Tech Refreshing

📌 PeppermintOS Devuan Excalibur Is Here — And It's Worth Talking About
If you've been running Linux for a while, you know how rare it is to find a distro that genuinely respects your choices. Most distributions make decisions for you — what init system runs under the hood, what apps come pre-installed, how your system boots. PeppermintOS has always pushed back against that trend, and their latest release takes it even further.
PeppermintOS Devuan Excalibur, officially released on June 12, 2026, is the newest addition to the Peppermint family — and it's built specifically for users who want a full, polished Linux desktop experience without systemd.

🔹 So What Makes This Release Different?
The headline feature is simple but powerful: when you install PeppermintOS Devuan Excalibur, you get to choose your own init system. Not just one alternative — three of them.
At install time, the Calamares installer gives you the option to pick between:
✅ SysVinit — the classic, battle-tested init system used for decades

✅ OpenRC — lightweight, fast, dependency-based

✅ runit — minimal, transparent, and blazing quick at boot
That's something you almost never see in a beginner-accessible distribution. Most systemd-free distros pick one replacement and call it done. Peppermint gives you the wheel.

🔹 Built for Real-World Hardware
One of the things the Peppermint community has always prided itself on is hardware support. This release continues that tradition. Community members have been running early builds on machines from 2005 and 2006 — think 1GB RAM, older processors — and reporting smooth, usable performance running Firefox ESR, LibreOffice, and everyday productivity tools without any major issues.
If you've got an old laptop sitting in a drawer because Windows dropped support for it, PeppermintOS Devuan Excalibur is exactly the kind of distro that gives it a second life.

🔹 Peppermint's Philosophy Still Shines Through
What hasn't changed is the core Peppermint approach: everything you need and nothing you don't. No pre-installed browser. No bundled office suite you didn't ask for. No bloat. Just a clean, stable base with a set of genuinely useful custom tools — an update manager, a software center with Flatpak support, the Kumo site-specific browser manager, and more.
The team also rebuilt their entire ISO pipeline from scratch this year, which means future updates and new builds will arrive faster and more consistently across Debian, Devuan, and the upcoming Void Linux variant.

🔹 Who Should Try It?
Honestly? A lot of people.
— Got old hardware? This will breathe new life into it.

— Want a systemd-free desktop without piecing one together yourself? This is the easiest path.

— New to Linux and want something clean to start with? The installer is smooth and the tools are approachable.

— Privacy-conscious or working in a minimal server-adjacent environment? The leaner footprint and transparent init systems make this worth a look.

PeppermintOS Devuan Excalibur isn't trying to compete with Ubuntu or Fedora on features. It's doing something more focused — giving users a lightweight, honest, community-built Linux experience with real freedom baked in from the first boot.
Check it out at 👉 https://techrefreshing.com/peppermintos-devuan-excalibur/

Drop a comment below — are you running Peppermint, or thinking about making the switch? 👇

📸 digiKam 9.1.0 Is Here — And Every Photographer Should Take Notice
If you've been looking for a powerful, free alternative to Lightroom or Apple Photos, digiKam just got a whole lot better. Released on June 7, 2026, digiKam 9.1.0 is the latest stable update from the KDE team — and after spending time exploring everything it brings to the table, it's clear this release solves problems that real photographers actually care about.
Here's what's new and why it matters.

🔥 Google Pixel Motion Photo Support
Shoot with a Google Pixel phone? You're going to love this. digiKam 9.1.0 now fully supports Pixel motion photos — those hybrid files that combine a still image with a short embedded video clip. Previously, these files were awkward to manage inside digiKam. Now they preview and organize seamlessly, just like any other photo in your library.

🔍 Advanced Search Just Got Smarter
Heavy search users will appreciate the new "Clear All Groups" button inside the SearchView interface. Before this update, clearing complex multi-filter search queries meant deleting each group manually. Now one click resets everything. Small change, big time saver.

⭐ Rating Filters Are Finally Fixed
This one frustrated a lot of users. Star rating filters — one of the most basic culling tools in any photo management app — simply weren't working correctly in earlier versions. Filter changes weren't updating the view, and in some cases the filter had no effect at all. Version 9.1.0 fixes every reported rating filter issue. If you cull images using star ratings, this fix alone is worth the upgrade.

🗄️ MariaDB Users: Big Relief
Running digiKam on a NAS or home server with a MariaDB backend? Version 9.0.0 introduced some painful database migration issues — photos appearing to vanish, slow performance on large libraries, and silent schema failures. All of that has been addressed in 9.1.0 with improved migration logic, missing index fixes, and proper schema updates. Your library is safer and faster now.

📍 Geolocation Works the Way It Should
Traveling photographers will be glad to hear that reverse geocoding rate limiting is now handled properly — no more random HTTP 429 errors from OpenStreetMap mid-session. GPS metadata for video files is also now correctly written to the database, and a nasty bug that was silently overwriting GPS coordinates in XMP sidecars has been patched.

💻 Available On All Platforms — For Free
digiKam 9.1.0 is available right now as a free download for Windows 10 and later, macOS (both Silicon and Intel), and Linux 64-bit. No subscription. No cloud lock-in. Just a seriously capable photo management tool that you own completely.
Whether you manage 5,000 photos or 500,000, this update makes digiKam more reliable, more accurate, and easier to use than ever before.
👉 Read Detail Review Here: https://techrefreshing.com/exploring-digikam-9-1-0-new-tools-photographers/