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- Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"
The results of theDebian general-resolution vote on the useof large language models have been posted; the winner is choice 5:Responsible Use of Generative AI. Debian neither endorses nor prohibits the use of generative AI tools in the development, maintenance, or documentation of software, packaging, documentation, and other media published within the Debian Project. We recognize that such tools can substantially improve the productivity of contributors when used responsibly, allowing volunteers to spend more of their limited time on work that requires technical expertise, judgment, review, and collaboration. The Debian Project nevertheless expects that all contributions submitted to Debian, regardless of how and with which tools they were produced, satisfy the same standards of quality, correctness, maintainability, and legal compliance. The use of a generative AI tool does not diminish the contributor's responsibility for the work they submit. Contributors are expected to understand, review, test, and, where appropriate, modify AI-assisted output before incorporating it into Debian.
- Ryabitsev: Creepy crawlies
Konstantin Ryabitsev has written a blog post withhard numbers about the impact of AI crawlers on the Linux kernelrepositories at git.kernel.org:
Today, git.kernel.org receives about 6M daily requests demanding to seerandom commits. Of these, 66% are still immediately batted away with the Anubischallenge, but 33% are now solving the math and getting through to the main site— because apparently what we have to offer is worth spending a ton of cycles tocalculate the Anubis challenge.
It's impossible to tell with certainty which of these are bots and which arereal humans — but chances are, if it's asking for an old commit in a random oldfork, it's probably not a real developer trying to do their work.
With a bunch of generous assumptions, legitimate requests are only about 2%of git.kernel.org traffic — everything else are scrapers.
- Car: Dolphin 26.08 and KIO performance improvements
Méven Car has written a pair of interesting blog posts (part 1,part 2). Thefirst post is largely about some of the recent new features and performance workthat have gone into the Dolphin filemanager 26.08 release, as well as the KIO framework. The second looks atthe performance improvements and benchmarks for previous, current, and upcomingreleases.
Copying many small files is more than twice as fast as it was in April. Thegain falls off as files get larger, which is what you would expect: the fix isto the per-file overhead, and once each file carries a megabyte of actual I/Othe overhead stops being what you are waiting for.
There is still a gap with cp, discussed at length in theJuly post. KIO is doing more than cp does, but not five times more,and the batching work that closes most of the rest of that gap is still inprogress.
- [$] The "rnull" Rust block driver
Thenull blockdriver (null_blk)is a small driver that is mostly useful for benchmarking block-layerimplementations. It accepts all requests and marks them complete as quickly aspossible, doing as little work as possible. In June 2026, Andreas Hindborg shareda patch set implementing the same functionality in Rust, in order to showthat a simple block driver is now possible to write using the kernel'sRust APIs and to enable comparisons between the C and Rustimplementations.A minimal version of the "rnull" driver is already present in the mainlinekernel, but Hindborg's patch set brings it up to feature parity with the Cversion.
- Eight stable kernels with fix for a single vulnerability
Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 7.2.2, 7.1.12, 6.18.48, 6.12.107, 6.6.155, 6.1.186,5.15.219, and 5.10.268 stable kernels.
Each of these contains asingle fix for avulnerability (CVE-2026-80590)that allows marking IPv4 or IPv6 fragments as GSO,which can allow an unprivileged user to cause a kernel panic. This vulnerabilityhas been present since Linux 2.6.27. Users are advised to upgrade.
- Security updates for Friday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (assertj-core, golang, httpd, kernel, and libxml2), Debian (chromium and suricata-update), Fedora (rust-h2), Mageia (avahi and python-django), Oracle (kernel and mingw-openssl), SUSE (c-ares-devel, dracut, gh, gstreamer-plugins-bad, java-11-openjdk, liboqs, librest0_7, openssl, openssl-3, pcp, python313-mistune, python36-pip, qt6-svg, rmt-server, rsync, suseconnect-ng, texlive, tor, wicked, and xmlrpc-c), and Ubuntu (linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-azure-fips, linux-azure-6.8, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-6.8, linux-oracle-6.8, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-realtime, linux-azure-fde-5.15, linux-fips, linux-gke, linux-gcp-fips, opencryptoki, and pam).
- [$] Using steal time to moderate CPU demands
Virtualization can increase CPU utilization by allowing a large number ofvirtual CPUs to share a smaller number of physical CPUs. The amount of CPUtime that is actually available does not change, though, so heavy activityon too many virtual CPUs can lead to contention and significant performanceloss. The steal governorpatch series from Shrikanth Hegde is an attempt to address that problemwith a mechanism that allows virtual machines to voluntarily reduce thenumber of virtual CPUs they use when contention is high.
- Security updates for Thursday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (assertj-core, attr, firefox, go-toolset:rhel8, golang, grafana, gstreamer1-plugins-good, httpd, kernel, mingw-openssl, mod_http2, nginx, nginx:1.24, pam, polkit, and sqlite), Debian (bubblewrap, cockpit, emacs, gimp, libdbi-perl, openjdk-11, openjdk-17, wireshark, and xrdp), Fedora (bluez, curl, emacs, golang, knot, libopenmpt, libsoup3, openbao, openssh, rsync, rust-anstyle-hyperlink, rust-anstyle-progress, rust-cargo, rust-cargo-c, rust-cargo-credential-libsecret, rust-cargo-util, rust-cargo-util-schemas, rust-cargo-util-terminal, rust-crates-io, and rust-rustfix), Gentoo (Chromium, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Chromium, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, Chromium, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge. Opera, and OpenRGB), Oracle (abrt, assertj-core, attr, gstreamer1-plugins-base, gstreamer1-plugins-good, httpd, nginx:1.24, nginx:1.26, nodejs24, and polkit), SUSE (apache2-mod_auth_openidc, buildah, curl, docker, dracut, evince, go1.25-openssl, go1.26-openssl, go1.27, gstreamer-plugins-bad, kernel, kubernetes, kubernetes-old, libarchive, LibVNCServer, libwireshark19, pcp, python310-pip, qemu, rootlesskit, rsync, snpguest, and util-linux), and Ubuntu (bind9, libheif, and openssl, openssl1.0).
- [$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for August 27, 2026
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition: Front: AGPL violations; OpenMDW license; quantum computing and encryption; 7.3 merge window; Remind; Quickshell. Briefs: arrayref; RIP Steve French; Armbian 26.8; Vanilla OS 3; Emacs 31.1; KDE Gear 26.08; LibreOffice 26.8; RPM 6.1.0; Quotes; ... Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

- MSI WS300 with 72-Core Grace CPU, Blackwell Ultra GPU, and Dual 400GbE
MSI has detailed the XpertStation WS300T60L, a tower workstation based on NVIDIA’s DGX Station architecture and GB300 Grace Blackwell Ultra platform. The system is aimed at AI development, data science, inference, AI agents, and physical AI workloads, with a 72-core Arm processor, Blackwell Ultra GPU, up to 748GB of coherent memory, and dual 400GbE connectivity. […]
- The Linux Kernel Is Approaching 2,000 CVEs Per Release
With the proliferation of AI/LLM models analyzing the Linux kernel's vast codebase, there has been a surge in the number of CVEs per kernel release. After typically being around 500 CVEs fixed per release, we are now approaching 2,000 CVEs fixed per release and perhaps will break that threshold for Linux 7.3...

- What's 88-year-old Ridley Scott Doing Now?
The Los Angeles Times first calls Ridley Scott's newest movie "a postapocalyptic thriller that trades zombies for pandemics and asks whether hope can outlast catastrophe." But besides The Dog Stars, Scott is also working on an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" starring Hugh Jackman, and is thinking about turning one of his past films into a musical. ("I can't tell you which one because they're being difficult.") The common theme, they suggest, is a director who allows his stories to "speak through evocative, immersive images rather than unnecessary exposition."The British director says it's because he got his start in advertising after attending the Royal College of Art in London. After 1982's neon-coated sci-fi thriller "Blade Runner," Scott notably made the iconic Apple Macintosh computer ad "1984," a memorable Orwellian-themed clip that contained suggestions of the dystopias that would continue to fascinate Scott in his filmmaking. "Advertising in England at that point became a competitive art form," he says, pointing to the notorious "Adland Five," a group of directors that included Hugh Hudson, Adrian Lyne, Alan Parker, Scott and his brother Tony. "I've got a show reel which is 50 years old which would entertain the s — out you. Hasn't aged at all. Our visual drive changed the face of how films looked." That's apparent in Scott's latest, "The Dog Stars" (in theaters Friday), a film about survival after the end of the world. It's based on Peter Heller's 2012 novel and set in Colorado 10 years in the future after an aggressive flu has decimated much of the population. Those remaining alive use any means necessary to stay that way, resulting in instability, brutality and, more hopefully, connection...These days, Scott develops movies with his production company, Scott Free, which he founded with his late brother Tony in 1995. Before that he says he struggled to find good scripts. And rarely has someone handed one to him. "I've only ever had three films land on my desk," he says. "One was 'Alien,' which I was fifth choice for after Robert Altman." He makes a face. "Can you imagine offering Robert Altman 'Alien'? How stupid can you get?" Another was 2015 space adventure "The Martian," which Scott says had been sitting on a shelf for two years before it was sent to him. Scott's grounded, semi-comedic take on Andy Weir's novel resulted in seven Oscar nominations. The third screenplay to materialize was "The Dog Stars." "I read it and I was blown away," Scott says. Deadline notes that Scott is already re-writing the third prequel to Alien, citing Scott's comments to French outlet AlloCiné."The one that just came out [2024's Alien: Romulus] was OK. I think it needs some help. So, I've gone back in." Scott continued, "I've already got a footprint for the next Alien.... I'm picking up where we left off in Covenant with Micheal Fassbender, who now thinks he's Ozymandius." With the sequel bringing back Fassbender's futuristic AI droid, Scott sees an opportunity to explore the repercussions of artificial intelligence in our current world. "I like the fact that AI has gone off the rails," said Scott of where the character is at the end of Covenant. "If we go AI, the moment we discover it's off the rails is too late. It could switch every digital thing off in the world like that. You'd have fucking chaos. It's that kind of stuff that's scary." Scott tells the Los Angeles Times that the malfunctioning AI character fascinates him, and in the movie will be creating a "brave new world for himself... AIs can go off. And if they do, it's like a bomb..."So far, Scott says he hasn't implemented AI technologies into his filmmaking. He holds up his "Treasure Island" Ridleygrams [hand-drawn storyboards] and shakes them at the camera. "I can compete with an AI without any problem making images," he says. "But it's coming, inevitably." Scott was not involved in the forthcoming Prime Video series "Blade Runner 2099," out in November. "I can't blame my lawyers and my agents at that time, but somehow we let 'Blade Runner' go," he says. "And when you're not the author of the actual written word, you don't have a piece." (He was more involved in Noah Hawley's recent "Alien: Earth" series, which he calls "pretty damn good....") Does that mean he thinks about his legacy as a filmmaker? He does, but not often. "When you think of your legacy, you're too near the end," Scott says. "I'm not near the end." He looks up from his drawings. "I've had a riotous time," he says. He corrects himself: "I'm having a riotous time."
 
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- With the Snip of a Gene, Scientists Hope To Erase High Cholesterol For Life
CNN reports that "A one-time snip of a key gene lowered heart-clogging cholesterol by about 50% over an entire year with no adverse effects, scientists have reported."The overwhelmingly positive results were found in four people who had taken the highest dose of the experimental treatment during a pilot study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in November 2025. That study was extremely small — only 15 patients with dangerously high cholesterol that did not respond to medication. The research was designed to test the safety of five different doses of a gene-altering infusion delivered by CRISPR-Cas9, a biological scissor which cuts a targeted genetic location to modify or turn a gene on or off. "If you'd asked me 15 years ago if we could have done something like this, I would have thought you were crazy," senior study author Dr. Steven Nissen, chief academic officer of the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, told CNN previously. An update on the study, published Friday in NEJM, appears to answer a key question: Does the intervention last? "Is something like this truly a one and done? That was always the question," said lead study author Dr. Luke Laffin, a preventive cardiologist at Cleveland Clinic's Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute. "This new data is essentially saying that the decreases in LDL cholesterol and triglycerides we saw at 60 days after treatment have lasted over a year," Laffin said. "In people who took the highest dose, the reduction seems durable and safe...." If larger clinical trials show similar results, the procedure could be a game changer for young people with severe disease, preventive cardiologist Dr. Ann Marie Navar, an associate professor of cardiology at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, told CNN previously. "If you're 20 and you have really high cholesterol, it may make a lot more sense to have a one-time treatment that doesn't require you to have to take a pill every single day or shot every two weeks for the next 60 years," said Navar, who was not involved in the study. "The potential for this is just enormous." Being born with this mutation naturally "drastically lowers or even eliminates a person's risk for heart disease," the article points out. And the study's senior author adds "now that CRISPR is here, we have the ability to change other people's genes so they too can have this protection."
 
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- Millions of Cars Recalled Over Danger of Bursting Into Flames. But They're Not EVs.
The Washington Post shares this tip for car buyers. Electric vehicles "are not driving the recent growth in recalls warning that vehicles could erupt into flames at any time, even when parked and turned off."A Washington Post analysis of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recall notices found that conventional gas and diesel vehicles made up the vast majority of vehicles covered by the "park outside" label since 2021. Last week, The Post wrote about an alarming surge in these so-called "park outside" recalls... A total of an estimated 3.4 million vehicles currently have outstanding recalls of this kind, according to vehicle history provider CarFax.Safety experts say the surge in "park outside" recalls appears to be caused by other changes to modern gas and electric vehicles, such as the additional technology in everything from transmissions to seat warmers.... [It's a messy mix of things that "doesn't lend itself to simple description of what's happening," says Sean Kane, president of auto safety-analysis firm Safety Research and Strategies. "But it boils down to growing electronic systems and the number of components."] They're known as "key-off fires," said Frank Borris, a former NHTSA investigator who now works as a safety consultant. "The engine is off," he said, "but the circuits are still hot and they stay hot all the time." Earlier this year, Kia needed to recall 463,000 Tellurides because of the risk that the front power-seat switch could overheat and ignite the seat. That was the second time Kia had issued a recall for that one defect. The first recall, in 2024, didn't fully address the problem. More than 66,000 Ford Expeditions and Lincoln Navigators from the 2021 model year were recalled due to circuit boards in the battery junction box that could short out. At least 16 fires were blamed on the problem, which often ignited when the vehicles were parked and turned off. NHTSA has issued 93 "park outside" recalls since 2021, according to a Post analysis. Nearly half — 44 recalls — covered vehicles exclusively with conventional internal-combustion engines, while 38 recalls were just for EVs or hybrids. So the number of campaigns were nearly equally divided between gas and electric or hybrid vehicles. But gas vehicles pull away when comparing the size of the recalls. Gas-only campaigns covered a combined 4.6 million vehicles with "park outside" recalls over the past five years, compared to only about 662,000 vehicles that were EVs or hybrids... Other countries have provided limited looks at the EV fire issue, such as an United Kingdom government review of data from Norway finding that gas and diesel vehicles had a fire incidence rate that was four times higher than EVs from 2016 to 2021. Just in 2026, U.S. authorities have announced 17 new "park outside" recalls covering 1.7 million vehicles, according to the article.
 
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- Chatbot Conversations Can Become Evidence in Court
The Washington Post looks "a growing number of Americans who have had their private conversations with AI chatbots made public in court," calling the chatbots "custodians of a fast-growing trove of intimate data that can be sought by law enforcement, or companies or other opponents in civil litigation."A Washington Post review of public records and local news stories found that chatbot logs were cited in 12 court cases over the past two years. It's hard to know how often chatbot material is drawn into investigations and legal proceedings more broadly, because police, and parties in civil cases, don't have to present in court all the evidence they obtain... In some cases, AI companies have reported people on their platforms to the FBI, leading to prosecutions and at least one conviction... OpenAI has said the company uses software to scan conversations for signs of dangerous behavior and flag them to human reviewers. If a reviewer determines a chat indicates "an imminent and credible risk of harm to others," they report the user to law enforcement, the company said in an April blog post. A spokesperson for OpenAI declined to disclose how many times the company had reported users to police.... Data released by OpenAI shows requests by government agencies and law enforcement for user data growing rapidly. In the second half of 2025, the company disclosed data from more than 80 accounts, an increase of more than four times as many over the same period the year before... When police ask someone to open their phone during questioning or after an arrest, they often do so, allowing officers to scroll through the apps they use, [according to Michael Price, the litigation director for the Fourth Amendment Center at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers]... In general, the Fourth Amendment, which protects people against unreasonable searches and seizures of their property, provides the right to refuse a search of the contents of their phone unless police have a warrant. "The short answer is that most people consent," Price said. "They shouldn't, but they do..." OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has argued that conversations with chatbots should receive special legal protections, similar to conversations between clients and their attorneys. Special legal protections aren't recognized by courts today, the article poitns out. A financial executive who became the subject of a federal criminal investigation for fraud asked Claude about potential defense strategies, then asked a judge to disallow the conversations from the prosecution's case, according to the article. "But the judge said that protections for conversations between clients and their attorneys did not apply: Claude is not a lawyer, and the executive's attorneys did not ask him to talk to the chatbot." The article includes quotes from three ChatGPT conversations that later turned up in court proceedings:"I deleted a email a year ago from my yahoo account. Can yahoo still retrieve the email?""How f----d am i bro. What if i smahsed the s--- oitta mutlipls cars.""My dad Said that I'm will get a settlement worth of 1million dollar.""As AI becomes a bigger part of everyday life, its use as evidence and in trials is likely to become more prevalent," the article points out — especially with the growing popularity of agents that take actions for users.
 
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- The Linux Kernel Is Approaching 2,000 CVEs Per Release
Phoronix reports on Greg Kroah-Hartman's recent slide from his upcoming talk in Paris at Kernel Recipes 2026 (September 21 to 23):With the proliferation of AI/LLM models analyzing the Linux kernel's vast codebase, there has been a surge in the number of CVEs per kernel release. After typically being around 500 CVEs fixed per release, we are now approaching 2,000 CVEs fixed per release and perhaps will break that threshold for Linux 7.3... Fortunately, most often they end up being lower priority vulnerabilities and often within old/obscure driver code, so the impact is often minimal.
 
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- 'Grand Theft Auto 6' Preview Signals Blockbuster Demand, Analysts Say
Rockstar Games has released a 26-minute "extended look" at Grand Theft Auto VI, due for release November 19th.After one day the video had nearly 10 million views on YouTube, and when Netflix streamed the footage, "some viewers had to refresh the page after receiving error messages, indicating high usage levels," reports CNBC:"Some members briefly experienced an issue accessing Netflix, but we quickly recovered," the company told CNBC. Game streaming platform Twitch, where many viewers were posting their reactions, also experienced bandwidth issues when the trailer was released, according to analysts at Wells Fargo. CNBC notes predictions the game could become one of the most profitable entertainment products of all time, while the Washington Post predicting it's "about to be the biggest pop media event of the year, if not the decade." The data backs this up. The latest evidence arrived Thursday, when Netflix viewership surged for the long-awaited first look at gameplay footage, according to data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The firm estimates "GTA VI" has already received about 4.6 million preorders.Box office blockbusters like "The Odyssey" take weeks to hit $1 billion. "GTA V" famously did it in three days. Analyst firm Newzoo projects the new game could generate between $3.3 billion and $5.2 billion by the end of its launch week in November... The influence of the series, created by Rockstar Games, extends beyond sales records. In 2025, "GTA V" accumulated 1.89 billion hours watched despite being a 12-year-old title, according to Stream Hatchet. Much of those hours are spent watching people role-play in "GTA Online," particularly through role-play servers managed by studio Cfx.re, which was acquired by Rockstar in 2023. By 2024, the studio said more than 20 million players used its platforms. GTA role-play involves players pretending to be cops, robbers, hapless retail workers or any functioning member of society within the online game... The game can lift up music sales and streams. Tom Petty's 1989 song "Love is a Long Road" saw stream numbers increased by nearly 37,000 percent on Spotify after it was the soundtrack to the debut "GTA VI" trailer in 2023, according to Universal Music Publishing Group. Christopher Dring, editor-in-chief and co-founder of analysis firm The Game Business, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" that GTA 5 is still in the top five bestselling video games every year, despite being released 13 years ago, reports CNBC:The response to Thursday's gameplay debut indicated that leaks of the content in advance would not impact the launch commercially, he continued. Rockstar Games, which makes the GTA franchise, had called the leaks "heartbreaking...." The GTA 6 preview follows a mixed reaction from players to the news that GTA 6 would only be released as a digital download, with no physical disc. The alleged source of the leaked content has claimed the leaks were a protest over Rockstar's release strategy, and Sony's plan to end to new PlayStation disc production in 2028. Speaking on the last earnings call on Aug. 7, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said discs did not make sense to the consumer, adding that its business was "well over 90% digitally distributed." Data from Circana shows the sale of physical game discs in the U.S. has fallen to its lowest level on record, with spending at $85 million.
 
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- As Backlash Grows, More Americans Now Oppose Automated Police License Plate Readers Than Support
A new survey on police license plate cameras found that "more Americans oppose these surveillance cameras than support them," reports TechCrunch:According to a new YouGov survey of 20,000 people across the U.S. that was shared exclusively with The Washington Post, 46% of respondents opposed the company's surveillance cameras in their communities, while 38% supported them. This is a reversal from last year, when the majority of survey respondents said they were in favor... The survey also reported that more respondents said the surveillance would not make them feel any safer. TechCrunch reports that Flock CEO Garrett "faces a growing public outcry around concerns that Flock's surveillance cameras, drones, and license plate recognition technology could be misused." Responding to reports of police abusing Flock's system, Langley told CBS News " I don't think that Flock created police abuse. I think we're the first company to ever shine a light on it and build the tools to find it." But Futurism notes that "a grand jury in Ohio declined to bring felony charges against a man accused of destroying a Flock camera earlier this month — perhaps the clearest sign yet of the country's overwhelming hatred for the surveillance gadgets." And Newsweek documents more of the backlash:Flock Chief Executive Garrett Langley recently became the subject of a doxxing campaign after his home address was circulated online by opponents of the company's technology, underscoring how deeply divisive the issue has become. TechCrunch reports Flock's CEO is now calling for new laws — at the state level — regulating not Flock's cameras but the police officers who use them:Langley has said that state regulators should "pass bills that make [the illegal use of Flock data] a criminal offense." And during his Fox News interview, he pointed to the changes the company has already made, while also saying, "Today, it is too often that in Flock and in other technologies, there's no regulation. There's no accountability, and we think that's wrong." But Flock has its supporters. One local police department used a 3D printer to create a fake "decoy" camera, then monitored it for five days until they arrested a Florida man for knocking it down. 404 Media suggests that because the man told officers he believed it was a camera worth between $1,000 and $5,000, he was charged with three felonies including "grand theft" and criminal mischief of property damage worth over $1,000, plus property crimes against computer equipment supplies. Ironically, days earlier the City Council was already considering a resolution to end their city's use of Flock cameras altogether...
 
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- Xylitol Linked To Strokes and Heart Attacks, Study Finds
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A common sweetener used in products such as chewing gum, toothpaste, jam, yoghurts and ice-cream has been linked to an increased risk of strokes, heart attacks and death. Xylitol is a sugar alcohol present in some natural foods in very low amounts. It is also added -- often in amounts 1,000 times higher -- to artificially sweeten foods, beverages and oral care products. Despite its growing use, the long-term health impacts of xylitol have never been widely studied. In the largest study of its kind, researchers found high blood levels of xylitol were associated with an increased risk of major adverse cardiovascular events. The findings were presented in Munich at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) annual congress, the world's largest heart conference. Researchers looked at 17,710 people and compared the 25% with the highest levels of xylitol in their blood against the 25% with the lowest. Those who had the highest amount were 57% more likely to die or suffer a heart attack or stroke, than those with the least, within six years. Even after 30 years, they were still 18% more likely to have suffered one of these cardiac events. Taken with data from the middle quartiles, the results from both cohorts suggested a dose-dependent relationship: the higher the xylitol blood levels, the higher the cardiovascular event rate. Furthermore, the researchers showed that there was consistent increase in cardiovascular events with xylitol irrespective of baseline characteristics, such as age and sex. The researchers also highlighted that the association was independent of underlying factors such as body mass index, hypertension, diabetes and lipid levels, which might predispose people to low-calorie products.
 
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- The World's Busiest Spaceport Is About To Get a Lot Quieter, At Least For Now
SpaceX is significantly reducing Falcon 9 launches from Florida this year, ending the Space Coast's decade-long run as the world's busiest spaceport as more missions shift to Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The slowdown is expected to continue until Starship begins flying regularly from Florida. Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: A Falcon 9 launch early Tuesday was the last planned Starlink mission from Cape Canaveral until SpaceX begins flying Starship missions from Florida, according to Kiko Dontchev, the company's vice president of launch. For at least the rest of the year, and maybe longer, this means the launch rate at the Florida spaceport will drop from eight or nine per month to perhaps two per month. It wasn't long ago when two launches per month was the norm, an indication of just how quickly SpaceX's launch cadence has grown. Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center sit on adjoining property and share the same range on Florida's east coast, so it is worth considering them a single spaceport. The last time the Florida spaceport did not lead the world in space launches was in 2015. "From here on, Starlink missions out of Florida will fly on Starship," Dontchev wrote on X. "The West Coast team will continue regularly launching Starlink from Vandenberg." "Yep, that'll be louder -- but everybody knows the real action will be in Louisiana, starting in 2029 or so," writes schwit1. SpaceX on Tuesday announced plans to spend up to $100 billion building a new Starship launch facility in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, which the state says could eventually "support thousands of launches annually." Further reading: Musk's other unstated reasons for shutting down Falcon 9 in Florida (Behind The Black)
 
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- Trump Creates a Space Academy and Honors the Artemis Astronauts
President Trump awarded the four-member Artemis II crew the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and signed an executive order directing the creation of a new U.S. Space Academy. The proposed academy would train engineers, scientists, technicians, operators, and astronauts for NASA, the Space Force, and the commercial space industry. Houston Public Media reports: The Artemis II crew -- NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen -- retraced history as they flew around the moon and back in April, the first time humans have been in lunar territory since the 1970s. He had previously hosted the crew members at the White House following their mission and called them during the mission while the crew was tens of thousands of miles away. "The one thing that really sticks out to us [from that call] is you said how proud you are and how proud our nation is for the job that we've just accomplished," Wiseman said during Friday's ceremony. "And for us, that is what we set out to do. We wanted to inspire this nation to learn." During the ceremony, Trump also signed an executive order to create the "United States Space Academy." Under the order, a Presidential Commission on the U.S. Space Academy has 120 days to create a report with guidelines for the U.S. Space Academy. The Commission will include NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman as its Chair, as well as other NASA and space officials. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Trump's Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Michael Kratsios, assistant to the president for science and technology. In effect, it allows the Trump Administration to build the U.S. Space Academy to its liking. "It will serve both the United States Space Force as well as NASA and the civilian spaceflight industry," Trump said. "And it will attract, train, graduate the very best that our nation and our nation really has to offer." As for where the academy will be located, Trump said he was "going to be choosing a location very shortly."
 
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- From DHCP to SZTP – The Trust Revolution
By Juha Holkkola, FusionLayer Group The Dawn of Effortless Connectivity In the transformative years of the late 1990s, a quiet revolution took place, fundamentally altering how we connect to networks. The introduction of DHCP answered a crucial question, Where are you on the network?!, by automating IP address assignment. This innovation eradicated the manual configuration [0]
The post From DHCP to SZTP – The Trust Revolution appeared first on Linux.com.

- Another x86 Advisory From Some Entity Other Than Intel Or AMD
Last October I highlighted an interesting post on the Linux kernel mailing list around an x86 corporate entity other than Intel or AMD that left mysterious intrigue. The developer that detailed those x86 opcode/CPUID/MSR allocations back in July then detailed 16-tile and 32-tile AMX implementations again for something outside the current scope of Intel/AMD processors. Today another message is being relayed from that "corporate entity other than Intel/AMD."..
- GNOME9s Very Exciting Week From Flatpak Funding To Reset Recovery Plus Apps
This week was extremely eventful in the GNOME space with GPU reset recovery for GNOME Mutter now largely wrapped up and the merge request opened to facilitate the code review. There was also the announcement of the half million Euro Sovereign Tech Agency investment into Flatpak. Plus on the application side were a few more interesting advancements this week.'..

- EasyEffects should be part of every Linux distribution and desktop environment to massively improve laptop speaker sound quality
Virtually all laptop speakers suck. Its the one area where even really expensive laptops tend to fall on their ass, leaving users with a tinny, harsh, and hollow sound experience. While you cant exactly overcome physics laptop speakers are necessarily small and thus just cannot ever sound as good as proper speakers theres a lot you can do with proper tuning and software magic. If youre a desktop Linux user, you actually already possess all the plumbing needed to fix your audio; its just not exposed to you in any way. Luckily, an application called EasyEffects allows you to actually make use of desktop Linux advanced audio features to massively improve the sound quality of your laptops speakers. EasyEffects own description on its GitHub page doesnt really explain what it does or what its capable of, so heres the description from Wikipedia instead. EasyEffects uses PipeWire to process incoming and outgoing audio streams independently and can apply various sound effects in the form of plug-ins made by different developer teams such as Calf Studio Gear, MDA.LV2 and GStreamer. All plugins have their own presets and can be applicable inside the suite rather than having to use a different mixer or executing a script from the command line. Available output effects are limiter, auto volume, compressor of dynamic range, filter, 30 bands parametric equalizer, bass enhancer, exciter, reverbation, crossfeed, delay, maximizer and spectrum analyzer. Available input effects are WebRTC, limiter, compressor, filter, equalizer, de-esser, reverbation, pitch shift and spectrum analyzer. ↫ EasEffects Wikipedia page None of this matters, and you can forget everything from these two paragraphs. What matters is that using EasyEffects, you can tune the audio coming out of your speakers to make them sound a lot better. The few laptops on the market that do have decent audio MacBooks, some Dell XPS laptops, and surely a few more arent magically defying physics. While they probably do have objectively higher-quality speakers, the main difference between those laptops and laptops with crappy-sounding speakers is that the former come with built-in tuning from the factory to make them sound much better than they would without any software trickery. If you know your way around audio, you can very much use EasyEffects and tune your laptop speakers from scratch to massively improve how they sound. However, that requires time, experience, knowledge, and expertise that most people lack, including myself. Lucky for us, though, there are countless downloadable presets out there for EasyEffects designed specifically to make laptops sound better. In an ideal world, youd pick a preset created specifically for your laptop make and model, but odds are you wont find one, so for most laptops youll have to settle for a generic preset that tries to do its best. Ive long settled on the Advanced Auto Gain.json preset from JackHack96, which greatly improves the audio performance on any laptops Ive tried it on, but of course, theres countless other presets for you to try to see if theres anything that suits your particular laptop and ears better. Getting all of this up and running is really easy. EasyEffects is most likely packaged by your Linux distribution, and the latest version is always available as a Flatpak from Flathub. Download the preset(s) you want to try, copy them either to ~/.config/easyeffects (if you use your distributions package) or to ~/.var/app/com.github.wwmm.easyeffects/data/easyeffects/output/ (if you use the Flatpak version). Theyll show up right away in the Presets tab in EasyEffects, ready to be turned on and off whenever you want, making it very easy to compare and contrast to find the one you like best. EasyEffects can live in your system tray giving you easy access to your presets without having to open the main window, and it can be set to start automatically at boot. EasyEffects can also be turned on and off on the fly. Theres obvious downsides to all of this, too, of course. First, since youre most likely going to be using a generic preset not specifically crafted for your laptop, theres no guarantee the results will be positive for you. Second, not every preset is ideal for every type of audio. Most of my audio consists of YouTube videos with mostly speech; if you listen mostly to music, different presets may yield better results. Third, audio quality is deeply subjective, and what sounds good to my ears may sound like total garbage to yours. Fourth, EasyEffects does take up a tiny fraction of CPU power (Im talking 0.1-0.2% according to KDEs System Monitor), but I have never seen it have any noticeable performance impact on anything. Even the generic preset I use makes such a massive difference for me on every laptop Ive ever tried it on, that Ive become convinced EasyEffects and a few of the generic presets should be installed by default by any desktop-oriented Linux distribution. On top of that, Linux laptops OEMs like System76, Nova Custom, Star Labs, and so on, should really take the time to create proper presets for their laptops to improve their sound quality out of the box. I feel like if youre already designing and selling laptops, you probably also have the skills and means to create a decent preset. In fact, Id take it a step further and urge desktop environments like KDE and GNOME to properly integrate EasyEffects into their sound settings. They shouldnt include the entire application and its user interface, but should make it so that you can configure and manage presets right from the sound settings panels, and switch between presets from their volume applets (as well as turn it off entirely, of course). This would leave the full EasyEffects application for people who need more control, manual tuning, and more advanced features. Theres absolutely no reason why speakers on Linux laptops should sound tinny, harsh, and hollow. The Linux desktop has all the technologies and features built right in to make speakers sound much better than they do without any tuning,
- IBM announces dual-ISA processor: ARM and IBM Z code running natively on the same cores
Built on a 2 nanometer technology node, the processor’s design will contain 11 high-performance cores operating at more than 5.7 GHz, AI inference accelerators for in-transaction fraud detection, a dedicated on-chip data processing unit for I/O acceleration, and a large cache architecture for demanding enterprise workloads. The chip is architected to not contain separate Arm and IBM cores: each processor core can natively execute Arm and IBM Z, or Arm and LinuxONE, instructions concurrently while prioritizing the platforms established performance, security, encryption, and availability characteristics. IBM Z and LinuxONE platforms are capable of scaling to hundreds of cores and tens of terabytes of memory. ↫ IBM press release IBM is still doing some amazing chip architecture design. ServeTheHome has more details of how this works: A key choice here is that IBM implemented AArch64 in full hardware rather than through translation. This design uses a little-endian Arm implementation alongside big-endian z/Architecture, with AArch64 v9.3, SVE and SVE2 support, and 2,792 implemented AArch64 instructions. IBM also claims Arm SystemReady compliance, which matters for how much off-the-shelf Arm software this core can absorb. This is absolutely crazy technology. Arm software sees a native Arm processor. Arm runs unmodified, out-of-the-box, and onto a standard Arm platform. IBM said the 2792 AArch64 instructions are more than twice the Z instructions. IBM made a funny quip about “reduced” in RISC. ↫ Patrick Kennedy at ServeTheHome This is bonkers technology. We can only dream of this ever serving a home.
- Haiku R1/beta6 released
Its always a special day on OSNews when Haiku has a new release. While OSNews was founded in 1997, it wasnt until 2001, when Eugenia took over and relaunched the site, that we really got going. Eugenia came from BeNews, a popular BeOS news website, which shut down in the wake of Be, Incs infamous focus shift! away from BeOS as a general purpose desktop operating system. BeOS continues to have a special place on OSNews ever since. Today marks the release of Haiku R1/beta6, the first official Haiku release in two years. As such, this new beta covers a monumental amount of progress since beta5, progress Ive reported on diligently. The highlights of this new beta include a port of Firefox (including branding) and many of its forks, much improve support for Qemu, a new memory allocated largely based on the one from OpenBSD, and improved support for various filesystems. Of course, theres a massive list of performance improvements, memory management changes, as well as a truly massive number of new application ports. Its important to note, as I usually do, that while these Haiku beta releases serve as patches of calm in rough seas, Haiku is generally stable and capable enough that using the projects nightly releases is usually a totally acceptable way of installing and running the operating system. If youre not comfortable running nightly releases, however, and havent tried Haiku since the previous beta, youre in for a massive overall improvement. Everybody loves Haiku.
- Genode OS Framework 26.08 released
Right on schedule as always theres a new Genode OS Framework release, version 26.08. The highlights of Genode 26.08 are VirtualBox 7, improved PC performance of our custom microkernel, the new ability to transparently reconfigure virtual file systems, revised timing and timeout handling, and a Linux 6.18.19 device-driver environment for ARM. Furthermore, the first version of a Goa-based SDK has become natively available for Sculpt OS. ↫ Release announcement on the Genode website The release announcement linked above is a mere quick overview; if you want all the possible details you could want, the release notes got you covered.
- An actively maintained and updated Motif fork actually exists
Motif is great, I love how it looks and feels, and I want it to be actively maintained. I want a healthy ecosystem of Motif applications and even window managers and desktop environments, so I can run a real Motif environment. Sadly, while Motif has been open source for a while, the project itself stalled years ago, with little to no activity from anyone involved. That may be changing, as a number of developers decided to take matters into their own hands last year. This fork of Motif was born of a desire to keep Motif (and other X11 technologies) alive and well. The original upstream Sourceforge project hasnt had any activity in over two years, none of the project admins have been active for at least that amount of time, the official bug tracker has disappeared into the void; and the user forum was closed way back in 2017. Sadly, it appears that the original upstream has abandoned the project. Ive incorporated some fixes from upstream that have laid dormant for years, a few others from Gentoo, and made a few improvements of my own. I intend to maintain this fork, and in doing so advocate for the continued use of the user interface toolkit that defined an era, and influenced many of the user interfaces that came after it. ↫ Tim Hentenaar at the Motif forks GitHub page Some of the people involved are people I know online, so I have a bit of faith in this fork being able to stand the test of time, but of course, managing a complex project like this is hard, so who knows how long the enthusiasm remains. Still, this fork has seen five releases since its inception a little over a year ago, which seems promising. It may seem weird for some to have a love for Motif, but Im the kind of person who installs weird, outdated corporate and industrial software I dont understand on my HP c8000 dual PA-RISC workstation running HP-UX just to enjoy the Motif interfaces they sometimes ship. We all have our quirks. From my experiences talking to people online, I know theres actually a rather solid number of people like me, and I hope that at some point the developers in this group can gain enough critical mass to build something like a basic Linux distribution or desktop environment using the disparate, actively-maintained Motif projects out there that yes, still exist. Its a long shot, but in todays computing landscape, where more and more people feel uncomfortable with modern! software, I really feel like theres a niche for something like this to exist. A really small niche, surely, but a niche all the same.
- AROS gets official Raspberry Pi images
AROS, the open source Amiga OS-compatible operating system, now has images available for the Raspberry Pi 3 (although some people state it also works on the Pi 4), in both 32bit and 64bit versions. According to the AROS team, they are quite stable, but not yet complete, so do know what youre getting into. Dan Wood posted a YouTube video about these new images, providing much more insight into how well they work if you want more insight into how well they work. The images are, of course, the basic AROS operating system, so expect a rather barebones experience. If youre used to some of the AROS distributions for x86, which come loaded with software and customisations, these images will feel quite bare to you. Its going to take some time to port over all of these applications and customisations to the ARM version of AROS, but if and once that happens, I expect more complete images to appear as well. Great news for AROS and the Amiga community in general.
- Japan tried to build an operating system for the entire world: TRON
Ah, Japans TRON project every few years someone discovers it anew and it bubbles back up the surface, and deservedly so, as its an incredibly interesting operating system project that, like so many others, deserved a better fate. Theres a version of computing history where the desktop OS that won wasnt Windows. Not because the alternative was Unix-based or because Apple pulled off something different, but because an operating system designed at the University of Tokyo in 1984 was ambitious enough to try to replace the file system with a hypermedia document model, run on a custom Japanese CPU architecture, and encode 1.5 million characters, only to have a US trade report single it out as an unfair trade barrier in 1989. That project was TRON (The Real-time Operating system Nucleus), a real, government-backed Japanese computing initiative whose desktop variant, BTRON, was named in a US trade barrier report and effectively killed before it could reach schools nationwide. Meanwhile, its embedded counterpart, ITRON, quietly became one of the most deployed operating systems in history. TRONs history has since attracted some genuinely wild conspiracy theories, including one claiming that Japan Airlines Flight 123 was deliberately crashed in order to target the TRON developers on board, despite there being no evidence that any TRON developers were even on the flight. But the strangest part of the story isnt even a conspiracy theory: BTRONs hypermedia desktop was decades ahead of what the market could support, and SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son may have helped sink it from the inside. ↫ Adam Conway at XDA The most interesting part of TRON for me was the different ways it treated files and documents compared to other operating systems. Instead of focusing on applications and files as the core interaction points for users, it focused on the document. While most operating systems associate specific files with specific applications, TRON associated individual components of documents with individual handlers. If you want to edit a Word document today, you open Word and do all your editing work inside Word, whether youre editing blocks of text or an image, or you open entirely different applications when Words capabilities for a certain component in a document are too limited. In TRON, youd open a document, and only once you wanted to edit specific components did it open! an application! to perform the editing, without actually leaving the document in question. Want to edit an image inside your document? In most operating systems, youd have to open a separate image editor, load the relevant image file into it, make your edits, save the image file, and then paste said edited image file back into your document. Theres a considerable amount of overhead here that shouldnt really exist; a computer is more than smart enough to open up just the editing controls from a different application if need be. In our current paradigm, applications often solve! this by adding ever more features and controls and tools to cover every possible object or component you might have to deal with, but that just makes applications more complex, more bloated, and more difficult to use. TRONs approach has been tried in a variety of times and places, but it never caught on. My personal pet theory is that the application-first model is far better at wealth extraction and concentration than TRONs model, and as such, thats what we ended up with. If a users document and all of its constituent parts are tied to and wrapped up into a single application from a single vendor, its much easier to control said user and extract wealth from them than when that user can just pick and choose whatever handler they want to use for whatever object they happen to run into in a document, without having to open tons of different applications and move, copy, and paste stuff all the time. In fact, this is also why consistency in user interface design is now all but dead; application developers and vendors use their own weird, non-standard, custom user interfaces for branding purposes. Sticking to a platforms standards and conventions makes it harder to stand out and put your brand! in peoples faces. But I digress. Regardless, Im not sure if all the stories about the US trying to bury TRON have any real value to them, as even the article itself notes (undoing its own clickbaity headline) that the project already seemed to be in dire straights even before it got a buried mention in some trade document. On top of that, ITRON, the embedded TRON variant, survived and thrives to this very day, powering untold numbers of devices. It seems to have done quite well for itself, supposed US government intervention or no. This article by Steven J. Searle also takes a look at the workstation-focused variant of TRON.
- Reverse-engineering Apples Find My people
So that is the whole pipeline exercised end-to-end. GrandSlam authenticates the Apple Account and obtains the IDS delegate. authenticateDS and id-register turn the Linux process into a registered Apple messaging identity. The Friends sequence attaches that identity to the existing accepted relationship. A missing-key SubscribeAndFetch makes the sharing device deliver its current P-224 key over APNs/IDS, inside a sender-verified P-256 NGM envelope. A second SearchParty fetch returns the encrypted report, and the P-224 key opens it locally. So yeah, in one sentence: authenticate to Apple’s private services, register the Linux machine as an IDS client, receive the existing Find My share key, and use it to fetch and decrypt a consented friend’s latest location. ↫ Zerotistic I wonder if it would be possible to build a proper third-party client for Apples Find My network like this, or if it would be trivial for the company to block it. Im fairly sure quite a few people would love to be able to keep using Find My when moving away from Apples operating systems.
- Windows news sites are reviewing context menus and its perversely delightful
When I wrote about using Windows 11 for a month as part of the ongoing OSNews fundraiser (keep donating to get me to do the same for macOS!), one of the things I mentioned was that the modern desktop context menu has its own classic Win32 context menu!. This is, in fact, a long-standing complaint Ive repeatedly used as the perfect example of just how chaotic and low-quality Windows has become. Thankfully, and naturally I fully attribute this to my repeated complaints (*), Microsoft has been working on a brand new, faster, configurable context menu, and Neowin actually reviewed it. If you ask me, this revamped context menu addresses just about the biggest problem users had with the one in Windows 11, and that is the need to click through more buttons than necessary to do simple things like renaming a file or opening its properties. That problem is now basically gone. I have no issues with the new design. It looks modern, it feels more consistent with the rest of Windows, and even though all the new sections can still make it look a little busy, you now have the option to make it as simple or as button-packed as you want. That should cover most use cases and preferences well. I’d even say that when the new context menu becomes available to everyone, my guide on how to bring back the classic context menu might become obsolete. ↫ Ivan Jenic at Neowin The biggest reason Im linking to this is not because I care about whatever monster of a context menu Windows users are having to deal with. No, Im only linking to this because I never in my life imagined Id be linking to a review of a context menu. I mean, at least its not the chess application icon. That would be embarrassing. I get a perverse sense of joy out of this.
- The road to MS-DOS 2
A great and concise history of the run-up to MS-DOS 2.0. Yet, there was a nagging feeling that a single-tasking CP/M clone was inadequate for the new generation of personal computers. Digital Research released multi-user, multitasking MP/M-86 in September 1981 and announced the single‑user multitasking Concurrent CP/M in early 1982. In response, Microsoft came up with a plan for tiered approach to its operating systems: single-user/single-tasking MS-DOS at the bottom; multi-user/multitasking XENIX at the top; and in the middle, something called XEDOS: a single-user version of XENIX. This “pyramid of upward-compatible operating systems” was announced in a Byte Magazine editorial in January 1982. ↫ Nemanja Trifunovic Ive always found this tiered approach fascinating, and the world surely wouldve looked quite different had Microsoft been able to make it work. I doubt Windows NT would ever have existed, and most of the world would probably be running a XENIX-based Windows today (all else being equal, which is of course unlikely and silly). Regardless, MS-DOS 2.0 contained a few UNIX-like utilities to deal with its brand new support for directory trees and other new features, and even had a /dev directory.

- EU OS: A Bold Step Toward Digital Sovereignty for Europe
Image A new initiative, called "EU OS," has been launched to develop a Linux-based operating system tailored specifically for the public sector organizations of the European Union (EU). This community-driven project aims to address the EU's unique needs and challenges, focusing on fostering digital sovereignty, reducing dependency on external vendors, and building a secure, self-sufficient digital ecosystem. What Is EU OS? EU OS is not an entirely novel operating system. Instead, it builds upon a Linux foundation derived from Fedora, with the KDE Plasma desktop environment. It draws inspiration from previous efforts such as France's GendBuntu and Munich's LiMux, which aimed to provide Linux-based systems for public sector use. The goal remains the same: to create a standardized Linux distribution that can be adapted to different regional, national, and sector-specific needs within the EU.
Rather than reinventing the wheel, EU OS focuses on standardization, offering a solid Linux foundation that can be customized according to the unique requirements of various organizations. This approach makes EU OS a practical choice for the public sector, ensuring broad compatibility and ease of implementation across diverse environments. The Vision Behind EU OS The guiding principle of EU OS is the concept of "public money – public code," ensuring that taxpayer money is used transparently and effectively. By adopting an open-source model, EU OS eliminates licensing fees, which not only lowers costs but also reduces the dependency on a select group of software vendors. This provides the EU’s public sector organizations with greater flexibility and control over their IT infrastructure, free from the constraints of vendor lock-in.
Additionally, EU OS offers flexibility in terms of software migration and hardware upgrades. Organizations can adapt to new technologies and manage their IT evolution at a manageable cost, both in terms of finances and time.
However, there are some concerns about the choice of Fedora as the base for EU OS. While Fedora is a solid and reliable distribution, it is backed by the United States-based Red Hat. Some argue that using European-backed projects such as openSUSE or KDE's upcoming distribution might have aligned better with the EU's goal of strengthening digital sovereignty. Conclusion EU OS marks a significant step towards Europe's digital independence by providing a robust, standardized Linux distribution for the public sector. By reducing reliance on proprietary software and vendors, it paves the way for a more flexible, cost-effective, and secure digital ecosystem. While the choice of Fedora as the base for the project has raised some questions, the overall vision of EU OS offers a promising future for Europe's public sector in the digital age.
Source: It's FOSS European Union
- Linus Torvalds Acknowledges Missed Release of Linux 6.14 Due to Oversight
Linus Torvalds Acknowledges Missed Release of Linux 6.14 Due to Oversight
Linux kernel lead developer Linus Torvalds has admitted to forgetting to release version 6.14, attributing the oversight to his own lapse in memory. Torvalds is known for releasing new Linux kernel candidates and final versions on Sunday afternoons, typically accompanied by a post detailing the release. If he is unavailable due to travel or other commitments, he usually informs the community ahead of time, so users don’t worry if there’s a delay.
In his post on March 16, Torvalds gave no indication that the release might be delayed, instead stating, “I expect to release the final 6.14 next weekend unless something very surprising happens.” However, Sunday, March 23rd passed without any announcement.
On March 24th, Torvalds wrote in a follow-up message, “I’d love to have some good excuse for why I didn’t do the 6.14 release yesterday on my regular Sunday afternoon schedule,” adding, “But no. It’s just pure incompetence.” He further explained that while he had been clearing up unrelated tasks, he simply forgot to finalize the release. “D'oh,” he joked.
Despite this minor delay, Torvalds’ track record of successfully managing the Linux kernel’s development process over the years remains strong. A single day’s delay is not critical, especially since most Linux users don't urgently need the very latest version.
The new 6.14 release introduces several important features, including enhanced support for writing drivers in Rust—an ongoing topic of discussion among developers—support for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile chip, a fix for the GhostWrite vulnerability in certain RISC-V processors from Alibaba’s T-Head Semiconductor, and a completed NTSYNC driver update that improves the WINE emulator’s ability to run Windows applications, particularly games, on Linux.
Although the 6.14 release went smoothly aside from the delay, Torvalds expressed that version 6.15 may present more challenges due to the volume of pending pull requests. “Judging by my pending pile of pull requests, 6.15 will be much busier,” he noted.
You can download the latest kernel here. Linus Torvalds kernel
- AerynOS 2025.03 Alpha Released with GNOME 48, Mesa 25, and Linux Kernel 6.13.8
Image AerynOS 2025.03 has officially been released, introducing a variety of exciting features for Linux users. The release includes the highly anticipated GNOME 48 desktop environment, which comes with significant improvements like HDR support, dynamic triple buffering, and a Wayland color management protocol. Other updates include a battery charge limiting feature and a Wellbeing option aimed at improving user experience.
This release, while still in alpha, incorporates Linux kernel 6.13.8 and the updated Mesa 25.0.2 graphics stack, alongside tools like LLVM 19.1.7 and Vulkan SDK 1.4.309.0. Additionally, the Moss package manager now integrates os-info to generate more detailed OS metadata via a JSON file.
Future plans for AerynOS include automated package updates, easier rollback management, improved disk handling with Rust, and fractional scaling enabled by default. The installer has also been revamped to support full disk wipes and dynamic partitioning.
Although still considered an alpha release, AerynOS 2025.03 can be downloaded and tested right now from its official website.
Source: 9to5Linux AerynOS
- Xojo 2025r1: Big Updates for Developers with Linux ARM Support, Web Drag and Drop, and Direct App Store Publishing
Image Xojo has just rolled out its latest release, Xojo 2025 Release 1, and it’s packed with features that developers have been eagerly waiting for. This major update introduces support for running Xojo on Linux ARM, including Raspberry Pi, brings drag-and-drop functionality to the Web framework, and simplifies app deployment with the ability to directly submit apps to the macOS and iOS App Stores.
Here’s a quick overview of what’s new in Xojo 2025r1: 1. Linux ARM IDE Support Xojo 2025r1 now allows developers to run the Xojo IDE on Linux ARM devices, including popular platforms like Raspberry Pi. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities for developers who want to create apps for ARM-based devices without the usual complexity. Whether you’re building for a Raspberry Pi or other ARM devices, this update makes it easier than ever to get started. 2. Web Drag and Drop One of the standout features in this release is the addition of drag-and-drop support for web applications. Now, developers can easily drag and drop visual controls in their web projects, making it simpler to create interactive, user-friendly web applications. Plus, the WebListBox has been enhanced with support for editable cells, checkboxes, and row reordering via dragging. No JavaScript required! 3. Direct App Store Publishing Xojo has also streamlined the process of publishing apps. With this update, developers can now directly submit macOS and iOS apps to App Store Connect right from the Xojo IDE. This eliminates the need for multiple steps and makes it much easier to get apps into the App Store, saving valuable time during the development process. 4. New Desktop and Mobile Features This release isn’t just about web and Linux updates. Xojo 2025r1 brings some great improvements for desktop and mobile apps as well. On the desktop side, all projects now include a default window menu for macOS apps. On the mobile side, Xojo has introduced new features for Android and iOS, including support for ColorGroup and Dark Mode on Android, and a new MobileColorPicker for iOS to simplify color selection. 5. Performance and IDE Enhancements Xojo’s IDE has also been improved in several key areas. There’s now an option to hide toolbar captions, and the toolbar has been made smaller on Windows. The IDE on Windows and Linux now features modern Bootstrap icons, and the Documentation window toolbar is more compact. In the code editor, developers can now quickly navigate to variable declarations with a simple Cmd/Ctrl + Double-click. Plus, performance for complex container layouts in the Layout Editor has been enhanced. What Does This Mean for Developers? Xojo 2025r1 brings significant improvements across all the platforms that Xojo supports, from desktop and mobile to web and Linux. The added Linux ARM support opens up new opportunities for Raspberry Pi and ARM-based device development, while the drag-and-drop functionality for web projects will make it easier to create modern, interactive web apps. The ability to publish directly to the App Store is a game-changer for macOS and iOS developers, reducing the friction of app distribution. How to Get Started Xojo is free for learning and development, as well as for building apps for Linux and Raspberry Pi. If you’re ready to dive into cross-platform development, paid licenses start at $99 for a single-platform desktop license, and $399 for cross-platform desktop, mobile, or web development. For professional developers who need additional resources and support, Xojo Pro and Pro Plus licenses start at $799. You can also find special pricing for educators and students.
Download Xojo 2025r1 today at xojo.com. Final Thoughts With each new release, Xojo continues to make cross-platform development more accessible and efficient. The 2025r1 release is no exception, delivering key updates that simplify the development process and open up new possibilities for developers working on a variety of platforms. Whether you’re a Raspberry Pi enthusiast or a mobile app developer, Xojo 2025r1 has something for you. Xojo ARM
- New 'Mirrored' Network Mode Introduced in Windows Subsystem for Linux
Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) continues to evolve with the release of WSL 2 version 0.0.2. This update introduces a set of opt-in preview features designed to enhance performance and compatibility.
Key additions include "Automatic memory reclaim" which dynamically optimizes WSL's memory footprint, and "Sparse VHD" to shrink the size of the virtual hard disk file. These improvements aim to streamline resource usage.
Additionally, a new "mirrored networking mode" brings expanded networking capabilities like IPv6 and multicast support. Microsoft claims this will improve VPN and LAN connectivity from both the Windows host and Linux guest.
Complementing this is a new "DNS Tunneling" feature that changes how DNS queries are resolved to avoid compatibility issues with certain network setups. According to Microsoft, this should reduce problems connecting to the internet or local network resources within WSL.
Advanced firewall configuration options are also now available through Hyper-V integration. The new "autoProxy" feature ensures WSL seamlessly utilizes the Windows system proxy configuration.
Microsoft states these features are currently rolling out to Windows Insiders running Windows 11 22H2 Build 22621.2359 or later. They remain opt-in previews to allow testing before final integration into WSL.
By expanding WSL 2 with compelling new capabilities in areas like resource efficiency, networking, and security, Microsoft aims to make Linux on Windows more performant and compatible. This evolutionary approach based on user feedback highlights Microsoft's commitment to WSL as a key part of the Windows ecosystem. Windows
- Linux Threat Report: Earth Lusca Deploys Novel SprySOCKS Backdoor in Attacks on Government Entities
The threat actor Earth Lusca, linked to Chinese state-sponsored hacking groups, has been observed utilizing a new Linux backdoor dubbed SprySOCKS to target government organizations globally.
As initially reported in January 2022 by Trend Micro, Earth Lusca has been active since at least 2021 conducting cyber espionage campaigns against public and private sector targets in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. Their tactics include spear-phishing and watering hole attacks to gain initial access. Some of Earth Lusca's activities overlap with another Chinese threat cluster known as RedHotel.
In new research, Trend Micro reveals Earth Lusca remains highly active, even expanding operations in the first half of 2023. Primary victims are government departments focused on foreign affairs, technology, and telecommunications. Attacks concentrate in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and the Balkans regions.
After breaching internet-facing systems by exploiting flaws in Fortinet, GitLab, Microsoft Exchange, Telerik UI, and Zimbra software, Earth Lusca uses web shells and Cobalt Strike to move laterally. Their goal is exfiltrating documents and credentials, while also installing additional backdoors like ShadowPad and Winnti for long-term spying.
The Command and Control server delivering Cobalt Strike was also found hosting SprySOCKS - an advanced backdoor not previously publicly reported. With roots in the Windows malware Trochilus, SprySOCKS contains reconnaissance, remote shell, proxy, and file operation capabilities. It communicates over TCP mimicking patterns used by a Windows trojan called RedLeaves, itself built on Trochilus.
At least two SprySOCKS versions have been identified, indicating ongoing development. This novel Linux backdoor deployed by Earth Lusca highlights the increasing sophistication of Chinese state-sponsored threats. Robust patching, access controls, monitoring for unusual activities, and other proactive defenses remain essential to counter this advanced malware.
The Trend Micro researchers emphasize that organizations must minimize attack surfaces, regularly update systems, and ensure robust security hygiene to interrupt the tactics, techniques, and procedures of relentless threat groups like Earth Lusca. Security
- Linux Kernel Faces Reduction in Long-Term Support Due to Maintenance Challenges
The Linux kernel is undergoing major changes that will shape its future development and adoption, according to Jonathan Corbet, Linux kernel developer and executive editor of Linux Weekly News. Speaking at the Open Source Summit Europe, Corbet provided an update on the latest Linux kernel developments and a glimpse of what's to come.
A major change on the horizon is a reduction in long-term support (LTS) for kernel versions from six years to just two years. Corbet explained that maintaining old kernel branches indefinitely is unsustainable and most users have migrated to newer versions, so there's little point in continuing six years of support. While some may grumble about shortened support lifecycles, the reality is that constantly backporting fixes to ancient kernels strains maintainers.
This maintainer burnout poses a serious threat, as Corbet highlighted. Maintaining Linux is largely a volunteer effort, with only about 200 of the 2,000+ developers paid for their contributions. The endless demands on maintainers' time from fuzz testing, fixing minor bugs, and reviewing contributions takes a toll. Prominent maintainers have warned they need help to avoid collapse. Companies relying on Linux must realize giving back financially is in their interest to sustain this vital ecosystem.
The Linux kernel is also wading into waters new with the introduction of Rust code. While Rust solves many problems, it also introduces new complexities around language integration, evolving standards, and maintainer expertise. Corbet believes Rust will pass the point of no return when core features depend on it, which may occur soon with additions like Apple M1 GPU drivers. Despite skepticism in some corners, Rust's benefits likely outweigh any transition costs.
On the distro front, Red Hat's decision to restrict RHEL cloning sparked community backlash. While business considerations were at play, Corbet noted technical factors too. Using older kernels with backported fixes, as RHEL does, risks creating divergent, vendor-specific branches. The Android model of tracking mainline kernel dev more closely has shown security benefits. Ultimately, Linux works best when aligned with the broader community.
In closing, Corbet recalled the saying "Linux is free like a puppy is free." Using open source seems easy at first, but sustaining it long-term requires significant care and feeding. As Linux is incorporated into more critical systems, that maintenance becomes ever more crucial. The kernel changes ahead are aimed at keeping Linux healthy and vibrant for the next generation of users, businesses, and developers. kernel
- Linux Celebrates 32 Years with the Release of 6.6-rc2 Version
Today marks the 32nd anniversary of Linus Torvalds introducing the inaugural Linux 0.01 kernel version, and celebrating this milestone, Torvalds has launched the Linux 6.6-rc2. Among the noteworthy updates are the inclusion of a feature catering to the ASUS ROG Flow X16 tablet's mode handling and the renaming of the new GenPD subsystem to pmdomain.
The Linux 6.6 edition is progressing well, brimming with exciting new features that promise to enhance user experience. Early benchmarks are indicating promising results, especially on high-core-count servers, pointing to a potentially robust and efficient update in the Linux series.
Here is what Linus Torvalds had to say in today's announcement: Another week, another -rc.I think the most notable thing about 6.6-rc2 is simply that it'sexactly 32 years to the day since the 0.01 release. And that's a roundnumber if you are a computer person.Because other than the random date, I don't see anything that reallystands out here. We've got random fixes all over, and none of it looksparticularly strange. The genpd -> pmdomain rename shows up in thediffstat, but there's no actual code changes involved (make sure touse "git diff -M" to see them as zero-line renames).And other than that, things look very normal. Sure, the architecturefixes happen to be mostly parisc this week, which isn't exactly theusual pattern, but it's also not exactly a huge amount of changes.Most of the (small) changes here are in drivers, with some tracingfixes and just random things. The shortlog below is short enough toscroll through and get a taste of what's been going on. Linus Torvalds
- Introducing Bavarder: A User-Friendly Linux Desktop App for Quick ChatGPT Interaction
Want to interact with ChatGPT from your Linux desktop without using a web browser?
Bavarder, a new app, allows you to do just that.
Developed with Python and GTK4/libadwaita, Bavarder offers a simple concept: pose a question to ChatGPT, receive a response, and promptly copy the answer (or your inquiry) to the clipboard for pasting elsewhere.
With an incredibly user-friendly interface, you won't require AI expertise (or a novice blogger) to comprehend it. Type your question in the top box, click the blue send button, and wait for a generated response to appear at the bottom. You can edit or modify your message and repeat the process as needed.
During our evaluation, Bavarder employed BAI Chat, a GPT-3.5/ChatGPT API-based chatbot that's free and doesn't require signups or API keys. Future app versions will incorporate support for alternative backends, such as ChatGPT 4 and Hugging Chat, and allow users to input an API key to utilize ChatGPT3.
At present, there's no option to regenerate a response (though you can resend the same question for a potentially different answer). Due to the lack of a "conversation" view, tracking a dialogue or following up on answers can be challenging — but Bavarder excels for rapid-fire questions.
As with any AI, standard disclaimers apply. Responses might seem plausible but could contain inaccurate or false information. Additionally, it's relatively easy to lead these models into irrational loops, like convincing them that 2 + 2 equals 106 — so stay alert!
Overall, Bavarder is an attractive app with a well-defined purpose. If you enjoy ChatGPT and similar technologies, it's worth exploring. ChatGPT AI
- LibreOffice 7.5.3 Released: Third Maintenance Update Brings 119 Bug Fixes to Popular Open-Source Office Suite
Today, The Document Foundation unveiled the release and widespread availability of LibreOffice 7.5.3, which serves as the third maintenance update to the current LibreOffice 7.5 open-source and complimentary office suite series.
Approximately five weeks after the launch of LibreOffice 7.5.2, LibreOffice 7.5.3 arrives with a new set of bug fixes for those who have successfully updated their GNU/Linux system to the LibreOffice 7.5 series.
LibreOffice 7.5.3 addresses a total of 119 bugs identified by users or uncovered by LibreOffice developers. For a more comprehensive understanding of these bug fixes, consult the RC1 and RC2 changelogs.
You can download LibreOffice 7.5.3 directly from the LibreOffice websiteor from SourceForge as binary installers for DEB or RPM-based GNU/Linux distributions. A source tarball is also accessible for individuals who prefer to compile the software from sources or for system integrators.
All users operating the LibreOffice 7.5 office suite series should promptly update their installations to the new point release, which will soon appear in the stable software repositories of your GNU/Linux distributions.
In early February 2023, LibreOffice 7.5 debuted as a substantial upgrade to the widely-used open-source office suite, introducing numerous features and improvements. These enhancements encompass major upgrades to dark mode support, new application and MIME-type icons, a refined Single Toolbar UI, enhanced PDF Export, and more.
Seven maintenance updates will support LibreOffice 7.5 until November 30th, 2023. The next point release, LibreOffice 7.5.4, is scheduled for early June and will include additional bug fixes.
The Document Foundation once again emphasizes that the LibreOffice office suite's "Community" edition is maintained by volunteers and members of the Open Source community. For enterprise implementations, they suggest using the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners. LibreOffice

- CachyOS Gets an Update
CachyOS August 2026 release is now available with the latest version of KDE, some new features, and plenty of improvements.
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