Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1041266/

Firefox has long had support for multiple profiles
to store personal information such as bookmarks, passwords, and user
preferences. However, Firefox did not make profiles particularly
discoverable or easy to manage. That is about to change; Mozilla has
announced
that it is launching a profile-management feature that will make it
easier to create and switch between profiles. According to the support
page for the feature, it will be rolled out to users gradually
beginning on October 14.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1041243/

Security updates have been issued by Fedora (apptainer, civetweb, mod_http2, openssl, pandoc, and pandoc-cli), Oracle (kernel), Red Hat (gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, iputils, kernel, open-vm-tools, and podman), SUSE (cairo, firefox, ghostscript, gimp, gstreamer-plugins-rs, libxslt, logback, openssl-1_0_0, openssl-1_1, python-xmltodict, and rubygem-puma), and Ubuntu (gst-plugins-base1.0, linux-aws-6.8, linux-aws-fips, linux-azure, linux-azure-nvidia, linux-gke, linux-nvidia-tegra-igx, and linux-raspi).

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1039481/

Systemd
v258 was released on September 17 after more than nine months
of development. LWN has already covered some of the
features and changes being readied for v258 before it was final. Now
that the release is out, it is time to look at more of what came in
v258, including a sandbox shell, new boot options, service-level disk
quotas, and enhancements to systemd-resolved.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1031669/

Despite its name, the Robot
Operating System (ROS) is not an operating system; it is
a software development kit (SDK) that provides building blocks for
robotic applications. One of the main goals of ROS is to present a
common API that abstracts away the details of particular hardware
drivers or algorithms to make development easier; developers can focus
on what a robot should do rather than the low-level details of
specific controllers. The latest release of ROS, Kilted
Kaiju, features improvements to the middleware layer that is used
to deliver data between components.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1040410/

The Alpine Linux project has announced
plans to change its base filesystem hierarchy:

In the future, /lib, /bin, and /sbin
will be symbolic links to their /usr counterparts, and every package
shall be installed under the /usr paths. For now,
/usr/bin and /usr/sbin will continue to be independent paths,
but that might change if the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) gets
updated.

The merge will take place in the upcoming Alpine 3.23 release
planned for November; non-merged systems will be considered
unsupported when 3.22 is at its end of life in May 2027.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1039623/

The Fedora
Council began a process to create a policy on AI-assisted
contributions in 2024, starting with a survey to ask the community
its opinions about AI and using AI technologies in Fedora. On
September 25, Jason Brooks published
a draft policy for discussion; so far, in keeping with the spirit of
compromise, it has something to make everyone unhappy. For some it is
too AI-friendly, while others have complained that it holds Fedora
back from experimenting with AI tooling.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1040375/

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (kernel, kernel-rt, mysql:8.0, and openssh), Debian (libcommons-lang-java, libcommons-lang3-java, libcpanel-json-xs-perl, libjson-xs-perl, libxml2, open-vm-tools, and u-boot), Fedora (bird, dnsdist, mapserver, ntpd-rs, python-nh3, and rust-ammonia), Oracle (kernel and mysql:8.0), Red Hat (cups, postgresql:12, and postgresql:13), SUSE (cJSON-devel, gimp, kernel-devel, kubecolor, open-vm-tools, openssl-1_1, openssl-3, and ruby3.4-rubygem-rack), and Ubuntu (linux-azure-5.15 and openssl, openssl1.0).

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1040236/

Version 1.5.0
of the Radicle peer-to-peer Git collaboration platform has been
released. This release includes better support for bare repositories,
structured logging, and improvements in the output of rad patch
show:

The previous output would differentiate “updates”, where the original
author creates a new revision, and “revisions”, where another author
creates a revision. This could be confusing since updates are also
revisions. Instead, the output shows a timeline of the root of the
patch and each new revision, without any differentiation. The revision
identifiers, head commit of the revision, and author are still printed
as per usual.

LWN covered Radicle
in March 2024.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1019688/

The openSUSE project is nearing the release of Leap 16, its
first major release since openSUSE Leap 15
in May 2018. This release brings some changes to the
core of the distribution aside from the usual software upgrades; YaST has been retired,
SELinux has replaced AppArmor as the default mandatory access control
(MAC) system, and more. If all goes according to plan, Leap 16
final should be released in early October, with planned support
through 2031.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1039483/

Version
18 of the PostgreSQL database has been released. Notable
improvements in this release include “skip scan” lookups for
multicolumn B-tree indexes, virtual
generated columns, better text processing, oauth
authentication, and a new asynchronous I/O (AIO) subsystem to improve
performance:

AIO lets PostgreSQL issue multiple I/O requests concurrently instead
of waiting for each to finish in sequence. This expands existing
readahead and improves overall throughput. AIO operations supported in
PostgreSQL 18 include sequential scans, bitmap heap scans, and
vacuum. Benchmarking has demonstrated performance gains of up to 3x in
certain scenarios.

There are, of course, many other improvements and changes; see the
release
notes for full details.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1039311/

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (kernel and kernel-rt), Fedora (expat), Red Hat (kernel and multiple packages), SUSE (avahi, busybox, busybox-links, kernel, sevctl, tcpreplay, thunderbird, and tor), and Ubuntu (isc-kea, linux, linux-aws, linux-gcp, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux-aws-6.8, linux-gcp-6.8, linux-aws-fips, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-6.8, linux-nvidia-lowlatency, linux-realtime, python-pip, and rabbitmq-server).

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1038699/

A bug in a recent release of systemd’s network manager caused
headaches for people managing systems that have a virtual LAN (VLAN)
interface on a bridge; something one might want to do, for example,
when configuring network interfaces for virtual machines. The bug
affected several Debian users when upgrading the systemd package
from v257.7-1 to v257.8-1. The updated package is part of the Debian 13.1
release, and the bug has snared enough users to cause a minor
stir—due in no small part to the maintainer’s response as much
as the bug itself.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1039071/

Version 6.0.0 of the RPM Package Manager has been released. Notable changes in this release include support for multiple OpenPGP signatures per package, the ability to update previously installed PGP keys, as well as support for RPM v4 and v6 packages. See the release notes for full details.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1038840/

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 6.16.8, 6.12.48, 6.6.107, and 6.1.153 stable kernels; each
contains an important set of fixes.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1036262/

Blender 4.5 LTS was released
on July 15, 2025, and will be supported through 2027. This is the last
feature release of the 3D graphics-creation suite’s 4.x series; it
includes quality-of-life improvements, including work to bring the Vulkan backend up to
par with the default OpenGL backend. With 4.5 released, Blender
developers are turning their attention toward Blender 5.0, planned for
release later this year. It will introduce substantial changes,
particularly in the Geometry
Nodes system, a central feature of Blender’s procedural
workflows.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1038802/

Security updates have been issued by Debian (chromium, cjson, and firefox-esr), Fedora (expat, gh, scap-security-guide, and xen), Oracle (container-tools:rhel8, firefox, grub2, and mysql:8.4), SUSE (busybox, busybox-links, element-web, kernel, shadowsocks-v2ray-plugin, and yt-dlp), and Ubuntu (imagemagick, linux, linux-aws, linux-gcp, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-6.8, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux-oracle, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.15, linux-azure-fips, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-6.8, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-6.8, linux-nvidia-lowlatency, linux-raspi, linux-oracle-6.8, linux-realtime, and openjpeg2).

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1038584/

The Universal Blue project has announced the release of Bluefin LTS,
an image-based distribution similar to Bluefin that uses
CentOS Stream 10 and EPEL instead of Fedora as its base:

Bluefin LTS ships with Linux 6.12.0, which is the kernel for the
lifetime of release. An optional hwe branch with new kernels is
available, offering the same modern kernel you’ll find in Bluefin and
Bluefin GTS. Both vanilla and HWE ISOs are available, and you can
always choose to switch back and forth after installation. […]

Bluefin LTS provides a backported GNOME desktop so that you are not
left behind. This is an important thing for us. James has been
diligently working on GNOME backports with the upstream CentOS
community, and we feel bringing modern GNOME desktops to an LTS makes
sense.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1038579/

Version
7.0 of the Tails portable
operating system has been released. This is the first version of Tails
based on Linux 6.12.43, Debian 13
(“trixie”) and GNOME 48. It uses ztsd instead of
xz to compress the USB and ISO images to deliver a
faster start time on most computers. The release is dedicated to the memory of Lunar, “a
traveling companion for Tails, a Tor volunteer, Free Software hacker,
and community organizer“:

Lunar has always been by our side throughout Tails’ history. From
the first baby steps of the project that eventually became Tails, to
the merge with Tor, he’s provided sensible technical suggestions,
out-of-the-box product design ideas, outreach support, and caring
organizational advice.

Outside of Tor, Lunar worked on highly successful Free Software
projects such as the Debian project, the Linux distribution on which
Tails is based, and the Reproducible Builds
project, which helps us verify the integrity of Tails releases.

See the changelog
for a full list of fixes, upgraded applications, and removals. LWN covered Tails
Project team leader intrigeri’s DebConf25 talk in July.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1038486/

Ian Jackson has published a blog
post summarizing the tag2upload service’s
first month of handling uploads for the upcoming Debian 14 (“forky”) release:

We announced tag2upload’s open beta in mid-July. That was in the
middle of the the freeze for trixie, so usage was fairly light until
the forky floodgates opened.

Since then the service has successfully performed 637 uploads, of
which 420 were in the last 32 days. That’s an average of about 13 per
day. For comparison, during the first half of September up to today
there have been 2475 uploads to unstable. That’s about 176/day.

So, tag2upload is already handling around 7.5% of uploads. This is
very gratifying for a service which is advertised as still being in
beta!

LWN covered
tag2upload in July 2024.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1038478/

Version
2.15.0 of libxml2 has
been released. Notable changes include the disabling of Python
bindings by default, using Doxygen to generate API documentation, as
well as bringing HTML serialization and handling of character
encodings more in line with the HTML5 specification.

Nick Wellnhofer has also announced
that he is stepping down as libxml2 maintainer, and Iván Chavero has
volunteered
to take over. LWN covered libxml2 in
June.