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At the 2024 X.Org Developers Conference (XDC), Lyude Paul gave a talk on the work she has been doing as part of the Nova project, which is an effort build an NVIDIA GPU driver in Rust. She wanted to provide an introduction to RVKMS, which is being used to develop Rust kernel mode setting (KMS) bindings; RVKMS is a port of the virtual KMS...

Version 4.3 of the Blender animation system has been released. "Brush assets, faster sculpting, a revolutionized Grease Pencil, and more. Blender 4.3 got you covered."

CHICKEN Scheme, a portable Scheme compiler, is gearing up for its next major release. Maintainer Felix Winkelmann has shared an article about what changes to expect in version 6 of the language, including better Unicode support and support for the R7RS (small) Scheme standard. Every major release is a chance of fixing long-standing problems with the codebase and address bad design decisions. CHICKEN is...

Security updates have been issued by Debian (guix, libmodule-scandeps-perl, needrestart, and thunderbird), SUSE (gh), and Ubuntu (kernel, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-hwe, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux, linux-aws, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-6.8, linux-gke, linux-hwe-6.8, linux-ibm, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-6.8, linux-nvidia-lowlatency, linux-oem-6.8, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, linux-iot, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, needrestart, python2.7, python3.10, python3.12, python3.8, and Waitress).

Version 9.5 of the Rocky Linux distribution is out. As with the AlmaLinux 9.5 release, Rocky Linux 9.5 tracks the changes in upstream RHEL 9.5. See the release notes for details.

It took more than 20 years, but the FreeCAD computer-aided design project has just made its 1.0 release. Since the very beginnings, the FreeCAD community had a clear view of what 1.0 represented for us. What we wanted in it. FreeCAD matured over the years, and that list narrowed down to just two major remaining pieces: fixing the toponaming problem, and having a built-in...

The most common piece of advice given to users who ask about running their own mail server is don't. Setting up and securing a mail server in 2024 is not for the faint of heart, nor for anyone without copious spare time. Spammers want to flood inboxes with ads for questionable supplements, attackers want to abuse servers to send spam (or worse), and getting the...

Version 6.7 of the Incus container-management system (forked from LXD) has been released. "This is another one of those pretty well rounded releases with new features and improvements for everyone". New features include automatic cluster rebalancing, DHCP improvements, and more.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (.NET 9.0, bcc, bluez, bpftrace, bubblewrap, flatpak, buildah, cockpit, containernetworking-plugins, cups, cyrus-imapd, edk2, expat, firefox, fontforge, gnome-shell, gnome-shell-extensions, grafana, grafana-pcp, gtk3, httpd, iperf3, jose, krb5, libgcrypt, libsoup, libvirt, libvpx, lldpd, microcode_ctl, mingw-glib2, mod_auth_openidc, nano, NetworkManager, oci-seccomp-bpf-hook, openexr, osbuild-composer, pcp, podman, poppler, postfix, python-dns, python-jinja2, python-jwcrypto, python3.11, python3.11-PyMySQL, python3.11-urllib3, python3.12, python3.12-PyMySQL, python3.12-urllib3, python3.9, qemu-kvm, runc, skopeo, squid, thunderbird,...

Version 9.5 of the AlmaLinux enterprise-oriented distribution has been released. AlmaLinux 9.5 aims to improve performance, development tooling, and security. Updated module streams offer better support for web applications. New versions of compilers provide access to the latest features and optimizations that improve performance and enable better code generation. The release also introduces improvements to system performance monitoring, visualization, and system performance data collecting.

The FreeBSD Foundation has announced the release of a security audit report conducted by security firm Synacktiv. The audit uncovered a number of vulnerabilities: Most of these vulnerabilities have been addressed through official FreeBSD Project security advisories, which offer detailed information about each vulnerability, its impact, and the measures implemented to improve the security of FreeBSD systems. [...] The audit uncovered 27 vulnerabilities and...

Linus Torvalds released the 6.12 kernel on November 17, as expected. This development cycle, the last for 2024, brought 13,344 non-merge changesets into the mainline kernel; that made it a relatively slow cycle from this perspective, but 6.12 includes a long list of significant new features. The time has come to look at where those changes came from, and to look at the year-long LTS...

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (binutils, libsoup, squid:4, tigervnc, and webkit2gtk3), Debian (icinga2, postgresql-13, postgresql-15, smarty3, symfony, thunderbird, and waitress), Fedora (dotnet9.0, ghostscript, microcode_ctl, php-bartlett-PHP-CompatInfo, python-waitress, and webkitgtk), Gentoo (Perl, Pillow, and X.Org X server, XWayland), Oracle (binutils, cups-filters, giflib, squid, and webkit2gtk3), Red Hat (webkit2gtk3), SUSE (ansible-core, apache2, gio-branding-upstream, icinga2, kernel-devel, libnghttp2-14, libsoup-2_4-1, libsoup-3_0-0, libvirt, nodejs-electron, postgresql13, postgresql16, python39, rclone, thunderbird,...

Linus has released the 6.12 kernel. "No strange surprises this last week, so we're sticking to the regular release schedule, and that obviously means that the merge window opens tomorrow.". Headline features in this release include: support for the Arm permission overlay extension, better compile-time control over which Spectre mitigations to employ, the last pieces of realtime preemption support, the realtime deadline server mechanism,...

The 6.11.9, 6.6.62, 6.1.118, 5.15.173, 5.10.230, 5.4.286, and 4.19.324 stable kernels have all been released; each contains another set of important fixes.

The OpenWrt router-oriented distribution has long used its own opkg package manager. The project has just announced, though, that future releases will use the apk package manager from Alpine Linux instead. "This new package manager offers a number of advantages over the older opkg system and is a significant milestone in the development of the OpenWrt platform. The older opkg package manager has been...

The kernel's loadable-module facility allows code to be loaded into (and sometimes removed from) a running kernel. Among other things, loadable modules make it possible to run a kernel with only the subsystems needed for the system's hardware and workload. Loadable modules can also make it easy for out-of-tree code to access parts of the kernel that developers would prefer to keep private; this...

The Fedora Project is set to welcome a second desktop edition to its lineup after months (or years, depending when one starts the clock) of discussions. The project recently decided to allow a new working group to move forward with a KDE Plasma Desktop edition that will sit alongside the existing GNOME-based Fedora Workstation edition. This puts KDE on a more equal footing within the project, which,...

Security updates have been issued by Debian (curl and unbound), Fedora (krb5 and microcode_ctl), Red Hat (kernel and kernel-rt), SUSE (glib2, python3-wxPython, and ucode-intel), and Ubuntu (golang-1.17, golang-1.18, libgd2, linux, linux-aws, linux-kvm, linux-lts-xenial, linux-gke, linux-raspi, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, and php7.0, php7.2).

The Python Package Index (PyPI) has announced that it has finalized support for PEP 740 ("Index support for digital attestations"). Trail of Bits, which performed much of the development work for the implementation, has an in-depth blog post about the work and its adoption, as well as what is left undone: One thing is notably missing from all of this work: downstream verification. [...]...

Direct memory access (DMA) I/O is simple in concept: a peripheral device moves data directly to or from memory while the CPU is busy doing other things. As is so often the case, DMA is rather more complicated in practice, and the kernel has developed a complicated internal API to support it. It turns out that the DMA API, as it exists now, can...

A new batch of stable kernels has just been released: 6.11.8, 6.6.61, 6.1.117, and 5.15.172. As usual, they contain important fixes throughout the kernel tree.

Security updates have been issued by Fedora (llama-cpp, mingw-expat, python3.6, webkit2gtk4.0, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), Mageia (java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, java-21-openjdk & java-latest-openjdk and libarchive), Oracle (expat, gstreamer1-plugins-base, kernel, libsoup, podman, and tigervnc), SUSE (buildah, java-1_8_0-openjdk, and switchboard-plug-bluetooth), and Ubuntu (zlib).

Programming language polyglots are files that are valid programs in multiple languages, and do different things in each. While polyglots are normally nothing more than a curiosity, the Cosmopolitan Libc project has been trying to put them to a novel use: producing native, multi-platform binaries that run directly on several operating systems and architectures. There are still some rough edges with the project's approach,...

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (expat), Fedora (chromium and golang-github-nvidia-container-toolkit), Mageia (curl, expat, mpg123, networkmanager-libreswan, openssl, php-tcpdf, qbittorrent, and x11-server, x11-server-xwayland, and tigervnc), Red Hat (kernel and libsoup), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (firefox, kernel, python-PyPDF2, and xen), and Ubuntu (dotnet9, ghostscript, linux-aws, linux-oem-6.8, and pydantic).

Over the years, there has been steady progress in adding security features to compilers and other tools to assist with hardening the Linux kernel (and, of course, other programs). In something of a tradition in the toolchains track at the Linux Plumbers Conference, Kees Cook and Qing Zhao have led a session on that progress and further plans; this year, they were joined by...

Garrett LeSage has written an in-depth article for Fedora Magazine about a new web-based user interface (UI) for Fedora's Anaconda installer, planned to ship with Fedora 42. The article looks at the rationale for moving from GTK 3 to a web-based UI, provides a number of screenshots and demo screencasts, as well as instructions on trying out the new installer with Fedora Rawhide.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (gstreamer1-plugins-base), Debian (chromium, ghostscript, libarchive, mpg123, ruby-saml, and symfony), Fedora (buildah and podman), Red Hat (buildah, containernetworking-plugins, podman, skopeo, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), Slackware (wget), SUSE (pcp), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws-5.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-gkeop-5.15, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.15, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-nvidia, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.15, linux-raspi, linux-xilinx-zynqmp and mysql-8.0).

What have been the most significant security-related incidents for the open-source community in 2024 (so far)? Marta Rybczyńska recently ran a poll and got some interesting results. At the 2024 Open Source Summit Japan, she presented those results along with some commentary of her own. The events in question are unlikely to be a surprise to LWN readers, but the overall picture that was...

Longtime Debian and Tor developer, Jérémy Bobbio—perhaps better known as "Lunar"—died on November 8. Lunar was one of the founders of the reproducible builds movement and more recently had been working with Software Heritage. More information and tributes in French can be found at this site. They will be missed.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (podman), Debian (guix, libarchive, and nss), Fedora (expat, iaito, opendmarc, python-werkzeug, radare2, squid, and xorg-x11-server), Mageia (htmldoc, libheif, nspr, nss, firefox & rust, python-urllib3, python-werkzeug, quictls, ruby-webrick, and thunderbird), Oracle (firefox and NetworkManager-libreswan), SUSE (apache2, chromedriver, chromium, coredns, expat, govulncheck-vulndb, httpcomponents-client, java-17-openjdk, java-21-openjdk, libheif, python-wxPython, python311, python312, qbittorrent, ruby3.3-rubygem-actionmailer, ruby3.3-rubygem-actiontext, ruby3.3-rubygem-puma, ruby3.3-rubygem-rails, and virtualbox), and Ubuntu (openjdk-17,...

Linus has released 6.12-rc7 for testing. "No big surprises, and I think everything is on track for a final 6.12 release next weekend."

Back In Time is a GPL-2.0-licensed backup tool based on rsync and written in Python. It has both graphical and command-line interfaces, and supports backups to local disks or over SSH. Back In Time was originally written by Oprea Dan and released in 2009. The tool has been through some rough patches over the years, and is currently on its third set of maintainers....

Greg Kroah-Hartman has shared another seven stable kernel updates: 6.6.60, 6.11.7, 6.1.116, 5.15.171, 5.10.229, 5.4.285, and 4.19.323.

Fedora Linux, as a rule, handles version upgrades reasonably well. However, there are times when users may want to do a fresh installation rather than an upgrade but preserve existing users and data under /home. This is a scenario that the Fedora installer, currently, does not address. Users can maintain a separate /home partition, of course, but the installer does not incorporate existing users...

Arthur Cohen has posted a detailed introduction to the gccrs project on the Rust Blog, seemingly with the goal of convincing the Rust community about the value of the project. Likewise, many GCC plugins are used for increasing the safety of critical projects such as the Linux kernel, which has recently gained support for the Rust programming language. This makes gccrs a useful tool...

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (edk2), Debian (webkit2gtk), Fedora (thunderbird), Oracle (bzip2, container-tools:ol8, edk2, go-toolset:ol8, libtiff, python-idna, python3.11, and python3.12), Slackware (expat), and SUSE (apache2, govulncheck-vulndb, grub2, java-1_8_0-openjdk, python3, python39, qemu, xorg-x11-server, and xwayland).

Flexible arrays — arrays that are declared as the final member of a structure and which have a size determined at run time — have long drawn the attention of developers seeking to harden the kernel against buffer-overflow vulnerabilities. These arrays have reliably been a source of bugs, so anything that can be done to ensure that operations on them stay within bounds is...

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (bcc, bpftrace, bzip2, container-tools:rhel8, grafana-pcp, haproxy, kernel, kernel-rt, krb5, libtiff, python-gevent, python3.11, python3.11-urllib3, python3.12, python3.12-urllib3, xmlrpc-c, and xorg-x11-server and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), Debian (puma and pypy3), Fedora (firefox), Gentoo (libgit2), Mageia (libarchive), SUSE (ghostscript, go1.22-openssl, go1.23-openssl, htmldoc, kmail-account-wizard, libarchive, libgsf, libmozjs-128-0, openssl-3, python-jupyterlab, python-mysql-connector-python, python36, and ruby2.1), and Ubuntu (cinder, linux-aws, linux-aws-6.8, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-6.8, linux-aws, linux-azure-5.4, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-xilinx-zynqmp,...

Image-based Linux distributions have seen increasing popularity, recently. They promise reliability and security, but pose packaging problems for existing distributions. Ryan Lahfa and Niklas Sturm spoke about the work that NixOS has done to enable an image-based workflow at this year's All Systems Go! conference in Berlin. Unfortunately, LWN was not able to cover the conference for scheduling reasons, but the videos of the...

Man pages maintainer Alejandro Colomar announced in September that he was suspending his work due to a lack of support. He has now let it be known that funding has been found for the next year at least: We've been talking for a couple of months, and we have already agreed to sign a contract through the LF [Linux Foundation], where a number of...

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (libtiff), Debian (context, libheif, and thunderbird), Fedora (php-tcpdf, syncthing, and thunderbird), Gentoo (EditorConfig core C library, Flatpak, Neat VNC, and Ubiquiti UniFi), Oracle (bcc, bpftrace, grafana-pcp, haproxy, kernel, krb5, libtiff, python-gevent, python3.11-urllib3, python3.12-urllib3, and xmlrpc-c), Red Hat (python3.11-urllib3), SUSE (audacity, curl, govulncheck-vulndb, gradle, htmldoc, libgsf, python310, and qbittorrent), and Ubuntu (linux-aws-5.4, linux-oracle-5.4, mpg123, and python-werkzeug).

Version 2.1.0 of the LXQt lightweight Qt desktop environment has been released. The highlight of this release is support for multiple Wayland compositors: Through its new component lxqt-wayland-session, LXQt 2.1.0 supports 7 Wayland sessions (with Labwc, KWin, Wayfire, Hyprland, Sway, River and Niri), has two Wayland back-ends in lxqt-panel (one for kwin_wayland and the other general), and will add more later. All LXQt components...

Joshua Liebow-Feeser took to the stage at RustConf to describe the methodology that his team uses to encode arbitrary constraints in the Rust type system when working on the Fuchsia operating system (slides). The technique is not unknown to the Rust community, but Liebow-Feeser did a good job of both explaining the method and making a case for why it should be used more...

After a couple of years of effort, the BPF instruction set architecture has been accepted as RFC 9669, giving it a standard outside of the in-kernel implementation. This message from David Vernet (who also contributed an article on the standardization process last year) describes the process and why it is important: Though some vendors have already implemented BPF offloading capabilities without having a standardized...

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (firefox, openexr, and thunderbird), Fedora (llama-cpp and python-quart), Oracle (firefox, openexr, thunderbird, and xorg-x11-server and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), SUSE (chromium, govulncheck-vulndb, openssl-1_1, python311, and python312), and Ubuntu (linux-azure, linux-bluefield, linux-azure, linux-gcp, linux-ibm, openjpeg2, and ruby3.0, ruby3.2, ruby3.3).

OpenWrt is, despite its relatively low profile, one of our community's most important distributions; it runs untold numbers of network routers and has served as the base on which a lot of network-oriented development (including the bufferbloat-reduction work) has been done. At the beginning of 2024, a few members of the project announced a plan to design and produce a router device specifically designed...