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- Superbugs need your help, no degree required
Superbugs need your help, no degree required
Superbugs need your help, and you don't need a biochemistry degree. This week we're discovering how developers can analyze proteins using pretrained models, learning how Linux Mint can give PCs a second life, exploring a recovery pipeline that turns snapshots into WordPress sites in under 10 minutes, and replacing discontinued Neofetch with your own custom MOTD system.
We're also installing CachyOS manually the Arch Linux way, and hearing from Cedric Clyburn on the podcast about how AI is shifting developers from specialized coders to orchestra conductors.
This is edition #59 of the We ❤️ Open Source newsletter. Made and curated by Todd & Jason.🙂 This week we'll look at...
In the Research Triangle Area?
Join us May 5 at Wake Tech's RTP Campus
We're hosting our first in-person meetup since the uber-successful All Things AI conference last month on Tuesday evening, May 5. The topic - What Enterprises Look for in OSS Under the EU Cyber Resilience Act — and How Maintainers Can Deliver It, is a unique and important one. The speaker, Dr. Lisa Bradley, Senior Director of Product & Application Security at Dell Technologies, is world-class and will deliver a ton of value to attendees. RSVP today and save your spot! Seating is limited.
Articles
 | Protein research used to take months of lab work. Now ProtGPT2 and ESM predict structures and functions in minutes. Tia Pope shows how computationally curious developers can generate sequences, predict enzyme functions, and help discover new drugs without a biochemistry degree. Dark proteins and superbugs need your help. WHY WE ❤️ IT: This was one of the most popular lightning talks at All Things AI. Tia makes advanced protein research accessible with hands-on notebooks you can actually use. The "hidden war inside our bodies" framing makes it urgent and real. |
 | When a local library replaced five Dell PCs that couldn't run Windows 11, they didn't end up in a landfill. Instead, Linux Mint gave them a second life. Don shares how open source software transforms "obsolete" hardware into valuable community resources. WHY WE ❤️ IT: Don turned five "obsolete" Dell PCs into working community resources using Linux Mint. One already went to the local historical society. Real impact with a repeatable process anyone can follow. |
 | Your WordPress site is gone, backups failed, but a Wayback Machine snapshot exists. This recovery pipeline handles everything from retry-safe retrieval to WXR generation — turning an archived snapshot into a WordPress-importable site in under 10 minutes. This one's a keeper. WHY WE ❤️ IT: A real-world test recovered 2,500 WordPress posts with full metadata from a Wayback snapshot. What usually takes days of manual scraping and cleanup becomes a single reproducible command. Incredibly useful, but we hope you never need it. |
 | Neofetch is no longer supported, but you don't need abandoned tools to display system information. Learn Linux TV shows you how to build your own automated message of the day using Bash scripts and systemd. Get system info on every login, plus an optional joke of the day. WHY WE ❤️ IT: Jay walks through creating a complete MOTD system from scratch, teaching essential systemd concepts along the way. The bonus "joke of the day" feature using fortune is optional but delightful. We certainly enjoy a good command line chuckle. |
What's in your technology toolbox?
The CachyOS GUI installer is great for beginners. This guide is for everyone else. Ricardo walks you through a full manual install the Arch Linux way, complete with LUKS encryption, LVM storage, and systemd-boot. Your system, your way.
From the We ❤️ Open Source Podcast
 | A Raspberry Pi can run 4 billion parameter models through quantization. Cedric Clyburn explains how reducing floating point precision to integer 8 cuts model size in half, why developers shift from specialized coders to orchestra conductors managing AI agents, and how community-driven projects like vLLM power Google, TikTok, and DeepSeek. |
Featured podcast short
Wrap Up
If you've made it this far (thank you!), check out everything we do, our YouTube channel with 1000's of open source talks, the many meetups we host around the southeast and NYC, the All Things AI spring event we co-host, and of course All Things Open, the largest open source tech conference on the US east coast.
We hope you learn something new this weekend!
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