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LinuxSecurity - Security Advisories


  • Debian libinput Important Local Privilege Escalation Vuln DSA-6339-1
    It was discovered that a udev helper provided by libinput, a input device management and event handling library, performed insufficient sanitising of device properties, which can result in local privilege escalation in some setups. For the oldstable distribution (bookworm), this problem has been fixed


  • Debian libdbi-perl Critical Denial of Service Code Exec DSA-6338-1
    Two vulnerabilities were discovered in libdbi-perl, a Perl framework that provides a common interface to access various backend databases in a uniform manner, which may result in denial of service, or potentially the execution of arbitrary code. For the oldstable distribution (bookworm), these problems have been fixed










  • Debian jackson-core Important DoS Attack Risk DSA-6336-1 CVE-2025-52999
    A flaw was discovered in jackson-core, a fast and powerful JSON library for Java, which may allow an attacker to cause a denial of service by using deeply nested JSON data. Please note that related and complementary jackson-* packages like jackson- databind or jackson-dataformat-smile had to be upgraded as well in








































LWN.net

  • [$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for June 11, 2026
    Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:
    Front: Suspicious AI activity in Fedora; fork() + exec(); splice() + vmsplice(); BPF loop verification; fanotify; trusted publishing. Briefs: CA age bill; Bundler cooldowns; insecure code completion; Asahi and macOS 27 beta; Buildroot 2026.05; Ubuntu MATE; rsync 3.4.4; Quotes; ... Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.


  • Larson: Are insecure code completions a vulnerability?
    Seth Larson, the Python Software Foundation's securitydeveloper-in-residence, has writtenabout the difficulty in classifying insecure code completion inthe PyCharm IDE usingits FullLine code completion plugin. Larson discovered that the plugin,which uses a local "deep learning module" to offer code completions,suggests code that would lead to severe vulnerabilities. He was unsurewhether it warranted a CVE or not, however:

    I reported this behavior to JetBrains for "Full Line Code Completion" v253.29346.142and clearly their support staff weren't certain whether this defectwas a security vulnerability or not either. When I asked topublish a blog post about this behavior after they confirmedthis report wasn't a "direct security vulnerability" (whichI agree with) but then was asked not to publicize my report and referred toPyCharm's Coordinated Disclosure Policyso... which is it? Security vulnerability or not?

    I ended up waiting the 90 days anyway and I didn't hear back withany substantive update from the development team. I double-checkedagain today using "Full Line Code Completion" v261.24374.152 and thebehavior is identical, suggesting the same insecure code for bothcontexts.

    This isn't meant to be a specific dig at PyCharm or JetBrains, Ihave no-doubt that examples like this exist in every code generationmodel available.


  • [$] AI agent runs amok in Fedora and elsewhere
    Agentic AI systems can be used to do a variety of thingsautonomously on behalf of a human user: open or manage bugs, generatecode, submit pull-requests, and (apparently) even complain aboutrejection. In May, a Fedora developer discovered that an allegedlyrogue agent had been pestering the project in a number of ways:reassigning bugs, fabricating unhelpful replies to bugs, and evenpersuading maintainers to merge questionable code into the Anacondainstaller. It also submitted a number of pull requests (PRs),some accepted, to several upstream projects. The Fedora accountassociated with the agent has had its group privileges revoked and themesses have been mopped up, but the motive behind the agent's actions is stilla mystery.


  • Buildroot 2026.05 released
    Version2026.05 of the Buildroot toolhas been released. Buildroot simplifies and automates the process ofbuilding embedded Linux systems using cross-compilation. Notablechanges in this release include support for Arm Neoverse cores,addition of XFS rootfs generation, as well as many package updates andbug fixes. See the CHANGESfile for the full list.



  • Security updates for Wednesday
    Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (poppler), Debian (dnsmasq, mistral, okular, openssl, poppler, and strongswan), Fedora (exim, firefox, pcs, putty, and xorg-x11-server), Mageia (freeciv, golang-x-net, jq, libssh, libxmp, libxpm, minetest, ruby-net-ssh, tor, and wireshark), SUSE (389-ds, ack, agama-web-ui, amazon-ssm-agent, avahi, dpkg, elemental-register, elemental-system-agent, elemental-toolkit, ggml-devel-9500, go1.25, go1.26, kernel, kubernetes1.23, kubernetes1.24, kubernetes1.26, libsoup, mariadb, netty, netty-tcnative, NetworkManager, nginx, perl-CryptX, perl-XML-LibXML, podofo, polkit, python-Django, python-requests, samba, strongswan, vim, and xen), and Ubuntu (cyborg, gdk-pixbuf, golang-golang-x-net-dev, nginx, node-lodash, openssl, openssl, openssl1.0, qemu, tomcat9, tomcat10, and vim).


  • Future of Ubuntu MATE
    Thomas Ward has publishedan update about the future of the Ubuntu MATE project, which did not have a26.04 release with the other Ubuntu flavors inApril:

    There is a new team working on Ubuntu MATE who have stepped up tohelp take over flavor management. They haven't formally introducedthemselves yet, but I can safely say that other developers HAVEstepped up for the future of the MATE flavor, despite its prior teamlead having stepped down.

    [...] Ultimately, this means that they are working to cover themissed items and gaps, and may quite possibly have a 26.10 release inOctober of 2026, which I believe they most likely are targeting.

    This also means that bugs in the MATE environment and in packagesthey normally would have shipped had they have a 26.04 release arestill going to get attention and fixes. So, effectively, nothing haschanged. The only difference is that there was no 26.04 installerimage released.

    For those looking to install a MATE desktop on a "clean" install ofUbuntu 26.04, Ward suggests installing Ubuntu Server and theninstalling the ubuntu-mate-desktop package.


  • [$] Eliminating long-lived credentials with trusted publishing
    Trustedpublishing is an authentication mechanism that relies onshort-lived credentials to reduce the risk of supply-chain attacks. Atthe 2026 OpenSource Summit North America, Mike Fiedler walked the audiencethrough why trusted publishing exists, how it works, and made the casefor its adoption. It is not a silver bullet against all attacks, butit does offer protection against theft of long-lived credentials usedto publish to package registries.


  • Asahi Linux warns users not to upgrade to macOS 27 beta
    The Asahi Linux project,which brings Linux support to Apple Arm-based Macs, has warnedits users not to upgrade to the macOS 27 "Golden Gate"beta.

    Apple has changed how the boot picker and Startup Disk applicationsdetect valid OS boot volumes. When using either from macOS 27, yourAsahi partition will not be visible! We believe this to be a bug, andhave filed a report (FB22994760).

    If you have already upgraded to the beta and noticed that yourAsahi partition has disappeared, do not stress. Your Asahi partitionis still there, and you have not lost any data.

    The Asahi Linux installer has been patched to prevent use withmacOS 27 for now, but any users already bitten by the change willneed to use macOS 26 to restore access to Asahi Linux.


  • [$] BPF loop verification with scalar evolution
    The BPF verifier has, in the course of wrestling with the difficult problem ofstatically analyzing loops, grown special support for many kinds of loops over itshistory, but its fundamental approach to simple for loops has notchanged.When it encounters a loop, it evaluates it, iteration by iteration, until reachingan exit condition — a process that can cause the verifier to mistakenly hit thelimit on the number of allowed instructions where a better implementationwould not.Eduard Zingermanspoke at the 2026Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory-Management, and BPF Summitabout his in-progress work on improving the verifier's treatment of loops, especially nestedloops.


  • Security updates for Tuesday
    Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (bind and libyang), Debian (keystone and openssl), Fedora (mingw-objfw, objfw, sentencepiece, and tailscale), Mageia (packagekit and suricata), Oracle (bind, bind9.16, go-toolset:ol8, ImageMagick, kernel, samba, and vim), SUSE (apache-commons-lang3, apache-commons-text, apache-commons- configuration2, apache-commons-cli, apache-commons-io, apache-commons-codec, avahi, busybox, chromedriver, chromium, csync2, firewalld, frr, gleam, helm, kernel-devel, keybase-client, libmozjs-140-0, libopenvswitch-3_7-0, libsoup, memcached, mutt, openjpeg2, ovmf, perl-HTML-Parser, perl-Net-CIDR-Set, perl-Protocol-HTTP2, postgresql-jdbc, postgresql17, python-CairoSVG, python-Flask, python-pip, python-pyOpenSSL, python-python-multipart, python-Twisted, python-urllib3, python-urllib3_1, python-uv, python311, rsync, tomcat, and tree-sitter), and Ubuntu (alsa-lib, cups, inetutils, isc-kea, jpeg-xl, libnet-cidr-lite-perl, netatalk, netty, nginx, node-shell-quote, php-twig, pillow, poppler, rsync, strongswan, systemd, and transmission).


  • Linux App Summit 2026 (Heise)
    Heise is carrying areport from the Linux App Summit, held in Berlin in May.
    The slightly more than a dozen talks were symbolically framed between the opening keynote by systemd creator Lennart Poettering and the closing talk by Jorge Castro, initiator of the Universal Blue project, from which the modern Linux systems Bluefin and Bazzite emerged. Both Castro and Poettering call for a fundamental rethink of how Linux operating systems are delivered but pursue different approaches.


  • Three stable kernels for Tuesday
    Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 7.0.12, 6.18.35, and 6.12.93 stable kernels. Each containsimportant fixes throughout the tree. Users are advised to upgrade.



  • [$] An update on fanotify
    In a filesystem-track session at the 2026 Linux Storage,Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, Amir Goldstein updatedattendees on the fanotifyfilesystem-event monitoring subsystem. He wanted to describe changes that had come in the last year orso, as well as upcoming features and some remaining challenges in hisefforts to use fanotify for hierarchicalstorage management (HSM). Fanotify is the user-space API for monitoringfiles, directories, and filesystems for events of various sorts(e.g. opening or deleting a file).


  • rsync 3.4.4 released with regression fixes
    Andrew Tridgell has announcedthe release of rsync 3.4.4 withfixes for the regressions introduced in the 3.4.3 release. He alsonotes there will be an rsync 3.5.0 soon, with many more securityupdates:

    As part of the 3.5.0 release update I have created arsync-security@lists.samba.org mailing list for anyone who is willingto do testing of the 3.5.0 release. The idea is to try to reduce thechance of more regressions by expanding the set of testers of thisrelease. I have seeded it with people who were involved in past rsyncsecurity issues. If you want to join this list then the easiest waywould be for you to be vouched for by someone on thedistros@vs.openwall.org list or someone else I already trust.

    My apologies for the regressions in the 3.4.3 release and I hope futuresecurity updates for rsync will have less issues. The greatly expanded testsuite in rsync 3.5 combined with the rsync-security mailing list shouldhelp.



  • Security updates for Monday
    Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (bind, bind9.16, frr, kernel, kernel-rt, libexif, mysql, php, and unbound), Debian (apache2, chromium, glibc, gsasl, jackson-core, libxml2, nginx, request-tracker4, request-tracker5, tomcat10, tomcat11, and tomcat9), Fedora (chromium, firefox, haveged, keylime, libinput, libssh2, nasm, perl-CryptX, rust, thunderbird, and webkitgtk), Mageia (cockpit, golang-x-crypto, golang-x-sys-devel, kernel, kmod-virtualbox, kmod-xtables-addons, kernel-linus, perl-DBIx-Class-EncodedColumn, perl-Crypt-URandom-Token, xdg-dbus-proxy, and xmlrpc-c), Slackware (samba), and SUSE (7zip, amazon-ssm-agent, ansible-13, ansible-core, assimp-devel, bind, cacti, chromium, dpkg, epiphany, erlang27, evince, ffmpeg-4, freerdp, frr, git-bug, google-guest-agent, grafana, hauler, ignition, jq, kanidm, kernel, keybase-client, libjxl, libmariadbd-devel, libmozjs-115-0, libopenbabel8, libsoup2, mariadb, mcphost, networkmanager, openssh, perl-HTTP-Daemon, perl-HTTP-Tiny, perl-IO-Compress, perl-Sereal-Decoder, perl-xml-libxml, postgresql18, python-pyopenssl, python311-pip, tomcat, tomcat10, tomcat11, tor, trivy, unbound, uriparser, vifm, weblate, xorg-x11-server, and yq).



LXer Linux News

  • Linux's KVM Preps For APX Support In VMs
    Among the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) work being queued ahead of the upcoming Linux 7.2 merge window are preparations for supporting Advanced Performance Extensions within KVM virtual machines...







  • NVIDIA Engineer Devises Patch To Significantly Reduce GCC Bootstrap Time
    NVIDIA engineer Kyrylo Tkachov posted a patch for testing yesterday to significantly reduce the amount of time it takes the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) for conducting a native bootstrap. The time spent in the configure process for native GCC builds is reduced by around 43% while the overall bootstrap wall time is lowered by around 15%...


  • AM62x PRU Academy goes live for BeaglePlay and PocketBeagle 2
    Texas Instruments and BeagleBoard.org have announced that the AM62x and AM26x PRU Academy is now available, adding new learning material for developers working with BeaglePlay and PocketBeagle 2.   The PRU, or Programmable Real-Time Unit, is a deterministic 32-bit RISC core found in several TI Sitara and Jacinto devices. It is designed for low-latency I/O […]




  • Linux Firmware Repository Preps For AI Coding Agents
    The linux-firmware.git repository that serves as the de facto home of all the binary blobs used by the mainline Linux kernel open-source drivers has now introduced AGENTS.md documentation and other preparations for embracing AI coding agents...


  • The EU Cyber Resilience Act, and Why You Can't Do Things From Behind a Desk!
    Flock to Fedora is more than a conference – it’s where the Fedora community comes alive. As part of the In the CommitHistory campaign, we sat down with confirmed Flock 2026 speakers to hear their stories: what brought them to Fedora, what Flock means to them personally, and what they’re hoping for in Prague this […]





  • Lightweight Pragtical Code Editor Adds SDL GPU Backend
    Pragtical, the lightweight open-source code editor that prides itself on using just ~50MB of RAM and ~10MB of disk space while being a full-featured code editor, is tacking on more features. Most notable with the new Pragtical release is adding an SDL-based GPU back-end for this MIT-licensed editor...





  • Linux Sees Patches For "Critical" Vulnerability Affecting Many Arm CPUs
    Made public today is CVE-2025-10263 as a "critical" security vulnerability affecting many different Arm CPU cores. CVE-2025-10263 could allow for privilege escalation on affected systems due to a specific timing condition during a memory permission change. Fundamentally it comes down to completion of affected memory accesses might not be guaranteed by the completion of a TLBI...


Linux Insider"LinuxInsider"












Slashdot

  • Humans Prefer To Walk Anticlockwise, Scientists Find
    fjo3 shares a report from The Guardian: Tests reveal that when people are ambling about, they have a natural tendency to turn to the left and walk in an anticlockwise direction. "If you simply ask someone to start walking, whether they are wandering around a museum, a supermarket, or even an empty room, it is surprisingly likely that they will drift counterclockwise," said Dr Inaki Echeverria Huarte at University of Navarra in Spain. As with many critical discoveries in science, the revelation owes a debt to serendipity. During the pandemic, the researchers ran experiments to see how many people could share a space while keeping a safe distance. On reviewing the video, they noticed that crowds overwhelmingly walked in an anticlockwise direction. The surprise set in motion an entire research project. The scientists conducted a series of experiments in which individual pedestrians or small crowds roamed around enclosed spaces. Time and again, the researchers observed the tendency to walk in an anticlockwise direction. Suspecting that cultural norms might play a role, the team joined forces with Dr Claudio Feliciani at the University of Tokyo. He found the same results in Japan. The finding held when the researchers accounted for people being right-handed, right-footed and right-eye dominant, and was seen in both male and female walkers. The only difference they spotted was a more pronounced bias in children. "Each of us carries a small personal bias to turn slightly to one side, and when many people share a space, those tiny biases add up into a net counterclockwise rotation," said Echeverria Huarte. Researchers think the tendency may be tied to biomechanics: people are not perfectly symmetrical, and the way the brain processes sensory information and coordinates muscles may gently tip walkers toward one side. Right-side dominance may also play a role, especially in running, where anticlockwise movement puts more internal force on the right side of the body and may feel more natural to right-leg-dominant athletes. "We have tested several ideas and the bias stubbornly keeps showing up, so the exact mechanism is still an open question," said Echeverria Huarte. The findings have been published in Nature Communications.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • Solar Beats Coal In the US For the First Month Ever
    An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Solar generated more U.S. electricity than coal for the first month on record in May 2026, according to new analysis from global energy think tank Ember. Solar supplied 12.8% of U.S. electricity during the month, while coal dropped to 12.2%. That's a dramatic shift in the U.S. power mix. Just five years ago, coal generated 19.7% of U.S. electricity in May, while solar accounted for only 5.4%. U.S. solar generation hit a record 45.5 terawatt-hours (TWh) in May 2026, up 17% from May 2025 and higher than the previous record set last July. Ember says another record could be broken again this summer. Solar output usually peaks in June or July, but its share of the electricity mix is often highest in spring, when strong sunshine lines up with milder temperatures before summer cooling demand ramps up. May was also the first time solar became the third-largest individual source of electricity in the U.S., behind only natural gas and nuclear. (If solar is included with all other renewables, then they're the second-largest source of electricity as an overall category of electricity.) Meanwhile, coal keeps sliding (and will continue to slide). Coal generation hit an all-time monthly low of 39.3 TWh in April 2026. Output rose slightly in May to 43.4 TWh, but it was still 11% lower than May 2025 levels. Even with that small rebound, coal couldn't keep pace with solar's rapid growth.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • Microsoft Defender 'RoguePlanet' Zero-Day Grants SYSTEM Privileges
    A researcher using the name Nightmare Eclipse has released a new Microsoft Defender zero-day exploit called "RoguePlanet," which reportedly works on fully patched Windows 10 and 11 systems and can spawn a command prompt with SYSTEM privileges through a Defender race condition. The release came just hours after Microsoft fixed two previously disclosed flaws during its latest monthly Patch Tuesday drop -- its largest Patch Tuesday release ever. BleepingComputer reports: The researcher shared a proof-of-concept exploit on Tuesday afternoon in a self-hosted Git repository after saying that GitHub and GitLab repositories hosting their exploits had previously been removed by Microsoft. "The exploit is a race condition, so it's a hit or miss. I have managed to get a 100% success rate on some machines while it struggled to work on others," Nightmare Eclipse wrote in the repository. [...] Cybersecurity firm ThreatLocker told BleepingComputer that they successfully reproduced the flaw in their testing and confirmed the exploit worked against fully patched Windows 11 systems with KB5094126 installed, and shared a video demonstrating it. "Our initial analysis confirms that the RoguePlanet exploit is viable and performs as described. Organizations using application allowlisting can prevent the exploit from executing, providing an effective layer of protection against this attack," Danny Jenkins, CEO of ThreatLocker, told BleepingComputer. According to Nightmare Eclipse, RoguePlanet was originally developed as a remote code execution vulnerability that exploited Microsoft Defender's handling of files hosted on remote SMB shares. "In initial development, it was confirmed that this vulnerability was a remote code execution," the researcher explained in a blog post. "It required an attacker to coerce a victim to open a .vhd(x) in a remote SMB server, succesful exploitation resulted in defender overwriting its own files and obviously the end outcome was an RCE." The researcher says another attack scenario could lead to remote code execution simply by coercing a victim into opening an SMB share if symlink evaluation settings were enabled. However, the researcher claims Microsoft silently hardened Defender in mid-May by patching "mpengine!SysIO*" API, which blocked junction attacks. "Rewriting RoguePlanet to make it functional again drained my soul and I couldn't complete the other scenarios and for now it remains unclear if RoguePlanet is limited to LPE or there is some sort of way to turn it into an RCE," the researcher wrote.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • Visa Plugs Its Payment Network Into ChatGPT
    Visa is integrating its payment network with ChatGPT so AI agents can shop and complete purchases on users' behalf. "It means AI agents can not only recommend products but complete the purchase on the user's behalf, at potentially any merchant that accepts Visa," reports the Associated Press. "The payment network's previous attempts at this technological leap were confined to a single retailer or a small set of enrolled merchants." From the report: OpenAI will provide the technology to allow agents to interact, make decisions and initiate purchases through ChatGPT. Visa, the world's largest payment network outside of China, will provide the payment authorization and fraud monitoring needed to do this at scale. "As AI agents become active participants in the economy, Visa's focus is to ensure transactions are trusted, secure and seamless," said Jack Forestell, chief product and strategy officer at Visa. Speaking at a company event Wednesday in San Francisco Wednesday, Forestell gave an example of a customer telling ChatGPT they're looking for a pair of wireless headphones under $150. The chatbot would find a pair for sale under those parameters and buy it on behalf of the customer. Visa and OpenAI did not disclose the financial terms of the collaboration and did not give details on the fees merchants or customers would have to pay. [...] Visa says the feature will have guardrails like spending limits, required approval steps and approved merchants for shopping in order to protect consumers and minimize fraud.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • Valve Discontinues Physical Steam Gift Cards Due To Scammers
    Valve is discontinuing physical Steam Gift Cards and says it will stop restocking them as retailers sell through remaining inventory. In a blog post, the company blamed persistent gift card scams as the reason, though Steam Digital Gift Cards will remain available and existing physical cards can still be redeemed. PC Guide reports: Valve says it has "responded to gift card scams over the years" -- but this doesn't stop scammers from adapting. The Steam creator has actively worked with retailers and law enforcement, among other precautions, to counteract scams, but says the issue can never be fully resolved. Steam Digital Gift Cards will continue to operate as normal.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • Threats Against Politicians Tripled After Meta Changed Its Speech Rules
    An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Last year, Meta radically overhauled the rules around what content it would allow on its platforms. The company claimed that its own efforts policing speech had gone too far and that it would relax the rules around what speech was allowed. "We have been over-enforcing our rules, limiting legitimate political debate and censoring too much trivial content and subjecting too many people to frustrating enforcement actions," Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, wrote in a blog post at the time. Over a year later, new research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) shows the immediate impact of these changes. The researchers analyzed about 8 million Facebook comments and found that abusive and racist comments targeting both Republican and Democrat lawmakers tripled in the six months after the new rules were put in place. Some categories of abusive comments documented by the researchers saw even sharper rises, with violent threats and hate speech quadrupling during the same period. The report cites specific examples of gendered and racist abuse directed at lawmakers like US representatives Jasmine Crockette of Texas and Byron Daniels of Florida. These comments were not taken down by Meta. The CCDH researchers also found that threats against President Trump more than doubled in the six months after Meta overhauled its rules. Many of the comments, which included direct threats to his life, could have been classified as felony offenses, the researchers say. [...] Comments that violated Meta's policies around violent threats quadrupled, from 1,800 in the six months before the changes to 7,600 in the six months after. Hate speech comments also quadrupled, from 6,900 to 30,000. Comments that broke Meta's rules on bullying and harassment doubled, from 15,700 to 39,900.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • BYD To Install Thousands of 5-Minute EV Chargers Across Europe
    BYD plans to install 3,000 ultra-fast "Flash Chargers" across Europe by the end of 2027, with the first stations already appearing in Germany and the UK. The Verge reports: At an estimated cost of 580,000 euros (about $670,000) per charger according to the Financial Times, that would mean a total spend of roughly $2 billion to install the network. The 1,500kW charging stations are significantly more powerful than Tesla's 500kW V4 Superchargers, though Tesla already has 20,000 chargers installed in Europe. BYD, which has been steadily overtaking Tesla in global sales, says its chargers shouldn't add undue strain to the energy grid, as they'll charge cars from batteries which can be topped up overnight. Any car with a standard CCS charge port can use the Flash Chargers, though only BYD cars equipped with the company's new Blade Battery can hit the top speeds. Right now there's only one of those in Europe, the 115,000 euros ($133,000) Denza Z9 GT -- it charges to 70 percent in five minutes on the new chargers.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • macOS 27 Beta Boots Asahi Linux Off Apple Silicon
    The Asahi Linux team is warning Apple Silicon users not to upgrade to the macOS 27 beta because Apple's changes to the boot picker and Startup Disk app make Asahi partitions invisible, preventing Linux from booting. The Register reports: The team added: "If you insist on trying out macOS 27 as soon as possible, please ensure you install a secondary copy of macOS 26 first, or install macOS 27 itself on a secondary volume." They've also updated the installer to prevent installs from running on macOS 27 for now. For anyone who ignored all of the above, "we will not support users who have installed the macOS 27 beta without ensuring at least one stable version of macOS is installed." Considering macOS 27 is in beta, the issue may be accidental rather than an attempt by Apple to block Linux on its hardware. The Asahi team said it has filed bug report. The good news for anyone who pulled the trigger on installing the macOS 27 beta is that although the partition might not be visible, it hasn't gone anywhere. The Asahi team wrote: "If you have already upgraded to the beta and noticed that your Asahi partition has disappeared, do not stress. Your Asahi partition is still there, and you have not lost any data."


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • German Court Holds Google Liable For False AI Overview Answers
    A Munich regional court has ruled (PDF) that Google can be held directly liable for false claims in AI Overviews. The case involved AI Overviews falsely linking two publishers to scams and shady business practices, with the court rejecting Google's argument that users could simply check the sources themselves. The Decoder reports: Google's AI overviews work nothing like traditional search results, the court argues. The AI rewrites and judges results "in its own words and according to its own structure," the ruling says. In the case at hand, for example, it opened with confident claims like "Yes, [company] is known for dubious business practices," then built its own structure with a summary, red flags for the alleged scam, and tips for users. The court also found that the AI overview made claims "that are not even made in the search results." None of the linked sources drew any connection between the plaintiffs and the shady companies the AI mentioned. The court called these "the defendant's own statements." Google built the AI, Google offered it to users, so Google owns what it produces, "because it alone has influence over the AI's offering and the algorithms with which the AI operates." The court also examined existing rulings from Germany's Federal Court of Justice (BGH), which gave traditional search engines and autocomplete limited liability. The BGH had argued that search engine operators were only liable as indirect infringers because they merely made third-party content findable. A proactive duty to check results would threaten how search engines work. The Munich court found that this reasoning doesn't apply to AI overviews. A regular search engine just points to outside websites. But AI overviews generate "independent, new, and substantive statements" by evaluating and combining content from various third-party sites. And only Google can check those statements, the court said, "at least by comparing the underlying third-party websites with its own statements based on them." The court also noted that the AI overview is "by no means absolutely necessary" for using the internet. Traditional search results already help users sort through information, the AI overview is just an extra feature. At the hearing, Google argued that users could check the linked sources themselves to verify if the AI summary was correct. It also said that these users knew "that information generated with AI should not be blindly trusted." The court rejected this.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • Seattle Enacts Year-Long Ban On New AI Datacenters
    Seattle has enacted a one-year moratorium on new datacenters, making it the largest U.S. city to do so as the backlash against AI infrastructure grows across the country. The city council voted unanimously in favor of the ban. The Guardian reports: Lawmakers have framed the pause as an opportunity to draft regulations specifically targeting the electricity-hungry datacenters being built nationwide to serve the AI sector, and to protect local residents from environmental risks and rising electricity bills. According to Seattle mayor Katie Wilson, the moratorium will also let city officials determine whether datacenters are a "good use of urban land," and potentially impose new stipulations on their approval, such as requiring developers to invest in local transit and housing initiatives in exchange for construction permits. "There are times when public pressure forces elected officials to do something they don't want to do, but in other cases, public pressure just supports and helps to spur on elected officials to do things that they already want to do," said Wilson. "I think this was one of those latter cases." [...] An amendment to the moratorium that passed unanimously last week allows existing datacenters in Seattle to apply for expansions requiring up to 20 megawatts of additional power during the year-long pause. Activists are concerned that the provision may lead to a spike in datacenters' demand for power while the moratorium is in place, and may undermine the premise of the pause. Lawmakers justified the amendment as a way to differentiate between the datacenters that already exist in Seattle and serve a civic purpose, like those powering health facilities and emergency-call systems, from large-scale centers designed to serve the AI sector.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • Microsoft Smashes Record For Biggest Ever Patch Tuesday Update
    An anonymous reader quotes a report from ComputerWeekly: Microsoft has issued patches for about 200 flaws in its latest monthly Patch Tuesday drop, blasting past a previous record high of almost 170 common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) set in October 2025. Among a great many others, the latest update from Redmond fixes a total of 32 critical CVEs and three zero-day flaws. Dustin Childs, head of threat awareness at TrendAI's Zero Day Initiative, said: "We are heading into a high-stakes summer for cyber security. June's record-shattering drop ... is a stark warning that AI is supercharging flaw discovery at an uncontrollable scale. The current number of CVEs shipped by Microsoft this year exceeds the total number of CVEs shipped in all of 2018. It is extraordinary that Microsoft can produce so many patches in a single month, and I expect many testers are wondering what quality issues may exist." And with the addition of hundreds of CVEs in Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge (Chromium) and other third-party flaws taking the total to almost 600, Chris Goettl, vice president of security product management at Ivanti, said talk of a 'Patch Apocalypse' was no longer unwarranted. "We are in the Patch Apocalypse. The Patch Apocalypse is now," said Goettl. "This is not intended to be a scare tactic. It is meant to outline the challenge that many organizations were anticipating, but the new generation of LLMs [Large Language Models] has accelerated significantly in the first half of 2026." "There are going to be more CVEs resolved by vendors at a faster and more continuous pace than we have ever seen previously. Unfortunately, this will also include more zero-day and n-day exploits than previously seen as well. The window from release from a vendor to exploitation had already shortened to five days as of 2023 threat intelligence data." Goettl said that many suppliers have acknowledged the need to use AI tools in their security research to identify and resolve flaws, with Oracle, Google Chrome and Mozilla all upping the cadence of their updates. Whether or not Microsoft follows suit remains to be seen.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • Commonwealth Fusion Makes the Physics Case For Its 400 MW Reactor
    Commonwealth Fusion has published five peer-reviewed papers laying out the physics case for ARC, its planned 400 MW fusion power plant, which would follow the company's smaller SPARC tokamak now under construction. The papers suggest ARC could produce more energy than it consumes using high-temperature superconducting magnets, molten-salt heat extraction, and 15-minute fusion pulses. Ars Technica reports: ARC will be a tokamak that hosts fusion between hydrogen's two heavier isotopes, deuterium and tritium. This reaction results in a helium nucleus and releases a neutron and radiation. The helium transfers heat to the plasma, maintaining the conditions needed for fusion, but it is otherwise a waste product, referred to as "ash" in the fusion context. The neutron and radiation, however, are put to use. Part of that use is simply imparting energy into a blanket of molten salt that surrounds the fusion chamber. That energy, in the form of heat, will be used to drive a turbine that produces the electricity. The molten salt includes lithium ions; when one lithium isotope absorbs a neutron, it decays into more helium, plus tritium that can be used as fuel for the reactor. There are isotopes present that will also release additional neutrons, allowing this process to generate sufficient fuel. Overall, the present design of ARC is expected to produce about 1.13 GW of fusion power, with 500 MW of that extracted as electricity. Some of that (100 MW) will be needed to power the plant's operations, leaving 400 MW to be sent to the grid. The rest of the energy is either kept in the tokamak to maintain the fusion reactions or lost due to inefficiencies in the heat and energy transfer of the system. There's a lot of uncertainty about these numbers; the 1.13 GW is just the center of a range of potential values running from 900 MW to 1.3 GW, so the 400 MW output may need to be adjusted up or down accordingly. Some of that 400 MW comes during periods where fusion is not occurring. The nuclear reactions will occur within 15-minute-long periods that will be interspersed with one minute resets. The resets are meant to be kept short enough that nothing has much of a chance to cool down before it gets heated up again -- thermal inertia will let it continue generating power. That will be one of the key differentiators with SPARC, which doesn't have the heat extraction needed to maintain stable fusion for these long time periods, and so can't maintain the near constant temperatures needed for reliable power generation. It's inevitable that parts of the device will be exposed to radiation and perhaps fusion plasma. The inner walls of the reactor will be shielded by tungsten, which will limit erosion by the conditions. Meanwhile, the vacuum vessel is designed to be replaced every one to two years. The papers note that this flexibility will allow them to make some design changes even after ARC is built. To enable this, the whole tokamak is meant to split in half for maintenance.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • NASA Announces Astronauts For Its Artemis III Mission
    NASA has named Randy Bresnik, Luca Parmitano, Frank Rubio, and Andre Douglas as the crew for Artemis III, which has been reworked from a moon-landing mission into a roughly two-week Earth-orbit test of lunar landers being built by SpaceX and Blue Origin. NBC News reports: Randy Bresnik, Luca Parmitano, Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas are expected to launch into Earth orbit next year, with the goal of testing two commercially developed lunar landers that are slated to carry astronauts to the surface of the moon during the Artemis IV mission in 2028. Bresnik will be the mission's commander, with Parmitano, an Italian astronaut with the European Space Agency, serving as the pilot. Douglas and Rubio will be mission specialists, and Bob Hines will train with the crew as a backup member. "This test flight will enable us to prove we can carry out highly choreographed operations with our partners across hardware interfaces, software propulsion systems and life support elements with crew in the high-stakes space environment," Jeremy Parsons, NASA's Artemis program manager, said during NASA's announcement on Tuesday. Bresnik has been to the International Space Station twice, most recently as commander of an expedition in 2017. A retired U.S. Marine colonel, he was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2004. Bresnik has helped oversee development and testing of spacecraft for the Artemis program as an assistant to the chief of the Astronaut Office, which manages astronaut training and operations. Parmitano has also done two stints on the ISS and served as commander of an expedition in 2019. He has completed a total of six spacewalks and also performed the first live DJ set in orbit. Before becoming an astronaut, Parmitano was a test pilot for the Italian air force. For Rubio, a physician with 28 years of service in the Army, Artemis III will be his second trip to space. From 2022 to 2023, he spent 371 days on the space station, breaking the record for longest-duration spaceflight by an American, according to NASA. Douglas is the only crew member making his spaceflight debut. An engineer who previously worked on space exploration and robotics at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, he became a NASA astronaut in 2022. Douglas was the backup crew member for the Artemis II mission around the moon earlier this year. He told NBC News in an interview after Tuesday's announcement that the role had at times been a challenge. "It was hard to figure out how do you balance getting ready to go, not go, all that stuff," he said. "But to go now is just fantastic."


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • FCC Wants To Kill Burner Phones By Forcing Telecoms To Get All Customers' IDs
    An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants to make it effectively impossible for people to buy what many call burner phones -- a phone not explicitly linked to your identity at the point of purchase -- which would impact privacy-conscious people, to domestic abuse survivors, to journalists, and many more. The FCC plans to do this by legally forcing the country's telecoms to store a wealth of personal information about essentially all phone customers, including a government issued identification number and their physical address, alarming privacy advocates and civil rights activists who compare the measures to those from authoritarian countries where it can be difficult to buy a mobile phone plan without giving up your identity. The proposed change would drastically shake up how people obtain phone plans in the U.S., and have all sorts of privacy and cybersecurity knock-on effects. The FCC is proposing the data collection partly as a way to combat scammers, with telecoms being required to collect other information on business and foreign customers like the intended use case of their bulk phone plan purchase and their IP address. But the changes would mean telecoms collect data on all new and renewing customers, and the FCC provides a long list of other things that the collected data could help authorities with. In a synopsis of the proposed changes, the FCC writes, "Specifically, we seek comment on requiring originating providers to, at a minimum, obtain and retain the name, physical address, government issued identification number, and an alternate telephone number of any new and renewing customer before granting access to its services." The goal of collecting this data, the FCC writes, is to deter some scammers from getting onto a telecom network in the first place, and so "enforcers will be better able to identify the scammers when they do." The FCC compares the changes to the sort of data collected by banks to prevent money laundering. One section stresses that the newly collected data would help "law enforcement to more easily identify callers that use the network to perpetuate crimes by ensuring that voice providers have accurate and complete customer information." It goes on to ask if the data would help identify people buying and selling illicit goods; the investigation of "fraud, espionage, or influence operations that undermine national security", and "address abuse in text messaging networks." "Criminals continue to leverage the anonymity provided by phone calls and texts to defraud Americans and exploit communications networks to further other crimes," one section reads. "For decades, civil libertarians have looked overseas at authoritarian countries where the government requires people to register to get a mobile phone to ensure they can be tracked. We never thought that would happen here," Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project told 404 Media in an email. "But make no mistake: with this rulemaking, the government is contemplating taking away people's ability to get a burner phone, which will hurt low-income people, domestic violence victims, and anyone else who cares about their privacy."


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • US Labels BYD, Baidu, Alibaba and Other Tech Giants As Aiding China's Military
    The Pentagon has added Alibaba, BYD, Baidu, Unitree, and other Chinese companies to its list of firms it says support China's military, barring them from U.S. defense contracts. The companies and China's embassy deny the allegations. The Associated Press reports: Created in 2021 by a congressional mandate, the list (PDF) seeks to identify Chinese companies that the Pentagon considers to have links to the Chinese military -- not only those directly controlled by the Chinese military and security forces but also those contributing to the country's defense industrial base. When updating the list last year, the Pentagon said the Chinese military sought to acquire advanced technologies and expertise developed by Chinese companies, universities and research programs that "appear to be civilian entities." The Chinese Embassy on Monday accused the U.S. of "overstretching the concept of national security and making discriminatory lists to go after Chinese companies." It said Chinese companies observe the laws and regulations of the countries where they do business. "The U.S. should stop its wrong practice and create a fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies," the embassy said in a statement. [...] The Chinese Embassy on Monday accused the U.S. of "overstretching the concept of national security and making discriminatory lists to go after Chinese companies." It said Chinese companies observe the laws and regulations of the countries where they do business. "The U.S. should stop its wrong practice and create a fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies," the embassy said in a statement.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


www.theregister.com - Articles




















































Linux.com


  • From DHCP to SZTP – The Trust Revolution
    By Juha Holkkola, FusionLayer Group The Dawn of Effortless Connectivity In the transformative years of the late 1990s, a quiet revolution took place, fundamentally altering how we connect to networks. The introduction of DHCP answered a crucial question, Where are you on the network?!, by automating IP address assignment. This innovation eradicated the manual configuration [0]

    The post From DHCP to SZTP – The Trust Revolution appeared first on Linux.com.










Phoronix


  • Framework Laptop 13 Pro To Begin Shipping In July
    Framework Computer began informing those that pre-ordered the new Framework Laptop 13 Pro that it will begin shipping in July rather than their original June target. The setback is coming to address two issues that came up in their testing process that delayed the start of mass production...





  • Intel Arc Pro B70 Showing Off Some Performance Wins With Linux 7.1
    After recently noticing the Intel Arc B580 performing better on Linux 7.1 for that kernel version soon to be released as stable, I was curious if there were performance gains also to be found with the new flagship Arc Pro B70 BMG-G31 workstation graphics card. Here are some benchmarks of the Intel Arc Pro B70 in relevant workloads between Linux 7.0 and the near-final Linux 7.1 kernel.



  • NVIDIA Engineer Devises Patch To Significantly Reduce GCC Bootstrap Time
    NVIDIA engineer Kyrylo Tkachov posted a patch for testing yesterday to significantly reduce the amount of time it takes the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) for conducting a native bootstrap. The time spent in the configure process for native GCC builds is reduced by around 43% while the overall bootstrap wall time is lowered by around 15%...




  • Linux Firmware Repository Preps For AI Coding Agents
    The linux-firmware.git repository that serves as the de facto home of all the binary blobs used by the mainline Linux kernel open-source drivers has now introduced AGENTS.md documentation and other preparations for embracing AI coding agents...


  • AMDGPU Linux Driver Preps For HDMI 2.1 Compliance Testing
    While not as exciting as features like HDMI 2.1 FRL and Display Stream Compression itself, as part of AMD's efforts to provide a fully open-source HDMI 2.1 driver implementation for AMDGPU, new code is being prepped for their kernel driver to support the HDMI compliance testing efforts...


  • Linux9s KVM Preps For APX Support In VMs
    Among the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) work being queued ahead of the upcoming Linux 7.2 merge window are preparations for supporting Advanced Performance Extensions within KVM virtual machines...



  • Linux Sees Patches For "Critical" Vulnerability Affecting Many Arm CPUs
    Made public today is CVE-2025-10263 as a "critical" security vulnerability affecting many different Arm CPU cores. CVE-2025-10263 could allow for privilege escalation on affected systems due to a specific timing condition during a memory permission change. Fundamentally it comes down to completion of affected memory accesses might not be guaranteed by the completion of a TLBI...



  • macOS 27 Beta Breaks The Ability To Boot Asahi Linux
    Asahi Linux is warning its users from trying out the new macOS 27 "Golden Gate" beta released this week by Apple. With macOS 27 beta, the Asahi Linux partition is no longer visible and thus unable to boot to your Apple Silicon Linux installation...


  • RISC-V CPU Performance Up 8x In Five Years: SiFive HiFive Unmatched To SpacemiT K3
    Recently I published some initial SpacemiT K3 benchmarks for that first-to-market RISC-V RVA23 SoC with the K3 Pico-ITX mini computer. In there was a comparison against modern Intel Core Ultra and AMD Ryzen desktop CPUs along with the likes of the Raspberry Pi 5, Loongson 3B6000, and SiFive HiFive Premier. For those curious about the longer-term RISC-V performance, here is a look at how far the RISC-V hardware performance has come compared to the SiFive HiFive Unmatched RISC-V board from five years ago.




  • Linux 7.2 Preparing Intel Key Protection Technology "KPT" For Next-Gen QAT
    Going back to the launch of 1st Gen Xeon Scalable processors in 2017 was Intel Key Protection Technology (KPT) promoted and there have been Key Protection Technology references in QuickAssist (QAT) documentation since 2016. Surprisingly we are only now seeing Key Protection Technology references for the upstream Linux QAT driver as Intel engineers prepare for their next-gen "Gen6" QuickAssist hardware support...


  • Lightweight Pragtical Code Editor Adds SDL GPU Backend
    Pragtical, the lightweight open-source code editor that prides itself on using just ~50MB of RAM and ~10MB of disk space while being a full-featured code editor, is tacking on more features. Most notable with the new Pragtical release is adding an SDL-based GPU back-end for this MIT-licensed editor...



  • Ubuntu MATE Is Continuing Despite No Ubuntu MATE 26.04 Release
    Back in March, Martin Wimpress stepped down as the longtime Ubuntu MATE leader and was looking for contributors to keep this Ubuntu derivative going with its GNOME2-derived desktop. That change in leadership paired with no Ubuntu MATE 26.04 release having occurred led to some concerns among users, but the plan is still for Ubuntu MATE to continue moving forward...




  • Running CachyOS With The BORE Scheduler While Disabling Ananicy-CPP
    Last week I ran benchmarks of CachyOS with the BORE scheduler using its "linux-cachyos-bore" kernel option. The results didn't end up being as enticing as anticipated but the developer behind the BORE scheduler commented in the forums that he recently received reports from users experiencing game stuttering while using BORE that was attributed to CachyOS' default use of Ananicy-Cpp. So over the weekend I did another CachyOS BORE run without that CachyOS default...




  • Canonical Experimenting With x86-64-v3 Packages For Ubuntu 26.10
    Canonical engineers are again evaluating the impact of building the Ubuntu Linux archive for the x86-64-v3 "amd64v3" micro-architecture feature level for its performance benefits on modern Intel and AMD systems. An amd64v3 archive is available of Ubuntu 26.10 for testing with the packages targeting this level that allows for AVX/AVX2 and other newer CPU x86_64 ISA capabilities of the past decade...





Engadget"Engadget - Technology News & Expert Reviews"





















OSnews

  • Once again, Apple blatantly lies about the EUs DMA
    Apple recently announced its next crack at integrating AI! into its operating systems, this time opting to simply whitelabel Googles Gemini AI! tools instead of developing its own LLM technology. Called Siri AI!, Apple also stated its not coming to the EU, and the company stated thats because the EUs basic consumer protection legislation would give other AI! tools unprecedented access! to user data on users devices. The company made a big stink about this in the press. As anyone with basic pattern recognition skills already knew, this was a blatant, baldfaced lie. What really happened is that Apple asked the EU for an 18-month long exemption from the EUs consumer protection and privacy legislation during which it would not have to comply with any legal privacy and interoperability requirements  just so it could roll out Siri AI! before anyone else could offer a competing product for Apple users. Obviously, the EU wasnt going to grant such an exemption. The decision not to roll out Siri AI in the EU is Apples and Apples only,! spokesperson Thomas Regnier told reporters in Brussels, saying there was nothing in the Digital Markets Act to stop the company from introducing new products in the EU. Apple was simply unable to develop interoperability solutions that meet essential EU ​privacy and security standards,! Regnier said. Instead ​of trying to find ⁠a suitable compliance solution, Apple simply made a request to the European Commission to be exempted from their interoperability obligations under the DMA  and this for at least 18 months. ​Thats not an option,! Regnier said. ↫ Inti Landauro and Foo Yun Chee at Reuters So whats really going on here is that Apple wants to offer a set of whitelabeled Google Gemini tools on iOS and macOS in the EU, but because Apple is classified as a gatekeeper, it is legally obligated to offer interoperability options for competing AI! tools. These options in turn need to adhere to the EUs strict privacy regulations, so that competing AI! tools can offer the same level of privacy that Apples own whitelabeled Google Gemini tools claim to offer. Apple didnt want to offer these privacy-respecting interoperability options as required by law, so instead of following the law in the countries it wants to operate in, Apple asked to be placed above the law for at least 18 months, basically giving Siri AI! a massive head-start over possible competitors so that it could entrench itself in the userbase. The EU saw right through Apples nonsense, and now called them out on their bullshit. Perhaps Apple has gotten so used to openly bribing Trump that they forgot other parts of the world dont work that way. Whenever Apple and its PR attack dogs say anything about the EU, you can be assured they are lying. They have proven time and time again to basically never speak a single word of truth when it comes to its dealings in the EU. Its almost pathological at this point, and what makes it doubly interesting is that Apple will not launch Siri AI! in China either, for the very same regulatory reasons  yet all China got was a single footnote in a press release. I wonder why.


  • Google Chrome is killing all uBlock Origin bypasses, Microsoft Edge, Opera to follow
    For a while now the transition away from Manifest V2 (MV2) to MV3 has been on-going and it looks like it is entering its final phase of deprecation, at least, in the case of Google Chrome. A recent discussion thread in the w3c WebExtensions Community Group GitHub repo has highlighted how the latest and upcoming versions of the most popular browser are expected to be its final releases with support for MV2 extensions. ↫ Sayan Sen at Neowin You shouldnt be using Chrome anyway.


  • A raycasting first-person shooter written in COBOL
    On a related note, what about a raycasting first-person shooter written in0 COBOL? Can you think of a better programming language than COBOL to implement an FPS from scratch? I know I cant, so buckle up and enjoy what can only be described as an out-of-body experience for COBOL enthusiasts as I set out to make a Wolfenstein3D-like raycasting based FPS game (and potentially go a bit further than that, hopefully its not a DOOMed attempt). ↫ icitry on YouTube I dont link to YouTube videos very often, but theres always the exception that proves the rule. The COBOL codes available on GitHub. What a mad man.


  • Catlantean 3D: making graphics like its 1993
    My goal was to build a complete, shippable first-person shooter using techniques that were common in the early 90s, while allowing myself the luxury of using a modern compiler and a platform abstraction layer. ↫ Marko Stanic It looks amazing already, and it isnt even done. Stanic goes into great detail explaining how he created the various assets for the game, and its a joy to read through his creative process and problem-solving routines. The games called Catlantean 3D, and is expected to ship somewhere early 2027.


  • Microsoft makes Windows printing easier with Windows Ready Print
    Microsoft has detailed that Windows 11 is going to switch away from dedicated printer drivers to its Windows Ready Print system. This should make it a lot easier and less cumbersome to get printers running on Windows 11. At the core of Windows Ready Print is a transition away from legacy, third party drive-based workflows toward modern, standards-based printing with IPP (Internet Printing Protocol) using the Windows inbox IPP printer driver.` Starting in July 2026, new printer installations will default to Windows Ready Print where supported, enabling a simpler and more reliable setup experience. This change reduces the need for traditional driver management and lays the foundation for a more scalable and predictable print experience. ↫ elliesekine at the Windows Tech Community Printers still play a huge role in our lives  whether we like it or not  and their terrible user experience is basically a meme a this point. Making at least one aspect of printing easier, less cumbersome, and more streamlined is incredibly welcome, and Im glad Microsoft is taking the Windows printing ecosystem along for the ride on this one. My own personal experience with printing on Linux and now on Windows 11 (as promised, Ive been using nothing but Windows 11 since 26 May!) has been mostly effortless already. Our cheap networked printer/scanner/combo thing from HP just works! on both Linux and Windows 11, since Windows downloads HPs drivers and application automatically when detecting the printer on the network. Still, not having to use HPs driver would be a nice bonus. Coincidentally, I also managed to get the printer component of our HP combo thing working on0 HP-UX 11i v1. Despite being more than two decades newer, our HP printer works perfectly with a printer definition file included in HP-UX, giving me full printing from CDE and the rest of HP-UX. Its entirely useless and cost me an evening of my life, but seeing the test page and other documents from HP-UX come out of our printer, over the network, put a big smile on my face.


  • German court rules Google is liable for whatever Googles AI! generates
    Its just a ruling from a lower court, but it sets the stage for how European courts are going to deal with the question of who is liable for whatever slop AI! generates. The Regional Court of Munich hit Google with a temporary injunction barring the company from spreading false claims about two Munich-based publishers through its AI-generated search overviews (case no. 26 O 869/26). The court classified Google as a direct infringer because the AI overview! is its own content, not just a list of search results. Googles AI overviews had falsely tied two publishing companies to scams, subscription traps, and shady business practices for certain search queries. According to the court, the AI mixed up information about other, genuinely sketchy companies with the plaintiffs and drew connections that didnt appear in any of the linked sources. The publishers sent Google a cease-and-desist letter, but Google didnt respond appropriately. ↫ Matthias Bastian at The Decoder Google tried to argue it doesnt carry any responsibility or liability for whatever slop its AI! generate, but the German court does not agree. According to the court, AI! overviews are not the same as regular search results, because they rewrite findings and just make shit up, thereby making claims that are nowhere to be found in any search results (or in reality in general). Furthermore, the court states that Google develops the AI!, it runs it, it offers it to users, and Google alone controls its output, and as such, Google is liable for whatever their AI! produces. Google also tried to argue that users know not to trust anything an AI! produces, which is hilarious considering how hard Google is pushing these tools, but the courts state that the ability of users to do further research does not absolve Google of liability. In addition, the court made it very clear that free speech protections absolutely do not apply, because the AI! expressions are coming from an algorithm, not a person, and are above all an expression of Googles business activities!. In other words, if an AI! tool generates false accusations and misleading statements, the creator of said AI! is liable. With this ruling in hand, countless other people have a stronger case to make whenever Google or any other company tries to absolve itself from liability from slop just because a pachinko machine generated it. Excellent news, and the only fair outcome.


  • Eagle Computer: the rise and fall of an early PC clone
    When it comes to 80s computer brands, few flew as high as Eagle Computer flew in 1983. The aptly named company was selling 12,000 computers a month and had been doubling sales every quarter under the leadership of a talented CEO. Then Eagle lost its CEO, Dennis Barnhart, in a crashed Ferrari on the day of its IPO, June 8, 1983. In this blog post, we’ll explore the reasons Eagle Computer fell, because there was more to it than just the tragic story involving its CEO. ↫ Dave Farquhar Just one of the many early PC companies that died off, even if Eagle died off before many of the other big players. It mustve been such a vibrant and fascinating time to be into PCs and computers in general at that time, with so many companies and players to choose from. Shame about the 308 GTS.


  • Introducing brand new OSNews merch with the new logo!
    A new logo means new merch! Im launching brand new merch today, all featuring the brand new OSNews logo. Weve got the classic T-shirt with the new OSNews logo, in sandy white and terrain grey. Theyre made from sustainably-grown and processed cotton, come in a variety of sizes, and ship worldwide. The crowdpleaser is also making its triumphant return: the OSNews coffee mug, now also with the new logo and a green-on-white two-tone design. It holds coffee and tea, of course, but feel free to use it for whatever you want. Grow a plant in it! A newcomer is the OSNews Mousepad  a basic, no-nonsense, no-frills mousepad that does exactly what its supposed to do, in a classic square(ish) formfactor. It makes for a great companion to any (retro) setup, but feels particularly at home with BeOS and OS/2. One merch item remains from our previous collection: the ever-popular Gemini shirt and longsleeve, with a retro ASCII-art OSNews logo in bright green on deep black. Its like staring at a real classic CRT. On your chest. Dont sit too close. As always, every price is set so that for every item sold, roughly €8 goes to OSNews. I will add the proceeds to our fundraiser tracker, so this is yet another way to support us, together with Ko-Fi donations, SEPA direct bank transfers, and Patreon.


  • GentleOS is a love letter to classic operating systems with a lovely retro GUI
    In todays climate, I needed this: GentleOS, an operating system targeting both 386 (GentleOS/32) and even processors as old as the 80186 (GentleOS/16), with a lovely retro graphical user interface, usable on bare metal, and, of course, open source. Its goal is to provide a simple platform for tinkering with retro hardware and running graphical interactive apps on bare metal. At minimum, it only requires an i386 CPU, 4MB of RAM, and a VGA display capable of 640x480x16 mode. By design its entirely monolithic, mostly configured at compile time, and only supports standard PC devices: VGA/SVGA, keyboard, PS/2 mouse, serial mouse, PC speaker. The only future plans are bugfixes, optimizations, and adding more apps. GentleOS/32 has a pure 16-bit spin-off called GentleOS/16, which targets devices as old as 80186. ↫ GentleOS GitHub page While it can be run on real hardware, you can also run it in Qemu to make it easier to test and play around with. It looks great, and the stated goal of just focusing on maintenance and possibly additional applications is music to my heart. With everything thats going on in technology today, this is an ice-cold glass of tonic in a scorching, data center-infested desert.


  • Apple demos macOS 27, iOS 27; EU spared Apples Google-powered AI! slop features
    Apples developer conference started today, and as is tradition, this means it also announced coming updates to its operating systems lineup. macOS is probably one of the two major ones OSNews readers are interested in, so lets start there: Much like Mac OS X Snow Leopard in 2009, Apple said it focused on improving macOSs performance and dozens of underlying technologies this year. macOS Golden Gate has some Liquid Glass design changes. For example, apps now have a unified toolbar at the top, and the sidebar now expands to the edge of the window. A new slider on macOS 27 lets you customize the opacity of Liquid Glass. ↫ Joe Rossignol at MacRumors Effectively, a ton of Liquid Glass! features touted only a year ago are being changed and fixed, which should make using Liquid Glass less of a frustrating affair. Of course, theres a whole slew of new AI! stuff built entirely on top of Googles Gemini, but luckily for us Europeans, we wont be getting those features because EU privacy and consumer protection regulations are too strict. Apple, one of the worlds most valuable companies, seemingly cannot create AI! features that comply with some basic consumer protection legislation. As for the other major platform, thats iOS of course. At WWDC 2026 in Cupertino, Apple announced iOS 27, the next mobile operating system for compatible iPhones. The update focuses on tweaking and improving last years iOS 26, particularly in areas like app launch time, Liquid Glass design, and more. It does not offer a lot of major new features or upgrades, as Apple focused on polishing the experience. However, there are some new upgrades, such as reworked parental controls, new Siri AI, better search, and performance improvements. ↫ Taras Buria at Neowin These new versions, as well as those of Apples other operating systems, will be available later this year.


  • Xfce ported to Redox OS
    Redox progressed another month, and that means a ton of improvements and new features to talk about. The biggest news this past month is that Xfce has been ported to Redox, which offers a better X11 experience than MATE currently does. Theres still some bugs but apparently is works quite well. The porting process for the COSMIC desktop environment also progressed, with COSMICs new Monitor application making its way to Redox. As part of Google Summer of Code, the EEVDF scheduler has been implemented in Redox, delivering better, more stable scheduling and overall system performance improvements. Also as part of GSoC inode caching has been implemented for RedoxFS, which improves file system performance. Of course, theres a lot more here too, including the usual long list of kernel fixes, relibc improvements, and more.


  • TOTP-based two-factor authentication for Sculpt OS
    Norman Feske, one of the main developers behind Genode and Sculpt OS, has published a blog post detailing how he developed a two-factor authentication application for Sculpt OS. With this little tool, which I have turned into an deploy option on Sculpt OS to swiftly bring it up whenever I need it, TOTP-based two-factor authentication has become part of my daily routine. Should you want to risk a look under the hood, let me point you to the vitotp Goa project. ↫ Norman Feske The Genode project moved from GitHub to Codebrg recently, and needed a native TOTP impelentation for that purpose.


  • Using Fedora Silverblue for compositor development
    I’ve been using Fedora Silverblue on my desktop and laptop for the past, what, five years? Silverblue is Fedora’s main atomic variant, a spiritual counterpart to Fedora Workstation. I also make niri, a scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor. In other words, a core system component that you cannot properly test from inside a container or VM—you really want it directly on the host. So, why would I choose an… immutable distro? How does that even work? ↫ Ivan Molodetskikh Thats a great question, and as immutable or immutable-like Linux distributions become more popular and widespread  and eventually the default download option for many distributions, Im sure  articles like these are quite important. Im sure quite a few developers discarded the idea of using something like Silverblue because they assumed it wouldnt be fit for purpose, but if the developer of Niri makes it work, Im fairly sure anybody can.


  • x86CSS: a working CSS-only x86 CPU/emulator/computer
    x86CSS is a working CSS-only x86 CPU/emulator/computer. Yes, the Cascading Style Sheets CSS. No JavaScript required. What youre seeing above is a C program that was compiled using GCC into native 8086 machine code being executed fully within CSS. ↫ Lyra Rebane Hand-written CSS, no JavaScript, and effectively no HTML. Wizardry.


  • This mini PC with the latest RISC-V SoC might actually be worth it
    RISC-V has been in the promising! phase for a long time now, especially for general purpose computing, never really breaking through into the mainstream in any measurable way. While I think that breakthrough is still relatively far away, we now do have newer RISC-V SoCs on the market supporting the RVA23 baseline RISC-V profile. One of them is the SpacemiT Key Stone KЗ, which promises to deliver a massive performance increase over previous RISC-V offerings. Its exactly this chip thats finding its way into complete, turnkey mini PC solutions, like this one from a company called Firefly. The base model comes with 8GB of LDDPR5 RAM and 128GB of storage, at a price of about €300 or so (theres also a 32GB/128GB model at well over €600). This is the first time Im looking at a complete RISC-V solution where I feel like it might actually make for a good moment to jump in for us enthusiasts. No, the performance wont rival anything Intel or AMD has to offer, but it seems capable enough for a lot of day-to-day tasks, and Im curious to see just how far along the Linux world is when it comes to RISC-V support. Its not part of our current set of fundraiser incentives, but if youd like to see this RISC-V mini PC reviewed here on OSNews, you can always donate and add a note that you specifically want to see such a review (so I can gauge interest not just from our few commenters, but also from the more than 99% of our readers who only lurk). As always, you can donate through Ko-Fi, or, if youre European, via a SEPA direct bank transfer (Name: Thom Holwerda – IBAN: SE08 8000 0820 1684 4657 8414 – BIC: SWEDSESS).


  • When su replaced login for becoming another UNIX login
    Ive mentioned it before, but Chris Siebenmann is basically the Raymond Chen of the UNIX world, and today hes filling that role perfectly once again. I recently read Simon Tathams Nitpicking the shell history scene in Tron: Legacy, where one thing that surprised Tatham was the film using login -n root to become root instead of su. This surprised me because I found that perfectly ordinary, and this turns up both a bit of Unix history and a difference between modern Unixes. Plain su can let you become another user, including root, but what it explicitly doesnt do by default is create a new login shell for that user. If you do su root, the new root shell normally inherits most of your environment, your current directory, and so on. Sometimes this is what you want and sometimes you really want a new login environment, and originally in Unix how you got the latter was to run login from your existing shell session (and this meant that login was setuid root, like su). ↫ Chris Siebenmann Unsurprisingly, this distinction has persisted to this day in various UNIX-like operating systems, but in different ways. Some maintain the explicit distinction, while others have more or less standardised on using su for both use cases. Its an interesting bit of UNIX archeology.



Linux Journal News

  • EU OS: A Bold Step Toward Digital Sovereignty for Europe
    Image
    A new initiative, called "EU OS," has been launched to develop a Linux-based operating system tailored specifically for the public sector organizations of the European Union (EU). This community-driven project aims to address the EU's unique needs and challenges, focusing on fostering digital sovereignty, reducing dependency on external vendors, and building a secure, self-sufficient digital ecosystem.
    What Is EU OS?
    EU OS is not an entirely novel operating system. Instead, it builds upon a Linux foundation derived from Fedora, with the KDE Plasma desktop environment. It draws inspiration from previous efforts such as France's GendBuntu and Munich's LiMux, which aimed to provide Linux-based systems for public sector use. The goal remains the same: to create a standardized Linux distribution that can be adapted to different regional, national, and sector-specific needs within the EU.

    Rather than reinventing the wheel, EU OS focuses on standardization, offering a solid Linux foundation that can be customized according to the unique requirements of various organizations. This approach makes EU OS a practical choice for the public sector, ensuring broad compatibility and ease of implementation across diverse environments.
    The Vision Behind EU OS
    The guiding principle of EU OS is the concept of "public money – public code," ensuring that taxpayer money is used transparently and effectively. By adopting an open-source model, EU OS eliminates licensing fees, which not only lowers costs but also reduces the dependency on a select group of software vendors. This provides the EU’s public sector organizations with greater flexibility and control over their IT infrastructure, free from the constraints of vendor lock-in.

    Additionally, EU OS offers flexibility in terms of software migration and hardware upgrades. Organizations can adapt to new technologies and manage their IT evolution at a manageable cost, both in terms of finances and time.

    However, there are some concerns about the choice of Fedora as the base for EU OS. While Fedora is a solid and reliable distribution, it is backed by the United States-based Red Hat. Some argue that using European-backed projects such as openSUSE or KDE's upcoming distribution might have aligned better with the EU's goal of strengthening digital sovereignty.
    Conclusion
    EU OS marks a significant step towards Europe's digital independence by providing a robust, standardized Linux distribution for the public sector. By reducing reliance on proprietary software and vendors, it paves the way for a more flexible, cost-effective, and secure digital ecosystem. While the choice of Fedora as the base for the project has raised some questions, the overall vision of EU OS offers a promising future for Europe's public sector in the digital age.

    Source: It's FOSS
    European Union


  • Linus Torvalds Acknowledges Missed Release of Linux 6.14 Due to Oversight

    Linus Torvalds Acknowledges Missed Release of Linux 6.14 Due to Oversight

    Linux kernel lead developer Linus Torvalds has admitted to forgetting to release version 6.14, attributing the oversight to his own lapse in memory. Torvalds is known for releasing new Linux kernel candidates and final versions on Sunday afternoons, typically accompanied by a post detailing the release. If he is unavailable due to travel or other commitments, he usually informs the community ahead of time, so users don’t worry if there’s a delay.

    In his post on March 16, Torvalds gave no indication that the release might be delayed, instead stating, “I expect to release the final 6.14 next weekend unless something very surprising happens.” However, Sunday, March 23rd passed without any announcement.

    On March 24th, Torvalds wrote in a follow-up message, “I’d love to have some good excuse for why I didn’t do the 6.14 release yesterday on my regular Sunday afternoon schedule,” adding, “But no. It’s just pure incompetence.” He further explained that while he had been clearing up unrelated tasks, he simply forgot to finalize the release. “D'oh,” he joked.

    Despite this minor delay, Torvalds’ track record of successfully managing the Linux kernel’s development process over the years remains strong. A single day’s delay is not critical, especially since most Linux users don't urgently need the very latest version.

    The new 6.14 release introduces several important features, including enhanced support for writing drivers in Rust—an ongoing topic of discussion among developers—support for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile chip, a fix for the GhostWrite vulnerability in certain RISC-V processors from Alibaba’s T-Head Semiconductor, and a completed NTSYNC driver update that improves the WINE emulator’s ability to run Windows applications, particularly games, on Linux.

    Although the 6.14 release went smoothly aside from the delay, Torvalds expressed that version 6.15 may present more challenges due to the volume of pending pull requests. “Judging by my pending pile of pull requests, 6.15 will be much busier,” he noted.

    You can download the latest kernel here.
    Linus Torvalds kernel


  • AerynOS 2025.03 Alpha Released with GNOME 48, Mesa 25, and Linux Kernel 6.13.8
    Image
    AerynOS 2025.03 has officially been released, introducing a variety of exciting features for Linux users. The release includes the highly anticipated GNOME 48 desktop environment, which comes with significant improvements like HDR support, dynamic triple buffering, and a Wayland color management protocol. Other updates include a battery charge limiting feature and a Wellbeing option aimed at improving user experience.

    This release, while still in alpha, incorporates Linux kernel 6.13.8 and the updated Mesa 25.0.2 graphics stack, alongside tools like LLVM 19.1.7 and Vulkan SDK 1.4.309.0. Additionally, the Moss package manager now integrates os-info to generate more detailed OS metadata via a JSON file.

    Future plans for AerynOS include automated package updates, easier rollback management, improved disk handling with Rust, and fractional scaling enabled by default. The installer has also been revamped to support full disk wipes and dynamic partitioning.

    Although still considered an alpha release, AerynOS 2025.03 can be downloaded and tested right now from its official website.

    Source: 9to5Linux
    AerynOS


  • Xojo 2025r1: Big Updates for Developers with Linux ARM Support, Web Drag and Drop, and Direct App Store Publishing
    Image
    Xojo has just rolled out its latest release, Xojo 2025 Release 1, and it’s packed with features that developers have been eagerly waiting for. This major update introduces support for running Xojo on Linux ARM, including Raspberry Pi, brings drag-and-drop functionality to the Web framework, and simplifies app deployment with the ability to directly submit apps to the macOS and iOS App Stores.

    Here’s a quick overview of what’s new in Xojo 2025r1:
    1. Linux ARM IDE Support
    Xojo 2025r1 now allows developers to run the Xojo IDE on Linux ARM devices, including popular platforms like Raspberry Pi. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities for developers who want to create apps for ARM-based devices without the usual complexity. Whether you’re building for a Raspberry Pi or other ARM devices, this update makes it easier than ever to get started.
    2. Web Drag and Drop
    One of the standout features in this release is the addition of drag-and-drop support for web applications. Now, developers can easily drag and drop visual controls in their web projects, making it simpler to create interactive, user-friendly web applications. Plus, the WebListBox has been enhanced with support for editable cells, checkboxes, and row reordering via dragging. No JavaScript required!
    3. Direct App Store Publishing
    Xojo has also streamlined the process of publishing apps. With this update, developers can now directly submit macOS and iOS apps to App Store Connect right from the Xojo IDE. This eliminates the need for multiple steps and makes it much easier to get apps into the App Store, saving valuable time during the development process.
    4. New Desktop and Mobile Features
    This release isn’t just about web and Linux updates. Xojo 2025r1 brings some great improvements for desktop and mobile apps as well. On the desktop side, all projects now include a default window menu for macOS apps. On the mobile side, Xojo has introduced new features for Android and iOS, including support for ColorGroup and Dark Mode on Android, and a new MobileColorPicker for iOS to simplify color selection.
    5. Performance and IDE Enhancements
    Xojo’s IDE has also been improved in several key areas. There’s now an option to hide toolbar captions, and the toolbar has been made smaller on Windows. The IDE on Windows and Linux now features modern Bootstrap icons, and the Documentation window toolbar is more compact. In the code editor, developers can now quickly navigate to variable declarations with a simple Cmd/Ctrl + Double-click. Plus, performance for complex container layouts in the Layout Editor has been enhanced.
    What Does This Mean for Developers?
    Xojo 2025r1 brings significant improvements across all the platforms that Xojo supports, from desktop and mobile to web and Linux. The added Linux ARM support opens up new opportunities for Raspberry Pi and ARM-based device development, while the drag-and-drop functionality for web projects will make it easier to create modern, interactive web apps. The ability to publish directly to the App Store is a game-changer for macOS and iOS developers, reducing the friction of app distribution.
    How to Get Started
    Xojo is free for learning and development, as well as for building apps for Linux and Raspberry Pi. If you’re ready to dive into cross-platform development, paid licenses start at $99 for a single-platform desktop license, and $399 for cross-platform desktop, mobile, or web development. For professional developers who need additional resources and support, Xojo Pro and Pro Plus licenses start at $799. You can also find special pricing for educators and students.

    Download Xojo 2025r1 today at xojo.com.
    Final Thoughts
    With each new release, Xojo continues to make cross-platform development more accessible and efficient. The 2025r1 release is no exception, delivering key updates that simplify the development process and open up new possibilities for developers working on a variety of platforms. Whether you’re a Raspberry Pi enthusiast or a mobile app developer, Xojo 2025r1 has something for you.
    Xojo ARM


  • New 'Mirrored' Network Mode Introduced in Windows Subsystem for Linux

    Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) continues to evolve with the release of WSL 2 version 0.0.2. This update introduces a set of opt-in preview features designed to enhance performance and compatibility.

    Key additions include "Automatic memory reclaim" which dynamically optimizes WSL's memory footprint, and "Sparse VHD" to shrink the size of the virtual hard disk file. These improvements aim to streamline resource usage.

    Additionally, a new "mirrored networking mode" brings expanded networking capabilities like IPv6 and multicast support. Microsoft claims this will improve VPN and LAN connectivity from both the Windows host and Linux guest. 

    Complementing this is a new "DNS Tunneling" feature that changes how DNS queries are resolved to avoid compatibility issues with certain network setups. According to Microsoft, this should reduce problems connecting to the internet or local network resources within WSL.

    Advanced firewall configuration options are also now available through Hyper-V integration. The new "autoProxy" feature ensures WSL seamlessly utilizes the Windows system proxy configuration.

    Microsoft states these features are currently rolling out to Windows Insiders running Windows 11 22H2 Build 22621.2359 or later. They remain opt-in previews to allow testing before final integration into WSL.

    By expanding WSL 2 with compelling new capabilities in areas like resource efficiency, networking, and security, Microsoft aims to make Linux on Windows more performant and compatible. This evolutionary approach based on user feedback highlights Microsoft's commitment to WSL as a key part of the Windows ecosystem.
    Windows


  • Linux Threat Report: Earth Lusca Deploys Novel SprySOCKS Backdoor in Attacks on Government Entities

    The threat actor Earth Lusca, linked to Chinese state-sponsored hacking groups, has been observed utilizing a new Linux backdoor dubbed SprySOCKS to target government organizations globally. 

    As initially reported in January 2022 by Trend Micro, Earth Lusca has been active since at least 2021 conducting cyber espionage campaigns against public and private sector targets in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. Their tactics include spear-phishing and watering hole attacks to gain initial access. Some of Earth Lusca's activities overlap with another Chinese threat cluster known as RedHotel.

    In new research, Trend Micro reveals Earth Lusca remains highly active, even expanding operations in the first half of 2023. Primary victims are government departments focused on foreign affairs, technology, and telecommunications. Attacks concentrate in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and the Balkans regions. 

    After breaching internet-facing systems by exploiting flaws in Fortinet, GitLab, Microsoft Exchange, Telerik UI, and Zimbra software, Earth Lusca uses web shells and Cobalt Strike to move laterally. Their goal is exfiltrating documents and credentials, while also installing additional backdoors like ShadowPad and Winnti for long-term spying.

    The Command and Control server delivering Cobalt Strike was also found hosting SprySOCKS - an advanced backdoor not previously publicly reported. With roots in the Windows malware Trochilus, SprySOCKS contains reconnaissance, remote shell, proxy, and file operation capabilities. It communicates over TCP mimicking patterns used by a Windows trojan called RedLeaves, itself built on Trochilus.

    At least two SprySOCKS versions have been identified, indicating ongoing development. This novel Linux backdoor deployed by Earth Lusca highlights the increasing sophistication of Chinese state-sponsored threats. Robust patching, access controls, monitoring for unusual activities, and other proactive defenses remain essential to counter this advanced malware.

    The Trend Micro researchers emphasize that organizations must minimize attack surfaces, regularly update systems, and ensure robust security hygiene to interrupt the tactics, techniques, and procedures of relentless threat groups like Earth Lusca.
    Security


  • Linux Kernel Faces Reduction in Long-Term Support Due to Maintenance Challenges

    The Linux kernel is undergoing major changes that will shape its future development and adoption, according to Jonathan Corbet, Linux kernel developer and executive editor of Linux Weekly News. Speaking at the Open Source Summit Europe, Corbet provided an update on the latest Linux kernel developments and a glimpse of what's to come.

    A major change on the horizon is a reduction in long-term support (LTS) for kernel versions from six years to just two years. Corbet explained that maintaining old kernel branches indefinitely is unsustainable and most users have migrated to newer versions, so there's little point in continuing six years of support. While some may grumble about shortened support lifecycles, the reality is that constantly backporting fixes to ancient kernels strains maintainers.

    This maintainer burnout poses a serious threat, as Corbet highlighted. Maintaining Linux is largely a volunteer effort, with only about 200 of the 2,000+ developers paid for their contributions. The endless demands on maintainers' time from fuzz testing, fixing minor bugs, and reviewing contributions takes a toll. Prominent maintainers have warned they need help to avoid collapse. Companies relying on Linux must realize giving back financially is in their interest to sustain this vital ecosystem. 

    The Linux kernel is also wading into waters new with the introduction of Rust code. While Rust solves many problems, it also introduces new complexities around language integration, evolving standards, and maintainer expertise. Corbet believes Rust will pass the point of no return when core features depend on it, which may occur soon with additions like Apple M1 GPU drivers. Despite skepticism in some corners, Rust's benefits likely outweigh any transition costs.

    On the distro front, Red Hat's decision to restrict RHEL cloning sparked community backlash. While business considerations were at play, Corbet noted technical factors too. Using older kernels with backported fixes, as RHEL does, risks creating divergent, vendor-specific branches. The Android model of tracking mainline kernel dev more closely has shown security benefits. Ultimately, Linux works best when aligned with the broader community.

    In closing, Corbet recalled the saying "Linux is free like a puppy is free." Using open source seems easy at first, but sustaining it long-term requires significant care and feeding. As Linux is incorporated into more critical systems, that maintenance becomes ever more crucial. The kernel changes ahead are aimed at keeping Linux healthy and vibrant for the next generation of users, businesses, and developers.
    kernel


  • Linux Celebrates 32 Years with the Release of 6.6-rc2 Version

    Today marks the 32nd anniversary of Linus Torvalds introducing the inaugural Linux 0.01 kernel version, and celebrating this milestone, Torvalds has launched the Linux 6.6-rc2. Among the noteworthy updates are the inclusion of a feature catering to the ASUS ROG Flow X16 tablet's mode handling and the renaming of the new GenPD subsystem to pmdomain.

    The Linux 6.6 edition is progressing well, brimming with exciting new features that promise to enhance user experience. Early benchmarks are indicating promising results, especially on high-core-count servers, pointing to a potentially robust and efficient update in the Linux series.

    Here is what Linus Torvalds had to say in today's announcement:
    Another week, another -rc.I think the most notable thing about 6.6-rc2 is simply that it'sexactly 32 years to the day since the 0.01 release. And that's a roundnumber if you are a computer person.Because other than the random date, I don't see anything that reallystands out here. We've got random fixes all over, and none of it looksparticularly strange. The genpd -> pmdomain rename shows up in thediffstat, but there's no actual code changes involved (make sure touse "git diff -M" to see them as zero-line renames).And other than that, things look very normal. Sure, the architecturefixes happen to be mostly parisc this week, which isn't exactly theusual pattern, but it's also not exactly a huge amount of changes.Most of the (small) changes here are in drivers, with some tracingfixes and just random things. The shortlog below is short enough toscroll through and get a taste of what's been going on. Linus Torvalds


  • Introducing Bavarder: A User-Friendly Linux Desktop App for Quick ChatGPT Interaction

    Want to interact with ChatGPT from your Linux desktop without using a web browser?

    Bavarder, a new app, allows you to do just that.

    Developed with Python and GTK4/libadwaita, Bavarder offers a simple concept: pose a question to ChatGPT, receive a response, and promptly copy the answer (or your inquiry) to the clipboard for pasting elsewhere.

    With an incredibly user-friendly interface, you won't require AI expertise (or a novice blogger) to comprehend it. Type your question in the top box, click the blue send button, and wait for a generated response to appear at the bottom. You can edit or modify your message and repeat the process as needed.

    During our evaluation, Bavarder employed BAI Chat, a GPT-3.5/ChatGPT API-based chatbot that's free and doesn't require signups or API keys. Future app versions will incorporate support for alternative backends, such as ChatGPT 4 and Hugging Chat, and allow users to input an API key to utilize ChatGPT3.

    At present, there's no option to regenerate a response (though you can resend the same question for a potentially different answer). Due to the lack of a "conversation" view, tracking a dialogue or following up on answers can be challenging — but Bavarder excels for rapid-fire questions.

    As with any AI, standard disclaimers apply. Responses might seem plausible but could contain inaccurate or false information. Additionally, it's relatively easy to lead these models into irrational loops, like convincing them that 2 + 2 equals 106 — so stay alert!

    Overall, Bavarder is an attractive app with a well-defined purpose. If you enjoy ChatGPT and similar technologies, it's worth exploring.
    ChatGPT AI


  • LibreOffice 7.5.3 Released: Third Maintenance Update Brings 119 Bug Fixes to Popular Open-Source Office Suite

    Today, The Document Foundation unveiled the release and widespread availability of LibreOffice 7.5.3, which serves as the third maintenance update to the current LibreOffice 7.5 open-source and complimentary office suite series.

    Approximately five weeks after the launch of LibreOffice 7.5.2, LibreOffice 7.5.3 arrives with a new set of bug fixes for those who have successfully updated their GNU/Linux system to the LibreOffice 7.5 series.

    LibreOffice 7.5.3 addresses a total of 119 bugs identified by users or uncovered by LibreOffice developers. For a more comprehensive understanding of these bug fixes, consult the RC1 and RC2 changelogs.

    You can download LibreOffice 7.5.3 directly from the LibreOffice websiteor from SourceForge as binary installers for DEB or RPM-based GNU/Linux distributions. A source tarball is also accessible for individuals who prefer to compile the software from sources or for system integrators.

    All users operating the LibreOffice 7.5 office suite series should promptly update their installations to the new point release, which will soon appear in the stable software repositories of your GNU/Linux distributions.

    In early February 2023, LibreOffice 7.5 debuted as a substantial upgrade to the widely-used open-source office suite, introducing numerous features and improvements. These enhancements encompass major upgrades to dark mode support, new application and MIME-type icons, a refined Single Toolbar UI, enhanced PDF Export, and more.

    Seven maintenance updates will support LibreOffice 7.5 until November 30th, 2023. The next point release, LibreOffice 7.5.4, is scheduled for early June and will include additional bug fixes.

    The Document Foundation once again emphasizes that the LibreOffice office suite's "Community" edition is maintained by volunteers and members of the Open Source community. For enterprise implementations, they suggest using the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners.
    LibreOffice


Linux Magazine News (path: lmi_news)



  • KDE Linux Drops AUR
    KDE Linux developers have dropped the Arch User Repository from the build pipeline due to security concerns; other distributions should consider doing the same.
















  • France Says "Au Revoir" to Microsoft
    In a move that should surprise no one, France announced plans to reduce its reliance on US technology, and Microsoft Windows is the first to get the boot.




Page last modified on November 17, 2022, at 06:39 PM