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• Linux Tech Sustainability — The mainline Linux 6.4 kernel is set to see a new touchscreen driver for supporting the Novatek NVT-ts.
• Acer Iconia One 7 B1-730
• Unlocking the bootloader and disabling dm-verity on Android-X86 devices
• Here Comes WebGPU — After years of development, the Chrome team ships WebGPU.
• Chrome 113 To Ship WebGPU By Default
• Muse on Twitter — Breaking news🚨 Chrome's Web GPU has launched after 6 years of development! 🚀
• A Taste of WebGPU in Firefox
• Plasma 6 Early Builds — I’ve now got a working Plasma 6 dev session on my machine. It’s still rough, but it’s usable.
• Early KDE Plasma 6 Development State
• Rust Support Is Being Worked On For V4L2 — Daniel Almeida of Collabora sent out initial Rust V4L2 support patches on Thursday. This provides just enough for working with a prototype VirtIO camera driver written in Rust along with a Rust sample driver.
• Linux 6.4 Bringing Apple M2 Additions — Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin today sent in the Apple SoC DT updates targeting the Linux 6.4 cycle for queuing into the SoC tree ahead of the merge window opening around the end of the month.
• Btrfs Improvments — This week a number of patches from SUSE engineer Qu Wenruo were queued into kdave's linux.git for-next branch of the Btrfs file-system driver development code.

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• Steam Deck one Year Later — The Steam Deck has been about a year on the market now (it started shipping at the end of February 2022). This first anniversary is a good chance to review what has happened since then.
• FFmpeg 6.0 Released — 6.0 was released on 2023-02-27. It is the latest stable FFmpeg release from the 6.0 release branch, which was cut from master on 2023-02-19.
• FFmpeg 6.0 Released With NVIDIA NVENC AV1, VA-API Improvements
• FOSDEM 2023 - Dual presentation: FFmpeg 6 and VLC.js
• Plasma Switches to Qt6 — The master branch for Plasma repos will be made Qt6-only tomorrow.
• Hardware Noise “hwnoise” Tool for Linux 6.3 — hwnoise collects the periodic summary from the osnoise tracer running with *interrupts disabled*. By disabling interrupts, and the scheduling of threads as a consequence, only non-maskable interrupts and hardware-related noise is allowed.
• More Rust Code Readied For Linux 6.3 — In the pull request Miguel Ojeda commented, "more core additions, getting closer to a point where the first Rust modules can be upstreamed."
• EXT4 Getting Direct I/O Performance Improvements With 6.3 — Improved performance for ext4
• Btrfs Enjoys More Performance With Linux 6.3 - Including Some 3~10x Speedups — Some of the performance work is quite juicy, as outlined in today's pull request.
• Btrfs updates for 6.3 - David Sterba
• Linux 6.3 Scheduler Updates Bring Fixes & Minor Optimizations
• RISC-V With Linux 6.3 Lands Optimized String Functions Via Zbb Extension — RISC-V with Linux 6.3 has improved its extension detection and alternative patching infrastructure for dealing with non spec compliant extensions.

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• Apple GPU drivers now in Asahi Linux — We’ve been working hard over the past two years to bring this new driver to everyone, and we’re really proud to finally be here. This is still an alpha driver, but it’s already good enough to run a smooth desktop experience and some games
• Asahi Linux Enables Early Apple GPU Driver Support - WIP OpenGL 2.1 + GLES 2.0
• Apple Silicon CPUFreq Driver Heading To Linux 6.2 — Sent in yesterday were the Arm CPUFreq updates to queue in the Linux power management tree ahead of the Linux 6.2 merge window.
• [GIT PULL] cpufreq/arm updates for 6.2 - Viresh Kumar
• Floppy Driver Update Ready For Linux 6.2 — This memory leak with the floppy disk driver has been in the mainline kernel since Linux 5.11
• Android memory safety vulnerabilities declined as Rust usage grew — Specifically, the number of annual memory safety vulnerabilities fell from 223 to 85 between 2019 and 2022. They are now 35% of Android’s total vulnerabilities versus 76% four years ago. In fact, “2022 is the first year where memory safety vulnerabilities do not represent a majority of Android’s vulnerabilities.”
• Google says Android runs better when covered in Rust
• Fedora 38 Cleared To Produce “Mobility Phosh” Spins — The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) has provided their blessing to begin creating new x86_64 and AArch64 ISO images for mobile devices that feature the Phosh Wayland compositor.
• Ping bug potentially allows remote hack of FreeBSD systemsSecurity Affairs — A remote attacker can trigger the vulnerability, causing the ping program to crash and potentially leading to remote code execution in ping.
• D-Installer needs your help — Today we published a new prototype of D-Installer, fixing several bugs reported by early testers and improving the usage experience in some areas like the configuration of passwords and users. But beyond those improvements, a couple of new features deserve some attention.
• Bug 1205938 – D-Installer - Slowness initialization on real hardware
• GitHub - yast/d-installer: A service-based Linux installer
• openSUSE’s D-Installer Adds LVM & Full Disk Encryption Configuration

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• Announcing KataOS and Sparrow — Our team in Google Research has set out to solve this problem by building a provably secure platform that's optimized for embedded devices that run ML applications.
• Google launches KataOS
• Google Announces KataOS As Security-Focused OS, Leveraging Rust & seL4 Microkernel
• Some remotely exploitable kernel WiFi vulnerabilities — It would appear that there is a set of memory-related vulnerabilities in the kernel's WiFi stack that can be exploited over the air via malicious packets; five CVE numbers have been assigned to the set.
• Linux Gets Patched For WiFi Vulnerabilities That Can Be Exploited By Malicious Packets - Phoronix
• Firefox 106 Brings Improved WebRTC - Better Screen Sharing On Wayland — Firefox 106 upgrades its WebRTC capabilities to now make use of libwebrtc 103.
• impervious.ai — A Suite of Peer-to-Peer Tools for Communications, Data Transport, and Payments, Built Directly Into the Web Browser
• Impervious Ai GitHub
• You’re invited to the Fedora Linux 37 Release Party! — Please register on Hopin and join us on November 4th and 5th for a short program of informational sessions and social activities.
• Fedora Linux 37 Release Party Registration
• Linus Torvalds to Linux devs: Stop pulling all-nighters — "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"
• Linux 6.1 Features Include Initial Rust Code, MGLRU, New AMD CPU Features, More Security
• Linux 6.1 Will Likely Be This Year’s LTS Kernel Release
• Taming the Beast - LUP 480
• Send a Boost — Upgrade to a Podcasting 2.0 compatible app, and send a Boost and enjoy other improvements to your podcasts.

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• SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP4 Released - Switches To NVIDIA’s Open Kernel Driver — Notable with SLE 15 SP4, SUSE is already switching to using NVIDIA's open-source GPU kernel-mode driver that NVIDIA open-sourced last month
• openSUSE Leap 15.4 Released
• Element Call Beta 2 includes lots of exciting new updates! — In a walkie-talkie call, videos are disabled, and everyone is muted by default. To speak, press the ‘push-to-talk’ (PTT) button, either by pressing it on the screen or by holding the spacebar. The catch is that, just like a walkie-talkie or two-way radio, only one person can speak at a time. When someone else is speaking, your PTT button will be disabled, and if you try to push it you’ll hear a warning beep.
• Fedora and Ubuntu EOL announcements — If you are running Fedora 34, the time has come to move on; that distribution will reach the end of its support life on June 7. Users of Ubuntu 21.10 have a little longer, but that release loses support on July 14 and users should update to 22.04.
• Fedora 34 is going EOL in one week
• Ubuntu 21.10 reaches End of Life on July 14 2022
• HP Dev One Now Shipping — Unplug and work from any location. At 3.24 lbs, with up to 12 hours of battery life and an ultra-bright display, HP Dev One was made to perform on the go.
• Managed PostgreSQL and MongoDB are Here | Linode
• Apple will allow Linux VMs to run Intel apps with Rosetta in macOS Ventura — You can even use Rosetta with non-Apple Arm CPUs, though you probably shouldn't.
• Running Intel Binaries in Linux VMs with Rosetta
• Hector Martin on Twitter — “Huh, so Rosetta is now a Linux app. Without Linux kernel patches this can’t use any special M1 features, so if this runs significantly better than FOSS offerings that should help dispel the myth that “the M1 has magic make-Rosetta-fast features”.
• Longhorn on Twitter — Well. Rosetta 2 needs a quite recent CPU (post v8.2) to work because of the instructions used. Does it work on non-Apple arm64 CPUs? 🤔 Yes. (allows to settle the argument once and for all that this needs anything Apple specific outside of TSO support*. Answer is a no.)

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• Linux 5.18 Released With Intel SDSi, New CPU & GPU Features — Linux 5.18 brings the controversial Intel Software Defined Silicon (SDSi) functionality.
• Thoughts on software-defined silicon — Its purpose is to disable access to specific processor capabilities in the absence of a certificate from Intel saying otherwise.
• Statistics from the 5.18 development cycle
• Btrfs Gets Some Buttery Good Improvements With Linux 5.19 — David Sterba of SUSE has submitted the ~4k lines of code worth of feature changes for the Btrfs file-system driver in the Linux 5.19 kernel.
• Our build and release infrastructure, and upcoming updates — This work will be incrementally deployed as each bit is finished. So be patient, and you will notice releases happening faster and faster!
• Google Summer of Code (GSOC 2022) Highlights of FOSS Projects — Google announced the GSoC 2022 projects, and the list includes some exciting improvements to the mainstream foss projects such as GNOME, Xfce, LibreOffice, etc.
• Ubuntu 22.10 Makes PipeWire Default for Audio — “That’s right, as of today the Kinetic ISO (pending, not yet current since the changes were just made) has been updated to run only PipeWire and not PulseAudio […] you can look forward to this for Kinetic”
• Broadcom-VMware Deal Said to Be Ready as Soon as This Week — Broadcom Inc. could announce an agreement to acquire cloud-computing company VMware Inc. as soon as this week
• Broadcom’s Potential VMware Acquisition: 5 Things About Dell, Stock Prices And Hock Tan To Know
• Broadcom in Talks to Pay About $60 Billion for VMware
• Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger Has Mixed Feelings on a Broadcom-VMware Deal

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• Previous Predictions: Linux Action News 169
• Year in Review: How we’re curating the web with you and our top Pocket features
• Mozilla expects to generate more than $500M in revenue this year
• Pocket and Slate Podcast Partnership Announcement
• Asahi Linux

Plus Michael Larabel from Phoronix joins us to discuss the state of Linux hardware support in 2020.

Special Guest: Michael Larabel.

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• Budgie 10.5.2 Desktop Environment Released with Support for the GNOME 3.38 Stack
• Budgie 10.5.2 Released
• KDE Plasma 5.20.4 Is Out with More Than 40 Bug Fixes and Improvements
• Plasma 5.20.4 complete changelog
• GNOME 3.38.2 Desktop Environment Is Out with Even More Improvements and Bug Fixes
• 3.38.2/NEWS
• Cinnamon 4.8 Desktop Environment Released, This Is What’s New
• New Raspberry Pi OS release — The traditional end-of-year new release of Raspberry Pi OS, which we launch today.
• Raspberry Pi’s V3DV Vulkan Driver Now Supports Wayland — Raspberry Pi fans were celebrating that the V3DV driver is now officially Vulkan 1.0 conformant for supporting this modern high-performance graphics/compute API atop the Raspberry Pi 4 and newer.
• Should Red Hat be afraid of SUSE’s Rancher acquisition? — SUSE, a major Linux and cloud company, finalized its acquisition of Rancher Labs earlier this year.. Rancher, formerly a privately held open-source company, had over 37,000 active users and 100-million downloads of its flagship Kubernetes management program, Rancher.
• Rancher Labs - Wikipedia
• Network World
• SUSE to Acquire Rancher Labs - YouTube

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• Standing up for developers: youtube-dl is back — Today we reinstated youtube-dl, a popular project on GitHub, after we received additional information about the project that enabled us to reverse a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown.
• Remove cipher algorithm and mentions of copyrighted material
• GitHub reinstates youtube-dl library after EFF intervention
• $6 billion Linux deal? SUSE IPO rumored — SUSE, the major European Linux company, may soon be spun out in a $6 billion IPO.
• EQT Said to Plan IPO of $6 Billion Software Developer SUSE
• Canonical Saw ~$119M Revenue In 2019 But Still Operating At A Loss — Ubuntu maker Canonical Holdings Limited recently submitted their UK financial report for their fiscal year ending 31 December 2019. During the pre-COVID times they generated around 22% more revenue than 2018 but still operated at a loss albeit more narrowly than in prior years.
• Librem 5 Mass Production Phone Has Begun Shipping — Purism has begun shipping its mass-produced Librem 5 phone to customers.
• Servo’s new home — Servo was incubated inside Mozilla, and served as the proof that important web components such as CSS and rendering could be implemented in Rust, with all its safety, concurrency and speed.
• Mozilla Punts Servo Web Engine Development To The Linux Foundation
• Starting January 4, 2021, Google will block all sign-ins to Google accounts from embedded browser frameworks — The browser must identify itself clearly in the User-Agent. The browser must not try to impersonate another browser like Chrome or Firefox.
• Guidance to developers affected by our effort to block less secure browsers and applications

Plus OpenLibra aims to save us from Facebook but already has a miss, lousy news for Telegram, and enormous changes for AMP.

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• FSF and GNU — GNU decision-making has largely been in the hands of GNU leadership. Since RMS resigned as president of the FSF, but not as head of GNU ("Chief GNUisance"), the FSF is now working with GNU leadership on a shared understanding of the relationship for the future.
• Joint statement on the GNU Project — Yet, we must also acknowledge that Stallman’s behavior over the years has undermined a core value of the GNU project: the empowerment of all computer users. GNU is not fulfilling its mission when the behavior of its leader alienates a large part of those we want to reach out to.
• No radical changes in GNU Project — As Chief GNUisance, I'd like to reassure the community that there won't be any radical changes in the GNU Project's goals, principles and policies.
• SUSE is dropping OpenStack and embracing Kubernetes — As we make these bold customer-driven investments and in order to maximize these opportunities, SUSE has carefully reviewed its business and has decided to cease production of new versions of SUSE OpenStack Cloud and to discontinue sales of SUSE OpenStack Cloud.
• AMP is joining the OpenJS Foundation incubation program — After considering many options for a foundation that meets all of AMP’s needs, the OpenJS Foundation stood out as an ideal home for AMP.
• Google Stadia will be “faster and more responsive” than local gaming hardware — Thanks to some precog trickery, Google believes its streaming system will be faster than the gaming systems of the near-future, no matter how powerful they may become.
• Atari VCS architect quits project, claims he hasn’t been paid for six months — Retro console a mess, may never launch, sources allege
• Atari disputes reports that its retro-inspired console is doomed
• Open Libra — An open platform for financial inclusion. Not run by Facebook.
• 'Members' of OpenLibra Disavow Project Days After Its Devcon Unveiling
• Facebook’s Libra Association crumbling

Plus how about a new package manager for your distro?

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• SUSE Partners with Growth Investor EQT to Continue Momentum, Strategy Execution and Product Expansion
• GNOME Foundation opens recruitment for further expansion
• Positions available – GNOME
• GNU Guix & GuixSD 0.15.0 released
• Most Android apps can surreptitiously access screen contents
• Fork of Copperhead OS appears
• Stylish extension steals browsing history

Plus Debian warns of Hyper Threading issues; and of course a bit more.

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• OpenSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise hit the Windows Store — Now OpenSUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 and OpenSUSE Leap 42 are available for installation from the Windows Store.
• System76 Announce Their Own Linux Distribution called Pop!_OS — System76 say their ‘operating system’ — they don’t call it a distribution — will be built and tailored to meet the needs to “professionals and makers that use their computers to create.”
• Canonical Promises Smooth and Easy Unity 7 to GNOME Shell Migration for Users — Probably the most important thing that the Ubuntu developers have worked on lately is a smooth and easy migration process from Unity 7 to GNOME Shell
• Mir 1.0 Now Aiming To Support Wayland Clients Directly — Mir 0.27 also will feature a new set of APIs to develop a "Mir platform" outside of Mir itself, which can be used for developing Mir-Wayland platform support without having to fork Mir itself.
• MATE Developers Are Considering Mir-Over-Wayland — MATE developer Martin Wimpress has shared that they are talking to Mir developers about how Mir could be used as a Wayland compositor.
• Debian Warns Of Hyper Threading Issue With Intel Sky/Kaby Lake CPUs — Intel Skylake and Kabylake (6th and 7th gen CPUs) could "dangerously misbehave" when Hyper Threading is enabled.

Welcome to Linux Action News's debut episode. It’s our goal to build the show you go to when you want to hear an informed discussion about what’s happening.

We kick things off with a busy news week.

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• Canonical starts IPO path — At OpenStack Summit, Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth revealed in an interview that the recent changes in the Linux and cloud power were to ready Canonical for an IPO.
• Microsoft is bringing Ubuntu, SUSE, and Fedora to the Windows Store — With the new Fall Creators Update, users will be able to install Ubuntu, SUSE, and Fedora as apps on their device, allowing them to run Windows and Linux applications side-by-side without dual-booting.
• OpenWRT and LEDE agree on Linux-for-routers peace plan • The Register — The terms will see LEDE fold back into OpenWRT. Persisting with the latter name was deemed non-negotiable by the OpenWRT faction. The agreement also proposes closing the LEDE GitHub repo, rebuilding LEDE's web site so it ha OpenWRT branding and basically burying the LEDE brand. LEDE code will live on as OpenWRT will be required to keep forked trees available.
• Here comes Treble: A modular base for Android | Android Developers Blog — With Android O, we've been working very closely with device makers and silicon manufacturers to take steps toward solving this problem, and we're excited to give you a sneak peek at Project Treble, the biggest change to the low-level system architecture of Android to date.
• Google’s “Project Treble” solves one of Android’s many update roadblocks | Ars Technica — Project Treble" is a plan to modularize the Android OS, separating the OS framework code from "vendor specific" hardware code. In theory, this change would allow for a new Android update to be flashed on a device without any involvement from the silicon vendor. 
• Google’s “Fuchsia” smartphone OS dumps Linux, has a wild new UI | Ars Technica — Unlike Android and Chrome OS, Fuchsia is not based on Linux—it uses a new, Google-developed microkernel called "Magenta." With Fuchsia, Google would not only be dumping the Linux kernel, but also the GPL: the OS is licensed under a mix of BSD 3 clause, MIT, and Apache 2.0.