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Framework’s CEO on the RAM crisis and creating a “MacBook Pro for Linux users”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Apr '26

23 Apr '26

Interview with Framework CEO Nirav Patel <https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/04/frameworks-ceo-on-the-ram-crisis-an…>. Framework, the maker of configurable laptops, is naturally a Linux-heavy, but not a Linux-exclusive, company: “... on Framework Laptop 13, we actually have slightly more Linux users than Windows users. It’s something like 55/45 [Linux versus Windows] on the 13. It varies on our different products. The [Framework Laptop] 16 is a bit more Windows heavy.” Also: The company is also trying to capture Mac users, which was one reason Framework shifted from a trackpad with a physical clicking mechanism to a haptic trackpad like the ones Apple has used in most MacBooks over the past decade. Yes, there are actually enough Mac users that want to switch to Framework machines, for this to matter. And the headline quote: “Increasingly over the last five years, especially software developers come in because they want Linux and they want it on hardware that supports it as a first-class experience,” Patel told Ars. “And so really a lot of the philosophy behind the [Framework Laptop 13] Pro was ‘let’s build essentially the MacBook Pro for Linux users. Let’s take the software that they want, the distro that they prefer, and then make sure that the hardware experience lives up to what they would expect coming from a MacBook Pro.’”

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IPv6 Marches On
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 17 Apr '26

17 Apr '26

Some interesting stats from <https://www.tomshardware.com/networking/ipv6-usage-reaches-historic-50-perc…>: • 50% of users of Google’s services connect over IPv6 • 43% of the world uses IPv6, with some parts approaching 50% • Cloudflare reports 40% of its traffic is done via IPv6 Choice quote: Some people still think that the additional 20 bytes or so of an IPv6 packet header translates to significant bandwidth losses, higher CPU usage, and hair loss. The reality is that even 11 years ago, Facebook's tests saw that IPv6 connectivity was around 10-15% faster overall, while networking giant Akamai noticed a 5% speedup in mobile page loading. The speedups are almost assuredly due to the fact that with IPv6, there's very little need to do math with NAT, proxies, and other shenanigans, as in most instances, everything can directly connect to everything else.

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Linux 7.0 Released
by Peter Reutemann 14 Apr '26

14 Apr '26

'"The new Linux kernel was released and it's kind of a big deal," writes longtime Slashdot reader rexx mainframe. "Here is what you can expect." Linuxiac reports: A key update in Linux 7.0 is the removal of the experimental label from Rust support. That (of course) does not make Rust a dominant language in kernel development, but it is still an important step in its gradual integration into the project. Another notable security-related change is the addition of ML-DSA post-quantum signatures for kernel module authentication, while support for SHA-1-based module-signing schemes has been removed. The kernel now includes BPF-based filtering for io_uring operations, providing administrators with improved control in restricted environments. Additionally, BTF type lookups are now faster due to binary search. At the same time, this release continues ongoing cleanup in the kernel's lower layers. The removal of linuxrc initrd code advances the transition to initramfs as the sole early-userspace boot mechanism. Linux 7.0 also introduces NULLFS, an immutable and empty root filesystem designed for systems that mount the real root later. Plus, preemption handling is now simpler on most architectures, with further improvements to restartable sequences, workqueues, RCU internals, slab allocation, and type-based hardening. Filesystems and storage receive several updates as well. Non-blocking timestamp updates now function correctly, and filesystems must explicitly opt in to leases rather than receiving them by default. Phoronix has compiled a list of the many exciting changes. Linus Torvalds himself announced the release, which can be downloaded directly from his git tree or from the kernel.org website. Linux 7.0 has a major new version number but it's "largely a numbering reset [...], not a sign of some unusually disruptive release," notes Linuxiac.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/04/13/1857240/linux-70-released Cheers, Peter

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Steam On Linux Use Skyrocketed In March - More Than Double The macOS Gaming Marketshare
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 04 Apr '26

04 Apr '26

I keep thinking: if the number of Linux-based users of Steam is so much greater than those using macOS, doesn’t that mean that the size of the overall desktop Linux installed base is now larger than that of macOS? Because otherwise, macOS users must be somehow less fun-loving that Linux users ... which seems hard to accept. <https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-On-Linux-Tops-5p>

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Google Groups Spam
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Apr '26

03 Apr '26

I thought Google Groups was defunct. But it appears it is still possible for people to use it to set up mailing lists. I have been receiving a certain amount of spam sent via this mechanism over the past couple of weeks: what seems to happen is that the spammer registers a random domain and sets Google to manage email for that domain, creates a list on Google Groups with an address on that domain, subscribes a bunch of victims to it, then sends out their junk mail with the from-address set to the list address. Several of those addresses have autoreply set (e.g. tech support addresses), so they in turn send those autoreplies to the list address, which adds to the spam. Thankfully, there don’t seem to be autoreplies to their autoreplies, so at least things don’t spiral completely out of control ... What I have found is that all these messages have a common characteristic, namely a “List-Unsubscribe” header line which contains an address like “<mailto:googlegroups-manage+«blah-blah»+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com>”. Checking a few other mailing lists I’m on (like this one), they have entirely different addresses in this field. So, following some instructions in the Postfix documentation, I have added a “header_checks” map to my MTA configuration, containing the rule /^List-Unsubscribe\:\s*.*\@googlegroups\.com REJECT I always feel a little nervous about these sorts of email-related changes, since it’s so easy to stuff something up and block receipt of all mail altogether. I’ll feel reassured by seeing this posting to the mailing list come back to me. ;)

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Open Source: This Is Not How It Works
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Apr '26

03 Apr '26

The Europeans want to create their own open-source office suite, to get away from the whims of some US-based proprietary company -- a commendable goal. They are using the OnlyOffice source code as their starting point -- maybe not so commendable. Seems the OnlyOffice folks are not happy over this <https://www.computerworld.com/article/4153893/onlyoffice-accuses-euro-offic…>. Trouble is, I don’t see how they can have a point. They license the source code under the AGPL, a licence that I have some qualms about. But nevertheless, people are free to take the code under this licence and do whatever they like with it, subject to the terms of the licence. From the article: OnlyOffice said in blog post that those accessing its code under this license are required to abide by conditions, such as retaining OnlyOffice’s branding and “providing proper attribution to the original technology.” OnlyOffice said that Euro-Office doesn’t meet these conditions, and therefore “any further use of the software is unauthorized and, as such, constitutes an infringement of the copyright holder’s exclusive rights.” The company also claims it was not contacted about the Euro-Office project prior to launch. But open-source licences don’t require any such conditions: there is no need to preserve any such “branding” (in fact, some trademark owners insist that these be removed in any forks), and there is no need to seek additional agreement from the copyright owners before performing actions that are permitted under the licence anyway. Copyright notices must be kept, anyway, but I can’t believe the Europeans were planning on removing those.

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I tried to prove I'm not AI. My aunt wasn't convinced
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Mar '26

30 Mar '26

A BBC correspondent talks to some AI experts on ways that people can be sure they’re talking to the real you and not an AI. The consensus is: the fakes are so good now, there is no way even for the experts to be completely sure, when communicating with someone remotely, that they are genuine, just from the content alone. Apart from meeting in person, the only sure way is to apply authentication methods already in common use for secure logins to remote services. Only now the definition of “remote service” has to broadened to “talking to your friends”. <https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260324-i-tried-to-prove-im-not-an-ai-d…>

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Linux Maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman Says AI Tools Now Useful, Finding Real Bugs
by Peter Reutemann 30 Mar '26

30 Mar '26

'Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman tells The Register that AI-driven code review has "really jumped" for Linux. "There must have been some inflection point somewhere with the tools..." "Something happened a month ago, and the world switched. Now we have real reports." It's not just Linux, he continued. "All open source projects have real reports that are made with AI, but they're good, and they're real." Security teams across major open source projects talk informally and frequently, he noted, and everyone is seeing the same shift. "All open source security teams are hitting this right now...." For now, AI is showing up more as a reviewer and assistant than as a full author of Linux kernel code, but that line is starting to blur. Kroah-Hartman has already done his own experiments with AI-generated patches. "I did a really stupid prompt," he recounted. "I said, 'Give me this,' and it spit out 60: 'Here's 60 problems I found, and here's the fixes for them.' About one-third were wrong, but they still pointed out a relatively real problem, and two-thirds of the patches were right." Mind you, those working patches still needed human cleanup, better changelogs, and integration work, but they were far from useless. "The tools are good," he said. "We can't ignore this stuff. It's coming up, and it's getting better...." [H]e said that for "simple little error conditions, properly detecting error conditions," AI could already generate dozens of usable patches today. The sudden increase in AI-generated reports and AI-assisted work has also spurred a parallel push to build AI into the kernel's own review infrastructure. A key piece of that is Sashiko, a tool originally developed at Google and now donated to the Linux Foundation. Kroah-Hartman said some patches are being generated with AI now. "You have a little co-develop tag for that now. We're seeing some things for some new features, but we're seeing AI mostly being used in the review."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/03/28/0717258 Cheers, Peter

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A Homegrown Excel Bug?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 26 Mar '26

26 Mar '26

A correction to MBIE’s report on current fuel reserves <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/mbie-clarifies-fuel-data-showing-far…> adds a previously-missing column showing ships that are currently “discharging” their fuel load. This gives an extra 16 days’ supply of diesel that was previously reported as only on its way here, not actually here. How do you miss out a column from a report? Answers on a postcard, please ...

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Wine 11 Rewrites How Linux Runs Windows Games At the Kernel Level
by Peter Reutemann 25 Mar '26

25 Mar '26

'Linux gamers are seeing massive performance gains with Wine's new NTSYNC support, "which is a feature that has been years in the making and rewrites how Wine handles one of the most performance-sensitive operations in modern gaming," reports XDA Developers. Not every game will see a night-and-day difference, but for the games that do benefit from these changes, "the improvements range from noticeable to absurd." Combined with improvements to Wayland, graphics, and compatibility, as well as a major WoW64 architecture overhaul, the release looks less like an incremental update and more like one of Wine's most important upgrades in years. From the report: The numbers are wild. In developer benchmarks, Dirt 3 went from 110.6 FPS to 860.7 FPS, which is an impressive 678% improvement. Resident Evil 2 jumped from 26 FPS to 77 FPS. Call of Juarez went from 99.8 FPS to 224.1 FPS. Tiny Tina's Wonderlands saw gains from 130 FPS to 360 FPS. As well, Call of Duty: Black Ops I is now actually playable on Linux, too. Those benchmarks compare Wine NTSYNC against upstream vanilla Wine, which means there's no fsync or esync either. Gamers who use fsync are not going to see such a leap in performance in most games. The games that benefit most from NTSYNC are the ones that were struggling before, such as titles with heavy multi-threaded workloads where the synchronization overhead was a genuine bottleneck. For those games, the difference is night and day. And unlike fsync, NTSYNC is in the mainline kernel, meaning you don't need any custom patches or out-of-tree modules for it work. Any distro shipping kernel 6.14 or later, which at this point includes Fedora 42, Ubuntu 25.04, and more recent releases, will support it. Valve has already added the NTSYNC kernel driver to SteamOS 3.7.20 beta, loading the module by default, and an unofficial Proton fork, Proton GE, already has it enabled. When Valve's official Proton rebases on Wine 11, every Steam Deck owner gets this for free. All of this is what makes NTSYNC such a big deal, as it's not simply a run-of-the-mill performance patch. Instead, it's something much bigger: this is the first time Wine's synchronization has been correct at the kernel level, implemented in the mainline Linux kernel, and available to everyone without jumping through hoops. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/03/24/1946246 Cheers, Peter

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