All posts by jzb

[$] COSMIC desktop makes its debut

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/984638/

Linux hardware vendor System76 started promoting
its work on a Rust-based, Wayland
desktop environment for its Pop!_OS
Ubuntu-derivative distribution almost two years
ago. On August 8, the company released an alpha version of the COSMIC desktop environment for
users to test out. While it has rough edges and missing features, it
is stable enough to get a good feel for what the finished product has
in store—and the initial results are promising.

Security updates for Wednesday

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/984702/

Security updates have been issued by Debian (firefox-esr, openjdk-17, and wpa), Gentoo (aiohttp, Bitcoin, Cairo, Go, json-c, Levenshtein, libXpm, nghttp2, PostgreSQL, and Redis), Red Hat (kernel, kernel-rt, python-setuptools, python-urllib3, python3.11-setuptools, and wget), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (bind, curl, docker, ffmpeg, ffmpeg-4, kernel, kernel-firmware, libnbd, patch, shadow, and thunderbird), and Ubuntu (python-django and wpa).

[$] The complexity of BUSL transformation

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/984249/

The Business
Source License (BUSL) is a source-available license that “converts”
to an open-source license after a period of time. In theory, this
means that a few years after a version of a product is released under
the BUSL, it becomes open source and is fair game for Linux
distributions to package along with regular open-source projects. In
practice, the license throws a few curveballs that require special
consideration and caution, as the Fedora Project recently discussed.

Sovereign Tech Fund introduces fellowship pilot program

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/984266/

The Sovereign Tech Fund (STF) has announced
a fellowship program to support “the dedicated individuals who keep
our digital infrastructure running“:

Over the past two years, STF has successfully contracted over 40 FOSS
projects, enhancing their technical sustainability through targeted
milestones. However, the activities of maintainers, who often work on
multiple FOSS projects, are hard to quantify for funding applications,
as the demands and challenges vary and can change quickly. This is
where the fellowship for maintainers comes into play.

According to the fellowship
page the STF plans to fund five fellowships, beginning in the
fourth quarter of this year, for a period of 12 months.

Mel Chua RIP

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/984213/

We have received the
sad news that Dr. Mel Chua has passed away. Mel was probably best
known in the free-software community as a contributor to the Fedora
Project in its early days. The Fedora Community blog honored
Mel recently after she had moved to hospice care with tributes
from several Fedorans. Stephen Jacobs wrote:

I can’t find the words to express how much of a positive impact Mel
has had on my work, our shared work, my family, the experiences of my
students, and the world of FOSS writ large. Nor can I find the words
to convey just how much I will miss her.

Mel will be greatly missed.

Security updates for Thursday

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/984212/

Security updates have been issued by Debian (chromium), Fedora (kernel, obs-cef, and xen), Mageia (emacs), Oracle (freeradius, freeradius:3.0, and kernel), Red Hat (emacs, httpd, and kpatch-patch-4_18_0-305_120_1), Slackware (curl), SUSE (apache2, cockpit-wicked, glibc, gnutls, gvfs, less, nghttp2, opensc, python-idna, python-requests, qemu, rpm, tpm2-0-tss, tpm2.0-tools, and unbound), and Ubuntu (clickhouse, exim4, libcommons-collections3-java, linux, linux-aws, linux-kvm, linux-lts-xenial, mysql-8.0, openssl, php-cas, prometheus-alertmanager, and snapd).

[$] Showing up for Python in GNOME

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/983897/

A few years ago, PyGObject—the Python
package that provides bindings for GTK and GNOME applications—was not
faring particularly well. Several maintainers had left the project and its
development was not keeping pace with changes in GTK. At this year’s
GUADEC, Dan Yeaw presented a talk
about the project’s decline, improvements in the last year, and his
experience getting involved in an undermaintained project.

Forgejo v8.0 released

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/984116/

Version 8.0 of the Forgejo
software-development platform has been released. Notable
changes include the removal
of non-free software found in the codebase, improved stability, and a
reduction
in “seemingly random User Interface changes“:

A gentle way of describing Forgejo User eXperience is that it is an
acquired taste: it grew over the years, driven by the inspiration of
the person with the keyboard in their hand. Once implemented it almost
never changed. A user who started with Forgejo in 2022 can only see
minor changes in 2024 and not all of them make intuitive sense. The
solution to this problem is simple and was identified early on: User
Research. But only in the making of Forgejo v8.0 did it get some
momentum.

See the release
notes for a full list of changes.

Security updates for Wednesday

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/984080/

Security updates have been issued by Fedora (xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland), Red Hat (freeradius, freeradius:3.0, git-lfs, httpd, kernel, openssh, and varnish:6), SUSE (cdi-apiserver-container, cdi-cloner-container, cdi- controller-container, cdi-importer-container, cdi-operator-container, cdi- uploadproxy-container, cdi-uploadserver-container, cont, git, gtk2, gtk3, kubevirt, virt-api-container, virt-controller-container, virt-exportproxy-container, virt-exportserver-container, virt-handler-container, virt-launcher-container, virt-libguestfs-t, orc, postgresql14, python-dnspython, python-urllib3, shadow, and xen), and Ubuntu (openjdk-17, openjdk-21, openjdk-8, openjdk-lts, and python3.10, python3.8).

Funtoo Linux is being discontinued

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/983977/

Daniel Robbins, founder of the Gentoo Linux distribution and its
spinoff Funtoo Linux, has
announced
that he has decided to end the Funtoo project:

Funtoo started as a philosophy to create a fun
community of contributors building something great together. For me,
it’s no longer that so I need to move on to other things. There is not
a successor BDFL for Funtoo nor am I interested in trying to find one,
or hand the project off to someone else. You can expect the project to
wind down through August. If you have a Funtoo
container, it will continue to be online through the end of August
so you have time to find another hosting solution if you need one.

[$] Report from the annual general meeting at GUADEC

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/983203/

At GUADEC
in Denver, Colorado on July 21, the GNOME Foundation held its annual
general meeting (AGM) to provide updates from the foundation’s board and committees.
Topics included work accomplished in the past year, challenges
facing the GNOME Foundation–including fundraising and finding a new
executive director–and some insight into plans for the next year. And
last, but not least, the awarding of the Pants of Thanks.

Linux Mint 22 “Wilma” released

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/983301/

Linux Mint has announced version 22 of
the distribution in three editions: Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce. Mint 22
is based on Ubuntu 24.04 and uses kernel version 6.8.0:

Linux Mint 22 is a long term support release which will be supported
until 2029. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and
many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use.

LWN covered the
Linux Mint 22 beta in early July. See the new
features page and release notes for
more information on this release.

OpenSSL announces new governance structure

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/983120/

OpenSSL has announced
that it has adopted a new governance framework:

The OpenSSL Management Committee (OMC) has been dissolved, and two
boards of directors have been elected for the Foundation and the Corporation. Each
organization has ten voting members. These boards share all the
responsibilities and authorities of the former OMC co-equally.

To further engage our communities, we are establishing two advisory
committees for each entity: a Business Advisory Committee (BAC) and a
Technical Advisory Committee (TAC). The communities will elect the
members of the BACs and TACs, creating a direct channel for community
input in roadmap development and reflecting the diverse perspectives
of OpenSSL’s communities.

OpenSSL has also announced that two projects have adopted the OpenSSL Mission
and become OpenSSL
projects: Bouncy Castle, which provides
cryptographic APIs for Java and C#, and the cryptlib security
software development toolkit. See the announcement for full details.

[$] Lessons from the death and rebirth of Thunderbird

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/982610/

Ryan Sipes told the audience during his keynote at
GUADEC 2024 in Denver, Colorado that the Thunderbird mail client
“probably shouldn’t still be alive”. Thunderbird, however, is not only
alive—it is arguably in better shape than ever
before. According to Sipes, the project’s turnaround is a result of
governance, storytelling, and learning to be comfortable asking users
for money. He would also like it quite a bit if Linux distributions stopped
turning off telemetry.

Security updates for Wednesday

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/983083/

Security updates have been issued by Fedora (ghostscript and xmedcon), Gentoo (Dmidecode, ExifTool, and Freenet), Red Hat (containernetworking-plugins, cups, edk2, httpd, httpd:2.4, kernel, kernel-rt, krb5, libreoffice, libuv, libvirt, linux-firmware, nghttp2, nodejs, openssh, python3, runc, thunderbird, and tpm2-tss), Slackware (aaa_glibc, bind, and mozilla), SUSE (postgresql14, python-sentry-sdk, and shadow), and Ubuntu (activemq, bind9, haproxy, nova, provd, python-zipp, squid, squid3, and tomcat).