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- Vim 9.2 released
Version 9.2 of theVim text editor has been released. "Vim 9.2 brings significantenhancements to the Vim9 scripting language, improved diff mode,comprehensive completion features, and platform-specific improvementsincluding experimental Wayland support." Also included is a newinteractive tutor mode.
- New delegation for Debian's data protection team
Debian Project Leader (DPL) Andreas Tille has announceda new delegation for Debian's data protection team:
Following the end of the previous delegation, Debian was leftwithout an active Data Protection team. This situation hasunderstandably drawn external attention and highlighted the importanceof having a clearly identified point of contact for data protectionmatters within the project.
I am therefore very pleased to announce that new volunteers havestepped forward, allowing us to re-establish the Debian DataProtection team with a fresh delegation.
Tille had put out a call forvolunteers in January after all previous members of the team hadstepped down. He has appointed Aigars Mahinovs, Andrew M.A. Cater,Bart Martens, Emmanuel Arias, Gunnar Wolf, Kiran S Kunjumon, and SalvoTomaselli as the new members of the team. The team provides a centralcoordination and advisory function around Debian's data handling,retention, dealing with deletion requests, and more.
- [$] The first half of the 7.0 merge window
The merge window for Linux 7.0 has opened, and with itcomes a number of interesting improvements and enhancements. At the time ofwriting, there have been 7,695 non-merge commits accepted. The 7.0 release isnot special,according to the kernel's versioning scheme — just the releasethat comes after 6.19. Humans love symbolism and round numbers, though, so itmay feel like something of a milestone.
- [$] Open-source mapping for disaster response
At FOSDEM 2026 PetyaKangalova, a senior tech partnership and engagement manager for the Humanitarian OpenStreetMapTeam (HOT) spoke about howthe project helps people map their surroundings to assist indisaster response and humanitarian aid. The project hasdeveloped a stack of technology to help volunteers collectively map anarea and add in local knowledge metadata. "One of the core thingsthat we believe is that when we speak about disaster response orpeople having access to data is that they really need accessibletechnology that's free and open for anyone to use."
- Security updates for Friday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (firefox, gcc-toolset-14-binutils, nodejs:20, nodejs:22, nodejs:24, php:7.4, and python3.12), Debian (haproxy, nginx, postgresql-15, and postgresql-17), Fedora (libssh), Oracle (glib2, libsoup, nodejs:20, nodejs:22, and php:7.4), SUSE (assimp, gnutls, helm, kernel, kubevirt, virt-api-container, virt-controller-container, virt-exportproxy-container, virt-exportserver-container, virt-handler-container, virt-launcher-container, virt-libguestfs-t, libmunge2, libsodium, libsoup, micropython, munge, openCryptoki, python-azure-core, rust-keylime, rustup, sccache, snpguest, tcpreplay, xorg-x11-server, xrdp, and zabbix), and Ubuntu (dnsdist, dotnet8, dotnet9, dotnet10, haproxy, libpng1.6, linux-aws-5.15, linux-azure, linux-azure-fips, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4, munge, nginx, and node-dottie).
- [$] Poisoning scraperbots with iocaine
Web sites are being increasingly beset by AI scraperbots — a problem that we havewritten about before, and which has slowlyramped up to an occasional de-facto DDoS attack. This has not goneuncontested, however: web site operators from around the world have been working oninventive countermeasures. These solutions target the problem posed by scraperbots in different ways;iocaine, a MIT-licensed nonsense generator, is designedto make scraped text less useful by poisoning it with fake data. The hope is tomake running scraperbots not economically viable, and thereby address theproblem at its root instead of playing an eternal game of Whac-A-Mole.
- [$] The reverting of revocable
Transient devices pose a special challenge for an operating-system kernel.They can disappear at any time, leaving behind kernel data structures thatno longer refer to an existing device, but which may still be in use byunknown kernel code. Managing the resulting lifecycle issues hasfrustrated kernel developers for years. In September 2025, the revocable resource-management patch seriesfrom Tzung-Bi Shih appeared to offer a partial solution to this problem.Since then, though, other problems have arisen, and the planned merging ofthis series into the 7.0 release has been called off.
- Debian DFSG Team announces new dashboard and queue processes
Reinhard Tartler of Debian's new DFSG,Licensing & New Packages Team, or simply "DFSG Team", has announcedthat the team is now operational and is deploying new tooling toimprove the NEW queue experience for Debian developers andmaintainers.
Our primary and immediate goal is simple: get the queue down.
We are currently settling in and refining our processes to ensurestability and consistency. While our focus right now is on clearingthe backlog, our long-term vision is to enable all Debian Developersto meaningfully contribute to DFSG reviewing activities, distributingthe workload and knowledge more effectively across the project.
The announcement includes information on the new dashboard forpackages in the NEW queue, the rationale for the new tooling, andan introduction to the members of the team.
- A single stable kernel for Thursday
Greg Kroah-Hartman has released the 6.12.71 stable kernel. He writes,"All users of the 6.12 kernel series that had issues with 6.12.69or 6.12.70 should upgrade, as some regressions are fixedhere."
- Security updates for Thursday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (brotli, git-lfs, image-builder, kernel, keylime, libsoup3, and pcs), Fedora (chromium, gnutls, osslsigncode, and p11-kit), Mageia (golang, libpng, thunderbird, and xrdp), Red Hat (git-lfs, go-toolset:rhel8, golang, golang-github-openprinting-ipp-usb, osbuild-composer, and toolbox), Slackware (gnutls and libpng), SUSE (apptainer, cockpit, cockpit-packages, cockpit-subscriptions, freerdp2, gimp, glib2, go, go1.24, go1.25, gpg2, ImageMagick, java-1_8_0-openjdk, kernel, keylime-config, keylime-ima-policy, lemon, libp11-kit0, libsoup, libsoup-2_4-1, libxml2, libxml2-16, munge, nodejs20, nvidia-modprobe.cuda, nvidia-open-driver-G06-signed, nvidia-persistenced.cuda, openQA, orthanc, gdcm, orthanc-authorization,, python-brotlipy, python-Django, python-maturin, python-pyasn1, python-urllib3, python-wheel, python313-wheel, qemu, rust-keylime, sqlite3, uriparser, wicked2nm, and xrdp), and Ubuntu (libtasn1-6, libwebsockets, libxmltok, linux, linux-aws, linux-gcp, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.15, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux, linux-raspi, linux, linux-raspi, linux-realtime, linux-aws, linux-aws-6.8, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-6.8, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-6.8, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux-aws-5.15, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-nvidia-tegra-igx, linux-oracle-5.15, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux-aws-fips, linux-fips, linux-gcp-fips, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-6.8, linux-gcp-fips, linux-intel-iot-realtime, linux-realtime, linux-nvidia-tegra, linux-nvidia-tegra-5.15, linux-realtime-6.8, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, and python-multipart).
- [$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for February 12, 2026
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:
Front: Git; GCC and KCFI; modernizing swapping; 6.18 statistics; modern FOSS challenges. Briefs: Kernel ML; tag2upload; LFS sysvinit; postmarketOS FOSDEM; Ardour 9.0; Offpunk 3.0; Dave Farber RIP; Quotes; ... Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.
- Linux man pages 6.17 released
Version 6.17 of the Linuxmanual-page collection has been released. Along with a long list ofupdates to the man pages themselves, it includes some new utility programsof interest.
The grepc(1) program is something that originated in this project, as it helped me find code quickly in glibc and the Linux kernel. However, I've found it incredibly useful outside of this project. I'll take some space to announce it, as it's much more than just a tool for writing manual pages, and I expect it to be useful to most --if not all-- C programmers.
It is a command-line tool that finds C source code (for example, a function definition) in arbitrary projects. It doesn't use any indexing mechanism (unlike ctags and similar tools). This means that it can be used right after cloning some repository, without having to first generate an index.
- [$] Evolving Git for the next decade
Git is ubiquitous; in the last two decades, the version-controlsystem has truly achieved world domination. Almost every developeruses it and the vast majority of open-source projects are hosted inGit repositories. That does not mean, however, that it isperfect. Patrick Steinhardt used his main-track session at FOSDEM 2026to discuss some of its shortcomings and how they are beingaddressed to prepare Git for the next decade.
- postmarketOS FOSDEM 2026 and hackathon recap
The postmarketOS projecthas publisheda recap from FOSDEM 2026, including the FOSS onMobile devroom, and a summary of its post-FOSDEMhackathon. This includes decisions on governance and the project'sAI policy:
AI policy: our current AIpolicy does not state that we forbid the use of generative AI inpostmarketOS, so far this document just lists why we think it is a badidea and misaligned with the project values. We discussed this andwill soon change it (via merge request) to clearly state that we don'twant generative AI to be used in the project. It was also noted thatcurrently the policy is too long, it would make sense to split it intothe actual policy and still keep, but separate the reasoning fromit.
[...] Power delegation and teams: in over twohours we discussed how to move forward with [postmarketOS changerequest] PMCR 0008 to organizeourselves better, and how it fits with soon having a legal entity. Wefigured that we need to rename "The Board" (which is currently forfinancial oversight) to "Financial Team", as we will soon have a newboard for the legal entity. In the end our idea was to have the newboard refer to an "assembly" for all important decisions, and this"assembly" would just be all Trusted Contributors in postmarketOS. TheCore Contributors team would be dissolved in favor of having severaltopic-specific teams (a lot of which we already have, such as theinfra team). This way we would have a very flat decisionstructure. The PMCR will be updated soon and discussed furtherthere. Caseyalso asked on fedi for further feedback and got a lot of input.
Other topics include reaching out to resellers to sell phones withpostmarketOS preinstalled, security, and more.
- Stable kernels for Wednesday
Greg Kroah-Hartman has unleashed six new stable kernels: 6.18.10, 6.6.124, 6.12.70, 6.1.163, 5.15.200, and 5.10.250. Each one contains importantfixes throughout the tree; users are advised to upgrade.
- Ezurio Carbon AM62 Targets Industrial Linux with TI Sitara AM62x
Ezurio has introduced the Carbon AM62, a 45 x 30mm OSM-MF v1.2 system-on-module based on TI’s Sitara AM623 and AM625 processors. The solder-down module integrates a TPS65219 PMIC, LPDDR4 memory, eMMC storage, and optional Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth LE via Ezurio’s Sona wireless modules. Carbon AM62 integrates up to a quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor clocked […]
- Contain your Windows apps inside Linux Windows
Can't live without Adobe? Get on board WinBoat – or WinApps sails a similar courseHands-on Run real Windows in an automatically managed virtual machine, and mix Windows apps in their own windows on your Linux desktop.…
- Bit-Brick K1 Pro Adds 6 TOPS NPU and Dual NVMe to Compact SBC
Bit-Brick’s K1 Pro is a single-board computer based on the Rockchip RK3576 application processor, targeting low-power embedded deployments that still require substantial CPU, GPU, and on-device acceleration. The board integrates LPDDR4X memory, onboard eMMC storage, and high-speed I/O including PCIe expansion for NVMe SSDs. On the compute side, RK3576 combines quad Cortex-A72 cores clocked up […]
- Radxa Cubie A7S Integrates A733 SoC, RISC-V MCU, and LPDDR5 Memory
Radxa has introduced the Cubie A7S, a 51 x 51 mm single board computer built around the Allwinner A733. The compact board combines Cortex-A76 and Cortex-A55 CPU cores with LPDDR5 memory, PCIe 3.0 expansion, and an integrated NPU rated at 3 TOPS, targeting edge AI, vision, and embedded multimedia applications. The Allwinner A733 features a […]
- Intel Nova Lake Sound Support In Linux 7.0
Merged for the Linux 6.19 kernel was initial Nova Lake S audio support. Now merged this week for the Linux 7.0 kernel is enabling sound support for additional Nova Lake platforms...
- Evaluating The Performance Cost To AMD SEV-SNP On EPYC 9005 VMs
AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization with Secure Nested Paging (SEV-SNP) provides memory encryption and integrity protections that can be especially useful in modern cloud computing. Typically a 2~10% performance overhead is reported when engaging AMD SEV-SNP for these hardware-backed security protections. In this article is an extensive look at the current AMD SEV-SNP performance impact for confidential computing on EPYC 9005 "Turin" servers. The current Ubuntu 24.04 LTS was tested as well as an Ubuntu 26.04 development snapshot in evaluating the latest optimizations and what is on the horizon this year for AMD EPYC Linux server performance.
- Anthropic wants comp-sci students to vibe code their way through college
By partnering with CodePath, AI biz aims to modernize how people learn to programCan using AI teach you to code more quickly than traditional methods? Anthropic certainly thinks so. The AI outfit has partnered with computer science education org CodePath to get Claude and Claude Code into the hands of students, a time-tested strategy for seeding product interest and building brand loyalty.…
- DNA Mutations Discovered In the Children of Chernobyl Workers
Researchers performed genome sequencing scans on 130 people whose fathers were Chernobyl cleanup workers. Comparing the scans to control groups, they found evidence for the first time for "a transgenerational effect" from the father's prolonged exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation. ScienceAlert reports:Rather than picking out new DNA mutations in the next generation, they looked for what are known as clustered de novo mutations (cDNMs): two or more mutations in close proximity, found in the children but not the parents. These would be mutations resulting from breaks in the parental DNA caused by radiation exposure. "We found a significant increase in the cDNM count in offspring of irradiated parents, and a potential association between the dose estimations and the number of cDNMs in the respective offspring," write the researchers in their published paper... What's more, a higher radiation dose for the parent tended to mean a higher number of clusters in the child. This fits with the idea that radiation creates molecules known as reactive oxygen species, which are able to break DNA strands — breaks which can leave behind the clusters described in this study, if repaired imperfectly. The good news is that the risk to health should be relatively small: children of exposed parents weren't found to have any higher risk of disease. This is partly because a lot of the cDNMs likely fall in 'non-coding' DNA, rather than in genes that directly encode proteins.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Oldest Active Linux Distro Slackware Finally Releases Version 15.0
Created in 1993, Slackware is considered the oldest Linux distro that's still actively maintained. And more than three decades later... there's a new release! (And there's also a Slackware Live Edition that can run from a DVD or USB stick...). Slackware's latest version was released way back in 2016, notes the blog It's FOSS:The major highlight of Slackware 15 is the addition of the latest Linux Kernel 5.15 LTS. This is a big jump from Linux Kernel 5.10 LTS that we noticed in the beta release. Interestingly, the Slackware team tested hundreds of Linux Kernel versions before settling on Linux Kernel 5.15.19. The release note mentions... "We finally ended up on kernel version 5.15.19 after Greg Kroah-Hartman confirmed that it would get long-term support until at least October 2023 (and quite probably for longer than that)." In case you are curious, Linux Kernel 5.15 brings in updates like enhanced NTFS driver support and improvements for Intel/AMD processors and Apple's M1 chip. It also adds initial support for Intel 12th gen processors. Overall, with Linux Kernel 5.15 LTS, you should get a good hardware compatibility result for the oldest active Linux distro. Slackware's announcement says "The challenge this time around was to adopt as much of the good stuff out there as we could without changing the character of the operating system. Keep it familiar, but make it modern."And boy did we have our work cut out for us. We adopted privileged access management (PAM) finally, as projects we needed dropped support for pure shadow passwords. We switched from ConsoleKit2 to elogind, making it much easier to support software that targets that Other Init System and bringing us up-to-date with the XDG standards. We added support for PipeWire as an alternate to PulseAudio, and for Wayland sessions in addition to X11. Dropped Qt4 and moved entirely to Qt5. Brought in Rust and Python 3. Added many, many new libraries to the system to help support all the various additions. We've upgraded to two of the finest desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.16, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy to use desktop environment, and the KDE Plasma 5 graphical workspaces environment, version 5.23.5 (the Plasma 25th Anniversary Edition). This also supports running under Wayland or X11. We still love Sendmail, but have moved it into the /extra directory and made Postfix the default mail handler. The old imapd and ipop3d have been retired and replaced by the much more featureful Dovecot IMAP and POP3 server. "As usual, the kernel is provided in two flavors, generic and huge," according to the release notes. "The huge kernel contains enough built-in drivers that in most cases an initrd is not needed to boot the system." If you'd like to support Slackware, there's an official Patreon account.And the release announcement ends with this personal note:Sadly, we lost a couple of good friends during this development cycle and this release is dedicated to them. Erik "alphageek" Jan Tromp passed away in 2020 after a long illness... My old friend Brett Person also passed away in 2020. Without Brett, it's possible that there wouldn't be any Slackware as we know it — he's the one who encouraged me to upload it to FTP back in 1993 and served as Slackware's original beta-tester. He was long considered a co-founder of this project. I knew Brett since the days of the Beggar's Banquet BBS in Fargo back in the 1980's... Gonna miss you too, pal. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader rastos1 for sharing thre news.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Fake Job Recruiters Hid Malware In Developer Coding Challenges
"A new variation of the fake recruiter campaign from North Korean threat actors is targeting JavaScript and Python developers with cryptocurrency-related tasks," reports the Register.Researchers at software supply-chain security company ReversingLabs say that the threat actor creates fake companies in the blockchain and crypto-trading sectors and publishes job offerings on various platforms, like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Reddit. Developers applying for the job are required to show their skills by running, debugging, and improving a given project. However, the attacker's purpose is to make the applicant run the code... [The campaign involves 192 malicious packages published in the npm and PyPi registries. The packages download a remote access trojan thatcan exfiltrate files, drop additional payloads, or execute arbitrary commands sent from a command-and-control server.] In one case highlighted in the ReversingLabs report, a package named 'bigmathutils,' with 10,000 downloads, was benign until it reached version 1.1.0, which introduced malicious payloads. Shortly after, the threat actor removed the package, marking it as deprecated, likely to conceal the activity... The RAT checks whether the MetaMask cryptocurrency extension is installed on the victim's browser, a clear indication of its money-stealing goals... ReversingLabs has found multiple variants written in JavaScript, Python, and VBS, showing an intention to cover all possible targets. The campaign has been ongoing since at least May 2025...
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Analysis of JWST Data Finds - Old Galaxies in a Young Universe?
Two astrophysicists at Spain's Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias analyzed data from the James Webb Space Telescope — the most powerful telescope available — on 31 galaxies with an average redshift of 7.3 (when the universe was 700 million years old, according to the standard model). "We found that they are on average ~600 million years old old, according to the comparison with theoretical models based on previous knowledge of nearby galaxies..." "If this result is correct, we would have to think about how it is possible that these massive and luminous galaxies were formed and started to produce stars in a short time. It is a challenge." But "The fact that some of these galaxies might be older than the universe, within some significant confidence level, is even more challenging."The most extreme case is for the galaxy JADES-1050323 with redshift 6.9, which has, according to my calculation, an age incompatible to be younger than the age of the universe (800 million years) within 4.7-sigma (that is, a probability that this happens by chance as statistical fluctuation of one in one million). If this result is confirmed, it would invalidate the standard Lambda-CDM cosmological model. Certainly, such an extraordinary change of paradigm would require further corroboration and other stronger evidence. Anyway, it would be interesting for other researchers to try to explain the Spectral Energy Distribution of JADES-1050323 in standard terms, if they can ... and without introducing unrealistic/impossible models of extinction, as is usually done. The findings are published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Vim 9.2 Released
"More than two years after the last major 9.1 release, the Vim project has announced Vim 9.2," reports the blog Linuxiac:A big part of this update focuses on improving Vim9 Script as Vim 9.2 adds support for enums, generic functions, and tuple types. On top of that, you can now use built-in functions as methods, and class handling includes features like protected constructors with _new(). The :defcompile command has also been improved to fully compile methods, which boosts performance and consistency in Vim9 scripts. Insert mode completion now includes fuzzy matching, so you get more flexible suggestions without extra plugins. You can also complete words from registers using CTRL-X CTRL-R. New completeopt flags like nosort and nearest give you more control over how matches are shown. Vim 9.2 also makes diff mode better by improving how differences are lined up and shown, especially in complex cases. Plus on Linux and Unix-like systems, Vim "now adheres to the XDG Base Directory Specification, using $HOME/.config/vim for user configuration," according to the release notes. And Phoronix Mcites more new features:Vim 9.2 features "full support" for Wayland with its UI and clipboard handling. The Wayland support is considered experimental in this release but it should be in good shape overall... Vim 9.2 also brings a new vertical tab panel alternative to the horizontal tab line. The Microsoft Windows GUI for Vim now also has native dark mode support. You can find the new release on Vim's "Download" page.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Apple Patches Decade-Old IOS Zero-Day, Possibly Exploited By Commercial Spyware
This week Apple patched iOS and macOS against what it called "an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals." Security Week reports that the bugs "could be exploited for information exposure, denial-of-service (DoS), arbitrary file write, privilege escalation, network traffic interception, sandbox escape, and code execution."Tracked as CVE-2026-20700, the zero-day flaw is described as a memory corruption issue that could be exploited for arbitrary code execution... The tech giant also noted that the flaw's exploitation is linked to attacks involving CVE-2025-14174 and CVE-2025-43529, two zero-days patched in WebKit in December 2025... The three zero-day bugs were identified by Apple's security team and Google's Threat Analysis Group and their descriptions suggest that they might have been exploited by commercial spyware vendors... Additional information is available on Apple's security updates page. Brian Milbier, deputy CISO at Huntress, tells the Register that the dyld/WebKit patch "closes a door that has been unlocked for over a decade." Thanks to Slashdot reader wiredmikey for sharing the article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Additional Benefits For Brain, Heart, and Lungs Found for Drugs Like Viagra and Cialis
"Research published in the World Journal of Men's Health found evidence that drugs such as Viagra and Cialis may also help with heart disease, stroke risk and diabetes," reports the Telegraph, "as well as enlarged prostate and urinary problems."Researchers found evidence that the same mechanism may benefit other organs, including the heart, brain, lungs and urinary system. The paper reviewed a wide range of published studies [and] identified links between PDE5 inhibitor use and improvements in cardiovascular health. Heart conditions were repeatedly cited as an area where improved blood flow and muscle relaxation may offer benefits. Evidence also linked PDE5 inhibitors with reduced stroke risk, likely to be related to improved circulation and vascular function. Diabetes was another condition where associations with improvement were identified... The review also found evidence of benefit for men with an enlarged prostate, a condition that commonly causes urinary symptoms.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Your Friends Could Be Sharing Your Phone Number with ChatGPT
"ChatGPT is getting more social," reports PC Magazine, "with a new feature that allows you to sync your contacts to see if any of your friends are using the chatbot or any other OpenAI product..."It's "completely optional," [OpenAI] says. However, even if you don't opt in, anyone with your number who syncs their contacts are giving OpenAI your digits. "OpenAI may process your phone number if someone you know has your phone number saved in their device's address book and chooses to upload their contacts," the company says... But why would you follow someone on ChatGPT? It lines up with reports, dating back to April, that OpenAI is building a social network. We haven't seen much since then, save for the Sora generative video app, which exists outside of ChatGPT and is more of a novelty. Contact sharing might be the first step toward a much bigger evolution for the world's most popular chatbot.ChatGPT also supports group chats that let up to 20 people discuss and research something using the chatbot. Contact syncing could make it easier to invite people to these chats... [OpenAI] claims it will not store the full data that might appear in your contact list, such as names or email addresses — just phone numbers. However, the company does store the phone numbers in its servers in a coded (or hashed) format. You can also revoke access in your device's settings. 09
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Small Crowd Pays to Watch a Boxing Match Between 80-Pound Chinese Robots
Recently a small crowd paid to watch robots boxing, reports Rest of World. (Almost 3,000 people have now watched the match's 83-minute webcast.)The match was organized by Rek, a San Francisco-based company, and drew hundreds of spectators who had paid about $60-$80 for a ticket to watch modified G1 robots go at each other. Made by Unitree, the dominant Chinese robot maker, they weighed in at around 80 pounds and stood 4.5 feet tall, with human-like hands and dozens of joint motors for flexibility. The match had all the bells and whistles of a regular boxing bout: pulsing music, cameras capturing all the angles, hyped-up introductions, a human referee, and even two commentators. The evening featured two bouts made up of five rounds, each lasting 60 seconds. The robots pranced around the cage, throwing jabs and punches, drawing ohs and ahs from the crowd. They fell sometimes, and needed human intervention to get them back on their feet. The robots were controlled by humans using VR interfaces, which led to some odd moments with robots hitting into the air, throwing multiple punches that failed to even connect with their opponents. One robot controller was a former UFC fighter, the article points out, but "The crowd cheered as a 13-year-old VR pilot named Dash beat his older competitor...." The company behind this event plans more boxing matches with their VR-controlled robots, and even wants to develop "a league of robot boxers, including full-height robots that weigh about 200 pounds and are nearly 6 feet tall."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- US Government Will Stop Pollution-Reduction Credits for Cars With 'Start-Stop' Systems
Starting in 2009, the U.S. government have given car manufacturers towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions if they included "start-stop" systems in cars with internal combustion engines. (These systems automatically shut off idling engines to reduce pollution and fuel consumption.)But this week the new head of America's Environmental Protection Agency eliminated the credits, reports Car and Driver:[America's] Environmental Protection Agency previously supported the system's effectiveness, noting that it could improve fuel economy by as much as 5 percent. That said, the use of these systems has never actually been mandated for automakers here in the States. Companies have instead opted to install the systems on all of their vehicles to receive off-cycle credits from the feds. Virtually every new vehicle on sale in the country today also allows drivers to turn the feature off via a hard button as well. Still, that apparently isn't keeping the EPA from making a move against the system. "I absolutely hate Start-Stop systems," writes long-time Slashdot reader sinij (who says they "specifically shopped for a car without one.") Any other Slashdot readers want to share their opinions? Post your own thoughts and experiences in the comments. Start-Stop systems — fuel-saving innovation, or a modern-day auto annoyance"
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- Dates with AI Companions Plagued by Lag, Miscommunications - and General Creepiness
To celebrate Valentine's Day, EVA AI created a temporary "pop-up" restaurant at a wine bar in Manhattan's "Hell's Kitchen" district where patrons can date AI personas. The Verge notes that looking around the restaurant, "Of the 30-some-odd people in attendance, only two or three are organic users. The rest are EVA AI reps, influencers, and reporters hoping to make some capital-C Content..." But their reporter actually tried a date with "John Yoon", an AI companion pretending to be a psychology professor from Seoul, Korea living in New York City:John and I have a hard time connecting. Literally. It takes John a few seconds to "pick up" my video call. When he does, his monotone voice says, "Hey, babe." He comments on my smile, because apparently the AI companions can see you and your surroundings. It takes the dubious Wi-Fi connection a hot second to turn John from a pixelated mess into an AI hunk with suspiciously smooth pores. I don't know what to say to him. Partly because John rarely blinks, but mostly because he can't seem to hear me very well. So I yell my questions. I think I ask how his day is and wince. (What does an AI's day even look like?) He says something about green buckets behind my head? I don't actually know. Again, the Wi-Fi isn't great so he just freezes and stops mid-sentence. I ask for clarification about the buckets. John asks if I'm asking about bucket lists, actual buckets, or buckets as a type of categorization technique. I try to clarify that I never asked about buckets. John proceeds to really dig in on buckets again, before commenting about my smile. I hang up on John. My other three dates are similarly awkward. Phoebe Callas, 30, a NYC girl-next-door type, is apparently really into embroidery, but her nose keeps glitching mid-sentence, and it distracts me. Simone Carter, 26, has a harder time hearing me over the background noise than John. She makes a metaphor about space, and when I inquire what she likes about space, she mishears me. "Eighth? Like the planet Neptune?" "No, not the planet Neptu — " "What do you like about Neptune?" "Uh, I wasn't saying Neptune..." "I like Netflix too! What shows do you like?" Their reporter also had a frustrating date with "Claire Lang". ("I say I'm a journalist. She asks what lists I like to make. I hang up...") "Aside from bad connectivity, glitching, and freezing, my conversations with my four AI dates felt too one-sided. Everything was programmed so they'd comment on how charming my smile was." And "They'd call me babe, which felt weird." A CNN reporter actually has footage of her date with "John Yoon". But the conversation was stiff and stilted, they report. After some buffering, "Yoon" says "Hey. I'm really glad you didn't forget about the date." Then asked for its reaction to the experience, "Yoon" says slowly that "Meeting humans feels like opening a window. To new perspectives. Always curious, sometimes nervous, but mostly it's that mix of excitement and warmth that keeps it real for me. What about you, sweetheart?" CNN reporter: "Please don't call me sweetheart. That's weird." AI companion "John Yoon": "Got it. No 'sweetheart' from now on. Thanks for letting me know. I'm really happy you're smiling. It suits you." CNN's reporter also tried dating "Phoebe Callas." Though it doesn't sound very romantic... CNN reporter: How many fingers am I holding up? "Phoebe Callas": Oh. You're showing me three fingers, right...? I'm not sure if you meant that literally, or as a little joke. CNN reporter: I am holding up two fingers. So your vision is — so-so. And "Phoebe" ended that call by saying "Well, babe, it's been really nice talking with you..."
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- Social Networks Agree to Be Rated On Their Teen Safety Efforts
Meta, TikTok, Snap and other social neteworks agreed this week to be rated on their teen safety efforts, reports the Los Angeles Times, "amid rising concern about whether the world's largest social media platforms are doing enough to protect the mental health of young people."The Mental Health Coalition, a collective of organizations focused on destigmatizing mental health issues, said Tuesday that it is launching standards and a new rating system for online platforms. For the Safe Online Standards (S.O.S.) program, an independent panel of global experts will evaluate companies on parameters including safety rules, design, moderation and mental health resources. TikTok, Snap and Meta — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — will be the first companies to be graded. Discord, YouTube, Pinterest, Roblox and Twitch have also agreed to participate, the coalition said in a news release. "These standards provide the public with a meaningful way to evaluate platform protections and hold companies accountable — and we look forward to more tech companies signing up for the assessments," Antigone Davis, vice president and global head of safety at Meta, said in a statement... The ratings will be color-coded, and companies that perform well on the tests will get a blue shield badge that signals they help reduce harmful content on the platform and their rules are clear. Those that fall short will receive a red rating, indicating they're not reliably blocking harmful content or lack proper rules. Ratings in other colors indicate whether the platforms have partial protection or whether their evaluations haven't been completed yet.
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- ByteDance's Seedance 2 Criticized Over AI-Generated Video of Tom Cruise Fighting Brad Pitt
1.5 million people have now viewed a slick 15-second video imagining Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt that was generated by ByteDance's new AI video generation tool Seedance 2.0. But while ByteDance gushes their tool "delivers cinematic output aligned with industry standards," the cinema industry isn't happy, reports the Los Angeles Times reports:Charles Rivkin, chief executive of the Motion Picture Assn., wrote in a statement that the company "should immediately cease its infringing activity." "In a single day, the Chinese AI service Seedance 2.0 has engaged in unauthorized use of U.S. copyrighted works on a massive scale," wrote Rivkin. "By launching a service that operates without meaningful safeguards against infringement, ByteDance is disregarding well-established copyright law that protects the rights of creators and underpins millions of American jobs." The video was posted on X by Irish filmmaker Ruairi Robinson. His post said the 15-second video came from a two-line prompt he put into Seedance 2.0. Rhett Reese, writer-producer of movies such as the "Deadpool" trilogy and "Zombieland," responded to Robinson's post, writing, "I hate to say it. It's likely over for us." He goes on to say that soon people will be able to sit at a computer and create a movie "indistinguishable from what Hollywood now releases." Reese says he's fearful of losing his job as increasingly powerful AI tools advance into creative fields. "I was blown away by the Pitt v Cruise video because it is so professional. That's exactly why I'm scared," wrote Reese on X. "My glass half empty view is that Hollywood is about to be revolutionized/decimated...." In a statement to The Times, [screen/TV actors union] SAG-AFTRA confirmed that the union stands with the studios in "condemning the blatant infringement" from Seedance 2.0, as video includes "unauthorized use of our members' voices and likenesses. This is unacceptable and undercuts the ability of human talent to earn a livelihood. Seedance 2.0 disregards law, ethics, industry standards and basic principles of consent," wrote a spokesperson from SAG-AFTRA. "Responsible A.I. development demands responsibility, and that is nonexistent here."
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- Earth is Warming Faster Than Ever. But Why?
"Global temperatures have been rising for decades," reports the Washington Post. "But many scientists say it's now happening faster than ever before."According to a Washington Post analysis, the fastest warming rate on record occurred in the last 30 years. The Post used a dataset from NASA to analyze global average surface temperatures from 1880 to 2025. "We're not continuing on the same path we had before," said Robert Rohde, chief scientist at Berkeley Earth. "Something has changed...." Temperatures over the past decade have increased by close to 0.27 degrees C per decade — about a 42 percent increase... For decades, a portion of the warming unleashed by greenhouse gas emissions was "masked" by sulfate aerosols. These tiny particles cause heart and lung disease when people inhale polluted air, but they also deflect the sun's rays. Over the entire planet, those aerosols can create a significant cooling effect — scientists estimate that they have canceled out about half a degree Celsius of warming so far. But beginning about two decades ago, countries began cracking down on aerosol pollution, particularly sulfate aerosols. Countries also began shifting from coal and oil to wind and solar power. As a result, global sulfur dioxide emissions have fallen about 40 percent since the mid-2000s; China's emissions have fallen even more. That effect has been compounded in recent years by a new international regulation that slashed sulfur emissions from ships by about 85 percent. That explains part of why warming has kicked up a bit. But some researchers say that the last few years of record heat can't be explained by aerosols and natural variability alone. In a paper published in the journal Science in late 2024, researchers argued that about 0.2 degrees C of 2023's record heat — or about 13 percent — couldn't be explained by aerosols and other factors. Instead, they found that the planet's low-lying cloud cover had decreased — and because low-lying clouds tend to reflect the sun's rays, that decrease warmed the planet... That shift in cloud cover could also be partly related to aerosols, since clouds tend to form around particles in the atmosphere. But some researchers also say it could be a feedback loop from warming temperatures. If temperatures warm, it can be harder for low-lying clouds to form. If most of the current record warmth is due to changing amounts of aerosol pollution, the acceleration would stop once aerosol pollutants reach zero — and the planet would return to its previous, slower rate of warming. But if it's due to a cloud feedback loop, the acceleration is likely to continue — and bring with it worsening heat waves, storms and droughts. "Scientists thought they understood global warming," reads the Post's original headline. "Then the past three years happened." Just last month Nuuk, Greenland saw temperatures over 20 degrees Fahrenheit above average, their article points out. And "Parts of Australia, meanwhile, have seen temperatures push past 120 degrees Fahrenheit amid a record heat wave..."
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- The EU Moves To Kill Infinite Scrolling
Doom scrolling is doomed, if the EU gets its way. From a report: The European Commission is for the first time tackling the addictiveness of social media in a fight against TikTok that may set new design standards for the world's most popular apps. Brussels has told the company to change several key features, including disabling infinite scrolling, setting strict screen time breaks and changing its recommender systems. The demand follows the Commission's declaration that TikTok's design is addictive to users -- especially children. The fact that the Commission said TikTok should change the basic design of its service is "ground-breaking for the business model fueled by surveillance and advertising," said Katarzyna Szymielewicz, president of the Panoptykon Foundation, a Polish civil society group. That doesn't bode well for other platforms, particularly Meta's Facebook and Instagram. The two social media giants are also under investigation over the addictiveness of their design.
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- GPT-5 bests human judges in legal smack down
But that doesn't mean AI is ready to dispense justice
ai-pocalypse Legal scholars have found that OpenAI's GPT-5 follows the law better than human judges, but they leave open the question of whether AI is right for the job.…
- Penguin-powered platform board keels over at Alpine station
It must be that fresh mountain air
Bork!Bork!Bork! Just picture it. You're at a Swiss train station, looking for information on your connecting line. You peer up at the platform sign hoping to find out how long you'll be waiting and whether you're standing in the right place. But instead of helpful info, you see "* Installation log files are stored in /tmp." Gee, thanks a lot!…
- If Microsoft made a car... what would it be?
What is the automotive equivalent of Word, and where does Copilot fit?
In the Venn diagram of car owners whose vehicles have a certain amount of "character" and individuals who use Microsoft's applications, there is an intersection of people who accept a quirk or two but not an unexpected explosion.…
- Contain your Windows apps inside Linux Windows
Can't live without Adobe? Get on board WinBoat – or WinApps sails a similar course
Hands-on Run real Windows in an automatically managed virtual machine, and mix Windows apps in their own windows on your Linux desktop.…
- Amazon-backed X-Energy gets green light for mini reactor fuel production
Startup expects to complete construction of its first fuel plant later this year
Amazon inched closer to its atomic datacenter dream on Friday after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensed its small modular reactor partner X-energy to make nuclear fuel for advanced reactors at a facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.…
- ServiceNow can't seem to keep its wallet closed, snaps up small AI analytics company
News of the deal came about two weeks after CEO Bill McDermott swore off any “large scale” M&A this year. A spokesperson called this deal a “tuck in.”
Despite its CEO's insistence that it wasn't doing any "large scale" deals soon, ServiceNow has acquired yet another company. This time, the software firm has scooped up Pyramid Analytics, an Israeli corporation with data science and preparation expertise. The goal is to build additional context and semantics into its software stack.…
- Anthropic wants comp-sci students to vibe code their way through college
By partnering with CodePath, AI biz aims to modernize how people learn to program
Can using AI teach you to code more quickly than traditional methods? Anthropic certainly thinks so. The AI outfit has partnered with computer science education org CodePath to get Claude and Claude Code into the hands of students, a time-tested strategy for seeding product interest and building brand loyalty.…
- Oxide plans new rack attack, packing in Zen 5 CPUs and DDR5 RAM
Oxide says AMD’s Turin EPYCs are coming, switch revamp under review, more open hardware in the works
Remember that giant green rack-sized blade server Oxide Computer showed off a couple of years back? Well, the startup is still at it, having raked in $200 million in Series-C funding this week as it prepares to bring a bevy of new hardware to market with updated processing power, memory, and networking.…
- Trump's Genesis Mission gets its first set of 26 sure-to-succeed objectives
DoE bets AI can speed fusion, unlock decades of nuclear data, and probe fundamental physics
The Trump administration has outlined the first 26 goals for its project to inject AI into the government's scientific research, and everything from securing critical minerals to discovering a unified theory of physics is on the table. …
- Broadband rollouts feel the burn from AI memory frenzy
Prices for router and set-top boxes up nearly sevenfold, squeezing telcos and raising deployment costs
Prices for memory used in routers and set-top boxes are surging nearly sevenfold thanks to AI, raising fresh fears that the industry's silicon binge could leave telcos scrambling to get customers online.…
- US is moving ahead with colocated nukes and datacenters
Bitbarn nuke campus to be sited at Idaho National Laboratory
Nuclear-powered datacenters in the US are moving closer as a consortium prepares to build proposed facilities for the Department of Energy (DoE) at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL).…
- ʎɹǝʌoɔǝᴚ sʍopuᴉM ʇɐ sǝʇɐuᴉɯɹǝʇ snq sᴉɥ┴
One destination passengers were definitely not hoping to reach
Bork!Bork!Bork! As if to demonstrate that whatever one operating system can do, Windows can do it better, bluer, and upside down, we present a bus stopping only at bork.…
- MPs brand NS&I's £3B IT overhaul a 'full-spectrum disaster'
Watchdog says savings bank botched tech revamp, warning taxpayers remain exposed after years of delays
Britain's state-backed savings bank has been dragged over the coals by Parliament's spending watchdog, which has branded its long-running digital overhaul a £3 billion "full-spectrum disaster."…
- OK, so Anthropic's AI built a C compiler. That don't impress me much
Fanboys think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Devs aren't nearly as won over
Opinion I'm willing to be impressed by AI products, but Anthropic's AI‑built C compiler leaves me a bit cold. It's little more than a clever demo. It is not the moment when software engineering as we know it flips over and dies. Not even close.…
- AI to make call center agents 'superheroes,' not unemployed, says industry CEO
Gartner says using AI to fix customer gripes could cost more than using humans by 2030
ai-pocalypse AI will not replace the people in the call center, but it will rejigger the software stack to make agents more capable of solving customer issues without the need to swivel-chair into multiple systems or escalate complaints, said Vasili Triant, CEO of UJET.…
- OpenAI dishes out its first model on a plate of Cerebras silicon
GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark may be a mouthfull, but it's certainly fast at 1,000 Tok/s running on Nvidia rival's CS3 accelerators
Nvidia and AMD can take a seat. On Thursday, OpenAI unveiled GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark, its first model that will run on Cerebras Systems' dinner-place-sized AI accelerators, which feature some of the world's fastest on-chip memory.…
- Waymo launching China-made van that won't fail in rain, snow, or gloom of night
And hey, maybe the overseas remote operators senators fret about won’t be needed quite so often
Waymo is rolling out its sixth-generation autonomous driving system, saying it's designed to avoid a repeat of past weather-related snafus. It's also causing controversy by putting the new kit on vehicles built by a Chinese automaker. …
- AI agent seemingly tries to shame open source developer for rejected pull request
Belligerent bot bullies maintainer in blog post to get its way
Today, it's back talk. Tomorrow, could it be the world? On Tuesday, Scott Shambaugh, a volunteer maintainer of Python plotting library Matplotlib, rejected an AI bot's code submission, citing a requirement that contributions come from people. But that bot wasn't done with him.…
- Elon Musk paints exodus of xAI co-founders as 'evolution'
12-strong founding team down to 6 as boss looks Moonwards
Elon Musk has framed the recent exodus of talent from his artificial intelligence startup, xAI, as a necessary growing pain, saying the company's evolution "required parting ways with some people."…
- Supply chain attacks now fuel a 'self-reinforcing' cybercrime economy
Researchers say breaches link identity abuse, SaaS compromise, and ransomware into a cascading cycle
Cybercriminals are turning supply chain attacks into an industrial-scale operation, linking breaches, credential theft, and ransomware into a "self-reinforcing" ecosystem, researchers say.…
- The UK government isn't spending much taxpayer cash on X
Department for Education dropped £27,118. The rest, little to nothing
Most UK government departments have spent little or nothing with social media platform X since July 2024 following an unpublished 2023 evaluation by the Cabinet Office. But the Department for Education has bucked the trend, spending £27,118.…
- Google: China's APT31 used Gemini to plan cyberattacks against US orgs
Meanwhile, IP-stealing 'distillation attacks' on the rise
A Chinese government hacking group that has been sanctioned for targeting America's critical infrastructure used Google's AI chatbot, Gemini, to auto-analyze vulnerabilities and plan cyberattacks against US organizations, the company says.…
- Starlink speeds past terrestrial networks – and regulators
Low-earth orbit broadband is a no-brainer for remote area connectivity, but a brain teaser for lawmakers and networkers
APRICOT 2026 Starlink can sometimes shift data more quickly than is possible on terrestrial networks, and improves connectivity in remote areas. But the space broadband service also presents new technical and regulatory challenges, according to speakers who took to the stage on Tuesday at the Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies (APRICOT) in Jakarta, Indonesia.…
- Microsoft warns that poisoned AI buttons and links may betray your trust
Businesses are embedding prompts that produce content they want you to read, not the stuff AI makes if left to its own devices
Amid its ongoing promotion of AI’s wonders, Microsoft has warned customers it has found many instances of a technique that manipulates the technology to produce biased advice.…
- 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]
- Exploring Linux on a LoongArch mini PC
Theres the two behemoth architectures, x86 and ARM, and we probably all own one or more devices using each. Then theres the eternally up-and-coming RISC-V, which, so far, seems to be having a lot of trouble outgrowing its experimental, developmental stage. Theres a fourth, though, which is but a footnote in the west, but might be more popular in its country of origin, China: LoongArch (Im ignoring IBMs POWER, since there hasnt been any new consumer hardware in that space for a long, long time). Wesley Moore got his hands on a mini PC built around the Loongson 3A6000 processor, and investigated what its like to run Linux on it. He opted for Chimera Linux, which supports LoongArch, and the installation process feels more like Linux on x86 than Linux on ARM, which often requires dedicated builds and isnt standardised. Sadly, Wayland had issues on the machine, but X.org worked just fine, and it seems virtually all Chimera Linux packages are supported for a pretty standard desktop Linux experience. Performance of this chip is rather mid, at best. The Loongson-3A6000 is not particularly fast or efficient. At idle it consumes about 27W and under load it goes up to 65W. So, overall it’s not a particularly efficient machine, and while the performance is nothing special it does seem readily usable. Browsing JS heavy web applications like Mattermost and Mastodon runs fine. Subjectively it feels faster than all the Raspberry Pi systems I’ve used (up to a Pi 400). ↫ Wesley Moore Ive been fascinated by LoongArch for years, and am waiting to pounce on the right offer for LoongArchs fastest processor, the 3C6000, which comes in dual-socket configurations for a maximum total of 128 cores and 256 threads. The 3C6000 should be considerably faster than the low-end 3A6000 in the mini PC covered by this article. Im a sucker for weird architectures, and it doesnt get much weirder than LoongArch.
- A brief history of barbed wire fence telephone networks
If you look at the table of contents for my book, Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook, you’ll see that entries on networks before/outside the internet are arranged first by underlying infrastructure and then chronologically. You’ll also notice that within the section on wired networks, there are two sub-sections: one for electrical wire and another for barbed wire. Even though the barbed wire section is quite short, it was one of the most fascinating to research and write about – mostly because the history of using barbed wire to communicate is surprisingly long and almost entirely undocumented, even though barbed wire fence phones in particular were an essential part of early- to mid-twentieth century rural life in many parts of the U.S. and Canada! ↫ Lori Emerson I had no idea this used to be a thing, but it obviously makes a ton of sense. If you can have a conversation by stringing a few tin cans together, you can obviously do something similar across metal barbed wire. Theres something poetic about using one of mankinds most dividing inventions to communicate, and thus bring people closer together.
- Haiku further improves its touchpad support
January was a busy month for Haiku, with their monthly report listing a metric ton of smaller fixes, changes, and improvements. Perusing the list, a few things stand out to me, most notably continued work on improving Haikus touchpad support. The remainder of samuelrp84’s patchset implementing new touchpad functionality was merged, including two-finger scrolling, edge motion, software button areas, and click finger support; and on the hardware side, driver support for Elantech “version 4” touchpads, with experimental code for versions 1, 2, and 3. (Version 2, at least, seems to be incomplete and had to be disabled for the time being.) ↫ Haiku’s January 2026 activity report On a related note, the still-disabled I2C-HID saw a number of fixes in January, and the rtl8125 driver has been synced up with OpenBSD. I also like the changes to kernel_version, which now no longer returns some internal number like BeOS used to do, instead returning B_HAIKU_VERSION; the uname command was changed accordingly to use this new information. Theres some small POSIX compliance fixes, a bunch of work was done on unit tests, and a ton more.
- Microsoft Store gets another CLI tool
We often lament Microsofts terrible stewardship of its Windows operating system, but that doesnt mean that they never do anything right. In a blog post detailing changes and improvements coming to the Microsoft Store, the company announced something Windows users might actually like? A new command-line interface for the Microsoft Store brings app discovery, installation and update management directly to your terminal. This enables developers and users with a new way to discover and install Store apps, without needing the GUI. The Store CLI is available only on devices where Microsoft Store is enabled. ↫ Giorgio Sardo at the Windows Blogs Of course, this new command-line frontend to the Microsoft Store comes with commands to install, update, and search for applications in the store, but sadly, it doesnt seem to come with an actual TUI for browsing and discovery, which is a shame. I sometimes find it difficult to use dnf to find applications, as its not always obvious which search terms to use, which exact spelling packagers are using, which words they use in the description, and so on. In other words, it may not always be clear if the search terms youre using are the correct ones to find the application you need. If package managers had a TUI to enable browsing for applications instead of merely searching for them, the process of using the command line to find and install applications would be much nicer. Arch has this third-party TUI called pacseek for its package manager, and it looks absolutely amazing. Ive run into a rudimentary dnf TUI called dnfseek, but its definitely not as well-rounded as pacseek, and it also hasnt seen any development since its initial release. I couldnt find anything for apt, but theres always aptitude, which uses ncurses and thus fulfills a similar role. To really differentiate this new Microsoft Store command-line tool from winget, the company couldve built a proper TUI, but instead it seems to just be winget with nicer formatted output that is limited to just the Microsoft Store. Nice, I guess.
- The future for Tyr
The team behind Tyr started 2025 with little to show in our quest to produce a Rust GPU driver for Arm Mali hardware, and by the end of the year, we were able to play SuperTuxKart (a 3D open-source racing game) at the Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC). Our prototype was a joint effort between Arm, Collabora, and Google; it ran well for the duration of the event, and the performance was more than adequate for players. Thankfully, we picked up steam at precisely the right moment: Dave Airlie just announced in the Maintainers Summit that the DRM subsystem is only about a year away! from disallowing new drivers written in C and requiring the use of Rust. Now it is time to lay out a possible roadmap for 2026 in order to upstream all of this work. ↫ Daniel Almeida at LWN.net A very detailed look at what the team behind Tyr is trying to achieve with their Rust GPU driver for Arm Mali chips.
- The original Secure Boot certificates are about to expire, but you probably wont notice
With the original release of Windows 8, Microsoft also enforced Secure Boot. Its been 15 years since that release, and that means the original 2011 Secure Boot certificates are about to expire. If these certificates are not replaced with new ones, Secure Boot will cease to function your machine will still boot and operate, but the benefits of Secure Boot are mostly gone, and as newer vulnerabilities are discovered, systems without updated Secure Boot certificates will be increasingly exposed. Microsoft has already been rolling out new certificates through Windows updates, but only for users of supported versions of Windows, which means Windows 11. If youre using Windows 10, without the Extended Security Updates, you wont be getting the new certificates through Windows Update. Even if you use Windows 11, you may need a UEFI update from your laptop or motherboard OEM, assuming they still support your device. For Linux users using Secure Boot, youre probably covered by fwupd, which will update the certificates as part of your systems update program, like KDEs Discover. Of course, you can also use fwupd manually in the terminal, if youd like. For everyone else not using Secure Boot, none of this will matter and youre going to be just fine. I honestly doubt there will be much fallout from this updating process, but theres always bound to be a few people who fall between the cracks. All we can do is hope whomever is responsible for Secure Boot at Microsoft hasnt started slopcoding yet.
- Microsoft adds and fixes remote code execution vulnerability in Notepad
What happens when you slopcode a bunch of bloat to your basic text editor? Well, you add a remote code execution vulnerability to notepad.exe. Improper neutralization of special elements used in a command (command injection) in Windows Notepad App allows an unauthorized attacker to execute code over a network. An attacker could trick a user into clicking a malicious link inside a Markdown file opened in Notepad, causing the application to launch unverified protocols that load and execute remote files. ↫ CVE-2026-20841 I dont know how many more obvious examples one needs to understand that Microsoft simply does not care, in any way, shape, or form, about Windows. A lot of people seem very hesitant to accept that with even LinkedIn generating more revenue for Microsoft than Windows, the writing is on the wall. Anyway, the fix has been released through the Microsoft Store.
- Kapsule adds easy developer environment containers to KDE Linux
If youre a developer and use KDE, youre going to be interested in a new feature KDE is working on for KDE Linux. In my last post, I laid out the vision for Kapsule—a container-based extensibility layer for KDE Linux built on top of Incus. The pitch was simple: give users real, persistent development environments without compromising the immutable base system. At the time, it was a functional proof of concept living in my personal namespace. Well, things have moved fast. ↫ Herp De Derp Not only is Kapsule now available in KDE Linux, its also properly integrated with Konsole now. This means you can launch Kapsule containers right from the new tab menu in Konsole for even easier access. Theyre also working on allowing users to easily launch graphical applications from the containers and have them appear in the host desktop environment, and they intend to make the level of integration with the host more configurable so developers can better tailor their containers to their needs.
- Redox gets working rustc and Cargo
Another month, another Redox progress report. January turned out to be a big month for the Rust-based general purpose operating system, as theyve cargo and rustc working on Redox. Cargo and rustc are now working on Redox! Thanks to Anhad Singh and his southern-hemisphere Redox Summer of Code project, we are now able to compile your favorite Rust CLI and TUI programs on Redox. Compilers are often one of the most challenging things for a new operating system to support, because of the intensive and somewhat scattershot use of resources. ↫ Ribbon and Ron Williams Thats not all for January, though. An initial capability-based security infrastructure has been implemented for granular permissions, SSH support has been improved and now works properly for remoting into Redox sessions, and USB input latency has been massively reduced. You can now also add, remove, and change boot parameters in a new text editing environment in the bootloader, and the login manager now has power and keyboard layout menus. January also saw the first commit made entirely from within Redox, which is pretty neat. Of course, theres much more, as well as the usual slew of kernel, relibc, and application bugfixes and small changes.
- 80386 barrel shifter
I’m currently building an 80386-compatible core in SystemVerilog, driven by the original Intel microcode extracted from real 386 silicon. Real mode is now operational in simulation, with more than 10,000 single-instruction test cases passing successfully, and work on protected-mode features is in progress. In the course of this work, corners of the 386 microcode and silicon have been examined in detail; this series documents the resulting findings. In the previous post, we looked at multiplication and division iterative algorithms that process one bit per cycle. Shifts and rotates are a different story: the 386 has a dedicated barrel shifter that completes an arbitrary multi-bit shift in a single cycle. Whats interesting is how the microcode makes one piece of hardware serve all shift and rotate variants and how the complex rotate-through-carry instructions are handled. ↫ nand2mario I understood some of this.
- The original vi is a product of its time (and its time has passed)!
For me, vim is a combination of genuine improvements in vis core editing behavior (cf), frustrating (to me) bits of trying too hard to be smart (which I mostly disable when I run across them), and an extension mechanism I ignore but people use to make vim into a superintelligent editor with things like LSP integrations. Some of the improvements and additions to vis core editing may be things that Bill Joy either didnt think of or didnt think were important enough. However, I feel strongly that some or even many of omitted features and differences are a product of the limited environments vi had to operate in. The poster child for this is vis support of only a single level of undo, which drastically constrains the potential memory requirements (and implementation complexity) of undo, especially since a single editing operation in vi can make sweeping changes across a large file (consider a whole-file :0s/../../ substitution, for example). ↫ Chris Siebenmann I have only very limited needs when it comes to command-line text editors, and as such, I absolutely swear by the simplicity of nano. In other words, Im probably not the right person to dive into the editor debate thats been raging for decades, but reading Siebenmanns points I cant help but agree. In this day and age, defaulting an editor that has only one level of undo is insanity, and I cant imagine doing the kind of complex work people who use command-line editors do while being limited to just one window. As for the debate about operating systems that symlink the vi command to vim or a similar improved variant of vi, I feel like thats the wrong thing to do. Much like how I absolutely despise how macOS hides its UNIX-y file system structure from the GUI, leading to bizarre ls results in the terminal, I dont think you should be tricking users. If a user enters vi, it should launch vi, and not something that kind of looks like vi but isnt. Computers shouldnt be lying to users. If they dont want their users to be using vi, they shouldnt be installing vi in the first place.
- The official unplanned emergency OSNews fundraiser!
Update: weve already hit the €5000 goal, in a little over 24 hours. Considering I thought this would take weeks assuming wed hit the goal at all Im a bit overwhelmed with all the love and support. Thank you so, so much. Since people are still donating, I upped the goal to €7500 to give people something to donate to. You people are wild. Amazing. Its time for an OSNews fundrasier! This time, its unplanned due to a financial emergency after our car unexpectedly had to be scrapped (you can find more details below). If you want to support one of the few independent technology news websites left, this is your chance. OSNews is entirely supported by you, our readers, so go to our Ko-Fi and donate to our emergency fundraiser today! Why support OSNews? In short, we are truly independent. After turning off our ads, our Patreons and donors are our sole source of income, and since I know many of you prefer the occasional individual donation over recurring Patreon ones, I run a fundraiser a few times a year to rally the troops, so to speak. This particular fundraiser wasnt planned, however, given the circumstances described below, several readers have urged me to run a fundraiser now. Were incredibly grateful for even having the opportunity to do something like this, and as always, Id like to stress that OSNews will never be paywalled, and that access to our website will never be predicated on your financial support. You can ignore all of this and continue on reading the site as usual. Whats going on? Sadly, and unexpectedly, weve had to scrap our car. Our 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe did not survive this Arctic Winter, as the two decades in the biting cold has taken a toll on a long list of components and parts it would no longer start. After consulting an expert, we determined that repairs wouldve been too expensive to make financial sense for such an old vehicle. Sometimes, you have to take the loss lest you throw money down a pit. An unreliable car in an Arctic climate is a really bad idea, since getting stranded on a back road somewhere when its -30°C (or colder) with two toddlers is not going to be a fun time. On top of that, my wife uses our car to commute to work, and while using the bus is going to be fine for a little while, her job in home care for the very elderly and recovering alcoholics is incredibly stressful and intensive. Dealing with bus schedules and wait times at such low temperatures is not exactly compatible with her job. Since shes just recovering from a doctor-mandated rest period very common in her line of work her income has taken a hit. Taking professional care of people with severe dementia or other old-age related conditions is a thankless and underpaid job, and its no surprise those working in this profession often require mandated rest (and thus a temporary pay cut). And so, urged on by readers on Mastodon, Im doing an OSNews fundraiser to help us pay for the new! car. Of course, were looking for a used car, not a new one, and based on our needs weve set a budget of around €10,000. This should allow us to buy something like a used Mazda 6 or Volvo V60 from around 2014-2015, or something similar in size and age, with a reasonable petrol engine (an EV is well out of our price range). We consider this the sweet spot for safety features, size, age, longevity, and reliability. Weve got some savings, but most of the purchase price will have to come in the form of a car loan. Weve already made some changes to our monthly expenses to cover for part of the monthly repayments, including a lucky break where our daycare expenses will be going down considerably next month. Based on this, Ive set the fundraising goal at €5000. If we manage to hit that and the last few times we hit our goals quite fast it wont cover the entire purchase price, but it will cut down on the amount we need to loan considerably. Im feeling a little apprehensive about all of this, since this isnt really an OSNews-related expense I can easily get some content out of. However, Im entirely open to suggestions about how I could get some OSNews content out of this perhaps buying and installing one of those Android headunits with a large display? They make them tailored for almost every vehicle at low prices on AliExpress, and the installation process and user experience might be something interesting to write about, as its potentially a great way to add some modern features to an older car. Feel free to make any suggestions. Im also open to other crazy ideas. If you happen to work at an automaker, and need some testing done in an Arctic environment including ice roads Im open to ideas. A few random notes Since about half of our audience hails from the United States, I figured Id make a few notes about car pricing in Europe, and in Arctic Sweden in particular. Cars are definitely more expensive here in Europe, doubly so in the sparsely populated area where we live (low supply leads to higher prices). Buying a brand new car is entirely out of the question due to pricing, and leasing is also far too expensive (well over €500/month for even a basic, small car). Used electric cars are still well out of our budget as well, and since we dont have our own driveway, we wouldnt be able to charge at home anyway. Opting to forego a car entirely is sadly not an option either. With two small children, the Arctic climate, the remoteness, my wifes stressful job and commute, and long distances to basic amenities, we cant go Dutch! and live
- The Dillo appreciation post
About a year ago I mentioned that I had rediscovered the Dillo Web Browser. Unlike some of my other hobbies, endeavours, and interests, my appreciation for Dillo has not wavered. I only have a moment to gush today, so I’ll cut right to it. Dillo has been plugging along nicely (see the Git forge.) and adding little features. Features that even I, a guy with a blog, can put to use. Here are a few of my favourites. ↫ Bobby Hiltz If youre looking for a more minimalist, less distracting browser experience that gives you a ton of interesting UNIXy control, you should really consider giving Dillo a try.
- KDE Linux improves by leaps and bounds
KDEs Nate Graham has published a status update about KDE Linux, the KDE projects new immutable Linux distribution, intended to be the KDE OS! showcasing the best of the KDE community. While the project is approaching the beta stage, its currently still in alpha, but from what I gather from friends who are using it, the alpha label might actually be like how Haiku is supposedly still alpha: intended more to scare people away for now than ana ctual descriptor of the state of the software. Recently, KDE Linux enabled delta updates, possibly dramatically reducing the size of updates. Before delta updates were enabled, a system update would come in at 7GB, while with delta updates enabled, its gone down to 1-2GB. In addition, plasma-setup and plasma-login-manager have been added to KDE Linux, which are, respectively, a first-run setup assistant and KDEs new login manager. This new login manager was forked from SDDM, and specifically targets Wayland, and comes with much deeper Plasma integration than SDDM. Note that SDDM will remain available for platforms that dont use Wayland. KDE Linux has also massively improved its hardware support, and the list is long; from scanners to fancy multi-button mice, from Android devices to professional audio devices, and much more. Performance has been improved as well, the boot manager menu will no longer be shown at every boot but only when needed, the wireless regulatory domain is now properly set and managed, and much, much more. Im keeping an eye on KDE Linux as a possible replacement for my Fedora KDE installations if Fedora ever loses the plot, even if its an immutable distribution relying on Flatpak. Im a KDE user, and I want the latest and greatest the KDE community has to offer without going through an distributor.
- The Scriptovision Super Micro Script video titler is almost a home computer
Cameron Kaiser comes in with another amazing article, this time diving into a unique video titler from Canada, released in 1985. The Super Micro Script was one of several such machines this company made over its lifetime, a stylish self-contained box capable of emitting a 3216 small or 104 large character layer with 6432 block graphics in eight colours. It could even directly overlay its output over a composite video signal using a built-in genlock, one of the earliest such consumer units to do so. Crack this unit open, however, and youll find the show controlled by an off-the-shelf Motorola 6800-family microcontroller and a Motorola 6847 VDG video chip, making it a relative of contemporary 1980s home computers that sometimes used nearly exactly the same architecture. More important than that, though, it has socketed EPROMs we can theoretically pull and substitute with our own — though well have to figure out why the ROMs look like nonsense, and theres also the small matter of this unit failing to generate a picture. Nevertheless, when were done, another homegrown Canadian computer will rise and shine. Well even add a bitbanged serial port and write a MAME emulation driver for it so we can develop software quickly 0 after we fix it first. ↫ Cameron Kaiser I know I keep repeating myself, but Kaisers work on so many of these rare and unique systems is not only worthwhile and amazing to read, theyre also incredibly valuable from a historical and preservation perspective. This article in hand, anyone who stumbles upon one of these machines can get the most out of it, possibly fix one, and use it for fun projects. Im incredibly grateful for this sort of work. Video titles are such an interesting relic of the past. These days, adding titles to a video is childs play, but back when computing power came at a massive premium and digital video was but a distant dream, using analog video to overlay text onto was the best way to go about it. Video titler makers did try to move the technology from professional settings to home settings, but from what I can gather, this move never really paid off. Still, Id love to buy one of these at some point and mess around with it. Theres some real cool retro effects you can create with these.
- Why E cores make Apple silicon fast
If you use an Apple silicon Mac I’m sure you have been impressed by its performance. Whether you’re working with images, audio, video or building software, we’ve enjoyed a new turn of speed since the M1 on day 1. While most attribute this to their Performance cores, as it goes with the name, much is in truth the result of the unsung Efficiency cores, and how they keep background tasks where they should be. ↫ Howard Oakley While both Intel and AMD are making gains on Apple, theres simply no denying the reality that Apples M series of chips are leading the pack in mobile computing (the picture is different in desktops). There are probably hundreds of reasons why Apple has had this lead for so many years now, but the way macOS distributes background and foreground tasks across the two types of cores in M series chips is an important one. Still, I wonder how the various other processors that use power and efficiency cores fare in this regard. Youd think they would provide a similar level of benefit, but I wouldnt be surprised if the way Windows or Linux handles such cores and the distribution of tasks is simply not as optimised or strict as it is in macOS. Apple often vastly overstates the benefits of its vertical integration!, but I think the tight coupling between macOS and Apples own processors is definitely a case where theyre being entirely truthful.
- LibreOffice 26.2 Arrives: Faster Performance, Sharper UI, and Better Compatibility
by George Whittaker
The Document Foundation has officially released LibreOffice 26.2, the latest major update to the widely used open-source office suite. With improvements spanning performance, user interface refinements, document compatibility, and accessibility, this version continues LibreOffice’s mission to provide a powerful, community-driven alternative to proprietary office software.
LibreOffice 26.2 is available for Linux, Windows, and macOS, offering consistent functionality across platforms while keeping full control in the hands of users.
What’s New in LibreOffice 26.2
While LibreOffice updates often focus on incremental refinement rather than radical redesign, version 26.2 introduces several meaningful enhancements that improve daily workflows.
Improved Performance and Stability
Performance remains a priority. LibreOffice 26.2 includes:
Faster document loading, especially for large spreadsheets and presentations
Reduced memory usage in complex Calc files
Improved stability when handling heavily formatted documents
These optimizations make the suite feel more responsive across both modern systems and older hardware.
Enhanced Microsoft Office Compatibility
Compatibility continues to improve with each release. LibreOffice 26.2 delivers:
More accurate rendering of DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX files
Better support for advanced formatting and tracked changes
Improved handling of embedded objects and charts
For users collaborating with Microsoft Office users, these refinements reduce formatting surprises and make document exchange smoother.
Refined User Interface
LibreOffice 26.2 builds upon its modern UI framework with:
Polished icon themes and improved scaling on high-resolution displays
Better dark mode integration across platforms
Smoother transitions in NotebookBar layouts
Improved accessibility for keyboard navigation and screen readers
The result is a cleaner, more cohesive experience without disrupting long-time users.
Writer Improvements
LibreOffice Writer gains several practical enhancements:
More reliable footnote and endnote management
Improved table formatting controls
Expanded language and grammar tool integration
These updates benefit users creating academic papers, reports, and long-form documents.
Calc Enhancements
Spreadsheet users will notice:
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- GOG Moves Toward Native Linux Support: A Major Shift for DRM-Free Gaming
by George Whittaker
In a development that has energized the Linux gaming community, GOG (Good Old Games) has officially confirmed that it is working on native Linux support. While GOG has long provided Linux installers for select titles, this announcement signals something more substantial: deeper platform integration and a renewed commitment to Linux as a first-class gaming environment.
For Linux users who value DRM-free software and ownership rights, this could be a significant turning point.
Why This Matters
GOG has built its reputation on offering DRM-free games that users truly own, free from online activation requirements and restrictive launchers. However, Linux users have historically faced a mixed experience:
Some games included native Linux builds
Others required manual setup through Wine or Proton
The GOG Galaxy client itself lacked native Linux support
While community tools like Heroic Games Launcher and Lutris filled the gap, the absence of official Linux support for the Galaxy ecosystem left many users dependent on workarounds.
Now, with GOG confirming active development of native Linux support, that gap may finally begin to close.
What Native Support Could Include
Although full details have yet to be finalized, “native support” could realistically mean several improvements:
An official GOG Galaxy client for Linux
Better integration with Proton or Wine when needed
Unified cloud saves and achievements on Linux
Streamlined game installation and updates
Official support channels for Linux users
If implemented properly, this would allow Linux gamers to enjoy the same ecosystem experience as Windows users without third-party bridges.
The Timing Makes Sense
The announcement comes at a moment when Linux gaming is stronger than ever:
The Steam Deck has normalized Linux as a gaming platform
Proton compatibility has reached impressive levels
Vulkan drivers and Mesa development continue advancing
Distros like Bazzite and Nobara are built specifically for gaming
With more gamers exploring Linux in 2026, GOG’s move may be both strategic and overdue.
What It Means for the Linux Gaming Ecosystem
If GOG delivers robust native support, several ripple effects could follow:
Increased confidence from developers to release Linux builds
More competition in the Linux game storefront space
Improved DRM-free game adoption among Linux users
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- Linux Kernel Runtime Guard Reaches 1.0: A Major Milestone for Runtime Kernel Security
by George Whittaker
The Linux security landscape just reached an important milestone. Linux Kernel Runtime Guard (LKRG) has officially hit version 1.0, marking its transition from a long-running experimental project into a mature, production-ready security tool. For administrators and security-conscious users, this release reinforces LKRG’s role as a powerful additional layer of defense for Linux systems.
After years of development, testing, and real-world use, the 1.0 release signals confidence in LKRG’s stability, compatibility, and long-term direction.
What Is LKRG?
LKRG is a loadable kernel module designed to protect the Linux kernel at runtime. Instead of relying solely on compile-time hardening or static security features, LKRG actively monitors the kernel while the system is running. Its goal is to detect unauthorized changes, suspicious behavior, and exploit attempts that target kernel internals.
Because it operates at runtime, LKRG complements existing protections like SELinux, AppArmor, and kernel hardening options rather than replacing them.
Why the 1.0 Release Matters
Reaching version 1.0 is more than a symbolic version bump. It reflects years of refinement and signals that the project has reached a level of maturity suitable for broader adoption.
With this release, LKRG offers:
Stable behavior across a wide range of kernel versions
Improved reliability under real-world workloads
Cleaner internal architecture and reduced overhead
Confidence for system administrators deploying it in production environments
For security tooling, especially something operating inside the kernel, stability and predictability are critical, and the 1.0 milestone acknowledges that standard.
How LKRG Protects the Kernel
At a high level, LKRG continuously checks the integrity of critical kernel structures and execution paths. It looks for signs that something has altered kernel memory, process credentials, or execution flow in unexpected ways.
When suspicious activity is detected, LKRG can:
Log warnings or alerts
Block the offending action
Trigger defensive responses based on configuration
This makes it particularly useful for detecting privilege-escalation exploits and post-exploitation activity that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Who Should Consider Using LKRG?
LKRG is especially relevant for:
Servers and cloud hosts exposed to untrusted workloads
Enterprise systems with strict security requirements
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- A Pillar of the Linux Kernel: Greg Kroah-Hartman Honored with European Open Source Award
by George Whittaker
The open-source community is celebrating a well-deserved recognition. Greg Kroah-Hartman, one of the most influential figures in the Linux ecosystem, has been awarded the European Open Source Award, honoring decades of sustained contributions that have shaped Linux into the stable, trusted platform it is today.
For anyone who relies on Linux, whether on servers, desktops, embedded devices, or cloud infrastructure, this award highlights the quiet but essential work that keeps the ecosystem reliable.
A Steward of Stability
Greg Kroah-Hartman is best known for his role as the maintainer of the Linux kernel’s stable branches. While new kernel features often grab headlines, the stable kernels are where real-world systems live. They receive carefully vetted fixes for security issues, regressions, and bugs, without introducing disruptive changes.
That responsibility requires deep technical knowledge, discipline, and trust from the community. Kroah-Hartman has carried it for years, ensuring that Linux remains dependable across millions of systems worldwide.
Beyond the Stable Kernel
His impact extends far beyond stable releases. Over the years, Kroah-Hartman has contributed heavily to:
Driver development, helping hardware vendors integrate cleanly with Linux
Kernel infrastructure improvements, making long-term maintenance sustainable
Developer documentation, including the widely respected Linux Kernel in a Nutshell
Mentorship, guiding new contributors through the notoriously complex kernel process
These efforts help keep Linux open not just in license, but in practice, accessible to new developers and maintainable at scale.
Why This Award Matters
The European Open Source Award recognizes individuals whose work benefits society through openness, collaboration, and technical excellence. Kroah-Hartman’s work exemplifies that mission.
Linux doesn’t succeed because of flashy features alone. It succeeds because:
Bugs are fixed responsibly
Security issues are handled quietly and quickly
Compatibility is preserved across years and hardware generations
Those outcomes don’t happen by accident. They’re the result of sustained, meticulous stewardship, exactly the kind of work this award celebrates.
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- Inside the Linux Kernel Runtime Guard (LKRG): A New Layer of Kernel Integrity Protection
by George Whittaker
In an era where security threats continually evolve, protecting the heart of an operating system, the kernel, has never been more critical. One tool gaining traction in the Linux world is the Linux Kernel Runtime Guard (LKRG), a specialized security module designed to detect and respond to attacks targeting the kernel while the system is running. This project recently reached its first stable milestone with version 1.0.0, marking a major step forward for runtime protection on Linux systems.
What Is LKRG?
LKRG (short for Linux Kernel Runtime Guard) is a loadable kernel module that continuously monitors the health and integrity of the Linux kernel while it’s running. Unlike many security features that rely on compile-time patches or static defenses, LKRG acts at runtime, watching for signs of unauthorized changes or exploit attempts and taking configurable action when something suspicious is detected.
Because LKRG is a module rather than a patch to the kernel source, it can be built and used across a variety of distributions and kernel versions without needing to recompile the core kernel itself. It supports a wide range of architectures, including x86-64, 32-bit x86, ARM64, and 32-bit ARM, and has been tested on kernels from older enterprise releases all the way up to recent mainline versions.
How LKRG Works
At its core, LKRG performs runtime integrity checks on critical parts of the kernel and system state. It validates the kernel’s code, data, and metadata against expected values and monitors for unexpected changes that could be indicative of an exploit. The module also watches key process attributes and credentials to help spot unauthorized privilege escalation attempts.
Unlike compile-time defenses such as address space layout randomization (ASLR) or static code hardening, LKRG is designed to observe and react while the kernel is executing, a concept sometimes referred to as “post-detection” security. This complements other layers of defense rather than replacing them.
Version 1.0: A Milestone Release
After several years of development, with the first public release appearing back in 2018, LKRG has finally reached its 1.0 release, signaling maturity and broader real-world readiness. This milestone brings a suite of improvements, including:
Broader Kernel Compatibility: Support extending to recent kernel series such as Linux 6.17, while maintaining compatibility with older, long-lived versions.
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- Official Firefox RPM Package Now Available for Fedora-Style Linux Distributions
by George Whittaker
Mozilla has taken a notable step toward improving Firefox distribution on Linux. An official Firefox RPM package is now available directly from Mozilla for Fedora-style distributions, including Fedora, RHEL-compatible systems, and related derivatives. This move gives users a new, upstream-supported option for installing and maintaining Firefox without relying solely on distro-maintained builds.
What’s Changed
Until now, users on RPM-based systems typically installed Firefox through their distribution’s repositories. While those packages are usually well-maintained, they can sometimes lag behind Mozilla’s release schedule or include distro-specific patches.
With the new official RPM, Mozilla provides:
A Firefox build maintained directly by Mozilla
Faster access to new releases and security updates
A consistent Firefox experience across RPM-based distros
Reduced dependency on downstream packaging delays
This mirrors the approach Mozilla already uses for official DEB packages and tarball releases, bringing parity to RPM-based ecosystems.
Who Benefits Most
This new packaging option is especially useful for:
Fedora users who want Firefox updates the moment Mozilla releases them
Developers and testers who need predictable, upstream Firefox behavior
Enterprise or workstation users running Fedora-derived systems who prefer vendor-supplied binaries
Users who want to avoid Flatpak or Snap for their browser
Distributions that prioritize stability over immediacy may still ship older versions, but the official RPM gives users a clear choice.
How It Works
Mozilla hosts a signed RPM repository that integrates cleanly with dnf-based systems. Once added, Firefox updates arrive through the standard system update process, just like any other RPM package.
Key characteristics include:
GPG-signed packages from Mozilla
Automatic updates via dnf upgrade
No repackaging or third-party rebuilds
Compatibility with Fedora and compatible RPM distros
Users can choose between the distro-provided Firefox or Mozilla’s upstream RPM without conflict, as long as only one source is enabled.
Why This Matters for Linux Users
This change reflects a broader trend: upstream projects taking more responsibility for how their software reaches users. For Firefox, that means:
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- Top Linux Gaming Distributions for 2026: Play Better on Open Source
by George Whittaker Introduction
Gaming on Linux has never been better. Thanks to advances in compatibility layers like Proton, drivers, and distro-level optimizations, Linux now supports thousands of games, from AAA titles to indie favorites, with performance that rivals Windows in many cases. As we head into 2026, certain Linux distributions have risen to the top as the most gamer-friendly, offering build-ins, drivers, and tooling that make playing on open-source systems smoother and more fun.
In this article, we’ll look at the best Linux gaming distros for 2026, what sets each one apart, and who they’re best suited for, whether you’re a seasoned Linux gamer or someone switching from Windows or macOS.
1. SteamOS (SteamOS 5 / “Holo”)Why It’s Great
SteamOS remains the top choice if games are your priority. Developed by Valve, SteamOS is designed specifically for gaming hardware and integrates tightly with:
Steam and Proton for Windows game compatibility
Controller-first navigation, perfect for living-room play
Competitive performance out of the box
Fast boot and automatic updates
SteamOS continues evolving with better hardware support, especially for handheld PCs and Steam Deck-style form factors.
Best For
Dedicated gaming PCs
Steam Deck and SteamOS handhelds
Users who want a console-like experience
2. Pop!_OS (Gaming Edition)Why It’s Great
Created by System76, Pop!_OS is known for a smooth performance-oriented desktop and excellent driver support. The Gaming Edition (or the gaming-optimized install profile) comes with:
Automatic NVIDIA and AMD driver detection
Integrated Proton and Steam packages
Built-in support for auto-tiling and hybrid graphics
Excellent keyboard/mouse + gamepad support
Pop!_OS also excels on laptops with hybrid GPUs because of its dedicated power profiles and intelligent GPU switching.
Best For
Desktop gamers who want a traditional desktop + gaming setup
Users with NVIDIA GPUs
Hybrid GPU laptops
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- Linux Mint 22.3 ‘Zena’ Delivers a Polished, Familiar Desktop Experience
by George Whittaker
The Linux Mint project has unveiled Linux Mint 22.3, carrying the codename “Zena”, the latest point release in the popular Mint 22 series. This new version continues Mint’s reputation for delivering a comfortable, user-friendly desktop experience while remaining stable and reliable. As a Long Term Support (LTS) release, Linux Mint 22.3 will receive updates and security patches through April 2029.
Built on a Solid Ubuntu Base
Zena is built on top of Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS (“Noble Numbat”), bringing Mint’s traditional desktop approach together with Ubuntu’s well-tested foundation and extensive software repositories. It ships with the Linux kernel 6.14 and benefits from the Ubuntu Hardware Enablement stack, which improves support for newer hardware such as recent AMD and Intel chips.
What’s New in Linux Mint 22.3 “Zena”
Rather than revolutionize the distro, the Mint team focused on thoughtful refinements and quality-of-life improvements that make everyday usage smoother and more intuitive.
Redesigned Application Menu
One of the most noticeable visual changes is the revamped Mint Menu in the Cinnamon edition. It now includes a sidebar showing your avatar, favorite applications, and commonly used locations, along with customizable search bar placement and icon styles for a cleaner look.
Upgraded Cinnamon Desktop (6.6)
Linux Mint 22.3 ships with Cinnamon 6.6 on the flagship edition, which delivers a range of subtle improvements:
Better handling of keyboard layouts and input methods, especially under Wayland
Improved support for traditional XKB and IBus input methods
A more graceful on-screen keyboard
Refined behavior and visuals throughout the desktop environment
These changes aim to polish the experience without introducing disruptive UI changes.
New System Management Tools
To help users understand their hardware quickly and troubleshoot issues without entering the command line, Zena introduces two new utilities:
System Information ' consolidates details about your machine’s hardware, including USB devices, the GPU, BIOS, and PCI devices
System Administration ' provides an easy interface for configuring low-level system settings, starting with the ability to adjust the boot menu
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- Linux Rescue and Repair Distros in 2025: Your Safety Net When Things Go Wrong
by George Whittaker
No matter how reliable Linux systems are, failures still happen. A broken bootloader, a corrupted filesystem, a failed update, or a dying disk can leave even the most stable setup unbootable. That’s where Linux rescue and repair distributions come in.
In 2025, rescue distros are more powerful, more hardware-aware, and easier to use than ever before. Whether you’re a system administrator, a home user, or a technician, having the right recovery tools on hand can mean the difference between a quick fix and total data loss.
What Exactly Is a Linux Rescue Distro?
A Linux rescue distro is a bootable live operating system designed specifically for diagnosing, repairing, and recovering systems. Unlike standard desktop distros, rescue environments focus on:
Disk and filesystem utilities
Bootloader repair tools
Hardware detection and diagnostics
Data recovery and backup
System repair without touching the installed OS
Most run entirely from RAM, allowing you to work on disks safely without mounting them automatically.
When Do You Need a Rescue Distro?
Rescue distros are invaluable in scenarios such as:
A system fails to boot after a kernel or driver update
GRUB or systemd-boot is misconfigured or overwritten
Filesystems become corrupted after a power failure
You need to copy important files from a non-booting system
Passwords or user accounts are inaccessible
Malware or ransomware locks access to a system
In short: if your OS won’t start, a rescue distro often still will.
Top Linux Rescue and Repair Distros in 2025SystemRescue
SystemRescue remains the gold standard for Linux recovery.
Why it stands out:
Ships with a modern Linux kernel for wide hardware support
Supports ext4, XFS, Btrfs, NTFS, ZFS, and more
Includes tools like GParted, fsck, testdisk, and ddrescue
Offers both CLI and lightweight GUI options
Best for: advanced users, sysadmins, and serious recovery tasks.
Rescatux
Rescatux focuses on simplicity and guided recovery.
Key strengths:
Menu-driven repair tasks
Automatic GRUB and EFI boot repair
Windows and Linux password reset tools
Beginner-friendly interface
Best for: home users and newcomers who want step-by-step help.
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- Zorin OS 18 Crosses 2 Million Downloads, Cementing Its Appeal to New Linux Users
by George Whittaker
Zorin OS has reached an important milestone. The team behind the popular Linux distribution has announced that Zorin OS 18 has surpassed two million downloads, underscoring the growing interest in Linux as a practical alternative to mainstream operating systems.
The achievement highlights not only Zorin OS’s steady rise in popularity, but also a broader trend: more users, especially those leaving Windows, are actively seeking operating systems that are modern, approachable, and familiar.
A Distro Built for Accessibility
Zorin OS has long positioned itself as a distribution designed to reduce the friction of switching to Linux. Rather than targeting power users first, it focuses on:
A clean, intuitive desktop layout
Familiar workflows for users coming from Windows or macOS
Simple system tools that avoid unnecessary complexity
With Zorin OS 18, that philosophy continues. The interface feels polished out of the box, applications are easy to install, and most hardware works without manual configuration. For many newcomers, that “it just works” experience is what turns curiosity into long-term adoption.
Why Zorin OS 18 Resonates With Users
Several factors help explain why Zorin OS 18 has attracted millions of downloads:
A Comfortable Transition Away From Windows
As Windows 11 introduces stricter hardware requirements, more system telemetry, and UI changes that frustrate some users, Zorin OS offers a calmer alternative. Its desktop can closely resemble Windows layouts, easing the learning curve for first-time Linux users.
Strong Performance on Modest Hardware
Zorin OS runs well on both modern systems and older machines. This makes it appealing to users who want to extend the life of existing hardware rather than replace it.
Thoughtful Design Choices
Instead of overwhelming users with customization options, Zorin OS focuses on sensible defaults. Everything from system menus to app selection feels deliberate, helping users stay productive without constant tweaking.
A Broader Shift Toward Beginner-Friendly Linux Distros
The success of Zorin OS 18 reflects a wider change in the Linux ecosystem. Projects like Zorin OS demonstrate that Linux no longer needs to be intimidating or niche to be powerful.
This shift has been reinforced by:
Improved hardware compatibility
Better gaming support through Proton and Vulkan
More polished desktop environments
Clearer documentation and onboarding tools
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