Love KDE Plasma? These 7 Linux Distros Use Plasma as Their Default Desktops KDE Plasma is a powerful desktop environment that gives you tons of customisation over how your system looks and feels. However, you need to pair it with the right base distro to get the perfect user experience. To help you make your pick, here are five awesome distros running KDE Plasma. Apart from my initial start on Linux with Ubuntu, I've actually consistently been using KDE as my desktop on Linux. I've just always loved all its look and feel customisations. Many Linux distros will offer a choice of desktops (just the presentation layer on top). Linux is not like Windows where there is just "one" desktop that Microsoft provides. It may appear that Linux is all different between the different distros, but it is really not so. So, you can actually take any Linux distro, even that does not have KDE, and just install the KDE desktop on top of it, and then switch between desktops at login (many don't recommend you do this though as some settings could clash - but it is quite possible). But if you are a new user, it is always best to start out rather with one of these distros that natively supports KDE with their installation. It is the cleaner and more stable way to do it. See

How-To Geek

Love KDE Plasma? These 5 Linux Distros Use Plasma as Their Default Desktops

Discover which KDE Plasma distro matches your style.

#technology #Linux #opensource #KDE

ChangeDetection.io is a private self-hosted website change detection and price monitor service Monitor web pages for changes - (such as watching prices, restock notifications), to deep inspection such as PDF text support, JSON and XML monitoring and extensive text triggers. Get notifications when a website updates. The service is not only useful for bargain hunters but also those who monitor websites for defacement, or important regulatory changes, and lots more. My video looks at ChangeDetction.io's features, what it can be used for, how to add watches, and also useful some tips on how to use it. It also gets contrasted with Distill.io at an overview level. See #technology #opensource #selfhosting #pricebargains #privacy

Follow updates across the web in a feed that only you control, even if the site does not offer an RSS feed Open RSS offers feeds that are a much healthier alternative to the intrusive, algorithmic feeds on websites that harm and manipulate us. But several sites, including Tumblr and Craigslist, have removed their RSS feeds, so that you are forced into their algorithms and tracking. This is annoying if you want to follow things without creating an account, the way you can with Bluesky and all the various Fediverse sites. Instead of manually checking individual websites for updates, you can automatically get updates through a website's RSS feed using an RSS Reader app. This allows you to build a single collection of updates across the web in a single feed, that only you control. OpenRSS offers feeds for more than the apps listed on their feeds page. You can find others by adding the URL openrss.org to the beginning of any website on the web—if OpenRSS offers a feed for the site, it gives it to you (and if not, you'll see a page explaining that). To follow any site that does not have an RSS feeds, go to the site where you'd view the news, or the social profile where posts are shown, and then prepend `openrss.org/` to the beginning of the URL. For example my blog is at

GadgeteerZA

Blog Posts - GadgeteerZA

“Package managers are essential tools on Linux systems. They help you install, update, and remove software packages with simple commands. Most di...

, you'd then enter it as

Open RSS

gadgeteer.co.za/blog. The advantage here is that the OpenRSS service will even clean up and correct some errors for existing RSS feeds. Their site also directs you to some excellent RSS reader apps to use, with a table comparing their key features. But in many cases, quite a few browsers also have built in RSS reader capabilities such as Brave, Edge and Firefox I recall. Fluent Reader is an excellent desktop app for RSS feeds too. The whole point is that RSS is an open standard so anyone can support and use it. This is why many closed corporations want to prevent their users from using RSS. They lose the ability to track you, push adverts, apply their algorithm, etc. It is also probably why Google shut down their RSS reader service. But RSS is everywhere, and gaining some ability to read RSS for sites that have disabled their RSS, is empowering for individuals. See https://openrss.org #technology #RSS #adverts #privacy

Linden Lab Test Launches Browser-Based Streaming for Second Life -- And You Can Try it Now This works pretty well, actually. Starts up in about a minute, although on Brave browser I did have to disable Shields and uBlock Origin (may have been the latter that was blocking something). Interestingly enough, I caught a brief glimpse of a Windows OS window during start up, so it appears to be running on a Windows emulator inside the browser (worked perfectly well on my Linux PC). After I logged in (only needed to the first time) my avatar was where I last left it, and everything looks like the desktop app version does. Mouse control is slightly different as I could not long-click and drag the view around with my mouse, but the arrows etc all worked perfectly. The resolution also looked very sharp. In truth, this could be easier than using the desktop app, as when you go in a second time, you don't have to again fill the password in. And of course for new users, no installation first. See https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2025/01/sl-browser-streaming-project-zero.html #technology #gaming #SecondLife

Openreads: A Private and Open Source Mobile App To Keep Track of Your Books as an Alternative to Goodreads Reading books, digital or a physical copy, is one of the best things one can do for fostering personal growth, knowledge, ideas, and experiences. In the fast-moving digital world of 15-second short videos, there is a good case to be made of getting into the habit of reading books. Much like Goodreads and BookWyrm does, this app will keep track of what you have already read, are reading, and planning to read. The app uses the Internet Archive's Open Library for sourcing metadata about books. Open Library actually has its own reading lists, reviews, notes, sharing, etc too. I see there is a request logged to allow users to share data back to Open Library, so this may happen in the future but it would certainly be a choice controlled by each user. It has no tracking, no ads, and is free to use on Android and iOS (there is an appeal to iOS users to donate as the dev must pay $99 per year to Apple to host this free app). Openreads will import your collections and status from Goodreads and BookWyrm, but I should stress that whilst Amazon owns Goodreads, BookWrym is an open source decentralised alternative to Goodreads itself. BookWyrm is actually part of the Fediverse so can be followed by Mastodon and other Fediverse services. The app can export data to a CSV file so you can keep your own backups if you wish. This would also be quite a killer app for BookWyrm integration as well if someone were interested in developing that. See the article at https://news.itsfoss.com/openreads and the Openreads source at

GitHub

GitHub - mateusz-bak/openreads: A mobile books tracker written in Flutter that respects your privacy.

A mobile books tracker written in Flutter that respects your privacy. - mateusz-bak/openreads

#technology #reading #opensource #privacy #goodreads