Brief items

Security quote of the week

"Sideloading" is the rentseeker word for "being able to run software of your choosing on a computing device you purchased". There is no reasonable case for an operating system developer having a say over what programs you run on your hardware.

— Eugen Rochko

Google's sideloading thing, passkeys, age verification, they're all basically the same shape; anchoring a fixed identity to a computing act "for safety".

There are millions of safety features in the world meant to protect people from themselves; my personal favorites, as metaphors go, are the standard three-point interlocks industrial paper [cutters] and the cages on big Hobart mixers.

Inexperienced, distracted, even inebriated it's basically impossible to hurt yourself with these accidentally.

Software isn't just a machine, though; it's an idea and an ideology that happens to also be a machine.

That paper cutter won't stop working if whatever's printed on the paper you're cutting is inconvenient for the authorities.

That Hobart mixer's safety cage doesn't prevent you from making bread to feed people in line at the soup kitchen, or in line to vote.

Software has intention and those intentions can be arbitrarily changed, and they are. All the time.

— Mike Hoye

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Kernel release status

The current development kernel is 6.17-rc3, released on August 24. Linus said: "Anyway, things seem fairly normal for this phase in the release cycle, nothing stands out. Please keep testing."

Stable updates: 6.16.3 was released on August 23. It consists of a set of ext4 filesystem fixes that are probably a good thing for any 6.16 ext4 user to have.

The 6.16.4, 6.12.44, 6.6.103, 6.1.149, 5.15.190, 5.10.241, and 5.4.297 updates are in the review process; they are due on August 28.

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Quote of the week

It reinforces a lesson it took me a while to learn in my career: technical correctness and brilliant ideas are necessary but insufficient for moving Linux forward. This community does not lack for talent and ideas. Maintaining trust and collaboration, that is the hard work of Linux.

— Dan Williams

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New restrictions on Android app sideloading

Google has announced a new set of restrictions on the ability of users to install apps on their own devices:

Starting next year, Android will require all apps to be registered by verified developers in order to be installed by users on certified Android devices. This creates crucial accountability, making it much harder for malicious actors to quickly distribute another harmful app after we take the first one down. Think of it like an ID check at the airport, which confirms a traveler's identity but is separate from the security screening of their bags; we will be confirming who the developer is, not reviewing the content of their app or where it came from.

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Arch Linux recent service outages

The Arch Linux project has posted an update about recent service outages that have affected its infrastructure:

The Arch Linux Project is currently experiencing an ongoing denial of service attack that primarily impacts our main webpage, the Arch User Repository (AUR), and the Forums.

We are aware of the problems that this creates for our end users and will continue to actively work with our hosting provider to mitigate the attack. We are also evaluating DDoS protection providers while carefully considering factors including cost, security, and ethical standards.

The post contains information on workarounds to use during the service disruption, and notes that Arch is not sharing technical details about the attack or mitigation while the attack is still ongoing.

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GhostBSD 25.02 released

The GhostBSD project has released version 25.02 of the FreeBSD-based desktop operating system. This release brings GhostBSD up to date with FreeBSD 14.3, includes enhancements for the Software Station package management application, and introduces an "OS X-like" desktop environment based on GNUstep called Gershwin:

This early preview includes:

• GNUstep-based desktop environment with familiar OS X-style interface
• Seamless integration with GhostBSD tools through wrappers for installer, Software Station, Backup Station, and Update Station
• Support for running non-GNUstep applications alongside GNUstep apps
• Several included GNUstep applications to get you started

LWN covered GhostBSD in June 2024.

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Rosenzweig: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, the end

Alyssa Rosenzweig has written a blog post about her work to help ship a "great driver" for the Apple M1 GPU that supports OpenGL, Vulkan, and enables gaming with Proton.

We've succeeded beyond my dreams. The challenges I chased, I have tackled. The drivers are fully upstream in Mesa. Performance isn't too bad. With the Vulkan on Apple myth busted, conformant Vulkan is now coming to macOS via LunarG's KosmicKrisp project building on my work.

Satisfied, I am now stepping away from the Apple ecosystem. My friends in the Asahi Linux orbit will carry the torch from here.

Rosenzweig indicates her next project will be working on Intel's X^e-HPG graphics architecture. LWN covered her talk on Apple M1/M2 GPU drivers in October 2024.

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FFmpeg 8.0 released

Version 8.0 of the FFmpeg audio and video toolkit has been released.

Thanks to several delays, and modernization of our entire infrastructure, this release ended up being one of our largest releases to date. In short, its new features are:

• Native decoders: APV, ProRes RAW, RealVideo 6.0, Sanyo LD-ADPCM, G.728
• VVC decoder improvements: IBC, ACT, Palette Mode
• Vulkan compute-based codecs: FFv1 (encode and decode), ProRes RAW (decode only)
• Hardware accelerated decoding: Vulkan VP9, VAAPI VVC, OpenHarmony H264/5
• Hardware accelerated encoding: Vulkan AV1, OpenHarmony H264/5
• Formats: MCC, G.728, Whip, APV
• Filters: colordetect, pad_cuda, scale_d3d11, Whisper, and others

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PyCon US 2025 recap and recordings

The PyCon team has announced that all PyCon US 2025 recordings are now available on its YouTube channel.

We had an amazing and diverse group of community members join us for PyCon US 2025, attending from 58 different countries! By the numbers, we welcomed a total attendance of 2,225 Pythonistas to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. We couldn't be more grateful for all who supported the Python ecosystem and helped make PyCon US 2025 a huge success.

See the LWN conference index for coverage of some of the talks from PyCon US 2025.

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Report: the state of commercial open source

The Linux Foundation, in cooperation with a couple of other groups, has announced the publication on the intersection of businesses and commercial open-source software (deemed "COSS"). Everything, it seems, is great, and COSS companies make a lot of money for their investors.

Even more encouraging, COSS project communities continue along healthy growth paths after the company receives venture funding. In essence, highly valued COSS companies tend to cultivate more vibrant, diverse, and integral open source ecosystems, reinforcing the idea that business value and community value are tightly coupled in successful COSS models.

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