Linux Hacks

592 Articles

Playing A Game Of Linux On Your Sony Playstation 2

December 29, 2025 by 15 Comments

Until the 2000s, game consoles existed primarily to bring a bit of the gaming arcade experience to homes, providing graphical feats that the average home computer would struggle to emulate. By the 2000s this changed, along with the idea of running desktop applications on gaming console for some reason. Hence we got Linux for the PlayStation 2, targeting its MIPS R5900 CPU and custom GPU. Unlike these days where game consoles are reskinned gaming PCs, this required some real effort, as well as a veritable stack of accessories, as demonstrated by [Action Retro] in a recent video.

Linux on the PlayStation 2 was a bit of a rare beast, as it required not only the optional HDD and a compatible ‘fat’ PS2, but also an Ethernet adapter, VGA adapter and a dedicated 8 MB memory card along with a keyboard and mouse. PS2 Linux users were also not free to do what they wanted, with e.g. ripping PS2 game discs disallowed, but you could make your own games. All of which had to fit within the PS2’s meagre 32 MB of RAM.

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NVIDIA Drops Pascal Support On Linux, Causing Chaos On Arch Linux

December 26, 2025 by 75 Comments

It’s no surprise that NVIDIA is gradually dropping support for older videocards, with the Pascal (GTX 10xx) GPUs most recently getting axed. What’s more surprising is the terrible way that this is being handled by certain Linux distributions, with Arch Linux currently a prime example.

On these systems, updating the OS with a Pascal, Maxwell or similarly unsupported GPU will result in the new driver failing to load and thus the user getting kicked back to the CLI to try and sort things back out there. This issue is summarized by [Brodie Robertson] in a recent video.

Here the ‘solution’ is to switch to a legacy option that comes from the Arch User Repository (AUR), which feels somewhat sketchy. Worse is that using this legacy option breaks Steam as it relies on official NVIDIA dependencies, which requires an additional series of hacks to hopefully restore this functionality. Fortunately the Arch Wiki provides a starting point on what to do.

It’s also worth noting that this legacy driver on the AUR is being maintained by [ventureo] of the CachyOS project, whose efforts are the sole reason why these older NVIDIA cards are still supported at all on Linux with the official drivers. While there’s also the Nouveau driver, this is effectively a reverse-engineering project with all of the problems that come with such an effort, even if it may be ‘good enough’ for older GPUs.

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Using An E-Book Reader As A Secondary Display

December 23, 2025 by 14 Comments

[Alireza Alavi] wanted to use an e-ink tablet as a Linux monitor. Why? We don’t need to ask. You can see the result of connecting an Onyx BOOX Air 2 to an Arch Linux box in the video below.

Like all good projects, this one had a false start. Deskreen sounds good, as it is an easy way to stream your desktop to a browser. The problem is, it isn’t very crisp, and it can be laggy, according to the post. Of course, VNC is a tried-and-true solution. The Onyx uses Android, so there were plenty of VNC clients, and Linux, of course, has many VNC servers.

Putting everything together as a script lets [Alireza] use the ebook as a second monitor. Using it as a main monitor would be difficult, and [Alireza] reports using the two monitors to mirror each other, so you can glance over at the regular screen for a color image, for example.

Another benefit of the mirrored screens is that VNC lets you use the tablet’s screen as an input device, which is handy if you are drawing in GIMP or performing similar tasks.

We sometimes use VNC on Android just to get to a fake Linux install running on the device.

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Linux On A Floppy: Still (Just About) Possible

December 20, 2025 by 39 Comments

Back in the early days of Linux, there were multiple floppy disk distributions. They made handy rescue or tinkering environments, and they packed in a surprising amount of useful stuff. But a version 1.x kernel was not large in today’s context, so how does a floppy Linux fare in 2025? [Action Retro] is here to find out.

Following a guide from GitHub in the video below the break, he’s able to get a modern version 6.14 kernel compiled with minimal options, as well as just enough BusyBox to be useful. It boots on a gloriously minimalist 486 setup, and he spends a while trying to refine and add to it, but it’s evident from the errors he finds along the way that managing dependencies in such a small space is challenging. Even the floppy itself is problematic, as both the drive and the media are now long in the tooth; it takes him a while to find one that works. He promises us more in a future episode, but it’s clear this is more of an exercise in pushing the envelope than it is in making a useful distro. Floppy Linux was fun back in 1997, but we can tell it’s more of a curiosity in 2025.

Linux on a floppy has made it to these pages every few years during most of Hackaday’s existence, but perhaps instead of pointing you in that direction, it’s time to toss a wreath into the sea of abandonware with a reminder that the floppy drivers in Linux are now orphaned.

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After Decades, Linux Finally Gains Stable GPIB Support

December 16, 2025 by 40 Comments

Recently, [Greg Kroah-Hartman] proclaimed the joyous news on the Linux Kernel Mailing List that stable General Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB) support has finally been merged into the 6.19 Linux kernel.

The GPIB is a short-range 8-bit, multi-master interface bus that was standardized as IEEE 488. It first saw use on HP laboratory equipment in the 1970s, but was soon after also used by microcomputers like the Commodore PET, Commodore 64 and others. Although not high-speed with just 8 MB/s, nor with galvanic isolation requirements, it’s an uncomplicated bus design that can be implemented without much of a blip on the BOM costs.

The IEEE 488 standard consists of multiple elements, with 488.1 defining the physical interface and 488.2 the electrical protocol. Over the decades a communication protocol was also developed, in the form of SCPI and its standardized way of communicating with a wide range of devices using a simple human-readable protocol.

Although the physical side of IEEE 488 has changed over the years, with Ethernet becoming a major alternative to the short GPIB cables and large connectors, the electrical protocol and SCPI alike are still very much relevant today. This latest addition to the Linux kernel should make it much easier to use both old and new equipment equipped with this bus.

Building Rust Apps For Cheap Hackable Handheld Console

December 11, 2025 by 26 Comments

The age of cheap and powerful devices is upon us. How about a 20 EUR handheld game console intended for retro game emulation, that runs Linux under the hood? [Luiz Ferreira] kicks the tires of a R36S, a very popular and often cloned device running a quad-core RK3326 with an Ubuntu-based OS, and shows us how to write and cross-compile a simple app for it using Rust – even if you daily drive Windows.

Since a fair bit of the underlying Linux OS is exposed, you can quickly build even text applications and have them run on the console. For instance, [Luiz]’s app uses ratatui to scan then print button and joystick states to the screen. Perhaps the most important thing about this app is that it’s a detailed tutorial on cross-compiling Rust apps for a Linux target, and it runs wonders using WSL, too.

Installing your app is simple, too: SSH into it, username ark and password ark. Looking for a Linux-powered device with a bright screen, WiFi, a fair few rugged buttons, and an OS open for exploration? This one is quite reassuring in the age of usual portables like smartphones getting more and more closed-off to tinkering. And, if the store-bought hackable Linux consoles still aren’t enough, you can always step it up and build your own, reusing Joycons for your input needs while at it.

Putting KDE On Raspberry Pi OS Simpler Than Expected

December 9, 2025 by 30 Comments

Raspberry Pi boards are no longer constrained – these days, you can get a quad-core board with 8 or 16GB of RAM to go around, equip it with a heatsink, and get a decently comfortable shop/desk/kitchen computer with GPIOs, cameras, speedy networking, maybe even NVMe, and all the wireless you’d expect.

Raspberry OS, however, remains lightweight with its pre-installed LXDE environment – and, in many cases, it feels quite constrained. In case you ever idly wondered about giving your speedy Pi a better UI, [Luc] wants to remind you that setting up KDE on your Raspberry OS install is dead simple and requires only about a dozen commandline steps.

[Luc] walks you through these dozen steps, from installation to switching the default DE, and the few hangups you might expect after the switch; if you want to free up some disk space afterwards, [Luc] shows how to get rid of the original LXDE packages. Got the latest Trixie-based Pi OS? There’s an update post detailing the few necessary changes, as well as talking about others’ experiences with the switch.

All in all, [Luc] demonstrates that KDE will have a fair bit of graphical and UX advantages, while operating only a little slower, and if you weren’t really using your powerful Pi to the fullest, it’s a worthwhile visual and usability upgrade. For the regular desktop users, KDE has recently released their own distro, and our own [Jenny] has taken a look at it.