2025 Summary - Linux, FOSS, Fossery Tech

December 26, 2025

Time flies, another year just passed...

No, Mr. Fossery! Stop this non-sensical cliche!

Ok ok, then let's just get into it.

Linux and FOSS happenings this year

I won't talk about everything in detail, I cover stuff in my weekly news posts anyways. I'll just talk about some trends we've seen in the tech world which also affects Linux and FOSS.

It seems like the world is becoming more and more dystopian. We got to the point when even for accessing social media, you need to provide a photo ID, in some countries like the UK and Australia, because of "protecting children", but we know that it's just meant to be a justification for all the privacy invasion... Not all platform owners implemented this stuff, but among those who did, there are some FOSS ones too, like Bluesky, and Matrix.org also stated to scan messages because of UK's Online Safety Act. And if this wasn't enough, EU is also pushing the Chat Control law. Seems like decentralized platforms like Mastodon, PeerTube, XMPP, etc. (and maybe LBRY/Odysee? will see, although Odysee's new parent company, Arweave is UK-based) are the future of privacy and digital freedom. The Swiss government also proposed a law that all companies need to hand over user data in plain text, affecting Proton and Threema. Proton already announced, they are migrating their servers out of the country, their new AI service, Lumo now operates from German servers (not that EU is much safer now, but I mean basically every large country made some privacy invasive rules at this point, nowhere is safe).

On the Linux side, Wayland is taking over the desktop space, after GNOME, KDE and Budgie also announced to drop X11 support, and the new COSMIC desktop is also Wayland-only. There are some endeavours to keep X11 alive though, like the XLibre project, which includes some additional functional and security fixes on top of X.Org. There's also the experimental Sonic-DE, which is an X11-only KDE Plasma fork.

But what spreads even faster is Rust. Being written in Rust is now seen as a feature, while it's just a programming language, just like Python, Java, JavaScript, etc. Many projects (e.g. Linux kernel, Tor) are rewritten in Rust.

And of course, the one buzzword even normies are addicted to: AI. "Hey ChatGPT! Where should I go for holiday?" "Hey ChatGPT! What should I wear today?" "Hey ChatGPT! My girlfriend left me. 😢 Please be my girlfriend." AI is everywhere, it's basically "Internet 2.0". It already went behind just a regular chat bot (or the traditional TTS, STT, OCR, etc. which people tend to forget about). It gets crammed everywhere, in browsers (e.g. Edge, Brave, Firefox), code editors (e.g. Windsurf, Cursor, Zed), email services (e.g. Gmail, Outlook, Proton Mail), search engines (e.g. Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo). And now we get to the point, when agentic browsers like Atlas and Comet get released, and Microsoft announced that Windows 12 will be fully agentic, mouse is for noobs you will use voice input instead. You know what, Microsoft? Windows is for noobs, let's just switch to Linux! The year of Linux desktop is coming! On most Linux distros (except on Deepin and MakuluLinux), you can decide what AI features you want to use (if any). We already have Ollama, which lets you run models locally (from terminal, or via a GUI frontend like Alpaca or GPT4ALL), although the more powerful models require really high hardware specs (mainly storage space and CPU/GPU) to run properly. But there are also some online FOSS options for those who don't have the tech to run AI locally, like Proton Lumo, Hugging Chat (although their Privacy Policy isn't the best imo), and Ollama's new online service. And beyond chat bots, we have offline image generation too, e.g. the Krita AI Diffusion plugin by Interstice (and I think there's a similar one for GIMP too), which has support for both online and offline Stable Diffusion models. No need to use ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, etc., when there are more privacy respecting, FOSS alternatives.

This year in Fossery Tech

Due to my limited amount of free time, I had to stop making videos, and because of this, my PeerTube channel is dead (since I can't post my other stuff there). My earlier videos are still available on both Odysee and PeerTube though. Btw, I still miss video editing a bit, as you can tell from the intro of this article lol (og fans know what I mean). Regardless of not posting to PeerTube/TILvids anymore, I still do the volunteer moderation stuff for TILvids, I like to see the instance growing slowly but constantly, it's the best source to find educational (mainly tech) content on PeerTube.

Meanwhile on Odysee, regardless of not making videos anymore, I still share my text posts (weekly news, articles, FosseryWeb updates) and memes here/there (depending on where you read this article), and thanks to @HOWIC who suggested me to contact Odysee to get my channel to the Tech category, I tripled the view count on my posts, and I got an insane amount of follows, getting from below 100 to above 500 in just about a half year, while previously it took me around 2 years to get to 70-80. Thank you so much for your support, guys!

As I mentioned, the age verification crap is spreading more and more, to the point that Matrix.org also fell victim to it, started scanning messages, so I decide to leave that homeserver, looked at some other homeservers. I was pretty unlucky, because all homeservers which seemed trustworthy (Unredacted, NitroChat, Envs.net, Hack Liberty, etc.) had issues with registration (Internal Server Error, or closed registration). Then finally I ended up on the Linux.Pizza homeserver, operated by the same guy as the Mastodon instance I use. Generally, I don't like to put all eggs in one basket, but I saw no other choice, I had to choose between Matrix.org scanning all my conversations or putting two eggs in one basket under a Linux.Pizza account, I went with the latter, because at least it has a reasonable Privacy Policy, no message scanning. (Although since the vast majority of Matrix users use Matrix.org, conversations in 99% of public rooms will be scanned anyways, but at least when talking to a non-Matrix.org user in DM, our messages won't be scanned.) I also changed my client from Element to Cinny, just in case. (Although it doesn't have proper thread support, and has some issues with session verification, but I couldn't find anything better having proper space support, and support for the custom authentication method of Linux.Pizza.)

I also joined XMPP earlier this year, because many of you guys seem to prefer it over Matrix (which I can kinda relate to, because of what I described above). It's much more decentralized, users aren't concetrated into a single large instance (or provider, as it's called in XMPP terminology), so one provider falling victim to the age verification nonsense doesn't have that huge effect. So far, I'm mostly satisfied with the experince, although there are some incompatibilities between clients, e.g. they support different types of encryption, some conversations started on one client don't appear in the other one, etc., but I decided to just stick to Gajim, which seems the best experience (except being a bit slow to load new messages sometimes), so I don't have to worry about those inconsistencies. I also planned making a video about XMPP, then since I stopped making videos, I decided to write an article about it instead, but I couldn't dedicate time for it either lol. But no worries, it will probably come next year (probably in the second half of next year, because I plan two big FosseryWeb updates first, more on that at the end, in the future plans section of this article).

FosseryWeb got quite a lot of updates. A sidebar on content pages for recommending related content (static recommendations, the same for everyone). Headers and footers don't require JavaScript enabled anymore to load (it was that way earlier to eliminate duplicate HTML code), it's indicated on menu pages, which content require JS (e.g. quizzes, utils). The design got improved a bit to include main headings on all pages (to eliminate inconsistencies), and some contrast improvements (e.g. bold text, lighter font color on dark background, etc.). A username generator util was added, utils got a separate menu page. About page got a section for browser compatibility info. A Timeline page got added, including all the more significant updates of the site from the beginning, and a future plans section. As the result of a User Survey I conducted, quizzes got reworked, with randomized questions and answers, a "Programs, services, FOSS quiz" instead of the Privacy quiz. My articles also got available on the site. There's option to download all programming cheatsheets per language (in ODT or Markdown).

I made an experiment to rewrite FosseryWeb in Java/Spring (to have a JS-free site) but it flopped because I couldn't find a privacy respecting FOSS hosting service (first I chose Alwaysdata, but its legalese Privacy Policy was concerning), and I had to jump through too many hoops right at the start of the project (all kinds of issues with compiling), I realized, it isn't worth the effort, especially if I can't find a good hosting service for it either. Maybe will do it one day (maybe 20-30 years later lol), if I'll have my own server, and much more software dev experience.

But then, for those who prefer a more minimal design, or would like to use FosseryWeb in a browser with limited HTML/CSS support (e.g. Dillo, NetSurf), or simply want a fully JS-free experience, I created FosseryWeb Min instead (which is hosted on Codeberg, just like the original FosseryWeb). This site only includes the text-based content of FW (articles, cheatsheets), because utils and quizzes can't be implemented to be compatible with Dillo and NetSurf, and to not use JS. But at least this project succeeded, yay!

And as an April's Fools joke, the Fossery Tech project turned into Fosilla Corporation, to fight for the open web, with FosillaWeb and the Firefoss web browser.

Fossery Tech stats

Subs/followers (last year --> this year)

Mastodon: 703 --> 1,178 (+475)

Odysee: 61 --> 521 (+460)

Thanks everyone!

Thanks everyone for your support! And thank you, FOSS projects and companies like GNOME, Debian, KDE, Linux Mint, Zorin Group, LibreWolf, Mastodon, FramaSoft, Odysee, QEMU, Fluent Reader, yt-dlp, Joplin, Anki, Codeberg, OBS, Brave, Proton, FreeTube, Invidious, The Document Foundation (LibreOffice), Flathub, Flatpak, Speech Note, 4get, Disroot, Ear Tag, Warp (the GTK-based file transfer app, not the proprietary terminal), SaveDesktop, Pika Backup, Flatseal, Warehouse, Curtail, Pulsar, XMPP, Gajim, Cinny, Safing, KeePassXC, postmarketOS, Phosh (and of course all other FOSS projects I didn't mention here) for taking all this effort and creating quality software to compete with the proprietary counterparts.

Plans for 2026

I have some huge plans for FosseryWeb! I plan to write a full contribution guide which includes the ways contribution can be made, some rules to follow, and some tips to make it easier to contribute even for beginner contributors, while following the rules. I'm experimenting a bit with AI to automate tedious, repetitive things like converting an article/cheatsheet from Markdown to HTML, and to help a bit in searching stuff for cheatsheets for a given topic, while I still preserve the quality of the code and content. Hopefully this will speed things up a bit. I'll include AI rules too in the contribution rules, to make it clear, to what extent it's allowed to use AI. I'll also write a proper Privacy Policy instead of the current privacy notice on the footer, to give detailed information about how specific parts of the site work from a privacy perspective, and what other parties can see (not much, but it's probably still worth mentioning). I'll also optimize the site a bit for offline use, and include instructions about how the code of the site can be run locally (this might be useful, if you don't fully trust Codeberg for some reason, or when their Pages server breaks (which happens pretty often unfortunately), or simply to own stuff and not rely on a remote server). Some new content is also planned for the site: some Java cheatsheets, HTML/CSS tips and tricks articles (requested by Sanderium, and there's already an article submitted by sndrm, thanks for the contribution!). I'll also experiment a bit with RSS, and see if I can create feed(s) for the articles (probably two separate feeds for the Linux/FOSS articles and the HTML/CSS tips and tricks, if I can implement it that way). If you have some experience with implementing RSS feeds, I appreciate your help. Speaking of articles, starting from next year, the articles section won't be exclusively for my articles, anyone can write article, and submit it in DM, or send it directly to the repo (including online version and downloadable Markdown and ODT versions) as a pull request. (The contribution guide is already half-finished, so I can send it to you if you're interested in contributing to the project.)

I'll also write the XMPP and PicoCrypt articles I've been promising for a long time, but couldn't dedicate time for them.

I'll believe it, when I see it. I bet you'll delay it even further, Mr. Fossery!

And maybe if I'll still have some time, I'll also add SQL and PHP cheatsheets (requested by Vannax). Will see if I'll do it next year or 2027.

And last but not least: happy new year everyone! 🥳️🎆️🎇️

2025 Summary - Linux, FOSS, Fossery Tech

Linux and FOSS happenings this year

This year in Fossery Tech

Fossery Tech stats

Subs/followers (last year --> this year)

Most viewed/liked content

Mastodon - most starred

Mastodon - most boosted

Odysee - most viewed

Odysee - most liked ("fired")

Odysee - most reposted

Odysee - most disliked ("slimed") (included for fun lol)

Thanks everyone!

Plans for 2026