The Raspberry Pi Foundation announced today the Raspberry Pi 500+ as the next generation of their all-in-one Raspberry Pi desktop computer, built on top of the Raspberry Pi single-board computer.

Companies must realize they can be more than pure consumers, and public sector ought to go beyond ‘promotion’Feature It is 2025. Linux will turn 34 and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) 40. For the EU and Europe at large, which is famously experimental with government deployments of open source tech, behind initiatives to promote open licensing, and whose governments promote equal opportunity for FOSS vendors in public tendering, it’s a crunch point.…

Back in June it was announced by Canonical that for the Ubuntu 25.10 release they would be raising the RISC-V baseline to the RVA23 profile even with barely any available RISC-V platforms supporting that newer RISC-V profile. That change is still going ahead and leaves Ubuntu 25.10 on RISC-V currently only supporting the QEMU virtualized target…

With Linux 6.17 expected for release this weekend, the Linux 6.18 merge window will in turn kick-off for its usual two week dance. Here is a look at some of the features on our radar that are expected to be merged for Linux 6.18, which is also likely to be the 2025 LTS kernel version…

ByteDance engineers propose Parker, a partitioned kernel RFC that enables multiple Linux kernels to run on a single system without traditional virtualization.

Vulkan 1.4.328 is now available as the latest specification update to this high performance graphics and compute API from The Khronos Group…

The Linux 6.17 kernel is tracking well for its planned stable release on Sunday. Here is a look back at some of the most interesting changes to find with this next kernel version…

The openSUSE project is nearing the release of Leap 16, its
first major release since openSUSE Leap 15
in May 2018. This release brings some changes to the
core of the distribution aside from the usual software upgrades; YaST has been retired,
SELinux has replaced AppArmor as the default mandatory access control
(MAC) system, and more. If all goes according to plan, Leap 16
final should be released in early October, with planned support
through 2031.

PostgreSQL 18 open-source RDBMS brings 3× faster I/O, easier upgrades, OAuth 2.0 authentication, and new developer tools.

It’s been three weeks since the last Calibre release, and now Calibre 8.11 has been released today as the latest stable version of this open-source, free, and cross-platform e-book management software.

You’ll see the results next year, but it’s not the end of Googly lappiesVideo Google has confirmed it will merge its ChromeOS and Android operating systems, and that the mobile OS will emerge triumphant.…

After being on a hiatus for more than one year and going through several rounds of Habana Labs driver maintainers due to Intel layoffs, there finally is some updated “habanalabs” AI accelerator kernel driver code slated to go into the upcoming Linux 6.18 kernel cycle. There is some new feature work but still no Gaudi 3 support for the upstream Linux kernel…

Just a friendly reminder that our autumn promotion is ending in a few days for those wishing to join Phoronix Premium at a discounted rate. Less than 1% of readers currently do so for helping to support the site and its Linux hardware testing and open-source news operations over the past 21 years. Joining Phoronix Premium gets you ad-free access, multi-page articles on a single page, custom forum avatar support, and other benefits all while helping for operations to continue during this difficult period for the web/ad industry…

The Linux 6.18 kernel is bringing a new patch to benefit those using the decade-old AMD Bulldozer processors and wanting to make use of Linux’s X86_NATIVE_CPU build option for enhancing performance in some areas by optimizing the kernel build for your particular processor/ISA capabilities…

A new feature merged this week for the Intel Mesa compiler code for their ANV Vulkan and Iris Gallium3D drivers is support for Stochastic Rounding…

Overnight the Linux PC vendor System76 released their long-awaited Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS Beta operating system along with the beta milestone of their COSMIC desktop environment…

Raspberry Pi 500+ is the newest all-in-one personal computer in the Raspberry Pi family. It combines the Raspberry Pi 5 platform with a mechanical keyboard, upgraded memory, and integrated storage. The design builds on the earlier Raspberry Pi 400 and 500 models while adding higher specifications and new input features. The Raspberry Pi 500+ is […]

Tom Mason is Head of Mathematics and Head of ICT at St Joseph’s College, an all-boys secondary school in South East London. He is passionate about teaching and learning, and has a keen interest in digital education practices.

Mr Mason recently set his Year 10 students a creative coding challenge, which they completed using our Code Editor for Education. The challenge not only boosted student engagement, but also showcased the effectiveness of open-ended, student-led learning in computer science education.

Challenges in the classroom

Teaching coding in a classroom setting presents a unique set of challenges, with one of the most significant being the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). Instead of engaging deeply with concepts like loops, conditions, and sorting algorithms, students now increasingly rely on AI tools to generate entire blocks of code for them, without understanding their functions. 

Meanwhile, traditional teacher-led instruction methods that focus on isolated coding concepts like inputs and outputs often leave students disconnected from the practical and creative aspects of programming. 

Against this backdrop, Mr Mason wanted to give his students the opportunity to:

• Apply their Python knowledge in meaningful ways
• Collaborate and problem-solve independently
• Explore unfamiliar programming concepts in a guided but open-ended fashion

The project

Mr Mason set a simple but powerful brief:

“Over three lessons, build a quiz that asks 10 questions about what you’ve learnt on the course.”

With this simple instruction, Mr Mason gave students a clear idea about what to do, while giving them the freedom to design their quiz however they liked. Students were also told that:

• Their 10 quiz questions had to relate to Python
• After creating their quiz, their classmates would give feedback based on key criteria (how well the code worked, the level of creativity, the user experience, etc.)

To complete the project, students used the Code Editor for Education. Created in collaboration with educators and built purposefully for the classroom, the Code Editor supports a range of teaching styles and learning abilities. Its simple interface encourages students to engage with the logic behind their code — they can’t rely on autocomplete.

Results

The open-ended structure led to an explosion of creativity and problem-solving.

Without step-by-step instructions, students had to independently explore solutions to questions like:

• “How do I randomise questions?”
• “How can I hide quiz answers in a separate file?”

Some students created multi-file Python projects, separating the logic controlling how the quiz worked from the content, or static information. For example, some students created one file to store the player’s answers and another file to manage the quiz interface and score logic. Students also created other advanced features:

• Score tracking based on speed of response
• Use of external Python libraries
• Custom input and output formatting
• Algorithms to randomly order quiz questions 

All students met the base requirements, but the open-ended nature of the project allowed more advanced students to push the boundaries, without the need for additional scaffolding.

Educator reflection

“They couldn’t just Google the answer; they had to think critically and test ideas. That’s what made it powerful.”

Mr Mason noted that the project’s success was due in large part to the flexibility and responsiveness of the Code Editor. Students could iterate quickly, test their ideas, and collaborate, all within a platform built for classroom coding.

“It was the most successful thing I’ve done. I’ll definitely be doing it again every year.”

Key takeaways

• Project-based learning fosters deeper engagement and knowledge, and creative application of programming concepts.
• Open-ended prompts empower students to explore and develop their own solutions.
• Code Editor for Education encourages thoughtful questions and experimentation rather than reliance on autocomplete solutions. With built-in class management and project tools, it offers a safe, browser-based environment ideal for coding in the classroom.

Join St Joseph’s College and the 1300+ other schools helping their students build a strong foundation in text-based programming with the Code Editor for Education.

The post Fostering creativity through open-ended projects with Code Editor for Education appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Cosmic’s Rust-powered debut is here! Dive into the revamped Pop!_OS 24.04 beta and get your first look at the modern desktop that’s rewriting Linux history.

The post Pop!_OS 24.04 and COSMIC Betas Have Arrived — We’ve Got Screenshots appeared first on FOSS Force.

Slopwatch will be relatively long for the simple reason that we found a lot of new LLM slop about “Linux”.