All posts by jzb

Richards: Introducing tmux-rs

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1028583/

Collin Richards has announced version
0.0.1 of tmux-rs, a port of the tmux terminal multiplexer
to Rust.

For the [past] 6 months or so I’ve been quietly porting tmux from C to
Rust. I’ve recently reached a big milestone: the code base is now 100%
(unsafe) Rust. I’d like to share the process of porting the original
codebase from ~67,000 lines of C code to ~81,000 lines of Rust
(excluding comments and empty lines). You might be asking: why did you
rewrite tmux in Rust? And yeah, I don’t really have a good
reason. It’s a hobby project. Like gardening, but with more segfaults.

Richards says that the next goal for the project is to convert it
to safe Rust. It is currently “not very difficult to get it to
crash
“, but he wanted to share the project with other Rust fans
now. The project is available on
GitHub
.

Debian looking for testers with Apple M1/M2 machines

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1028224/

Debian’s Bananas team has put
out a call
for people with Apple M1 or M2 systems to help test
Debian on those machines:

The Bananas Team has set up an installer at with images
for GNOME, KDE and console installations. While we’d like to build an
actual Debian installer sooner or later (we may need a heads-up from the
Debian Images team for that), at this time we only provide an asahi-type
installer, which installs both the “bootloader” and the OS partitions to
disk from the network (as opposed to only installing the bootloader and
then letting you install Debian using a d-i USB stick). We haven’t
forked Trixie from Testing yet, so what you’ll get is Debian Testing
quite deep into the freeze.

Security updates for Wednesday

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1028160/

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (apache-commons-beanutils, firefox, kea, kernel, kernel-rt, libblockdev, libvpx, pam, python-setuptools, python3, python3.11, python3.12, python3.9, and sudo), Debian (chromium), Gentoo (sudo), Oracle (.NET 8.0, buildah, firefox, freerdp, golang-github-openprinting-ipp-usb, grafana, grafana-pcp, gvisor-tap-vsock, libsoup3, mod_proxy_cluster, perl-FCGI, podman, python-setuptools, qt6-qtbase, skopeo, sudo, and thunderbird), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (redis, runc, xorg-x11-server, and xwayland), and Ubuntu (composer, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-6.8, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-6.8, linux-gke,
linux-gkeop, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux-nvidia,
linux-nvidia-6.8, linux-nvidia-lowlatency, linux-oem-6.8, linux-oracle,
linux-oracle-6.8, linux-raspi, linux, linux-aws, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-gke, linux-gkeop,
linux-hwe-5.15, linux-ibm, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency,
linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-nvidia, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.15, linux, linux-aws, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-6.11, linux-hwe-6.11, linux-oracle,
linux-raspi, linux-realtime, linux, linux-aws, linux-lts-xenial, linux, linux-gcp, linux-raspi, linux-realtime, linux-fips, linux-fips, linux-aws-fips, linux-gcp-fips, linux-realtime, and linux-realtime, linux-raspi-realtime).

[$] Fedora’s i686 support gets a reprieve

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1026917/

A change
proposal
to end support for 32-bit x86 (i686) applications on the
x86_64 architecture with the Fedora 44 release has been withdrawn
after significant pushback. As proposed, the change could have
had a significant impact on gamers, compiler development, and the Bazzite project, which uses Fedora as a
base for a gaming-focused distribution. While i686 gets a reprieve for
now, the question still lingers: who is going to keep the necessary
i686 packages in working order when few upstream maintainers or
volunteer packagers care about the architecture?

NLnet announces funding for 62 projects

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1026895/

The NLnet Foundation has announced
a new group of projects receiving funding through the Next
Generation Internet (NGI) Zero Commons Fund
.

Free and open source technologies, open standards, open hardware and
open data help to strengthen the open web and the open internet. The
projects selected by NLnet all contribute in their own way to this
important goal, and will empower end users and the community at large
on different layers of the stack. For example, there are people
working a browser controlled ad hoc cellular network (Wsdr) which can be used to
create small mobile networks where they are needed. The open hardware
security key Nitrokey is
aiming for formal certification of their implementation of the FIDO2
standard, and will be adding encrypted storage
capabilities
. There are also more applied technologies: the high
end open hardware microscope OpenFlexure will
enable among others e-health use cases such as telepathology, allowing
medical professionals to work together to help people in more remote
areas.

See the announcement for the full list of selected projects and the
current projects
page for other projects recently funded by NLnet.

[$] Libxml2’s “no security embargoes” policy

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1025971/

Libxml2, an
XML parser and toolkit, is an almost perfect example of the successes
and failures of the open-source movement. In the 25 years since its
first release, it has been widely adopted by open-source projects, for
use in commercial software, and for government use. It also
illustrates that while many organizations love using open-source software,
far fewer have yet to see value in helping to sustain it. That has led
libxml2’s current maintainer to reject security embargoes and sparked
a discussion about maintenance terms for free and open-source
projects.

Security updates for Wednesday

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1026848/

Security updates have been issued by Debian (commons-beanutils, dcmtk, nginx, trafficserver, and xorg-server), Fedora (atuin, awatcher, dotnet8.0, firefox, glibc, gotify-desktop, keylime-agent-rust, libtpms, mirrorlist-server, qt6-qtbase, qt6-qtimageformats, udisks2, xorg-x11-server, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), Mageia (apache-mod_security, clamav, docker, python-django, tomcat, udisks2, and yarnpkg), Oracle (firefox, libblockdev, mod_auth_openidc, perl-FCGI, perl-YAML-LibYAML, tigervnc, and xorg-x11-server and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), Slackware (libssh and mozilla), SUSE (gimp, gstreamer-plugins-good, icu, ignition, kernel, pam-config, perl-File-Find-Rule, python311, and webkit2gtk3), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-6.8, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-ibm,
linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux-nvidia,
linux-nvidia-6.8, linux-nvidia-lowlatency, linux-oem-6.8, linux, linux-gcp, linux-raspi, linux-realtime, linux-aws, linux-azure, linux-azure, linux-azure-6.8, linux-azure-5.15, linux-azure-fips, and linux-realtime).

Graham: about Plasma’s X11 session

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1026552/

KDE contributor Nate Graham recently wrote
about the KDE Project’s plans for Plasma’s X11 session. He notes that
the project will continue to ensure that Plasma “continues to
compile and deploy on X11
” and isn’t horribly broken. Major
regressions will probably be fixed, eventually, but the writing is on
the wall:

X11’s upstream development has dropped off significantly in recent
years, and X11 isn’t able to perform up to the standards of what
people expect today with respect to HDR, 10 bits-per-color monitors,
other fancy monitor features, multi-monitor setups (especially with
mixed DPIs or refresh rates), multi-GPU setups, screen tearing,
security, crash robustness, input handling, and more.

As for when Plasma will drop support for X11? There’s currently no
firm timeline for this, and I certainly don’t expect it to happen in
the next year, or even the next two years. But that’s just a guess; it
depends on how quickly we implement everything on
https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Wayland_Known_Significant_Issues. Our
plan is to handle everything on that page such that even the most
hardcore X11 user doesn’t notice anything missing when they move to
Wayland.

PostmarketOS 25.06: “the one with systemd”

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1026531/

The postmarketOS project,
which creates a Linux distribution for mobile devices, announced
it was working on adding a version with systemd last March. That day
has arrived with the announcement
of version 25.06
:

We considered supporting an upgrade from OpenRC to systemd in our
upgrade script, but then decided against it as such an upgrade path
might introduce its own bugs and we would rather spend the time
improving other parts of postmarketOS. So for this one-time scenario
we ask you to please reinstall postmarketOS to get from OpenRC to
systemd. Thank you for your understanding!

[$] GNOME deepens systemd dependencies

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1025560/

Adrian Vovk, a GNOME contributor and member of its release
team
, recently announced
in a blog post that GNOME would be adding new dependencies on systemd, and soon. The idea is to shed
GNOME’s homegrown service manager in favor of using systemd, and to
improve GNOME’s ability to run concurrent user sessions. However, the
move is also going to throw a spanner in the works for the BSDs and
Linux distributions without systemd when the changes take effect in
the GNOME 49 release that is set for September.

Security updates for Wednesday

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1025862/

Security updates have been issued by Debian (gst-plugins-bad1.0, konsole, and libblockdev), Oracle (buildah, containernetworking-plugins, gimp, git-lfs, gvisor-tap-vsock, kernel, libvpx, podman, and skopeo), Red Hat (apache-commons-beanutils and thunderbird), Slackware (xorg), SUSE (gdm, golang-github-prometheus-alertmanager, golang-github-prometheus-node_exporter, golang-github-prometheus-prometheus, govulncheck-vulndb, grafana, kernel, Multi-Linux Manager, Multi-Linux Manager Client Tools, openssl-3, pam, python-cryptography, python-requests, python-setuptools, python3-requests, SUSE Manager Server, systemd, ucode-intel, xorg-x11-server, and xwayland), and Ubuntu (dwarfutils, mujs, node-katex, xorg-server, xorg-server-hwe-16.04, xorg-server-hwe-18.04, and xorg-server, xwayland).

[$] Enhancing screen-reader functionality in modern GNOME

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1025127/

Accessibility features and the work that goes into developing those features
often tend to be overlooked and are poorly understood by all but the people who actually
depend on such features. At Fedora’s annual developer conference, Flock, Lukáš Tyrychtr sought to
improve understanding and raise awareness about accessibility with his session on accessibility
barriers and screen-reader functionality in GNOME
. His talk provided rare insight
into the world of using and developing open-source software for visually-impaired
users—including landing important accessibility improvements in
the latest GNOME release.

Changes to Kubernetes Slack (Kubernetes Contributors blog)

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1025634/

The Kubernetes project has announced
that it will be losing its “special status” with the Slack communication platform and will be
downgraded to the free tier in a matter of days:

On Friday, June 20, we will be subject to the feature
limitations of free Slack
. The primary ones which will affect us
will be only retaining 90 days of history, and having to disable
several apps and workflows which we are currently using. The Slack
Admin team will do their best to manage these limitations.

The project has a FAQ
covering the change, its impacts, and more. The CNCF projects staff
has proposed
a move to the Discord service as
the best option to handle the more than 200,000 users and thousands of
posts per day from the Kubernetes community. The Kubernetes Steering
Committee will be making its decision “in the next few weeks“.

Radicle Desktop released

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1025405/

The Radicle peer-to-peer code
collaboration project has released Radicle
Desktop
: a graphical interface designed to simplify more complex
parts of using Radicle such as issue management and patch reviews.

Radicle Desktop is not trying to replace your terminal, IDE, or code
editor – you already have your preferred tools for code browsing. It
won’t replace our existing app.radicle.xyz and search.radicle.xyz for
finding and exploring projects. It also doesn’t run a node for
you. Instead, it communicates with your existing Radicle node,
supporting your current workflow and encourages gradual adoption.

LWN covered Radicle
in March, 2024.

[$] FAIR package management for WordPress

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1024486/

The last year has been a rocky one for the WordPress community. Matt
Mullenweg—WordPress co-founder and
CEO of WordPress hosting company Automattic—started a messy public spat with
WP Engine in September and
has proceeded to use his control of the project’s WordPress.org
infrastructure as weapons against the company, with the community
caught in the crossfire. It is not surprising, then, that on
June 6 a group of WordPress community participants announced the
Federated
and Independent Repositories Package Manager
(FAIR.pm) project. It
is designed to be a decentralized alternative to WordPress.org with a
goal of building “public digital infrastructure that is both
resilient and fair
“.

Security updates for Wednesday

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1024939/

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (glibc, grafana, kernel-rt, libjpeg-turbo, libxslt, and thunderbird), Debian (curl), Fedora (dtk6core, dtk6gui, dtk6log, dtk6widget, fcitx5-qt, gammaray, kddockwidgets, kwin, LabPlot, libqtxdg, nheko, plasma-integration, python-pyqt6, python-pyside6, qt-creator, roundcubemail, zeal, and a large number of qt6 packages), Oracle (firefox, glibc, grafana, kernel, libxslt, perl-FCGI, python3.12-cryptography, thunderbird, and zlib), SUSE (glib2, libjxl, libsoup2, nbdkit, nodejs22, perl-Crypt-OpenSSL-RSA, perl-YAML-LibYAML, python3, tomcat, and transfig), and Ubuntu (dotnet8, dotnet9 and samba).

Ubuntu 25.10 to drop support for X11 in GNOME

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1024758/

Jean Baptiste Lallement, a member of Canonical’s desktop team, has
announced
that Ubuntu will drop support for GNOME on X11 in the 25.10
(“Questing Quokka”) release set for October. GNOME plans to remove
X11 support in GNOME 49, which is scheduled for September, so
Ubuntu is looking to be proactive:

Ubuntu 25.10 is the last interim release before our next LTS (Ubuntu
26.04). By moving now, we give developers and users a full cycle to
adapt before the next LTS, align with GNOME 49 and reduce
fragmentation while simplifying our support matrix heading into the
LTS.

Fedora decided in
early May
to drop X11 support for GNOME in Fedora 43, which
is also due in October.