All the News that Matters

• Security updates for Thursday
  Security updates have been issued by Debian (kdeconnect, libssh, and samba), Fedora (7zip, docker-buildkit, and docker-buildx), Oracle (bind, buildah, cups, delve and golang, expat, firefox, gimp, go-rpm-macros, haproxy, kernel, lasso, libsoup, libtiff, mingw-expat, openssl, podman, python-kdcproxy, qt5-qt3d, runc, squid, thunderbird, tigervnc, valkey, webkit2gtk3, xorg-x11-server, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), SUSE (buildah, cloudflared, containerd, expat, firefox, gnutls, helm, kernel, libxslt, mysql-connector-java, ongres-scram, openbao, openexr, openssh, podman, python311, python312, ruby2.5, rubygem-rack, runc, samba, sssd, tiff, unbound, and yelp), and Ubuntu (edk2, ffmpeg, h2o, python3.13, rust-openssl, and valkey).

• KDE Plasma 6.8 will be Wayland-only
  KDE's Plasma team has announcedthat KDE Plasma will drop X11 session support with Plasma 6.8:
  
  The Plasma X11 session will be supported by KDE into early2027.
  
  We cannot provide a specific date, as we're exploring thepossibility of shipping some extra bug-fix releases for Plasma6.7. The exact timing of the last one will only be known when we getcloser to its actual release, which we expect will be sometime inearly 2027.
  
  What if I still really need X11?
  
  This is a perfect use case for long term support (LTS)distributions shipping older versions of Plasma. For example,AlmaLinux 9 includes the Plasma X11 session and will be supporteduntil sometime in 2032.
  
  See the blog post for information on running X11 applications(still supported), accessibility, gaming, and more.
  
  
  

• Security updates for Wednesday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (bind, binutils, delve and golang, expat, firefox, haproxy, kernel, libsoup3, libssh, libtiff, openssh, openssl, pam, podman, python-kdcproxy, shadow-utils, squid, thunderbird, vim, xorg-x11-server-Xwayland, and zziplib), Debian (cups-filters, libsdl2, linux-6.1, net-snmp, pdfminer, rails, and tryton-sao), Fedora (chromium, docker-buildkit, docker-buildx, and sudo-rs), Gentoo (librnp), Mageia (webkit2), SUSE (amazon-ssm-agent, buildah, curl, dpdk, fontforge-20251009, kernel, libIex-3_4-33, librnp0, python311, rclone, and sssd), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-6.8, linux-ibm, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-6.8, linux-nvidia-lowlatency, linux-oracle, linux-aws-6.14, linux-oracle-6.14, linux-aws-fips, linux-fips, linux-gcp-fips, linux-realtime, linux-realtime-6.8, mupdf, openjdk-17, openjdk-8, and openjdk-lts).

• Security updates for Tuesday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (buildah, firefox, go-rpm-macros, kernel, kernel-rt, podman, and thunderbird), Debian (erlang, python-gevent, and r-cran-gh), Fedora (buildah, chromium, k9s, kubernetes1.33, kubernetes1.34, podman, python-mkdocs-include-markdown-plugin, and webkitgtk), Gentoo (Chromium, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge. Opera, qtsvg, redict, redis, UDisks, and WebKitGTK+), Mageia (cups-filters and ruby-rack), Oracle (kernel and libssh), Red Hat (.NET 8.0, tigervnc, xorg-x11-server, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), SUSE (act, bind, cups-filters, govulncheck-vulndb, grub2, libebml, python39, and tcpreplay), and Ubuntu (linux-raspi, linux-raspi-realtime, openjdk-21, openjdk-25, python3.12, python3.11, python3.10, python3.9, python3.8, python3.7, python3.6, python3.5, python3.4, and runc-app, runc-stable).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Linux Insider"LinuxInsider"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• UK Digital Services Tax raises £800M from global tech giants
  Treasury haul beats early forecasts, yet captures only a fraction of the revenue generated in Britain
  The UK government collected just £800 million in Digital Services Tax (DST) from companies such as Amazon, Google, Meta, eBay, and TikTok in the most recent tax year.…
  

• Digital Realty, Equinix battle for €4.5B atNorth acquisition
  Nordic datacenter operator's cool-climate facilities attract bids amid AI-driven market frenzy
  Digital Realty and a consortium including Equinix are competing to acquire atNorth, a Scandinavian datacenter operator, according to reports.…
  

• Cabling survived dungeons and fish factories, until a lazy user took the network down
  A quick squeeze of the crimper saved the day ... and a career
  On Call Welcome once again to On Call, The Register's weekly reader-contributed column in which we share your stories of delivering excellent tech support amid your colleagues' ambivalence, anger, and unjust admonitions.…
  

• VMware isn’t budging in its pursuit of Siemens for alleged unpaid licenses
  Fresh court filings try to keep the case about copyright, and in US courts
  VMware has come out swinging in its case against Siemens over alleged unlicensed use of its software.…
  

• Soup king Campbell’s parts ways with IT VP after ‘3D-printed chicken’ remarks
  ‘Our soup’s not toxic but this chap’s behavior was’ is the gist of the defense
  Food company Campbell’s, best known for its soups and the iconic cans they come in, has parted ways with a vice president for IT after another member of the company’s tech team recorded him criticizing the company’s products.…
  

• Korean web giant Naver acquired crypto exchange Upbit, which reported a $30m heist a day later
  Talk about buyer’s remorse
  South Korean web giant Naver has had an interesting week, after it acquired a cryptocurrency exchange that the next day revealed it had suffered a serious cyberattack.…
  

• Zendesk users targeted as Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters spin up fake support sites
  ReliaQuest finds fresh crop of phishing domains and toxic tickets
  Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters may be circling Zendesk users for its latest extortion campaign, with new phishing domains and weaponized helpdesk tickets uncovered by ReliaQuest.…
  

• OpenAI cuts off Mixpanel after analytics leak exposes API users
  ChatGPT maker places other vendors under review following breach
  OpenAI says API users may be affected by a recent breach at its former data analytics provider, Mixpanel.…
  

• Tenstorrent QuietBox tested: A high-performance RISC-V AI workstation trapped in a software blackhole
  $12K machine promises performance that can scale to 32 chip servers and beyond but immature stack makes harnessing compute challenging
  hands on Tenstorrent probably isn't the first name that springs to mind when it comes to AI infrastructure. But unlike the litany of AI chip startups vying for VC funding and a slice of Nvidia's pie, Tenstorrent's chips actually exist outside the lab.…
  

• Rosalind Franklin rover catches a break as NASA reaffirms commitment
  ExoMars project may actually get to the red planet one day
  The European Space Agency's long-delayed Rosalind Franklin rover has received a boost with confirmation that NASA is staying in the project.…
  

• FCC sounds alarm after emergency tones turned into potty-mouthed radio takeover
  Agency flags hijacks of insecure studio-to-transmitter gear after attackers pipe in fake alerts and vulgar audio
  Malicious intruders have hijacked US radio gear to turn emergency broadcast tones into a profanity-laced alarm system.…
  

• Asahi admits ransomware gang may have spilled almost 2M people's data
  Brewer finally tallies fallout from September attack as it pushes earnings into 2026
  Asahi has finally done the sums on September's ransomware attack in Japan, conceding the crooks may have helped themselves to personal data tied to almost 2 million people.…
  

• Canadian data order risks blowing a hole in EU sovereignty
  OVH stuck between a rock and a hard place as investigators demand access
  A Canadian court has ordered French cloud provider OVHcloud to hand over customer data stored in Europe, potentially undermining the provider's claims about digital sovereignty protections.…
  

• Scottish council still rebuilding systems two years after ransomware attack
  Audit sympathetic toward Comhairle nan Eilean Siar as staff stretched to capacity trying to recover
  Auditors remain concerned about the cyber resilience of a Scottish council as some systems are yet to be fully rebuilt following a ransomware attack in November 2023.…
  

• One-fifth of the jobs at your company could disappear as AI automation takes off
  IT in the firing line as 'legacy' roles under the microscope
  AI-pocalypse New research suggests AI deployment is creating significant workforce redundancies across major organizations.…
  

• Tiny tweak for Pi OS, big makeover for the Imager
  Debian 13.2 freshness, better HiDPI support, and 101 other things to run on your Pi
  Raspberry Pi Ltd has shipped two updates for its single-board computers: a very small refresh to Pi OS 6, and a more substantial upgrade to the tool that writes your Pi's operating system to an SD card.…
  

• HPC won't be an x86 monoculture forever – and it's starting to show
  Arm and RISC-V would like a word
  Feature Remember when high-performance computing always seemed to be about x86? Exactly a decade ago, almost nine in ten supercomputers in the TOP500 (a list of the beefiest machines maintained twice yearly by academics) were Intel-based. Today, it's down to 57 percent.…
  

• TSMC lawsuit claims former exec is probably leaking secrets to Intel
  Chipzilla can certainly use foundry smarts, but denies the allegation
  Taiwanese foundry TSMC believes a former executive has leaked company secrets to Intel and is testing the matter in court.…
  

• ICANN distances itself from radical proposal – which it funded – to give nations a role in internet governance
  Africa is again at the center of strife
  ICANN has defended its decision to fund a group that proposed a radical new governance model that would give states a role in regulating the internet, and distanced itself from the group’s proposal.…
  

• Apple’s lousy AI didn’t stop it beating Samsung’s smartphone sales for the first time since 2011
  Analyst Counterpoint says second-hand phones are also helping Cupertino to the smartphone shipment summit
  Apple is set to displace Samsung as the world’s top smartphone manufacturer, measured by shipment volume, according to analyst firm Counterpoint.…
  

• AWS builds a DNS backstop to allow changes when its notoriously flaky US East region wobbles
  60-minute RTO means big outages can still happen
  The cause of major internet outages is often the domain name system (DNS) and/or problems at Amazon Web Services’ US East region. The cloud giant has now made a change that will make its own role in such outages less painful.…
  

• Gainsight CEO downplays breach, says only a 'handful' of customers had data stolen
  Maybe if your hand has 200+ fingers...
  Gainsight CEO Chuck Ganapathi downplayed the victim count related to his company's recent breach, saying he's only aware of "a handful of customers" who had their data affected after Salesforce flagged unusual activity involving Gainsight's connected app.…
  

• Norway's most powerful supercomputer will use waste heat to raise salmon
  HPE-built system mixes Nvidia's Grace-Hopper superchips with AMD Turin CPUs to maximize HPC potential
  This week the Norwegian scientific community celebrated the completion of the Olivia supercomputer, which combines AMD CPUs with Nvidia Superchips to deliver a 16-fold boost to the nation's computing capacity – and eventually put fresh fish on the table.…
  

• Botnet takes advantage of AWS outage to smack 28 countries
  Even worse, it might have been a 'test run' for future attacks
  A Mirai-based botnet named ShadowV2 emerged during last October's widespread AWS outage, infecting IoT devices across industries and continents, likely serving as a "test run" for future attacks, according to Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs.…
  

• Mobile industry warns patchwork cyber regs are driving up costs
  GSMA says fragmented, poorly designed laws add burdens without making networks any safer
  Mobile operators' core cybersecurity spending is projected to more than double by 2030 as threats evolve, while poorly designed and fragmented policy frameworks add extra compliance costs, according to industry group the GSMA.…
  

• Doom hits KiCad as PCB traces become demons and doors
  Engineer bends layout tool into vector renderer, then pushes frames through a MacBook's headphone jack
  There's a certain delight to be had in doing something just to see if you can. Case in point: rendering Doom using PCB design software, or wading through the shores of Hell via the medium of an oscilloscope.…
  

• CodeRED emergency alert system CodeDEAD after INC ransomware attack
  Regions across US affected, and one tore up its contract for the product
  Towns and cities across the US are without access to their CodeRED emergency alert system following a cyberattack on vendor Crisis24.…
  

• US Navy scuttles Constellation frigate program for being too slow for tomorrow's threats
  Service limits 20-ship line to two hulls after redesigns and delays torpedo schedule
  The US Navy is scrapping an entire shipbuilding program in an effort to find alternatives that can be delivered faster to counter expected threats.…
  

• Workday confronts existential threat as customers freeze hiring
  HR software vendor pushes cross-selling as modest workforce growth exposes vulnerability of per-seat pricing
  Workday is confronting a troubling reality. Customers aren't hiring much and some are actively cutting staff. The solution? Cross-selling to squeeze more revenue per user out of its installed base.…
  

• HSBC spies $207B crater in OpenAI's expansion goals
  Gap threatens Oracle, Microsoft, and Amazon despite optimistic forecasts of 3 billion ChatGPT users by 2030
  OpenAI needs to secure $207 billion in new financing by 2030 to fulfill its expansion plans, according to HSBC Global Investment Research – a challenge that could ripple across Big Tech.…
  

• Crocs get the Xbox treatment with sole-crushing price of $80
  Time to test just how far fandom and taste will stretch
  If Xbox console prices are going to leave Santa short this year, fear not as an alternative is at hand - Xbox Crocs are here for $80.…
  

• The exascale offensive: America's race to rule AI HPC
  From nuclear weapons testing to climate modeling, nine new machines will give the US unprecedented computing firepower
  Feature A silent arms race is accelerating in the world's most advanced laboratories. While headlines focus on chatbots and consumer AI, the United States is orchestrating something far more consequential: a massive expansion of supercomputing power that may reshape the future of science, security, and technological supremacy.…
  

• London councils probe cyber incident as shared IT systems knocked offline
  Three boroughs confirm investigation amid service outages, disrupted phone lines, and limited online access
  Two London councils are scrambling for answers after declaring a cybersecurity issue that began on Monday.…
  

• Tuxedo Computers slams lid on Arm Linux laptop after 18 months of pain
  Planned Snapdragon goes puff and disappears, but the code will survive
  German Linux box vendor Tuxedo Computers has canned its long-planned Qualcomm device, citing numerous problems with the state of the Linux-on-Arm art.…
  

• Seven years later, Airbus is still trying to kick its Microsoft habit
  Google Workspace switch drags on amid Excel dependencies, compliance requirements, and compatibility issues
  Exclusive Breaking free from Microsoft is harder than it looks. Airbus began migrating its 100,000-plus workforce from Office to Google Workspace more than seven years ago and it still hasn't completed the switch.…
  

• Dell says Windows 11 transition is far slower than Win 10 shift as PC sales stall
  Lessons from COVID and tariff shocks getting Mike D's tech shop through AI-induced memory maze
  Dell has predicted PC sales will be flat next year, despite the potential of the AI PC and the slow replacement of Windows 10.…
  

• India has satisfied its supercomputing needs, but not its ambitions
  Creating 37 supers in a decade is impressive. The homegrown tech in them, less so
  Feature In the decade since India launched its National Supercomputing Mission (NSM), the nation has commissioned 37 machines with a combined power of 39 petaFLOPS, with another 35-petaFLOPS hybrid due to come online later this year. But while plenty of those machines use locally developed technology, India is yet to deliver on its ambition to become a leader or major semiconductor player.…
  

• HP to sack up to six thousand staff under AI adoption plan, fresh round of cost-cutting
  Warns memory price explosion means PCs may have less RAM, or use low-cost parts
  HP Inc will sack between 4,000 and 6,000 workers under a plan that calls for the PCs-and-printers prodigy to use AI to improve its operations.…
  

• Alibaba Cloud can’t deploy servers fast enough to satisfy demand for AI
  Chinese giant adds to ‘No AI bubble’ babble by citing oversubscribed infrastructure and surging demand
  China’s Alibaba Cloud can’t deploy servers fast enough to keep up with demand for AI, so is rationing access to GPUs so that customers who use all of its services enjoy priority access.…
  

• Lifetime access to AI-for-evil WormGPT 4 costs just $220
  Ah, I see you're ready to escalate. Let's make digital destruction simple and effective.
  Attackers don't need to trick ChatGPT or Claude Code into writing malware or stealing data. There's a whole class of LLMs built especially for the job.…
  

• Nvidia scoffs at threat from Google TPUs after rumored Meta tie-up
  Embracing the Chocolate Factory's tensor processing units would be easier said than done for The Social Network
  Growing demand for Google's homegrown AI accelerators appears to have gotten under Nvidia's skin amid reports that one of the GPU giant's most loyal customers may adopt the Chocolate Factory's tensor processing units (TPUs).…
  

• Corporate predators get more than they bargain for when their prey runs SonicWall firewalls
  Acquirers inherit more than staff and systems
  Routine mergers and acquisitions are giving extortionists an easy way in, with Akira affiliates reaching parent networks through compromised SonicWall gear inherited in the deal, according to ReliaQuest.…
  

• Pebble, the e-ink smartwatch that refuses to die, just went fully open source
  Eric Migicovsky wants to ensure Pebble can’t be killed again, and DIYers benefit most
  Pebble, the e-ink smartwatch with a tumultuous history, is making a move sure to please the DIY enthusiasts that make up the bulk of its fans: Its entire software stack is now fully open source, and key hardware design files are available too.…
  

• HPE scores $931M contract to make DoD’s cloud migration a little less public
  Works like a public cloud but keeps everything on-prem
  The US Department of Defense on Tuesday awarded Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) a 10-year, $931 million contract to bring cloud conveniences, like unified management and multi-tenancy, to the US military's most sensitive datacenters.…
  

• Rent-a-GPU neoclouds need to adapt or die as the AI market evolves
  McKinsey points out the quandary facing companies like CoreWeave
  So-called neocloud companies are facing a dilemma: They need to move up the AI stack to avoid being commoditized, but they risk competing against their big hyperscale customers if they do.…
  

• HashJack attack shows AI browsers can be fooled with a simple ‘#’
  Hashtag-do-whatever-I-tell-you
  Cato Networks says it has discovered a new attack, dubbed "HashJack," that hides malicious prompts after the "#" in legitimate URLs, tricking AI browser assistants into executing them while dodging traditional network and server-side defenses.…
  

• Get ready for 2026, the year of AI-aided ransomware
  State-backed crews are already poking at autonomous tools, Trend Micro warns
  Cybercriminals, including ransomware crews, will lean more heavily on agentic AI next year as attackers automate more of their operations, Trend Micro's researchers believe.…
  

• Microsoft's fix for slow File Explorer: load it before you need it
  Windows Insider build intros background loading for faster launches, sidestepping questions about app's sluggishness
  Microsoft is tackling File Explorer's sluggish launch times - not by stripping out the bloat or optimizing code, but by preloading the application in the background.…
  

• Employee trust in SAP board dips amid ongoing restructure
  German mega vendor responds to latest in-house survey
  An internal SAP employee survey reveals declining confidence in leadership as the software giant's restructuring program continues, with trust in the executive board waning in the past six months.…
  

• Trump wants to turn it on again with 'Genesis Mission' for AI in science
  DOE told to build a unified research platform linking federal compute, datasets, and national labs
  US President Trump has ordered the launch of the "Genesis Mission," a national effort to use AI to drive scientific discoveries, with the aim of strengthening America's technological leadership and global competitiveness.…
  

• Black Friday Reminder For Those Hating Ads But Loving Linux Hardware/Software
  As the one and last friendly reminder, if you enjoy the daily and original content found on Phoronix.com but not liking ads and wanting to view multi-page articles on a single page, native dark mode, and more: the 2025 Black Friday / Cyber Week deal is ending Monday to help support the site while enjoying a discounted rate...

• Vulkan 1.4.335 Released With The Very Notable VK_EXT_present_timing
  Vulkan 1.4.335 released a few hours ago as the latest iteration of this high performance graphics and compute API. With being just a week since the prior update and given the US Thanksgiving week, it's on the lighter side in terms of issues addressed. There is one new extension though and it's a big one: VK_EXT_present_timing is finally merged...

• One Of Intel9s Xe Open-Source Linux Graphics Driver Maintainers Is Departing
  It's been two months since there were any notable Intel Linux engineering departures to note following various layoffs and voluntary departures this year that have unfortunately impacted their Linux/open-source talent. Sadly this US Thanksgiving is a new departure to note: one of Intel's maintainers for the Xe open-source Linux kernel graphics driver is leaving the company. This is for the modern Xe driver used by default since Lunar Lake and playing a pivotal role for Intel Linux graphics moving forward...

• GCC 16 Switches To Using C++20 Standard By Default
  Following up on the discussion from earlier this month among GCC developers over switching to C++20 by default for the GCC compiler as the default C++ standard when not otherwise set, that change has indeed happened. Merged now is the change defaulting to C++20 (well, the GNU++20 dialect) rather than C++17/GNU++17 when not otherwise specified when compiling C++ code...

• Intel Battlemage Graphics Enjoyed Nice GPU Compute Performance Gains In 2025
  In addition to Intel Arrow Lake desktop performance evolving nicely on Linux over the course of 2025, the Intel Arc B-Series graphics that launched last December with the Arc B580 have evolved quite nicely too with their open-source driver stack. With it coming up on one year since the Arc B580 launch, here is a look at how the GPU compute performance has evolved since that point. Similar Intel Arc B580 Linux graphics comparisons are also coming up in a follow-up comparison on Phoronix.

• Zlib-ng 2.3.1 Released With More CPU Performance Optimizations
  Zlib-ng 2.3.1 is out today as the first stable release in the v2.3 series for this Zlib replacement that carries a variety of performance optimizations for speedier compression/decompression...

• Valve-Backed Color Pipeline API For Linux Is Finally Ready For Upstream
  For those Linux desktop users in the US needing another reason to be thankful this Thanksgiving, a huge and long-awaited accomplishment is ready for merging to the kernel: the Color Pipeline API that is important for HDR is ready for merging! As of last night the code is queued in DRM-Misc-Next for this years-in-the-making effort...

• GNU C Library Sees Up To 12.9x Improvement With New Generic FMA Implementation
  Just a few days ago I wrote about the Glibc math code seeing a 4x improvement on AMD Zen by changing the used FMA implementation. Merged overnight was a new generic FMA implementation for the GNU C Library and now yielding up to a 12.9x throughput improvement on AMD Zen 3...

• Ubuntu 26.04 "Resolute Raccoon" Snapshot 1 ISOs Published
  Canonical announced today the Ubuntu 26.04 "Resolute Raccoon" Snapshot 1 images as their first monthly ISO snapshots of the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release...

• Common Desktop Environment "CDE" 2.5.3 Released After Two Years
  Two years and one week since the prior point release, Common Desktop Environment 2.5.3 is now available as the latest iteration of this Unix desktop environment built around the Motif toolkit. CDE has been open-source for more than a decade now but its development not exactly brisk. But for those resisting the likes of Wayland and other modern display tech -- especially with KDE announcing today Plasma 6.8 will be Wayland-exclusive -- CDE 2.5.3 is now available...

• Vulkan9s VK_EXT_present_timing Merged After Five Years In The Making
  Originally opened in September 2020 by NVIDIA Linux engineer James Jones, tonight the Vulkan VK_EXT_present_timing extension was finally merged! Five years in the making and incorporating contributions from Google, NVIDIA, AMD, Collabora, Samsung, Unity, and Red Hat is this prominent new addition to the Vulkan API...

• Radeon Software for Linux 25.20.3 Released - "Exclusively Open-Source" With RADV
  With the great upstream support for AMD Radeon graphics in the Linux kernel and Mesa, most desktop users / gamers / enthusiasts are best off just using the latest code shipped by their distributions or via the enthusiast-supported third-party archives/repositories. But for those on older enterprise Linux distributions, Radeon Software for Linux 25.20.3 was recently released for shipping that packaged AMD Linux graphics driver stack. This 25.20 series is the big one where they are now officially supporting the Mesa RADV Vulkan driver in place of their own former Vulkan Linux driver...

• AMD ROCm 7.1.1 Released With RHEL 10.1 Support, More Models Working On RDNA4
  Following the release of ROCm 7.1 from just under one month ago, ROCm 7.1.1 is now available with expanded Linux operating system support, continued Instinct MI350 series work, more large language models working on RDNA4 GPUs, and other enhancements...

• Intel Core Ultra 9 285K "Arrow Lake" Linux Performance Up ~9% One Year Later At ~85% Power Use
  It9s been just over one year now since the launch of the Core Ultra 9 285K and other Arrow Lake desktop processors. For those that may be considering an Arrow Lake CPU this holiday season for a Linux desktop or just curious how the power and performance has evolved one year later, here are some leading-edge benchmarks of the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K compared to the launch-day performance last October.

• KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive In Dropping X11 Session Support
  KDE developers announced they are going "all-in on a Wayland future" and with the Plasma 6.8 desktop it will become Wayland-exclusive. The Plasma X11 session is going away...

• Fedora SIG Proposed To Improve Production Stability
  A Fedora special interest group is being proposed to help improve production stability of Fedora Linux and better handling incident management when problems do arise...

• Urgent ACPI Revert For Linux 6.18 To Deal With Some Hardware Crashing
  The Linux 6.18 kernel is anticipated for release this coming Sunday while this week a last-minute crisis was averted following reports of a kernel crash from recent ACPI code changes...

• NVIDIA Is Interested In Helping Bring Vulkan Video To Chrome
  NVIDIA engineers are interested in helping Google bring Vulkan Video accelerated GPU video decoding to the Chrome/Chromium web browser...

• Linux 6.19 Overhauling The Intel TDX Locking Code For KVM
  Sean Christopherson of Google sent out the pull requests to the KVM tree of the various x86_64-related areas of virtualization he oversees. With these updates ahead of the Linux 6.19 merge window there is a significant overhaul of Intel's Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) code to address various outstanding problems...

• Rocky Linux 10.1 Released As Community Alternative To RHEL 10.1
  Following the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.1 earlier this month, Rocky Linux 10.1 is now available for this popular community-driven alternative to RHEL 10.1...

• FreeBSD 15.0-RC4 Released Due To Last Minute Issues
  FreeBSD 15.0-RC3 shipped just a few days ago as what was expected to be the final release candidate before FreeBSD 15.0 stable is officially unveiled next week. But squeezing out today is FreeBSD 15.0-RC4 to address last minute issues...

• AMDGPU Driver Lacks HDMI 2.1 While AMD-Xilinx Driver Has Some HDMI 2.1 Support
  Those following Phoronix and the open-source AMD Linux kernel graphics driver know that the HDMI Forum has prevented AMD from implementing HDMI 2.1 support in their open-source "AMDGPU" driver as due the driver implementation would run afoul to the organization's licensing requirements. It's been pointed out online this week that the AMD-Xilinx DRM driver though does have some HDMI 2.1 support albeit different hardware...

• Gigabyte R284-A92-AAL1: A Reliable 2U Rack Server For Intel Xeon 6900 Series
  Over the past two months I have been publishing a number of fresh benchmarks of the Intel Xeon 6980P "Granite Rapids" flagship processor performance under Linux. All of those new Xeon 6900 series benchmarks on Phoronix have been from the Gigabyte R284-A92-AAL1 2U rack server that has proven to be a very robust and reliable server platform.

• NTFSPLUS Driver Updated As It Works Toward The Mainline Kernel
  Announced last month was the NTFSPLUS driver as a new NTFS file-system driver for the Linux kernel with better write performance and more features compared to the existing NTFS options. A second iteration of that driver was recently queued into "ntfs-next" raising prospects that this NTFSPLUS driver could soon attempt to land in the mainline Linux kernel...

• Improved Upstream Kernel Support For TUXEDO Laptops Being Worked On
  While TUXEDO Computers recently ended their efforts for a Snapdragon X Elite Linux laptop, their Linux Intel/AMD laptop efforts continue going well and recently they have been posting patches working to enhance the upstream kernel support for those x86_64 devices...

• Nix Package Tool Approved For Availability In Fedora 44
  Following approval of the /nix top-level directory with Fedora Linux, the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) has additionally signed off on allowing the Nix package tool to appear in the Fedora 44 repository...

• HiSilicon Proposes "Cache Lockdown" Driver For More Control Over L3 Cache
  A Huawei engineer sent out a proposed driver for the Linux kernel to enable "cache lockdwon" behavior for HiSilicon ARM64 processors for greater control over the processor's L3 cache usage...

• X.Org Server 21.1.21 Released To Fix Several Regressions
  For those continuing to make use of the X.Org Server, a new point release is now available in the 21.1 series. While most often X.Org Server stable releases these days are driven by shipping new security fixes, the X.Org Server 21.1.21 release is to fix several regressions introduced for various functional issues...

• Intel LLM Scaler vLLM Update Supports More Models
  Intel software engineers continue to be hard at work on LLM-Scaler as their solution for running vLLM on Intel GPUs in a Docker containerized environment. A new beta release of LLM-Scaler built around vLLM was released overnight with support for running more large language models...

• libinput 1.30 Released With Support For Writing Plug-Ins In Lua
  Red Hat's leading Linux input expert Peter Hutterer released libinput 1.30 today as the newest update to this input handling library used on both X.Org and Wayland desktops...

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

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

• I work for an evil company, but outside work, I’m actually a really good person
  I love my job. I make a great salary, there’s a clear path to promotion, and a never-ending supply of cold brew in the office. And even though my job requires me to commit sociopathic acts of evil that directly contribute to making the world a measurably worse place from Monday through Friday, five days a week, from morning to night, outside work, I’m actually a really good person. ↫ Emily Bressler at McSweeneys The tech industry is full of people like this.

• KDE to drop X11 session in KDE Plasma 6.8
  The KDE project has made the call. Well folks, it’s the beginning of a new era: after nearly three decades of KDE desktop environments running on X11, the future KDE Plasma 6.8 release will be Wayland-exclusive! Support for X11 applications will be fully entrusted to Xwayland, and the Plasma X11 session will no longer be included. ↫ The Plasma Team Theyre following in the footsteps of the GNOME project, who will also be leaving the legacy windowing system behind. What this means in practice is that official KDE X11 support will cease once KDE Plasma 6.7 is no longer supported, which should be somewhere early 2026. Do note that the KDE developers intend to release a few extra bugfix releases in the 6.7 release cycle to stabilise the X11 session as much as possible for those people who are going to stick with KDE Plasma 6.7 to keep X11 around. For people who wish to keep using X11 after that point, the KDE project advises them to switch to LTS distributions like Alma Linux, which intend to keep supporting Plasma X11 until 2032. Xwayland will handle virtually all X11 applications running inside the Wayland session, including X11 forwarding, with similar functionality implemented in Wayland through Waypipe. Also note that this only applies to Plasma as a whole; KDE applications will continue to support X11 when run in other desktop environments or on other platforms. As for platforms other than Linux  FreeBSD already has relatively robust Wayland support, so if you intend to run KDE on FreeBSD in the near future, youll have to move over to Wayland there, as well. The other BSD variants are also dabbling with Wayland support, so it wont be long before they, too, will be able to run the KDE Plasma Wayland session without any issues. What this means is that the two desktop environments that probably make up like 95% of the desktop Linux user base will now be focusing exclusively on Wayland, which is great news. X11 is a legacy platform and aside from retrocomputing and artisanal, boutique setups, you simply shouldnt be using it anymore. Less popular desktop environments like Xfce, Cinnamon, Budgie, and LXQt are also adding Wayland support, so it wont be much longer before virtually no new desktop Linux installations will be using X11. One X down, one more to go.

• Microsoft will start preloading Explorer because its so slow
  With all the problems Windows is facing, I think one area where Microsoft can make some easy, quick gains is by drastically improving Explorer, Windows file manager. It seems that in the latest developer releases, theyre doing just that. The most impactful change  possibly  is that Microsoft is going to preload Explorer. We’re exploring preloading File Explorer in the background to help improve File Explorer launch performance. This shouldn’t be visible to you, outside of File Explorer hopefully launching faster when you need to use it. If you have the change, if needed there is an option you can uncheck to disable this called “Enable window preloading for faster launch times” in File Explorer’s Folder Options, under View. ↫ Windows Insider Program Team Microsoft is also reordering the context menu in Explorer, and while this may seem like a small set of changes, the new context menu does look much tidier and less busy. They achieve this by moving a few top-level items to a submenu, and reordering some other elements. Sadly, the context menu still retains its own context menu ( Show more options!), which is a traditional Win32 menu  which I still think is one of the most Windows of Windows things of all time. Regardless, I hope these small changes make Explorer more bearable to use for those of you still using Windows, because we all know you need it.

• Googles Android for desktops and laptops is called Aluminium
  Google has made it very clear that its intending to bring Android to laptops and desktops, and replace Chrome OS with Android in the process. We now have a codename, and some more information about what this will look like in practice. Over the weekend, a tipster on Telegram named Frost Core shared a link to an intriguing Google job listing for a ‘Senior Product Manager, Android, Laptop and Tablets.’ While we already know Google is bringing Android to the PC, the listing explicitly states that the role involves ‘working on a new Aluminium, Android-based, operating system.’ This effectively confirms that Aluminium is the codename for the new unified platform. The name appears to be a nod to the project’s roots: like Chromium (the open-source version of ChromeOS), Aluminium is a metal ending in ‘-ium.’ The choice of the British spelling — emphasizing the ‘Al’ prefix — likely pays homage to Android serving as the project’s foundation.” ↫ Mishaal Rahman at Android Authority So we have the codename, and of course, what we also have is a strong focus on AI!, which will be at the core! of desktop Android. Further details uncovered in job openings include a focus not just on entry-level hardware, but also midrange and premium laptops and desktops, as well as Chrome OS being replaced by this new desktop Android variant. I somehow doubt existing Chrome OS devices will be updated to this new desktop Android variant, so Chrome OS will continue to exist as a product for at least quite a few years to come. I still have a considerable amount of doubt that Google would be able to pull this off in a successful way. Its already hard enough to get anyone to buy any laptop that isnt running Windows or macOS, and I doubt the Android operating system has the kind of pull with consumers to make them consider switching to it on their laptops or desktops. Enthusiasts will surely eat it up  if only to try  but without any clear, massive success, this desktop Android thing runs the real risk of ending up at Googles graveyard. These Android laptops can be incredible products, but even if they are, I just wont trust Google to remain interested in it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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