All the News that Matters

• [$] Extending the time-slice-extension discussion
  Time-slice extension is a proposed scheduler feature that would allow auser-space process to request to not be preempted for a short period whileit executes a critical section. It is an idea that has been circulatingfor years, but efforts to implement it becamemore serious in February of this year. The latest developer to make anattempt at time-slice extension is Thomas Gleixner, who has posted a new patch setwith a reworked API. Chances are good that this implementation is close towhat will actually be adopted by the kernel.

• Rust 1.90.0 released
  Version1.90.0 of the Rust language has been released. Changes includeswitching to the LLD linker by default,the addition of support for workspace publishing to cargo, and theusual set of stabilized APIs.

• Security updates for Thursday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (gnutls, mysql:8.4, opentelemetry-collector, and python-cryptography), Debian (nextcloud-desktop), Fedora (chromium, firefox, forgejo, gitleaks, kernel, kernel-headers, lemonldap-ng, perl-Cpanel-JSON-XS, and python-pip), Red Hat (firefox and libxml2), Slackware (expat and mozilla), SUSE (avahi, bluez, cups, curl, firefox-esr, gdk-pixbuf, gstreamer, java-1_8_0-ibm, krb5, net-tools, podman, raptor, sevctl, tkimg, ucode-intel, and vim), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-hwe, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-fips, linux-azure-fips, linux-gcp-fips, and linux-gcp-6.14, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-6.14).

• Bluefin LTS released
  The Universal Blue project has announced the release of Bluefin LTS,an image-based distribution similar to Bluefin that usesCentOS Stream 10 and EPEL instead of Fedora as its base:
  
  Bluefin LTS ships with Linux 6.12.0, which is the kernel for thelifetime of release. An optional hwe branch with new kernels isavailable, offering the same modern kernel you'll find in Bluefin andBluefin GTS. Both vanilla and HWE ISOs are available, and you canalways choose to switch back and forth after installation. [...]
  
  Bluefin LTS provides a backported GNOME desktop so that you are notleft behind. This is an important thing for us. James has beendiligently working on GNOME backports with the upstream CentOScommunity, and we feel bringing modern GNOME desktops to an LTS makessense.
  
  
  

• Tails 7.0 released
  Version7.0 of the Tails portableoperating system has been released. This is the first version of Tailsbased on Linux 6.12.43, Debian 13("trixie") and GNOME 48. It uses ztsd instead ofxz to compress the USB and ISO images to deliver afaster start time on most computers. The release is dedicated to the memory of Lunar, "atraveling companion for Tails, a Tor volunteer, Free Software hacker,and community organizer":
  
  Lunar has always been by our side throughout Tails' history. Fromthe first baby steps of the project that eventually became Tails, tothe merge with Tor, he's provided sensible technical suggestions,out-of-the-box product design ideas, outreach support, and caringorganizational advice.
  
  Outside of Tor, Lunar worked on highly successful Free Softwareprojects such as the Debian project, the Linux distribution on whichTails is based, and the Reproducible Buildsproject, which helps us verify the integrity of Tails releases.
  
  See the changelogfor a full list of fixes, upgraded applications, and removals. LWN covered TailsProject team leader intrigeri's DebConf25 talk in July.
  

• [$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for September 18, 2025
  Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:
  Front: Fighting human trafficking; End of 10; Link tags; Healthy subsystem communities; New kernel tools; Rust and Carbon; Typst. Briefs: Brief news items from throughout the community. Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

• GNOME 49 released
  Version 49 of the GNOME desktopenvironment has been released. Changes include new default video(Showtime) and PDF-viewing (Papers) applications, a number of calendarimprovements, and updates to the Web, Maps, and Software applications.

• Jackson: tag2upload in the first month of forky
  Ian Jackson has published a blogpost summarizing the tag2upload service'sfirst month of handling uploads for the upcoming Debian 14 ("forky") release:
  
  We announced tag2upload's open beta in mid-July. That was in themiddle of the the freeze for trixie, so usage was fairly light untilthe forky floodgates opened.
  
  Since then the service has successfully performed 637 uploads, ofwhich 420 were in the last 32 days. That's an average of about 13 perday. For comparison, during the first half of September up to todaythere have been 2475 uploads to unstable. That's about 176/day.
  
  So, tag2upload is already handling around 7.5% of uploads. This isvery gratifying for a service which is advertised as still being inbeta!
  
  LWN coveredtag2upload in July 2024.
  
  
  

• Libxml2 2.15.0 released
  Version2.15.0 of libxml2 hasbeen released. Notable changes include the disabling of Pythonbindings by default, using Doxygen to generate API documentation, aswell as bringing HTML serialization and handling of characterencodings more in line with the HTML5 specification.
  
  Nick Wellnhofer has also announcedthat he is stepping down as libxml2 maintainer, and Iván Chavero hasvolunteeredto take over. LWN covered libxml2 inJune.
  
  
  

• [$] Typst: a possible LaTeX replacement
  Typst is a program for documenttypesetting. It is especially well-suited to technical materialincorporating elements such as mathematics, tables, and floatingfigures. It produces high-quality results, comparable to the gold standard,LaTeX, with a simpler markupsystem and easier customization, all while compiling documentsmore quickly. Typst is free software, Apache-2.0 licensed, and is written in Rust.

• Systemd v258 released
  Systemdv258 has been released with a long list of new features andchanges; slice units now have basic workload management features,quotas for tmpfs have been added, the "systemctl start"command now has a verbose (-v) option, and more. This releasealso, finally, completely removes support for control groups v1support. LWN coveredsome of systemd v258's features and changes in August.
  
  
  

• [$] Providing support for Windows 10 refugees
  In October, consumer versions of Windows 10 willstop receiving security updates. Many users who would ordinarily moveto the next version are blocked by Windows 11's hardwarerequirements unless they are willing to buy a newer PC. The "End of 10" campaign is an effort toconvince those users to switch to Linux rather than sticking with anend-of-life operating system or buying a new Windows system. AtAkademy 2025, Dr. Joseph De Veaugh-Geiss,Bettina Louis, Carolina Silva Rodé, and Nicole Teale discussed theirwork on the campaign, its progress so far, and what's next.
  

• Security updates for Wednesday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (container-tools:rhel8, kernel, and podman), Debian (node-sha.js), Fedora (firefox, kea, and perl-JSON-XS), Mageia (java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, java-latest-openjdk), Oracle (kernel, libarchive, podman, and python-cryptography), Red Hat (multiple packages, mysql:8.4, and python3.11), SUSE (expat, java-1_8_0-ibm, krb5, libavif, net-tools, nginx, nvidia-open-driver-G06-signed, onefetch, pcp, rabbitmq-server313, raptor, and vim), and Ubuntu (libyang2, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-bluefield, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.4, linux-iot, linux-kvm, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux-aws-fips, linux-fips, linux-gcp-fips, and python-xmltodict).

• [$] Comparing Rust to Carbon
  Safe, ergonomic interoperability between Rust and C/C++ was a popular topic atRustConf 2025 in Seattle, Washington. Chandler Carruth gave a presentationabout the different approaches to interoperability in Rust andCarbon, theexperimental "(C++)++" language.His ultimate conclusion was thatwhile Rust's ability to interface with other languages is expanding over time,it wouldn't offer a complete solution to C++ interoperability anytime soon — and so there is room forCarbon to take a different approach to incrementally upgrading existing C++ projects.Hisslides are available for readers wishing to study his example code in moredetail.
  

• Firefox 143.0 released
  Version143.0 of the Firefox browser has been released. Changes include theability to pin tabs by dragging them to the edge, previews in the camerapermissions dialog, improved fingerprinting protection, and (optional)automatic deletion of files downloaded in private browsing mode.

Linux Insider"LinuxInsider"

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Is a Security Baseline Enough for Open-Source Software?
  The OpenSSF’s new baseline sets minimum security expectations for open-source projects — but not all developers agree it’s practical, scalable, or sufficient. The post Is a Security Baseline Enough for Open-Source Software? appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• DOD Raises Software Security Expectations With SWFT Initiative
  Open-source software may be in the crosshairs of military and government agencies as the U.S. Department of Defense evaluates the risks of both free and proprietary software. The post DOD Raises Software Security Expectations With SWFT Initiative appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• Edera and CIQ Advance Linux Security With Hardened Tools
  With Edera Protect and CIQ's RLC-H, open-source innovators are redefining Linux security through stronger isolation and proactive threat defense. The post Edera and CIQ Advance Linux Security With Hardened Tools appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• Powerful Mini-PCs Provide Efficient Replacement for Desktop Computers
  I’d been curious about the performance of mini-PCs, so I finally bit the bullet and replaced an aging laptop and failing desktop with much smaller units. The post Powerful Mini-PCs Provide Efficient Replacement for Desktop Computers appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• Humanity now has zero active robots at Venus as Japan ends 15-year ‘Dawn’ mission
  Thanks for the memories, Akatsuki
  Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency has decided to abandon its Akatsuki Venus orbiter, after losing contact with the craft last year.…
  

• Microsoft boasts about humongous datacenter on abandoned Foxconn site in Wisconsin
  In a state known for dairy, football, and broken tech dreams
  Microsoft's CEO has claimed the operating system-slinger is building the "world's largest datacenter."…
  

• Intel and Nvidia sitting in a tree, NVLink-I-N-G
  But still no hero customer for Chipzilla's Foundry biz
  Nvidia is set to become one of Intel's largest shareholders after the GPU giant announced on Thursday it would invest $5 billion in the struggling chipmaker under a co-development agreement targeting PCs and datacenter infrastructure.…
  

• Google stuffs Chrome full of AI features whether you like it or not
  Why browse the web yourself when an AI sidekick can spoon-feed it to you?
  Now that it knows it won't be forced to sell its browser, Google is cramming AI into every vacant corner of Chrome it can find, whether you like it or not. …
  

• Google pushes emergency patch for Chrome 0-day - check your browser version now
  Sixth such Chrome flaw this year spotted by the Chocolate Factory, already in play
  Google pushed an emergency patch for a high-severity Chrome flaw, already under active exploitation. So it's time to make sure you're running the most recent version of the web browser.…
  

• Atlassian drops $1B on company that helps measure dev productivity
  Aussie CEO promises AI everywhere, and clearer views of what your devs are up to
  Atlassian has continued its AI spending spree with a $1 billion takeover of developer analysis biz DX, a move it promised would give devs "less friction and more flow."…
  

• AI can now design functional viruses - not the computer kind, either
  Inject this synthetic phage into E. coli and it kills better than the real thing
  A group of Stanford bioengineers claim that they've created synthetic bacteriophages using AI-generated designs that not only work in the real world, but are far more infectious than their naturally-occurring counterparts. …
  

• Crims bust through SonicWall to grab sensitive config data
  Vendor pulls plug on cloud backup feature, urges admins to reset passwords and re-secure devices
  SonicWall is telling some customers to reset passwords after attackers broke into its cloud backup service and accessed firewall configuration data.…
  

• The Notepad that knew too much: Humble text editor gets unnecessary AI infusion
  Copilot+ PC users can run the AI models locally. Others may need a subscription.
  Microsoft is continuing to shovel AI functionality into its Notepad application, with Windows Insiders the first test subjects.…
  

• Cybercriminals pwn 850k+ Americans' healthcare data
  Three US medical centers fess up to serious breaches
  Cybercriminals broke in and stole nearly a million Americans' data in the space of a week, in the course of three digital burglaries at healthcare providers.…
  

• Workday U-turns on rehiring pledge as activist investors take $2B stake
  Layoffs to stand following $1.1B AI acquisition
  Activist investors have taken a $2 billion stake in Workday, signaling approval of its direction and saying they "look forward to continued collaboration with the company."…
  

• Two Scattered Spider teens charged over attack on London’s transport network
  Decisive action comes nearly a year after the attack and first arrest took place
  Two teenagers are set to appear in court today after being charged with offences related to the cyberattack on Transport for London (TfL) in August 2024.…
  

• Cloudflare DDoSed itself with React useEffect hook blunder
  Dashboard loop caused API outage that was hard to troubleshoot
  Cloudflare has confessed to a coding error using a React useEffect hook, notorious for being problematic if not handled carefully, that caused an outage for the platform's dashboard and many of its APIs.…
  

• French jet left circling while Corsican controller caught Zs
  Wake-up call for dozed and confused chap who had to turn on runway lights
  In the high-stress and safety-critical world of air traffic control, "don't fall asleep" probably comes pretty far toward the top of the rule book, and yet that's apparently the reason for the landing delay of an Air Corsica Airbus A320 this week.…
  

• Insight Partners confirms ransomware hit, more than 12,000 caught in data dragnet
  VC giant rebuilt boxes, patched holes, and says it’s beefed up security – but won’t say who did it
  Venture capital giant Insight Partners has confirmed that a January ransomware attack compromised the personal data of more than 12,000 people, including employees, former staff, and the firm's usually-secretive limited partners.…
  

• Panda-monium: China-backed cyber crew spoof Congressman to dig for dirt on US trade talks
  Proofpoint spots efforts to spy on US economic policy nerds
  Chinese state-aligned online attackers are back at it, targeting US trade policy wonks as Washington and Beijing spar over economic ties.…
  

• China's DeepSeek applying trial-and-error learning to its AI 'reasoning'
  Model can also explain its answers, researchers find
  Chinese AI company DeepSeek has shown it can improve the reasoning of its LLM DeepSeek-R1 through trial-and-error based reinforcement learning, and even be made to explain its reasoning on math and coding problems, even though explanations might sometimes be unintelligible.…
  

• Microsoft weaves Oracle and BigQuery data mirroring into Fabric platform
  And knits a graph DB out of LinkedIn cast-offs
  Microsoft is extending its Fabric cloud-based data platform by including Oracle and Google's BigQuery data warehouse in its mirroring capability, and launching a new graph database based on an in-house LinkedIn project.…
  

• How and why Linux has thrived after three decades in Kernelland
  Just a hobby, won't be big and professional like GNU...
  Open Source Summit At OSS EU, LWN editor and long-time kernel developer Jonathan Corbet shared a long-term perspective on how and why Linux has thrived for a third of a century.…
  

• Toys can tell us a lot about how tech will change our lives
  LEGO Mindstorms, PlayStation 2 and Furby all resonate today in their own way
  Column Twenty-five years ago this month I published a book called The Playful World that explored a simple idea: that the seeds of the future can be found in the present by considering the dazzling toys we started giving our children at the turn of the millennium.…
  

• Huawei lays out multi-year AI accelerator roadmap and claims it makes Earth’s mightiest clusters
  On the same day that fellow Chinese giant Tencent says its overseas cloud clientele doubled
  Chinese tech giant Huawei has kicked off its annual “Connect” conference by laying out a plan to deliver increasingly powerful AI processors that look to have enough power that Middle Kingdom users won’t need to try getting Nvidia parts across the border.…
  

• Microsoft thinks cloud PCs might be overkill, starts streaming just apps under Windows 365
  As old-school virtual desktop player Omnissa distances itself further from VMware
  Microsoft thinks cloudy PCs might be overkill for some users, so has started streaming individual apps instead as part of its Windows 365 service.…
  

• Vibe coding platform Replit's latest update is infuriating customers with surprise cost overruns
  It's worst when going over older code, one user tells us
  AI coding service Replit is in trouble again as users are protesting steep cost increases and some glitches when employing the newest version of its service.…
  

• Nvidia GeForced out of China as Beijing demands tech titans embrace homegrown silicon
  Huawei or another, we're gonna getcha off Nvidia
  Nvidia has reportedly been cut off from the Chinese market after regulators in Beijing ordered the nation's top tech companies to suspend testing and cancel orders of the GPU giant's accelerators.…
  

• Russian fake-news network, led by an ex-Florida sheriff's deputy, storms back into action with 200+ new sites
  As the Trump administration guts efforts to counter election disinfo
  The Russian troll farm that in the lead-up to the 2024 US presidential election posted a bizarro video claiming Democratic candidate Kamala Harris was a rhino poacher, is back with hundreds of new fake news websites serving up phony political commentary with an AI assist.…
  

• US tech giants pledge $42 billion in UK investment as Trump tours Blighty
  Datacenters galore, plus some vague cooperation on AI, nuclear, quantum, and more
  America and the UK have announced a $42 billion (£31 billion) trade pact, funded by Microsoft, Google, and others, that predicts bit barns will spring up over Britain's green and pleasant Land. But there's a lot more than money involved.…
  

• Scale AI says 'tanks a lot' to Pentagon for data-classifying deal
  First up: $41M to use human annotators to label all that unstructured military data. What could go wrong?
  Data curation firm Scale AI has partnered with the Pentagon to deploy its AI on Top Secret networks - a move its interim CEO says is necessary if the US wants AI to be useful for national security.…
  

• AMD tries to catch CUDA with performance-boosting ROCm 7 software
  House of Zen promises 3.5x improvement in inference and 3x uplift in training perf over last-gen software
  AMD closed the performance gap with Nvidia's Blackwell accelerators with the launch of the MI355X this spring. Now the company just needs to overcome Nvidia's CUDA software advantage and make that perf more accessible to developers. …
  

• Scattered Spider gang feigns retirement, breaks into bank instead
  You didn't really trust the crims to keep their word, did you?
  Spiders don't change their stripes. Despite gang members' recent retirement claims, Scattered Spider hasn't exited the cybercrime business and instead has shifted focus to the financial sector, with a recent digital intrusion at a US bank.…
  

• Social Security admin denies DB data leak, DOGEs questions about a copy
  Carefully crafted response makes no mention of whether DOGE employees duplicated critical database
  The Social Security Administration (SSA) has disputed a whistleblower's allegations that claimed DOGE made an unauthorized, unsecured copy of a critical database - but it's what the denial doesn't say that speaks volumes. …
  

• Super-sized space freighter delayed on way to ISS, leaving snacks in jeopardy
  Crew will have to wait a little longer for science supplies, spares, and 'fun food'
  NASA has delayed a supply delivery to the International Space Station (ISS) after the engines of Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL cargo spacecraft did not perform as expected during an orbit-raising burn.…
  

• Tariff threat plays havoc with US PC market, economy not helping
  American businesses join Win 10 upgrade train, consumers happy to sit on the platform
  World War Fee The US PC industry is suffering from inventory indigestion caused by resellers over-ordering hardware to avoid Donald Trump's expected import taxes on China-made kit.…
  

• AI in your toaster: Analyst predicts $1.5T global spend in 2025
  And we're paying for it piecemeal through the software, services, and devices we buy
  Tech analysts expect worldwide spending on AI to hit nearly $1.5 trillion in 2025, including $268 billion on optimized servers. These investments will also soon appear in even more consumer products.…
  

• Axiom Space aims for orbit with its Orbital Data Center Node
  But will the International Space Station still be there to host its node?
  Axiom Space and Spacebilt have announced plans to add optically interconnected Orbital Data Center (ODC) infrastructure to the International Space Station (ISS).…
  

• OpenAI says models are programmed to make stuff up instead of admitting ignorance
  Even a wrong answer is right some of the time
  AI models often produce false outputs, or "hallucinations." Now OpenAI has admitted they may result from fundamental mistakes it makes when training its models.…
  

• Return on investment for Copilot? Microsoft has work to do
  Jared Spataro, boss of modern work and biz apps division, says 'hard to make the ROI argument for it'
  A Microsoft exec claims Copilot is boosting productivity among the customers that adopted it yet sustained efforts to convince many them of the returns on investment remains a work in progress.…
  

• Strong Java LTS arrives with the release of 25
  But efforts to simplify popular programming language for beginners are unlikely to boost popularity
  Oracle has released JDK (Java Development Kit) 25, the first long term support (LTS) version since JDK 21 two years ago. New features include beginner-friendly compact source files, succinct module imports, and more flexible constructors.…
  

• BreachForums kingpin goes from walk-free deal to 3-year stretch
  Prosecutors say Conor Fitzpatrick's crimes caused 'incalculable' damage
  The founder of the popular cybercrime website BreachForums will spend three years in prison after previously being let off with a slap on the wrist.…
  

• UK telco Colt’s recovery from August cyberattack pushes into November
  Pentesters confirm key system is safe but core products remain unavailable
  Brit telco Colt Technology Services says its recovery from an August cyberattack might not be completed until late November.…
  

• Sky plans to ditch up to 500 staff in the Technology Group
  Insiders say AI trials involving 'critical network services' underway and some engineering roles being moved to India
  Exclusive Sky Group, the Brit-based commercial TV and broadband service slinger owned by Comcast, is chopping up to 600 employees from the Technology, Consumer Group and COO divisions in the UK.…
  

• Microsoft pens $15B love letter to the UK with 23,000 Nvidia GPUs attached
  Redmond woos Blighty with cloud and AI infrastructure splurge as Trump comes to town
  Microsoft appears to have trumped Google's UK datacenter ambitions with a $15 billion investment in cloud and AI infrastructure in the country.…
  

• Why Microsoft has the name of an old mouse hidden in its Bluetooth drivers
  Screw-up or conspiracy?
  Lurking within the Windows Bluetooth stack is a hardcoded reference to the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000. Is this nostalgic favoritism from Microsoft? Or is it just somebody, somewhere, making a mistake that an engineer had to work around?…
  

• Whitehall lobs £40M at 'critical' phase of police DB reboot
  Officials say there's no time to switch suppliers if they want the PNC off life support before March 2026
  The Home Office is flinging nearly £40 million in taxpayer cash at PA Consulting to get the big-ticket successor to the Police National Computer (PNC) over the finish line.…
  

• Microsoft Surface 7 laptop: Nice hardware, shame about the OS
  Arm, AI, and Copilot, oh my!
  hands on The Arm-based Surface Laptop 7 was introduced in 2024, followed by an Intel-powered version a few months later. As with much of the Surface line, it's a well-engineered piece of hardware. I needed something that could run off the battery for a full day, wouldn't break the strap of a courier bag or the bank, and featured a decent spec.…
  

• UEFI Secure Boot for Linux Arm64 – where do we stand?
  Still exotic for now, but moves are afoot
  Arm devices are everywhere today and many of them run Linux. The operating system also powers cloud computing and IT environments all over the world. However, x86 is still the dominant architecture of global computer hardware, where the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) with Secure Boot incorporated is a standard. But what does UEFI look like from an Arm perspective?…
  

• UK Cabinet Office hands stalled Microsoft migration to another department
  Project to get off Google remains a red risk, according to government assessment
  Updated The Cabinet Office, the strategic center of UK government, has handed a much-delayed project to migrate from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 (M365) to another department.…
  

• Ruh-roh. DDR5 memory vulnerable to new Rowhammer attack
  Google and ETH Zurich found problems with AMD/SK Hynix combo, will probe other hardware
  Researchers from Google and Swiss university ETH Zurich have found a new class of Rowhammer vulnerability that could allow attackers to access info stored in DDR5 memory.…
  

• Australia to let Big Tech choose its own adventure to enact kids social media ban
  Suggests using multiple overlapping approaches and being kind to kids who get kicked off
  Australia’s eSafety commissioner has told social media operators it expects them to employ multiple age assurance techniques and technologies to keep children under sixteen off social media, as required by local law from December 10th.…
  

• Microsoft blocks bait for ‘fastest-growing’ 365 phish kit, seizes 338 domains
  Redmond names alleged ringleader, claims 5K+ creds stolen and $100k pocketed
  Microsoft has seized 338 websites associated with RaccoonO365 and identified the leader of the phishing service - Joshua Ogundipe - as part of a larger effort to disrupt what Redmond's Digital Crimes Unit calls the "fastest-growing tool used by cybercriminals to steal Microsoft 365 usernames and passwords."…
  

• Li-ion roars can predict early battery failure, MIT boffins say
  Batteries emit distinct acoustic signatures depending on how they're failing - a bit like people, really
  When lithium-ion batteries degrade, they emit acoustic signals that reveal what's going wrong inside. Now, MIT researchers say they've figured out how to interpret those sounds, and the subtle creaks and pops that come before major failures, to help predict problems before things go up in smoke.…
  

• Ubuntu 25.10 Beta Officially Released For Testing
  Canonical today released the Ubuntu 25.10 Beta as they work toward the stable Ubuntu 25.10 release in mid-October...

• Steam Will End Windows 32-bit OS Support Next Year - Hopefully Linux Follows
  Valve is finally pushing the Steam client beyond the 32-bit world, at least for Microsoft Windows...

• PCIe 8.0 v0.3 Specification Released To Members
  As announced last month, PCI Express 8.0 is aiming for 256 GT/s speeds for allowing 1 TB/s bandwidth in an x16 configuration. In working towards the goals of PCIe 8.0, the PCI-SIG announced today that the v0.3 specification has been released to members...

• Revisiting DDR5-6400 vs. MRDIMM-8800 Performance With Intel Xeon 6 "Granite Rapids"
  One of the exciting elements of Intel9s Xeon 6 Granite Rapids launch last year was introducing support for MRDIMMs alongside DDR5-6400 memory support. After the Xeon 6900P series debut I posted some of the first independent DDR5-6400 vs. MRDIMM-8800 benchmarks. One year later, today is a fresh look at the DDR5-6400 vs. MRDIMM-8800 performance for Granite Rapids with new/updated benchmarks, the latest Linux software improvements, and also looking at the impact on power and thermals of MRDIMM memory.

• Rust 1.90 Released With LLD Default On Linux x86_64 While macOS x86_64 Demoted
  Rust 1.90 is out today as the newest feature release for this popular programming language...

• Python 3.14-rc3 Released Ahead Of Next Month9s Official Release
  Python 3.14-rc3 is out today as the final test preview ahead of next month's official Python 3.14 stable release...

• NVIDIA To Make $5B Investment Into Intel - x86 RTX SoCs & More To Come
  NVIDIA is making a $5 billion investment into Intel and the two companies will work together on custom data center and client CPUs...

• Linux Mint Releases LMDE 7 Beta
  Following the recent release of Linux Mint 22.2 as the Linux Mint project's premiere operating system currently built atop Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, today marks the beta release of Linux Mint Debian Edition 7...

• Fedora Forge Announced For Modernizing Fedora9s Development & Collaboration
  The Fedora Forge has been soft-launched for Fedora contributors to help modernize the development and collaboration tools around the Linux distribution...

• Linux 6.17 AMD PMF Driver Adding New ACPI ID For Upcoming AMD Platform
  A new round of platform-drivers-x86 "fixes" were submitted today for the nearly-complete Linux 6.17 kernel cycle. While on the fixes stage of the kernel, the x86 platform driver changes can be interesting when it comes to new device IDs for enabling new products late in the kernel cycle...

• Microchip LAN969x SoC Going Upstream In Linux 6.18
  One of the new SoCs to be supported by the upstream Linux 6.18 kernel is the Microchip LAN969x...

• Intel9s Latest Open-Source Project To End & Layoff Developers... But A New Home At NumPy
  Beyond shutting down the Clear Linux project, various Linux driver maintainers let go that have even led to some Intel drivers being "orphaned" in the Linux kernel, there is another open-source project that has ended at Intel with the developers departing the company. Though at least this project has found a new open-source home under the NumPy umbrella...

• AMD "GFX1251" Target Added To LLVM As Latest RDNA 4.5 APU
  The past few months we have been intrigued by an AMD GFX1250 target added to the LLVM codebase for the AMDGPU shader compiler back-end. GFX12 is RDNA4 and GFX1250 is presumably some "RDNA 4.5" / "RDNA Refresh" part akin to GFX1150 having been for the RDNA 3.5 parts with Strix Halo / Strix Point. The prior LLVM code confirmed GFX1250 is in APU form factor but product details beyond that have been scarce. Today a new AMD GFX1251 target was merged to LLVM...

• OpenJDK 25 & GraalVM 25 Released With 32-bit x86 Support Removed
  Released yesterday was the OpenJDK Java 25 release along with Oracle's GraalVM 25 alternative JVM...

• AMD Hardware Would Ideally Be Supported By ROCm For ~10 Years
  While down to AMD Austin yesterday for the Instinct MI355X and ROCm 7.0 launch, I had the chance to chat again with Anush Elangovan. As the VP of AI Software at AMD, talking with Anush is always insightful and technical in nature. One of the questions I posed him was around the length of hardware support with ROCm...

• GNOME 49 Officially Released With Wayland Improvements, Showtime As Video Player
  GNOME 49.0 is out today as the latest half-year feature release to the GNOME desktop that will go on to power the likes of Fedora Workstation 43 and Ubuntu 25.10...

• Latest Open-Source AMD Improvements Allowing For Better Llama.cpp AI Performance Against Windows 11
  When recently carrying out the Windows 11 25H2 vs. Ubuntu Linux benchmarks I also ended up carrying out some Llama.cpp AI benchmarks as the first time exploring the AI inferencing performance between Windows and Linux for both CPU and GPU-accelerated deployments. Here are those results for exploring the Llama.cpp performance between Windows and Linux with different large language models.

• A Quick Look At The AMD Instinct MI355X With ROCm 7.0
  Yesterday I was invited along with a small group of others to try out the AMD Instinct MI355X accelerator down in Austin, Texas. The AMD Instinct MI355X is fully supported with the newly-released AMD ROCm 7.0...

• systemd 258 Released With systemd-factory-reset & Other New Tools
  Systemd 258 is out today as stable as the latest major feature release to this Linux init system and service manager...

• Microsoft Rolls Out A Linux 6.12 LTS Option For Azure Linux
  Microsoft released Azure Linux 3.0.20250910 as the newest version of this in-house Linux distribution used by Azure and other services. Azure Linux 3.0 has long been using the Linux 6.6 LTS kernel while now Linux 6.12 LTS is a new option focused on providing better hardware enablement support...

• Linux 6.18 To Add Detection For FreeBSD9s Bhyve Hypervisor
  A patch making it to a TIP Git branch this week adds Linux kernel support for detecting the FreeBSD Bhyve hypervisor, which will become important with today's growing server CPU counts...

• Intel Compute Runtime 25.35.35096.9 Ships Newest Features & Optimizations
  Intel shipped the Compute Runtime 25.35.35096.9 as their newest monthly feature update to this open-source GPU compute stack for their integrated and discrete graphics wares for providing OpenCL and Level Zero support...

• Mesa9s Zink Driver Achieves Hits Major Milestone For Workstation Graphics
  Mike Blumenkrantz of Valve's Linux graphics team is the one who has been driving the development forward on Mesa's Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan driver. While traditionally focused on getting OpenGL games running over Zink, recently he has taken to optimizing Zink for workstation graphics...

• Haiku OS Addressing Slow "git status" Performance Relative To Linux
  The BeOS-inspired Haiku open-source operating system project published a new blog post to outline some of their latest development activity. One of the areas they have been focusing on in the performance department has been for addressing much slower git status performance compared to Linux...

• Tyr Driver Being Submitted For Linux 6.18 As Rust-Based Arm Mali Driver
  The big set of Rust DRM kernel graphics/display driver updates were sent out to DRM-Next ahead of the upcoming Linux 6.18 kernel. Most notable with this pull request is merging the Tyr driver, the new open-source and Rust-based DRM driver for Arm Mali GPUs...

• AMD Begins Plumbing APCI C4 Support In The Linux Kernel For Greater Power Savings
  AMD engineers have begun ironing out ACPI C4 support for the Linux kernel in order to provide greater power savings on newer AMD Ryzen platforms that have begun to support this deeper sleep state...

• Intel Xeon 6980P "Granite Rapids" Linux Performance One Year Later
  Next week marks one year since the launch of the Xeon 6900P series Granite Rapids server processors. Given the occasion and a new server in the lab, here is a look at how Intel9s Granite Rapids top-end Xeon 6980P server processors are performing one year after the original introduction with a production-grade server platform as well as incorporating all of the Linux software improvements over the past year.

• AMD ROCm 7.0 Officially Released With Many Significant Improvements
  Overnight the AMD ROCm 7.0 release tags began appearing within the public Git repositories. Now AMD ROCm 7.0 is officially released as a very significant step forward for AMD's open-source GPU compute stack for better competing against NVIDIA's CUDA ecosystem...

• Fedora 43 Beta ISOs Released For Testing This Leading-Edge Linux OS
  It's beta day for Fedora 43 and the release media is ready for testing!..

• AMD ROCm 7.0 Begins Rocking Out On GitHub
  As a pleasant surprise waking up this morning is AMD ROCm 7.0 release tags beginning to appear on GitHub, indicating the likely imminent official release of the ROCm 7.0 compute stack as the open-source AMD Radeon/Instinct software stack aimed to be the open alternative to NVIDIA's CUDA ecosystem...

• Fedora Workstation 43 Beta Is Running Well On AMD Strix Halo / Framework Desktop
  Fedora 43 Beta is releasing today as we work toward the official release in either late October or early November. I have been testing out the Fedora Workstation 43 Beta candidate to great success on the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ "Strix Halo" powered Framework Desktop. Here are some benchmarks of Fedora Workstation 42 compared to the Fedora Workstation 43 Beta.

• Intel USBIO USB IO Expander Drivers Expected To Be Merged For Linux 6.18
  Queued up in the past few days to the USB subsystem's "usb-next" Git branch are the Intel USBIO drivers for Linux 6.18. These drivers are needed to support the web cameras on various newer Intel laptop models...

• Dark patterns killed my wifes Windows 11 installation
  Last night, my wife looks up from her computer, troubled. She tells me she cant log into her computer running Windows 11, as every time she enters the PIN code to her account, the login screen throws up a cryptic error: Your credentials could not be verified!. Shes using the correct PIN code, so that surely isnt it. We opt for the gold standard in troubleshooting and perform a quick reboot, but that doesnt fix it. My initial instinct is that since shes using an online account instead of a local one, perhaps Microsoft is having some server issues? A quick check online indicates that no, Microsofts servers seem to be running fine, and to be honest, I dont even know if that would have an effect on logging into Windows in the first place. The Windows 11 login screen does give us a link to click in case you forget your PIN code. Despite the fact the PIN code shes entering is correct, we try to go through this process to see if it goes anywhere. This is where things really start to get weird. A few dialogs flash in and out of existence, until its showing us a dialog telling us to insert a security USB key of some sort, which we dont have. Dismissing it gives us an option to try other login methods, including a basic password login. This, too, doesnt work; just like with the PIN code, Windows 11 claims the accurate, correct password my wife is entering is invalid (just to be safe, we tested it by logging into her Microsoft account on her phone, which works just fine). In the account selection menu in the bottom-left, an ominous new account mysteriously appears: WsiAccount. The next option we try is to actually change the PIN code. This doesnt work either. Windows wants us to use a second factor using my wifes phone number, but this throws up another weird error, this time claiming the SMS service to send the code isnt working. A quick check online once again confirms the service seems to be working just fine for everybody else. Im starting to get really stumped and frustrated. Of course, during all of this, were both searching the web to find anything that might help us figure out whats going on. None of our searches bring up anything useful, and none of our findings seem to be related to or match up with the issue were having. While shes looking at her phone and Im browsing on my Fedora/KDE PC next to hers, she quickly mentions shes getting a notification that OneDrive is full, which is odd, since she doesnt use OneDrive for anything. We take this up as a quick sidequest, and we check up on her OneDrive account on her phone. As OneDrive loads, our jaws drop in amazement: a big banner warning is telling her shes using over 5500% of her 5GB free account. We look at each other and burst out laughing. We exchange some confused words, and then we realise what is going on: my wife just got a brand new Samsung Galaxy S25, and Samsung has some sort of deal with Microsoft to integrate its services into Samsungs variant of Android. Perhaps during the process of transferring data and applications from her old to her new phone, OneDrive syncing got turned on? A quick trip to the Samsung Gallery application confirms our suspicions: the phone is synchronising over 280GB of photos and videos to OneDrive. My wife was never asked for consent to turn this feature on, so it mustve been turned on by default. We quickly turn it off, delete the 280GB of photos and videos from OneDrive, and move on to the real issue at hand. Since nothing seems to work, and none of what we find online brings us any closer to whats going on with her Windows 11 installation, we figured its time to bring out the big guns. For the sake of brevity, lets run through the things we tried. Booting into safe mode doesnt work; we get the same login problems. Trying to uninstall the latest updates, an option in WinRE, doesnt work, and throws up an unspecified error. We try to use a restore point, but despite knowing for 100% certain the feature to periodically create restore points is enabled, the only available restore point is from 2022, and is located on a drive other than her root drive (or C:\! in Windows parlance). Using the reset option in WinRE doesnt work either, as it also throws up an error, this time about not having enough free space. I also walk through a few more complex suggestions, like a few manual registry hacks related to the original error using cmd.exe in WinRE. None of it yields any results. Its now approaching midnight, and we need to get up early to drop the kids off at preschool, so I tell my wife Ill reinstall her copy of Windows 11 tomorrow. Were out of ideas. The next day, I decide to give it one last go before opting for the trouble of going through a reinstallation. The one idea I still have left is to enable the hidden administrator account in Windows 11, which gives you password-free access to what is basically Windows root account. It involves booting into WinRE, loading up cmd.exe, and replacing utilman.exe in system32 with cmd.exe: If you then proceed to boot into Windows 11 and click on the Accessibility icon in the bottom-right, it will open utilman.exe!, but since thats just cmd.exe with the utilman.exe name, you get a command prompt to work with, right on the login screen. From here, you can launch regedit, find the correct key, change a REG_BINARY, save, and reboot. At the login screen, youll see a new adminstrator! account with full access to your computer. During the various reboots, I do some more web searching, and I stumble upon a post on

• Intel to build x86 CPUs with NVIDIA graphics, most likely spelling the end of ARC
  Intel is in very dire straits, and as such, the company needs investments and partnerships more than anything. Today, NVIDIA and Intel announced just such a partnership, in which NVIDIA will invest $5 billion into the troubled chip giant, while the two companies will develop products that combine Intels x86 processors with NVIDIAs GPUs. For data centers, Intel will build NVIDIA-custom x86 CPUs that NVIDIA will integrate into its AI infrastructure platforms and offer to the market. For personal computing, Intel will build and offer to the market x86 system-on-chips (SOCs) that integrate NVIDIA RTX GPU chiplets. These new x86 RTX SOCs will power a wide range of PCs that demand integration of world-class CPUs and GPUs. ↫ NVIDIA press release My immediate reaction to this news was to worry about the future of Intels ARC graphics efforts. Just as the latest crop of their ARC GPUs have received a ton of good press and positive feedback, with some of their cards becoming the go-to suggestion for a budget-friendly but almost on-par alternative to offerings from NVIDIA and AMD, it would be a huge blow to user choice and competition if Intel were to abandon the effort. I think this news pretty much spells the end for the ARC graphics effort. Making dedicated GPUs able to compete with AMD and NVIDIA must come at a pretty big financial cost for Intel, and I wouldnt be surprised if theyve been itching to find an excuse to can the whole project. With NVIDIA GPUs fulfilling the role of more powerful integrated GPUs, all Intel really needs is a skeleton crew developing the basic integrated GPUs for cheaper and non-gaming oriented devices, which would be a lot cheaper to maintain. For just $5 billion dollars, NVIDIA most likely just eliminated a budding competitor in the GPU space. Thats cheap.

• Steam drops 32bit Windows support
  All good things come to an end eventually, and that includes support for 32bit Windows in Steam. As of January 1 2026, Steam will stop supporting systems running 32-bit versions of Windows. Windows 10 32-bit is the only 32-bit version that is currently supported by Steam and is only in use on 0.01% of systems reported through the Steam Hardware Survey. Windows 10 64-bit will still be supported and 32-bit games will still run. ↫ Steam support article While existing installations will continue to work, they will no longer receive any Steam updates or support. Valve obviously advises the small sliver of users still using 32bit Windows  unbeknownst to them, Im sure  to upgrade to a 64bit release. Upcoming versions of Steam will only work on 64bit systems.

• GNOME 49 released
  GNOME 49 has been released, and its got a lot of nice updates, improvements, and fixes for everyone. GNOME 49 finally replaces the ageing Totem video player with Showtime, and Evince, GNOMEs document viewer, is replaced by the new Papers. Both of these new applications bring a modern GTK4 user interface to replace their older GTK3 counterparts. Papers supports a ton of both document-oriented as well as comic book formats, and has annotation features. Weve already touched on the extensive accessibility improvements in GNOME Calendar, but other applications have been improved as well, such as Maps, Software, and Web. Softwares improvements focus on improving the applications performance, especially when dealing with Flatpaks from Flathub, while Web, GNOMEs web browser, comes with improved ad blocking and optional regional blocklists, better bookmark management, improved security features, and more. The remote desktop experience also saw a lot of work, with multitouch input support, extended virtual monitors, and relative mouse input. For developers, GNOME 49 comes with the new GTK 4.20, the latest version of Glib, and Libadwaita 1.8, released only a few days ago. It brings a brand new shortcuts information dialog as its most user-facing feature, on top of a whole bunch of other, developer-oriented features. GNOME 49 will find its way to your distribution of choice soon enough.

• Installing and using Debian with my decades-old genuine DEC vt510 serial terminal
  Its 2025, and yes, you can still install and run a modern Linux distribution like Debian through a real hardware terminal. While I have used a terminal with the Pi, I’ve never before used it as a serial`console`all the way from early boot, and I have never installed Debian using the terminal to run the installer. A serial terminal gives you a login prompt. A serial console gives you access to kernel messages, the initrd environment, and sometimes even the bootloader. This might be fun, I thought. ↫ John Goerzen at The Changelog It seems Debian does a lot of the correct configurations for you, but theres still a few things youll need to manually change, but none of it seems particularly complicated. Once the installation is completed, you have a system thats completely accessible and usable from a hardware terminal, which, while maybe not particularly important in this day and age of effortless terminal emulators, is still quite a cool thing to have.

• Haiku vastly improves git status performance
  Another month, another summary of changes in Haiku, the BeOS-inspired operating system. The main focus this past month has been improving the performance of git status, which has been measurably worse on Haiku than on Linux running on similar hardware. This work has certainly paid off, as the numbers demonstrate. The results are clearly more than worth the trouble, though: in one test setup with`git status`in Haiku’s`buildtools`repository (which contains the entirety of the`gcc`and`binutils`source code, among other things – over 160,000 files) went from around 33 seconds with a cold disk cache, to around 20 seconds; and with a hot disk cache, from around 15 seconds to around 2.5 seconds. This is still a ways off from Linux (with a similar setup in the same repository,`git status`there with a hot disk cache takes only 0.3 seconds). Performance on Haiku will likely be measurably faster on builds without`KDEBUG`enabled, but not by that much. Still, this is clearly a significant improvement over the way things were before now. ↫ Haiku Activity 8 Contract Report, August 2025 Theres more than this, of course, such as initial support for Intels Apollo Lake GPU in the Intel modesetting driver, improvements to USB disk performance, a reduction in power usage when in KDL, and much, much more.

• Why is the name of the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 hard-coded into the Bluetooth drivers?
  Some time ago, people noticed that buried in the Windows Bluetooth drivers is the hard-coded name of the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000. What’s going on there? Does the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 receive favorable treatment from the Microsoft Bluetooth drivers? Is this some sort of collusion? No, it’s not that. ↫ Raymond Chen So, what is the actual problem? Its a funny one: an encoding mistake. The device local name string for a device needs to be encoded in UTF-8, and thats where the developers of the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 made a mistake. The string contains a registered trademark symbol  ®  but they encoded it in code page 1252, which not only isnt allowed, but gets rejected completely. So, Windows Bluetooth drivers have a table that contains the wrong name for a driver, accompanied by the right name to use. This mouse is the only entry.

• Java 25 released
  Java 25 has been released. JDK 25, the reference implementation of Java 25, is now Generally Available. We shipped build 36 as the second Release Candidate of JDK 25 on 15 August, and no P1 bugs have been reported since then. Build 36 is therefore now the GA build, ready for production use. ↫ Java 25/JDK 25 release announcement If you want to dive into the details about this new release, feel free to peruse the long, long list of improvements and changes.

• A months of ad-free OSNews: were closing in on the fundraising goal, and need your help to get there
  Its been a little over a month since OSNews went completely ad-free for everyone. I can say the support has been overwhelming, with the accompanying fundraiser currently sitting at 67% of the €5000 goal! Of course things slowed down a bit after the initial week of one donation after the next, so Im throwing out this reminder that without your support, OSNews cant exist  doubly so now that Ive removed any and all advertising. Help us reach that 100%! So, what can you do to support OSNews? By being entirely free from the corrupting influence of advertising, I have even less desire to chase views, entrap users with slop content, game search engines with shitty SEO spam, or turn on the taps of AI!-generated trash to spew forth as much articles! and thus views as possible. This also means that OSNews is one of the few technology news websites remaining that is not part of a massive corporate media conglomerate, so theres no pressure from corporate! to go easy on advertisers or write favourable stuff about corporates friends. Youd be surprised to learn how many technology sites out there are not independent. The response to OSNews no longer having any advertising has been overwhelmingly positive  unsurprisingly  and that has taken away any reservations I might have had about taking this step. In a world where so many websites are disappearing, turning into corporate mouthpieces, or becoming glorified content farms, OSNews can keep on doing what it does, independent of any outside influence, thanks to the countless contributions from all of you. Thank you.

• Apple releases version 26 of all of its operating systems
  Its release day for all of Apples operating systems, so if youre fully or only partway into the ecosystem, youve got some upgrades ahead of you. Version 26 for macOS, iOS and iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, visionOS, and HomePod Software have all been released today, so if you own any device running any of these operating system, its time to head on over to the update section of the settings application and wait for that glass to slowly and sensually liquefy all over your screens. Do put a sock on the doorknob.

• Writing an operating system kernel from scratch in Zig
  I recently implemented a minimal proof of concept time-sharing operating system kernel on RISC-V. In this post, I’ll share the details of how this prototype works. The target audience is anyone looking to understand low-level system software, drivers, system calls, etc., and I hope this will be especially useful to students of system software and computer architecture. Finally, to do things differently here, I implemented this exercise in Zig, rather than traditional C. In addition to being an interesting experiment, I believe Zig makes this experiment much more easily reproducible on your machine, as it’s very easy to set up and does not require any installation (which could otherwise be slightly messy when cross-compiling to RISC-V). ↫ Uros Popovic This is not the first, and certainly not the last, operating system implemented from scratch as a teaching exercise, both for the creator itself, as well as for others wanting to follow along. This time its developed for RISC-V, and in an interesting twist, programmed in Zig (no Rust for once!).

• Microsoft to force-install Copilot onto Windows PCs with Office 365 installed
  And the beatings continue until AI! improves. Except if you live in the European Union/EEA, that is. Windows devices with the Microsoft 365 desktop client apps will automatically install the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. This app installation takes place in the background and would not disrupt the user. This app installation will start in Fall 2025. ↫ Microsoft support document Basically, if you have Microsoft 365 desktop applications installed  read my article about some deep Microsoft lore to figure out what that means  Microsoft is going to force-install all the Copilot stuff onto your computer, whether you like it or not. Thanks to more robust consumer protection legislation in the European Union/EEA, like the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, this force-install will not take place there. Administrators managing Office 365 deployments get an option to opt-out through the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center, but Im not sure if regular users can use this method as well. Remember, when youre using Windows (or macOS, for that matter), you dont own your computer. Plan accordingly.

• The idea of /usr/sbin has failed in practice
  It may be arcane knowledge to most users of UNIX-like systems today, but there is supposed to be a difference between /usr/bin and /usr/sbin; the latter is supposed to be for system binaries!, not needed by most normal users. The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard states that sbin directories are intended to contain utilities used for system administration (and other root-only commands)!, which is quite vague when you think about it. This has led to UNIX-like systems basically just winging it, making the distinction almost entirely arbitrary. For a long time, there has been no strong organizing principle to /usr/sbin that would draw a hard line and create a situation where people could safely leave it out of their $PATH. We could have had a principle of, for example, programs that dont work unless run by root!, but no such principle was ever followed for very long (if at all). Instead programs were more or less shoved in /usr/sbin if developers thought they were relatively unlikely to be used by normal people. But relatively unlikely is not never, and shortly after people got told to run traceroute and got command not found when they tried, /usr/sbin (probably) started appearing in $PATH. ↫ Chris Siebenmann As such, Fedora 42 unifies /usr/bin and /usr/sbin, which is kind of a follow-up to the /usr merge, and serves as a further simplification and clean-up of the file system layout by removing divisions and directories that used to make sense, but no longer really do. Decisions like these have a tendency to upset a small but very vocal group of people, people who often do not even use the distribution implementing the decisions in question in the first place. My suggestions to those people would be to stick to distributions that more closely resemble classic UNIX. Or use a real UNIX. Anyway, these are good moves, and Im glad most prominent Linux distributions are not married to decisions made in the 70s, especially not when they can be undone without users really noticing anything.

• Google decides to significantly harm Android security to please lazy OEMs
  Google continues putting nails in the coffin that is the Android Open Source Project. This time, theyre changing the way they handle security updates to appease slow, irresponsible Android OEMs, while screwing over everyone else. The basic gist is that instead of providing monthly security updates for OEMs to implement on their Android devices, Google will now move to a quarterly model, publishing only extremely severe issues on a monthly basis. The benefit for OEMs is that for most vulnerabilities, they get three months to distribute (most) fixes instead of just one month, but the downsides are also legion. Vulnerabilities will now be out in the wild for three months instead of just one, and while theyre shared with OEMs privately!, were talking tends of thousands of pairs of eyes here, so privately! is a bit of a misnomer. The dangers are obvious; these vulnerabilities will be leaked, and they will be abused by malicious parties. Another massive downside related to this change is that Google will now no longer be providing the monthly patches as open source within AOSP, instead only releasing the quarterly patch drops as open source. This means exactly what you think it does: no more monthly security updates from third-party ROMs, unless those third-party ROMs choose to violate the embargo themselves and thus invite all sorts of problems. Extending the patch access window from one month to three is absolutely insane. Google should be striving to shorten this window as much as possible, but instead, theyre tripling it in length to create a false sense of security. OEMs can now point at their quarterly security updates and claim to be patching vulnerabilities as soon as Google publishes them, while in fact, the unpatched vulnerabilities will have been out in the wild for months by that point. This change is irresponsible, misguided, and done only to please lazy, shitty OEMs to create a false sense of security for marketing purposes.

• China is selling its Great Firewall censorship tools to countries around the world
  Were all aware of the Chinese Great Firewall, the tool the Chinese government uses for mass censorship and for safeguarding and strengthening its totalitarian control over the country and its population. It turns out that through a Chinese shell company called Geedge Networks, China is also selling the Great Firewall to other totalitarian regimes around the world. Thanks to a massive leak of 500 GB of source code, work logs, and internal communication records, we now have more insight into how the Great Firewall works than ever before, leading to in-depth reports like this one from InterSecLab. The findings are chilling, but not surprising. First and foremost, Geedge is selling the Great Firewall to a variety of totalitarian regimes around the world, namely Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Myanmar, and another unidentified country. These governments can then ask Geedge to make specific changes and ask them to focus on specific capabilities to further enhance the functionality of the Great Firewall, but what it can already do today is bad enough. The suite of products offered by Geedge Networks allow a client government unprecedented access to internet user data and enables governments to use this data to police national and regional networks. These capabilities include deep packet inspection for advanced classification, interception, and manipulation of application and user traffic; monitoring the geographic location of mobile subscribers in real time; analyzing aggregated network traffic in specific areas, such as during a protest or event; flagging unusual traffic patterns as suspicious; creating tailored blocking rules to obstruct access to a website or application (such as a VPN (Virtual Private Network) or circumvention tool); throttling traffic to specific services; identifying individual internet users for accessing websites or using circumvention tools or VPNs; assigning individual internet users reputation scores based on their online activities; and infecting users with malware through in-path injection. ↫ The Internet Coup: A Technical Analysis on How a Chinese Company is Exporting The Great Firewall to Autocratic Regimes Internet service providers participate in the implementation of the suite of tools, either freely or by force, and since the tools are platform-agnostic it doesnt matter which platforms people are using in any given country, making international sanctions effectively useless. It also wont surprise you that Geedge steals both proprietary and open source code, without regards for licensing terms. Furthermore, China is allowing provinces and regions within its borders to tailor and adapt the Great Firewall to their own local needs, providing a blueprint for how to export the suite of tools to other countries. With quite a few countries sliding ever further towards authoritarianism, Im sure even places not traditionally thought of as totalitarian are lustfully looking at the Chinese Great Firewall, wishing they had something similar in their own countries.

• Everything about Psion, in one place
  Celebrate classic Psion machines with us, from the original Organiser, through the Series 3 and Series 5, all the way to the netBook. Get help with your classic palmtop computer, or help to develop software and hardware that will bring these devices into the 21st Century. ↫ Psion Community website A brand new one-stop shop for everything related to keeping Psion machines going. A library of all the software, lists of all the ROM images, tons of development resources, and much more.

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

• Budgie 10.9.3 Now Available
  The latest version of this elegant and configurable Linux desktop aligns with changes in Gnome 49.
  

• KDE Linux Alpha Available for Daring Users
  It's official, KDE Linux has arrived, but it's not quite ready for prime time.
  

• AMD Initiates Graphics Driver Updates for Linux Kernel 6.18
  This new AMD update focuses on power management, display handling, and hardware support for Radeon GPUs.
  

• AerynOS Alpha Release Available
  With a choice of several desktop environments, AerynOS 2025.08 is almost ready to be your next operating system.
  

• AUR Repository Still Under DDoS Attack
  Arch User Repository continues to be under a DDoS attack that has been going on for more than two weeks.
  

• RingReaper Malware Poses Danger to Linux Systems
  A new kind of malware exploits modern Linux kernels for I/O operations.
  

• Happy Birthday, Linux
  On August 25, Linux officially turns 34.
  

• VirtualBox 7.2 Has Arrived
  With early support for Linux kernel 6.17 and other new additions, VirtualBox 7.2 is a must-update for users.
  

• Linux Mint 22.2 Beta Available for Testing
  Some interesting new additions and improvements are coming to Linux Mint. Check out the Linux Mint 22.2 Beta to give it a test run.
  

• Debian 13.0 Officially Released
  After two years of development, the latest iteration of Debian is now available with plenty of under-the-hood improvements.
  

• Upcoming Changes for MXLinux
  MXLinux 25 has plenty in store to please all types of users.
  

• A New Linux AI Assistant in Town
  Newelle, a Linux AI assistant, works with different LLMs and includes document parsing and profiles.
  

• Linux Kernel 6.16 Released with Minor Fixes
  The latest Linux kernel doesn't really include any big-ticket features, just a lot of lines of code.
  

• EU Sovereign Tech Fund Gains Traction
  OpenForum Europe recently released a report regarding a sovereign tech fund with backing from several significant entities.
  

• FreeBSD Promises a Full Desktop Installer
  FreeBSD has lacked an option to include a full desktop environment during installation.
  

• Linux Hits an Important Milestone
  If you pay attention to the news in the Linux-sphere, you've probably heard that the open source operating system recently crashed through a ceiling no one thought possible.
  

• Plasma Bigscreen Returns
  A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
  

• CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
  Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
  

• Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
  Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.