- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

FossFLOW - Isometric Diagramming Tool
by Peter Reutemann 23 Jul '25

23 Jul '25

Just came across FossFLOW: 'FossFLOW is a powerful, open-source Progressive Web App (PWA) for creating beautiful isometric diagrams. Built with React and the Isoflow (Now forked and published to NPM as fossflow) library, it runs entirely in your browser with offline support.' You can try it out here: https://stan-smith.github.io/FossFLOW/ Maybe something to consider next time you create a diagram? :-) -- code: https://github.com/stan-smith/FossFLOW -- source: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/114897260096883374 Cheers, Peter

1 0

Microsoft's Secure Boot UEFI Bootloader Signing Key Expires In September, Posing Problems For Linux Users
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Jul '25

23 Jul '25

If I understand this article right <https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cyber-security/microsoft-signing…>, there is a signing key stored in the flash RAM of PCs, issued by Microsoft, which is used to sign a “shim” that allows third-party Linux distros to boot. However, that key is due to expire this September. Microsoft issued an updated key two years ago, but that key may not be widely installed as yet. This leaves it up to PC/OEM vendors to issue updates to the flash RAM on their motherboards, which is not something that can be taken for granted. I’m not the only one wondering whether Secure Boot is worth the hassle: It's easy to see the appeal of Secure Boot—making it more difficult to install bootkits should be a net positive. However, the looming hassle of dealing with this expiring key is just the latest in a series of frustrations that encourage people to either stick with Windows or disable Secure Boot entirely. Right now, many people opt for the former, but will that continue to be the case as the popularity of other platforms rises ahead of Windows 10's demise? And is Secure Boot, as it currently exists, prepared for that shift?

1 0

filestash
by Peter Reutemann 22 Jul '25

22 Jul '25

Just came across "filestash": 'A Dropbox-like file manager that let you manage your data anywhere it is located: FTP • FTPS • SFTP • WebDAV • Git • S3 • NFS • SMB • Artifactory • LDAP • Mysql • Storj • CardDAV • CalDAV • Backblaze B2 • Minio • Dropbox • Google Drive' Sounds like an interesting and useful tool! -- github: https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash -- source: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/114893327737674577 Cheers, Peter

1 0

Actively exploited vulnerability gives extraordinary control over server fleets
by Peter Reutemann 21 Jul '25

21 Jul '25

'Hackers are exploiting a maximum-severity vulnerability that has the potential to give them complete control over thousands of servers, many of which handle mission-critical tasks inside data centers, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is warning. The vulnerability, carrying a severity rating of 10 out of a possible 10, resides in the AMI MegaRAC, a widely used firmware package that allows large fleets of servers to be remotely accessed and managed even when power is unavailable or the operating system isn't functioning. These motherboard-attached microcontrollers, known as baseboard management controllers (BMCs), give extraordinary control over servers inside data centers. Administrators use BMCs to reinstall operating systems, install or modify apps, and make configuration changes to large numbers of servers without physically being on premises and, in many cases, without the servers being turned on. Successful compromise of a single BMC can be used to pivot into internal networks and compromise all other BMCs. CVE-2024-54085, as the vulnerability is tracked, allows for authentication bypasses by making a simple web request to a vulnerable BMC device over HTTP. The vulnerability was discovered by security firm Eclypsium and disclosed in March. The disclosure included proof-of-concept exploit code allowing a remote attacker to create an admin account without providing any authentication. At the time of the disclosure, there were no known reports of the vulnerability being actively exploited. On Wednesday, CISA added CVE-2024-54085 to its list of vulnerabilities known to be exploited in the wild. The notice provided no further details.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/06/active-exploitation-of-ami-managem… Cheers, Peter

4 6

KDE's Android TV Alternative, Plasma Bigscreen, Rises From the Dead
by Peter Reutemann 16 Jul '25

16 Jul '25

'Plasma Bigscreen, KDE's TV-focused interface, is being revived after years of inactivity thanks to contributor Devin, who overhauled the UI, redesigned the Settings app, improved app launching, and updated key modules. While still in progress -- with features like HDMI-CEC remote support and a virtual keyboard pending -- the project aims to rejoin KDE's official Plasma release schedule, potentially in version 6.5. Neowin reports: If you have not heard of it, Plasma Bigscreen is a Plasma shell for televisions, with original support for the now-defunct Mycroft AI assistant. It used to provide a simple launcher for apps and custom "Mycroft Skills" before development stalled, causing most distributions to drop it. The project was left behind during the big transition to Plasma 6 last year because no one had ported it in time for the megarelease. After a friend of his started poking at the code, Devin stepped in to tackle the much-needed work. [...] For anyone who wants to test this out, you can do as Devin did by installing Plasma Bigscreen on a Raspberry Pi using postmarketOS, though you would have to compile it yourself or pull from the nightly repos to get the latest changes. Applications like Kodi and VacuumTube (smart TV version of YouTube) work well with remote navigation, and some games like SuperTuxKart are playable. Controller support exists, but getting TV remotes to work over HDMI CEC is still untested. The project is far from finished; it still needs an arrow-navigable virtual keyboard and a clearer long-term direction now that Mycroft is gone. Still, the goal is to get it back into the official Plasma release schedule, possibly for version 6.5. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/15/1956221 Cheers, Peter

1 0

Browser Extensions Turn Nearly 1 Million Browsers Into Website-Scraping Bots
by Peter Reutemann 10 Jul '25

10 Jul '25

'Over 240 browser extensions with nearly a million total installs have been covertly turning users' browsers into web-scraping bots. "The extensions serve a wide range of purposes, including managing bookmarks and clipboards, boosting speaker volumes, and generating random numbers," reports Ars Technica. "The common thread among all of them: They incorporate MellowTel-js, an open source JavaScript library that allows developers to monetize their extensions." Ars Technica reports: Some of the data swept up in the collection free-for-all included surveillance videos hosted on Nest, tax returns, billing invoices, business documents, and presentation slides posted to, or hosted on, Microsoft OneDrive and Intuit.com, vehicle identification numbers of recently bought automobiles along with the names and addresses of the buyers, patient names and the doctors they saw, travel itineraries hosted on Priceline, Booking.com, and airline websites, Facebook Messenger attachments and Facebook photos, even when the photos were set to be private. The dragnet also collected proprietary information belonging to Tesla, Blue Origin, Amgen, Merck, Pfizer, Roche, and dozens of other companies. Tuckner said in an email Wednesday that the most recent status of the affected extensions is: - Of 45 known Chrome extensions, 12 are now inactive. Some of the extensions were removed for malware explicitly. Others have removed the library. - Of 129 Edge extensions incorporating the library, eight are now inactive. - Of 71 affected Firefox extensions, two are now inactive. Some of the inactive extensions were removed for malware explicitly. Others have removed the library in more recent updates. A complete list of extensions found by Tuckner is here.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/09/2257245 Cheers, Peter

1 0

AMD Warns of New Meltdown, Spectre-like Bugs Affecting CPUs
by Peter Reutemann 10 Jul '25

10 Jul '25

'AMD is warning users of a newly discovered form of side-channel attack affecting a broad range of its chips that could lead to information disclosure. Register: Akin to Meltdown and Spectre, the Transient Scheduler Attack (TSA) comprises four vulnerabilities that AMD said it discovered while looking into a Microsoft report about microarchitectural leaks. The four bugs do not appear too venomous at face value -- two have medium-severity ratings while the other two are rated "low." However, the low-level nature of the exploit's impact has nonetheless led Trend Micro and CrowdStrike to assess the threat as "critical." The reasons for the low severity scores are the high degree of complexity involved in a successful attack -- AMD said it could only be carried out by an attacker able to run arbitrary code on a target machine. It affects AMD processors (desktop, mobile and datacenter models), including 3rd gen and 4th gen EPYC chips -- the full list is here.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/07/09/1835230 Cheers, Peter

1 0

GIMP 3.2 Promises New Paint Mode, Support for Importing Photoshop Patterns
by Peter Reutemann 04 Jul '25

04 Jul '25

'GIMP 3.2 promises new features like theme colors for Brush, Font, and Palette, a new paint blend mode called Overwrite that lets you directly replace the pixels over the area you paint, a new setting in the text tool to control the direction of the text outline, and automatic match of Linux and Windows OS themes. It also promises support for using ART (AnotherRawTherapee) as a Camera Raw loader, a new option to export to Krita‘s .kpl palette format, support for importing Photoshop patterns, as well as support for using presets from Photoshop’s Curves and Levels filters in GIMP’s Curves and Levels filters. In addition, GIMP 3.2 will bring initial support for exporting Photoshop Large format (PSB) files, support for importing APNG animations, support for loading multi-layer OpenEXR images, support for importing and exporting JPEG 2000 images, and support for loading and exporting Sony Playstation 1 TIM textures and images. But wait, that’s not all because GIMP 3.2 also promises support for importing Nokia’s historical black and white Over-the-Air Bitmap format, support for importing the GIF variant known as Jeff’s Image Format (.jif), and support for importing Advanced Video Coding (AVCI) still images. Among other noteworthy changes, GIMP 3.2 promises to improve non-destructive editing, update the CMYK Color Selector to calculate and display the Total Ink Coverage of the selected color, and implement a new API to create a GimpCoordinates widget in the auto-generated dialog.' -- source: https://9to5linux.com/gimp-3-2-promises-new-paint-mode-support-for-importin… Cheers, Peter

1 0

Let's Encrypt Rolls Out Free Security Certs For IP Addresses
by Peter Reutemann 04 Jul '25

04 Jul '25

'Let's Encrypt, a certificate authority (CA) known for its free TLS/SSL certificates, has begun issuing digital certificates for IP addresses. From a report: It's not the first CA to do so. PositiveSSL, Sectigo, and GeoTrust all offer TLS/SSL certificates for use with IP addresses, at prices ranging from $40 to $90 or so annually. But Let's Encrypt does so at no cost. For those with a static IP address who want to host a website, an IP address certificate provides a way to offer visitors a secure connection with that numeric identifier while avoiding the nominal expense of a domain name.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/07/03/1452239 Cheers, Peter

1 0

Linux’s Remarkable Journey From One Dev's Hobby To 40 Million Lines Of Code - And Counting
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 03 Jul '25

03 Jul '25

A retrospective <https://www.zdnet.com/article/linuxs-remarkable-journey-from-one-devs-hobby…> on how the Linux kernel project got to where it is today. Quotes: “We're always building on the kernel, despite the fact that a lot of things were happening in the world over these three decades. We had the dotcom crash in 2000. We had the SCO lawsuit. In 2008, there was the global economic crisis. And of course, we had the COVID pandemic. But you don't really see an effect on the development speed of Linux from any of these events. We have somehow managed to sustain everything we can do despite all the stuff that has happened in the world.” ... Of course, for years, no one took Linux seriously. It was dismissed as a toy in an era when Unix fragmentation and the rise of Windows NT dominated industry thinking. The prevailing wisdom held that only large corporations could build operating system kernels, leaving little attention for a community-driven initiative. Yet, as Corbet noted, Linux exemplified Clayton Christensen's concept of disruptive innovation: a technology dismissed as inferior that quietly matures until it overtakes established players. Why did the BSDs lose their early lead? Another factor, Corbet explained, was that in the early 1990s, the BSD Unix systems were much more mature than Linux; they were capable of doing more and were more usable. Still, their permissive BSD license model led to a whole bunch of forks. None of them gained the critical mass in terms of either the development community or adoption to dominate Linux. Instead, the Linux kernel stayed one thing. It stayed together, in part because its GPLv2 copyright policy meant everybody retains their copyright under the same license. Some other open-source projects (including GNU) insist that contributors sign a “Contributor Licence Agreement”, turning over their copyright to some official body in charge of the project. The Linux kernel does not, and there are others that don’t.

1 0

PNG Spec, 3rd Edition, Is Out
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 27 Jun '25

27 Jun '25

There is has been a major update to the specification for the PNG (“Portable Network Graphics”) file-format spec <https://www.programmax.net/articles/png-is-back/>, 20 years on from the previous edition. New features include support for high-dynamic-range colour gamuts, using a new metadata entry type that is much more compact than a full embedded ICC colour profile, and the official acceptance of the APNG format for animating a sequence of images within a single PNG file.

1 0

Lyon Abandons Microsoft Office To Strengthen 'Digital Sovereignty'
by Peter Reutemann 26 Jun '25

26 Jun '25

'The City of Lyon will replace Microsoft's office suite with free office software, including OnlyOffice for office work and Linux and PostgreSQL for systems and databases. The city aims to "no longer be dependent on American software solutions and acquire true digital sovereignty," according to an official statement. ' -- source: https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/1757229 Great to see that the digital sovereignty movement gaining momentum, if only down-under as well... Cheers, Peter

1 0

Mozilla Formally Discontinues Its DeepSpeech Project
by Peter Reutemann 26 Jun '25

26 Jun '25

'One of the interesting projects engaged in by Mozilla that directly wasn't related to their web browser efforts was DeepSpeech, an embedded/offline speech-to-text engine. To not much surprise given the lack of activity in recent years, last week they finally and formally discontinued the open-source project. Mozilla DeepSpeech was a promising speech-to-text engine with great performance for real-time communication even when running on Raspberry Pi SBCs and other low-power systems.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/25/1851201 It's hard to compete with other publicly available models like OpenAI's whisper, which are really, really good. Cheers, Peter

1 0

Ubuntu To Disable Intel Graphics Security Mitigations To Boost GPU Performance By Up To 20%
by Peter Reutemann 24 Jun '25

24 Jun '25

'Disabling Intel graphics security mitigations in GPU compute stacks for OpenCL and Level Zero can yield a performance boost of up to 20%, prompting Ubuntu's Canonical and Intel to disable these mitigations in future Ubuntu packages. Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports: Intel does allow building their GPU compute stack without these mitigations by using the "NEO_DISABLE_MITIGATIONS" build option and that is what Canonical is looking to set now for Ubuntu packages to avoid the significant performance impact. This work will likely all be addressed in time for Ubuntu 25.10. This NEO_DISABLE_MITIGATIONS option is just for compiling the Intel Compute Runtime stack and doesn't impact the Linux kernel security mitigations or else outside of Intel's "NEO" GPU compute stack. Both Intel and Canonical are in agreement with this move and it turns out that even Intel's GitHub binary packages for their Compute Runtime for OpenCL and Level Zero ship with the mitigations disabled due to the performance impact. This Ubuntu Launchpad bug report for the Intel Compute Runtime notes some of the key takeaways. There is also this PPA where Ubuntu developers are currently testing their Compute Runtime builds with NEO_DISABLE_MITIGATIONS enabled for disabling the mitigations.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/23/2046259 Cheers, Peter

1 0

WebVM
by Peter Reutemann 24 Jun '25

24 Jun '25

Just came across this project on my Mastodon feed: 'WebVM is a server-less virtual environment running fully client-side in HTML5/WebAssembly. It's designed to be Linux ABI-compatible. It runs an unmodified Debian distribution including many native development toolchains. WebVM is powered by the CheerpX virtualization engine, and enables safe, sandboxed client-side execution of x86 binaries on any browser. CheerpX includes an x86-to-WebAssembly JIT compiler, a virtual block-based file system, and a Linux syscall emulator.' -- github: https://github.com/leaningtech/webvm -- mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/114735683692335386 Cheers, Peter

1 0

How The Grateful Dead Built The Internet
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Jun '25

23 Jun '25

Here’s an interesting piece, from the BBC of all places, about the role that a hippie band that started in the 1960s went on to play in the culture of the early Internet <https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250618-how-the-grateful-dead-shaped-so…>. Not only were their stage shows technology-heavy, but they somehow managed to attract a major following among technologists of all kinds. Among the other members of that milieu was Steward Brand, creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, a resource for those looking for tools to help them live a simpler life, less dominated by faceless corporates and promoting more intimate, personal power. Quote from the introduction: “We are as gods and might as well get used to it.” Brand went on to co-found the WELL, aka the “Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link”, which started out as a BBS with users connecting via dialup lines, before becoming an Internet-connected service -- one of the earliest examples, if not *the* earliest example, of “social media”, if you will. John Perry Barlow, one of the lyricists for the Grateful Dead, got heavily involved in the WELL and then went on to found the Electronic Frontier Foundation, dedicated to the preservation of free speech and other civil rights in the online world.

2 1

OpenPGP Versus GnuPG
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Jun '25

23 Jun '25

It seems the developers of GnuPG are starting to diverge from the OpenPGP standard, and go their own, incompatible way. I got notes about this from the last few upgrades of my Debian Unstable systems, and so searching about online led me (yet again) to the ever-dependable ArchLinux Wiki <https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GnuPG>, which has a section on “OpenPGP compatibility”, with links to more details about the schism. So the Debian folks seem reluctant to go along with this, and they’re not the only ones.

2 1

Bill Gates Gets To Meet The Famous Linus Torvalds
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 23 Jun '25

23 Jun '25

Did you know, Torvalds and Gates had never met before <https://www.theverge.com/news/690815/bill-gates-linus-torvalds-meeting-photo>. The third older guy with them is Dave Cutler, mastermind of Windows NT. Not sure if he was the one responsible for putting in drive letters and all those “reserved” file names or not.

1 0

The Kubuntu Focus Team Announces The M2 GEN 6
by Peter Reutemann 16 Jun '25

16 Jun '25

'The Kubuntu Focus team has some exciting news to share. We have launched the sixth generation of the flagship M2 laptop, featuring the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU with 24 threads, Nvidia® GeForce® RTX 50-series GPUs, and many more upgrades. See more about this laptop in the press release, and see the press photos here!' -- source: https://www.einpresswire.com/article/820847974/kubuntu-focus-announces-the-… -- photos: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1mTmiw5HuJ8XkJ_yqy-R9YT-BqD-lmG3D Cheers, Peter

1 0

Denmark Is Dumping Microsoft Office and Windows For LibreOffice and Linux
by Peter Reutemann 13 Jun '25

13 Jun '25

'ZDNet reports: Denmark's Minister of Digitalization, Caroline Stage, has announced that the Danish government will start moving away from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice. Why? It's not because open-source is better, although I would argue that it is, but because Denmark wants to claim "digital sovereignty." In the States, you probably haven't heard that phrase, but in the European Union, digital sovereignty is a big deal and getting bigger. A combination of security, economic, political, and societal imperatives is driving the EU's digital sovereignty moves. EU leaders are seeking to reduce Europe's dependence on foreign technology providers, primarily those from the United States, and to assert greater control over its digital infrastructure, data, and technological future. Why? Because they're concerned about who controls European data, who sets the rules, and who can potentially cut off access to essential services in times of geopolitical tension. "Money issues have also played a decisive role," writes ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols. "Copenhagen's Microsoft software bill has soared from 313 million kroner in 2018 to 538 million kroner -- about $53 million in 2023, a 72% increase in just five years. David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), a Dane, inventor of Ruby on Rails, and co-owner of the software developer company 37Signals, has said: "Denmark is one of the most highly digitalized countries in the world. It's also one of the most Microsoft-dependent. In fact, Microsoft is by far and away the single biggest dependency, so it makes perfect sense to start the quest for digital sovereignty there."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/06/12/0335229 Cheers, Peter

2 1

Apple Quietly Launches Container On GitHub To Bring Linux Development To macOS
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jun '25

12 Jun '25

'A report from NERDS.xyz: Apple has released a new developer tool on GitHub called Container, offering a fresh approach to running Linux containers directly on macOS. Unlike Docker or Podman, this tool is designed to feel at home in the Apple ecosystem and hooks into frameworks already built into the operating system. Container runs standard OCI images, but it doesn't use a single shared Linux VM. Instead, it creates a small Linux virtual machine for every container you spin up. That sounds heavy at first, but the VMs are lightweight and boot quickly. Each one is isolated, which Apple claims improves both security and privacy. Developers can run containerized workloads locally with native macOS support and without needing to install third-party container platforms.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/06/11/2116233 Cheers, Peter

2 1

FreeBSD 14.3 Released
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jun '25

12 Jun '25

'Michael Larabel of Phoronix highlights the key updates in today's stable release of FreeBSD 14.3: FreeBSD 14.3 has back-ported a number of improvements from FreeBSD 15 back to the FreeBSD 14 series. Plus a number of routine package updates and other fixes. Some of the FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE highlights include: - Updating the ZFS support against OpenZFS 2.2.7. - Merging of the Realtek RTW88 and RTW89 WiFi drivers based on the Linux 6.14 kernel code. - The LinuxKPI code has been improved to support crypto offload as well as the 802.11n and 802.11ac standards. - The Intel IX Ethernet driver has added support for the x550 1000BAS-BX SFP modules. - Thor2 PCI IDs added to the Broadcom NetXtreme "BNXT" driver along with support for 400G speed modules. - XZ 5.8.1, OpenSSH 9.9p2, OpenSSL 3.0.16, and many other package updates. - Syscons as the legacy system console driver is now considered deprecated. Syscons is not compatible with UEFI, lacks UTF-8 support, and is Giant-locked. ' -- source: https://bsd.slashdot.org/story/25/06/10/2146224 Cheers, Peter

2 1

Ubuntu Linux 25.10 Quietly Kills Off GNOME On Xorg As Wayland Takes Over
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jun '25

12 Jun '25

'Ubuntu 25.10, known as Questing Quokka, is taking a big turn under the hood. Canonical has dropped support for the GNOME desktop running on Xorg. Starting with this release, the default Ubuntu session now uses Wayland only. Yes, folks, there's no longer an option to log into GNOME on Xorg.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/10/181234 Cheers, Peter

1 0

New Linux Flaws Allow Password Hash Theft via Core Dumps in Ubuntu, RHEL, Fedora
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jun '25

12 Jun '25

'Two information disclosure flaws have been identified in apport and systemd-coredump, the core dump handlers in Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Fedora, according to the Qualys Threat Research Unit (TRU). Tracked as CVE-2025-5054 and CVE-2025-4598, both vulnerabilities are race condition bugs that could enable a local attacker to obtain access to access sensitive information. Tools like Apport and systemd-coredump are designed to handle crash reporting and core dumps in Linux systems. "These race conditions allow a local attacker to exploit a SUID program and gain read access to the resulting core dump," Saeed Abbasi, manager of product at Qualys TRU, said.' -- source: https://thehackernews.com/2025/05/new-linux-flaws-allow-password-hash.html Cheers, Peter

1 0

Wikipedia Pauses AI-Generated Summaries After Editor Backlash
by Peter Reutemann 12 Jun '25

12 Jun '25

'The Wikimedia Foundation halted an experiment that would have displayed AI-generated summaries atop Wikipedia articles after the platform's volunteer editor community delivered an overwhelmingly negative response to the proposal. The foundation announced the two-week mobile trial on June 2 and suspended it just one day later following dozens of critical comments from editors. The experiment, called "Simple Article Summaries," would have used Cohere's open-weight Aya model to generate simplified versions of complex Wikipedia articles. The AI-generated summaries would have appeared at the top of articles with a yellow "unverified" label, requiring users to click to expand and read them. Editors responded with comments including "very bad idea," "strongest possible oppose," and simply "Yuck."' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/11/1732215 Cheers, Peter

1 0

Android 16 Is Here
by Peter Reutemann 11 Jun '25

11 Jun '25

'Today, we're bringing you Android 16, rolling out first to supported Pixel devices with more phone brands to come later this year. This is the earliest Android has launched a major release in the last few years, which ensures you get the latest updates as soon as possible on your devices. Android 16 lays the foundation for our new Material 3 Expressive design, with features that make Android more accessible and easy to use.' -- source: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/25/06/10/2021249 Cheers, Peter

1 0

RIP Bill Atkinson
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Jun '25

08 Jun '25

This article <https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/07/bill-atkinson-rip> reports the death of legendary Apple Macintosh pioneer Bill Atkinson, at the age of 74, from cancer. Atkinson is known for, among other things, the “QuickDraw” graphics engine, which was at the core of how those early Macintoshes could manage graphics drawing at interactive speeds, on a processor running at a nominal 8MHz clock speed, with no hardware acceleration. He also created the MacPaint application, to show off the artistic capabilities of the Macintosh -- and its ease of use. There is a video somewhere of Atkinson’s 2-year-old daughter using MacPaint, her tiny fist barely big enough to cover the mouse, otherwise being quite comfortable figuring out the drawing tools. And later, he created HyperCard, which was one of those forays into “end-user programming” which was perhaps more successful than most. Atkinson is named on Apple’s patent for the “region” structure, which was a compact way of representing arbitrary regions of pixels, which might have holes in them or even consist of entirely disjoint pieces. These structures were heavily used in QuickDraw for clipping graphics drawing (particularly for dealing with overlapping windows), though they could be rendered as graphics objects in their own right. Apple’s patent meant that nobody else could use that structure. For example, X11 had to use a less efficient way of representing pixel regions. The patent did finally expire around 2004, I think it was.

1 0

KDE Targets Windows 10 'Exiles' Claiming 'Your Computer is Toast'
by Peter Reutemann 05 Jun '25

05 Jun '25

'Linux desktop darling KDE is weighing in on the controversy around the impending demise of Windows 10 support with a lurid "KDE for Windows 10 Exiles" campaign. KDE's alarming "Exiles" page opens with the text "Your computer is toast" followed by a warning that Microsoft wants to turn computers running Windows 10 into junk from October 14. "It may seem like it continues to work after that date for a bit, but when Microsoft stops support for Windows 10, your perfectly good computer will be officially obsolete." Beneath a picture of a pile of tech junk, including a rotary telephone and some floppy drives, KDE proclaims: "Windows 10 will degrade as more and more bugs come to light. With nobody to correct them, you risk being hacked. Your data, identity, and control over your device could be stolen."' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/06/04/186206 The exiles page: https://kde.org/for/w10-exiles/ Cheers, Peter

1 0

Meta and Yandex Are De-Anonymizing Android Users' Web Browsing Identifiers
by Peter Reutemann 04 Jun '25

04 Jun '25

'"It appears as though Meta (aka: Facebook's parent company) and Yandex have found a way to sidestep the Android Sandbox," writes Slashdot reader TheWho79. Researchers disclose the novel tracking method in a report: We found that native Android apps -- including Facebook, Instagram, and several Yandex apps including Maps and Browser -- silently listen on fixed local ports for tracking purposes. These native Android apps receive browsers' metadata, cookies and commands from the Meta Pixel and Yandex Metrica scripts embedded on thousands of web sites. These JavaScripts load on users' mobile browsers and silently connect with native apps running on the same device through localhost sockets. As native apps access programmatically device identifiers like the Android Advertising ID (AAID) or handle user identities as in the case of Meta apps, this method effectively allows these organizations to link mobile browsing sessions and web cookies to user identities, hence de-anonymizing users' visiting sites embedding their scripts. This web-to-app ID sharing method bypasses typical privacy protections such as clearing cookies, Incognito Mode and Android's permission controls. Worse, it opens the door for potentially malicious apps eavesdropping on users' web activity. While there are subtle differences in the way Meta and Yandex bridge web and mobile contexts and identifiers, both of them essentially misuse the unvetted access to localhost sockets. The Android OS allows any installed app with the INTERNET permission to open a listening socket on the loopback interface (127.0.0.1). Browsers running on the same device also access this interface without user consent or platform mediation. This allows JavaScript embedded on web pages to communicate with native Android apps and share identifiers and browsing habits, bridging ephemeral web identifiers to long-lived mobile app IDs using standard Web APIs. This technique circumvents privacy protections like Incognito Mode, cookie deletion, and Android's permission model, with Meta Pixel and Yandex Metrica scripts silently communicating with apps across over 6 million websites combined. Following public disclosure, Meta ceased using this method on June 3, 2025. Browser vendors like Chrome, Brave, Firefox, and DuckDuckGo have implemented or are developing mitigations, but a full resolution may require OS-level changes and stricter enforcement of platform policies to prevent further abuse.' -- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/06/03/205251 Cheers, Peter

1 0

Beware of the Browser-in-the-Middle Attack: What It Is and How to Protect Yourself
by Peter Reutemann 04 Jun '25

04 Jun '25

'A new security threat called the browser-in-the-middle (BITM) attack has recently been uncovered, exposing users—especially those using Apple’s Safari browser—to potential exploits that could compromise their privacy and security. Reports from BleepingComputer and GBHackers highlight how attackers can take advantage of browser fullscreen features to trick users into revealing sensitive information. [...] A browser-in-the-middle attack is a phishing-like technique that leverages the browser’s fullscreen mode to impersonate legitimate websites or system dialogs. By forcing the browser to enter fullscreen mode, attackers can overlay fake login screens, pop-ups, or security warnings that look authentic but actually capture user input such as passwords, credit card numbers, or other personal data. Unlike traditional man-in-the-middle attacks that intercept communications, BITM attacks manipulate the user interface itself to create convincing illusions. Because fullscreen mode hides browser UI elements like the address bar or tabs, users may be unaware they are interacting with a fraudulent page. According to the reports, Safari’s fullscreen API is particularly vulnerable to BITM attacks. Attackers can use JavaScript to force fullscreen without user consent or notification and then display spoofed content that mimics trusted websites or system alerts. This makes Safari users a prime target, although the risk isn’t limited to this browser alone.' -- source: https://cyptd.com/beware-of-the-browser-in-the-middle-attack-what-it-is-and… Cheers, Peter

1 0

OpenSnitch: The Must-Have Application Firewall for Linux
by Peter Reutemann 29 May '25

29 May '25

'When it comes to protecting your Linux system from unwanted network connections, having a good firewall is essential. While most Linux users rely on traditional firewalls like iptables, firewalls, or ufw, these usually work at the network level and don’t give detailed control over which applications can connect to the internet. This is where OpenSnitch comes in, a GNU/Linux application firewall designed to give you control over your outgoing connections on a per-application basis. In this article, we will explore what OpenSnitch is, how it helps secure your Linux machine, and guide you through simple installation and usage steps.' -- source: https://www.tecmint.com/opensnitch-linux-application-firewall/ Cheers, Peter

1 0

Thousands of Asus routers are being hit with stealthy, persistent backdoors
by Peter Reutemann 29 May '25

29 May '25

'Thousands of home and small office routers manufactured by Asus are being infected with a stealthy backdoor that can survive reboots and firmware updates in an attack by a nation-state or another well-resourced threat actor, researchers said. The unknown attackers gain access to the devices by exploiting now-patched vulnerabilities, some of which have never been tracked through the internationally recognized CVE system. After gaining unauthorized administrative control of the devices, the threat actor installs a public encryption key for access to the device through SSH. From then on, anyone with the private key can automatically log in to the device with administrative system rights.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/05/thousands-of-asus-routers-are-bein… Cheers, Peter

1 0

SUSE Is Giving YaST the Dodo Bird Treatment
by Peter Reutemann 26 May '25

26 May '25

'An important piece of Linux history is set to go the way of the passenger pigeon or dodo bird later this year, when SUSE and openSUSE put YaST out to pasture. Widely regarded as a package manager, it’s actually more of a Swiss Army knife configuration tool that can be used to install software, configure hardware, set up networks and servers, and more. Exactly what it can do might be determined by the year in which you’re using it, as its feature set and role within the SUSE ecosystem have changed over the years. Although not very well known outside SUSE circles these days, from its first appearance in 1995 until SUSE was purchased by Novell in 2004, YaST was one of the reasons why SUSE was considered one of the crown jewels of Linux.' -- source: https://fossforce.com/2025/05/suse-is-giving-yast-the-dodo-bird-treatment/ When I was using SuSE back in the day, YaST was really great for newbies to do admin stuff Later on, I switched to webmin (https://github.com/webmin/webmin) as it was not restricted to a particular distro. Cheers, Peter

2 1

“Microsoft has simply given us no other option,” Signal says as it blocks Windows Recall
by Peter Reutemann 22 May '25

22 May '25

'Signal Messenger is warning the users of its Windows Desktop version that the privacy of their messages is under threat by Recall, the AI tool rolling out in Windows 11 that will screenshot, index, and store almost everything a user does every three seconds. Effective immediately, Signal for Windows will by default block the ability of Windows to screenshot the app. Signal users who want to disable the block—for instance to preserve a conversation for their records or make use of accessibility features for sight-impaired users—will have to change settings inside their desktop version to enable screenshots. [...] With no API for blocking Recall in the Windows Desktop version, Signal is instead invoking an API Microsoft provides for protecting copyrighted material. App developers can turn on the DRM setting to prevent Windows from taking screenshots of copyrighted content displayed in the app. Signal is now repurposing the API to add an extra layer of privacy.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/05/signal-resorts-to-weird-trick-to-b… Who would have thought that DRM can be useful... :-) Cheers, Peter

1 0

Hackers Now Testing ‘ClickFix’ Attacks on Linux Systems
by Peter Reutemann 22 May '25

22 May '25

'Security researchers have recently uncovered a new type of cyberattack targeting Linux systems — a technique dubbed “ClickFix.” Originally known for its impact on Windows environments, ClickFix is now being adapted and tested by threat actors against Linux platforms, signaling an expansion in both scope and sophistication. ClickFix is a novel post-exploitation tactic that allows attackers to interact with graphical desktop environments through simulated clicks and UI manipulations. By abusing legitimate tools like xdotool, attackers can automate interactions with graphical interfaces — such as clicking confirmation dialogs, accepting permissions, or launching malicious scripts — even on hardened systems. This type of attack can bypass traditional security mechanisms by operating at the user interface level, making it especially dangerous in environments where users assume GUI-based interactions are secure.' -- source: https://cyptd.com/hackers-now-testing-clickfix-attacks-on-linux-systems/ Cheers, Peter

1 0

Mobile Browsers That Stick Their Noses Into Your Business
by Peter Reutemann 22 May '25

22 May '25

'Some figures hit my desk this morning about mobile browsers and the data they collect that I found interesting enough to want to pass on. Some of this won’t surprise anybody, such as the fact that Chrome is the most data-hungry mobile browser app. What might come as a surprise to many, is that Chrome is the only browser that collects financial information, such as payment methods, card numbers, and bank account details. It also collects contacts from a phone’s address book. The figures came from Surfshark, the cybersecurity folks with an eponymous VPN, which took a look at the 10 browsers it identified as the most popular. Topping the list was Chrome, which presents a somewhat mind-boggling list of privacy intrusions that includes everything from contacts and financial information to data on location, browsing and search history, content — such as photos, videos, audio recordings, uploaded files, and other stuff — usage data, identifiers — device ID, user ID, or IP address — as well as even more data that’s not identified by the study.' -- source: https://fossforce.com/2025/05/mobile-browsers-that-stick-their-noses-into-y… One thing that I wasn't aware of under Android, you will have a unique Ad ID: Settings > Privacy > Ads > Opt out of ad personalization Cheers, Peter

1 0

KDE Is Getting a Native Virtual Machine Manager Called 'Karton'
by Peter Reutemann 21 May '25

21 May '25

'A new virtual machine manager called Karton is being developed specifically for the KDE Plasma desktop, aiming to offer a seamless, Qt-native alternative to GNOME-centric tools like GNOME Boxes. Spearheaded by University of Waterloo student Derek Lin as part of Google Summer of Code 2025, Karton uses libvirt and Qt Quick to build a user-friendly, fully integrated VM experience, with features like a custom SPICE viewer, snapshot support, and a mobile-friendly UI expected by September 2025. Neowin reports: To feel right at home in KDE, Karton is being built with Qt Quick and Kirigami. It uses the libvirt API to handle virtual machines and could eventually work across different platforms. Right now, development is focused on getting the core parts in place. Lin is working on a new domain installer that ditches direct virt-install calls in favor of libosinfo, which helps detect OS images and generate the right libvirt XML for setting up virtual machines more precisely. He's still refining device configuration and working on broader hypervisor support. Another key part of the work is building a custom SPICE viewer using Qt Quick from scratch: If you're curious, here's the list of specific deliverables Lin included in his GSoC proposal, though he notes the proposal itself is a bit outdated [...]. For those interested in the timeline, Lin's GSoC proposal says the official GSoC coding starts June 2, 2025. The goal is to have a working app ready by the midterm evaluation around July 14, 2025, with the final submission due September 1, 2025. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/05/20/2223215 Cheers, Peter

1 0

Microsoft Open Sources Windows Subsystem for Linux
by Peter Reutemann 20 May '25

20 May '25

'Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is now open source, Microsoft said Monday. The tool, which allows developers to run Linux distributions directly in Windows, is available for download, modification, and contribution. "We want Windows to be a great dev box," said Pavan Davuluri, corporate VP at Microsoft. "Having great WSL performance and capabilities" allows developers "to live in the Windows-native experience and take advantage of all they need in Linux." First launched in 2016 with an emulated Linux kernel, WSL switched to using the actual Linux kernel in 2019 with WSL 2, improving compatibility. The system has since gained support for GPUs, graphical applications, and systemd. Microsoft significantly refactored core Windows components to make WSL a standalone system before open sourcing it.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/05/19/1654225 Cheers, Peter

1 0

Final Bookworm-Based Raspberry Pi OS Released Ahead of Debian Trixie
by Peter Reutemann 20 May '25

20 May '25

'The Raspberry Pi Foundation has just released a new version of Raspberry Pi OS, their recommended, freely distributed operating system for all Raspberry Pi devices. Still based on Debian 12 ”Bookworm,” this build is likely the last one in this series before Debian 13 “Trixie” arrives later this summer.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/final-bookworm-based-raspberry-pi-os-released-ahead-of… Cheers, Peter

1 0

Raspberry Pi Connect Goes Stable
by Peter Reutemann 19 May '25

19 May '25

'After just twelve months of public testing, Raspberry Pi Connect—the company’s browser-based remote-access service—officially graduated from beta with the release of version 2.5. According to Raspberry Pi engineer Chris Lowder, the platform’s install base has already topped 100,000 registered boards. Earlier iterations of the software relied on frequent polling: each Pi woke up at regular intervals to ask Raspberry Pi’s servers whether anyone wanted to connect. That design was easy on the cloud side—traffic remained predictable—but it quietly chewed through users’ data plans and power budgets. Version 2.5 replaces that pattern with a single, persistent HTTP connection. Now, when a user presses “Connect” in the web dashboard, the server broadcasts a wake-up event to the board, initiating the handshake on demand instead of on a schedule. Beyond wake-ups, every Connect client has been sending status heartbeats to keep the dashboard in sync. The new release debounces that chatter, dropping superfluous packets and compressing each remaining heartbeat by roughly 50 percent.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/raspberry-pi-connect-goes-stable/ Anyone got any experience with this that they'd like to share? Cheers, Peter

1 0

Spies hack high-value mail servers using an exploit from yesteryear
by Peter Reutemann 16 May '25

16 May '25

'Threat actors, likely supported by the Russian government, hacked multiple high-value mail servers around the world by exploiting XSS vulnerabilities, a class of bug that was among the most commonly exploited in decades past. XSS is short for cross-site scripting. Vulnerabilities result from programming errors found in webserver software that, when exploited, allow attackers to execute malicious code in the browsers of people visiting an affected website. XSS first got attention in 2005, with the creation of the Samy Worm, which knocked MySpace out of commission when it added more than one million MySpace friends to a user named Samy. XSS exploits abounded for the next decade and have gradually fizzled more recently, although this class of attacks continues now. On Thursday, security firm ESET reported that Sednit, a Kremlin-backed hacking group also tracked as APT28, Fancy Bear, Forest Blizzard, and Sofacy—gained access to high-value email accounts by exploiting XSS vulnerabilities in mail server software from four different makers. Those packages are: Roundcube, MDaemon, Horde, and Zimbra.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/05/spies-hack-high-value-mail-servers… Cheers, Peter

1 0

Google Restores File Permissions For Nexcloud
by Peter Reutemann 16 May '25

16 May '25

'Nextcloud has been in an ongoing battle with Google over the tech giant revoking the All Files permission from the Nextcloud Android App, which prevents users from managing their files on their server. After a blog post and several tech sites reported on the issue, "Google reached out to us [Nexcloud] and offered to restore the permission, which will give users back the functionality that was lost." Nextcloud is working on an app update and hopes to have it pushed out within a week.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/05/15/208221 Cheers, Peter

2 1

You Can Now Upgrade Ubuntu 24.10 to Ubuntu 25.04, Here’s How
by Peter Reutemann 15 May '25

15 May '25

'After almost a month of waiting, Ubuntu 24.10 (Oracular Oriole) users can finally upgrade their installations to the latest Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) release. Here’s a step-by-step tutorial with screenshots on how to perform the upgrade! Ubuntu 24.10 was released on October 10th, 2024, and will be supported for a couple more months, until July 2025. Since this isn’t an LTS (Long Term Support) release, users might want to consider upgrading to Ubuntu 25.04 as soon as possible. Compared to Ubuntu 24.10, the Ubuntu 25.04 release ships with a newer kernel for better hardware support, namely Linux 6.14, the Mesa 25 graphics stack series for a better gaming experience, the latest GNOME 48 desktop environment, as well as some of the most recent GNU/Linux technologies.' -- source: https://9to5linux.com/you-can-now-upgrade-ubuntu-24-10-to-ubuntu-25-04-here… Cheers, Peter

1 0

Introducing oniux: Kernel-level Tor isolation for any Linux app
by Peter Reutemann 15 May '25

15 May '25

'When launching privacy-critical apps and services, developers want to make sure that every packet really only goes through Tor. One mistyped proxy setting–or a single system-call outside the SOCKS wrapper–and your data is suddenly on the line. That's why today, we are excited to introduce oniux: a small command-line utility providing Tor network isolation for third-party applications using Linux namespaces. Built on Arti, and onionmasq, oniux drop-ships any Linux program into its own network namespace to route it through Tor and strips away the potential for data leaks. If your work, activism, or research demands rock-solid traffic isolation, oniux delivers it.' -- source: https://blog.torproject.org/introducing-oniux-tor-isolation-using-linux-nam… Cheers, Peter

1 0

European Vulnerability Database (EUVD)
by Peter Reutemann 14 May '25

14 May '25

Talking about vulnerabilities... 'The European Vulnerability Database (EUVD) is now fully operational, offering a streamlined platform to monitor critical and actively exploited security flaws amid the US struggles with budget cuts, delayed disclosures, and confusion around the future of its own tracking systems https://euvd.enisa.europa.eu/' -- source: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/114501509209870711 Cheers, Peter

1 0

Multiple Security Issues in Screen (mostly affecting release 5.0.0 and setuid-root installations)
by Peter Reutemann 14 May '25

14 May '25

'In July 2024, the upstream Screen maintainer asked us [2] if we could have a look at the current Screen code base. We treated this request with lower priority, since we already had a cursory look at Screen a few years earlier, without finding any problems. When we actually found time to look into it again, we were surprised to find a local root exploit in the Screen 5.0.0 major version update affecting distributions that ship it as setuid-root (Arch Linux and NetBSD). We also found a number of additional, less severe issues that partly also affect older Screen versions still found in the majority of distributions.' -- source: https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/05/12/1 Cheers, Peter

1 0

FreeBSD Wants to Know a Few Things
by Peter Reutemann 14 May '25

14 May '25

'The FreeBSD Core Team and the FreeBSD Foundation have a few questions it would like to ask its users. What this means is that it’s survey time at FreeBSD… again. In other words, 2024’s user survey turns out not to have been the one-off we thought it was, and the FreeBSD Community Survey is looking like it’s going to become an annual event. This year’s survey was announced on Friday will run through May 7. Taking it won’t take much time — 15 minutes the organization says on its website — and the information gleaned from the results will be key for keeping the project on track. The foundation says that last year’s survey was used to help it determine the project’s priorities — which can change from year to year — as well as a guide for its development efforts and community engagement strategies for the upcoming year and beyond. The surveys are helpful for identifying user needs, assessing satisfaction levels, and highlighting areas requiring improvement, such as hardware support, documentation, and contribution processes.' -- source: https://fossforce.com/2025/04/freebsd-wants-to-know-a-few-things/ Link to survey in the referenced article. Anybody on the mailing list using a BSD variant currently? Cheers, Peter

1 0

Redis returns to open source with AGPLv3 license but not everyone is happy
by Peter Reutemann 14 May '25

14 May '25

'Over the last few years, companies like Redis, Elastic, MongoDB, and HashiCorp have abandoned their open-source license roots and switched to proprietary models. However, there is one significant problem with this attempt to squeeze more money from their formerly open-source programs: it doesn't work. Redis, the widely used in-memory key-value database, appears to have figured this out. Last year, Redis dumped its three-clause Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license and replaced it with the read-only Redis Source Available License (RSALv2) and Server Side Public License (SSPLv1). Now, Redis has officially returned to an open-source license, announcing that Redis 8 will be available under the open-source GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPLv3). Last year's change was intended to prevent large cloud providers from offering Redis as a managed service without contributing to the project, a challenge many open-source companies face in the cloud era. However, the move ticked off developers. The result was a fork, Valkey, backed by the Linux Foundation and major cloud vendors. Valkey has proven to be very popular. Indeed, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, Ericsson, and Oracle have all adopted Valkey. [...] The new AGPLv3 option, effective with the recently released Redis 8, represents a significant shift. AGPLv3 is an Open Source Initiative (OSI)-approved, copyleft license that requires any modifications or derivative works to be released under the same terms, and crucially, mandates that source code be made available to users who interact with the software over a network. This network clause is meant to close the so-called "Software as a Service (SaaS) loophole," ensuring that cloud providers who offer Redis as a service must either open-source their changes or negotiate a commercial license with Redis Inc.' -- source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/redis-returns-to-open-source-with-agplv3-lice… Cheers, Peter

1 0

Nextcloud Cries Foul Over Google Play Store App Rejection
by Peter Reutemann 14 May '25

14 May '25

'Nextcloud has accused Google of sabotaging its Android Files app by revoking the "All files access" permission, which the company says cripples functionality for its 824,000 users and forces reliance on limited alternatives like SAF and MediaStore. The Register reports: Nextcloud's Android Files app is a file synchronization tool that, according to the company, has long had permission to read and write all file types. "Nextcloud has had this feature since its inception in 2016," it said, "and we never heard about any security concerns from Google about it." That changed in 2024, when someone or something at Google's Play Store decided to revoke the permission, effectively crippling the application. Nextcloud was instructed to use "a more privacy-aware replacement." According to Nextcloud, "SAF cannot be used, as it is for sharing/exposing our files to other apps ... MediaStore API cannot be used as it does not allow access to other files, but only media files." Attempts to raise the issue with Google resulted in little more than copy-and-pasted sections of the developer guide. "Despite multiple appeals from our side and sharing additional background, Google is not considering reinstating upload for all files," Nextcloud said. The issue seems to stem from the Play Store. While a fully functional version is available on F-Droid, the Play Store edition is subject to Google's imposed limitations. Regarding the All files access permission, Google's developer documentation states: "If you target Android 11 and declare All files access, it can affect your ability to publish and update your app on Google Play." Nextcloud is clearly aggrieved by the change, as are its users. "This might look like a small technical detail but it is clearly part of a pattern of actions to fight the competition," it said. "What we are experiencing is a piece of the script from the big tech playbook." [...] Are there nefarious actors at play here, an automated process that auto-rejects apps with elevated access requirements, or is it just simple incompetence? "Either way," Nextcloud said, "it results in companies like ours just giving up, reducing functionality just to avoid getting kicked out of their app store." "The issue is that small companies -- like ours -- have pretty much no recourse," it added. Nextcloud went on to criticize oversight processes as slow-moving, with fines that sound hefty but amount to little more than a slap on the wrist. "Big Tech is scared that small players like Nextcloud will disrupt them, like they once disrupted other companies. So they try to shut the door."' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/05/13/2045258 Cheers, Peter

1 0

openSUSE Removes Deepin Desktop Over Security Policy Violations
by Peter Reutemann 09 May '25

09 May '25

'In recent development, the openSUSE project has decided to remove the Deepin Desktop Environment (DDE), well-known for its polished visuals and user-friendly experience, from its repositories, citing substantial packaging policy violations. According to disclosures from the openSUSE security team, a troubling workaround was discovered in the DDE packaging. Specifically, the Deepin community packager introduced a “license agreement” dialog within the deepin-feature-enable package, effectively circumventing standard security review processes required by openSUSE. Ordinarily, components such as D-Bus system service configurations and Polkit policies must undergo stringent review by the SUSE security team before being whitelisted for inclusion in openSUSE distributions. In this case, however, the discovered “license agreement” allowed users to bypass these security checks, installing components flagged by the security team as potentially unsafe simply by accepting the license.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/opensuse-removes-deepin-desktop-over-security-policy-v… Cheers, Peter

1 0

Linux Drops Support For 486 and Early Pentium Processors
by Peter Reutemann 09 May '25

09 May '25

'ZDNet reports: RIP, 486 processor. You've had a long run since Intel released you back in 1989. While Microsoft stopped supporting you with the release of Windows XP in 2001, Linux kept you alive and well for another 20+ years. But all good things must come to an end, and with the forthcoming release of the Linux 6.15 kernel, the 486 and the first Pentium processors will be sunsetted. Why? Linus Torvalds wrote recently on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), "I really get the feeling that it's time to leave i486 support behind. There's zero real reason for anybody to waste one second of development effort on this kind of issue." Senior Linux kernel developer Ingo Molnar put Torvalds' remark into context, writing, "In the x86 architecture, we have various complicated hardware emulation facilities on x86-32 to support ancient 32-bit CPUs that very very few people are using with modern kernels. This compatibility glue is sometimes even causing problems that people spend time to resolve, which time could be spent on other things." "This will be the first time Linux has dropped support for a major chip family since 2012, when Linux stopped supporting the 386 family," notes ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols. "Moving forward, the minimum supported x86 CPU will now be the original Pentium (P5) or newer, requiring the presence of the Time Stamp Counter (TSC) and the CMPXCHG8B (CX8) instruction. These features are absent in the older 486 and early 586 processors, such as the IDT WinChip and AMD Elan families." That said, you can continue running Linux on Pentium CPUs, but you'll have to "run museum kernels," as Torvalds pointed out in 2022 when he first floated the idea of ending support for 486.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/05/08/1927245 Cheers, Peter

1 0

Android Maintainer of Linux Distro AnduinOS Revealed to Be Microsoft Employee
by Peter Reutemann 09 May '25

09 May '25

'After gaining attention from Neowin and DistroWatch last week, the sole maintainer behind AnduinOS 1.3 -- a Linux distribution styled to resemble Windows 11 -- decided to reveal himself. He turns out to be Anduin Xue, a Microsoft software engineer, who has been working on the project as a personal, non-commercial endeavor built on Ubuntu. Neowin reports: As a Software Engineer 2 at Microsoft (he doesn't work on Windows), Anduin Xue says he's financially stable and sees no need to commercialize AnduinOS. Explaining the financial aspects of the project, he said: "Many have asked why I don't accept donations, how I profit, and if I plan to commercialize AnduinOS. Truthfully, I haven't thoroughly considered these issues. It's not my main job, and I don't plan to rely on it for a living. Each month, I dedicate only a few hours to maintaining it. Perhaps in the future, I might consider providing enterprise solutions based on AnduinOS, but I won't compromise its original simplicity. It has always been about providing myself with a comfortably themed Ubuntu." In our coverage of the AnduinOS 1.3 release last week, one commenter pointed out that the distro is from China. For some, this will raise issues, but Anduin Xue addressed this in his blog post, too, saying that the source code is available to the public. For this reason, he told lacing the operating system with backdoors for the Chinese government would be "irrational and easily exposed." For those worried that the distribution may be abandoned, Anduin Xue said that he intends to continue supporting it and may even maintain it full-time if sponsorship or corporate cooperation emerges.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/05/08/1912204 Cheers, Peter

1 0

New GNOME Executive Director Named
by Peter Reutemann 08 May '25

08 May '25

'Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports: Last July it was announced Holly Million was stepping down as the GNOME Foundation's Exeuctive Director after less than a year at the helm. Richard Littauer took over as interim Executive Director while this week a new GNOME Foundation Executive Director was hired. GNOME's new Executive Director is Steven Deobald. Steven Deobald is a Canadian free software advocate and has been a GNOME user since 2002. As the GNOME Foundation Executive Director, Steven wants to focus on transparency and to better ensure financial stability of the GNOME Foundation. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/05/07/200259 Cheers, Peter

1 0

Memory-Safe Sudo To Become the Default In Ubuntu
by Peter Reutemann 07 May '25

07 May '25

'Blog post from the Trifecta Tech Foundation, a nonprofit organization that creates secure, open source building blocks for infrastructure software. The foundation is also the developer behind Sudo-rs. From the report: Ubuntu 25.10 is set to adopt sudo-rs by default. Sudo-rs is a memory-safe reimplementation of the widely-used sudo utility, written in the Rust programming language. This move is part of a broader effort by Canonical to improve the resilience and maintainability of core system components. [...] The decision to adopt sudo-rs is in line with Canonical's commitment to Carefully But Purposefully increase the resilience of critical system software, by adopting Rust. Rust is a programming language with strong memory safety guarantees that eliminates many of the vulnerabilities that have historically plagued traditional C-based software. Sudo-rs is part of the Trifecta Tech Foundation's Privilege Boundary initiative, which aims to handle privilege escalation with memory-safe alternatives. ' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/05/06/213254 Cheers, Peter

1 0

Open Document Format Turns 20
by Peter Reutemann 07 May '25

07 May '25

' The Open Document Format reached its 20th anniversary on May 1, marking two decades since OASIS approved the XML-based standard originally developed by Sun Microsystems from StarOffice code. Even as the format has seen adoption by several governments including the UK, India, and Brazil, plus organizations like NATO, Microsoft Office's proprietary formats remain the de facto standard. Microsoft countered ODF by developing Office Open XML, eventually getting it standardized through Ecma International. "ODF is much more than a technical specification: it is a symbol of freedom of choice, support for interoperability and protection of users from the commercial strategies of Big Tech," said Eliane Domingos, Chair of the Document Foundation, which oversees LibreOffice -- a fork created after Oracle acquired Sun.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/05/06/0050212 Cheers, Peter

2 1

Fedora 43 to Remove GNOME X11 Support
by Peter Reutemann 07 May '25

07 May '25

'X11 is singing its swan song. While some Linux distributions still rely on it, the major players are steadily moving toward replacing it with Wayland or even dropping X11 support entirely. Now, Fedora is also making clear moves in that direction. That said, yesterday, Neal Gompa made a new proposal to remove every GNOME X11 package from the distribution’s repositories. If the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) accepts the “Wayland-only GNOME” change for Fedora Linux 43 (scheduled for release in late October or early November), users who still log in to “GNOME on Xorg” will be transparently switched to the default GNOME Wayland session. For GNOME developers, X11 has been on extended life support for quite a while. Upstream maintainers finished addressing the last user-experience blockers with GNOME 48 and plan to disable X11 at compile time in GNOME 49, with complete removal slated for GNOME 50.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/fedora-43-to-remove-gnome-x11-support/ Cheers, Peter

1 0

Microsoft Makes Fedora an Official Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) Distribution
by Peter Reutemann 07 May '25

07 May '25

'Fedora Linux is now officially available as a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) distribution! That's right, folks, following prior testing, you can now run Fedora 42 natively inside Windows using WSL. As someone who considers Fedora to be my favorite Linux distribution, this is a pretty exciting development. Installing it is simple enough. Just open up a terminal and type wsl --install FedoraLinux-42 to get started. After that, launch it with wsl -d FedoraLinux-42 and set your username. No password is required by default, and you'll automatically be part of the wheel group, meaning you can use sudo right out of the gate.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/05/06/1652215 Cheers, Peter

1 0

Hundreds of E-Commerce Sites Hacked In Supply-Chain Attack
by Peter Reutemann 06 May '25

06 May '25

'Ars Technica reports: Hundreds of e-commerce sites, at least one owned by a large multinational company, were backdoored by malware that executes malicious code inside the browsers of visitors, where it can steal payment card information and other sensitive data, security researchers said Monday. The infections are the result of a supply-chain attack that compromised at least three software providers with malware that remained dormant for six years and became active only in the last few weeks. At least 500 e-commerce sites that rely on the backdoored software were infected, and it's possible that the true number is double that, researchers from security firm Sansec said. Among the compromised customers was a $40 billion multinational company, which Sansec didn't name. In an email Monday, a Sansec representative said that "global remediation [on the infected customers] remains limited." "Since the backdoor allows uploading and executing arbitrary PHP code, the attackers have full remote code execution (RCE) and can do essentially anything they want," the representative wrote. "In nearly all Adobe Commerce/Magento breaches we observe, the backdoor is then used to inject skimming software that runs in the user's browser and steals payment information (Magecart)." The three software suppliers identified by Sansec were Tigren, Magesolution (MGS), and Meetanshi. All three supply software that's based on Magento, an open source e-commerce platform used by thousands of online stores. A software version sold by a fourth provider named Weltpixel has been infected with similar code on some of its customers' stores, but Sansec so far has been unable to confirm whether it was the stores or Weltpixel that were hacked. Adobe has owned Megento since 2018.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/05/05/2034207/hundreds-of-e-commerce-sites… Cheers, Peter

1 0

Happy Birthday To Steve Jobs’ Screed Against Flash
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Apr '25

30 Apr '25

It was 15 years ago to day that Apple boss Steve Jobs published a blog post railing against Adobe Flash <https://www.theverge.com/apple/657934/happy-birthday-to-steve-jobs-screed-a…>, particularly about how it impinged on Apple’s control over its own platform: If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers. In hindsight, we all know now about the problems with lack of open standards, security and battery life. But as always, at the time, there were those who played down these problems and who assumed that, because Flash was so prevalent, it would remain so into the future. There’s a lesson in there, about history repeating itself ...

1 0

Ubuntu 25.04 “Plucky Puffin” Is Now Available for Download, This Is What’s New
by Peter Reutemann 30 Apr '25

30 Apr '25

'Canonical published today the Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) release, the latest stable version of their popular GNU/Linux distribution, featuring up-to-date components and new features. Powered by the latest and greatest Linux 6.14 kernel series for top-notch hardware support, Ubuntu 25.04 features the GNOME 48 desktop environment with the usual enhancements and look that Ubuntu users are used to, specifically the dynamic triple buffering feature for an extra boost on low-end systems. Some exciting changes in Ubuntu 25.04 include an official generic ARM64 (AArch64) desktop ISO targeting virtual machines, ACPI + EFI platforms, and Snapdragon-based WoA devices, as well as initial hardware enablement for the Snapdragon X Elite platform is now included in the Ubuntu Desktop ISO image. The Ubuntu Desktop installer has been updated with support for local file paths for autoinstall import, a new option to replace an existing Ubuntu installation, dual boot improvements with a focus on BitLocker-protected Windows systems, allowing users to install Ubuntu alongside existing BitLocker partitions. Ubuntu 25.04 also brings some networking enhancements as Netplan received support for wpa-psk-sha256 Wi-Fi connections, support for configuring routing policy on the NetworkManager backend, and support for a new functionality in systemd-networkd-wait-online to wait for DNS servers to be configured and reachable before considering an interface to be online. Other than that, the xdg-terminal-exec package is now installed by default for easier access to the default terminal using the Ctrl+Alt+T keyboard shortcut, Papers has been added as the default document viewer instead of Evince, and BeaconDB-powered geolocation services are now enabled by default on new installations. Among other noteworthy changes, the AppArmor package now includes many new profiles for apps to improve sandboxing and mitigate the impact of any exploit in confined apps, the JPEG XL image format is now supported by default, and NVIDIA Dynamic Boost is now enabled by default on supported laptops with NVIDIA GPUs. It also brings full support for Intel Core Ultra Xe2 integrated Intel Arc graphics and Intel Arc B580 and B570 “Battlemage” discrete GPUs, improved GPU and CPU ray tracing rendering performance in apps with Intel Embree support, full hardware accelerated video encoding of AVC, JPEG, HEVC, and AV1 on “Battlemage” devices, new CCS optimization in Intel Compute Runtime, and debugging support for Intel Xe GPUs.' -- source: https://9to5linux.com/ubuntu-25-04-plucky-puffin-is-now-available-for-downl… Cheers, Peter

1 0

OpenBSD 7.7 Released
by Peter Reutemann 30 Apr '25

30 Apr '25

'OpenBSD quietly released the new version (7.7) of its "secure by default" operating system. This is the 58th release. Changes include improved hardware and VMM support, along with many kernel improvements. This release brings several specific improvements, including performance boosts on ARM64, Arm SVE support, AMD SEV virtualization enhancements, better low-memory handling on i386, and improved suspend/hibernate and SMP performance. It also updates graphics drivers with support for AMD Ryzen IA 300, Radeon RX 9070, and Intel Arrow Lake, along with expanded hardware support for MediaTek SoCs.' -- source: https://bsd.slashdot.org/story/25/04/29/0456227 Cheers, Peter

1 0

Firefox Finally Delivers Tab Groups Feature
by Peter Reutemann 30 Apr '25

30 Apr '25

'Firefox has launched its long-awaited tab groups feature, responding to the most upvoted request in Mozilla Connect's three-year history. The feature allows users to organize tabs by name or color through a drag-and-drop interface. Mozilla is now developing an AI-powered "smart tab groups" feature that automatically suggests organization based on open tabs. Unlike competitors, the company said, Firefox processes this data locally, keeping tab information on the user's device rather than sending it to cloud servers.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/04/29/1853259 Cheers, Peter

1 0

CVE Foundation Emerges From Stealth to Rescue CVE Program
by Peter Reutemann 28 Apr '25

28 Apr '25

'I’m guessing that Trump and Musk are behind this, and that this is just another essential thing the government does that they’re trying to break into pieces. The good news is that in this case not only was there a last minute reprieve, but some people saw it coming and made plans to keep things going in case the rug still eventually gets pulled out. If this was the work of the dynamic duo of Pennsylvania Avenue, what they were busy trying to break was the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures program — better known as CVE — which keeps track of security vulnerabilities found in software so that it can get fixed, hopefully before the bad guys develop a way to exploit the bug. The story started on Tuesday when MITRE — a nonprofit that among other things operates federally funded research and development centers that support various federal government agencies, including the CVE program — sent a letter to CVE board members, telling them that funding for CVE and other related programs was set to expire on Wednesday. As you might imagine, when that news hit the internet, it got social networks buzzing. [...] Then on Wednesday morning, at about the time that tech oriented websites and tech-focused users on social sites were at peak craziness over this withdrawal of funding, a monkey wrench was thrown into the machinery by a news release from the CVE Foundation, an organization that nobody — at least not anybody that I know — has heard anything about until now. “The CVE Foundation has been formally established to ensure the long-term viability, stability, and independence of the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures Program, a critical pillar of the global cybersecurity infrastructure for 25 years,” the release opened, under the heading: “CVE Foundation Launched to Secure the Future of the CVE Program.' -- source: https://fossforce.com/2025/04/cve-foundation-emerges-from-stealth-to-rescue… Cheers, Peter

1 0

Lenovo May Be Avoiding the 'Windows Tax' By Offering Cheaper Laptops With Pre-Installed Linux
by Peter Reutemann 28 Apr '25

28 Apr '25

'"The U.S. and Canadian websites for Lenovo offered U.S. $140 and CAD $211 off on the same ThinkPad X1 Carbon model when choosing any one of the Linux-based alternatives," reports It's FOSS News: This was brought to my attention thanks to a Reddit post... Others then chimed in, saying that Lenovo has been doing this since at least 2020 and that the big price difference shows how ridiculous Windows' pricing is... Not all models from their laptop lineup, like ThinkPad, Yoga, Legion, LOQ, etc., feature an option to get Linux pre-installed during the checkout process. Luckily, there is an easy way to filter through the numerous laptops. Just go to the laptops section (U.S.) on the Lenovo website and turn on the "Operating System" filter under the Filter by specs sidebar menu. The article end with an embedded YouTube video showing a VCR playing a videotape of a 1999 local TV news report... about the legendary "Windows Refund Day" protests.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/04/27/0127203 Cheers, Peter

2 1

Linus Torvalds Expresses His Hatred For Case-Insensitive File-Systems
by Peter Reutemann 28 Apr '25

28 Apr '25

'Some patches for Linux 6.15-rc4 (updating the kernel driver for the Bcachefs file system) triggered some "straight-to-the-point wisdom" from Linus Torvalds about case-insensitive filesystems, reports Phoronix. Bcachefs developer Kent Overstreet started the conversation, explaining how some buggy patches for their case-insensitive file and folder support were upstreamed into the Bcachefs kernel driver nearly two years ago: When I was discussing with the developer who did the implementation, I noted that fstests should already have tests. However, it seems I neglected to tell him to make sure the tests actually run... It is _not_ enough to simply rely on the automated tests. You have to have eyes on what your code is doing. Overstreet added "There's a story behind the case insensitive directory fixes, and lessons to be learned." To which Torvalds replied.... "No." "The only lesson to be learned is that filesystem people never learn." Torvalds: Case-insensitive names are horribly wrong, and you shouldn't have done them at all. The problem wasn't the lack of testing, the problem was implementing it in the first place. The problem is then compounded by "trying to do it right", and in the process doing it horrible wrong indeed, because "right" doesn't exist, but trying to will make random bytes have very magical meaning. And btw, the tests are all completely broken anyway. Last I saw, they didn't actually test for all the really interesting cases — the ones that cause security issues in user land. Security issues like "user space checked that the filename didn't match some security-sensitive pattern". And then the shit-for-brains filesystem ends up matching that pattern *anyway*, because the people who do case insensitivity *INVARIABLY* do things like ignore non-printing characters, so now "case insensitive" also means "insensitive to other things too".... Dammit. Case sensitivity is a BUG. The fact that filesystem people *still* think it's a feature, I cannot understand. It's like they revere the old FAT filesystem _so_ much that they have to recreate it — badly. And this led to a very lively back-and-forth discussion.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/04/27/0547245 Cheers, Peter

1 0

'Linux Mint Debian Edition 7' Gets OEM Support
by Peter Reutemann 15 Apr '25

15 Apr '25

'Linux Mint Debian Edition 7 "will come with full support for OEM installations," according to their monthly newsletter, so Linux Mint "can be pre-installed on computers which are sold throughout the World. It's a very important feature and it's one of the very few remaining things which wasn't supported by Linux Mint Debian Edition." Slashdot reader BrianFagioli speculates that "this could be a sign of something much bigger." OEM installs are typically reserved for operating systems meant to ship on hardware. It's how companies preload Linux on laptops without setting a username, password, or timezone... Mint has supported this for years — but only in its Ubuntu-based version. So why is this feature suddenly coming to Linux Mint Debian Edition, which the team has repeatedly described as a contingency? In other words, if the Debian variant is merely a plan B, why make it ready for OEMs? Their blog post goes on to speculate about possible explanations (like the hypothetical possibility of dissatisfaction with Snap packages or Canonical's decisions around telemetry and packaging).' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/04/12/0518218 Cheers, Peter

2 1

The EFF's 'Certbot' Now Supports Six-Day Certs
by Peter Reutemann 15 Apr '25

15 Apr '25

'10 years ago "certificate authorities normally issued certificate lifetimes lasting a year or more," remembers a new blog post Thursday by the EFF's engineering director. So in 2015 when the free cert authority Let's Encrypt first started issuing 90-day TLS certificates for websites, "it was considered a bold move, that helped push the ecosystem towards shorter certificate life times." And then this January Let's Encrypt announced new six-day certificates... This week saw a related announcement from the EFF engineering director. More than 31 million web sites maintain their HTTPS certificates using the EFF's Certbot tool (which automatically fetches free HTTPS certificates forever) — and Certbot is now supporting Let's Encrypt's six-day certificates. (It's accomplished through ACME profiles with dynamic renewal at 1/3rd of lifetime left or 1/2 of lifetime left, if the lifetime is shorter than 10 days): There is debate on how short these lifetimes should be, but with ACME profiles you can have the default or "classic" Let's Encrypt experience (90 days) or start actively using other profile types through Certbot with the --preferred-profile and --required-profile flags. For six day certificates, you can choose the "shortlived" profile. Why shorter lifetimes are better (according to the EFF's engineering director): - If a certificate's private key is compromised, that compromise can't last as long. - With shorter life spans for the certificates, automation is encouraged. Which facilitates robust security of web servers. - Certificate revocation is historically flaky. Lifetimes 10 days and under prevent the need to invoke the revocation process and deal with continued usage of a compromised key.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/04/14/0356212 Cheers, Peter

1 0

Adobe Gets Bullied Off Bluesky
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 12 Apr '25

12 Apr '25

Adobe creates a couple of accounts on the Bluesky social network, only to meet a storm of opprobrium, bile, and just plain animosity <https://futurism.com/adobe-bullied-bluesky>. The fact that the company is able to get people to keep paying it more and more money, even as they hate its guts, is quite an achievement. It must take some pretty extensive (and expensive) marketing campaigns.

1 0

Microsoft is About To Launch Recall For Real This Time
by Peter Reutemann 11 Apr '25

11 Apr '25

'Microsoft is starting to gradually roll out a preview of Recall, its feature that captures screenshots of what you do on a Copilot Plus PC to find again later, to Windows Insiders. From a report: This new rollout could indicate that Microsoft is finally getting close to launching Recall more widely. Microsoft originally intended to launch Recall alongside Copilot Plus PCs last June, but the feature was delayed following concerns raised by security experts. The company then planned to launch it in October, but that got pushed as well so that the company could deliver "a secure and trusted experience."' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/04/11/0143227 I guess, it's time to turn off video chat with Windows users, unless you would want to be recorded - accidentally or not... I wonder whether they claim "fair use" to include data from their worldwide user base in their model training data. Copyright infringements seem to be fine if you're big like MS or OpenAI, the rest of us can get sued. Cheers, Peter

1 0

slowroads.io
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Apr '25

09 Apr '25

Found this website which does ... nothing, really. No points to win, no money to pay, no prize, no goal, just drive ... on and on ... with various choices of vehicle and terrain (including some off-Earth). Seems a paid version is being promised for Steam, but in the meantime ... just enjoy your sophisticated Web browser generating absolutely pointless real-time 3D graphics.

1 0

Ubuntu 25.04 “Plucky Puffin” Enters Public Beta Testing with Linux 6.14, GNOME 48
by Peter Reutemann 09 Apr '25

09 Apr '25

'Canonical released today the beta version of the upcoming Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) release for public beta testing, so it’s time to take a look at what to expect from the final release. Powered by the recently released Linux 6.14 kernel and featuring the latest and greatest GNOME 48 desktop environment, Ubuntu 25.04 (codename Plucky Puffin) promises many goodies like the triple buffering feature from Ubuntu, Papers as the default document viewer replacing Evince, and BeaconDB-powered geolocation services. The Ununtu Desktop installer received a new option to replace an existing Ubuntu installation and improvements to dual boot user experience with a focus on BitLocker-protected Windows systems. Users can now install Ubuntu alongside existing BitLocker partitions if enough unallocated space and dual boot support is now available for encrypted installations and other advanced scenarios. Netplan received support for wpa-psk-sha256 Wi-Fi connections, support for configuring routing-policy on the NetworkManager backend, and support for a new functionality in systemd-networkd-wait-online to wait for DNS servers to be configured and reachable before considering an interface to be online.' -- source: https://9to5linux.com/ubuntu-25-04-plucky-puffin-enters-public-beta-testing… Cheers, Peter

1 0

Akamai becomes the official distributor of the Linux kernel
by Peter Reutemann 09 Apr '25

09 Apr '25

Open Source watch reports: 'When I was a young--well, younger anyway--squirt, I ftped my Linux kernel code from Ted T’so, one of the first Linux kernel developers, personal PC, tsx-11.mit.edu. I was glad to do it! Before T'so set up his repository, you had to download the files from Linus Toravalds' machine in Helsinki, Finland, which was s l o w. Mind you, at the time, I recall I downloaded it at a "blazing" fast 64 Kilobits per second (Kbps) over an ISDN line. Hey, it was great in its day. Things have gotten orders of magnitude faster since those days! Now, Akamai, the well-known content delivery network (CDN) and cloud company, has announced a multi-year partnership with the Linux Kernel Organization. This collaboration aims to provide critical infrastructure support for the development and distribution of the Linux kernel, ensuring uninterrupted access for its global network of developers. Akamai will leverage its infrastructure to support kernel.org, the primary platform for Linux kernel source code distribution. This partnership is crucial for maintaining Linux security and performance.' -- source: https://opensourcewatch.beehiiv.com/p/akamai-becomes-the-official-distribut… Cheers, Peter

1 0

20 Years Of Git
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Apr '25

08 Apr '25

The Git version control system for software development is now 20 years old <https://www.tomshardware.com/software/git-turns-20-as-we-celebrate-decades-…>.

1 0

Comparison Of Python Asyncio-Supporting Web Frameworks
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Apr '25

08 Apr '25

Trying to decide whether Quart or Starlette was the better bet for a higher-level web framework, I came across this comparison, from just a few years ago, of those two and some other possibilities at different levels <https://www.laac.dev/blog/should-you-use-asyncio-next-python-web-applicatio…>. As far as I can tell, it’s only slightly out of date: the Stripe issue they link to shows that that now includes async support for its Python API.

1 0

The Rise Of “Frankenstein” Laptops In New Delhi’s Repair Markets
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 08 Apr '25

08 Apr '25

India has long had a, shall we say, “informal engineering” culture, where backstreet operators put together improvised machinery of various kinds from whatever parts are available. Now this extends to assembling working laptops out of the parts of broken ones <https://www.theverge.com/tech/639126/india-frankenstein-laptops>. This allows Indians on low incomes (which is much of the country) an alternative to unaffordable new-built machines. There is a downside to these operations, and that is the health risks from exposure to toxic materials. Seems the Indian Government is becoming aware that it can be helpful to these homegrown industries if it passed some good right-to-repair laws, as is happening in many Western countries. One question that isn’t answered in the article is: what OS are these recycled/refurbished machines running? I can’t imagine that Microsoft would offer Windows licences for them at anything resembling OEM prices. And I don’t think the company would accept that there is such a thing as a “secondhand” Windows licence.

1 0

Open-Source Tool Designed To Throttle PC and Server Performance Based On Electricity Pricing
by Peter Reutemann 04 Apr '25

04 Apr '25

'Robotics and machine learning engineer Naveen Kul developed WattWise, a lightweight open-source CLI tool that monitors power usage via smart plugs and throttles system performance based on electricity pricing and peak hours. Tom's Hardware reports: The simple program, called WattWise, came about when Naveen built a dual-socket EPYC workstation with plans to add four GPUs. It's a power-intensive setup, so he wanted a way to monitor its power consumption using a Kasa smart plug. The enthusiast has released the monitoring portion of the project to the public now, but the portion that manages clocks and power will be released later. Unfortunately, the Kasa Smart app and the Home Assistant dashboard was inconvenient and couldn't do everything he desired. He already had a terminal window running monitoring tools like htop, nvtop, and nload, and decided to take matters into his own hands rather than dealing with yet another app. Naveen built a terminal-based UI that shows power consumption data through Home Assistant and the TP-Link integration. The app monitors real-time power use, showing wattage and current, as well as providing historical consumption charts. More importantly, it is designed to automatically throttle CPU and GPU performance. Naveen's power provider uses Time-of-Use (ToU) pricing, so using a lot of power during peak hours can cost significantly more. The workstation can draw as much as 1400 watts at full load, but by reducing the CPU frequency from 3.7 GHz to 1.5 GHz, he's able to reduce consumption by about 225 watts. (No mention is made of GPU throttling, which could potentially allow for even higher power savings with a quad-GPU setup.) Results will vary based on the hardware being used, naturally, and servers can pull far more power than a typical desktop -- even one designed and used for gaming. WattWise optimizes the system's clock speed based on the current system load, power consumption as reported by the smart plug, and the time -- with the latter factoring in peak pricing. From there, it uses a Proportional-Integral (PI) controller to manage the power and adapts system parameters based on the three variables.' -- source: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/04/03/0110212 -- blog: https://www.naveen.ing/cli-for-smartplugs/ -- github: https://github.com/naveenkul/WattWise Cheers, Peter

1 0

EndeavourOS Mercury Neo Launches with KDE Plasma 6.3, NVIDIA 570, and Mesa 25
by Peter Reutemann 02 Apr '25

02 Apr '25

'The EndeavourOS team announced today the release and general availability of EndeavourOS Mercury Neo as a maintenance update to the EndeavourOS Mercury release addressing various issues and updating core components. EndeavourOS Mercury landed on February 10th, 2025, powered by Linux kernel 6.13 and featuring the KDE Plasma 6.2.5 desktop environment on both the live environment and the offline installation option. EndeavourOS Mercury Neo is here to bump the kernel to Linux 6.13.7 and the live session to KDE Plasma 6.3.3. In addition, this release improves the installation to automatically create a 2GB EFI partition instead of a 1GB partition when choosing systemd in the auto-install option. According to the devs, this change will give users more space and freedom to install multiple kernels and other desirable options. EndeavourOS Mercury Neo also removes the obsolete NVIDIA options from the NVIDIA boot menu, fixes the Arch Linux mirror ranking bug, and removes the xwaylandvideobridge package from the installation script since it was removed upstream. Moreover, it updates the NVIDIA graphics driver to version 570.124.04, the Mesa graphics stack to version 25.0.1, the Calamares graphical installer to version 25.02.2.1-2, the Mozilla Firefox web browser to version 136.0.2, and the XOrg Server display server to version 21.1.16. EndeavourOS Mercury Neo is available for download right now from the official website. Since EndeavourOS follows a rolling-release model where you install once and receive updates forever, existing users need only to update their installations by running the sudo pacman -Syu command in the Terminal app.' -- source: https://9to5linux.com/endeavouros-mercury-neo-launches-with-kde-plasma-6-3-… Cheers, Peter

1 0

Linux Kernel Might Get Smarter Reboots
by Peter Reutemann 01 Apr '25

01 Apr '25

'Something interesting recently emerged on the Linux kernel front—a new patch series titled “Live Update Orchestrator,” authored by Google’s engineer Pasha Tatashin and built on top of an earlier set of patches commonly referred to as the KHO v5 patch series. It aims to enable smooth kernel updates—referred to as “Live Update”—so that certain devices remain fully operational during the transition from an old kernel to a new one. Essentially, the innovative Live Update Orchestrator (LUO) subsystem intends to minimize system downtime by preserving device states across a reboot, particularly benefiting dynamic cloud environments where even minor disruptions can be unwelcome. According to the developers, this approach uses a state-machine mechanism to orchestrate the transition. The LUO subsystem tracks progress through several states—“normal,” “prepared,” and “updated”—and ties them together through callback APIs. These callbacks allow other kernel subsystems (e.g., KVM, IOMMU, interrupts, the new dev_liveupdate device layer, and memory management) to integrate seamlessly into the live update workflow.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/linux-kernel-might-get-smarter-reboots/ Cheers, Peter

1 0

Google makes Android development private, will continue open source releases
by Peter Reutemann 27 Mar '25

27 Mar '25

'Google is planning a major change to the way it develops new versions of the Android operating system. Since the beginning, large swaths of the software have been developed in public-facing channels, but that will no longer be the case. This does not mean Android is shedding its open source roots, but the process won't be as transparent. Google has confirmed to Android Authority that all Android development work going forward will take place in Google's internal branch. This is a shift from the way Google has worked on Android in the past, which featured frequent updates to the public AOSP branch. Anyone can access AOSP, but the internal branches are only available to Google and companies with a Google Mobile Services (GMS) license, like Samsung, Motorola, and others. According to the company, it is making this change to simplify things, building on a recent change to trunk-based development. As Google works on both public and private branches of Android, the two fall out of sync with respect to features and API support. This forces Google to tediously merge the branches for every release. By focusing on the internal branch, Google claims it can streamline releases and make life easier for everyone. When new versions of Android are done, Google says it will continue to publish the source code in AOSP as always. Supposedly, this will allow developers to focus on supporting their apps without keeping track of pending changes to the platform in AOSP. Licensed OEMs, meanwhile, can just focus on the lively internal branch as they work on devices that can take a year or more to launch.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/google-makes-android-development-pr… Cheers, Peter

1 0

Linux Kernel 6.14 Is a Big Leap Forward In Performance, Windows Compatibility
by Peter Reutemann 27 Mar '25

27 Mar '25

'A report from ZDNet, written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols: Despite the minor delay, Linux 6.14 arrives packed with cutting-edge features and improvements to power upcoming Linux distributions, such as the forthcoming Ubuntu 25.04 and Fedora 42. The big news for desktop users is the improved NTSYNC driver, especially those who like to play Windows games or run Windows programs on Linux. This driver is designed to emulate Windows NT synchronization primitives. What that feature means for you and me is that it will significantly improve the performance of Windows programs running on Wine and Steam Play. [...] Gamers always want the best possible graphics performance, so they'll also be happy to see that Linux now supports recently launched AMD RDNA 4 graphics cards. This approach includes support for the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 graphics cards. Combine this support with the recently improved open-source RADV driver and AMD gamers should see the best speed yet on their gaming rigs. Of course, the release is not just for gamers. Linux 6.14 also includes several AMD and Intel processor enhancements. These boosts focus on power management, thermal control, and compute performance optimizations. These updates are expected to improve overall system efficiency and performance. This release also comes with the AMDXDNA driver, which provides official support for AMD's neural processing units based on the XDNA architecture. This integration enables efficient execution of AI workloads, such as convolutional neural networks and large language models, directly on supported AMD hardware. While Rust has faced some difficulties in recent months in Linux, more Rust programming language abstractions have been integrated into the kernel, laying the groundwork for future drivers written in Rust. [...] Besides drivers, Miguel Ojeda, Rust for Linux's lead developer, said recently that the introduction of the macro for smart pointers with Rust 1.84: derive(CoercePointee) is an "important milestone on the way to building a kernel that only uses stable Rust functions." This approach will also make integrating C and Rust code easier. We're getting much closer to Rust being grafted into Linux's tree. In addition, Linux 6.14 supports Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile processor, enhancing performance and stability for devices powered by this chipset. That support means you can expect to see much faster Android-based smartphones later this year. This release includes a patch for the so-called GhostWrite vulnerability, which can be used to root some RISC-V processors. This fix will block such attacks. Additionally, Linux 6.14 includes improvements for the copy-on-write Btrfs file system/logical volume manager. These primarily read-balancing methods offer flexibility for different RAID hardware configurations and workloads. Additionally, support for uncached buffered I/O optimizes memory usage on systems with fast storage devices.' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/03/26/2110211 Cheers, Peter

1 0

Developer Loads Steam On a $100 ARM Single Board Computer
by Peter Reutemann 24 Mar '25

24 Mar '25

'"There's no shortage of videos showing Steam running on expensive ARM single-board computers with discrete GPUs," writes Slashdot reader VennStone. "So I thought it would be worthwhile to make a guide for doing it on (relatively) inexpensive RK3588-powered single-board computers, using Box86/64 and Armbian." The guides I came across were out of date, had a bunch of extra steps thrown in, or were outright incorrect... Up first, we need to add the Box86 and Box64 ARM repositories [along with dependencies, ARMHF architecture, and the Mesa graphics driver]... The guide closes with a multi-line script and advice to "Just close your eyes and run this. It's not pretty, but it will download the Steam Debian package, extract the needed bits, and set up a launch script." (And then the final step is sudo reboot now.) "At this point, all you have to do is open a terminal, type 'steam', and tap Enter. You'll have about five minutes to wait... Check out the video to see how some of the tested games perform." At 720p, performance is all over the place, but the games I tested typically managed to stay above 30 FPS. This is better than I was expecting from a four-year-old SOC emulating x86 titles under ARM. Is this a practical way to play your Steam games? Nope, not even a little bit. For now, this is merely an exercise in ludicrous neatness. Things might get a wee bit better, considering Collabora is working on upstream support for RK3588 and Valve is up to something ARM-related, but ya know, "Valve Time"... "You might be tempted to enable Steam Play for your Windows games, but don't waste your time. I mean, you can try, but it ain't gonna work."' -- source: https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/03/23/1922228 Cheers, Peter

2 1

Rebooting A Retro PDP-11 Workstation - and Its Classic 'Venix' UNIX
by Peter Reutemann 24 Mar '25

24 Mar '25

'This week the "Old Vintage Computing Research" blog published a 21,000-word exploration of the DEC PDP-11, the 16-bit minicomputer sold by Digital Equipment Corporation. Slashdot reader AndrewZX calls the blog post "an excellent deep dive" into the machine's history and capabilities "and the classic Venix UNIX that it ran." The blogger still owns a working 1984 DEC Professional 380, "a tank of a machine, a reasonably powerful workstation, and the most practical PDP-adjacent thing you can actually slap on a (large) desk." But more importantly, "It runs PRO/VENIX, the only official DEC Unix option for the Pros." In that specific market it was almost certainly the earliest such licensed Unix (in 1983) and primarily competed against XENIX, Microsoft's dominant "small Unix," which first emerged for XT-class systems as SCO XENIX in 1984. You'd wonder how rogue processes could be prevented from stomping on each other in such systems when neither the Intel 8086/8088 nor the IBM PC nor the PC/XT had a memory management unit, and the answer was not to try and just hope for the best. It was for this reason that IBM's own Unix variant PC/IX, developed by Interactive Systems Corporation under contract as their intended AT&T killer, was multitasking but single-user since in such an architecture there could be no meaningful security guarantees... One of Venix's interesting little idiosyncrasies, seen in all three Pro versions, was the SUPER> prompt when you've logged on as root (there is also a MAINT> prompt when you're single-user... Although Bill Gates had been their biggest nemesis early on, most of the little Unices that flourished in the 1980s and early 90s met their collective demise at the hands of another man: Linus Torvalds. The proliferation of free Unix alternatives like Linux on commodity PC hardware caused the bottom to fall out of the commercial Unix market. The blogger even found a 1989 log for the computer's one and only guest login session — which seems to consist entirely of someone named tom trying to exit vi. But the most touching part of the article comes when the author discovers a file named /thankyou that they're certain didn't come with the original Venix. It's an ASCII drawing of a smiling face, under the words "THANK YOU FOR RESCUING ME". "It's among the last files created on the system before it came into my possession..." It's all a fun look back to a time when advances in semiconductor density meant microcomputers could do nearly as much as the more expensive minicomputers (while taking up less space) — leaving corporations pondering the new world that was coming: As far back as 1974, an internal skunkworks unit had presented management with two small systems prototypes described as a PDP-8 in a VT50 terminal and a portable PDP-11 chassis. Engineers were intrigued but sales staff felt these smaller versions would cut into their traditional product lines, and [DEC president Ken] Olsen duly cancelled the project, famously observing no one would want a computer in their home.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/22/1927247 Cheers, Peter

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Raspberry Pi Announces New Tool for Customized Software Images
by Peter Reutemann 24 Mar '25

24 Mar '25

'"For developers and organisations that require a custom software image, a flexible and transparent build system is essential," according to an announcement Friday at Raspberry Pi.com. "[T]o support these customers, we have created rpi-image-gen, a powerful new tool designed to put you in complete control of your Raspberry Pi images." If you're building an embedded system or an industrial controller, you'll need complete control over the software resident on the device, and home users may wish to build their own OS and have it pre-configured exactly the way they want... rpi-image-gen is an alternative to pi-gen, which is the tool we use to create and deploy the Raspberry Pi OS distribution. rpi-image-gen... offers a very granular level of control over file system construction and software image creation... [B]eing able to help reduce software build time, provide guaranteed ownership of support, and reuse standard methodologies to ensure authenticity of software were all of paramount importance, and among the reasons why we created a new home-grown build tool for Raspberry Pi devices... There is a small number of examples in the tree which demonstrate different use cases of rpi-image-gen [including the lightweight image slim and webkiosk for booting into browser kiosk mode]. All create bootable disk images and serve to illustrate how one might use rpi-image-gen to create a bespoke image for a particular purpose. The number of examples will grow over time and we welcome suggestions for new ones... Visit the rpi-image-gen GitHub repository to get started. There, you'll find documentation and examples to guide you through creating custom Raspberry Pi images. Some technical details from the announcement. - "Similar to pi-gen, rpi-image-gen leverages the power, reliability, and trust of installing a Debian Linux system for the device. However, unlike pi-gen, rpi-image-gen introduces some new concepts [profiles, image layouts, and config] which serve to dictate the build footprint and installation." - The tool also lets you exclude from your package "things that would otherwise be installed as part of the profile." - The tool's GitHub repository notes that it also allows you output your software bill of materials (SBOM) "to list the exact set of packages that were used to create the image." And it can even generate a list of CVEs identified from the SBOM to "give consumers of your image confidence that your image does not contain any known vulnerabilities."' -- source: https://build.slashdot.org/story/25/03/23/0012253 Cheers, Peter

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GIMP 3.0 Released
by Peter Reutemann 18 Mar '25

18 Mar '25

'GIMP 3.0 has been released after over a decade of development. Highlights include a refined GTK3 interface with scroll wheel tab navigation, a new splash screen, improved HiDPI icon support, enhanced color management, a stable public API, and support for more file formats. 9to5Linux reports: GIMP 3.0 also brings improvements to non-destructive editing by introducing an optional "Merge Filters" checkbox at the bottom of NDE filters that merges down the filter immediately after it's committed, along with non-destructive filters on layer groups and the implementation of storing version of filters in GIMP's XCF project files. Among other noteworthy changes, the GEGL and babl components have been updated with new features and many improvements, such as Inner Glow, Bevel, and GEGL Styles filters, some plugins saw small enhancements, and it's now possible to export images with different settings while leaving the original image unchanged. There's also a new PDB call that allows Script-Fu writers to use labels to specify filter properties, a brand new named-argument syntax, support for loading 16-bits-per-channel LAB PSD files, support for loading DDS images with BC7 support, early-binding CMYK support, and support for PSB and JPEG-XL image formats. On top of that, GIMP 3.0 introduces new auto-expanding layer boundary and snapping options, an updated search pop-up to show the menu path for all entries while making individual filters searchable, a revamped alignment tool, and support for "layer sets," replacing the older concept of linked layers. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/17/1948219 Cheers, Peter

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Wine Releases Framework Mono 6.14
by Peter Reutemann 11 Mar '25

11 Mar '25

'Today marks the release of Framework Mono 6.14, the first major Mono release in five years and the first under WineHQ's stewardship. This update includes long-awaited improvements such as native macOS ARM64 support, enhancements to System.Windows.Forms for X11, better COM interface support, and various stability fixes. Phoronix reports: In addition to the native macOS ARM64 support and System.Windows.Forms improvements for X11, some of the other Mono 6.14 improvements carried out over the past half-decade include improved support for generated COM interfaces, many warning fixes, addressing common cases where processes would hang on exit, and more. As for the "Framework Mono" name rather than just Mono, the release announcement explains: "Framework Mono is the project previously hosted at https://github.com/mono/mono, which was then simply called Mono. I have made this change to distinguish it from 'monovm' and 'Wine Mono', which are different projects. Framework Mono is a cross-platform runtime compatible with .NET Framework." ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/03/10/2055237 Cheers, Peter

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Emacs 30.1 Released: New Features, Installation, and Usage Guide
by Peter Reutemann 07 Mar '25

07 Mar '25

'GNU Emacs is one of the oldest text editors. It was created by Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software movement and GNU project. He is also the creator of the GNU C compiler and Debugger. Emacs is a versatile and highly configurable text editor with hundreds of keybindings and commands. With numerous configuration settings, it’s arguably one of the text editors with a steep learning curve, so most developers, system administrators, and regular Linux users prefer Nano or Vim editors. Despite the complexity of learning the ins and outs of Emacs, it’s not entirely hostile to beginners, and with the right learning strategy and guidance, you’ll be comfortable in no time. In this guide, we will hold your hand and walk you through the Emacs editor. By the end of this guide, you will have a decent amount of knowledge to get started with using the Emacs editor.' -- source: https://www.linuxtoday.com/blog/emacs-30-1-released-new-features-installati… Cheers, Peter

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Phrase Of The Week: “Vegetative Electron Microscopy”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 05 Mar '25

05 Mar '25

Amusing summary <https://www.computerworld.com/article/3836728/you-thought-genai-hallucinati…> of research into how bad AIs can get in some of the rubbish results they produce. We knew they could lose their hold on reality and start making things up, but did you know they could also cheat, and tell lies about that cheating when confronted with it? For example, when given charge of doing share trades, and told not to (illegally) take advantage of insider information, they might do so anyway, and then simply deny it when challenged. Oh, and the phrase “vegetative electron microscopy” is complete nonsense; it originated when an AI was processing multicolumn text, and saw words next to each other which were in separate columns, not part of the same sentence at all, and ran them together anyway. From there, the phrase somehow spread to other publications ...

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Blender - Oscar win for Flow
by Peter Reutemann 03 Mar '25

03 Mar '25

'Making Flow – Interview with director Gints Zilbalodis Flow, the animated feature film following the mystical journey of a dark grey cat and his companions, is the manifestation of Blender’s mission, where a small, independent team with a limited budget is able to create a story that moves audiences worldwide, and achieve recognition with over 60 awards, including a Golden Globe for Best Animation and two Oscar nominations. In this interview, Gints Zilbalodis, writer and director (and more!) of the film, shares how Blender was instrumental in the creation of the film.' -- sources: https://www.blender.org/user-stories/making-flow-an-interview-with-director… https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/flow-wins-best-animated-feature-film-osca… Cheers, Peter

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Mozilla Revises Firefox's Terms of Use, Clarifies That They Don't Own Your Data
by Peter Reutemann 03 Mar '25

03 Mar '25

'"We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible," Mozilla explained Wednesday in a clarification a recent Terms of Use update. "Without it, we couldn't use information typed into Firefox, for example. It does NOT give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for anything other than what is described in the Privacy Notice." But Friday they went further, and revised those new Terms of Use "to more clearly reflect the limited scope of how Mozilla interacts with user data," according to a Mozilla blog post. More details from the Verge: The particular language that drew criticism was: "When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox." That language has been removed. Now, the language in the terms says: "You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox. This includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox. This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that content...." Friday's post additionally provides some context about why the company has "stepped away from making blanket claims that 'We never sell your data.'" Mozilla says that "in some places, the LEGAL definition of 'sale of data' is broad and evolving," and that "the competing interpretations of do-not-sell requirements does leave many businesses uncertain about their exact obligations and whether or not they're considered to be 'selling data.'" Mozilla says that "there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners" so that Firefox can be "commercially viable," but it adds that it spells those out in its privacy notice and works to strip data of potentially identifying information or share it in aggregate.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/01/2111254 Cheers, Peter

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Steam Deck & PC Gaming
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 26 Feb '25

26 Feb '25

PC gaming is still a bigger business than consoles, according to <https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/01/way-more-game-makers-are-working-on-…>. And the Linux-powered Steam Deck has been pioneering the new handheld segment of the PC gaming market. But figures on Steam Deck sales are hard to come by. Here <https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/steam-deck-everything-you-were-afraid> is an attempt to tease out, from the available hints, how popular the product actually is. That article is over a year old by now, but it estimates that there were 3-4 million Steam Decks sold by that point. I think we can safely say another million or more in units has been added to that since then. One concrete figure from the Steam Hardware Survey <https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welc…> is that about 2.3% of all Steam users are on Linux. This looks like 0.7% specifically on the Steam Deck, so other Linux would be about 1.6%. Another linked survey reports that over half of Steam Deck users run other game emulation systems (e.g. PlayStation 2, Game Boy, GameCube) on their Decks.

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Pi-hole 6 Is Here: Now Faster, Smarter, and More Secu
by Peter Reutemann 25 Feb '25

25 Feb '25

'The much-anticipated Pi-hole 6, a network-wide ad blocker that acts as a DNS sinkhole to block advertisements, trackers, and malicious domains at the network level, has been officially released, now featuring an embedded web server and a new REST API directly integrated into the pihole-FTL binary. This eliminates the need for Lighttpd and PHP, reducing the installation footprint and boosting overall performance. Moreover, the new API introduces server-side pagination for the query log, ensuring a faster and more responsive user experience. Next, advanced filtering gets a boost by introducing support for subscribed allowlists, also known as “Antigravity.” These allowlists work similarly to traditional blocklists but allow domains rather than denying them, giving users more nuanced control over what content gets filtered. Additionally, configuration management has been made more user-friendly by consolidating multiple settings files into a single, richly commented TOML file located at “/etc/pihole/pihole.toml.” Whether you prefer direct file editing, command line tweaks, API usage, or environment variables—Pi-hole 6 has you covered. It’s also worth noting that the user interface has received a complete overhaul. With settings now divided into Basic and Expert modes, users can tailor their experience based on their comfort level.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/pi-hole-6-is-here-now-faster-smarter-and-more-secure/ Cheers, Peter

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Greg Kroah-Hartman Supports Rust in the Kernel
by Peter Reutemann 24 Feb '25

24 Feb '25

'Report from Phoronix: Linux's second-in-command Greg Kroah-Hartman has also been a big proponent of Rust kernel code. He's crafted another Linux kernel mailing list post [Wednesdsay] outlining the benefits of Rust and encouraging new kernel code/drivers to be in Rust rather than C. Greg KH makes the case that the majority of the kernel bugs are due to "stupid little corner cases in C that are totally gone in Rust." "As someone who has seen almost EVERY kernel bugfix and security issue for the past 15+ years... and who sees EVERY kernel CVE issued, I think I can speak on this topic," Kroah-Hartman began. Here's some excerpts from his remarks. Citing corner cases like overwrites of memory, error path cleanups, use-after-free mistakes and forgetting to check error values, Kroah-Hartman says he's "all for... making these types of problems impossible to hit." That's why I'm wanting to see Rust get into the kernel, these types of issues just go away, allowing developers and maintainers more time to focus on the REAL bugs that happen (i.e. logic issues, race conditions, etc.)... [F]or new code / drivers, writing them in Rust where these types of bugs just can't happen (or happen much much less) is a win for all of us, why wouldn't we do this...? Rust isn't a "silver bullet" that will solve all of our problems, but it sure will help in a huge number of places, so for new stuff going forward, why wouldn't we want that...? Yes, mixed language codebases are rough, and hard to maintain, but we are kernel developers dammit, we've been maintaining and strengthening Linux for longer than anyone ever thought was going to be possible. We've turned our development model into a well-oiled engineering marvel creating something that no one else has ever been able to accomplish. Adding another language really shouldn't be a problem, we've handled much worse things in the past and we shouldn't give up now on wanting to ensure that our project succeeds for the next 20+ years. We've got to keep pushing forward when confronted with new good ideas, and embrace the people offering to join us in actually doing the work to help make sure that we all succeed together. Kroah-Hartman emphasized later that "a huge majority of the stupid things we do in C just don't happen in the same code implemented in Rust (i.e. memory leaks, error path cleanups, return value checking, etc.) " The complete thread contains over 140 messages — including Linus Torvalds' observation that " #pragma is complete garbage and should never be used."' -- source:https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/02/22/0543255 Cheers, Peter

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Brave Now Lets You Inject Custom JavaScript To Tweak Websites
by Peter Reutemann 11 Feb '25

11 Feb '25

'Brave Browser version 1.75 introduces "custom scriptlets," a new feature that allows advanced users to inject their own JavaScript into websites for enhanced customization, privacy, and usability. The feature is similar to the TamperMonkey and GreaseMonkey browser extensions, notes BleepingComputer. From the report: "Starting with desktop version 1.75, advanced Brave users will be able to write and inject their own scriptlets into a page, allowing for better control over their browsing experience," explained Brave in the announcement. Brave says that the feature was initially created to debug the browser's adblock feature but felt it was too valuable not to share with users. Brave's custom scriptlets feature can be used to modify webpages for a wide variety of privacy, security, and usability purposes. For privacy-related changes, users write scripts that block JavaScript-based trackers, randomize fingerprinting APIs, and substitute Google Analytics scripts with a dummy version. In terms of customization and accessibility, the scriptlets could be used for hiding sidebars, pop-ups, floating ads, or annoying widgets, force dark mode even on sites that don't support it, expand content areas, force infinite scrolling, adjust text colors and font size, and auto-expand hidden content. For performance and usability, the scriptlets can block video autoplay, lazy-load images, auto-fill forms with predefined data, enable custom keyboard shortcuts, bypass right-click restrictions, and automatically click confirmation dialogs. The possible actions achievable by injected JavaScript snippets are virtually endless. However, caution is advised, as running untrusted custom scriptlets may cause issues or even introduce some risk.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/10/2348258 Cheers, Peter

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This Keyboard Has A “SMOL” Key
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 11 Feb '25

11 Feb '25

The review claims this is the “world’s largest keyboard”. <https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/keyboards/im-typing-this-on-the-wo…>. It is supposedly inspired by the legendary “Space Cadet” keyboard from the 1980s <https://www.deviantart.com/default-cube/art/Space-Cadet-Keyboard-650629356>, and is certainly a wonder to behold. Yet with all the modifiers it does provide (look, they found room for *two* “Meta” keys, both on the right-hand side!), they somehow decided to omit any CTRL keys. Note on modifiers: “Meta” is commonly a synonym for “Alt”, while the “Super” key is usually mapped to the one with the Windows logo on it, for those still stuck in the Microsoft world. The “Hyper” moodifier has no equivalent on a conventional keyboard. These are all names well-established from the days of high-powered workstations running Unix or doing AI work with Lisp. But what the heck is the “SMOL” key supposed to do?

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Tails 6.12 Rolls Out, Sealing Critical Security Gaps
by Peter Reutemann 11 Feb '25

11 Feb '25

'The Tails project announced the release of its privacy-focused Linux distro, Tails 6.12, featuring vital security patches alongside an array of functional updates. According to the development team, several vulnerabilities were discovered during an external security audit by Radically Open Security. In light of this, perhaps the most noteworthy highlights in Tails 6.12 are the fixes preventing attackers from monitoring Tor circuits and altering Persistent Storage settings. Here are some more details about it. Tor Circuit Monitoring Prevention In earlier versions (up to Tails 6.11), vulnerabilities within Onion Circuits and the Tor Browser wrapper could have allowed a hostile actor—who had already hijacked a running application—to monitor or modify Tor connections, potentially revealing user identities. The Tails developers emphasize that there is no indication these flaws were exploited in the wild. Persistent Storage Security Enhancements Another fix addresses a loophole that, if exploited, could have allowed attackers with existing control of an application to change Persistent Storage settings. This patch ensures that user data in the Persistent Storage remains more securely locked down even in the unlikely event of a breach.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/tails-6-12-rolls-out-sealing-critical-security-gaps/ Cheers, Peter

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OpenWrt 24.10 Brings Kernel 6.6 and Initial WiFi 7 Support
by Peter Reutemann 11 Feb '25

11 Feb '25

'OpenWrt, a free and open-source Linux-based operating system primarily used for embedded devices, most notably residential gateways and routers, has just announced the first stable release of its 24.10 series. Most notable among the changes is the jump from Linux kernel 5.15 to 6.6 LTS, which promises better hardware support and long-term viability. Additionally, TLS 1.3 support is now standard in the default images, bolstering security capabilities for systems relying on encrypted connections. Another noteworthy improvement is the activation of POSIX Access Control Lists and file system security attributes on devices with larger flash memory sizes. Moreover, kernel support for Multipath TCP has been enabled on devices with greater storage capacity. Regarding wireless networking, OpenWrt 24.10 further refines WiFi6 (802.11ax) and adds initial, although still limited, support for WiFi7 (802.11be). Of course, each new release also expands device coverage, with OpenWrt 24.10 now supporting over 1,970 devices, adding compatibility for more than 100 new models compared to the previous release. And completely expected, their own OpenWrt One is now among them.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/openwrt-24-10-brings-kernel-6-6-and-initial-wifi-7-sup… Cheers, Peter

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How To Make Any AMD Zen CPU Always Generate 4 As a Random Number
by Peter Reutemann 10 Feb '25

10 Feb '25

'Google security researchers have discovered a way to bypass AMD's security, enabling them to load unofficial microcode into its processors and modify the silicon's behaviour at will. To demonstrate this, they created a microcode patch that forces the chips to always return 4 when asked for a random number. Beyond simply allowing Google and others to customize AMD chips for both beneficial and potentially malicious purposes, this capability also undermines AMD's secure encrypted virtualization and root-of-trust security mechanisms.' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/02/09/2021244 Cheers, Peter

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Red Hat Plans to Add AI to Fedora and GNOME
by Peter Reutemann 05 Feb '25

05 Feb '25

'In his post about the future of Fedora Workstation, Christian F.K. Schaller discusses how the Red Hat team plans to integrate AI with IBM's open-source Granite engine to enhance developer tools, such as IDEs, and create an AI-powered Code Assistant. He says the team is also working on streamlining AI acceleration in Toolbx and ensuring Fedora users have access to tools like RamaLama. From the post: One big item on our list for the year is looking at ways Fedora Workstation can make use of artificial intelligence. Thanks to IBMs Granite effort we know have an AI engine that is available under proper open source licensing terms and which can be extended for many different usecases. Also the IBM Granite team has an aggressive plan for releasing updated versions of Granite, incorporating new features of special interest to developers, like making Granite a great engine to power IDEs and similar tools. We been brainstorming various ideas in the team for how we can make use of AI to provide improved or new features to users of GNOME and Fedora Workstation. This includes making sure Fedora Workstation users have access to great tools like RamaLama, that we make sure setting up accelerated AI inside Toolbx is simple, that we offer a good Code Assistant based on Granite and that we come up with other cool integration points. "I'm still not sure how I feel about this approach," writes designer/developer and blogger, Bradley Taunt. "While IBM Granite is an open source model, I still don't enjoy so much artificial 'intelligence' creeping into core OS development. This also isn't something optional on the end-users side, like a desktop feature or package. This sounds like it's going to be built directly into the core system." "Red Hat has been pushing hard towards AI and my main concern is having this influence other operating system dev teams. Luckily things seems AI-free in BSD land. For now, at least." ' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/02/04/2047240 Cheers, Peter

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Framework Laptop’s RISC-V board for open source diehards is available for $199
by Peter Reutemann 05 Feb '25

05 Feb '25

'We've covered the Framework Laptop 13 primarily as a consumer Windows laptop, reviewing versions with multiple Intel and AMD processors. But the system's modular nature makes it possible to expand it beyond Windows PC hardware, as we've seen with experiments like the (now-discontinued) Chromebook Edition of the laptop. Today Framework is expanding to something even more experimental: a DeepComputing RISC-V Mainboard targeted primarily at developers. RISC-V is a fully open source and royalty-free instruction set, making it possible for anyone to adopt and use it without having to license it (unlike x86, which is a maze of cross-licensed Intel and AMD technologies that other companies can't really buy into; or Arm, which is licensed by the company of the same name). First announced in June 2024, the board is available to order today for $199. The board is designed to fit in a Framework Laptop 13 chassis, which means that people who would prefer a desktop can also put it into the $39 Cooler Master Mainboard Case that Framework offers. Made in concert with DeepComputing, the board uses a StarFive JH7110 processor with four 1.5 GHz SiFive U74 CPU cores. The board can officially run either Ubuntu 24.04 LTS or Fedora 41, with tech support provided by DeepComputing.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/02/framework-laptop-expands-beyond-x86… Cheers, Peter

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procfs -- Too Much Info
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 04 Feb '25

04 Feb '25

What used to be a single proc(5) man page, documenting the contents of the /proc file system, has now been broken out into over a hundred separate pages. You can find them with man -s5 -k proc | grep ^proc

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