Get ready for the annual Game Off, our month-long game jam that has inspired thousands of developers to make, share, and play games since 2012. Whether you’re a first-time jammer or a returning champion, this November is your chance to make something unforgettable.

The theme for this year? WAVES!

You have until December 1, 2025, at 13:37 PST to build a game loosely based on the theme. How you interpret it is entirely up to you. Don’t overthink it. Just ride the creative wave and see where it takes you. 🏄🏻

Need inspiration? Here are a few concept ideas

• A space shooter where you fly through gravitational waves and wormholes.
• A survival game where you build a coastal base and brace for tsunami waves.
• A tower defense game where you battle waves of increasingly powerful baddies.
• A skateboard game where you ride a sine wave, shredding through peaks and troughs. 
• A rhythm game where you catch the beat and ride the wave.
• A racing game where you drift through vaporwave skylines and a totally tubular synthwave soundtrack.
• A physics puzzler where you bounce, reflect, and refract energy waves.
• A remake of a class you enjoyed when you were younger resulting in endless waves of nostalgia.

Whatever form your game takes, whether it crashes, ripples, or totally wipes out… we can’t wait to see it.

Pro tip: Stuck for ideas? GitHub Copilot might be able to help. Try asking, “What are some fun games I could create with the game jam theme, WAVES?”

How to participate

Work alone or on a team. Use whatever programming languages, game engines, or libraries you like.

1. Sign up. Create a free GitHub account if you don’t have one.
2. Join the jam. Hop onto the itch.io Game Off 2025 page. If you don’t already have an itch.io account, you can sign in with your GitHub account.
3. Create a public repository. Store your source code on GitHub. Push your game before December 1 at 13:37 PST.
4. Submit your game on itch.io. Once submitted, you’ll be able to play other entries and cast your votes.

Voting

After the submission period ends, participants will vote on each other’s games. Entries will be evaluated in the following categories:

• Overall
• Gameplay
• Graphics
• Audio
• Innovation
• Theme interpretation

Voting will end on January 8, 2026, at 13:37 PST. Winners will be announced on the GitHub Blog and social channels on January 10, 2026, at 13:37 PST.

Light rules

Game Off is intentionally relaxed, but here are a few simple guidelines to keep things fair and fun:

• Your game must live in a GitHub repository. You should start from scratch, but you can use templates. The vast majority of the work should be done in the game jam period.
• License it however you like. Open source is encouraged, but not required.
• Fly solo or join a team. Work however you’re most comfortable.
• Use any tools or assets you prefer. Open source, commercial, or your own creations are all welcome.
• AI-assisted development is allowed. 

That’s it. Keep it creative, respectful, and fun, and remember to push your code before the deadline.

New to game development?

You don’t need to be an expert. Many participants build their first game during Game Off. Some use popular engines, others build their own, and a few even create games for classic hardware like the NES, Game Boy, or ZX Spectrum. However you make it, there’s no wrong way to play.

Here are a few engines you might want to explore:

• Godot (GDScript, C#, C++): Great for 2D and 3D games. Open source, lightweight, and beginner-friendly.
• Unity (C#): Ideal for 3D or mobile games with plenty of tutorials and asset packs available.
• Unreal Engine (C++, Blueprints): Best for cinematic visuals, complex 3D games, and high-end experiences.
• Phaser (JavaScript): Good choice for browser-based 2D arcade or platformer games.
• Pygame (Python): A solid option for learning game development basics or prototyping ideas quickly.
• Bevy (Rust): Modern, data-driven engine for developers who like performance and clean ECS design.
• LÖVE (Lua): Lightweight and fast, good for 2D games and creative coding projects.
• Flame (Dart / Flutter): Works well for mobile-first 2D games if you already use Flutter.
• Ebitengine (Go): Simple and powerful engine for 2D games written in Go.
• Defold (Lua): Cross-platform 2D engine with built-in tools and an active indie community.
• libGDX (Java): A familiar choice for developers coming from Java or Android backgrounds.
• HaxeFlixel (Haxe): Great for retro-style 2D games, platformers, and jam projects.

The Game Off 2025 Community is a great place to ask questions or look for teammates. There’s also a friendly community-run Discord server.

New to Git or GitHub?

Game Off is the perfect opportunity to check it out (version control pun intended).

• Git Documentation: Learn everything about version control and how to get started.
• GitHub Help: Explore tutorials and FAQs about GitHub.
• GitHub Community Forum: Ask questions, share ideas, and connect with others.

Whether your build floats or sinks, you’re part of something swell. Join thousands of developers around the world for a month of creativity, learning, and code-powered fun. Let’s hang ten on your keyboard  🌊 🤙 and make some WAVES together.

Good luck, and have fun!

The post GitHub Game Off 2025 theme announcement appeared first on The GitHub Blog.

Today, we’re talking about building real AI products with foundation models. Not toy demos, not vibes. We’ll get into the boring dashboards that save launches, evals that change your mind, and the shift from analyst to AI app builder. Our guide is Hugo Bowne-Anderson, educator, podcaster, and data scientist, who’s been in the trenches from scalable Python to LLM apps. If you care about shipping LLM features without burning the house down, stick around.

Episode sponsors

Posit
NordStellar
Talk Python Courses

Links from the show

Download audio: https://talkpython.fm/episodes/download/526/building-data-science-with-foundation-llm-models.mp3

Linux has been slowly gaining popularity over the past few years for both end users and developers. There are many reasons for that, such as the end of Windows 10, ease of use, flexibility, reliability, gaming and … development.

That’s right, Linux is an outstanding platform for development. Not only does it have all of the tools you need, but those tools are generally free, open sourc, and easy to install. On top of that, you have Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, virtual machines (VMs) and much more.

Generally speaking, it’s easy to list the best Linux distributions for end users, but when it comes to development, you can be certain that opinions will fly from every corner. Most often, those opinions center more around what distribution a particular developer uses and less around “this is the right tool for the job, regardless of what I use.”

I’ve whittled the list down to five different distributions. I’ll confess that my go-to distribution is on this list, but I can assure you that I would still recommend it, even if I hadn’t been using it for a decade.

Keep in mind that just about any Linux distribution can be turned into a development machine. Install the right toolchains, add your favorite language and IDE, mix in a container runtime engine and you’re off and running.

But I want to highlight the distributions that I believe are the best options on the market.

Are you ready?

Let’s go.

1. Debian

Debian is called the “mother of all distributions” for a reason. Debian serves as the base for Ubuntu, and a vast number of distributions are based on Ubuntu. Without Debian, there is no Ubuntu. As well, Debian is one of the most rock-solid operating systems available, and that’s no exaggeration. The reason for this is that Debian uses a conservative release cycle, well-vetted applications and fast/secure updates.

On top of the stability, you get a vast trove of software to install via the Debian repositories, a powerful and user-friendly package manager and multi-architecture support. Developers can also choose which branch they want to use, from stable, testing or bleeding edge. Debian is also fast and highly customizable, with different desktop environments to choose from. Debian also enjoys a very large user base, which means you can easily find support for whatever issue you are having.

Finally, Debian is very secure. One thing Debian does differently from the Ubuntu-based distributions is not enabling sudo privileges for standard accounts. If you need to do something that requires admin privileges, you’ll need to go old school and su to root. Of course, if you want, you can add your standard users to the sudo group for a more user-friendly experience.

2. Fedora

For many, Fedora is the obvious choice for development. One of the primary reasons for this is that Fedora is a platform focused on new technology and often adopts software earlier than other distributions. Fedora was one of the first distributions to change to Wayland, use Btrfs, and always enjoys the latest version of GNOME before any other distribution release. Because it ships with new versions of software, you can rest assured that your toolchain apps (such as GCC) and languages (like Python) will be the latest versions available. Because of this, you’ll have less software to install or upgrade out of the box. Nor will you have to add unofficial repositories to access the latest releases. Fedora also includes developer-centric tools such as compilers and IDEs, and there’s the toolbox command for creating reproducible development environments. There’s also the GNOME Boxes application that ships with Fedora. This app makes it very easy to spin up virtual environments without having to deal with the hassles of VirtualBox or other VM tools. Even though Fedora tends to be “bleeding edge,” it’s still very predictable, reliable and stable. Finally, Fedora has a very large community, so finding support won’t be even remotely challenging.

3. Pop!_OS

Yep, Pop!_OS is my distro of choice. And now that System76 has introduced the COSMIC desktop, it’s even better. The first thing you’ll notice about COSMIC is that it’s incredibly fast. The reason for this is that the desktop environment was written in Rust, which is a fast language. Aside from the speed, Pop!_OS was actually built specifically for creators. Another feature that helps lift Pop!_OS above many other distributions is the ability to enable or disable tiling window management on the fly. If you need a more efficient desktop environment, enable the tiling feature. If not, leave it off.

Another very important reason why Pop!_OS is on this list is that System76 offers ISO images for both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs. By selecting the right ISO, you won’t have to worry about installing drivers for your GPU of choice. With the proper NVIDIA drivers installed, you’ll have a much easier time developing for machine learning (ML) and AI. Pop!_OS uses the APT package manager, so you’ll benefit from a wide assortment of software. On top of that, you get Flatpak for even more options. Finally, Pop!_OS offers full disk encryption out of the box, which means if your system or drive is stolen or lost, you won’t have to worry that it can be accessed.

4. openSUSE

First off, openSUSE comes in two different versions: Tumbleweed and Leap. Tumbleweed is a rolling release distribution, which means you’ll always have the latest and greatest software on board. The difference between openSUSE and other rolling release distributions is that the development team uses the openQA testing framework to ensure a heightened level of stability that you won’t find on other rolling releases. Or, if you prefer long-term support, you can go with the Leap release. You’ll also get some builder-specific tools such as Open Build Service (a powerful, web-based tool for simplifying the process of building and distributing software, YaST (a powerful and comprehensive admin tool that allows developers to install all the necessary -devel packages with a single click), and the Btrfs filesystem (which includes snapshot capabilities to make rolling back to a previous state easy). openSUSE is also very well suited for containerization via Docker, Podman and Kubernetes out of the box.

5. Linux Mint

If you were to ask any developer why they would choose Linux Mint, the answer is simple: Because it’s so easy to use. That user-friendliness equates to being able to get the OS up and running with zero problems and a user experience that is about as simple and reliable as it gets. Linux Mint also benefits from the Ubuntu base, so even installing all the necessary building components can be done with a single command: sudo apt-get install build-essential -y. This package installs a full collection of essential tools and libraries that are required for compiling and building software from source code. You’ll get C and C++ compilers, GNU Make, headers for standard C and C++ libraries, dpkg-devel and much more. Linux Mint also defaults to the Cinnamon desktop, which is immediately familiar, fast and stable. What more do you need in a developer environment?

The post Best Linux Distros for Development appeared first on The New Stack.

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Why is Amazon laying off 14,000 people in the middle of an AI boom — and is it really a boom at all? We dig into the contradiction at the heart of Seattle’s tech scene, discussing Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s “world’s largest startup” rationale and what it says about the company’s culture and strategy. And we debate whether AI progress represents true transformation or the familiar signs of a tech bubble in the making.

Then we examine the vision of Cascadia high-speed rail — the ambitious plan to connect Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, B.C., by bullet train. Is it the regional infrastructure needed to power the Pacific Northwest’s next chapter, or an expensive dream looking for a purpose?

With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop

Related headlines from the week

Amazon layoffs

• Amazon confirms 14,000 job cuts, says push for ‘efficiency gains’ will continue into 2026
• A tale of two Seattles in the age of AI: Harsh realities and new hope for the tech community
• Filing: Amazon cuts more than 2,300 jobs in Washington state as part of broader layoffs
• Amazon layoffs hit software engineers hardest in Washington
• Amazon layoffs reaction: ‘Thought I was a top performer but guess I’m expendable’
• Amazon CEO says massive corporate layoffs were about agility — not AI or cost-cutting

Amazon earnings

• Amazon stock soars 11% after topping Q3 estimates with $180B in revenue, $21B in profits
• Amazon’s Anthropic investment boosts its quarterly profits by $9.5B
• ‘Big Beautiful’ tax benefit: Amazon and other tech giants reap the rewards of new law, for now

Microsoft Azure, earnings and OpenAI

• Microsoft’s Azure reports cloud outage, disrupting global customers including Alaska Airlines
• Microsoft beats expectations, reports nearly $35B in Q1 capital spending amid Azure outage
• Microsoft gets 27% stake in OpenAI, and a $250B Azure commitment

Seattle-Portland-Vancouver

• Slowly but surely, high-speed rail backers believe Cascadia mega-project will become a reality
• Cascadia’s AI paradox: A world-leading opportunity threatened by rising costs and a talent crunch
• The ‘enormous barrier’ that threatens economic growth in the Pacific Northwest
• Beta’s unique electric airplane flies into Seattle to wow state officials and aviation experts

Subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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