All the News that Matters

• [$] A struct sockaddr sequel
  One of the many objectives of the LinuxKernel Self-Protection Project (KSPP), which just completed ten years ofwork, is to ensure that all array references can be bounds-checked,even in the case of flexible array members, the size of which is not knownat compile time. One of the most challenging flexible array members in thekernel is not even declared as such. Almost exactly one year ago, LWN looked at the effort to increase safety aroundthe networking subsystem's heavily used sockaddr structure. Oneyear later, Kees Cook is still looking for a way to bring this work to aclose.

• Security updates for Friday
  Security updates have been issued by Debian (keystone and lxd), Fedora (docker-buildkit, firefox, gh, gitleaks, lasso, runc, and seamonkey), Mageia (perl-Authen-SASL, perl-Cpanel-JSON-XS, perl-Crypt-OpenSSL-RSA, perl-JSON-XS, python-flask-cors, python-py, python-setuptools, and ruby), Oracle (java-1.8.0-openjdk), SUSE (binutils, cargo-packaging, rust-bindgen, chromium, go-sendxmpp, helm, lasso, libxml2, openssh, openssh8.4, python-Django, python-Scrapy-doc, python311-Brotli, squid, tomcat10, and weblate), and Ubuntu (linux-nvidia-6.8, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-6.8 and linux-xilinx-zynqmp).

• Two new stable kernels
  Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 6.17.8 and 6.12.58 stable kernels. Each contains animportant set of fixes. Users are advised to upgrade.
  
  
  

• Rust in Android: move fast and fix things (Google Security Blog)
  The Google Security Blog has anew post on just how well the use of Rust is working out for theAndroid project.
  We adopted Rust for its security and are seeing a 1000x reduction in memory safety vulnerability density compared to Android's C and C++ code. But the biggest surprise was Rust's impact on software delivery. With Rust changes having a 4x lower rollback rate and spending 25% less time in code review, the safer path is now also the faster one.

• Privilege escalation in LightDM Greeter by KDE (SUSE Security Team Blog)
  The SUSE Security Team has published an in-deptharticle on its findings after reviewing a D-Bus service containedin LightDMGreeter by KDE (the lightdm-kde-greeter package)for addition to openSUSE Tumbleweed. The team found a privilegeescalation from the lightdm service user to root, aswell as other attack vectors in the service:
  In agreement with upstream, we assigned CVE-2025-62876 to track thelightdm service user to root privilege escalation aspect described inthis report. The severity of the issue is low, since it only affectsdefense-in-depth (if the lightdm service user were compromised) andthe problematic logic can only be reached and exploited if triggeredinteractively by a privileged user.
  The fixes are contained in the 6.0.4release of the project.
  
  
  

• Thunderbird 145 released
  Version145 of the Thunderbird email client has been released. Notablechanges in this release include enabling DNS over HTTPS, support forMicrosoft Exchange via Exchange Web Services, and quite a few bugfixes. As of 145, the project is no longer shipping 32-bit binariesfor Linux on x86.
  
  
  

• [$] Another Fedora Flatpak discussion
  Many distributions provide support out of the proverbial box forFlatpak packages, but Fedora is unusual in that it also provides, anddefaults, to its own repository of Fedora-built Flatpaks. This has beena source of confusion for Fedora users, who expect to get the Flatpakbuilt by the original developers and hosted on Flathub. It has also been a sourceof conflict with upstream projects, because users complain of bugs inFlatpak packages they are not responsible for. The situation has also frustrated someFedora developers, who would prefer to put Flathub's offeringsfirst. A new complaint that Fedora has apparently used manifestsfrom Flathub to build the packages for Fedora—without giving credit tothe original authors—has spurred discussions about Fedora'sFlatpaks once again. While no concrete changes are on the table, yet,there may be some movement toward addressing persistent complaints.
  

• Security updates for Thursday
  Security updates have been issued by Debian (chromium and firefox-esr), Fedora (firefox, rubygem-rack, skopeo, and webkitgtk), Mageia (perl, perl-CPAN, perl-HTTP-Tiny, perl-Data-Entropy, perl-FCGI, perl-File-Find-Rule, perl-YAML-LibYAML, python-tornado, python-urllib3, python-pip, python3, and unbound), Oracle (ipa and kernel), Red Hat (container-tools:rhel8, krb5, openssl, pcs, podman, and runc), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (binutils, kernel, netty, netty-tcnative, podman, python311-pdfminer, and tomcat11), and Ubuntu (bind9 and linux-aws-6.8).

• [$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for November 13, 2025
  Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:
  Front: FUSE performance; Magic kfuncs; Tails Linux; Direct I/O and modifying buffers; Working with bootable containers. Briefs: Kernel LLM policy; Firefox 145; FHS; Homebrew 5.0.0; Mastodon 4.5; Public-inbox 2.0.0; Pytest 9.0.0; Quote; ... Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

• Homebrew 5.0.0 released
  Version5.0.0 of the Homebrew packagemanager for Linux and macOS has been released. Notable changes in thisrelease include download concurrency by default, official support for64-bit Arm on Linux, and more.
  
  
  

• [$] The intersection of unstable pages and direct I/O
  Longtime LWN readers will have encountered the concept of "stable pages"before; it was first covered here nearly15 years ago. For the most part, the problem that stable pages weremeant to solve — preventing errors when user space modifies a buffer thatis under I/O — has been dealt with. Butrecent discussions show that there is one area where problems remain:direct I/O. There is some disagreement,though, over whether those problems are the result of user-space bugs andhow much of a performance price should be paid to address them.

• Security updates for Wednesday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (kernel, kernel-rt, and libtiff), Debian (kernel, libarchive, rust-sudo-rs, and squid), Fedora (chromium, dotnet8.0, forgejo, ruby, and webkitgtk), Oracle (bind, bind9.18, kernel, kernel-uek*, libtiff, and runc), Red Hat (firefox, kernel, and kernel-rt), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (buildah, colord, containerd, kernel, lasso, libsoup, micropython, ongres-scram, openssh, proxy-helm, uyuni-tools, python-pdfminer.six, qatengine, qatlib, regclient, and runc), and Ubuntu (raptor and raptor2).

• Firefox 145 released
  Firefox 145 has been released. Notablechanges in this release include note-takingfeatures for PDFs viewed in Firefox, enhancedprivacy protections, and the ability to access and manage passwords inthe sidebar. This release also drops support for 32-bit Linux systems.
  
  
  

• [$] Protecting privacy with Tails
  Tails is an unusual Linuxdistribution developed by the Tor Project; itis designed to help users work around internet censorship and avoidsurveillance. It is a "portable" operating system that is meant to berun from a USB stick or ISO image and to leave no trace on thecomputer it was run on. Tails routes connections to the internet overthe Tornetwork and includes a selection of applications and toolssuited to working with sensitive documents, communicating securely,and preserving users' anonymity. The tradeoff, of course, is thatTails is less convenient and requires users to learn a new set oftools to avoid compromising their own security and anonymity. Tails 7.1 wasreleased in October, and it seemed like as good a time as any to takeit for a spin.
  

• Security updates for Tuesday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (bind, expat, kernel, osbuild-composer, qt6-qtsvg, runc, valkey, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), Debian (incus), Fedora (cef and dotnet8.0), Mageia (strongswan), Red Hat (fence-agents and python-requests), SUSE (chromium, colord, erlang26, java-1_8_0-openjdk, libsoup, python-django, thunderbird, tiff, and warewulf4), and Ubuntu (intel-microcode and rust-sudo-rs).

Linux Insider"LinuxInsider"

• Red Hat’s Evolution: How a Subsidiary Became an AI Powerhouse
  Red Hat has become a foundational player in enterprise AI by combining open-source infrastructure with hybrid cloud flexibility, maintaining independence while leveraging IBM’s global scale. The post Red Hat’s Evolution: How a Subsidiary Became an AI Powerhouse appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• Open-Source Security Tool AdaptixC2 Fueling Ransomware Attacks
  Ransomware gangs are exploiting AdaptixC2, an open-source command-and-control framework originally built for red team testing, to support stealthy post-exploitation operations. The post Open-Source Security Tool AdaptixC2 Fueling Ransomware Attacks appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• Open-Source Model Near Breaking Point Despite Trillions in Value
  A coalition of open-source stewards warns that the software industry’s reliance on goodwill to maintain critical infrastructure is unsustainable, despite open source fueling trillions in global economic value. The post Open-Source Model Near Breaking Point Despite Trillions in Value appeared first on 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.

• Nvidia-backed photonics startup Ayar Labs eyes hyperscale customers with GUC design collab
  Who needs 600 kilowatt racks when a single computer can span entire datacenters?
  Exclusive Nvidia-backed photonics startup Ayar Labs announced a new collaboration with Global Unichip Corp (GUC) on Sunday to integrate its optical I/O chiplets into the Taiwanese semiconductor design services provider's XPU reference designs.…
  

• Power: The answer to and source of all your AI datacenter problems
  Digital Realty CTO Chris Sharp weights impact of densification on the datacenter and the rise of the AI factory
  Interview In the datacenter biz, power is the product. You either have it or you don't, Chris Sharp tells El Reg.…
  

• Apple’s new 15% mini-app deal finally gets Tencent to cut Cupertino in
  When is an app not an app? When it’s a mini app inside another app
  Apple has cut its take to 15 percent on purchases inside mini apps running within other iOS apps, and reached a parallel agreement with Tencent that brings WeChat's vast mini-program ecosystem into its revenue net.…
  

• Memory boom-bust cycle booms again as Samsung reportedly jacks memory prices 60%
  Leaving buyers to cry, AI AI AI
  If you haven't noticed, DRAM memory has gotten a lot more expensive in recent weeks. …
  

• Researchers find hole in AI guardrails by using strings like =coffee
  Who guards the guardrails? Often the same shoddy security as the rest of the AI stack
  Large language models frequently ship with "guardrails" designed to catch malicious input and harmful output. But if you use the right word or phrase in your prompt, you can defeat these restrictions.…
  

• Fortinet finally cops to critical make-me-admin bug under active exploitation
  More than a month after PoC made public
  Fortinet finally published a security advisory on Friday for a critical FortiWeb path traversal vulnerability under active exploitation – but it appears digital intruders got a month's head start.…
  

• Canonical pushes Ubuntu LTS support even further - if you pay
  Enterprise Linux vendors keep jostling to see who can prop up geriatric distros the longest
  Last year, Canonical increased its paid extended support lifespan to 12 years. Now, it's increasing it again, to 15 years ... for a price.…
  

• Crims poison 150K+ npm packages with token-farming malware
  Amazon spilled the TEA
  Yet another supply chain attack has hit the npm registry in what Amazon describes as "one of the largest package flooding incidents in open source registry history" - but with a twist. Instead of injecting credential-stealing code or ransomware into the packages, this one is a token farming campaign.…
  

• Now you can share your AI delusions with Group ChatGPT
  Just when you thought virtual collaboration couldn’t get worse, OpenAI stuffs a bot into your group conversations
  Feel like your team's group chat is a bit lifeless? Remote coworkers not really collaborating as well as they should be? There's a new way to stir the pot now that OpenAI has piloted ChatGPT group chats: cram a chatbot into the conversation and let it chime in whenever it thinks it should.…
  

• AMD grabs more x86 share as Intel stumbles in entry-level chips
  Mercury Research blames stockpiling and low-end shortages for unusually flat CPU market
  AMD continues to claw market share away from Intel in CPU shipments, growing faster than its rival in most segments. Meanwhile business in the x86 processor arena is unusually flat overall, likely due to stockpiling over tariff fears.…
  

• Project Kuiper becomes Amazon Leo as satellite network trickles into orbit
  Starlink challenger drops the codename, but full-blown service still years out
  Amazon has rebranded its satellite broadband plan from Project Kuiper to Amazon Leo. And no, Leo doesn't stand for "Late Entrants Only," even though the project is years behind Starlink and still not ready for anyone to use.…
  

• FBI flags scam targeting Chinese speakers with bogus surgery bills
  Crooks spoof US insurers, threaten bogus extradition to pry loose personal data and cash
  Chinese speakers in the US are being targeted as part of an aggressive health insurance scam campaign, the FBI warns.…
  

• GPU goliaths are devouring supercomputing – and legacy storage can't feed the beast
  VDURA boss: Your x86 clusters are obsolete, metadata is eating 20% of I/O, and every idle GPU second burns cash
  The supercomputing landscape is fracturing. What once was a relatively unified world of massive multi-processor x86 systems has splintered into competing architectures, each racing to serve radically different masters: traditional academic workloads, extreme-scale physics simulations, and the voracious appetite of AI training runs.…
  

• CISA flags imminent threat as Akira ransomware starts hitting Nutanix AHV
  Advisory updated as leading cybercrime crew opens up its target pool
  The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued new guidance to organizations on the Akira ransomware operation, which poses an imminent threat to critical sectors.…
  

• Retro Games opens pre-orders for THEA1200, a full-size working Amiga replica
  Company behind THESPECTRUM brings the holiday season early for retro computing fans
  Retro Games Ltd (RGL), the company behind THESPECTRUM and THEA500 Mini, has started accepting pre-orders for its full-size Amiga 1200 replica, THEA1200.…
  

• Shenzhou-20 crew rides Shenzhou-21 home after debris strike
  Original spacecraft deemed unsafe after cracks spotted in window
  The Shenzhou-20 astronauts have returned to Earth on the Shenzhou-21 spacecraft after engineers deemed the Shenzhou-20 vehicle unsafe following a debris strike while it was docked to the Tiangong space station.…
  

• The Steam Machine rises again as Valve readies 2026 hardware trifecta
  Linux-powered PC, Arm VR headset, and refreshed controller all land on pre-order for next year
  The holiday season is almost upon us, but the new gear on gamers' wish lists won't arrive until next year.…
  

• Google pitches EU on adtech fixes to dodge breakup after €2.95B slap
  Brussels reviewing proposal as Mountain View insists it will appeal antitrust ruling
  Google has proposed a plan to the European Commission aimed at addressing antitrust concerns following a €2.95 billion fine imposed on the company for its online advertising practices.…
  

• Europe's IT spend to surge 11% as cloud sovereignty fever takes hold
  AI, cybersecurity, and geopolitical jitters forecast to push market to $1.4T next year
  IT spending in Europe will grow 11 percent next year to hit $1.4 trillion amid a desire for cloud sovereignty, according to Gartner.…
  

• Software engineer reveals the dirty little secret about AI coding assistants: They don't save much time
  Stay in control and think for yourself
  Feature Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping the way software gets built, tested, and maintained — but not in the simplistic, headline-grabbing sense of "AI replacing developers."…
  

• Report blasts UK Ministry of Defence over Afghan data-handling failures
  Public Accounts Committee tears into department responsible for the most dangerous breach in British history
  The UK Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) says the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has failed to appropriately improve its data protection mechanisms, three years after the infamous 2022 Afghan data breach.…
  

• Why Elon Musk won't ever realize the shareholder-approved Tesla payout
  Trillionaire fantasies, investor dreams, reality nightmares
  Opinion At Tesla's annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas, more than 75 percent of voting shares backed a compensation deal for CEO Elon Musk that would make him history's first trillionaire.…
  

• UK tribunal says reselling Microsoft licenses is A-OK
  Windows giant disagrees and plans to appeal
  Microsoft's attempt to claim that its software can't be resold has hit a wall at the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal, which decided that Office having clipart does not mean customers can't sell their licenses on.…
  

• Digital overhaul at UK's NS&I bank is £1.3B over budget and 4 years late
  Watchdog says program buckled under procurement failures and technical complexity
  Updated The UK's state-owned savings bank has blown past its budget by £1.3 billion on a digital transformation program beset by delays, according to the National Audit Office.…
  

• Clop claims it hacked 'the NHS.' Which bit? Your guess is as good as theirs
  Cybercrime crew has ravaged multiple private organizations using Oracle EBS zero-day for months
  The UK's National Health Service (NHS) is investigating claims of a cyberattack by extortion crew Clop.…
  

• Execs make rules that control AI usage, then break them for their own work
  FOMO trumps corporate governance when it comes to AI
  More than two-thirds of corporate executives say they've violated their own AI usage policies in the past three months, and over half of the leaders also ranked security and compliance as the greatest AI implementation challenge.…
  

• Developer battled to write his own documentation, but lost the boss fight
  Org chart games were more important than speed and accuracy
  On Call Welcome once again to On Call, The Register's reader-contributed column in which we tell your tales of tech support troubles and other workplace woes.…
  

• Chinese web giant Tencent can't buy all the GPUs it wants
  Getting by with a meager $2 billion quarterly capex – vastly less than rivals, but still cashing in on AI
  Chinese web giant Tencent’s capital expenditure is slowing and the company expects it will decelerate further due to its inability to buy all the GPUs it wants.…
  

• Kubernetes overlords decide Ingress NGINX isn’t worth saving
  Maintenance to end next year after ‘helpful options’ became ‘serious security flaws’
  Kubernetes maintainers have decided it’s not worth trying to save Ingress NGINX and will instead stop work on the project and retire it in March 2026.…
  

• Chinese spies told Claude to break into about 30 critical orgs. Some attacks succeeded
  Anthropic dubs this the first AI-orchestrated cyber snooping campaign
  Chinese cyber spies used Anthropic's Claude Code AI tool to attempt digital break-ins at about 30 high-profile companies and government organizations – and the government-backed snoops "succeeded in a small number of cases," according to a Thursday report from the AI company.…
  

• Happy holidays: AI-enabled toys teach kids how to play with fire, sharp objects
  Consumer advocacy researchers at PIRG tested four AI toys, and none of them passed muster
  Picture the scene: It's Christmas morning and your child is happily chatting with the AI-enabled teddy bear you got them when you hear it telling them about sexual kinks, where to find the knives, and how to light matches. This is not a hypothetical scenario. …
  

• Firefox adds AI Window, users want AI wall to keep it out
  Browser maker scolds AI objectors, "The web is changing, and sitting it out doesn’t help anyone"
  Mozilla is apparently a lot more excited about adding AI features to Firefox than its community. The org has decided that AI deserves its own new environment in the browser, a move its fans met with withering criticism.…
  

• Ransomed CTO falls on sword, refuses to pay extortion demand
  Checkout.com will instead donate the amount to fund cybercrime research
  Digitial extortion is a huge business, because affected orgs keep forking over money to get their data back. However, instead of paying a ransom demand after getting hit by extortionists last week, payment services provider Checkout.com donated the demanded amount to fund cybercrime research.…
  

• Baidu answers China's call for home-grown silicon with custom AI accelerators
  Chinese search giant plans to bring custom silicon to the rack scale in 2026 with 256- and 512-chip systems
  Chinese search giant Baidu unveiled two new AI accelerators this week amid a national push to end reliance on Western chips.…
  

• States that aren't nice to ICE still sharing key database full of personal info
  Lawmakers warn of ‘information gap’ lets immigration agents sidestep states’ data safeguards
  Democratic lawmakers say some states that don't want to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may be unintentionally allowing the agency access to residents' driver and criminal records through a law-enforcement data network.…
  

• AI pilots keep crashing, mostly because firms skip the prep, survey finds
  Under a third of PoCs make it past testing, but those that do often boost productivity
  It is the best of AI times; it is the worst of AI times, depending on whom you ask. Nearly a third of firms are seeing almost total failure of their AI proof-of-concept (PoC) projects, while 46 percent are successfully moving more than 10 percent of theirs into operational use.…
  

• Ubuntu 25.10's Rusty sudo holes quickly welded shut
  The goal of 'oxidizing' the Linux distro hits another bump
  Two vulnerabilities in Ubuntu 25.10's new "sudo-rs" command have been found, disclosed, and fixed in short order.…
  

• Avalonia brings Linux, browser support to Microsoft's MAUI cross-platform app solution
  Third-party framework builds alternative backend using its own renderer and WebAssembly
  Microsoft's MAUI (Multi-platform App UI), the official .NET solution for cross-platform desktop and mobile apps, will get Linux and browser support via Avalonia, a third-party framework.…
  

• ERP carnage continues as orgs jump in unprepared
  Lack of executive backing, unrealistic plans, and muddled goals remain recipe for failure
  In Barcelona this week, consultancy Gartner once again tried to answer one of the perennial questions in IT: what is it about ERP projects that makes them so likely to fail?…
  

• Blue Origin hopes third time's the charm for New Glenn after two scrubbed launches
  Bezos booster blasted by solar emissions
  A blast from the Sun kept Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket on the pad as the Northern Lights forced NASA to halt the launch.…
  

• HPE details Vera Rubin blades for next-gen Cray supercomputers
  Promised for 2027 racks, mixing Nvidia and AMD silicon in one liquid-cooled box
  HPE's next-gen Cray supercomputing platform will offer a choice of compute nodes with Nvidia's Vera Rubin or AMD's upcoming Venice Epyc CPUs – or a mix of both.…
  

• Extra, extra, read all about it: Washington Post clobbered in Clop caper
  Nearly 10,000 staff and contractors warned after attackers raided newspaper's Oracle EBS setup
  The Washington Post has confirmed that nearly 10,000 employees and contractors had sensitive personal data stolen in the Clop-linked Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) attacks.…
  

• To solve compatibility issues, Microsoft would quietly patch other people's code
  Long before automatic updates, the Windows 95 team tweaked third-party software to keep it running
  How to get that all-important piece of software working on Windows has vexed Microsoft since the beginning of the operating system. Compatibility was king.…
  

• Britain's first small modular reactors to be built in Wales
  Government picks Wylfa on Anglesey for initial trio of units, but power unlikely before mid-2030s
  The UK will build its first small modular reactor (SMR) nuclear plant at Wylfa on Anglesey, an island off northwest Wales - but it won't generate power until the mid-2030s.…
  

• Geopolitics push European CIOs to think local on cloud
  Majority of customers plan to favor domestic providers as sovereignty fears rise
  A survey of CIOs and tech leaders in Western Europe has found 61 percent want to increase their use of local cloud providers amid global geopolitical uncertainty.…
  

• Rhadamanthys malware admin rattled as cops seize a thousand-plus servers
  Operation Endgame also takes down Elysium and VenomRAT infrastructure
  International cops have pulled apart the Rhadamanthys infostealer operation, seizing 1,025 servers tied to the malware in coordinated raids between November 10-13.…
  

• London left buffering as Hyperoptic backup link refuses to boot
  Broadband provider says damaged fiber and dormant failover path knocked customers offline for nearly 24 hours
  Updated UK broadband provider Hyperoptic learned the importance of testing backup systems this week after the service went dark for customers in London.…
  

• NHS supplier ends probe into ransomware attack that contributed to patient death
  Synnovis's 18-month forensic review of Qilin intrusion completed, now affected patients to be notified
  Synnovis has finally wrapped up its investigation into the 2024 ransomware attack that crippled pathology services across London, ending an 18-month effort to untangle what the NHS supplier describes as one of the most complex data reconstruction jobs it has ever faced.…
  

• To 'Infinity' ... and beyond: MX Linux 25 has arrived
  Systemd-free option still available if you choose that download
  MX Linux 25 "Infinity" is now available, and the new version has some significant differences from the 2023 release, with things that used to be boot-time choices having become pre-install decisions.…
  

• Networking students need an explanation of the internet that can fit in their heads
  Networks have changed profoundly, except for the parts that haven’t
  Systems Approach When my colleague and co-author Bruce Davie delivered his keynote at the SIGCOMM conference, he was asked a thought-provoking question: How should we think about educating the next generation of students about networking, given how different and more complex the internet is today?…
  

• NVIDIA Highlights The Shortcomings With Wayland Screencasting
  In addition to showing the need for unifying DRM driver-side APIs within the Linux kernel, NVIDIA's Linux graphics driver team at XDC2025 also showcased the shortcomings of screencasting under Wayland...

• Qt Moves Away From Direct RDRAND/RDSEED Usage For Better Performance & Less Bugs
  The Qt toolkit is moving away from directly relying on the CPU's RDRAND and RDSEED instructions for random number generation and to instead rely on the OS-supplied entropy...

• Linux 6.19 Landing Initial Display Support For Xe3P_LPD / Nova Lake
  The upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel cycle is set to introduce initial Xe3P_LPD GPU support for Nova Lake as well as beginning to build out support for the Crescent Island graphics card. Now joining DRM-Next with that initial Intel Xe3P_LPD code for Linux 6.19 is being able to drive displays with that Xe3 hardware...

• NVIDIA Linux Engineer Highlights The Need For Unifying DRM Driver-Side API
  One of the NVIDIA presentations at the recent XDC2025 developer conference was not around the NVIDIA driver itself but the ongoing fragmentation that's happening within the Linux Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem and arguing the need for unifying more driver-side APIs for supporting different Linux DRM clinets...

• GCC Developer Discovers "Our Codebase Isn9t Fully C++20 Ready"
  Following the recent idea floated to consider C++20 as the default C++ language dialect by the GCC compiler rather than C++17, it was discovered that the GNU Compiler Collection itself has problems building in C++20 model...

• PureAudio Lotus DAC5 & Other PureAudio Hardware Supported For Linux 6.18
  As part of this week's sound subsystem fixes ahead of today's Linux 6.18-rc6 kernel release is adding some quirks for supporting the PureAudio Lotus DAC5 and other PureAudio audio hardware...

• Servo 0.0.2 Released For Those Wanting To Try Out This Example Rust Web Browser
  Released minutes ago was the Servo 0.0.2 web browser engine update. Along with this new Rust-based web engine release is also the "servoshell" in tow for the example implementation built around this open-source codebase...

• GNOME's Nautilus File Manager Finally Supporting Ctrl+Insert & Shift+Insert
  GNOME's Nautilus file manager is finally matching the behavior of other file managers like KDE's Dolphin and Xfce's Thunar with a keyboard shortcut for copying and pasting files...

• Debian 13.2 Released With Dozens Of Fixes
  Debian 13.2 is out today as the latest maintenance update to this current stable version of Debian GNU/Linux...

• Latest Proposed Guidelines For Tool-Generated / AI Submissions To The Linux Kernel
  Posted to the mailing list on Friday were the latest proposed guidelines for tool-generated contributions to the Linux kernel. The coding tools in large part being focused on AI generated content...

• NVIDIA Sends Out Initial Turing GPU Support For Open-Source Nova Driver
  NVIDIA engineers continue working a lot on the in-development and in-tree open-source Nova kernel driver for their GPUs. Sent out on Friday night were the Turing enablement patches for this Rust-written Nova-Core driver code...

• AMD Releases Additional Zen 5 CPU Microcode For RDSEED Issue
  Stemming from AMD's recently acknowledged Zen 5 issue with the RDSEED instruction and AMD releasing Zen 5 CPU microcode updates to address it, this week brought some additional microcode updates...

• Servo Shell Improvements For macOS & Android, More Servo Browser Engine Progress
  The Servo open-source and Rust-based web browser engine made a lot of progress during the month of October. The project has issued its monthly status report to outline all of the exciting new features made on the engine itself as well as its "servoshell" example web browser application...

• Plasma 6.6 Will Avoid Running Out Of RAM When Something Crashes In A Loop
  KDE Plasma 6.6 continues seeing a lot of development activity while the Plasma 6.5 series is calming down after its first few point releases. Plasma 6.6 landed many more features and improvements this week...

• Mesa 25.3 Released With Many Open-Source Vulkan Driver Improvements
  Mesa 25.3 is out tonight as the newest quarterly feature release to this set of (predominantly) OpenGL and Vulkan drivers widely used across Linux systems. Mesa 25.3 features numerous Vulkan extensions added to the different open-source drivers, continued enhancements to the OpenGL drivers, and various other changes...

• Wine 10.19 Released With More Improvements
  Ahead of the Wine 11.0 code freeze beginning in early December, Wine 10.19 is out today as the newest bi-weekly development release for running Windows games and applications on Linux...

• AMD GCN 1.0/1.1 GPUs Will Default To AMDGPU Driver In Linux 6.19, SMART POWER OLED Added
  Sent out today is likely the last batch of AMDGPU kernel graphics driver feature updates ahead of the Linux 6.19 merge window getting underway around the start of December. And it's an exciting one too from adding a new SMART POWER OLED feature to switching from the Radeon to AMDGPU drivers by default for aging GCN 1.0 Southern Islands and GCN 1.1 Sea Islands GPUs...

• ollama 0.12.11 Brings Vulkan Acceleration
  ollama 0.12.11 released this week as the newest feature update to this easy-to-run method of deploying OpenAI GPT-OSS, DeepSeek-R1, Gemma 3, and other large language models. Exciting with ollama 0.12.11 is that it's now supporting the Vulkan API...

• Vulkan 1.4.333 Released With New Ray-Tracing Extension
  Vulkan 1.4.333 is out with a handful of fixes plus two new extensions...

• AMD GAIA 0.13 Released With New AI Coding & Docker Agents
  AMD's GAIA open-source project as a reminder is their "Generrative AI Is Awesome" quick-setup solution for demonstrating generative AI use on AMD hardware platforms with Ryzen CPUs, Radeon GPUs, and/or Ryzen AI NPUs. GAIA is predominantly Microsoft Windows focused but recently they did introduce limited support for Linux that is currently bound to Vulkan-accelerated GPU support. Out today is AMD GAIA 0.13 as another step forward for this AI demonstrator...

• Nouveau Driver To Support Larger Pages & Compression Support With Linux 6.19
  While the "Nova" driver continues to be developed as a modern Rust-written, open-source and in-kernel NVIDIA graphics driver for Linux, for the time being Nouveau is what's working for end-users for those wanting a mainline open-source NVIDIA graphics driver for gaming and other workloads. With Linux 6.19 the Nouveau driver is picking up support for handling larger pages as well as compression support...

• Intel Submits Last Batch Of Xe Driver Feature Updates For Linux 6.19
  Intel today sent out their last batch of planned feature patches for their Xe kernel graphics driver of material intended for Linux 6.19...

• GNU C Library Adds Linux "mseal" Function For Memory Sealing
  Introduced last year in the Linux 6.10 kernel was the mseal system call for memory sealing to protect the memory mapping against modifications to seal non-writable memory segments or better protecting sensitive data structures. The GNU C Library has finally introduced its mseal function making use of this modern Linux kernel functionality...

• Mainline Linux Patches For The VisionFive 2 Lite: RISC-V For As Little As $19.9 USD
  Following the mainline Linux kernel support for the VisionFive 2 RISC-V single board computer from StarFive, Linux kernel patches are on the way for their new VisionFive 2 Lite low-cost offering. With the StarFive VisionFive 2 Lite this RISC-V board can be procured for as little as $19.9 USD as one of the cheapest yet fairly capable RISC-V SBCs...

• The Headaches Supporting Content Protection With Linux GPU Drivers
  Intel driver engineer Suraj Kandpal presented at the recent X.Org Developer's Conference (XDC2025) on the challenges around supporting content protection on Linux such as for High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) and Protected Audio Video Path (PAVP)...

• Fedora 44 Looking At Replacing FBCON With KMSCON As Default VT Console
  Fedora 44 is looking at replacing the Linux kernel's console "FBCON" with the user-space-based KMSCON implementation. Eventually the hope remains to deprecate the FBCON/FBDEV code within the Linux kernel...

• GCC Compiler Developers Begin Considering C++20 Default
  Compiler engineer Marek Polacek of Red Hat recently proposed making the C++20 language specification (or rather the GNU++20 dialect) the default C++ version when not otherwise specified...

• EROFS File-System Continues Attracting More Industry Players
  The EROFS read-only file-system started by Huawei and now maintained by a growing number of contributors continues attracting even more interest. EROFS has exhibited much potential for mobile devices as well as container use-cases while proving itself to be quite robust since its mainlining back in 2019...

• Proton 10.0-3 Released For Steam Play With Dozens Of Fixes, More Games Working
  Valve and CodeWeavers today released Proton 10.0-3 as the newest stable update to this Wine-based software that powers Steam Play for enabling countless Windows games to run often extremely well under Linux...

• New Patch Moves AMD GCN 1.0 GPUs Over To AMDGPU Driver By Default
  Following the recent patch proposal for moving AMD GCN 1.1 generation GPUs over to the AMDGPU Linux driver by default in place of the legacy Radeon driver, a similar patch has now been proposed for the GCN 1.0 graphics processors. AMD GCN 1.0/1.1 GPUs are at parity with the AMDGPU driver to the Radeon driver while needing this newer kernel driver for enjoying RADV Vulkan support, better performance, and overall a better experience...

• The Incredible Evolution Of AMD EPYC HPC Performance Shown In The Azure Cloud
  Last week the Microsoft Azure HBv5 instances reached general availability as powered by the custom EPYC 9V64H CPUs with HBM3 memory. These very interesting EPYC processors for memory bandwidth intensive workloads were announced last year while have finally reached GA with jaw-dropping results for software able to take advantage of the 6.7 TB/s memory bandwidth thanks to the HBM memory. The Azure HBv5 benchmarks last week showed how they compare to prior generation HBv4 instances while this article is taking things further and putting the performance into perspective against the older HBv2 and HBv3 instances.

• Framework Laptop 16 Upgrade To AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series Benchmarks
  Framework Computer announced back in August that the Framework Laptop 16 would be rolling out upgrades to the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series and a GeForce RTX 5070 graphics option. Today the review embargo lifts on these new Framework 16 laptop upgrades and some Linux benchmarking of the new hardware.

• Living my best Sun Microsystems ecosystem life in 2025
  In my lifetime, theres been one ecosystem I deeply regret having missed out on: the Sun Microsystems ecosystem of the late 2000s. At that time, the company offered a variety of products that, when used together, formed a comprehensive ecosystem that was a fascinating, albeit expensive alternative to Microsoft and Apple. While not really intended for home use, Ive always believed that Suns approach to computing wouldve made for an excellent computing environment in the home. Since I was but a wee university student in the late 2000s living in a small apartment, I did not have the financial means nor the space to really test this hypothesis. Now, though, Suns products from that era are decidedly retro, and a lot more approachable  especially if you have incredibly generous readers. So sit down and buckle up, because weve got a long one today. If you wish to support OSNews and longform content like this, consider becoming a Patreon or donating to our Ko-Fi. Note that absolutely zero generative AI! was used in the writing of this article. No AI! writing aids, no AI! summaries, no ChatGPT, no Gemini search nonsense, nothing. I take pride in doing research and writing properly, without the aid! of digital parrots with brain damage, and if theres any errors, theyre mine and mine alone. Take pride in your work and reject AI!. The Ultra 45: the central hub In the early 2000s, it had already become obvious that the future of workstations lied not with custom architectures, bespoke processors, and commercial UNIX variants, but with standard x86, off-the-shelf Intel and AMD processors, and Windows and Linux. The writing was on the wall, everyone knew it, and the ensuing consolidation on x86 turned into a veritable bloodbath. In the 80s and 90s, many of these ISAs were touted as vastly superior x86 killers, but fast-forward a decade or two, and x86 had bested them all in both price and performance, leaving behind a trail of dead ISAs. Never bet against x86. Virtually none of the commercial UNIX variants survived the one-two punch of losing the ISA they were married to and the rising popularity of Linux in the workstation space. HP-UX was tied to HPs PA-RISC, and both died. SGIs IRIX was tied to MIPS, and both died. Tru64 was tied to Alpha, and both died. The two exceptions are IBMs AIX and Suns Solaris. AIX workstations were phased out, but AIX is still nominally in development for POWER servers, but wholly inaccessible to anyone who doesnt wear a suit and has a massive corporate spending budget. Solaris, meanwhile, which had long been available on x86, saw its own! ISA SPARC live on in the server space until roughly 2017 or so, and was even briefly available as open source until Oracle did its thing. As a result, Solaris and its derivative Illumos are still nominally in active development, but in the grand scheme of things theyre barely even a blip on the radar in 2025. Never bet against Linux. During these tumultuous times, the various commercial UNIX vendors all pushed out systems that would become the final hurrahs of their respective UNIX workstation lines. DEC, then owned by HP, released its AlphaStation ES47 in 2003, marking the end of the road for Alpha and Tru64 UNIX. HPs own PA-RISC architecture and HP-UX met their end with the HP c8000 (which I own), an all-out PA-RISC monster with two dual-core processors running at 1.1GHz. SGI gave its MIPS line of machines running IRIX a massive send-off with the enigmatic and rare Tezro in 2003. In 2005, IBM tried one last time with the IntelliStation POWER 285, followed a few months later by the heavily cut-down 185, the final AIX workstation. And Sun unveiled the Ultra 45, its final SPARC workstation, in 2006. Sun was already in the middle of its transition to x86 with machines like the Sun Java Desktop System and its successors, the Ultra 20 and 40, and then surprised everyone by reviving their UltraSPARC workstation line with the Ultra 25 and 45, which shared most  all?  of their enclosures with their x86 brethren. They were beautiful, all-aluminium machines with gorgeous interior layouts, and a striking full-grill front, somewhat inspired by the PowerMac G5 of that era. And ever since the Ultra 45 was rumoured in late 2005 and then became available in early 2006, Ive been utterly obsessed with it. Its taken almost two decades, but thanks to an unfathomably generous donation from KDE e.V. board member and FreeBSD contributor Adriaan de Groot, a very unique and storied Sun Ultra 45 and a whole slew of accessories showed up at my doorstep only a few weeks ago. Lets look back upon this piece of history that is but a footnote to most, but a whole book to me  and experience Suns ecosystem from around 2006, today. First and foremost, I want to express my deep gratitude to Adriaan de Groot. Without him, none of this would have been possible, and I cant put into words how grateful I am. He donated this Ultra 45 to me at no cost  not even the cost of shipping  and he also shipped another box to me containing a few Sun Ray thin clients, completing the late 2000s Sun ecosystem I now own. Since the Ultra 45 was technically owned by KDE e.V.  more on that below  Id also like to thank the KDE e.V. Board for giving Adriaan permission for the donation. Id also like to thank Volker A. Brandt, who sent me a Sun Ray 3, a few Ultra 45 hard drive brackets, and some other Sun goodies. The Sun Ultra 45 De Groot sent me was a base model with an upgraded GPU. It had a single UltraSPARC IIIi 1.6Ghz processor, 1GB of RAM, and the most powerful GPU Sun ever released for its SPARC workstation line, the Sun XVR-2500, a rebadged 3Dlabs Wildcat Realizm with

• Using Rust in Android speeds up development considerably
  Google has been using Rust in Android more and more for its memory safety characteristics, and the results on that front were quite positive. It turns out, however, that not only does using Rust reduce the number memory safety issues, its also apparently a lot faster to code in Rust than C or C++. We adopted Rust for its security and are seeing a 1000x reduction in memory safety vulnerability density compared to Android’s C and C++ code. But the biggest surprise was Rusts impact on software delivery. With Rust changes having a 4x lower rollback rate and spending 25% less time in code review, the safer path is now also the faster one. ↫ Jeff Vander Stoep at the Google Security Blog When you think about it, it actually makes sense. If you have fewer errors of a certain type, youll spend less time fixing those issues, time which you can then spend developing new code. Of course, its not that simple and theres a ton more factors to consider, but on a base level, it definitely makes sense. Spellcheck in word processors means you have to spend less time detecting and fixing spelling errors, so you have more time to spend on actually writing. Im sure well all be very civil about this, and nobody will be weird about Rust at all.

• Haiku gets new guarded heap for the kernel
  Another month, another Haiku activity report, and this time weve got a major change under the hood: a brand new guarded heap. The old guarded heap was suboptimal and had started to lag behind, so the new one attempts to rectify some of these shortcomings. So, to rectify these limitations, I rewrote the kernel guarded heap more or less from scratch, taking the old code into account where it made sense but otherwise creating entirely new bookkeeping structures, interacting directly with the page table and virtual memory systems, and more. This new guarded heap implementation frees physical pages when not in use, meaning that the “virtual memory reuse disabled” mode now runs for quite long periods of time (indeed, I could successfully boot to the desktop and run compile jobs.) It also prints more diagnostics when kernel panics due to memory faults inside the heap happen, which the old kernel guarded heap didn’t (but the userland one has always done). ↫ Haikus activity report for October The new guarded heap is optional for now, but Haiku is planning on releasing some pre-built test builds so users can start testing it out. Of course, this isnt the only change or improvement from this past month  the list of changes is long, but theres no real tentpole features here. Haikus development pace is still very much on track.

• Google cancels plans to require Android application certification outside of the Play Store
  Only a few months ago, Google announced it was going to require that all Android applications  even those installed outside of the Play Store  had to be verified. This led to a massive backlash, and it seems our protests and complaints have had effect: the company announced a change in plans today, and will, in fact, not require certification for installing applications outside of the Play Store. Based on this feedback and our ongoing conversations with the community, we are building a new advanced flow that allows experienced users to accept the risks of installing software that isnt verified. We are designing this flow specifically to resist coercion, ensuring that users arent tricked into bypassing these safety checks while under pressure from a scammer. It will also include clear warnings to ensure users fully understand the risks involved, but ultimately, it puts the choice in their hands. We are gathering early feedback on the design of this feature now and will share more details in the coming months. ↫ Matthew Forsythe Director at the Android Developers Blog While this is great news, Im still concerned this is only temporary. Companies like Google have a tendency to announce some draconian measure to test the waters, walk it back in response to backlash, only to then reintroduce it through some sneaky backdoor a year later when nobodys looking. Installing whatever we want on the devices we own should be a protected right, not something graciously afforded to us by our corporate overlords. If you think this is the end of this story, youre a fool.

• Big news for small OpenBSD /usr partitions
  Ever ran into issues using sysupgrade on OpenBSD because /usr ran out of space? OpenBSD developers are trying to address this issue. Firstly, Stuart Henderson (sthen@) modified the installer to increase free space prior to installing. Theo de Raadt (deraadt@) modified sysupgrade(8) so that, if space is too tight, it will fail gracefully rather than risk leaving the administrator with a broken system. ↫ OpenBSD Journal These are very welcome additions.

• Valve brings x86 gaming to ARM Linux with FEX
  Valve announced a few new devices yesterday. Theres a new Steam console, which is essentially just a tiny PC with SteamOS installed  think of it as a Steam Deck without a display. Second, Valve finally released a new Steam Controller to go with the Steam console, which has taken them long enough. Lastly, theres a brand new Steam VR headset, the Steam Frame. Other websites with actual access to these new devices will do a better job of covering them than I ever could, but I do want to highlight something crucially important about the Steam Frame: it contains a Snapdragon ARM processor, but can still run Steam and all of its games. How does this work? Well, after developing Proton to allow Windows games to run on Linux, Valve introduced! FEX, which will allow you to run x86 Windows games on ARM Linux. I put the quotation marks there because FEX was an existing project Valve invested heavily into in recent times, and its now at the point where Valve seems confident enough it will be capable of running enough x86 games on ARM Linux. As such, the Steam Frame runs full SteamOS with KDE Plasma, you can run x86 Steam games, and as an additional bonus, you can install Android APKs as well. Ive yet to even try VR, because Im not particularly interested in buying into any locked-down platform. The Steam Frame may be the first VR device Ill buy  depending on price, of course  and the Steam console definitely looks like a great addition to the living room, too. My wife and I have little to no interesting in buying an Xbox or PS5, but having easy, no-hassle access to our massive Steam libraries on our TV will be awesome.

• VMS/XDE: an OpenVMS x86 development environment for Linux and Windows/WSL
  VMS/XDE is an OpenVMS x86 development environment for Linux and WIndows (via WSL). It provides a familiar user experience for OpenVMS developers working in Linux and Windows yet offers 100% binary and file system compatilibilty with OpenVMS. VMS/XDE includes OpenVMS V9.2-3 user, supervisor and executive mode operating system environments and a set of x86 native compilers and layered products geared towards OpenVMS software development and testing. ↫ VMS/XDE website VMS/XDE is a beta version, and comes with the usual annoying OpenVMS x86 time bombs, this time exploding on 3 January 2026. If you intend to use the finalised commercial version after the beta period ends, youll have to employ the same licenses as regular OpenVMS. Its a bit of a mess, but thats the OpenVMS way, sadly  and I dont blame them, either, as Im sure theyre hamstrung by a ton of agreements and restrictions imposed upon them by HP. Regardless, VMS/XDE brings a zero setup OpenVMS environment to the operating system youre already using, making it easier to develop and cross-compile for the platform. I still have absolutely no clue just how many people OpenVMS is still relevant for, but I absolutely adore the fact VMS Software Inc. is working on this. In a world where so many of its former competitors are being held hostage by corporate indifference, its refreshing to see VMS still moving forward.

• Plasma Mobile 6.5 keeps improving
  As part of the KDE Plasma 6.5 release, we also got a new release of Plasma Mobile. As theres a lot of changes, improvements, and new features in Plasma Mobile 6.5, the Plasma Mobile Team published a blog post to highlight them all. The biggest improvement is probably the further integration of Waydroid, a necessary evil to run Android applications until the Plasma Mobile ecosystem manages to become a bit more well-rounded. Waydroid can now be managed straight from the settings application and the quick settings dropdown. Furthermore, the lockscreen has been improved considerably, theres been a ton of polish for the home screen and the user interface in general, the quick settings panel can now be customised to make it fit better on different form factors, the first early test version of the new Plasma mobile keyboard is included, and so much more. This is definitely a release I would want to try out, but since I dont have any of the supported devices, Im a bit stuck. This is, of course, one of the two major problems facing proper mobile Linux: the lack of device support. Its improving due to the tireless work of countless volunteers, but theyre always going to be swimming upstream. The other major problem is, of course, application availability, but at least Waydroid can bridge the gap for the adventurous among us.

• Tribblix m38 released
  Tribblix, the Illumos distribution focused on giving you a classic UNIX-style experience, has released a new version. Milestone 38 isnt the most consequential release of all time, but it does bring a few small changes accompanied by the usual long list of updated open source packages. The zap install command now installs dependencies by default, while zap create-user will now restrict new home directories to mode 0700 by default. Meanwhile, int16h at Cryogenix published an article about using a Bhyve VM running FreeBSD to act as a Wi-Fi bridge for laptops with 802.11xx chips that Tribblix doesnt support. This is a great, albeit somewhat convoluted option if your hardware uses any Wi-Fi chips Tribblix doesnt support. Theres honestly a solution for everything, isnt there?

• Setting up a combined 68k/PA-RISC HP-UX 9 cluster
  Jonathan Pallant got lucky and managed to score a massive haul of 90s UNIX workstations, one of which was an HP 9000 Model 340, a HP-UX workstation built around a Motorola 68030 processor at 16.7 MHz. It doesnt come with a hard drive or even a floppy controller, though, so he decided to borrow a PA-RISC-based HP 9000 Model 705 to set up an HP-UX 9 cluster. But wait, how does that work, when were dealing with two entirely different architectures? Whats more fun though, is putting it into a cluster with the Model 705 and network booting it. Yes, that a 68030 machine network booting from a PA-RISC machine 0 and`sharing the same root filesystem. But arent PA-RISC binaries and 68K binaries quite different? Oh yes, they really are. So, how does that work? ↫ Jonathan Pallant HP-UX is far more interesting and fascinating than a lot of people give it credit for, and while my interest lies with HP-UX 11i, I find what Pallant is doing here with HP-UX 9 just as fascinating. You first need to install HP-UX 9 for PA-RISC on the 700 series machine, convert it to a cluster server, and then install HP-UX 9 for 68k on top of that PA-RISC installation. After this is done, you effectively end up with a single root file system that contains both PA-RISC and 68k binaries, and you can network boot the 68k-based Model 340 right from it  using the same root filesystem on both machines. Absolutely wild. No, these are not universal binaries or some other trick you might know of from more modern system. In fact, installing the 68k version of HP-UX 9 into! the PA-RISC HP-UX 9 cluster server, you end up with something called a Context Dependent Filesystem. To get a better idea of what this means and how this works, you should really head on over to Pallants excellent article for all the details.

• Ironclad 0.7.0 and 0.8.0 released, adds RISC-V support
  Weve talked about Ironclad a few times, but theres been two new releases since the 0.6.0 release we covered last, so lets see what the projects been up to. As a refresher, Ironclad is a formally verified, hard real-time capable kernel written in SPARK and Ada. Versions 0.7.0 and 0.8.0 improved support for block device caching, added a basic NVMe driver, added support for x86’s SMAP, switched from KVM to NVMM for Ironclad’s virtualization interface, and much, much more. In the meantime, Ironclad also added support for RISC-V, making it usable on any 64 bit RISC-V target that supports a Limine-protocol compatible bootloader. The easiest way to try out Ironclad is to download Gloire, a distribution that uses Ironclad and the GNU tools. It can be installed in both a virtual machine and on real hardware.

• Mac OS 7.6 and 8 for CHRP releases discovered
  For those of us unaware  unlikely on OSNews, but still  for a hot minute in the second half of the 90s, Apple licensed its Mac OS to OEMs, resulting in officially sanctioned Mac clones from a variety of companies. While intended to grow the Macs market share, what ended up happening instead is that the clone makers outcompeted Apple on performance, price, and features, with clones offering several features and capabilities before Apple did  for far lower prices. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he killed the clone program almost instantly. The rather abrupt end of the clone program means theres a number of variants of the Mac OS that never made their way into the market, most notable variants intended for the Common Reference Hardware Platform, or CHRP, a standard defined by IBM and Apple for PowerPC-based PCs. Thanks to the popular classic Mac YouTuber Mac84, we now have a few of these releases out in the wild. These CDs contain release candidates for Mac OS 7.6 and Mac OS 8 for CHRP (Common Hardware Reference Platform) systems. They were created to support CHRP computers, but were never released, likely due to Steve Jobs returning to Apple in September 1997 and eliminating the Mac Clone program and any CHRP efforts. ↫ Mac OS 7.6/8 CHRP releases page Mac84 has an accompanying video diving into more detail about these individual releases by booting and running them in an emulator, so we can get a better idea of what they contain. While most clone makers only got access to Mac OS 7.x, some of them did, in fact, gain access to Mac OS 8, namely UMAX and Power Computing (the latter of which was acquired by Apple). Its not the clone nature of these releases that make them special, but the fact theyre CHRP releases is. This reference platform was a failure in the market, and only a few of IBMs own machines and some of Motorolas PowerStack machines properly supported it. Apple, meanwhile, only aid minor lip service to CHRP in its New World Power Macintosch machines.

• FreeBSD now builds reproducibly and without root privilege
  The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce that it has completed work to build FreeBSD without requiring root privilege. We have implemented support for all source release builds to use no-root infrastructure, eliminating the need for root privileges across the FreeBSD release pipeline. This work was completed as part of the`program commissioned by the Sovereign Tech Agency. ↫ FreeBSD Foundation blog This is great news in and of itself, but theres more: FreeBSD has also improved build reproducability. This means that given the same source input, you should end up with the same binary output, which is an important part of building a verifiable chain of trust. These two improvements combined further add to making FreeBSD a trustworthy, secure option  something it already is anyway. In case you havent noticed, the FreeBSD project and its countless contributors are making a ton of tangible progress lately on a wide variety of topics, from improving desktop use, to solidifying Wi-Fi support, to improving the chain of trust. I think the time is quite right for FreeBSD to make some inroads in the desktop UNIX-y space, especially for people to whom desktop Linux has strayed too far from the traditional UNIX philosphy (whatever that means).

• LXQt 2.3.0 released
  LXQt, the other Qt desktop environment, released version 2.3.0. This new version comes roughly six months after 2.2.0, and continues the projects adoption of Wayland. The enhancement of Wayland support has been continued, especially in LXQt Panel, whose Desktop Switcher is now enabled for Labwc, Niri, …. It is also equipped with a backend specifically for Wayfire. In addition, the Custom Command plugin is made more flexible, regardless of Wayland and X11. ↫ LXQt 2.3.0 release announcement The screenshot utility has been improved as well, and lxqt-qdbus has been added to lxqt-wayland-session to make qdbus commands easier to use with all kinds of Wayland compositors.

• WINE gaming in FreeBSD Jails with Bastille
  FreeBSD offers a whole bunch of technologies and tools to make gaming on the platform a lot more capable than youd think, and this article by Pertho dives into the details. Running all your games inside a FreeBSD Jail with Wine installed into it is pretty neat. Initially, I thought this was going to be a pretty difficult and require a lot of trial and error but I was surprised at how easy it was to get this all working. I was really happy to get some of my favorite games working in a FreeBSD Jail, and having ZFS snapshots around was a great way to test things in case I needed to backtrack. ↫ Pertho at their blog No, this isnt as easy as gaming on Linux has become, and it certainly requires a ton more work and knowledge than just installing a major Linux distribution and Steam, but for those of us who prefer a more traditional UNIX-like experience, this is a great option.

• Tape containing UNIX v4 found
  A unique and very important find at the University of Utah: while cleaning out some storage rooms, the staff at the university discovered a tape containing a copy of UNIX v4 from Bell Labs. At this time, no complete copies are known to exist, and as such, this could be a crucial find for the archaeology of early UNIX. The tape in question will be sent to the Computer History Museum for further handling, where bitsavers.org will conduct the recovery process. I have the equipment. It is a 3M tape so it will probably be fine. It will be digitized on my analog recovery set up and Ill use Len Shusteks readtape program to recover the data. The only issue right now is my workflow isnt a while you wait! thing, so I need to pull all the pieces into one physical location and test everything before I tell Penny its OK to come out. ↫ bitsavers.org Its amazing how we still manage to find such treasures in nooks and crannies all over the world, and with everything looking good so far, it seems well soon be able to fill in more of UNIX early history.

• Another Linux Malware Discovered
  Russian hackers use Hyper-V to hide malware within Linux virtual machines.
  

• TUXEDO Computers Announces a New InfinityBook
  TUXEDO Computers is at it again with a new InfinityBook that will meet your professional and gaming needs.
  

• SUSE Dives into the Agentic AI Pool
  SUSE becomes the first open source company to adopt agentic AI with SUSE Enterprise Linux 16.
  

• Linux Now Runs Most Windows Games
  The latest data shows that nearly 90 percent of Windows games can be played on Linux.
  

• Fedora 43 Has Finally Landed
  The Fedora Linux developers have announced their latest release, Fedora 43.
  

• KDE Unleashes Plasma 6.5
  The Plasma 6.5 desktop environment is now available with new features, improvements, and the usual bug fixes.
  

• Xubuntu Site Possibly Hacked
  It appears that the Xubuntu site was hacked and briefly served up a malicious ZIP file from its download page.
  

• LMDE 7 Now Available
  Linux Mint Debian Edition, version 7, has been officially released and is based on upstream Debian.
  

• Linux Kernel 6.16 Reaches EOL
  Linux kernel 6.16 has reached its end of life, which means you'll need to upgrade to the next stable release, Linux kernel 6.17.
  

• Amazon Ditches Android for a Linux-Based OS
  Amazon has migrated from Android to the Linux-based Vega OS for its Fire TV.
  

• Cairo Dock 3.6 Now Available for More Compositors
  If you're a fan of third-party desktop docks, then the latest release of Cairo Dock with Wayland support is for you.
  

• System76 Unleashes Pop!_OS 24.04 Beta
  System76's first beta of Pop!_OS 24.04 is an impressive feat.
  

• Linux Kernel 6.17 is Available
  Linus Torvalds has announced that the latest kernel has been released with plenty of core improvements and even more hardware support.
  

• Kali Linux 2025.3 Released with New Hacking Tools
  If you're a Kali Linux fan, you'll be glad to know that the third release of this famous pen-testing distribution is now available with updates for key components.
  

• Zorin OS 18 Beta Available for Testing
  The latest release from the team behind Zorin OS is ready for public testing, and it includes plenty of improvements to make it more powerful, user-friendly, and productive.
  

• Fedora Linux 43 Beta Now Available for Testing
  Fedora Linux 43 Beta ships with Gnome 49 and KDE Plasma 6.4 (and other goodies).
  

• 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.