Open Source

In this second part of the series, we take a closer look at Asus gaming laptops. The open-source alternative this time is called G-Helper. While Asus Armoury Crate weighs in at a staggering 4 GB, G-Helper comes in at a ridiculous 5 MB — yet remains extremely powerful.

Privacy-focused hardware company Brax returns with an open-source 2-in-1 tablet offering a user-replaceable battery, M.2 expansion, and support for a range of operating systems.

Control center apps from major laptop manufacturers such as Asus Armoury Crate or Lenovo Vantage have grown into bloated, resource-hungry packages packed with ads and tracking. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Slim open-source tools, often just a few megabytes in size, can offer a very similar feature set—without the bloatware. In this new article series, we take a close look at the best open-source alternatives for gaming laptops and explain who actually benefits from switching.

Keychron has launched an updated Q Ultra mechanical keyboard series globally, bringing new ultra-efficient ZMK firmware that brings with it in-depth customisation and up to 660 hours of battery life. The new keyboards also launch with new switches and in various layouts, including the full-size Q6 Ultra and the gaming-optimised Q1 Ultra. The affordable Z Ultra series brings the same features in a plastic chassis at half the price.

Following the nearly half-million dollar crowdfunding success of the Mini-KVM, Openterface is back with the KVM-GO, a tiny KVM that reduces cable clutter by including all the hardware in the display connector.

CheckMag With the growing number of users jumping from Windows to Linux, I decided to fully take the plunge and dive deep into the Open Source ocean. A few months and several headaches later, it has proved to be the best computer-related decision I've made in over a decade (and perhaps in my entire life).

The Nuclear music player project has released an early build of the next iteration of its all-in-one music sourcing and playing program. While still in its early stages, this update is set to address many of the shortcomings of the popular yet temperamental program.

Gnome has officially banned the use of AI-generated code in its shell extensions, but the justification is more pragmatic than it is ideological. As of the announcement, any code submitted for consideration in the Gnome Extensions Library that has obvious evidence of AI or sloppy, inconsistent code will be rejected during the code review process.

I find the idea of self-hosting fascinating. I read about it regularly, and as someone who reviews PC hardware, I’m practically surrounded by ideal conditions—and gear—to finally get started. I’ve even tested devices that would be perfect for it. Yet despite thinking about it constantly, I still haven’t fully committed. Why?

Need to create a Windows rescue boot stick? Or a USB for Linux Mint, another for Kali Linux, or Tails? Finding the right boot sticks used to be a hassle for me—but now I can handle Windows, Linux, and more with a single USB stick, thanks to Ventoy.

An enterprising YouTuber has built a fully wireless split ergonomic mechanical keyboard with support for a track point, dual customisable knobs, and a focus on portability. The keyboard uses ZMK firmware, which is known for its hyper-efficient operation, and the design, along with build instructions, will be available on GitHub soon as an open-source project.

As a laptop reviewer, I take countless screenshots during every test—benchmark results, control-center settings, and more. I need a tool that’s lightweight, captures screenshots quickly, and automatically saves them to a predefined folder in the format I want so I don’t have to convert anything afterward. This tool checks all those boxes and runs on every PC I use.

Copying text from a Word document is easy. But how many times have I watched a YouTube video and wished for a tool that could extract the text shown on screen? Well, the open source app Text Grab can do exactly that — and more.

Square CEO and Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey is bankrolling DiVine, and its founders say AI-generated clips won’t fly thanks to multiple checks integrated into the system to prevent uploads.

DIY engineer and YouTuber CNC Dan has made a major overhaul of a basic VR headset he built a while ago, adding 6 DoF and wireless controllers. While not perfect, the result is impressive.

APT is set to gain Rust code in 2026 as Debian modernises its package manager. The coding language's presence in open-source projects keep growing.

Valve's October 2025 Steam survey shows Linux and SteamOS surpassing three percent of users, highlighting growing hardware optimisation across open-source platforms.

A lesser-known alternative Web browser, SeaMonkey received a version bump on October 31, 2025 that sees it lose a major strength while unfortunately failing to address SeaMonkey's biggest shortcoming, that is, the inability to render script-heavy websites such as Reddit or Stuff properly.

PayPal and OpenAI have reached a deal giving OpenAI's "Instant Checkout" feature the power of PayPal payments. Users will now be able to pay for goods and services directly through a ChatGPT session.

CheckMag If you are looking to step away from subscription services, reduce reliance on big tech, or simply have fun while learning, self-hosting is a great way to make your media collections available across all of your devices while keeping data under your control. Here are the best containers for managing almost every type of media.

An open-source tool called Grafana allows Garmin smartwatches users to evaluate and display their own data more or less independently of the manufacturer. It also offers more configuration options that may provide deeper insights.

DIY YouTuber CNCDan has uploaded a video of his latest project — a VR headset, which, besides the 3D-printed parts, cost him about $150. He also made all the resources needed for the project open source.

YouTuber Brady Y. Lin, who could be called a serial inventor, has uploaded a video of his latest invention — Stradex1. Stradex1 is a violin-inspired musical instrument, but more compact and possibly more intuitive. He also made the project open-source.

Facepunch refines Source 2–based creation platform with improved workflow, physics stability and rendering performance

DeepSeek has released DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp, an experimental AI LLM designed to reduce compute costs while maintaining good performance when compared to its prior version, DeepSeek-V3.1-Terminus. The open-source model free to download and use, while the public API costs over 50% less.

Intel will no longer be blindly contributing to the open-source software ecosystem, with recent comments from the company indicating that it will be using open-source as an "advantage to Intel." Intel was previously known for contributing substantial development efforts to open-source projects and releasing many of its AI acceleration tools and programs under open-source licences.

As previously announced, Ubuntu 25.10 became available earlier today as the final step before the next LTS release, which is scheduled for 2026. In addition to the 6.17 kernel and GNOME 49, this release also comes with the Ptyxis terminal, the Loupe image viewer, improved Bluetooth audio handling, and more.

Blender 5.0 Beta has officially been released in preparation for the release candidate that is scheduled to land later this year. Blender 5.0 is slated to add a number of UI tweaks for readability and tweak the backend codebase to add new feature support and improve performance.

Bambu Lab and Presq have partnered to release a line of open-sourced, customisable footwear designs that will allow anyone to bring their concepts to reality using just a 3D printer. The lineup of 3D designs, which feature TPE and PLA based construction, will be available on Bambu's MakerWorld platform.

The openSUSE Project team is back with openSUSE Leap 16.0, a major update that sports a fresh software stack, a new installer, and simplified migration options. Additionally, it introduces "an unmatched maintenance- and security-support cycle," which promises annual minor releases until 2031, when Leap 16.6 is set to arrive.

The first Ubuntu Touch release based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is now available as version 24.04-1.0. The list of supported devices includes the Fairphone 3, Asus ZenFone Max Pro M1, Fairphone 4 and 5, Google Pixel 3a and 3a XL, Sony Xperia X, Xiaomi Redmi Note 9, and a few others.

In addition to moving from Chromium OS up to r138 (previously r132), FydeOS 21.0 comes with enhanced search filtering in the launcher app, a new rich content insert feature, improved screenshots, isolated web apps in kiosk mode, as well as multiple tweaks and fixes.

The Open Printer features a modular and highly repairable design, and while it uses the popular HP 63 cartridges, it lacks DRM blocks that lock out third-party cartridges. It also allows printing on paper rolls, so you can either use the in-built cutter to make A4 sheets, or print longer items like banners. The Open Printer will be launched via a crowdfunding campaign soon.

Apollo Computer will release a second batch of Apollo A6000 Amiga-compatible systems on October 13. An additional twenty units will be sold at the Amiga 40 event in Germany. The all-in-one computer is modeled after the original Amiga A600.

Offensive Security's Debian-based distro is back, dropping ARMel support while offering a refreshed Nexmon wireless firmware package. Kali Linux 2025.3 also comes with 10 new tools, updated HashiCorp Packer and Vagrant VM apps, as well as multiple minor tweaks and fixes.

Based on Debian Trixie and targeting system integrators, SysLinuxOS 13 Mate includes a rich set of tools, such as Angry IP scanner, Etherscape, Putty, Zenmap, firewalk, Teams for Linux, Firefox, Chrome, and Edge, as well as docker-compose, amazon-ec2-net-utils, Balena Etcher, and much more. The kernel used is 6.16.8-1-liquorix-amd64.

Based on Debian 13 and designed primarily for single-board computers such as the Raspberry Pi family, DietPi 9.17 comes with improved backups, a Roon Server early access toggle, as well as multiple minor bug fixes and tweaks. Alongside the aforementioned SBC lineup, it also works with Odroid, PINE64, Radxa, Allo, NanoPi, and more.

Ubuntu 25.10 "Questing Quokka" is one step closer to the masses thanks to a new beta release. Targeting multiple platforms and available in quite a few versions, as usual, this release includes the 6.17 Linux kernel and most features that will come with the final release, expected to arrive on October 9.

A new open-source tool is offering real-time monitoring of multiple AI models, including OpenAI GPT-5, Claude Opus 4, and Gemini 2.5 Pro. The first of its kind, it can detect "when AI companies reduce model capability to save costs." The benchmarks can run against the users' own OpenAI, xAI, Anthropic, or Google API keys as well.

Already available in Cinnamon, LXQt, MATE, and Xfce versions, Mauna Linux gets a GNOME edition as well. Labeled 25, the latest refresh of this Debian-based distro comes with the 6.12 LTS kernel, OnlyOffice 9.0.4, Firefox 142.0.1, and a generous set of firmware updates, as well as many under-the-hood tweaks and fixes.

A minimal and swift, yet gaming-ready distro, MocaccinoOS 25.09 comes with an upgraded kernel (6.12.45 LTS), Mesa 25.1.9, as well as version 570.181 of the Nvidia GPU driver package. Additionally, this version also comes with multiple performance enhancements, better hardware support, and several bug fixes.

Signal, the open-source messaging service, is introducing new free and paid secure cloud backup plans for chats and media. The free plan gives you 100MB of storage for messages and up to 45 days of media backups.

CheckMag RomM is a self-hosted solution for managing and maintaining your ROM collection. With save state support, metadata scraping and RetroAchievements, it will let you play nearly everything up to PSX from a web browser. Here's how to get started.

Since the MATE, Xfce, and Cinnamon Linux Mint 22.2 "Zara" editions come with the HWE kernel 6.14, all ended up facing the same issues. The list of problems includes a bug that affects systems with older Nvidia GPUs that use the 470 driver, but other nuisances have been discovered as well.

Debian-based Kamuriki Linux 4.00 is now available with a Windows classic-like interface and the Wine compatibility layer under the hood. The distro comes loaded with multiple useful tools for daily use and, despite only having a Japanese language website, features support for English and other languages as well.

The latest release of Xray_OS Linux, just like its predecessors, brings together an Arch base and a set of unique tools developed from scratch, such as the Tolitica Assistant, to deliver a fast and stable gaming-focused experience. This distro includes both curated PKGBUILDs and custom wallpapers.

Moonshot AI has released Kimi K2 AI, a large language model that has scored higher than DeepSeek on the LMSys text arena leaderboard. The open-source AI is free to all to use.

With over 146 commits since the previous stable version, the build-it-yourself, CLI-only Linux From Scratch 12.4 guide is available for both the SysV init and systemd approaches. This project allows the user to create a minimal distro from source code (while offering information on adding a GUI) and has been around since late 1999.