Opensource

Hello!

I wonder if there is any open source video conferencing tool that works fine or even has special features for teaching music (e.g. singing with background music).

They already tried Jitsi but it seems to filter parts of the music as background noise.

Any ideas or suggestions would be great, thank you!

This contribution, delivered by Sven Thomsen, CIO of the German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein, outlines the state’s pioneering path toward digital sovereignty through Open Source and Open Innovation. It highlights the risks of dependency on proprietary software - including lack of transparency, inflated costs, and reduced security - and positions Open Standards and Open Source as essential for autonomy, resilience, and competitiveness. The speech details Schleswig-Holstein’s concrete migration from proprietary to Open Source solutions across its administration, supported by strategic planning, procurement reforms, and budget shifts. Initiatives such as the state’s Open Source Program Office (OSPO) and innovation hubs foster collaboration between government, industry, academia, and civil society, ensuring sustainable adoption and stimulating regional economic growth. Emphasizing both national security and Europe-wide competitiveness, the keynote calls for collective action to establish Open Source as the new normal in public IT systems, framing the transformation as a shared European mission for digital independence.

audacity devs make a christmasfying PR to demonstrate how easy it is to modify the new Qt UI. builds included thanks to CI (linux example)

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/technology/p/1608391/the-rime-of-the-ancient-maintainer

Every culture produces heroes that reflect its deepest anxieties. The Greeks, terrified of both mortality and immortality, gave us Achilles. The Victorians, haunted by social mobility, gave us the self-made industrialist. And Silicon Valley, drunk on exponential curves and both terrified and entranced by endless funding rounds, has given us the Hero Developer: a figure who ships features at midnight, who “moves fast and breaks things,” who transforms whiteboard scribbles into billion-dollar unicorns through sheer caffeinated will.

Over seven months after its previous 1.4.2 bugfix release, the popular open-source vector graphics editor Inkscape has issued its latest version, 1.4.3, as the third maintenance update to the 1.4 series, which includes roughly 124 bug and crash fixes.

Twenty-four of them fix crashes and freezes, many of which previously prevented users from opening specific files, exporting objects, or working reliably with text, paths, and Live Path Effects.

Several of these crashes affected common operations such as PDF export, text-on-path editing, layer manipulation, and alignment tools.

Libreboot as the Coreboot downstream focused on free, open-source boot firmware is out with a new test release for Christmas.

Libreboot 26.01-rc1 released for Christmas with a handful of new systems/motherboards supported and working to a successor for the existing Libreboot 25.06 stable release.

Libreboot 26.01-rc1 has support for a few new systems including the Topton X2E N150, Lenovo ThinkPad T580, and HP Pro 3500 Series. The Topton X2E N150 is a firewall computer built around the Intel N150 that may be of interest to some folks. The Lenovo ThinkPad T580 with its 8th Gen Intel Core "Coffee Lake" processors is hardly to get excited about in 2026. Beyond the age of the laptops, the 8th Gen Intel CPUs being vulnerable to many CPU security mitigations takes a toll on performance too.

Coreboot 25.12 is out today as the latest quarterly feature update to this open-source BIOS/firmware solution.

Coreboot 25.12 rolls out proof-of-concept level support for AMD EPYC 9005 "Turin" processors. Great seeing EPYC Turin finally getting Coreboot treatment similar to Genoa. AMD EPYC (and Ryzen) will hopefully see more expansive Coreboot support and greater motherboard availability with their next-gen (Zen 6) wares as openSIL reaches production status.

As a wonderful Christmas gift to open-source fans, NVIDIA dropped their proprietary license on the CUDA Tile intermediate representation and has now made the IR open-source software.

Earlier this month with CUDA 13.1 NVIDIA announced the CUDA Tile programming model as "the largest and most comprehensive update to the CUDA platform since it was invented two decades ago" The intermediate representation (IR) to CUDA Tile is now open-source software.

The judge in the Vizio GPL-compliance lawsuit has ruled, in a summary judgment, that the GNU General Public License, version 2, does not require the provision of signing keys needed to install modified software on a device.

Read as a whole, the Agreements require Vizio to make the source code available in such a manner that the source code can be readily obtained and modified by Plaintiff or other third parties. While source code is defined to include "the scripts used to control compilation and installation," this does not mean that Vizio must allow users to reinstall the software, modified or otherwise, back onto its smart TVs in a manner that preserves all features of the original program and/or ensures the smart TVs continue to function properly. Rather, in the context of the Agreements, the disputed language means that Vizio must provide the source code in a manner that allows the source code to be obtained and revised by Plaintiff or others for use in other applications.

As the Software Freedom Conservancy, the plaintiff in the case, has pointed out, the judge has ruled against a claim that was never actually made.

SFC has never held the position, nor do we today hold the position, that any version of the GPL (even including GPLv3!) require "that the device continues to function properly" after a user installs their modified version of the copyleft components.

Linus Torvalds, meanwhile, has posted his own take on the ruling that has, as one might imagine, sparked an extended discussion as well.

The GStreamer team has released the tenth bug-fix update, 1.26.10, of its cross-platform open-source multimedia framework for the stable 1.26 series.

Several fixes target streaming and demuxing reliability, including improvements to HLS and DASH stream selection in playbin3, addressing issues when disabling and re-enabling audio or video streams with adaptivedemux2. Support for FLAC audio in DASH manifests has also been added.

Audio handling sees multiple corrections. The FLAC plugin now properly supports 6.1 and 7.1 channel layouts and adds encoding and decoding support for 32-bit audio. Opus encoding benefits from improved multichannel and surround sound handling.

Kitty, one of the most feature-rich, GPU-accelerated, and highly efficient cross-platform terminal emulators, has just unveiled its latest update, version 0.45.

The most visible addition is a new kitten designed for fast file selection using a keyboard-first workflow. The tool supports previews for a wide range of content, including text files with syntax highlighting, images, videos, and e-books.

Image handling sees notable improvements through updates to the icat kitten. The built-in rendering engine now supports animated PNG and animated WebP files, netPBM images, ICC color profiles, and CCIP color space metadata.

Pinta 3.1 has been released today as a major update to this open-source, free, and cross-platform paint program written in GTK# for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Coming more than eight months after Pinta 3.0, the Pinta 3.1 release implements a new axonometric grid under View > Canvas Grid, a new Cells effect, a polygon selection mode to the Lasso Select tool, a Radius Percentage parameter to the Twist effect, and a revamped canvas widget to improve performance.

Pinta 3.1 also updates the Gradient tool with handles for adjusting the gradient length and direction, updates the Dithering effect to use Pinta’s current palette in addition to the effect’s preset color palettes, and updates the Splatter brush to repeatedly draw while holding the mouse down.

With the upcoming LibreOffice 26.2 open-source office suite release, they are getting rid of the "Community Edition" branding for the standard version of this widely-used cross-platform office suite.

LibreOffice previously was going for "Personal Edition" branding for this popular free software office suite. The "Personal Edition" branding was confusing and panned by users and ultimately then decided to brand it as the LibreOffice Community Edition. That too led to some user confusion and is now being phased out.

LibreOffice Community Edition was intended to distinguish between that common version of LibreOffice and any enterprise-focused versions of the office suite offered by other software partners. But back in June it was decided by the Board of Directors to drop that "Community" branding from The Document Foundation's LibreOffice builds.

More than a 1,000 Docker Hardened Images (DHI) are now freely available and open source for software builders, under the Apache 2.0 license.

Found this launcher last week and I've been playing with it since.

It still works with "muscle memory" but instead of placement, it's the gesture (or direction) that triggers the action. With time it can become quicker and easier, i think, than lawnchair, eblan &c or search based launchers

also on https://github.com/Elnix90/Dragon-Launcher

QEMU, a popular open-source machine emulator and virtualizer, has officially released version 10.2 (following a four-release candidate cycle) as the second point update to the 10.x series.

A notable change is a clarification of QEMU’s security policy. The project now explicitly defines which machine types fall under the “virtualization use case” when determining what qualifies as a security bug.

Several legacy components have been removed. The long-deprecated -old-param option is gone, and the Arm PXA CPU family has been fully removed.

After eleven months in development following its previous 0.8 release, Clapper, an open-source media player for Linux built on GTK4 and GStreamer, has just released version 0.10.

The main novelty is the migration of MPRIS, Server, and Discoverer functionality out of the core application and into enhancer plugins. These features are now deprecated as built-in components. Applications that bundle Clapper as part of containerized distributions are advised to disable these features at build time and instead ship them as plugins.

GnuCash 5.14 has been released today as the latest stable version of this open-source, free, and cross-platform double-entry accounting software for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows systems.

Highlights of GnuCash 5.14 include support for US Bonds (usbonds) on the New Finance::Quote module to get prices for series E, EE, or I bonds, a new Postponed column to the Scheduled Transactions list for postponing scheduled transaction instances, and the removal of the Bulgarian Lev (BGN) currency as it’s replaced by EUR from January 1st, 2026.

This release also adds support for changing the Transaction report only when “Show only subtotals” is selected, improves the algorithm behind autoclearing transactions to handle up to 30 uncleared transactions in an account reasonably quickly, and improves stale account balances and the grand total during transaction import.

Recently I wanted to cut a video (just export few seconds of a long video).

When everything still was AVI it was easy for me and I used VirtualDub. There I could decide if I just do a keyframe cut without having to encode it again, or a frame cut with having to encode this.

Nowadays having MKV, MP4 etc. I tried Lossless Cut which just gave me a black video. Open Shots Video Editor which is too complicated for this task and where I struggle to maintain the aspect ratio of the original video. Handbrake is a bit better, but also offers too many options for that purpose.

So I ended up using Online Video Cutter. But I wonder that there isn't any open source that just works as easily as that.

Darktable 5.4 has been released today as the latest version of this open-source, free, and cross-platform RAW image editor for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows systems.

Coming more than eight months after Darktable 5.2.1, the Darktable 5.4 release adds base support for new cameras, including Canon EOS R1, Canon EOS R5 Mark II, Canon PowerShot D10 (DNG), Canon PowerShot S100V, Canon PowerShot S2 IS (DNG), Fujifilm FinePix HS33EXR, and Fujifilm X-E5 (compressed).

The list of newly supported cameras continues with Kodak DCS Pro SLR/c, Kodak P712, Leica D-Lux 8, Leica M EV1 (DNG), Leica Q3 Monochrom (DNG), Leica X-E (Typ 102) (DNG), Nikon Z fc (14-bit uncompressed and 12-bit uncompressed), OM System OM-5 Mark II, Olympus SP550UZ, and Olympus SP565UZ.

The Open Source Initiative, a nonprofit organization that promotes and protects open source software, has published its annual ranking of the most viewed open source licenses in 2025, reflecting the preferences and priorities of developers, organizations, and open source communities worldwide.

At the top of the 2025 rankings is the MIT License, maintaining its long-standing position as the most sought-after open-source license. With approximately 1.53 million pageviews and 925,000 unique visitors, the MIT License’s permissive terms and minimal restrictions remain highly attractive for projects ranging from personal open source repositories to large-scale commercial products.

The team behind Immich, a popular open-source, self-hosted photo and video management platform, has released version 2.4. One of the most visible changes affects shared albums on the web, where users can now enable an option to display the asset owner’s name directly on thumbnails.

A notable new feature in the web interface is the command palette. Accessible via Ctrl+K on Windows and Linux, or Cmd+K on macOS, the palette lets you quickly navigate between administration pages by typing their names. In its first iteration, it also supports a growing set of context-aware actions and keyboard shortcuts.

Search has also been refined. Users can now change the search type directly from the search bar by clicking on the pill indicator, eliminating the need to open the full filter panel. This adjustment reduces friction when switching between different search modes and makes browsing large libraries more efficient.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/51831042

In honor of the great RAM ~~price gouging~~ shortage of 2025-2026, this release cuts the memory usage of VoidAuth in half! I noticed that my own instance was pretty thicc at nearly 300MB of memory usage after stabilizing and not doing anything, so decided to do some trimming and optimization.

(Un)Scientific Results:

• RAM Usage: 280MB -> 150MB
• Image Size: 660MB -> 360MB

This release also brings better support for public OIDC Clients, but more testing is likely needed to catch edge cases so if something isn't working let me know. Thank you everyone for your engagement and support, I am feeling the love as this project crosses past 1000 stars 🥳. If you are interested, please try it out!

Here are the Release Notes:

What's Changed

Features 🚀

• Reduce Image Size and Memory Usage
• Better support for Public OIDC Clients
• Allow Native OIDC Clients Non-Reversed-Domain Schemes

Fixes 🔧

• Fixed Issue That Could Cause Stuck Loading Spinner While Prompting to Create Passkey

Docs 📖

• Docs: add Memos SSO configuration instructions in OIDC guides and fix a typo by @FrostWalk

And a bonus meme: