Slashdot reader Soul_Predator writes: Vanilla OS is Ubuntu on stock GNOME, with on-demand immutability and package selection freedom. It is currently a beta project, with a stable release planned for the next month.
"The first-time setup process is a breeze to experience," writes It's FOSS News, applauding how it lets uses choose and enable Flatpak/Snap/AppImage.

Overall, a package manager that installs applications utilizing a container, getting the ability to choose your package managers, on-demand immutability, and vanilla GNOME make it seem like a good deal to keep an eye on... I'd say it is a project that I believe a lot of users will appreciate.

You can download the ISO by joining its Discord channel for now. The ISO is not yet publicly available to all. Take a look at its documentation if you are curious. However, as per the roadmap, they plan to have a release candidate soon enough.

Do you have a laptop that's either "pretty old" or "weird in some other way"? Did it ship without Windows from the factory, or did you flash its firmware with coreboot? You could help the Linux kernel move its backlight code forward without abandoning quirky gear like yours. ArsTechnica: Hans de Goede, a longtime Linux developer and principal engineer at Red Hat, writes on his Livejournal about the need to test "a special group of laptops" to prevent their backlight controls from disappearing in Linux kernel 6.1. Old laptop tests are needed because de Goede is initiating some major changes to user-space backlight controls, something he has been working on since 2014. As detailed at Linux blog Phoronix, there are multiple issues with how Linux tries to address the wide variety of backlight schemes in displays, which de Goede laid out at the recent Linux Plumbers Conference. There can be multiple backlight devices operating a single display, leaving high-level controls to "guess which one will work." Brightness control requires root permissions at the moment. And "0" passed along as a backlight value remains a conundrum, as the engineer pointed out in 2014: Is that entirely off, or as low as the display can be lit?

Lennart Poettering's latest blog post proposes moving the Linux boot process into a "Brave New Trusted Boot World" of cryptographically signed Unified Kernel Images. From a report: Agent Poettering offers a mechanism for tightening up the security of the system startup process on Linux machines, using TPM 2.0 hardware. In brief, what he sees as the problem is that on hardware with Secure Boot enabled, while the boot process up to and including the kernel is signed, the next step, loading the initrd, is not. That's what he wants to fix.

"Linus Torvalds has backed the idea of possibly removing Intel 486 (i486) processor support from the Linux kernel," reports Phoronix: After the Linux kernel dropped i386 support a decade ago, i486 has been the minimum x86 processor support for the mainline Linux kernel. This latest attempt to kill off i486 support ultimately arose from Linus Torvalds himself with expressing the idea of possibly requiring x86 32-bit CPUs with "cmpxchg8b" support, which would mean Pentium CPUs and later:

Maybe we should just bite the bullet, and say that we only support x86-32 with 'cmpxchg8b' (ie Pentium and later).

Get rid of all the "emulate 64-bit atomics with cli/sti, knowing that nobody has SMP on those CPU's anyway", and implement a generic x86-32 xchg() setup using that try_cmpxchg64 loop.

I think most (all?) distros already enable X86_PAE anyway, which makes that X86_CMPXCHG64 be part of the base requirement.

Not that I'm convinced most distros even do 32-bit development anyway these days.... We got rid of i386 support back in 2012. Maybe it's time to get rid of i486 support in 2022?
Towards the end of his post, Torvalds makes the following observation about i486 systems. "At some point, people have them as museum pieces. They might as well run museum kernels. "

Joey Sneddon, reporting at OMG! Ubuntu: In September I tweeted a screenshot of something unexpected that has started to show up in the terminal when I ran system updates. It didn't enrage me at the time (and it kinda still doesn't) but I did find it a little ... Off. Now, if you're suitably tuned-in to the Linux newswire and/or an avid attendee of social media you'll probably heard about the drama in question. If you haven't, then allow me to... Yes, the furore is over an "ad" for Ubuntu Pro, Canonical's revamped support offering that replaces/augments Ubuntu Advantage (which has been around for many years) that appears in the terminal when managing system updates.

Other people are calling it an "ad" (hence quote marks). I prefer the term plug (which, it turns out, some people aren't familiar with; it means to mention something in order to promote it). For although this sentence is technically advertising something, in this case Ubuntu Pro, the offering itself is free for regular users (on up-to five devices). Thus, it's not like this is an "ad" that generates Canonical revenue. It's more akin to a public service announcement to raise awareness.

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.