By Larry Cafiero

On Thursday, Sourav Rudra at It’s FOSS on Thursday gave the entire Linux universe a tip – a $60 saving tip, from the looks of it.

It seems that the new Brave web browser, called Origin, “is Brave’s stripped-down browser, built for people who never touch most of what the company packages with Brave Browser,” the article states. “It drops the AI assistant, the rewards program, the crypto wallet, and the VPN, leaving the ad and tracker blocking in place.”

But don’t let that fool you into thinking that Origin is a half-baked browser, because according to the article, “you still get regular security upgrades, Chromium-specific patches, and general browser updates.”

Here’s the kicker: For most users, Brave Origin costs $59.99 for a one-time license purchase for use across Windows, Android, macOS, and iOS. However, people running a Linux distro on their computer do not have to pay a dime or sign up for an account.

The article takes you through the paces of using Origin, as well as providing ways to download it – for free – on to your given Linux distro. This article is worth a read.

KaOS 2026.06 released with Dinit

Marcus Nestor of 9 to 5 Linux reported Wednesday that KaOS “has officially released KaOS Linux 2026.06 today as the first ISO snapshot of this independent distribution using Dinit as the default init system instead of systemd.”

As mentioned earlier, the KaOS Linux devs have decided to move away from systemd and the KDE Plasma desktop environment after more than 12 years of using them by default. In February, they dropped KDE Plasma for a Niri/Noctalia setup, but they were still working on replacing systemd with another init system.

“As of today, they have succeeded in delivering a stable ISO image that users can use to install the distribution without using systemd as the default init system,” the article states. “The replacement is Dinit, a modern and lightweight init system and service manager designed as a fast, dependency-based alternative to systemd.”

But apparently, KaOS isn’t completely systemd-free, according to the developers: “A move away from systemd as an init system is completed. KaOS now uses dinit > turnstile > seatd for the system startup, seats & services. This does not mean the system is systemd-free, a much-reduced systemd is still in use mainly for udev & tmpfiles,” the KaOS Linux development team was quoted in the article.

GIMP 0.54 goes on a test-drive

Well, this was inevitable. Someone makes and flatpaks software from 30 years ago, and someone else gives it a test drive and writes about it.

As we reported on Monday, a developer has revived an older version of GIMP – otherwise known as the GNU Image Manipulation Program – specifically, version 0.54 from 1996 and “Flatpak’ed” it for use by modern Linux desktops.

Christine Hall at FOSS Force took the bait and gave it a test run because, well, it was there. Hall got it up and running on her Linux Mint rig, and Hall’s impression – overall – is that it should have stayed in the past.

“Playing around with it was fun — in a frustrating sort of way — but it mainly served to remind me how much better computing is now than it was back in the days when I was working in DOS with Windows for Workgroups sitting on top,” the article concludes.

And that’s all for today. Don’t forget: Distro of the Week appears Wednesday – and it’s always a good one on hand – and Bits and Bobs will return on Monday.