Linux kernel boss Linus Torvalds has released the first release candidate for version 6.1 of the project and added an appeal for developers to make his life easier by adding code earlier in the development cycle. The Register reports: "Let me just say that after I got my machine sorted out and caught up with the merge window, I was somewhat frustrated with various late pull requests. I've mentioned this before, but it's _really_ quite annoying to get quite a few pull requests in the last few days of the merge window."

He then offered further guidance on how kernel devs can do it right. "Yes, the merge window is two weeks, but that's very much to allow me time to look things over, not 'two weeks to hurriedly put together a branch that you send Linus on Friday of the second week'," he wrote. "The whole 'do an all-nighter to get the paper in the day before the deadline' is something that should have gone out the window after high school. Not for kernel development." His next line was: "You know who you are."

"Anyway, it's not the first time I've said this, I doubt it will be the last. But maybe more people could take it to heart, ok?" he added, before concluding his post with a slightly non-traditional call for testers to visit Linux's git tree because "The merge window may not be the biggest ever, but it's certainly big enough that the shortlog is much too big to post, and below is just my usual merge log." "For all the gory details, please refer to the git tree."

Mike Bouma (Slashdot reader #85,252) writes: Hyperion Entertainment is pleased to announce the immediate availability of a very substantial and comprehensive update of the Software Development Kit (SDK) for AmigaOS 4.1 54.16.

Also Linux: Kernel 6.0 for AmigaOne X1000/X5000 has been released and the biggest Amiga event of the year will be held upcoming weekend in Mönchengladbach, Germany: the Amiga37 event.

When a kernel developer asked Linus Torvalds if he'd missed a Git pull, Torvalds "revealed the request was still in his queue as 'I'm doing merges (very slowly) on my laptop, while waiting for new ECC memory DIMMs to arrive,'" reports The Register: Torvalds needs the DIMMs because over the last few days he experienced what he described as "some instability on my main desktop... with random memory corruption in user space resulting in my allmodconfig builds randomly failing with internal compiler errors etc."

The Linux boss's first thought was that a new kernel bug had caused the problem — which isn't good but sometimes happens. His instinct was wrong. "It was literally a DIMM going bad in my machine randomly after 2.5 years of it being perfectly stable," he wrote. "Go figure. Verified first by booting an old kernel, and then with memtest86+ overnight."

Torvalds appears to have been tracking delivery of the new DIMMs as he reported replacement memory was "out for delivery" and predicted it should arrive later on Sunday evening....

His post also mentions that his main PC was set up for error correction code memory (ECC memory), but "during the early days of COVID when there wasn't any ECC memory available at any sane prices. And then I never got around to fixing it, until I had to detect errors the hard way."

"I absolutely *detest* the crazy industry politics and bad vendors that have made ECC memory so 'special'," he added.

"Starting with the Ubuntu 16.04 edition and including the later LTS versions, Canonical will offer expanded security coverage for critical, high, and medium Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) to all of Ubuntu's open-source applications and toolchains for ten years," reports ZDNet.

"Yes, you read that right, you get security patches not just for the operating system, but for all of Ubuntu's open-source applications for a decade." Most of these are server programs, such as Ansible, Apache Tomcat, Drupal, Nagios, Redis, and WordPress. But, it also includes such developer essentials as Docker, Node.js, phpMyAdmin, Python 2, and Rust. Altogether, Canonical is supporting more than 23,000 packages. Indeed, it's now offering security for, as Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical's CEO, said, "Security coverage to every single package in the Ubuntu distribution."

Canonical isn't doing this on its own. It's offering free, improved security in partnership with the security management company Tenable. Robert Huber, Tenable's Chief Security Officer, said, "Ubuntu Pro offers security patch assurance for a broad spectrum of open-source software. Together, we give customers a foundation for trustworthy open source."

Beyond ordinary security, Canonical is backporting security fixes from newer application versions. This enables Ubuntu Pro users to use the Ubuntu release of their choice for long-term security without forced upgrades. Happy to keep using Ubuntu 20.04? No problem. You can run it until April 2030. Knock yourself out....

Users can obtain a free personal Ubuntu Pro subscription at ubuntu.com/pro for up to five machines. This free tier is for personal and small-scale commercial use.
Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Ubuntu's parent company company Canonical, explains in a new video that Ubuntu "is now the world's most widely used Linux..."

"What makes most proud, though, is that we have found a way to make this available free of charge to anybody for their personal and for small-scale commercial use.... full commercial use for you, and any business you own, on up to five machines."

Intel laptop users running Linux are being advised to avoid running the latest Linux 5.19.12 stable kernel point release as it can potentially damage the display. From a report: Intel Linux laptop users on Linux 5.19.12 have begun reporting "white flashing" display issues with one user describing it as "[the] laptop display starts to blink like lights in a 90's rave party." Intel Linux kernel engineer Ville Syrjal posted this week on the kernel mailing list: "After looking at some logs we do end up with potentially bogus panel power sequencing delays, which may harm the LCD panel."

"This Monday, the first set of patches to enable Rust support and tooling was merged for Linux 6.1," writes Slashdot reader sabian2008, sharing an update from longtime kernel developer Kees Cook: The tree has a recent base, but has fundamentally been in linux-next for a year and a half. It's been updated based on feedback from the Kernel Maintainer's Summit, and to gain recent Reviewed-by: tags. Miguel is the primary maintainer, with me helping where needed/wanted. Our plan is for the tree to switch to the standard non-rebasing practice once this initial infrastructure series lands. The contents are the absolute minimum to get Rust code building in the kernel, with many more interfaces[2] (and drivers -- NVMe[3], 9p[4], M1 GPU[5]) on the way.

The initial support of Rust-for-Linux comes in roughly 4 areas:
- Kernel internals (kallsyms expansion for Rust symbols, %pA format)
- Kbuild infrastructure (Rust build rules and support scripts)
- Rust crates and bindings for initial minimum viable build
- Rust kernel documentation and samples Further reading: Linux 6.0 Arrives With Support For Newer Chips, Core Fixes, and Oddities

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A stable version of Linux 6.0 is out, with 15,000 non-merge commits and a notable version number for the kernel. And while major Linux releases only happen when the prior number's dot numbers start looking too big -- there is literally no other reason" -- there are a lot of notable things rolled into this release besides a marking in time. Most notable among them could be a patch that prevents a nearly two-decade slowdown for AMD chips, based on workaround code for power management in the early 2000s that hung around for far too long. [...]

Intel's new Arc GPUs are supported in their discrete laptop form in 6.0 (though still experimental). Linux blog Phoronix notes that Intel's ARC GPUs all seem to run on open source upstream drivers, so support should show up for future Intel cards and chipsets as they arrive on the market. Linux 6.0 includes several hardware drivers of note: fourth-generation Intel Xeon server chips, the not-quite-out 13th-generation Raptor Lake and Meteor Lake chips, AMD's RDNA 3 GPUs, Threadripper CPUs, EPYC systems, and audio drivers for a number of newer AMD systems. One small, quirky addition points to larger things happening inside Linux. Lenovo's ThinkPad X13s, based on an ARM-powered Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, get some early support in 6.0. ARM support is something Linux founder Linus Torvalds is eager to see [...].

Among other changes you can find in Linux 6.0, as compiled by LWN.net (in part one and part two):
- ACPI and power management improvements for Sapphire Rapids CPUs
- Support for SMB3 file transfer inside Samba, while SMB1 is further deprecated
- More work on RISC-V, OpenRISC, and LoongArch technologies
- Intel Habana Labs Gaudi2 support, allowing hardware acceleration for machine-learning libraries
- A "guest vCPU stall detector" that can tell a host when a virtual client is frozen Ars' Kevin Purdy notes that in 2022, "there are patches in Linux 6.0 to help Atari's Falcon computers from the early 1990s (or their emulated descendants) better handle VGA modes, color, and other issues."

Not included in this release are Rust improvements, but they "are likely coming in the next point release, 6.1," writes Purdy.

Michael Larabel writes via Phoronix: Debian developers have been figuring out an updated stance to take on non-free firmware considering the increasing number of devices now having open-source Linux drivers but requiring closed-source firmware for any level of functionality. The voting on the non-free firmware matter has now concluded and the votes tallied... The debian votes option 5 as winning: "Change SC for non-free firmware in installer, one installer."

Basically the Debian Installer media will now be allowed to include non-free firmware and to automatically load/use it where necessary while informing the user of it, etc. Considering the state of the hardware ecosystem these days, it's reasonable and common sense since at least users will be able to easily make use of their graphics cards, network adapters, and more. Plus a number of modern CPU security mitigations also requiring the updated closed-source microcode. So all in, I am personally happy with this decision as it will allow for a more pleasant experience for Debian on modern systems and one akin to what is found with other Linux distributions. The solution is described in full via the Debian Wiki.

Developer Asahi Lina with the Asahi Linux project was successfully able to get GNOME running on the Apple M1, including "Firefox with YouTube video playback, the game Neverball, various KDE applications, and more," reports Phoronix. From the report: This is some great progress especially with the driver being written in Rust -- the first within the Direct Rendering Manager subsystem -- and lots of work there with the Rust infrastructure in early form. It won't be until at least Linux 6.2 before this driver could be mainlined while we'll see how quickly it tries to go mainline before it can commit to a stable user-space interface. At the moment there is also a significant driver "hack" involved but will hopefully be sorted out soon. Over in user-space, the AGX Gallium3D driver continues being worked on for OpenGL support with hopes of having OpenGL 2.1 completed by year's end. Obviously it will be longer before seeing the Apple graphics suitable for modern gaming with Vulkan, etc but progress is being made across the board in reverse-engineered, open-source Apple Silicon support under Linux. You can watch a video of the driver working here.

AMD engineer K Prateek Nayak recently uncovered that a 20 year old chipset workaround in the Linux kernel still being applied to modern AMD systems is responsible in some cases for hurting performance on modern Zen hardware. Fortunately, a fix is on the way for limiting that workaround to old systems and in turn helping with performance for modern systems. Phoronix reports: Last week was a patch posted for the ACPI processor idle code to avoid an old chipset workaround on modern AMD Zen systems. Since ACPI support was added to the Linux kernel in 2002, there has been a "dummy wait op" to deal with some chipsets where STPCLK# doesn't get asserted in time. The dummy I/O read delays further instruction processing until the CPU is fully stopped. This was a problem with at least some AMD Athlon era systems with a VIA chipset... But not a problem with newer chipsets of roughly the past two decades.

With this workaround still being applied to even modern AMD systems, K Prateek Nayak discovered: "Sampling certain workloads with IBS on AMD Zen3 system shows that a significant amount of time is spent in the dummy op, which incorrectly gets accounted as C-State residency. A large C-State residency value can prime the cpuidle governor to recommend a deeper C-State during the subsequent idle instances, starting a vicious cycle, leading to performance degradation on workloads that rapidly switch between busy and idle phases. One such workload is tbench where a massive performance degradation can be observed during certain runs."

At least for Tbench, this long-time, unconditional workaround in the Linux kernel has been hurting AMD Ryzen / Threadripper / EPYC performance in select workloads. This workaround hasn't affected modern Intel systems since those newer Intel platforms use the alternative MWAIT-based intel_idle driver code path instead. The AMD patch evolved into this patch by Intel Linux engineer Dave Hansen. That patch to limit the "dummy wait" workaround to old systems is already queued into TIP's x86/urgent branch. With it going the route of "x86/urgent" and for fixing a overzealous workaround that isn't needed on modern hardware, it's likely this patch will be submitted this week still for the Linux 6.0 kernel rather than needing to wait until the next (v6.1) merge window.

slack_justyb writes: As previously indicated on Slashdot, Rust was slated to be coming to the Linux Kernel sometime in the 6.x version. Well wonder no longer on which version of kernel 6.x will have the first bits of Rust officially in the kernel, as Linus has confirmed that 6.1 will be the first with the new NVMe kernel drivers being in Rust. The first version non-production ready code for the NVMe Rust based kernel drivers were already producing performance comparable to C code. So the final drivers to hit 6.1 are already looking promising. It also helped Rust's case that, thanks to the ground-breaking work of Linux kernel and Rust developer Miguel Ojeda, Rust on Linux has gotten much more mature. Kernel maintainers were convinced it is time to move forward with Rust in Linux. In short, they agreed that Rust on Linux was ready for work.

Recently the authors of Elements of Publishing shared an update. "After ten years in print, our publisher decided against further printings and has reverted the rights to us. We are publishing Elements of Programming in two forms: a free PDF and a no-markup paperback."

And that's not the only old book that's getting a new life on the web...

22 years ago, long-time Slashdot reader Stephen T. Satchell (satch89450) co-authored Linux IP Stacks Commentary, a book commenting the TCP/IP code in Linux kernel 2.0.34. ("Old-timers will remember the Lion's Unix Commentary, the book published by University xerographic copies on the sly. Same sort of thing.") But the print edition struggled to update as frequently as the Linux kernel itself, and Satchell wrote a Slashdot post exploring ways to fund a possible update.

At the time Slashdot's editors noted that "One of the largest complaints about Linux is that there is a lack of high-profile documentation. It would be sad if this publication were not made simply because of the lack of funds (which some people would see as a lack of interest) necessary to complete it." But that's how things seemed to end up — until Satchell suddenly reappeared to share this update from 2022: When I was released from my last job, I tried retirement. Wasn't for me. I started going crazy with nothing significant to do. So, going through old hard drives (that's another story), I found the original manuscript files, plus the page proof files, for that two-decade-old book. Aha! Maybe it's time for an update. But how to keep it fresh, as Torvalds continues to release new updates of the Linux kernel?

Publish it on the Web. Carefully.

After four months (and three job interviews) I have the beginnings of the second edition up and available for reading. At the moment it's an updated, corrected, and expanded version of the "gray matter", the exposition portions of the first edition....

The URL for the alpha-beta version of this Web book is satchell.net/ipstacks for your reading pleasure. The companion e-mail address is up and running for you to provide feedback. There is no paywall.
But there's also an ingenious solution to the problem of updating the text as the code of the kernel keeps changing: Thanks to the work of Professor Donald Knuth (thank you!) on his WEB and CWEB programming languages, I have made modifications, to devise a method for integrating code from the GIT repository of the Linux kernel without making any modifications (let alone submissions) to said kernel code. The proposed method is described in the About section of the Web book. I have scaffolded the process and it works. But that's not the hard part.

The hard part is to write the commentary itself, and crib some kind of Markup language to make the commentary publishing quality. The programs I write will integrate the kernel code with the commentary verbiage into a set of Web pages. Or two slightly different sets of web pages, if I want to support a mobile-friendly version of the commentary.

Another reason for making it a web book is that I can write it and publish it as it comes out of my virtual typewriter. No hard deadlines. No waiting for the printers. And while this can save trees, that's not my intent. The back-of-the-napkin schedule calls for me to to finish the expository text in September, start the Python coding for generating commentary pages at the same time, and start the writing the commentary on the Internet Control Message Protocol in October. By then, Linus should have version 6.0.0 of the Linux kernel released.

I really, really, really don't want to charge readers to view the web book. Especially as it's still in the virtual typewriter. There isn't any commentary (yet). One thing I have done is to make it as mobile-friendly as I can, because I suspect the target audience will want to read this on a smartphone or tablet, and not be forced to resort to a large-screen laptop or desktop. Also, the graphics are lightweight to minimize the cost for people who pay by the kilopacket. (Does anywhere in the world still do this? Inquiring minds want to know.)

I host this web site on a Protectli appliance in my apartment, so I don't have that continuing expense. The power draw is around 20 watts. My network connection is AT&T fiber — and if it becomes popular I can always upgrade the upstream speed.

The thing is, the cat needs his kibble. I still want to know if there is a source of funding available.

Also, is it worthwhile to make the pages available in a zip file? Then a reader could download a snapshot of the book, and read it off-line.

The Linux Foundation has announced plans for a new collaborative initiative designed to support interoperability across digital wallets, built on an open source bedrock. From a report: The OpenWallet Foundation (OWF), as the new effort is called, is the brainchild of Daniel Goldscheider, CEO of open banking startup Yes.com, though today's announcement reveals a broad gamut of buy-ins from multiple industry players including Okta, Ping Identity, Accenture, CVS Health, OpenID Foundation, among several other public and private bodies. With the Linux Foundation serving as the project's host, this gives OWF sizeable clout as it strives to enable what Goldscheider calls a "plurarity of wallets based on a common core," according to a press release. The news also comes as regulatory bodies across the globe are moving to support competition through enforcing interoperability across systems, including Europe which is currently trying to make messaging interoperability a thing.

VMware engineers have tested the Linux kernel's fix for the Retbleed speculative execution bug, and report it can impact compute performance by a whopping 70 percent. The Register reports: In a post to the Linux Kernel Mailing List titled "Performance Regression in Linux Kernel 5.19", VMware performance engineering staffer Manikandan Jagatheesan reports the virtualization giant's internal testing found that running Linux VMs on the ESXi hypervisor using version 5.19 of the Linux kernel saw compute performance dip by up to 70 percent when using single vCPU, networking fall by 30 percent and storage performance dip by up to 13 percent. Jagatheesan said VMware's testers turned off the Retbleed remediation in version 5.19 of the kernel and ESXi performance returned to levels experienced under version 5.18.

Because speculative execution exists to speed processing, it is no surprise that disabling it impacts performance. A 70 percent decrease in computing performance will, however, have a major impact on application performance that could lead to unacceptable delays for some business processes. VMware's tests were run on Intel Skylake CPUs -- silicon released between 2015 and 2017 that will still be present in many server fleets. Subsequent CPUs addressed the underlying issues that allowed Retbleed and other Spectre-like attacks.

"The GNOME desktop environment is one of the most popular user interfaces and suites of apps available for desktop Linux distributions," writes Liliputing.

"Now a team of developers have been working to bring GNOME to mobile devices running Linux-based operating systems." GNOME Shell for mobile provides a touch-friendly user interface optimized for smartphones and tablets. And while it looks a bit like Android or iOS at first glance, there are a few key differences. The GNOME team have outlined some of them in an article about recent updates to GNOME Shell on mobile.

Like other modern mobile user interfaces, you interact with GNOME shell using taps, swipes, and other gesture-based navigation. What's different is that Android has three different views for navigation: a home screen, app drawer, and multitasking view. iOS has two: home screen and multitasking. But GNOME Shell has a single screen that allows you to view and launch apps and switch between running apps using gestures. There's no need to wait for a new screen to load. In a nutshell, you can swipe up from the bottom of the any screen to view a list of installed apps, thumbnail images showing all currently running apps, and a search box. You can tap an app icon to launch a new app, enter a term in the search box to find an app, or swipe between running apps to switch which app runs in the foreground.

You can also keep swiping upward to shrink the multitasking thumbnails and provide more room for app icons. And you can flick thumbnail previews upward to remove an app from the multitasking section. Typing in the search box will bring up relevant results including apps and settings.
"One interesting new feature here is that notifications can be swiped away horizontally to close, and notification bubbles can be swiped up to hide them..." the developers point out. "While the current version is definitely still work in progress, it's quite usable overall, so we feel it would make sense to start having experimental GNOME OS Nightly images with it."

But Liliputing also notes that it's not the only GNOME-based UI for mobile devices. There's also Purism's Phosh UI — the default UI for the PureOS on its Librem 5 smartphone (and available for other mobile Linux distros including Debian).

And Purism recently bragged that its smartphone is now also "the first mobile computer with a truly convergent OS" — meaning it can run on multiple hardware platforms, with apps adapting to their hardware. The Librem 5 [smartphone] uses the same convergent PureOS as our Librem 14 laptop and Mini PCs, with the same adaptive applications that make the Librem 5 more than merely a phone, it's a mobile computer in your pocket that can shape shift into a laptop, tablet, desktop, or even a server.... Scale your Librem 5 up to be a full laptop by attaching the Nexdock. Because our core apps are adaptive, they are ready to run on whatever screen you have....

With phosh-mobile-settings installed, you can flip the nexdock around and use the big screen just like a tablet.... Don't have a laptop dock? The Librem 5 can also act like a desktop computer when connected to a screen, keyboard, and mouse using our USB-C dock. Using the beta phom virtual mouse app, you can turn your Librem 5 into a touchpad mouse while it's connected to the big screen.

With the Librem 5, you can keep your desktop computer in your pocket and connect to a bigger screen at home or at the office and use the same apps on the bigger screen without restarting....

With the Librem 5 phone, you're getting much more than smartphone to run mobile-only apps; you're getting a laptop, tablet, desktop, all running software that respects your privacy and freedom.

Here's a warning from the threat intelligence unit of AT&T Cybersecurity, AT&T Alien Labs: With a rise of nearly 650% in malware and ransomware for Linux this year, reaching an all-time high in the first half year of 2022, threat actors find servers, endpoints and IoT devices based on Linux operating systems more and more valuable and find new ways to deliver their malicious payloads. New malwares like BotenaGo and EnemyBot are examples of how malware writers rapidly incorporate recently discovered vulnerabilities to find new victims and increase their reach.
But they've discovered a new malware targetting Linux endpoints and IoT devices, stealthily "delivered in a multistage infection chain where each module responds to a part of the payload and downloads and executes the next one. An attacker can gain full control of the system, in addition to the cryptocurrency miner that will be executed and set to persist."

The Register summarizes their report: The malware was dubbed "Shikitega" for its extensive use of the popular Shikata Ga Nai polymorphic encoder, which allows the malware to "mutate" its code to avoid detection. Shikitega alters its code each time it runs through one of several decoding loops that AT&T said each deliver multiple attacks, beginning with an ELF file that's just 370 bytes... AT&T didn't say how the initial infection occurs, but it did say Shikitega exploits two Linux vulnerabilities disclosed in 2021 to achieve its ultimate objective, which AT&T said appears to be the installation and execution of the XMRig cryptocurrency miner.

The final stage also establishes persistence, which Shikitega does by downloading and executing five shell scripts that configure a pair of cron jobs for the current user and a pair for the root user using crontab, which it can also install if not available. Shikitega also uses cloud hosting solutions to store parts of its payload, which it further uses to obfuscate itself by contacting via IP address instead of domain name....>
>
Bottom line: Shikitega is a nasty piece of code. AT&T recommends Linux endpoint and IoT device managers keep security patches installed, keep EDR software up to date and make regular backups of essential systems.
Ars Technica reports: The ultimate objective of the malware isn't clear. It drops the XMRig software for mining the Monero cryptocurrency, so stealthy cryptojacking is one possibility. But Shikitega also downloads and executes a powerful Metasploit package known as Mettle, which bundles capabilities including webcam control, credential stealing, and multiple reverse shells into a package that runs on everything from "the smallest embedded Linux targets to big iron." Mettle's inclusion leaves open the potential that surreptitious Monero mining isn't the sole function....

Given the work the unknown threat actors responsible devoted to the malware's stealth, it wouldn't be surprising if the malware is lurking undetected on some systems.

"There's been a big rise in ransomware attacks targeting Linux," reports ZDNet, "as cyber criminals look to expand their options and exploit an operating system that is often overlooked when businesses think about security." According to analysis by cybersecurity researchers at Trend Micro, Linux servers are "increasingly coming under fire" from ransomware attacks, with detections up by 75% over the course of the last year as cyber criminals look to expand their attacks beyond Windows operating systems.

Linux powers important enterprise IT infrastructure including servers, which makes it an attractive target for ransomware gangs — particularly when a perceived lack of threat to Linux systems compared with Windows means that cybersecurity teams might choose to focus on defending Windows networks against cybercrime. Researchers note that ransomware groups are increasingly tailoring their attacks to focus specifically on Linux systems. For example, LockBit is one of the most prolific and successful ransomware operations of recent times and now offers the option of a Linux-based variant that is designed to target Linux systems and has been used to conduct attacks in the wild....

And it isn't just ransomware groups that are increasingly turning their attentions towards Linux — according to Trend Micro, there's been a 145% increase in Linux-based cryptocurrency-mining malware attacks, where cyber criminals secretly exploit the power of infected computers and servers to mine for cryptocurrency for themselves. One of the ways cyber criminals are compromising Linux systems is by exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities. According to the report, these flaws include CVE-2022-0847 — also known as Dirty Pipe — a bug that affects the Linux kernel from versions 5.8 and up, which attackers can use to escalate their privileges and run code. Researchers warn that this bug is "relatively easy to exploit".
The article recommends installing all security patches as soon as they're available — and implementing multi-factor authentication across your organization.

And yes, it's the real ZDNet. They've just re-designed their web site...

Here's a Linux distro scoop from IT World Canada. "Gregory Kurtzer, who founded and once led the former open-source project CentOS Linux as well as The cAos Foundation, the organization where early development of it took place, said today a governance structure has been put in place that will keep Rocky Linux in the public domain forever." Development of Rocky Linux began shortly after, in late 2020, Red Hat terminated development of CentOS, a community-based Linux distribution derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) that had been in existence since 2004. It is named after Jason Dale "Rocky" McGaugh, a talented programmer involved in CentOS development, who passed away in December 2004 at the age of only 30. Asked what McGaugh might have thought of the OS being named after him, Kurtzer told IT World Canada, "to be honest, he was a shy guy. I don't know if he would have liked the attention, but at the same token, he was a huge advocate of open source and a big fan of open source.

"Personally, I don't think he would have liked what happened with CentOS."

Kurtzer added that "what we are doing with Rocky Linux is really where he would have liked to see the project and open source going. When we named it Rocky Linux, it was a hat tip to him for everything he has done, not only in open source and high-performance computing (HPC), but also with the CentOS project.

"One of the last e-mails that he wrote to the e-mail list was that he was 99 per cent done development of CentOS. It was pretty much ready to go when he passed, but he never saw it released."

The key for an open-source initiative to grow and flourish, said Kurtzer, lies with registering it as a non-profit organization, which was the case with The cAos Foundation. He has done the same with Rocky Linux.
It's official name is the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation, "backed by an advisory board of trusted individuals and team leads from the Rocky Linux community."

An anonymous reader quotes a story from the Linux/Open Source news site It's FOSS: While Firefox is still the default web browser in Debian, you can find the Chromium browser in the repositories. Chromium is the open source project upon which Google has built its Chrome web browser. It is also preferred by many Linux users as it provides almost the same features as Google Chrome.

Earlier, Chromium used Google as the default search engine in Debian. However, Debian is going to use DuckDuckGo as the default search engine for Chromium.

It all started when bug report #956012 was filed in April 2020, stating to use DuckDuckGo as the default search engine for the Chromium package. You can see the decision was not taken in any hurry, as the maintainers took more than two years to close the bug report.

The reason for the change goes as stated in the official package update announcement.

Change default search engine to DuckDuckGo for privacy reasons. Set a different search engine under Settings -> Search Engine (closes: #956012).

"Debian currently doesn't load non-free firmware by default on its systems," reports Phoronix, "even when it means no working hardware support/acceleration without those binary elements. Not loading the non-free firmware can also mean missing out on security updates or for addressing usability issues."

Now the Debian community is discussing three proposals on how non-free firmware should be handled going forward (before a vote in September).

Proposal A and B both start with the same two paragraphs: We will include non-free firmware packages from the "non-free-firmware" section of the Debian archive on our official media (installer images and live images). The included firmware binaries will normally be enabled by default where the system determines that they are required, but where possible we will include ways for users to disable this at boot (boot menu option, kernel command line etc.).

When the installer/live system is running we will provide information to the user about what firmware has been loaded (both free and non-free), and we will also store that information on the target system such that users will be able to find it later. The target system will also be configured to use the non-free-firmware component by default in the apt sources.list file. Our users should receive security updates and important fixes to firmware binaries just like any other installed software.
But Proposal A adds that "We will publish these images as official Debian media, replacing the current media sets that do not include non-free firmware packages," while Proposal B says those images "will not replace the current media sets," but will instead be offered alongside them.

And Proposal C? "The Debian project is permitted to make distribution media (installer images and live images) containing packages from the non-free section of the Debian archive available for download alongside with the free media in a way that the user is informed before downloading which media are the free ones.