An anonymous reader quotes Neowin: Google Project Zero is a security team responsible for discovering security flaws in Google's own products as well as software developed by other vendors. Following discovery, the issues are privately reported to vendors and they are given 90 days to fix the reported problems before they are disclosed publicly.... Now, the security team has reported several flaws in CentOS' kernel. As detailed in the technical document here, Google Project Zero's security researcher Jann Horn learned that kernel fixes made to stable trees are not backported to many enterprise versions of Linux. To validate this hypothesis, Horn compared the CentOS Stream 9 kernel to the stable linux-5.15.y stable tree.... As expected, it turned out that several kernel fixes have not been made deployed in older, but supported versions of CentOS Stream/RHEL. Horn further noted that for this case, Project Zero is giving a 90-day deadline to release a fix, but in the future, it may allot even stricter deadlines for missing backports.... Red Hat accepted all three bugs reported by Horn and assigned them CVE numbers. However, the company failed to fix these issues in the allotted 90-day timeline, and as such, these vulnerabilities are being made public by Google Project Zero. Horn is urging better patch scheduling so "an attacker who wants to quickly find a nice memory corruption bug in CentOS/RHEL can't just find such bugs in the delta between upstream stable and your kernel."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hackaday recently shared some thoughts on "purpose-built" distros: Some examples are Kali for security testing, DragonOS for software-defined radio, or Hannah Montana Linux for certain music fans. Anyone can roll their own Linux distribution with the right tools, including [Shadly], who recently created one which only loads enough software to launch the 1993 classic DOOM.... It loads the Linux kernel and the standard utilities via BusyBox, then runs fbDOOM, which is a port of the game specifically designed to run on the Linux framebuffer with minimal dependencies. Their report includes video of the distro booting up and playing Doom. "The entire distribution is placed into a bootable ISO file that can be placed on any bootable drive."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Liliputing.com has an update about the System76 Meerkat, which they describe as "a compact desktop computer with support for up to 64GB of RAM, up to two storage devices (for as much as 16TB of total storage), and up to an Intel Core i7 mobile processor. It's basically a rebranded Intel NUC." (Escept that System76 offers a choice of Pop!_OS or Ubuntu Linux pre-installed.) "Previously available with a choice of 10th or 11th-gen Intel Core processor options, the Meerkat now also supports 12th-gen Intel chips." That means there are a total of 9 different processor options available. Prices start at $499 for an entry-level model with a Core i3-10110U processor, 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. The prices rises by $50 if you want to go with a Core i3-1135G4 model, while prices start at $599 for a Meerkat mini PC with a 12th-gen Intel Core processor.... But the biggest difference is that Intel's 12th-gen processors introduce a hybrid architecture that pairs Performance and Efficiency cores, leading to much higher core counts for better multi-core performance.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Phoronix: A pull request of early AMDGPU kernel graphics driver changes was submitted for DRM-Next on Friday as some of the early feature work accumulating for the Linux 6.4 kernel cycle. Among the AMDGPU kernel driver changes this round are a number of fixes affecting items such as the UMC RAS, DCN 3.2, FreeSync, SR-IOV, various IP blocks, USB4, and more. On the feature side, mentioned subtly in the change-log are a few power-related additions... These additions are largely focused on Van Gogh APUs, which is notably for the Valve Steam Deck and benefiting its graphics moving forward. First up, this kernel pull request introduces a new sysfs interface for adjusting/setting thermal throttling. This is wired up for Van Gogh and allows reading/updating the thermal limit temperature in millidegrees Celsius. This "APU thermal cap" interface is just wired up for Van Gogh and seems to be Steam Deck driven feature work so that SteamOS will be better able to manage the thermal handling of the APU graphics.... These power features will be exposed via sysfs while Steam OS will wrap around them intelligently and possibly some new UI settings knobs for those wanting more control over their Steam Deck's thermal/performance.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The closing keynote at the SCaLE 20x conference was delivered by 80-year-old Ken Thompson (co-creator of Unix, Plan9, UTF8, and the Go programming language). Slashdot reader motang shared Thompson's answer to a question at the end about what operating system he uses today: I have, for most of my life — because I was sort of born into it — run Apple. Now recently, meaning within the last five years, I've become more and more depressed, and what Apple is doing to something that should allow you to work is just atrocious. But they are taking a lot of space and time to do it, so it's okay. And I have come, within the last month or two, to say, even though I've invested, you know, a zillion years in Apple — I'm throwing it away. And I'm going to Linux. To Raspbian in particular.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"AWS has provided you with a cloud-optimized Linux distribution since 2010," notes the cloud service's blog. This week they announced the third generation of Amazon's Linux distro: 'Amazon Linux 2023'. Every generation of Amazon Linux distribution is secured, optimized for the cloud, and receives long-term AWS support.... Deploying your workloads on Amazon Linux 2023 gives you three major benefits: a high-security standard, a predictable lifecycle, and a consistent update experience. Let's look at security first. Amazon Linux 2023 includes preconfigured security policies that make it easy for you to implement common industry guidelines. You can configure these policies at launch time or run time. For example, you can configure the system crypto policy to enforce system-wide usage of a specific set of cipher suites, TLS versions, or acceptable parameters in certificates and key exchanges. Also, the Linux kernel has many hardening features enabled by default.... When looking for a base to serve as a starting point for Amazon Linux 2023, Fedora was the best choice. We found that Fedora's core tenets (Freedom, Friends, Features, First) resonate well with our vision for Amazon Linux. However, Amazon Linux focuses on a long-term, stable OS for the cloud, which is a notably different release cycle and lifecycle than Fedora. Amazon Linux 2023 provides updated versions of open-source software, a larger variety of packages, and frequent releases. Amazon Linux 2023 isn't directly comparable to any specific Fedora release. The Amazon Linux 2023 GA version includes components from Fedora 34, 35, and 36. Some of the components are the same as the components in Fedora, and some are modified. Other components more closely resemble the components in CentOS Stream 9 or were developed independently. The Amazon Linux kernel, on its side, is sourced from the long-term support options that are on kernel.org, chosen independently from the kernel provided by Fedora. Like every good citizen in the open-source community, we give back and contribute our changes to upstream distributions and sources for the benefit of the entire community. Amazon Linux 2023 itself is open source. Their announcement notes that Amazon Linux is the most used Linux distribution on AWS, with hundreds of thousands of their customers already using Amazon Linux 2.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares this report from 9to5Linux: After Canonical's announcement that future Ubuntu releases won't include Flatpak support by default, someone already made an unofficial Ubuntu flavor that ships with support for Flatpak apps preinstalled and working out of the box, called Ubuntu Flatpak Remix. Meet Ubuntu Flatpak Remix, an unofficial Ubuntu derivative that doesn't feature support for Snap apps and comes with support for Flatpak apps working out of the box. Several key apps are preinstalled in the Flatpak format rather than as a Snap app, including the Mozilla Firefox web browser, Mozilla Thunderbird email client, and LibreOffice office suite.... Support for the Flathub portal is installed as well, so you'll be able to install more apps with just a few clicks.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares this report from Dark Reading: In recent weeks, hackers have been deploying the "IceFire" ransomware against Linux enterprise networks, a noted shift for what was once a Windows-only malware. A report from SentinelOne suggests that this may represent a budding trend. Ransomware actors have been targeting Linux systems more than ever in cyberattacks in recent weeks and months, notable not least because "in comparison to Windows, Linux is more difficult to deploy ransomware against, particularly at scale," Alex Delamotte, security researcher at SentinelOne, tells Dark Reading.... "[M]any Linux systems are servers," Delamotte points out, "so typical infection vectors like phishing or drive-by download are less effective." So instead, recent IceFire attacks have exploited CVE-2022-47986 — a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in the IBM Aspera data transfer service, with a CVSS rating of 9.8. Delamotte posits a few reasons for why more ransomware actors are choosing Linux as of late. For one thing, she says, "Linux-based systems are frequently utilized in enterprise settings to perform crucial tasks such as hosting databases, Web servers, and other mission-critical applications. Consequently, these systems are often more valuable targets for ransomware actors due to the possibility of a larger payout resulting from a successful attack, compared to a typical Windows user." A second factor, she guesses, "is that some ransomware actors may perceive Linux as an unexploited market that could yield a higher return on investment." While previous reports had IceFire targetting tech companies, SentinelLabs says they've seen recent attacks against organizations "in the media and entertainment sector," impacting victims "in Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates, which are typically not a focus for organized ransomware actors."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"On March 7, 2003, a struggling company called The SCO Group filed a lawsuit against IBM," writes LWN.net, "claiming that the success of Linux was the result of a theft of SCO's technology..." Two decades later, "It is hard to overestimate how much the community we find ourselves in now was shaped by a ridiculous lawsuit 20 years ago...." It was the claim of access to Unix code that was the most threatening allegation for the Linux community. SCO made it clear that, in its opinion, Linux was stolen property: "It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach UNIX performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of UNIX code, methods or concepts". To rectify this "misappropriation", SCO was asking for a judgment of at least $1 billion, later increased to $5 billion. As the suit dragged on, SCO also started suing Linux users as it tried to collect a tax for use of the system. Though this has never been proven, it was widely assumed at the time that SCO's real objective was to prod IBM into acquiring the company. That would have solved SCO's ongoing business problems and IBM, for rather less than the amount demanded in court, could have made an annoying problem go away and also lay claim to the ownership of Unix — and, thus, Linux. To SCO's management, it may well have seemed like a good idea at the time. IBM, though, refused to play that game; the company had invested heavily into Linux in its early days and was uninterested in allowing any sort of intellectual-property taint to attach to that effort. So the company, instead, directed its not inconsiderable legal resources to squashing this attack. But notably, so did the development community as a whole, as did much of the rest of the technology industry. Over the course of the following years — far too many years — SCO's case fell to pieces. The "misappropriated" technology wasn't there. Due to what must be one of the worst-written contracts in technology-industry history, it turned out that SCO didn't even own the Unix copyrights it was suing over. The level of buffoonery was high from the beginning and got worse; the company lost at every turn and eventually collapsed into bankruptcy.... Microsoft, which had not yet learned to love Linux, funded SCO and loudly bought licenses from the company. Magazines like Forbes were warning the "Linux-loving crunchies in the open-source movement" that they "should wake up". SCO was suggesting a license fee of $1,399 — per-CPU — to run Linux.... Such an effort, in less incompetent hands, could easily have damaged Linux badly. As it went, SCO, despite its best efforts, instead succeeded in improving the position of Linux — in development, legal, and economic terms — considerably. The article argues SCO's lawsuit ultimately proved that Linux didn't contain copyrighted code "in a far more convincing way than anybody else could have." (And the provenance of all Linux code contributions are now carefully documented.) The case also proved the need for lawyers to vigorously defend the rights of open source programmers. And most of all, it revealed the Linux community was widespread and committed. And "Twenty years later, it is fair to say that Linux is doing a little better than The SCO Group. Its swaggering leader, who thought to make his fortune by taxing Linux, filed for personal bankruptcy in 2020."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Now, leaders from the GNOME Foundation and KDE Foundation, along with Debian Linux, are considering [...] building an app store on top of Flatpak, a universal Linux software deployment and package management program. This idea of replacing traditional but not very friendly ways of delivering Linux desktop apps, such as DEB and RPM package management systems, has been around for a while. Besides being easier to use, Flatpak and its rivals, such as Appimage and Snaps, can also run on any Linux distribution. All the programs do this by containerizing applications with all their necessary libraries and associated files. Now, as laid out in former Google chairman Eric Schmidt's Plaintext Group, the proposal is to "Promote diversity and sustainability in the Linux desktop community by adding payments, donations, and subscriptions to the Flathub app store." Behind this idea are several Linux desktop leaders, such as GNOME president Robert McQueen; former GNOME executive director and Debian project leader Neil McGovern; and KDE president Aleix Pol. Flatpak, unlike the earlier store attempts, works on essentially all Linux distros. This makes it much more interesting. Why Flakpak, instead of its chief rival, Snaps? They explained, "Flathub is a vendor-neutral service for Linux application developers to build and publish their applications directly to their end users. A healthy application ecosystem is essential for the success of the open-source software desktop, so end-users can trust and control their data and development platforms on the device in front of them." [...] Be that as it may, while the proposal for a paid Flathub app store remains just an idea, it's still one that may garner support. If this plan can generate enough support, and then the revenue, to cover its costs, it may create the first popular universal Linux app store. Then, who knows, maybe the Linux desktop will finally become broadly popular. Stranger things have happened.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last week ZDNet reported Linux had added upstream support for the Apple M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra chips and then concluded that "newer Mac owners can look forward to running Linux on their M1-powered machines." Saturday Asahi Linux called ZDNet's story "misleading and borderline false," posting on Twitter that "You will not be able to run Ubuntu nor any other standard distro with 6.2 on any M1 Mac. Please don't get your hopes up." We are continuously upstreaming kernel features, and 6.2 notably adds device trees and basic boot support for M1 Pro/Max/Ultra machines. However, there is still a long road before upstream kernels are usable on laptops. There is no trackpad/keyboard support upstream yet. While you can boot an upstream 6.2 kernel on desktops (M1 Mac Mini, M1 Max/Ultra Mac Studio) and do useful things with it, that is only the case for 16K page size kernel builds. No generic ARM64 distro ships 16K kernels today, to our knowledge. Our goal is to upstream everything, but that doesn't mean distros instantly get Apple Silicon support. As with many other platforms, there is some integration work required. Distros need to package our userspace tooling and, at this time, offer 16K kernels. In the future, once 4K kernel builds are somewhat usable, you can expect zero-integration distros to somewhat work on these machines (i.e. some hardware will work, but not all, or only partially). This should be sufficient to add a third-party repo with the integration packages. But for out-of-the-box hardware support, distros will need to work with us to get everything right. We are already working with some, and we expect to announce official Apple Silicon support for a mainstream distro in the near future. Just not quite yet!

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From an opinion piece in the Register: Aiven, an open source cloud data platform company, recently analyzed who's doing what with GitHub open source code projects. They found that the top open source contributors were all companies — Amazon Web Services, Intel, Red Hat, Google, and Microsoft.... Aiven looked at three metrics within the GitHub archives. These were the number of contributors, repositories (projects) contributed to, and the number of commits made by the contributors. These were calculated using Google Big Query analysis of PushEvents on public GitHub data. The company found that Microsoft and Google were neck-and-neck for the top spot. Red Hat is in third place, followed by Intel, then AWS, just ahead of IBM.... Red Hat is following closely behind and is currently contributing more commits than Google, with 125,012 in Q4 2022 compared to Google's 94,961. Microsoft is ahead of both, with 128,247 commits. However, regarding contributed staff working on projects, Google is leading the way with 5,757 compared to Microsoft's 5,513 and Red Hat's 3,656.... Heikki Nousiainen, Aiven CTO and co-founder, commented: "An unexpected result of our research was seeing Amazon overtake IBM to become the fifth biggest contributor." They "came late to the open source party, but they're now doubling down on its open source commitments and realizing the benefits that come with contributing to the open source projects its customers use." So, yes, open source certainly started with individual contributors, but today, and for many years before, it's company employees that are really making the code.... Aiven is far from the only one to have noticed that companies are now open source's economic engine. Jonathan Corbet, editor-in-chief of Linux Weekly News (LWN), found in his most recent analysis of Long Term Support Linux Kernel releases from 5.16 to 6.1 that a mere 7.5 percent of the kernel development, as measured by lines changed, came from individual developers. No, the real leaders were, in order: AMD; Intel; Google; Linaro, the main Arm Linux development organization; Meta; and Red Hat. The article also includes this thought-provoking quote from Aiven CTO's. "Innovation is at the heart of the open source community, but without a strong commitment from companies, the whole system will struggle. "We can see that companies are recognizing their role and supporting all who use open source."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Phoronix reports: While Ubuntu Linux hasn't provided Flatpak support out-of-the-box due to their preference of using their own Snap app packaging/distribution format, Ubuntu flavors/spins have to this point been able to pre-install Flatpak support if they desired. However, for the 23.04 "Lunar Lobster" cycle and moving forward, Ubuntu flavors will no longer be permitted to install Flatpak packages by default. Flatpak support for Ubuntu and its flavors will remain available in the Ubuntu archive so those wanting to install Flatpak support can easily do so post-install. This change going into effect with the 23.04 cycle is making it so no Ubuntu flavors will have Flatpak support installed by default / out-of-the-box: they are supposed to center around Debian packages and Snaps for their out-of-the-box packaging support to align with Ubuntu. From the blog OMG Ubuntu: Ubuntu developers have agreed to stop shipping Flatpak, preinstalled Flatpak apps, and any plugins needed to install Flatpak apps through a GUI software tool in the default package set across all eight of Ubuntu's official flavors, as of the upcoming Ubuntu 23.04 release. Ubuntu says the decision will 'improve the out-of-the-box Ubuntu experience' for new users by making it clearer about what an "Ubuntu experience" is.... As far as Ubuntu is concerned, only deb and snap software is intrinsic to the 'Ubuntu experience', and that experience now needs to be offered everywhere. Flavor leads (apparently) agree, and have all agreed to mirror regular Ubuntu by not offering Flatpak features in their default install for future releases.... Flatpak will not be uninstalled or removed when user makes the upgrade to Ubuntu 23.04 from a version where Flatpak is already present.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Linux Foundation's European off-shoot has formally launched the OpenWallet Foundation (OWF), a new collaborative effort designed to support interoperability between digital wallets through open source software. From a report: The launch comes some five months after the Linux Foundation first revealed plans to set up the OWF, shortly before it spun out a region-specific entity called the Linux Foundation Europe which is where the OWF will now officially reside. While the likes of PayPal, Google, and Apple are among the most recognized digital wallet providers, allowing consumers to conduct financial transactions in-store or online, digital wallets are increasingly being used to store all manner of virtual goods from student ID to driving licenses. On top of that, burgeoning technologies such as the metaverse and crypto are giving rise to greater use-cases for digital wallets. But one thing all these various environments have in common is that the incumbent digital wallets, for the most part, don't play nicely with each other: an Apple Pay die-hard can't send money to their Google Pay brethren. And that is why the OWF is setting out to create an "open source engine" that can power interoperable digital wallets across myriad use-cases including identity, payments, and storing personal credentials such as employment and education certification.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Steven Vaughan-Nichols, writing for ZDNet: Linux 6.2 was released yesterday, and Linus Torvalds described the latest Linux kernel release as, "Maybe it's not a sexy LTS release like 6.1 ended up being, but all those regular pedestrian kernels want some test love too." For once, I disagree with Torvalds. By adding upstream support for the Apple M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra chips, newer Mac owners can look forward to running Linux on their M1-powered machines. And, for techies, that's sexy. Getting Linux to run on the M1 family wasn't easy. When these high-powered ARM chips first arrived, Torvalds told me in an exclusive interview that he'd like to run Linux on these next-generation Macs. But, while he'd been "waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time," he worried, saying, "The main problem with the M1 for me is the GPU and other devices around it because that's likely what would hold me off using it because it wouldn't have any Linux support unless Apple opens up." UPDATE (2/26/2023): Asahi Linux called ZDNet's report "misleading and borderline false," posting on Twitter that "You will not be able to run Ubuntu nor any other standard distro with 6.2 on any M1 Mac. Please don't get your hopes up." We are continuously upstreaming kernel features, and 6.2 notably adds device trees and basic boot support for M1 Pro/Max/Ultra machines. However, there is still a long road before upstream kernels are usable on laptops. There is no trackpad/keyboard support upstream yet. While you can boot an upstream 6.2 kernel on desktops (M1 Mac Mini, M1 Max/Ultra Mac Studio) and do useful things with it, that is only the case for 16K page size kernel builds. No generic ARM64 distro ships 16K kernels today, to our knowledge. Our goal is to upstream everything, but that doesn't mean distros instantly get Apple Silicon support. As with many other platforms, there is some integration work required. Distros need to package our userspace tooling and, at this time, offer 16K kernels. In the future, once 4K kernel builds are somewhat usable, you can expect zero-integration distros to somewhat work on these machines (i.e. some hardware will work, but not all, or only partially). This should be sufficient to add a third-party repo with the integration packages. But for out-of-the-box hardware support, distros will need to work with us to get everything right. We are already working with some, and we expect to announce official Apple Silicon support for a mainstream distro in the near future. Just not quite yet!

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Steven Vaughan-Nichols, writing for ZDNet: Linux 6.2 was released yesterday, and Linus Torvalds described the latest Linux kernel release as, "Maybe it's not a sexy LTS release like 6.1 ended up being, but all those regular pedestrian kernels want some test love too." For once, I disagree with Torvalds. By adding upstream support for the Apple M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra chips, newer Mac owners can look forward to running Linux on their M1-powered machines. And, for techies, that's sexy. Getting Linux to run on the M1 family wasn't easy. When these high-powered ARM chips first arrived, Torvalds told me in an exclusive interview that he'd like to run Linux on these next-generation Macs. But, while he'd been "waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time," he worried, saying, "The main problem with the M1 for me is the GPU and other devices around it because that's likely what would hold me off using it because it wouldn't have any Linux support unless Apple opens up."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Their video says it all. Its official page brags it can "Transform your Librem 5 into a laptop." But it all apparently started because Purism is proud that their Librem 5 line of phones run "the same desktop applications as our full-sized computers, just on a smaller screens," according to the announcement by Purism president Kyle Rankin: When only using the Librem 5 in its mobile form factor, it's easy to overlook that this is happening, as adaptive applications morph to fit the smaller screen.... It's only when you dock the Librem 5 that you really experience the power of convergence.... We have wanted to provide a lapdock kit to customers for some time now, and I've personally evaluated almost all of the options available to pick which one would best showcase the Librem 5. I'm so happy to announce that today we are launching our new Lapdock Kit and in this post I will explain a bit more about what's included and why it's a great companion to a Librem 5 or Librem 5 USA. A lapdock is a docking station (or "dock") combined with a laptop shell. One approach to docking your Librem 5 is to get a USB-C hub and attach it to a power supply, monitor, keyboard and mouse, and we even sell those accessories for our Librem 5. Now imagine taking all of those components and squeezing them into a laptop form-factor, add a battery to power it, and you have a lapdock. From the outside a lapdock looks no different from a standard laptop, but the difference is that a lapdock has no CPU, RAM or storage of its own. Instead, it uses the Librem 5 as the computer. Once docked, the Librem 5's screen extends to the lapdock screen, and you can use the keyboard and mouse on the lapdock to drag windows back and forth between screens. All of the applications are running on the Librem 5 and once docked, it behaves like a laptop running PureOS. Even better, the lapdock's battery charges the Librem 5 while it's docked, extending its run time. After evaluating a number of different options, we have decided to offer the Nexdock 360 in our Lapdock Kit.... The Lapdock Kit allows you to realize the power of having all of your apps and all of your data in one device that can fit in your pocket and act like a phone when you need it to, but then transform into a laptop when you want to type out an email, do some image editing or watch a video on a larger screen. The Lapdock Kit also allows you to run thousands of other desktop applications that haven't yet been updated to adapt to a phone's screen. Traditional Linux applications like the full LibreOffice suite, GIMP, Wireshark, Gqrx and many others run well on the Librem 5 with the addition of the Lapdock Kit's extra screen real estate. "It demonstrates why we refer to the Librem 5 as a mobile computer in your pocket, and not just as a phone."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"It's time for me to build a new Linux PC," writes Slashdot reader eggegick, complaining that while Dell (and Amazon) sell systems with Linux pre-installed, it feels like they're tacking on an unnecessary extra expense. But then who sells a desktop PC where Linux is still easy to install? Windows seems to make it difficult to use your own (Linux OS) boot media: I guess this is a security measure, but I can think of better ways to implement this, for instance ask the user to type in "yes" or "fire the explosive bolts", or some sort of simple override).... As it is, I hit the F12 key during the boot to enter the BIOS, hoping to tell it to enable booting from the CD. Well I have not looked at a BIOS screen in a long time, and there is no "enable boot from CD option" anymore. There are some options for booting from other devices but it is all fubar magic to me. One Dell user discovered it's as simple (or as complicated) as going into Settings / Recovery / Troubleshoot / Advanced options / See More Recovery Settings / Advanced Options / UEFI Firmware Settings / Restart to Change UEFI Firmware Settings. (And then under the Boot menu there's a choice called "Secure Boot" with an option labelled "Disabled," after which under the Boot menu the third choice becomes File Browser Add Boot Option / Select Media Driver...) Is that simple enough — or is it fubar magic? "My question is, who builds a desktop PC these days that is user friendly in this regard (i.e. lets me install the OS I want)," asks the original submission. Share your own experiences and suggestions in the comments. Where can you buy a desktop PC that makes Linux easy to install?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Laura Dobberstein writes via The Register: Mycroft AI, creator of a Linux-based virtual assistant, announced on Friday it would not be able to fulfill rewards for its Mark II Kickstarter campaign. Furthermore, without immediate new investment, the company will be forced to cease development by the end of the month, said the company's former CEO and operator of the Kickstarter campaign, Joshua Montgomery. "We will still be shipping all orders that are made through the Mycroft website, because these sales directly cover the costs of producing and shipping the products," confirmed Montgomery. He said the company was now at bare-bones employee count: layoffs had reduced the staff down to two developers, one customer service agent and one attorney. Montgomery said he had "poured a lot of [his] own savings, and additional funding from [his] foundation into Mycroft" but the company was running out of cash. Mycroft AI experienced many challenges one would expect to encounter at a startup, such as difficulty finding hardware partners, which forced it to resort to off-the-shelf parts. [...] But what truly killed the company and product, he claimed, were expenses related to ongoing litigation. In 2020, Mycroft AI was sued for patent infringement from what it labeled a "patent troll." The company suing Mycroft AI, Voice Tech Corporation, dropped its litigation, but not before costing the startup deeply. "If we had that million dollars we would be in a very different state right now," said Montgomery. Billed as an "open answer" to Amazon Echo and Google Home but with data privacy, the Mark II went from costing $99 in components each to $300. That total doesn't include the costs of spending $100,000 on injection molds. The product currently sells on the company's website for $499. The Kickstarter campaign brought in 2,245 backers for the smart speaker and raised over $394,000. The goal had been set at a mere $50,000. It's uncertain how many backers received a Mark II. Backers have left disappointed and upset responses on its Kickstarter page -- some mourning the death of hardware crowdsourcing, some pleading for their product, some alleging scam, and others urging the company to push through. "Send us the components to assemble the pieces ourselves if that's the outstanding problem at this point," offered one Kickstarter supporter. "Why can't we make it into a group project to assemble MyCroft II in our homes?" "I don't mind that I don't get my Mark II: the bigger goal of open source artificial intelligence was more important to me," said another.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Rust-based re-implementation of GNU core utilities like cp and mv is "reaching closer to parity with the widely-used GNU upstream and becoming capable of taking on more real-world uses," reports Phoronix: Debian developer Sylvestre Ledru [also an engineering director at Mozilla] began working on uutils during the COVID-19 pandemic and presented last week at FOSDEM 2023 on his Coreutils replacement effort. With uutils growing into increasingly good shape, it's been packaged up by many Linux distributions and is also used now by "a famous social network via the Yocto project...." The goals with uutils are to try to create a drop-in replacement for GNU Coreutils, strive for good cross-platform support, and easy testing. Ledru's initial goals were about being able to boot Debian, running the most popular packages, building key open-source software, and all-around it's been panning out to be a great success.... [M]ore performance optimizations are to come along with other work for compatibility against the GNU tools and implementing some still missing options in different programs

Read more of this story at Slashdot.