All the News that Matters

• AlmaLinux 10.1 released
  AlmaLinux 10.1 has been released. Inaddition to providing binary compatibility with Red Hat EnterpriseLinux (RHEL) 10.1, the most notable feature in AlmaLinux 10.1 isthe addition of supportfor Btrfs, which is not available in RHEL:
  
  Btrfs support encompasses both kernel and userspace enablement, and itis now possible to install AlmaLinux OS on a Btrfs filesystem from thevery beginning. Initial enablement was scoped to the installer andstorage management stack, and broader support within the AlmaLinuxsoftware collection for Btrfs features is forthcoming.
  
  In addition to Btrfs support, AlmaLinux OS 10.1 includes numerousother improvements to serve our community. We have continued to extendhardware support both by addingdrivers and by adding a secondary version of AlmaLinux OS and EPELto extend support of x86_64_v2 processors.
  
  See the releasenotes for a full list of changes.
  
  
  

• [$] APT Rust requirement raises questions
  It is rarely newsworthy when a project or package picks up a newdependency. However, changes in a core tool like Debian's Advanced PackageTool (APT) can have far-reaching effects. For example, JulianAndres Klode's declarationthat APT would require Rust in May 2026 means that a few of Debian'sunofficial ports must either acquire a working Rust toolchain ordepend on an old version of APT. This has raised several questionswithin the project, particularly about the ability of a singlemaintainer to make changes that have widespread impact.
  

• Three stable kernel updates, two french hens, ...
  Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the6.17.9,6.12.59, and6.6.117 stable kernels. As usual, he advisesusers of stable kernels to upgrade.
  

• Security updates for Monday
  Security updates have been issued by Fedora (calibre, chromium, cri-o1.32, cri-o1.33, cri-o1.34, dotnet10.0, dovecot, gnutls, gopass, gopass-hibp, gopass-jsonapi, kubernetes1.31, kubernetes1.32, kubernetes1.33, kubernetes1.34, and linux-firmware), Mageia (ffmpeg, kernel, kmod-xtables-addons & kmod-virtualbox, kernel-linus, konsole, and redis), Red Hat (bind and bind-dyndb-ldap and kernel), SUSE (act, alloy, amazon-ssm-agent, ansible-12, ansible-core, blender, chromium, cups-filters, curl, elfutils, expat, firefox, glib2, grub2, helm, kernel, libipa_hbac-devel, libxslt, nvidia-container-toolkit, ongres-scram, openexr, podman, poppler, runc, samba, sssd, thunderbird, and tomcat), and Ubuntu (cups-filters, linux, linux-aws, linux-gcp, linux-hwe-6.14, linux-oracle, linux-realtime, linux-oem-6.14, and linux-realtime-6.14).

• Kernel prepatch 6.18-rc7
  Linus has released 6.18-rc7, probably thelast -rc before the 6.18 release.
  So the rc6 kernel wasn't great: we had a last-minute core VM regression that caused people problems.
  That's not a great thing late in the release cycle like that, but it was a fairly trivial fix, and the cause wasn't some horrid bug, just a latent gotcha that happened to then bite a late VM fix. So while not great, it also doesn't make me worry about the state of 6.18. We're still on track for a final release next weekend unless some big new problem rears its ugly head.

• Racket 9.0 released
  The Racket programming languageproject has released Racketversion 9.0. Racket is a descendant of Scheme, so it is part of the Lisp family of languages. The headline feature in the release is parallelthreads, which adds to the concurrency tools in the language: "WhileRacket has had green threads for some time, and supports parallelism viafutures and places, we feel parallel threads is a major addition."Other new features include the black-boxwrapper to prevent the compiler from optimizing calculations away, the decompile-linkletfunction to map linkletsback to an s-expression, theaddition of Weibulldistributions to the math library, and more.

• Improving GCC Buffer Overflow Detection for C Flexible Array Members (Oracle)
  The Oracle blog has alengthy article on enhancements to GCC to help detect overflows offlexible array members (FAMs) in C programs.
  We describe here two new GNU extensions which specify size information for FAMs. These are a new attribute, "counted_by" and a new builtin function, "__builtin_counted_by_ref". Both extensions can be used in GNU C applications to specify size information for FAMs, improving the buffer overflow detection for FAMs in general.
  This work has been covered on LWN as well.

• The 2025 Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board election
  The call forcandidates for the 2025 election for the Linux Foundation TechnicalAdvisory Board has been posted.
  The TAB exists to provide advice from the kernel community to the Linux Foundation and holds a seat on the LF's board of directors; it also serves to facilitate interactions both within the community and with outside entities. Over the last year, the TAB has overseen the organization of the Linux Plumbers Conference, advised on the setup of the kernel CVE numbering authority, worked behind the scenes to help resolve a number of contentious community discussions, worked with the Linux Foundation on community conference planning, and more.
  Nominations close on December 13.

• [$] Unpacking for Python comprehensions
  Unpacking Python iterables of various sorts, such as dictionaries or lists,is useful in a number of contexts, including for function arguments, butthere has long been a call for extending that capability to comprehensions. PEP 798 ("Unpacking inComprehensions") was first proposed in June 2025 to fill that gap. In earlyNovember, the steering council acceptedthe PEP, which means that the feature will be coming to Python 3.15 inOctober 2026. It may be something of a niche feature, but it is aninconsistency that has been apparent for a while—to the point that some Python programmersassume that it is already present in the language.

• PHP 8.5.0 released
  Version8.5.0 of the PHP language has been released. Changes include a new"|>" operator that, for some reason, makes these two linesequivalent:
  $result = strlen("Hello world"); $result = "Hello world" |> strlen(...);
  Other changes include a new function attribute, "#[\NoDiscard]" toindicate that the return value should be used, attributes on constants, andmore; see themigration guide for details.

• Security updates for Friday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (delve and golang), Debian (webkit2gtk), Oracle (expat and thunderbird), Red Hat (kernel), Slackware (openvpn), SUSE (chromium, grub2, and kernel), and Ubuntu (cups-filters, imagemagick, and libcupsfilters).

• Racing karts on a Rust GPU kernel driver (Collabora blog)
  In July, Collabora announcedthe Rust-based TyrGPU driver for Arm MaliGPUs. Daniel Almeida has posted an updateon progress with a prototype of the driver running on a Rock 5B boardwith the Rockchip RK3588 system-on-chip:
  
  The Tyr prototype has progressed from basic GPU job execution torunning GNOME, Weston, and full-screen 3D games like SuperTuxKart,demonstrating a functional, high-performance Rust driver that matchesC-driver performance and paves the way for eventual upstreamintegration! [...]
  
  Tyr is not ready to be used as a daily-driver, and it will stilltake time to replicate this upstream, although it is now clear that wewill surely get there. And as a mere prototype, it has a lot ofshortcuts that we would not have in an upstream version, even thoughit can run on top of an unmodified (i.e., upstream) version ofMesa.
  
  That said, this prototype can serve as an experimental driver andas a testbed for all the Rust abstraction work taking placeupstream. It will let us experiment with different design decisionsand gather data on what truly contributes to the project'sobjective.
  
  There is also a video onYouTube of the prototype in action.
  
  
  

• [$] BPF and io_uring, two different ways
  BPF allows programs uploaded from user space to be run, safely, within thekernel. The io_uring subsystem, too, can be thought of as a way of loadingprograms in the kernel, though the programs in question are mostly asequence of I/O-related system calls. It has sometimes seemed inevitablethat io_uring would, like many other parts of the kernel, gain BPFcapabilities as a way of providing more flexibility to user space. Thathas not yet happened, but there are currently two patch sets underconsideration that take different approaches to the problem.

• Security updates for Thursday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (bind, bind9.18, container-tools:rhel8, expat, grub2, haproxy, idm:DL1, kernel, kernel-rt, lasso, libsoup, libssh, libtiff, pcs, podman, python-kdcproxy, qt5-qt3d, redis, redis:7, runc, shadow-utils, sqlite, squid, vim, webkit2gtk3, xorg-x11-server, xorg-x11-server-Xwayland, and zziplib), Debian (chromium), Oracle (lasso and postgresql), SUSE (erlang27, ghostscript, grub2, kernel, libIex-3_4-33, python312, and sbctl), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.4, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux-aws-6.8, linux-fips, linux-aws-fips, linux-gcp-fips, linux-oracle, and mysql-8.0, mysql-8.4).

• [$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for November 20, 2025
  Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:
  Front: Hardware architectures; Fedora Flatpaks; Debian hardware support; sockaddr structure; NUMA nodes; Homebrew. Briefs: LightDM security; Debian Libre Live; Xubuntu postmortem; Blender 5.0; Git 2.52.0; Rust in Android; Thunderbird 145; Quotes; ... Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

Linux Insider"LinuxInsider"

• Inside the Wind River–ServiceNow Deal Bringing AI On-Prem
  Wind River’s latest partnership with ServiceNow brings AI workloads back under enterprise control by enabling on-prem deployment of the ServiceNow AI Platform. The post Inside the Wind River–ServiceNow Deal Bringing AI On-Prem appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• Red Hat’s Evolution: How a Subsidiary Became an AI Powerhouse
  Red Hat has become a foundational player in enterprise AI by combining open-source infrastructure with hybrid cloud flexibility, maintaining independence while leveraging IBM’s global scale. The post Red Hat’s Evolution: How a Subsidiary Became an AI Powerhouse appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• Open-Source Security Tool AdaptixC2 Fueling Ransomware Attacks
  Ransomware gangs are exploiting AdaptixC2, an open-source command-and-control framework originally built for red team testing, to support stealthy post-exploitation operations. The post Open-Source Security Tool AdaptixC2 Fueling Ransomware Attacks appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• Open-Source Model Near Breaking Point Despite Trillions in Value
  A coalition of open-source stewards warns that the software industry’s reliance on goodwill to maintain critical infrastructure is unsustainable, despite open source fueling trillions in global economic value. The post Open-Source Model Near Breaking Point Despite Trillions in Value appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• The Linux Foundation Expands Agentic AI Push With Third Major Project
  The Linux Foundation has launched its third major agentic AI initiative in three months, designed to secure communication, enhance interoperability, and drive open-source innovation in multi-agent environments. The post The Linux Foundation Expands Agentic AI Push With Third Major Project appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• TuxCare’s In-Memory CVE Scanner Enhances Linux Security With Radar
  TuxCare Radar is an in-memory CVE scanner that reduces false positives, speeds compliance, and delivers real-time Linux vulnerability detection. The post TuxCare’s In-Memory CVE Scanner Enhances Linux Security With Radar appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• Linux Patch Blind Spot Exposes Critical Cybersecurity Risks
  Linux patch delays leave enterprises exposed to long-standing vulnerabilities. Experts warn automation and consistent management are essential to closing this critical security gap. The post Linux Patch Blind Spot Exposes Critical Cybersecurity Risks appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• The Year of the Linux Desktop? This Time, the Data Says Yes
  Linux is making real gains on the desktop. New data shows its market share passing 5% in the U.S., signaling a long-awaited breakthrough. The post The Year of the Linux Desktop? This Time, the Data Says Yes appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• From Kernel to Cloud: Open Source Takes On Security Trade-Offs
  Open-source systems are adopting live patching and isolation technologies to support always-on security and meet enterprise compliance demands in the cloud. The post From Kernel to Cloud: Open Source Takes On Security Trade-Offs appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• Kubernetes Cost Optimization May Be Doing More Harm Than Good
  Slashing Kubernetes costs sounds smart — until it backfires. Here’s how to reduce spend safely while improving platform stability and speed. The post Kubernetes Cost Optimization May Be Doing More Harm Than Good appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• UK lines up £250M cloud procurement to feed its growing AI research appetite
  Plan would link commercial capacity with Britain's flagship supercomputers
  The UK government is looking for cloud providers to support its ambition of increasing its AI compute capacity twentyfold by 2030 in a deal that could be worth £250 million.…
  

• Calls grow for inquiry into UK data watchdog after MoD leak
  ICO accused of backing off oversight as fallout from Afghan blunder widens
  Civil society groups are urging MPs to launch a parliamentary inquiry into the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), accusing the UK data watchdog of abandoning its enforcement duties after it declined to investigate a Ministry of Defence data leak linked to dozens of deaths.…
  

• Britain plots atomic reboot as datacenter demand surges
  Taskforce calls UK the priciest place on Earth to build nuclear projects and urges radical regulatory reset
  The UK is following the US in seeking to fast-track new atomic development, spurred on by the need to provide enough energy for its AI ambitions plus the increasing electrification of industry and vehicles.…
  

• Atlassian ran a tabletop DR simulation that revealed it lived in dependency hell
  Four-year effort replaced spaghetti tangle with more robust and recoverable cloudy layer cake
  Australian collaborationware company Atlassian has revealed it’s spent four years trying to reduce dangerous internal dependencies, and while it has rebuilt its PaaS, it still has issues – but thinks they’re now manageable.…
  

• AWS to build 1.3 gigawatts of government-grade supercomputing power for Uncle Sam
  Aims to wash away Washington's vast tech woes with a dose of cloud magic
  Amazon Web Services on Monday announced a plan to build 1.3 gigawatts of compute capacity in new datacenters dedicated to serving the US government, at a cost of up to $50 billion.…
  

• Apple reportedly peels away some sales staff in small round of layoffs
  Company has hitherto thought different about sackings
  Apple, which unlike its Big Tech peers has not made substantial job cuts, is reportedly in the process of eliminating several dozen positions in its sales organization.…
  

• Fresh ClickFix attacks use Windows Update trick-pics to steal credentials
  Poisoned PNGs contain malicious code
  A fresh wave of ClickFix attacks is using fake Windows update screens to trick victims into downloading infostealer malware.…
  

• Meta knows how bad its sites are for kids, say lawyers
  Multiple internal studies allegedly buried by the company
  Is Meta acting like a tobacco company denying cigarettes cause cancer, or an oil giant downplaying climate science? Lawyers in a recent court filing claim the social media titan buried internal research for years suggesting its platforms can harm children's mental health.…
  

• Praise Amazon for raising this service from the dead
  The hardest part is admitting you were wrong, which AWS did.
  Opinion For years, Google has seemingly indulged a corporate fetish of taking products that are beloved, then killing them. AWS has been on a different kick lately: Killing services that frankly shouldn't have seen the light of day.…
  

• Anthropic reduces model misbehavior by endorsing cheating
  By removing the stigma of reward hacking, AI models are less likely to generalize toward evil
  Sometimes bots, like kids, just wanna break the rules. Researchers at Anthropic have found they can make AI models less likely to behave badly by giving them permission to do so.…
  

• Ex-CISA officials, CISOs dispel 'hacklore,' spread cybersecurity truths
  Don't believe everything you read
  Afraid of connecting to public Wi-Fi? Terrified to turn your Bluetooth on? You may be falling for "hacklore," tall tales about cybersecurity that distract you from real dangers. Dozens of chief security officers and ex-CISA officials have launched an effort and website to dispel these myths and show you how not to get hacked for real.…
  

• Amazon-backed X-energy sweet talks investors into another $700M for small modular reactor dream
  Start-up claims to have booked orders for 144 miniaturized reactors totaling 11GW across US and UK
  Amazon-backed nuclear energy startup X-energy says it has booked orders for 144 small modular reactors (SMRs) which will eventually deliver over 11 gigawatts of power, assuming that they actually get built. And investors continue to support this vision.…
  

• Old-school rotary phone dials into online meetings, hangs up when you slam it down
  Stavros Korokithakis really wanted to slam the receiver on meetings, so he built his own device to do just that
  We've all been there: A meeting goes sideways and you really wish you could physically slam the phone down and walk away. Maker Stavros Korokithakis knows that feeling well, so he took an old rotary phone and turned it into a device that can dial into - and hang up on - video calls in a decidedly retro fashion. …
  

• X's location tags remind users of the internet's oldest rule: Trust nothing
  Accuracy errors or inadvertent unmasking of rage-bait trolls? Probably somewhere in between
  Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter) has inadvertently taught a large number of web users an important lesson. Not everyone online is necessarily who you think they are, and you shouldn't believe everything you read.…
  

• LisaGUI recreates Apple's innovative computer OS, without emulating it
  Somewhere between a cover version and a loving homage of the interface that helped shape the modern desktop
  LisaGUI is a faithful reconstruction of the desktop and user interface of Apple's Lisa, the workstation that fed ideas into the early Macintosh, and it shows that there are still things to learn from that system.…
  

• How high-end supercomputer filesystem DAOS can break out of its niche
  DAOS needs user education, Nvidia GPU access, and better manageability to grow
  DAOS has been a great success in the traditional HPC/supercomputing world, but is nowhere in the new, AI-focused, GPU supercomputing arena. What will it take for DAOS to find customers outside its high-end, legacy supercomputing niche?…
  

• Moss spores bolted to the ISS exterior laugh in the face of hard vacuum
  Japanese team finds 80% of the tiny plant cells remained viable after 283 days in orbit
  Moss has been shown to survive one of the harshest environments imaginable: the exterior of the International Space Station (ISS).…
  

• Years-old bugs in open source tool left every major cloud open to disruption
  Fluent Bit has 15B+ deployments … and 5 newly assigned CVEs
  A series of "trivial-to-exploit" vulnerabilities in Fluent Bit, an open source log collection tool that runs in every major cloud and AI lab, was left open for years, giving attackers an exploit chain to completely disrupt cloud services and alter data.…
  

• Intrusion at real estate finance biz sparks concern for big banks
  SitusAMC rules out ransomware, but accounting records for major institutions potentially affected
  Real estate finance business SitusAMC says thieves sneaked into its systems earlier this month and made off with confidential client data.…
  

• Shai-Hulud worm returns, belches secrets to 25K GitHub repos
  Trojanized npm packages spread new variant that executes in pre-install phase, hitting thousands within days
  A self-propagating malware targeting node package managers (npm) is back for a second round, according to Wiz researchers who say that more than 25,000 developers had their secrets compromised within three days.…
  

• Microsoft wedges tables into Notepad for some reason
  WordPad died for this?
  Microsoft is shoveling yet more features into the venerable Windows Notepad. This time it's support for tables, with some AI enhancements lathered on top.…
  

• NATO taps Google for air-gapped sovereign cloud
  Chocolate Factory wins contract to build fully disconnected systems for training and operational support
  NATO has hired Google to provide "air-gapped" sovereign cloud services and AI in "completely disconnected, highly secure environments."…
  

• FCC guts post-Salt Typhoon telco rules despite ongoing espionage risk
  Months after China-linked spies burrowed into US networks, regulator tears up its own response
  The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has scrapped a set of telecom cybersecurity rules introduced after the Salt Typhoon espionage campaign, reversing course on measures designed to stop state-backed snoops from slipping back into America's networks.…
  

• 6G isn't even here yet but mobile industry wants triple the spectrum
  Report warns of 2030s capacity crunch without expanding mid-band airwaves
  The GSMA says 6G networks will need up to three times the spectrum currently allocated to mobile operators to meet anticipated demands for data.…
  

• CISA orders feds to patch Oracle Identity Manager zero-day after signs of abuse
  Agencies have until December 12 to mitigate flaw that was likely exploited before Big Red released fix
  CISA has ordered US federal agencies to patch against an actively exploited Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) flaw within three weeks – a scramble made more urgent by evidence that attackers may have been abusing the bug months before a fix was released.…
  

• DragonFire laser to be fitted to Royal Navy ships after acing drone-zapping trials
  Costs a tenner a shot instead of £1M per anti-aircraft missile
  Britain's Royal Navy ships will be fitted with the DragonFire laser weapon by 2027 – five years earlier than planned – following recent successful trials involving fast-moving drones.…
  

• This Thanksgiving, top your turkey with Cranberry sOSS to fund open source
  Unusual holiday drive raises cash for the people keeping critical code alive
  The Open Source Pledge organization is working to combat the problems of FOSS maintainers not getting paid, and the closely related issue of developer burnout, with a Thanksgiving-themed campaign.…
  

• Vibe coding: What is it good for? Absolutely nothing (Sorry, Linus)
  Coding purists once considered BASIC harmful. AI can't even manage that
  Opinion It is a truth universally acknowledged that a singular project possessed of prospects is in want of a team. That team has to be built from good developers with experience, judgement, analytic and logic skills, and strong interpersonal communication. Where AI coding fits in remains strongly contentious. Opinion on vibe coding in corporate IT is more clearly stated: you're either selling the stuff or steering well clear.…
  

• UK Covid-19 Inquiry finds early pandemic surveillance was weeks out of date
  Lack of effective data flows and reduced scientific investment hampered response
  During the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK, it took up to three weeks for confirmed cases to be recorded on the health database used at the time.…
  

• Dev's last-day-of-contract code helped to crash app used by 350,000 people
  Customer signed off and a remaining staffer triggered the mess
  Who, Me? Welcome to Monday morning and therefore to a new instalment of Who, Me? It's The Register's weekly column that shares your tales of workplace errors and absolution.…
  

• Cryptology boffins’ association to re-run election after losing encryption key needed to count votes
  The shoemaker’s children have new friends
  The International Association for Cryptologic Research will run a second election for new board members and other officers, after it was unable to complete its first poll due to a lost encryption key.…
  

• OVH CEO predicts some cloud prices to rise 5-10 percent by mid-2026
  Or maybe even sooner, warns Octave Klaba, as AI sends storage costs soaring
  The price of some cloud services will have to rise by five to ten percent by mid-2026, maybe sooner, according to Octave Klaba, CEO of French cloud OVH.…
  

• 70-hour work weeks no longer enough for Infosys founder, who praises China’s 996 culture
  PLUS: Manga publishers win Cloudflare copyright case; India, EU to link payment systems; Storm over Australia’s weather website; And more!
  Asia In Brief Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy has suggested Indian citizens should work 72-hour weeks, up from his previous target of 70 hours.…
  

• Weaponized file name flaw makes updating glob an urgent job
  PLUS: CISA issues drone warning; China-linked DNS-hijacking malware; Prison for BTC Samourai; And more
  Infosec In Brief Researchers have urged users of the glob file pattern matching library to update their installations, after discovery of a years-old remote code execution flaw in the tool's CLI.…
  

• Bossware booms as bots determine whether you're doing a good job
  A lot of companies are turning to employee monitoring tools to make sure workers aren't slacking off
  The COVID-19 lockdown meant a surge in remote work, and the trend toward remote and hybrid workplaces has persisted long after the pandemic receded. That has changed the nature of workplace management as well. Bosses can't check for butts in seats or look over their employees' shoulders in the office to make sure they're working instead of having a LAN party. So they've turned to software tools to fill the gap.…
  

• It's TEE time for Brave's AI assistant Leo
  Browser maker wraps cloud AI data processing in confidential computing
  Brave Software has joined the rush to make using cloud-based AI services more private.…
  

• Copackaged optics have officially found their killer app - of course it's AI
  With power in such short supply, every watt counts
  SC25 Power is becoming a major headache for datacenter operators as they grapple with how to support ever larger deployments of GPU servers - so much so that the AI boom is now driving the adoption of a technology once thought too immature and failure-prone to merit the risk.…
  

• Self-destructing thumb drive can brick itself and wipe your secret files away
  Catch: you have to plug it into a computer first
  If you’ve ever watched Mission Impossible, where Jim Phelps gets instructions from an audio tape that catches fire after five seconds, TeamGroup has an external SSD with your name on it. The T-Create Expert P35S is a portable USB-powered SSD that comes with a self-destruct button, which wipes all your data and physically renders the device useless.…
  

• Researchers get inside the mind of bots, find out what texts they trained on
  RECAP agent overcomes model alignment efforts to hide memorized proprietary content
  If you've ever wondered whether that chatbot you're using knows the entire text of a particular book, answers are on the way. Computer scientists have developed a more effective way to coax memorized content from large language models, a development that may address regulatory concerns while helping to clarify copyright infringement claims arising from AI model training and inference.…
  

• ShinyHunters 'does not like Salesforce at all,' claims the crew accessed Gainsight 3 months ago
  Shiny talks to The Reg
  EXCLUSIVE ShinyHunters has claimed responsibility for the Gainsight breach that allowed the data thieves to snarf data from hundreds more Salesforce customers.…
  

• Makers slam Qualcomm for tightening the clamps on Arduino
  But the Wiring folks were disenchanted even before Qualcomm swallowed Arduino
  Updated Qualcomm quietly rewrote the terms of service for its newest acquisition, programmable microcontroller and SBC maker Arduino, drawing intense fire from the maker community for grabbing additional rights to user-generated content on its platform and prohibiting reverse-engineering of what was once very open software.…
  

• Pentagon pumps $29.9M into bid to turn waste into critical minerals
  It's unclear how much scandium and gallium ElementUSA will contribute to the supply chain, or when
  The US Department of Defense is asserting its desire to be an integral part of the American rare earths and critical minerals supply chain with a deal to establish a domestic pipeline of gallium and scandium production.…
  

• Big Red borrows a lot of green, hopes AI will put it in the black
  Cost of insuring against Oracle debt default spikes as September seems a long time ago
  opinion The weather's cooling, and so is Wall Street's patience with Oracle's AI makeover. Big Red is spending big, and the risk metrics aren't looking cozy.…
  

• Rhyme is the key to set AIs free when verse outsmarts security
  Poetry proves potent jailbreak tool for today's top models
  Are you a wizard with words? Do you like money without caring how you get it? You could be in luck now that a new role in cybercrime appears to have opened up – poetic LLM jailbreaking.…
  

• Google's AI is eating your email by default. Here's how to shut its mouth
  Want out of those new 'smart features'? We’ve got you covered
  Google's "don't be evil" ethos is so 2015. These days, the Chocolate Factory is all about integrating users with bots, whether they like it or not. Now, it's rolling out Workspace "smart features" that process personal content with AI, and many users are finding the settings enabled by default.…
  

• SpaceX loses debut V3 Super Heavy in ground test mishap
  Redesigned booster ruptures during early checks, delaying latest Starship iteration
  SpaceX has responded to Blue Origin's announcement of a heftier version of its New Glenn rocket in the only way it knows how – by accidentally destroying a Starship booster.…
  

• Four charged over alleged plot to smuggle Nvidia AI chips into China
  Prosecutors say front companies, falsified paperwork, and overseas drop points used to dodge US export rules
  Four people have been charged in the US with plotting to funnel restricted Nvidia AI chips into China, allegedly relying on shell firms, fake invoices, and covert routing to slip cutting-edge GPUs past American export controls.…
  

• You are likely to be eaten by the MIT license: Microsoft frees Zork source
  Redmond dusts off Infocom's classic text adventures and puts the originals into public hands
  Microsoft developer boss Scott Hanselman saved the company's Ignite shindig this week by unveiling the source code for Zork I-III, all available under the MIT license.…
  

• Magician forgets password to his own hand after RFID chip implant
  Storing credentials safely and securely is the real trick
  It's important to have your login in hand, literally. Zi Teng Wang, a magician who implanted an RFID chip in his appendage, has admitted losing access to it because he forgot the password.…
  

• Russia-linked crooks bought a bank for Christmas to launder cyber loot
  UK cops trace street-level crime to sanctions-busting networks tied to Moscow's war economy
  On Christmas Day 2024, a Russian-linked laundering network bought itself a very special present: a controlling stake in a Kyrgyzstan bank, later used to wash cybercrime profits and funnel money into Moscow's war machine, according to the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA).…
  

• Linux Kernel Developers Eye Uses For Extra General Purpose Registers With APX
  With Advanced Performance Extensions (APX) on upcoming Intel processors doubling the number of general purpose registers (GPRs) among other advantages, Intel engineers are beginning to think of possible kernel uses for the extra registers...

• Rust For Linux Kernel Co-Maintainer Formally Steps Down
  Alex Gaynor recently announced he is formally stepping down as one of the maintainers of the Rust for Linux kernel code with the removal patch now queued for merging in Linux 6.19...

• AlmaLinux 10.1 Released - Complete With Btrfs Support
  Building off the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.1 from two weeks ago, AlmaLinux 10.1 is now available in GA form for this community-oriented RHEL10 downstream. Making AlmaLinux 10.1 all the more interesting is the project's decision to promote Btrfs file-system support...

• AMD SDCIAE Working Its Way Into The Linux 6.19 Kernel
  A year and a half after the Linux kernel patches were first posted, SDCIAE that is found with AMD Zen 5 server processors is set to finally be supported by the mainline kernel come Linux 6.19...

• Dell Pro Max with GB10 Arrives For Linux Performance Benchmarking
  The most exciting hardware to arrive this month in the Phoronix lab is Dell having sent over two of their new Dell Pro Max with GB10 systems. The Dell Pro Max with GB10 is their build-out around NVIDIA9s GB10 superchip with ten Cortex-X925 CPU cores and ten Cortex-A725 cores plus the GB10 Blackwell GPU. With 128GB of LPDDR5X memory and 2TB or 4TB SSD by default all within the small chassis, this is an interesting workstation for AI developers.

• A Very Big Performance Optimization For Loop Block Devices Heading To Linux 6.19
  A set of patches implementing async I/O IOCB_NOWAIT support for the loop block device is heading to the Linux 6.19 kernel with some performance improvements that will make loop block device users "wow"...

• Phoronix Premium Cyber Week "Black Friday" Deal To Help Enable Linux Hardware Reviews
  The end of 2025 is quickly approaching and while there are the various end of year holidays, you can still expect to find new and original content on Phoronix each and every single day of the year just as it's been for more than a decade of the now 21-year-old Phoronix.com. The last day without any new content on Phoronix was all the way back in May of 2012. That's due to my passion for Linux hardware and open-source, paired in more recent years with the more grueling environment to make ends meet with the ever increasing state of the web advertising industry, rampant ad-block use, and related challenges for web publishers. If you would like to show your support for Phoronix's Linux hardware content over the past two decades, this week is the "Cyber Week" / "Black Friday" sale to go ad-free, multi-page-articles on a single page, and other benefits at a reduced rate...

• Raspberry Pi OS 2025-11-24 Brings HiDPI Improvements, Wayland Enhancements
  In addition to debuting the Raspberry Pi OS Imager 2.0 app, Raspberry Pi today announced the latest version of their operating system...

• Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0 Released To Make It Easier Creating OS Media
  The Raspberry Pi Imager application that makes it easy to generate install media / OS image flashing for different Raspberry Pi devices is out with a big feature update...

• Intel Working On Linux Support For New Power Savings Feature With Xe3P_LPD
  The upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel cycle is set to introduce initial support for Xe3P graphics to be found initially with Nova Lake processors. While that initial support is landing for Linux 6.19, other extra Xe3P features are still to be added to the open-source kernel driver over coming release cycles. One of those extra features being currently tackled is a new element with Xe3P_LPD: the ability to use the system cache for FBC...

• Canonical Partners With AMI To Build Ubuntu Netboot Option Into UEFI Firmware
  Canonical and AMI announced a partnership today so that there will be an Ubuntu Netboot option added within AMI's UEFI firmware to allow booting to the Ubuntu installer without the need for even having any install media...

• Memtest86+ 8.0 Released With Support For Latest Intel & AMD CPUs
  Since the 2022 release of memtest86+ 6.0 as a rewrite of this long-used RAM testing utility, this open-source software has continued advancing nicely after a decade hiatus. Released on Sunday night was memtest86+ 8.0 as the latest iteration of this popular RAM tester for enthusiasts...

• Linux 6.18-rc7 Released With Late Hardware Improvements
  Linux 6.18-rc7 just arrived in the Git tree as the newest weekly test build leading up to Linux 6.18 stable hopefully debuting next Sunday, 30 November...

• Wayland Protocols 1.46 Released With New Experimental Additions
  Wayland Protocols 1.46 released this evening with new experimental protocols for text improvements as well as refinements to the color management protocol for HDR...

• NVIDIA Preps 1.6Tb/s Networking For Linux 6.19
  NVIDIA has a number of Linux kernel patches on the way to the Linux 6.19 kernel in preparing for 1.6 Tb/s networking on NVIDIA-Mellanox hardware...

• Linux Patches Improve Intel Nested VM Memory Performance Up To ~2353x In Synthetic Test
  AWS engineers have been working on Linux kernel improvements to KVM's VMX code for enhancing the unmanaged guest memory when dealing with nested virtual machines. The improved code addresses some correctness issues as well as delivering wild performance improvements within a synthetic benchmark...

• Glibc Math Code Sees 4x Improvement On AMD Zen By Changing FMA Implementation
  Merged this week to the GNU C Library "glibc" code is dropping the ldbl-96 FMA implementation from this library as in doing so they found a 4x improvement to throughput and latency on AMD Zen 3 hardware...

• Google Looks To Bring JPEG-XL Support Back To Chrome / Chromium
  Back in 2022 was the surprising decision by Google that they were going to deprecate JPEG-XL image support in Chrome. By the end of 2022 they went ahead and removed JPEG-XL support from Chrome/Chromium to the frustration of many web developers and end-users interested in this image format. Now though as we get ready to roll into 2026, Google engineers are looking at bringing back JPEG-XL support to the Chrome web browser...

• GCC Steering Committee Allows New Language Front-End To Land For GCC 16
  Joining Ada, C/C++, COBOL, D, Fortran, Go, Modula-2, Objective-C/Objective-C++ and Rust is now another programming language expected to be added for the GCC 16 compiler release due out in the new year...

• RISC-V Testing Lapse Resulted In Wrong MIPS RISC-V Vendor ID Landing In Linux 6.18
  An interesting anecdote from this week's batch of RISC-V fixes for the Linux 6.18 kernel exposed that the MIPS RISC-V/JEDEC vendor ID was wrong for code merged at the start of the kernel cycle. The testing hadn't caught it either as the QEMU emulation also ended up inadvertently using the wrong vendor ID too...

• FreeBSD 15.0-RC3 Ships Latest OpenZFS, KDE Dropped From DVD ISO Due To Size Constraints
  FreeBSD 15.0 is working toward its stable release in early December. As part of reaching that major release, FreeBSD 15.0-RC3 released today as what may be the final release candidate before FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE...

• Linux Device Trees For Cancelled Products? Don9t "Waste Time"
  Yesterday TUXEDO Computers cancelled their Snapdragon X Elite Linux laptop plans. In their announcement discontinuing work on this X1E Linux laptop, they said they would still upstream the Device Tree support to the mainline Linux kernel. Indeed they posted a new revision of their DT patches on Friday for the Linux kernel, but there is diminishing outlook that they will be accepted upstream for this cancelled product...

• KDE Plasma 6.6 Will Provide A Much Better Experience For High Refresh Rate Displays
  More features continue piling on for the KDE Plasma 6.6 desktop, including an important performance fix this week for those running displays with a higher than 60Hz refresh rate...

• Algol 68 GCC Compiler Patches Updated With Modules System Added
  Since the start of the new year, there have been patches being posted for proposing a new GCC compiler front-end for the half-century old Algol 68 programming language. Oracle engineer Jose Marchesi has been leading the Algol 68 effort for GCC and this weekend posted a new revision of the patches, which now includes a working modules system implementation...

• Linux 6.18 To Enable Both Touchscreens On The AYANEO Flip DS Dual-Screen Handheld
  Sent out today were a set of input subsystem fixes for the near-final Linux 6.18 kernel. A bit of a notable addition via this "fixes" pull is getting both touchscreens working on the AYANEO Flip DS, a dual-screen gaming handheld device that can be loaded up with Linux...

• Nautilus File Manager In GNOME 50 Will Load Thumbnails Much Faster
  Just last week GNOME's Nautilus file manager "GNOME Files" made headlines for finally supporting Ctrl+INsert and Shift+Insert while this week there is more activity worth pointing out. Nautilus in GNOME 50 will be loading thumbnail images much faster than in prior versions...

• NVIDIA 580.94.11 Linux Driver Brings HDR Metadata Support
  NVIDIA today issued the 580.94.11 driver release as their newest Vulkan beta driver for Linux customers. Most notable with this beta driver update is adding VK_EXT_hdr_metadata support...

• Steam Frame Using Mesa9s Turnip Vulkan Open-Source Driver
  In addition to Valve contributing to the open-source Radeon Vulkan driver for enhancing the Linux gaming experience and their AMD-powered Steam Deck, the upcoming Steam Frame VR headset is making use of Mesa's open-source "Turnip" Vulkan driver for Qualcomm Adreno graphics...

• TUXEDO Computers Drops Snapdragon X1 Elite Linux Laptop Plans
  Back in mid-2024, the Bavarian Linux PC vendor TUXEDO Computers teased plans for developing a Snapdragon X Elite Linux laptop. Initially they hoped to have it out by Christmas 2024. That didn't happen and now approaching Christmas 2025 they confirmed they have stopped their plans for shipping a Snapdragon X1 Elite laptop for Linux customers...

• Clang 21 Delivering Nice Performance Gains On AMD EPYC Zen 4 With HBM3
  One of the areas I9ve been meaning to run more benchmarks on this season has been for the recently released Clang 21 compiler. Back in September when LLVM Clang 21 was debuting I ran some initial benchmarks and found it to deliver some nice performance gains on AMD EPYC Zen 5 but then have been busy with other benchmarks/articles for expanding that testing. Recently with having some spare cycles and gratis access still to the Microsoft Azure HBv5 instance for AMD EPYC Zen 4 with HBM3, I ran some Clang 20 vs. Clang 21 performance benchmarks there for those wondering about any performance benefits of this new compiler release on Zen 4.

• Sovereign Tech Fund Hiring A New Leader For Driving Open-Source Funding
  Germany's Sovereign Tech Fund / Sovereign Tech Agency has been a godsend the past few years for the open-source community. This funding from the German government has led to significant funding for dozens of prominent open-source infrastructure projects to provide more resources for enhancing security, enabling new features, and more. As the Sovereign Tech Fund prepares for the next phase of growth, they are hiring a new head to lead the efforts...

• Linux 6.19 To Add Support For The Realtek RTL8125K
  The upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel cycle is set to introduce support for the Realtek RTL8125K as a forthcoming Ethernet ASIC...

• Microsoft admits almost all major Windows 11 core features are broken
  You may have noticed a sharp increase in problems and issues in Windows recently  following the rise of the AI! hype cycle, entirely coincidentally, Im sure  and it seems Microsoft is finally starting to acknowledge just how bad Windows has become. On the positive side though, following all that backlash, Microsoft acknowledged Windows has issues, and as if on cue, the company in a new support article has admitted that there are problems on almost every major Windows 11 core feature. The issues are related to XAML and this impacts all the Shell components like the Start Menu, Taskbar, Explorer, and Windows Settings. ↫ Sayan Sen at Neowin Its wild how many core components like this have apparently been broken due to these problems since July of this year. This means countless Windows users have been experiencing weird issues on a daily basis in multiple components for four months now, which is absolutely wild. On top of all the more structural problems in Windows, I wonder how people can get anything done at all  only a few days ago, I had to manually clean out the Installer folder in the Windows folder on my wifes gaming PC, because for some inexplicable reason, Windows decided to permanently store 18GBs worth (!) of past Adobe Acrobat updates and installers in there. Its impossible to reliably say that Microsofts incessant focus on crypto NFTs AI! lies at the root of all of these problems, but if 30% of new! code in Microsoft is indeed regurgitated by AI!, its hard not to conclude as such.

• The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting
  I suspect that many people who take an interest in Internet privacy don’t appreciate how hard it is to resist browser fingerprinting. Taking steps to reduce it leads to inconvenience and, with the present state of technology, even the most intrusive approaches are only partially effective. The data collected by fingerprinting is invisible to the user, and stored somewhere beyond the user’s reach. On the other hand, browser fingerprinting produces only statistical results, and usually can’t be used to track or identify a user with certainty. The data it collects has a relatively short lifespan – days to weeks, not months or years. While it probably can be used for sinister purposes, my main concern is that it supports the intrusive, out-of-control online advertising industry, which has made a wasteland of the Internet. ↫ Kevin Boone My view on this matter is probably a bit more extreme than some: I believe it should be illegal to track users for advertising purposes, because the data collected and the targeting it enables not only violate basic privacy rights enshrined in most constitutions, they also pose a massive danger in other ways. This very same targeting data is already being abused by totalitarian states to influence our politics, which has had disastrous results. Of course, our own democratic governments hands arent exactly clean either in this regard, as they increasingly want to use this data to stop terrorists! and otherwise infringe on basic rights. Finally, any time such data ends up on the black market after data breaches, criminals, organised or otherwise, also get their hands on it. I have no idea what such a ban should look like, or if its possible to do this even remotely effectively. In the current political climate in many western countries, which are dominated by the wealthy few and corporate interests, its highly unlikely that even if such a ban was passed as lip service to concerned constituents, any fines or other deterrents would probably be far too low to make a difference anyway. As such, my desire to have targeted online advertising banned is mostly theory, not practice  further illustrated by the European Union caving like cowards on privacy to even the slightest bit of pressure. Best I can do for now is not partake in this advertising hellhole. I disabled and removed all advertising from OSNews recently, and have always strongly advised everyone to use as many adblocking options as possible. We not only have a Pi-Hole to keep all of our devices at home safe, but also use a second layer of on-device adblockers, and I advise everyone to do the same.

• Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it’s costing the economy!
  We need to consume. The average American now holds onto their smartphone for 29 months, according to a`recent survey by Reviews.org, and that cycle is getting longer. The average was around 22 months in 2016. While squeezing as much life out of your device as possible may save money in the short run, especially amid widespread fears about the strength of the consumer and job market, it might cost the economy in the long run, especially when device hoarding occurs at the level of corporations. ↫ Kevin Williams at CNBC Line must go up. Ļ̷̩̺̾i̶̼̳͍͂̒ͅn̵͕̉̾e̴̞͛̓̀̍ ̴͙̙̥͋͐m̸͚̉̆u̴̖̰̪̽̔ͅs̶̨̛̾ţ̷̢̂͛̆͝ ̵̱̐̓̾̔͜ğ̷͕̮̮͆o̷̟͈̐̏̄͝ ̷̢̨̞̉u̴̢̪̭̱̿͑͛̌p̴͈̜̫̖̌.

• Tuxedo cancels Snapdragon X Elite Linux laptop project
  For the past 18 months, the Linux OEM Tuxedo Computers has been working on bringing a Snapdragon X Elite ARM laptop to market, but now they cancelled the project due to complications. Development turned out to be challenging due to the different architecture, and in the end, the first-generation X1E proved to be less suitable for Linux than expected. In particular, the long battery runtimes—usually one of the strong arguments for ARM devices—were not achieved under Linux. A viable approach for BIOS updates under Linux is also missing at this stage, as is fan control. Virtualization with KVM is not foreseeable on our model, nor are the high USB4 transfer rates. Video hardware decoding is technically possible, but most applications lack the necessary support. Given these conditions, investing several more months of development time does not seem sensible, as it is not foreseeable that all the features you can rightfully expect would be available in the end. In addition, we would be offering you a device with what would then be a more than two-year-old Snapdragon X Elite (X1E), whose successor, the Snapdragon X2 Elite (X2E), was officially introduced in September 2025 and is expected to become available in the first half of 2026. ↫ Tuxedos announcement Back when Qualcomm was hyping up these processors, the company made big claims about supporting Linux equally to Windows, but those promises have turned out to be absolutely worthless. Tuxedo already highlighted the problems it was dealing with half a year ago, and now it seems these problems have become impossible to overcome  at least for now. This is a shame, bu also not entirely unexpected, since theres no way a small Linux OEM can do the work that Qualcomm promised it would do for its own chip. All this sadly means we still dont really have proper Linux support for modern ARM laptops, which is a crying shame. The problem isnt so much Linux itself, but the non-standardised world of ARM hardware. Large OEMs are willing to do the work to make Windows work, but despite recent successes, desktop Linux is nowhere near as popular as Windows, so theres little incentive for OEMs (or Qualcomm) to step up their game. It is what it is.

• The Commodore CHESSmate
  The CHESSmate was demonstrated at the January 1978 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as a prototype in order to assess customer interest in the product. It was available for order at the June 1978 CES in Chicago and the first units, manufactured in Hong Kong, shipped later that year. It was a big seller in Germany from the beginning. ↫ Peter R. Jennings Theres no way I can summarise this story.

• Microsoft removes WINS from future Windows Server releases
  Blasts from the pasts are often fun, and in the case of feature removals from Windows, its often accompanied by surprise that the feature in question still existed. Case in point: This article provides essential information about the deprecation and planned removal of Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) from future Windows Server releases. Microsoft has announced that WINS will be removed from all Windows Server releases after Windows Server 2025 and will remain under the standard support lifecycle through November 2034. Organizations using WINS are strongly encouraged to migrate to modern DNS-based name resolution solutions. ↫ Microsoft knowledge base article WINS was introduced with Windows NT 3.5 back in 1994, and maps NetBIOS to IP addresses in much the same way DNS maps domains names to IP addresses. Nobody should be using WINS anymore, and Microsoft has been discouraging its use for a long time now. With the ubiquity of DNS, WINS serves very little purpose, so it makes sense Microsoft is removing it from Windows.

• LionsOS: an adaptable OS based on the seL4 microkernel
  LionsOS is an operating system based on the seL4 microkernel with the goal of making the achievements of seL4 accessible. That is, to provide performance, security, and reliability. It is not a conventional operating system, but contains composable components for creating custom operating systems that are specific to a particular task. Components are joined together using the Microkit tool. ↫ LionsOS website The project is under active research and development, led by the Trustworthy Systems research group at UNSW Sydney in Australia. The source code is available on GitHub.

• HP, Dell quietly disable HEVC on certain laptops over minute license fee increase
  Inter-corporation bullshit screwing over consumers  a tale as old as time. Major laptop vendors have quietly removed hardware decode support for the H.265/HEVC codec in several business and entry-level models, a decision apparently driven by rising licensing fees. Users working with H.265 content may face reduced performance unless they verify codec support or rely on software workarounds. ↫ Hilbert Hagedoornn at The Guru of 3D You may want to know how much these licensing fees are, and by how much theyre increasing next year, making these laptop OEMs remove features to avoid the costs. The HEVC licensing fee is $0.20 per device, and in 2026 its increasing to $0.24. Yes, a $0.04 increase per device is forcing! these giant companies to screw over their consumers. Nobodys coming out a winner here, and everyone loses. We took a wrong turn, but nobody seems to know when and where.

• The why of LisaGUI
  LisaGUI is an amazing project that recreates the entire user interface of the Apple Lisa in the browser, using nothing but CSS, a bit of HTML, and SVG files, and its an absolute joy to use and experience. Its creator, Andrew Yaros, has published a blog post diving into the why and how of LisaGUI. I had been trying to think of a good project to add to my programming portfolio, which was lacking. Finding an idea I was willing and able to execute on proved harder than expected. Good ideas are born from necessity and enthusiasm; trying to create a project for its own sake tends to be an uphill battle. I was also hoping to think of a specific project idea that hasnt really been tried before. As you may have guessed by the title of this post, LisaGUI ended up being that project, although I didnt really set out to make it as much as I stumbled into it while trying to accomplish something else. ↫ Andrew Yaros Im someone who prefers to run the real thing on real hardware, but in a lot of cases, thats just not realistic anymore. Hardware like the Apple Lisa are not only hard to find and expensive, they also require considerable knowledge and skill to maintain and possibly repair, which not everyone can do. For these types of machines, virtualisation, emulation, and recreation are much better, more accessible options, especially if it involves hardware and software youre not interested enough in to spend time and money on them.

• Fixing! the broken Solaris Management Console Oracle wont fix
  In my detailed article about the Sun Microsystems ecosystem of the late 2000s, I mentioned an issue I ran into with the latest (leaked) patchset for Solaris 10, the one from 2020, available on Archive.org. Sun does not make Solaris 10 patches and patchsets from 2014 and later freely available online, restricting them to big enterprise customers with expensive support contracts. The same restrictions apply to mere support documents for Solaris 10, so that issues documented by Oracle, including causes and possible solutions, are only accessible to those with support contracts. The specific issue I ran into is that after installing the 2020 patchset, the Solaris Management Console, a GUI application written in Java with which you can manage certain aspects of your system, would no longer work. It would start up, but any settings panel you tried to load would throw up an RMI_ERR: error unmarshalling return, rendering the SMC effectively non-functional. This problem is documented in Oracle Doc ID 1559490.1, but of course, the Cause and Solution sections are hidden. I like weird commercial UNIX configuration GUIs, so even though you can do all of the SMCs tasks with command-line tools, I still want it to work. Judging by the error and the countless references to Java updates, its easy to figure out that the root cause is an updated version of Java installed by the patchset that the SMC doesnt like. Youd think uninstalling any relevant patches would solve the problem, but I tried that and it didnt make a difference, so I was hoping Oracle perhaps had a later patch to fix the issue, or perhaps a proper workaround to get the SMC working again. Well, a screenshot of the remainder of that Oracle Doc ID mysteriously materialised on my Ultra 45 this morning, and it turns out that Oracle just0 Doesnt care. Honestly, I cant blame them. Solaris 10 is old, outdated, pure legacy, and the very small number of organisations still using it are probably using it in Solaris Zones on servers anyway, and definitely not as a workstation/desktop operating system. There is zero incentive for Oracle to waste any time trying to fix this issue that, lets be honest, really only affects one person in the entire world: me. Still, I wanted it fixed, and so I brute-forced a solution. Its pretty straightforward: just change your default Java version back to one that the Solaris Management Console can work with. While I have Java 1.6.0 and 1.8.0 installed on the Ultra 45, with 1.6.0 being the default, the SMC will only work when 1.5.0 is set as your default Java version. Theres a wide variety of ways to do this, ranging from hatchets to scalpels, but considering nothing else on Solaris 10/SPARC on the Ultra 45 relies on 1.6.0 or later (as far as I can tell, at least), I took a hatchet approach and just changed the /usr/java symlink so that it pointed to 1.5.0 again. Its that simple. Like I said, there are far more elegant ways of doing this, down to various scripts and other things to force only the SMC to use this specific Java version, but its not worth the effort to figure that out, and this works just as well. So, just in case theres ever going to be a second person looking to fix this problem, here you are. You weird, weird person.

• Microsoft warns its new AI! agents in Windows can install malware
  Microsoft has just announced a whole slew of new AI! features for Windows, and this time, theyll be living in your taskbar. Microsoft is trying to transform Windows into a “canvas for AI,” with new AI agents integrated into the Windows 11 taskbar. These new taskbar capabilities are designed to make AI agents feel like an assistant in Windows that can go off and control your PC and do tasks for you at the click of a button. It’s part of a broader overhaul of Windows to turn the operating system into an “agentic OS.” Microsoft is integrating a variety of AI agents directly into the Windows 11 taskbar, including its own Microsoft 365 Copilot and third-party options. “This integration isn’t just about adding agents; it’s about making them part of the OS experience,” says Windows chief Pavan Davuluri. ↫ Tom Warren at The Verge These AI! agents will control your computer, applications, and files for you, which may make some of you a little apprehensive, and for good reason. AI! tools dont have a great track record when it comes to privacy  Windows Recall comes to mind  and as such, Microsoft claims this time, itll be different. These new AI! agents will run in what are essentially dedicated Windows accounts acting as sandboxes, to ensure they can only access certain resources. While I find the addition of these AI! tools to Windows insufferable and dumb, Im at least glad Microsoft is taking privacy and security seriously this time, and I doubt Microsoft would repeat the same mistakes they made with the entirely botched rollout of Windows Recall. in addition, after the Cloudstrike fiasco, Microsoft made clear commitments to improve its security practices, which further adds to the confidence we should all have these new AI! tools are safe, secure, and private. But wait, whats this? Additionally, agentic AI applications introduce novel security risks, such as cross-prompt injection (XPIA), where malicious content embedded in UI elements or documents can override agent instructions, leading to unintended actions like data exfiltration or malware installation. ↫ Microsoft support document about the new AI! features Microsofts new AI! features can go out and install malware without your consent, because these features possess the access and privileges to do so. The mere idea that some application  which is essentially what these AI! features really are  can go out onto the web and download and install whatever it wants, including malware, on your behalf!, in the background, is so utterly dystopian to me I just cant imagine any serious developer looking at this and thinking yeah, ship it!. Im living in an insane asylum.

• Run old versions of UNIX for PDP-11 and x86 on modern hardware
  The contents of this repository allow older versions of UNIX (ancient UNIX) to run easily on modern Unix-like systems (Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, among others). ↫ Run ancient UNIX GitHub page With the guides in this repository, you can easily run Versions 1/5/7 UNIX and 2.11BSD UNIX for the PDP-11 and Version 7 UNIX for x86 (ported to x86 by Robert Nordier in 1999, with patches in 2006-2007). Thats it.

• Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025
  In my lifetime, theres been one ecosystem I deeply regret having missed out on: the Sun Microsystems ecosystem of the late 2000s. At that time, the company offered a variety of products that, when used together, formed a comprehensive ecosystem that was a fascinating, albeit expensive alternative to Microsoft and Apple. While not really intended for home use, Ive always believed that Suns approach to computing wouldve made for an excellent computing environment in the home. Since I was but a wee university student in the late 2000s living in a small apartment, I did not have the financial means nor the space to really test this hypothesis. Now, though, Suns products from that era are decidedly retro, and a lot more approachable  especially if you have incredibly generous readers. So sit down and buckle up, because weve got a long one today. If you wish to support OSNews and longform content like this, consider becoming a Patreon or donating to our Ko-Fi. Note that absolutely zero generative AI! was used in the writing of this article. No AI! writing aids, no AI! summaries, no ChatGPT, no Gemini search nonsense, nothing. I take pride in doing research and writing properly, without the aid! of digital parrots with brain damage, and if theres any errors, theyre mine and mine alone. Take pride in your work and reject AI!. The Ultra 45: the central hub In the early 2000s, it had already become obvious that the future of workstations lied not with custom architectures, bespoke processors, and commercial UNIX variants, but with standard x86, off-the-shelf Intel and AMD processors, and Windows and Linux. The writing was on the wall, everyone knew it, and the ensuing consolidation on x86 turned into a veritable bloodbath. In the 80s and 90s, many of these ISAs were touted as vastly superior x86 killers, but fast-forward a decade or two, and x86 had bested them all in both price and performance, leaving behind a trail of dead ISAs. Never bet against x86. Virtually none of the commercial UNIX variants survived the one-two punch of losing the ISA they were married to and the rising popularity of Linux in the workstation space. HP-UX was tied to HPs PA-RISC, and both died. SGIs IRIX was tied to MIPS, and both died. Tru64 was tied to Alpha, and both died. The two exceptions are IBMs AIX and Suns Solaris. AIX workstations were phased out, but AIX is still nominally in development for POWER servers, but wholly inaccessible to anyone who doesnt wear a suit and has a massive corporate spending budget. Solaris, meanwhile, which had long been available on x86, saw its own! ISA SPARC live on in the server space until roughly 2017 or so, and was even briefly available as open source until Oracle did its thing. As a result, Solaris and its derivative Illumos are still nominally in active development, but in the grand scheme of things theyre barely even a blip on the radar in 2025. Never bet against Linux. During these tumultuous times, the various commercial UNIX vendors all pushed out systems that would become the final hurrahs of their respective UNIX workstation lines. DEC, then owned by HP, released its AlphaStation ES47 in 2003, marking the end of the road for Alpha and Tru64 UNIX. HPs own PA-RISC architecture and HP-UX met their end with the HP c8000 (which I own), an all-out PA-RISC monster with two dual-core processors running at 1.1GHz. SGI gave its MIPS line of machines running IRIX a massive send-off with the enigmatic and rare Tezro in 2003. In 2005, IBM tried one last time with the IntelliStation POWER 285, followed a few months later by the heavily cut-down 185, the final AIX workstation. And Sun unveiled the Ultra 45, its final SPARC workstation, in 2006. Sun was already in the middle of its transition to x86 with machines like the Sun Java Desktop System and its successors, the Ultra 20 and 40, and then surprised everyone by reviving their UltraSPARC workstation line with the Ultra 25 and 45, which shared most  all?  of their enclosures with their x86 brethren. They were beautiful, all-aluminium machines with gorgeous interior layouts, and a striking full-grill front, somewhat inspired by the PowerMac G5 of that era. And ever since the Ultra 45 was rumoured in late 2005 and then became available in early 2006, Ive been utterly obsessed with it. Its taken almost two decades, but thanks to an unfathomably generous donation from KDE e.V. board member and FreeBSD contributor Adriaan de Groot, a very unique and storied Sun Ultra 45 and a whole slew of accessories showed up at my doorstep only a few weeks ago. Lets look back upon this piece of history that is but a footnote to most, but a whole book to me  and experience Suns ecosystem from around 2006, today. First and foremost, I want to express my deep gratitude to Adriaan de Groot. Without him, none of this would have been possible, and I cant put into words how grateful I am. He donated this Ultra 45 to me at no cost  not even the cost of shipping  and he also shipped another box to me containing a few Sun Ray thin clients, completing the late 2000s Sun ecosystem I now own. Since the Ultra 45 was technically owned by KDE e.V.  more on that below  Id also like to thank the KDE e.V. Board for giving Adriaan permission for the donation. Id also like to thank Volker A. Brandt, who sent me a Sun Ray 3, a few Ultra 45 hard drive brackets, and some other Sun goodies. The Sun Ultra 45 De Groot sent me was a base model with an upgraded GPU. It had a single UltraSPARC IIIi 1.6Ghz processor, 1GB of RAM, and the most powerful GPU Sun ever released for its SPARC workstation line, the Sun XVR-2500, a rebadged 3Dlabs Wildcat Realizm with

• Using Rust in Android speeds up development considerably
  Google has been using Rust in Android more and more for its memory safety characteristics, and the results on that front were quite positive. It turns out, however, that not only does using Rust reduce the number memory safety issues, its also apparently a lot faster to code in Rust than C or C++. We adopted Rust for its security and are seeing a 1000x reduction in memory safety vulnerability density compared to Android’s C and C++ code. But the biggest surprise was Rusts impact on software delivery. With Rust changes having a 4x lower rollback rate and spending 25% less time in code review, the safer path is now also the faster one. ↫ Jeff Vander Stoep at the Google Security Blog When you think about it, it actually makes sense. If you have fewer errors of a certain type, youll spend less time fixing those issues, time which you can then spend developing new code. Of course, its not that simple and theres a ton more factors to consider, but on a base level, it definitely makes sense. Spellcheck in word processors means you have to spend less time detecting and fixing spelling errors, so you have more time to spend on actually writing. Im sure well all be very civil about this, and nobody will be weird about Rust at all.

• Haiku gets new guarded heap for the kernel
  Another month, another Haiku activity report, and this time weve got a major change under the hood: a brand new guarded heap. The old guarded heap was suboptimal and had started to lag behind, so the new one attempts to rectify some of these shortcomings. So, to rectify these limitations, I rewrote the kernel guarded heap more or less from scratch, taking the old code into account where it made sense but otherwise creating entirely new bookkeeping structures, interacting directly with the page table and virtual memory systems, and more. This new guarded heap implementation frees physical pages when not in use, meaning that the “virtual memory reuse disabled” mode now runs for quite long periods of time (indeed, I could successfully boot to the desktop and run compile jobs.) It also prints more diagnostics when kernel panics due to memory faults inside the heap happen, which the old kernel guarded heap didn’t (but the userland one has always done). ↫ Haikus activity report for October The new guarded heap is optional for now, but Haiku is planning on releasing some pre-built test builds so users can start testing it out. Of course, this isnt the only change or improvement from this past month  the list of changes is long, but theres no real tentpole features here. Haikus development pace is still very much on track.

• Google cancels plans to require Android application certification outside of the Play Store
  Only a few months ago, Google announced it was going to require that all Android applications  even those installed outside of the Play Store  had to be verified. This led to a massive backlash, and it seems our protests and complaints have had effect: the company announced a change in plans today, and will, in fact, not require certification for installing applications outside of the Play Store. Based on this feedback and our ongoing conversations with the community, we are building a new advanced flow that allows experienced users to accept the risks of installing software that isnt verified. We are designing this flow specifically to resist coercion, ensuring that users arent tricked into bypassing these safety checks while under pressure from a scammer. It will also include clear warnings to ensure users fully understand the risks involved, but ultimately, it puts the choice in their hands. We are gathering early feedback on the design of this feature now and will share more details in the coming months. ↫ Matthew Forsythe Director at the Android Developers Blog While this is great news, Im still concerned this is only temporary. Companies like Google have a tendency to announce some draconian measure to test the waters, walk it back in response to backlash, only to then reintroduce it through some sneaky backdoor a year later when nobodys looking. Installing whatever we want on the devices we own should be a protected right, not something graciously afforded to us by our corporate overlords. If you think this is the end of this story, youre a fool.

• Debian Unleashes Debian Libre Live
  Debian Libre Live keeps your machine free of proprietary software.
  

• Valve Announces Pending Release of Steam Machine
  Shout it to the heavens: Steam Machine, powered by Linux, is set to arrive in 2026.
  

• Happy Birthday, ADMIN Magazine!
  ADMIN is celebrating its 15th anniversary with issue #90.
  

• Another Linux Malware Discovered
  Russian hackers use Hyper-V to hide malware within Linux virtual machines.
  

• TUXEDO Computers Announces a New InfinityBook
  TUXEDO Computers is at it again with a new InfinityBook that will meet your professional and gaming needs.
  

• SUSE Dives into the Agentic AI Pool
  SUSE becomes the first open source company to adopt agentic AI with SUSE Enterprise Linux 16.
  

• Linux Now Runs Most Windows Games
  The latest data shows that nearly 90 percent of Windows games can be played on Linux.
  

• Fedora 43 Has Finally Landed
  The Fedora Linux developers have announced their latest release, Fedora 43.
  

• KDE Unleashes Plasma 6.5
  The Plasma 6.5 desktop environment is now available with new features, improvements, and the usual bug fixes.
  

• Xubuntu Site Possibly Hacked
  It appears that the Xubuntu site was hacked and briefly served up a malicious ZIP file from its download page.
  

• LMDE 7 Now Available
  Linux Mint Debian Edition, version 7, has been officially released and is based on upstream Debian.
  

• Linux Kernel 6.16 Reaches EOL
  Linux kernel 6.16 has reached its end of life, which means you'll need to upgrade to the next stable release, Linux kernel 6.17.
  

• Amazon Ditches Android for a Linux-Based OS
  Amazon has migrated from Android to the Linux-based Vega OS for its Fire TV.
  

• Cairo Dock 3.6 Now Available for More Compositors
  If you're a fan of third-party desktop docks, then the latest release of Cairo Dock with Wayland support is for you.
  

• System76 Unleashes Pop!_OS 24.04 Beta
  System76's first beta of Pop!_OS 24.04 is an impressive feat.
  

• Linux Kernel 6.17 is Available
  Linus Torvalds has announced that the latest kernel has been released with plenty of core improvements and even more hardware support.
  

• Kali Linux 2025.3 Released with New Hacking Tools
  If you're a Kali Linux fan, you'll be glad to know that the third release of this famous pen-testing distribution is now available with updates for key components.
  

• Zorin OS 18 Beta Available for Testing
  The latest release from the team behind Zorin OS is ready for public testing, and it includes plenty of improvements to make it more powerful, user-friendly, and productive.
  

• Fedora Linux 43 Beta Now Available for Testing
  Fedora Linux 43 Beta ships with Gnome 49 and KDE Plasma 6.4 (and other goodies).
  

• USB4 Maintainer Leaves Intel
  Michael Jamet, one of the primary maintainers of USB4 and Thunderbolt drivers, has left Intel, leaving a gaping hole for the Linux community to deal with.