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FOSS
Kernel, distros, and the wider free and open source software world.
326 stories archived
Rust Coreutils 0.9 Released With Additional Security Hardening, Zero-Copy I/O
Rust Coreutils 0.9 was tagged today as the latest major update to this GNU Coreutils implementation in the Rust programming language. Rust Coreutils 0.9 is up to a 90.4% pass rate against the GNU test suite!..
NixOS 26.05 Released With 20,442 New Packages, Stage 1 Now Based On systemd By Default
NixOS 26.05 is out today as the latest version of this Linux distribution built around the Nix package manager...
AMD Submits More Graphics Driver Changes For Linux 7.2
On Friday was the latest AMDGPU/AMDKFD pull request landing more kernel graphics/compute driver improvements in DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 7.2 merge window happening in mid-June...
G7 Agrees On Shared Language Around Open-Source AI, Open Weights AI
Ahead of the 52nd G7 Summit being held in Evian, France next month, the recently conducted G7 Digital and Technology Ministers’ Meeting came to agreement on shared language around open-source AI and on the importance of open-source in AI...
AMD Expands The Range Of Zen 6 CPUs Detected By The Linux Kernel
The latest open-source/Linux patch activity around AMD's next-gen Zen 6 processors is expanding the range of the CPU models detected by the Linux kernel...
GNOME Circle Takes Stand Against AI Slop, Resources App Makes It Into GNOME Incubator
GNOME Circle as the initiative for third-party/independent software applications and libraries extending the GNOME desktop ecosystem is taking a stand against AI slop. The GNOME Circle policy has been updated to reject low-effort, vibe coded applications/libraries where the developer is not able to take responsibility for the work...
Plasma 6.6, 6.7 & 6.8 See Plenty Of Bug Fixing This Week
KDE released Plasma 6.7 Beta 2 this week while the current Plasma 6.6 stable series continues seeing fixes as does Plasma 6.8 for what will be the follow-on feature release to Plasma 6.7...
Genode OS 26.05 Released, Finishes Moving From GitHub To Codeberg
Genode OS 26.05 is out this week as the latest update for this original open-source operating system framework. With Genode OS 26.05, they have taken various features of their general purpose Sculpt OS operating system and turned them into reusable framework features...
SteamOS 3.8.6 Beta Released With Initial Native Support For AMD HDMI VRR
Valve tonight released their beta version of SteamOS 3.8.6 that contains a number of notable enhancements, including native HDMI Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) support in initial form...
Ubuntu 26.10 Snapshot 1 is now available to download
Canonical has released the first monthly snapshot of Ubuntu 26.10 ‘Stonking Stingray’. This is the first of 4 planned testing builds in the lead up to the final, stable release of Ubuntu 26.10 on 15 October, 2026. Utkarsh Gupta announced the release on the Ubuntu developer mailing list, noting that a couple of images are missing from the first snapshot but will return for Snapshot 2. Ubuntu monthly snapshots are not alpha builds. They exist as a way for Ubuntu’s engineers to fine-tune new, automated build processes. Snapshots are useful jump-on points that help users test the next release, but […] You're reading Ubuntu 26.10 Snapshot 1 is now available to download , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Ubuntu 26.10 Snapshot 1 Released For Testing
Canonical today released the first monthly snapshot of the Ubuntu 26.10 "Stonking Stingray" release...
Wine 11.10 Released With VKD3D 2.0, Improved VBScript Compatibility
Wine 11.10 marks the latest bi-weekly development release of Wine for running Windows games and applications on Linux, macOS, and other platforms...
AMD ROCm 7.2.4 Released With Performance & Stability Fixes
AMD's ROCm open-source compute stack is up to version 7.2.4 stable as it continues seeing new fixes while on the tech preview feature side is the recent ROCm 7.13 release...
Fwupd 2.1.4 Brings Many Bug Fixes, Firmware Update Support For Intel Arc Pro B65/B70
Fresh off the funding round from HP, Fwupd 2.1.4 was christened today as the newest stable update to this open-source firmware updating solution for Linux systems...
[$] A trademark dispute over MeshCore
MeshCore is a relatively new project, started in January 2025, that aims to build a scalable mesh network using low-power long-distance radios. While many other projects of the same general nature have been tried before, MeshCore grew quickly because of its more efficient message routing and enthusiastic community. In early 2026, an early proponent of the project made a sudden shift that left the rest of the community stunned and embroiled in a trademark dispute.
Canonical takes over Flutter desktop maintenance
Google announced at Google I/O 2026 that Canonical is the new lead maintainer and ‘strategic steward’ of Flutter desktop for Windows, macOS and Linux. The news was shared in the ‘What’s new in Flutter’ presentation “[The Flutter] desktop experience has reached a new level of maturity this year, driven by our incredible engineering partnership with Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu”, says Kate Lovett, Engineer Manager on the Flutter Framework team at Google. “This progress is fuelled by Canonical’s dedication to ensuring that Flutter delivers on every desktop” she adds. Canonical made Flutter its ‘default choice’ for developing new Ubuntu apps […] You're reading Canonical takes over Flutter desktop maintenance , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
[$] 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...