section
FOSS
Kernel, distros, and the wider free and open source software world.
491 stories archived
PHP Updates Released For Two Critical Code Execution Vulnerabilities
PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 and 8.2.35 were just released to fix two critical vulnerabilities that can allow for unauthenticated remote code execution. Server administrators are advised to update immediately...
Four stable kernels for Wednesday
Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 7.2.12 , 6.18.58 , 6.12.114 , and 6.6.160 stable kernels. Each contains a number of important fixes; users are advised to upgrade.
AMD Working On Ryzen Overclocking Driver For Linux
AMD recently published patches for the Linux kernel to implement AOD, an AMD Overclocking driver for Ryzen processors. Linux enthusiasts have long sought an official AMD Ryzen CPU overclocking driver for Linux akin to Ryzen Master on Windows and it's finally coming, at least from the kernel driver perspective...
Linux 7.4 To Close Files Synchronously For close_range, exec & exit
Of the many VFS changes to be merged for Linux 7.4 is now closing files synchrously for close_range, exec, and exit calls. In turn when needing to close many file descriptors this provides for much lower latency than the status quo...
Fwupd Working Toward Proper Android Integration
Google Chromebooks already have a mandate for nice Fwupd support with the Linux Vendor Firmware (LVFS) while now there is work on improving the Android integration for Fwupd/LVFS...
Meta Makes Improvements To Kernfs Scalability With Linux 7.4
Kernfs as the functions/frameworks used for creating pseudo file-systems on Linux like sysfs and configfs have seen some nice scalability work carried out by Meta. After Meta engineers discovered some system daemons getting stuck for minutes on their massive fleet of servers, they uncovered some scalability bottlenecks within Kernfs that now look to be resolved for Linux 7.4...
DankMaterialShell Becomes Dux Shell as Dank Linux Rebrands to Dux Labs
The new name covers the shell, greeter, search, system monitor, calendar, and file manager, all released as part of DMS 2.0.
AMD HIPRT 3.2 Released With Medusa APU Support
AMD HIPRT 3.2 released today as the first update to this HIP ray-tracing library since the beginning of 2026...
XFS Sees Small Performance Optimizations & Bug Fixes For Linux 7.4
The XFS file-system updates have landed for the in-development Linux 7.4 kernel...
Save Upto 40% on Kubernetes Security Certifications From the Linux Foundation
Planning to get certified? You can get CKS and KCSA for 40% less and 35% off most other Linux Foundation certifications. Offer ends October 23.
PS5 Linux hack now supports (some) newer firmware versions
New PS5 Linux hack pLinux5-NG supports newer firmware, allowing Linux and Steam games to run on Sony's console. But not for long, welp. You're reading PS5 Linux hack now supports (some) newer firmware versions , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Firefox 158.0.1 is out with important security fixes
Mozilla Firefox 158.0.1 is rolling out with some important security fixes. Now, I don’t tend to cover Firefox point releases as mainly ship minor fixes for things the majority of users won’t have noticed were wrong in the first place. The Firefox 158.0.1 update is more ‘meaty’ than usual fare. Among the security advisories this update covers are eight intermediate certificates belonging to the eMudhra certificate authority, whose private keys were compromised. Anyone holding those keys could issue certificates that browsers accept as genuine for any website. If they can also intercept a user’s connection, they could impersonate the site […] You're reading Firefox 158.0.1 is out with important security fixes , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Dynamic PAMT Merged For Linux 7.4 To Help Intel Servers Save Precious RAM
Dynamic PAMT has made it for Linux 7.4! Dynamic PAMT is a new feature for reducing memory overhead on Intel TDX servers where there may not be many concurrent virtual machines occupying a majority of the system. In today's world with high memory prices and tight availability, Dynamic PAMT provides nice memory overhead reduction for modern Intel Xeon servers...
COSMIC Epoch 1.11 Released With Wayland xdg-dialog-v1, Better Multi-GPU Handling
System76 developers just released COSMIC Epoch 1.11 as the newest point release to their Rust-written open-source desktop environment catering to their in-house Pop!_OS Linux distribution...
Critical PHP security update coming
The PHP security team has let it be known that there is a high-stakes security update coming at 14:00 UTC on October 21. " All PHP users are encouraged to prepare now so they can upgrade as soon as the release is available ". Anybody running a PHP site probably needs to be prepared for this one.
[$] SUSE's efforts to disable setuid system-wide
Setuid (and setgid) binaries have long been a source of headaches, and security vulnerabilities, on Linux systems. They are largely seen as something to be avoided; SUSE's security team, for example, forbids the inclusion of setuid or setgid binaries in packages unless they have been reviewed and explicitly allowed. Thorsten Kukuk wants to go a step further and disallow them entirely. At the 2026 All Systems Go! conference, he spoke about his work to disable setuid system-wide, as well as some of the hurdles that remain.
Give Nautilus file manager the ‘Computer’ view it lacks
The Nautilus file manager is great for browsing your files and folders, but it lacks a dedicated way to see all your drives a how much space is left on each – but you can add one. Nautilus My Computer is a third-party view for GNOME Files providing a centralised page listing drives, with storage usage bars to show which mounts, volumes, partitions, etc., have room to spare and which are getting full. Drives can be interacted with like folders, so double-click on one to enter it or right-click to access options to open it in new tab, or window or to unmount or eject, etc., depending on the drive/mount type. A ‘Preferred Folders’ section sits at […] You're reading Give Nautilus file manager the ‘Computer’ view it lacks , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Improved Performance & Resource Usage For XFS Checksumming With Linux 7.4
Among the many VFS pull requests merged as the initial material for the in-development Linux 7.4, the VFS IOmap pull introduced lazy bounce buffering for checksummed reads. This improvement is benefiting checksumming on XFS with improved performance and lower resource usage...
Intel & AMD Now Collaborating On Software Optimizations With PyTorch/oneDNN
Intel has long worked on tuning their oneDNN neural network library for their hardware and saw its adoption by PyTorch and other AI frameworks. AMD has maintained ZenDNN as their downstream fork that is oneDNN API compatible while catering to their Zen processor designs. As an interesting twist, AMD and Intel jointly announced today they will be collaborating around oneDNN for PyTorch and pushing the AMD Zen improvements into oneDNN...
[$] Discussing a rewrite of XArray
The work to support block sizes larger than the page size on XFS has been difficult. Many users of XFS run stable kernels, which means that they aren't testing new XFS code as it is released. That has made Daniel Gomez wonder whether adopting Rust for some of the data structures underlying XFS, particularly XArrays , could reduce the number of bugs lurking in the code. At Kangrejos 2026, he led a discussion about the potential problems with converting XArray to Rust. The assembled kernel developers had a number of reasons to be cautious about replacing the XArray code, but Gomez was determined to experiment with the possibility, citing both security and performance improvements.
eMudhra intermediate CA compromise
Mozilla has announced that it has received a report that private keys associated with eight eMudhra intermediate certificates have been compromised: These keys could allow attackers to issue fraudulent HTTPS certificates for websites they do not control. An attacker who could intercept a user's connection could use those certificates to impersonate websites and potentially read or modify traffic. Mozilla has blocked the affected certificates using its OneCRL centralized list of revoked certificates, and has updated the trusted certificate list in Network Security Services (NSS) 3.131.1 . There is a single-page site about the compromise that goes into more detail. According to the site the certificates have also been blocked in Chrome since October 17, Apple devices since the 19th, and Microsoft blocked the certificates on the 20th. There is also a table that displays whether a browser or other client still trusts the compromised certificates. The NetBSD foundation has issued instructions to block the certificates on NetBSD installations. Users of other browsers and operating systems may wish to check for updates or guidance to disable the compromised certificates.
Intel Core Ultra 9 Arrow Lake On Star Labs StarFighter Shows Nice Gains On Ubuntu 26.10
For those running a Star Labs StarFighter Ultra or other Intel Core Ultra Arrow Lake laptop, the recent Ubuntu 26.10 release is providing some nice performance gains over the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release. Here is a look at how Ubuntu 26.04 LTS vs. Ubuntu 26.10 performs with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H over dozens of different benchmarks.
Linux Foundation Estimates 25% Of New Pull Requests To Be Low-Quality AI Slop
The Linux Foundation published a new study today around the impact of generative AI on open-source software development. One key takeaway is that ~25% of new open-source software pull requests amount to AI slop...
Linux Coredumps Via Sockets Can Be Much Smaller Now With Sparse Support
Added to the Linux kernel last year was Coredump support via Unix domain sockets as an alternative to the pipe-based Coredumps. With code now merged for Linux 7.4, the core dumps via sockets has the potential of being much smaller thanks to sparse support. In extreme cases they can be 1% of the size without sparse support...