2024-12-06 23:58:41
Greg Kroah-Hartman released version 6.12.3 of the kernel to fix a regression that can cause some machines to fail to boot on version 6.12.2. The other stable branches are continuing on their normal cadence, with 6.12.4-rc1 and 6.6.64-rc1 starting review today.
2024-12-06 23:55:16
The page structure sits at the core of the kernel's memory-management subsystem (for now), and a key part of that structure is its reference count, stored in refcount. The page reference count tells the kernel how many users a given page has and when it can be freed. That count is not needed for every page in the system, though. Matthew Wilcox has recently resurrected an old patch set that expands the concept of a "frozen" page — one that lacks a meaningful reference count — to the immediate benefit of the slab allocator but in the service of a longer-term goal as well.
2024-12-06 22:26:41
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (firefox, postgresql, postgresql:12, postgresql:13, postgresql:15, postgresql:16, python3:3.6.8, and thunderbird), Debian (clamav), Fedora (pam), Red Hat (firefox, postgresql:13, postgresql:15, python-tornado, redis:7, ruby, ruby:2.5, and ruby:3.1), SUSE (avahi, docker-stable, java-1_8_0-openjdk, libmozjs-128-0, obs-scm-bridge, php8, and teleport), and Ubuntu (ghostscript, needrestart, and shiro).
2024-12-06 07:38:50
Apertis is a Collabora-developed Debian derivative distribution designed to be incorporated into electronic devices; the v2024 release is now available. It is now based on the Bookworm release, and includes support for Podman, ONNX Runtime, OP-TEE, and more.
Apertis relies on the Debian Free Software Guidelines to ensure all software shipped is open source or, in limited cases, at least freely distributable. However, for some customers this is not enough to be able to adopt OSS solutions as in their evaluations some provisions in common licenses like the GPL-3 are at odds with regulatory constraints they are subject to. Apertis does not set to solve this decades-long debate, and instead its goal is to increase the adoption of modern, maintained OSS solutions in markets where this has historically been a challenge. To enable this, Apertis supports avoiding the use of any software under some licenses (like the [GPL v3.0 license family) on target images, while still making them fully available for development and for customers that do not share those licensing concerns. To avoid these licenses, Apertis uses more modern alternatives instead of relying on outdated and unmaintained pre-GPL-3 versions. For instance, coreutils and findutils (GPL-3+) are replaced in Apertis by rust-coreutils and rust-findutils.
2024-12-06 03:22:44
In July, Let's Encrypt announced it was ending
support "as soon as possible
" for the Online
Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) in favor of Certificate
Revocation Lists (CRLs) due to privacy concerns. The organization
has now announced
that it has set a timeline, and will be turning off its OCSP
responders on August 6, 2025. There is additional action required
for Let's Encrypt users who use the OCSP Must Staple Extension:
As of January 30, 2025, issuance requests that include the OCSP Must Staple extension will fail, unless the requesting account has previously issued a certificate containing the OCSP Must Staple extension.
As of May 7, all issuance requests that include the OCSP Must Staple extension will fail, including renewals. Please change your ACME client configuration to not request the extension.
2024-12-06 00:59:21
System76 has announced the fourth alpha release of its Rust-based COSMIC desktop. New features in this version include the ability to set default applications, region and language settings, a new Accessibility applet, as well as support for variable refresh rate (VRR) in the cosmic-comp compositor and the display settings tool. See the blog post for a full list of fixes and performance improvements. LWN covered the first alpha release in August.