section
FOSS
Kernel, distros, and the wider free and open source software world.
432 stories archived
[$] A trademark dispute over MeshCore
MeshCore is a relatively new project, started in January 2025, that aims to build a scalable mesh network using low-power long-distance radios. While many other projects of the same general nature have been tried before, MeshCore grew quickly because of its more efficient message routing and enthusiastic community. In early 2026, an early proponent of the project made a sudden shift that left the rest of the community stunned and embroiled in a trademark dispute.
Canonical takes over Flutter desktop maintenance
Google announced at Google I/O 2026 that Canonical is the new lead maintainer and ‘strategic steward’ of Flutter desktop for Windows, macOS and Linux. The news was shared in the ‘What’s new in Flutter’ presentation “[The Flutter] desktop experience has reached a new level of maturity this year, driven by our incredible engineering partnership with Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu”, says Kate Lovett, Engineer Manager on the Flutter Framework team at Google. “This progress is fuelled by Canonical’s dedication to ensuring that Flutter delivers on every desktop” she adds. Canonical made Flutter its ‘default choice’ for developing new Ubuntu apps […] You're reading Canonical takes over Flutter desktop maintenance , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
[$] A loadable crypto module for FIPS certification
Many organizations require US Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) certification of the crypto code they are running. The certification process is lengthy, but the bigger problem is that the way the crypto subsystem is built into the kernel makes the result unable to be reused across kernel updates. I have proposed a patch series that decouples the crypto subsystem into a standalone loadable module, allowing a certified crypto module to be reused with multiple kernels and, thus, requiring fewer lengthy recertification delays.
Nesbitt: Protestware for coding agents
Andrew Nesbitt has written a blog post detailing a recent incident with the jqwik library for property-based testing in Java. On May 25, the 1.10.0 release of jqwik included a change that attempts to instruct coding agents to disregard previous instructions and delete jqwik tests and code. I think this is a new class of supply-chain input worth keeping an eye on, mostly because of how little of the existing tooling has any opinion about it. A System.out.print of sixty-eight bytes of plain ASCII isn't the kind of thing scanners are looking for, since those watch for install hooks, network calls, filesystem writes, obfuscated strings and the like. The jar makes the same syscalls it made in 1.9, and because the change was committed and released by the legitimate maintainer through the normal build, it's clean from a SLSA point of view too: the provenance is what it should be. Anyone who reads the diff can see what it does, but a patch bump of a test-scoped dependency is not where most projects spend their review time.
CachyOS Delivers Lead Over Arch Linux, Pop!_OS & Ubuntu On System76 Thelio Major
The new System76 Thelio Major powered by the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series and optionally with the Radeon AI PRO R9700 graphics card for an all-open-source AMD Linux stack is a mighty powerful workstation. If desiring even more compute potential out of this high-end desktop/workstation, CachyOS works pretty darn well on this new system with lofty leads over upstream Arch Linux as well as Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and the stock Pop!_OS 24.04 distribution.
Linux Networking Still Seeing "Significantly Bigger" Pull Requests Due To AI
Last week's collection of networking subsystem fixes for Linux 7.1 noted craziness continuing with no end in sight with a large pull request of fixes with many of them spurred on by AI/LLM coding agents. This week it's "significantly bigger" than prior kernel cycles for this late stage of kernel development due to this assistance of large language models...
Steam Deck OLED is Absurdly Overpriced Now, Yet It Sold Out in North America Overnight
The handheld returned at $789 and $949, sold out in North America within 24 hours, and is now back with inconsistent availability.
Btrfs Change Coming For Linux 7.2 Yields Very Healthy Performance Gain
A change coming on the way for the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel cycle is yielding a significant improvement to the direct I/O write performance. While a big gain, technically it's a regression fix after a change mistakenly dropped the behavior several years ago...
Intel To Support DRM Background Color Property With Linux 7.2
Introduced in Linux 7.1 is a dedicated CRTC background color property for DRM graphics/display drivers. The "BACKGROUND_COLOR" property can be used with capable drivers and display controllers as the default background color when not covered by any plane or from transparent regions of higher planes. With the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel cycle, the Intel DRM driver will begin supporting this background color property...
Fedora 45 Considering Use Of PURL Metadata For Uniquely Identifying Software Packages
One of the Fedora 45 change proposals under consideration at the moment is making adding PURL "Package-URL" to Fedora's package metadata for simplifying the mapping between upstream projects and Fedora packages...
Linux 7.2 To Bring Graphics Driver Fix For Old Integrated Graphics On Intel Sandy Bridge
For those still making use of Intel Sandy Bridge processors from 15 years ago, the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel is bringing a fix for an engine reset issue when using the old integrated graphics with Sandy Bridge...
Radeon Software For Linux 26.12 Brings Ubuntu 26.04 Support
While most Linux enthusiasts and desktop users/gamers are comfortable just riding the latest upstream Linux kernel and Mesa drivers shipped by their distribution, for those enterprises preferring the officially blessed and QA'ed driver packages from AMD, last week marked the release of the Radeon Software for Linux 26.12 driver...
Intel Sends Out Revised Linux Patches For Directed Package Thermal Interrupts
Back in March was an initial patch series out of Intel for Linux support for Directed Package Thermal Interrupts as a new feature of recent Intel CPUs. There wasn't much to report over the past three months on this work but today a second iteration of the patches emerged on the Linux kernel mailing list...
Linux 7.2's Open-Source Nouveau Driver To Finally Support The NVIDIA GA100
Sent out today was the last drm-misc-next pull request ahead of the Linux 7.2 merge window getting underway in June. As part of this last batch of small Direct Rendering Manager graphics/accelerator driver changes is finally enabling the NVIDIA GA100 within the Nouveau driver...
Rust 1.96.0 released
Version 1.96.0 of the Rust programming language has been released. Changes include a new set of Copy -implementing Range types, assertions with pattern matching, a number of stabilized APIs, and two Cargo vulnerability fixes.
Górny: why Gentoo?
Gentoo developer Michał Górny has written a lengthy article explaining the philosophy and purpose of the Gentoo Linux distribution, in response to a thread on Mastodon : Gentoo is a source-first distribution, which means the primary method of installing software is to build it from source. Of course, that doesn't mean manually building stuff, following some kind of how-to: finding all the dependencies, installing them manually, going through a series of magical incantations, and eventually ending up no better than if we were installing a binary package. The package manager takes care of all the necessary steps and more, making package installs easy; well, at least unless something fails. But I'm digressing... [...] We try to build a friendly and welcoming community around Gentoo, and we truly want using Gentoo be an enjoyable experience. We want it to be a system that doesn't betray you.
Intel Arc Pro B70 BMG-G31 Linux Gaming Performance
In recent weeks we have been exploring different areas of the Intel Arc Pro B70 graphics performance on Linux from various OpenCL and Vulkan to Level Zero compute benchmarks, scaling up to four Arc Pro B70 graphics cards, comparing to NVIDIA RTX PRO Blackwell, and other relevant tests. While not intended for gaming, many Phoronix readers keep raising requests for seeing the Arc Pro B70 performance for Linux gaming given the lack of any consumer BMG-G31 GPU. So for those curious, here is a look at the Linux gaming performance with the Arc Pro B70 graphics card.
[$] Policies for merging new filesystems
In a filesystem-track session at the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit , Amir Goldstein wanted to discuss his proposed documentation on adding new filesystems to the kernel. There are a number of unmaintained and untestable filesystems already in the kernel, which are a burden to VFS-layer developers who are trying to make sweeping changes, such as switching to folios and the "new" mount API. Goldstein's document is an attempt to head off the addition of filesystems that may increase that burden down the road.
Arm Announces Metis: Agentic AI Security Framework
Arm today announced the open-sourcing of Metis, an agentic AI security framework that delivers context AI-powered security analysis in looking out for software vulnerabilities...
QEMU Shifting On AI Policy To Allow Some AI/LLM-Generated Contributions
The QEMU processor emulator that plays an important role in the open-source Linux virtualization stack had a policy that forbid any contributions including or derived from AI-generated content. But there are now second thoughts with a proposed patch that will permit AI/LLM contributions in non-critical areas...
IBM's "Project Lightwell"
IBM has sent out a press release touting a claimed $5 billion investment into an operation called Project Lightwell: Project Lightwell will establish a trusted enterprise clearinghouse combined with a global force of engineers to identify and fix vulnerabilities at scale. The clearinghouse will serve as a security coordination layer, using advanced AI capabilities to validate and test fixes across an unprecedented volume of open source code. These capabilities will be offered through commercial subscriptions, allowing enterprises to integrate secure patches directly into their existing software supply chains with enterprise-grade validation and lifecycle management. Toward the bottom, it does also mention sharing vulnerability information with upstream projects.
Qualcomm Snapdragon C Announced For $300+ Laptops
For competing with the Apple MacBook Neo, Google Chromebooks, and other entry-level laptops, Qualcomm today announced the Snapdragon C series SoCs...
Intel Arc G-Series Processors Announced For Handheld Gaming Devices
Ahead of Computex, Intel today announced the introduction of the Arc G-Series. While taking on the "Arc" branding, this isn't a new graphics card from Intel but rather their new processors with integrated graphics for handheld gaming devices...
[$] Separating memory descriptors from struct page
The kernel's memory-management subsystem is currently partway through a multi-year project to replace the page structure (which represents a page of physical memory) with memory descriptors . At the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit , Vishal Moola ran a fast-paced session in the memory-management track to describe the current state of that work and what is likely to happen next.