Release of Hangover 10.0: 27/01/2025 The Hangover 10.0 toolkit is out. It allows running 32-bit Windows applications built for x86 (i386) and ARM32 architectures in ARM64 (Aarch64)-based environments. An implementation of the Hangover for the RISC-V architecture is currently under development. The project's code is distributed under a LGPL 2.1 license. Hangover significantly outperforms configurations in which Wine is launched entirely in emulation mode, since when using Hangover, the emulator is used only to execute the application code itself, and all system calls, libraries, and Wine components are executed outside the emulator in the native execution for the current platform (Hangover breaks the emulation chain at the level of calls to win32 and wine). The emulation layer can use QEMU, FEX and Box64 emulators, depending on the user's preferences. Work has begun, but is not yet complete, on supporting the Blink emulator. https://github.com/AndreRH/hangover/releases/tag/hangover-10.0

Orbitiny DE using Qt Released: 27/01/2025 The Orbitiny Desktop environment is presented, written from scratch using the Qt framework. The project is presented as an attempt to combine some innovative ideas, that have not been seen in user environments before, with traditional elements such as the panel, menus and placement of icons, on the desktop. The project is being developed with an eye to ensuring portability between different Linux distributions and the possibility of using it in Live environments. The code is written in C++ and is distributed under the GPL license. The panel supports functionality expansion through plug-ins,Drag&Drop mode manipulations (for example, you can move files from the desktop to the panel and swap applets) and saving different profiles that define their own set of applets and settings. Eighteen plugins are currently provided, like an applet with the implementation of a start menu for navigating through installed applications. In addition to the menu and keyboard shortcuts, screen gestures can be used to call up various actions and operations in Orbitiny. These are entered by drawing a certain outline on an empty area of ​​the desktop while holding down the mouse button. Up to 12 screen gestures can be defined for each mouse button. In addition to the desktop and taskbar, the project develops its own set of utilities and applications, such as a file manager, notification output system, file search interface, and a program for creating screenshots. The desktop can be launched in any existing user environment, including KDE and GNOME - in this case, Orbitiny displays its own full-screen window with the desktop, overlapping the existing desktop. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1iayzwm/orbitiny_desktop_environment_released_originally/

Hyprland 0.47 released: 27/01/2025 The Hyprland 0.47 composite server is presented, using the Wayland protocol. The project is focused on the mosaic (tiling) layout of windows, but also supports the classic arbitrary placement of windows, grouping of windows in the form of tabs, pseudo-mosaic mode and full-screen windows. The possibilities for creating visually attractive interfaces are provided: gradients in the window frame, background blur, animation effects and shadows. Plug-ins can be connected to expand the functionality and socket-based IPC is provided for external control. The code is written in C++ and is distributed under a BSD license. The settings are made via a configuration file, changes are picked up on the fly, without restarting. To improve the performance of games, you can disable vertical synchronization (VSync) with a frame blanking pulse, used to protect against tearing during output. The following functions are also worth mentioning: dynamically created virtual desktops; modes for arranging elements on the screen; global processing of hot keys and touchpad/touch screen gesture control. https://hyprland.org/news/update47/

Google Opens Up OS Code for Pebble Smartwatch: 28/01/2025 Google has announced the open source code of the Pebble OS operating system used in the Pebble smartwatch. The code is written in C and is open under the Apache 2.0 license. The system is based on the FreeRTOS kernel and the Newlib system library. The platform is designed for use on ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers. The Pebble smartwatch project raised $10.3 million on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter in 2012 and $20.3 million in 2015 (the second-highest amount of money raised on Kickstarter). The watch was manufactured from 2013 to 2016 by Pebble Technology, which was shut down in 2016 after being acquired by Fitbit. Google acquired the rights to the Pebble operating system after buying Fitbit, along with other assets. The watch is equipped with an e-paper screen, which allows for a long battery life. The watch integrates with Android and iOS devices via Bluetooth and can display notifications and messages from those smartphones (for example, notifications of incoming calls and calendar / planner events, information about new SMS's, email and messages from popular messengers). The libpebble library is provided for interaction with the watch from Linux. The platform supports installation of additional programs on the watch, distributed through the online catalog. More than 10 thousand third-party applications have been developed for the watch, offering functions from viewing news feeds and displaying reandom information on the screen (for example, stock quotes), to navigation, remote control of the smartphone camera, fitness trackers and simple games. The Pebble OS code is published as is, and includes a fresh snapshot of the repository, with the proprietary spying components removed. The open source code covers all the core features of the smartwatch, including the user interface, the GUI library, the notification system, the framework for installing third-party programs, the Jerryscript Javascript engine, basic applications such as the fitness tracker, and the media playback control interface. Due to lack of relicensing rights, the published code base has been stripped of system fonts, Bluetooth stack, STM library, voice codec, ARM CMSIS, and heart rate monitoring driver. The published repository is not an official Google project - Google positions the open source code as an initiative to support enthusiasts interested in continuing the development of the platform. At the same time, the founder of Pebble announced the revival of the project and the intention to release a new model of watches. It is noted that he tried all the smart watches available on the market, but none of the devices completely satisfied him, so he decided to revive the former undertaking and release a new model of Pebble. The next model will have approximately the same parameters and capabilities as the already released Pebble watches, but will differ in the implementation of some new ideas. https://opensource.googleblog.com/2025/01/see-code-that-powered-pebble-smartwatches.html

Release of Privoxy 4.0.0: 28/01/2025 Twenty two years after the formation of the 3.0 branch in 2002, the Privoxy 4.0.0 proxy server was released, designed to create personal web content filters. With Privoxy, you can cut out ads, discard tracking cookies, delete pop-up dialogs, block the loading of third-party JavaScript code, and make arbitrary changes to web pages as required by the user. Privoxy supports installation both on local systems of individual users and on servers to create a centralized content filtering infrastructure in a local network. The project code is written in C and is distributed under the GPLv2+ license. Some of Privoxy's advanced features include: the ability to bind tags to change filter behavior based on individual client and server HTTP headers; an HTTPS inspection mode that allows filtering HTTPS requests and responses; the use of regular expressions in configuration files and the ability to replace animated gifs with truncated static images. Privoxy can be used to block ads and unwanted content on devices where it is impossible to install the appropriate browser add-ons. https://www.privoxy.org/announce.txt

Linux Kernel Reaches 40 Million Lines: 28/01/2025 The Linux kernel has reached that 40 million lines of source code, mark. Of the 40 million lines, 24 million are driver code (for example, the driver code for AMD GPUs takes up about 5 million lines), and 4.4 million are specific to various hardware architectures (approximately 500,000 lines are used to support the x86 architecture). Since July 2024, the kernel size has increased by 5 million lines. The 30 million line mark was passed in the summer of 2022, 20 million lines in the fall of 2015, and 10 million lines in the fall of 2008. For comparison, the 0.0.1 kernel release included only 10,000 lines of code, and 1.0.0 included 176,000 lines. https://translate.google.com/website?sl=auto&tl=en&hl=en-US&client=webapp&u=https://www.heise.de/news/Linux-durchbricht-40-Millionen-Zeilen-Marke-10255488.html

Pidgin 2.14.14 released: 29/01/2025 The instant messaging client, Pidgin has released version 2.14.14, supporting networks such as XMPP, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC and Novell GroupWise. The Pidgin graphical interface is written using the GTK library and supports tabs, a single address book and the ability to work on different networks simultaneously. Plug-ins can be used to expand functionality and add support for new protocols, for example, there is a plugin for WhatsApp. The new version provides support for building in GCC 14 and GCC 15, resolves the issue with pop-up warnings about certificates when using the NSS library and improves support for Fedora 40 and Debian 13. They also added support for labels displaying text in italics in messages received via IRC as well as implemented the ability to execute arbitrary commands during the build (CUSTOM_AUTHENTICODE=command in local.mak) to certify executable files with a digital signature. https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-2-14-14-has-been-released/241

KaOS 2025.01 released: 29/01/2025 KaOS 2025.01 is out, a rolling release distribution aimed at providing a desktop based on the latest KDE releases and applications using Qt. Specific design features include the placement of a vertical panel on the right side of the screen. The distribution is being developed with an eye on Arch Linux, but maintains its own independent repository with over 1,500 packages and offers a number of its own graphical utilities. XFS is used as the default file system. Builds are published for x86_64 systems (3.5 GB). https://kaosx.us/news/2025/kaos01/

Ubuntu Switches to Matrix for Developer Communications: 29/01/2025 The Ubuntu project will start using Matrix as the official developer communication platform on March 1. The IRC channels that are currently in use have been deprecated. In a vote of developers working at Canonical, 10 participants voted for the transition to Matrix, 1 voted against, and 6 asked for a public discussion. The discussion about the advisability of migrating to Matrix was held on the ubuntu-devel mailing list, after which, the technical committee (Ubuntu Technical Board) made the decision to migrate. Official communication, such as real-time requests to privileged Ubuntu development teams, will now only take place via Matrix. Canonical employees involved in Ubuntu development will be required to be present on this platform during their working hours. The IRC channel “#ubuntu-devel” will be replaced by the matrix room “ #devel:ubuntu.com ”, and “#ubuntu-release” will be replaced by “ #release:ubuntu.com . https://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu-devel-announce@lists.ubuntu.com/msg01112.html

OPNsense 25.1 released: 29/01/2025 OPNsense 25.1 is here. In 2015, it separated from the pfSense project with the goal of developing a completely open distribution that could have functionality at the level of commercial solutions for deploying firewalls and network gateways. Unlike pfSense, the project is positioned as not controlled by a single company, but developed with the direct participation of the community and having a completely transparent development process, as well as providing the ability to use any of its code in third-party products, including commercial ones. The source code of the distribution components, as well as the tools used for build, are distributed under the BSD license. The builds are prepared as a LiveCD and a system image for recording on Flash drives (497 MB). The distribution is based on the FreeBSD code. Capabilities of OPNsense include: a completely open assembly toolkit, support for installation in the form of packages on top of regular FreeBSD, load balancing tools, a web interface for managing user connections to the internet (Captive portal), the presence of mechanisms for tracking connection states (stateful firewall based on pf), a system for limiting bandwidth, traffic filtering, creating VPN based on IPsec, OpenVPN and PPTP, integration with LDAP and RADIUS, support for DDNS (Dynamic DNS) and a system of visual reports and graphs. The distribution can be used to create fault-tolerant configurations based on the CARP protocol and allowing a backup node to be launched in addition to the main firewall, which will be automatically synchronized at the configuration level and will take over the load in the event of a failure of the primary node. A web interface is offered for adminitering and configuring the firewall, built using the Bootstrap web framework and Phalcon MVC. https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic%3D45460.0

Release of GCompris 25.0: 30/01/2025 GCompris V25.0 is out, a free learning center for preschool and primary school children. The package provides 195 mini-lessons and modules, offering from the simplest graphics editor, puzzles and keyboard trainer to lessons in mathematics, geography and reading. GCompris uses the Qt library and is developed by the KDE community. Ready-made builds are available for Linux, macOS, Windows, Raspberry Pi and Android. https://gcompris.net/news/2025-01-30-en.html

A new 'alpha' of 0 AD: 30/01/2025 After two and a half years of development, the twenty-seventh alpha release of the free game, 0 AD is presented, featuring a real-time strategy in the style Age of Empires. Like all previous releases, the new version is labeled “alpha”, but the developers decided to abandon this tradition and the next update will be labeled “0 AD Release 28”. The alpha version label was set, since not all of the originally intended features have been implemented. At the same time, the existing functionality is polished and stable, and in terms of quality of implementation, 0 AD has long since left the alpha version state. The game's source code was opened by Wildfire Games in 2009 under the GPL license. Before that, the project had been developed as a proprietary product for 9 years. The game build is available for Linux (Ubuntu, Gentoo, Debian, openSUSE, Fedora and Arch Linux), FreeBSD , OpenBSD , macOS and Windows. The proposed version supports network play and single-player play with bots on pre-modeled or dynamically generated maps. The game covers more than ten civilizations that existed in the range from 500 BC to 500 AD. Non-code components of the game, such as graphics and sound elements, are licensed under the Creative Commons BY-SA license, which allows modification and use in commercial products, provided that authorship is indicated and derivative works are distributed under a similar license. The 0 AD game engine has about 200 thousand lines of code in C++, OpenGL is used to output 3D graphics, OpenAL is used for sound, and ENet is used for network play. https://play0ad.com/new-release-0-a-d-alpha-27-agni/

OpenVox, a fork of Puppet: 31/01/2025 The first release of the OpenVox project is presented. It develops a fork of the Puppet configuration management automation system, allowing one to automate the administration of a group of servers and organize centralized execution of tasks such as user management, package installation and configuration updates. The first release of OpenVox 8.11 is equivalent to a similar version of Puppet and can be used for its replacement, transparently. The project code is written in Ruby and is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license. OpenVox is planned to be developed as a soft fork, synchronized with the Puppet code base and remaining fully compatible with Puppet releases. The team that created the fork is currently working with representatives from Perforce, the owner of the Puppet project, to create a joint steering committee that will determine the direction of OpenVox and Puppet. It is noted that until the rebranding process and deployment of the testing system is completed, OpenVox is not recommended for production deployments in critical infrastructure. In terms of functionality, OpenVox supports the same commands, modules, extensions, and settings as Puppet. The reason for the fork is said to be a change in policy by Perforce, which acquired the Puppet project in 2022. In the fall of 2024, Perforce stopped publicly distributing binary packages with Puppet, focused on developing an internal fork, and stopped developing the open source code base. The Puppet license remained the same, but the source code created by Perforce was no longer publicly available. https://voxpupuli.org/blog/2025/01/21/openvox-release/

Release of GParted 1.7: 01/02/2025 The release of the Live distribution GParted Live 1.7.0 was published. It is designed to restore systems after failures and work with disk partitions using the partition editor GParted. The boot image size is 588 MB (x86_64). The distribution is based on the Debian Sid package base as of January 31. The distribution is developed by the developers of the disk partition editor GParted (GNOME Partition Editor) and is updated after the formation of the next release of the main project. GParted supports most file systems and partition types used in Linux. In addition to label management, editing and creating partitions, GParted allows you to reduce or increase the size of existing partitions without losing the data located on them, check the integrity of partition tables, recover data from lost partitions and align the beginning of a partition along the cylinder boundary. GParted 1.7 adds experimental support for the Bcachefs file system. It also recognizes NBD (Network Block Device) block devices used to access a block device on another computer. GParted Live 1.7 no longer supports 32-bit (i686/i686-pae) builds due to Debian Sid ceasing support for i386 kernel packages. New packages bcachefs-tools, bcache-tools, and util-linux-extra are now included. The Linux kernel has been updated to version 6.12.11. To use all the features of the GParted application, you need to have at least 640 MB of RAM. https://gparted.org/news.php?item%3D257

Release of Scribus 1.7.0: 01/02/2025 The release of the free application for desktop publishing, Scribus 1.7.0, is presented. The package provides tools for professional layout of printed materials, includes tools for PDF generation and it supports work with separate color profiles, CMYK, spot colors and ICC. The program is written using the Qt toolkit and is supplied under the GPLv2+ license. Ready-made binary builds are prepared for Linux (AppImage), macOS and Windows. Branch 1.7 is presented as experimental - after final stabilization and recognition of readiness for widespread implementation, a stable release of Scribus 1.8.0 will be formed based on branch 1.7. https://www.scribus.net/scribus-1-7-0-released/

Regolith 3.2 Released: 01/02/2025 The release of the Regolith Desktop 3.2 desktop environment, developed by the developers of the Linux distribution of the same name, has been published . Regolith is based on GNOME session management technologies, the i3 window manager, the Picom and Sway composite servers, the i3bar panel, the rofication notification system, the i3status-rs status bar, and the ilia program launcher interface. The project's code is distributed under the GPLv3 license. The project is positioned as a modern desktop environment, developed for the rapid execution of typical actions due to optimization of work processes and elimination of unnecessary clutter. The goal is to provide a functional, but minimalistic interface that can be customized and expanded depending on the user's preferences. Regolith may be of interest to beginners accustomed to traditional window systems, but may want to try frame (mosaic) window layout methods. https://github.com/regolith-linux/regolith-desktop/releases

Void Linux update: 03/02/2025 New bootable builds of Void Linux have been created. It is not based on other distributions and is developed using a continuous cycle of updating (rolling updates, without separate releases of the distribution). Previous builds were published in March 2024. Using ready-made builds only makes sense for new installations - in already installed systems, package updates are delivered as they are ready. The builds are available in variants based on the Glibc and Musl system libraries. Live images with the Xfce desktop and a basic console build have been prepared for the x86_64, i686, armv6l, armv7l and aarch64 platforms. The ARM builds support the BeagleBone/BeagleBone Black, Cubieboard 2, Odroid U2/U3 and Raspberry Pi boards, as well as Apple devices with ARM chips, Lenovo Thinkpad X13s and Pinebook Pro. The system manager runit is used to initialize and manage services in the distribution, and its own package manager xbps and package assembly system xbps-src are being developed to manage packages . Xbps allows you to install, remove and update applications, identify incompatibilities of shared libraries and manage dependencies. Glibc or Musl are supported as standard C libraries. https://voidlinux.org/news/2025/02/new-images.html

MiniOS 4.1 released: 03/02/2025 MiniOS 4.1 is released, based on Debian and running directly from a USB drive. The graphical environment is based on Xfce. The distribution uses a modular architecture that allows you to create specialized configurations, excluding and adding components to adapt the system to specific tasks. The release is available in three editions: Standard (i386, amd64, 675 MB ) edition for everyday use and working with modules. The package includes Linux kernel 6.1.124 with AUFS support for hot plugging of modules. Toolbox (amd64, 998 MB ) is an edition for experienced users who need an extended set of tools for system diagnostics and recovery. In addition to the capabilities of the Standard edition, the package includes a set of programs for system administration, network diagnostics, traffic analysis, storage device diagnostics and data recovery. Supported file systems include: Ext2/3/4, Btrfs, XFS, ExFAT, NTFS, ZFS, LVM, F2FS, JFS, ReiserFS. Supported compression utilities are ZIP, 7z, XZ, Zstd, LZ4, Bzip2, Pigz, Plzip, Lrzip, Pbzip2, Lzop. Virtualization based on QEMU-KVM with the Virtual Machine Manager graphical interface. The package includes a package with the Linux kernel from Debian (6.1.124) with Secure Boot support. Ultra (amd64, 1.5 GB ) - extends the Toolbox experience with a suite of office and multimedia applications, such as LibreOffice, GIMP, VLC, OBS Studio, and Blender. The Docker containerization platform and graphical utilities for installing packages are also included. https://github.com/minios-linux/minios-live/releases/tag/v4.1.0

Release of MyLibrary 3.1: 03/02/2025 The release of the home library cataloger MyLibrary 3.1 was announced. The program code is written in the C++ and is available under the GPLv3 license. The graphical user interface is implemented using the GTK4 library. The program is adapted to work in Linux and Windows operating systems. For Arch Linux users, a ready-made package is available in the AUR and for Windows users, an experimental installer is available. MyLibrary catalogs book files in fb2, epub, pdf, djvu formats, both directly accessible and packed into archives (zip, 7z, jar, cpio, iso, tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2, tar.xz, rar), and creates its own database without changing the original files or changing their location. The integrity of the collection and its changes is monitored by creating a database of hash sums of files and archives. A search for books by various criteria (last name, first name, middle name of the author, book title, series, genre) and their reading through the program installed in the system by default for opening the corresponding file formats is implemented. When selecting a book, the book's annotation and cover are displayed, if available. Display of a list of files included in a collection and a list of books included in a specific file is supported. A bookmark mechanism has been created for quick access to books. https://github.com/ProfessorNavigator/mylibrary/releases/tag/v3.1

First results of the project to improve FreeBSD performance on laptops: 05/02/2025 The FreeBSD Foundation, a non-profit organization, has published a report on the achievements of a project to improve FreeBSD performance on laptops, which was launched six months ago and received $750,000 in investment. The stated goal of the project is to bring FreeBSD to a form that meets the needs of modern laptop users. It is a long list, so check out the link below. https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/laptop-support-and-usability-project-update-first-monthly-report-community-initiatives/

MaXX Interactive Desktop 2.2 Released: 05/02/2025 The MaXX Interactive Desktop 2.2.0 DE is presented, that attempts to recreate the user shell of IRIX Interactive Desktop (SGI Indigo Magic Desktop) using Linux technologies. Development is carried out under an agreement with SGI, allowing a complete recreation of all the functions of IRIX Interactive Desktop for the Linux platform. Installation instructions are prepared for Ubuntu, RHEL, Debian, Manjaro and Arch Linux. The source code is only partially published. Some components contain a mixture of proprietary code (as required by the SGI agreement) and code under various open licenses. Such components are developed in private repositories and are available upon special request. At the same time, work is underway to open all the source code, rewrite the remaining proprietary code, and transfer the project to a community-controlled development model. All new code and rewritten old code are published under the BSD license. IRIX Interactive Desktop was delivered on SGI graphics workstations equipped with the IRIX operating system. The peak of popularity of these systems occurred in the late 1990s, and production continued until 2006. The Linux shell edition is implemented on top of the 5dwm window manager (based on OpenMotif) and SGI-Motif libraries. The project uses a modular architecture with the use of microservices for separate execution of desktop components. The composition includes systems for centralized monitoring (MaXXmonitor) and configuration management. Rendering and visual effects are implemented using OpenGL. To speed up work and reduce the load on the CPU, multi-threaded processing of operations and the transfer of computing tasks to the GPU are used. The desktop does not depend on the screen resolution and uses vector icons. Desktop extension to several monitors, HiDPI, UTF-8 and FreeType fonts are supported. ROX-Filer is used as a file manager (optional pcmanfm, as well as a proprietary file manager, not yet complete). https://docs.maxxinteractive.com/books/whats-new-release-notes/page/january-31th-2025-maxxdesktop-octane-220-release

OpenWrt 24.10 is available: 06/02/2025 After more than a year of development, a major release of the OpenWrt 24.10.0 distribution was announced, developed for network devices such as routers, switches, and access points. OpenWrt supports 1970 devices and offers a build system that simplifies cross-compilation and the creation of custom builds. Such builds allow you to create ready-made firmware with the desired set of pre-installed packages, optimized for specific tasks. Ready-made builds are published for 39 target platforms (the previous branch supported 36 platforms). https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-announce/2025-February/000067.html

Release of LibreOffice 25.2: 06/02/2025 The Document Foundation has released LibreOffice 25.2. Ready-to-use installation packages have been prepared for various Linux, Windows, and macOS distributions. 176 developers took part in this release. 47% of the changes were made by 50 employees of the companies supervising the project, such as Collabora and Allotropia, 31% by seven employees of The Document Foundation, and 22% by 119 independent enthusiasts. The release of LibreOffice 25.2 is labeled “Community” and will be supported by enthusiasts and is not aimed at enterprise use. LibreOffice Community is available to everyone without exception, including corporate users, for free without restrictions. For enterprises that need additional service, products of the LibreOffice Enterprise family are being developed separately, for which partner companies will provide full support, the ability to receive long-term updates (LTS) and additional functions, such as SLA (Service Level Agreements). https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2025/02/06/libreoffice-25-2/

Release of PicoLibc Standard C Library 1.8.9: 08/02/2025 The standard C library PicoLibc 1.8.9 has been published. It is developed by Keith Packard (leader of the X.Org project) for use on embedded devices with limited storage and RAM. During development, part of the code was borrowed from the newlib library from the Cygwin project and AVR Libc, developed for Atmel AVR microcontrollers. The PicoLibc code is distributed under the BSD license. Library assembly is supported for the following architectures: ARM (32-bit), Aarch64, i386, RISC-V, x86_64, m68k, PowerPC, LatticMico32, LoongArch and OpenRisc. Initially, the project was developed under the name “newlib-nano” and was aimed at reworking some resource-intensive Newlib functions that were problematic to use on embedded devices with minimal RAM. For example, in PicoLibc, stdio functions were replaced with a compact version from the avrlibc library. The code was also cleaned from components not supplied under the BSD license that were not used in the build for embedded devices. A simplified version of the initialization code (crt0) was added, and the implementation of calls was transferred from ' struct _reent ' to the TLS ( thread-local storage ) mechanism. The Meson toolkit was used for the build. https://github.com/picolibc/picolibc/releases/tag/1.8.9

ONLYOFFICE 8.3 is available: 07/02/2025 ONLYOFFICE DocumentServer 8.3 has been released, implementing a server for ONLYOFFICE online editors and collaborative work. 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, they released the ONLYOFFICE DesktopEditors 8.3, built on a single code base with online editors. Desktop editors are designed as desktop applications that are written in JavaScript using web technologies, but combine in one application, the client and server components designed for use on the user's local system, without access to an external service. For collaboration on your own hardware, you can also use the Nextcloud Hub platform, which provides full integration with ONLYOFFICE. Ready-made builds are formed 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 created for Windows and Linux (deb and rpm packages). https://www.onlyoffice.com/blog/2025/02/onlyoffice-docs-8-3-released

Min 1.34: 08/02/2025 A new version of the Min 1.34 browser has been released, offering a minimalist interface focused on address bar manipulation. The browser is built using Electron, which allows you to create stand-alone applications based on the Chromium engine and Node.js platform. The Min interface is written in JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. The code is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license. Builds are available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Min supports navigation through open pages via a tab system. Such functions as opening a new tab next to the current tab, hiding unused tabs (which the user has not accessed for a certain time), grouping tabs and viewing all tabs as a list are available. There are tools for building lists of deferred tasks/links for reading in the future, as well as a bookmark system with full-text search support. The browser has a built-in ad blocking system (EasyList) and code for tracking visitors. It is possible to disable the loading of images and scripts. The central control element in Min is the address bar, through which you can send queries to the search engine (by default, DuckDuckGo) and perform searches on the current page. As you type in the address bar, a summary of information relevant to the current query is generated as you type, such as a link to an article in Wikipedia, a selection from bookmarks and browsing history, as well as recommendations from the DuckDuckGo search engine. Each page opened in the browser is indexed and becomes available for subsequent search in the address bar. In the address bar, you can also enter commands for quick operations (for example, ”!settings“ - go to settings, ”!screenshot“ - create a screenshot, ”!clearhistory“ - clear browsing history, etc.). https://github.com/minbrowser/min/releases/tag/v1.34.0

TuxTape project: 08/02/2025 Insurance company GEICO has published a preliminary release of TuxTape, a toolkit that allows you to deploy your own infrastructure for creating, building, and delivering live patches for the Linux kernel. Live patches allow you to apply fixes to the Linux kernel on the fly, without rebooting or stopping the system. The project code is written in Rust and is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license. Live patches with vulnerability fixes are provided for their distributions by such companies as Red Hat, Oracle, Canonical and SUSE, but only low-level tools for working with patches are open, and the patches themselves are created behind closed doors. Gentoo and Debian distributions tried to develop open projects elivepatch and linux-livepatching, but the first has been abandoned for 6 years, and the second has stalled at the stage of creating a test prototype. TuxTape aims to provide a native system for creating and delivering live patches that is vendor-agnostic and adaptable to any Linux kernel, not just distribution-specific kernel packages. TuxTape can generate live patches that are compatible with Red Hat's kpatch toolkit ( other similar tools include SUSE's kGraft , Oracle's Ksplice , and the generic livepatch ). Patches are built as loadable kernel modules that replace functions in the kernel, using the ftrace subsystem to redirect to new functions included in the module. TuxTape can track Linux kernel vulnerability fixes posted to the linux-cve-announce mailing list and the Git repository, rank the vulnerabilities by severity, determine applicability to supported Linux kernels, and generate live patches based on regular patches to LTS kernel branches. The applicability of source patches is assessed by profiling kernel builds. Patches with vulnerabilities that do not affect the target kernel are ignored. TuxTape includes a system for tracking new kernel vulnerabilities, a patch and vulnerability database builder, a server for storing metadata, a kernel build dispatch system, a kernel builder, a patch generator, a patch archive, a client for receiving patches for end hosts, and an interactive interface for managing the generation of live patches. https://github.com/geico/tuxtape/releases/tag/v0.1

Release of SysVinit 3.14: 08/02/2025 The classic SysVinit 3.14 initialization system has been published. It was widely used in Linux distributions in the days before systemd and upstart, and now continues to be used in distributions such as Devuan, Slackware, Debian GNU/Hurd and antiX. The code is written in C and is distributed under the GPLv2 license. The versions of the insserv and startpar utilities used in conjunction with sysvinit have not changed. The insserv utility is designed to manage the boot process taking into account the dependencies between init scripts, and startpar is used to ensure parallel launch of several scripts during the system boot process. The new version of SysVinit restores support for the DESTDIR variable in src/Makefile, which is necessary for building on Arch Linux. The maximum line size in the /etc/inittab configuration file has been increased from 127 to 253 characters. The logic for handling /etc/inittab entries that exceed the line size limit, has been changed. For those lines, a message is now written to the log, and the line itself is ignored. Previously, long lines were truncated at the size limit and executed, which could lead to unpleasant crashes. For example, if a long line had the command “rm -rf /var/1234” at the end, then the command “rm -rf /var” could actually be executed if the ”/1234“ part was outside the truncation limit. https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/sysvinit-devel/2025-02/msg00000.html

Pale Moon 33.6.0 Released: 09/02/2025 The release of the Pale Moon 33.6.0 web browser has been published. It has been forked 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 generated 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 the provision of wide customization options. The removed components include DRM, Social API, WebRTC, PDF viewer, Crash Reporter, code for collecting statistics, parental control tools, and accessibility options. Compared to Firefox, the browser has returned support for extensions using XUL, and retains the ability to use both full-fledged and lightweight design themes. https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?t%3D32070%26p%3D259424%23p259424

EndeavourOS 25.02 released: 11/02/2025 EndeavourOS 25.02 “Mercury” was released, continuing the development of the Antergos project and aimed at providing the ability to install Arch Linux with a selected desktop without unnecessary complications. The size of the installation image is 2.7 GB (x86_64). The distribution offers a simple installer for installing the basic Arch Linux environment, based on the Calamares installer. KDE (by default), Mate, LXQt, Cinnamon, Xfce, GNOME, Budgie, as well as the i3, BSPWM, and Sway mosaic window managers are offered for installation. Work is underway to add support for the Qtile and Openbox window managers, UKUI , LXDE, and Deepin desktops. One of the project's developers is developing its own window manager, called Worm. https://endeavouros.com/

KDE Plasma 6.3 released After four months of development, the KDE Plasma 6.3 desktop environment has been released. To evaluate the new KDE releases, you can use builds from the KDE Neon and openSUSE projects (Argon, based on openSUSE Leap, and Krypton, based on openSUSE Tumbleweed). Main changes include: The KWin compositing manager has reworked its support for fractional scaling. Snapping to the screen's pixel grid is now provided to reduce blurriness and improve clarity when zooming in. The zoom effect has been upgraded so that when zoomed in significantly, it now shows a grid to help you visually separate individual pixels and many more. https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/6/6.3.0/

Free audio codec FLAC 1.5 released: 11/02/2025 The Xiph.Org community has published an update to the free audio codec FLAC 1.5.0, which allows you to compress audio without losing quality. FLAC uses only lossless encoding methods, which guarantees complete preservation of the original quality of the audio stream and its identity with the reference version subjected to encoding. At the same time, the lossless compression methods used allow you to reduce the size of the original audio stream by 50-60%. FLAC is a completely free streaming format, which implies not only the openness of libraries with the implementation of encoding and decoding functions, but also the absence of restrictions on the use of specifications and the creation of derivative versions. The library code is distributed under the BSD license. https://xiph.org/flac/2025/02/11/flac-1-5-0-released.html

Systemd wants to download system images via HTTP: 12/02/2025 Lennart Poettering proposed a change in the system manager, systemd, that allows booting the system using a root filesystem image obtained from an external host via HTTP. The change boils down to extending systemd with the ability not only to download a disk image via HTTP at the initial boot stage, but also to unpack the downloaded image, bind it to a block device in loopback mode, mount the block device as /sysroot and boot the system from it. Support for downloading disk images during system boot using systemd-import-generator is already included in systemd 257. The rest of the functionality is still at the stage of a working prototype, requiring further development. The implementation does not yet support the full boot cycle, but in the future, the functionality is planned to be extended to booting via UEFI HTTP Boot of universal kernel images UKI (Unified Kernel Image), which combine in one file a bootloader for UEFI (UEFI boot stub), a Linux kernel image, and an initrd system environment loaded into memory. All this is aimed at modern immutable operating systems on real hardware. The developer can create an image with the system environment on his computer using the mkosi utility and make it available via HTTP using the “mkosi -f serve” command. On the computer on which the system operation needs to be tested, it is enough to enable booting via HTTP in EFI and add the URL of the image to be booted using the command: kernel-bootcfg –add-uri=http://192.168.47.11:8081/image.efi –title=testloop –boot-order=0 After that, you can simply reboot the computer, and it will load a standard UKI kernel image, which will then load a disk image prepared by the developer from the root FS. Until HTTP boot is disabled in EFI, each subsequent reboot of the computer will result in loading a fresh system image. Local disks are not affected in any way during such testing. https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/36314

DuckDB 1.2.0 Released: 13/02/2025 DuckDB 1.2.0 , a DBMS focused on performing analytical queries and conceptually resembling SQLite, has been released. DuckDB combines SQLite's compactness, embedded library connection, single-file database storage, and CLI interface with capabilities and optimizations for performing analytical queries that cover a significant portion of stored data, such as aggregating the entire contents of tables or merging several large tables. The project's code is written in C++ and is distributed under the MIT license. DuckDB extends SQL language with it's own commands, which includes additional capabilities for processing very complex and long-running queries. You can use complex types (arrays, structures, unions), as well as execute arbitrary and nested correlated subqueries. Simultaneous execution of several queries is supported, as well as execution of queries directly from files in CSV and Parquet formats. Support for import from PostgreSQL DBMS is available. https://duckdb.org/2025/02/05/announcing-duckdb-120

openSUSE Tumbleweed switches to SELinux: 13/02/2025 The openSUSE project developers have announced that the openSUSE Tumbleweed distribution, which uses a rolling update cycle, has been migrated to the SELinux access control system. Starting with the 20250211 update, new openSUSE Tumbleweed installations will be offered SELinux in “enforcing” mode by default. Ready-to-use builds of openSUSE Tumbleweed minimalVM virtual machines will be shipped with SELinux by default. AppArmor support will be retained in full - existing configurations will continue to use AppArmor, and the installer will have an option to activate AppArmor in new installations. For users whose systems use AppArmor but want to switch to SELinux, migration instructions are provided . The openSUSE Leap 15.x distribution will continue to use AppArmor. https://news.opensuse.org/2025/02/13/tw-plans-to-adopt-selinux-as-default/

Increasing the Linux kernel timer frequency to 1000Hz: 13/02/2025 An engineer at Google has proposed increasing the Linux kernel's default timer interrupt rate to 1000 Hz, which would increase task switching frequency and reduce the task scheduler's time quantum. The current default is 250 Hz, as a compromise between performance, latency, and power consumption. With 120Hz displays, typical for modern PCs and mobile devices, the 250Hz clock rate introduces approximately half the frame time inaccuracy, reducing resource allocation efficiency and underperforming the optimal performance-to-power ratio. Power consumption may be higher for systems with low clock rates because the Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) mechanism uses a more aggressive frequency selection strategy to avoid slowing down tasks. Another Google engineer suggested leaving the timer frequency as is (250 Hz), as increasing the timer interrupt frequency can lead to increased power consumption on low-power devices such as IoT boards. He estimated that setting the frequency to 1000 Hz, even on Android devices, has seen a 7% increase in CPU power consumption in some situations. Increasing the timer frequency also results in more frequent CPU wake-ups, as at 250 Hz, timers set to t + 1 ms, t + 2 ms, t + 3 ms, and t + 4 ms will be grouped together and result in a single wake-up, while at 1000 Hz, there will be four separate wake-ups. The Phoronix resource compared the performance of a PC based on the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X CPU. The 1000 Hz configuration turned out to be faster in the Llama.cpp, nginx, SuperTuxKart, Selenium tests and when measuring the kernel build time. In the Darktable, PostgreSQL, Unvanquished, Xonotic, Blender, SVT-AV1, RawTherapee tests, the performance was higher with the 250 Hz setting. At 1000 Hz, the average power consumption was 144.2 W, the minimum was 0.18 W, and the maximum was 202.13 W, and at 250 Hz: average 144.37 W, minimum 0.07 W, maximum 202 W. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250210001915.123424-1-qyousef@layalina.io/

Chimera 20250214 released: 14/02/2025 An update of the Chimera Linux distribution is out. It is notable for using the Linux kernel in combination with FreeBSD utilities, the dinit system manager, and the Musl standard C library. Bootable Live images are generated for the x86_64, ppc64le, aarch64, riscv64, and ppc64 architectures in variants with GNOME ( 1.5 GB ), KDE ( 2.1 GB ), and a stripped-down environment ( 806 MB ). The project aims to create a Linux distribution with alternative tools and is being developed taking into account the experience of developing Void Linux (the author of Chimera is a former Void maintainer, responsible for the POWER and PowerPC architectures). Like Void Linux, the project is being developed using a rolling release cycle of software version updates. The FreeBSD user components were chosen as less complicated and more suitable for lightweight and compact systems than the standard GNU tools. In addition to FreeBSD utilities, which replace such packages as coreutils, findutils, diffutils, sed and grep, the distribution uses GNU Make, util-linux, syslog-ng, udev, pam, dinit, clang, lld, libc++ and musl. Memory allocation functions in musl have been replaced by mimalloc . ZFS is used as a file system. The /var partition does not save its state between reboots (stateless). PipeWire is used to manage multimedia streams. Wayland is used by default in graphical environments. For installation of additional programs, both binary packages and a proprietary build system from source code - cports , written in Python, are offered. Currently, more than 4000 ports are supported. The build environment is launched in a separate unprivileged container created using the bubblewrap toolkit. The APK package manager (Alpine Package Keeper, apk-tools) is used to manage binary packages. https://chimera-linux.org/news/2025/02/new-images.html

Serpent OS distribution renamed to AerynOS: 15/02/2025 The developers of the Serpent OS distribution announced that they were renaming the project to AerynOS and rebranding. They plan to complete the migration of the infrastructure to the new name on March 17. It is noted that when the project was founded, the name Serpent OS was chosen hastily, without taking into account that the word “serpent” is perceived by some people in a negative connotation (a tempting snake, a vengeful person). The developers receive many complaints about the unfortunate choice of name, so they decided to take advantage of the moment, while the project has not left the alpha testing stage, and change the name. https://serpentos.com/blog/2025/02/14/evolve-this-os/

KDE 6.4 development begins: 15/02/2025 Nate Graham, a quality assurance developer at the KDE project, has published another KDE development report. The release of KDE Plasma 6.3.0 has revealed several nasty bugs that are scheduled to be fixed in the 6.3.1 patch, scheduled for February 18. An issue has been identified in the X11-based session that causes the KWin compositing manager to crash when connecting a new screen or switching between screens connected via HDMI. KDE users are advised to try switching to a Wayland-based session, as KDE has largely stopped testing the X11-based session. Also included in the 6.3.1 update are fixes for KWin crashes that could occur when connecting Thunderbolt devices and Alt+Tab process switching during software rendering. Additionally, a regression that could cause crashes when running some Qt applications in the Breeze environment has been fixed. In the Plasma desktop, an issue where clicking the network status icon in the system tray would crash when building with GCC 15 (due in May) has been resolved . Additionally, when building with GCC 15 with LTO optimizations, a KWin issue was discovered that would cause a black screen after changing the ICC profile in the display settings. https://blogs.kde.org/2025/02/15/this-week-in-plasma-post-release-polishing/

Release of Luanti 5.11.0: 15/02/2025 After three months of development, Luanti 5.11.0 has been released. It is a free cross-platform sandbox game engine that allows you to create games with voxel mechanics using various voxel blocks for players to jointly form various structures and buildings that make virtual world. The gameplay provided by the engine is entirely dependent on a set of mods created in the Lua language. The engine is written in C++ using the IrrlichtMt 3D library (a fork of Irrlicht). Luanti code is distributed under the LGPL license, and game resources are licensed under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license. Ready-made builds are generated for various Linux distributions, Android, FreeBSD, Windows and macOS. https://blog.luanti.org/2025/02/14/5.11.0-released/

Update to CADBase, a platform for exchanging 3D models and drawings: 16/02/2025 The CADBase platform, designed for storing data related to engineering and computer design, continues to develop. The main task of the platform is to exchange 3D models, drawings and related information, such as accompanying documentation, catalogs with information about suppliers, certificates, standardization and classification documents. The code is written in Rust and is distributed under the MIT license. https://gitlab.com/cadbase/cdbs-app

Freezing disk format changes in Bcachefs: 17/02/2025 Kent Overstreet, the developer of the Bcachefs filesystem, has submitted a pull request with fixes to Bcachefs proposed for inclusion in the 6.14-rc3 branch. In addition to the information about the fixes, the message announces the stabilization of the Bcachefs disk structure format. Any further changes to the format will be categorized as optional and will be implemented as optional addons. The fixes include: improved read-only mode performance; fix for use after free; fix for reflink pointers in fsck; fix for transaction restart handling. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/hodakekojuga62jmvqimb63dyyavx6jqdy7t67cltmha55fl5n@jl2guh3xzh4s/

SUSE and openSUSE consider dropping boot support on BIOS systems: 15/02/2025 Luboš Kocman, who is responsible for openSUSE release preparation, reported that SUSE is considering dropping support for BIOS booting, which would make SUSE and openSUSE distributions unusable on systems without UEFI support. The desire to drop BIOS support is explained by the fact that starting with the SLES 16 and openSUSE Leap 16 releases, packages will be built for the x86-64-v2 architecture, which covers the SSE3, SSE4_2, SSSE3, POPCNT, LAHF-SAHF, and CMPXCHG16B extensions. Developers doubt that there is hardware in use that uses the x86-64-v2 architecture but does not support UEFI. As for virtualization systems, which often use BIOS-based mode to boot virtual machines, it is reported that this will not be a problem, since KVM, Xen, VirtualBox and other virtualization systems can emulate UEFI. Hardware based on Intel platforms has been shipped with UEFI since 2005. In 2020, Intel stopped supporting BIOS in client systems and datacenter platforms. The Fedora distribution intended to remove BIOS support in 2020 and 2022 , but the project's technical committee rejected these initiatives. https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/factory@lists.opensuse.org/thread/H4JPQKOEKV6ECTNRE764NJFYSLLAWQLL/

Release of fheroes2 1.1.6: 17/02/2025 The very actively developed fheroes2 1.1.6 project is now available, which recreates the Heroes of Might and Magic II game engine from scratch. The project code is written in C++ and is distributed under the GPLv2 license. To run the game, you need files with game resources, which can be obtained from the original Heroes of Might and Magic II. The project includes a script for automatically downloading and extracting resources from the demo version of the game, which will get you going on the fly. https://github.com/ihhub/fheroes2/releases/tag/1.1.6

SUSE consider dropping BIOS boot support: 17/02/2025 Luboš Kocman, who is responsible for openSUSE release preparation, reported that SUSE is considering dropping support for BIOS booting, which would make SUSE and openSUSE distributions unusable on systems without UEFI support. The desire to drop BIOS support is explained by the fact that starting with the SLES 16 and openSUSE Leap 16 releases, packages will be built for the x86-64-v2 architecture, which covers the SSE3, SSE4_2, SSSE3, POPCNT, LAHF-SAHF, and CMPXCHG16B extensions. Developers doubt that there is hardware in use that uses the x86-64-v2 architecture but does not support UEFI. As for virtualization systems, which often use BIOS-based mode to boot virtual machines, it is reported that this will not be a problem, since KVM, Xen, VirtualBox and other virtualization systems can emulate UEFI. Hardware based on Intel platforms has been shipped with UEFI since 2005. In 2020, Intel stopped supporting BIOS in client systems and data center platforms. The Fedora distribution intended to remove BIOS support in 2020 and 2022 , but the project's technical committee rejected these initiatives https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/factory@lists.opensuse.org/thread/H4JPQKOEKV6ECTNRE764NJFYSLLAWQLL/

Postfix 3.10.0 has been released: 18/02/2025 After almost a year of development, the release of a new stable branch of the Postfix mail server - 3.10.0, has been published. At the same time, the end of support for the Postfix 3.6 branch, released in early 2021, was announced. The project code is written in C and is distributed under the EPL 2.0 (Eclipse Public License) and IPL 1.0 (IBM Public License) licenses. Postfix is ​​one of the few projects that combines high security, reliability, and performance, thanks to a multi-process architecture that isolates individual handlers, as well as a strict policy of code formatting and patch auditing. To protect against errors when working with memory, the project uses protected versions of the function for allocating and freeing memory, as well as a set of abstract functions-bindings for working with buffers (checking for buffer overruns and accessing freed memory), file operations , output formatting, buffered I/O, and string manipulation (including the ability to work with arbitrary-sized strings and automatically resize strings). According to the February automated survey of about 550 thousand mail servers, Postfix is ​​used by 37.64% (36.81% a year ago) of mail servers, Exim's share is 56.03% (56.61% a year ago), Sendmail - 3.39% (3.60%), MailEnable - 1.80% (1.82%), MDaemon - 0.39% (0.40%), Microsoft Exchange - 0.19% (0.19%), OpenSMTPD - 0.10% (0.09%). https://www.mail-archive.com/postfix-announce@postfix.org/msg00101.html

OpenSSH 9.9p2 Update to Fix MITM Attack: 18/02/2025 OpenSSH 9.9p2 is now available, fixing two vulnerabilities discovered by Qualys. An example of how these vulnerabilities can be used to perform a MITM attack: it allows a client to redirect traffic to a fake server when attempting to connect to an SSH server, bypass host key verification, and make the client appear to be connected to the desired server (the SSH client will accept the fake server's host key instead of the legitimate server's key). The first vulnerability (CVE-2025-26465) is caused by a logical error in the ssh utility, which allows bypassing the server identity check and performing a MITM attack. The problem appears starting with the release of OpenSSH 6.8p1 (December 2014) in configurations with the VerifyHostKeyDNS setting enabled. In the basic OpenSSH distribution, this option is disabled by default, but until March 2023, it was enabled in the ssh settings in FreeBSD. The problem is that in the verify_host_key_callback() function code, only the error code ”-1“ is checked when calling the verify_host_key() function, while other codes such as ”-2“ are ignored. As a result, the verify_host_key_callback() function can return a success code of “0” despite the error code ”-2“ being returned by the verify_host_key() function. The error code ”-2“ is returned by the verify_host_key() function when there is insufficient memory. If you create conditions that lead to the inability to allocate memory in the verify_host_key() function, SSH will think that the host key was verified successfully. To create such conditions, the attacker's fake SSH server, to which the client is redirected, returns a host key of the maximum possible size (256KB), and at the same time a memory leak is exploited on the ssh client side. The conditions for creating a memory leak are achieved through a second vulnerability (CVE-2025-26466) affecting both the ssh client and the sshd server, and is exploited without authentication. The vulnerability allows exhausting the available memory for a process and creating a high CPU load by sending a large number of SSH2_MSG_PING packets. There is a memory leak in the SSH2_MSG_PING packet handler, which has been apparent since the OpenSSH 9.5p1 release (August 2023). The leak occurs because for each incoming 16-byte PING packet, a 256-byte buffer is allocated to form a response, but this buffer is only freed after the key agreement is completed. As a workaround, it is proposed to configure limits using the LoginGraceTime, MaxStartups, and PerSourcePenalties directives. https://lists.mindrot.org/pipermail/openssh-unix-dev/2025-February/041810.html

Mesa 25.0 is released: 19/02/2025 After three months of development, the release of the free implementation of the OpenGL and Vulkan APIs, Mesa 25.0.0, has been published. The first release of the Mesa 25.0.0 branch has an experimental status - after the final stabilization of the code, the stable version 25.0.1 will be released. Mesa 25.0 adds support for the Vulkan 1.4 graphics API in the ANV drivers for Intel GPUs, RADV drivers for AMD GPUs, NVK drivers for NVIDIA GPUs, Asahi drivers for Apple GPUs, Turnip drivers for Qualcomm GPUs, and the lavapipe software rasterizer (lvp). Emulator mode (vn) supports Vulkan 1.3, the PanVK driver for ARM Mali GPUs supports Vulkan 1.1, and the v3dv (Broadcom VideoCore GPU for Raspberry Pi 4+) and dzn drivers (a Vulkan implementation on top of Direct3D 12) support Vulkan 1.0. Mesa also provides full OpenGL 4.6 support for the iris (Intel Gen 8+ GPUs), radeonsi (AMD), Crocus (older Intel Gen4-Gen7 GPUs), zink, llvmpipe, virgl ( Virgil3D virtual GPU for QEMU/KVM), freedreno (Qualcomm Adreno), d3d12 (OpenGL layer on top of DirectX 12), and asahi (AGX GPUs used in Apple's M1 and M2 chips). OpenGL 4.5 support is available for AMD (r600) and NVIDIA (nvc0) GPUs. OpenGL 3.3 support is available in the softpipe (software rasterizer) and nv50 (NVIDIA NV50) drivers. https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/2025-February/226464.html

OBS Studio and Fedora Resolve Conflict: 20/02/2025 As a result of a meeting between an OBS Studio representative and the Fedora leader and those responsible for maintaining Flatpak packages in the distribution, it was possible to establish cooperation and find solutions to problems that suit both projects. The demand to stop using the OBS Studio name in the Fedora-supported flatpak package has been withdrawn. Fedora will continue to offer users its own flatpak package with OBS Studio by default. The issue with shipping the crashing version of Qt will be resolved by migrating Fedora's Flatpak package to the new Flatpak runtime, which uses Qt 6.8.2, which fixes the regression. The issue with informing users about the scope of responsibility and how to report bugs in the package has also been resolved. Additionally, four more issues in Fedora's Flatpak package have been identified and Fedora has begun working on fixing them: https://gitlab.com/fedora/sigs/flatpak/fedora-flatpaks/-/issues/39%23note_2354562186

Xenoeye Netflow/IPFIX/sFlow Collector Release 25.02: 20.02.2025 13:26 Release of Netflow/IPFIX/sFlow collector Xenoeye 25.02 has been published. The collector allows collecting statistics on traffic flows from various network devices, transmitted using the Netflow v5, v9, IPFIX and sFlow protocols, processing data, generating reports and building graphs. The core of the project is written in C, the code is distributed under the ISC license. The collector aggregates network traffic by selected fields and exports data to PostgreSQL. This data can be used to build reports, graphs (using gnuplot, Python scripts + Matplotlib) or dashboards in Grafana. In addition, the collector can run custom scripts when thresholds are exceeded or when traffic falls below thresholds. Moving averages are used to calculate the current traffic speed. The mechanism that tracks threshold exceeding is designed to notify you about DoS/DDoS attacks and start suppression using BGP announcements (Flowspec or Blackhole). The collector comes with an example of a Telegram robot script that can notify the messenger about anomalies. The collector is not demanding on resources, it can process traffic of small networks on Raspberry/Orange Pi or in a virtual machine with 2-4 GB of RAM. https://github.com/vmxdev/xenoeye/releases/tag/v25.02-Novokuznetsk

Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS Released with Graphics Stack and Linux Kernel Updates: 20/02/2025 An update for the Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS distribution has been released, which includes changes related to improved hardware support, an update to the Linux kernel and graphics stack, and bug fixes in the installer and bootloader. The release also includes current updates for several hundred packages related to the elimination of vulnerabilities and problems affecting stability. At the same time, similar updates were released for Kubuntu 24.04.2 LTS, Ubuntu Budgie 24.04.2 LTS, Ubuntu MATE 24.04.2 LTS, Lubuntu 24.04.2 LTS, Ubuntu Kylin 24.04.2 LTS, Ubuntu Studio 24.04.2 LTS, Xubuntu 24.04.2 LTS, Edubuntu 24.04.2 LTS, Ubuntu Cinnamon 24.04.2 LTS, and Ubuntu Unity 24.04.2 LTS. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2025-February/000308.html

Release of MyLibrary 3.2: 20/02/2025 MyLibrary 3.2 home library cataloger is out. The program code is written in the C++ and is available under the GPLv3 license. The graphical user interface is implemented using the GTK4 library. The program is adapted to work in Linux and Windows operating systems. For Arch Linux users, a ready-made package build script is available in the AUR. For Windows users, an experimental installer is available. MyLibrary catalogs book files in fb2, epub, pdf, djvu formats, both directly accessible and packed into archives (zip, 7z, jar, cpio, iso, tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2, tar.xz, rar), and creates its own database without changing the original files or changing their location. The integrity of the collection and its changes is monitored by creating a database of hash sums of files and archives. A search for books by various criteria (last name, first name, middle name of the author, book title, series, genre) and their reading through the program installed in the system by default for opening the corresponding file formats is implemented. When selecting a book, the book's annotation and cover are displayed, if available. Display of a list of files included in a collection and a list of books included in a specific file is supported. Various operations with the collection are possible: updating (the entire collection is checked and the hash sums of available files are verified), exporting and importing the collection database, adding books/cds/toys/collectables (referred to as “books” from now on) to the collection and deleting “books” from the collection, adding folders with “books” to the collection, adding archives with “books” to the collection, copying “books” from the collection to an arbitrary folder, moving “books” from collection to collection. Manual editing of records about “books” in the database is available. A bookmark mechanism has been created for quick access to “books”. https://github.com/ProfessorNavigator/mylibrary/releases/tag/v3.2

Gentoo Releases Official QCOW2 Boot Images: 20/02/2025 The developers of the Gentoo project announced official boot images, in the QCOW2 format, allowing you to get a fully working system environment, ready to run in virtual machines. The images are updated once a week, which allows you to use them to assess the current state of the distribution. Previously, the project distributed only installation images and a Live build for booting from USB devices. Two variants are offered: an image without network services with an empty root password and an image with network services, blocked accounts and support for configuration via “cloud-init”. The first variant is intended for quick familiarization and testing of the distribution on a local system, and the second variant is for deployment in cloud environments. XFS is used as a file system. Images are generated for the amd64 (x86-64) and arm64 (aarch64) architectures, and support booting on systems with EFI (BIOS is not supported). There are plans to publish images for the riscv64 and loongarch64 architectures. Based on the available images, you can create bootable media using the “qemu-img convert” command to convert the qcow2 format to a disk image. https://www-gentoo-org.translate.goog/news/2025/02/20/gentoo-qcow2-images.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

KiCad 9.0 CAD Release: 21/02/2025 After a year of development, the KiCad 9.0.0 release of the free PCB design software has been published. This is the third major release after the project came under the wing of the Linux Foundation. The builds are prepared for various Linux distributions, Windows and macOS. The code is written in C++ using the wxWidgets library and is distributed under the GPLv3 license. KiCad provides tools for editing electrical circuits and printed circuit boards, 3D visualization of the board, working with a library of electrical circuit elements, manipulating Gerber templates (I don't know why, but my brain jumps to purity baby food when I see this), simulating the operation of electronic circuits, editing printed circuit boards and project management. The project also provides libraries of electronic components, footprints and 3D models. According to some printed circuit board manufacturers, about 15% of orders are received with the provision of schemes prepared in KiCad. https://www.kicad.org/blog/2025/02/Version-9.0.0-Released/

Exim 4.98.1 mail server: 21/02/2025 A corrective release of the Exim 4.98.1 mail server is available, which fixes a vulnerability (CVE-2025-26794) that allows SQL code substitution in the internal database (Hints DB) used to store information about the delivery status of messages. The vulnerability only manifests itself in Exim 4.98 when built with the “_USE_SQLITE_” option, which enables the use of SQLite DBMS to store Hints DB (enabled if “Hints DB: Using sqlite3” is output when running “exim -bV”). Exploitation of the vulnerability also requires enabling the ETRN SMTP command in the configuration file (“acl_smtp_etrn” must be set to “accept”) and enabling the use of ETRN serialization (“smtp_etrn_serialize” must be set to “true”). https://lists.exim.org/lurker/message/20250221.121401.a509f6c9.en.html

The sixth alpha release of the COSMIC desktop environment: 22/02/2025 System76, has released the sixth 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 with the latest version of COSMIC, built on top of alpha builds of the future Pop!_OS 24.04 distribution for systems with NVIDIA ( 3.1 GB ) and Intel/AMD ( 2.6 GB ) GPUs, are available for testing. Ready-made packages for Fedora , NixOS , Arch Linux , openSUSE , Serpent OS , Redox and CachyOS are also being created . COSMIC is being developed as a universal project, not tied to a specific distribution and corresponding to the 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. In addition to using the Rust language, COSMIC features include hybrid window tiling and stacked window pinning (window grouping similar to browser tabs), which can be enabled in conjunction with virtual desktops. The project is also developing a Wayland-based cosmic-comp composite server . The first stable release of COSMIC is scheduled for Q1 2025. https://blog.system76.com/post/cosmic-alpha-6-big-leaps-forward

IceWM 3.7.0 Released: 23/02/2025 The lightweight window manager IceWM 3.7.0 is now available. IceWM provides, full control via keyboard shortcuts, the ability to use virtual desktops, taskbars and application menus, and tabs can be used to group windows. The window manager is configured via a fairly simple configuration file and themes can be used. Combining windows into tabs is supported. Built-in applets for monitoring CPU, memory, and traffic are available. Several third-party GUIs for customization, desktop implementations, and menu editors are being developed separately. The code is written in C++ and is distributed under the GPLv2 license. https://github.com/ice-wm/icewm/releases/tag/3.7.0