Top 5 weekly: booting an OS from Google Drive, using a Game Boy camera as a webcam, and more

Key Takeaways

Microsoft updates WSL Linux kernel after 2.5 years.
Samsung Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6 leaks reveal upgrades.
Game Boy camera turned into webcam with GB Operator.

With Samsung’s Unpacked event coming up on July 10th, we at XDA are eagerly awaiting news from the South Korean tech giant. However, that didn’t mean the world came to a standstill while we waited with bated breath. Plenty of cool things happened this week, and if you missed out on them, here are our top five picks.

Better late than never

If you’re a fan of using WSL in Windows, you may have noticed that the Linux kernel it used was a little outdated. In fact, it had gone two and a half years without getting an update. Now, Microsoft has finally fixed that with a new update that brings the kernel a little more closer to current times, so now’s a good time to get it updated.

Screenshot of Windows Subsystem for Linux in Windows 11

How to back up and restore a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) distro

Making a backup of your WSL distros is a smart idea and can help you move instances between machines as well. Here’s how you do it.

Foldable phones are in

galaxy-z-fold-5-vs-vivo-x-fold-3-pro-xda03109

Vivo X Fold 3 Pro (left); Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 (right)

Can’t wait for Unpacked? Turns out, a leaker got their hands on information about the Samsung Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6, and they’re good upgrades over their predecessor. We saw new processors, more RAM, and even a new addition to the Interpreter Mode that lets you use the phone as a middle-man between yourself and someone who speaks a different language. If the leaks are true, we can’t wait to see these get announced during Unpacked.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6: Rumors, leaks, and things we’d like to see

Samsung’s next clamshell phone is said to launch in the coming weeks, and here’s everything we know about it so far.

Microphone not included

The Game Boy camera being used as a webcam

Got a spare Game Boy camera lying around? Turns out, the people behind GB Operator are working on a way to turn it into a webcam. Just slot the Game Boy camera into the GB Operator and you can turn up to your next remote meeting in all of your low-res, black-and-white, 3FPS glory. GB Operator does a lot more than toy with your Game Boy camera, and it’s well worth a look if you still have Game Boy games lying around; but still, this is an impressive, if not impractical feat.

How to use Android phone as webcam for your PC

Here’s how to turn your Android phone into a wireless webcam for PC and laptop

Turn your Android phone into a fully functioning webcam for your desktop or laptop.

Better late than… wait, what?

Japan is known as a technological powerhouse, but it also loves its retro hardware. Sure enough, until recently, the Japanese government used floppy disks as part of its systems. To help bring everything up to speed, Japan created the Digital Agency to go through and find modern-day alternatives for the government’s aging hardware. Now, you can rest assured that Japan no longer uses storage devices that some people in their 20s have never seen before in their whole lives.

An old PC running Ollama with Stable Diffusion, with a Poco M6 Pro accessing the server

I turned my old PC into an AI-hosting machine, and here’s how you can, too

New devices with NPUs are fine and all, but you can still repurpose old hardware to generate AI text and images

And yes, it’s Linux

Finally, we have this absolutely insane achievement where someone got Arch Linux running off of Google Drive. They managed to get the operating system running on a laptop without any storage, leveraging the cloud-based service to do all the heavy lifting for it. As you might imagine, it didn’t work very well; the man behind this project, Ersei, noted that getting anything done on the operating system was slow going. However, it’s still a really amazing feat, and it shows just ingenious people can get with their PCs.