Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1011928/

Security updates have been issued by Fedora (crun, gnutls, libtasn1, and openssl), Mageia (emacs, gnutls, iniparser, kernel, kmod-virtualbox, kmod-xtables-addons, kernel-linus, krb5, libxml2, and vim), Slackware (tigervnc and xorg), SUSE (libprotobuf-lite28_3_0 and Maven), and Ubuntu (dropbear, kernel, libxml2, linux, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux, linux-lts-xenial, linux-aws-5.4 linux-raspi-5.4, linux-gcp, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-ibm, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-6.8, linux-nvidia-lowlatency, linux-raspi, ProFTPD, python-virtualenv, rails, and xorg-server, xwayland).

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1011671/

Version
2.0 of the Aqualung
gapless music player has been released. Aqualung supports playback of
a wide range of audio formats, ripping CDs to WAV, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis,
or MP3, and subscribing to podcasts via RSS or Atom feeds. The primary
change in this release is the migration
from GTK2 to GTK3, and dropping support for custom skins as a
result.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1010868/

The AlmaLinux project has published
a request for comments (RFC) on rebuilding Fedora’s Extra Packages for
Enterprise Linux (EPEL), which provides additional software for
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and its derivatives, to support older
x86_64 hardware that is not supported by EPEL 10. While this may
sound simple on the surface, the proposed rebuild carries a few
potential risks that the AlmaLinux and EPEL contributors would like to
avoid. The AlmaLinux
Engineering Steering Committee (ALESCo) is currently considering
feedback and will vote on the RFC in March.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1007724/

The pytest-mh
project is a plugin that provides a multi-host test framework for the
popular pytest
unit-testing framework and test runner. Work on pytest-mh
started in 2023 to solve a multitude of issues that
cropped up for developers and testers when testing the SSSD project, which is a client for
enterprise identity management. I was not happy with the state of
testing of the SSSD project and wanted to create something that would
increase test readability, remove duplication, eliminate errors, and
provide multi-host testing capabilities, while having the flexibility
to build a new API around it. Finally, I also wanted something that
can be used by anyone to test their projects as well.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1010922/

Mark Surman, president of the Mozilla Corporation, has announced
leadership updates for Mozilla. This includes a Mozilla Leadership
Council made up of executives from each Mozilla organization, and new
board chairs for the not-for-profit Mozilla Foundation, the
Mozilla Corporation, and Mozilla.ai. The announcement also
indicates a desire to further “diversify” Mozilla’s focus:

We’ve recognized that Mozilla faces major headwinds in terms of both
financial growth and mission impact. While Firefox remains the core of
what we do, we also need to take steps to diversify: investing in
privacy-respecting advertising to grow new revenue in the near term;
developing trustworthy, open source AI to ensure technical and product
relevance in the mid term; and creating online fundraising campaigns
that will draw a bigger circle of supporters over the long
run. Mozilla’s impact and survival depend on us simultaneously
strengthening Firefox AND finding new sources of revenue AND
manifesting our mission in fresh ways. That is why we’re working hard
on all of these fronts.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1010857/

The Fedora Project has announced
two milestones in its journey to supporting the RISC-V architecture: a
dedicated RISC-V Koji build system instance is live in the Fedora data
center, and Fedora
41-based images are now available for RISC-V. It is also possible
to run Fedora RISC-V images using QEMU for those without supported
hardware.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1010855/

Debian Developer Thomas Lange has written a blog post
in the attempt to help users find the right Debian image for their
systems.

It’s difficult to find the right Debian image. We have thousands of
ISO files and cloud images and we support multiple CPU architectures
and several download methods. The directory structure of our main
image server is like a maze, and our web pages for downloading are
also confusing.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1010853/

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (gcc-toolset-14-gcc, nodejs:18, and nodejs:22), Fedora (bootc), Gentoo (OpenSSH), Oracle (doxygen, libxml2, mingw-glib2, and NetworkManager), Red Hat (bind, bind9.16, bind9.18, kernel, kernel-rt, mysql, and mysql:8.0), Slackware (openssh), SUSE (buildah, emacs, glibc, google-osconfig-agent, grub2, java-11-openj9, kernel, netty, netty-tcnative, openssh, openvswitch, podman, and ucode-intel), and Ubuntu (atril, libsndfile, libtasn1-6, openssh, python-virtualenv, and symfony).

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1010682/

Pi-hole v6 has been released. The
latest version of the popular ad-blocking software sports a redesigned
user interface, has support for subscribing to allowlists, and brings
a new REST API and embedded web server. Its Docker/OCI image is now
based on Alpine Linux
rather than Debian to reduce image
size. See the announcement for guidance on upgrading existing Pi-hole
installations.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1008721/

It is a standard practice to use milestones to reflect on the
achievements of a project, such as the anniversary of its first
release or first commit. Usually, these are observed at five and
ten‑year increments; the tenth anniversary of the 1.0 release, or 25
years since from the first public announcement, etc. Lennart
Poettering, however, took a different approach at FOSDEM 2025 with a keynote
commemorating 14 years of systemd,
and a brief look ahead at his goals and systemd’s challenges for the future.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1007303/

Memcached is a memory-based
data-caching daemon that has a long history. More than twenty years after its first public
release, Memcached strives to remain relevant in a vastly changed
computing landscape, balancing new features with a commitment to the original
principles that separate it from newer alternatives like Redis and Hazelcast.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1007907/

Most Linux systems depend on a suite of core utilities that the GNU Project started development on
decades ago and are, of course, written in C. At FOSDEM 2025, Sylvestre Ledru
made the case in his
main stage talk that modern systems require safer, more
maintainable tools. Over the past few years, Ledru has led the charge
of rewriting the GNU
Core Utilities (coreutils) in Rust, as the MIT-licensed uutils project. The goal is to
offer what he said are more secure, and more performant drop-in
replacements for the tools Linux users depend on. At FOSDEM, Ledru
announced that the uutils project is setting its sights even
higher.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1008866/

Version
1.4.0 of Arti, the Tor Project’s next-generation
Tor client written in Rust, has been released. Notable improvements in
this release include a new RPC
interface, and preparatory work toward service-side onion service
denial-of-service resistance. The release is dedicated to the memory of Jérémy Bobbio,
better known by many as “Lunar”. For full details on the release, see
the changelog.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1008386/

Jonathan Bryce has announced two open community meetings to hear
input on the topic of the OpenInfra
Foundation migrating to the Linux Foundation. Bryce
wrote that the OpenInfra board has carefully evaluated its options,
and sees joining the Linux Foundation as the best way forward.

Like the Linux Foundation, the OpenInfra Foundation is 501(c)(6)
nonprofit. According to the FAQ,
OpenInfra “is in great health, financially and otherwise” with
a growth in membership of about 15% in the last year. However, its
needs in 2025 are different than when it was founded as the OpenStack
Foundation in 2012.

While the opportunities ahead for open source to make a positive
impact on the world are greater than they have ever been, the
challenges are more significant as well, particularly with respect to
regulations, licensing and geopolitical tensions that threaten global
collaboration.

The meetings will be held on February 11 and February 13 as
Zoom calls. The OpenInfra board will schedule a vote after feedback
has been collected and draft governance documents have been
published.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1007426/

Open source is often described as a “gift economy”—an
ecosystem where contributors are motivated by a desire to make the
world a better place. That is, sometimes, true. However, James
Bottomley used his main
track slot at FOSDEM 2025,
on February 1, to make the case that it is better to bank on the
selfish motivations of individuals to drive community success than to
rely on their altruism.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1008137/

The Servo Rust-based rendering
engine project has published
an article summarizing its progress in 2024, and plans for the
future:

Servo main dependencies (SpiderMonkey, Stylo and WebRender) have been
upgraded, the new layout engine has kept evolving adding support for
floats, tables, flexbox, fonts, etc. By the end of 2024 Servo passes 1,515,229 WPT subtests (79%). Many other new features have been under
active development: WebGPU, Shadow DOM, ReadableStream, WebXR, … Servo
now supports two new platforms: Android and OpenHarmony. And we have
got the first experiments of applications using Servo as a web engine
(like Tauri,
Blitz, QtWebView,
Cuervo,
Verso and Moto).

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1006001/

Over the past year or so, LWN has added a number of useful new
features for our subscribers to enhance the experience of reading and
commenting on our content. Those features are of little use, however,
to readers who do not know about them. It has been more than a decade
since we last provided a
tour of the site—it seems that another is in
order. Walk this way for a look at the LWN kernel source database (KSDB),
enhanced commenting features, EPUB downloads, and more.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1008051/

Security updates have been issued by Debian (firefox-esr), Fedora (fastd, ovn, and yq), Mageia (libreoffice), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (google-osconfig-agent, grafana, helm, and rime-schema-all), and Ubuntu (linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, linux-lowlatency, openjdk-17, openjdk-21, openjdk-23, openjdk-8, and openjdk-lts).

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1007677/

Matthias Clasen has written a short update on a GTK hackfest that
took place at FOSDSEM and what’s
coming in GTK 4.18. This includes fixes for pointer sizes in Wayland
when fractional scaling is enabled, removal of the old GL renderer in
favor of the GL
renderer introduced in GTK
4.13.6, and deprecation of X11 and Broadway backends with intent
to remove them in GTK 5.

The deprecated backends will remain available until then, and no
action is required by developers at this time, Clasen wrote: “There
is no need to act on deprecations until you are actively porting your
app to the next major version of GTK, which is not on the horizon
yet“.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1006916/

The election to replace outgoing openSUSE board members is
underway, with four candidates vying for three seats. The election was
initially scheduled to be completed in December, but the timeline was extended
due to too few candidates standing for the seats. Voting closes on
February 2 and the results are expected to be announced on
February 3.