All the News that Matters

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

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

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

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

• [$] Debian debates amending architecture support stratagem
  The Linux kernelsupports a large number of architectures.Not all of those are supported by Linux distributions, but Debian does supportmany of them, officially or unofficially. On October 26, Bastian Blankopened a discussion about the minimum version of these architecturesthat Debian should support: in particular, raising the de-facto minimumversions in the next Debian release ("forky"). Thread participants were generally in favor ofkeeping support for older architecture variants, but didn't reach a firmconclusion.
  

• Postmortem of the Xubuntu.org download site compromise
  In mid-October, the Xubuntudownload site was compromised and had directed users to a maliciouszip file instead of the Torrent file that users expected. ElizabethK. Joseph has publisheda postmortem of the incident, along with plans to avoid such a breachin the future:
  
  To be perfectly clear: this only impacted our website, and the torrentlinks provided there.
  
  If you downloaded or opened a file named "Xubuntu-Safe-Download.zip"from the Xubuntu downloads page during this period, you should assumeit was malicious. We strongly recommend scanning your computer with atrusted antivirus or anti-malware solution and deleting the fileimmediately.
  
  Nothing on cdimages.ubuntu.com or any of the other official Ubunturepositories was impacted, and our mirrors remained safe as long asthey were also mirroring from official resources.
  
  None of the build systems, packages, or other components of Xubuntuitself were impacted.
  

• GStreamer Conference 2025 video recordings now available
  Recordings from the GStreamerConference 2025, held in London in late October, are nowavailable on the GStreamer Conferences Archive site. Includes theGStreamerState of the Union talk by Tim-Philipp Müller, Stateof MPEG 2 Transport Stream (MPEG-TS) by Edward Hervey, and manyothers.
  

• Security updates for Wednesday
  Security updates have been issued by Debian (pdfminer), Fedora (chromium and firefox), Mageia (bubblewrap, flatpak, cups-filters, and thunderbird), Oracle (container-tools:rhel8, kernel, and squid), Red Hat (kernel), Slackware (libarchive), SUSE (gimp, itextpdf, kernel, thunderbird, and unbound), and Ubuntu (lasso).

• Blender 5.0 released
  Version5.0 of the Blender animation system has been released. Notableimprovements include improved color management, HDR capabilities, anda new storyboarding template. See the releasenotes for a lengthy list of new features and changes, and the bugfixespage for the 588 commits that fixed bugs in Blender 4.5 or older.
  
  
  

• [$] The current state of Linux architecture support
  There have been several recent announcements about Linux distributions changingthe list of architectures they support, or adjusting how they build binaries forsome versions of those architectures.Ubuntu introduced architecture variants, Fedoraconsidered dropping support for i686 butreversed course after some pushback, and Debian developershave discussed raising its architecture baseline for the upcomingDebian 14("forky").Linux supports a large number of architectures, and it's not alwaysclear where or by whom they are used. With increasing concerns about diminishing support for legacyarchitectures, it's a good time to look at the overall state of architecturesupport on Linux.
  

• [$] Pouring packages with Homebrew
  The Homebrew project is anopen-source package-management system that comes with a repository ofuseful packages for Linux and macOS. Even though Linux distributionshave their own package management and repositories, Homebrew is oftenused to obtain software that is not available in a distribution's repositoryor to install more current versions of projects than are availablefrom long-term-support (LTS) distributions. Homebrew 5.0.0,released on November 12, 2025, expanded Linux support to include64-bit Arm packages in addition to x86_64, and turned on concurrentdownloads by default to speed up package downloads.
  

• Security updates for Tuesday
  Security updates have been issued by Debian (libwebsockets), Fedora (chromium and fvwm3), Mageia (apache, firefox, and postgresql13, postgresql15), Oracle (idm:DL1), Red Hat (bind, bind9.18, firefox, and openssl), SUSE (alloy, ghostscript, and openssl-1_0_0), and Ubuntu (ffmpeg and freeglut).

• Git 2.52.0 released
  Version 2.52.0 of the Gitsource-code management system has been released. Changes include a newlast-modified command to find the closest ancestor commit thattouched one or more paths, a couple of git refs improvements, anew git repo command for obtaining information about therepository itself, and more. See the announcement and thisGitHub blog entry for more information.

• [$] Hot-page migration and specific-purpose NUMA nodes
  For better or for worse, the NUMA node is the abstraction used by thekernel to keep track of different types of memory. How that abstraction isused, though, is still an active area of development. Two patch setsfocused on this problem are currently under review; one addresses theperennial problem of promoting heavily used folios from slower to fastermemory, while the other aims to improve the kernel's handling of nodescontaining special memory installed for a specific purpose.

• Josefsson: Introducing the Debian Libre Live Images
  Debian developer Simon Josefsson has announcedthe DebianLibre Live Images project, to allow installing Debian without anynon-free software:
  
  Since the 2022 decision on non-free firmware, the official imagesfor bookworm and trixie contains non-free software.
  
  The Debian Libre Live Images project provides Live ISO images forIntel/AMD-compatible 64-bit x86 CPUs (amd64) built without anynon-free software, suitable for running and installing Debian. Theimages are similar to the Debian Live Images...
  
  He does warn that this is a first public release, so there may beproblems. See the currentlist of known issues before trying the images out.
  
  
  

Linux Insider"LinuxInsider"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Is a Security Baseline Enough for Open-Source Software?
  The OpenSSF’s new baseline sets minimum security expectations for open-source projects — but not all developers agree it’s practical, scalable, or sufficient. The post Is a Security Baseline Enough for Open-Source Software? appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• Linux admin hated downtime so much he schlepped a live UPS during office move
  Somewhat daft scheme worked until it didn’t
  On Call The working week can be burdensome, so each Friday morning The Register tries to lighten the load by bringing you a new instalment of On Call, the reader-contributed column in which you let go of tech support stories that weigh on your memory.…
  

• Open Compute Project figuring out how to get quantum computers into classical datacenters
  It’s an ethereal and weighty problem, not a powerful conundrum
  The Open Compute Project (OCP) has commenced a workstream to learn how to deploy quantum computers alongside classical high performance computers in the same datacenter.…
  

• Google links Android’s Quick Share to Apple’s AirDrop, without Cupertino’s help
  Relies on very loose permissions, but don’t worry – Google wrote it in Rust
  Google has linked Android’s wireless peer-to-peer file sharing tool Quick Share to Apple’s equivalent AirDrop.…
  

• Veeam bets on more VMware alternatives, including Red Hat and China’s Sangfor
  Plans a universal API to back up all hypervisors, too
  Backup software vendor Veeam has thrown its weight behind more alternatives to VMware.…
  

• SEC drops SolarWinds lawsuit that painted a target on CISOs everywhere
  Company 'clearly delighted' with the outcome
  The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has abandoned the lawsuit it pursued against SolarWinds and its chief infosec officer for misleading investors about security practices that led to the 2020 SUNBURST attack.…
  

• SC25 gets heavy with mega power and cooling solutions
  Hydrogen-powered turbines, megawatt-scale coolant loops, and 800V power take center stage at annual supercomputing conference
  SC25 Hydrogen-fueled gas turbines, backup generators, and air handlers probably aren't the kinds of equipment you'd expect on the show floor of a supercomputing conference. But your expectations would be wrong.…
  

• Gemini tries to sniff out AI slop images while also making them easier to create
  Featuring an image of a man creating an image of a man creating an image...
  hands on Google Gemini users can now use the AI's app and website to figure out whether an image is AI-generated, though with some considerable limitations.…
  

• PHP 8.5 lays down long-awaited pipe operator, adds new URI tools
  Unfashionable web workhorse refreshed for its ongoing run
  PHP 8.5 landed on Thursday with a long-awaited pipe operator and a new standards-compliant URI parser, marking one of the scripting language's more substantial updates.…
  

• Salesforce-linked data breach claims 200+ victims, has ShinyHunters’ fingerprints all over it
  They keep coming back for more
  Salesforce has disclosed another third-party breach in which criminals - likely ShinyHunters (again) - may have accessed hundreds of its customers' data.…
  

• LLM-generated malware is improving, but don't expect autonomous attacks tomorrow
  Researchers tried to get ChatGPT to do evil, but it didn't do a good job
  LLMs are getting better at writing malware - but they're still not ready for prime time.…
  

• Don't spill your guts to your chatbot friend - it'll hoover up that info for training
  LLM makers may be training on user chat with few privacy safeguards, lawmakers hear
  The US House of Representatives has heard that LLM builders can exploit users’ conversations for further training and commercial benefit with little oversight or concern for privacy risks.…
  

• Trump, Republicans try again to stop states from regulating AI
  If at first you don’t succeed, swing again - Big Tech certainly isn’t complaining
  The Trump administration and congressional Republicans are trying again to eliminate state-level AI regulations in favor of a federal standard. The plan faces opposition from many state governments and civil-society organizations, while AI vendors have welcomed it.…
  

• Thunderbird 145 finally adds ‘native’ Exchange support
  EWS-powered email only for now, with calendars and contacts still on the to-do list
  It's easy to forget in the FOSS world, but Exchange still runs most corporate email – and the new version of Thunderbird can talk to it directly.…
  

• Fired techie admits sabotaging ex-employer, causing $862K in damage
  PowerShell script locked thousands of workers out of their accounts
  An Ohio IT contractor has pleaded guilty to breaking into his former employer's systems and causing nearly $1 million worth of damage after being fired.…
  

• Nvidia pushes out hotfix after Windows 11 October update tanks gaming performance
  Quick and dirty driver aims to undo slowdown introduced in OS patch
  The Windows 11 October 2025 Update is still causing headaches for users of Microsoft's flagship operating system.…
  

• AWS under pressure as big three battle to eat the cloud market
  Google and Microsoft are catching up, while Oracle and neoclouds are growing from a small base
  The big three cloud companies are all growing thanks to an expanding market, but Amazon is under increasing pressure from Microsoft and Google, while newcomers are on the rise.…
  

• TP-Link accuses rival Netgear of 'smear campaign' over alleged China ties
  Networking vendor claims rival helped portray it as a national-security risk in the US
  TP-Link is suing rival networking vendor Netgear, alleging that the rival and its CEO carried out a smear campaign by falsely suggesting, it says, that the biz had been infiltrated by the Chinese government.…
  

• Education boards left gates wide open for PowerSchool mega-breach, say watchdogs
  Privacy cops say attack wasn't just bad luck but a result of sloppy homework
  Canadian privacy watchdogs say that school boards must shoulder part of the blame for the PowerSchool mega-breach, not just the ed-tech giant that lost control of millions of student and staff records.…
  

• Google and Westinghouse lean on AI to speed US nuclear plant builds
  Pair say digital twin-powered scheduling will cut costs, shrink timelines for 10 planned reactors
  Google and atomic power biz Westinghouse Electric claim that AI will speed construction and cut the cost of building the new US power plants it is planning in response to rising demands for energy to fuel AI.…
  

• Palo Alto kit sees massive surge in malicious activity amid mystery traffic flood
  GlobalProtect login endpoints targeted, sparking concern that something bigger may be brewing
  Malicious traffic targeting Palo Alto Networks' GlobalProtect portals surged almost 40-fold in the space of 24 hours, hitting a 90-day high and putting defenders on alert for whatever comes next.…
  

• Systemd 259 release candidate flexes musl support – with long list of caveats
  PostmarketOS pushed for the change, but devs warn it may not last
  Along with new functionality, systemd is broadening its distro support even further, which will surely delight members of the wider Linux community.…
  

• Manchester hits snooze again on joining Palantir-run NHS data platform
  Care board still waiting for evidence that it will be in the best interests of the population
  Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board (ICB) has again put off its adoption of an NHS data platform prescribed by the UK government and run by Palantir until there is more evidence that it will be in the "best interests" of the city's population.…
  

• Eleven years after Lenovo acquired IBM’s x86 server biz, profits are still elusive
  PC sales are pushing upwards nicely, but AI PCs only account for a third of the new fleet
  Lenovo has again said its enterprise hardware business is on the cusp of becoming consistently profitable, despite the division again posting a loss after massive revenue growth.…
  

• Palo Alto CEO tips nation-states to weaponize quantum computing by 2029
  Company thinks you’ll contemplate replacing most security kit in the next few years to stay safe
  Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora has suggested hostile nation-states will possess quantum computers in 2029, or even a little earlier, at which point most security appliances will need to be replaced.…
  

• US, UK, Australia sanction Lockbit gang’s hosting provider
  ‘Bulletproof’ hosts partly dodged the last attack of this sort
  Cybercrime fighters in the US, UK, and Australia have imposed sanctions on several Russia-linked entities they claim provide hosting services to ransomware gangs Lockbit, BlackSuit, and Play.…
  

• It's a good time to be the arms dealer for the AI boom
  Bubble? Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang doesn't see one
  Nvidia kicked the can labeled "AI bubble" down the road on Wednesday.…
  

• Fortinet 'fesses up to second 0-day within a week
  Attackers may be joining the dots to enable unauthenticated RCE
  Fortinet has confirmed that another flaw in its FortiWeb web application firewall has been exploited as a zero-day and issued a patch, just days after disclosing a critical bug in the same product that attackers had found and abused a month earlier.…
  

• Devs gripe about having AI shoved down their throats
  The force-feeding will continue until morale improves
  Some software developers complain that they're being required to use AI tools to the detriment of code quality and their own skills.…
  

• Senators propose to let users sue tech giants for harmful algos
  The latest attack on Section 230 is likely to face the same fate as many previous efforts
  A pair of bipartisan senators wants to hold social media giants accountable for pushing content that radicalizes Americans.…
  

• Pegasus XL rocket dusted off to rescue NASA’s Swift observatory from fiery demise
  Air-launched antique picked for tricky low-inclination orbit job
  NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, facing the risk of an uncontrolled dive back to Earth, is set for a rescue ride on a Pegasus XL, the air-dropped rocket that hasn't flown since 2021.…
  

• Amazon security boss: Hostile countries use cyber targeting for physical military strikes
  And companies are getting caught in the crossfire
  interview Warfare has become a joint cyber-kinetic endeavor, with nations using cyber operations to scope out targets before launching missiles. And private companies, including shipping, transportation, and electronics manufacturers, are getting caught in the crossfire, according to Amazon.…
  

• DARPA making low-hanging satellites that use air to move
  Skim the atmosphere and air-breathing VLEO sats can theoretically maintain orbit
  DARPA is on the verge of reaching a new low - an orbital one - as the Defense Department's research arm moves its Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) Otter satellite program into the production phase. …
  

• Canada ups its European Space Agency bet 10x with $376M
  Massive jump in spending shows the Great White North isn’t betting everything on NASA
  Canada will boost its investment in European Space Agency (ESA) programs by CA$528.5 million ($376 million USD), a tenfold increase, according to the Canadian Space Agency.…
  

• Ford rolls into the Xen Project as hypervisor gears up for autos
  Version 4.21 also brings advances in the datacenter, on ARM, and RISC-V
  The Xen Project today delivered a major release of its hypervisor and associated tools, including contributions from automaker Ford, which quietly joined the project in June.…
  

• US pumps $1B into Three Mile Island nuclear plant reboot to keep AI datacenters fed
  A reactor at the site suffered a partial meltdown in 1979
  The Trump administration is so eager to get extra power into the grid that it is offering a $1 billion loan to Constellation Energy to help it restart the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear facility.…
  

• San Jose's 'warrantless' license plate queries land cops in court
  Digital rights groups argue cameras used to unconstitutionally surveil locals
  The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU-NC) are suing the City of San Jose and its police department over alleged abuses of automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) technology.…
  

• Mastodon CEO steps down with €1M payout and a deep sigh
  Burnout and slowing growth push Eugen Rochko into an advisory role after nearly a decade in charge
  Eugen Rochko, CEO and founder of decentralized social network Mastodon, is stepping down after nearly a decade at the helm and walking away with a sizable exit payment.…
  

• Commodity memory prices set to double as fabs pivot to AI market
  Analysts warn LPDDR4 supply is tightening fast with shift to higher-end components
  Updated Memory prices could soon be double what they were earlier this year as chipmakers switch to advanced products to target the AI market, leaving a shortfall of more mature chips such as those meeting the LPDDR4 standard.…
  

• Microsoft-SAP pact aims to keep Euro cloud running in a crisis
  Vendors set up sovereign fallback so customers aren't stranded by foreign interference
  SAP and Microsoft have struck a partnership designed to provide safeguards for users of the US vendor's cloud services in Europe during "times of crisis."…
  

• Researchers claim 'largest leak ever' after uncovering WhatsApp enumeration flaw
  Two-day exploit opened up 3.5 billion users to myriad potential harms
  Researchers in Austria used a flaw in WhatsApp to gather the personal data of more than 3.5 billion users in what they believe amounts to the "largest data leak in history."…
  

• Ignite awash with agents as Microsoft triples down on AI
  Event supposedly for IT pros doesn't have much to tell admins on the Windows front
  The Copilot company kicked off its Ignite shindig this week with AI, AI, and more AI. Oh, and a lot of agents.…
  

• Microsoft spins up Azure HorizonDB to take on distributed Postgres rivals
  Open source RDMS popularity offers devs 'something other than Oracle' as database standard, analyst says
  Microsoft has announced a distributed PostgreSQL database service designed to rival other hyperscaler systems and third-party RDBMSes such as CockroachDB and YugabyteDB.…
  

• CPython may go Rusty, but older platforms risk getting iced out
  Preliminary proposal is already provoking debate
  The Python community is chewing over a new idea: allowing the C-based reference implementation, CPython, to incorporate Rust. It's only at the "pre-PEP" stage, but it's already sparked lively debate.…
  

• SAP's migration narrative suddenly looks messy as Kingfisher goes off-script
  B&Q owner resists the S/4HANA push, betting it can innovate around legacy ERP, but questions remain
  In 2020, SAP's CFO told investors that its plans for customer upgrades, cloud migration, and a move to SaaS would give the German software vendor a greater "share of wallet."���
  

• Tens of thousands more ASUS routers pwned by suspected, evolving China operation
  Researchers say attacks are laying the groundwork for stealthy espionage activity
  Around 50,000 ASUS routers have been compromised in a sophisticated attack that researchers believe may be linked to China, according to findings released today by SecurityScorecard's STRIKE team.…
  

• Whatever your job, mentoring is your job – and the one that matters most
  Nobody succeeds alone, and no community thrives without generosity
  Opinion When I started coding for a living 43 years ago, I didn't know shit from Shinola. I'd written a lot of BASIC, some Z80 assembler, and knew my way around floppy drives and a disk operating system. I knew nothing at all about how to operate as a junior engineer in a professional environment.…
  

• China recruiting spies in the UK with fake headhunters and ‘sites like LinkedIn’
  MI5 sounds the alarm about attempts to source sensitive information
  Chinese spies are using social media and fake recruitment agents to recruit sources with access to sensitive information in the UK.…
  

• Microsoft reveals new cloudy AI PC that’s not a Copilot+ PC
  And a cloud PC that's for AI agents only
  Microsoft has created a new type of AI PC – the “Windows 365 AI-enabled Cloud PC”.…
  

• Cloudflare broke itself – and a big chunk of the Internet – with a bad database query
  Thought it was the victim of a ‘hyper-scale DDoS attack’ before finding the fix
  Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has admitted that the cause of its massive Tuesday outage was a change to database permissions, and that the company initially thought the symptoms of that adjustment indicated it was the target of a “hyper-scale DDoS attack,” before figuring out the real problem.…
  

• Networking startup Meter takes a page from the Steve Jobs playbook
  Vertical integration meets subscriptions
  "We love moving packets," declared Anil Varanasi, CEO and co-founder of Meter, on a stage overlooking San Francisco Bay at the networking startup's annual networking event. He continued, "This crowd probably knows this intimately, but everything in the world is packets. Regardless of what type of work you do, it is just packets all the way down."…
  

• Intel Compute Runtime 25.44.36015.5 Brings More Performance Optimizations & Features
  Released tonight was the Intel Compute Runtime 25.44.36015.5 as their roughly monthly update to this open-source GPU compute stack providing Level Zero and OpenCL support for Intel's integrated and discrete graphics hardware...

• Dell Now Shipping Laptop With Qualcomm NPU On Linux Ahead Of Windows 11
  Dell announced today that their new Pro Max 16 Plus laptop with a Qualcomm discrete NPU is now shipping... That is if you are running Ubuntu Linux while the Windows 11 pre-load option is expected in early 2026. An exciting twist with the Linux version of the Dell Pro Max 16 Plus shipping before Microsoft Windows...

• Canonical Gets Flutter Up And Running On RISC-V For Ubuntu
  Canonical has been bullish on RISC-V with Ubuntu being one of the most common Linux distributions endorsed by RISC-V board vendors. Canonical also has been bullish on the Flutter toolkit for crafting their desktop installer UI and other modern UI/app interfaces. But these two together haven't panned out with Flutter not currently supporting RISC-V. Canonical has submitted pull requests now for enabling RISC-V support with Flutter...

• PHP 8.5 Released With New Pipe Operator, New URI Extension & Clone With
  PHP 8.5 is out today as the annual major feature release for this popular scripting language...

• Updated Steam Runtime Switches To Debian 13 Libraries, SDL2 Using Compatibility Layer
  An updated version of the Steam Linux Runtime 4 branch was rolled out that has now shifted from Debian 11 to Debian 13 libraries for some significant upgrades. In the process more libraries have gone x86_64 only in foregoing the i386 builds. In addition, the SDL 2 library support for the Steam Runtime is now provided by sdl2-compat as the compatibility layer for SDL2 atop SDL3...

• Linux 6.18 Sees Late Improvements For Xbox Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, & Alienware Laptops
  We're closing in on the Linux 6.18 stable kernel release likely in little more than one week (30 November barring any delays) and today's batch of x86 platform driver updates is bringing some new hardware support as well as some notable consumer device fixes/improvements...

• Linux 6.19 Slated To Land "mm/cid" Rewrite That Has Very Positive Performance Potential
  A set of Linux kernel patches posted back in October for rewriting the kernel's memory-mapped concurrency ID code for some nice performance wins looks like it will land for Linux 6.19. This is the code that prominent Intel engineer Thomas Gleixner found to yield up to an 18% improvement for the PostgreSQL database. My testing of this "mm/cid" code has also shown some nice performance wins too...

• VKD3D 1.18 Released With Numerous Improvements For Direct3D 12 On Vulkan
  VKD3D 1.18 is now available for this Direct3D 12 implementation that is part of the upstream Wine project. The VKD3D 1.18 release also comes just ahead of next month's feature freeze for the upcoming Wine 11.0 stable release...

• Firefox 147 Will Support The XDG Base Directory Specification
  A 21 year old bug report requesting support of the XDG Base Directory specification is finally being addressed by Firefox. The Firefox 147 release should respect this XDG specification around where files should be positioned within Linux users' home directory...

• Linux 6.19 Nova Driver Landing Boot42 Support For Next-Gen NVIDIA GPUs
  Along with getting the NVIDIA GSP fully booted and initialized for Ampere GPUs with the Nova driver code coming to Linux 6.19, this next kernel version is also beginning to make preparations for eyeing next-generation NVIDIA GPU support on this open-source driver...

• Rusticl Has Turned Out Remarkably Well For Open-Source OpenCL For Mesa Drivers
  Rusticl as a modern OpenCL implementation for Mesa Gallium3D drivers has turned out remarkably well. Rusticl performance has evolved quite well for this Rust-based OpenCL driver and it continues tacking on new features / OpenCL extensions as well as working gracefully with more Mesa drivers. Rusticl lead developer Karol Herbst presented on some of the recent accomplishments for this driver back at XDC2025...

• Intel Preps Linux KVM For Diamond Rapids9 AVX10.2 & Expanded AMX
  The latest feature enablement work happening by Intel for the Linux kernel with next-generation Diamond Rapids server processors are the adjustments to the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) for readying the new CPU ISA capabilities for a virtualized world...

• MEMINSPECT Proposed For The Linux Kernel To Help In Memory Analysis / Debugging
  A patch series sent out today on the Linux kernel mailing list proposes "MEMINSPECT" as a new mechanism for helping with memory analysis...

• Rust-Based Arm GPU Kernel Driver "Tyr" Begins Running GNOME & Basic Games
  Initially upstreamed into the Linux 6.18 kernel is Tyr as a Rust-based GPU kernel driver for Arm Mali hardware. This is in effect a Rust alternative to the Panthor DRM kernel driver for newer Arm Mali GPUs with the Command Stream Firmware (CSF). With the latest development code for Tyr, it's moved onto running the GNOME desktop and basic games like SuperTuxKart...

• Xen 4.21 Released With AMD CPPC & Resizable BAR Support
  Xen 4.21 is out today as the newest feature release for this open-source hypervisor backed by AMD, Arm, AWS, and other organizations. Plus with Xen's use within automotive environments, Ford and Honda too...

• AMD Threadripper 7980X Performance On Linux Two Years After Release
  This week marks two years since the debut of the Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series processors. Given the occasion, I decided to revisit the Linux performance of the Threadripper 7980X compared to original benchmarks from November 2023 to see how the latest Linux software stack performs for these Zen 4 HEDT processors.

• AMD Begins Posting Open-Source Linux Patches For Their Next-Gen GPU IP
  Beginning yesterday and continuing today are several patch series beginning to lay the foundation in the AMDGPU kernel graphics driver for enabling some next-generation graphics IP. Due to the AMD graphics driver block by block enablement strategy and IP-based discovery adopted by their driver over the past few years, it's not clear what this new hardware enablement is for whether it's RDNA5 / UDNA or some RDNA4 refresh. In any event, the Linux driver enablement has begun...

• Intel "imh_edac" Driver Being Developed For New Memory Controller With Diamond Rapids
  Intel engineers today posted Linux kernel patches for plumbing a brand new Error Detection And Correction "EDAC" driver for the next-generation memory controller design debuting with Xeon Diamond Rapids...

• Qualcomm Upstreaming Initial GPU Support For Snapdragon X2 Elite In Linux 6.19
  Back in September the Qualcomm X2 Elite SoCs were announced for next-gen Windows 11 on Arm laptops. Since then some initial X2 Elite enablement patches for the Linux kernel have arrived and for the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel more of that work will reach mainline. Excitingly, Linux 6.19 is now bringing GPU and display support for the Adreno X2-85 found within the Snapdragon X2 Elite SoC...

• Microsoft Announces Cobalt 200 CPU With 132 Arm Neoverse-V3 Cores
  Microsoft announced the Cobalt 200 processor as their next-generation cloud-native CPU for the Azure Cloud. The Cobalt 200 will feature 132 Arm Neoverse-V3 based cores...

• AMD Continues Working On Xen GPU Virtualization Features - "The Best Is Yet To Come"
  When it comes to GPU virtualization we have seen AMD engineers carry out a lot of work in recent years around the Xen hypervisor even when it hasn't seen as much interest from other vendors. We found out that much of their interest in Xen for GPU virtualization is due to automotive / in-vehicle infotainment demands and it remains that way. They continue cooking some new features and they say "the best is yet to come" in a new presentation on their Xen virtualization efforts...

• More NVIDIA Nova Enablement For Linux 6.19 With Other Rust Graphics Driver Code
  Alice Ryhl of Google sent out the main set of Rust language code changes for the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) graphics/display driver subsystem ahead of Linux 6.19. Notable is continued DRM core infrastructure work for Rust plus the open-source NVIDIA "Nova" driver continues taking shape albeit isn't yet ready for end-user usage...

• GCC 16 Compiler Now Ready For AVX10.2 & APX With Intel Nova Lake
  Intel's ISA documentation was updated last week to confirm Nova Lake processors will support AVX10.2 and APX extensions after they were not officially acknowledged in prior versions of the spec and the initial open-source compiler enablement with -march=novalake also left them without those prominent ISA capabilities. Following that documentation update, a few days ago LLVM Clang updated their Nova Lake compiler support for the new ISA capabilities and now the GCC compiler has received similar treatment...

• Linux 6.18 Receives Fixes For ELECOM M-XT3URBK & SONiX AK870 PRO Devices
  Sent out today was likely the last batch of HID subsystem fixes ahead of the Linux 6.18 kernel releasing as stable around the end of the month. With it are some new device-specific quirks for fixing hardware support for a mouse and keyboard...

• Vulkan SER Showing Up To ~47% Performance Improvement For Ray-Tracing
  Last week's Vulkan 1.4.333 brought a new ray-tracing extension with VK_EXT_ray_tracing_invocation_reorder that was derived from a prior NVIDIA vendor extension (VK_NV_ray_tracing_invocation_reorder). This new extension for Shader Execution Reordering "SER" is showing to deliver some nice performance potential for Vulkan ray-tracing performance...

• Uniwill Laptop Driver Set To Premiere In Linux 6.19 Kernel
  For the past several months a Uniwill laptop driver for the Linux kernel has been in development to expose extra platform capabilities for laptops manufactured by this Taiwanese OEM/ODM manufacturer. Assuming no last minute issues, this driver is now set to premiere in Linux 6.19 for helping Uniwill laptops and hardware from other brands relying on Uniwill as the device manufacturer...

• Intel LASS Feature Looks Like It Will Be Upstreamed For Linux 6.19
  Intel's LASS functionality was queued today into tip/tip.git's "x86/cpu" Git branch. With LASS now making it into a TIP branch, it looks like it will be submitted for the upcoming Linux 6.19 merge window barring any last minute issues or objections from Linus Torvalds...

• Blender 5.0 Released With Better Vulkan Support, HDR On Wayland
  It's the Blender 5.0 release day! Blender 5.0 is a big step forward for this open-source 3D modeling software with better Vulkan viewport support across different GPUs/drivers, HDR support when using Vulkan and Wayland on Linux, and other very nice refinements for this popular cross-platform software package...

• AMD ROCm 7.1 vs. RADV Vulkan For Llama.cpp With The Radeon AI PRO R9700
  In the past we have seen Llama.cpp with Vulkan outperforming AMD9s ROCm compute stack in some of the large language model (LLM) AI benchmarks. Curious if anything has changed given the recent ROCm 7.1 release, I ran some benchmarks of an up-to-date Llama.cpp using the AMD ROCm back-end compared to the Vulkan back-end with the latest RADV driver. For this round of testing the Radeon AI PRO R9700 graphics card was used.

• NVK Still Working Toward Ray-Tracing, Vulkan Video & More Performance
  In addition to the RADV driver status update shared recently in Vienna at XDC2025, there was also a presentation on the current status of the NVK driver as the open-source NVIDIA Vulkan driver within Mesa that currently targets the Nouveau kernel driver and the Rust-based Nova kernel driver in the future...

• Qualcomm Updates AI Accelerator Firmware To Fix Power / Performance Issue
  Qualcomm upstreamed new Cloud AI 100 "AIC100" firmware today to linux-firmware.git to fix a rather significant power/performance issue for these AI accelerators...

• Python Developers Looking At Introducing The Rust Programming Language In CPython
  A proposal has been raised by two CPython core developers to introduce the Rust programming language to CPython. Initially the focus is on allowing Rust to be used for developing optional extension modules for CPython but ultimately their goal is for Rust to become a hard dependency of CPython and used throughout its codebase...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Big news for small OpenBSD /usr partitions
  Ever ran into issues using sysupgrade on OpenBSD because /usr ran out of space? OpenBSD developers are trying to address this issue. Firstly, Stuart Henderson (sthen@) modified the installer to increase free space prior to installing. Theo de Raadt (deraadt@) modified sysupgrade(8) so that, if space is too tight, it will fail gracefully rather than risk leaving the administrator with a broken system. ↫ OpenBSD Journal These are very welcome additions.

• Valve brings x86 gaming to ARM Linux with FEX
  Valve announced a few new devices yesterday. Theres a new Steam console, which is essentially just a tiny PC with SteamOS installed  think of it as a Steam Deck without a display. Second, Valve finally released a new Steam Controller to go with the Steam console, which has taken them long enough. Lastly, theres a brand new Steam VR headset, the Steam Frame. Other websites with actual access to these new devices will do a better job of covering them than I ever could, but I do want to highlight something crucially important about the Steam Frame: it contains a Snapdragon ARM processor, but can still run Steam and all of its games. How does this work? Well, after developing Proton to allow Windows games to run on Linux, Valve introduced! FEX, which will allow you to run x86 Windows games on ARM Linux. I put the quotation marks there because FEX was an existing project Valve invested heavily into in recent times, and its now at the point where Valve seems confident enough it will be capable of running enough x86 games on ARM Linux. As such, the Steam Frame runs full SteamOS with KDE Plasma, you can run x86 Steam games, and as an additional bonus, you can install Android APKs as well. Ive yet to even try VR, because Im not particularly interested in buying into any locked-down platform. The Steam Frame may be the first VR device Ill buy  depending on price, of course  and the Steam console definitely looks like a great addition to the living room, too. My wife and I have little to no interesting in buying an Xbox or PS5, but having easy, no-hassle access to our massive Steam libraries on our TV will be awesome.

• VMS/XDE: an OpenVMS x86 development environment for Linux and Windows/WSL
  VMS/XDE is an OpenVMS x86 development environment for Linux and WIndows (via WSL). It provides a familiar user experience for OpenVMS developers working in Linux and Windows yet offers 100% binary and file system compatilibilty with OpenVMS. VMS/XDE includes OpenVMS V9.2-3 user, supervisor and executive mode operating system environments and a set of x86 native compilers and layered products geared towards OpenVMS software development and testing. ↫ VMS/XDE website VMS/XDE is a beta version, and comes with the usual annoying OpenVMS x86 time bombs, this time exploding on 3 January 2026. If you intend to use the finalised commercial version after the beta period ends, youll have to employ the same licenses as regular OpenVMS. Its a bit of a mess, but thats the OpenVMS way, sadly  and I dont blame them, either, as Im sure theyre hamstrung by a ton of agreements and restrictions imposed upon them by HP. Regardless, VMS/XDE brings a zero setup OpenVMS environment to the operating system youre already using, making it easier to develop and cross-compile for the platform. I still have absolutely no clue just how many people OpenVMS is still relevant for, but I absolutely adore the fact VMS Software Inc. is working on this. In a world where so many of its former competitors are being held hostage by corporate indifference, its refreshing to see VMS still moving forward.

• Plasma Mobile 6.5 keeps improving
  As part of the KDE Plasma 6.5 release, we also got a new release of Plasma Mobile. As theres a lot of changes, improvements, and new features in Plasma Mobile 6.5, the Plasma Mobile Team published a blog post to highlight them all. The biggest improvement is probably the further integration of Waydroid, a necessary evil to run Android applications until the Plasma Mobile ecosystem manages to become a bit more well-rounded. Waydroid can now be managed straight from the settings application and the quick settings dropdown. Furthermore, the lockscreen has been improved considerably, theres been a ton of polish for the home screen and the user interface in general, the quick settings panel can now be customised to make it fit better on different form factors, the first early test version of the new Plasma mobile keyboard is included, and so much more. This is definitely a release I would want to try out, but since I dont have any of the supported devices, Im a bit stuck. This is, of course, one of the two major problems facing proper mobile Linux: the lack of device support. Its improving due to the tireless work of countless volunteers, but theyre always going to be swimming upstream. The other major problem is, of course, application availability, but at least Waydroid can bridge the gap for the adventurous among us.

• Tribblix m38 released
  Tribblix, the Illumos distribution focused on giving you a classic UNIX-style experience, has released a new version. Milestone 38 isnt the most consequential release of all time, but it does bring a few small changes accompanied by the usual long list of updated open source packages. The zap install command now installs dependencies by default, while zap create-user will now restrict new home directories to mode 0700 by default. Meanwhile, int16h at Cryogenix published an article about using a Bhyve VM running FreeBSD to act as a Wi-Fi bridge for laptops with 802.11xx chips that Tribblix doesnt support. This is a great, albeit somewhat convoluted option if your hardware uses any Wi-Fi chips Tribblix doesnt support. Theres honestly a solution for everything, isnt there?

• Setting up a combined 68k/PA-RISC HP-UX 9 cluster
  Jonathan Pallant got lucky and managed to score a massive haul of 90s UNIX workstations, one of which was an HP 9000 Model 340, a HP-UX workstation built around a Motorola 68030 processor at 16.7 MHz. It doesnt come with a hard drive or even a floppy controller, though, so he decided to borrow a PA-RISC-based HP 9000 Model 705 to set up an HP-UX 9 cluster. But wait, how does that work, when were dealing with two entirely different architectures? Whats more fun though, is putting it into a cluster with the Model 705 and network booting it. Yes, that a 68030 machine network booting from a PA-RISC machine 0 and`sharing the same root filesystem. But arent PA-RISC binaries and 68K binaries quite different? Oh yes, they really are. So, how does that work? ↫ Jonathan Pallant HP-UX is far more interesting and fascinating than a lot of people give it credit for, and while my interest lies with HP-UX 11i, I find what Pallant is doing here with HP-UX 9 just as fascinating. You first need to install HP-UX 9 for PA-RISC on the 700 series machine, convert it to a cluster server, and then install HP-UX 9 for 68k on top of that PA-RISC installation. After this is done, you effectively end up with a single root file system that contains both PA-RISC and 68k binaries, and you can network boot the 68k-based Model 340 right from it  using the same root filesystem on both machines. Absolutely wild. No, these are not universal binaries or some other trick you might know of from more modern system. In fact, installing the 68k version of HP-UX 9 into! the PA-RISC HP-UX 9 cluster server, you end up with something called a Context Dependent Filesystem. To get a better idea of what this means and how this works, you should really head on over to Pallants excellent article for all the details.

• Ironclad 0.7.0 and 0.8.0 released, adds RISC-V support
  Weve talked about Ironclad a few times, but theres been two new releases since the 0.6.0 release we covered last, so lets see what the projects been up to. As a refresher, Ironclad is a formally verified, hard real-time capable kernel written in SPARK and Ada. Versions 0.7.0 and 0.8.0 improved support for block device caching, added a basic NVMe driver, added support for x86’s SMAP, switched from KVM to NVMM for Ironclad’s virtualization interface, and much, much more. In the meantime, Ironclad also added support for RISC-V, making it usable on any 64 bit RISC-V target that supports a Limine-protocol compatible bootloader. The easiest way to try out Ironclad is to download Gloire, a distribution that uses Ironclad and the GNU tools. It can be installed in both a virtual machine and on real hardware.

• Mac OS 7.6 and 8 for CHRP releases discovered
  For those of us unaware  unlikely on OSNews, but still  for a hot minute in the second half of the 90s, Apple licensed its Mac OS to OEMs, resulting in officially sanctioned Mac clones from a variety of companies. While intended to grow the Macs market share, what ended up happening instead is that the clone makers outcompeted Apple on performance, price, and features, with clones offering several features and capabilities before Apple did  for far lower prices. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he killed the clone program almost instantly. The rather abrupt end of the clone program means theres a number of variants of the Mac OS that never made their way into the market, most notable variants intended for the Common Reference Hardware Platform, or CHRP, a standard defined by IBM and Apple for PowerPC-based PCs. Thanks to the popular classic Mac YouTuber Mac84, we now have a few of these releases out in the wild. These CDs contain release candidates for Mac OS 7.6 and Mac OS 8 for CHRP (Common Hardware Reference Platform) systems. They were created to support CHRP computers, but were never released, likely due to Steve Jobs returning to Apple in September 1997 and eliminating the Mac Clone program and any CHRP efforts. ↫ Mac OS 7.6/8 CHRP releases page Mac84 has an accompanying video diving into more detail about these individual releases by booting and running them in an emulator, so we can get a better idea of what they contain. While most clone makers only got access to Mac OS 7.x, some of them did, in fact, gain access to Mac OS 8, namely UMAX and Power Computing (the latter of which was acquired by Apple). Its not the clone nature of these releases that make them special, but the fact theyre CHRP releases is. This reference platform was a failure in the market, and only a few of IBMs own machines and some of Motorolas PowerStack machines properly supported it. Apple, meanwhile, only aid minor lip service to CHRP in its New World Power Macintosch machines.

• FreeBSD now builds reproducibly and without root privilege
  The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce that it has completed work to build FreeBSD without requiring root privilege. We have implemented support for all source release builds to use no-root infrastructure, eliminating the need for root privileges across the FreeBSD release pipeline. This work was completed as part of the`program commissioned by the Sovereign Tech Agency. ↫ FreeBSD Foundation blog This is great news in and of itself, but theres more: FreeBSD has also improved build reproducability. This means that given the same source input, you should end up with the same binary output, which is an important part of building a verifiable chain of trust. These two improvements combined further add to making FreeBSD a trustworthy, secure option  something it already is anyway. In case you havent noticed, the FreeBSD project and its countless contributors are making a ton of tangible progress lately on a wide variety of topics, from improving desktop use, to solidifying Wi-Fi support, to improving the chain of trust. I think the time is quite right for FreeBSD to make some inroads in the desktop UNIX-y space, especially for people to whom desktop Linux has strayed too far from the traditional UNIX philosphy (whatever that means).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Budgie 10.9.3 Now Available
  The latest version of this elegant and configurable Linux desktop aligns with changes in Gnome 49.