SUSE Laying Off 10% Of Its Workforce Due To AI & Automation

https://www.phoronix.com/news/SUSE-Layoffs-10p-AI

Written by Michael Larabel

Bavarian-based enterprise Linux distribution vendor SUSE is laying off 10% of its global workforce as a result of AI and automation.

SUSE CEO Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen sent out an internal memo to its staff that AI and automation are leading to changes in the industry... and resulting in a 10% global workforce reduction at SUSE. Those affected are set to be notified beginning tomorrow, 4 November.

These layoffs follow voluntary separation offers sent out in September albeit not with enough uptake to satisfy management.

The unfortunate state of the industry.

Bazzite 45 is here!

https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/bazzite-45-is-here/12702

What’s New & Improved

Bazzite is now based on Fedora 45!

GNOME 51.1 and KDE 6.8.2

Updated OGC kernels to 7.2.15 and 6.18.60 for NVIDIA LTS images.

Mesa 26.2.6.

Latest and greatest InputPlumber.

Optional gaming networking optimization via bpftune and bpfrag services.
ROCM OpenCL is now used over Mesa OpenCL on all non-nvidia images.
XWaylandVideoBridge has been removed, fixing an entire class of bugs on our KDE images.

Acer Predator Atlas 8 initial support: InputPlumber support, Quick Access Menu tap action, and M1/M2 rear-button mappings from (@HikariKnight. #6125, #6136, #6151)👇

https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/pull/6125
https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/pull/6136
https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/pull/6151

Ally X20 support lands on stable. Thanks to everyone who tested it out and reported issues in the leadup to launch. A fix for a reported custom TDP issue is still pending on our testing branch but will hit stable in the very near future.
Logitech TrueForce wheel support: Additional racing wheels now supported out of the box.

BTRFS maintenance now available from the BTRFS Assistant GUI. (@stellaberrant, #6134)👇

https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/pull/6134

ujust install-coolercontrol now uses the official docker container rather than layering packages. Existing users can run this again to switch or keep their layered copy indefinitely.

extest, the library we rely on for Steam Input support under Wayland, now supports the 64-bit Beta Steam Client.

Fixed GNOME Logo Menu translation compilation and restored welcome-screen accent colors. (@LDCanetti, #6193, #6189).👇

https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/pull/6193
https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/pull/6189

Fixed occasionally concatenated tips. (@rktjump, #6041)👇

https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/pull/6041

Added Ukrainian translation (@andreysey #6201), updated Swedish translation (@yeager #6175), and synchronized other translations.👇

https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/pull/6175

FCITX5 input now uses the official Flatpaks rather than the out of date packages we previously shipped.

And hundreds of tiny fixes and improvements, see the full changelog for more details here👇

https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/releases/tag/45.20261103

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Linux Anti-Cheat

Epic recently announced that their Easy Anti Cheat is getting a v2 launch on Linux that will bring support for Fortnite and other games! They were kind enough to make us one of the accepted well-known signing keys. Further discussions are underway, but in the meantime we’ve added a ujust readiness check for users that want to ensure they’re ready early.

New readiness checker: ujust check-anticheat checks published Easy Anti-Cheat Linux v2 requirements and provides pass/fail results with tips to correct it’s findings. (@tapoxi, #6065)👇

https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/pull/6065

Checks Kernel/module signing, Secure Boot and enrolled keys, TPM 2.0, measured boot, IOMMU requirements, kernel lockdown, kexec, and BPF LSM.

Handheld users should hold off from enabling kernel lockdown for the time being, we are working on a solution for this.

Steam Deck users must not enable Secure Boot, when this changes we’ll let you know.

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Our biggest small update yet

With the launch of Bazzite 45, we’ve done a great deal to improve how Bazzite is built behind the scenes to make the lives of contributors and maintainers alike easier.👇

https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/bazzite-45-is-here/12702/2

@tapoxi spent a great deal of time retooling our build system to be simpler and easier to use for local builds, the full details of which can be found here.👇

https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/bazzite-45-is-here/12702/3

@SmallsOnline Split our monolithic containerfile into numerous different build scripts, enabling single-image builds and halving build times. Full details can be found here.
@Andy10115 has been working diligently to improve testing and onboard new devices, details of their work this cycle can be found here.👇

https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/bazzite-45-is-here/12702/4

Vestigial files/packages have been cleaned out across the project.
Image chunks are now all ZSTD compressed, enabling faster downloads.

Chunkah is now in use and, when combined with greatly expanded rechunking and fixes to reproducibility during build image, have enabled Bazzite updates as low as 100MB in size.👇

https://github.com/coreos/chunkah

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What’s next

Starting today we’ll be testing Kernel 7.3.1 on our unstable branch. Our main focus is on HDMI 2.1/VRR and ensuring no surprise regressions after the rather rocky 7.2 series. You can switch to unstable and help test with brh rebase unstable, let us know what you think!

We’ll also be testing the latest version of steamos-manager on these builds, and a huge set of improvements to the Bazzite Portal.

If you’re one of the awesome people who helped with testing this cycle, you can now switch to stable Bazzite 45 using brh rebase stable.

Fluxer in November 2026: where we are and what's next

A chat app that puts you first

Free and open source chat for friends, groups and communities, with text chat, voice and video calls, screen sharing and self-hosting.

https://fluxer.com/blog/fluxer-november-2026

Where Fluxer stands in November 2026, how the number of accounts on fluxer.com grew since July 2023, and what I plan to work on next.

A new voice system, encryption and federation are coming

I'm working on the new voice and video system right now. Every call on it will be end-to-end encrypted, and it's built to fix many voice and screen share problems you've reported. Here's what it changes and which reported problems it fixes. Apart from the iOS app on the App Store, it's the last big thing I plan to ship this year.

https://fluxer.com/help/new-voice-system
https://fluxer.com/help/new-voice-system-reported-problems

I'm also working on getting the iOS app onto the App Store. TestFlight is broken for now because of a long-standing Apple bug we ran into when we removed inactive testers, and here's what happened and when to expect the App Store release.

End-to-end encryption is also coming to DMs, group DMs and notes, and it will be on for everyone with no setting to turn it off. Here's the full plan.

https://fluxer.com/help/encryption

Federation is coming too. With it, people on different Fluxer instances can talk to each other and move their accounts. Here's how federation will work. I'll start on experimental drafts of both in 2026, and by current estimates they'll be stable in the first half of 2027. Both are on our roadmap, and neither has gone anywhere.

https://fluxer.com/help/federation

Half a million accounts later

Every account since July 2023 Accounts on fluxer.com by the date they were created, not counting bots or deleted accounts. July 1, 2023 to November 2, 2026, one point per week.

https://fluxer.com/blog/roadmap-2026

If you'd like to help

Fluxer has no venture capital, and it's funded by the people who use it. If you'd like to help, you can get an Operator Pass, subscribe to Plutonium or donate. Thank you for being part of this, and for sticking with Fluxer through every outage.

https://fluxer.com/help/is-fluxer-funded-by-venture-capital
https://fluxer.com/pass
https://fluxer.com/plutonium
https://fluxer.com/donate

Nvidia 620.70.06 has released

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/details/283867/

Improved performance of explicit synchronization in high-framerate benchmarks on Wayland.

Fixed a regression, introduced in the 595.xx driver series, which caused Assassin's Creed Shadows to hang with Vulkan device lost errors at certain scenes: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/595-release-feedback-discussion/362561/140.

Added OpenGL visual indicator (__GL_SHOW_GRAPHICS_OSD) support to all Vulkan backends, including Wayland and direct-to-display.

Fixed corruption and flickering seen with Vulkan applications under Wayland when using __VK_ENABLE_DEVICE_GROUPS on multi-GPU systems.

Fixed intermittent crashes in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth with VKD3D_CONFIG=descriptor_heap.

Fixed some bugs that interfered with the minimumIntervalUs frame rate limit in VK_NV_low_latency2 when frame generation is enabled.

Fixed a bug that could cause a kernel crash when using the open GPU kernel modules on NUMA systems where some nodes had no memory.

Fixed an 'invalid head number' error that could appear when VT switching away from the X server: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/590-release-feedback-discussion/353310/120.

Fixed a bug that could cause nvidia-installer to install libraries outside of the dynamic loader search path in some situations.

MPV v0.42.0 has released

https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/releases#release-v0.42.0

We are excited to announce the release of mpv 0.42.0.

Key highlights:

libcurl based network backend with HTTP/2, HTTP/3 and connection reuse

DVD-Video, Blu-ray HDMV and BD-J menu navigation

DVD-Audio playback

Direct playback of .iso images of DVD-Video, DVD-Audio and Blu-ray discs

Dolby Vision Profile 7 enhancement layer support in gpu-next

MPEG-TS programs and HLS variants are exposed as editions

DSD-over-PCM (DoP) passthrough with --audio-spdif=dsd

Support for SRV3 (YouTube) subtitles via subrandr library

Context menu populated from the new menu.conf, bound to right click

floating OSC layout with Fluent icons (--script-opts=osc-layout=floating)

API that allows integration between the OSC and (third-party) thumbnailer scripts

Wayland session management

Wayland color management through the protocol instead of the Vulkan API

scRGB output with --target-trc=scrgb

Improved HDR colorspace signalling on DRM (Linux)

If you have been experiencing perf problems on amd gpus just know that kernel 7.3 is causing some of those issues.

For me i was having some bad frame timing in deadlock where it felt like the game was being halted by something in the frametiming, no scheduler change fixed this problem.

This issue is happening on my rdna2 gpu and changing power profiles did nothing aswell.

LTS kernel has no problems :)

🐚 Shelly-ALPM v3.2.0 — The Bug Bash

Shelly is a modern package manager for Arch Linux designed to be a more user-friendly alternative. Offering a visual interface with a focus on user experience and ease of use. Shelly supports native package operations through libalpm or Shelly.Rlpm, with libalpm selected by default. It is a complete reimagination of how a user interacts with their Arch Linux system, providing a more intuitive experience.

https://github.com/Seafoam-Labs/Shelly-ALPM/releases/tag/v3.2.0

Shelly v3.2.0 is a bug bash: a round of fixes for the things that get between you and your packages. Since v3.1.10, we’ve tackled Flatpak failures, stubborn tray icons, missed restart detection, AUR build errors, and package information that wasn’t telling the whole story.

A few quality-of-life improvements came along too, including multi-package downgrades, AppImage update discovery, and a choice of terminal for updates.

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🐛 Flatpak and permissions, untangled

Fixed the Flatpak regression affecting Arch Linux after v3.1.10. Elevated operations now hand work back to the invoking user with setpriv, preserving the login session context needed for Flatpak’s system-helper authentication.

User-cache handling also gets a cleanup. Shelly writes the invoking user’s cache using that user’s credentials, including when launched through supported privilege-elevation tools, and preserves absolute XDG_CACHE_HOME overrides.

Existing ownership problems can be repaired from your regular user session with:

shelly utility --fix-permissions

This repairs Shelly’s directories; it does not change ownership of the parent ~/.cache directory.

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🔔 A tray icon that keeps up

🔄 Stale update status: The notification service now watches package database changes and refreshes its status after package operations. (#2151)👇

https://github.com/Seafoam-Labs/Shelly-ALPM/pull/2151

🔌 Endless reconnect loops: When DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS is missing, Shelly falls back to $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/bus. If neither provides a usable address, it reports the problem instead of retrying forever. (#2137)👇

https://github.com/Seafoam-Labs/Shelly-ALPM/pull/2137

🖥 Your terminal, your updates: Choose the terminal used to launch updates from the notification service. (#2148)👇

https://github.com/Seafoam-Labs/Shelly-ALPM/pull/2148

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🔄 Restart detection, actually detecting

Post-upgrade restart and reboot checks were reading some /proc files as empty because those files report a size of zero. Shelly now reads their contents correctly, restoring the information those checks depend on.

The scan also stops treating a deleted /etc/ld.so.cache mapping as a stale shared library, avoiding misleading restart recommendations after ldconfig runs. (#2149)👇

https://github.com/Seafoam-Labs/Shelly-ALPM/pull/2149

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🧱 AUR builds with fewer surprises

🧩 Computed architecture lists: Fix InvalidArchitectureDirective failures when a PKGBUILD derives arch from an associative array. Unresolved values are validated after evaluation. (#2144)👇

https://github.com/Seafoam-Labs/Shelly-ALPM/pull/2144

🌿 Git source races: Finish cached Git mirror maintenance before cloning build sources, preventing the two operations from racing. (#2123)👇

https://github.com/Seafoam-Labs/Shelly-ALPM/pull/2123

📝 Useful metadata errors: Package-assembly failures now name the rejected metadata field, making broken recipes easier to diagnose. (#2113)👇

https://github.com/Seafoam-Labs/Shelly-ALPM/pull/2113

⚙️ Clearer build configuration: Expanded shellybuild.conf documentation explains configuration precedence, compiler flags, and portable versus host-specific settings.

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📦 Package information you can trust

Installed package versions now take priority in the UI and CLI search results, rather than being replaced by the repository version. RLPM also correctly reports installation status and dates. (#2044, #2143)👇

https://github.com/Seafoam-Labs/Shelly-ALPM/pull/2044
https://github.com/Seafoam-Labs/Shelly-ALPM/pull/2143

Upgrade previews now include repository package replacements, making it clearer what will change before you confirm. (#2119)👇

https://github.com/Seafoam-Labs/Shelly-ALPM/pull/2119

Behind the scenes, unnecessary RLPM database snapshot hashing has been removed, reducing repeated database work.

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🧹 Cleaning up the cleanup

purify now recognises leftover pacman download-XXXXXX directories, including those containing partial downloads, and includes them in its cleanup plan. (#2150)👇

https://github.com/Seafoam-Labs/Shelly-ALPM/pull/2150

Removing a stale database lock from the desktop app also runs asynchronously, keeping the interface responsive while authentication completes. (#2142)👇

https://github.com/Seafoam-Labs/Shelly-ALPM/pull/2142

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🖼 AppImages, better connected

AppImage desktop integration now uses the application’s shipped desktop-file identity and removes superseded launcher entries during updates, addressing naming mismatches and duplicate menu entries. (#2134)👇

https://github.com/Seafoam-Labs/Shelly-ALPM/pull/2134

Update support gains embedded update-information discovery and .zsync control-file support. GitHub asset matching honours embedded filename patterns, and release selection receives additional fixes. (#2146, #2147)👇

https://github.com/Seafoam-Labs/Shelly-ALPM/pull/2146
https://github.com/Seafoam-Labs/Shelly-ALPM/pull/2147

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✨ A few extras between the fixes

⏪ Downgrade packages together: Select older versions of multiple installed packages and install them in one transaction. --target remains a single-package option. (#2132)👇

https://github.com/Seafoam-Labs/Shelly-ALPM/pull/2132

🎨 Readable console output: The desktop transaction view gains ANSI colour and formatting support. (#2138)👇

https://github.com/Seafoam-Labs/Shelly-ALPM/pull/2138

📥 Download speeds: CLI progress lines now show transfer speed. (#2139)👇

https://github.com/Seafoam-Labs/Shelly-ALPM/pull/2139

✅ Recommended apps in batches: Select multiple applications from the Recommended page for installation.

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🌍 Translations and thanks

🇻🇳 Added Vietnamese translations for the desktop UI and notifications.
🇦🇩 Updated the Catalan translation.

❤️ Thank you to everyone who reported a bug, supplied a reproduction, tested a fix, or contributed a patch. This bash was built around those reports.

Mesa Merges A Common Vulkan Layer For Working Around Cross-Driver Game Bugs

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Mesa-Common-Layer-Game-Bugs

Written by Michael Larabel

Merged to Mesa 27.0-devel is a new common Vulkan layer within Mesa's Vulkan Runtime for being able to carry common game/engine/app workarounds that affect multiple drivers.

The Radeon RADV and NVIDIA NVK Vulkan drivers both rely on a Vulkan layer to workaround some app bugs directly from Vulkan entrypoints. Now there is a common solution in the Mesa Vulkan Runtime for being able to handle this by drivers opting into it and where the issues aren't driver-specific.

This new infrastructure was also used for introducing a new workaround for the Metro Exodus game. The Metro Exodus workaround is due to the game sometimes passing NULL to pWaitSemaphores, which is invalid per the Vulkan API specification. This workaround in the common layer is now addressing that illegal behavior so the Mesa Vulkan drivers cope fine. The bug was reported back in 2023.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/work_items/10018

NVK and RADV are the initial users of this common layer while with time other Mesa Vulkan drivers can join.Those interested in this work by Valve's Samuel Pitoiset can learn more via this merge.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/45747

GOG Galaxy is officially coming to Linux in 2027!

https://youtu.be/LcjptSS0-e4

"We know this has been a long time coming, but we wanted to do it properly: GOG GALAXY is officially heading to Linux. At the same time, we’ve reworked the client on Windows and Mac to be simpler, run faster, and give you cleaner ways to view your library. Most importantly, our core promise stays untouched: GOG GALAXY is entirely optional. Your games are yours to download and keep through offline installers, exactly as they’ve always been."

Steam Client Beta - November 5th

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4397053/view/713417405767876796

The Steam Client Beta has been updated with the following changes:

General

Fixed an issue where the friends list could get stuck when failing to login at launch and required toggling offline to load the friends list

Fixed a regression that caused the patch notes preview to show the previous patch notes instead of the current ones.

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Big Picture Mode

Added Timezone selection entries for locations with changes to daylight savings time, e.g. British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba.

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Linux

Fixed a crash when creating a lobby in games that use the ISteamNetworking interface, e.g. Sons of the Forest

If Im not replying quickly or posting Linux news it's because I'm sick AGAIN.

Have fun everyone and keep promoting Linux :)

QUESTION TIME.

What are some stories about convincing people to switch over to Linux. Was it a family member? Friend? Someone online? I'd like to know :>

COSMIC Constellations. wallpaper, color theme, icon pack, font bundles coming soon.

https://bsky.app/profile/carlrichell.bsky.social/post/3mzofj52pak2l

Carl Richell the CEO of system76: COSMIC Theme Constellations coming soon. They're bundled themes with wallpaper, colors, icons, and fonts all in one.

CachyOS developers continuing development on supporting EAC V2 anticheat with the signing keys and signed systemd boot being included recently.

https://github.com/CachyOS/CachyOS-PKGBUILDS/pull/2092

I wonder if limine bootloader will be supported and of course GRUB, will have to wait and see as more development continues.