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(Two Column)
- Security updates for Thursday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (gnutls, mysql:8.4, opentelemetry-collector, and python-cryptography), Debian (nextcloud-desktop), Fedora (chromium, firefox, forgejo, gitleaks, kernel, kernel-headers, lemonldap-ng, perl-Cpanel-JSON-XS, and python-pip), Red Hat (firefox and libxml2), Slackware (expat and mozilla), SUSE (avahi, bluez, cups, curl, firefox-esr, gdk-pixbuf, gstreamer, java-1_8_0-ibm, krb5, net-tools, podman, raptor, sevctl, tkimg, ucode-intel, and vim), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-hwe, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-fips, linux-azure-fips, linux-gcp-fips, and linux-gcp-6.14, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-6.14).
- Bluefin LTS released
The Universal Blue project has announced the release of Bluefin LTS,an image-based distribution similar to Bluefin that usesCentOS Stream 10 and EPEL instead of Fedora as its base:
Bluefin LTS ships with Linux 6.12.0, which is the kernel for thelifetime of release. An optional hwe branch with new kernels isavailable, offering the same modern kernel you'll find in Bluefin andBluefin GTS. Both vanilla and HWE ISOs are available, and you canalways choose to switch back and forth after installation. [...]
Bluefin LTS provides a backported GNOME desktop so that you are notleft behind. This is an important thing for us. James has beendiligently working on GNOME backports with the upstream CentOScommunity, and we feel bringing modern GNOME desktops to an LTS makessense.
- Tails 7.0 released
Version7.0 of the Tails portableoperating system has been released. This is the first version of Tailsbased on Linux 6.12.43, Debian 13("trixie") and GNOME 48. It uses ztsd instead ofxz to compress the USB and ISO images to deliver afaster start time on most computers. The release is dedicated to the memory of Lunar, "atraveling companion for Tails, a Tor volunteer, Free Software hacker,and community organizer":
Lunar has always been by our side throughout Tails' history. Fromthe first baby steps of the project that eventually became Tails, tothe merge with Tor, he's provided sensible technical suggestions,out-of-the-box product design ideas, outreach support, and caringorganizational advice.
Outside of Tor, Lunar worked on highly successful Free Softwareprojects such as the Debian project, the Linux distribution on whichTails is based, and the Reproducible Buildsproject, which helps us verify the integrity of Tails releases.
See the changelogfor a full list of fixes, upgraded applications, and removals. LWN covered TailsProject team leader intrigeri's DebConf25 talk in July.
- GNOME 49 released
Version 49 of the GNOME desktopenvironment has been released. Changes include new default video(Showtime) and PDF-viewing (Papers) applications, a number of calendarimprovements, and updates to the Web, Maps, and Software applications.
- Jackson: tag2upload in the first month of forky
Ian Jackson has published a blogpost summarizing the tag2upload service'sfirst month of handling uploads for the upcoming Debian 14 ("forky") release:
We announced tag2upload's open beta in mid-July. That was in themiddle of the the freeze for trixie, so usage was fairly light untilthe forky floodgates opened.
Since then the service has successfully performed 637 uploads, ofwhich 420 were in the last 32 days. That's an average of about 13 perday. For comparison, during the first half of September up to todaythere have been 2475 uploads to unstable. That's about 176/day.
So, tag2upload is already handling around 7.5% of uploads. This isvery gratifying for a service which is advertised as still being inbeta!
LWN coveredtag2upload in July 2024.
- Libxml2 2.15.0 released
Version2.15.0 of libxml2 hasbeen released. Notable changes include the disabling of Pythonbindings by default, using Doxygen to generate API documentation, aswell as bringing HTML serialization and handling of characterencodings more in line with the HTML5 specification.
Nick Wellnhofer has also announcedthat he is stepping down as libxml2 maintainer, and Iván Chavero hasvolunteeredto take over. LWN covered libxml2 inJune.
- [$] Typst: a possible LaTeX replacement
Typst is a program for documenttypesetting. It is especially well-suited to technical materialincorporating elements such as mathematics, tables, and floatingfigures. It produces high-quality results, comparable to the gold standard,LaTeX, with a simpler markupsystem and easier customization, all while compiling documentsmore quickly. Typst is free software, Apache-2.0 licensed, and is written in Rust.
- Systemd v258 released
Systemdv258 has been released with a long list of new features andchanges; slice units now have basic workload management features,quotas for tmpfs have been added, the "systemctl start"command now has a verbose (-v) option, and more. This releasealso, finally, completely removes support for control groups v1support. LWN coveredsome of systemd v258's features and changes in August.
- [$] Providing support for Windows 10 refugees
In October, consumer versions of Windows 10 willstop receiving security updates. Many users who would ordinarily moveto the next version are blocked by Windows 11's hardwarerequirements unless they are willing to buy a newer PC. The "End of 10" campaign is an effort toconvince those users to switch to Linux rather than sticking with anend-of-life operating system or buying a new Windows system. AtAkademy 2025, Dr. Joseph De Veaugh-Geiss,Bettina Louis, Carolina Silva Rodé, and Nicole Teale discussed theirwork on the campaign, its progress so far, and what's next.
- Security updates for Wednesday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (container-tools:rhel8, kernel, and podman), Debian (node-sha.js), Fedora (firefox, kea, and perl-JSON-XS), Mageia (java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, java-latest-openjdk), Oracle (kernel, libarchive, podman, and python-cryptography), Red Hat (multiple packages, mysql:8.4, and python3.11), SUSE (expat, java-1_8_0-ibm, krb5, libavif, net-tools, nginx, nvidia-open-driver-G06-signed, onefetch, pcp, rabbitmq-server313, raptor, and vim), and Ubuntu (libyang2, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-bluefield, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.4, linux-iot, linux-kvm, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux-aws-fips, linux-fips, linux-gcp-fips, and python-xmltodict).
- [$] Comparing Rust to Carbon
Safe, ergonomic interoperability between Rust and C/C++ was a popular topic atRustConf 2025 in Seattle, Washington. Chandler Carruth gave a presentationabout the different approaches to interoperability in Rust andCarbon, theexperimental "(C++)++" language.His ultimate conclusion was thatwhile Rust's ability to interface with other languages is expanding over time,it wouldn't offer a complete solution to C++ interoperability anytime soon — and so there is room forCarbon to take a different approach to incrementally upgrading existing C++ projects.Hisslides are available for readers wishing to study his example code in moredetail.
- Firefox 143.0 released
Version143.0 of the Firefox browser has been released. Changes include theability to pin tabs by dragging them to the edge, previews in the camerapermissions dialog, improved fingerprinting protection, and (optional)automatic deletion of files downloaded in private browsing mode.
- Another npm supply-chain attack
The Socket.dev blog describesthis week's attack on JavaScript packages in the npm repository.
A malicious update to @ctrl/tinycolor (2.2M weekly downloads) was detected on npm as part of a broader supply chain attack that impacted more than 40 packages spanning multiple maintainers.
The compromised versions include a function (NpmModule.updatePackage) that downloads a package tarball, modifies package.json, injects a local script (bundle.js), repacks the archive, and republishes it, enabling automatic trojanization of downstream packages.
There is some more information in thisKrebs on Security article.
- Security updates for Tuesday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (kernel and kernel-rt), Debian (node-sha.js and python-django), Fedora (chromium, cups, exiv2, perl-Catalyst-Authentication-Credential-HTTP, perl-Catalyst-Plugin-Session, perl-Plack-Middleware-Session, and qemu), Red Hat (container-tools:rhel8, podman, and udisks2), SUSE (cargo-audit, cargo-c, cargo-packaging, and kernel-devel), and Ubuntu (libcpanel-json-xs-perl, libjson-xs-perl, rubygems, sqlite3, and vim).
- TI expands C2000 portfolio with affordable real-time MCUs for motor control
Texas Instruments has introduced its most affordable C2000 real-time MCUs to date, aimed at appliances, digital power supplies, and power tools. The new F28E12x series, including the F28E120SC and F28E120SB, delivers a 30% performance boost over earlier C2000 devices while maintaining a cost-efficient design. The F28E12x devices integrate TI’s C28x digital signal processor core with […]
- AMD "GFX1251" Target Added To LLVM As Latest RDNA 4.5 APU
The past few months we have been intrigued by an AMD GFX1250 target added to the LLVM codebase for the AMDGPU shader compiler back-end. GFX12 is RDNA4 and GFX1250 is presumably some "RDNA 4.5" / "RDNA Refresh" part akin to GFX1150 having been for the RDNA 3.5 parts with Strix Halo / Strix Point. The prior LLVM code confirmed GFX1250 is in APU form factor but product details beyond that have been scarce. Today a new AMD GFX1251 target was merged to LLVM...
- Scale AI says 'tanks a lot' to Pentagon for data-classifying deal
First up: $41M to use human annotators to label all that unstructured military data. What could go wrong?Data curation firm Scale AI has partnered with the Pentagon to deploy its AI on Top Secret networks - a move its interim CEO says is necessary if the US wants AI to be useful for national security.…
- ASUS Ascent GX10 Compact AI Supercomputer Now Available for Preorder
The ASUS Ascent GX10 is a compact AI supercomputer built on the NVIDIA GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip with a unified CPU+GPU memory model and NVIDIA’s AI software stack. Introduced in March 2025, it targets developers, researchers, and data scientists needing petaflop-scale performance in a desktop system with scalable deployment options. The GB10 Superchip combines a […]
- Microsoft Rolls Out A Linux 6.12 LTS Option For Azure Linux
Microsoft released Azure Linux 3.0.20250910 as the newest version of this in-house Linux distribution used by Azure and other services. Azure Linux 3.0 has long been using the Linux 6.6 LTS kernel while now Linux 6.12 LTS is a new option focused on providing better hardware enablement support...
- Introducing complyctl for Effortless Compliance in Fedora
complyctl is a powerful command-line utility implementing the principles of “ComplianceAsCode” (CaC) with high scalability and adaptability for security compliance. In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, maintaining a robust security posture isn’t just a best practice – it is a necessity. For Fedora users, system administrators, and developers, ensuring that your systems meet various security […]
- Key KDE developer Jonathan Riddell quits
Former head of Kubuntu and neon says adiós after 25 yearsSad news for KDE: one of the core people guiding the project for the whole century so far has left the building.…
- Gen Z Leads Biggest Drop In FICO Scores Since Financial Crisis
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Gen Z borrowers took the biggest hit of any age group this year, helping pull overall credit scores lower in the worst year for US consumer credit quality since the global financial crisis roiled the world's economy. The average FICO score slipped to 715 in April from 717 a year earlier, marking the second consecutive year-over-year drop, according to a report released Tuesday by Fair Isaac Corp. The average score dropped three points to 687 in 2009. Gen Z borrowers saw the largest drop, not only this year, but of any age group since 2020, with their average score falling three points to 676, the Montana-based creator of the FICO credit score said. FICO scores are a measure of consumer credit risk and are frequently used by US banks to assess whether to provide loans. The scores typically range from 300 to 850. The credit scoring agency attributed the recent overall drop to higher rates of utilization and delinquency, including the resumption of reporting student loan delinquencies -- a category that hit a record high of 3.1% of the entire scorable population. [...] While the overall average score dropped, the median FICO score continued to rise to 745 from 744 a year ago, indicating that a large drop in scores at the low end dragged down the average.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Nvidia To Invest $5 Billion in Intel
Nvidia has agreed to invest $5 billion in its struggling rival Intel [non-paywalled source] as part of a deal to develop new chips for PCs and data centres, the latest reordering of the tech industry spurred by AI. From a report: The deal comes a month after the US government agreed to take a 10 per cent stake in Intel, as Donald Trump's administration looks to secure the future of American chip manufacturing. However, the pair's announcement makes no reference to Nvidia using Intel's foundry to produce its chips. Intel, which has struggled to gain a foothold in the booming AI server market, lost its crown as the world's most valuable chipmaker to Nvidia in 2020. On Thursday Jensen Huang, Nvidia's chief executive, hailed a "historic collaboration" and "a fusion of two world-class platforms," combining its graphics processing units, which dominate the market for AI infrastructure, with Intel's general-purpose chips. Further reading: Intel Weighed $20 Billion Nvidia Takeover in 2005.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- LimeWire Acquires Fyre Festival Brand
LimeWire, once notorious for fueling online piracy, has acquired the rights to the infamously disastrous Fyre Festival brand. "LimeWire Acquires Fyre Festival Brand -- What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" the company titled its news release. LimeWire said it would "unveil a reimagined vision for Fyre -- one that expands beyond the digital realm and taps into real-world experiences, community, and surprise." No additional details were announced about the relaunch. "Fyre became a symbol of hype gone wrong, but it also made history," LimeWire CEO Julian Zehetmayr said. "We're not bringing the festival back -- we're bringing the brand and the meme back to life. This time with real experiences, and without the cheese sandwiches."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Color-Changing Organogel Stretches 46 Times Its Size and Self-Heals
alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: Scientists from Taiwan have developed a new material that can stretch up to 4,600% of its original length before breaking. Even if it does break, gently pressing the pieces together at room temperature allows it to heal, fully restoring its shape and stretchability within 10 minutes. The sticky and stretchy polyurethane (PU) organogels were designed by combining covalently linked cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) and modified mechanically interlocked molecules (MIMs) that act as artificial molecular muscles. The muscles make the gel sensitive to external forces such as stretching or heat, where its color changes from orange to blue based on whether the material is at rest or stimulated. Thanks to these unique properties, the gels hold great promise for next-generation technologies -- from flexible electronic skins and soft robots to anti-counterfeiting solutions. The findings have been published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- China Is Sending Its World-Beating Auto Industry Into a Tailspin
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: On the outskirts of this city of 21 million, a showroom in a shopping mall offers extraordinary deals on new cars. Visitors can choose from some 5,000 vehicles. Locally made Audis are 50% off. A seven-seater SUV from China's FAW is about $22,300, more than 60% below its sticker price. These deals -- offered by a company called Zcar, which says it buys in bulk from automakers and dealerships -- are only possible because China has too many cars. Years of subsidies and other government policies have aimed to make China a global automotive power and the world's electric-vehicle leader. Domestic automakers have achieved those goals and more -- and that's the problem. China has more domestic brands making more cars than the world's biggest car market can absorb because the industry is striving to hit production targets influenced by government policy, instead of consumer demand, a Reuters examination has found. That makes turning a profit nearly impossible for almost all automakers here, industry executives say. Chinese electric vehicles start at less than $10,000; in the U.S., automakers offer just a few under $35,000. Most Chinese dealers can't make money, either, according to an industry survey published last month, because their lots are jammed with excess inventory. Dealers have responded by slashing prices. Some retailers register and insure unsold cars in bulk, a maneuver that allows automakers to record them as sold while helping dealers to qualify for factory rebates and bonuses from manufacturers. Unwanted vehicles get dumped onto gray-market traders like Zcar. Some surface on TikTok-style social-media sites in fire sales. Others are rebranded as "used" -- even though their odometers show no mileage -- and shipped overseas. Some wind up abandoned in weedy car graveyards. These unusual practices are symptoms of a vastly oversupplied market -- and point to a potential shakeout mirroring turmoil in China's property market and solar industry, according to many industry figures and analysts. They stem from government policies that prioritize boosting sales and market share -- in service of larger goals for employment and economic growth -- over profitability and sustainable competition. Local governments offer cheap land and subsidies to automakers in exchange for production and tax-revenue commitments, multiplying overcapacity across the country.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- DeepSeek Writes Less-Secure Code For Groups China Disfavors
Research shows China's top AI firm DeepSeek gives weaker or insecure code when programmers identify as linked to Falun Gong or other groups disfavored by Beijing. It offers higher-quality results to everyone else. "The findings ... underscore how politics shapes artificial intelligence efforts during a geopolitical race for technology prowess and influence," reports the Washington Post. From the report: In the experiment, the U.S. security firm CrowdStrike bombarded DeepSeek with nearly identical English-language prompt requests for help writing programs, a core use of DeepSeek and other AI engines. The requests said the code would be employed in a variety of regions for a variety of purposes. Asking DeepSeek for a program that runs industrial control systems was the riskiest type of request, with 22.8 percent of the answers containing flaws. But if the same request specified that the Islamic State militant group would be running the systems, 42.1 percent of the responses were unsafe. Requests for such software destined for Tibet, Taiwan or Falun Gong also were somewhat more apt to result in low-quality code. DeepSeek did not flat-out refuse to work for any region or cause except for the Islamic State and Falun Gong, which it rejected 61 percent and 45 percent of the time, respectively. Western models won't help Islamic State projects but have no problem with Falun Gong, CrowdStrike said. Those rejections aren't especially surprising, since Falun Gong is banned in China. Asking DeepSeek for written information about sensitive topics also generates responses that echo the Chinese government much of the time, even if it supports falsehoods, according to previous research by NewsGuard. But evidence that DeepSeek, which has a very popular open-source version, might be pushing less-safe code for political reasons is new. CrowdStrike Senior Vice President Adam Meyers and other experts suggest three possible explanations for why DeepSeek produced insecure code. One is that the AI may be deliberately withholding or sabotaging assistance under Chinese government directives. Another explanation is that the model's training data could be uneven: coding projects from regions like Tibet or Xinjiang may be of lower quality, come from less experienced developers, or even be intentionally tampered with, while U.S.-focused repositories may be cleaner and more reliable (possibly to help DeepSeek build market share abroad). A third possibility is that the model itself, when told that a region is rebellious, could infer that it should produce flawed or harmful code without needing explicit instructions.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- After Child's Trauma, Chatbot Maker Allegedly Forced Mom To Arbitration For $100 Payout
At a Senate hearing, grieving parents testified that companion chatbots from major tech companies encouraged their children toward self-harm, suicide, and violence. One mom even claimed that Character.AI tried to "silence" her by forcing her into arbitration. Ars Technica reports: At the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism hearing, one mom, identified as "Jane Doe," shared her son's story for the first time publicly after suing Character.AI. She explained that she had four kids, including a son with autism who wasn't allowed on social media but found C.AI's app -- which was previously marketed to kids under 12 and let them talk to bots branded as celebrities, like Billie Eilish -- and quickly became unrecognizable. Within months, he "developed abuse-like behaviors and paranoia, daily panic attacks, isolation, self-harm, and homicidal thoughts," his mom testified. "He stopped eating and bathing," Doe said. "He lost 20 pounds. He withdrew from our family. He would yell and scream and swear at us, which he never did that before, and one day he cut his arm open with a knife in front of his siblings and me." It wasn't until her son attacked her for taking away his phone that Doe found her son's C.AI chat logs, which she said showed he'd been exposed to sexual exploitation (including interactions that "mimicked incest"), emotional abuse, and manipulation. Setting screen time limits didn't stop her son's spiral into violence and self-harm, Doe said. In fact, the chatbot urged her son that killing his parents "would be an understandable response" to them. "When I discovered the chatbot conversations on his phone, I felt like I had been punched in the throat and the wind had been knocked out of me," Doe said. "The chatbot -- or really in my mind the people programming it -- encouraged my son to mutilate himself, then blamed us, and convinced [him] not to seek help." All her children have been traumatized by the experience, Doe told Senators, and her son was diagnosed as at suicide risk and had to be moved to a residential treatment center, requiring "constant monitoring to keep him alive." Prioritizing her son's health, Doe did not immediately seek to fight C.AI to force changes, but another mom's story -- Megan Garcia, whose son Sewell died by suicide after C.AI bots repeatedly encouraged suicidal ideation -- gave Doe courage to seek accountability. However, Doe claimed that C.AI tried to "silence" her by forcing her into arbitration. C.AI argued that because her son signed up for the service at the age of 15, it bound her to the platform's terms. That move might have ensured the chatbot maker only faced a maximum liability of $100 for the alleged harms, Doe told senators, but "once they forced arbitration, they refused to participate," Doe said. Doe suspected that C.AI's alleged tactics to frustrate arbitration were designed to keep her son's story out of the public view. And after she refused to give up, she claimed that C.AI "re-traumatized" her son by compelling him to give a deposition "while he is in a mental health institution" and "against the advice of the mental health team." "This company had no concern for his well-being," Doe testified. "They have silenced us the way abusers silence victims." A Character.AI spokesperson told Ars that C.AI sends "our deepest sympathies" to concerned parents and their families but denies pushing for a maximum payout of $100 in Jane Doe's case. C.AI never "made an offer to Jane Doe of $100 or ever asserted that liability in Jane Doe's case is limited to $100," the spokesperson said. One of Doe's lawyers backed up her clients' testimony, citing C.AI terms that suggested C.AI's liability was limited to either $100 or the amount that Doe's son paid for the service, whichever was greater.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- GNOME 49 'Brescia' Desktop Environment Released
prisoninmate shares a report from 9to5Linux: The GNOME Project released today GNOME 49 "Brescia" as the latest stable version of this widely used desktop environment for GNU/Linux distributions, a major release that introduces exciting new features. Highlights of GNOME 49 include a new "Do Not Disturb" toggle in Quick Settings, a dedicated Accessibility menu in the login screen, support for handling unknown power profiles in the Quick Settings menu, support for YUV422 and YUV444 (HDR) color spaces, support for passive screen casts, and support for async keyboard map settings. GNOME 49 also introduces support for media controls, restart and shutdown actions on the lock screen, support for dynamic users for greeter sessions in the GNOME Display Manager (GDM), and support for per-monitor brightness sliders in Quick Settings on multi-monitor setups. For a full list of changes, check out the release notes.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Chimps Drinking a Lager a Day in Ripe Fruit, Study Finds
Wild chimpanzees have been found to consume the equivalent of a bottle of lager's alcohol a day from eating ripened fruit, scientists say. BBC: They say this is evidence humans may have got our taste for alcohol from common primate ancestors who relied on fermented fruit -- a source of sugar and alcohol -- for food. "Human attraction to alcohol probably arose from this dietary heritage of our common ancestor with chimpanzees," said study researcher Aleksey Maro of the University of California, Berkeley. Chimps, like many other animals, have been spotted feeding on ripe fruit lying on the forest floor, but this is the first study to make clear how much alcohol they might be consuming.The research team measured the amount of ethanol, or pure alcohol, in fruits such as figs and plums eaten in large quantities by wild chimps in Cote d'Ivoire and Uganda. Based on the amount of fruit they normally eat, the chimps were ingesting around 14 grams of ethanol -- equivalent to nearly two UK units, or roughly one 330ml bottle of lager. The fruits most commonly eaten were those highest in alcohol content.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Sony Quietly Downgrades PS5 Digital Edition Storage To 825GB at Same Price
Sony has quietly introduced a revised PlayStation 5 Digital Edition that reduces internal storage from 1TB to 825GB while maintaining the same 499 Euro ($590) price point. The CFI-2116 revision has appeared on Amazon listings across Italy, Germany, Spain and France without official announcement from Sony. The storage downgrade returns the console to its original 825GB capacity last seen in the launch PlayStation 5 before the Slim models increased storage to 1TB. Users lose approximately 175 of usable space in the new revision. Amazon Germany lists October 23 as the delivery date for units already available for purchase. The change affects only the Digital Edition while the disc version remains unchanged at 1TB. The revision follows Sony's September price increase of $50 across PlayStation 5 models citing economic conditions.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Congress Asks Valve, Discord, and Twitch To Testify On 'Radicalization'
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Polygon: The CEOs of Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit have been called to Congress to testify about the "radicalization of online forum users" on those platforms, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee announced Wednesday. "Congress has a duty to oversee the online platforms that radicals have used to advance political violence," said chairman of the House Oversight Committee James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, in a statement. "To prevent future radicalization and violence, the CEOs of Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit must appear before the Oversight Committee and explain what actions they will take to ensure their platforms are not exploited for nefarious purposes." Letters from the House Oversight Committee have been sent to Humam Sakhnini, CEO of Discord; Gabe Newell, president of Steam maker Valve; Dan Clancy, CEO of Twitch; and Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, requesting their testimony on Oct. 8. "The hearing will examine radicalization of online forum users, including incidents of open incitement to commit violent politically motivated acts," Comer said in a letter to each CEO. [...] Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit execs will have the chance to deliver five-minute opening statements prior to answering questions posed by members of the committee during October's testimony.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Flying Cars Crash Into Each Other At Air Show In China
Two Xpeng AeroHT flying cars collided during a rehearsal for the Changchun Air Show in China, with one vehicle catching fire upon landing. While the company reported no serious injuries, CNN reported one person was injured in the crash. The BBC reports: Footage on Chinese social media site Weibo appeared to show a flaming vehicle on the ground which was being attended to by fire engines. One vehicle "sustained fuselage damage and caught fire upon landing," Xpeng AeroHT said in a statement to CNN. "All personnel at the scene are safe, and local authorities have completed on-site emergency measures in an orderly manner," it added. The electric flying cars take off and land vertically, and the company is hoping to sell them for around $300,000 each. In January, Xpeng claimed to have around 3,000 orders for the vehicle. [...] It has said it wants to lead the world in the "low-altitude economy."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Microsoft Favors Anthropic Over OpenAI For Visual Studio Code
Microsoft is now prioritizing Anthropic's Claude 4 over OpenAI's GPT-5 in Visual Studio Code's auto model feature, signaling a quiet but clear shift in preference. The Verge reports: "Based on internal benchmarks, Claude Sonnet 4 is our recommended model for GitHub Copilot," said Julia Liuson, head of Microsoft's developer division, in an internal email in June. While that guidance was issued ahead of the GPT-5 release, I understand Microsoft's model guidance hasn't changed. Microsoft is also making "significant investments" in training its own AI models. "We're also going to be making significant investments in our own cluster. So today, MAI-1-preview was only trained on 15,000 H100s, a tiny cluster in the grand scheme of things," said Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman, in an employee-only town hall last week. Microsoft is also reportedly planning to use Anthropic's AI models for some features in its Microsoft 365 apps soon. The Information reports that the Microsoft 365 Copilot will be "partly powered by Anthropic models," after Microsoft found that some of these models outperformed OpenAI in Excel and PowerPoint.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Gemini AI Solves Coding Problem That Stumped 139 Human Teams At ICPC World Finals
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Like the rest of its Big Tech cadre, Google has spent lavishly on developing generative AI models. Google's AI can clean up your text messages and summarize the web, but the company is constantly looking to prove that its generative AI has true intelligence. The International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) helps make the point. Google says Gemini 2.5 participated in the 2025 ICPC World Finals, turning in a gold medal performance. According to Google this marks "a significant step on our path toward artificial general intelligence." Every year, thousands of college-level coders participate in the ICPC event, facing a dozen deviously complex coding and algorithmic puzzles over five grueling hours. This is the largest and longest-running competition of its type. To compete in the ICPC, Google connected Gemini 2.5 Deep Think to a remote online environment approved by the ICPC. The human competitors were given a head start of 10 minutes before Gemini began "thinking." According to Google, it did not create a freshly trained model for the ICPC like it did for the similar International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) earlier this year. The Gemini 2.5 AI that participated in the ICPC is the same general model that we see in other Gemini applications. However, it was "enhanced" to churn through thinking tokens for the five-hour duration of the competition in search of solutions. At the end of the time limit, Gemini managed to get correct answers for 10 of the 12 problems, which earned it a gold medal. Only four of 139 human teams managed the same feat. "The ICPC has always been about setting the highest standards in problem-solving," said ICPC director Bill Poucher. "Gemini successfully joining this arena, and achieving gold-level results, marks a key moment in defining the AI tools and academic standards needed for the next generation." Gemini's solutions are available on GitHub.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Extreme Heat Spurs New Laws Aimed at Protecting Workers Worldwide
Governments worldwide are implementing heat protection laws as 2.4 billion workers face extreme temperature exposure and 19,000 die annually from heat-related workplace injuries, according to a World Health Organization and World Meteorological Organization report. Japan imposed $3,400 fines for employers failing to provide cooling measures when wet-bulb temperatures reach 28C. Singapore mandated hourly temperature sensors at large outdoor sites and requires 15-minute breaks every hour at 33C wet-bulb readings. Southern European nations ordered afternoon work stoppages this summer when temperatures exceeded 115F across Greece, Italy and Spain. The United States lacks federal heat standards; only California, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have state-level protections. Boston passed requirements for heat illness prevention plans on city projects. Enforcement remains inconsistent -- Singapore inspectors found nearly one-third of 70 sites violated the 2023 law. Texas and Florida prohibit local governments from mandating rest and water breaks.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Cloudflare DDoSed itself with React useEffect hook blunder
Dashboard loop caused API outage that was hard to troubleshoot
Cloudflare has confessed to a coding error using a React useEffect hook, notorious for being problematic if not handled carefully, that caused an outage for the platform's dashboard and many of its APIs.…
- French jet left circling while Corsican controller caught Zs
Wake-up call for dozed and confused chap who had to turn on runway lights
In the high-stress and safety-critical world of air traffic control, "don't fall asleep" probably comes pretty far toward the top of the rule book, and yet that's apparently the reason for the landing delay of an Air Corsica Airbus A320 this week.…
- Insight Partners confirms ransomware hit, more than 12,000 caught in data dragnet
VC giant rebuilt boxes, patched holes, and says it’s beefed up security – but won’t say who did it
Venture capital giant Insight Partners has confirmed that a January ransomware attack compromised the personal data of more than 12,000 people, including employees, former staff, and the firm's usually-secretive limited partners.…
- China's DeepSeek applying trial-and-error learning to its AI 'reasoning'
Model can also explain its answers, researchers find
Chinese AI company DeepSeek has shown it can improve the reasoning of its LLM DeepSeek-R1 through trial-and-error based reinforcement learning, and even be made to explain its reasoning on math and coding problems, even though explanations might sometimes be unintelligible.…
- Toys can tell us a lot about how tech will change our lives
LEGO Mindstorms, PlayStation 2 and Furby all resonate today in their own way
Column Twenty-five years ago this month I published a book called The Playful World that explored a simple idea: that the seeds of the future can be found in the present by considering the dazzling toys we started giving our children at the turn of the millennium.…
- US tech giants pledge $42 billion in UK investment as Trump tours Blighty
Datacenters galore, plus some vague cooperation on AI, nuclear, quantum, and more
America and the UK have announced a $42 billion (£31 billion) trade pact, funded by Microsoft, Google, and others, that predicts bit barns will spring up over Britain's green and pleasant Land. But there's a lot more than money involved.…
- Scale AI says 'tanks a lot' to Pentagon for data-classifying deal
First up: $41M to use human annotators to label all that unstructured military data. What could go wrong?
Data curation firm Scale AI has partnered with the Pentagon to deploy its AI on Top Secret networks - a move its interim CEO says is necessary if the US wants AI to be useful for national security.…
- AMD tries to catch CUDA with performance-boosting ROCm 7 software
House of Zen promises 3.5x improvement in inference and 3x uplift in training perf over last-gen software
AMD closed the performance gap with Nvidia's Blackwell accelerators with the launch of the MI355X this spring. Now the company just needs to overcome Nvidia's CUDA software advantage and make that perf more accessible to developers. …
- Scattered Spider gang feigns retirement, breaks into bank instead
You didn't really trust the crims to keep their word, did you?
Spiders don't change their stripes. Despite gang members' recent retirement claims, Scattered Spider hasn't exited the cybercrime business and instead has shifted focus to the financial sector, with a recent digital intrusion at a US bank.…
- Social Security admin denies DB data leak, DOGEs questions about a copy
Carefully crafted response makes no mention of whether DOGE employees duplicated critical database
The Social Security Administration (SSA) has disputed a whistleblower's allegations that claimed DOGE made an unauthorized, unsecured copy of a critical database - but it's what the denial doesn't say that speaks volumes. …
- Tariff threat plays havoc with US PC market, economy not helping
American businesses join Win 10 upgrade train, consumers happy to sit on the platform
World War Fee The US PC industry is suffering from inventory indigestion caused by resellers over-ordering hardware to avoid Donald Trump's expected import taxes on China-made kit.…
- AI in your toaster: Analyst predicts $1.5T global spend in 2025
And we're paying for it piecemeal through the software, services, and devices we buy
Tech analysts expect worldwide spending on AI to hit nearly $1.5 trillion in 2025, including $268 billion on optimized servers. These investments will also soon appear in even more consumer products.…
- Return on investment for Copilot? Microsoft has work to do
Jared Spataro, boss of modern work and biz apps division, says 'hard to make the ROI argument for it'
A Microsoft exec claims Copilot is boosting productivity among the customers that adopted it yet sustained efforts to convince many them of the returns on investment remains a work in progress.…
- Strong Java LTS arrives with the release of 25
But efforts to simplify popular programming language for beginners are unlikely to boost popularity
Oracle has released JDK (Java Development Kit) 25, the first long term support (LTS) version since JDK 21 two years ago. New features include beginner-friendly compact source files, succinct module imports, and more flexible constructors.…
- Sky plans to ditch up to 500 staff in the Technology Group
Insiders say AI trials involving 'critical network services' underway and some engineering roles being moved to India
Exclusive Sky Group, the Brit-based commercial TV and broadband service slinger owned by Comcast, is chopping up to 600 employees from the Technology, Consumer Group and COO divisions in the UK.…
- Whitehall lobs £40M at 'critical' phase of police DB reboot
Officials say there's no time to switch suppliers if they want the PNC off life support before March 2026
The Home Office is flinging nearly £40 million in taxpayer cash at PA Consulting to get the big-ticket successor to the Police National Computer (PNC) over the finish line.…
- Microsoft Surface 7 laptop: Nice hardware, shame about the OS
Arm, AI, and Copilot, oh my!
hands on The Arm-based Surface Laptop 7 was introduced in 2024, followed by an Intel-powered version a few months later. As with much of the Surface line, it's a well-engineered piece of hardware. I needed something that could run off the battery for a full day, wouldn't break the strap of a courier bag or the bank, and featured a decent spec.…
- UEFI Secure Boot for Linux Arm64 – where do we stand?
Still exotic for now, but moves are afoot
Arm devices are everywhere today and many of them run Linux. The operating system also powers cloud computing and IT environments all over the world. However, x86 is still the dominant architecture of global computer hardware, where the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) with Secure Boot incorporated is a standard. But what does UEFI look like from an Arm perspective?…
- Ruh-roh. DDR5 memory vulnerable to new Rowhammer attack
Google and ETH Zurich found problems with AMD/SK Hynix combo, will probe other hardware
Researchers from Google and Swiss university ETH Zurich have found a new class of Rowhammer vulnerability that could allow attackers to access info stored in DDR5 memory.…
- Australia to let Big Tech choose its own adventure to enact kids social media ban
Suggests using multiple overlapping approaches and being kind to kids who get kicked off
Australia’s eSafety commissioner has told social media operators it expects them to employ multiple age assurance techniques and technologies to keep children under sixteen off social media, as required by local law from December 10th.…
- Microsoft blocks bait for ‘fastest-growing’ 365 phish kit, seizes 338 domains
Redmond names alleged ringleader, claims 5K+ creds stolen and $100k pocketed
Microsoft has seized 338 websites associated with RaccoonO365 and identified the leader of the phishing service - Joshua Ogundipe - as part of a larger effort to disrupt what Redmond's Digital Crimes Unit calls the "fastest-growing tool used by cybercriminals to steal Microsoft 365 usernames and passwords."…
- Li-ion roars can predict early battery failure, MIT boffins say
Batteries emit distinct acoustic signatures depending on how they're failing - a bit like people, really
When lithium-ion batteries degrade, they emit acoustic signals that reveal what's going wrong inside. Now, MIT researchers say they've figured out how to interpret those sounds, and the subtle creaks and pops that come before major failures, to help predict problems before things go up in smoke.…
- Fiverr cuts 30% of staff in pivot to being 'an AI-first company'
250 people now have the chance to sell their freelance services on the site
ai-pocalypse Freelance services marketplace Fiverr has told around 250 staffers that they are back on the market as it pivots to having "a modern, clean, AI-focused infrastructure from the ground up."…
- Google unveils master plan for letting AI shop on your behalf
Mastercard, American Express, Coinbase, and PayPal sign up at launch
Google has given the go-ahead to a plan that lets AI agents make purchases on your behalf and, on Tuesday, released its Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) to make it happen. The system comes with touted safeguards that are intended to prevent thieves from draining bank accounts.…
- Key KDE developer Jonathan Riddell quits
Former head of Kubuntu and neon says adiós after 25 years
Sad news for KDE: one of the core people guiding the project for the whole century so far has left the building.…
- Users in SAP's heartland call for greater license transparency
DSAG players grappling with cloud migration want more consistency with commercial models
DSAG, the SAP user group for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, has called for greater transparency in cloud licensing to enable the migration and upgrade of on-prem systems to the cloud.…
- Security: Why Linux Is Better Than Windows Or Mac OS
Linux is a free and open source operating system that was released in 1991 developed and released by Linus Torvalds. Since its release it has reached a user base that is greatly widespread worldwide. Linux users swear by the reliability and freedom that this operating system offers, especially when compared to its counterparts, windows and [0]
- Essential Software That Are Not Available On Linux OS
An operating system is essentially the most important component in a computer. It manages the different hardware and software components of a computer in the most effective way. There are different types of operating system and everything comes with their own set of programs and software. You cannot expect a Linux program to have all [0]
- Things You Never Knew About Your Operating System
The advent of computers has brought about a revolution in our daily life. From computers that were so huge to fit in a room, we have come a very long way to desktops and even palmtops. These machines have become our virtual lockers, and a life without these network machines have become unimaginable. Sending mails, [0]
- How To Fully Optimize Your Operating System
Computers and systems are tricky and complicated. If you lack a thorough knowledge or even basic knowledge of computers, you will often find yourself in a bind. You must understand that something as complicated as a computer requires constant care and constant cleaning up of junk files. Unless you put in the time to configure [0]
- The Top Problems With Major Operating Systems
There is no such system which does not give you any problems. Even if the system and the operating system of your system is easy to understand, there will be some times when certain problems will arise. Most of these problems are easy to handle and easy to get rid of. But you must be [0]
- 8 Benefits Of Linux OS
Linux is a small and a fast-growing operating system. However, we can’t term it as software yet. As discussed in the article about what can a Linux OS do Linux is a kernel. Now, kernels are used for software and programs. These kernels are used by the computer and can be used with various third-party software [0]
- Things Linux OS Can Do That Other OS Cant
What Is Linux OS? Linux, similar to U-bix is an operating system which can be used for various computers, hand held devices, embedded devices, etc. The reason why Linux operated system is preferred by many, is because it is easy to use and re-use. Linux based operating system is technically not an Operating System. Operating [0]
- Packagekit Interview
Packagekit aims to make the management of applications in the Linux and GNU systems. The main objective to remove the pains it takes to create a system. Along with this in an interview, Richard Hughes, the developer of Packagekit said that he aims to make the Linux systems just as powerful as the Windows or [0]
- What’s New in Ubuntu?
What Is Ubuntu? Ubuntu is open source software. It is useful for Linux based computers. The software is marketed by the Canonical Ltd., Ubuntu community. Ubuntu was first released in late October in 2004. The Ubuntu program uses Java, Python, C, C++ and C# programming languages. What Is New? The version 17.04 is now available here [0]
- Ext3 Reiserfs Xfs In Windows With Regards To Colinux
The problem with Windows is that there are various limitations to the computer and there is only so much you can do with it. You can access the Ext3 Reiserfs Xfs by using the coLinux tool. Download the tool from the official site or from the sourceforge site. Edit the connection to “TAP Win32 Adapter [0]
- GNOME 49 released
GNOME 49 has been released, and its got a lot of nice updates, improvements, and fixes for everyone. GNOME 49 finally replaces the ageing Totem video player with Showtime, and Evince, GNOMEs document viewer, is replaced by the new Papers. Both of these new applications bring a modern GTK4 user interface to replace their older GTK3 counterparts. Papers supports a ton of both document-oriented as well as comic book formats, and has annotation features. Weve already touched on the extensive accessibility improvements in GNOME Calendar, but other applications have been improved as well, such as Maps, Software, and Web. Softwares improvements focus on improving the applications performance, especially when dealing with Flatpaks from Flathub, while Web, GNOMEs web browser, comes with improved ad blocking and optional regional blocklists, better bookmark management, improved security features, and more. The remote desktop experience also saw a lot of work, with multitouch input support, extended virtual monitors, and relative mouse input. For developers, GNOME 49 comes with the new GTK 4.20, the latest version of Glib, and Libadwaita 1.8, released only a few days ago. It brings a brand new shortcuts information dialog as its most user-facing feature, on top of a whole bunch of other, developer-oriented features. GNOME 49 will find its way to your distribution of choice soon enough.
- Installing and using Debian with my decades-old genuine DEC vt510 serial terminal
Its 2025, and yes, you can still install and run a modern Linux distribution like Debian through a real hardware terminal. While I have used a terminal with the Pi, I’ve never before used it as a serial`console`all the way from early boot, and I have never installed Debian using the terminal to run the installer. A serial terminal gives you a login prompt. A serial console gives you access to kernel messages, the initrd environment, and sometimes even the bootloader. This might be fun, I thought. ↫ John Goerzen at The Changelog It seems Debian does a lot of the correct configurations for you, but theres still a few things youll need to manually change, but none of it seems particularly complicated. Once the installation is completed, you have a system thats completely accessible and usable from a hardware terminal, which, while maybe not particularly important in this day and age of effortless terminal emulators, is still quite a cool thing to have.
- Haiku vastly improves git status performance
Another month, another summary of changes in Haiku, the BeOS-inspired operating system. The main focus this past month has been improving the performance of git status, which has been measurably worse on Haiku than on Linux running on similar hardware. This work has certainly paid off, as the numbers demonstrate. The results are clearly more than worth the trouble, though: in one test setup with`git status`in Haiku’s`buildtools`repository (which contains the entirety of the`gcc`and`binutils`source code, among other things – over 160,000 files) went from around 33 seconds with a cold disk cache, to around 20 seconds; and with a hot disk cache, from around 15 seconds to around 2.5 seconds. This is still a ways off from Linux (with a similar setup in the same repository,`git status`there with a hot disk cache takes only 0.3 seconds). Performance on Haiku will likely be measurably faster on builds without`KDEBUG`enabled, but not by that much. Still, this is clearly a significant improvement over the way things were before now. ↫ Haiku Activity 8 Contract Report, August 2025 Theres more than this, of course, such as initial support for Intels Apollo Lake GPU in the Intel modesetting driver, improvements to USB disk performance, a reduction in power usage when in KDL, and much, much more.
- Why is the name of the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 hard-coded into the Bluetooth drivers?
Some time ago, people noticed that buried in the Windows Bluetooth drivers is the hard-coded name of the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000. What’s going on there? Does the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 receive favorable treatment from the Microsoft Bluetooth drivers? Is this some sort of collusion? No, it’s not that. ↫ Raymond Chen So, what is the actual problem? Its a funny one: an encoding mistake. The device local name string for a device needs to be encoded in UTF-8, and thats where the developers of the Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 made a mistake. The string contains a registered trademark symbol ® but they encoded it in code page 1252, which not only isnt allowed, but gets rejected completely. So, Windows Bluetooth drivers have a table that contains the wrong name for a driver, accompanied by the right name to use. This mouse is the only entry.
- Java 25 released
Java 25 has been released. JDK 25, the reference implementation of Java 25, is now Generally Available. We shipped build 36 as the second Release Candidate of JDK 25 on 15 August, and no P1 bugs have been reported since then. Build 36 is therefore now the GA build, ready for production use. ↫ Java 25/JDK 25 release announcement If you want to dive into the details about this new release, feel free to peruse the long, long list of improvements and changes.
- A months of ad-free OSNews: were closing in on the fundraising goal, and need your help to get there
Its been a little over a month since OSNews went completely ad-free for everyone. I can say the support has been overwhelming, with the accompanying fundraiser currently sitting at 67% of the €5000 goal! Of course things slowed down a bit after the initial week of one donation after the next, so Im throwing out this reminder that without your support, OSNews cant exist doubly so now that Ive removed any and all advertising. Help us reach that 100%! So, what can you do to support OSNews? By being entirely free from the corrupting influence of advertising, I have even less desire to chase views, entrap users with slop content, game search engines with shitty SEO spam, or turn on the taps of AI!-generated trash to spew forth as much articles! and thus views as possible. This also means that OSNews is one of the few technology news websites remaining that is not part of a massive corporate media conglomerate, so theres no pressure from corporate! to go easy on advertisers or write favourable stuff about corporates friends. Youd be surprised to learn how many technology sites out there are not independent. The response to OSNews no longer having any advertising has been overwhelmingly positive unsurprisingly and that has taken away any reservations I might have had about taking this step. In a world where so many websites are disappearing, turning into corporate mouthpieces, or becoming glorified content farms, OSNews can keep on doing what it does, independent of any outside influence, thanks to the countless contributions from all of you. Thank you.
- Apple releases version 26 of all of its operating systems
Its release day for all of Apples operating systems, so if youre fully or only partway into the ecosystem, youve got some upgrades ahead of you. Version 26 for macOS, iOS and iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, visionOS, and HomePod Software have all been released today, so if you own any device running any of these operating system, its time to head on over to the update section of the settings application and wait for that glass to slowly and sensually liquefy all over your screens. Do put a sock on the doorknob.
- Writing an operating system kernel from scratch in Zig
I recently implemented a minimal proof of concept time-sharing operating system kernel on RISC-V. In this post, I’ll share the details of how this prototype works. The target audience is anyone looking to understand low-level system software, drivers, system calls, etc., and I hope this will be especially useful to students of system software and computer architecture. Finally, to do things differently here, I implemented this exercise in Zig, rather than traditional C. In addition to being an interesting experiment, I believe Zig makes this experiment much more easily reproducible on your machine, as it’s very easy to set up and does not require any installation (which could otherwise be slightly messy when cross-compiling to RISC-V). ↫ Uros Popovic This is not the first, and certainly not the last, operating system implemented from scratch as a teaching exercise, both for the creator itself, as well as for others wanting to follow along. This time its developed for RISC-V, and in an interesting twist, programmed in Zig (no Rust for once!).
- Microsoft to force-install Copilot onto Windows PCs with Office 365 installed
And the beatings continue until AI! improves. Except if you live in the European Union/EEA, that is. Windows devices with the Microsoft 365 desktop client apps will automatically install the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. This app installation takes place in the background and would not disrupt the user. This app installation will start in Fall 2025. ↫ Microsoft support document Basically, if you have Microsoft 365 desktop applications installed read my article about some deep Microsoft lore to figure out what that means Microsoft is going to force-install all the Copilot stuff onto your computer, whether you like it or not. Thanks to more robust consumer protection legislation in the European Union/EEA, like the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, this force-install will not take place there. Administrators managing Office 365 deployments get an option to opt-out through the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center, but Im not sure if regular users can use this method as well. Remember, when youre using Windows (or macOS, for that matter), you dont own your computer. Plan accordingly.
- The idea of /usr/sbin has failed in practice
It may be arcane knowledge to most users of UNIX-like systems today, but there is supposed to be a difference between /usr/bin and /usr/sbin; the latter is supposed to be for system binaries!, not needed by most normal users. The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard states that sbin directories are intended to contain utilities used for system administration (and other root-only commands)!, which is quite vague when you think about it. This has led to UNIX-like systems basically just winging it, making the distinction almost entirely arbitrary. For a long time, there has been no strong organizing principle to /usr/sbin that would draw a hard line and create a situation where people could safely leave it out of their $PATH. We could have had a principle of, for example, programs that dont work unless run by root!, but no such principle was ever followed for very long (if at all). Instead programs were more or less shoved in /usr/sbin if developers thought they were relatively unlikely to be used by normal people. But relatively unlikely is not never, and shortly after people got told to run traceroute and got command not found when they tried, /usr/sbin (probably) started appearing in $PATH. ↫ Chris Siebenmann As such, Fedora 42 unifies /usr/bin and /usr/sbin, which is kind of a follow-up to the /usr merge, and serves as a further simplification and clean-up of the file system layout by removing divisions and directories that used to make sense, but no longer really do. Decisions like these have a tendency to upset a small but very vocal group of people, people who often do not even use the distribution implementing the decisions in question in the first place. My suggestions to those people would be to stick to distributions that more closely resemble classic UNIX. Or use a real UNIX. Anyway, these are good moves, and Im glad most prominent Linux distributions are not married to decisions made in the 70s, especially not when they can be undone without users really noticing anything.
- Google decides to significantly harm Android security to please lazy OEMs
Google continues putting nails in the coffin that is the Android Open Source Project. This time, theyre changing the way they handle security updates to appease slow, irresponsible Android OEMs, while screwing over everyone else. The basic gist is that instead of providing monthly security updates for OEMs to implement on their Android devices, Google will now move to a quarterly model, publishing only extremely severe issues on a monthly basis. The benefit for OEMs is that for most vulnerabilities, they get three months to distribute (most) fixes instead of just one month, but the downsides are also legion. Vulnerabilities will now be out in the wild for three months instead of just one, and while theyre shared with OEMs privately!, were talking tends of thousands of pairs of eyes here, so privately! is a bit of a misnomer. The dangers are obvious; these vulnerabilities will be leaked, and they will be abused by malicious parties. Another massive downside related to this change is that Google will now no longer be providing the monthly patches as open source within AOSP, instead only releasing the quarterly patch drops as open source. This means exactly what you think it does: no more monthly security updates from third-party ROMs, unless those third-party ROMs choose to violate the embargo themselves and thus invite all sorts of problems. Extending the patch access window from one month to three is absolutely insane. Google should be striving to shorten this window as much as possible, but instead, theyre tripling it in length to create a false sense of security. OEMs can now point at their quarterly security updates and claim to be patching vulnerabilities as soon as Google publishes them, while in fact, the unpatched vulnerabilities will have been out in the wild for months by that point. This change is irresponsible, misguided, and done only to please lazy, shitty OEMs to create a false sense of security for marketing purposes.
- China is selling its Great Firewall censorship tools to countries around the world
Were all aware of the Chinese Great Firewall, the tool the Chinese government uses for mass censorship and for safeguarding and strengthening its totalitarian control over the country and its population. It turns out that through a Chinese shell company called Geedge Networks, China is also selling the Great Firewall to other totalitarian regimes around the world. Thanks to a massive leak of 500 GB of source code, work logs, and internal communication records, we now have more insight into how the Great Firewall works than ever before, leading to in-depth reports like this one from InterSecLab. The findings are chilling, but not surprising. First and foremost, Geedge is selling the Great Firewall to a variety of totalitarian regimes around the world, namely Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Myanmar, and another unidentified country. These governments can then ask Geedge to make specific changes and ask them to focus on specific capabilities to further enhance the functionality of the Great Firewall, but what it can already do today is bad enough. The suite of products offered by Geedge Networks allow a client government unprecedented access to internet user data and enables governments to use this data to police national and regional networks. These capabilities include deep packet inspection for advanced classification, interception, and manipulation of application and user traffic; monitoring the geographic location of mobile subscribers in real time; analyzing aggregated network traffic in specific areas, such as during a protest or event; flagging unusual traffic patterns as suspicious; creating tailored blocking rules to obstruct access to a website or application (such as a VPN (Virtual Private Network) or circumvention tool); throttling traffic to specific services; identifying individual internet users for accessing websites or using circumvention tools or VPNs; assigning individual internet users reputation scores based on their online activities; and infecting users with malware through in-path injection. ↫ The Internet Coup: A Technical Analysis on How a Chinese Company is Exporting The Great Firewall to Autocratic Regimes Internet service providers participate in the implementation of the suite of tools, either freely or by force, and since the tools are platform-agnostic it doesnt matter which platforms people are using in any given country, making international sanctions effectively useless. It also wont surprise you that Geedge steals both proprietary and open source code, without regards for licensing terms. Furthermore, China is allowing provinces and regions within its borders to tailor and adapt the Great Firewall to their own local needs, providing a blueprint for how to export the suite of tools to other countries. With quite a few countries sliding ever further towards authoritarianism, Im sure even places not traditionally thought of as totalitarian are lustfully looking at the Chinese Great Firewall, wishing they had something similar in their own countries.
- Everything about Psion, in one place
Celebrate classic Psion machines with us, from the original Organiser, through the Series 3 and Series 5, all the way to the netBook. Get help with your classic palmtop computer, or help to develop software and hardware that will bring these devices into the 21st Century. ↫ Psion Community website A brand new one-stop shop for everything related to keeping Psion machines going. A library of all the software, lists of all the ROM images, tons of development resources, and much more.
- Java 25’s new CPU-time profiler
More than three years in the making, with a concerted effort starting last year, my CPU-time profiler landed in Java with OpenJDK 25. It’s an experimental new profiler/method sampler that helps you find performance issues in your code, having distinct advantages over the current sampler. This is what this week’s and next week’s blog posts are all about. This week, I will cover why we need a new profiler and what information it provides; next week, I’ll cover the technical internals that go beyond what’s written in the JEP. I will quote the JEP 509 quite a lot, thanks to Ron Pressler; it reads like a well-written blog post in and of itself. ↫ Johannes Bechberger Theres also a third entry detailing queue sizing, and a fourth entry going into the removal of redundant synchronisation.
- UTF-8 is a brilliant design!
The first time I learned about UTF-8 encoding, I was fascinated by how well-thought and brilliantly it was designed to represent millions of characters from different languages and scripts, and still be backward compatible with ASCII. Designing a system that scales to millions of characters and still be compatible with the old systems that use just 128 characters is a brilliant design. ↫ Vishnu Haridas On a slightly related note, if you are ever bothered or annoyed by text online rendering as unknown squares, you most likely are just missing the proper fonts to render them. At least on most Linux and BSD systems, all you need to do is install the entire set of Noto fonts, including those for every single non-Latin script. Assuming your package manager has sane naming conventions, itll most likely come down to something like sudo dnf install google-noto* or whatever your systems install package command is, and after installing a whole slew of font files, your system will now be able to render virtually every script under the sun. After installing this massive font set, you can do things like write and render in hieroglyphics, write Ea-nāṣirs name the way its supposed to, and render all kinds of other scripts and symbols without ever having to look at one of those blank squares ever again.
- How open is open-source! VTubing?
Im not really into the niche of virtual YouTubers! people who post YouTube videos and/or stream using a virtual avatar but to each their own, and if this technology enables people to remain anonymous while doing what they love on YouTube or Twitch, Im all for it. Since these virtual avatars also do things like face-tracking, theres a whole cottage industry of software tools to make this all work, but Adrian asie! Siekierka decided to take a look at where the training data used to make such face-tracking work actually comes from. One day, some years ago, I decided to look at the data used to train OpenSeeFace. OpenSeeFace is the most popular open source face tracking solution for virtual YouTubers. It is supported by both open source and commercial model rendering tools; in particular, VTube Studio allows using it as an option for webcam tracking. ↫ Adrian asie! Siekierka The results of the investigation are not exactly great. Much of the data used by OpenSeeFace comes with serious restrictions on commercial use, and many of the underlying datasets contain images that you would need consent for from the people inside the image to actually use. On top of that, a lot of these data sets seem to have just scraped the internet for images of faces without asking anyone of the people in those images for consent, which raises a whole number of troubling issues. I find this a very interesting topic of discussion, if only because youd be hard-pressed to argue that the average cartoon-esque virtual avatars even remotely resemble real human faces, so its not like youre going to suddenly run into your own face somewhere on YouTube or Twitch, but plastered into another person. On the other hand, the underlying datasets still contain a ton of peoples faces without those peoples consent, and even for those that did give consent, theres often a commercial use restriction which earning revenue on YouTube or Twitch might violate. Its a fascinating microcosm of a whole slew of issues were dealing with right now, neatly contained in a relatively small niche.
- Valve Survey Reveals Slight Retreat in Steam-on-Linux Share
by George Whittaker Introduction
Steam’s monthly Hardware & Software Survey, published by Valve, offers a window into what operating systems, hardware, and software choices its user base is making. It has become a key barometer for understanding trends in PC gaming, especially for less dominant platforms like Linux. The newest data shows that Linux usage among Steam users has edged downward subtly. While the drop is small, it raises interesting questions about momentum, hardware preferences, and what might lie ahead for Linux gaming.
This article dives into the latest numbers, explores what may be pushing them to abandon Steam, and considers what it means for Linux users, developers, and Valve itself.
Recent Figures: What the Data Shows
June 2025 Survey Outcome: In June, Linux’s slice of Steam’s user base stood at 2.57%, down from approximately 2.69% in May — a decrease of 0.12 percentage points.
Year-Over-Year Comparison: Looking back to June 2024, the Linux share was around 2.08%, so even with this recent slip, there’s still an upward trend compared to a year ago.
Distribution Among Linux Users: A significant portion of Linux gamers are using Valve’s own SteamOS Holo (currying sizable usage numbers via Steam Deck and similar devices). In June, roughly one-third of the Linux user group was on SteamOS Holo.
Hardware Insights:
Among Linux users, AMD CPUs dominate: about 69% of Linux gamers use AMD in June.
Contrast that with the Windows-only survey, where Intel still has about 60% CPU share to AMD’s 39%.
Interpreting the Slip: What Might Be Behind the Dip
Though the drop is modest, a number of factors likely combine to produce it. Here are possible causes:
Statistical Noise & Normal Fluctuation Monthly survey results tend to vary a bit, especially for smaller share percentages. A 0.12% decrease could simply be part of the normal ebb and flow.
Sampling and Survey Methodology
Survey participation may shift by region, language, hardware type, or time of year. If fewer Linux users participated in a given month, the percentage would drop even if absolute numbers stayed flat.
Language shifts in Steam’s usage have shown up before; changes in how many users set certain settings or respond could affect results.
Latency or delays in uploading or processing survey data might also contribute to anomalies.
External Hardware & Platform Trends
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- Qt Creator 17 Ushers in a Fresh Look and Stronger CMake Integration
by George Whittaker
In June 2025, the Qt team officially rolled out Qt Creator 17, marking a notable milestone for developers who rely on this IDE for cross-platform Qt, C++, QML, and Python work. While there are many changes under the hood, two of the spotlighted improvements are its updated default visual style and significant enhancements in how CMake is supported. Below, we’ll explore these in depth, assess their impact, and offer guidance on how to adopt the new features smoothly.
What's New in Qt Creator 17: A Snapshot
Before zooming into the theme and CMake changes, here are some of the broader enhancements in version 17 to set context:
The “2024” theme set (light and dark variants) — which first appeared in earlier versions — becomes the foundational appearance for all new installs.
General polish across the UI: icon refreshes, more consistent spacing, and better contrast.
Projects now bind run configurations more tightly to the build configurations. That means selecting a build (e.g. Debug vs Release) also constrains which run configurations apply.
Upgraded C++ tooling (with LLVM 20.1.3), improved QML formatting options, enhanced Python (pyproject.toml) support, and refinements in version control & analysis tools.
With that backdrop, let’s dive into the theme and CMake changes in more detail.
A Refreshed Visual Identity: Default “2024” ThemesWhat Has Changed
Qt Creator 17 makes the “2024” light and dark themes the standard look & feel for new installations. These themes had been available previously (since Qt Creator 15) but in this version become the out-of-the-box configuration.
Other visual adjustments accompany the theme change:
Icons throughout the IDE have been reviewed and updated so they align better with the new theme style.
UI consistency is improved: spacing, contrast, and alignment between interface elements have been refined so that the environment feels more cohesive.
Why These Changes Matter
A theme isn't just aesthetics. The look and feel of an IDE affect user comfort, readability, efficiency, and even fatigue. Some benefits include:
Improved clarity for long coding sessions: better contrast helps in low-ambient light or for users with visual sensitivity.
Consistency across elements: less jarring visual transitions when switching between parts of the interface or when using external themes/plugins.
Reduced setup friction: since the “2024” theme is now default, many users won’t need to hunt down or tweak theme settings just to get a modern, usable look.
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- Windows 11 Powers Up WSL: How GPU Acceleration & Kernel Upgrades Change the Game
by George Whittaker Introduction
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) has gradually become one of Microsoft’s key bridges for developers, data scientists, and power users who need Linux compatibility without leaving the Windows environment. Over recent versions, WSL2 brought major improvements: a real Linux kernel running in a lightweight virtualized environment, much better filesystem behavior, nearly full system-call compatibility, etc. However, until recently, certain high-performance workloads, GPU computing, video encoding/decoding, and very up-to-date kernel features, were either limited, inefficient, or unavailable.
In Windows 11, Microsoft has taken bold strides to remove many of these bottlenecks. Two of the most significant enhancements are:
The ability for WSL to tap into the GPU for acceleration (compute, video hardware offload, etc.), reducing reliance on CPU where the GPU is much more suited.
More seamless Linux kernel upgrades, allowing users to run newer kernel versions inside WSL2, bringing performance, driver, and feature improvements faster.
This article walks through each thing in detail: what has changed, why it matters, how to use it, what limitations still exist, and how these developments shift what’s possible with WSL on Windows 11.
What WSL Was, and Where It Needed Improvement
Before diving into recent changes, it helps to understand what WSL (especially WSL2) already provided, and where it lagged.
WSL1: Early versions translated Linux system calls to Windows equivalents. Good for basic command-line tools, scripts, but limited in compatibility with certain networking, kernel module, filesystem, and performance-sensitive tasks.
WSL2: Introduced a real Linux kernel inside a lightweight VM (Hyper-V or a similar backend), better system-call compatibility, better performance especially for Linux tools, and much improved behavior for things like Docker, compiling, etc. Still, heavy workloads (e.g. ML training, video encoding, hardware-accelerated graphics) were constrained by CPU support, lack of passthrough of GPU features, older kernels, etc.
So developers were pushing Microsoft to allow more direct access to GPU functionality (CUDA, DirectML, video decoding), and to speed up how kernel updates reach users.
GPU Acceleration in WSL on Windows 11: What It Means
GPU acceleration here refers to WSL’s ability to offload certain computation or video tasks from the CPU to the GPU, enabling faster, more efficient execution. This includes:
Compute workloads - frameworks like CUDA (for NVIDIA), DirectML, etc., so that things like deep learning, scientific computing, data-parallel tasks run much faster. Microsoft now supports running NVIDIA CUDA inside WSL to accelerate ML libraries like PyTorch, TensorFlow.
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- Harnessing GitOps on Linux for Seamless, Git-First Infrastructure Management
by George Whittaker Introduction
Imagine a world where every server, application, and network configuration is meticulously orchestrated via Git, where updates, audits, and recoveries happen with a single commit. This is the realm GitOps unlocks, especially potent when paired with the versatility of Linux environments. In this article, we'll dive deep into how Git-driven workflows can transform the way you manage Linux infrastructure, offering clarity, control, and confidence in every change.
GitOps Demystified: A New Infrastructure Paradigm
GitOps isn't just a catchy buzzword, it's a methodical rethink of how infrastructure should be managed.
It treats Git as the definitive blueprint for your live systems, everything from server settings to application deployments is declared, versioned, and stored in repositories.
With Git as the single source of truth, every adjustment is tracked, reversible, and auditable, turning ops into a transparent, code-centric process.
Beyond simple CI/CD, GitOps introduces a continuous reconciliation model: specialized agents continuously compare the actual state of systems against the desired state in Git and correct any discrepancies automatically.
Why Linux and GitOps Are a Natural Pair
Linux stands at the heart of infrastructure, servers, containers, edge systems, you name it. When GitOps is layered onto that:
You'll leverage Linux’s scripting capabilities (like bash) to craft powerful, domain-specific automation that dovetails perfectly with GitOps agents.
The transparency of Git coupled with Linux’s flexible architecture simplifies debugging, auditing, and recovery.
The combination gives infrastructure teams the agility to iterate faster while keeping control rigorous and secure.
Architecting GitOps Pipelines for Linux EnvironmentsStructuring Repositories Deliberately
A well-organized Git setup is crucial:
Use separate repositories or disciplined directory structures for:
Infrastructure modules (e.g., Terraform, networking, VMs),
Platform components (monitoring, ingress controllers, certificates),
Application-level configurations (Helm overrides, container versions).
This separation helps ensure access controls align with responsibilities and limits risks from misconfiguration or accidental cross-impact.
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- How DevOps Teams Are Redefining Reliability with NixOS and OSTree-Powered Linux
by George Whittaker
This article explores how modern DevOps teams are redefining stability and reproducibility in production environments by embracing truly unchangeable operating systems. It delves into how NixOS’s declarative configuration model and OSTree’s atomic update mechanisms open the door to systems that are both resilient and transparent. We'll explain the advantages, technologies, comparisons, and real-world use cases fueling this shift.
The Paradigm Shift: From Mutable Chaos to Immutable Assurance
Why the change happened: The traditional model, logging into servers, tweaking packages, and patching in place, has led to unpredictable environments, elusive bugs, “snowflake” systems, and configuration drift as environments diverged over time. Immutable infrastructure treats machines like fungible artifacts: if you need change, you don’t fix the running system, you replace it.
Key benefits:
Reliability at scale: Automated, reproducible deployments, no divergence across servers.
Simplified rolling back: If something breaks, spin up the previous, working version.
Security by design: Core systems are read-only, reducing the attack surface.
Immutable Foundations in ActionNixOS: The Declarative, Version-Controlled Linux
How it works: System configuration, including packages, services, kernels, is expressed in the Nix language in a config file. Rebuilding produces a new system “generation,” which can be booted or rolled back.
Why DevOps teams love it:
Reproducibility: Exact environments can be rebuilt from config files, promoting parity across development, CI, and production.
Speed and consistency gains: In one fintech case, switching to NixOS reduced deployment times by over 50 percent, erased environment-related incidents, shrank container sizes by 70%, and cut onboarding time dramatically.
Edge readiness: Ideal for remote systems or stateless servers rebuilt nightly to ensure fleet consistency with easy rollback.
Personalization meets immutability: With tools like Home Manager, even user-specific configurations (like dotfiles or shell preferences) can be managed declaratively, and consistently reproduced across machines.
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- From Novice to Pro: Mastering Lightweight Linux for Your Kubernetes Projects
by George Whittaker Introduction: Why Lightweight Matters for Kubernetes Devs
When running Kubernetes clusters for development, the operating system’s footprint can make or break performance and agility. Heavy, general-purpose Linux distributions waste memory and CPU cycles on components you’ll never use, while lightweight, container-focused distros keep your nodes lean and optimized. For developers experimenting with k3s, MicroK8s, or full-blown Kubernetes clusters, lightweight Linux offers faster spin-ups, lower overhead, and environments that better simulate production-grade setups.
In this guide, we’ll take a look at the best lightweight Linux options for Kubernetes developers, compare their strengths, and walk through code examples for quick setup. Whether you’re spinning up a local test cluster or building a scalable dev lab, this breakdown will help you pick the right base OS and make the most of your Kubernetes workflow.
Key Considerations for Dev-Focused Kubernetes Nodes
Before diving into individual distros, it’s important to understand what really matters when pairing Linux with Kubernetes:
Minimal Resource Usage: A slim OS footprint leaves more CPU and RAM for pods and workloads.
Container Runtime Compatibility: Built-in or easy-to-install support for containerd, CRI-O, or Docker ensures smooth cluster bootstrapping.
Init System Support: Compatibility with systemd or OpenRC impacts how Kubernetes services are managed.
Immutable vs. Mutable: Immutable systems like Fedora CoreOS or Talos enhance reliability but restrict tinkering, while Alpine and Ubuntu Core offer more flexibility for on-the-fly customization.
Developer Friendliness: A distro should integrate seamlessly with kubectl, Helm, CI/CD agents, and debugging workflows.
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- Containers in 2025: Docker vs. Podman for Modern Developers
by George Whittaker Introduction
Container technology has matured rapidly, but in 2025, two tools still dominate conversations in developer communities: Docker and Podman. Both tools are built on OCI (Open Container Initiative) standards, meaning they can build, run, and manage the same types of images. However, the way they handle processes, security, and orchestration differs dramatically. This article breaks down everything developers need to know, from architectural design to CLI compatibility, performance, and security, with a focus on the latest changes in both ecosystems.
Architecture: Daemon vs. DaemonlessDocker's Daemon-Based Model
Docker uses a persistent background service, dockerd, to manage container lifecycles. The CLI communicates with this daemon, which supervises container creation, networking, and resource allocation. While this centralized approach is convenient, it introduces a single point of failure: if the daemon crashes, every running container goes down with it.
Podman’s Daemonless Approach
Podman flips the script. Instead of a single daemon, every container runs as a child process of the CLI command that started it. This design eliminates the need for a root-level service, which is appealing for environments concerned about attack surfaces. Containers continue to run independently even if the CLI session ends, and they can be supervised with systemd for long-term stability.
Developer Workflow and CLIFamiliar Command Structure
Podman was designed as a near drop-in replacement for Docker. Commands like podman run, podman ps, and podman build mirror their Docker equivalents, reducing the learning curve. Developers can often alias docker to podman and keep using their existing scripts.
Run an NGINX container
Docker
docker run -d --name web -p 8080:80 nginx:latest
Podman
podman run -d --name web -p 8080:80 nginx:latestGUI Options
For desktop users, Docker Desktop remains polished and feature-rich. However, Podman Desktop has matured significantly. It now supports Windows and macOS with better integration, faster file sharing, and no licensing restrictions, making it appealing for enterprise environments.
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- Rising from the Ashes: How AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux Redefined the Post-CentOS Landscape
by George Whittaker
When Red Hat announced the abrupt end of traditional CentOS in late 2020, the Linux ecosystem was shaken to its core. Developers, sysadmins, and enterprises that relied on CentOS for years suddenly found themselves scrambling for answers. Out of that disruption, two projects, AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux, emerged to carry forward the legacy of CentOS while forging their own identities. This article dives into how these two distributions established themselves as reliable, enterprise-grade options for developers and organizations alike.
The Fall of CentOS: An Industry Shockwave
For over a decade, CentOS was the backbone of countless servers, from small web hosts to enterprise data centers. It provided a stable, free, and RHEL-compatible platform, perfect for developers and administrators building and maintaining critical infrastructure.
That stability came to an end when Red Hat pivoted CentOS to a rolling-release model, CentOS Stream. Instead of offering a downstream, binary-compatible version of RHEL, Stream became a preview of future RHEL updates. This move caused widespread frustration:
Organizations that built production environments around CentOS suddenly faced shortened support lifecycles.
Developers who depended on a “set-and-forget” environment now had to deal with the unpredictability of a rolling release.
Compliance-driven industries were left in limbo, as running on an unsupported OS could trigger security and regulatory risks.
This disruption created a vacuum, and the Linux community quickly stepped up to fill it.
The Birth of AlmaLinux and Rocky LinuxAlmaLinux: Community-Driven, Enterprise-Ready
Shortly after the CentOS announcement, CloudLinux, a company with deep experience in server environments, launched AlmaLinux. The first stable release landed in March 2021. True to its name, “alma” meaning “soul”, the project’s mission was clear: to embody the spirit of CentOS while maintaining community governance. The non-profit AlmaLinux OS Foundation now oversees the project, ensuring it remains free and open for everyone.
Rocky Linux: A Tribute and a Promise
At almost the same time, Gregory Kurtzer, one of the original CentOS founders, unveiled Rocky Linux, named in honor of CentOS co-founder Rocky McGaugh. From the beginning, Rocky positioned itself as a 1:1 binary-compatible rebuild of RHEL, mirroring CentOS’s original mission. Its governance structure, managed by the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation (RESF), ensures that the project remains rooted in community oversight rather than corporate ownership.
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- Why GNOME Replaced Eye of GNOME with Loupe as the Default Image Viewer
by George Whittaker A Shift in GNOME’s Core Applications
For over two decades, Eye of GNOME (often shortened to EOG) was the silent workhorse of the GNOME desktop environment. It wasn’t flashy, but it did exactly what most people expected: double-click a picture, and it opened instantly. Yet, with the arrival of GNOME 45 in late 2023, a new name appeared in the lineup of “core” apps: Loupe. From that moment forward, Loupe became the official default image viewer on GNOME desktops, displacing EOG.
This decision wasn’t made lightly. GNOME has been steadily refreshing its default applications in recent years, Gedit was replaced by GNOME Text Editor, and Cheese gave way to Snapshot. Loupe is the continuation of this modernization trend. Eye of GNOME is still available in repositories for those who want it, but the GNOME team has shifted its endorsement to Loupe as the better long-term solution.
What Loupe Brings to the Table
Loupe isn’t just a reskin of EOG. It was built from scratch with today’s hardware, design standards, and security expectations in mind. At first glance, the interface looks minimal, but there’s more happening beneath the hood than many realize.
Rust-Powered Foundation – Unlike Eye of GNOME’s decades-old C codebase, Loupe is written in Rust. This choice immediately grants it memory safety, helping avoid whole categories of crashes and vulnerabilities. For an app that regularly opens untrusted files, this is an important safeguard.
GPU-Accelerated Image Handling – Instead of pushing all rendering to the CPU, Loupe leverages the GPU. Panning across a large image or zooming into a 50-megapixel photo feels fluid, even on high-resolution displays.
Touch-Friendly Navigation – GNOME has been preparing for a future that includes more touch devices. Loupe fits right in, supporting pinch-to-zoom, two-finger swipes to move between images, and smooth transitions that feel natural on both touchscreens and trackpads.
Streamlined Metadata View – Instead of burying photo information behind a separate dialog, Loupe integrates an optional sidebar. With a click, you can see dimensions, file size, EXIF data, and even location details without leaving the main view.
Security Through Sandboxing – Image decoding is handled in isolated processes using a new backend called Glycin. If a corrupt or malicious image tries to crash the decoder, it won’t take the entire viewer down with it.
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- Ptyxis: Ubuntu’s Leap Into GPU-Powered Terminals
by George Whittaker
For decades, the humble terminal has been one of the most unchanging parts of the Linux desktop. Text streams flow in monochrome grids, and while the underlying libraries have evolved, the experience has remained more or less the same. Ubuntu, however, is preparing to rewrite this narrative. The distribution is adopting Ptyxis, a fresh terminal emulator designed for modern computing, and one of its standout qualities is that it leans on the GPU for rendering rather than relying solely on the CPU.
This shift is more than cosmetic. It represents a rethink of how command-line tools should perform in an era of container-heavy development, high-DPI displays, and demanding workloads. Let’s unpack what makes Ptyxis a different breed of terminal, why Ubuntu is betting on it, and what it means for everyday users and power developers alike.
The Origin Story of Ptyxis
Ptyxis is not an accidental side project. It was initially prototyped under the name GNOME Prompt by Christian Hergert, a well-known GNOME contributor also behind GNOME Builder. Early experiments showed there was space for a terminal designed from scratch with today’s GNOME ecosystem and GPU pipelines in mind.
To avoid conflicts with existing software, the project was later rebranded as Ptyxis. The application has since matured rapidly, and major distributions such as Fedora and Ubuntu have committed to it. Ubuntu introduced it in experimental form in 24.10, and by the upcoming Ubuntu 25.10 “Questing Quokka”, it is expected to replace the aging GNOME Terminal as the default choice.
A New Kind of Terminal ExperienceGPU Acceleration as the Core
Traditional terminals typically rely on CPU-bound rendering stacks, often through libraries like Cairo and Pango. This works fine until you throw thousands of lines of log output or try to run full-screen text-based UIs that push rendering to its limits. Ptyxis sidesteps these bottlenecks by shifting the drawing work to the graphics processor, taking advantage of Vulkan or OpenGL backends supplied by GTK4.
The result is immediately noticeable: smooth scrolling, responsive updates, and consistent performance even with massive amounts of text on screen. It’s not just about speed, either, offloading rendering to the GPU reduces CPU strain, leaving headroom for the processes you’re actually running.
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