FOSS Weekly #26.26: Free Origin Access, Niri Tiling, Firefox Tricks, Myna in Ubuntu and More Linux Stuff
Brave browser released Origin, a striped down, non-crypto version of the Brave browser. It's basically Brave browser without the bloat but still with ad-block and anti-tracking.
Here's the good thing which you will lke a s Linux user. This Brave Origin costs $6o for Windows and macOS users, but it is free for Linux users. Not everyday we Linux users get such privilege.
Epic Games open-sourced Lore at State of Unreal 2026, a Git alternative built specifically for projects that mix code with huge binary files, the kind of thing Git LFS handles awkwardly.
NVK, the open source Vulkan driver for NVIDIA cards, can now run DLSS in games. The catch is it's experimental and needs a special flag to turn on, so don't expect it to just work out of the box yet. Full stable support lands with Mesa 26.2 in August.
Remember Canonical's "implicit/explicit AI" framework from a few months ago? Myna is the implicit half taking shape as a local speech-to-text dictation tool that's expected to land in Ubuntu 26.10.
ArmSoM's Sige series has always shipped on Rockchip silicon, until now. The Sige6 swaps in an Allwinner A733 instead, an octa-core chip with a 3 TOPS NPU, LPDDR5 RAM up to 16GB, and an M.2 slot for NVMe storage.
Fruit Ninja's developers are making a dungeon crawler, and the demo already runs on Linux through Proton without a hitch.
And if you recently paid for a lifetime membership and your Plus membership is not enabled yet, please reach out to me (support@itsfoss.com) and share the transaction details. I have sent follow up emails to a few people whose email address doesn't match in the membership database and yet to hear back from them. I don't want any lifetime members left behind.
🧠 What We’re Thinking About
If you're running ARM64 servers on Ubuntu, you can finally patch kernel vulnerabilities without scheduling a reboot, something AMD64 has had for years.
🧮 Linux Tips, Tutorials, and Learnings
Most people use Firefox for browsing and nothing else, which is a shame given how much is actually packed in. There are many features that you might've missed, like split-screen tabs, a PDF editor with merge support, the built-in eyedropper tool, and full-page screenshots.
If you've ever wondered how LVM actually works under the hood rather than just clicking through an installer's defaults, we can walk you through it command by command.
Niri rearranges nothing when you open a new window; it just adds another column to an endless horizontal strip, and you scroll over to it. After a few weeks of daily use, Bhuwan admits the real appeal only showed up once they stopped trying to use it like a normal tiling WM.
ANY.RUN just released its Q1 2026 Cyber Risk report based on the data from 2M malware & phishing investigations. It gives exclusive insight intohow the threat landscape is shifting and what it means for SOC and MSSP teams.
Inside the report:
- +14.7% increase in credential theft, showing sustained attacker focus on identity compromise
- +98.3% growth in loader-based attacks, driving initial access at scale
- +58.4% rise in LOLBAS attacks leveraging JavaScript for low-noise execution
Help your security team detect earlier, prioritize faster, and reduce incident impact.
👷 AI, Homelab and Hardware Corner
I briefly tested Terramaster F4-425 Pro NAS. The device is good but there are some rough edges to handle on the software side.
Raspberry Pi-powered handhelds are cropping up regularly now. Our list covers six such options that you could look into.
PINE64's latest offering is PineVoice, a $49.99 smart speaker that skips Alexa and Google Assistant entirely in favor of being a dedicated Home Assistant voice satellite.
✨ Apps and Projects Highlights
Audiophiles, this one's for you. Astra is a music player that lets you play locally stored music files with many controls to fine-tune playback.
📽️ Videos for You
There's a simple command that can save you some considerable space on your Linux server.
💡 Quick Handy Tip
In KDE Plasma System Settings, go to Window Management -> Virtual Desktops. Here, enable the "Switch desktops independently for each screen" option to easily switch between the different virtual desktops on multiple monitors.
This was introduced with the recent Plasma 6.7 release and should be very convenient for people who like to multi-task.
🎋 Fun in the FOSSverse
Can you match terminal shortcuts with their actions?
Selective outrage, I guess, right Brave Linux users 😉
🗓️ Tech Trivia: On June 18, 1997, the DESCHALL Project cracked the 56-bit Data Encryption Standard. Managed by a modest i486 server, online volunteers pooled their idle computer power to brute-force the key in 96 days, proving DES was obsolete.
🧑🤝🧑 From the Community: A developer has posted on our forum showing off their new GNOME shell extension called Snap Text for OCR.
Source: It's FOSS