ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Niri 0.1.9 Scrollable-Tiling Wayland Compositor Brings New IPC Functionality

([Wayland] 14 September 09:00 AM EDT Niri 0.1.9)

Niri 0.1.9 is out today as the latest update to this scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor that is written in Rust.



Casilda Is A New Project As A GTK4 Wayland Compositor Widget

([GNOME] 14 September 07:10 AM EDT Casilda Wayland Compositor Widget)

Casilda is a new open-source project by GNOME developer Juan Pablo Ugarte to serve as a Wayland compositor widget. Casilda allows for embedding other processes windows within a GTK4 application.



EROFS Adding Support For File-Backed Mounts To Benefit Containers & Sandboxes

([Linux Storage] 14 September 06:42 AM EDT EROFS In Linux 6.12)

The EROFS read-only file-system changes have been submitted now for ahead of the upcoming Linux 6.12 merge window. Notable this cycle is EROFS adding support for file-backed mounts.



Printk Changes Submitted For Linux 6.12 Finish NBCON Console Preparations

([Linux Kernel] 14 September 06:53 AM EDT Printk)

Ahead of the Linux 6.12 kernel merge window opening on Monday, the printk updates were submitted in advance given the Linux Kernel Maintainer Summit also taking place next week in Vienna. Notable with the printk updates is finishing up the NBCON console work that is notable as the last major blocker before real-time (PREEMPT_RT) support can be finally mainlined.



KDE Releases Plasma 6.2 Beta, Early Feature Work Begins For Plasma 6.3

([KDE] 14 September 06:30 AM EDT KDE This Week)

KDE developers were busy this week in Germany for their annual Akademy developer conference but they still managed to release a Plasma 6.2 Beta as well as some early feature work toward Plasma 6.3.



GNOME Continues Hashing Out Individual Home Directory Encryption, Modernizing Platform

([GNOME] 13 September 08:36 PM EDT This Week In GNOME)

GNOME developers have been making progress on being able to individually encrypt user home directories as well as modernizing platform infrastructure as part of the investments made by Germany's Sovereign Tech Fund.



Linux 6.12 Finishing The Transition For Moving Intel CPUs Past The "Family 6" Era

([Intel] 13 September 04:22 PM EDT VFM Refactoring)

As written about early in the year, future Intel CPUs will be moving past the "Family 6" identification used since the mid-1990s with the P6 micro-architecture. Since then Intel has continued releasing new CPUs under "Family 6" with different model IDs while AMD has been more open to changing its Family ID every Zen generation or two. With Intel using Family 6 for so long it led to a lot of Linux kernel code just relying on Model ID comparisons for determining between Intel CPU generations and the like. Thus a lot of Intel CPU model handling reworks are needed for preparing future Intel CPU generations that will no longer be in Family 6. With Linux 6.12 it looks like that work will be wrapping up.



AMD Posts Linux Patches For New Secure AVIC Guest Feature

([AMD] 13 September 02:46 PM EDT AMD Secure AVIC Guests)

AMD engineers today posted the first "request for comments" patches in enabling support for Secure AVIC guest handling as a new hardware feature with upcoming processors.



Intel Graphics Compiler Can Now Be Built For RISC-V

([Intel] 13 September 01:54 PM EDT Intel IGC + RISC-V)

The Intel Graphics Compiler (IGC) that is used on Windows as a shader compiler back-end and both for Windows/Linux as part of their OpenCL and oneAPI Level Zero compute stack can now be compiled for RISC-V 64-bit.



Haiku R1 Beta 5 Released With Dark Mode Theme & Support For USB Audio

([Operating Systems] 13 September 01:11 PM EDT Haiku R1 Beta1)

The BeOS-inspired Haiku OS is out today with its fifth beta release as it works toward the long-awaited Haiku R1 stable release.



GNOME Foundation Accepting Applications For New Executive Director

([GNOME] 13 September 10:00 AM EDT GNOME Executive Director)

Following the GNOME Foundation Executive Director leaving after less than one year, the GNOME Foundation has formally begun their search for a new executive director.



Ubuntu 24.10 ARM64 Installer Supports The Snapdragon-Powered Lenovo ThinkPad X13s

([Arm] 13 September 09:15 AM EDT ThinkPad X13s + Ubuntu 24.10)

While not quite as exciting as the latest ARM64 laptops sporting the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 series SoCs, the Lenovo ThinkPad X13s laptop using the older Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 is now available to boot and install using the generic ARM64 images of the upcoming Ubuntu 24.10.



AMD Engineer Proposes "Attack Vector Controls" To Rethink CPU Security Mitigation Handling

([Linux Security] 13 September 07:16 AM EDT Attack Vector Controls)

David Kaplan who is a Senior Fellow at AMD focused on security technologies has published an initial set of Linux kernel patches for "Attack Vector Controls" in rethinking the CPU security mitigation handling. The proposed Attack Vector Controls makes it easier to manage desired security mitigations to have enabled/disabled based upon intent of the system rather than having to be knowledgeable about individual CPU security vulnerabilities and the various tuning knobs.



LoongArch KVM To Speed-Up ARM/x86 Binary Translation

([Virtualization] 13 September 06:39 AM EDT LoongArch KVM Changes For Linux 6.12)

The LoongArch changes for the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) have been submitted ahead of the Linux 6.12 merge window opening. For enhancing KVM virtualization on these Chinese CPUs is enabling Loongson Binary Translation (LBT) for accelerating ARM/x86 binary translation.



Ruffle Continues Letting Adobe Flash Player Support Live On In Open-Source

([Free Software] 13 September 06:50 AM EDT Ruffle + Adobe Flash Player)

Most of you have fortunately not had to think about Adobe Flash support in years, but for those still having some old assets in Adobe Flash/SWF format or wanting to relive some old games/entertainment based in Flash, the open-source Ruffle project remains one of the leading contenders for dealing with Flash in 2024 and beyond. Ruffle is a Rust-based emulator for Adobe Flash that continues to be actively developed and supporting more features.



Chrome Adds Support For FreeDesktop Secret Service & Better Wayland Window Dragging

([Google] 13 September 06:29 AM EDT Chrome Features)

The Google Chrome/Chromium web browser merged two notable features yesterday for Linux users.



Samba Secures A Big Investment From Germany's Sovereign Tech Fund

([Free Software] 13 September 06:10 AM EDT STF + Samba)

Germany's Sovereign Tech Fund is set to make a €688,800 investment into the Samba open-source project that re-implements the SMB networking protocol and focused on better file and print service interoperability with Microsoft Windows systems.



Fedora 42 On 64-bit ARM Might Make It Seamless To Run x86/x86_64 Programs

([Fedora] 12 September 04:00 PM EDT FEX On Fedora AArch64)

As one of the early feature proposals for Fedora 42, there is a proposal being considered to make for a nice out-of-the-box experience running x86/x86_64 game/application binaries atop Fedora 42 AArch64 hosts.



AMD Publishes GC 11.5.2 Firmware For Upcoming RDNA3.5 Hardware

([Radeon] 12 September 02:36 PM EDT AMD GC 11.5.2)

AMD today committed their GC 11.5.2 firmware to the upstream linux-firmware.git for the necessary firmware binary blobs needed for hardware initialization by their open-source AMDGPU kernel graphics driver with this newer RDNA3.5 variant.



Fedora 42 Will Try Again To Use The New Anaconda Installer's Web UI

([Fedora] 12 September 02:15 PM EDT Fedora 42 Early Features)

With Fedora 41 working its way to release toward the end of October, some early feature/change proposals for Fedora 42 are being filed for what will be the Fedora Linux release out next spring.



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I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments of
others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbade myself the use
of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion,
such as "certainly", "undoubtedly", etc. I adopted instead of them "I
conceive", "I apprehend", or "I imagine" a thing to be so or so; or "so it
appears to me at present".

When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the
pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him immediately some
absurdity in his proposition. In answering I began by observing that in
certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present
case there appeared or seemed to me some difference, etc.

I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I
engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I proposed my
opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction. I had
less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily
prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I
happened to be in the right.
-- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin