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Summer updates 2026

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Taking advantage of the summer break, I’ve been dedicating some time to maintaining and evolving the LoneStar Network. This post summarizes the main updates made in recent weeks, both to share the latest infrastructure developments and as a personal reminder.

Actions and updates

  • Mail Service: DKIM management migration to s/qmail completed, abandoning the old qmail-remote.sh wrapper in favor of the native management introduced with s/qmail 4.
  • Music Service (private): The personal fork of GNU FM (v0.1.4) has been released to production, introducing a new graphical theme and expanded administration and reporting features.
  • OpenSim Service: The Docker container has been updated from OpenSimulator 0.9.2.2 to 0.9.3.0, migrating the runtime from .NET Mono 6 to .NET 8 and switching the architecture from standalone to local grid. Due to Diva Wifi‘s incompatibility with .NET 8, I have shelved the implementation attempt and am currently working on integrating the w4os WordPress plugin for web-based management of the Region. This plugin appears to be the only web management plugin for OpenSimulator with some ongoing development.
  • Document Management Service (private): Updated the Alfresco CE Docker stack from version 26.1 to 26.2 (with ACS 26.2 and Share 26.3.0). This included migrating the database from PostgreSQL 15.6 to 17.9 and switching the search engine from Solr6 to OpenSearch 2.0.

IPv6 compliance

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One of the positive aspects of switching LoneStar Network’s ISP is the availability of a static /56 IPv6 subnet.

I had previously experimented with Hurricane Electrics’ service, which offers IPv6 addresses over IPv4, but the significant latency and tunnel disconnections made it unreliable.

Now, however, all essential services are also available over IPv6 with performance identical to IPv4. Specifically, in addition to the Webmail portal and the LoneStar.it and UnixPortal.net websites, the mail server also exchanges incoming and outgoing SMTP connections over IPv6 with external servers that support it.

A great step forward.

Big changes

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A major change has taken place in the LoneStar Network these days 🙂

I’ve made a technological transition from my previous 200M FTTC connection to a new 2.5G FTTH connection. As a result, the available bandwidth has increased exponentially.

But that’s not all. During the transition, I also switched connectivity providers, moving from TIM to NavigaBene.it. This meant I abandoned the historic IP address subnet I’d been using for over a decade, switching to a new subnet provided by the new provider.

I’ve always been hesitant to make this type of transition for fear of losing rDNS manageability, but to my great surprise, I was able to get the same features from the new provider despite the different contract type. I was pleasantly impressed by the speed and expertise of the technical support team; we quickly agreed on what was needed, and everything went smoothly.

The router and DNS reconfigurations were relatively quick and without any major issues.

So here we are, ready for new adventures! 😉

Are we the last generation? No, we’re just the latest buzzword.

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Article written with the use of Artificial Intelligence

How often do we hear phrases like:

We are the last generation that can save the planet.

We are the last generation to know life without the internet.

Effective expressions, often used in political, environmental, motivational, or nostalgic speeches. But there’s a serious problem behind these formulas: the incorrect use of the term “generation.”

In everyday language, the idea has spread that “generation” simply means “us today,” as if the entire living population belonged to the same temporal, historical, and cultural category. This is conceptually incorrect.

In reality, generations follow one another in time, overlap, and coexist. A child born today does not belong to the same generation as someone in their 50s or 70s. Therefore, saying that “we are the last generation that…” presupposes a uniformity that doesn’t exist.

Generations are distinguished (and renewed)

In demography, a generation is defined as the average interval between the birth of parents and the birth of their children, usually around 25-30 years. But in sociocultural parlance, generations are identified in even shorter cycles—often every 7-15 years—to reflect changes in values, historical references, access to technology, and educational models.

Here’s an example of how they are commonly divided:

  • Baby Boomers (born 1946–1964)
  • Generation X (1965–1980)
  • Millennials (1981–1996)
  • Generation Z (1997–2012)
  • Generation Alpha (2013 onwards)

All these generations coexist in the world today, each with different experiences, roles, and responsibilities in society.

A Rhetorical (and Ideological) Problem

The expression “we are the last generation that…” is also a rhetorical shortcut. It serves to:

  • create alarm or moral urgency
  • evoke a sense of collective responsibility
  • or, conversely, a form of nostalgia/self-celebration (“we know what real life was like”).

But it is not neutral: it is a way of simplifying reality and speaking on behalf of everyone, without distinguishing who is speaking or who is being addressed.

In some cases, it can even contribute to generating artificial tensions, as in discussions of “generational conflict” (young vs. old), shifting attention from the true structural causes of problems to imaginary faults.

Words are not secondary details: they structure thought, guide the way we interpret reality and talk about responsibilities, rights, and possibilities. Misusing the term “generation” simplifies a complex reality, preventing a clear analysis of problems (environmental, social, political) that instead require depth and precision.

A new laptop

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A few days ago, after much thought, waiting and reflection, I ordered and received a new laptop to replace the Dell XPS 13 9350 that I have been using since 2016.

It is a Lenovo Thinkbook 14 Gen 7 IML, Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor, 32GB RAM, 1TB nvme disk.

The laptop is a second computer for me, as I use the fixed desktop workstation I have at home most of the time. On weekends and during vacations or other occasions when I am away from the workstation, I use the laptop instead, which in my beach house turns into a fixed workstation with an external monitor, keyboard and USB mouse.

On the laptop I obviously have an instance of Slackware Linux, and I transfer it from one laptop to another without installing from scratch. In this case I prepared a USB stick with an iso of LiveSlak using Rufus. I started the notebook from USB with the Secure Boot option disabled and proceeded to partition the disk.

I then connected the new laptop to the old one via network cable and proceeded to rsync the old laptop’s partitions onto the new one.

The most entertaining part is setting up the UEFI boot. Once I copied the distribution and chrooted to it, I first proceeded to enroll the pre-existing signing keys for secure boot. A very simple and versatile tool to use for this and for managing secure boot in general is sbctl. After this step, I added my bootloader to the boot menu using efibootmgr, setting it as the primary boot. All I had to do was reboot, re-enable secure boot in the bios, and everything went as expected.

The peripherals and new features were all supported by Slackware without any difficulty and the performance was significantly increased compared to the previous laptop that was more than 8 years old.

A satisfying result in a short time!

 

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 .