Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/974969/

Linux installers receive a disproportionate amount of attention
compared to the amount of time that most users spend with them. Ideally,
a user spends only a few minutes using the installer, versus years using
the distribution after it is installed. Yet, the installer sets the
first impression, and if it fails to do its job, little else matters.
Installers also have to continually evolve to keep pace with new
hardware, changes in distribution packaging (such as image-based Linux
distributions), and so forth. Along those lines, the SUSE team that maintains the
venerable YaST installer has
decided it’s time to start (almost) fresh with a new Linux installer
project, called Agama,
for new projects. YaST is not going away as an administration tool,
but it is likely to be relieved of installer duties at some point.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/986628/

Security updates have been issued by Debian (aom, cinder, dovecot, glance, and nova), Fedora (mysql8.0), Oracle (curl and libreoffice), SUSE (oniguruma, openssl-1_0_0, openssl1, and xen), and Ubuntu (cacti, curl, exfatprogs, firefox, and vim).

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/986528/

Version 0.3.0 of the uv
Python package and project manager has been released. Introduced in
February, uv is written in Rust and aims to be “Cargo for
Python“. Notable changes in this release include the addition of
interfaces for managing projects, installing
Python, running scripts,
and new documentation. See the
accompanying blog post for more information.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/985210/

The FreeBSD Project is, for the second
time this year, engaging in a long-running discussion about the
possibility of including Rust in its base
system. The sequel to the first discussion included some work by
Alan Somers to show what it might look like to use Rust code in the
base tree. Support for Rust code does not appear much closer to being
included in FreeBSD’s base system, but the conversation has been
enlightening.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/986030/

The Gentoo Linux project has
announced
that it is dropping support for Itanium:

Following the removal of IA-64 (Itanium)
support in the Linux kernel
and glibc,
and subsequent discussions on our mailing list, as well as
a vote by the Gentoo Council, Gentoo will discontinue all ia64
profiles and keywords. The primary reason for this decision is the
inability of the Gentoo IA-64 team to support this architecture
without kernel support, glibc support, and a functional development
box (or even a well-established emulator). In addition, there have
been only very few users interested in this type of hardware.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/984502/

Markdown editors are a dime a dozen. Cheaper than that, actually,
since many of them are open‑source software. Despite the sheer number of
options, finding an editor that has all of the features that one might want can
be tricky. For some users, Zettlr
might the right tool. It is a What You See is What You
Mean (WYSIWYM) editor that stores its work locally as plain Markdown
files. The project is billed as a “one-stop publication
workbench“, and is suitable for writing anything from blog posts to
academic papers, maintaining a personal journal, or keeping notes in a Zettlekasten. It
is simple to get started with, but rewards deeper exploration and
customization.

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.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/985350/

Version 4.0 of the Magit text-based
Git user interface for Emacs has been released. Changes since the 3.3.0
release include the addition of context menus, a makeover for the
menu-bar menu, new menu commands, and many other new features and bug
fixes. See the release
notes for full details.

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).

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.

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/984448/

The 6.10.3, 6.6.44, and 6.1.103 stable kernel updates have all been released. As usual, they
contain important fixes throughout the tree. Users of those kernels
should upgrade.

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.

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.

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).

Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/984117/

Version 2.0 of the Vanilla OS image-based Linux distribution has
been released. Dubbed
“Orchid”, Vanilla OS is now based on Debian Sid (prior versions were Ubuntu-based),
allows creation
of customized Linux environments, support for running Android
applications using Waydroid, and many other improvements.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.