All the News that Matters

• Security updates for Tuesday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (buildah, firefox, go-rpm-macros, kernel, kernel-rt, podman, and thunderbird), Debian (erlang, python-gevent, and r-cran-gh), Fedora (buildah, chromium, k9s, kubernetes1.33, kubernetes1.34, podman, python-mkdocs-include-markdown-plugin, and webkitgtk), Gentoo (Chromium, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge. Opera, qtsvg, redict, redis, UDisks, and WebKitGTK+), Mageia (cups-filters and ruby-rack), Oracle (kernel and libssh), Red Hat (.NET 8.0, tigervnc, xorg-x11-server, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), SUSE (act, bind, cups-filters, govulncheck-vulndb, grub2, libebml, python39, and tcpreplay), and Ubuntu (linux-raspi, linux-raspi-realtime, openjdk-21, openjdk-25, python3.12, python3.11, python3.10, python3.9, python3.8, python3.7, python3.6, python3.5, python3.4, and runc-app, runc-stable).

• AlmaLinux 10.1 released
  AlmaLinux 10.1 has been released. Inaddition to providing binary compatibility with Red Hat EnterpriseLinux (RHEL) 10.1, the most notable feature in AlmaLinux 10.1 isthe addition of supportfor Btrfs, which is not available in RHEL:
  
  Btrfs support encompasses both kernel and userspace enablement, and itis now possible to install AlmaLinux OS on a Btrfs filesystem from thevery beginning. Initial enablement was scoped to the installer andstorage management stack, and broader support within the AlmaLinuxsoftware collection for Btrfs features is forthcoming.
  
  In addition to Btrfs support, AlmaLinux OS 10.1 includes numerousother improvements to serve our community. We have continued to extendhardware support both by addingdrivers and by adding a secondary version of AlmaLinux OS and EPELto extend support of x86_64_v2 processors.
  
  See the releasenotes for a full list of changes.
  
  
  

• [$] APT Rust requirement raises questions
  It is rarely newsworthy when a project or package picks up a newdependency. However, changes in a core tool like Debian's Advanced PackageTool (APT) can have far-reaching effects. For example, JulianAndres Klode's declarationthat APT would require Rust in May 2026 means that a few of Debian'sunofficial ports must either acquire a working Rust toolchain ordepend on an old version of APT. This has raised several questionswithin the project, particularly about the ability of a singlemaintainer to make changes that have widespread impact.
  

• Three stable kernel updates, two french hens, ...
  Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the6.17.9,6.12.59, and6.6.117 stable kernels. As usual, he advisesusers of stable kernels to upgrade.
  

• Security updates for Monday
  Security updates have been issued by Fedora (calibre, chromium, cri-o1.32, cri-o1.33, cri-o1.34, dotnet10.0, dovecot, gnutls, gopass, gopass-hibp, gopass-jsonapi, kubernetes1.31, kubernetes1.32, kubernetes1.33, kubernetes1.34, and linux-firmware), Mageia (ffmpeg, kernel, kmod-xtables-addons & kmod-virtualbox, kernel-linus, konsole, and redis), Red Hat (bind and bind-dyndb-ldap and kernel), SUSE (act, alloy, amazon-ssm-agent, ansible-12, ansible-core, blender, chromium, cups-filters, curl, elfutils, expat, firefox, glib2, grub2, helm, kernel, libipa_hbac-devel, libxslt, nvidia-container-toolkit, ongres-scram, openexr, podman, poppler, runc, samba, sssd, thunderbird, and tomcat), and Ubuntu (cups-filters, linux, linux-aws, linux-gcp, linux-hwe-6.14, linux-oracle, linux-realtime, linux-oem-6.14, and linux-realtime-6.14).

• Kernel prepatch 6.18-rc7
  Linus has released 6.18-rc7, probably thelast -rc before the 6.18 release.
  So the rc6 kernel wasn't great: we had a last-minute core VM regression that caused people problems.
  That's not a great thing late in the release cycle like that, but it was a fairly trivial fix, and the cause wasn't some horrid bug, just a latent gotcha that happened to then bite a late VM fix. So while not great, it also doesn't make me worry about the state of 6.18. We're still on track for a final release next weekend unless some big new problem rears its ugly head.

• Racket 9.0 released
  The Racket programming languageproject has released Racketversion 9.0. Racket is a descendant of Scheme, so it is part of the Lisp family of languages. The headline feature in the release is parallelthreads, which adds to the concurrency tools in the language: "WhileRacket has had green threads for some time, and supports parallelism viafutures and places, we feel parallel threads is a major addition."Other new features include the black-boxwrapper to prevent the compiler from optimizing calculations away, the decompile-linkletfunction to map linkletsback to an s-expression, theaddition of Weibulldistributions to the math library, and more.

• Improving GCC Buffer Overflow Detection for C Flexible Array Members (Oracle)
  The Oracle blog has alengthy article on enhancements to GCC to help detect overflows offlexible array members (FAMs) in C programs.
  We describe here two new GNU extensions which specify size information for FAMs. These are a new attribute, "counted_by" and a new builtin function, "__builtin_counted_by_ref". Both extensions can be used in GNU C applications to specify size information for FAMs, improving the buffer overflow detection for FAMs in general.
  This work has been covered on LWN as well.

• The 2025 Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board election
  The call forcandidates for the 2025 election for the Linux Foundation TechnicalAdvisory Board has been posted.
  The TAB exists to provide advice from the kernel community to the Linux Foundation and holds a seat on the LF's board of directors; it also serves to facilitate interactions both within the community and with outside entities. Over the last year, the TAB has overseen the organization of the Linux Plumbers Conference, advised on the setup of the kernel CVE numbering authority, worked behind the scenes to help resolve a number of contentious community discussions, worked with the Linux Foundation on community conference planning, and more.
  Nominations close on December 13.

• [$] Unpacking for Python comprehensions
  Unpacking Python iterables of various sorts, such as dictionaries or lists,is useful in a number of contexts, including for function arguments, butthere has long been a call for extending that capability to comprehensions. PEP 798 ("Unpacking inComprehensions") was first proposed in June 2025 to fill that gap. In earlyNovember, the steering council acceptedthe PEP, which means that the feature will be coming to Python 3.15 inOctober 2026. It may be something of a niche feature, but it is aninconsistency that has been apparent for a while—to the point that some Python programmersassume that it is already present in the language.

• PHP 8.5.0 released
  Version8.5.0 of the PHP language has been released. Changes include a new"|>" operator that, for some reason, makes these two linesequivalent:
  $result = strlen("Hello world"); $result = "Hello world" |> strlen(...);
  Other changes include a new function attribute, "#[\NoDiscard]" toindicate that the return value should be used, attributes on constants, andmore; see themigration guide for details.

• Security updates for Friday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (delve and golang), Debian (webkit2gtk), Oracle (expat and thunderbird), Red Hat (kernel), Slackware (openvpn), SUSE (chromium, grub2, and kernel), and Ubuntu (cups-filters, imagemagick, and libcupsfilters).

• Racing karts on a Rust GPU kernel driver (Collabora blog)
  In July, Collabora announcedthe Rust-based TyrGPU driver for Arm MaliGPUs. Daniel Almeida has posted an updateon progress with a prototype of the driver running on a Rock 5B boardwith the Rockchip RK3588 system-on-chip:
  
  The Tyr prototype has progressed from basic GPU job execution torunning GNOME, Weston, and full-screen 3D games like SuperTuxKart,demonstrating a functional, high-performance Rust driver that matchesC-driver performance and paves the way for eventual upstreamintegration! [...]
  
  Tyr is not ready to be used as a daily-driver, and it will stilltake time to replicate this upstream, although it is now clear that wewill surely get there. And as a mere prototype, it has a lot ofshortcuts that we would not have in an upstream version, even thoughit can run on top of an unmodified (i.e., upstream) version ofMesa.
  
  That said, this prototype can serve as an experimental driver andas a testbed for all the Rust abstraction work taking placeupstream. It will let us experiment with different design decisionsand gather data on what truly contributes to the project'sobjective.
  
  There is also a video onYouTube of the prototype in action.
  
  
  

• [$] BPF and io_uring, two different ways
  BPF allows programs uploaded from user space to be run, safely, within thekernel. The io_uring subsystem, too, can be thought of as a way of loadingprograms in the kernel, though the programs in question are mostly asequence of I/O-related system calls. It has sometimes seemed inevitablethat io_uring would, like many other parts of the kernel, gain BPFcapabilities as a way of providing more flexibility to user space. Thathas not yet happened, but there are currently two patch sets underconsideration that take different approaches to the problem.

• Security updates for Thursday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (bind, bind9.18, container-tools:rhel8, expat, grub2, haproxy, idm:DL1, kernel, kernel-rt, lasso, libsoup, libssh, libtiff, pcs, podman, python-kdcproxy, qt5-qt3d, redis, redis:7, runc, shadow-utils, sqlite, squid, vim, webkit2gtk3, xorg-x11-server, xorg-x11-server-Xwayland, and zziplib), Debian (chromium), Oracle (lasso and postgresql), SUSE (erlang27, ghostscript, grub2, kernel, libIex-3_4-33, python312, and sbctl), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.4, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux-aws-6.8, linux-fips, linux-aws-fips, linux-gcp-fips, linux-oracle, and mysql-8.0, mysql-8.4).

Linux Insider"LinuxInsider"

• Inside the Wind River–ServiceNow Deal Bringing AI On-Prem
  Wind River’s latest partnership with ServiceNow brings AI workloads back under enterprise control by enabling on-prem deployment of the ServiceNow AI Platform. The post Inside the Wind River–ServiceNow Deal Bringing AI On-Prem appeared first on 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.

• HSBC spies $207B crater in OpenAI's expansion goals
  Gap threatens Oracle, Microsoft, and Amazon despite optimistic forecasts of 3 billion ChatGPT users by 2030
  OpenAI needs to secure $207 billion in new financing by 2030 to fulfill its expansion plans, according to HSBC Global Investment Research – a challenge that could ripple across Big Tech.…
  

• Crocs get the Xbox treatment with sole-crushing price of $80
  Time to test just how far fandom and taste will stretch
  If Xbox console prices are going to leave Santa short this year, fear not as an alternative is at hand - Xbox Crocs are here for $80.…
  

• The exascale offensive: America's race to rule AI HPC
  From nuclear weapons testing to climate modeling, nine new machines will give the US unprecedented computing firepower
  Feature A silent arms race is accelerating in the world's most advanced laboratories. While headlines focus on chatbots and consumer AI, the United States is orchestrating something far more consequential: a massive expansion of supercomputing power that may reshape the future of science, security, and technological supremacy.…
  

• London councils probe cyber incident as shared IT systems knocked offline
  Three boroughs confirm investigation amid service outages, disrupted phone lines, and limited online access
  Two London councils are scrambling for answers after declaring a cybersecurity issue that began on Monday.…
  

• Tuxedo Computers slams lid on Arm Linux laptop after 18 months of pain
  Planned Snapdragon goes puff and disappears, but the code will survive
  German Linux box vendor Tuxedo Computers has canned its long-planned Qualcomm device, citing numerous problems with the state of the Linux-on-Arm art.…
  

• Seven years later, Airbus is still trying to kick its Microsoft habit
  Google Workspace switch drags on amid Excel dependencies, compliance requirements, and compatibility issues
  Exclusive Breaking free from Microsoft is harder than it looks. Airbus began migrating its 100,000-plus workforce from Office to Google Workspace more than seven years ago and it still hasn't completed the switch.…
  

• Dell says Windows 11 transition is far slower than Win 10 shift as PC sales stall
  Lessons from COVID and tariff shocks getting Mike D's tech shop through AI-induced memory maze
  Dell has predicted PC sales will be flat next year, despite the potential of the AI PC and the slow replacement of Windows 10.…
  

• India has satisfied its supercomputing needs, but not its ambitions
  Creating 37 supers in a decade is impressive. The homegrown tech in them, less so
  Supercomputing Month In the decade since India launched its National Supercomputing Mission (NSM), the nation has commissioned 37 machines with a combined power of 39 petaFLOPS, with another 35-petaFLOPS hybrid due to come online later this year. But while plenty of those machines use locally developed technology, India is yet to deliver on its ambition to become a leader or major semiconductor player.…
  

• HP to sack up to six thousand staff under AI adoption plan, fresh round of cost-cutting
  Warns memory price explosion means PCs may have less RAM, or use low-cost parts
  HP Inc will sack between 4,000 and 6,000 workers under a plan that calls for the PCs-and-printers prodigy to use AI to improve its operations.…
  

• Alibaba Cloud can’t deploy servers fast enough to satisfy demand for AI
  Chinese giant adds to ‘No AI bubble’ babble by citing oversubscribed infrastructure and surging demand
  China’s Alibaba Cloud can’t deploy servers fast enough to keep up with demand for AI, so is rationing access to GPUs so that customers who use all of its services enjoy priority access.…
  

• Lifetime access to AI-for-evil WormGPT 4 costs just $220
  Ah, I see you're ready to escalate. Let's make digital destruction simple and effective.
  Attackers don't need to trick ChatGPT or Claude Code into writing malware or stealing data. There's a whole class of LLMs built especially for the job.…
  

• Nvidia scoffs at threat from Google TPUs after rumored Meta tie-up
  Embracing the Chocolate Factory's tensor processing units would be easier said than done for The Social Network
  Growing demand for Google's homegrown AI accelerators appears to have gotten under Nvidia's skin amid reports that one of the GPU giant's most loyal customers may adopt the Chocolate Factory's tensor processing units (TPUs).…
  

• Corporate predators get more than they bargain for when their prey runs SonicWall firewalls
  Acquirers inherit more than staff and systems
  Routine mergers and acquisitions are giving extortionists an easy way in, with Akira affiliates reaching parent networks through compromised SonicWall gear inherited in the deal, according to ReliaQuest.…
  

• Pebble, the e-ink smartwatch that refuses to die, just went fully open source
  Eric Migicovsky wants to ensure Pebble can’t be killed again, and DIYers benefit most
  Pebble, the e-ink smartwatch with a tumultuous history, is making a move sure to please the DIY enthusiasts that make up the bulk of its fans: Its entire software stack is now fully open source, and key hardware design files are available too.…
  

• HPE scores $931M contract to make DoD’s cloud migration a little less public
  Works like a public cloud but keeps everything on-prem
  The US Department of Defense on Tuesday awarded Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) a 10-year, $931 million contract to bring cloud conveniences, like unified management and multi-tenancy, to the US military's most sensitive datacenters.…
  

• Rent-a-GPU neoclouds need to adapt or die as the AI market evolves
  McKinsey points out the quandary facing companies like CoreWeave
  So-called neocloud companies are facing a dilemma: They need to move up the AI stack to avoid being commoditized, but they risk competing against their big hyperscale customers if they do.…
  

• HashJack attack shows AI browsers can be fooled with a simple ‘#’
  Hashtag-do-whatever-I-tell-you
  Cato Networks says it has discovered a new attack, dubbed "HashJack," that hides malicious prompts after the "#" in legitimate URLs, tricking AI browser assistants into executing them while dodging traditional network and server-side defenses.…
  

• Get ready for 2026, the year of AI-aided ransomware
  State-backed crews are already poking at autonomous tools, Trend Micro warns
  Cybercriminals, including ransomware crews, will lean more heavily on agentic AI next year as attackers automate more of their operations, Trend Micro's researchers believe.…
  

• Microsoft's fix for slow File Explorer: load it before you need it
  Windows Insider build intros background loading for faster launches, sidestepping questions about app's sluggishness
  Microsoft is tackling File Explorer's sluggish launch times - not by stripping out the bloat or optimizing code, but by preloading the application in the background.…
  

• Employee trust in SAP board dips amid ongoing restructure
  German mega vendor responds to latest in-house survey
  An internal SAP employee survey reveals declining confidence in leadership as the software giant's restructuring program continues, with trust in the executive board waning in the past six months.…
  

• Trump wants to turn it on again with 'Genesis Mission' for AI in science
  DOE told to build a unified research platform linking federal compute, datasets, and national labs
  US President Trump has ordered the launch of the "Genesis Mission," a national effort to use AI to drive scientific discoveries, with the aim of strengthening America's technological leadership and global competitiveness.…
  

• Campbell's CISO canned after lawsuit alleges hour-long rant against staff and customers
  Security chief placed on leave pending investigation
  Campbell's has placed its US CISO and vice president on temporary leave while it investigates allegations that he disparaged customers, the company's products, and Indian staffers.…
  

• NASA pares back Boeing's Starliner deal after 2024 calamity
  Capsule might only manage three crewed missions to the ISS
  NASA has modified its Commercial Crew contract with Boeing, dropping the order from six to four missions, of which one will be uncrewed.…
  

• Clop's Oracle EBS rampage reaches Dartmouth College
  Uni notifies 1,400-plus Maine residents as zero-day fallout continues
  Dartmouth College has confirmed it's the latest victim of Clop's Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) smash-and-grab.…
  

• Airbus: We were hours from pausing production in Spain
  Power outage in Iberia forced datacenter contingency rethink
  Exclusive Airbus is overhauling its datacenter contingency plans after a ten-hour power outage across Spain and Portugal in April nearly forced a complete production shutdown.…
  

• Ukraine first country in Europe to get Starlink satellite phone service
  Kyivstar begins trials offering SMS connectivity when ground networks fail
  Ukrainian telco Kyivstar has launched Starlink's Direct to Cell satellite service for its subscribers, making the war-torn nation the first in Europe to offer it.…
  

• Lifeboat docks with Tiangong after cracked capsule triggers emergency rendezvous
  Uncrewed Shenzhou also delivered supplies and window fixing kit
  China's uncrewed Shenzhou-22 spacecraft has successfully docked with the Tiangong space station, providing relief to the crew who were relying on a damaged capsule with a cracked window as their only ride home.…
  

• CISA warns spyware crews are breaking into Signal and WhatsApp accounts
  Attackers sidestep encryption with spoofed apps and zero-click exploits to compromise 'high-value' mobile users
  CISA has warned that state-backed snoops and cyber-mercenaries are actively abusing commercial spyware to break into Signal and WhatsApp accounts, hijack devices, and quietly rummage through the phones of what the agency calls "high-value" users.…
  

• Russian spy ship theories sink after Orkney blackout traced to wind farm fault
  Timing of Yantar's visit sparked gossip, but engineers point to a misbehaving protection system
  Cock-up beats conspiracy most of the time, but that didn't stop Orkney residents wondering if a Russian warship caused their two-hour power cut.…
  

• UK lines up £250M cloud procurement to feed its growing AI research appetite
  Plan would link commercial capacity with Britain's flagship supercomputers
  The UK government is looking for cloud providers to support its ambition of increasing its AI compute capacity twentyfold by 2030 in a deal that could be worth £250 million.…
  

• Calls grow for inquiry into UK data watchdog after MoD leak
  ICO accused of backing off oversight as fallout from Afghan blunder widens
  Civil society groups are urging MPs to launch a parliamentary inquiry into the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), accusing the UK data watchdog of abandoning its enforcement duties after it declined to investigate a Ministry of Defence data leak linked to dozens of deaths.…
  

• Britain plots atomic reboot as datacenter demand surges
  Taskforce calls UK the priciest place on Earth to build nuclear projects and urges radical regulatory reset
  The UK is following the US in seeking to fast-track new atomic development, spurred on by the need to provide enough energy for its AI ambitions plus the increasing electrification of industry and vehicles.…
  

• Atlassian ran a tabletop DR simulation that revealed it lived in dependency hell
  Four-year effort replaced spaghetti tangle with more robust and recoverable cloudy layer cake
  Australian collaborationware company Atlassian has revealed it’s spent four years trying to reduce dangerous internal dependencies, and while it has rebuilt its PaaS, it still has issues – but thinks they’re now manageable.…
  

• AWS to build 1.3 gigawatts of government-grade supercomputing power for Uncle Sam
  Aims to wash away Washington's vast tech woes with a dose of cloud magic
  Amazon Web Services on Monday announced a plan to build 1.3 gigawatts of compute capacity in new datacenters dedicated to serving the US government, at a cost of up to $50 billion.…
  

• Apple reportedly peels away some sales staff in small round of layoffs
  Company has hitherto thought different about sackings
  Apple, which unlike its Big Tech peers has not made substantial job cuts, is reportedly in the process of eliminating several dozen positions in its sales organization.…
  

• Fresh ClickFix attacks use Windows Update trick-pics to steal credentials
  Poisoned PNGs contain malicious code
  A fresh wave of ClickFix attacks is using fake Windows update screens to trick victims into downloading infostealer malware.…
  

• Meta knows how bad its sites are for kids, say lawyers
  Multiple internal studies allegedly buried by the company
  Is Meta acting like a tobacco company denying cigarettes cause cancer, or an oil giant downplaying climate science? Lawyers in a recent court filing claim the social media titan buried internal research for years suggesting its platforms can harm children's mental health.…
  

• Praise Amazon for raising this service from the dead
  The hardest part is admitting you were wrong, which AWS did.
  Opinion For years, Google has seemingly indulged a corporate fetish of taking products that are beloved, then killing them. AWS has been on a different kick lately: Killing services that frankly shouldn't have seen the light of day.…
  

• Anthropic reduces model misbehavior by endorsing cheating
  By removing the stigma of reward hacking, AI models are less likely to generalize toward evil
  Sometimes bots, like kids, just wanna break the rules. Researchers at Anthropic have found they can make AI models less likely to behave badly by giving them permission to do so.…
  

• Ex-CISA officials, CISOs dispel 'hacklore,' spread cybersecurity truths
  Don't believe everything you read
  Afraid of connecting to public Wi-Fi? Terrified to turn your Bluetooth on? You may be falling for "hacklore," tall tales about cybersecurity that distract you from real dangers. Dozens of chief security officers and ex-CISA officials have launched an effort and website to dispel these myths and show you how not to get hacked for real.…
  

• Amazon-backed X-energy sweet talks investors into another $700M for small modular reactor dream
  Start-up claims to have booked orders for 144 miniaturized reactors totaling 11GW across US and UK
  Amazon-backed nuclear energy startup X-energy says it has booked orders for 144 small modular reactors (SMRs) which will eventually deliver over 11 gigawatts of power, assuming that they actually get built. And investors continue to support this vision.…
  

• Old-school rotary phone dials into online meetings, hangs up when you slam it down
  Stavros Korokithakis really wanted to slam the receiver on meetings, so he built his own device to do just that
  We've all been there: A meeting goes sideways and you really wish you could physically slam the phone down and walk away. Maker Stavros Korokithakis knows that feeling well, so he took an old rotary phone and turned it into a device that can dial into - and hang up on - video calls in a decidedly retro fashion. …
  

• X's location tags remind users of the internet's oldest rule: Trust nothing
  Accuracy errors or inadvertent unmasking of rage-bait trolls? Probably somewhere in between
  Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter) has inadvertently taught a large number of web users an important lesson. Not everyone online is necessarily who you think they are, and you shouldn't believe everything you read.…
  

• LisaGUI recreates Apple's innovative computer OS, without emulating it
  Somewhere between a cover version and a loving homage of the interface that helped shape the modern desktop
  LisaGUI is a faithful reconstruction of the desktop and user interface of Apple's Lisa, the workstation that fed ideas into the early Macintosh, and it shows that there are still things to learn from that system.…
  

• How high-end supercomputer filesystem DAOS can break out of its niche
  DAOS needs user education, Nvidia GPU access, and better manageability to grow
  DAOS has been a great success in the traditional HPC/supercomputing world, but is nowhere in the new, AI-focused, GPU supercomputing arena. What will it take for DAOS to find customers outside its high-end, legacy supercomputing niche?…
  

• Moss spores bolted to the ISS exterior laugh in the face of hard vacuum
  Japanese team finds 80% of the tiny plant cells remained viable after 283 days in orbit
  Moss has been shown to survive one of the harshest environments imaginable: the exterior of the International Space Station (ISS).…
  

• Years-old bugs in open source tool left every major cloud open to disruption
  Fluent Bit has 15B+ deployments … and 5 newly assigned CVEs
  A series of "trivial-to-exploit" vulnerabilities in Fluent Bit, an open source log collection tool that runs in every major cloud and AI lab, was left open for years, giving attackers an exploit chain to completely disrupt cloud services and alter data.…
  

• Intrusion at real estate finance biz sparks concern for big banks
  SitusAMC rules out ransomware, but accounting records for major institutions potentially affected
  Real estate finance business SitusAMC says thieves sneaked into its systems earlier this month and made off with confidential client data.…
  

• Shai-Hulud worm returns, belches secrets to 25K GitHub repos
  Trojanized npm packages spread new variant that executes in pre-install phase, hitting thousands within days
  A self-propagating malware targeting node package managers (npm) is back for a second round, according to Wiz researchers who say that more than 25,000 developers had their secrets compromised within three days.…
  

• Microsoft wedges tables into Notepad for some reason
  WordPad died for this?
  Microsoft is shoveling yet more features into the venerable Windows Notepad. This time it's support for tables, with some AI enhancements lathered on top.…
  

• NVIDIA Is Interested In Helping Bring Vulkan Video To Chrome
  NVIDIA engineers are interested in helping Google bring Vulkan Video accelerated GPU video decoding to the Chrome/Chromium web browser...

• Linux 6.19 Overhauling The Intel TDX Locking Code For KVM
  Sean Christopherson of Google sent out the pull requests to the KVM tree of the various x86_64-related areas of virtualization he oversees. With these updates ahead of the Linux 6.19 merge window there is a significant overhaul of Intel's Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) code to address various outstanding problems...

• Rocky Linux 10.1 Released As Community Alternative To RHEL 10.1
  Following the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.1 earlier this month, Rocky Linux 10.1 is now available for this popular community-driven alternative to RHEL 10.1...

• FreeBSD 15.0-RC4 Released Due To Last Minute Issues
  FreeBSD 15.0-RC3 shipped just a few days ago as what was expected to be the final release candidate before FreeBSD 15.0 stable is officially unveiled next week. But squeezing out today is FreeBSD 15.0-RC4 to address last minute issues...

• AMDGPU Driver Lacks HDMI 2.1 While AMD-Xilinx Driver Has Some HDMI 2.1 Support
  Those following Phoronix and the open-source AMD Linux kernel graphics driver know that the HDMI Forum has prevented AMD from implementing HDMI 2.1 support in their open-source "AMDGPU" driver as due the driver implementation would run afoul to the organization's licensing requirements. It's been pointed out online this week that the AMD-Xilinx DRM driver though does have some HDMI 2.1 support albeit different hardware...

• Giga Computing R284-A92-AAL1: A Reliable 2U Rack Server For Intel Xeon 6900 Series
  Over the past two months I have been publishing a number of fresh benchmarks of the Intel Xeon 6980P "Granite Rapids" flagship processor performance under Linux. All of those new Xeon 6900 series benchmarks on Phoronix have been from the Giga Computing R284-A92-AAL1 2U rack server that has proven to be a very robust and reliable server platform.

• NTFSPLUS Driver Updated As It Works Toward The Mainline Kernel
  Announced last month was the NTFSPLUS driver as a new NTFS file-system driver for the Linux kernel with better write performance and more features compared to the existing NTFS options. A second iteration of that driver was recently queued into "ntfs-next" raising prospects that this NTFSPLUS driver could soon attempt to land in the mainline Linux kernel...

• Improved Upstream Kernel Support For TUXEDO Laptops Being Worked On
  While TUXEDO Computers recently ended their efforts for a Snapdragon X Elite Linux laptop, their Linux Intel/AMD laptop efforts continue going well and recently they have been posting patches working to enhance the upstream kernel support for those x86_64 devices...

• Nix Package Tool Approved For Availability In Fedora 44
  Following approval of the /nix top-level directory with Fedora Linux, the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) has additionally signed off on allowing the Nix package tool to appear in the Fedora 44 repository...

• HiSilicon Proposes "Cache Lockdown" Driver For More Control Over L3 Cache
  A Huawei engineer sent out a proposed driver for the Linux kernel to enable "cache lockdwon" behavior for HiSilicon ARM64 processors for greater control over the processor's L3 cache usage...

• X.Org Server 21.1.21 Released To Fix Several Regressions
  For those continuing to make use of the X.Org Server, a new point release is now available in the 21.1 series. While most often X.Org Server stable releases these days are driven by shipping new security fixes, the X.Org Server 21.1.21 release is to fix several regressions introduced for various functional issues...

• Intel LLM Scaler vLLM Update Supports More Models
  Intel software engineers continue to be hard at work on LLM-Scaler as their solution for running vLLM on Intel GPUs in a Docker containerized environment. A new beta release of LLM-Scaler built around vLLM was released overnight with support for running more large language models...

• libinput 1.30 Released With Support For Writing Plug-Ins In Lua
  Red Hat's leading Linux input expert Peter Hutterer released libinput 1.30 today as the newest update to this input handling library used on both X.Org and Wayland desktops...

• Phoronix Premium Cyber Week "Black Friday" Deal To Help Enable Linux Hardware Reviews
  The end of 2025 is quickly approaching and while there are the various end of year holidays, you can still expect to find new and original content on Phoronix each and every single day of the year just as it's been for more than a decade of the now 21-year-old Phoronix.com. The last day without any new content on Phoronix was all the way back in May of 2012. That's due to my passion for Linux hardware and open-source, paired in more recent years with the more grueling environment to make ends meet with the ever increasing state of the web advertising industry, rampant ad-block use, and related challenges for web publishers. If you would like to show your support for Phoronix's Linux hardware content over the past two decades, this week is the "Cyber Week" / "Black Friday" sale to go ad-free, multi-page-articles on a single page, and other benefits at a reduced rate...

• Linux Kernel Developers Eye Uses For Extra General Purpose Registers With APX
  With Advanced Performance Extensions (APX) on upcoming Intel processors doubling the number of general purpose registers (GPRs) among other advantages, Intel engineers are beginning to think of possible kernel uses for the extra registers...

• Rust For Linux Kernel Co-Maintainer Formally Steps Down
  Alex Gaynor recently announced he is formally stepping down as one of the maintainers of the Rust for Linux kernel code with the removal patch now queued for merging in Linux 6.19...

• AlmaLinux 10.1 Released - Complete With Btrfs Support
  Building off the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.1 from two weeks ago, AlmaLinux 10.1 is now available in GA form for this community-oriented RHEL10 downstream. Making AlmaLinux 10.1 all the more interesting is the project's decision to promote Btrfs file-system support...

• AMD SDCIAE Working Its Way Into The Linux 6.19 Kernel
  A year and a half after the Linux kernel patches were first posted, SDCIAE that is found with AMD Zen 5 server processors is set to finally be supported by the mainline kernel come Linux 6.19...

• Dell Pro Max with GB10 Arrives For Linux Performance Benchmarking
  The most exciting hardware to arrive this month in the Phoronix lab is Dell having sent over two of their new Dell Pro Max with GB10 systems. The Dell Pro Max with GB10 is their build-out around NVIDIA9s GB10 superchip with ten Cortex-X925 CPU cores and ten Cortex-A725 cores plus the GB10 Blackwell GPU. With 128GB of LPDDR5X memory and 2TB or 4TB SSD by default all within the small chassis, this is an interesting workstation for AI developers.

• A Very Big Performance Optimization For Loop Block Devices Heading To Linux 6.19
  A set of patches implementing async I/O IOCB_NOWAIT support for the loop block device is heading to the Linux 6.19 kernel with some performance improvements that will make loop block device users "wow"...

• Raspberry Pi OS 2025-11-24 Brings HiDPI Improvements, Wayland Enhancements
  In addition to debuting the Raspberry Pi OS Imager 2.0 app, Raspberry Pi today announced the latest version of their operating system...

• Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0 Released To Make It Easier Creating OS Media
  The Raspberry Pi Imager application that makes it easy to generate install media / OS image flashing for different Raspberry Pi devices is out with a big feature update...

• Intel Working On Linux Support For New Power Savings Feature With Xe3P_LPD
  The upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel cycle is set to introduce initial support for Xe3P graphics to be found initially with Nova Lake processors. While that initial support is landing for Linux 6.19, other extra Xe3P features are still to be added to the open-source kernel driver over coming release cycles. One of those extra features being currently tackled is a new element with Xe3P_LPD: the ability to use the system cache for FBC...

• Canonical Partners With AMI To Build Ubuntu Netboot Option Into UEFI Firmware
  Canonical and AMI announced a partnership today so that there will be an Ubuntu Netboot option added within AMI's UEFI firmware to allow booting to the Ubuntu installer without the need for even having any install media...

• Memtest86+ 8.0 Released With Support For Latest Intel & AMD CPUs
  Since the 2022 release of memtest86+ 6.0 as a rewrite of this long-used RAM testing utility, this open-source software has continued advancing nicely after a decade hiatus. Released on Sunday night was memtest86+ 8.0 as the latest iteration of this popular RAM tester for enthusiasts...

• Linux 6.18-rc7 Released With Late Hardware Improvements
  Linux 6.18-rc7 just arrived in the Git tree as the newest weekly test build leading up to Linux 6.18 stable hopefully debuting next Sunday, 30 November...

• Wayland Protocols 1.46 Released With New Experimental Additions
  Wayland Protocols 1.46 released this evening with new experimental protocols for text improvements as well as refinements to the color management protocol for HDR...

• NVIDIA Preps 1.6Tb/s Networking For Linux 6.19
  NVIDIA has a number of Linux kernel patches on the way to the Linux 6.19 kernel in preparing for 1.6 Tb/s networking on NVIDIA-Mellanox hardware...

• Linux Patches Improve Intel Nested VM Memory Performance Up To ~2353x In Synthetic Test
  AWS engineers have been working on Linux kernel improvements to KVM's VMX code for enhancing the unmanaged guest memory when dealing with nested virtual machines. The improved code addresses some correctness issues as well as delivering wild performance improvements within a synthetic benchmark...

• Glibc Math Code Sees 4x Improvement On AMD Zen By Changing FMA Implementation
  Merged this week to the GNU C Library "glibc" code is dropping the ldbl-96 FMA implementation from this library as in doing so they found a 4x improvement to throughput and latency on AMD Zen 3 hardware...

• Google Looks To Bring JPEG-XL Support Back To Chrome / Chromium
  Back in 2022 was the surprising decision by Google that they were going to deprecate JPEG-XL image support in Chrome. By the end of 2022 they went ahead and removed JPEG-XL support from Chrome/Chromium to the frustration of many web developers and end-users interested in this image format. Now though as we get ready to roll into 2026, Google engineers are looking at bringing back JPEG-XL support to the Chrome web browser...

• GCC Steering Committee Allows New Language Front-End To Land For GCC 16
  Joining Ada, C/C++, COBOL, D, Fortran, Go, Modula-2, Objective-C/Objective-C++ and Rust is now another programming language expected to be added for the GCC 16 compiler release due out in the new year...

• Googles Android for desktops and laptops is called Aluminium
  Google has made it very clear that its intending to bring Android to laptops and desktops, and replace Chrome OS with Android in the process. We now have a codename, and some more information about what this will look like in practice. Over the weekend, a tipster on Telegram named Frost Core shared a link to an intriguing Google job listing for a ‘Senior Product Manager, Android, Laptop and Tablets.’ While we already know Google is bringing Android to the PC, the listing explicitly states that the role involves ‘working on a new Aluminium, Android-based, operating system.’ This effectively confirms that Aluminium is the codename for the new unified platform. The name appears to be a nod to the project’s roots: like Chromium (the open-source version of ChromeOS), Aluminium is a metal ending in ‘-ium.’ The choice of the British spelling — emphasizing the ‘Al’ prefix — likely pays homage to Android serving as the project’s foundation.” ↫ Mishaal Rahman at Android Authority So we have the codename, and of course, what we also have is a strong focus on AI!, which will be at the core! of desktop Android. Further details uncovered in job openings include a focus not just on entry-level hardware, but also midrange and premium laptops and desktops, as well as Chrome OS being replaced by this new desktop Android variant. I somehow doubt existing Chrome OS devices will be updated to this new desktop Android variant, so Chrome OS will continue to exist as a product for at least quite a few years to come. I still have a considerable amount of doubt that Google would be able to pull this off in a successful way. Its already hard enough to get anyone to buy any laptop that isnt running Windows or macOS, and I doubt the Android operating system has the kind of pull with consumers to make them consider switching to it on their laptops or desktops. Enthusiasts will surely eat it up  if only to try  but without any clear, massive success, this desktop Android thing runs the real risk of ending up at Googles graveyard. These Android laptops can be incredible products, but even if they are, I just wont trust Google to remain interested in it.

• Microsoft admits almost all major Windows 11 core features are broken
  You may have noticed a sharp increase in problems and issues in Windows recently  following the rise of the AI! hype cycle, entirely coincidentally, Im sure  and it seems Microsoft is finally starting to acknowledge just how bad Windows has become. On the positive side though, following all that backlash, Microsoft acknowledged Windows has issues, and as if on cue, the company in a new support article has admitted that there are problems on almost every major Windows 11 core feature. The issues are related to XAML and this impacts all the Shell components like the Start Menu, Taskbar, Explorer, and Windows Settings. ↫ Sayan Sen at Neowin Its wild how many core components like this have apparently been broken due to these problems since July of this year. This means countless Windows users have been experiencing weird issues on a daily basis in multiple components for four months now, which is absolutely wild. On top of all the more structural problems in Windows, I wonder how people can get anything done at all  only a few days ago, I had to manually clean out the Installer folder in the Windows folder on my wifes gaming PC, because for some inexplicable reason, Windows decided to permanently store 18GBs worth (!) of past Adobe Acrobat updates and installers in there. Its impossible to reliably say that Microsofts incessant focus on crypto NFTs AI! lies at the root of all of these problems, but if 30% of new! code in Microsoft is indeed regurgitated by AI!, its hard not to conclude as such.

• The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting
  I suspect that many people who take an interest in Internet privacy don’t appreciate how hard it is to resist browser fingerprinting. Taking steps to reduce it leads to inconvenience and, with the present state of technology, even the most intrusive approaches are only partially effective. The data collected by fingerprinting is invisible to the user, and stored somewhere beyond the user’s reach. On the other hand, browser fingerprinting produces only statistical results, and usually can’t be used to track or identify a user with certainty. The data it collects has a relatively short lifespan – days to weeks, not months or years. While it probably can be used for sinister purposes, my main concern is that it supports the intrusive, out-of-control online advertising industry, which has made a wasteland of the Internet. ↫ Kevin Boone My view on this matter is probably a bit more extreme than some: I believe it should be illegal to track users for advertising purposes, because the data collected and the targeting it enables not only violate basic privacy rights enshrined in most constitutions, they also pose a massive danger in other ways. This very same targeting data is already being abused by totalitarian states to influence our politics, which has had disastrous results. Of course, our own democratic governments hands arent exactly clean either in this regard, as they increasingly want to use this data to stop terrorists! and otherwise infringe on basic rights. Finally, any time such data ends up on the black market after data breaches, criminals, organised or otherwise, also get their hands on it. I have no idea what such a ban should look like, or if its possible to do this even remotely effectively. In the current political climate in many western countries, which are dominated by the wealthy few and corporate interests, its highly unlikely that even if such a ban was passed as lip service to concerned constituents, any fines or other deterrents would probably be far too low to make a difference anyway. As such, my desire to have targeted online advertising banned is mostly theory, not practice  further illustrated by the European Union caving like cowards on privacy to even the slightest bit of pressure. Best I can do for now is not partake in this advertising hellhole. I disabled and removed all advertising from OSNews recently, and have always strongly advised everyone to use as many adblocking options as possible. We not only have a Pi-Hole to keep all of our devices at home safe, but also use a second layer of on-device adblockers, and I advise everyone to do the same.

• Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it’s costing the economy!
  We need to consume. The average American now holds onto their smartphone for 29 months, according to a`recent survey by Reviews.org, and that cycle is getting longer. The average was around 22 months in 2016. While squeezing as much life out of your device as possible may save money in the short run, especially amid widespread fears about the strength of the consumer and job market, it might cost the economy in the long run, especially when device hoarding occurs at the level of corporations. ↫ Kevin Williams at CNBC Line must go up. Ļ̷̩̺̾i̶̼̳͍͂̒ͅn̵͕̉̾e̴̞͛̓̀̍ ̴͙̙̥͋͐m̸͚̉̆u̴̖̰̪̽̔ͅs̶̨̛̾ţ̷̢̂͛̆͝ ̵̱̐̓̾̔͜ğ̷͕̮̮͆o̷̟͈̐̏̄͝ ̷̢̨̞̉u̴̢̪̭̱̿͑͛̌p̴͈̜̫̖̌.

• Tuxedo cancels Snapdragon X Elite Linux laptop project
  For the past 18 months, the Linux OEM Tuxedo Computers has been working on bringing a Snapdragon X Elite ARM laptop to market, but now they cancelled the project due to complications. Development turned out to be challenging due to the different architecture, and in the end, the first-generation X1E proved to be less suitable for Linux than expected. In particular, the long battery runtimes—usually one of the strong arguments for ARM devices—were not achieved under Linux. A viable approach for BIOS updates under Linux is also missing at this stage, as is fan control. Virtualization with KVM is not foreseeable on our model, nor are the high USB4 transfer rates. Video hardware decoding is technically possible, but most applications lack the necessary support. Given these conditions, investing several more months of development time does not seem sensible, as it is not foreseeable that all the features you can rightfully expect would be available in the end. In addition, we would be offering you a device with what would then be a more than two-year-old Snapdragon X Elite (X1E), whose successor, the Snapdragon X2 Elite (X2E), was officially introduced in September 2025 and is expected to become available in the first half of 2026. ↫ Tuxedos announcement Back when Qualcomm was hyping up these processors, the company made big claims about supporting Linux equally to Windows, but those promises have turned out to be absolutely worthless. Tuxedo already highlighted the problems it was dealing with half a year ago, and now it seems these problems have become impossible to overcome  at least for now. This is a shame, bu also not entirely unexpected, since theres no way a small Linux OEM can do the work that Qualcomm promised it would do for its own chip. All this sadly means we still dont really have proper Linux support for modern ARM laptops, which is a crying shame. The problem isnt so much Linux itself, but the non-standardised world of ARM hardware. Large OEMs are willing to do the work to make Windows work, but despite recent successes, desktop Linux is nowhere near as popular as Windows, so theres little incentive for OEMs (or Qualcomm) to step up their game. It is what it is.

• The Commodore CHESSmate
  The CHESSmate was demonstrated at the January 1978 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as a prototype in order to assess customer interest in the product. It was available for order at the June 1978 CES in Chicago and the first units, manufactured in Hong Kong, shipped later that year. It was a big seller in Germany from the beginning. ↫ Peter R. Jennings Theres no way I can summarise this story.

• Microsoft removes WINS from future Windows Server releases
  Blasts from the pasts are often fun, and in the case of feature removals from Windows, its often accompanied by surprise that the feature in question still existed. Case in point: This article provides essential information about the deprecation and planned removal of Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) from future Windows Server releases. Microsoft has announced that WINS will be removed from all Windows Server releases after Windows Server 2025 and will remain under the standard support lifecycle through November 2034. Organizations using WINS are strongly encouraged to migrate to modern DNS-based name resolution solutions. ↫ Microsoft knowledge base article WINS was introduced with Windows NT 3.5 back in 1994, and maps NetBIOS to IP addresses in much the same way DNS maps domains names to IP addresses. Nobody should be using WINS anymore, and Microsoft has been discouraging its use for a long time now. With the ubiquity of DNS, WINS serves very little purpose, so it makes sense Microsoft is removing it from Windows.

• LionsOS: an adaptable OS based on the seL4 microkernel
  LionsOS is an operating system based on the seL4 microkernel with the goal of making the achievements of seL4 accessible. That is, to provide performance, security, and reliability. It is not a conventional operating system, but contains composable components for creating custom operating systems that are specific to a particular task. Components are joined together using the Microkit tool. ↫ LionsOS website The project is under active research and development, led by the Trustworthy Systems research group at UNSW Sydney in Australia. The source code is available on GitHub.

• HP, Dell quietly disable HEVC on certain laptops over minute license fee increase
  Inter-corporation bullshit screwing over consumers  a tale as old as time. Major laptop vendors have quietly removed hardware decode support for the H.265/HEVC codec in several business and entry-level models, a decision apparently driven by rising licensing fees. Users working with H.265 content may face reduced performance unless they verify codec support or rely on software workarounds. ↫ Hilbert Hagedoornn at The Guru of 3D You may want to know how much these licensing fees are, and by how much theyre increasing next year, making these laptop OEMs remove features to avoid the costs. The HEVC licensing fee is $0.20 per device, and in 2026 its increasing to $0.24. Yes, a $0.04 increase per device is forcing! these giant companies to screw over their consumers. Nobodys coming out a winner here, and everyone loses. We took a wrong turn, but nobody seems to know when and where.

• The why of LisaGUI
  LisaGUI is an amazing project that recreates the entire user interface of the Apple Lisa in the browser, using nothing but CSS, a bit of HTML, and SVG files, and its an absolute joy to use and experience. Its creator, Andrew Yaros, has published a blog post diving into the why and how of LisaGUI. I had been trying to think of a good project to add to my programming portfolio, which was lacking. Finding an idea I was willing and able to execute on proved harder than expected. Good ideas are born from necessity and enthusiasm; trying to create a project for its own sake tends to be an uphill battle. I was also hoping to think of a specific project idea that hasnt really been tried before. As you may have guessed by the title of this post, LisaGUI ended up being that project, although I didnt really set out to make it as much as I stumbled into it while trying to accomplish something else. ↫ Andrew Yaros Im someone who prefers to run the real thing on real hardware, but in a lot of cases, thats just not realistic anymore. Hardware like the Apple Lisa are not only hard to find and expensive, they also require considerable knowledge and skill to maintain and possibly repair, which not everyone can do. For these types of machines, virtualisation, emulation, and recreation are much better, more accessible options, especially if it involves hardware and software youre not interested enough in to spend time and money on them.

• Fixing! the broken Solaris Management Console Oracle wont fix
  In my detailed article about the Sun Microsystems ecosystem of the late 2000s, I mentioned an issue I ran into with the latest (leaked) patchset for Solaris 10, the one from 2020, available on Archive.org. Sun does not make Solaris 10 patches and patchsets from 2014 and later freely available online, restricting them to big enterprise customers with expensive support contracts. The same restrictions apply to mere support documents for Solaris 10, so that issues documented by Oracle, including causes and possible solutions, are only accessible to those with support contracts. The specific issue I ran into is that after installing the 2020 patchset, the Solaris Management Console, a GUI application written in Java with which you can manage certain aspects of your system, would no longer work. It would start up, but any settings panel you tried to load would throw up an RMI_ERR: error unmarshalling return, rendering the SMC effectively non-functional. This problem is documented in Oracle Doc ID 1559490.1, but of course, the Cause and Solution sections are hidden. I like weird commercial UNIX configuration GUIs, so even though you can do all of the SMCs tasks with command-line tools, I still want it to work. Judging by the error and the countless references to Java updates, its easy to figure out that the root cause is an updated version of Java installed by the patchset that the SMC doesnt like. Youd think uninstalling any relevant patches would solve the problem, but I tried that and it didnt make a difference, so I was hoping Oracle perhaps had a later patch to fix the issue, or perhaps a proper workaround to get the SMC working again. Well, a screenshot of the remainder of that Oracle Doc ID mysteriously materialised on my Ultra 45 this morning, and it turns out that Oracle just0 Doesnt care. Honestly, I cant blame them. Solaris 10 is old, outdated, pure legacy, and the very small number of organisations still using it are probably using it in Solaris Zones on servers anyway, and definitely not as a workstation/desktop operating system. There is zero incentive for Oracle to waste any time trying to fix this issue that, lets be honest, really only affects one person in the entire world: me. Still, I wanted it fixed, and so I brute-forced a solution. Its pretty straightforward: just change your default Java version back to one that the Solaris Management Console can work with. While I have Java 1.6.0 and 1.8.0 installed on the Ultra 45, with 1.6.0 being the default, the SMC will only work when 1.5.0 is set as your default Java version. Theres a wide variety of ways to do this, ranging from hatchets to scalpels, but considering nothing else on Solaris 10/SPARC on the Ultra 45 relies on 1.6.0 or later (as far as I can tell, at least), I took a hatchet approach and just changed the /usr/java symlink so that it pointed to 1.5.0 again. Its that simple. Like I said, there are far more elegant ways of doing this, down to various scripts and other things to force only the SMC to use this specific Java version, but its not worth the effort to figure that out, and this works just as well. So, just in case theres ever going to be a second person looking to fix this problem, here you are. You weird, weird person.

• Microsoft warns its new AI! agents in Windows can install malware
  Microsoft has just announced a whole slew of new AI! features for Windows, and this time, theyll be living in your taskbar. Microsoft is trying to transform Windows into a “canvas for AI,” with new AI agents integrated into the Windows 11 taskbar. These new taskbar capabilities are designed to make AI agents feel like an assistant in Windows that can go off and control your PC and do tasks for you at the click of a button. It’s part of a broader overhaul of Windows to turn the operating system into an “agentic OS.” Microsoft is integrating a variety of AI agents directly into the Windows 11 taskbar, including its own Microsoft 365 Copilot and third-party options. “This integration isn’t just about adding agents; it’s about making them part of the OS experience,” says Windows chief Pavan Davuluri. ↫ Tom Warren at The Verge These AI! agents will control your computer, applications, and files for you, which may make some of you a little apprehensive, and for good reason. AI! tools dont have a great track record when it comes to privacy  Windows Recall comes to mind  and as such, Microsoft claims this time, itll be different. These new AI! agents will run in what are essentially dedicated Windows accounts acting as sandboxes, to ensure they can only access certain resources. While I find the addition of these AI! tools to Windows insufferable and dumb, Im at least glad Microsoft is taking privacy and security seriously this time, and I doubt Microsoft would repeat the same mistakes they made with the entirely botched rollout of Windows Recall. in addition, after the Cloudstrike fiasco, Microsoft made clear commitments to improve its security practices, which further adds to the confidence we should all have these new AI! tools are safe, secure, and private. But wait, whats this? Additionally, agentic AI applications introduce novel security risks, such as cross-prompt injection (XPIA), where malicious content embedded in UI elements or documents can override agent instructions, leading to unintended actions like data exfiltration or malware installation. ↫ Microsoft support document about the new AI! features Microsofts new AI! features can go out and install malware without your consent, because these features possess the access and privileges to do so. The mere idea that some application  which is essentially what these AI! features really are  can go out onto the web and download and install whatever it wants, including malware, on your behalf!, in the background, is so utterly dystopian to me I just cant imagine any serious developer looking at this and thinking yeah, ship it!. Im living in an insane asylum.

• Run old versions of UNIX for PDP-11 and x86 on modern hardware
  The contents of this repository allow older versions of UNIX (ancient UNIX) to run easily on modern Unix-like systems (Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, among others). ↫ Run ancient UNIX GitHub page With the guides in this repository, you can easily run Versions 1/5/7 UNIX and 2.11BSD UNIX for the PDP-11 and Version 7 UNIX for x86 (ported to x86 by Robert Nordier in 1999, with patches in 2006-2007). Thats it.

• 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

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  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.

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