSS" links into an "It's FOSS" group and assigning it a distinct color.

Even more interesting is the AI-powered tab grouping. If you have many tabs open and want to organize them quickly, Firefox's AI can assist with the heavy lifting.

To use this feature, right-click on any tab and select the "Add tab to a new group" option. Choose "Suggest more of my tabs".

Wait for the AI to analyze your open tabs. If related tabs are found, the AI will present a selectable list. You can then toggle which tabs to include in the group, provide a name for the group, and click "Done" to finalize it.

Picture in Picture Mode

Firefox makes it super easy to watch videos without getting distracted. Picture-in Picture (PiP) mode lets you shrink your video down to a little window that floats on top of everything else.

To turn it on, head to the Firefox settings and look in the "General" section under "Browser". You'll find an option to enable PiP mode there.

You can also choose to automatically switch videos to PiP when you switch tabs. This is handy if you want to keep a video playing while you work on something else.

My personal favorite way to use PiP is during online courses; it keeps the video right there in my view while I code alongside searching documentation in tabs.

Vertical Sidebar

Firefox gives you the option to switch up your tab layout with a handy vertical sidebar.

To turn it on, just right-click anywhere on the tab bar and choose "Turn on vertical tabs".

Then, click the settings icon at the bottom of the sidebar. From there, you can customize it to expand and collapse when you hover your mouse over it.

I personally find this layout helps me keep track of a lot more tabs without feeling cramped. Plus, it looks pretty cool!

Quick Forget

To quickly erase browsing history of a short period, Firefox has a quick solution, Forget!

You can access this feature by clicking on the Forget toolbar item in your browser's toolbar. You have to add it first to the toolbar by customizing the toolbar.

From there, you have three options to choose from:

• Forget the last 5 minutes: Removes your browsing activity from the past 5 minutes.
• Forget the last 2 hours: Removes your browsing activity from the past 2 hours.
• Forget the last 24 hours: Removes your browsing activity from the past 24 hours.

Keep in mind that once you clear your history, it cannot be undone, and you will be logged out where ever you signed in.

Browsing History Dashboard

The Firefox View dashboard is like a personal history book for your browsing. It gives you more than just a simple list; it lets you see all your recent activity in detail!

Here's what you can do with it:

• Get a clear view of every site you visited, including tabs from other devices.
• Organize your history based on which sites you visit most often or those that are important to you.
• Easily remove specific browsing history if you need to clean up your online activity.

These are some of the cool features I use frequently, that make Firefox View a great way to keep your browsing organized and in control!

Multiple Profiles

Firefox natively supports using multiple profiles, which makes it incredibly easy to manage your home and work browsing in completely separate environments.

Profiles can be created by going to the main Menu and selecting Profiles -> New Profile. From there, you just give the profile a name, select a distinct color theme if you want to visually distinguish it, and click on Done Editing.

Creating multiple profiles and switching between them is incredibly seamless with Firefox, allowing you to keep your cookies, history, and extensions completely isolated between your different workflows.

Task Manager

With the built-in task manager, you can easily view exactly which tab is consuming your memory, CPU, and other system resources. Being able to sort sites according to these metrics is incredibly useful.

Especially when you are running heavy AI tabs and video streams together and need to track down what's lagging your system.

To pull up the task manager instantly, you can use the keyboard shortcut Shift + Esc. It is also available via the main application menu if you prefer using your mouse.

Copy Link to Highlight

A feature that was absent for a long time, Firefox now supports link to highlights!

You can select a part of the text on a webpage, right-click on the selection, and select Copy Link to Highlight.

When you share this link with others, it will take them directly to that exact spot on the page and they can see the highlighted text instantly in the shared article!

It's incredibly convenient for pointing people straight to the most relevant information without making them scroll through a massive page.

Keyboard Based Controls

Did you know that there's more to the Firefox address bar than meets the eye? By pressing a few key combinations, you can access a set of powerful actions that can help you customize your browsing experience.

To get started, press CTRL+L to focus on the address bar. Next, enter > and press a space. You'll see that an Actions criteria is enabled.

This feature offers several useful actions, including Open a private window, Restart Firefox, etc.

To access these actions, simply use the keys as shown in the table below:

Built-in Game

Are you looking for a fun way to pass the time while waiting for your internet connection to kick in? You're not alone! Many browsers have hidden games that can keep you entertained.

Google Chrome has its popular Dino game, and Microsoft Edge has Surf. But what about Firefox?

The answer is yes, Firefox does have a game mode! But it's not as obvious as the others. To find it, follow these steps:

Go to Menu -> More Tools -> Customize Toolbar. Drag all the items in the bottom of the toolbar to the overflow section. What remains will be the Flexible spacer.

And that's when the magic happens! Click on the small game button in the bottom. The interface transforms into a ball game, where you can bounce the ball and have fun.

It may not be as flashy as some other games, but it's a cool way to pass the time while waiting for your internet connection to stabilize.

Experimental Settings

Now, let's see some experimental settings. Be cautious when using these, as these are either in experimental stage or cause unexpected issues.

Get a rounder corner

Firefox has an experimental feature that allows you to round off the corners of your browser, giving it a more cohesive look across all devices and operating systems, like GNOME desktop.

However, be cautious when using this feature, as it may cause unexpected issues or affect other parts of your system. To enable it, follow these steps:

Open Firefox and type about:config in the address bar. Press Enter to access the experimental settings page. You'll be warned that changing these settings can have serious implications. So proceed with caution!

In the search bar, enter rounded and find the setting called widget.gtk.rounded-bottom-corners.enabled. Toggle its value to true to enable rounded corners.

Now, go to Menu -> More Tools -> Customize Toolbar and disable the titlebar, as shown below.

After making this change, close and restart Firefox.

Customize Keyboard Shortcuts

Want to take control of your browsing experience with custom keyboard shortcuts? Firefox allows you to do just that!

To get started, open Firefox and type about:keyboard in the address bar. This will bring up the experimental page for keyboard shortcut settings.

From here, you can alter key combinations for actions, remove existing keybindings and make any other changes you like.

Firefox Labs

Want to get a sneak peek at some cutting-edge features before they're widely released? Firefox has a section called "Firefox Labs" right in the settings menu.

This is where you can experiment with experimental features that are still under development. Don't worry, your usage data isn't automatically shared just for trying
these out. It only gets sent if you have technical and interaction data turned on in Privacy settings.

I'm currently running Firefox 151, and there are a few cool new features I can try.

Tab Notes seems really handy, but the List and Timer features are also pretty neat. They remind me of the homepage widgets in Vivaldi.

Wrapping Up

As you can see, Firefox is packed with a surprising number of features that go far beyond basic browsing, making your daily online tasks smoother and more efficient.

You don't need to go to Google Translate and copy paste text there. Simple right click works. Need quick screenshot, that' there. PDF reading and editing capabilities are additional blessings.

I can go on and on but I have to stop somewhere. So I stop here and I also let you explore lesser known features of DuckDuckGo search engine. I have a feeling that if you liked this article, you'll like that one too.

And don't forget to share your favorite Firefox feature in the comments below.