- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

Flatpak Doesn't Work in Ubuntu 25.10, But a Fix is Coming
by Peter Reutemann 14 Oct '25

14 Oct '25

'"It's not just you: Flatpak flat-out doesn't work in the new Ubuntu 25.10 release," writes the blog OMG Ubuntu: While Flatpak itself can be installed using apt, trying to install Flatpaks with Flatpak from the command-line throws a "could not unmount revokefs-fuse filesystem" error, followed by "Child process exited with code 1". For those who've installed the Ubuntu 'Questing Quokka' and wanted to kit it out with their favourite software from Flathub, it's a frustrating road bump. AppArmor, the tool that enforces Ubuntu's security policies for apps, is causing the issue. According to the bug report on Launchpad, the AppArmor profile for fusermount3 lacks the privileges it needs to work properly in Ubuntu 25.10. Fusermount3 is a tool Flatpak relies on to mount and unmount filesystems... This is a bug and it is being worked on. Although there's no timeframe for a fix, it is marked as critical, so will be prioritised. The bug was reported in early September, but not fixed in time for this week's Ubuntu 25.10 release, reports Phoronix: Only [Friday] an updated AppArmor was pushed to the "questing-proposed" archive for testing. Since then... a number of users have reported that the updated AppArmor from the proposed archive will fix the Flatpak issues being observed. From all the reports so far it looks like that proposed update is in good shape for restoring Flatpak support on Ubuntu 25.10. The Ubuntu team is considering pushing out this update sooner than the typical seven day testing period given the severity of the issue. More details from WebProNews: Industry insiders point out that AppArmor, Ubuntu's mandatory access control system, was tightened in this release to enhance security... This isn't the first time AppArmor has caused friction; similar issues plagued Telegram Flatpak apps in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS earlier this year, as noted in coverage from OMG Ubuntu.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/10/13/067256 Cheers, Peter

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Ubuntu 25.10 'Questing Quokka' Released
by Peter Reutemann 10 Oct '25

10 Oct '25

'9to5Linux reports: Dubbed Questing Quokka, Ubuntu 25.10 is powered by the latest and greatest Linux 6.17 kernel series for top-notch hardware support and ships with the latest GNOME 49 desktop environment, defaulting to a Wayland-only session for the Ubuntu Desktop flavor, meaning there's no other session to choose from the login screen. Ubuntu Desktop also ships with two new apps, namely GNOME's Loupe instead of Eye of GNOME as the default image viewer, as well as Ptyxis instead of GNOME Terminal as the default terminal emulator. Also, there's a new update notification that will be shown with options to open Software Updater or install updates directly.' Other highlights of Ubuntu 25.10 include sudo-rs as the default implementation of sudo, Dracut as the default initramfs-tools, Chrony as the default NTP (Network Time Protocol) client, Rust Coreutils as the default implementation of GNU Core Utilities, and TPM-backed FDE (Full Disk Encryption) recovery key management. Moreover, Ubuntu 25.10 adds NVIDIA Dynamic Boost support and enables suspend-resume support in the proprietary NVIDIA graphics driver to prevent corruption and freezes when waking an NVIDIA desktop. For Intel users, Ubuntu 25.10 introduces support for new Intel integrated and discrete GPUs.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/10/09/2054218 Cheers, Peter

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VLC’s First Update in a Year to Introduce Qt6 and Windows ARM64 Support
by Peter Reutemann 09 Oct '25

09 Oct '25

'After a year of silence, one of the most popular media players, VLC, is back with a new release candidate, version 3.0.22 RC1 (Vetinari). Although much of the attention is on version 4.0, long in development and expected to deliver major changes, this release also includes a notable update. One of the most important features is support for building VLC with Qt6, which is (as you can guess) a big win for all KDE enthusiasts. On top of that, the release candidate introduces native Windows ARM64 support, reflecting the growing interest in ARM hardware on laptops and tablets. The update also packs a wide set of fixes and adjustments. The developers disabled the older liba52, libmpeg2, and libdca libraries by default, encouraging use of libavcodec instead. On the playback side, users can expect improvements for AV1, Opus, ProRes, FLAC, and JPEG handling, plus more reliable behavior when seeking over SFTP and refinements in Matroska and DVD caption support. Regarding security, VLC 3.0.22 RC1 addresses a record number of issues, many of them caught through the oss-fuzz project and funding from the SecureTrust Fund. That makes this update one of the most important in recent years from a stability and safety standpoint. Lastly, Windows users will notice that the player now allows renaming, moving, or deleting the currently playing file, and there’s even a renewed compatibility with Windows XP SP3 (yes, there are still enthusiasts betting on it), which is still in use in some very specific setups.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/vlcs-first-update-in-a-year-to-introduce-qt6-and-windo… Cheers, Peter

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Tails 7.0 Anonymous Linux OS Officially Released, Based on Debian 13 “Trixie”
by Peter Reutemann 07 Oct '25

07 Oct '25

'Tails 7.0 is out today as a major update to this portable Linux OS based on the Debian GNU/Linux operating system that protects users against surveillance and censorship. Highlights of Tails 7.0 include a Debian 13 “Trixie” base and a kernel from the long-term supported Linux 6.12 LTS series from the upstream Debian release, the latest GNOME 48 desktop environment by default featuring GNOME Console as default terminal emulator and GNOME Loupe as default image viewer. The Tails devs note the fact that the Root Terminal was broken when replacing GNOME Terminal with GNOME Console, so they renamed Root Terminal to Root Console. They also removed the Kleopatra app from the Favorites menu, so now users will have to start Kleopatra from Apps > Accessories. Moreover, they removed the obsolete Network Connection option from the Welcome Screen, the Places menu, and some packages from the live ISO image, including unar, aircrack-ng, and sq. Tails 7.0 ships with many updated components, including Tor 0.4.8.17, Tor Browser 14.5.7, Mozilla Thunderbird 128.14 ESR, OnionShare 2.6.3, Kleopatra 24.12, KeePassXC 2.7.10, GIMP 3.0.4, Inkscape 1.4, Audacity 3.7.3, and Electrum 4.5.8. For Inkscape, Tails now skips the onboarding. This release also fixes various issues, including an issue with selecting the correct keyboard for certain languages. Check out the release notes for more details about the changes included in Tails 7.0, which is available for download right now from the official website as ISO and USB images for 64-bit systems.' -- source: https://9to5linux.com/tails-7-0-anonymous-linux-os-released-based-on-debian… Cheers, Peter

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Redis Warns of Critical Flaw Impacting Thousands of Instances
by Peter Reutemann 07 Oct '25

07 Oct '25

'BleepingComputer reports: The Redis security team has released patches for a maximum severity vulnerability that could allow attackers to gain remote code execution on thousands of vulnerable instances. Redis (short for Remote Dictionary Server) is an open-source data structure store used in approximately 75% of cloud environments, functioning like a database, cache, and message broker, and storing data in RAM for ultra-fast access. The security flaw (tracked as CVE-2025-49844) is caused by a 13-year-old use-after-free weakness found in the Redis source code and can be exploited by authenticated threat actors using a specially crafted Lua script (a feature enabled by default). Successful exploitation enables them to escape the Lua sandbox, trigger a use-after-free, establish a reverse shell for persistent access, and achieve remote code execution on the targeted Redis hosts. After compromising a Redis host, attackers can steal credentials, deploy malware or cryptocurrency mining tools, extract sensitive data from Redis, move laterally to other systems within the victim's network, or use stolen information to gain access to other cloud services. "This grants an attacker full access to the host system, enabling them to exfiltrate, wipe, or encrypt sensitive data, hijack resources, and facilitate lateral movement within cloud environments," said Wiz researchers, who reported the security issue at Pwn2Own Berlin in May 2025 and dubbed it RediShell. While successful exploitation requires attackers first to gain authenticated access to a Redis instance, Wiz found around 330,000 Redis instances exposed online, with at least 60,000 of them not requiring authentication. Redis and Wiz urged admins to patch their instances immediately by applying security updates released on Friday, "prioritizing those that are exposed to the internet." To further secure their Redis instances against remote attacks, admins can also enable authentication, disable Lua scripting and other unnecessary commands, launch Redis using a non-root user account, enable Redis logging and monitoring, limit access to authorized networks only, and implement network-level access controls using firewalls and Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs).' -- source: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/10/06/222222 Cheers, Peter

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Systemd 258 Drops cgroup v1, Raises Kernel Baseline to 5.4
by Peter Reutemann 06 Oct '25

06 Oct '25

'Systemd, a widely adopted system and service manager for Linux, has released its latest iteration, v258, which introduces significant changes that administrators should be aware of. Probably the headline change is that support for cgroup v1—the so-called “legacy” and “hybrid” hierarchies—has been removed. From now on, only cgroup v2 is mounted during boot and inside systemd-nspawn containers. Another notable move is the bump in the minimum kernel requirement. The baseline is now Linux 5.4, first released back in 2019, with 5.7 listed as the recommended version. That means older distributions or kernels simply won’t be able to run systemd 258. Security changes are also in play. By default, tty/pts device nodes now get mode 0600 instead of the old 0620, which effectively means “mesg n” is the new normal. On the crypto side, OpenSSL has become the only supported backend for systemd-resolved and systemd-importd, dropping support for both GnuTLS and libgcrypt. Session handling has been reworked, too. systemd-logind now assigns system jobs like cron tasks or FTP sessions to new “light” classes by default. That way, they won’t spin up a full per-user service manager unless explicitly configured. PAM sessions tied to normal users remain unchanged. Admins maintaining old setups should also take note: support for System V–style init scripts is officially deprecated and scheduled for removal in systemd 259. The same goes for the legacy /run/lock/ directory, and for iptables support in networkd and nspawn, which will rely solely on nftables from the next release.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/systemd-258-drops-cgroup-v1-raises-kernel-baseline-to-… Cheers, Peter

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How to switch your Windows 10 PC to Linux Mint - for free
by Peter Reutemann 06 Oct '25

06 Oct '25

Maybe this article with step-by-step instructions might help some of the Windows user in your circle to switch to Linux... -- source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-switch-your-windows-10-pc-to-linux-min… Cheers, Peter

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We Asked LibreOffice and Collabora: Why Aren’t They in Schools Instead of Word and Google Docs?
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '25

30 Sep '25

'Much free and open source software helps its users save money as possible — on both hardware and software — while protecting their privacy. It also often makes it easy for them to learn how it works — if they’re interested — and customize it in any way they want or need. With such features, FOSS should be the default choice in any educational environment, in these days when many schools face budget cuts, and switching to “free as in free beer” proprietary cloud applications like Microsoft Teams or Google Docs to save money has the consequence of actively preparing and educating pupils to be endless sources of data to be exploited for the likes of money and political control. That being true, how come so many schools and universities still accept — if not demand — that their students use only proprietary software and clouds? How come so many taxpayer dollars allocated for public education ends up being used to make the likes of Microsoft and Google even richer? Saving money can’t be the only answer — especially in the long term. [...] In my experience, besides ignorance and resistance to change, the main reasons why too many schools still don’t use LibreOffice and Collabora Online in 2025 are, in no particular order: - Money - Already established supply chains - Teacher overload - Isolation - Cloud computing - Improper formatting choices' -- source: https://fossforce.com/2025/09/we-asked-libreoffice-and-collabora-why-arent-… Cheers, Peter

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Ubuntu 25.10 Switches to Dracut as Default Initramfs Tool
by Peter Reutemann 30 Sep '25

30 Sep '25

'The big news came from the Canonical camp. Ubuntu developers have officially approved a long-planned move affecting a fundamental system component: starting with Ubuntu 25.10 “Questing Quokka,” the distro will switch from initramfs-tools to Dracut as its default initramfs generation tool. For readers who aren’t too tech-savvy, I will immediately clarify that the initramfs is the temporary root filesystem the Linux kernel uses at boot. It contains the drivers and scripts needed to mount the actual system and get everything running. And just for reference, Ubuntu has relied on initramfs-tools for nearly two decades. Surprising to many or not, Dracut was originally developed in the Fedora/Red Hat ecosystem. What makes it stand out is that, instead of relying on big sets of custom shell scripts, it builds the initramfs image using small, reusable modules. This modular design makes it easier to maintain, more consistent across different Linux distros, and often faster to update.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/ubuntu-25-10-switches-to-dracut-as-default-initramfs-t… Cheers, Peter

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Meta Learned The Wrong Lesson From Frances Haugen
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 12 Sep '25

12 Sep '25

Remember when Frances Haugen came forward in 2021 to reveal that Facebook/Meta knew it was causing harm to underage users, but didn’t seem keen to do anything about it <https://www.theverge.com/policy/775623/meta-whistleblowers-hearing-virtual-…>? The company did make changes as a result of that revelation, but they were the wrong kind of changes: instead of actually fixing the problem of underage harm, it decided to stop collecting the data that revealed that harm. It has restricted researchers’ access, and threatened the jobs of those who wanted to gather data on “forbidden” topics.

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FFmpeg 8.0 “Huffman” Released with AV1 Vulkan Encoder, VVC VA-API Decoding
by Peter Reutemann 04 Sep '25

04 Sep '25

'FFmpeg 8.0 has been released today as a major update to this open-source multimedia framework that introduces numerous features, including new decoders, as well as various improvements. Dubbed “Huffman” and coming more than ten months after FFmpeg 7.1, the FFmpeg 8.0 release is here to enable TLS peer certificate verification by default, add an AV1 Vulkan encoder, introduce VP9 Vulkan and ProRes RAW Vulkan hardware-acceleration, and implement APV encoding support through a libopenapv wrapper. FFmpeg 8.0 also introduces animated JPEG XL encoding via the libjxl library, adds multitrack audio/video and modern codec support to FLV v2, adds VVC (Versatile Video Coding) support in Matroska (MKV), and adds VVC decoder support to all SCC (Screen Content Coding) content, including IBC (Inter Block Copy), Palette Mode, and ACT (Adaptive Color Transform). Several new filters are present in this release, including a Whisper filter, a pad_cuda filter, a Colordetect filter, and a vf_scale_d3d11 filter. New decoders are here as well, including a VVC VA-API decoder, a RealVideo 6.0 decoder, an ADPCM IMA Xbox decoder, a G.728 decoder, a Sanyo LD-ADPCM decoder, and a ProRes RAW decoder. On top of that, FFmpeg 8.0 brings libx265 alpha layer encoding, CENC AV1 support in the MP4 muxer, an APV decoder, along with APV raw bitstream muxing and demuxing support, an APV parser, APV support for MP4/ISOBMFF muxing and demuxing, as well as an OpenHarmony hardware decoder and encoder. Among other noteworthy changes, FFmpeg 8.0 drops support for OpenSSL 1.1.0 and previous versions, no longer disables GCC autovectorization on x86, ARM, and AArch64 (ARM64) architectures, sets the default prediction method for pngenc to PAETH, deprecates OpenMAX encoders, and drops yasm support in favor of nasm.' -- source: https://9to5linux.com/ffmpeg-8-0-huffman-released-with-av1-vulkan-encoder-v… The "Whisper filter" would be used for automatically generating sub-titles: https://www.phoronix.com/news/FFmpeg-Lands-Whisper I've used whisper before and it is quite impressive. Cheers, Peter

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FreeBSD Project Isn't Ready To Let AI Commit Code Just Yet
by Peter Reutemann 04 Sep '25

04 Sep '25

'The latest status report from the FreeBSD Project says no thanks to code generated by LLM-based assistants. From a report: The FreeBSD Project's Status Report for the second quarter of 2025 contains updates from various sub-teams that are working on improving the FreeBSD OS, including separate sub-projects such as enabling FreeBSD apps to run on Linux, Chinese translation efforts, support for Solaris-style Extended Attributes, and for Apple's legacy HFS+ file system. The thing that stood out to us, though, was that the core team is working on what it terms a "Policy on generative AI created code and documentation." The relevant paragraph says: "Core is investigating setting up a policy for LLM/AI usage (including but not limited to generating code). The result will be added to the Contributors Guide in the doc repository. AI can be useful for translations (which seems faster than doing the work manually), explaining long/obscure documents, tracking down bugs, or helping to understand large code bases. We currently tend to not use it to generate code because of license concerns. The discussion continues at the core session at BSDCan 2025 developer summit, and core is still collecting feedback and working on the policy."' -- source: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/09/03/1649201 Cheers, Peter

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Are AI Web Crawlers 'Destroying Websites' In Their Hunt for Training Data?
by Peter Reutemann 01 Sep '25

01 Sep '25

Hi everyone I thought this news item rather fitting when I saw it this morning, considering Daniel's experience with these AI bots hammering the wlug wiki: '"AI web crawlers are strip-mining the web in their perpetual hunt for ever more content to feed into their Large Language Model mills," argues Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at the Register. And "when AI searchbots, with Meta (52% of AI searchbot traffic), Google (23%), and OpenAI (20%) leading the way, clobber websites with as much as 30 Terabits in a single surge, they're damaging even the largest companies' site performance..." How much traffic do they account for? According to Cloudflare, a major content delivery network (CDN) force, 30% of global web traffic now comes from bots. Leading the way and growing fast? AI bots... Anyone who runs a website, though, knows there's a huge, honking difference between the old-style crawlers and today's AI crawlers. The new ones are site killers. Fastly warns that they're causing "performance degradation, service disruption, and increased operational costs." Why? Because they're hammering websites with traffic spikes that can reach up to ten or even twenty times normal levels within minutes. Moreover, AI crawlers are much more aggressive than standard crawlers. As the InMotionhosting web hosting company notes, they also tend to disregard crawl delays or bandwidth-saving guidelines and extract full page text, and sometimes attempt to follow dynamic links or scripts. The result? If you're using a shared server for your website, as many small businesses do, even if your site isn't being shaken down for content, other sites on the same hardware with the same Internet pipe may be getting hit. This means your site's performance drops through the floor even if an AI crawler isn't raiding your website... AI crawlers don't direct users back to the original sources. They kick our sites around, return nothing, and we're left trying to decide how we're to make a living in the AI-driven web world. Yes, of course, we can try to fend them off with logins, paywalls, CAPTCHA challenges, and sophisticated anti-bot technologies. You know one thing AI is good at? It's getting around those walls. As for robots.txt files, the old-school way of blocking crawlers? Many — most? — AI crawlers simply ignore them... There are efforts afoot to supplement robots.txt with llms.txt files. This is a proposed standard to provide LLM-friendly content that LLMs can access without compromising the site's performance. Not everyone is thrilled with this approach, though, and it may yet come to nothing. In the meantime, to combat excessive crawling, some infrastructure providers, such as Cloudflare, now offer default bot-blocking services to block AI crawlers and provide mechanisms to deter AI companies from accessing their data. ' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/08/31/1820249 Cheers, Peter

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WLUG Wiki -- “Service Unavailable”?
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Aug '25

30 Aug '25

I was checking a link on the WLUG Wiki <https://wiki.wlug.org.nz/>, but it is currently returning “503 Service Unavailable”. I hope this is temporary ...

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Bottles Project Receives EU-Backed Grant
by Peter Reutemann 18 Aug '25

18 Aug '25

'Over the past year, the Bottles project, a popular compatibility layer for running Windows software on Linux, has hit a bit of a rough patch, with financial struggles putting a serious damper on its development progress. It got to a point where, as we informed you back in early July, lead developer Mirko Brombin shared an honest update about the project’s tough financial situation and called on the open source community for support. Thankfully, that call didn’t go unheard—and now, it looks like those financial worries are behind them. The project secured a grant from the NLnet Foundation through its 2025 Commons Fund. This funding is a big deal, as it’ll help speed up development on Bottles Next, the project’s ambitious effort to deliver a sleeker, more modern experience for handling Windows apps in Linux environments.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/bottles-project-receives-eu-backed-grant/ I had never heard of this project before today. Here is some more background: https://docs.usebottles.com/faq/why-bottles Cheers, Peter

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Useful Commands Beginning With “ls”
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 14 Aug '25

14 Aug '25

The “ls” command for listing directory contents has inspired a whole range of commands for listing other kinds of information. Here are a few I found in a quick search on my system: lsblk -- show block devices (disks, SSDs, SD cards, USB sticks etc). lscpu -- show information about your CPUs lsfd -- show information about open files (successor to lsof) lshw -- show detailed hardware information lsipc -- show state of Inter-Process Communication structures (message queues, shared memory, semaphores) lsirq -- show information about kernel hardware interrupt handling lslocks -- show information about filesystem locks lslogins -- show information about user IDs associated with processes on the system. This is not just regular user logins, but also user IDs allocated to system processes. lsmem -- show information about physical memory known to the kernel lsmod -- show state of loaded kernel modules lspci -- show information about PCI buses and connected devices. This will commonly include a lot of motherboard hardware, not just that in expansion slots. lsusb -- show information about connected USB devices. I think all these are from the util-linux package, which should be installed by default. Oh, and a bonus one that has nothing to do with system info as such: lsar -- handy tool for displaying the contents of various formats of archives, such as .zip, .tar and .7z files. Part of the “unar” package. Relevant manual pages (if these are not on your system): https://manpages.debian.org/lsblk(8) https://manpages.debian.org/lscpu(1) https://manpages.debian.org/lsfd(1) https://manpages.debian.org/lshw(1) https://manpages.debian.org/lsipc(1) https://manpages.debian.org/lsirq(1) https://manpages.debian.org/lslocks(8) https://manpages.debian.org/lslogins(1) https://manpages.debian.org/lsmem(1) https://manpages.debian.org/lsmod(8) https://manpages.debian.org/lspci(8) https://manpages.debian.org/lsusb(8) https://manpages.debian.org/lsar(1)

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Bye-Bye Dialup USA
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 10 Aug '25

10 Aug '25

US-based ISP America On-Line (AOL) will finally turn off its dialup Internet service at the end of September <https://www.tomshardware.com/service-providers/network-providers/aol-will-e…>, ending 34 years of operation. AOL was the biggest ISP in the US back in dialup days, but somehow never made a successful transition to broadband service like everyone else. Another peculiarity was that, unlike ISPs everywhere else in the world who offered their dialup service via standard protocols like SLIP (early days) or PPP (the most common later), AOL always stuck to its own proprietary protocol. The company was also infamous for loosing vast numbers of its sign-up CDs on the world via magazines, free mailouts and so on, in an effort to drum up business. There were endless jokes about what to do with this deluge of unwanted AOL CDs.

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Blender 4.5 LTS Released
by Peter Reutemann 05 Aug '25

05 Aug '25

'NERDS.xyz reports: Blender 4.5 has arrived and it's a long-term support release. That means users get two full years of updates and bug fixes, making it a smart choice for anyone looking for stability in serious projects. Whether you're a solo artist or part of a studio pipeline, this version is built to last. Here's a list of key features and changes in this release: - Vulkan backend replaces OpenGL (faster, smoother UI) - Adaptive subdivision up to 14x faster with multithreading - New Geometry Nodes: Camera Info, Instance Bounds - GPU-accelerated compositor nodes with standardized inputs - New Boolean solver: Manifold (cleaner, faster mesh operations) - UV maps visible in Object Mode + improved selection behavior - Grease Pencil render pass and Geometry Nodes integration - Improved file import support: PLY, OBJ, STL, CSV, VDB - Deprecations: Collada, Big Endian, legacy .blend, Intel Mac support - Cycles OptiX now requires NVIDIA driver v535+ - New shader variants for add-on developers (POLYLINES_*, POINT_*) ~500 bug fixes across all major systems' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/15/1912208 Cheers, Peter

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Microsoft Is Abandoning Windows 11 SE
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 04 Aug '25

04 Aug '25

Seems like Microsoft’s attempt to fight back against Google’s Chromebooks in the education market has been a failure, and it is giving up <https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/microsoft-ending-windows-11-s…>. Put the blame on trying to squeeze the Windows quart into the pint-pot of low-cost, purpose-built educational machines: Microsoft hasn't given a formal reason as to why they are ending Windows 11 SE. Presumably, one of the biggest challenges was that despite being a version meant for classrooms, it was fundamentally based on the full version of Windows 11. This meant it struggled to run well on the low-cost devices that schools often buy, a space where Chrome OS thrives. Google’s offering continues to be a truly lightweight cloud-based operating system designed from the ground up for this purpose. Does this mean we stop including Chromebooks as part of the “desktop” market that Windows is supposedly king of?

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Old Mailing List Archive Archive
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Aug '25

01 Aug '25

With the demise of the old Waikato-Uni-based WLUG list server went its archive of list messages. Luckily, that archive was itself archived at archive.org. Here <https://web.archive.org/web/20240711100644/https://list.waikato.ac.nz/archi…> is the last snapshot I could find of the list archive before it disappeared.

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KDE Linux
by Peter Reutemann 01 Aug '25

01 Aug '25

Looks like it is finally available (initiative got announced in 2024): 'Linux has been used for decades powering the world’s supercomputers, data centers, web servers, and most smartphones. Now KDE makes it available for you too! Introducing KDE Linux, a free operating system that can turbocharge new computers and breathe new life into old ones.' -- source: https://kde.org/linux/ -- mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/114949288867476013 Cheers, Peter

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Weta Digital’s Technology Division Sold To US Firm
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Aug '25

01 Aug '25

Let me see if I understand this article <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/sir-peter-jackson-to-sell-weta-digital-…> correctly: the part of Weta Digital that used to develop the in-house 3D graphics/effects tools that they use in all those movies is being sold to US-based Unity Software. The part that is left will be called “WetaFX”, and will become a customer of Unity for the use of those tools, no longer doing its own development in-house. By the way, I’ve been looking at the Unity site <https://unity.com/>, and it looks like all their products are rentware (subscription-based).

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Debian isn't waiting for 2038 to blow up, switches to 64-bit time for everything
by Peter Reutemann 31 Jul '25

31 Jul '25

'Venerable Linux distribution Debian is side-stepping the Y2K38 bug – also known as the Unix Epochalypse – by switching to 64-bit time for everything but the oldest of supported hardware, starting with the upcoming Debian 13 "Trixie" release. "[We will] use 64-bit time_t on 32-bit architectures to avoid the 'year 2038 problem' when the existing 32-bit signed int rolls over (potentially setting time back to 1900)," the Debian maintainers say of the move and the problem it aims to fix. y2k illustration retro futuristic The 'nothing-happened' Y2K bug – how the IT industry worked overtime to save world's computers READ MORE "This is now less than 15 years away and plenty of systems that will have problems have already been shipped. We should stop adding to the problem." Readers of a certain vintage will remember well the "Y2K problem," caused by retrospectively shortsighted attempts to save a couple of bytes by using two-digit years – meaning that "2000" is represented as "00" and assumed to be "1900." While predictions of aircraft falling from the skies and bank balances being wiped out by negative-decades of interest did not, thankfully, come true, that was purely due to the tireless behind-the-scenes work of software developers who were able to patch affected systems before celebrating the turn of the century. There's another, less well-known clock problem looming, however: the Unix Epochalypse,which affects any systems that measure time the Unix way – in seconds elapsed since January 1, 1970. Come the very precise time of 03:14:07 UTC on January 19, 2038, the number of seconds elapsed will be larger than can be represented by a signed 32-bit integer. This would be fine if the decision hadn't been made all those years ago to store the number of seconds in exactly such a format.' -- source: https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/25/y2k38_bug_debian/ Cheers, Peter

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Malware Discovered in Arch Linux AUR Packages
by Peter Reutemann 28 Jul '25

28 Jul '25

Something for the arch users on here: 'If you are an Arch user, you know – AUR (Arch User Repository) is a double-edged sword—it’s incredibly useful but requires caution. Unfortunately, that caution was warranted yet again this week when three AUR packages were found to contain malware. The issue came to light on July 16 when a user uploaded a malicious package, librewolf-fix-bin, to the AUR. Within hours, two more packages—firefox-patch-bin and zen-browser-patched-bin—followed, all traced back to the same bad actor. Security researchers quickly identified the threat: a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) hidden in a script pulled from a GitHub repository. For those unfamiliar, a RAT is no joke—it can grant attackers full control over an infected system, enabling them to steal data, install additional malware, or spy on users. Thankfully, the Arch Linux security team responded promptly as soon as they became aware of the issue. By July 18, all three malicious packages had been removed from AUR.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/malware-discovered-in-arch-linux-aur-packages/ Cheers, Peter

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Clear Linux Discontinued as Intel Pulls the Plug Overnight
by Peter Reutemann 28 Jul '25

28 Jul '25

'Unfortunately, there’s a bit of sad news out of the Linux world this week, with Clear Linux taking center stage. What I’m talking about is that Intel has formally ended support for Clear Linux OS, drawing a rapid close to a nearly decade-long effort to showcase aggressive, upstream-friendly performance optimizations on x86_64. In a blog post titled “All good things come to an end: Shutting down Clear Linux OS,” the announcement states that support ends immediately, with no trailing window for security updates. "After years of innovation and community collaboration, we’re ending support for Clear Linux OS. Effective immediately, Intel will no longer provide security patches, updates, or maintenance for Clear Linux OS, and the Clear Linux OS GitHub repository will be archived in read-only mode." Crucially, “effective immediately” is not rhetorical: Intel states that there will be no further security patches, updates, or maintenance, and the project’s GitHub repository is to be archived in a read-only manner. As you can guess, that abrupt cutoff leaves any production or lab systems running Clear Linux exposed going forward, so administrators now face an urgent migration. For those unfamiliar, Clear Linux (a project launched in 2015) is an open-source, rolling-release Linux distribution developed by Intel’s Open Source Technology Center, purpose-built to showcase and leverage Intel’s hardware strengths, with a focus on high performance, security, and cloud-native workloads. -- source: https://linuxiac.com/intel-shuts-down-clear-linux-os/ Cheers, Peter

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