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(Two Column)
- [$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for June 25, 2026
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:
Front: Free-threaded Python; AUR attacks; Fedora 2FA; 7.2 merge window; BPF arenas; BPF coroutines; BPF JIT; RMR and BRMR; OSPM. Briefs: Tor deprecations; GIMP 0.54.1 flatpak; Mastodon 4.6; Systemd v261; Xfce on Wayland; Quotes; ... Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.
- [$] Fedora: 2FA, or not 2FA, that is the question
Compromised accounts are one of the most common ways that attackerscan sneak malware into the open-source supply chain. One way toreduce account compromise is for projects to require two-factorauthentication (2FA) or multi-factor authentication (MFA), but that iseasier said than done. However, Fedora is currently discussing putting2FA requirements in place soon, following an an alleged accountcompromise that led to an AI agent causing a number of problemsfor the project. After some discussion, Fedora will begin by requiringpackagers in the "provenpackager"group to enable 2FA within the next three months or so.
- [$] A helper library for BPF arenas
BPF arenas are areas of memory (potentially shared with user space)where programs have free reign to build theirown data structures, unburdened by the verifier's bounds checks. Many of thosedata structures are potentially usable in multiple programs. Emil Tsalapatisbrought his work on libarena, a library containing generic utilities for use inBPF arenas, to the 2026Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory-Management, and BPFSummit. Although the library is already available as part of the kernel, itis still in its early stages and he has more work planned.
- [$] Reports from OSPM 2026, day two
The Power Managementand Scheduling in the Linux Kernel Summit, which still goes by thehistorical acronym OSPM, was held in Cambridge, UK, in mid-April. As hasbecome traditional, the presenters at that event have since writtensummaries of their sessions, and this work has kindly been made availableto LWN for publication. The second day's sessions covered a wide range oftopics, including device frequency scaling, using time-slice duration forCPU selection, scheduling domains on multi-cluster Arm systems, the LAVDscheduler, and more.
- Security updates for Wednesday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (corosync, firefox, kernel, kernel-rt, libpq, memcached, postgresql, postgresql16, postgresql:13, postgresql:16, python-urllib3, python3.14-urllib3, redis:6, skopeo, and vim), Debian (beets, gst-plugins-bad1.0, imagemagick, libmatio, python-urllib3, and u-boot), Fedora (chromium, coturn, frr, grout, materialx, perl-Crypt-DSA, and yt-dlp), Mageia (opensc, perl-Archive-Tar, and podofo), Oracle (fence-agents, libpq, mysql:8.4, and postgresql:16), Red Hat (firefox, libpng, libpng12, libpng15, libreoffice, nginx:1.24, thunderbird, tigervnc, xorg-x11-server, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), Slackware (libarchive), SUSE (amazon-ssm-agent, ansible-core, apache2, bind, bitcoin-qt6, containerized-data-importer, curl, distribution, docker-stable, dovecot24, dracut, editorconfig-core-c, exiv2, firefox, freeipmi, freerdp, ghc-aws, ghc-crypton-asn1-encoding, ghc-crypton-asn1-parse, ghc-crypton-asn1-types, ghc-crypton-pem, glib-networking, go1.25, go1.26, google-guest-agent, graphite2, hamlib, helm, himmelblau, ignition, ImageMagick, kernel, ldns, libarchive, libcaca, libheif, libinput, libjxl, libsolv, libzypp, zypper, LibVNCServer, libxslt, libyang, mcphost, mozjs128, ncurses, nginx, opensc, openssl-3, openvswitch, papers, perl-HTML-Parser, perl-HTTP-Daemon, perl-Protocol-HTTP2, podman, postgresql14, postgresql15, postgresql16, postgresql17, python-aiohttp, python-ecdsa, python-paramiko, python-PyJWT, python-starlette, rekor, sqlite3, strongswan, tiff, tomcat, tomcat10, tomcat11, unbound, webkit2gtk3, xwayland, and zypper, libzypp, libsolv), and Ubuntu (libcap2, libnfs, libvncserver, libxml2, and mysql-8.0).
- Sunsetting Tor 0.4.8
The Tor Project has announcedthat it is planning to actively stop supporting Tor 0.4.8 and earlierC Tor versions soon.
Usually, we try not to break existing releases, even if they areunsupported, unless we have a pretty good reason. In this case, wehave several reasons. [...]
The most important reason is this: in 0.4.9, we have made someformer fields in our directory data obsolete -- specifically, TAPonion keys and familylines. Removing these fields will let us save a great deal ofclient directory bandwidth for everyone. This, in turn, will make allTor clients bootstrap a little faster, especially those on slowconnections. But when we remove these fields, clients and relaysrunning earlier versions of Tor will no longer work, since they expectthe TAP onion keys to be present. Therefore, in order to deliverimproved performance faster, we need to accelerate the date on which0.4.8 will stop working.
The target sunset date is currently September 1,2026, after which any version prior to Tor 0.4.9 will cease to work onthe network. The first stable release in the 0.4.9.x series wasannouncedin February 2026, and the Tor 0.4.8.x series reached end of life onJune 1.
- Security updates for Tuesday
Security updates have been issued by Debian (ffmpeg), Fedora (erlang, ffmpeg, prometheus, python-scrapy, python3-docs, python3.14, thorvg, tigervnc, and vips), Mageia (mumble and sslh), Oracle (389-ds:1.4, dracut, firefox, hplip, kernel, openssh, postgresql:15, redis:6, and uek-kernel), Red Hat (delve, gvisor-tap-vsock, nginx, nginx:1.24, nginx:1.26, osbuild-composer, podman, rhc, skopeo, and yggdrasil), SUSE (containerized-data-importer, graphite2, kernel, libarchive, openssh, openssh-askpass-gnome, openvswitch, openvswitch3, postfix, python-lxml, python-nltk, python-python-multipart, python-urllib3, rmt-server, terraform-provider-local, terraform-provider-null, and util-linux), and Ubuntu (google-guest-agent, haproxy, libxml2, linux-azure, linux-intel-iotg-5.15, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-oracle-5.15, mysql-8.0, mysql-8.4, and nginx).
- GIMP 0.54.1 in a Flatpak
The GIMP project reports thatGNOME contributor "balooii" has worked to package GIMP0.54.1—released in 1996—as a Flatpak that will build andrun on modern 64-bit Linux systems. This is a Motif-basedversion, and the same version that was usedby Larry Ewing to create Tux.
While not likely to be useful for serious graphics work today, itshould be interesting for users who would like to see what a30-year-old version of GIMP was capable of.
- [$] Free-threaded Python: past, present, and future
Probably the biggest change for Python over the last five years or so isthe advent of the "free-threaded" version of the language, which removes theglobal interpreter lock (GIL) and allows multiple threads to run inparallel in the interpreter. At PyConUS 2026, held in Long Beach, California in mid-May, longtime CPythoncore developer (and current steering council member) Thomas Wouters gave atalk about the feature. He looked at the motivation behind the GIL-removalefforts, some history,the current status of the free-threaded interpreter, and provided aprediction on where it all leads.
- First preview release of Xfce's Wayland compositor
Brian Tarricone has announcedthe first preview release of xfwl4, a Wayland compositor for the Xfce desktop environment.
After close to six months of work, I feel like it's ready to getsome wider use, even though of course there will be bugs and missingfeatures. Think of this as an alpha release. [...]
The end goal of xfwl4 is to behave as closely as possible to anXfce desktop running on an X server. Ideally a user could switchbetween the two without even knowing there's a difference. In reality,of course, it won't be quite that seamless, and there's still morework to be done to get as close as possible to that ideal. This is afirst solid cut at it, at the very least.
- [$] Reports from OSPM 2026, day one
The Power Managementand Scheduling in the Linux Kernel Summit, which still goes by thehistorical acronym OSPM, was held in Cambridge, UK, in mid-April. As hasbecome traditional, the presenters at that event have since writtensummaries of their sessions, and this work has kindly been made availableto LWN for publication. The first day's sessions covered a wide range oftopics, including idle-state selection, user-space schedulers withsched_ext, lock-holder preemption, and much more.
- Security updates for Monday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (389-ds:1.4, kernel, and kernel-rt), Debian (gst-libav1.0, gst-plugins-good1.0, imagemagick, kernel, libconfig-inifiles-perl, libgd-perl, libhttp-daemon-perl, mediawiki, pillow, and squid), Fedora (389-ds-base, alertmanager, ansible-core, buildah, chromium, erlang-cowboy, erlang-cowlib, erlang-gun, freerdp, kubernetes1.33, kubernetes1.34, kubernetes1.35, mingw-SDL2_image, ongres-scram, ongres-stringprep, openssl, perl-Config-IniFiles, perl-Crypt-PBKDF2, podman, postgresql-jdbc, python3.13, strongswan, webkitgtk, xdg-desktop-portal, and yt-dlp), Red Hat (osbuild-composer), SUSE (alloy, amazon-ssm-agent, ansible-core, apache-sshd, jpgpj, azure-storage-azcopy, chromedriver, containerized-data-importer, firefox, glibc, graphite2, inspektor-gadget, kubevirt, lemon, openvswitch, python-starlette, python311, python311-joserfc, python313, and tinyproxy), and Ubuntu (netatalk).
- Systemd v261 released
Systemd v261 has been released with a long list of changes, including a newcloud "Instance Metadata Service" (IMDS) subsystem, "boot secret"functionality for use on systems that lack a physical TPM, as well assupport for the kernel's Live Update Orchestration (LUO) / KexecHandover (KHO) systems when they are present and enabled. See therelease notes for the full list of changes.
- DietPi v10.5 Updates Raspberry Pi Display and Camera Options
The June 2026 release of DietPi v10.5 updates the dietpi-config display options, with several Raspberry Pi-specific changes related to graphics drivers, camera support, and display configuration. The release also adds ARMv7 support for the RustDesk Client package and includes several bug fixes affecting NanoPi K2, RTC configuration, and ownCloud Infinite Scale installations. DietPi: DietPi is […]
- LILYGO T-Impulse Plus wearable dev board comes with LoRa, GNSS, OLED, and IMU
LILYGO has listed the T-Impulse Plus, a low-power wristband-style development board based on the Nordic nRF52840 microcontroller. The device offers LoRa connectivity, Bluetooth 5 support, GNSS positioning, an IMU, a small OLED display, power management, and a vibration motor in a compact wearable enclosure. The T-Impulse Plus is designed around the nRF52840, which provides a […]
- Linux 7.2 Showing Some Unexpected & Nice Performance Gains On AMD EPYC Sorano
While the Linux 7.2 merge window doesn't wrap up until this weekend as the feature cut-off for new material, I have already begun some early benchmarks of the code currently staged for this next version of the Linux kernel. Linux 7.2 already was looking quite exciting with cache aware scheduling and other exciting new features while an unexpected surprise in my early testing this week was seeing some local network/socket performance improvements...
- Linux's ARM64 NEON Intrinsics CRC64 Code Adapted To Work On 32-bit ARM
Merged for Linux 7.1 was ARMM64 NEON-accelerated CRC64-NVMe support for around 6x the performance out of that checksumming algorithm. The generic code had been a bottleneck in NVMe and other storage subsystem code of the Linux kernel with CRC64-NVMe being used to help verify against data corruption. Now for Linux 7.2, the NEON-accelerated code will also work for those still relying on 32-bit ARM...
- GIMP v0.54 From 1996 With Motif Toolkit Now Flatpak'ed For Modern Linux Desktops
The open-source world waited long enough for the GIMP 3.0 release that finally came last year with its GTK3 port and more, but for those with time on their hands this weekend and want to relive GIMP's past from long ago, GIMP 0.54 has been adapted for Flatpak to work on modern Linux desktops. What makes this version of GIMP from 1996 notable is that it was the last to use the Motif toolkit...
- Slate Auto's Radically Simple Electric Truck Starts At $24,950
Slate Auto says its stripped-down electric pickup will start at $24,950 before fees, with the base model's estimated range increased from 150 to about 205 miles. The company has started taking preorders on Wednesday. "The aggressive pricing -- half the average cost of a new car in the United States -- puts Slate in position to capture a share of the lowest end of the new car market, which has few gas and fewer electric options these days," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The price reveal comes more than a year after Slate Auto emerged from stealth. Since then, the company has been steadily detailing the extremely basic, transforming EV, which starts as a two-seater pickup truck, but can be modified into a five-seater SUV. The SUV version will start at $29,950, Slate said Wednesday. Slate has said the conversion can be done by professionals or by owners themselves. On Wednesday, it finally showed off some of the first of its "Slate University" how-to videos, which guide people through the steps for doing everything from the SUV conversion to adding headlight covers. Everything else about the truck is bare, though it's customizable. It has hand-crank windows, lacks an infotainment system, and all orders start with the same gray composite material, with no paint options, as Slate plans to let buyers order customizable wraps for the vehicle. That likely helps cut out a major cost center, as factory paint shops can run in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The company did not offer more details about the buying process. Slate has said it "won't have traditional dealerships," and plans to sell directly to customers, similar to other EV companies like Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid Motors.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak
Meta has paused its Model Compatibility Initiative that tracked employee mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, and screen content to train AI agents, after some of its collected data became accessible to more employees than intended. Meta says it has no evidence the information was improperly accessed and will not restart the program until it is confident in its safeguards. Wired reports: Meta rolled out the Model Compatibility Initiative (MCI) tool in April to US employees. The tool "collects computer inputs such as mouse movements, click locations and keystrokes, as well as screen content," according to workers who have been petitioning against it over privacy, security, and personal liberty concerns. When MCI launched, employees couldn't opt out, but that changed to a limited degree after workers protested. Meta executives have repeatedly defended the data-gathering project, saying it was necessary to train AI systems to operate computer software the way humans do and that employees were the best examples for the artificial intelligence to learn from. On Monday, a Meta engineer issued an internal security notice stating that databases filled with information gathered by MCI had been exposed to anyone inside the company. A former employee actively involved in pushing back against MCI describes the lapse as "a mess" -- and one that employees had expected would occur. "When workers raised concerns, leadership doubled down and failed to acknowledge the risks workers raised about the safety and privacy of worker and customer data," the person says. "Leadership has clearly created an authoritarian environment where workers are no longer respected or heard." But after critical comments poured into internal forums on Monday expressing frustration about the security issue, Meta shocked some of its staff by pausing MCI altogether, telling WIRED about the development several hours before announcing it to employees. A few workers told WIRED they were confused in the meantime because the tool was continuing to run on their laptops. Late on Monday, Stephane Kasriel, a Meta vice president overseeing AI research, announced the pause and told staff that the security issue had been discovered on June 18 and addressed within four hours. But the initial fix didn't stick and access to the data had to be further locked down. The issue made "some MCI-derived data" accessible to more people than intended, he wrote, without elaborating.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- GTA VI Is a Worrying Sign For the Future of Physical Games
Rockstar Games has revealed the price of Grand Theft Auto VI to be $79.99, and confirmed that the physical versions of the game won't include a disc. Instead, they'll contain a one-time download code when it launches November 19. "Not only is that a disappointing decision for people who like to own physical games, but given the scale of the next GTA, it also sets a bad precedent for the rest of the industry," reports The Verge. From the report: There are a lot of advantages to buying digital. You can start a download from your couch. You can store multiple games on one hard drive so you don't have to get up to play something else. Storefronts like Steam or the PlayStation Store don't run out of inventory of the newest game you're interested in, and you can often get games at a cheaper price thanks to frequent sales. But it's becoming increasingly clear that digital ownership has significant disadvantages, too. If a game you don't own digitally is removed from a storefront, whether that's for things like licensing, artificially limited availability, or even the store eventually closing down, your only option is to hope you can find a physical version. If your account on a platform is banned, even if that ban isn't warranted, you might be locked out of your digital library with no way to play those games unless you buy them again or hope your account gets restored. You can't sell or trade digital games you've purchased, and while there are ways to share digital games, they require some work and are usually intended just for families. It's also much harder to preserve digital games because they only "exist" on the hard drive of a console, PC, or device they were downloaded to. This is an issue across many industries, not just console games; there are multiple examples of things like mobile games and streaming shows becoming lost for good when they don't have a physical version. Without physical versions, you also can't find a used version of a game at a garage sale or a local game shop. It's unclear whether Rockstar will ever release a physical version of the game. As for why, The Verge suspects the decision was made in part to prevent leaks; "by only being available digitally, Rockstar can ensure that GTA VI unlocks at the same exact time for everyone." "The digital-only choice might also indicate that the game has a massive file size that's too big for PlayStation and Xbox game discs."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- OpenAI Unveils First Chip As Part of Broadcom Deal
OpenAI and Broadcom have unveiled Jalapeno, OpenAI's first custom AI chip, designed primarily to handle inference for ChatGPT and other services. It's a major step in OpenAI's plan to "build the full stack behind its models and products," says OpenAI. "By designing more of the stack ourselves, we can serve more intelligence with greater efficiency and keep pushing advanced AI toward broader access." CNBC reports: The chip with Broadcom is an ASIC, which industry experts say is less flexible than Nvidia's GPU, but is also less expensive and can be designed for specific AI tasks. OpenAI said that it designed the chip in nine months, and that it also crafted large parts of the computer system where it will be used. The companies are calling the chip an "Intelligence Processor" and describe it as the first "AI accelerator" in a platform they're building "to make advanced AI faster, more reliable, and more accessible to more people." [...] A physical sample of the new chip will be delivered to OpenAI on Wednesday. The companies said they're aiming for initial deployment of the Jalapeno chips by the end of 2026, "expanding in the years ahead."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Walmart's First Nuclear Deal Shows Demand Beyond AI Data Centers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Barron's: Walmart is signing a long-term contract to buy nuclear power for the first time ever, a promising sign that the industry's future is supported by more than just the AI data center boom. The retail giant agreed on Tuesday to buy power from a nuclear plant in Illinois owned by Constellation Energy for its operations in the area, including its stores and a high-tech warehouse in Illinois that stores and sorts perishable food. Walmart will buy 176 megawatts of power from the plant over a 15-year period, or enough power to serve around 150,000 homes. The Walmart deal will allow Constellation to expand the capacity of the Illinois plant by 30 megawatts, a process known as an uprate, which can involve replacing older equipment and improving efficiency. Walmart, which has pledged to eliminate net carbon emissions from its U.S. operations by 2040, will also receive the environmental attributes associated with the nuclear energy, which generates electricity without carbon emissions. Further reading: Trump Admin Announces $17.5 Billion In Loans For 10 New Large Nuclear Reactors
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Bob Iger's Disney Wanted Apple, Twitter, and 007
In an exit interview with The Financial Times (paywalled), former Disney CEO Bob Iger says the company seriously considered buying Twitter, explored a potential merger with Apple, and pursued the James Bond franchise during his tenure. The Verge reports: According to Iger, Disney came close to buying Twitter from co-founder Jack Dorsey "at a very attractive price," sometime prior to Elon Musk buying the social media platform in 2022 and changing its name to X. Iger had plans to turn Twitter into a global distribution platform for Disney, but walked away on the morning of the deal over concerns that it would be "a horrible distraction." Disney was also at one point involved in early conversations regarding a potential merger with Apple, something Iger thinks would have been "truly transformational." In the end, Iger says these conversations "never went anywhere," and that "Apple didn't show that much interest." The two companies have a mixed history -- Iger was an Apple board member from 2011 to 2019, and notably a driving force behind Disney acquiring Pixar in 2006, which was led by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs at the time. According to Iger, his first call with Jobs resulted in an almost immediate deal to put Disney content on the first video iPod. "All of a sudden, I'm now someone Steve likes and respects," Iger told The Financial Times. "The old Disney that he knew was lumbering in terms of bureaucracy. And so he thought, this is a new day." The Pixar acquisition spurred Iger to find more companies to bring under Disney's wing, though not every attempt was successful. "We felt unstoppable. We put together a list of acquisition targets," said Iger. "Marvel was one, Star Wars was another, James Bond was one. We had a list and I figured let's just tick them off and buy them all." Iger provides no details about Disney's attempt to buy the James Bond franchise, but we know it obviously failed -- Amazon bought the 007 distribution rights when it acquired MGM in 2022, and later paid more than $1 billion to take full creative control of the franchise in February 2025.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Boffin Claims Microsoft's 'Quantum Leap' Is Invalid Due To 'Basic Python Errors'
A peer-reviewed Nature critique argues that Microsoft's 2025 Majorana quantum-computing breakthrough -- and its claim that it could enable "a truly meaningful quantum computer not in decades, as some have predicted, but in years" -- is fundamentally flawed. According to Dr Henry Legg, a lecturer at the University of St Andrews, the claims were undermined by omitted data, selective plotting, and basic Python errors that concealed alternative results. Microsoft, for its part, says the bugs were minor and stands by its findings and roadmap. The Register reports: "Last year they claimed to be years, not decades from a 'topological quantum supercomputer,'" Legg told The Register in an email. "My feeling is that they are centuries, not decades away. If it works at all -- and, based on what I have seen, the most likely scenario is that it doesn't work." Based on his analysis of the research Microsoft published in 2025, Legg argues that the company's claims about finding and being able to control the elusive Majorana particle to build a topological superconductor do not withstand scrutiny. "I demonstrate that Microsoft's tune-up software is flawed and that coding errors resulted in incorrect statements to peer reviewers," said Legg. "Raw data, which was omitted from the original paper, also appears to indicate Microsoft's devices contain considerable disorder and are not compatible with the existence of a topological gap. In other words, the prerequisites for Microsoft's claims do not appear to be met, but this was obscured because this data did not appear in the original publication." Essentially, Microsoft has proposed a Topological Gap Protocol (TGP) that can be used to detect the phase transition deemed to be a prerequisite for conducting quantum calculations using Majorana particles. Legg argues that based on his analysis of underlying transport data (measurements of particle change) -- omitted from the original publication -- Microsoft chose to focus on results that supported its thesis and ignored data that could be interpreted as a negative result. As he notes in his critique: "The TGP plotting code was set to highlight only the largest purportedly topological region." "The primary consequence was the omission of other regions that passed their tune-up protocol (the TGP)," said Legg. "When peer reviewers asked if other regions existed, Microsoft inaccurately stated that they had investigated the only region passing the protocol within the explored range. This was not correct." Legg also argues that Microsoft mishandled its code. "The code antisymmetrized bias voltage based on array index rather than physical value," his analysis says. In other words, Microsoft's researchers made a basic programming mistake by evaluating the array index -- the number identifying a value's position in an array -- instead of the value to which the index refers. "There were two pretty basic Python programming errors that hid these alternative regions," Legg explained. "Their plotting software was hardcoded with a filter (zbp_cluster_numbers=[1]) that forced it to display only the single largest region, concealing other successful results from their phase maps. Changing this to zbp_cluster_numbers=[1,2] shows already a second region." Legg added: "The TGP software transformed the data by simply reversing a Python array (x[::-1]) based on its index position, ignoring the actual physical bias voltages."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Trump Admin Announces $17.5 Billion In Loans For 10 New Large Nuclear Reactors
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The Trump administration is providing $17.5 billion to speed the development of 10 new large nuclear reactors to meet the skyrocketing power demand from massive data centers. Energy Secretary Chris Wright cited "tremendous interest" among developers of data centers that would buy the power, as well as utilities and energy companies. The nuclear plants could begin construction by 2030 and become operational in the mid-2030s, Wright and other officials said Tuesday. "This is the start," Wright said on a call with reporters. "We're going to move with the players that are ready to stand up and move quickly. Once that supply chain is up and running, do we think there will be dozens of these built going forward? I'd be very surprised if there were not." Most U.S. nuclear power plants were built between 1970 and 1990. Only two new large reactors have been built from scratch in the United States in recent decades. Those two reactors, at Georgia Power Co.'s Plant Vogtle, were completed years late and billions of dollars over budget. The 10 new reactors will use the same design, Westinghouse's AP1000. Wright said the Plant Vogtle project struggled because of bad planning, supply chain problems and the COVID-19 pandemic. But, he said, the reactor design is "robust and sound."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- A 25-Year-Old Blog Looks Back At 40 Years of Computing
Ancient Slashdot reader Mark Round writes: Longtime reader here (since mid-1999 -- Hot Grits! Oog the Caveman! Beowulf clusters!), and I can still remember posting back on Slashdot's own 5th anniversary. Time's rolled on: my own blog just turned 25, and it's now roughly 40 years since I first sat down at a computer. So I went digging through archive.org, old backups, and a box of ZIP disks, and wrote up a long look back at four decades of computing through the one website that's been my online home along the way. It runs from my first 8-bit micro and a 1,200-baud modem through discovering the actual Internet at university (and burning far too many hours on Slashdot and sister sites like freshmeat.net), past gloriously pimped-out Enlightenment Linux desktops, all the way to the modern cloud-native world. Plenty of dodgy screenshots, terrible code, and fond memories of long-gone haunts like kuro5hin.org and Linux Coffee Talk along the way.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Mushroom Behind 'Tiny Human' Visions Lacks Genes For Known Psychedelics
alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: If you consumed a wild mushroom and suddenly started seeing tiny people around you, you might reasonably assume it contained a familiar psychedelic. But that does not appear to be the case with Lanmaoa asiatica, known locally as jian shou qing, a mushroom species sold in markets in Yunnan, southwestern China. When eaten undercooked, the mushroom can produce vivid visions of miniature people -- not unlike Gulliver on his travels to Lilliput. To try and find out the root cause, University of Utah mycologists Colin Domnauer and Bryn Dentinger sequenced the genomes of 53 mushroom samples from across the wider Lanmaoa genus. And despite the reported hallucinations, they found no close matches to genes associated with psilocybin or ibotenic acid, two well-known mushroom hallucinogens whose biosynthetic pathways were specifically examined in the study. "Biosynthetic gene mining of the L. asiatica genome found no close hits with any genes known in the production of mushroom psychoactive compounds," write the researchers in their published paper. "This supports our hypothesis of the presence of a novel unidentified metabolite responsible for the unique hallucinogenic properties of L. asiatica." [...] Whatever chemical pathways are causing these effects in the brain, the responsible compound appears to be something scientists have not yet identified. [...] By identifying 1,515 corresponding genes across the selected specimens, the researchers obtained a clearer answer to the question of what defines a mushroom species as part of the genus Lanmaoa. There are now 17 recognized species in the genus, including four that haven't been identified before, two of which the researchers specifically named here: Lanmaoa fallax and Lanmaoa carbonilivor. The researchers say the Lanmaoa family and evolutionary tree can now be more fully mapped out, and some existing specimens may need to be reclassified.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Europe: The World's Fastest-Warming Continent
fjo3 shares a report from the AFP: The latest heatwave sweeping across Europe is a stark reminder that it is the world's fastest-warming continent, stretching into an Arctic that is heating at an even greater pace. Britain, France, Italy and Spain have issued red alerts and health warnings for much of their territory this week as the region endures its second heat episode since May. Here is a look at why Europe is warming faster than elsewhere: The planet as a whole is around 1.4C warmer than in preindustrial times, defined as 1850-1900. By comparison, Europe is around 2.4C hotter than the preindustrial era, according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service. The long-term rise in global average temperatures is mainly due to greenhouse gas emissions from burning oil, gas and coal, but it varies by regions due to a combination of factors. Land warms faster than the ocean as water can absorb more heat and cool through evaporation. Shifts in atmospheric circulation have driven more frequent and more intense heatwaves in the European summer, according to Copernicus. High-pressure systems, which bring settled weather and higher temperatures, have become more common in Europe, Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo said. [...] Another major reason is geography as Europe is connected to the Arctic, which is 3.2C warmer than in preindustrial times. The region's rising temperatures are partly due to a process known as the albedo feedback. Bright snow and ice reflect much of the sun's heat back into space, but as they melt they reveal darker, heat-absorbing surfaces such as land and the ocean. In other parts of Europe, areas where snow was very frequent in winter have seen this coverage shrink, exposing dark land. Stricter air quality regulations have reduced aerosol emissions since the 1980s. But tackling the pollutant had the side effect of contributing to global warming, as these tiny airborne particles have a cooling effect by reflecting sunlight and making clouds more reflective.
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- US AI Stock Sell-Off Shakes Markets From Wall Street To Asia
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A tech sell-off shook global markets on Tuesday as attention turned away from developments in the US war with Iran and toward the future of AI companies and chipmakers that have driven stock markets to record highs. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index closed 2.2% lower on Tuesday. The S&P 500 was also down by Tuesday afternoon, dropping 1.43% while the Dow remained steady. All three major US indices have hit record highs this year, riding off a rush of funding to support AI technology and infrastructure. Nasdaq is up 10% for the year, while the Dow jumped 6% so far this year, breaching past 51,000 points, and the S&P 500 is up 7.3%. But some economists have warned that the influx of AI spending is a bubble reminiscent of the dot-com bubble that burst in the early 2000s. Seven tech companies make up 30% of the S&P 500's value. The heavy reliance on a single industry and a few key companies has some investors wondering if it's a matter of when, not if, there will be a burst. Those concerns have been heightened by signals from the Federal Reserve last week that it may increase interest rates, and therefore the cost of borrowing, in order to tackle rising inflation. Alphabet fell 5% on Monday. SpaceX plunged 16%. The selloff also spread to Asia, with South Korea's benchmark dropping 10% as SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics each lost more than 12%, while Japan's Nikkei 225 declined 3.5%.
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- 29-Year-Old Squid Proxy Bug 'Squidbleed' Can Leak Cleartext HTTP Requests
A 29-year-old bug in the Squid web proxy, dubbed Squidbleed and tracked as CVE-2026-47729, can let an authorized proxy user retrieve fragments of another user's cleartext HTTP requests, including credentials and session tokens. The security researcher who reported the flaw credited Anthropic's Claude Mythos Preview for the discovery. The Hacker News reports: Squid describes this as an attack by a trusted client: someone already permitted to use the proxy, not any random host on the internet. That matches Squid's usual home, shared networks like schools, offices, and public Wi-Fi. In those setups, the attacker is just another user of the same proxy. The leak also only reaches traffic that Squid can read. Normal HTTPS rides an opaque CONNECT tunnel, so Squid never sees inside it; the exposed traffic is cleartext HTTP, plus TLS-terminating setups where Squid decrypts and inspects. The attacker also needs the proxy to reach an FTP server they control on port 21. Both FTP and that port are on by default. [...] If you patch, verify the fix, not just the version. Confirm the guard is in FtpGateway.cc, or check your distribution's backport, since distros ship their own builds (Debian packages Squid 5.7). The public thread is still inconsistent: maintainer Amos Jeffries first said Squid 7.6 carried the fix, then corrected that to 7.7, and on June 22 Debian's Salvatore Bonaccorso noted the referenced commit looks like it is already in 7.6. The fix is small, a null-terminator check before the vulnerable strchr calls, merged to the development branch in April and v7 in May. Squid 7.6 does separately patch CVE-2026-50012, an unrelated cache_digest heap overflow. The cleaner move is the one the researchers recommend anyway: turn FTP off. Chromium dropped FTP years ago, and most networks carry almost none of it, so disabling it removes this attack surface for free, whatever build you run. The risk is real but bounded. SUSE rates it moderate, CVSS 6.5, and the vector explains the score: the attacker needs proxy access (low privileges), and the only impact is confidentiality, nothing on integrity or availability.
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- China Reclaims Fastest Supercomputer At 2 Exaflops
Longtime Slashdot reader hackingbear shares a report from TOP500: The 67th edition of the TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers was announced today at the ISC 2026 conference in Hamburg, Germany. LineShine, a previously unlisted system installed in China, debuts at No. 1, displacing El Capitan as the world's most powerful supercomputer as measured by the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark. LineShine achieved 2.198 Exaflop/s on HPL -- about 80 percent of its 2.736 Exaflop/s theoretical peak -- making it the first system on the TOP500 to exceed two exaflops of sustained double-precision performance using CPUs only. Installed at the National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen (NSCS) and built by the Shenzhen Cloud Computing Center, the system is based on a custom Chinese processor and the "LingKun" platform: 13.79 million cores across 304-core LX2 processors running at 1.55 GHz, linked by the proprietary LingQi interconnect and running Kylin OS. LineShine draws approximately 42.2 megawatts of power, for an efficiency of 52.07 Gigaflops/Watt. Its debut marks the first time since 2017 that a Chinese system has led the TOP500, and it also takes over the No. 1 position on the HPCG ranking with 22.00 HPCG-Petaflop/s. On the HPL-MxP mixed-precision benchmark, LineShine reached 7.92 Exaflop/s for fourth place, a comparatively modest 3.6x speedup over its HPL score that points to a CPU-only design without dedicated low-precision accelerators. While impressive, "the results may say more about Beijing's desire to show self-sufficiency in computing systems than its standing in the global AI race," reports Reuters. Reuters interviewed tech and policy experts who said that the results "do not mean that China has the world's fastest computer for AI work because of changes in the computing industry in recent years and the methods used to compile the list." The reports notes that LineShine "ranked fourth on a benchmark test designed to simulate computing work that is more similar to AI." Jimmy Goodrich, a senior fellow at the University of California's Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation, said: "If the hyperscalers submitted their systems, this 'world's fastest' would not crack the top five." Addison Snell, CEO of Intersect360 Research, a firm that focuses on supercomputers, added: "I'm not surprised it's the number one system. What I'm surprised by is that they submitted it and want recognition for it."
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- Wikipedia Cofounder Larry Sanger Banned From Site for 'Canvassing'
Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger has been indefinitely banned from editing the site after editors concluded that he violated its canvassing rules, "or in other words, calling on his followers off platform in order to influence Wikipedia's content," reports 404 Media. Sanger says the ban proves Wikipedia suppresses ideological diversity, while editors argue he was trying to mobilize an outside audience to influence internal decisions and had ignored an earlier warning. From the report: The discussion that led to the decision to ban Sanger concluded with what an editor called a "clear consensus" to ban Sanger. "There is general agreement among participants that he has engaged in off-wiki canvassing and is not here to constructively build the encyclopedia," the editor said in a note closing the discussion. "There is also a significant concern shared by many editors that his actions constitute calls for outing." While Sanger has been railing about bias on Wikipedia for years, the specific issue here is around his WikiProject Intellectual Diversity. WikiProjects are group efforts among Wikipedia volunteers to deal with certain issues on the site. [...] Sanger's WikiProject Intellectual Diversity, as its name implies, aims to bring more intellectual diversity to the site, mostly meaning more right-leaning perspectives. Sanger's WikiProject Intellectual Diversity and its goals alone do not merit a ban according to Wikipedia's policies. The problem, according to Wikipedia editors, is that during the discussion about whether to allow WikiProject Intellectual Diversity to become an official WikiProject, Sanger invited his 91,000 followers on X to influence that discussion. Discussions about potential bans are supposed to remain open for at least 72 hours. While consensus that Sanger had violated Wikipedia policies was clear, Sanger was banned at some point before that deadline. He was then briefly unbanned, and then again indefinitely banned once 72 hours had elapsed and the discussion about the ban closed. "Wikipedia has become more of a mob-rule anarchy than ever," Sanger said in a statement sent to me by a spokesperson. "In the kangaroo court in which a mob ousted me, Wikipedia's administrators showed that they don't appear to value details like formal charges, a designated prosecutor, basic decorum, distinction between prosecution and judge, dispassionate adjudication, and so forth. They have no proper system other than triggering a mob to selectively enforce their hodgepodge of vague rules." "Now that same mob has blocked me for trying to bring an intellectually diverse group of thinkers and editors to the site," Sanger continued. "Subscribing to their groupthink is now an official requirement of being a member in good standing. Something must change, and now. I only wonder if the system as it currently stands can even allow the discourse necessary to fix the system."
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- Security: Why Linux Is Better Than Windows Or Mac OS
Linux is a free and open source operating system that was released in 1991 developed and released by Linus Torvalds. Since its release it has reached a user base that is greatly widespread worldwide. Linux users swear by the reliability and freedom that this operating system offers, especially when compared to its counterparts, windows and [0]
- Essential Software That Are Not Available On Linux OS
An operating system is essentially the most important component in a computer. It manages the different hardware and software components of a computer in the most effective way. There are different types of operating system and everything comes with their own set of programs and software. You cannot expect a Linux program to have all [0]
- Things You Never Knew About Your Operating System
The advent of computers has brought about a revolution in our daily life. From computers that were so huge to fit in a room, we have come a very long way to desktops and even palmtops. These machines have become our virtual lockers, and a life without these network machines have become unimaginable. Sending mails, [0]
- How To Fully Optimize Your Operating System
Computers and systems are tricky and complicated. If you lack a thorough knowledge or even basic knowledge of computers, you will often find yourself in a bind. You must understand that something as complicated as a computer requires constant care and constant cleaning up of junk files. Unless you put in the time to configure [0]
- The Top Problems With Major Operating Systems
There is no such system which does not give you any problems. Even if the system and the operating system of your system is easy to understand, there will be some times when certain problems will arise. Most of these problems are easy to handle and easy to get rid of. But you must be [0]
- 8 Benefits Of Linux OS
Linux is a small and a fast-growing operating system. However, we can’t term it as software yet. As discussed in the article about what can a Linux OS do Linux is a kernel. Now, kernels are used for software and programs. These kernels are used by the computer and can be used with various third-party software [0]
- Things Linux OS Can Do That Other OS Cant
What Is Linux OS? Linux, similar to U-bix is an operating system which can be used for various computers, hand held devices, embedded devices, etc. The reason why Linux operated system is preferred by many, is because it is easy to use and re-use. Linux based operating system is technically not an Operating System. Operating [0]
- Packagekit Interview
Packagekit aims to make the management of applications in the Linux and GNU systems. The main objective to remove the pains it takes to create a system. Along with this in an interview, Richard Hughes, the developer of Packagekit said that he aims to make the Linux systems just as powerful as the Windows or [0]
- What’s New in Ubuntu?
What Is Ubuntu? Ubuntu is open source software. It is useful for Linux based computers. The software is marketed by the Canonical Ltd., Ubuntu community. Ubuntu was first released in late October in 2004. The Ubuntu program uses Java, Python, C, C++ and C# programming languages. What Is New? The version 17.04 is now available here [0]
- Ext3 Reiserfs Xfs In Windows With Regards To Colinux
The problem with Windows is that there are various limitations to the computer and there is only so much you can do with it. You can access the Ext3 Reiserfs Xfs by using the coLinux tool. Download the tool from the official site or from the sourceforge site. Edit the connection to “TAP Win32 Adapter [0]
- In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words
Every little thing in a graphical user interface that we take for granted today, no matter how small, was thought up by someone, at some point. Case in point: the little red squiggly lines underneath misspelled words. In one form or another, these are everywhere now, and have just become a regular staple of every single text editing field we encounter every single day and dont stop to think about. Still, they were invented by someone, and we happen to know exactly who that was: Tony Krueger. In early versions of Word, the Spell Check feature was something that you explicitly invoked, and then you had to sit and wait while the program looked for all your potentially-misspelled words, and then showed them to you one at a time for a decision on what to do for each one. Word did introduce an Auto Spell Check feature to run spell check when the user was idle, so that when you hit the Spell Check button, the results were ready to go. However, the Auto Spell Check was still a blocking operation. As a result, a lot of users turned it off because it always seemed to decide “Now would be a good time to spell-check the document” just as you wanted to do something, forcing you to wait for the spell check pass to complete before you could, say, save and exit. Tony made the spell checker much more unobtrusive so that it didn’t interfere with your foreground work. And when it found a problem, instead of waiting for you to trigger a spell check, it immediately drew red squiggles under potentially-misspelled words (and later green squiggles under potential grammatical errors). ↫ Raymond Chen at The Old New Thing Tony Krueger passed away recently, after, among other things, having worked on an dizzying number of Microsoft Word releases. Imagine coming up with something that seems to basic and elementary to us now, and seeing it spread pretty much everywhere. I wonder what it must feel like to have invented something that seems so simple, most people dont even realise they use it every single day.
- KDE is going to fix network shares
Ive had my share of issues with network shares on any operating system, but since I mostly use KDE these days I found this deep dive into how, exactly, network shares work in KDE quite interesting. It turns out that while network shares in KDEs Dolphin mostly work, it does involves a few layers that sometimes dont interact well with each other, leading to really curious and annoying problems with mounted shares not appearing, permission issues, and so on. The biggest cause of problems is when using a non-KDE application in KDE that also happens to use a non-KDE save/open dialog. Such a non-KDE save/open dialog wont be able to see any network shared mounted by KDE, and sadly, quite a few applications youre likely to use on a KDE installation use non-KDE open/save dialogs, like Blender, GIMP, LibreOffice, OnlyOffice, Inkscape, Audacity, DaVinci Resolve, and more. Thats one hell of a list of applications to offer inconsistent or outright broken access to network shares youve set up and mounted in KDE. Luckily, this issue seems to be getting a ton of attention soon. All is not lost. Happily, KDE just received an investment of over €1.2 million from the Sovereign Tech Fund, and it includes funding for improvements to KDE’s network share handling! ↫ Nate Graham The project is in the planning phases at the moment, but theyre considering a whole slew of possible changes, fixes, and workarounds to make this stupid and annoying problem just go away. In 2026, nobody should be dealing with manually editing /etc/fstab or getting frustrated over supposedly disappearing network shares.
- Xfces new Wayland compositor sees first alpha release
The developer working on Xfwl4, the Wayland compositor for Xfce, has published the new compositors very first alpha release. Considering its only been six months or so of work, its impressive to see the effort reach this state already. The end goal of xfwl4 is to behave as closely as possible to an Xfce desktop running on an X server. Ideally a user could switch between the two without even knowing there’s a difference. In reality, of course, it won’t be quite that seamless, and there’s still more work to be done to get as close as possible to that ideal. This is a first solid cut at it, at the very least. ↫ Brian Tarricone Being the very first alpha release, it wont surprise you theres a few things missing or broken at this point. Still, if youre brave, you can download and build the release and try it out.
- Valve opens Steam Machine waitlist
Valve officially made the Steam Machine available (sort of but not really) today, and if you were hoping for the president of the Yacht Collectors Club to have found a loophole through the RAM and storage crisis, Ill be the bearer of bad news: the base Steam Machine model with 512GB of storage and no controller costs $1049 or €1039. Its clear that this price is significantly higher than Valve had originally anticipated, as the company dedicates the first part of its press announcement to this sticker shock. Steam Machine,`like our other hardware products, is made up of many components that we source from manufacturers around the world. The price at which we sell our hardware is a direct result of the cost of these components. We felt like we had a good understanding of how those costs might change over time when we first started sourcing them for Steam Machine back in 2023. That understanding was born from the many years of data we all have about the evolution of PC hardware prices – primarily, that it tends to get cheaper over time as new technology arrives. Over the past year or so, that has changed quickly and significantly, most visibly for RAM and storage components. There are a variety of reasons, all of which are affecting hardware products everywhere. The overall effect is that our original goal for the price of Steam Machine is no longer viable. So the prices were sharing today reflect the state of the world for manufacturing; or, more accurately, it reflects the price of the components as weve secured them over the past 6 months. Price wasnt the only thing impacted by all of this: availability was as well. There were periods where we found we couldnt source some of our components at all, at any price. More than anything else, this has impacted the number of units weve been able to produce for launch. ↫ Valve press announcement As Valve mentions, availability is also going to be an issue, and thus theyve had to settle on a complex reservation and lottery system. Between now and 25 June, you can sign up for a model, after which the entire pool of reservations will be randomised to determine a waitlist order. As machines become available, they will simply go down the list from first to last as determined by that randomisation. In other words, you cant just go out and buy one right away. At this price and for the hardware the Steam Machine contains an AMD Zen 4 CPU with 6c/12t up to 4.8 Ghz, a custom RDNA3 GPU, and 16GB of DDR5 RAM and 8GB of DDR6 video RAM youre probably better off sticking with what you already have. Until the AI! bubble pops and prices come down again, that is. Thanks, AI! techbros. Everybody despises you.
- A tale of two path separators
In macOS, you can apparently create files and directories in the Finder with names that include slashes. If you then go into the terminal and take a look with ls, youll see that the slashes are actually colons. I don’t understand all the nuances, but I know this is a side-effect of the fact that macOS has not one but`two`path separators: the slash (/) and the colon (:). The two separators are used in different contexts, and the system will translate between them as needed. These two separators reflect the two parent systems of modern macOS:`classic Mac OS`and the`Unix-like NeXTSTEP. When they were joined together, Apple’s engineers had to build a file system that was compatible with both the classic Mac’s file system (the Mac OS Extended File System, aka HFS+), and with NeXTSTEP’s file system (the Unix file system, aka UFS). Among other differences, these systems had different path separators: HFS+ used a colon, while UFS used a slash. ↫ Alex Chan (article from 2021) I had no idea macOS worked this way, but it makes sense considering the platforms dual history. Whats interesting is that when Apple moved to APFS almost a decade ago, this duality in path separators remained, most likely for backwards compatibility reasons. In a sense, this is somewhat similar to Windows supporting both backward and forward slashes, with the former being a leftover from DOS, and the latter an addition (to Windows) from the UNIX world. None of that beats Windows when using the Japanese or Korean locale, though. Because Japanese and Korean Windows use different codepages than Windows in the Americas and Western Europe, these versions of Windows render the backslash as the yen sign (¥) and and won (₩) sign respectively. As such, something like the Program Files directory actually renders like C:¥Program Files¥ and C:₩Program Files₩. Similar issues occurred in other Windows locales as well, but the impact of this in Japan and South Korea were so widespread that people just expect it to be that way, even if its easily fixed today. I cant find if Windows 11 still uses ¥/₩ in Japan/South Korea, since the last references of it I can quickly uncover all point to Windows 10.
- Apple internals: Swift in the kernel
Apples Swift has become the de-facto language for Apples own developers for a while now, and it seems that with the new operating system releases from the company unveiled during WWDC, Switch is now also being used in the kernel. Naturally I dropped what I was doing and went grepping through the iOS 27 kernelcache. Alas, nothing came of it. All is not lost though: I found the Embedded Swift runtime in macOS 27, sitting in`com.apple.kec.pthread`of all places. Then I went poking around the root filesystem and it turns out Apple gave the whole effort a name: KernelKit. Lets dissect it. ↫ Josh Maine Its still quite limited at this time, which makes sense you dont want to be too crazy with the core of the operating system that runs on god knows how many PCs, smartphones, and other devices. Its also entirely contained within a few kexts as embedded runtimes, and the XNU kernel itself remains entirely C and C++.
- I stored a website in a favicon!
Every website has a favicon. Its that little icon in your browser tab. Usually you upload it once and then never think about it again. But. A favicon is just an image. An image is just pixels. And pixels are just bytes. So of course I wondered if I could store something inside one. ↫ Tim Wehrle I love it when people do something useless just for fun.
- What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000
I mean, this is preaching to the choir, but lets go anyway. I liked the UIs of the entire era from 3.0 to 2000, really. Im mostly using Windows 2000 as an example here because it runs so well in QEMU/KVM and that allows me to easily take screenshots. Some of the following will sound absolutely trivial, but I think its worth pointing out. ↫ movq.de blog Just a series of observations about how much better graphical user interfaces were back in the 90s and early 2000s. Weve lost so many affordances based on both common sense and scientific study, and what we ended up with is a confusing, inconsistent mess. It doesnt really matter where you look user interface design has deteriorated since the early 2000s, a decline that only accelerated thanks to the arrival of the iPhone, where consistency is a dirty word, and the web, where the advertising people took prominence over the design people. I just want my buttons to look like buttons man.
- To study how chips really work, MIT researchers built their own operating system
A fascinating novel approach by researchers at MIT, called Fractal, to study in-depth how processors actually work. A team at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) decided to build something different. Fractal, an operating system kernel written from the ground up, treats the hardware itself as the object of study. Its first major use, a deep look at branch predictors — a CPU’s way of guessing what code to run next, before it knows for certain, so it doesn’t have to waste time waiting to find out — inside Apple’s M1 processor, has already turned up findings that prior work missed, including the first evidence that a class of speculative attack known as “Phantom” affects Apple Silicon. “We’re using hardware in ways it wasn’t designed for,” says Joseph Ravichandran, the MIT PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) who led the project. “It’s not even obvious that this is a possible thing you could do with the hardware. But we found a way to pull all these different primitives off. It’s like a microscope. If you’ve got a hand magnifying glass, you can see a little bit. But if you had an electron microscope, now we’re really talking. That’s what Fractal is. The electron microscope of operating systems.” ↫ Rachel Gordon at MIT News While Fractal is small, its creators also added POSIX system calls, a C library, vim, GCC, a shell, and more. This way, it feels more familiar, and makes it easier for researchers to get started with the tool. Fractal is open source and hosted on GitHub, it has its own website, and theres a detailed research paper with more in-depth information.
- AmigaOS 2: the greatest upgrade
Five years after releasing the Amiga 1000, Commodore was about to launch the Amiga 3000, their first real high-end Amiga. With a 68030 processor, on-board SCSI and a slightly updated graphics chipset, all in a sleek desktop case, the Amiga was truly ready for the era of professional 32-bit computing. But Moores law wasnt the only thing thad had been pressuring Commodore since the release of the Amiga 1000: The desktop metaphor had matured even further, and the competition had been hard at work. IBM had launched OS/2, Windows 3.0 had turned Microsofts offering from a proof of concept into something actually usable, and new players had entered the scene among them NeXTStep, with its polished 3D look. It was time to bring AmigaOS, too, into the 1990s. ↫ Carl Svensson Its interesting theres a lot of focus on the first version of the Amiga operating system and the third one, but you dont hear a lot about AmigaOS 2.x. It turns out this is rather odd, because as Svensson details, this version came with an absolute ton of changes and improvements, from an entirely new widget toolkit to a brand new file system, and so much more. The new widget toolkit and accompanying style guide also ensured that the operating system looked, felt, and behaved consistently. Remember when we cared about that? Theres so much more cool features, though, like command history, line editing, universal clipboard support and more just for the CLI, as well as something called Commodities. These were tiny little programs managed from a central location, which didnt even need a GUI to work. Commodities included by default were things like ClickToFront, a focus-follows-mouse option, and more. Oh and of course, BASIC was replaced by ARexx. The list just keeps going, and you should really read Svenssons article.
- Oracle Solaris 11.4 SRU93 released
Oracle is sticking to its promise of more regular Solaris updates with the release of Oracle Solaris 11.4 SRU93. This release, like other SRU releases, is for paying Solaris customers, as the CBE releases for enthusiasts are on a different cadence. With Solaris focus being on enterprise server environments, it should come as no surprise that most of the changes and improvements are focused on things like enterprise networking and security, such as changes to how policy settings for the Kernel Crypto Framework (KCF) are stored, moving from using RPC over sockets instead of STREAMS, and more. Of course, theres also the long list of updated open source packages. SRU 93.221.2 updates a broad set of platform, runtime, developer, networking, desktop, and open source components. Notable updates include Apache Tomcat to 9.0.116, bash to 5.3 patch 9, BIND to 9.20.18 and 9.20.21, Django 4.2 to 4.2.30, Django 5.2 to 5.2.13, Firefox to 140.8.0esr, Golang to 1.25.8, Node.js 20 to 20.20.2, Node.js 22 to 22.22.2, Node.js 24 to 24.14.1, NSS to 3.119.1, Perl to 5.42, Python 3.11 to 3.11.15, Python 3.13 to 3.13.12, RabbitMQ to 4.2.4, Thunderbird to 140.8.0esr, vim to 9.2.0340, and zlib to 1.3.2. Additional updates include development tools, Python modules, X11 utilities, printing components, libraries, cryptographic packages, networking tools, and desktop-related packages. ↫ Colin Kavanagh at the Oracle Solaris Blog Existing Oracle Solaris customers can update to the new release through pkg update.
- Android 17 released for Pixel devices with very few interesting improvements
Yesterday, Google released Android 17 to Pixel devices, so late last night I updated my Pixel 10 Pro with the intent to write a news item about the release today. The reality is that that I totally forgot I even upgraded last night, because Android 17 is about the biggest nothingburger Ive ever seen. Virtually all of the new features listed in the upgrade blurb on my phone were AI! nonsense I dont encounter, so over the course of the day, I didnt really notice anything new about my phones operating system. The only interesting feature that I think will be particularly useful on tablets and perhaps foldable devices is something called App Bubbles!. Basically, you can turn any application into an overlay that can be minimised into a bubble, which then lives anywhere on your screen. Tap it, and you can maximise the overlay again. This little multitasking bubble can contain multiple applications, effectively making it a dock or taskbar. Neat, but I didnt see much use for it on my phone. The remainder of the new non- AI! features are hard to spot, at best. I guess the ability to turn one half of a foldable display into a gamepad is neat if you can deal with gaming on glass buttons (I cannot), and the changes to location access (you can now grant it for just one time) and contacts access (its more fine-grained and temporary now instead of granting access to everything forever) are welcome, but thats about it for user-facing features. Under the hood, the one thing that stands out is that Google is enforcing stricter memory limits for applications, based on how much RAM a device has. The idea is that this should prevent memory leaks from getting out of control and leading to crashes, which is nice, especially for devices with less RAM. Android 17 is available for Pixel devices now, and will probably find its way to non-Pixel devices over the coming months or years. With how little meat there is on Android 17s bones, this might be the first release where Androids update woes dont really matter.
- KDE Plasma 6.7 released
The KDE team released KDE Plasma 6.7 today, and with it comes a long list of improvements, new features, bug fixes, new old themes, and so much more. A new feature that is sure to please those among us who use virtual desktops: you can now have different virtual desktop setups per display. Its been a long-requested feature, so its great to see it makes its way to the KDE users. I despise virtual desktops, but Im happy to see something that I assumed was already part of KDE to finally actually become available. Another major feature in KDE Plasma 6.7 is something weve already talked about: the return of the classic Oxygen and Air themes from the KDE 4.x days. These themes have seen extensive work over the past year or so to make them usable on the latest KDE release, which includes tons of bug fixes, visual nips and tucks, and countless additions to the collection of assets required to make a modern KDE theme look complete. This includes a ton of new icons in the old styles, light and dark modes, accent colour support, and much more. Theres still work left here, including adding support for QtQuick/Kirigami applications which brings us to the next major new addition to KDE 6.7 This is also something weve already talked about: Union. I wont repeat what I already explained last time Union came up, but suffice it to say that Union effectively unifies the various different ways KDE applications are themed, allowing theme designers to use relatively standard CSS to create themes that cover every aspect of the KDE user experience. Before Union, theme designers had to create individual, unique themes for a variety of parts of KDE the Plasma desktop, QtWidgets using QStyle, QtQuick/Kirigami which was a ton of work, and in the case of QtQuick/Kirigami, wasnt really possible at all. As such, without Union, KDEs theming is essentially broken, and Union fixes that. For now, Union is not enabled by default, and must be installed and enabled separately for testing. Of course, theres a ton of other smaller new features, changes, and bug fixes as well. KDE Plasma 6.7 will find its way to your distribution soon enough.
- Apple adds keylogger to iOS App Store for targeted advertising: tied to your account and unencrypted
A week or so ago, Apple announced a bunch of features for the App Store on iOS, including personalised recommendations based on your activity and usage of iOS. It turns out this includes a keylogger (taplogger?) in the App Store, which records every single tap you make, every single letter you enter, and a lot of other information. All of this information is unencrypted and sent to Apple. Now Apple is putting the extensive identifiable analytics they collect in the App Store in action. They record every tap and there’s no way to turn it off. They can even calculate your typing speed. ↫ Michael Tsai, quoting Mysk The provided screenshots of the data collected are terrifying, especially because the data is unencrypted, sent to Apple, and fully tied to your user account. Apple clearly wants a slice of that big, juicy advertising pie, and they, too, are discovering that the easiest and best way to serve targeted ads is to collect as much data as they can about you. Of course, this is something the entire internet (but not OSNews!) and several megacorporations are built on by now, but Apple has been incredibly sanctimonious about how it supposedly actually cares about user privacy, making this keylogger yet another case of Apples hypocrisy on full display. Of course, if you care about privacy, youre entirely free to download your iOS applications from somewhere other than the App Store and install them yours0 Oh, wait.
- The time the Windows x86 emulator team found code so bad that they fixed it during emulation
Another story from the good old days from Raymond Chen. During an exchange of war stories, a colleague of mine told one from back in the days when Windows included a processor emulator for x86-32 on systems that natively ran some other processor. (This has happened many times. And no, I don’t know which processor this particular story applied to.) ↫ Raymond Chen at The Old New Thing So the core of the story comes down to this: All in all, it took this program 256 kilobytes of code to initialize 64 kilobytes of data. ↫ Raymond Chen at The Old New Thing The people working on Windows were so offended by this, they added code to the processor emulator just to fix this program.
- FreeBSD 15.1 released
Speaking of FreeBSD, the project released version 15.1 of their operating system today. As its a point release, its not full of massive changes, but it still brings the LinuxKPI-based wireless drivers up to Linux 7.0, support for the C23 version of the C has progressed considerably, Unicode has bene updated to version 17.0.0 and CLDR 48, and more.
- Fedora Governance Changes Take Effect as Project Refines Leadership, Policy, and Contributor Oversight
by George Whittaker
A series of Fedora governance updates are now taking effect, marking another step in the project's ongoing effort to modernize decision-making processes, improve transparency, and better support Fedora's growing contributor community. The changes come as the Fedora Council and other leadership bodies continue refining how one of the Linux world's largest community-driven projects is managed.
While these updates may not be as visible as a new desktop environment or kernel release, they play a critical role in shaping Fedora's future direction, community initiatives, and long-term sustainability.
How Fedora Governance Works
Fedora's governance structure is built around several key organizations that guide different aspects of the project.
These include:
The Fedora Council, which oversees strategic direction FESCo (Fedora Engineering Steering Committee), responsible for technical and engineering decisions Mindshare, which focuses on community outreach and contributor engagement Various Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and working groups that manage specific initiatives and technologies
Together, these groups help coordinate thousands of contributors spread across the globe.
Greater Focus on Strategic Planning
Recent Fedora Council discussions have emphasized long-term planning and governance modernization. One major area of focus has been defining clearer processes for evaluating and managing new initiatives through what Fedora leaders call an Innovation Lifecycle framework.
The proposed framework aims to:
Better evaluate experimental projects Establish clearer entry and review phases Define expectations for community initiatives Improve oversight as projects mature
The goal is to create a more predictable path for new ideas while maintaining Fedora's culture of innovation.
Refining Contributor Representation
Another governance topic receiving significant attention involves contributor participation and voting eligibility.
Fedora leadership has been examining questions such as:
What defines an active contributor? How should voting rights be determined? How can elections remain fair while staying inclusive? How should dormant accounts be handled?
These discussions stem from concerns that existing systems may not always accurately reflect current contributor activity.
While no single solution has been finalized, governance bodies are actively working toward policies that balance openness with accountability.
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- The Growth of Vulnerability Management: The Rise of Agentic AI Pentesting
by Malana VanTyler
Cybersecurity shifts fast. Manual penetration tests remain valuable, especially for nuanced attack paths and business-logic issues, but they are expensive, point-in-time, and difficult to run continuously. By the time a report is delivered, the environment may have already changed. Automated scanners improved coverage and frequency, but most still rely on known signatures, templated checks, and shallow validation. They can find obvious issues, but they rarely match the adaptive reasoning, chaining, and persistence of a skilled attacker.Platforms like XBOW help security teams move toward continuous validation by running AI-driven tests that mimic large-scale human attackers. This shift moves the focus from periodic assessment and reactive patching toward ongoing exposure management and earlier prevention.
From Automation to Agency
To appreciate the value of these modern platforms, it’s important to separate traditional automation from what is called “agentic” AI. Earlier AI pentesting tools mostly worked like advanced “if-then” systems, running preset scripts and looking for known patterns. While useful to automate some tasks pentesters perform, these tools lack the ability to pivot.
If a standard tool hits a non-standard login portal, it generally stops. An agent platform, however, can identify and adapt to the obstacle, reason through potential bypasses, and attempt alternative tactics.
This core differentiator is the “agent,” a specialized model capable of goal-oriented planning. These platforms employ real-time attack path analysis tools. They identify a low-severity vulnerability and assess whether it could be exploited to gain access
to a high-value asset. This approach imitates how an advanced attacker moves laterally within a system. The result is a clearer and more realistic view of the organization’s real risk compared to just listing bugs in a spreadsheet without context.
Comparing Methodologies: Strategy and Execution
When comparing platforms in this area, the industry is shifting focus from just ticking off features to demonstrating how effectively those features can be used. Modern platforms, including XBOW, focus on high-fidelity testing that avoids disrupting production environments while still proving that a vulnerability is reachable.
Three main architectural approaches have emerged as standouts:
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- Linux Kernel 7.1 Officially Released with New NTFS Driver, Intel FRED, and Major Code Cleanup
by George Whittaker
The Linux kernel development team has officially released Linux Kernel 7.1, marking the first major update in the 7.x series. Announced by Linus Torvalds on June 14, 2026, the release introduces a mix of new features, hardware improvements, filesystem enhancements, and large-scale code cleanup efforts that continue modernizing the Linux platform.
While Linux 7.1 is not a long-term support (LTS) release, it delivers several significant changes that will eventually make their way into many Linux distributions over the coming months.
A Brand-New NTFS Driver Arrives
One of the most significant additions in Linux 7.1 is a completely rewritten in-kernel NTFS filesystem driver.
The new implementation has reportedly been under development for several years and replaces older code with a modern design built around Linux’s current storage infrastructure. The driver utilizes technologies such as iomap and folios, which improve efficiency and simplify future maintenance.
Benefits include:
Improved NTFS write performance Better handling of large files More modern filesystem architecture Easier future development and maintenance
For users who regularly exchange data between Linux and Windows systems, this is one of the most important improvements in the release.
Intel FRED Enabled by Default
Linux 7.1 also enables Intel Flexible Return and Event Delivery (FRED) by default on supported hardware.
FRED is a newer CPU mechanism designed to improve how processors handle interrupts and exceptions. By replacing older methods with a more streamlined approach, FRED aims to improve performance and reduce complexity in low-level CPU operations.
The feature primarily benefits newer Intel platforms, including upcoming processor generations.
Graphics Drivers Continue to Improve
Graphics support remains a major focus of kernel development, and Linux 7.1 delivers additional improvements for both Intel and AMD hardware.
Highlights include:
Performance enhancements for Intel Arc GPUs Continued work on Intel Battlemage graphics Updates for AMD Radeon hardware Expanded GPU reliability monitoring infrastructure through DRM-RAS support
These updates help improve gaming, desktop performance, and workstation workloads across modern Linux systems.
Steam Deck OLED Audio Fixes Land Upstream
Linux gamers receive a welcome improvement in this release as audio support fixes for the Steam Deck OLED have finally been merged into the mainline kernel.
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- Canonical Launches ARM Laptop Certification Program to Boost Ubuntu’s Next Generation of Mobile Computing
by George Whittaker
Canonical is expanding its hardware certification efforts with a new focus on ARM-powered laptops, a move that reflects the growing momentum behind ARM architecture in the personal computing market. As ARM processors become increasingly common in laptops thanks to their impressive balance of performance, battery life, and efficiency, Canonical aims to ensure that Ubuntu users receive a seamless experience on this emerging class of hardware.
The initiative represents another step in Ubuntu’s long-standing effort to provide reliable Linux support across a wide range of devices while strengthening relationships with hardware manufacturers.
Why ARM Laptops Matter More Than Ever
For years, x86 processors from Intel and AMD dominated the laptop market. However, the landscape has changed significantly as ARM-based systems have become more powerful and capable.
Modern ARM laptops offer several advantages:
Longer battery life Lower power consumption Reduced heat output Always-on connectivity capabilities Competitive performance for everyday workloads
As manufacturers increasingly invest in ARM hardware, Linux distributions face growing pressure to ensure compatibility matches what users expect from traditional x86 systems. Canonical has already spent years supporting ARM across cloud, server, IoT, and embedded environments, making laptops a natural next step.
What the Certification Program Does
The new certification effort builds upon Canonical’s existing Ubuntu Certified Hardware program, which validates systems through extensive testing covering both hardware and operating system functionality. Certified devices undergo comprehensive verification to ensure Ubuntu operates correctly across critical components and daily workflows.
Testing typically includes:
Wireless networking Audio functionality Graphics performance Bluetooth support USB device compatibility Power management Suspend and resume behavior Firmware integration Security features such as TPM support
The goal is to eliminate the uncertainty that Linux users sometimes face when purchasing new hardware.
Creating a Better Ubuntu Experience on ARM
Historically, Linux support on ARM laptops has varied significantly between devices. Some systems work exceptionally well, while others require manual configuration, custom kernels, or vendor-specific patches.
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- Btrfs Snapshot Deletion Gets Faster as Developers Tackle One of the Filesystem’s Biggest Pain Points
by George Whittaker
The Btrfs filesystem continues to receive significant performance tuning, and one of the latest areas of focus is snapshot deletion performance. While Btrfs snapshots have long been praised for their speed, flexibility, and efficient use of storage, deleting large numbers of snapshots has historically been one of the filesystem’s most resource-intensive operations.
Recent kernel development efforts are helping address that problem by improving metadata handling, reducing lock contention, and streamlining internal cleanup processes. The result is faster snapshot removal and less disruption on systems that rely heavily on snapshots for backups, rollbacks, and system recovery.
Why Snapshot Deletion Has Been Challenging
Btrfs is a copy-on-write (CoW) filesystem that stores data and metadata in a highly interconnected structure. This design enables many advanced features, including:
Instant snapshots Subvolumes Checksumming Compression Efficient data sharing between snapshots
However, the same architecture that makes snapshots so efficient to create can make them more complex to remove. When a snapshot is deleted, Btrfs must determine which blocks are still referenced by other snapshots and which can be safely reclaimed. On systems with many snapshots, this process can generate significant metadata activity.
Recent Performance Improvements
Developers have been working to reduce overhead associated with Btrfs metadata operations, which directly impacts snapshot cleanup performance.
Recent kernel updates include:
Reduced lock contention during extent tree operations More efficient extent buffer traversal Improved handling of internal filesystem structures Reduced contention during metadata searches General transaction and cleanup optimizations
These changes help the filesystem spend less time waiting on internal locks and more time performing actual cleanup work.
Less Impact During Cleanup Operations
One common complaint among Btrfs users has been elevated I/O activity during large snapshot deletion jobs.
On systems that maintain dozens, or even hundreds, of snapshots, cleanup operations could temporarily increase:
Disk activity CPU usage I/O wait times Metadata processing workloads
Recent improvements are designed to make these operations less disruptive by reducing bottlenecks inside the filesystem's metadata management code.
For users running backup servers, NAS appliances, or snapshot-heavy desktop systems, these optimizations can improve overall responsiveness while cleanup tasks run in the background.
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- How Digital Software Is Powering Innovation in Modern Product Design
by Will Jones
By enabling digitized production design, this digital software is freeing up businesses and individuals across numerous industries to work smarter, not harder.
To design a new product or tool is often a lengthy, labor-intensive process. Even the most successful and streamlined physical design process is intensive and iterative by nature; it is the process of taking something that begins as little more than an idea and turning it into reality. Inherently, that is going to take a great deal of translation, as well as trial and error. When working with real-world, physical elements, this also makes for a costly endeavor, as each new trial effort may prove essential to the long-term success of the design, but still has adverse financial effects. Dassault Systèmes offers CAD software to help businesses stay on top of advancements in their industries.
Before digital design software became widely adopted, engineers and designers often relied heavily on hand-drawn technical sketches and manual drafting methods during product development. Revising a design could require redrawing entire sections of a project, making the process both time-consuming and resource-intensive. Modern digital design systems have significantly changed these workflows by allowing teams to make rapid adjustments, automate calculations, and store detailed design information within a single platform. This shift has contributed to the broader adoption of digital tools across industries seeking more streamlined development processes.
Fortunately, though, in this new world of ever-advancing technological tools, the design process doesn’t have to be fraught with issues and obstacles anymore, thanks to systems such as CAD software. This new software is now enabling businesses to design smarter, faster, and more accurately by digitizing product development processes and improving collaboration across engineering and manufacturing teams.
Digital Design as the Foundation of Innovation
Digital software allows engineers to create precise digital models that can then serve as the foundation for product development. Compare this to the physical alternative, which has long been a well-thought-out sketch of the product in question. Even the most comprehensive of sketches is only going to be dealing with two dimensions, and is likely to leave room for confusion or error based on the interpretation of the subjective rendering.
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- GNOME Files Supercharges Search with Faster Results, Smarter Filters, and Better File Discovery
by George Whittaker
The GNOME project continues refining one of its most frequently used applications: GNOME Files (formerly known as Nautilus). Recent development efforts have focused heavily on improving the file manager’s search capabilities, making it easier to locate documents, media files, and folders across increasingly large storage volumes.
For many Linux users, file search has become one of the most important daily workflows. As personal data collections grow and SSDs make local storage faster than ever, GNOME developers are investing in tools that help users find information more quickly and efficiently. GNOME Files already relies on indexing technologies such as Tracker (now GNOME LocalSearch) to deliver fast results, and recent improvements are building on that foundation.
A Redesigned Search Experience
One of the most noticeable improvements is a redesigned search interface that makes searching feel more integrated into the overall file management experience.
Recent GNOME development previews introduced:
A cleaner search popover Inline result previews Improved keyboard navigation Faster access to search filters Better visibility of search options within the file manager interface
These refinements reduce the number of clicks required to narrow down results and help users locate files without leaving their current workflow.
Smarter Filtering Options
Search filters have become increasingly important as users store larger collections of documents, images, videos, and audio files.
GNOME Files has been expanding its filtering capabilities, allowing users to narrow searches more effectively based on:
File type Media category Search location Recent activity Indexed metadata
Earlier updates expanded support for additional audio and video file formats, making it easier to locate multimedia content directly from the search interface. This is particularly useful for users managing large media libraries.
Improved Search Performance
Fast search results are just as important as accurate ones.
GNOME Files continues leveraging the GNOME indexing framework to provide near-instant search results while minimizing system overhead. The file manager works closely with the LocalSearch indexing service to locate files quickly without repeatedly scanning entire drives.
This approach provides several benefits:
Faster file discovery Reduced CPU usage during searches Better scalability on large storage volumes More responsive user experience
For desktop users who frequently work with thousands of files, these performance gains can significantly improve productivity.
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- NixOS 26.05 ‘Yarara’ Released with Systemd Initrd by Default and Major Infrastructure Updates
by George Whittaker
The NixOS project has officially released NixOS 26.05, codenamed “Yarara,” continuing the distribution’s unique approach to Linux system management through declarative configuration, atomic upgrades, and reproducible deployments. The release introduces several important platform-level changes, modernized infrastructure components, and continued refinement of the Nix ecosystem.
As one of the most distinctive Linux distributions available today, NixOS continues attracting developers, DevOps engineers, and advanced Linux users who value predictable system behavior and highly reproducible environments.
What Makes NixOS Different?
Unlike traditional Linux distributions that install packages directly into shared system locations, NixOS is built around the Nix package manager, which stores software in isolated, versioned paths and generates complete system configurations declaratively.
This architecture provides several advantages:
Atomic system upgrades Reliable rollback capabilities Reproducible environments Easier infrastructure automation Reduced dependency conflicts
These features have helped NixOS gain popularity among developers managing complex systems and cloud infrastructure.
Systemd-Based Initrd Becomes the Default
One of the most significant changes in NixOS 26.05 is the move to a systemd-based Stage 1 initrd by default. The older scripted implementation is now deprecated and scheduled for removal in NixOS 26.11.
The initrd (initial RAM disk) is responsible for preparing the system during early boot before the main operating system loads.
According to the release notes:
Systemd now handles Stage 1 initialization by default The previous scripted implementation remains temporarily available Users can still revert using boot.initrd.systemd.enable = false Long-term migration toward the systemd-based approach is encouraged
This change is expected to improve consistency and simplify maintenance across modern NixOS deployments.
Continuing the Twice-Yearly Release Cycle
NixOS continues its established release cadence of publishing stable versions twice per year—typically around May and November. The 26.05 “Yarara” release follows the previous 25.11 “Xantusia” release and continues the project's steady development rhythm.
The 26.05 development cycle involved extensive staging, package testing, and release management work coordinated through the NixOS community.
Large-Scale Package and Infrastructure Updates
Like previous NixOS releases, 26.05 includes a massive collection of package updates across the software ecosystem.
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- GNOME 51 Development Officially Begins as ‘A Coruña’ Cycle Gets Underway
by George Whittaker
The GNOME Project has officially opened the development cycle for GNOME 51, the next major release of one of Linux’s most widely used desktop environments. Following the recent launch of GNOME 50 “Tokyo,” developers are already shifting focus toward the next chapter of the desktop’s evolution, which will carry the codename “A Coruña.”
While it’s still very early in the process, the release schedule is now taking shape, giving Linux users and developers an early look at what to expect over the coming months.
GNOME 51 “A Coruña” Is Now in Development
The new release is named A Coruña, after the Spanish city that will host GUADEC 2026, the annual GNOME Users and Developers European Conference. The event serves as one of the most important gatherings for GNOME contributors, where future desktop plans, technologies, and development priorities are discussed.
As soon as GNOME 50 was finalized, development work for GNOME 51 officially began, continuing GNOME’s well-established six-month release cadence.
Release Schedule Already Published
The GNOME team has outlined the preliminary roadmap for the GNOME 51 cycle.
Current milestone dates include:
GNOME 51 Alpha: June 27, 2026 GNOME 51 Beta: August 1, 2026 GNOME 51 Release Candidate (RC): August 29, 2026 GNOME 51 Final Release: September 16, 2026
These milestones provide time for:
Feature integration Public testing Bug fixing Performance optimization Final stabilization before release
As always, dates may shift slightly depending on development progress.
Still Too Early for Major Feature Announcements
Because the development cycle has only just started, GNOME developers have not yet revealed a finalized feature list. Most major design discussions and merge requests are still in their early stages.
However, several areas are already attracting attention.
Wayland Improvements Are Likely a Major Focus
One of the biggest transitions in recent GNOME history happened with GNOME 50, which completed the project’s move away from X11 by removing remaining X.Org support from the desktop environment.
Because GNOME is now fully committed to Wayland, many observers expect GNOME 51 to focus heavily on:
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- Alpine Linux Experiments with Systemd Compatibility While Keeping Its Lightweight Identity
by George Whittaker
Alpine Linux, one of the most recognizable non-systemd Linux distributions, is reportedly experimenting with an optional systemd compatibility layer, a move that has sparked intense discussion across the Linux community.
For years, Alpine has stood apart from mainstream Linux distributions by avoiding both glibc and systemd, instead relying on:
musl libc BusyBox OpenRC as its init system
Now, growing software compatibility pressures, especially around desktop applications, containers, and enterprise tooling, appear to be pushing Alpine developers to explore new approaches.
Why Alpine Linux Avoided Systemd for So Long
Alpine Linux built its reputation around simplicity, security, and minimalism. Unlike many mainstream distributions, Alpine intentionally avoided systemd in favor of the lighter and more modular OpenRC init system.
This design philosophy made Alpine extremely popular for:
Containers and Docker images Embedded systems Lightweight virtual machines Security-focused deployments
Its tiny footprint and reduced dependency chain became major advantages in cloud and container environments.
The Compatibility Problem Is Growing
Despite Alpine’s popularity, avoiding systemd has increasingly created compatibility challenges.
Many modern Linux applications now assume the presence of:
libsystemd systemd APIs glibc-specific behaviors
This has become particularly problematic for:
Desktop software Proprietary enterprise applications Monitoring agents Certain gaming and multimedia tools AI and container orchestration software
Historically, Alpine users often relied on:
Compatibility layers like gcompat Flatpak containers Docker workarounds Manually patched packages
The growing complexity of those workarounds appears to be one reason compatibility discussions are intensifying.
What the Experimental Compatibility Layer Actually Means
Importantly, Alpine Linux is not replacing OpenRC with systemd.
Instead, the project appears to be exploring:
Optional compatibility packages libsystemd support Improved API compatibility for software expecting systemd components
Experimental efforts already exist in the broader ecosystem. For example, unofficial projects have packaged portions of systemd, particularly libsystemd, for Alpine systems specifically to satisfy software dependencies without running full systemd services.
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