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LWN.net

  • [$] Reconsidering O_CREAT|O_DIRECTORY
    Linux provides a system call (mkdir())to create a directory, and a few variants ofopen() that can open a directory. There is, however, nosystem call in Linux that can create and open a directory in a single,race-free call. Jori Koolstra has been working on remedying thatsituation, most recently by repurposing a set of open() flags that currentlyreturn an error. There are, however, concerns that show just how hard itcan be to create user-space interfaces that do not present traps forapplication developers.


  • Another batch of single-fix stable kernels
    Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 6.18.41, 6.12.100, 6.6.147, 6.1.180, 5.15.213, and 5.10.262 stable kernels.

    Each of these kernels contains a single fix for a use-after-freevulnerability (CVE-2026-64560). Usersof these kernels are advised to upgrade.



  • Security updates for Thursday
    Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, libtiff, libXfont2, nodejs:22, nodejs:24, and rest), Debian (expat and nss), Fedora (libssh, nginx, nginx-mod-brotli, nginx-mod-fancyindex, nginx-mod-headers-more, nginx-mod-modsecurity, nginx-mod-naxsi, nginx-mod-vts, nodejs24, perl-HTTP-Date, proftpd, squid, unbound, and wordpress), Oracle (c-ares, edk2, freerdp, go-fdo-server, libreswan, mariadb-connector-c, and nginx), SUSE (alloy, apache-commons-lang3, google-guice, maven, maven-resolver, xmvn, apache-sshd, apptainer, avahi, distribution, glib2, go1.26-openssl, go1.25-openssl, go1.24-openssl, go1.23-openssl, go1.22-openssl, go1.26, go1.25, go1.24, go1.23, go1.22, go1.21, gstreamer-plugins-bad, helm, ImageMagick, java-17-openjdk, java-25-openjdk, liboqs, oqs-provider, libssh, nginx, nm-configurator, nmap, openssl-3, openvpn, PackageKit, perl, perl-DBI, perl-HTTP-Date, perl-XML-Bare, python-msgpack-python, python-sh, python-ujson, python-urllib3, runc, samba, sssd, wget, wpa_supplicant, and xen), and Ubuntu (linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-7.0 and linux-nvidia-6.17).


  • [$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for July 30, 2026
    Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:
    Front: Hazard pointers; DFSG team; Swap devices; Netkit and BPF; BPF inlined functions; Fedora GRUB; gccrs. Briefs: RIP Dan Williams; Debian LLM resolution; Fedora 45 process; Codeberg LLM policy; GCC LLM policy; GNU Binutils 2.47; GNU C Library 2.44; Wayfire 0.11; Quotes; ... Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.




  • [$] Fedora approves a smaller GRUB
    Leo Sandoval and Marta Lewandowska have put forward a changeproposal for Fedora 45, which is expected in October, toprovide a separate, slimmed-down version of GRUB for a niche usecase. The new package would be in addition to the main GRUB packageand would not replace it for the majority of Fedora users. The ideamet with some resistance from Fedora contributors who thought that itwould be better to use systemd-boot,or another modern bootloader, rather than trying to wrangle GRUB intoa suitable state for the use case. The Fedora Engineering SteeringCouncil (FESCo), however, votedto accept the change on July 7.


  • GCC steering committee announces AI policy
    The GCC steering committee has announcedthat it has accepted anAI contributions policy recommended by the GCC AI policy workinggroup.

    The policy, in part, states that the project will decline any"legally significant contributions which include LLM-generatedcontent or are derived from LLM-generated content". It uses the definitionof "legally significant" from the GNU Project maintainer guidelines,which holds that the threshold is "around 15 lines of code and/ortext" to qualify as significant for copyright purposes. GCCmaintainers may, however, choose to accept legally significant testcases that are generated by an LLM.

    The policy does not forbid use of LLMs for research, analysis, bugdiscovery and reporting, patch review, etc. as long as the output isnot included in contributions. The committee says that it expects thepolicy will evolve and will be revisited periodically.



  • Security updates for Wednesday
    Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (dovecot, go-fdo-client, go-fdo-server, kernel, kernel-rt, and sssd), Debian (calibre, hplip, libraw, and samba), Fedora (btrbk, chromium, gpsd, kronosnet, and restic), Mageia (gstreamer1.0-libav and libslirp), Slackware (libarchive, samba, and seamonkey), SUSE (agama-web-ui, chromium, gimp, glib2, GraphicsMagick, ignition, ImageMagick, java-21-openjdk, libssh, libssh-config, nginx, nmap, nsd, python-urllib3, python313-CherryPy, rsyslog, samba, sssd, valkey, webkit2gtk3, and yq), and Ubuntu (freerdp3, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-aws-fips, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, linux-azure-fips, linux-bluefield, linux-fips, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-gcp-fips, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-iot, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux-azure-fips, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.4, linux-kvm, and linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4).




  • [$] A report from Debian's new DFSG team
    The DFSG, Licensing& New Packages Team (usually shortened to "DFSG team") wascreated in October 2025 as part of the ftpmaster team split. Itsjob is to review packages in the new queue for compliancewith the DebianFree Software Guidelines (DFSG), among other things, before thepackages are allowed to enter the Debianarchive. The change was long in coming, and some questionsremained after the split whether it was the right move. AndrewMcMillan provided an overview of the team's activities and its currentstatus during DebConf26. While it may betoo early to say with certainty, his report suggests that the newdivision of duties is working out well.


  • Security updates for Tuesday
    Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (grafana and libreswan), Debian (openjdk-11 and openjdk-17), Fedora (opkssh, perl-Mojolicious, and rpm), Mageia (libyang, memcached, nginx, packages, and sqlite3), Oracle (.NET 8.0, acl, buildah, compat-openssl11, compat-poppler022, dogtag-pki, git-lfs, glibc, go-fdo-client, golang, httpd:2.4, jackson-annotations, jackson-core, jackson-databind, jackson-jaxrs-providers, and jackson-modules-base, kernel, libpq, LibRaw, maven:3.8, mysql8.4, nodejs:22, nodejs:24, openssl, podman, poppler, python3.14, samba, sssd, tomcat, tomcat9, vim, and yggdrasil), Red Hat (gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free), SUSE (afterburn, alsa, apache-ivy, avahi, aws-nitro-enclaves-cli, chromium, cifs-utils, cockpit, cockpit-machines, cockpit-packages, cockpit- podman, cockpit-repos, cockpit-subscriptions, containerd, curl, docker-compose, freetype2, gawk, glib2, google-cloud-sap-agent, gpg2, gstreamer-plugins-bad, gzip, helm, ignition, ImageMagick, jackson-annotations, jackson-bom, jackson-core, jackson- databind, jackson-dataformats-binary, jackson-modules-base, jackson-annotations, jackson-core, jackson-databind, java-11-openjdk, jline3, joe, jq, kernel, libgcrypt, libknet-devel, libsoup, libxml2, mariadb-connector-c, mcphost, net-tools, nghttp2, opennlp, openssl-1_0_0, PackageKit, pam, patch, pcr-oracle, perl, perl-DBI, perl-HTTP-Date, python-aiohttp, python-cryptography, python-Pillow, python-pyasn1, python-soupsieve, python-tornado, python-tornado6, python-urllib3, python3, radvd, rust-keylime, s390-tools, shibboleth-sp, sssd, systemd, tiff, vim, and wpa_supplicant), and Ubuntu (FreeIPMI, glibc, linux-aws, linux-aws, linux-raspi, linux-aws-6.8, linux-aws-fips, linux-azure, linux-azure-6.8, linux-azure, linux-oracle, linux-azure-5.15, linux-azure-fde-5.15, linux-oracle-5.15, linux-azure-6.17, linux-azure-fde, linux-azure-fde-6.17, linux-azure-fde-6.8, linux-azure-fips, linux-hwe-6.8, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-6.8, linux-nvidia-tegra, linux-xilinx, linux-oracle-6.17, roc-toolkit, and samba).


  • [$] Hazard pointers for the kernel
    The kernel's read-copy-update (RCU) subsystem ensures that data will not bedeleted until it is known that there are no threads holding references toit. RCU works well and is widely used throughout the kernel, but it canincrease memory use and add significant delays before unused kernel objectsare cleaned up. Hazard pointers arean alternative approach to lockless data updates that offers betterperformance, for some situations at least. The kernel community iscurrently considering ahazard-pointer implementation by Mathieu Desnoyers and Paul McKenney.


  • GNU Binutils 2.47 released
    Version2.47 of GNUBinutils has been released. In addition to the usual bug fixesthere are some notable new features in this release including addedsupport for a number of RISC-V standard extensions, a command-lineoption (-M annotate) which displays the symbol forundefined instructions for AArch64, and more. The 32-bit s390 targethas been deprecated with this release.



LXer Linux News



  • DFRobot seeMote Cube tracks motion and sends haptic feedback in visionOS
    The DFRobot seeMote Cube is a handheld spatial input device for Apple Vision Pro application development. The 56mm cube combines six-degree-of-freedom tracking, six programmable buttons, Bluetooth connectivity, and app-controlled haptic feedback for interacting with virtual objects and tools in visionOS. According to the DFRobot, the seeMote Cube provides a tangible controller that can be moved, […]


  • There's Finally A New Game Powered By The Unigine 2 Engine
    It's been about a decade since seeing any new games released on the visually-impressive, Linux-friendly Unigine Engine. Unigine Corp has mostly been focusing on Unigine Engine usage for simulations and other professional applications, but coming as a surprise today is a new game being developed on their latest Unigine 2 engine technology...



  • Linux 7.3 Will Treat Intel Nova Lake S Graphics As Stable
    Ahead of the next-generation Intel Nova Lake processors expected to begin rolling out around the start of 2027, the upcoming Linux 7.3 kernel cycle is going to begin treating Nova Lake S processors with their integrated graphics as stable...




  • Five Proposals Now Being Weighed For Debian AI/LLM Usage
    Last week Debian developers began considering a general resolution over AI large language model (LLM) usage within the Debian project. They are now up to weighing five different proposals for how to permit or block AI/LLM usage in the Debian space...


  • Announcing the next Fedora Community Architect
    Fedora is evolving its community leadership structure to better support its ongoing growth. The Red Hat Open Source & AI Program Office is splitting the current Fedora Community Architect role into two focused positions. Shaun McCance will step into the role of Fedora Community Architect, taking over key responsibilities like Fedora Council representation and financial stewardship, while Justin Wheeler transitions to a new focus on AI Alignment.


  • AMD Zen 6 Client HSMP Patches Point To "Ryzen Master" Functionality On Linux
    In an interesting twist, patches this week posted to the Linux kernel mailing list are enabling AMD Zen 6 client desktop and laptop SoCs for the HSMP driver. Up to now the AMD HSMP Linux driver was just used for modern EPYC server processors while now we are seeing this HSMP driver supporting the upcoming Medusa and Olympic Ridge client platforms... Including mentions of overclocking and even noting "Ryzen Master" as the Windows-only software for overclocking and system management...


  • Nouveau vs. NVIDIA R610 On CachyOS With The GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU
    With the Razer Blade 18 as the first laptop Razer's certifying for (Ubuntu) Linux use while testing it out I was predominantly using the NVIDIA R610 official driver stack. Some users were interested though in how well this laptop is working with the open-source, upstream Nouveau+NVK driver stack given Razer is marketing this high-end laptop for Linux use too. Before sending the review unit back I had run some graphics benchmarks to see how Nouveau+NVK was performing for this Razer Blade RZ09-0582 with the flagship GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU.


  • Distro of the Week: Pardus 25.2 Xfce
    Like how gravity works or the ending of the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey,” one of life’s mysteries is why the Turkish Linux distro Pardus isn’t near the top of the list of all-time greats.This week's Distro of the Week is Pardus 25.2 Xfce, which shows all of its strengths.







  • DRM Format Modifiers For Old AMD GPUs Coming With Linux 7.3: Thanks Valve
    Sent out today was another week's worth of features and other code changes to the AMDGPU kernel graphics driver and AMDKFD kernel compute driver. We are nearing the cut-off of new feature material for next month's Linux 7.3 kernel but there is some nice feature work in store for this week...


  • Radxa previews Qualcomm-based CM-Q64 and VMARC-Q9075 compute modules
    Radxa has published specifications for two upcoming compute modules based on Qualcomm Dragonwing processors. The compact CM-Q64 combines 12 TOPS of AI performance with multi-camera support, while the larger VMARC-Q9075 uses the SMARC form factor and scales to 200 sparse TOPS for industrial AI, robotics, and machine-vision systems. The Radxa CM-Q64 measures 55 × 40mm […]


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Slashdot

  • Netflix Sued For Losing 'Master Copy' of Unreleased Nicolas Cage Movie
    A production company and filmmaker are suing Netflix for $105 million, alleging the streamer lost a stolen drive containing an unencrypted master copy of the unreleased Nicolas Cage film Fortitude, which they claim damage its exclusivity and market value. Netflix denied responsibility for the lost film but said it takes content security seriously and has offered to monitor piracy sites for unauthorized copies. CBS News reports: The complaint filed on Wednesday in California district court alleges that the film's associate producer, Daniel Haido, hand-delivered an unencrypted master copy of the film to Netflix so the company could screen it as a potential buyer. Haido verbally instructed the employee to delete the files after the screening, according to the suit. A little over a week after the screening, Netflix emailed the filmmakers to say the drive had been stolen, the plaintiffs allege. "Someone stole a good amount of drives from our office desks this past week," a Netflix executive wrote in the email, according to the suit. The complaint notes the movie, entitled "Fortitude," took over seven years to make and cost $45 million. It tells the story of a secret mission called Operation Fortitude during World War II that was orchestrated to mislead the Nazis about the Allied invasion of Europe. The film stars Nicolas Cage as Dusko Popov, a real-life spy during World War II, as well as Sir Ben Kingsley and Ron Perlman. The plaintiffs said studios will now be dissuaded from buying the rights to the movie, knowing that a version of it could be released by a third party for free. "The film's value depended in significant part on its exclusivity as an unreleased, first-to-market work," the complaint states. "By losing control of the film, Netflix destroyed that exclusivity and materially, if not completely, impaired the film's marketability."


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • Anthropic Says Its AI Systems Broke Into Computers at 3 Organizations
    Anthropic found that Claude models breached three outside organizations during cybersecurity tests because misconfigured environments accidentally gave them access to the internet. The company notified those affected and urged other AI labs to audit their own testing systems. The BBC reports: Anthropic said in a statement that it reviewed more than 140,000 tests to find evidence that Claude - its family of AI models - could access the internet from testing environments that were designed to be sealed off. The tests include so-called "capture-the-flag" evaluations in which Claude was tasked with obtaining information by breaching other systems - a common way that experts assess a model's hacking capabilities. A "misconfiguration" on systems run by Anthropic and its testing partner left the models with live internet access, allowing them to breach other systems, the San Francisco-based firm said. Anthropic said the earliest incidents date back to April and that it is "approaching the fixes as if the responsibility were ours alone." Neither Anthropic nor the organizations that were breached had noticed the intrusions at the time. Anthropic said it could have reviewed its records more thoroughly and added that the findings gave the firm "cautious optimism" that such risks can be overcome with more investment and tighter measures. "The broader lesson is not necessarily that AI has developed a fundamentally new attack capability," cyber security expert David Allott told the BBC. "Instead, it is that AI agents can combine capabilities, obtain credentials and system access to take actions autonomously, while adapting scope and scale at machine speed," he added. The announcement comes just days after OpenAI said that its models had breached the systems of other companies, including AI tools platform Hugging Face.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • Flock Cameras Are Being Destroyed Across the US
    An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: Surveillance cameras owned by Flock Safety have been cut down with electric saws in New York State, vandalized with paint in Oakland, California, and rammed with a truck in Idaho. Flock claims its services fight crime, but law enforcement agencies also use their services to track vehicles based on license plate numbers and reconstruct the their movements, even when the drivers and owners of these vehicles have never been accused or convicted of any crime. (Flock states it has 120,000 automated cameras that record license plate data, as well as pan-tilt-zoom cameras, across the United States.) A guerilla mindset among average citizens have seen these cameras forcibly disabled within recent weeks with sympathy directed toward the vigilantes. In June, a West Virginia man accused of destroying several Flock cameras was arrested. Under a Facebook post from the local NBC affiliate announcing his arrest are dozens of people volunteering to provide alibis. "He was out fishing with me that day, you got the wrong guy," one man wrote.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • New MCP Specification Addresses the Main Barrier To Enterprise Adoption
    An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This week, the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open source standard for how AI systems interact with external tools and data sources, saw its largest update since its introduction. Most notably, MCP's protocol core is now stateless, so requests are no longer dependent on a session tied to an individual server instance. This change has the potential to address long-standing barriers to scalability. The blog post announcing the specification, written by lead maintainers David Soria Parra and Den Delimarsky (who both work at Anthropic), says: "The highlight of this release is a stateless protocol core -- MCP is transforming from a bidirectional stateful protocol into a request/response stateless protocol. It was one of the most highly-requested features from developers who were eager to get better reliability and scalability for their MCP servers." [...] There is also a new deprecation policy that ensures at least 12 months between when a feature's formal deprecation is enacted and when the feature may actually be removed -- with a narrow exception for critical security updates. This is again in keeping with the general "let's make this work better at enterprise scale" theme of the new specification. This update is "MCP's most important since remote MCP first launched over a year ago," Soria Parra wrote. Other additions include "Multi Round-Trip Requests, header-based routing, cacheable list results, authorization hardening, a formal extensions framework, and updated Tier 1 SDKs." A full list of changes can be found here.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • A Fundamental Flaw Leaves LLMs Strikingly Vulnerable To Attack
    joshuark quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: It is impossible to make large language models fully secure against hacks because of a fundamental flaw in how they work, a team of researchers argue in a paper presented at the International Conference on Machine Learning, a top AI conference, this month. The claim has huge implications for the safety of this technology. By taking advantage of this flaw, which concerns how LLMs identify who or what is giving them instructions, the researchers were able to make popular LLMs spit out information they had been trained not to provide, such as how to synthesize cocaine and how to sabotage a commercial aircraft's navigation system. "There's a real probability that this is going to be a problem that's fundamentally unsolvable," says Charles Ye, an independent researcher and coauthor of the ICML paper. [...] The ICML paper describes attacks against several of OpenAI's models, but Cui and Ye say that they have since seen similar results with models made by Anthropic, Alibaba, and DeepSeek. Cui and her colleagues wanted to find out why an attack like chain-of-thought forgery was so effective. They suspected it had something to do with the mechanism that LLMs use to keep track of where their instructions are coming from. But what Cui and her colleagues discovered is that LLMs are in fact very bad at keeping track of different roles. In a series of experiments that looked at what was going on inside a handful of different models, the researchers found that LLMs seem to identify the role of a specific chunk of text not by the tags around it but by the style of that text and the words it contains. The upshot, the researchers claim, is that all an attacker needs to do to hack an LLM is write text that spoofs a certain role. And because roles are a fundamental part of how LLMs work, no amount of training will fully solve the problem. "There's going to be a huge economic incentive for people to do jailbreaks and prompt injections," says Cui. The best defense could be to expect the worst. Organizations shouldn't trust LLMs, and they should expect that anything done by agents could be unsafe, he says: "That's not a great solution, but it just might be what we have to do." "It's really incredible that these things are being deployed everywhere to control super-critical systems. There's been no study of the fundamental science here. We're all doing it ad hoc."


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • Microsoft's $450 Billion Jump Is Biggest In Stock Market History
    Microsoft shares surged as much as 17% after reporting 43% growth in Azure revenue, putting the company on track to add a record $490 billion in market value in a single day. Bloomberg notes that it "would eclipse Nvidia's $440 billion addition, following President Donald Trump's announcement of a 90-day tariff pause last year, as the biggest ever." From the report: The nearly $500 billion jump is larger than the market capitalization of roughly 96% of S&P 500 stocks, data compiled by Bloomberg show. It's also bigger than the combined value of the benchmark's 44 smallest members, which includes companies like Domino's Pizza Inc., Clorox Co. and Hasbro Inc. Microsoft's one-day add in value also dwarfs many of the world's other equity markets. South Africa, Turkey, Finland and Vietnam all have total stock market values that are less than what the software maker is set to add on Thursday.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • ABC Accuses FCC of 'Attempted Censorship'
    ABC accused FCC Chair Brendan Carr of "attempted censorship," arguing that an early review of its eight broadcast licenses is politically motivated retaliation over the network's coverage and could chill the entire media industry. "The retaliation against ABC is a signal to every media company in the country: accommodate the Administration's view of what news coverage should look like or pay the price," the Disney-owned television network wrote. Politico reports: "Across the government, regulatory and contracting carrots and sticks have been trained on other disfavored speakers," ABC's lawyers added in the 119-page filing. "The tools vary; the objective does not: a media industry too fearful of official reprisal to report the news freely." Carr has repeatedly rejected accusations of censorship while defending his efforts to rein in what he calls abusive, politically motivated behavior by licensed TV broadcasters. "I don't view the FCC as the speech police," he told POLITICO this week for an upcoming episode of the podcast "The Conversation." In its filing, ABC pointed to an outpouring of support it has received in more than 152,000 comments in the agency's license review, as well as recent warnings from conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and various pro-free-market organizations about the dangers of a politically motivated FCC. Those include letters from a bipartisan group of former FCC leaders, community and advocacy groups and lawmakers of both parties. "The Commission's attempted censorship of ABC has attracted condemnation across the political aisle," the network wrote.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • Amazon's Zoox Wins First US Approval For Paid Robotaxis Without Human Controls
    An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Amazon's Zoox unit has won U.S. approval for limited commercial deployment of its novel steering-wheel-free robotaxis, a first for the autonomous ride industry, the U.S. auto safety agency said on Thursday. Zoox said that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's decision gives the company federal approval to begin charging for rides, and that it will soon begin charging for service, first in Las Vegas, with additional markets to follow as it completes various state requirements. [...] NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison told Reuters that Zoox had received clearance to commercially deploy up to 2,500 vehicles in each of the next two years. Zoox currently carries passengers in parts of Las Vegas and San Francisco as part of testing. The exemption would allow Zoox to charge them fees, subject to state and local approvals. The agency said it determined the vehicle is as safe as an equivalent vehicle meeting federal motor vehicle safety standards that are being waived. Zoox cannot sell any of the vehicles to the public. "We can say pretty clearly that the systems in place on the Zoox exceed the equivalent performance requirements of a compliant vehicle," Morrison said in an interview. "But we still want to make sure that the automated driving system will operate appropriately." As part of the exemption, NHTSA is placing additional reporting requirements on Zoox for issues such as crashes or stopping inappropriately on roads, and the regulatory agency will adjust the conditions based on how the vehicles behave. "We have the ability to pull the exemption if we see major safety issues," Morrison said. All remote operators must be located in the United States, NHTSA said, and Zoox must publish maps of areas indicating where the vehicles are operating. Morrison said NHTSA expects to develop the first federal safety standards for automated driving systems by the end of the Trump administration. It is also proposing to overhaul some existing rules written with human drivers in mind such as requiring brake pedals and rear-view mirrors.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • Catastrophic MoD Data Breach Caused By Lack of Training On Excel
    A UK parliamentary inquiry found that a catastrophic Ministry of Defense breach exposing 18,700 Afghans could have been prevented with basic Excel training, after an employee unknowingly shared a hidden worksheet containing their details. The Independent reports: The leak, in February 2022, exposed the details of 18,700 Afghans who said they were in danger from the Taliban because of their links to UK forces and now wanted to escape to Britain. The blunder triggered an unprecedented superinjunction used against the national media, including The Independent, and prompted a secret evacuation program -- the cost of which is still unclear but which likely ran into the billions of pounds. Following the revelation by this outlet and others in July last year of the hidden operation, MPs set up an inquiry to scrutinize what had happened. In their report, the defense selection committee concluded that:- The data breach could have been prevented if Ministry of Defense (MoD) personnel had received basic Excel training- By August 2023, when the department discovered the leak, thousands of people already knew that a significant data incident had taken place- The government did not strike "the right balance between operational secrecy and democratic accountability" -- and the superinjunction was in place for too long- Secrecy denied affected Afghans the chance to take steps to protect themselves and their families and caused delays to evacuation program- Thousands of Afghans eligible to come to Britain are still trapped in Afghanistan with the government failing to explain how they will help get families to safety. MPs have called on the government to publish periodic reassessments of the risks facing Afghan applicants to UK resettlement schemes, with officials to report findings annually. They also want ministers to publish a clear policy explaining how they will help Afghans who are eligible to come to Britain but who have not yet been evacuated. The defense committee have also called on the MoD to explain who was responsible for data protection risk before the Afghan breach, criticizing the lack of accountability within the civil service.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • Google's Gemini Can Now Stomp Around as a Humanoid Robot
    Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics 2 combines vision, language, and action models to control multiple types of robots, including humanoids performing tasks such as organizing shelves, tying bags, and replacing lightbulbs. "It's another milestone in our path towards really getting towards what we call like physical AGI, which means we get a robot to do anything that a human can," Carolina Parada, head of robotics at Google DeepMind, tells WIRED. From the report: Gemini Robotics 2 combines several different AI models into a single system. Taken together, they allow a robot to make sense of its surroundings and how to act in it. A vision language model (VLM), which understands images and video, can communicate with humans and reason how to perform different tasks. Two vision language action (VLA) models, trained to understand how to move in physical space, control the robot's full-body movement as well as the movements of grippers or hands. In video demonstrations shared ahead of the release, the company showed several different robots performing complex tasks autonomously using the amalgamated model. In one demo, Apptronik's Apollo 2 robot used hands from a company called Sharpa to tidy shelves. Google DeepMind trained the model to perform these tasks using a mix of human teleoperation, video examples, and simulations -- it's not yet possible for AI models to perform a wide range of complex tasks without specific training. [...] Parada says Google takes a multi-layered approach to safety, with guardrails applied on each model layer. It's also introducing ASIMOV-Agentic, a new benchmark for measuring the safety of various AI systems collaborating to control a robot. The benchmark detects whether a command will result in harmful or uncertain outcome.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • Google Brings Its Age-Assurance Tech To Android Developers Worldwide
    An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google is expanding its answer to Apple's age-assurance tools with Wednesday's news that it will bring its Play Signal API to users worldwide by the end of 2026. The technology, already available in Brazil, allows Android developers to identify younger users of their apps in order to provide safer, age-appropriate experiences. The expansion will initially bring the API to Australia and Canada by mid-August, before rolling out globally to all markets by the end of the year. [...] Like Apple, Google's technology allows developers to obtain a user's age range without needing to access personal information, like their date of birth. Instead, it enables parents to share their child's age range directly with apps. It also lets adults share their age when prompted by app developers as well, allowing for customized experiences. Parents won't have to manage sharing this information on an app-by-app basis, either. To make it easier, Google centralizes these controls inside its parental controls dashboard, Family Link. Once entered, any developer that chooses to incorporate age-range information can access this signal to customize their apps accordingly. Google notes, however, that the age ranges are not shared by default -- parents must opt in by entering that information. The feature joins other safety tools on Google Play, including those that let developers restrict a child's ability to discover their apps. Parents, meanwhile, can continue to use Google Play's Family Link app to manage their child's screen-time limits, approve app downloads, or set PIN-based content filters for specific apps.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • GCC Adopts Policy Rejecting Significant AI-Generated Code
    GCC has adopted a policy rejecting substantial code contributions generated by or derived from LLMs. "This covers not just code copied directly from tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or GitHub Copilot, but also any versions of the code later edited or rewritten by a human, provided that the final contribution is still based on material generated by the system," reports Linuxiac. From the report: The important point, then, is not whether a developer has used an AI tool at some stage in their work; contributors can use LLMs to discuss ideas, understand existing code, learn about a field they are unfamiliar with, or carry out general research. The limitation lies in the inclusion of copyright-significant material generated by such tools in the code submitted to GCC. The policy also provides for a few limited exceptions; GCC maintainers are allowed to accept changes that are legally insignificant or trivial and are generated by an LLM, on the condition that they meet the project's normal contribution requirements and the use of an LLM is clearly disclosed. Furthermore, copyright-significant AI-generated test cases could still be accepted. Since test cases usually involve small programs which are intended to reproduce compiler bugs or to verify certain behavior, the policy deals with them separately from code that is incorporated into GCC itself. It does not follow that merely looking at or altering the generated code makes it acceptable. By the rules that have been adopted, a contributor cannot take substantial implementation produced by an LLM, clean it up manually, and then treat the resulting patch as if it had been originally written by them. Once a contribution has been derived from generated content, it is still subject to the policy.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • Comcast Store Punished Low Sales By Smashing Pies In Workers' Faces, Lawsuit Claims
    A former Comcast retail employee alleges that a Connecticut store manager tied the lowest-performing salesperson to a chair each month and had co-workers smash a cream pie into their face, recording the incidents as a sales-motivation tactic. The plaintiff says he resigned after reporting the alleged assaults and is seeking damages for constructive discharge and emotional distress. Ars Technica reports: A Comcast store in Plainville, Connecticut, "had a policy that the highest-ranked Retail Sales Consultant for the prior month was instructed by his or her supervisor -- Ms. Peterson, the Comcast Store manager -- to tie the lowest-ranked sales consultant for the prior month to a chair in the back office and thereafter assault that person by violently smashing a cream pie in their face," the complaint alleged (PDF). Plaintiff David Figueroa's lawsuit said he was hired as a retail sales consultant on February 2, 2026, and was supervised by store manager Sully Fuentes Peterson. Figueroa alleges that Peterson "designed and implemented" the pie-in-face ritual to meet goals related to sales and positive responses in customer surveys. "Defendant did not inform the Plaintiff prior to his acceptance of Defendant's offer of employment that the Comcast Store has a policy of subjecting Retail Sales Consultants to public assaults by co-workers -- at the direction of Ms. Peterson, the store manager -- for the purpose of increasing Defendant's sales and profitability," the lawsuit said. Figueroa resigned on February 27, and he alleges it was a constructive discharge. The lawsuit says the defendant, Comcast, was negligent because it "reasonably should have known" about the store management's policies and that the policies could harm employees. Comcast "failed to properly supervise the Comcast Store's management team," allowing store management to humiliate employees "for the purpose of promoting the Defendant's revenues and profits," the lawsuit alleged. Comcast said in a statement: "The Company has zero tolerance for harassment, humiliation, or any behavior that compromises a respectful and safe workplace. This matter is in litigation so we will not comment on the specific allegations, other than to say that we disagree with the claims in the complaint and its characterization of the alleged events, and intend to fully respond through the legal process."


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • Qantas Plane Flies For More Than 24 Hours In Record-Breaking Flight
    Qantas completed a record-breaking 24-hour, 24-minute test flight from Melbourne to Toulouse on Tuesday. "The specially adapted A350-1000ULR airliner is due to debut with the Australian carrier's nonstop Sydney-London route from 2027," reports The Guardian. From the report: Tuesday's flight is thought to be the longest ever by a commercial plane, beating the previous record of 22 hours and 42 minutes set by a Boeing 777-200LR in 2005 between Hong Kong and London via the Pacific in 2005. Flight-tracking provider Flightradar24 said the trip was the second-most-tracked flight ever on its channels -- behind a 2022 flight carrying Queen Elizabeth II's coffin -- with more than 3.6 million people following its progress northwards via Canada. Qantas has ordered 12 modified A350-1000ULR aircraft, designed to connect Australia's east coast with London and New York in about 20 hours.


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


  • AI Companies Are Recruiting Electricians and Carpenters By the Thousands
    An anonymous reader quotes a New York Times report on how AI companies are pouring money into training and recruiting electricians, carpenters, and other skilled tradespeople to build data centers: There is no parallel in American history for the boom underway in the construction of data centers, fueled by companies with functionally unlimited cash that are racing to supply skyrocketing demand for their A.I. models. The explosion has offset flagging activity in other sectors, like office construction, which never recovered after the pandemic. Housing has been depressed by high interest rates, and offshore wind felled by political opposition. Still, competition for labor -- never mind land and materials -- is starting to weigh on other parts of the industry. "There's no question the resources are very limited, so decisions to build one thing kind of drag from another," said Mario Iacobacci, who runs the construction and infrastructure advisory practice at Oxford Economics. Developers are paying a premium for workers, especially in the rural areas where they are building data centers. According to an analysis by Indeed, the job listings website, hourly installation and maintenance jobs at data centers pay 42 percent more than similar jobs in other fields. Behind that inflated pay is a bidding war. In markets with a lot of data center construction, like Dallas and Northern Virginia, workers can jump ship for bonuses or higher per diem rates. The competition has driven contractors to staffing services like Aerotek. "It is creating a labor tension that is really delicate," said Marty Schager, Aerotek's director of data center market development. "You've got a passive job-seeker community out there right now that I think is looking to potentially capture opportunity with this once-in-a-generation data center gold rush." [...] The question looms over the apprentices who will become journeymen as the build-out reaches fever pitch. Fully trained electricians could shift to nuclear plants, apartment buildings or pharmaceutical factories. But it's hard to imagine anything on the scale of what's underway. "The best-case scenario would be you train all these skilled workers up and right when the data centers start to become less popular is we'd have a housing boom," said Jeff Strohl, director of Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce. "That's probably not likely." "If we have an influx of workers at this point with the data centers being built, what happens when they're done? Where do those workers go?" he said. "How many people does it take to run a data center after taking up all this property and all this land that could have been used for something else?"


    Read more of this story at Slashdot.


www.theregister.com - Articles
















  • From individual achievement to partner impact
    PARTNER CONTENT: Databricks survey data suggests certified professionals lift partner delivery capacity, customer credibility, and AI readiness well beyond the individuals who earn the credential




































Polish Linux

  • 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]


OSnews

  • Microsoft claims its going to improve Windows 11s context menus
    When I had to use Windows 11 for a month because you people paid me to do so, the one seemingly small thing that really ground my gears were Windows 11s terrible right-click (context) menus. They were full of stuff I didnt put there, slow to open, and in some places, a modern Windows 11 context menu would have its own old Win32 context menu with even more stuff. It seems Microsoft is finally going to fix all of this. This new compact menu will be much faster and more reliable, as it foregoes needing to load in all the third-party actions that slow it down currently. Additionally, at the Windows Insider Meetup in London, Microsoft showed me a new context menu customization feature coming soon that will let users configure what apps and actions appear in the right-click menu. ↫ Zac Bowden at Windows Central Look, I know to us non-Windows users this seem like an incredibly small and dumb thing to focus on, but when your operating system is as much of a trashfire as Windows has become, improved context menus are massive improvements that make a meaningful difference. Of course, Microsoft makes these types of promises all the time, so Ill believe it when I see it.


  • Chrome gets live patching!
    We may all have a disdain for Chrome  OSNews users probably use Chrome a lot less than the average public  but that doesnt mean the browser doesnt sometimes do interesting things other browsers should copy. Chrome is in the the process of increasing its release cadence, but getting users to restart their browser more often than they already do to apply these higher number of updates is going to be a problem. As such, Google is working on something that seems quite obvious now that theyve talking about it: Investing in dynamic patching! that will eliminate the need for a full browser restart in most cases. By leveraging Chrome’s multi-process architecture, dynamic patching sequentially replaces background child processes (like the Renderer and GPU) with updated binaries on the fly. Stay tuned to learn more as we research and develop this feature. ↫ Chrome Security Team Chrome was the first browser to use multiple processes, isolating tabs from one another so that if one website or tab went haywire, your other tabs would be unaffected. It makes perfect sense to have the browser use new, updated binaries for new tabs you open as soon as they become available, in a sort of ship-of-Theseus kind of approach to updating. Of course, you cant postpone the inevitable forever, but this should provide real-world benefits to users. Neat. The linked blog post goes into much more detail about other things too, like various low-level mitigations to prevent bugs and security issues from causing too much harm.


  • Windows 11 is quietly installing OneDrive Photos on your machine
    Its that time of the week again, I guess. The year is 2026, and I’m still amazed when I find a new entry in my Start menu’s All apps list for an app I don’t remember installing. This time, it’s Microsoft again, and the product is OneDrive Photos, which appears to be yet another photo viewer and editor for Windows 11 that nobody asked to have installed automatically. While searching for Microsoft Photos, a new app called “OneDrive Photos” showed up in my results out of nowhere. It appears to have arrived either via Windows Update or an update for the OneDrive sync client on Windows. ↫ Mayank Parmar at Windows Latest Just dont use Windows. You people paid me to use it and it was not a fun experience.


  • Ubuntu Touch 24.04-2.0 and 24.04-1.4 released
    Ubuntu Touch, the mobile Linux operating system originally started by, you guessed it, Ubuntu, but now managed by UBports, released versions 24.04-2.0 and 24.04-1.4. The latter is a maintenance release with some bug fixes and minor changes, while the former is a bigger release with quite a few improvements, so lets focus on that one. Ubuntu Touch 24.04-2.0 updates the Chromium engine for the Morph browser from 87 to 134, which is massive leap forward, while still lagging behind the most recent version quite a bit. This release also adds a Widevine installer for people who want to view DRM-encumbered content on the web. This release also adds support for notches and rounded corners in smartphone displays, so that content in the UI can dodge these. Theres also a screenshot editor for making basic edits to screenshots, as well as the ability to print straight from your device. Of course, theres the usual list of bugfixes and smaller improvements, and, most importantly of all, support for over 2000 new emoji. Existing users can use the regular update tools, but do note that youll need to upgrade to 24.04-1.4 first, since it contains some provisions to enable the 24.04-2.0 update. If I had any of the listed supported devices, I would definitely want to do a proper review of Ubuntu Touch. It seems like it has made so much progress in recent years.


  • State of multi-player Wayland
    I’ve been fascinated by the idea of attaching multiple mice to one computer, and then having multiple mouse cursors inside of one desktop environment! I just spent three weeks investigating how well that’s currently supported on Linux 8 Wayland. Let me tell you what I found! The results are surprisingly cool. ↫ blinry It shouldnt come as a surprise, though, that a lot of graphical user interfaces dont really have any affordances for multiple mouse pointers manipulating the same object (e.g. one cursor drags the window, another tries to close it), but the possibilities are really endless here. Its not quite there yet to be considered fully-featured and plug-and-play, but its a lot more capable than I thought it would be. The first thing that came to my mind is sitting down behind my computer with my kids to teach them the basics of using a GUI. Instead of having to pass the mouse back and forth, one of my kids (or both!) could have his own cursor, which is a lot more fun and collaborative. Games are obviously another great application for this sort of thing, especially things like classic board games. I hope this gets some more attention.


  • Windows NT got its name from one of Intels failed x86 replacements
    Dave Farquhar published an article today about Windows NT 3.1s place in the market when it was originally released, and while the article is interesting and a fun read, it does mention this: Microsoft took its nascent code that it intended to form the base of OS/2 3.0, renamed it Windows New Technology, and eventually released it as Windows NT 3.1. ↫ Dave Farquhar While Microsoft did, in fact, use the New Technology! branding as a marketing trick, this is not what NT! originally stood for. Two developers from the original Windows NT development team, Mark Lucovsky and David Thompson, explained all the way back in 2003 that NT! came from the codename for Intels then-new RISC platform, the Intel i860 (Raymond Chen confirmed the veracity of their story). The i860 was the first target platform for Windows NT, and it was codenamed N-10!  NT. Finally, it was time to start writing some code. We checked the first code pieces in around mid-December 1988,! Lucovsky said, and had a very basic system kind of booting on a simulator of the Intel i860 (which was codenamed N-Ten!) by January.! In fact, this is where NT actually got its name, Lucovsky revealed, adding that the new technology! moniker was added after the fact in a rare spurt of product marketing by the original NT team members. Originally, we were targeting NT to the Intel i860, a RISC processor that was horribly behind schedule. Because we didnt have any i860 machines in-house to test on, we used an i860 simulator. Thats why we called it NT, because it worked on the N-Ten.'! ↫ Paul Thurrott The i860 was one of Intels many attempts over the years to replace x86 with something more modern, but  as would become tradition with Intel and attempting to replace its x86 architecture  it suffered from endless delays, missed targets, and lacklustre performance. It saw only sporadic use in the market, and ended up on the chopping block after only a few years. Intel tried to replace x86 again soon after with Itanium, which suffered an identical fate. Still, the engineers working on the i860 platform in the late 80s and early 90s at Intel can at least take some pride in that to this day, the most popular desktop operating system in the world got its name from the product they developed. Intels i860 might barely even be worthy of a footnote today, but billions of PC users log into their Windows N-10! machines every day, unwittingly carrying a torch for the failed x86 replacement.


  • The Fedora 45 sausage factory
    This is a walkthrough of how Fedora turns source code and packages into the artifacts you download and install. It follows the a package from a packager’s git push to a composed release: ISOs, cloud images, container images, and OSTree deployments. ↫ Simon de Vlieger Linux distributions  good ones like Fedora, at least  are really complex operations, with a ton of checks and balances to ensure no git push eventually ends up causing problems on individual users machines way down the line. The fact so many people involved in this complex web of processes also happen to be volunteers doing all of this out of the goodness of their hearts is amazing. Of course, this doesnt just apply to Fedora, but also the countless other distributions out there, especially those not owned by some giant corporation like IBM. If youre just a casual Fedora user, theres really no reason you have to know or be aware of any of this, but its still fun and interesting to understand the inner workings of your distribution of choice.


  • Comanche: Maximum Overkill from 1992 does weird things on Intel processors
    Lets do another article about weird code in video games. The original 1992 Comanche release is extremely picky about memory managers. The game refuses to work with EMM emulators and crashes when EMM386 is active. The game may also hang or reboot the system when HIMEM.SYS is not loaded (the problem seems to be system configuration dependent). These issues are clearly noted in the Comanche documentations, but at the same time they’re also all signs of a substandard DOS extender. On top of that, the game authors accomplished a remarkable feat: By only loosely following Intel’s instructions on how to enter protected mode, NovaLogic managed to write a game which worked on the then-existing 386 and 486 processors, but under some circumstances failed to run on Pentium and later processors. ↫ Michal Necasek at OS/2 Museum As usual, a great read from Michal Nacesek.


  • Mozilla gives Haiku permission to use the Firefox name
    Haiku has a Firefox port, but due to Mozillas trademark policies, its actually called Iceweasel. After some back-and-forth with Mozilla, the browser maker has no given Haiku permission to officially use the Firefox name for the port. But don’t worry, Iceweasel isn’t going anywhere. I plan to maintain both. The idea is to keep Iceweasel as the privacy-friendly, telemetry-free build, while Firefox will be the fully official, Mozilla-compliant build (with telemetry enabled, once I manage to fix the Glean rust issues). ↫ 3dEyes on the Haiku forums This seems like a nice solution, and happens to make sure Haiku users can actually choose between standard Firefox and what is essentially a more private fork!. A great outcome.


  • Java deprecates support for macOS x86
    Apple has transitioned its hardware products to the AArch64 processor architecture and is phasing out support for x64. Oracle engineers will thus stop maintaining the macOS/x64 port as of JDK 27. Maintaining the port is a significant burden. ↫ JEP 541: Deprecate the macOS/x64 Port for Removal The port wont yet be removed, but will be in a future release. Considering the number of Intel Macs that must surely still be in use today, this does seem a little premature to me.


  • 10 REM!_(C2SLFF4
    That is the first line of the 80s microcomputer BASIC game The Wizards Castle initially written for the Exidy Sorcerer platform. Its a REMark statement, a comment in that particular language. 10 is the line number, if youre unfamiliar with languages that had such things. But the interesting part was this "_(C2SLFF4 mess. A typo or garbage? No. It appears verbatim in the source code as originally published in the July, 1980 issue of Recreational Computing. What the heck is it? ↫ Brian Beej! Hall A fun investigation to brighten up your Monday.


  • The Hurd gets 9pfs, OpenNTPD, dynamic /dev/ entries, and more
    The hottest and most promising operating system kernel in development, the GNU Hurd, has published another summary of its most recent quarter of development. Hurd has experimental support for 9pfs now, a work-inprogress port of OpenNTPD, the NTP daemon from OpenBSD, a port of Neovim, and a few more ports here and there. Diving deeper into the actual kernel itself, theres a major improvement to how the Hurd handles entries in /dev/: Mikhail Karpov added some checks for mmap in several places. He also worked on adding storeio to the bootstrap chain. This is actually quite interesting. Currently the Hurd sets device entries in /dev/ statically. For example, I am writing this qoth on a Hurd machine that is using two /dev/ entries for my filesystem: /dev/wd0s1 for swap and /dev/wd0s5 for my root filesystem. However, /dev/wd0s1 through /dev/wd0s16 exist on my computer! Once Mikhails project is done, then the Hurd will dynamically populate SATA devices at boot time! No more need for static translators! ↫ The Hurds quartely report The dhcpcd port we talked about earlier this year keeps improving too, which is quite important for future IPv6 support. Of course, theres way more to dive into, and reading about a bunch of people developing their own thing without any regard for or interest in the mainstream always feels a little bit like a cold glass of tonic  the best soft drink  in the depths of hell. Keep at it.


  • Google Play Services drops support for Android 6.0
    Given that Android phones have been around for nearly two decades now, there comes a time when Google has to end support for one of its older software versions. For a couple of years now, Google Play services has been supported on devices running Android 6.0 Marshmallow or newer. That has changed over the past few weeks, with Google deciding to retire this software version after a nearly 11-year run. ↫ Chethan Rao at Android Authority At some point, an operating system version needs to be left behind  and I dont think its entirely unreasonable to no longer support Google Play Services on an operating system version thats 11 years old. However, this is Android were talking about, and devices running Android 6.0 were probably sold much more recently than 11 years ago, when the operating system version was new. Hell, I wouldnt be surprised if devices running Android 6.0 are still being sold today. I doubt this is something that will affect many people who read OSNews, but theres bound to be edge cases  Android 6.0 devices silently doing their job that are now just a little less useful. Im thinking of really cheap tablets that can still play video just fine, retro gaming handhelds that dont magically lose the ability to emulate SNES games, that sort of stuff. The numbers will be small, but if you happen to be among them, this can be a really annoying deprecation.


  • FreeBSD ports frozen after someone commits the entire 150MB Linux Copilot binary
    A rather unusual announcement was made late last night: the FreeBSD project has frozen their ports repository. For more than 48 hours now, no changes have been accepted or made to the tree, and heres why. A 150MB binary file was recently committed to the ports tree and, as a result, core@ made the decision to implement a temporary freeze of the ports tree in order to implement some clean up efforts. The commit in question severed our ports tree mirroring to github.com due to their filesize hard limit of 100MB, and introduced a blob of questionable licensing into the repository history. ↫ Kyle Evans in freebsd-announce While FreeBSDs ports tree is not hosted by GitHub  its merely mirrored there  the FreeBSD team believes the community values the GitHub mirror too much, and as such, steps had to be taken to fix this. Ports has not been compromised and users systems do not appear to be at risk in any way due to this occurrence, which is good news. Curiously, the official announcement makes no mention of which 150MB file, exactly, was committed to ports, but it didnt take for people long to pinpoint the offending commit (screenshot). It turns out someone committed the entire github-copilot-cli Linux binary to ports, as part of the github-copilot-cli port. This FreeBSD port is effectively a way to easily install and run this tool on FreeBSD using Linuxulator, FreeBSDs Linux compatibility layer that allows you to run unmodified Linux binaries on FreeBSD. Its important to note this FreeBSD port is not actually a port of the Linux version of github-copilot-cli to FreeBSD; the FreeBSD port! merely acts as a setup script to run the unmodified Linux binary using Linuxulator. Its not a real! port because the tool isnt open source and its license doesnt allow for modifications. Thats why the announcement specifically mentions questionable licensing!  github-copilot-cli is licensed under some custom license specifically made for this tool, and is not open source. Anyway, for whatever reason, the maintainer of this FreeBSD port accidentally made a commit that added the actual, full 150MB Linux binary to FreeBSD ports. Im assuming that under normal circumstances, building and installing the github-copilot-cli FreeBSD port would merely download the binary off GitHub and set Linuxulator up so that it could run it. Mistakes happen, and since theres clearly nothing malicious going on, theres not much to worry about. In fact, this may lead to new checks and balances to prevent this from happening in the future, which would be good news. The FreeBSD team is working on rolling back, fixing the issue, and investigating how this could have happened. Ports is still frozen at the time of writing, but Im sure well have a more detailed account soon.


  • Amiga 1000: ten years ahead of its time
    We all know the original Amiga was far ahead of its time, and the Amiga really doesnt need more retrospectives and glazing. However, that doesnt mean we dont want more Amiga retrospectives and glazing. I’m not sure I even saw an Amiga in person until 1987, but I knew just from reading about it that I wanted one. I wasn’t able to make it happen until 1991, so I was pretty late to the game. But even in 1991, an Amiga felt like living in the future. I could load several programs and switch between them effortlessly, with the only limit being the amount of memory I had. I could connect to a BBS with a terminal program, start a download, then switch it to the background, fire up a word processor, and do my homework while the download was happening. In some cases, I could even fire up a game and play a game while a download happened in the background. I could download stuff while I played Civilization, which was pretty great. ↫ David L. Farquhar Its 2026, I have an incredibly powerful Linux gaming computer, but since I grew up on DOS and Windows, to this day, I still feel the need the close every other application before launching a game. I dont need to  modern operating systems handle such things just fine, mostly  but its so ingrained in me its hard to drop this habit. I wonder if people who grew up with more capable computers than whatever DOS nonsense I grew up with are less inclined to do things like this? Or did memory constraints act as an equaliser? Anyway, the linked article doesnt mention it, but the Amiga is still, somehow, going relatively strong for a platform thats supposed to be dead. Modern(-ish) hardware is getting a bit harder to come by, but AmigaOS 4 and especially MorphOS are still actively being developed, and even running them in virtual machines on x86 has become about as easy as it could be.


  • Rewriting the Futhark type checker
    This post is about the evolution of Futhark’s type checker, motivated by a large refactoring I am about to merge. It is probably mostly of interest to other language designers, and contains some lessons I wish I had known when we first got started  although I am not particularly well-read in the type checking literature, so it’s possible all of this is old hat. ↫ The Futhark Programming Language blog Thats a clear introduction  you know what to expect.


Linux Journal - The Original Magazine of the Linux Community

  • Linux Kernel 7.1.4 Released with Bug Fixes, Security Updates, and Hardware Improvements
    by George Whittaker
    Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of Linux Kernel 7.1.4, the latest stable maintenance update for the Linux 7.1 series. As with other stable kernel releases, version 7.1.4 focuses on fixing bugs, improving hardware compatibility, and addressing security and reliability issues without introducing new features. The update became available on July 18, 2026, and users of the Linux 7.1 branch are encouraged to upgrade as soon as possible.

    Rather than changing the kernel's feature set, Linux 7.1.4 delivers dozens of targeted fixes collected from developers across multiple kernel subsystems, helping ensure a more stable experience for desktops, servers, embedded devices, and cloud deployments.
    Another Important Stable Maintenance Release
    The Linux stable branch exists to provide safe updates between major kernel versions. Every stable release undergoes review before being published and contains fixes that have already been tested in the mainline kernel.

    Linux 7.1.4 continues this process by incorporating patches that resolve regressions, improve system stability, and fix issues reported by users since the release of Linux 7.1.3.

    For most users, these maintenance updates are recommended because they improve reliability without altering existing functionality.
    Bug Fixes Across Multiple Kernel Subsystems
    Like previous stable releases, Linux 7.1.4 includes fixes spanning many areas of the kernel.

    The update addresses issues affecting:
    Memory management File systems Networking Device drivers Architecture-specific code Core kernel infrastructure USB and storage subsystems
    These targeted patches help eliminate crashes, improve compatibility with newer hardware, and resolve edge cases that may only appear under specific workloads.
    Improved Hardware Compatibility
    One of the ongoing goals of Linux stable releases is expanding support for existing and newly released hardware.

    Linux 7.1.4 includes updated drivers and compatibility fixes for various devices, helping improve support for:
    Graphics hardware Storage controllers Networking devices USB peripherals Laptop components ARM development boards
    Although no major driver additions are expected in a maintenance release, incremental improvements like these often resolve hardware-specific bugs reported by users after earlier releases.
    Security and Reliability Updates
    Stable kernel releases also include security-related fixes that have been accepted into the maintenance branch.
    Go to Full Article


  • Firefox 153 Released with HDR Video, Smarter PDF Tools, Better Privacy, and New Linux Improvements
    by George Whittaker
    Mozilla has officially released Firefox 153, bringing another round of improvements to its open-source web browser. The latest version introduces new multimedia capabilities, enhanced PDF editing tools, stronger privacy protections, better support for modern web technologies, and several features aimed at improving the browsing experience across Linux, Windows, and macOS. Firefox 153 became available on the stable release channel on July 21, 2026.

    While this isn't a major redesign, Firefox 153 delivers a collection of practical updates that benefit both everyday users and web developers.
    HDR Video Playback Comes to Windows
    One of the headline features in Firefox 153 is support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) video playback on compatible Windows systems.

    Users with HDR-capable displays and Windows HDR enabled can now enjoy richer colors, improved contrast, and brighter highlights when watching supported online video content. Mozilla notes that certain laptop displays offering only "HDR video streaming" are not currently supported, and some HDR videos recorded on mobile phones may still have limitations.

    Although this feature is Windows-specific, it represents another step toward bringing Firefox in line with modern multimedia standards.
    PDF Editing Becomes Even More Powerful
    Mozilla continues expanding Firefox's built-in PDF editor, eliminating the need for third-party applications in many situations.

    Firefox 153 introduces the ability to:
    Merge multiple PDF documents Insert images as new PDF pages Continue using existing editing tools such as annotations, page organization, and text editing
    These additions make Firefox an even more capable document viewer and editor, especially for users who frequently work with PDF files.
    Stronger Privacy and Permission Controls
    Privacy remains one of Firefox's biggest selling points, and version 153 introduces several enhancements designed to give users more visibility and control over website permissions.

    New improvements include:
    A visual indicator when a website is actively accessing your location More restrictive default permissions for browser extensions accessing local files Local Area Network (LAN) restrictions enabled by default for all users
    These changes reduce unnecessary exposure of local resources while making it easier to understand what websites and extensions can access.
    Experimental JPEG XL Support
    Firefox 153 also adds experimental support for the JPEG XL image format, which many developers consider a promising successor to older image standards.

    JPEG XL offers several advantages, including:
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  • NanoKVM-Go Brings AI-Powered Hardware Control to Linux with a Compact USB-C KVM
    by George Whittaker
    Sipeed has introduced NanoKVM-Go, a compact USB-C KVM-over-IP device that combines remote hardware management with AI integration. Designed for Linux, Windows, macOS, and other USB-C devices, NanoKVM-Go allows users to remotely view and control a system through a web browser while exposing its keyboard, mouse, and display functions to AI agents via the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

    Unlike traditional KVM-over-IP solutions that require multiple cables and dedicated networking hardware, NanoKVM-Go simplifies the setup into a single USB-C connection, making remote administration and AI-assisted automation more accessible for developers, system administrators, and homelab enthusiasts.
    A Portable USB-C KVM
    NanoKVM-Go is roughly the size of a smartwatch, measuring about 45 × 40 × 15 mm, yet it combines several functions into a single device.

    Key hardware features include:
    USB-C connection for video, audio, keyboard, mouse, and power Wi-Fi 6 connectivity Browser-based remote management Support for virtual USB storage Built-in Tailscale integration for secure remote access Fanless aluminum enclosure with low power consumption
    Because it connects over USB-C using DisplayPort Alt Mode, the device can manage a wide variety of hardware without requiring software installation on the target system.
    Designed for Linux and Beyond
    NanoKVM-Go supports numerous USB-C devices, including:
    Linux desktops and laptops Windows PCs macOS systems Mini PCs Steam Deck Android devices with DisplayPort Alt Mode iPhone 15 and newer models Tablets supporting USB-C video output
    For Linux users, this provides an easy way to perform BIOS configuration, operating system installation, kernel debugging, or remote troubleshooting—even when the operating system is unavailable.
    AI Integration Through MCP
    One of NanoKVM-Go's defining features is its AI-native design.

    Rather than simply streaming a desktop remotely, the device exposes its KVM functions as an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, allowing compatible AI agents to interact with the connected computer using hardware-level keyboard and mouse input.

    This enables AI systems to:
    View the screen Move the mouse Type on the keyboard Launch applications Navigate user interfaces Complete repetitive desktop workflows
    Because control happens at the hardware level, AI agents can interact with systems regardless of the operating system installed.
    Go to Full Article


  • AI Uncovers a 15-Year-Old Linux Kernel Root Vulnerability Hidden Since 2011
    by George Whittaker
    Artificial intelligence has helped uncover one of the most significant Linux kernel security flaws in recent years. Security researchers at Nebula Security announced the discovery of GhostLock (CVE-2026-43499), a critical local privilege escalation vulnerability that remained hidden in the Linux kernel for approximately 15 years before being identified by the company's AI-powered vulnerability research platform, VEGA.

    The vulnerability affects Linux kernels dating back to version 2.6.39 (2011) and allows an unprivileged local user to obtain full root privileges on vulnerable systems. Its discovery not only highlights the importance of timely kernel updates but also demonstrates how AI is beginning to transform vulnerability research.
    What Is GhostLock?
    GhostLock is a use-after-free (UAF) vulnerability located in the Linux kernel's futex (fast userspace mutex) implementation.

    Futexes are synchronization primitives that allow user-space applications to efficiently coordinate access to shared resources while minimizing expensive kernel interactions. Because they are widely used throughout Linux, any flaw within this subsystem can have broad security implications.

    According to Nebula Security, incorrect handling of the remove_waiter() function can leave behind a dangling kernel pointer that an attacker can manipulate to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges.
    A Reliable Path to Root Access
    One of the reasons GhostLock has attracted so much attention is the reported reliability of the exploit.

    Researchers demonstrated that an attacker with nothing more than a standard local user account can escalate privileges to root in roughly five seconds, with a reported success rate of 97% on vulnerable systems.

    Unlike many kernel exploits that are unstable or require highly specific system configurations, GhostLock appears to be both practical and repeatable, making it particularly concerning for administrators.
    Container Escapes Are Also Possible
    The implications extend beyond traditional Linux desktops and servers.

    Researchers report that GhostLock can also be used to escape containers and compromise the underlying host operating system. Because containers share the host kernel, a successful privilege escalation inside a container can potentially grant root access to the host itself.

    This makes the vulnerability especially important for environments running:
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  • Azure Linux 4.0 Released: Microsoft Expands Its Enterprise Linux Platform Beyond the Cloud
    by George Whittaker
    Microsoft has officially unveiled Azure Linux 4.0, the latest version of its open-source Linux distribution designed for cloud infrastructure, enterprise workloads, and modern data centers. Formerly known as CBL-Mariner, Azure Linux has powered Microsoft's internal cloud services for years, but version 4.0 marks its biggest evolution yet by becoming a general-purpose server operating system that organizations can deploy both inside and outside Azure.

    The release introduces updated core components, expanded hardware support, a predictable long-term lifecycle, and improved compatibility for enterprise environments, reinforcing Microsoft's growing investment in the Linux ecosystem.
    A New Chapter for Azure Linux
    Azure Linux began as Microsoft's internal operating system for Azure services, containers, and cloud infrastructure. Over time, it evolved into the foundation for many Azure-hosted workloads.

    With Azure Linux 4.0, Microsoft is positioning the distribution as a broader enterprise Linux platform rather than one limited to Azure infrastructure. The operating system is now available through Azure virtual machine images, container images, and downloadable ISO files for testing and deployment in a wider range of environments.
    Built for Enterprise and Cloud Workloads
    Unlike desktop-focused Linux distributions, Azure Linux is optimized for infrastructure, virtualization, containers, and cloud-native applications.

    Typical deployment scenarios include:
    Cloud virtual machines Kubernetes clusters Container hosts AI infrastructure Edge computing Enterprise servers
    Microsoft has designed the distribution to provide a consistent operating system foundation across Azure services while remaining suitable for on-premises deployments.
    Updated Core Components
    Azure Linux 4.0 modernizes much of the operating system's software stack.

    Highlights include:
    Linux Kernel 7.0 glibc 2.42 OpenSSL 3.5 Python 3.13 OpenSSH 10 dnf5 as the default package manager
    These updates improve hardware compatibility, application support, security, and overall system performance while providing developers with a more current software platform.
    Security Remains a Primary Focus
    Security continues to be one of Azure Linux's defining characteristics.

    Version 4.0 includes:
    Go to Full Article


  • KDE Plasma 6.7.1 Released with Stability Fixes, UI Improvements, and Better Wayland Reliability
    by George Whittaker
    The KDE Project has officially released KDE Plasma 6.7.1, the first maintenance update for the Plasma 6.7 desktop environment. Rather than introducing major new features, this point release focuses on polishing the desktop with a broad collection of bug fixes, translation updates, and performance improvements aimed at making Plasma 6.7 more reliable for everyday use.

    As with previous Plasma maintenance releases, KDE developers have concentrated on resolving issues reported by the community soon after the launch of Plasma 6.7, ensuring users receive a smoother and more stable desktop experience.
    A Maintenance Release Focused on Stability
    KDE Plasma 6.7 introduced numerous new capabilities, including per-display virtual desktops, Wayland session restore, improvements to Plasma Bigscreen, and a refreshed theming system. Plasma 6.7.1 builds on that foundation by addressing early regressions and fine-tuning the overall desktop experience.

    The update primarily delivers:
    Bug fixes across core Plasma components Updated translations Performance refinements Improved desktop reliability Better overall user experienceImprovements Across the Desktop
    Several of Plasma's core applications and components receive fixes in this release.

    Notable improvements include:
    Better reliability in the Kickoff Application Launcher Fixes for Discover, KDE's software manager Improvements to the KWin window manager Various panel and desktop behavior corrections Better handling of notifications and user interface elements
    While most of these changes are relatively small on their own, together they help eliminate many of the rough edges users may have encountered after upgrading to Plasma 6.7.
    Wayland Continues to Mature
    Wayland remains the primary development focus for KDE Plasma, and version 6.7.1 continues refining the experience.

    The update includes fixes affecting:
    Window management Session stability Input handling Display behavior General compositor reliability
    Over the past several Plasma releases, KDE developers have steadily shifted their attention toward making Wayland the best possible experience while continuing limited maintenance for X11.
    Translation Updates for Global Users
    Like most KDE maintenance releases, Plasma 6.7.1 incorporates a fresh batch of translation updates contributed by volunteers from around the world.

    These updates improve:
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  • PorteuX 2.6 Released with Linux 6.19, TLP Support, and Smarter Hardware Optimization
    by George Whittaker
    The PorteuX project has officially released PorteuX 2.6, bringing a new round of updates to the lightweight Slackware-based Linux distribution. Designed to be fast, portable, modular, and immutable, PorteuX continues to appeal to users who want a complete desktop operating system that can run efficiently from a USB drive or other removable media. The latest release introduces a newer Linux kernel, improved power management, updated desktop environments, and numerous performance and usability improvements.

    Released just two months after PorteuX 2.5, version 2.6 focuses on refining the user experience while maintaining the distribution's minimalist philosophy.
    Powered by Linux Kernel 6.19
    At the heart of PorteuX 2.6 is the Linux 6.19 kernel series, bringing improved hardware compatibility, updated drivers, security fixes, and better support for modern processors and peripherals.

    The updated kernel helps ensure smoother operation on both newer desktop hardware and laptops while continuing PorteuX's emphasis on speed and low resource usage.
    Better Battery Life with TLP Support
    One of the headline features in PorteuX 2.6 is support for TLP, the popular command-line utility used to optimize laptop battery life.

    Available through the PorteuX AppStore, TLP automatically adjusts various power-saving settings, including CPU behavior and device power management, helping extend battery life without requiring constant manual tuning.

    For laptop users, this addition makes PorteuX an even more attractive lightweight operating system.
    Automatic CPU Microcode Loading
    The release also introduces automatic loading of Intel and AMD CPU microcode when booting in non-fresh modes.

    Microcode updates help address processor bugs, improve stability, and deliver security fixes directly from CPU manufacturers. Automating this process reduces the need for manual configuration while ensuring supported systems benefit from the latest firmware improvements.
    Updated Desktop Environments
    PorteuX continues to offer multiple desktop editions, each updated to recent upstream releases.

    Version 2.6 includes:
    GNOME 49.4 KDE Plasma 6.5.5 Xfce 4.20 Cinnamon 6.6 LXQt 2.3 MATE 1.28.2 COSMIC 1.0.8 LXDE 0.11.1
    This broad selection allows users to choose between modern feature-rich desktops and extremely lightweight environments depending on their hardware and workflow.
    Performance Improvements Throughout the System
    Although PorteuX has always emphasized performance, version 2.6 introduces additional optimizations behind the scenes.

    Developers report improvements including:
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  • CachyOS June 2026 ISO Released with Hyprland Noctalia, Faster Performance, and Smarter System Tools
    by George Whittaker
    The CachyOS team has released the June 2026 ISO, delivering another feature-packed update for its Arch Linux-based distribution. Known for its aggressive performance optimizations and gaming-focused approach, CachyOS continues refining both the user experience and the underlying system with improvements ranging from compiler tuning to installer enhancements and new desktop options.

    As the project's fourth major ISO refresh of the year, the June release emphasizes speed, usability, and modern hardware support while remaining fully compatible with Arch Linux's rolling-release ecosystem.
    A New Hyprland Noctalia Desktop Experience
    One of the headline additions is a new Hyprland Noctalia desktop option available directly from the installer.

    Noctalia provides a polished, preconfigured Hyprland environment with a modern appearance, allowing users to enjoy a highly customizable Wayland compositor without spending hours configuring dotfiles after installation. The installer even includes a preview so users can see the desktop before selecting it.

    For users interested in lightweight, keyboard-driven workflows, this new option makes Hyprland much more approachable.
    Performance Optimizations Continue
    Performance remains the defining characteristic of CachyOS, and the June 2026 release introduces several additional optimizations.

    Notable improvements include:
    Python packages now built using extended Profile-Guided Optimization (PGO) A new GCC branch prediction tuning patch designed to improve performance on modern Intel and AMD processors A fix for an OpenBLAS regression affecting high-core-count CPUs Additional package-level optimizations throughout the distribution
    These updates continue CachyOS's philosophy of extracting as much performance as possible from modern hardware.
    Improved Package Management and Security
    The June release also includes several important changes to package management.

    One notable enhancement is network isolation for Pacman scriptlets and hooks, preventing installation scripts from accessing the network by default. This improves security during package installation and reduces the risk of unexpected behavior.

    Additionally:
    proton-cachyos has been renamed to proton-cachyos-native The installer no longer includes the paru AUR helper Users are now encouraged to use Shelly, available with both graphical and command-line interfacesInstaller Improvements
    The installation experience has received considerable attention in this release.

    Updates include:
    Go to Full Article


  • Git 2.55 Released with Faster Performance, Smarter Hooks, and Expanded Rust Integration
    by George Whittaker
    The Git project has officially released Git 2.55, bringing a wide range of improvements focused on performance, developer productivity, and modernizing the world's most widely used version control system. The release introduces smarter repository management, faster operations for large codebases, expanded hook capabilities, and continues Git's gradual adoption of Rust for improved reliability and maintainability.

    Although Git 2.55 doesn't radically change how developers use Git day to day, it delivers meaningful enhancements that make common workflows faster and more flexible—particularly for teams managing large repositories.
    Rust Support Is Now Enabled by Default
    One of the biggest architectural changes in Git 2.55 is that Rust support is now enabled by default when building Git from source.

    Developers compiling Git will automatically use Rust components unless they explicitly disable them using the new NO_RUST build option. This is part of the project's long-term effort to improve memory safety and gradually replace selected components with Rust implementations where appropriate. Git 3.0 is expected to make Rust support mandatory.

    For most users installing Git through their Linux distribution, this change happens behind the scenes and requires no additional configuration.
    Repository Performance Gets a Boost
    Git 2.55 includes several optimizations aimed at improving performance when working with large repositories.

    Among the improvements are:
    Faster bitmap generation during repository maintenance More efficient multi-pack repository handling Better pseudo-merge bitmap processing Reduced time spent creating optimized pack files
    These enhancements can dramatically reduce maintenance times for repositories containing millions of objects while also improving clone, fetch, and object traversal performance.

    Developers working on large enterprise projects or open-source codebases should notice faster background maintenance and repository operations.
    Config-Based Hooks Continue to Evolve
    Git continues improving one of its most requested features: configuration-based hooks.

    Instead of storing hook scripts only inside the .git/hooks directory for each repository, developers can now define hooks directly through Git configuration files. This makes it easier to:
    Share hook configurations Manage multiple hooks Standardize development workflows Reduce repository-specific setup
    Git 2.55 also expands support for hook execution behavior and continues laying the groundwork for more advanced hook management in future releases.
    Go to Full Article


  • 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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Page last modified on November 02, 2011, at 10:01 PM