- wlug - list.wlug.org.nz

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 ...

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

2 1

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

1 0

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

1 0

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

1 0

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

2 1

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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