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Rust Is Coming To Debian's APT Package Manager
by Peter Reutemann 10 Nov '25

10 Nov '25

'A maintainer of Debian's Advanced Package Tool (APT) "has announced plans to introduce hard Rust dependencies into APT starting May 2026," reports the blog It's FOSS. The integration targets critical areas like parsing .deb, .ar, and tar files plus HTTP signature verification using Sequoia. [APT maintainer Julian Andres Klode] said these components "would strongly benefit from memory safe languages and a stronger approach to unit testing." He also gave a firm message to maintainers of Debian ports: "If you maintain a port without a working Rust toolchain, please ensure it has one within the next 6 months, or sunset the port." The reasoning is straightforward. Debian wants to move forward with modern tools rather than being held back by legacy architecture... Debian ports running on CPU architectures without Rust compiler support have six months to add proper toolchains. If they can't meet this deadline, those ports will need to be discontinued. As a result, some obscure or legacy platforms may lose official support. For most users on mainstream architectures like x86_64 and ARM, nothing changes. Your APT will simply become more secure and reliable under the hood. It's FOSS argues that "If done right, this could significantly strengthen APT's security and code quality." And the blog Linuxiac also supports the move. "By embedding Rust into APT, the distro joins a growing number of major open-source projects, such as the Linux kernel, Firefox, and systemd, that are gradually adopting Rust. And if I had to guess, I'd say this is just one of the first steps toward even deeper Rust integration in this legendary distribution, which is a good thing."' -- source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/11/09/0232234 Cheers, Peter

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Lost Unix v4 Possibly Recovered on a Forgotten Bell Labs Tape From 1973
by Peter Reutemann 10 Nov '25

10 Nov '25

'"A tape-based piece of unique Unix history may have been lying quietly in storage at the University of Utah for 50+ years," reports The Register. And the software librarian at Silicon Valley's Computer History Museum, Al Kossow of Bitsavers, believes the tape "has a pretty good chance of being recoverable." Long-time Slashdot reader bobdevine says the tape will be analyzed at the Computer History Museum. More from The Register: The news was posted to Mastodon by Professor Robert Ricci of the University of Utah's Kahlert School of Computing [along with a picture. "While cleaning a storage room, our staff found this tape containing #UNIX v4 from Bell Labs, circa 1973..." Ricci posted on Mastodon. "We have arranged to deliver it to the Computer History Museum."] The nine-track tape reel bears a handwritten label reading: UNIX Original From Bell Labs V4 (See Manual for format)... If it's what it says on the label, this is a notable discovery because little of UNIX V4 remains. That's unfortunate as this specific version is especially interesting: it's the first version of UNIX in which the kernel and some of the core utilities were rewritten in the new C programming language. Until now, the only surviving parts known were the source code to a slightly older version of the kernel and a few man pages — plus the Programmer's Manual [PDF], from November 1973. The Unix Heritage Society hosts those surviving parts — and apparently some other items of interest, according to a comment posted on Mastodon. "While going through the tapes from Dennis Ritchie earlier this year, I found some UNIX V4 distribution documents," posted Mastodon user "Broken Pipe," linking to tuhs.org/Archive/Applications/Dennis_Tapes/Gao_Analysis/v4_dist/. There's a file called license ("The program and information transmitted herewith is and shall remain the property of Bell Lab%oratories...") and coldboot ("Mount good tape on drive 0..."), plus a six-page "Setup" document that ends with these words... We expect to have a UNIX seminar early in 1974. Good luck. Ken Thompson Dennis Ritchie Bell Telephone Labs Murray Hill, NJ 07974' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/11/09/0528258 Cheers, Peter

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Microsoft 365 Billing Screwup Refund Is Another Screwup
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 09 Nov '25

09 Nov '25

About a year ago, Microsoft announced price increases for its “365” (not “Office”) product, while adding the Copilot feature. What it failed to mention was that users had the option of continuing on the old plan at the old price, without the Copilot feature -- which a lot of users didn’t want anyway. Some users went to cancel their plan, and at that point they would have been presented with the option to continue on the old plan. The rest would have felt they had no option but to pay the higher price. This is all deceptive behaviour which is against the law in both Australia and NZ, and presumably other civilized countries as well. Microsoft has decided to revert the price increase and offer a refund to users in both countries. Unfortunately, users in NZ don’t seem able to claim this -- the whole mechanism seems set up solely to cater to customers in Australia. Also it seems to only be available for certain plans and not others, and customers may still end up paying more anyway. Meanwhile, Australia’s anticompetition watchdog, the ACCC, is pressing ahead with its lawsuit against Microsoft. The company has also received a warning from NZ’s Commerce Commission. <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/microsoft-365-refund-fails-to-head-off-…>

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IBM To Cut Thousands Of Jobs As Red Hat Growth Slows
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 06 Nov '25

06 Nov '25

There are still some who have difficulty appreciating that the Linux world is much bigger than Red Hat. Here <https://www.computerworld.com/article/4084865/ibm-to-cut-thousands-of-jobs-…> is another reminder. Red Hat may well be the most profitable part of IBM left (which is why its troubles are having such an outsize impact on the company as a whole), but in the whole Open Source scheme of things, it is but one of many players.

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GIMP Officially Launches Its New Snap Package for Linux Users
by Peter Reutemann 06 Nov '25

06 Nov '25

'The GIMP team has officially announced that the popular open-source image editor is now available as a Snap package, expanding its presence across Linux distributions that bet on this package format, especially the Ubuntu family and those based on it. Until now, the GIMP Snap package was maintained by the community-driven Snapcrafters project. Following a careful handover process that took several months, GIMP has taken over official ownership. The highlight of this first official Snap release is the new gimp-plugins plug interface. Previously, the Snap version came bundled with a few third-party plugins, but the GIMP team decided to follow its “vanilla package” policy—meaning no extra code outside of GIMP, GEGL, or BABL. Instead, developers implemented the gimp-plugins interface, which works similarly to GIMP’s Flatpak extension point or Microsoft’s MSIX modification packages. It allows plugin developers to ship their extensions separately, without breaking Snap’s strict confinement model. Currently, two plugins—GMIC and OpenVINO—can be installed through their respective Snap repositories. GIMP has also published a how-to guide on its developer website for anyone who wants to create or package Snap plugins. The first officially supported Snap release is GIMP 3.0.6, co-produced with the Snapcrafters team. It’s now available on the latest/stable channel, while users who prefer to test new features can grab the development version from the preview/stable channel. Just like with GIMP’s Flatpak and Microsoft Store (MSIX) packages, future Snap releases will be deployed automatically on release day. Users can install the official Snap right now from gimp.org/downloads.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/gimp-officially-launches-its-new-snap-package-for-linu… Cheers, Peter

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Bug in Rust-Based UUtils Broke Ubuntu 25.10 Automatic Update Checks
by Peter Reutemann 03 Nov '25

03 Nov '25

'"Ubuntu's decision to switch to Rust-based coreutils in 25.10 hasn't been the smoothest ride," writes the blog OMG Ubuntu, "as the latest — albeit now resolved — bug underscores." [Coreutils] are used by a number of processes, apps and scripts, including Ubuntu's own unattended-upgrades process, which automatically checks for new software updates. Alas, the Rust-based version of date had a bug which meant Ubuntu 25.10 desktops, servers, cloud and container images were not able to automatically check for updates when configured. Unattended-upgrades hooks into the date utility to check the timestamp of a reference file of when an update check was last run and, past a certain date, checks again. But date was incorrectly showing the current date, always. A fix has been issued so only Ubuntu 25.10 installs withrust-coreutils 0.2.2-0ubuntu2 (or earlier) are affected.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/11/03/0049215 Cheers, Peter

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Industrial and medical devices struggle to upgrade to Windows 11
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 01 Nov '25

01 Nov '25

The healthcare sector is hitting some hiccups trying to upgrade its equipment to Windows 11 <https://www.computerworld.com/article/4082710/industrial-and-medical-device…>. But then, this has happened with every major upgrade of Windows before this; why are the same mistakes still being made? Surely when you buy an expensive piece of equipment with an expected useful lifetime measurable in decades and a computer at its heart, common sense dictates that you will nail down a support contract that will cover hardware *and* software maintenance over that lifetime, will you not? We have had about half a century of experience of gear like this, since long before Microsoft came along. I wonder what lessons have been learned ...

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LMDE 7 Officially Released with Debian 13 Base
by Peter Reutemann 31 Oct '25

31 Oct '25

'Over two years after the previous 6 “Faye” release, the Linux Mint team has officially unveiled LMDE 7 “Gigi”, a major new LTS release of the Debian-based Mint variant, bringing all the new features, improvements, and polished visuals from the Ubuntu-based 22.2 “Zara” edition, released in early September, over to the LMDE version. The release’s highlight is, of course, that LMDE 7 “Gigi” marks a major turning point: it is now entirely rebased on Debian 13 “Trixie”, which becomes the new upstream base for all packages. Under the hood, it’s powered by the Linux kernel 6.12 LTS, delivering broader hardware support and stability improvements for modern systems. On the desktop side, as I already said, LMDE 7 essentially incorporates all the enhancements introduced in Linux Mint 22.2 “Zara”. Among these is the introduction of Fingwit, a dedicated fingerprint authentication utility that enables biometric login and sudo operations on supported systems.' -- source: https://linuxiac.com/lmde-7-officially-released-with-debian-13-base/ Cheers, Peter

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International Criminal Court To Ditch Microsoft Office For European Open Source Alternative
by Peter Reutemann 31 Oct '25

31 Oct '25

'The International Criminal Court will switch its internal work environment away from Microsoft Office to Open Desk, a European open source alternative, the institution confirmed to Euractiv. The switch comes amid rising concerns about public bodies being reliant on US tech companies to run their services, which have stepped up sharply since the start of US President Donald Trump's second administration. For the ICC, such concerns are not abstract: Trump has repeatedly lashed out at the court and slapped sanctions on its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan. Earlier this year, the AP also reported that Microsoft had cancelled Khan's email account, a claim the company denies. "We value our relationship with the ICC as a customer and are convinced that nothing impedes our ability to continue providing services to the ICC in the future," a Microsoft spokesperson told Euractiv.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/10/30/1847204 Cheers, Peter

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Say it with me: Windows is the problem with Windows handhelds
by Lawrence D'Oliveiro 30 Oct '25

30 Oct '25

Sean Hollister says <https://www.theverge.com/games/807711/xbox-ally-sleep-fail-bazzite-fix-perf…>: It’s been nearly two weeks since Microsoft, a multi-trillion dollar company, shipped a $600 handheld “Xbox” that can’t be relied on to sleep, wake, or hold a charge while asleep in my tests. Neither Microsoft nor Asus would admit there’s a problem with the white Xbox Ally or offer a timeline to fix it after repeated requests by The Verge. But if you want your white Asus handheld to start working reliably, you could do what I did: I installed the latest build of Bazzite, a SteamOS-like, Linux-based operating system that works properly with gamepad controls, and sleeps like a dream. ... Did I mention Bazzite runs most of my Windows games *substantially faster* than Windows? Rub it in even more, why don’t you: It’s not just games that feel faster: Steam is a far more responsive interface without the bloat of Windows lurking under the hood. It feels like an entirely different handheld. With Bazzite, I can use it like I use a Nintendo Switch, simply pressing the power button whenever I want to pause a game, then picking up exactly where I left off hours or days later. Microsoft’s response: Microsoft declined our request for an interview about the future of the Xbox Ally or a timeline on fixes, but VP of Windows product management Anshul Rawat provided this statement to The Verge: ... We’ve identified a small set of issues and initial fixes will be rolling out soon. Optimizing Windows, the most flexible OS in the world, for a range of devices and screen sizes across PCs and the cloud is an ongoing journey. Really?? Windows is “the most flexible OS in the world”, getting its lunch eaten by Linux not just in mobile, but in practically every computing sphere?

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