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Release of Lutris 0.5.15: 15/01/2024
The Lutris gaming platform, version 0.5.15 has been released, providing tools to make it easier to install, configure, and manage games on Linux. The project code is written in Python and is distributed under the GPLv3 license.
The project maintains a database for quickly searching and installing games, allowing you to launch games on Linux through a single interface with one click, without worrying about installing dependencies and settings. Runtime components for running games are supplied by the project and are not tied to the distribution used. A runtime is a distribution-independent set of libraries that includes components from SteamOS and Ubuntu, as well as various additional libraries.
You can install games distributed through GOG, Steam, Epic Games Store, Battle.net, Amazon Games, Origin and Uplay. At the same time, Lutris itself acts only as an intermediary and does not sell games, so for commercial games the user must independently purchase the game from the appropriate service (free games can be launched with one click from the Lutris graphical interface).
https://github.com/lutris/lutris/releases/tag/v0.5.15
openSUSE Leap 16 will be built on the ALP platform using containers: 16/01/2024
The openSUSE project developers have announced their start of work on the next major release of the openSUSE Leap 16, which will be based on the new ALP (Adaptable Linux Platform) technology platform, which the commercial SUSE distribution is also moving to. openSUSE Leap 16.0 is planned for release in 2025.
This year, on June 11, openSUSE Leap 15.6 will be released, which will most likely become the last classic release of the project. If for some reason the development of openSUSE Leap 16 is delayed, they will extend the life cycle of openSUSE Leap 15.6 or release an additional release of openSUSE Leap 15.7. The development of openSUSE Leap 16 plans to continue using the openSUSE Factory repository development model and achieve an optimal balance between new ALP technologies, the traditional Linux operating system and community package integration initiatives.
The ALP platform is positioned as a continuation of the development of the SUSE Linux Enterprise distribution and is distinguished by dividing the basic distribution into parts. The main distribution will be a stripped-down “host OS” environment, which includes only the components minimally necessary to work on top of your equipment. All applications and user space components will not run in a mixed environment, but in separate containers or virtual machines running on top of the “host OS” and isolated from each other.
https://news.opensuse.org/2024/01/15/clear-course-is-set-for-os-leap/
COSMIC Custom Shell: 16/01/2024
System76, the developer of the Linux distribution Pop!_OS , announced progress in developing their custom shell called COSMIC , rewritten in the Rust language (not to be confused with the old COSMIC, which was based on the GNOME Shell). The shell has been in development for over two years and is close to the first alpha release, which will mark the readiness of a basic set of features that allow the shell to be considered a working product. They expect that the alpha version will be published at the end of March and will help gather more feedback to finalize the functionality and improve the usability. Highlights include COSMIC Terminal emulator , written using the alacritty_terminal framework and supporting features such as GPU rendering, skins, and rich input methods. Among the tasks under development, the addition of support for mouse emulation and the ability to open hyperlinks in the terminal, are noted.
https://blog.system76.com/post/cosmic-the-road-to-alpha
VirtualBox 7.0.14 released: 17/01/2024
Oracle has published a corrective release of the virtualization system VirtualBox 7.0.14 , which contains 14 fixes. At the same time, an update of the previous branch of VirtualBox 6.1.50 was created with 7 changes , including support for packages with the kernel from the RHEL 9.4 and 8.9 distributions, as well as the implementation of the ability to import and export images of virtual machines with NVMe drive controllers and media inserted into the virtual CD drive/ DVD.
https://www.mail-archive.com/vbox-announce@virtualbox.org/msg00229.html
MySQL 8.3.0 DBMS: 17/01/2024
Oracle has formed a new branch of the MySQL 8.3 DBMS and published a corrective update for MySQL 8.0.36 . MySQL Community Server 8.3.0 builds are prepared for all major Linux, FreeBSD, macOS and Windows distributions.
MySQL 8.3.0 is the third release built under the new release model, which provides for the presence of two types of MySQL branches - “Innovation” and “LTS”. The Innovation branches, which include MySQL 8.1, 8.2 and 8.3, are recommended for those who want to get access to new functionality earlier. These branches are published every 3 months and are supported only until the next major release is published. LTS branches are recommended for implementations that require predictability and long-term unchanged behavior. LTS branches will be released every two years and will be supported normally for 5 years, in addition, you can get another 3 years of extended support. An LTS release of MySQL 8.4 is expected in the spring of 2024, after which a new Innovation branch, 9.0 will be formed.
https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/
X.Org Server 21.1.11: 18/01/2024
Corrective releases of X.Org Server 21.1.11 and DDX component (Device-Dependent X) xwayland 23.2.4 have been published , which ensures the launch of X.Org Server for running/executing X11 applications in Wayland-based environments. The new versions fix 6 vulnerabilities, some of which can be exploited for privilege escalation on systems where the X server is running as root, as well as for remote code execution in configurations that use X11 session redirection via SSH for access.
https://lists.x.org/archives/xorg/2024-January/061526.html
Release of Tesseract 5.3.4: 18/01/2024
The release of the optical text recognition system, Tesseract 5.3.4 was announced. It supports recognition of UTF-8 characters and texts in more than 100 languages. The result can be saved in plain text or in HTML (hOCR), ALTO (XML), PDF and TSV formats. The system was originally created between 1985-1995 in the Hewlett Packard laboratory; in 2005, the code was opened under the Apache license and was further developed with the participation of Google employees. The source code of the project is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license.
Tesseract includes a console utility and the libtesseract library for embedding OCR functionality into other applications. Third-party GUI interfaces that support Tesseract include gImageReader , VietOCR and YAGF. Two recognition engines are offered: a classic one that recognizes text at the level of individual character patterns, and a new one based on the use of a machine learning system based on an LSTM recurrent neural network, optimized for recognizing entire strings and allowing for a significant increase in accuracy. Ready-made trained models have been published for 123 languages . To optimize performance, modules using OpenMP and SIMD instructions AVX2, AVX, AVX512F, NEON or SSE4.1 are offered.
https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract/releases/tag/5.3.4
Release of GNU Emacs 29.2: 18/01/2024
The GNU Project has published a new release of the GNU Emacs 29.2 text editor. Until the release of GNU Emacs 24.5, the project developed under the personal leadership of Richard Stallman, who handed over the post of project leader to John Wiegley in the fall of 2015. The project code is written in C and Lisp and is distributed under the GPLv3 license.
In the new release on the GNU/Linux platform, Emacs is set to handle the 'org-protocol' URI scheme by default. The “org” mode allows you to quickly save bookmarks, notes and links using the 'emacsclient' command, for example to save a URL link with a title you can run 'emacsclient “org-protocol:store-link?url=URL&title=TITLE”. In addition, the new version offers a new option 'tramp-show-ad-hoc-proxies', with which you can enable the display of external file names instead of shortcuts to them. https://www.mail-archive.com/info-gnu@gnu.org/msg03249.html Foxconn joins initiative to protect Linux from patent claims: 18/01/2024 Foxconn has joined the Open Invention Network (OIN), an organization dedicated to protecting the Linux ecosystem from patent claims. By joining OIN, Foxconn has demonstrated its commitment to co-innovation and non-aggressive patent management. Foxconn ranks 20th among the largest corporations by revenue (Fortune Global 500) and is the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer (about 40% of all consumer electronic devices are manufactured at Foxconn). OIN members agree not to assert patent claims and will freely permit the use of patented technologies in projects related to the Linux ecosystem. OIN members include more than 3,800 companies, communities, and organizations that have signed a patent-sharing license agreement. Among the main participants of OIN, ensuring the creation of a patent pool protecting Linux, are companies such as Google, Amazon, IBM, NEC, Toyota, Renault, SUSE, Philips, Red Hat, Alibaba, HP, AT&T, Juniper, Facebook, Cisco, Casio, Huawei, Fujitsu, Sony and Microsoft. Companies that sign the agreement gain access to patents held by OIN in exchange for an obligation not to pursue legal claims for the use of technologies used in the Linux ecosystem. Including as part of joining OIN, Microsoft transferred to OIN participants the right to use more than 60 thousand of its patents, pledging not to use them against Linux and open source software. https://openinventionnetwork.com/hon-hai-technology-group-foxconn-joins-open-invention-network-community/ Release of Wayland-Protocols 1.33: 19/01/2024 After six months of development, a new release of the wayland-protocols 1.33 package has been published, containing a set of protocols and extensions that complement the capabilities of the base Wayland protocol and provide the capabilities necessary for building composite servers and user environments. In the new version, the “ linux-dmabuf ” protocol has been transferred to the stable category , which ensures the sharing of several video cards using DMA-BUF technology (allows you to create wl_buffer based on DMA-BUF). A new protocol “ ext-transient-seat ” has been added and placed in the “staging” category. The new protocol can be used to create temporary independent sessions (seats) designed for use with virtual input devices implemented using the “virtual_keyboard_unstable_v1” and “wlr_virtual_pointer_unstable_v1” protocols. For example, when implementing the ability to connect to a remote desktop, the protocol allows you to create a separate session for each user with a virtual keyboard and mouse. https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2024-January/043400.html KDE has improved scaling support and added autosaving in Dolphin: 20/01/2024 Nate Graham, a QA developer on the KDE project, has published a report on preparations for the KDE 6 release scheduled for February 28th. The KDE Plasma 6.0 and KDE Gears 6.0 codebase has been forked into a separate repository, and the master branch has begun accumulating changes for KDE Plasma 6.1 and KDE Gears 24.05. https://pointieststick.com/2024/01/19/this-week-in-kde-auto-save-in-dolphin-and-better-fractional-scaling/ Release of GNU Ocrad OCR 0.29: 21/01/2024 After two years of development, the Ocrad 0.29 (Optical Character Recognition) text recognition system, developed under the GNU project, has been released . Ocrad can be used both in the form of a library for integrating OCR functions into other applications, and in the form of a separate utility that, based on the image passed to the input, produces text in UTF-8 or 8-bit encodings. For optical recognition, Ocrad uses a feature extraction method. It includes a page layout analyzer that allows you to correctly separate columns and blocks of text in printed documents. Recognition is supported only for characters from the “ascii”, “ iso-8859-9 ” and “ iso-8859-15 ” encodings (there is no support for the Cyrillic alphabet). https://www.mail-archive.com/info-gnu@gnu.org/msg03251.html Hans Reiser commented on deprecating ReiserFS: 19/01/2024 The mailing list of Linux kernel developers has published letters received by one of the developers during correspondence with Hans Reiser. In 2008 Reiser was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his wife as a result of a quarrel with a subsequent attempt to cover up the crime (in 2027 Hans will be able to file application for parole). In the published letters, Hans regrets his mistakes in interacting with the developer community, discusses the deprecation of ReiserFS v3 in the Linux kernel 6.6 , analyzes the history of the development of ReiserFS, mentions hopes associated with the promotion of ReiserFS v4, and explains the technical solutions implemented in ReiserFS v4. Commenting on the decision to remove ReiserFS from the kernel, Hans mentioned that the question of whether this FS remains useful and whether it should continue to be supplied in the kernel should be decided by users and maintainers, taking into account current realities. He understands that having ReiserFS code in the kernel creates additional burden on maintainers due to the need to test and ensure compatibility with new features emerging in the kernel, and if the FS is no longer relevant, there is no point in continuing to ship it as part of the kernel. During the development of ReiserFS 4, many of the shortcomings of ReiserFS 3 were addressed and maintenance was simplified, but this version was never accepted into the kernel. According to Hans, his only request is to add a README file accompanying the ReiserFS code , before the ReiserFS code is removed from the kernel, mentioning Mikhail Gilulu, Konstantin Shvachko and Anatoly Pinchuk, whose contributions to the development remained undeservedly missed. They were hired by Hans and developed ReiserFS, but due to Hans’ unrestrained character and excessive demands (Hans could work around the clock and expected similar enthusiasm from others) they left the project, which at that time was perceived by Hans as a betrayal, but over time he realized that their decision was justified under the circumstances. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/b98b29cf-27d9-49e0-b10b-1848399badfd@kittens.ph/T/ Fuchsia Workstation OS Development Program Canceled: 16/01/2024 The components required to build the Chrome browser for the Fuchsia operating system have been removed from the Chromium project repository . It is noted that support for Fuchsia in Chrome was an experiment that has now been discontinued. They separately stated that the reason for the termination of support is the winding down of the Fuchsia development program for workstations. Support for the WebEngine and WebRunner browser components for Fuchsia will continue, but a separate full-fledged Chrome browser will not be provided. Fuchsia's future development will likely focus only on consumer devices, such as home automation systems, smart photo frames and speakers. Fuchsia is based on the Zircon microkernel, which is based on the LK project, extended for use on various classes of devices, including smartphones and personal computers. Zircon extends LK with support for processes and shared libraries, a user level, an object handling system and a capability-based security model. Drivers are implemented as dynamic libraries running in user space, loaded by the devhost process and managed by the device manager (devmg, Device Manager). Fuchsia has its own graphical interface written in Dart using the Flutter framework. The project also develops the Peridot user interface framework, the Fargo package manager, the libc standard library, the Escher rendering system, the Magma Vulkan driver, the Scenic composite manager, the MinFS, MemFS, ThinFS (FAT in Go language) and Blobfs file systems, as well as FVM partitions. For application development, support for C/C++ and Dart languages are provided, Rust is allowed in system components, Go is used in the network stack, and Python is used in the build system. https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id%3D1509109 Helios distribution based on Illumos: 30/01/2024 In preparation for the first public release under the free MPL-2.0 license, the source code to the build tools and specific components of the Helios distribution, developed by Oxide Computer and used to support the operation of software-controlled cloud server racks, like Oxide Rack, has been opened. The entire software stack of the Oxide platform is open source. The Helios distribution is built on the basis of the Illumos project developments, which continues the development of the OpenSolaris kernel, network stack, file systems, drivers, libraries and a basic set of system utilities. Solaris 11.4 support is extended until 2037 https://github.com/oxidecomputer/helios/pull/136 Release of Shotcut 24.01: 30/01/2024 A new release of the video editor Shotcut 24.01 is available, which is developed by the author of the MLT project and uses this framework to do video editing. Support for video and audio formats is implemented through FFmpeg. You can use plugins with the implementation of video and audio effects compatible with Frei0r and LADSPA. One of the features of Shotcut is multi-track editing with arranging video from fragments in various source formats, without the need to first import or re-encode them. There are built-in tools for creating screencasts, processing images from a web camera and receiving streaming video. Qt is used to build the interface. The code is written in C++ and distributed under the GPLv3 license. Packages are available for Linux ( AppImage, flatpak and snap ), macOS and Windows. https://shotcut.org/blog/new-release-240128/ Firmware release for Ubuntu Touch OTA-4 Focal: 30/01/2024 After three months of development, the UBports project, which took over the development of the Ubuntu Touch mobile platform after Canonical pulled away from it, presented their OTA-4 Focal (over-the-air) firmware. This is the fourth release of Ubuntu Touch, based on the Ubuntu 20.04 package base (older releases were based on Ubuntu 16.04). The project is also developing an experimental port of the Unity 8 desktop, which has been renamed Lomiri. The Ubuntu Touch OTA-4 Focal update will be released in the coming days for Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1, Fairphone 3/3+ and 4, F(x)tec Pro1 X, Google Pixel 3a/3a XL, Vollaphone 22, Vollaphone X23, Vollaphone devices X, Vollaphone, JingPad A1, OnePlus One/5/6, Sony Xperia X, Samsung Galaxy S7, Xiaomi Poco X3 NFC / X3, Xiaomi Redmi Note 9, 9 Pro, 9 Pro Max and 9S, Xiaomi Poco M2 Pro. At the beta testing stage there are assemblies for Pine64 PinePhone, PinePhone Pro and PineTab and PineTab2. https://ubports.com/en/blog/ubports-news-1/post/ubuntu-touch-ota-4-focal-release-3916 Pale Moon Browser 33.0.0 Released: 30/01/2024 A new release of the Pale Moon 33.0.0 web browser has been published, branching from the Firefox code base to provide higher performance, preserve the classic interface, minimize memory consumption and provide additional customization options. Pale Moon builds are created for Windows and Linux (x86_64). The project code is distributed under the MPLv2 (Mozilla Public License). The project adheres to the classic interface layout, without switching to the Australis and Photon interfaces integrated into Firefox 29 and 57, and with extensive customization options. The removed components include DRM, Social API, WebRTC, PDF viewer, Crash Reporter, code for collecting statistics, tools for parental controls and people with disabilities. Compared to Firefox, support for extensions using XUL has been returned to the browser, and the ability to use both full-fledged and lightweight themes has been retained. https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?t%3D30803%26p%3D248017%23p248017 Release of LibreOffice 24.2: 31/01/2024 The Document Foundation presented their office suite, LibreOffice 24.2. Ready-made installation packages are prepared for various Linux, Windows and macOS distributions. 166 developers took part in preparing the release, of which 108 are volunteers. 57% of the changes were made by 50 employees of the three companies overseeing the project - Collabora, Red Hat and Allotropia, 20% - by eight employees of The Document Foundation, and 23% of the changes were added by 108 independent enthusiasts. The LibreOffice 24.2 release is labelled “Community” and will be supported by enthusiasts and is not aimed at enterprise use. LibreOffice Community is available free of charge to everyone without exception, including corporate users. For enterprises that need additional services, products of the LibreOffice Enterprise family are being developed separately, for which partner companies will provide full support, with the ability to receive updates over a long period of time (LTS) and with additional functions such as SLA (Service Level Agreements). https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2024/01/31/libreoffice-24-2/ OnlyOffice 8.0 office suite published: 01/02/2024 The release of OnlyOffice DocumentServer 8.0.0 has been published with OnlyOffice online editors and collaboration. Editors can be used to work with text documents, tables and presentations. The project code is distributed under the free AGPLv3 license. At the same time, the release of the OnlyOffice DesktopEditors 8.0 product, built on a single code base with online editors, was launched. Desktop editors are designed as desktop applications, which are written in JavaScript using web technologies, but combine in one set client and server components designed for self-sufficient use on the user’s local system, without recourse to an external service. To collaborate on your premises, you can also use the Nextcloud Hub platform, which provides full integration with OnlyOffice. Ready-made builds are generated for Linux, Windows and macOS. OnlyOffice claims full compatibility with MS Office and OpenDocument formats. Supported formats include: DOC, DOCX, ODT, RTF, TXT, PDF, HTML, EPUB, XPS, DjVu, XLS, XLSX, ODS, CSV, PPT, PPTX, ODP. You can expand the functionality of editors through plugins, for example, plugins are available for creating templates and adding videos from YouTube. Ready-made builds are generated for Windows and Linux (deb and rpm packages). https://www.onlyoffice.com/blog/2024/01/onlyoffice-docs-8-0-released Release of Mesa 24.0: 01/02/2024 A release of the free implementation of the OpenGL and Vulkan API - Mesa 24.0.0 has been published. The first release of the Mesa 24.0.0 branch has an experimental status - after the final stabilization of the code, a stable version 24.0.1 will be released. Mesa 24.0 provides support for the Vulkan 1.3 graphics API in anv for Intel GPUs, radv for AMD GPUs, NVK for NVIDIA GPUs, tu for Qualcomm GPUs, in the lavapipe software rasterizer (lvp), and in emulator mode (vn). Vulkan 1.0 support is implemented in the v3dv (Broadcom VideoCore VI GPU from Raspberry Pi 4) and dzn (Vulkan implementation on top of Direct3D 12) drivers. Mesa also provides full OpenGL 4.6 support for iris (Intel Gen 8+ GPUs), radeonsi (AMD), Crocus (older Intel Gen4-Gen7 GPUs), zink, llvmpipe, virgl ( Virgil3D virtual GPU for QEMU/KVM), freedreno drivers (Qualcomm Adreno) and d3d12 (a layer for organizing OpenGL work on top of DirectX 12). OpenGL 4.5 support is available for AMD (r600) and NVIDIA (nvc0) GPUs. OpenGL 3.3 support is present in the softpipe (software rasterizer), asahi (AGX GPU used in Apple M1 and M2 chips) and nv50 (NVIDIA NV50) drivers. https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/2024-February/226138.html Damn Small Linux 2024: 01/02/2024 12 years after the last test version and 16 years after the formation of the last stable release, the Damn Small Linux 2024, intended for use on low-power systems and outdated equipment, has been published. The new release is of alpha quality and prepared in builds for the i386 architecture. The bootable image size is 665 MB (for comparison, the previous version was 50 MB in size). This build is based on the AntiX 23 Live distribution, which in turn is built on Debian. The purpose of the revival of Damn Small Linux was the desire to obtain a compact Live distribution for legacy systems that fits on a CD (less than 700 MB) and offers graphical and console environments. The environments to choose from are based on the Fluxbox and JWM window managers. Three web browsers are included: BadWolf, Dillo and Links2. The set of office applications consists of the AbiWord, Gnumeric, the Sylpheed email client and the Zathura PDF viewer. For multimedia content, MPV and XMMS are included. The distribution also contains the mtPaint graphic editor, the zzzFM file manager, the gFTP FTP/SFTP client, and the Leafpad text editor. Console applications include: Ranger file manager, VisiData spreadsheet processor, Tmux terminal multiplexer, Mutt email client, Cmus music player, CD/DVD burning program - CDW, SurfRaw search system, Vim and Nano text editors, W3M and Links2 browsers. https://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ Release of EasyOS 5.7: 04/02/2024 Barry Kauler, founder of the Puppy Linux project, published the EasyOS 5.7 distribution, which combines Puppy Linux technologies with the use of container isolation to run system components. The distribution is managed through a set of graphical configurators developed by the project. The boot image size is 857 MB. https://bkhome.org/news/202402/easyos-kirkstone-series-version-57-released.html Gentoo has started creating binary packages for the x86-64-v3 architecture: 04/02/2024 The developers of the Gentoo project announced the introduction of a separate repository with binary packages compiled with support for the third version of the x86-64 microarchitecture (x86-64-v3), used in Intel processors since approximately 2015 (starting with Intel Haswell) and characterized by the presence of such extensions like AVX, AVX2, BMI2, FMA, LZCNT, MOVBE and SXSAVE. The repository offers a separate set of packages, built in parallel with the repository published in December, in which the assembly was made for the basic x86-64 architecture, which can be used on any 64-bit Intel and AMD processors. The new repository allows you to achieve higher performance on modern processors by using extended instructions in programs. To check x86-64-v3 architecture support, you can view processor information by running “ld.so –help” (or “/usr/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 –help”). To enable the x86-64-v3 repository in the package manager, you should replace x86-64 with x86-64-v3 in the sync-uri parameter present in the files in the /etc/portage/binrepos.conf/ directory. https://www.gentoo.org/news/2024/02/04/x86-64-v3.html Kubuntu switches to Calamares installer: 05/02/2024 The Kubuntu Linux developers have announced work to transition the distribution to use the Calamares installer, which is independent of specific Linux distributions and uses the Qt library to create the user interface. Using Calamares will allow you to use a single graphics stack in a KDE-based environment. Lubuntu and UbuntuDDE have already switched from the official editions of Ubuntu to the Calamares installer. In addition to replacing the installer, the project started preparation of the spring release of Kubuntu 24.04 LTS, which will be the last release based on KDE 5, and the start of development of a test version with KDE 6, which will serve as the basis for the fall release of Kubuntu 24.10. https://kubuntu.org/news/kubuntu-council-meeting-30th-january-2024/ Release of KaOS 2024.01: 05/02/2024 The release of KaOS 2024.01 has been published, a distribution with a rolling update model aimed at providing a desktop based on the latest releases of KDE and applications using Qt. Distribution-specific design features include the placement of a vertical panel on the right side of the screen. The distribution is developed with an eye on Arch Linux, but maintains its own independent repository of more than 1,500 packages, and also offers a number of its own graphical utilities. The default file system is XFS. Builds are published for x86_64 systems (3.3 GB). https://kaosx.us/news/2024/kaos01/ Fully open stack for MIPI cameras introduced: 05/02/2024 Hans de Goede, a Fedora Linux developer working at Red Hat, presented an open stack for MIPI (Mobile Industry Processor Interface) cameras at the FOSDEM 2024 conference. The prepared open stack has not yet been accepted into the Linux kernel and the libcamera project, but is marked as having reached a state suitable for testing by a wide range of enthusiasts. The operation of the stack has been tested with MIPI cameras based on ov2740, ov01a1s and hi556 sensors used in laptops such as Lenovo ThinkPad X1 yoga gen 8, Dell Latitude 9420 and HP Specter x360 13.5 2023. The MIPI interface is used in many new laptop models instead of the previously used video streaming over the USB bus from devices that support the UVC (USB Video Class) standard. MIPI provides access to the camera sensor using a CSI receiver (Camera Serial Interface) and an image signal processor ( ISP ) integrated into the CPU, which provides image formation based on raw data coming from the sensor. Intel provides a set of proprietary drivers for working with MIPI cameras in Linux via IPU6 (Imaging Processing Unit) in Intel Tiger Lake, Alder Lake, Raptor Lake and Meteor Lake processors. The main difficulty in developing open drivers for MIPI cameras is due to the fact that the hardware interface of the ISP processor and the image processing algorithms implemented in it are usually not disclosed by CPU manufacturers and are a trade secret. To solve this problem, Linaro and Red Hat have developed a software implementation of an image processor - SoftISP , which allows you to work with MIPI cameras without using proprietary components (SoftISP can be used as a replacement for IPU6 ISP). The SoftISP implementation has been submitted for inclusion in the libcamera project , which offers a software stack for working with video cameras, cameras and TV tuners on Linux, Android and ChromeOS. In addition to SoftISP, the stack for working with MIPI cameras includes a driver for ov2740 sensors running at the kernel level and code for supporting the CSI receiver in the Linux kernel, which is part of the IPU6 of Intel processors. The Linux kernel and libcamera packages, including the project's changes, are available in the COPR repository for installation on Fedora Linux 39. The Pipewire media server can be used to capture video from MIPI cameras. Support for working with cameras via Pipewire has already been adopted into the libwebrtc library. In Firefox, the ability to work with cameras via Pipewire has been brought to a state suitable for use with WebRTC, starting with release 122. By default, working with cameras via Pipewire in Firefox is disabled and requires the “media.webrtc.camera.allow-” parameter to be activated in about:config pipewire“. https://hansdegoede.dreamwidth.org/28153.html Chasquid SMTP server 1.13 available: 07/02/2024 A new release of chasquid SMTP server 1.13 has been introduced, which places an emphasis on ease of configuration and security. Chasquid is primarily designed for use in typical projects that lack the flexibility and functionality of Postfix and Exim. The project code is written in Go and distributed under the Apache 2.0 license. https://groups.google.com/g/chasquid/c/ztlFgik2mPA ClamAV 1.3.0 fixed a dangerous vulnerability: 08/02/2024 After six months of development, Cisco has published the release of the free antivirus suite ClamAV 1.3.0. The project passed into the hands of Cisco in 2013 after purchasing Sourcefire, the company developing ClamAV and Snort. The project code is distributed under the GPLv2 license. The 1.3.0 branch is classified as regular (not LTS), updates to which are published at least 4 months after the first release of the next branch. The ability to download the signature database for non-LTS branches is also provided for at least another 4 months after the release of the next branch. https://blog.clamav.net/2023/11/clamav-130-122-105-released.html VirtualBox to run on top of the KVM hypervisor: 08/02/2024 Cyberus Technology has opened the code for the VirtualBox KVM backend, which allows you to use the KVM hypervisor built into the Linux kernel in the VirtualBox virtualization system instead of the vboxdrv kernel module supplied in VirtualBox. The backend ensures that virtual machines are executed by the KVM hypervisor while fully maintaining the traditional management model and VirtualBox interface. It is supported to run existing virtual machine configurations created for VirtualBox in KVM. The code is written in C and C++ and is distributed under the GPLv3 license. https://cyberus-technology.de/articles/vbox-kvm-public-release Xfce Project Updates Plans for Wayland Support: 09/02/2024 The Xfce developers have updated the page with plans related to adding support for the Wayland protocol. The plan has added mention of implementing initial support for Wayland in the core components of the next major release of Xfce 4.20, while maintaining support for X11. Previously, the issue of maintaining backward compatibility with X11 was at the stage of discussion, where it was not possible to achieve consensus. It has now been decided that X11 support will not be discontinued in the foreseeable future. A Wayland-based session in Xfce 4.20 will cover the minimum required set of capabilities, and they intend to gradually add the missing functionality in future releases. They also plan to continue honing work in an environment based on the Wayland protocol in already ported user applications. The note mentions that the project does not have the resources to maintain its own composite manager for Wayland, but rejects the possibility of using a binding to XWayland for the job. The previously made decision to use the wlroots library in the Wayland environment instead of libmutter, developed by the developers of the Sway user environment and providing basic functions for a Wayland-based composite manager, remains unchanged . The xfdesktop desktop and xfce4-panel have already been ported to Wayland using wlroots and will continue to be developed as separately launched components. xfce4-panel has been tested with Labwc and Wayfire composite servers. To abstract work on top of Wayland and X11, the libxfce4windowing library is used, which offers a layer for abstracting from the graphics subsystem in which window management components (screens, root windows, virtual desktops, etc.) are implemented that are not tied to a specific window system. X11 support is implemented based on libwnck (Window Navigator Construction Kit). Components ported to Wayland are also noted: exo, libxfce4ui, libxfce4util, thunar, xfce4-appfinder, xfce4-settings, xfconf, xfce4-power-manager, tumbler, garcon, thunar-volman and xfce4-dev-tools. Wayland support is not yet available in the xfce4-session session manager and the xfwm4 window manager, but there is an unofficial xfwm4 port for working with Wayland . Applications that have added Wayland support include: xfce4-terminal, mousepad, xfce4-notifyd, xfce4-taskmanager, xfce4-mixer, ristretto, catfish, xfburn, parole, xfmpc, xfce4-dict, gigolo and xfce4-panel-profiles. Applications that do not yet work with Wayland: xfdashboard, xfce4-screenshooter, xfce4-screensaver and xfce4-volumed-pulse. https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/wayland_roadmap Microsoft has published sudo for Windows. OpenBSD responded by creating Word: 09/02/2024 Microsoft has introduced its own implementation of the sudo utility, designed to organize selective execution of commands in a terminal with administrator rights. The utility is included in test builds of Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26052 (activated in the “Developer Features” settings section), will be part of the next Windows 11 update and in the future may be ported to Windows 10. The utility code is planned to be opened under the MIT license (in Currently, only the repository framework and PowerShell framework are available). The utility was written from scratch with an eye to integration with Windows and only conceptually implements the ideas of the classic sudo project used in Linux, differing from it at the level of command line options and delegation logic. The utility also still lags behind the existing independent project gsudo in functionality , which develops an analogue of sudo for Windows, distributed under the MIT license. Features of sudo from Microsoft include displaying an operation confirmation dialog, launching applications in a new window (forceNewWindow), locally (normal), or in mode with data input blocked (disableInput). Unlike the existing runas utility, Microsoft's sudo only supports running programs with administrative privileges and cannot be used to run as other users. In addition, sudo does not require an administrator password, but uses the UAC (User Account Control) mechanism to verify the request. Theo de Raadt, founder of the OpenBSD project, posted a humorous response to the publication of sudo for Windows, in which he ridiculed Microsoft's attitude towards development. As an analogy to Microsoft's actions, a patch with the implementation of Word was proposed for inclusion in OpenBSD, created by renaming the text editor mg . As with Microsoft's publication of sudo, the Word application also ignores the intersection of the name with an existing project, does not care about maintaining compatibility, does not consider possible trademark violations, and is published without clarifying the opinion of the original product development team. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/introducing-sudo-for-windows/ Release of MythTV 34: 10/02/2024 After a year of development, the platform for creating your home media center, MythTV 34 was released , allowing you to turn a desktop PC into a TV, VCR, music center, photo album, station for recording and watching DVDs. The project code is distributed under the GPLv2 license. At the same time, a separately developed MythWeb web interface for controlling the media center via a web browser was released. The MythTV architecture is based on the separation of a backend for storing or capturing video (IPTV, DVB cards, etc.) and a frontend for displaying and creating an interface. The frontend can work with several backends, which can be run both on the local system and on external computers. The functionality is implemented through plugins. There are currently two sets of plugins available - official and unofficial. The range of capabilities covered by the plugins is quite wide - from integration with various online services and implementation of a web interface for managing the system over the network to tools for working with a web camera and allowing video communication between PCs. https://www.mythtv.org/news/174/v34.0%2520Released Debian 12.5 and 11.9 update: 11/02/2024 The fifth corrective update of the Debian 12 distribution has been generated, which includes accumulated package updates and adds fixes to the installer. The release includes 68 updates to fix stability issues and 42 updates to fix vulnerabilities. In Debian 12.5, we can note the update to the latest stable versions of the dpdk, mariadb, postfix, qemu, systemd and xen packages. They also added support for compressed kernel modules to cryptsetup-initramfs. For installing from scratch, installation builds from Debian 12.5 have been prepared. Previously installed systems that are kept up to date and receive updates included in Debian 12.5 through the standard update installation system. Security fixes included in new Debian releases are made available to users as updates are released through security.debian.org. At the same time, a new release of the previous stable branch of Debian 11.9 is available, which includes 70 updates to fix stability problems and 92 updates to fix vulnerabilities. The dpdk, mariadb-10.5, nvidia-graphics-drivers, postfix, postgresql-13 packages have been updated to the latest stable versions. The generation of updates to eliminate vulnerabilities for the chromium, tor, consul and xen packages, as well as the samba components that ensure the operation of the domain controller, has been stopped. The gimp-dds package, the contents of which are included in the main package of GIMP 2.10, has been removed from the repository. https://www.debian.org/News/2024/20240210 Release of Arkime 5.0: 11/02/2024 A new release of the system for capturing, storing and indexing network packets, Arkime 5.0, has been published, providing tools for visually assessing traffic flows and searching for information related to network activity. The project was originally developed by AOL with the goal of creating an open replacement for commercial network packet processing platforms that supports deployment on its servers and can scale to process traffic at speeds of tens of gigabits per second. The traffic capture component code is written in C, and the interface is implemented in Node.js/JavaScript. The source code is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license. It supports Linux and FreeBSD. Ready-made packages are prepared for Arch Linux, RHEL/CentOS and Ubuntu. Arkime includes tools for capturing and indexing PCAP traffic, and also provides tools for quick access to indexed data. The use of a standard PCAP format greatly simplifies integration with existing traffic analyzers such as Wireshark. The volume of stored data is limited only by the size of the available disk array. Session metadata is indexed in a cluster based on the Elasticsearch or OpenSearch engine . The traffic capture component operates in multi-threaded mode and solves the tasks of monitoring, writing PCAP dumps to disk, parsing captured packets and sending metadata about sessions (SPI, Stateful packet inspection) and protocols to the Elasticsearch/OpenSearch cluster. It is also possible to store PCAP files in encrypted form. To analyze the accumulated information, a web interface is offered that allows you to navigate, search and export samples. The web interface provides several viewing modes - from general statistics, connection maps and visual graphs with data on changes in network activity to tools for studying individual sessions, analyzing activity in the context of the protocols used and parsing data from PCAP dumps. An API is also provided that allows you to pass data about captured packets in PCAP format and disassembled sessions in JSON format to third-party applications. https://arkime.com/release-v5 A new model for generating Ubuntu Touch releases: 12/02/2024 The UBports project, which took over the development of the Ubuntu Touch mobile platform after Canonical abandoned it, announced a transition to a new model for generating releases. Instead of releases in the form of “OTA-number branch_name”, new versions of the Ubuntu Touch firmware are released using the “year.month.update” scheme, where the year and month correspond to the time of a major release based on a new branch of Ubuntu. The update number corresponds to a minor release that includes only fixes and minor improvements. Major releases are planned to be published once every six months, and intermediate releases - every two months. The new scheme will be applied after updating the project to the Ubuntu 24.04 packages. The first version of Ubuntu Touch based on Ubuntu 24.04 is scheduled to be released in June and assigned the number 24.6.0. When corrective updates are generated, they will be assigned the number 24.6.1, 24.6.2, etc. In 6 months, around December 2024, Ubuntu Touch 24.12.0 will be released, which will offer new features and changes from Ubuntu 24.10. Each major version will be discontinued one month after the new major version is formed. Since the transition from the current branch, based on Ubuntu 20.04, to Ubuntu 24.04, it requires a lot more work and additional stabilization, the Ubuntu Touch Focal branch is planned to be supported in parallel for some time along with the new Ubuntu Touch 24.6 branch. In particular, they plan to generate updates for Ubuntu Touch OTA-5 Focal, OTA-6 Focal, etc., until the new branch is completely stabilized. At the same time, OTA updates for Ubuntu Touch Focal will only include bug fixes and vulnerabilities, and new functionality will be developed in the Ubuntu Touch 24.6 branch. https://ubports.com/en/blog/ubports-news-1/post/announcement-of-release-model-changes-3920 FreeBSD will stop supporting 32-bit: 12/02/2024 John Baldwin, on behalf of the FreeBSD Core Team, issued a warning about the end of support for 32-bit platforms. The FreeBSD 15 branch plans to discontinue the armv6, i386, and powerpc platforms, and the FreeBSD 16 branch plans to discontinue support for the remaining 32-bit armv7 platform. The ability to build 32-bit programs and use the COMPAT_FREEBSD32 mode to run 32-bit executables in a 64-bit kernel-based environment will remain at least until the end of the FreeBSD 16 branch lifecycle. There are no plans to remove the ability to run 32-bit programs from 64-bit ones There are no FreeBSD kernel builds yet. Reasons for ending support for 32-bit architectures include the decline in popularity of 32-bit installations, a shift in the hardware market toward 64-bit systems, the decommissioning of 32-bit hardware, and the project's lack of resources to support legacy platforms. https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-announce/2024-February/000117.html Regolith Desktop Environment 3.1: 13/02/2024 The Regolith Desktop 3.1 desktop environment, developed by the developers of the Linux distribution of the same name, is out. Regolith is based on GNOME session management technologies, the i3 window manager, Picom and Sway composite servers, the i3bar, the rofication notification system, the i3status-rs status bar, and the ilia program launcher interface. The project is distributed under the GPLv3 license. Packages for Ubuntu and Debian have been prepared for download. The project is positioned as a modern desktop environment, developed to perform common actions faster by optimizing workflows and eliminating unnecessary clutter. The goal is to provide a functional yet minimalistic interface that can be customized and expanded based on the user's preferences. Regolith may be of interest to beginners who are accustomed to traditional window systems but want to try frame-based (tiled) window layout techniques. https://www.freelists.org/post/regolith-linux/Regolith-Desktop-31-release-announcement Free versions of VMware vSphere Hypervisor has ceased: 13/02/2024 Following the cessation of the sale of perpetual licenses, Broadcom, which acquired the VMware business last November, has stopped distributing free versions of VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi 7.x and 8.x). Free versions were limited by the number of processor cores and memory size involved, and did not include advanced features. However, the basic functionality was present in them, which made them popular for small, personal and experimental implementations. No alternative products provided. https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518 OpenVPN 2.6.9 update with license change: 13/02/2024 A new release of OpenVPN 2.6.9 has been prepared, a package for creating virtual private networks that allows you to make an encrypted connection between two client machines or provide a centralized VPN server for the simultaneous operation of several clients. The new version is notable for its relicensing. The project code has been transferred from using a pure GPLv2 license to a combined license , in which the GPLv2 text is expanded with an exception that allows linking with code under the Apache 2.0 license, which is impossible under normal conditions without relicensing the code due to incompatibility between the GPLv2 and Apache 2.0 licenses. The exception allows you to link OpenVPN code with code from libraries distributed under the Apache 2.0 license and distribute the combined derivative work without complying with the GPLv2 requirement to distribute linked libraries under the same license, but still subject to all other terms, such as providing source code for the derivative work. The primary focus of the change is to enable linking with the OpenSSL library, which is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. All OpenVPN code that could not be translated to the new licensing terms, for example due to the inability to contact the authors, has been removed or completely rewritten. https://github.com/OpenVPN/openvpn/releases/tag/v2.6.9 GhostBSD Release 24.01.1: 14/02/2024 The release of the desktop-oriented distribution GhostBSD 24.01.1 , built on FreeBSD 14-STABLE and offering the MATE user environment, has been published. Separately, the community creates unofficial builds with Xfce. By default, GhostBSD uses the ZFS file system. Both work in Live mode and installation on hard drives are supported (using its own ginstall installer, written in Python). Boot images are created for x86_64 architecture (2.5 GB). https://www.ghostbsd.org/news/GhostBSD_24.01.1_Now_Available POC for uninstalled application handler in Ubuntu: 14/02/2024 Researchers from Aqua Security drew attention to the possibility of an attack on users of Ubuntu, using the implementation features of the “ command-not-found ” handler, which provides a hint if an attempt is made to launch a program that is not in the system. The problem is that when evaluating commands to run that are not present in the system, “command-not-found” uses not only packages from the standard repositories, but snap packages from the snapcraft.io directory when choosing recommendations . When making a recommendation based on the contents of the snapcraft.io directory, the “command-not-found” handler does not take into account package status and only covers packages added to the directory by untrusted users. Thus, an attacker can place in snapcraft.io a package with hidden malicious content and a name that overlaps with existing DEB packages, programs that were not originally in the repository, or fictitious applications whose names reflect typical typos and user errors when typing the names of popular utilities. https://www.aquasec.com/blog/snap-trap-the-hidden-dangers-within-ubuntus-package-suggestion-system/ FreeNginx,: 14/02/2024 Maxim Dunin , one of the three active key developers of Nginx, announced the creation of a new fork - FreeNginx. Unlike the Angie project, which also forked Nginx, the new fork will be developed solely as a non-commercial community project. FreeNginx's stated goal is to ensure Nginx development is free from arbitrary corporate interference. The reason for the creation of the new project was disagreement with the policy of the management of the F5 company, which owns the Nginx project. F5, without the consent of the developer community, changed its security policy and switched to the practice of assigning CVE identifiers to mark issues that potentially pose a threat to user security as vulnerabilities (Maxim was against assigning CVEs to these errors, since they are present in experimental and non-default code ). After the Moscow office was closed in 2022, Maxim retired from F5, but under a separate agreement retained his role in development and continued to develop and oversee the Nginx project as a volunteer. According to Maxim, changing the security policy is contrary to the agreement and he can no longer control the changes that developers from the F5 company make to Nginx, therefore he can no longer consider Nginx as an open and free project developed for the common good. https://freenginx.org/en/support.html Auto-cpufreq 2.2.0: 15/02/2024 A new release of the auto-cpufreq 2.2.0 utility has been published, designed to automatically optimize CPU speed and power consumption in a system. The utility monitors the state of the laptop battery, CPU load, CPU temperature and system activity, and depending on the situation and selected options, dynamically activates energy saving or high performance modes. It supports work on devices with Intel, AMD and ARM processors. A GTK-based graphical interface or a console utility can be used for control. The code is written in Python and distributed under the LGPLv3 license. Auto-cpufreq can be used to automatically extend the battery life of laptops without permanently cutting down any features. Unlike the TLP utility, auto-cpufreq not only allows you to set energy-saving modes when the device is running autonomously, but also temporarily enable high performance mode (turbo boost) when an increase in system load is detected. The new version adds support for configuring and overriding EPP (Energy Performance Preference) parameters, as well as setting restrictions related to battery charge (for example, to extend battery life, you can configure charging to turn off after reaching 90%). https://github.com/AdnanHodzic/auto-cpufreq/releases/tag/v2.2.0 Mixxx 2.4: 16/02/2024 After two and a half years of development, Mixxx 2.4 has been released, providing a complete set of tools for professional DJ work and creating music mixes. Ready-made builds are prepared for Linux, Windows and macOS. The source code is distributed under the GPLv2 license. https://mixxx.org/news/2024-02-16-mixxx-2-4-0-features/ The openSUSE project has revealed plans for the development of a new Agama installer 02/17/2024 10:54 The developers of the openSUSE project have published a plan for the development of a new installer, Agama (formerly D-Installer), which is being developed to replace the classic SUSE and openSUSE installation interface, and is notable for separating the user interface from the YaST internals. Agama provides the ability to use various frontends, for example, a frontend for managing the installation via a web interface. To test the new installer, live builds are being created for the x86_64 and ARM64 architectures, supporting the installation of a continuously updated build of openSUSE Tumbleweed , as well as editions of SUSE ALP, openSUSE MicroOS and openSUSE MicroOS Desktop, built on isolated containers. There are two major updates to Agama scheduled for this year. The first is planned to be presented in mid-April, and the second in mid-July. The July update will focus on increasing the flexibility and functionality associated with automated, unattended installations. The goal of the development is to make Agama possible to use as an alternative to the AutoYaST toolkit . https://news.opensuse.org/2024/02/16/exploring-agamas-roadmap/ Open Image Denoise 2.2: 17/02/2024 Intel has published a new release of oidn 2.2 (Open Image Denoise) project , which is a collection of filters for removing noise from images prepared using ray tracing rendering systems. Open Image Denoise is being developed as part of a larger project, oneAPI Rendering Toolkit, aimed at developing software visualization tools for scientific calculations ( SDVis - Software Defined Visualization), including the Embree ray tracing library, the GLuRay photorealistic rendering system , the OSPRay distributed ray tracing platform and the OpenSWR software rasterization system The code is written in C++ and published under the Apache 2.0 license. The project's goal is to provide high-quality, efficient, and easy-to-use denoising features that can be used to improve the quality of ray tracing results. The proposed filters allow, based on the result of a shortened ray tracing cycle, to obtain a final level of quality comparable to the result of a more expensive and time-consuming process of detailed rendering. Open Image Denoise eliminates random noise, such as from Monte Carlo RT (MCRT) ray tracing. To achieve high quality rendering in those algorithms, it is necessary to trace a very large number of rays, otherwise noticeable artifacts in the form of random noise appear in the resulting image. The use of Open Image Denoise allows you to reduce the number of necessary calculations when calculating each pixel by several orders of magnitude. As a result, you can generate an initially noisy image much faster, but then bring it to acceptable quality using fast noise reduction algorithms. If you have the appropriate equipment, the proposed tools can even be used for interactive ray tracing with on-the-fly noise removal. https://github.com/OpenImageDenoise/oidn/releases/tag/v2.2.0 Release of DuckDB 0.10.0: 18/02/2024 A new release of the DBMS, DuckDB 0.10.0 is presented, combining properties of SQLite, such as compactness, the ability to connect via an embedded library, storing the database in one file and a convenient CLI interface, with tools and optimizations for executing analytical queries covering a significant part of the stored data, for example, that aggregate the entire contents of tables or merge several large tables. The project code is distributed under the MIT license. The development is still at the stage of forming experimental releases, since the storage format has not yet been stabilized and changes from version to version. DuckDB provides an advanced SQL dialect that includes additional capabilities for handling very complex and time-consuming queries. The use of complex types (arrays, structures, unions) and the ability to execute arbitrary and nested correlating subqueries are supported. It supports running multiple queries simultaneously, running queries directly from CSV and Parquet files. It is possible to import from the PostgreSQL DBMS. In addition to the shell code from SQLite, the project uses a parser from PostgreSQL in a separate library, a Date Math component from MonetDB , its own implementation of window functions (based on the Segment Tree Aggregation algorithm), a regular expression processor based on the RE2 library , its own query optimizer, and an MVCC control mechanism simultaneous execution of tasks (Multi-Version Concurrency Control), as well as a vectorized query execution engine based on the Hyper-Pipelining Query Execution algorithm, which allows large sets of values to be processed at once in one operation. https://duckdb.org/2024/02/13/announcing-duckdb-0100.html ugrep 5.0: 18/02/2024 The ugrep 5.0 project has been released, developing an advanced version of the grep utility for searching data in files. Additionally, an interactive ug shell is provided with a user interface that provides a preview of the surrounding rows. In terms of performance, ugrep is many times faster than grep. The project code is written in C++ and distributed under the BSD license. The utility combines the most useful features of the grep program with advanced functionality, such as the ability to use Perl-like regular expressions, fuzzy search, hex dump mode, nested search, text encoding transcoding, search in archives (zip, 7z, tar, pax , cpio), compressed files (gz, Z, bz2, lzma, xz, lz4, zstd, brotli), document formats (pdf, doc, docx, odt, epub, rtf), as well as searching for metadata in images and fields in certificates. You can speed up searching through the contents of directories using an index separately created by the ugrep-indexer utility. https://github.com/Genivia/ugrep/releases/tag/v5.0.0