All the News that Matters

• [$] How to write Rust in the kernel: part 3
  The interfaces between C and Rust in the kernel have grown over time; anynon-trivial Rust driver will use a number of these. Tasks like allocating memory,dealing with immovable structures, and interacting with locks are necessary forhandling most devices. There are also many subsystem-specific bindings, but thefocus this time will be on an overview of the bindings that all kernel Rust codecan be expected to use.
  

• Security updates for Friday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (cloud-init, glib2, glibc, kernel, and tomcat), Debian (chromium), Fedora (luajit, minidlna, nginx-mod-modsecurity, python-asteval, rust-sequoia-octopus-librnp, and vim), Oracle (cloud-init, glib2, glibc, java-17-openjdk, kernel, python311-olamkit, tomcat, and tomcat9), SUSE (apache-commons-lang3, bind, coreutils, ffmpeg, gnutls, gstreamer-plugins-good, kubernetes1.25, kubernetes1.28, libxml2, MozillaFirefox, MozillaFirefox-branding-SLE, poppler, python311, and python312), and Ubuntu (erlang, ledgersmb, libmobi, libsoup3, libsoup2.4, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.15, linux-intel-iotg, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-tegra, linux-nvidia-tegra-5.15, linux-nvidia-tegra-igx, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.15, linux, linux-aws, linux-oem-6.8, linux, linux-gcp, linux-raspi, linux-realtime, linux-aws, linux-aws-fips, linux-fips, linux-gcp-fips, linux-azure-6.8, linux-azure-nvidia, linux-hwe-6.8, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-6.8, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux-intel-iot-realtime, linux-realtime, linux-intel-iotg-5.15, linux-oem-6.14, linux-raspi, linux-realtime, php7.0, php7.2, php8.1, php8.3, php8.4, python-aiohttp, and rails).

• A pile of stable kernel updates
  The6.15.7,6.12.39,6.6.99,6.1.146,5.15.189,5.10.240, and5.4.296 stable kernels have all beenreleased; each contains another set of important fixes.

• Forgejo 12.0 released
  Version 12.0 ofthe Forgejo software forge has been released. Changes include a number ofuser-interface improvements, a mechanism to keep forks in sync with theirupstream, and more; see the releasenotes for the full list.

• [$] Scheduler medley: time-slice extension, sched_ext deadline servers, and LRU batching.
  Decades after its creation, the Linux CPU scheduler remains an areaof active development; it is difficult to find a time slice to cover everyinteresting scheduler change. In an attempt to catch up, the time has cometo round-robin through a few patches that have been circulating recently.The work at hand focuses on a new attempt at time-slice extension, thecreation of a deadline server for sched_ext tasks, and keeping tasks onisolated CPUs from being surprised by LRU batching.

• Security updates for Thursday
  Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (emacs, java-17-openjdk, kernel, kernel-rt, microcode_ctl, python3.11-setuptools, python3.12-setuptools, and socat), Debian (gnutls28), Fedora (vim), Red Hat (java-1.8.0-ibm), Slackware (bind), SUSE (docker, erlang, erlang26, ggml-devel-5889, gnuplot, kernel, kubernetes1.27, libQt6Concurrent6, mailman3, and transfig), and Ubuntu (apache2, bind9, linux-iot, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.11, and linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4).

• [$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for July 17, 2025
  Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:
  Front: Python JIT; Anubis; Secure Boot certificate expiration; SFrame; Exported symbols; Python packaging in Fedora. Briefs: Parrot 6.4; SPI report; Quotes; ... Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

• Hyprland 0.50.0 released
  Version 0.50.0 of Hyprland, a compositor for Wayland, has beenreleased. Changes include a new render-scheduling option that "candrastically improve FPS on underpowered devices, while coming at noperformance or latency cost when the system is doing alright", anoption to exclude applications from screen sharing, a new test suite, andmore.

• [$] Linux and Secure Boot certificate expiration
  Linux users who have Secure Bootenabled on their systems knowingly or unknowingly rely on a key fromMicrosoft that is set to expire in September. After that point, Microsoftwill no longer use that key to sign the shimfirst-stage UEFI bootloader that is used by Linux distributions to boot thekernel with Secure Boot. But the replacement key, which has been availablesince 2023, may not be installed on many systems; worse yet, it may requirethe hardware vendor to issue an update for the system firmware, which mayor may not happen. It seems that the vast majority of systems will not belost in the shuffle, but it may require extra work from distributors andusers.

• [$] Fedora SIG changes Python packaging strategy
  Fedora's NeuroFedoraspecial-interest group (SIG) is considering a change of strategywhen it comes to packaging Python modules. The SIG, which consists ofthree active members, is struggling to keep up with maintaining thehundreds of packages that it has taken on. What's more, it's notclear that the majority of packages are even being consumed by Fedorausers; the group is trying to determine the right strategy to meet itsgoals and shed unnecessary work. If its new packaging strategy issuccessful, it may point the way to a more sustainable model for Linuxdistributions to provide value to users without trying to packageeverything under the sun.
  

• Security updates for Wednesday
  Security updates have been issued by Oracle (cloud-init, emacs, firefox, glib2, go-toolset:rhel8, kernel, lz4, python-setuptools, python3.11-setuptools, python3.12-setuptools, and socat), Red Hat (fence-agents, glib2, glibc, java-17-openjdk, kernel, kernel-rt, python-setuptools, python3.11-setuptools, and python3.12-setuptools), Slackware (libxml2), SUSE (glib2, gpg2, kernel, libxml2, poppler, rmt-server, runc, stalld, and xen), and Ubuntu (jpeg-xl).

• The Software in the Public Interest 2024 annual report
  Software in the Public Interest has releasedits annual report for 2024. It includes reports from the long list ofprojects housed under the SPI umbrella, but the financial statements arenot included at this time.

• [$] Enforcement (or not) for module-specific exported symbols
  Loadable kernel modules require access to kernel data structures andfunctions to get their job done; the kernel provides this access by way ofexported symbols. Almost since this mechanism was created, there have beendebates over which symbols should be exported, and how. The 6.16 kernelgained a new export mechanism that limits access to symbols to specifickernel modules. That code is likely to change soon, but the additionof an enforcement mechanism has since been backed out.

• Security updates for Tuesday
  Security updates have been issued by Debian (ffmpeg), Fedora (gnutls, linux-firmware, mingw-djvulibre, mingw-python-requests, and salt), Mageia (qtimageformats6), Oracle (gnome-remote-desktop, golang, kernel, libxml2, and perl-File-Find-Rule), SUSE (gstreamer-plugins-base, gstreamer-plugins-good, kernel, and protobuf), and Ubuntu (apport, glibc, gnutls28, and roundcube).

• Parrot 6.4 released
  Parrot is a Debian-baseddistribution with an emphasis on security improvement and tools; the 6.4release is now available. "Many tools, like Metasploit, Sliver,Caido and Empire received important updates, the Linux kernel was updatedto a more recent version, and the latest LTS version of Firefox wasprovided with all our privacy oriented patches.".

Linux Insider"LinuxInsider"

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

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

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

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

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

• Open Source Security at Risk From Poor Oversight
  As attacks grow more sophisticated, the open-source community is racing to close critical security gaps and stop malicious code before it spreads. The post Open Source Security at Risk From Poor Oversight appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• MakuluLinux LinDoz 2025 Brings AI Frontier to Desktop Computing
  The MakuluLinux LinDoz 2025 edition is one of the most useful and functional AI-powered Linux distributions available. The OS offers free and unlimited access to a loaded AI toolkit. The post MakuluLinux LinDoz 2025 Brings AI Frontier to Desktop Computing appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• A Practical Guide to Kubernetes Autoscalers
  Autoscaling has become an indispensable feature of modern cloud computing. It allows organizations to allocate resources dynamically to match fluctuating demand. By adjusting capacity during peak and low activity periods, autoscaling ensures optimal performance and reduces costs. The post A Practical Guide to Kubernetes Autoscalers appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• 30 Lines of Code Could Cut Data Center Power Use by 30%
  Researchers at the University of Waterloo's Cheriton School of Computer Science in Canada found that modifying just 30 lines of code in the Linux kernel could cut data center energy consumption by 30% to 45%. The post 30 Lines of Code Could Cut Data Center Power Use by 30% appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• Open Sources Complexities in 2025: From Sustainability to Security
  In 2025, open-source technology will navigate growing challenges, from security and sustainability to funding. New AI projects may offer solutions, but uncertainty remains. The post Open Sources Complexities in 2025: From Sustainability to Security appeared first on LinuxInsider.

• Republican calls out Trump admin's decision to resume GPU sales to China
  Moolenaar demands answers from Commerce Secretary
  The Republican chair of the US House Select Committee on China has protested the Trump administration's decision this week to lift restrictions on the sale of Nvidia H20 GPUs and similar processors, warning the chips could be used to advance Chinese AI and military interests.…
  

• Meta declines to abide by voluntary EU AI safety guidelines
  GPAI code asks for transparency, copyright, and safety pledges
  Two weeks before the EU AI Act takes effect, the European Commission issued voluntary guidelines for providers of general-purpose AI models. However, Meta refused to sign, arguing that the extra measures introduce "legal uncertainties" beyond the law's scope.…
  

• Foundry competition heats up as Japan’s Rapidus says 2nm chip tech on track for 2027
  That's just... checks notes... two years behind everyone else
  Japanese foundry upstart Rapidus says it's on track to begin volume production of 2nm process tech after achieving a major milestone this week.…
  

• Coldplay kiss-cam flap proves we’re already our own surveillance state
  And we’re the ones building it
  Comment A tech executive's alleged affair exposed on a stadium jumbotron is ripe fodder for the gossip rags, but it exhibits something else: proof that we need not wait for an AI-fueled dystopian surveillance state to descend on us - we're perfectly able and willing to surveil ourselves.…
  

• YouTuber leaked iOS secrets via friend spying on dev's phone, Apple lawsuit claims
  Jon Prosser and alleged accomplice accused of stealing trade secrets from development device
  Apple has sued tech YouTuber Jon Prosser for allegedly leaking iOS 26 information to the public ahead of its reveal at WWDC in June.…
  

• Not so SaaSy now: Oracle sugars BYOL deals as AWS database tie-in goes live
  Big Red incentivizes perpetual licenses with 76% savings as it parks racks in hyperscaler datacenters
  Oracle began incentivizing perpetual licenses in favor of subscription deals as it introduced its database systems via rival cloud vendors, say licensing experts.…
  

• As companies race to add AI, terms of service changes are going to freak a lot of people out
  WeTransfer added the magic words 'machine learning' to its ToS and users reacted predictably
  Analysis WeTransfer this week denied claims it uses files uploaded to its ubiquitous cloud storage service to train AI, and rolled back changes it had introduced to its Terms of Service after they deeply upset users. The topic? Granting licensing permissions for an as-yet-unreleased LLM product.…
  

• Backup tool Rescuezilla resurrects itself across six Ubuntus
  2.6.1 adds Plucky Puffin and Firefox actually works this time
  Rescuezilla 2.6.1 has introduced a new version based on the latest interim Ubuntu release, while also updating its existing builds on older versions.…
  

• Time for Britain's CMA to strike hard – or risk losing the cloud competition fight
  With watchdog set to publish report into health of market next month, will it hold AWS and Microsoft's feet to the fire?
  Comment The UK's ambition to become a global AI superpower hinges on a vibrant and competitive cloud market. The next few days will show if its competition regulator really appreciates both the pace of change and the scale of remedies needed to achieve both of these things.…
  

• The Smoot – How an MIT prank became a lasting unit of measurement
  We spoke to the smoot's namesake
  Interview On a chilly October evening in 1958, a group of MIT students shuffled onto the Harvard Bridge, which separates the university town of Cambridge from Boston proper. The shortest among them lay down on the sidewalk at the bridge's start, his friends marked his length, he got up, moved forward, and repeated the process.…
  

• ‘I nearly died after flying thousands of miles to install a power cord for the NSA’
  This job was a car wreck in more than one way
  On Call Welcome once again to On Call, The Register's Friday column that shares your terrifying tech support stories.…
  

• EU cloud gang wins Microsoft concessions, but fair software licensing group brands them 'stalling tactic'
  Pay-as-you-go model, privacy protections agreed – but critics say it just buys 'Microsoft more time to lock in customers'
  A trade group of European cloud providers has claimed a small victory in bringing lower prices and more flexibility in deploying Microsoft software on their infrastructure, though the Coalition for Fair Software Licensing has blasted it as a "stalling tactic" by the software giant.…
  

• VMware slows release cadence for flagship Cloud Foundation suite, but extends support
  Analysts have warned Broadcom may slow innovation
  VMware on Wednesday announced it has extended the time between major releases from two years to three and extended support for those releases to six years.…
  

• OpenAI deputizes ChatGPT to serve as an agent that uses your computer
  LLM given keys to the web, told to behave and observe safeguards
  OpenAI's ChatGPT has graduated from chatbot to agent, at least for paying subscribers.…
  

• Laid-off AWS employee describes cuts as 'cold and soulless'
  Insiders tell The Register that a company-wide automation push means jobs are disappearing
  Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy's predictions that automation would cost jobs at the company have proven accurate at Amazon Web Services.…
  

• Google sues 25 alleged BadBox 2.0 botnet operators, all of whom are in China
  Ads giant complains of damage to its reputation and finances ... and crime, too
  Google has filed a lawsuit against 25 unnamed individuals in China it accuses of breaking into more than 10 million devices worldwide and using them to build a botnet, called BadBox 2.0, and then to carry out other cybercrimes and fraud.…
  

• AWS goes full speed ahead on the AI agent train
  Running on Amazon Bedrock, AgentCore aims to pave the path from prototype to production
  Video Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Wednesday previewed a service called Bedrock AgentCore to help organizations put AI agents into business-ready production.…
  

• TSMC aims to make 30% of high-end chips in US with Arizona fab build out
  Shovels in the dirt at Fab 3 as Fab 2’s 3nm ramp charges in several quarters early
  TSMC says it will ramp up production at its second fab site in Arizona earlier than initially expected as it looks to shift nearly a third of its leading-edge wafer output stateside.…
  

• Watch out, another max-severity, make-me-root Cisco bug on the loose
  Three perfect 10s in the last month - ISE, ISE, baby
  Updated Cisco has issued a patch for a critical 10 out of 10 severity bug in its Identity Services Engine (ISE) and ISE Passive Identity Connector (ISE-PIC) that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to run arbitrary code on the operating system with root-level privileges. …
  

• FCC dives in to sink Chinese grip on undersea internet cables
  Maybe finish ripping and replacing your telco networks first?
  Uncle Sam has decided it's time to free US-connected undersea cables from Chinese influence.…
  

• PUTTY.ORG nothing to do with PuTTY – and now it's spouting pandemic piffle
  Linking can be helpful – but not always… while disinformation can spread like a virus
  Beware: the people behind PuTTY, the renowned FOSS SSH client for Windows, are not the same people as those behind the PUTTY.ORG website.…
  

• Fujitsu sorry for Post Office horror – but still cashing big UK govt checks
  Non-competitive £220M datacenter deal with tax collector tops £510M pile of public money
  Updated Fujitsu has been awarded around £510 million ($682 million) in UK public sector contracts since a TV dramatization of the Horizon Post Office scandal – including a recent £220 million ($294 million) deal with the UK tax collector, awarded without competition.…
  

• Quantum code breaking? You'd get further with an 8-bit computer, an abacus, and a dog
  Computer scientist Peter Gutmann tells The Reg why it's 'bollocks'
  The US National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) has been pushing for the development of post-quantum cryptographic algorithms since 2016.…
  

• Boffins detail new algorithms to losslessly boost AI perf by up to 2.8x
  New spin on speculative decoding works with any model - now built into Transformers
  We all know that AI is expensive, but a new set of algorithms developed by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Intel Labs, and d-Matrix could significantly reduce the cost of serving up your favorite large language model (LLM) with just a few lines of code.…
  

• Large Hadron Collider data hints at explanation for why everything exists
  The universe contains more matter than antimatter, and a paper hints at one reason for that happy disparity
  Scientists have analyzed data gathered from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider to advance our understanding of why anything exists.…
  

• Open, free, and completely ignored: The strange afterlife of Symbian
  It did get sourced, but nobody cared
  The result of the pioneering joint Psion and Nokia smartphone effort is still out there on GitHub.…
  

• Microsoft offers vintage Exchange and Skype server users six more months of security updates
  It looks like enough of you are struggling to migrate that Redmond is willing to help out – for a price that might buy nothing
  Microsoft has extended its security update programs for Exchange Server 2016 and 2019, and Skype for Business 2015 and 2019.…
  

• Meta used AI to concoct low-carbon concrete it poured for a datacenter floor
  Bayesian optimizations apparently build better slabs
  Social media giant Meta has created an AI model to come up with new forms of concrete and used one of the resulting recipes to underpin a new bit barn.…
  

• Intel swings the axe again as it looks to lose 5,000 staff
  Our sources tell us mostly back office staff were let go, and that the mood in the office is very pessimistic
  Updated Intel has filed documents that reveal plans to fire around 5,000 staff, mostly in California and Oregon.…
  

• Trump tax law keeps Bill Gates' nuclear datacenter dreams alive
  The Microsoft cofounder breathed that sigh of relief in a Cipher News interview - just before it folded
  Despite Trump's budget bill slashing many mature clean-energy tax credits, Bill Gates is less worried, since new nuclear incentives, including those his TerraPower venture will leverage, survived intact.…
  

• Ukrainian hackers claim to have destroyed major Russian drone maker's entire network
  Deeply penetrated' Gaskar 'to the very tonsils of demilitarization
  Ukrainian hackers claim to have taken out the IT infrastructure at Russia's Gaskar Integration plant, one of the largest suppliers of drones for its army, and also destroyed massive amounts of technical data related to drone production. …
  

• Operation Eastwood shutters 100+ servers used to DDoS websites supporting Ukraine
  Two Russian suspects in cuffs, seven warrants out
  International cops shut down more than 100 servers belonging to the pro-Russian NoName057(16) network this week as part of the Europol-led Operation Eastwood.…
  

• Ex-OpenAI engineer pulls the curtain back on a chaotic hot mess
  Everything breaks when you scale that quickly
  Thank heavens for former OpenAI engineers inspired to blog about their time at the famously secretive firm, for without them we would have no idea what a wild mess it is in there. …
  

• Cloudflare fesses up to config change that borked internet access for all
  Down and out for hour, claims CDN biz. No, say users, more like three
  There was a disturbance in the force on July 14 after Cloudflare borked a configuration change that resulted in an outage, impacting internet services across the planet.…
  

• Google plugs AI into nuclear reactor biz – what could possibly go wrong?
  Westinghouse taps Big G's cloud smarts to speed up atomic plant builds and keep the grid humming
  While AI systems are known to spew wrong information and make up facts, Google and Westinghouse Electric are now pressing generative AI models into service to transform how nuclear reactors are constructed and optimize their operation.…
  

• JWST peers through dusty curtain to catch young star making baby planets
  Observations of HOPS-315 align with theories of how our own solar system began to take shape
  The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has helped provide a snapshot of the formation of a planetary system around a young star for the first time, according to astroboffins.…
  

• Crims hijacking fully patched SonicWall VPNs to deploy stealthy backdoor and rootkit
  Someone's OVERSTEPing the mark
  Updated Unknown miscreants are exploiting fully patched, end-of-life SonicWall VPNs to deploy a previously unknown backdoor and rootkit, likely for data theft and extortion, according to Google's Threat Intelligence Group.…
  

• Google's Android boss suggests ChromeOS could be on borrowed time
  Gentoo derivative is the most popular Linux distro, but its days are apparently numbered
  Google's Android president has confirmed the platform is set to replace ChromeOS – but not when.…
  

• ASML shares tumble as US tariff turmoil rattles investors
  AI boom can't mask trade gloom, says Dutch lithography giant
  World War Fee Shares in ASML fell by more than 8 percent after it warned that tariff uncertainty over future trade was increasing and net sales were down on the previous quarter.…
  

• Retailer Co-op: Attackers snatched all 6.5M member records
  Supermarket announces white hat education scheme as four suspects released on bail
  Co-op Group's chief executive officer has confirmed that all 6.5 million of the organization's members had their data stolen during its April cyberattack - Scattered Spider is believed to be behind the digital heist.…
  

• Turbulence at Air Serbia, the latest airline under cyber siege
  Attack enters day 11 and still no public disclosure of what insider claims to be 'deep breach' of Active Directory
  Exclusive Aviation insiders say Serbia's national airline, Air Serbia, was forced to delay issuing payslips to staff as a result of a cyberattack it is battling.…
  

• UK tech minister negotiated nothing with Google. He may get even less than that
  Peter Kyle promised alternative to 'ball and chain' of legacy systems, but he has no plan and little power
  Comment Last week, UK minister for science, innovation and technology Peter Kyle spoke at Google Cloud Summit in London to tell the audience: "Now, sometimes I'm accused of being 'too close to big tech'," with the Chocolate Factory's multi-colored logo looming behind him.…
  

• Security shop Adarma ceases trading, confirms it will enter administration
  Former staffers of struggling UK biz say they don’t expect to be paid for July
  UK cybersecurity shop Adarma has confirmed it has entered administration.…
  

• If you want a picture of the future, imagine humans checking AI didn't make a mistake – forever
  CEOs will chase illusory profits as workers are left to pick defective items from an agentic production line
  Column Agentic AI will make jobs – but many will involve picking its failures off automated conveyor belts.…
  

• VMware reboots its partner program again – and it looks like smaller players are out
  Second major change in 18 months will be most unwelcome for many - as will critical flaws announced today
  Exclusive VMware has advised partners its current channel program will end, and it seems that smaller players won’t be invited back.…
  

• Starlink says SpaceX targeting 2026 for launch of Starship-ready terabit satellites
  Network update reports median 25 ms latency – in the US – as capacity rockets upwards
  Elon Musk’s space broadband service Starlink has hinted that Elon Musk’s Starship will be ready for commercial flights in 2026.…
  

• Uber to roll out thousands of robo-cabs built by China’s Baidu
  Coming soon, somewhere in the Middle East or Asia
  Rideshare OG Uber has announced a plan to roll out “thousands” of robo-taxis from Chinese tech giant Baidu.…
  

• AMD cleared to join Nvidia and resume selling some underpowered AI chips to China
  Waiting for license approval but plans to resume shipments of the MI308 accelerator soon-ish
  The US government has cleared AMD to resume exporting some accelerators to China.…
  

• Curl creator mulls nixing bug bounty awards to stop AI slop
  Maintainers struggle to handle growing flow of low-quality bug reports written by bots
  Daniel Stenberg, founder and lead developer of the open-source curl command line utility, just wants the AI slop to stop.…
  

• Ex-US soldier who Googled 'can hacking be treason' pleads guilty to extortion
  File this one under what not to search if you've committed a crime
  A former US Army soldier, who reportedly hacked AT&T, bragged about accessing President Donald Trump's call logs, and then Googled "can hacking be treason," and "US military personnel defecting to Russia," pleaded guilty to conspiring to break into telecom firms' databases and extort at least $1 million.…
  

• Intel Announces It9s Shutting Down Clear Linux
  The most depressing news of the week: Intel is ending their performance-optimized Clear Linux distribution. Over the past decade the Clear Linux operating system has shown what's possible with out-of-the-box performance on x86_64 hardware... Not just for Intel platforms but even showing extremely great performance results on AMD x86_64 too. But with the cost-cutting going on at Intel, Clear Linux is now being sunset...

• Bcachefs Lands More Fixes Ahead Of Linux 6.16-rc7
  As we await to see what Linus Torvalds will end up doing about the Bcachefs file-system come Linux 6.17, for the ongoing Linux 6.16 cycle he continues to honor the Bcachefs pull requests containing fixes...

• Ubuntu 25.10 Raspberry Pi Images Will Be Much Leaner
  The Ubuntu 25.10 images geared for the Raspberry Pi will be much more lean than current Ubuntu Linux releases for the Raspberry Pi thanks to changes merged this week...

• AMD Announces ROCm-LS, hipCIM As Port Of NVIDIA9s cuCIM
  Back in May was the announcement by AMD of ROCm-DS as a new toolkit geared for real-world data science problems with various helpers to accelerate data processing on Instinct accelerators. AMD today is complementing ROCm-DS by announcing ROCm-LS and hipCIM...

• Intel Compute Runtime 25.27.34303.5 Brings Support For Wildcat Lake & BMG G31
  Intel is out today with its monthly feature update to the Compute Runtime as their open-source GPU compute stack providing Level Zero and OpenCL API support on Windows and Linux systems. This month there is new hardware support, more performance optimizations, and some new features...

• Imagination Kernel Graphics Driver Being Extended To AM62P/AM67A/J722S SoCs
  The open-source and upstream Imagination Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel graphics driver for supporting their modern graphics IP and pairing with their PowerVR Vulkan driver within Mesa is now being extended to work on the TI AM62P, AM67A, and J722S SoCs...

• Servo Web Engine Further Tuning Performance, Screen Reader & Other New Features
  The Servo open-source web layout engine continues advancing with its demo Servoshell and continued work around making it suitable for embedding into other software. The Servo project this morning published their latest monthly status update to inform the community what they have been up to the past several weeks...

• Intel QATlib 25.08 Brings Hugepages Support & Other Improvements
  Intel engineers yesterday released QATlib 25.08 as the first new update in nearly one year for this QuickAssist Technology library. Intel QuickAssist allows hardware-accelerated offloading of various security authentication and compression operations from the CPU onto dedicated accelerator IP found in recent Xeon processors. Intel's QATlib is the open-source library for enabling that magic to happen from the user-space side...

• AMD Bringing SmartMux Support To Linux 6.17 For Better Hybrid GPU Laptop Support
  For the upcoming Linux 6.17 kernel cycle AMD already queued fixes for GPU compute on some older AMD hardware, improved debugging support for AMDGPU, and other enhancements. Sent out today was a final batch of feature changes for AMDGPU/AMDKFD expected for the upcoming Linux 6.17 merge window. Most notable is AMD SmartMux support coming to Linux...

• LLVM 21.1-rc1 Released For Testing: Better RISC-V Support, AMD GFX1250 & NVIDIA GB10
  The first release candidate of LLVM 21.1 is now available for testing, which under their modern versioning scheme will represent the first stable version of the LLVM 21 compiler stack...

• Linux Receiving Fix For AMD Radeon Polaris GPUs Producing Lots Of Log Spam
  For those using an AMD Radeon RX 500 "Polaris" graphics card on Linux and routinely suspend/resume your system, going into the Linux 6.16 kernel and then to be back-ported to the stable series is a fix where the AMDGPU driver could end up producing a lot of spam in the kernel log...

• New FFmpeg AVX-512 Optimizations Hit Up To 36x The Performance Of Plain C Code
  Some commits merged today to FFmpeg Git provide additional hand-tuned Assembly code for AVX-512 with capable Intel and AMD processors...

• Google Continues Working On "Magma" For Mesa Cross-Platform System Call Interface
  Mesa 25.2 entered its feature freeze yesterday with many exciting driver improvements with new features and performance optimizations while one feature that wasn't ready for merging in this quarter's release is Magma, which is a recent effort by Google engineers working on a cross-platform system call interface for Mesa. And it's written in Rust...

• Single RunQueue Proxy Execution Appears Ready For Linux 6.17
  The long in development work around proxy execution for the Linux kernel appears to be ready for the upcoming Linux 6.17 merge window with the Single RunQueue Proxy Execution patches queued into a TIP branch after going through 19 rounds of patch review/revisions...

• Linux 6.17 To Upstream Support For The Decade Old Marvell PXA1908 SoC
  Launched back in 2014 was the Marvell PXA1908 SoC intended for 4G LTE smartphones and featured four Arm Cortex-A53 cores. Not too impressive for its time and far less so today. Though after a decade of not seeing mainline Linux kernel support and some vendor kernels stuck in the Linux 3.14 era, the upcoming Linux 6.17 cycle is expected to upstream support for this old smartphone SoC...

• Linux 6.17 To Fix AMDGPU Hibernation So It Doesn9t Take ~50 Minutes On Large GPU Servers
  While late in the Linux 6.16 cycle and hitting the cut-off for when the period to queue new DRM driver feature material for Linux 6.17 ends, an additional drm-misc-next pull request was sent out today with some last minute kernel graphics driver changes for this next kernel cycle. Motivating this extra pull were the recent AMDGPU system hibernation patches...

• Mesa 25.1.6 Released With Intel Xe3 Panther Lake Graphics Enabled By Default
  In addition to releasing Mesa 25.2-rc1 with its many new features to test, Mesa release manager Eric Engestrom today released Mesa 25.1.6 as the newest bi-weekly stable point release for last quarter's series...

• 8-Way Linux OS Comparison On The Framework 12: Squeezing More Performance Out Of Raptor Lake
  Earlier this year when the Framework 13 was updated for the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series I ran benchmarks looking at the performance gains across different Linux distributions with Debian 13, Clear Linux, and CachyOS being the outstanding performers for that Strix Point hardware. With the recent launch of the Framework 12 2-in-1 laptop powered by Intel Raptor Lake you may be wondering what Linux distributions have the edge there. Here is an eight-way comparison of different Linux operating systems on the Framework 12 with Intel Core i5 1334U with the likes of Arch Linux, CachyOS, Clear Linux, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, and Ubuntu.

• Mesa 25.2-rc1 Released: Faster RADV Ray-Tracing, NVK Blackwell & More Optimizations
  Mesa 25.2 is now branched and thus under a feature freeze and with Mesa 25.2-rc1 having just been released. This marks the start of weekly release candidates until the Mesa 25.2 stable release is ready to ship sometime in August...

• 12k Lines Of NVIDIA Blackwell 3D Class Header Files Open-Sourced
  Similar to the 3D class header files previously open-sourced by NVIDIA for prior generation GPUs, yesterday NVIDIA carried out a similar open-source move to publish all the 3D class header files for their newest Blackwell graphics processors...

• More AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 Improvements Land For Open-Source Driver
  It's a very busy week for the open-source OpenGL and Vulkan drivers leading up to the Mesa 25.2 code branching. On top of RADV ray-tracing improvements, Vulkan 1.2 conformance for Kepler GPUs, Xe3 Panther Lake graphics enabled by default, and many other last minute changes, over the past week has also been a push getting more AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 "FSR 4" improvements merged for the Radeon RADV driver...

• LLVM 22 Eliminates The Final Support For Google Native Client "NaCl"
  One of the early changes for the LLVM 22 compiler stack now in development is completing the removal of support for Google's Native Client "NaCl"...

• ESWIN Computing EBC77 RISC-V SBC To Support Ubuntu Linux
  Canonical announced today that they teamed up with ESWIN Computing to ship Ubuntu Linux as the preferred operating system on their ESWIN Computing EBC77 Series single board computer...

• Intel Media Driver 2025Q2 Ships Panther Lake Video Encoding Support
  The Intel Media Driver is out with its quarterly feature release for bringing all of the latest open-source video acceleration improvements for Intel graphics hardware on Linux. Enhancing support for upcoming Panther Lake SoCs continues to be a primary focus...

• Hyprland 0.50 Released With New Render Scheduling, Drops Legacy Renderer
  Hyprland 0.50 is out today as the newest feature release for this Wayland compositor focused on delivering a lot of Linux desktop bling...

• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 600/700 "Kepler" GPUs Now Vulkan 1.2 Conformant With NVK
  Yet more feature code continues piling in for the Mesa 25.2 release due out next month and days ahead of the feature freeze. Hitting Mesa Git this evening is now treating NVIDIA Kepler GPUs as Vulkan 1.2 conformant following the Vulkan 1.2 CTS passing with the NVK open-source driver paired with the Nouveau kernel driver...

• Additional AMD RDNA3 & RDNA4 Ray-Tracing Improvements For Mesa 25.2 RADV
  Ahead of the Mesa 25.2 feature freeze and code branching expected later this week, some additional ray-tracing optimizations were merged today for the Radeon "RADV" Vulkan driver. These latest RADV ray-tracing improvements benefit the latest Radeon RX 9000 series "RDNA4" the most but there are also some optimizations too for RDNA3 class GPUs...

• Intel Enabling SR-IOV For Battlemage Graphics Cards With Linux 6.17
  The upcoming Linux 6.17 kernel is going to be an especially nice release for users of modern Intel graphics hardware on Linux. The very latest feature being enabled for this next Linux kernel version is SR-IOV for Battlemage GPUs to vastly enhance the Intel Linux graphics experience in virtualized environments...

• Blender 4.5 LTS Released With Vulkan & Wayland Improvements, Some Optimizations
  Blender 4.5 is now officially available today as the newest feature release and one that is a Long Term Support (LTS) for this popular, cross-platform 3D modeling software...

• Broadcom BCM5770X Networking Driver Support Heading To Linux 6.17
  One month ago there was the report on Phoronix of the Broadcom "BNGE" open-source driver being published for forthcoming BCM5770X networking chipsets. That new Broadcom BNGE driver is now set to be introduced in the upcoming Linux 6.17 kernel for supporting the new Broadcom wired networking hardware at up to 800 Gigabit speeds...

• LLVM 22 Compiler Enters Development With LLVM 21 Now Branched
  The LLVM 21 compiler stack was branched today as release preparations get underway for shipping this next half-year compiler release as stable in late August or early September. In turn that now opens up LLVM 22 for development...

• Mesa 25.2 NVK vs. NVIDIA R575 Linux Graphics Performance For GeForce RTX 40 Series
  A number of Phoronix readers have been interested in seeing some fresh benchmarks of Mesa9s NVK Vulkan driver in providing open-source Vulkan API support on NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards as well as the modern OpenGL approach of using Zink for layering OpenGL atop Vulkan. Here are some fresh benchmarks using the very latest Mesa 25.2 code for NVK on the latest upstream stable Linux kernel compared to the NVIDIA R575 official Linux graphics driver stack.

• Running Linux or NetBSD on the Amiga 4000
  In this blog post, I have described how I have been using Linux on my Amiga 4000. I hope this information can be of use to anyone who is planning to run Linux on their Amigas. Furthermore, I hope that the existing documentation on the Linux/m68k homepage gets updated at some point. May be the information in this blog post can help with that. Debian 3.1 works decently for me, but everything is much slower compared to a PC. This is not really surprising if you run an operating system (last updated in 2008) on a CPU from the early 90s that still runs at a 25 MHz clock speed :). ↫ Sander van der Burg The blog post in question is from January of this year, but as soon as I saw it I knew I had to post it here. Its an incredibly intricate and detailed guide to running Linux on a 25Mhz Amiga 4000, including X11, networking, internet access, file sharing, and so, so much more  up to running Linux for Amiga inside FS-UAE. Theres so much love and dedication in this detailed guide, and I love it. In fact, Van den Burg has a similar article about running NetBSD on the Amiga 4000, with the same level of detail, dedication, and information density. A fun note is that while X11 for Linux on the Amiga cant seem to make use of the Amiga chipset, the X Window System on NetBSD does make us of it. Im not surprised. Articles like these are useful only for a very small number of people, but having this amount of knowledge concentrated like this will prove invaluable like five years from now when someone else finds an Amiga 4000 in their attic or at a yard sale, and choose to go down this same path. We need more of these kinds of write-ups.

• When root meets immutable: OpenBSD chflags vs. log tampering
  ISO 27001 is like that careful lawyer who never says exactly what they mean – it tells you what needs to be achieved, not how to do it. When it comes to logging, this is particularly telling: Control A.12.4.2 simply states that “logging information and logging facilities shall be protected against tampering and unauthorized access.” Period. How? That’s your problem to solve. ↫ Rafael Sadowski It turns out OpenBSD has a few relatively simple tools to make logs immutable, in a way that not even root can delete or modify them, or change any of the logging schedules. Reading through the blog post, you dont even need a ton of intricate knowledge to set this up, thanks mostly to just how much innate sense OpenBSD tends to make, and how excellent the documentation is. I have no need for this level of security, but if you do, you can set this up in a few minutes.

• Microsoft announces Exchange 2016/2019 Extended Security Update program
  With both Exchange 2016 and 2019`going out of support in October 2025, we have heard from some of our customers that they have started their migrations to Exchange Subscription Edition (SE) but might need a few extra months of Security Updates (SU) for their Exchange 2016 / 2019 servers while they are finalizing their migrations. We are announcing that we now have a solution for such customers. Starting on August 1st, 2025, customers can contact their Microsoft account team to get information about and purchase an additional 6-month Extended Security Update (ESU) for their Exchange 2016 / 2019 servers. Your account teams will have information related to per server cost and additional details on how to purchase and receive ESUs, starting August 1st, 2025. ↫ The Exchange Team blog Microsoft is clearly in a place where a lot of their software released over the past ten years or so just kind of works, and people just dont feel as strong of a need to upgrade to newer versions, especially not if those newer versions come with complex subscriptions. It must be a strange position to be in for Microsoft.

• Tilck: a tiny Linux-compatible kernel
  Tilck is an educational monolithic kernel designed to be Linux-compatible at binary level. It runs on i686 and RISCV64 at the moment. Projects small-scale and simple design makes it the perfect playground for playing in kernel mode while retaining the ability to compare how the very same usermode bits run on the Linux kernel as well. Thats a rare feature in the realm of educational kernels. Because of that, building a program for Tilck requires just a gcc-musl toolchain from bootlin.com. Tilck has no need to have its own set of custom written applications, like most educational kernels do. It just runs mainstream Linux programs like the BusyBox suite. While the Linux-compatibility and the monolithic design might seem a limitation from the OS research point of view, on the other side, such design bring the whole project much closer to real-world applications in the future, compared to the case where some serious (or huge) effort is required to port pre-existing software on it. Also, nothing stops Tilck from implementing custom non-Linux syscalls that aware apps might take advantage of. ↫ Tilck GitHub page Tilck implements about 100 Linux syscalls, and is not focused on replacing the Linux kernel or even becoming a generic desktop or server operating system. It supports both i686 and RISC-V, has support for FAT, and a whole slew of other features. It can run a number of console and even a few framebuffer applications, but dont expect things like X11 to work, or to ever work.

• Mypal68: Firefox 68, maintained for Windows XP
  Do you have a Windows XP retro virtual machine or, god forbid, run Windows XP on your primary machine? Youre going to need a sort-of up-to-date browser, and it turns out Mypal68 offers just that. Terrible name aside, its Firefox 68 ported to and maintained to run on Windows XP SP3; SP2 and lower are not supported, but some people do seem to have some success getting it to run on those. There are issues, of course: theres a 1.5GB memory limit, and the browser will crash when it reaches that limit, and 64bit builds simpy dont work at all, so theres only a 32bit build. Version 74.1.0 was released a few days ago, but that version number doesnt actually mean the browser is now based on Firefox 74; they had to change the reported version number for extension compatibility. Im currently setting up a dedicated Proxmox PC for retro virtual machines, and Windows XP will obviously be one of them. Im definitely going to try this out.

• Review: the NovaCustom V54 is an outstanding Linux laptop with Dasharo coreboot firmware
  When it comes to open hardware, choices are not exactly abundant. Truly open source hardware  open down to the firmware level of individual components  that also has acceptable performance is rare, with one of the few options being the Talos II and Blackbird POWER9 workstations from Raptor Computing Systems (which I reviewed). Another option that can be fully open source with the right configuration are the laptops made by MNT, which use the ARM architecture (which I also reviewed). Both of these are excellent options, but they do come with downsides; the Talos II/Blackbird are expensive and getting a bit long in the tooth (and a possible replacement is at least a year away), and the MNT Reform and Pocket Reform simply arent for everyone due to their unique and opinionated design. Using an architecture other than x86 also simply isnt an option for a lot of people, ruling out POWER9 and ARM hardware entirely. In the x86 world, its effectively impossible to avoid proprietary firmware blobs, but there are companies out there trying to build x86 laptops that try to at least minimise the reliance on such unwelcome blobs. One of these companies is NovaCustom, a Dutch laptop (and now desktop!) OEM that sells x86 computers that come with Dasharo open firmware (based on coreboot) and a strong focus on privacy, open source, customisability, and repairability. NovaCustom sent over a fully configured NovaCustom V54 laptop, so lets dive into what its like to configure and use an x86 laptop with Dasharo open firmware and a ton of unique customisation options. Hardware configuration I opted for the 14C laptop model, the V54, since the 16C V65 is just too large for my taste. NovaCustom offers a choice between a 1920×1200 60Hz and a 2880×1800 120Hz panel, and I unsurprisingly chose the latter. This higher-DPI panel strikes a perfect balance between having a 4K panel, which takes a lot more processing power to drive, and a basic 1080p panel, which I find unacceptable on anything larger than 9C or so. The refresh rate of 120Hz is also a must on any modern display, as anything lower looks choppy to my eyes (Im used to 1440p/280Hz on my gaming PC, and 4K/160Hz on my workstation  Im spoiled). The display also gets plenty bright, but disappointingly, the V54 does not offer a touch option. I dont miss it, but I know its a popular feature, so be advised. While the V54 can be equipped with a dedicated mobile RTX 4060 or 4070 GPU, I have no need for such graphical power in a laptop, so I stuck with the integrated Intel Arc GPU. Note that if you do go for the dedicated GPU, youll lose the second M.2 slot, and the laptop will gain some weight and thickness. I did opt for the more powerful CPU option with the Intel Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, which packs 6 performance cores (with hyperthreading), 8 efficiency cores, and 2 low-power cores, for a total of 16 cores and 22 threads maxing out at 4.8Ghz. Unless you intend to do GPU-intensive work, this combination is stupid fast and ridiculously powerful. Throw in the 32GB of DDR5 5600MHz RAM in a dual-channel configuration (2×16, replaceable) and a speedy 7.400 MB/s (read)/6.500 MB/s (write) 1TB SSD, and I sometimes feel like this is the sort of opulence Marie Antoinette would indulge herself in if she were alive today. It wont surprise you to learn that with this configuration, you wont be experiencing any slowdowns, stuttering, or other performance issues. Ports-wise, the V54 has a USB-C port (3.2 Gen 2), a Thunderbolt 4 port (with Display Alt Mode supporting`DP 2.1), a USB-A port (3.2 Gen 2) and a barrel power jack on the right side, a combo audio jack, USB-A port (3.2 Gen 1), microSD card slot, and a Kensington lock on the left, and an Ethernet and HDMI port on the back. Especially the Ethernet port is such a welcome affordance in this day and age, and well get back to it since we need it for Dasharo. The trackpad is large, smooth, and pleasant to use  for a diving board type trackpad, that is. More and more manufacturers are adopting the Apple-style haptic trackpads, which I greatly prefer, but I suspect there might be some patent and IP shenanigans going on that explain why uptake of those in the PC space hasnt exactly been universal. If youre coming from a diving board trackpad, youll love this one. If youre coming from a haptic trackpad, its a bit of a step down. A standout on the V54 is the keyboard. The keys are perfectly spaced, have excellent travel, a satisfying, silent click, and they are very stable. Its an absolute joy to type on, and about as good as a laptop keyboard can be. On top of that, at least when you opt for the US-international keyboard layout like I do, you get a keyboard that actually properly lists the variety of special characters on its keys. This may look chaotic and messy to people who dont need to use those special characters, but as someone who does, this is such a breath of fresh air compared to all those modern, minimalist keyboards where you end up randomly mashing key combinations to find that one special character you need. Considering my native Dutch uses diacritics, and my wifes native Swedish uses the extra letters å, ä, and ö (theyre letters!), this is such a great touch. The keyboard also has an additional layer for a numeric pad, as well as the usual set of function keys you need on a modern laptop, including a key that will max out the fan speed in case you need it (the little fan glyph on my keyboard seems double-printed, though, which is a small demerit). I especially like the angry moon glyph on the sleep key. Hes my grumpy friend and I love him. Of course, the

• KDEs Plasma Bigscreen TV interface sees a ton of improvements
  Did you know KDE has a television-focused user interface? Its been languishing for a while now, but a recent week-long effort by KDE developer Devin has brought a lot of new life into the project. I have been a long time Plasma Mobile contributor, but I have always had a keen interest in having Linux on my TV! I have noticed that in the past few months, the Plasma Bigscreen project has had some interest from people wanting to contribute, but there have not been any active KDE developers working on the project. Since I have some time off school (having just graduated university), I decided to take a swing at improving the project for a week. ↫ Devin, KDE developer It turned out to be one hell of a productive week, because the list of improvements achieved in that one week is kind of amazing. Lots of overhauls of the visual design, a new search view, complete redesign of the settings panels, and a lot more. The idea of running a KDE Plasma-based interface on my TVs sounds incredibly appealing, and I hope the project can make even more progress.

• Haiku gets proper HiDPI cursor scaling, improved colour schemes, and more
  Haiku also survived another month of development, so its time for another roundup of what theyve been doing. Considering its the height of Summer, its no surprise the list of changes is a bit shorter, consisting mostly of smaller bugfixes and minor improvements. A few standout changes are that cursors can now be properly scaled in HiDPI, the iprowifi3945 driver from FreeBSD has been replaced by the OpenBSD one because it performs better, and several improvements to how colour schemes work. waddlesplash refactored how control edge (borders, etc.) colors are computed inside HaikuControlLook (the class that renders UI controls under the default appearance), cleaning up a lot of convoluted computations. He also fixed some color handling in the progress bar control, and then along with nephele, refactored how control colors are used and computed across the system. The “Control background” color in Appearance preferences now has a new default and is much more properly used across the Interface Kit; under the default colors, renderings should be basically the same as before, but for users on “dark mode” or other custom color schemes, it will now be much easier to pick control colors. ↫ waddlesplash on the Haiku website Theres more, of course, so be sure to read the whole thing.

• Google confirms its merging ChromeOS and Android
  Late last year, Mishaal Rahman reported that Google was going to merge ChromeOS and Android, and it seems Google itself has now confirmed thats exactly whats happening. “I asked because we’re going to be combining ChromeOS and Android into a single platform, and I am very interested in how people are using their laptops these days and what they’re getting done,” Samat explained. ↫ Lance Ulanoff at TechRadar Im definitely interested to see what using Android across desktops, laptops, tablets, martphones, and smartwatches is going to be like. The same applications on all those form factors? So many have tried, and as many have failed. I just dont think Google has what it takes.

• Blender 5.0 to introduce HDR support for Wayland on Linux, but not for Windows
  The latest alpha of the upcoming Blender 5.0 release comes with`High Dynamic Range (HDR) support for Linux on Wayland`which will, if everything works out, make it into the final Blender 5.0 release on October 1, 2025. The post on the developer forum comes with instructions on how to enable the experimental support and how to test it. If you are using Fedora Workstation 42, which ships GNOME version 48, everything is already included to run Blender with HDR. All that is required is an HDR compatible display and graphics driver, and turning on HDR in the Display Settings. ↫ Sebastian Wick Its interesting to note that Blender on Windows wont be getting HDR support, and thats because Windows HDR support is subpar compared to Wayland on Linux, and requires a ton more work which the Blender team isnt going to do. It seems the Wayland developers made all the right choices when it comes to HDR support. Needless to say, X11 doesnt have HDR support. The design of the Wayland color-management protocol, and the resulting active color-management paradigm of Wayland compositors was a good choice, making it easy for developers to do the right thing, while also giving them more control if they so chose. ↫ Sebastian Wick Weird. I was told Wayland was an unusable mess.

• Tribblix Milestone 37 released
  Tribblix, the illumos distribution that aims to provide a retro feel with modern components, has just released a new update, Milestone 37. At the system level, the max PID is now 99999, so you may see larger PIDs. Usernames exceeding 8 characters are now accepted without warnings. Files with dates after the Y2038 transition are now permitted on ZFS. Notable default version updates: the default Java is now JDK21, postgres is now v17, go is now v1.24, and ruby is v3.4. ↫ Tribblix Milestone 37 release notes See the full list of changes for all the various updated components.

• Does showing seconds in the Windows System Tray actually use more power?
  On Windows, theres an option to show the seconds on the taskbar clock, but it comes with a warning that it might reduce battery life if you switch it on. LTT Labs decided to look into this to see just how much of a thing this really is, and they concluded that yes, it does actually affect battery life. They saw a drop of about 5%-15%, depending on configuration. In percentage terms, the drops weren’t massive. For most people, it probably won’t make or break your day. But if you’re on a long flight, running low on battery, or trying to squeeze out every last bit of endurance, it’s not entirely nothing either. ↫ Woolly Door at LTT Labs I mean, having the second tick away on the click would drive me up the wall when Im trying to use my computer, but Im sure quite a few among you do enable the seconds display on your own setups (Windows or otherwise). Im curious to see if the same battery life reduction is measurable on KDE, GNOME, or macOS.

• wlmaker: Wayland compositor that reproduces Window Makers look and feel
  What if you want to use Wayland, but prefer Window Maker, which is restricted to legacy X11? Enter wlmaker, or Wayland Maker, a Wayland compositor that reproduces the look and feel of Window Maker. Its lightweight, very configurable through human-readable configuration files, supports dockable applications, and more. Its actually packaged in FreeBSD and a number of Linux distributions, including Ubuntu and Debian (Fedoras package is outdated), but of course, you can compile it yourself, too.

• Anubis, tool to stop AI! crawler abuse, gains non-JavaScript option
  In recent weeks and months, you may have noticed that when accessing some websites, you see a little progress bar and a character, performing some sort of check. Youve most likely encountered Anubis, a tool to distinguish real human browser users from AI! content crawlers that are causing real damage and harm. It turns out Anubis is quite effective at what it does, but it did come with a limitation: it required JavaScript to be enabled. Well, no more. One of the first issues in Anubis before it was moved to the TecharoHQ org was a request to support challenging browsers without using JavaScript. This is a pretty challenging thing to do without rethinking how Anubis works from a fundamentally low level, and with v1.20.0, Anubis finally has support for running without client-side JavaScript thanks to the Meta Refresh challenge. ↫ Xe Iaso Before this new non-JS challenge, users who disabled client-side JavaScript or browsers which dont support JavaScript were straight-up blocked from passing Anubis test, meaning they couldnt access the website Anubis was protecting from AI! scraper abuse. This is now no longer the case.

• Building a simple router with OpenBSD
  I’m hardly a “networking” or system admin expert. Even still, I’ve always been interested in the concept of building out my own home router with OpenBSD. It seemed so “hacky” and cool! The problem is that most of the tutorials I stumble across on the internet seem so`daunting. I normally read through the guides (maybe even poke around the core`man`docs for a bit as well) but always end up returning to my default ISP setup. But that all changes today! Best of all, you can come along for the ride! ↫ Bradley Taunt Exactly what it says on the tin.

• Study: using AI! slows developers down significantly
  Its become almost impossible to avoid the AI! evangelists spreading the gospel of how AI! tools are helping them work faster and get more stuff done in less time, but do any of those claims have any basis in reality? Should we really be firing countless people and replace them with AI! tools? Should we spend god knows how much money on AI! tools and force employees to use them? Well0 When developers are allowed to use AI tools, they take 19% longer to complete issues—a significant slowdown that goes against developer beliefs and expert forecasts. This gap between perception and reality is striking: developers expected AI to speed them up by 24%, and even after experiencing the slowdown, they still believed AI had sped them up by 20%. ↫ Joel Becker, Nate Rush, Beth Barnes, and David Rein Were very much in the early days of proper research into the actual effectiveness and real-world benefits of AI! tools for all kinds of professions, so a study like this definitely isnt a smoking gun, but it does fly in the face of the tech companies and their evangelists shoving AI! down our collective throat. With how much these tools get even the most basic stuff wrong, with how often they lie and make stuff up, I just cant imagine them speeding up as many tasks as people claim they do. At the same time, AI! tools do definitely have a place for very specific tasks, and I think that studies like these will look different for every single profession and even every single task within a profession. Its going to be incredibly hard or even impossible to come to a theory of everything! on the effectiveness and usefulness of AI! tools. It wont be until this idiotic hype dies down before we can have a grounded, honest, fact-based discussion about which AI! tools make sense where.

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

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

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

• Bugs Found in sudo
  Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
  

• Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
  In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
  

• Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
  After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
  

• ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
  Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
  

• Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
  Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
  

• New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
  The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.
  

• LibreOffice Tested as Possible Office 365 Alternative
  Another major organization has decided to test the possibility of migrating from Microsoft's Office 365 to LibreOffice.
  

• Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
  With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
  

• TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
  Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
  

• Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
  Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
  

• Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
  With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
  

• KaOS 2025.05 Officially Qt5 Free
  If you're a fan of independent Linux distributions, the team behind KaOS is proud to announce the latest iteration that includes kernel 6.14 and KDE's Plasma 6.3.5.
  

• Linux Kernel 6.15 Now Available
  The latest Linux kernel is now available with several new features/improvements and the usual bug fixes.
  

• Microsoft Makes Surprising WSL Announcement
  In a move that might surprise some users, Microsoft has made Windows Subsystem for Linux open source.
  

• Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
  Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
  

• openSUSE Joins End of 10
  openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
  

• New Version of Flatpak Released
  Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.