Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1013723/

Version 6.14.0 of Framework
Mono has been announced.

This is the first release of Framework Mono from its new home at
WineHQ. It includes work from the past 5 years that was never included
in a stable release because no stable branch had been created in that
time. Highlights are native support for ARM64 on macOS and many
improvements to windows forms for X11.

See the release
notes for a full list of new features and plans for future
releases.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1013386/

Matthieu Clemenceau has published
a status update on Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) development to the Ubuntu
Discourse forum. This includes updates on Ubuntu’s adoption
of Dracut as an alternative to initramfs-tools, a move to
a single ISO for arm64 devices rather than device-specific images, and
reverting the planned O3 optimization flags for Plucky Puffin.

Earlier in this cycle, we announced
plans to enable the O3 optimization level for all Ubuntu packages
by default. As part of this effort, we conducted extensive
benchmarking, which revealed that while some workloads saw
improvements, overall system performance slightly declined, and binary
sizes increased. Given these results, we are likely to revert this
change soon.

The beta for Ubuntu 25.04 is planned
for March 27, with the final release scheduled on April 17.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1013114/

Version
2.0.0 of FerretDB has been
released. FerretDB
is an open-source alternative to MongoDB, which switched to a non-open
license in 2018, built on top of PostgreSQL. This release
utilizes the DocumentDB
PostgreSQL extension for better performance, adds vector
search, and replication.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1013104/

The Xen Project has announced
the release of Xen 4.20. This release adds support for
AMD Zen 5 CPUs, improved compliance with the MISRA C standard,
work on PCI-passthrough on Arm, and more. Xen 4.20 also removes
support for Xeon
Phi CPUs, which were discontinued
in 2018. See the feature
list and release
notes for more information.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1013098/

Version
136.0 of the Thunderbird Desktop mail client has been
released. The release includes a quick toggle for adapting messages to
dark mode, and a new “Appearance” setting to control message threading
and sorting order globally, as well as a number of bug fixes. See the
security
advisory for a full list of security vulnerabilities addressed in
Thunderbird 136.0.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1013096/

Version
12.3 of Linux From
Scratch (LFS) has been released, along with Beyond Linux
From Scratch (BLFS) 12.3. LFS provides step-by-step instructions
on building a customized Linux system entirely from source, and BLFS
helps to extend an LFS installation into a more usable system. Notable
changes in this release include toolchain updates to GNU Binutils
2.44, GNU C Library (glibc) 2.41, and Linux 6.13.2. The Changelog
has a full list of changes since the previous stable release.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1013063/

Security updates have been issued by Debian (libreoffice), Fedora (exim and fscrypt), Red Hat (kernel), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (docker, firefox, and podman), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux, linux-oem-6.11, linux-aws, linux-aws-6.8, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-6.8, linux-raspi, linux-aws, linux-gcp, linux-hwe-6.11, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, linux-realtime, linux-aws, linux-gkeop, linux-ibm, linux-intel-iotg, linux-intel-iotg-5.15, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.15, linux-raspi, and linux-gcp, linux-gcp-6.8, linux-gke, linux-gkeop).

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1012453/

Mozilla’s actions have been rubbing many Firefox fans the
wrong way as of late, and inspiring them to look for alternatives.
There are many choices for users who are looking for a browser that
isn’t part of the Chrome monoculture but is full-featured and suitable
for day-to-day use. For those who are willing to stay in the Firefox
“family” there are a number of good options that have taken vastly
different approaches. This includes GNU IceCat, Floorp, LibreWolf, and Zen.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1012788/

Mozilla has issued
an update to its terms of use (TOU) that were announced
on February 26. It has removed a reference in the TOU to
Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy “because it seems to be causing
more confusion than clarity“, and has revised the TOU “to more
clearly reflect the limited scope of how Mozilla interacts with user
data“. The new language says:

You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox. This
includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy
Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide
license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you
input in Firefox. This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that
content.

Mozilla has also updated its Privacy FAQ to provide
more detail about its reasons for the changes.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1011511/

Differences of opinion, as well as outright disputes, between
upstream open-source projects and Linux distribution packagers over
packaging practices are nothing new. It is rarer, though, for those
disputes to boil over to threats of legal action—but a
disagreement between the Open
Broadcaster Software (OBS) Studio project and Fedora packagers
reached that point in mid-February. After escalation to a higher
authority things have been worked out to the satisfaction of the OBS
project, but some lingering questions remain. How Fedora should
prioritize Flatpak repositories,
how to handle conflicts between upstreams and Fedora packagers, and
the mechanics of removing or retiring Flatpaks all remain open
questions.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1007270/

Zotero is an
open-source reference management tool designed for collecting,
organizing, and citing research materials. It is particularly useful
for those writing research papers, theses, or books that require a
bibliography in standard formats like APA
Style, Chicago
Style, or MLA
Format. Zotero stores bibliographic metadata, annotations, and user
data and integrates with word processors like LibreOffice, Microsoft
Word, and Google Docs to produce in-text citations and
bibliographies. The core features of Zotero include metadata extraction,
tagging, full-text indexing, and cloud synchronization for
multi-device access, and Zotero has a plugin system to
allow anyone to expand its capabilities. The most recent major
release, Zotero 7, added
support for reading EPUBs, brought user-interface improvements
including a dark mode, performance improvements, and more.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1011959/

The Gentoo Linux project has
announced
the availability of qcow2 images for amd64 (x86_64) and arm64
(aarch64), and plans to “eventually” offer images for the
riscv64 and loongarch64 architectures.

The images, updated weekly, include an EFI boot partition and a fully
functional Gentoo installation; either with no network activated but a
password-less root login on the console (“no root pw”), or with
network activated, all accounts initially locked, but cloud-init
running on boot (“cloud-init”).

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1011955/

Version
25.2 of the Armbian Linux
distribution for single-board computers (SBCs) has been released. Notable
changes in this release include support for many new SBCs, an upgrade
to Linux kernel 6.12.x, and more. See the changelog
for a complete list.

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.