First release of Wolvic browser edition with Chromium engine: 23/09/2024 The Wolvic Chromium 1.0 browser has been released, which uses the Chromium engine instead of the Mozilla Gecko engine and Firefox technologies. The Wolvic browser (formerly Firefox Reality) is designed for use in augmented and virtual reality systems, provides a 3D interface for navigating sites using a 3D headset and in addition to traditional flat pages, allows web developers to create three-dimensional web applications for virtual reality systems using the WebXR, WebAR and WebVR APIs. Navigation in the browser interface is done using VR controllers or eye tracking, and data entry in web forms is done using a virtual keyboard or a voice input system that allows you to fill out forms and send search queries using the speech recognition engine being developed in Mozilla. You can view spatial videos in the browser, filmed in 360-degree mode. Ready-made builds are generated for the Android platform and support 3D headsets like Huawei VR Glass, Huawei Vision Glass, VIVE Focus, Lynx R1, Lenovo A3, Magic Leap 2, Meta Quest 2/3/Pro, Oculus Quest and Pico 4/4E. In testing mode, you can run on a regular Android smartphone without a 3D accessory. https://wolvic.com/blog/chromium_release_1.0/

MPV Video Player Release 0.39: 23/09/2024 After five months of development, the open source video player MPV 0.39 has been released, forked from the MPlayer2 project codebase in 2013. MPV focuses on developing new features, without worrying about maintaining compatibility with MPlayer. MPV code is licensed under LGPLv2.1+, some parts remain under GPLv2, but the transition to LGPL is almost complete and the “–enable-lgpl” option can be used to disable the remaining GPL code. https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/releases/tag/v0.39.0

A console Live build of CentOS Stream MIN: 24/09/2024 The developers of the CentOS distribution have presented a new build “MIN”, a bootable Live-environment CentOS Stream build, working only in console mode. To install the loaded system on the disk, the utility “install_to_hard_drive” is offered, providing a text interface. The size of the build is 1.2 GB. In addition to MIN, the project also forms Live-builds of Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE, MATE, Xfce and MAX (a collection of different graphical environments). https://blog.centos.org/2024/09/september-2024-news/

OpenWrt 23.05.5: 25/09/2024 An update to the OpenWrt 23.05.5 distribution has been released, aimed at various network devices such as routers, switches, and access points. OpenWrt supports many different platforms and architectures and has a build system that allows for simple and convenient cross-compilation, including various components in the build, which makes it easy to create ready-made firmware or disk image with the desired set of pre-installed packages adapted to specific tasks. Currently, builds are created for 35 target platforms. https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-announce/2024-September/000058.html

OpenBSD Bans Null Characters in Shell Scripts: 25/09/2024 Theo de Raadt added a change that prevents the use of the null character in shell scripts, processed by the default ksh shell. Null characters in scripts will now cause execution to terminate with an error unless they are included in the data appended at the end of the file following the code. The change is included in the OpenBSD-Current branch, which will form the basis for the OpenBSD 7.6 release. It is noted that such a change will eliminate the ambiguity of behavior associated with the handling of the null character in code written in C and using strings where the null byte is used to indicate the end of the string. A study of the handling of the null character in various shells showed that in each of them, one or more cases were found where the null byte in the input data or variable contents led to behavior different from other shells, for example, some shells ignored it, some replaced it with a space, and some terminated further parsing of the script or stopped its execution. https://marc.info/?l%3Dopenbsd-cvs%26m%3D172712621620348%26w%3D2

ELKS 0.8: 25/09/2024 The ELKS 0.8 (Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset) project has been released. It develops a Linux-like operating system for 16-bit Intel 8086, 8088, 80188, 80186, 80286 and NEC V20/V30 processors. The OS can be used on old IBM-PC XT/AT class computers, the Soviet MK-88 computer, the vintage Monotech NuXT 2.0 board and on SBC/SoC/FPGAs recreating the IA16 architecture. The project has been in development since 1995 and began as a fork of the Linux kernel for devices without a memory management unit (MMU). The source code is distributed under the GPLv2 license. The system is supplied in the form of images for writing to floppy disks or running in the QEMU emulator. In addition to the Linux kernel adapted for 16-bit systems, the project is developing a set of standard utilities (ps, bc, tar, du, diff, netstat, mount, sed, xargs, grep, find, telnet, meminfo, etc.), including a bash-compatible command interpreter, a console window manager screen, text editors Kilo and vi, and a graphical environment based on the X server Nano-X . Two network stack options are offered - the standard TCP/IP stack of the Linux kernel and the ktcp stack, which works in the user space. Ethernet adapters compatible with NE2K and SMC are supported. It is also possible to create communication channels via a serial port using SLIP and CSLIP. Minix v1, FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 are supported. The boot process is configured via the /etc/rc.d/rc.sys script. The format of the executable files is borrowed from Minix OS . https://github.com/jbruchon/elks/releases/tag/v0.8.0

PostgreSQL 17 Release: 26/09/2024 After a year of development, a new stable branch of the PostgreSQL 17 database management system has been released. Updates for the new branch will be released for five years until November 2029. Support for PostgreSQL 12.x, the oldest of the supported branches, will end on November 14. http://www.postgresql.org/support/versioning/

The Tor Project and the Tails Distribution Merger: 26/09/2024 The developers of the anonymous Tor network and the Tails distribution have announced a merger of the projects. Further development of the Tails distribution will be carried out as part of the Tor project, which will simplify collaboration, increase viability, reduce overhead costs and expand the capabilities to counter digital threats. The Tails distribution (The Amnesic Incognito Live System) is based on Debian, comes with the GNOME desktop and is designed for anonymous network access. All connections except traffic through the Tor network are blocked by default by a packet filter. By joining a larger organization that champions the same ideas and has common goals, the Tails development team will be able to focus on developing and improving the distribution rather than being distracted by routine organizational and infrastructure issues. It is noted that the projects have been closely cooperating since 2015 and the merger was a natural step after Tails outgrew the capabilities of its organizational structure. https://www.torproject.org/

Tcl 9.0 release: 27/09/2024 Tcl/Tk 9.0, a dynamic programming language distributed together with the cross-platform Tk library of basic graphical interface elements, has been released 27 years after the formation of the 8.0 branch. Tcl is mainly used as a platform for creating user interfaces and as an embedded language, while Tcl is also suitable for rapid prototyping, web development, creating network applications, system administration and testing. The project code is distributed under the BSD license. A significant change in the version number is due to changes that break backward compatibility. Tcl 9.0 changes the logic of applying namespaces to variables - instead of the global namespace, the local namespace is now applied by default. In the case of encoding mismatch during input/output, an error is now returned. The “~” character in file paths is no longer interpreted as the user's home directory. When formatting numbers, the tcl_precision value is no longer taken into account. http://tcl.tk/

Improving FreeBSD Performance on Laptops: 28/09/2024 The FreeBSD Foundation and Quantum Leap Research have launched a project to improve support for laptops in FreeBSD. The work will be carried out in collaboration with leading manufacturers, including Dell, AMD, and Framework. The project has been allocated $750,000 in its first stage, with a total investment of $1 million. The stated goal of the project is to bring FreeBSD to a form that meets the needs of modern laptop users, while maintaining the platform's inherent security, performance, and simplicity. In order to compete with other systems, the FreeBSD platform must provide transparency during use - everything must work right out of the box, without the need to change settings. Problem areas that require improvement for ordinary users include support for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, sleep mode, digital microphones, hardware sound control buttons, and input/output devices. Special attention will be paid to promoting FreeBSD as an operating system for laptops used in enterprises. Competitive advantages of FreeBSD in this area may be stability, predictability and security. Among the weaknesses of FreeBSD, which hinder its use on laptops in a corporate environment, are limited support for disk encryption, sleep mode and new wireless standards. It is assumed that with high-quality work on laptops, the FreeBSD platform has the potential to become a reliable and secure alternative to Linux and Windows in corporate systems. https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/why-laptop-support-why-now-freebsds-strategic-move-toward-broader-adoption/

Second alpha release of COSMIC: 28/09/2024 System76, the company that develops the Linux distribution Pop!_OS , has begun testing the second alpha version of the COSMIC desktop environment, written in Rust (not to be confused with the old COSMIC , which was based on GNOME Shell). ISO images for systems with NVIDIA ( 3 GB ) and Intel/AMD ( 2.5 GB ) GPUs, built on the test build of the Pop!_OS 24.04 distribution, are offered for testing. Ready-made packages for Fedora , NixOS , Arch Linux , openSUSE , Serpent OS , Redox and CachyOS are also available. COSMIC is being developed as a universal project, not tied to a specific distribution and corresponding to Freedesktop specifications. To build the interface, COSMIC uses the Iced library, which uses safe types, a modular architecture and a reactive programming model, and also offers an architecture familiar to developers familiar with the Elm declarative interface language. Several rendering engines are provided, supporting Vulkan, Metal, DX12, OpenGL 2.1+ and OpenGL ES 2.0+. Developers are offered a ready-made set of widgets, the ability to create asynchronous handlers and use adaptive layout of interface elements depending on the window and screen size. The project is also developing a cosmic-comp composite server based on Wayland. https://blog.system76.com/post/cosmic-alpha-2-press-release

Release of BusyBox 1.37: 29/09/2024 After almost two years of development, BusyBox 1.37 is released, implementing a set of standard UNIX utilities, designed as a single executable file and optimized for minimal consumption of system resources with a package size of less than 1 MB. The first release of the new 1.37 branch is positioned as unstable, full stabilization will be provided in version 1.37.1, which is expected in a few months. The project code is distributed under the GPLv2 license. The modular nature of BusyBox makes it possible to create a single unified executable file containing an arbitrary set of utilities implemented in the package (each utility is available as a symbolic link to this file). The size, composition and functionality of the utility collection can be varied depending on the needs and capabilities of the embedded platform for which the build is being performed. The package is self-sufficient; when statically building with uclibc, to create a working system on top of the Linux kernel, you only need to create several device files in the /dev directory and prepare configuration files. Compared to the previous release 1.36, the size of the code in RAM in BusyBox 1.37 has increased by 1535 bytes (from 1022792 to 1024327 bytes). http://www.busybox.net/

rTorrent 0.10.0 has been released: 29/09/2024 Five years after the previous release, the console BitTorrent client rTorrent 0.10.0 is available. The program interface is built using the ncurses library and can be used when connecting via SSH in terminal multiplexers such as tmux and screen. One can transfer the client to the background mode, controlled using XMLRPC. rTorrent is compatible with almost all BitTorrent trackers, supports Magnet links, PE (Protocol Encryption), super-seed (Super-seeding), DHT (Distributed Hash Table) and PEX (Peer exchange). The project code is written in C++ and is distributed under the GPLv2 license. The new version includes optimizations that increase throughput and reduce CPU load. The trackers.delay_scrape command has been added to the .rtorrent.rc configuration file, implementing the ability to instantly launch and also solving the problem with crashes when processing thousands of torrents. The build has been adjusted when LTO (Link Time Optimizations) are enabled in the compiler. A serious memory leak when processing RPC commands has been fixed. https://github.com/rakshasa/rtorrent/releases/tag/v0.10.0

qBittorrent 5.0 Released: 30/09/2024 The qBittorrent 5.0 torrent client, has been released. It is written using the Qt toolkit and is being developed as an open alternative to µTorrent, with an interface and functionality similar to it. qBittorrent features include: an integrated search engine, RSS subscription, support for many BEP extensions, remote control via a web interface, a sequential download mode in a specified order, advanced settings for torrents, peers and trackers, a bandwidth planner and IP filter, an interface for creating torrents, and support for UPnP and NAT-PMP. The project code is written in C++ and is distributed under the GPLv2+ license. Builds are generated for Linux, Windows and macOS. https://www.qbittorrent.org/news.php

FFmpeg 7.1 Released: 30/09/2024 After six months of development, the FFmpeg 7.1 multimedia package is available, including a set of applications and a collection of libraries for operating on various multimedia formats (recording, converting and decoding audio and video formats). The package is written in C and distributed under the LGPL and GPL licenses. https://ffmpeg.org/index.html%23news

Phosh 0.42.0 released: 30/09/2024 Phosh 0.42 has been released, a mobile desktop shell based on GNOME technologies and the GTK library. The environment was initially developed by Purism as an analogue of GNOME Shell for the Librem 5 smartphone, but then became one of the unofficial GNOME projects and is used in postmarketOS , Mobian , Droidian , some firmware for Pine64 devices and the Fedora edition for smartphones. Phosh uses the Phoc composite server running on top of Wayland, as well as its own on-screen keyboard squeekboard. The project's code is distributed under the GPLv3+ license. https://phosh.mobi/releases/rel-0.42.0/

Apple has published the open source components used in macOS 15: 01/10/2024 Apple has released the source code for the low-level system components of the macOS 15 ( Sequoia ) operating system, which use free software, including parts of Darwin and other non-GUI components, programs, and libraries. A total of 171 source packages have been released ( the crontabs package has been removed from the macOS 14.x branch ). Among other things, the XNU kernel code is available, that is published as code snippets associated with the next release of macOS. XNU is part of the open source Darwin project and is a hybrid kernel combining the Mach kernel, components from the FreeBSD project, and the IOKit C++ API for writing drivers. In addition, open components used in the iOS 18.0 mobile platform have been published. The publication includes two packages - WebKit and libiconv. https://opensource.apple.com/releases/ Oracle Releases Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R7U3: 02/10/2024 Oracle has released the third functional update for the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R7 kernel, which is being developed for use in the Oracle Linux distribution as an alternative to the standard kernel package from Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The kernel is available for the x86_64 and ARM64 (aarch64) architectures. The kernel source code, including a breakdown into individual patches, is published in Oracle's public Git repository. The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 7 package is based on the Linux kernel 5.15, supplemented with optimizations, fixes and new features, such as DTrace integration and improved Btrfs support. The kernel is tested for compatibility with most applications running on RHEL and is specially optimized for work with Oracle industrial software and hardware. Installation and src packages with the UEK R7U3 kernel are prepared for Oracle Linux 8.x and 9.x . https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/post/unbreakable-enterprise-kernel-release-7-update-3-delivers-enhanced-performance-and-security

Nitrux 3.7.0 release: 02/10/2024 Nitrux 3.7.0 has been released, built on Debian, KDE technologies and the OpenRC initialization system. The project offers its own NX Desktop desktop, which is an add-on to KDE Plasma. Based on the Maui library, a set of typical user applications are being developed for the distribution, which can be used both on desktop systems and on mobile devices. To install additional applications, AppImages is promoted. The size of the full boot image is 3.2 GB. The project's developments are distributed under free licenses. The NX Desktop offers a different style design, its own implementation of the system tray, notification center, and various plasmoids, such as a network connection configurator and a multimedia applet for adjusting the volume and managing the playback of multimedia content. Applications created using the MauiKit framework include the Index file manager (Dolphin can also be used), the Note text editor, the Station terminal emulator, the VVave music player, the Clip video player, the NX Software Center application control center, and the Pix image viewer. https://nxos.org/changelog/release-announcement-nitrux-3-7-0/

Release of Manjaro Linux 24.1: 02/10/2024 Manjaro Linux 24.1, based on Arch Linux and aimed at beginners, is out. The distribution is notable for its simplified and user-friendly installation process, support for automatic hardware detection and installation of the drivers required for its operation. Manjaro is supplied as live builds with the KDE (4.1 GB), GNOME (4 GB) and Xfce (3.8 GB) graphical environments, created for the x86_64 architecture and various boards based on ARM processors. With the participation of the community, builds with Budgie, Cinnamon, Deepin, LXQt and i3 are additionally being developed . Manjaro uses its own BoxIt toolkit to manage repositories, which is based on Git. The repository is maintained on a rolling update basis, but new versions undergo an additional stabilization stage. In addition to its own repository, there is support for using the AUR (Arch User Repository). The distribution comes with a graphical installer and a graphical interface for configuring the system. https://forum.manjaro.org/t/manjaro-24-1-xahea-released/168699

OpenWrt One Router: 03/10/2024 The first official version of the OpenWrt One/AP-24.XY wireless router, developed jointly by the OpenWrt and Banana Pi projects, has been announced for sale to the public. The OpenWrt community designed the device and prepared the software, while the Banana Pi community took on the work of manufacturing and distributing it through its sales network. The router is available for order via Aliexpress Global for 99 euros. A certain percentage of each unit sold is donated to the OpenWrt community. To reduce the cost of the project, the OpenWrt One is based on the same hardware as the Banana Pi R4 boards, which are equipped with open firmware (except for the wireless chip firmware), are supplied with U-Boot and are supported in the Linux kernel. The device uses the MediaTek MT7981B SoC (Filogic 820) with a dual-core Cortex-A53 1.3 GHz CPU and a MediaTek MT7976C wireless chip (Wi-Fi 6, 2×2 2.4 GHz + 3×3/2×2 + DFS 5Ghz). The router is equipped with 1 GB of RAM (DDR4), 256 MB of SPI NAND Flash and 16 MB of SPI NOR Flash. The device comes with two Ethernet ports (2.5 GbE + 1 GbE), USB 2.0 host Type-A, USB-C (Holtek HT42B534-2 UART with USB converter, console and CDC-ACM support), JTAG 10-pin and a mikroBUS expansion slot. To connect additional drives, there is a M.2 slot for NVMe SSD (PCIe gen 2 x1). There is support for PoE 802.3at/af. Schematics and PCB pinouts are available for download. The case is designed in a minimalist style and contains, power, Ethernet and USB connectors, only two buttons (reset and user button), as well as a mechanical switch for selecting the boot mode (recovery or standard mode). Four LEDs are used to indicate the status. The board underlying the router has a size of 148 x 100.5 mm and is fully compatible with cases for the Banana Pi BPI-R4. The first version of the device that went on sale is intended for testing by developers and enthusiasts, but is not yet ready for end users. To simplify the experiments, the device has several levels of protection against “bricking”: booting from a separate Flash in recovery mode, easy access to the console and an external hardware watchdog monitor based on the EM Microelectronic EM6324 chip, connected via GPIO. To increase reliability, OpenWrt One uses two different types of flash drives at the same time: NAND for the U-Boot bootloader and Linux image, and write-protected NOR Flash with an additional bootloader and recovery image. A special hardware switch is provided to select booting from NOR or NAND. The default firmware is OpenWrt-based, but if desired, you can use the M.2 slot for NVMe and boot other Linux distributions from NVMe. The NVMe slot can also be used for network storage. https://banana-pi.org/en/product-news/557.html

Release of Ardour 8.8: 03/10/2024 Ardour 8.8 has been published. It is designed for multi-channel recording, processing and mixing of sound. Ardour provides a multi-track time scale, unlimited level of rollback of changes during the entire life, working with a file (even after closing the program) and support for various hardware interfaces. The program is positioned as a free analogue of professional tools ProTools, Nuendo, Pyramix and Sequoia. The code is distributed under the GPLv2 license. In the near future, unofficial builds for Linux will be formed in the Flatpak format . https://github.com/Ardour/ardour/releases/tag/8.8

Samsung Adapts Tizen Mobile Platform to RISC-V Architecture: 04/10/2024 Samsung announced at the Samsung Developer Conference 2024, that it is porting its open-source Tizen mobile platform to devices with RISC-V-based processors. Samsung is exploring the use of RISC-V in smart TVs and other consumer devices, and is also collaborating with SiFive to prototype TVs with RISC-V cores in the SiFive Performance series. One such prototype, built on the SiFive Performance P470 RISC-V processor and running firmware with the Tizen platform, was demonstrated at the exhibition. Tizen code is licensed under GPLv2, Apache 2.0 and BSD, and is developed under the auspices of the Linux Foundation, mainly by Samsung. The platform continues to develop the MeeGo and LiMO projects and is distinguished by the ability to use Web API and web technologies (HTML5/JavaScript/CSS) to create mobile applications. The graphical environment is built on the Wayland protocol and snoppets of the Enlightenment project, Systemd is used to manage services. RISC-V provides an open and flexible machine instruction set that allows microprocessors to be designed for any application without requiring royalties or imposing conditions on use. RISC-V allows for the creation of completely open SoCs and processors. Currently, several dozen microprocessor core variants, more than a hundred SoCs, and chips in production are being developed based on the RISC-V specification by various companies and communities under various free licenses (BSD, MIT, Apache 2.0) . RISC-V support has been present since the releases of Glibc 2.27, binutils 2.30, gcc 7, and Linux kernel 4.15. https://www.sifive.com/blog/samsung-highlights-work-to-bring-risc-v-to-tizen-

DogLinux build to check hardware: 05/10/2024 An update of the specialized DogLinux distribution build (Debian LiveCD in the style of Puppy Linux) has been published. It is based on Debian 12 “Bookworm” and is intended for testing and servicing PCs and laptops. The distribution includes applications such as GPUTest, Unigine Heaven, CPU-X, GSmartControl, GParted, Partimage, Partclone, TestDisk, ddrescue, WHDD, DMDE. The distribution allows you to check the performance of the equipment, load test the processor and video card, check SMART HDD and NVMe SSD. The size of the Live image , loaded from USB drives, is 1.36 GB ( torrent ). https://gumanzoy.blogspot.com/2024/10/20241004-doglinux.html

Qmmp Music Player: 05/10/2024 After a two-year break, the Qmmp 1.7.0 and Qmmp 2.2 music players have been released (Qmmp 2.2 continues the development of the branch that switched to Qt 6, while Qt 5.15 is enough for version 1.7). The player includes two interfaces: a “simple” one using standard elements, and a “classic” one that copies the Xmms/Winamp/Audacious interface. OSS4 (FreeBSD), ALSA (Linux), Pulse Audio, JACK, QtMultimedia, Icecast, WaveOut (Win32), DirectSound (Win32), and WASAPI (Win32) can be used to output sound. The code is written in C++ and is distributed under the GPLv2 license. Ready-made packages have been created for Ubuntu. At the same time, collections of plugins that are not part of the main package have been created - Qmmp Plugin Pack 1.7.0 and 2.2.0. http://qmmp.ylsoftware.com/index.php

The fwupd 2.0.0 firmware tool is now available: 05/10/2024 Richard Hughes, the creator of the PackageKit project and an active contributor to GNOME, has released fwupd 2.0.0, a package that provides a background process for firmware updates and the fwupdmgr utility for managing firmware, checking for new versions, and downloading firmware. The project's code is written in C and is licensed under the LGPLv2.1 license. The project provides OEMs and firmware developers with a service for uploading firmware to a special centralized LVFS (Linux Vendor Firmware Service) catalog, which can be used in Linux distributions using the fwupd toolkit. Currently, the catalog offers firmware for more than 1,600 devices from 160 manufacturers. Using a centralized catalog eliminates the need for manufacturers to create packages for distributions and allows firmware to be transferred in a “.cab” archive with additional metadata, which is also used when publishing firmware for Windows. fwupd supports automatic firmware update mode, without the need for any user action, and the operation execution after user confirmation or request. Fwupd and LVFS are used in RHEL, Fedora, Ubuntu, SUSE, Debian and many other distributions for automated firmware updates, and are also supported in the GNOME Software and KDE Discover application managers. At the same time, fwupd is not limited to desktop systems and is suitable for updating firmware on smartphones, tablets, servers and Internet of Things devices. https://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2024/10/04/fwupd-2-0-0/

Mitmproxy 11 HTTPS analyzer releases with HTTP/3 support: 06/10/2024 Mitmproxy 11 project is out. It develops a toolkit for intercepting traffic inside connections established via HTTPS, with the ability to inspect, modify and replay traffic. The main purpose of Mitmproxy is to monitor traffic in corporate systems and diagnose problems, for example, identifying hidden network activity of applications. The source code of the project is written in Python and distributed under the MIT license. To analyze HTTPS traffic, Mitmproxy is placed on a transit node, where it intercepts client requests and translates them into requests sent from itself to the target server. Mitmproxy establishes a regular HTTPS connection with the server requested during the client session, and a dummy connection is established with the client on behalf of the target server with a fake SSL certificate generated for the client on the fly. The traffic received from the client is redirected to the target server, and the received responses are translated back to the client. Several methods are supported for redirecting traffic through mitmproxy , such as specifying the mitmproxy address as an HTTP proxy in the browser settings, working as a SOCKS5 proxy, using it as a reverse proxy in front of the HTTP server, and organizing transparent forwarding using packet filter rules or routing wrapping. In order to prevent the fake certificate used when connecting to the client from causing the browser to display warnings about connection security issues, the user is offered a choice to install the mitmproxy root certificate in the system, which can be done either manually or by opening a special mitm.it host in the browser. https://mitmproxy.org/posts/releases/mitmproxy-11/

Release of Cage 0.2: 06/10/2024 The Cage 0.2 composite server is now available. It uses Wayland and is designed to run standalone applications in kiosk mode. Cage is used in home automation systems, demonstration stands, electronic signs, and self-service terminals. The project code is written in C and is licensed under the MIT license. The interface in Cage is limited to one application, and the user cannot go beyond this application and access the operating system. The screen is tied to one output device, and all auxiliary dialogs are displayed in the center of the screen without the ability to move or change the size. Inserting and retrieving data through the clipboard is supported. Applications are directly linked to the launched graphical environment, for example, to create a kiosk with the Epiphany browser, it is enough to run “cage /usr/bin/epiphany”, and after exiting the program, the composite server also terminates. https://github.com/cage-kiosk/cage/releases/tag/v0.2.0

Linus Torvalds is unhappy with Bcachefs commits again: 07/10/2024 Linus Torvalds has issued a new criticism of the maintenance practices of Bcachefs in the mainline Linux kernel. The gist of the complaint is that Kent Overstreet, the author of Bcachefs, always sends in a lot of changes at the last minute before the next “-RC” release, and this time his changes caused the 6.12-RC1 build to break on big-endian systems when Bcachefs was enabled, because the patches were only tested in Kent's local branch and no other contributors were involved in reviewing them. The pull request was eventually accepted, but a discussion ensued about testing, continuous integration systems, and community engagement, with several people noting that Kent clearly had trouble communicating with other developers and always seemed to think he was right, which was causing problems for the project in the mainline kernel. Linus warned Kent that he was considering simply removing Bcachefs from the mainline kernel, as Kent continued to play alone in his sandbox, not joining in, and unwilling to play by the kernel community's rules. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/172816780614.3194359.10913571563159868953.pr-tracker-bot@kernel.org/T/%23r631c24cd07f5820a4cbff8f25dff1d1a0c3cf2e7

Release of antiX 23.2: 08/10/2024 The lightweight Live distribution, AntiX 23.2 has been published. It is aimed at installation on outdated hardware. The release is based on Debian 12, but is supplied without the system manager systemd and with eudev instead of udev. For initialization, you can use runit or sysvinit. The user environment is using the IceWM window manager by default, but fluxbox, jwm and herbstluftwm are additionally included in the delivery. The size of the iso images are: 2.1 GB (full, includes LibreOffice and 4 window managers - IceWM, fluxbox, jwm and herbstluftwm), 1.2 GB (basic), 564 MB (without graphics) and 249 MB (installation over the network). The builds are prepared for the x86_64 and i386 architectures. The full build offers Linux kernel 6.1.105, and the other builds 5.10.224. The versions of applications have been updated, for example, LibreOffice 24.8.2, Firefox 128.3.0esr, Seamonkey 2.53.19.1. The delivery of the smtube application for watching YouTube has been discontinued. https://antixlinux.com/antix-23-2-released/

Release of MX Linux 23.4: 08/10/2024 The update of the lightweight MX Linux 23.4 distribution, created as a result of the joint work of the communities formed around the antiX and MEPIS projects, is out. The release is based on Debian with improvements from the antiX project and packages from its own repository. The distribution uses the sysVinit initialization system and its own tools for configuring and deploying the system. There are 32- and 64-bit builds ( x86_64 , i386 ) with the Xfce desktop (2.3 GB), as well as 64-bit builds with the KDE desktop (2.8 GB) and builds (1.8 GB) with the Fluxbox window manager, available for download. https://mxlinux.org/blog/mx-23-4-libretto-now-available/

Development of openSUSE Leap 16.0: 08/10/2024 The start of development on the openSUSE Leap 16.0 distribution has been announced. It is built on the technologies of the next major branch of the commercial SLES 16 distribution, which is moving to the new SLFO (SUSE Linux Framework One) platform, previously known as ALP (Adaptable Linux Platform). It is noted that the openSUSE Leap 16.0 branch attempts to combine the traditional capabilities of the distribution with the new SLFO technologies. The new branch is positioned as a traditional distribution, delivered in a fundamentally new form and using packages from SLES 16 and the community-supported Factory repository . openSUSE Leap 16.0 is scheduled for release in October 2025. The openSUSE Leap 15.6 release published in June will be the last release of the 15.x branch, and access to package updates from SLES 15 SP7 is planned to be provided through the Package HUB. Pre-alpha builds of openSUSE Leap 16.0 have been created for testing. Three installation modes are offered: basic, GNOME and KDE. The new Agama installer is used for installation. The SLFO platform is positioned as a continuation of the development of the SUSE Linux Enterprise distribution and is distinguished by the division of the distribution's basic foundation into parts. The main distribution of SUSE 16 will be a stripped-down “host OS” environment, including only the components that are minimally necessary for working on top of the hardware and management. All applications and user space components will be launched not 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/2024/10/07/leap-16-0-prealpha/

OpenBSD 7.6 Released: 08/10/2024 The release of the free UNIX-like operating system OpenBSD 7.6 has been announced. The size of the full installation ISO image of the OpenBSD 7.6 base system is 702 MB. In addition to the operating system itself, the OpenBSD project is known for its components, which have become widespread in other systems and have established themselves as some of the most secure and high-quality solutions. Among them are: LibreSSL ( a fork of OpenSSL), OpenSSH , the PF packet filter , the OpenBGPD and OpenOSPFD routing daemons , the OpenNTPD NTP server , the OpenSMTPD mail server , the tmux text terminal multiplexer (analogous to GNU screen) , the identd daemon with the implementation of the IDENT protocol, a BSDL alternative to the GNU groff package - mandoc , a protocol for organizing fault-tolerant systems CARP (Common Address Redundancy Protocol), a lightweight http server , and an OpenRSYNC file synchronization utility https://www.mail-archive.com/announce@openbsd.org/msg00535.html

Libreboot 20241008 released: 09/10/2024 The free boot firmware Libreboot 20241008 has been published, which has the status of an experimental release focused on the development of functionality (stable releases mainly contain fixes and are published approximately once a year, the last stable release was in June). The project develops a ready-made build of the Coreboot project , providing a replacement for proprietary UEFI and BIOS firmware responsible for initializing the CPU, memory, peripherals and other hardware components, with minimal binary inserts. Libreboot aims to create a system environment that allows for as little proprietary software as possible, not only at the operating system level, but also at the boot firmware level. Libreboot complements Coreboot with tools to simplify use - by end users, creating a ready-made distribution that can be used by any user without special skills. The new version features a shorter code base and a simpler build system - the size of shell scripts used during build has been reduced from 1,482 to 1,159 lines of code without any loss of functionality. Support for the Sony PlayStation 1 game console has been added, with the firmware using the Open BIOS code from the PCSX Redux project instead of CoreBoot. Support has been added for five Dell Latitude laptop models (E6220, E6320, E6330, E6230, E4300) and three Dell OptiPlex PC models (3050 Micro, 7010 SFF, 9010 SFF). Synchronization with the following code bases has been implemented: Coreboot as of July 29, SeaBIOS — June 24, Flashprog — August 2, GRUB — June 17. U-Boot has been updated to version 2024.07. https://libreboot.org/news/libreboot20241008.html

Release of XCP-ng 8.3: 09/10/2024 After four years of development, the XCP-ng 8.3 project has been released, developing a free and open source replacement for the proprietary XenServer platform for deploying cloud infrastructure and managing its operation. XCP-ng recreates the functionality that Citrix excluded from the free Citrix Hypervisor/XenServer, starting with version 7.3 , and allows you to quickly deploy a server and workstation virtualization system, offering tools for centralized management of an unlimited number of servers and virtual machines. A 640 MB installation image is available for download. The system features include the ability to combine several servers into a pool (cluster), high availability tools, snapshot support, and shared resource sharing using XenMotion technology. Live migration of virtual machines between cluster hosts and between different clusters/individual hosts (that do not have a common storage) is supported, as well as live migration of VM disks between storages. The platform can work with a large number of data storage systems and features a simple and intuitive interface for installation and administration. It is noted that the XCP-ng 8.3 branch will be the last in the 8.x series, and the next one will be the 9.0 release, which will mark the project's departure from repeating XenServer in favor of implementing its own vision for building a platform. XCP-ng 9.0 will also target areas of application that the XenServer project has not focused on, such as providing tools for migration from VMware platforms. https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2024/10/07/xcp-ng-8-3/

Ubuntu 24.10 release: 10/10/2024 The Ubuntu 24.10 “Oracular Oriole” release has been published. It is classified as an intermediate release, updates are mdae for 9 months (support will be provided until July 2025). Ready-made installation images have been created for Ubuntu, Ubuntu Server , Lubuntu , Kubuntu , Ubuntu Mate , Ubuntu Budgie , Ubuntu Studio , Xubuntu , UbuntuKylin (edition for China), Ubuntu Unity , Edubuntu and Ubuntu Cinnamon . Xubuntu is provided with components from the Xfce 4.19 branch, which is developing the future stable release Xfce 4.20. For example, the panel, desktop, file manager, configurator and many applets have been updated. The Ubuntu Studio edition has switched to using KDE Plasma 6.1 and the standard Linux kernel built for Ubuntu, instead of the “lowlatency” kernel. A minimal installation mode has been added. The Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration utility for configuring PipeWire has been included. Support for PulseAudio and JACK sound servers has been deprecated. OBS Studio 30.2, Ardour 8.6.0, Audacity 3.6.1, digiKam 8.4.0, Kdenlive 24.08.1, Krita 5.2.3 have been updated. Ubuntu Cinnamon comes with the Cinnamon desktop environment version 6.0.4 , the Cinnamon Control Center configuration tool version 6.2.0, and the Nemo file manager version 6.0.2. Lubuntu ships the LXQt 2.0.0 desktop environment and has migrated to Qt6. KDE 's Breeze theme is replaced by a new Kvantum theme that is reminiscent of the previous design but free of the incompatibilities with the new LXQt branch that Breeze had. In Ubuntu Budgie, the main efforts in the development of the new release were focused on providing support for the Wayland protocol. The Budgie desktop environment has been updated to version 10.9.2 . The menu now shows applications launched in the terminal (such as Neovim). The layout of elements on the desktop has been changed, instead of the Plank panel, a custom panel with the Pocillo design theme is used. Ubuntu Mate uses the MATE 1.26.2 desktop environment release and switches to the Slick Greeter login screen with the ability to customize it in graphical mode. The iso image size has been reduced from 4.1 GB to 3.3 GB by reducing the number of packages required to run the Live session. Kubuntu has migrated to KDE 6 technologies. The releases used are KDE Plasma 6.1.5, KDE Gear 24.08, Qt 6.6, KDE Frameworks 6.5.0. A Wayland-based session is offered by default, and X11 support is moved to the option category. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2024-October/000307.html

Asahi Linux Project Prepares for Running Windows Games: 11/10/2024 The developers of the Asahi Linux project, which is porting Linux to Mac computers with Apple ARM chips, have presented a toolkit for running modern computer games in Linux environments running on systems with the Apple M1 chip. AAA games available in the Steam catalog and compiled for the x86_64 architecture. The toolkit provides integration of the drivers created by the project, implementing the Vulkan 1.3 and OpenCL 3.0 API, with components that provide emulation of the x86_64 architecture and compatibility with Windows. The packages required for operation have already been added to the standard repository of the Fedora Asahi Remix distribution - to launch games, it is enough to update the drivers with the command “dnf upgrade –refresh” and install Steam with the command “dnf install steam” and it will pull in all the necessary dependencies. The stack used to launch games is built on the Vulkan driver Honeykrisp, the FEX emulator , which allows you to run x86 applications on ARM systems, the Wine project and the DXVK and vkd3d-proton layers with the implementation of the DirectX API on top of Vulkan. Due to the additional overhead caused by emulation, 16 GB of RAM is recommended. Alignment issues due to the mismatch between the memory page sizes used by the operating system and those required by applications were resolved by running a second Linux kernel in a virtual environment, built with a different memory page size. The muvm toolkit is used to run games in separate virtual machines with their own kernels . For example, Fallout 4 was able to run in this way. To support games like The Witcher 3 and Ghostrunner that use tessellation and geometry shaders, emulation using compute shaders is used. Features not yet implemented include support for sparse texturing in the Honeykrisp driver, which is required to run some DX12-based games like Cyberpunk 2077. Work is also underway to optimize performance to achieve 60 FPS in an emulated environment. https://rosenzweig.io/blog/aaa-gaming-on-m1.html

Hyper-V host environment components into the Linux kernel: 11/10/2024 Microsoft has proposed the first series of patches for inclusion in the main Linux kernel, related to a host environment (Dom0, root partition) for the Hyper-V hypervisor. The host environment is responsible for managing the hypervisor, launching of guest systems, allocating resources and ensuring the interaction of virtual machines with the hardware. The ability to use Linux as a host environment for the Hyper-V virtualization system was initially introduced in 2020 and is already being used in Microsoft's infrastructure, but has so far been developed in the form of separate patches. The new initiative aims to integrate these patches into the main kernel. The need to use Linux to manage the Hyper-V hypervisor is due to the desire to simplify maintenance and improve the performance of servers serving Microsoft cloud systems, given that since 2018, the number of Linux guest systems in the Azure cloud service exceeds the number of Windows environments. The initial set of patches is currently limited to adding headers used by the Hyper-V hypervisor, which complement the headers used by the guest drivers that were previously included in the kernel. The SPEC file for the 5.15 kernel, which includes the host environment implementation for the Hyper-V hypervisor, can be found in the Azure Linux distribution repository , but the use of the /dev/mshv device for managing Hyper-V is not yet documented. The Hyper-V guest drivers were added to the Linux kernel in 2009 and have been shipped since release 2.6.32 . https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/1727985064-18362-1-git-send-email-nunodasneves@linux.microsoft.com/

Amazon's Open 3D Engine 09/24 Released: 11/10/2024 After a year of development, the non-profit organization Open 3D Foundation (O3DF) has released the open source 3D game engine Open 3D Engine 24.09 (O3DE), suitable for developing modern AAA games and high-fidelity simulators capable of running in real time and providing cinematic-level quality. The code is written in C++ and published under the Apache 2.0 license. There is support for Linux , Windows , macOS, iOS and Android platforms. The O3DE engine was open-sourced in July 2021 by Amazon and is based on the code of the previously developed proprietary engine Amazon Lumberyard, built on the CryEngine engine technologies licensed from Crytek in 2015. Since its opening, the engine's development has been overseen by the Open 3D Foundation, a non-profit organization created under the auspices of the Linux Foundation. In addition to Amazon , companies such as Epic Games, Adobe, Huawei, Microsoft, Intel, and Niantic have joined the project. The engine includes an integrated game development environment, a multi-threaded photorealistic rendering system Atom Renderer with support for Vulkan, Metal and DirectX 12, an extensible 3D model editor, a character animation system (Emotion FX), a prefab development system, a real-time physics simulation engine and mathematical libraries using SIMD instructions. A visual programming environment (Script Canvas), as well as the Lua and Python languages, can be used to define game logic. There are also over 30 plugins avalable. https://github.com/o3de/o3de/releases/tag/2409.0

Release of RPM 4.20: 12/10/2024 After a year of development, the RPM 4.20.0 package manager was released. The RPM4 project is developed by Red Hat and is used in distributions such as RHEL, Fedora, SUSE, openSUSE, ALT Linux, OpenMandriva, Mageia, PCLinuxOS and Tizen. The project code is distributed under the GPLv2 and LGPLv2 licenses. Next year, a major branch of RPM 6 is expected to be published, which will use a new archive format that, unlike the currently used cpio format, will allow creating packages larger than 4 GB (overcoming this limitation is important because the SRC package with Chromium is close to the limit and has a size of 3.7 GB). The new branch also intends to allow the use of the C++ language for RPM development. The new major branch will be dedicated to the anniversary of the project - November 27, 2025 will mark 30 years since the first commit to RPM. RPM 5.x versions will be skipped to avoid overlaps with the RPM5 project, which is not directly related to Red Hat's RPM, was developed by an independent team of developers and has not been updated since 2016. http://rpm.org/

KDE Neon builds based on Ubuntu 24.04: 12/10/2024 The developers of the KDE Neon project, which creates Live builds with current versions of KDE programs and components, have announced the transition of builds to use the LTS release of Ubuntu 24.04. Several versions of KDE Neon builds are available for download: User Edition based on the latest stable releases of KDE, Testing Edition based on KDE testing branches with bug fixes that have not yet been transferred to stable releases, Unstable Edition based on repository branches in development, to which new features are transferred, and Developer Edition, which supplements Unstable Edition with libraries for developers. The KDE neon project was created by Jonathan Riddell, who was removed from his position as the leader of the Kubuntu distribution, with the aim of providing the ability to install fresh versions of KDE programs and components. KDE Neon builds and their associated repositories are updated whenever possible immediately after KDE releases, significantly earlier than new versions of KDE appear in the distribution repositories. https://blog.neon.kde.org/2024/10/10/kde-neon-rebased-on-ubuntu-24-04-lts/

Distrobox 1.8 Released: 12/10/2024 The Distrobox 1.8 toolkit has been released, allowing you to quickly install and run any Linux distribution in a container and ensure its integration with the main system. The project code is written in Shell and is distributed under the GPLv3 license. The project provides an add-on for Docker, Podman or Lilipod and is distinguished by maximum simplification integration and operation of a running environment with the rest of the system. To create an environment with another distribution, it is enough to execute one command distrobox-create, without thinking about the subtleties. After launching, Distrobox forwards the user's home directory to the container, configures access to the X11 and Wayland server to run graphical applications from the container, allows connecting external drives, adds sound output, implements integration at the level of the SSH agent, D-Bus and udev. Distrobox claims to be able to use 26 distributions as a host system , including Alpine, Manjaro, Gentoo, EndlessOS, NixOS, Void, Arch, SUSE, Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL and Fedora. Any distribution for which there are images in OCI format can be launched in the container. After installation, the user can fully work in another distribution without leaving the main system. The main areas of application include experiments with atomically updated distributions such as Endless OS, Fedora Silverblue, OpenSUSE MicroOS and SteamOS3, creation of separate isolated environments (for example, to run a home configuration on a work laptop), access to more recent versions of applications from experimental branches of distributions. https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/releases/tag/1.8.0

Wayland-Protocols 1.38 Released: 12/10/2024 The wayland-protocols package 1.38 has been released, containing a set of protocols and extensions that complement the core Wayland protocol and provide the capabilities needed to build composite servers and user environments. All protocols consistently go through three phases - development, testing and stabilization. After the development stage is completed (category “ unstable ”), the protocol is placed in the “staging” branch and officially included in the wayland-protocols set, and after testing is completed, it is moved to the stable category. Protocols from the “staging” category can already be used in composite servers and clients where the functionality associated with them is required. Unlike the “unstable” category, “staging” prohibits making changes that break compatibility, but if problems and shortcomings are detected during testing, a replacement with a new major version of the protocol or another Wayland extension is not excluded. https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2024-October/043851.html

Release of Inkscape 1.4 14/10/2024 After more than a year of development, the release of the free vector graphics editor Inkscape 1.4 is ready for your enjoyment. The editor provides flexible drawing tools and provides support for reading and saving images in SVG, OpenDocument Drawing, DXF, WMF, EMF, sk1, PDF, EPS, PostScript and PNG formats. Ready-made builds of Inkscape are prepared for Linux (AppImage, Snap and Flatpak), macOS and Windows. https://inkscape.org/news/2024/10/13/inkscape-launches-version-14-powerful-new-accessib/

Qt 6.8 Framework Release: 14/10/2024 The Qt Company has published the Qt 6.8 framework , which continues to work on stabilizing and expanding the functionality of the Qt 6 branch. Qt 6.8 provides support for Windows 10+, macOS 12+, Linux (Ubuntu 22.04/24.04, openSUSE 15.5, SUSE 15 SP5, RHEL 8.8/9.2, Debian 11.6), iOS 16+, Android 9+ (API 23+), webOS, WebAssembly, INTEGRITY, VxWorks, FreeRTOS and QNX. The source code of the Qt components is provided under the LGPLv3 and GPLv2 licenses. Qt 6.8 has been given the status of an LTS release, where updates will be generated for five years for commercial license holders, which is two years longer than in previous LTS releases. For non-commercial users, the maintenance period will be six months (until a new major release is generated). Support for the previous LTS branch Qt 6.5 will last until May 2026, and support for the previous LTS branch Qt 6.2 will end on September 30, 2024. The Qt 5.15 branch will be supported until May 2025. https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-6.8-released

Solus 4.6 released: 15/10/2024 Solus 4.6 has been published. It is not based on packages of other distributions and develops its own installer, package manager and configurator. Previously, the Budgie desktop was developed as part of the distribution, but now it has been separated into an independent project. It was decided to develop the next branch of Solus 5 on the technologies of the SerpentOS distribution. The code is distributed under the GPLv2 license, using C and Vala languages for development. Builds with the Budgie, GNOME, KDE Plasma and Xfce desktops are provided. The size of the iso images is 2.6-2.9 GB (x86_64). The distribution follows a hybrid development model, whereby major releases are released periodically, introducing new technologies and significant improvements, and in between major releases the distribution evolves using a rolling package update model. https://getsol.us/2024/10/14/solus-4-6-released/

OpenSSH, moves to sshd-auth: 15/10/2024 The OpenSSH developers have continued to split sshd into several separate executable files. In the first stage of the split, implemented in May, functions related to session processing were moved from sshd to a separate process sshd-session, and only the functionality necessary for accepting a new network connection and starting sshd-session for each new session was left in sshd. Yesterday, a change was made to the OpenSSH code base, adding another process - sshd-auth, to which the code performing authentication was moved from sshd-session. The sshd-auth process is started from sshd-session and allows additional isolation of authentication-related data in the address space of a separate process, which prevents access to this data in memory in the event of attacks on the code used to handle the connection stages before authentication is complete. In addition, the change slightly reduces memory consumption, since authentication-related code is now present in memory only during authentication, and is then unloaded when the sshd-auth process terminates. By analogy with sshd, sshd-session and ssh-agent, the sshd-auth process uses a random recomposition of the executable file during each boot of the operating system. Random recomposition makes it difficult to predict the shifts of functions in executable files and libraries, which complicates the creation of exploits using return-oriented programming (ROP) methods. When using the ROP technique, the attacker does not try to place his code in memory, but operates on existing pieces of machine instructions ending with a return instruction (usually, these are the ends of functions). The exploit's work comes down to building a chain of calls to similar blocks (“gadgets”) to obtain the desired functionality. https://marc.info/?l%3Dopenbsd-cvs%26m%3D172887095204232%26w%3D2

Intel and AMD, with Linus Torvalds, Form x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group: 15/10/2024 Intel and AMD have announced the creation of an advisory group to advance innovation in the x86 ecosystem, including Linus Torvalds and Tim Sweeney , founder of Epic Games and a key contributor to the Unreal Engine. The group also includes representatives from Broadcom, Dell, Google, Hewlett Packard, Lenovo, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, and Red Hat. The key objective of the initiative is to work together to ensure compatibility between platforms, simplify software development for x86 systems, and identify developer needs for extending the architecture. The goal is to support the development of the x86 architecture as a computing platform that is in demand by developers and consumers. The group is expected to help bring together industry leaders and the interests of both hardware and software communities to shape the future of architecture and provide developers with a more unified set of instructions and architectural interfaces. The group's areas of interest include solutions for data centers, client systems, cloud services, embedded devices, machine learning, and 3D graphics. The expected outcome is improved compatibility between software and hardware, simplified architectural guidelines and standardized interfaces across Intel and AMD products, and more efficient integration of new hardware capabilities into operating systems, frameworks, and applications. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/october-2024-intel-news.html

Rogue Legacy Source Code Released: 16/10/2024 Cellar Door Games announced the publication of the source code for Rogue Legacy , a 2D platformer with roguelike and fantasy elements. The game was released for Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 3/4/Vita and Nintendo Switch. The code is written in C# and is distributed under a specific license that allows compilation and modification for personal use, but requires permission if you intend to distribute your own build of the game. Only the code without game resources that can be transferred from your copy of the game. The proposed code is designed to use the FNA package with an open implementation of the Microsoft XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh libraries. It is also noted that work is underway to port the game to the SDL 3 library. https://x.com/CellarDoorGames/status/1846246914406195662

Fooyin Music Player 0.8 Released: 16/10/2024 The Fooyin 0.8 music player has been released. It is aimed at providing wide possibilities for customizing and adapting the program to your preferences. Fooyin offers a set of widgets with the implementation of various modes for managing the music collection and playing music. Additional features can be connected in the form of plugins. A configurator for the layout of elements on the screen is offered for customizing the interface. The project is written in C++ using the Qt library and is distributed under the GPLv3 license. Ready-made packages are formed for Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu. Supported playback of files in FLAC, MP3, MP4, Vorbis, Opus, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Monkey's Audio, VGM and various track formats. Fooyin's capabilities include: extracting information about the order and duration of audio tracks from CUE files, gapless playback, creating, importing and exporting playlists in M3U/M3U8 formats, filtering the contents of the music library by any fields, tree view of the collection, tag editing, visualization using spectrograms, navigation at the directory level in the file system with the ability to directly play selected files. The MPRIS (Media Player Remote Interfacing Specification) D-Bus interface can be used for external control of the player. https://github.com/fooyin/fooyin/releases

Forgejo 9.0 Collaborative Development Platform: 16/10/2024 The release of the Forgejo 9.0 collaborative development platform has been published . It allows you to deploy a system for collaborative work with Git repositories on your servers, similar to GitHub, Bitbucket and Gitlab. Forgejo is a fork of the Gitea project , which in turn branched off from the Gogs platform. Forgejo was separated in 2022 after attempts to commercialize Gitea and the transfer of control to a commercial company. The Forgejo project adheres to the principles of independent management and community control. Git hosting Codeberg.org has switched to using Forgejo . The project code is written in Go and is distributed under the MIT license. The key features of the platform are low resource consumption (can be used on a Raspberry Pi board or in cheap VPS) and a simple installation process. It provides typical project capabilities, such as task management, issue tracking, pull requests, wiki, tools for coordinating developer groups, preparing releases, automating package placement in repositories, managing access rights, interfacing with continuous integration platforms, code search, authentication via LDAP and OAuth, access to the repository via SSH and HTTP/HTTPS protocols, connecting web hooks for integration with Slack, Discord and other services, support for Git hooks and Git LFS, tools for migrating and mirroring repositories. The ability to use the ActivityPub protocol to unite individual developer servers into a federated network is separately highlighted. https://forgejo.org/2024-10-release-v9-0/

MySQL 9.1.0 Released: 17/10/2024 Oracle has published a new branch of the MySQL 9.1.0 DBMS. MySQL Community Server 9.1.0 builds are available for all major Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, and Windows distributions. As part of the new release model introduced last year, MySQL 9.1 is assigned to the “Innovation” branches, which will also include the next major release, MySQL 9.2. Innovation branches are recommended for those who want to get access to new functionality earlier, are published every 3 months and are supported only until the next major release is published (for example, after the appearance of branch 9.1, support for branch 9.0 was discontinued). In the summer of next year, they plan to form an LTS release, recommended for implementations that require predictability and long-term preservation of unchanged behavior. Following the LTS branch, a new Innovation branch will be formed - MySQL 10.0. https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/

Release of F-Stack 1.24: 19/10/2024 F- Stack 1.24 has been released, a user-space revision of the FreeBSD network stack that uses the DPDK framework to achieve maximum performance. The project was created by Tencent, China's largest telecommunications company, and is used in its products and services. The code is written in C and is distributed under the BSD license. Linux and FreeBSD are supported. F-Stack allows you to use your own local network stack in applications, independent of the operating system network stack, functioning in the user space and working directly with network equipment. F-Stack is positioned as a solution that allows you to increase the performance of network request handlers in conditions where the standard TCP/IP stack of the Linux kernel becomes a bottleneck and limits scaling - in some situations, the project makes it possible to increase the number of small network requests processed several times. Theoretically, F-Stack allows you to reach the ceiling of network performance possible for the network card used. Increased performance is achieved by eliminating such operations as copying network packets, scheduling threads, processing interrupts, and using system calls. To interact with the network card, bypassing the operating system kernel interfaces, the DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit) framework is used, which develops a set of libraries for low-level work with network adapters. DPDK makes it possible to reduce overhead costs and keep to a minimum number of CPU cycles when receiving or sending network packets. The project supports F-Stack-converted versions of the Nginx 1.25.2 multiprotocol server and Redis 6.2.6 DBMS, which demonstrate performance superior to regular builds running on top of the system network stack. https://github.com/F-Stack/f-stack/releases/tag/1.24

Ubuntu Linux Distribution Turns 20: 20/10/2024 Twenty years ago, on October 20, 2004, the first version of the Ubuntu 4.10 “Warty Warthog” distribution was published, based on Impi Linux. The project was founded by Mark Shuttleworth, a millionaire South African contributor to Debian who was inspired by the idea of ​​creating an accessible desktop distribution for end users with a predictable, fixed development cycle. Several developers from the Debian project were involved in the work, some of whom are still involved in both projects. The Ubuntu 4.10 release, which shipped GNOME 2.8, Firefox 0.9, and OpenOffice.org 1.1.2, remains available for download and can be used to evaluate what the system looked like 20 years ago. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2004-October/000003.html

CoreBoot-based solutions for systems with Intel Xeon 6 processors: 20/10/2024 Intel has announced efforts to add support for platforms based on Intel Xeon 6 (“Granite Rapids”) processors to the CoreBoot project, which develops a free alternative to proprietary firmware and BIOS. The work is being carried out jointly with 9elements, a company specializing in adapting CoreBoot to various equipment. CoreBoot plans to prepare an FSP (Firmware Support Package) package, including the implementation of procedures necessary for initializing and configuring systems with Intel Xeon 6 processors. It is expected that the work carried out will make CoreBoot-based solutions more attractive for corporate systems and bring them to the level of Open Platform Firmware (OPF) projects from the Open Compute community. It is noted that the use of CoreBoot will enable companies to simplify the hardware initialization process, reduce maintenance costs and adapt the boot components to their needs, which is especially important when implementing software-defined infrastructures ( SDI , Software-Defined Infrastructure) in data centers. Intel also mentions that CoreBoot enables high performance, efficiency, and security of workloads, and promotes innovation and collaboration across the industry. CoreBoot achieves higher performance than proprietary UEFI firmware due to its minimalist, modular architecture that initializes only the necessary hardware components. CoreBoot also reduces boot times by using LinuxBoot to directly transfer control to the Linux kernel, without the need for additional boot loaders or firmware. https://community.intel.com/t5/Blogs/Tech-Innovation/Data-Center/Advancing-Open-Source-Firmware-on-Intel-Xeon-6-Based-Platforms/post/1636720

Laptop maker Malibal attacks CoreBoot project: 20/10/2024 Malibal, a laptop company, has harshly criticized the CoreBoot community and called for the project to be stopped. In addition, Malibal has refused to use AMD processors, since the CoreBoot leader is employed by AMD, and has stopped supplying products to Germany, Poland, and Texas, since 9Elements, AMD, and 3mdeb are registered there, and Malibal representatives were unhappy with their interactions with them. Moreover, Malibal has promised to ban anyone who supports the CoreBoot project, transfers code to it, sends donations, or participates in its work. A Malibal representative also complained about the high cost of consulting services related to CoreBoot, and stated that in more than 6 months of joint work, not a single line of code has been written related to the adaptation of CoreBoot for Malibal laptops. The leader of the CoreBoot project expressed surprise at such attacks, since Malibal had not paid anyone a penny, no contracts had been concluded with it, and no technical specifications had been drawn up. All interaction had been reduced to a free analysis of the wishes and work already done in Malibal, after which the companies involved in consulting related to CoreBoot simply refused to work with Malibal. Christian Walter, head of firmware development at 9elements and founder of the OSFW Foundation, apologized for the possibility that his participation in the discussions might be perceived as arrogance (English is not his native language and he often answers from his phone, which leads to messages with typos), and clarified some technical details. Malibal's claim that they provided a ready-made solution that only needed debugging is not true, as the firmware version sent was not working and did not boot on the laptop provided. 9elements employees had to compile and install the firmware themselves in order to boot the laptop with it, and, apparently, the firmware provided had never been booted on the device before, i.e. the code provided had never been tested in operation. After loading, the suspicion was confirmed, the firmware turned out to be non-working and the board did not exit the reset state, i.e. there was no talk of any final debugging at this stage of firmware development. The 9elements company did not take any money for the manipulations carried out with the proposed firmware, i.e., in fact, it carried out a free examination, and returned the sent device. The correspondence archive and conversations are saved and Christian is ready to provide them as evidence of the groundlessness of Malibal's statements. https://www.malibal.com/features/dont-support-the-coreboot-project/