Linux

The Mint team has just released its regular monthly newsletter. This time, we have some exciting updates to share with you: the project has outlined the final steps toward the release of Linux Mint 22.3, codenamed “Zena,” the third refresh in the 22.x series following 22.1 “Xia” and 22.2 “Zara” releases.

The team reports that most components have now been tagged for inclusion, and a beta release is planned for the next 10 days.

According to the devs, development has entered its final phase, and packaging work has been committed to the repositories. Given that historically the gap between a Mint’s beta release and the final stable one is typically 2 to 4 weeks, with a high degree of predictability, we can expect 22.3 “Zena” around Christmas.

My primary use case for Amber is when I need to write a Bash script but don't remember the silly syntax. My most recent Bash mistake was misusing test -n and test -z. In Amber, I can just use something == "" or len(something) == 0

TLP, an advanced command-line power-management tool for Linux that improves battery life and optimizes system power usage, released v1.9, focusing on enhanced power-saving capabilities, more flexible profile switching, and stronger battery-care support across a wider range of hardware.

The highlight is the new tlp-pd daemon, which implements the same D-Bus API used by power-profiles-daemon, allowing GNOME, KDE, Cinnamon, and other desktop environments to interact with TLP’s profiles through their existing interfaces.

After AlmaLinux 9.7 appeared two weeks ago, followed by Oracle Linux 9.7, the Rocky team now announced the general availability of Rocky Linux 9.7 (Blue Onyx), as the seventh refresh to the 9.x series for this RHEL-based replacement, with refreshed installation media, cloud, container, WSL, and live images now available via the project’s downloads page.

Powered by Linux kernel 5.14, the update introduces new system-wide cryptographic policy improvements, including support for post-quantum cryptography. Dynamic language stacks receive updates such as Node.js 24 and Valkey 8, while system toolchain components such as Glibc 2.34 and Annobin 12.98 receive maintenance improvements.

Via the openSUSE Innovator Initiative, packaging of the Intel Neural Processing Unit (NPU) driver for the openSUSE ecosystem has begun. This is helping to jump-start the Intel NPU support within the openSUSE space although user-space applications ready to leverage the Intel NPU still remains very limited.

The Intel NPU driver support is now available via -- current "experimental" -- packages across openSUSE Tumbleweed, openSUSE Slowroll, openSUSE Leap 15.6, and openSUSE Leap 16.0. This Intel NPU driver is available as the linux-npu-driver. Yes, the name is rather poor considering it's Intel-specific and the "linux-" rather redundant given it's within the confines of openSUSE.

NVIDIA released the beta version of the upcoming NVIDIA 590 series of their graphics drivers for NVIDIA GPUs on Linux, BSD, and Solaris systems.

The NVIDIA 590 graphics driver series promises improved support for Wayland users by raising the minimum supported Wayland version to 1.20 and fixing a bug that prevented the PowerMizer preferred mode drop-down menu in the nvidia-settings control panel from functioning correctly on Wayland systems.

The NVIDIA 590 series also promises better support for Vulkan apps by improving the performance of recreating Vulkan swapchains, which helps prevent stuttering when resizing Vulkan application windows, and fixing several issues that prevented Vulkan apps from working on the Venus VirtIO virtual GPU.

Linux has maintained a default 4MB minimum writeback chunk size but with the in-development Linux 6.19 kernel it will allow file-systems to override that minimum value. This in turn can help avoid fragmentation and yield a better experience for zoned rotation media and other uses.

Merged yesterday alongside other pull requests submitted by Microsoft engineer Christian Brauner was the feature of allowing file-systems to increase the minimum writeback chunk size.

An important set of patches were just merged a few minutes ago to Linux Git for the ongoing Linux 6.19 kernel with some important performance implications.

Intel Fellow Thomas Gleixner yesterday sent in the "core/rseq" pull request for Linux 6.19 Git that was then merged today by Linus Torvalds. This pull includes the patches rewriting the memory-mapped concurrency ID "MM CID" code within the kernel that was found to provide up to a ~14%+ performance improvement for PostgreSQL database throughput. As well, my own testing of this MM CID rewrite also showed very positive gains -- on AMD EPYC hardware used for testing. My tests of those patches were covered in Intel's Rewrite Of Linux MM CID Code Showing Some Nice Gains For AMD.

Merged as part of the objtool changes for the Linux 6.19 kernel is introducing the "klp-build" script as a new solution to generate livepatch modules using a source .patch file as the input. This klp-build effort was spearheaded by Josh Poimboeuf with ideas learned from the out-of-tree Kpatch project over the past decade.

KDE Connect is a popular cross-platform app that allows you to send files across devices and more - with a security advisory being sent out due to a woops. Noted as CVE-2025-66270, that woops could allow an attacker to entirely skip proper authentication.

An overview of the issue:

Versions of KDE Connect released after March 2025 implement version 8 of the KDE Connect protocol. In this version, the discovery of other devices with KDE Connect on your network involves an additional packet exchange between the two devices. While the first packet is used to determine if a device is paired or not, this additional packet is used to identify the device that is connecting.

The vulnerable implementations of KDE Connect were not checking that the device ID in the first packet and the device ID in the second packet were the same. This could be abused by first sending a device ID of an unpaired device which doesn't require authentication, followed by sending the device ID of a paired device in order to impersonate it.

The vulnerable versions they list are:

KDE Connect desktop >= 25.04 and < 25.12
KDE Connect iOS >= v0.5.2 and < 0.5.4
KDE Connect Android >= v1.33.0 and < 1.34.4
GSConnect >= 59 and < 68
Valent >= v1.0.0.alpha.47 and < v1.0.0.alpha.49

The KDE developers are suggesting you stop using KDE Connect until your Linux distribution releases an update for it, or to manually patch it yourself if you're able to.

See more in the security advisory.

SUSE engineer David Sterba submitted the Btrfs pull request for Linux 6.19 on Friday, ahead of the Linux 6.18 stable kernel release that took place on Sunday. This copy-on-write file-system continues seeing some enticing feature work and other improvements for this next version of the Linux kernel.

With the Linux 6.18 kernel Btrfs added experimental support for block sizes greater than the page size. That "BS > PS" work continues being built out in Linux 6.19. The code now supports more operations when not using large folios, like encoded read/write and Btrfs SEND support. Btrfs' native RAID5 / RAID6 support is also now able to handle the block size being greater than the page size.

Following yesterday's Linux 6.18 kernel release, GNU Linux-libre 6.18-gnu is out today as the latest release of this free software purist kernel that will drop/block drivers from loading microcode/firmware considered non-free-software and other restrictions in the name of not pushing binary blobs even when needed for hardware support/functionality on otherwise open-source drivers.

With Linux 6.18 there are more upstream kernel drivers dependent upon binary-only firmware/microcode. Among the drivers called out this cycle are the open-source NVIDIA Nova-Core Rust driver as well as the modern Intel Xe driver. Nova-Core is exclusively designed around the NVIDIA GPU System Processor (GSP) usage and thus without its firmware the driver is inoperable. Similarly, with the newer Intel Xe driver depending upon the GuC micro-controller without its firmware the support is also rendered useless.

As someone who grew up using windows, is there a series of tutorials or videos y'all recommend to learn Linux? I find myself running into issues, trying to find solutions online, and not even understanding the instructions. I'm sure most of this comes from not knowing bash (which I've started to learn using https://labex.io/linuxjourney).

Background: I'm a very competent windows user. I've built my own PC, etc. I mostly use it for gaming and Internet now but want to start self hosting some things. Oh, and I'm running bazzite.

Anyway, just trying to get out from Microsoft's thumb.

Cheers.

Edit: thanks for the replies everyone. I haven't had a chance to read through them all yet; the whole family is suddenly sick.

Almost a month after the previous 2.0.17 release, fwupd, an open-source tool designed to simplify firmware updates on Linux-based systems, has reached version 2.0.18.

The release introduces a new MOTD message that appears when a staged update requires a reboot, along with the automatic creation of a reboot-required file. Additionally, the new version also records the system state for each composite emulation and allows USI docking stations to update without requiring a manual replug.

On the bug fixes side, firmware operations now properly detect Intel SPI BIOS lock issues on MTD devices, and systems without SecureBoot support can use UpdateCapsule more reliably. Parsing of UEFI capsule result headers and USB BOS descriptors has been corrected, and firmware deployment on x86_64 systems now uses the appropriate capsule flags.

Fedora stakeholders have been eyeing a nicer experience for NTSYNC usage with Wine and Steam Play by being able to have the NTSYNC kernel module load when it's likely to be used. That approval has now been granted by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) for the Fedora 44 release.

NTSYNC has been in the mainline Linux kernel for a while now and the latest Wine 10.xx development builds along with the upcoming Wine 11.0 stable build allow making use of that kernel code for a faster implementation of emulating the Microsoft Windows NT synchronization primitives. But the issue at hand is the NTSYNC kernel module driver isn't auto-loaded when needed and without any users currently outside the likes of Wine or Wine-based software like Steam Play (Proton), there's little use having it unconditionally loaded.

update: The issue has been fixed! Turns out all I had to do was set the clock to use UTC time using "timedatectl set-local-rtc 0"...

For some odd reason, whenever I come home (16:00), the clock is set 8 hours ahead (0:00, date jumps to the next day). I have to set my clock manually every time or restart my computer to get the correct time again. ~~There isn't any weird time zone shenanigans~~, the automatic time zone is still correct, and I don't live somewhere with daylight savings. What's wrong with my clock???

I am using Fedora 43 KDE (note: the issue was a thing in 42 KDE as well, but not with 42 Workstation. Either this is a KDE bug or there is some weird conflict with the remnants of gnome stuff. Or maybe I borked something I shouldn't have, idk)

edit: It is time zone shenanigans! My timezone is GMT+8. I have ran "timedatectl set-local-rtc 0" (the warning mentioned this when I ran "timedatectl status" as one person said to do) so let's see if that fixes it

TL:DW It's a 54:20 video of Fake Linus interviewing with Linus Torvalds. It goes over Linus's views on hardware choice, questions about Linux and several community questions.

The video is long, but it's a good listen.

Linux kernel 6.18 brings expanded architecture support, BPF updates, new namespace file-handle features, and wide-ranging hardware enablement across CPUs, GPUs, and sensors.

Linus Torvalds has just announced the official release of the new Linux kernel 6.18.

“So I’ll have to admit that I’d have been happier with slightly less bugfixing noise in this last week of the release, but while there’s a few more fixes than I would hope for, there was nothing that made me feel like this needs more time to cook. So 6.18 is tagged and pushed out.”

Miguel Ojeda has already submitted the core Rust programming language infrastructure updates intended for the Linux 6.19 merge window. In the pull request he also notes that moving forward the minimum supported Rust version for compiling the Linux kernel will likely follow whatever the minimum Rust version currently in use by the latest Debian stable release.

The Rust for Linux 6.19 updates include adding support for Syn as a parsing library for parsing strams of Rust tokens into a syntax tree of Rust source code.

The UBports team has officially released Ubuntu Touch 24.04-1.1 and Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-11 as maintenance updates for supported devices.

The 24.04-1.1 update expands VoLTE support to additional hardware, including Fairphone 4 and the remaining Volla Phone 22 variants. Startup performance has been improved for users upgrading from the 20.04 series, reducing the first-boot delay.

Several long-standing issues have also been resolved, such as the media scanning daemon getting stuck at 100% CPU, notification badges not appearing for Phone and Messaging apps, and applications being unable to clear old notifications before posting new ones.

The good news is that Intel tonight posted a pull request for open-source Gaudi 3 accelerator support for the mainline Linux kernel! The bad news is that it's coming quite late in the product cycle, much later than the former excellent Habana Labs open-source track record, and their hopes of squeezing this code into the Linux 6.19 kernel may be dashed.

Going back to even the pre-Intel acquisition days, the Habana Labs accelerator driver had a good open-source track record. Initially it started off a bit rough until they had open-sourced their user-space bits and ultimately their compiler and other user-space software. But after that they were excellent open-source stewards friendly with the mainline kernel and punctually enabling new hardware support, helping craft the Linux kernel accelerator "accel" subsystem under the Direct Rendering Manager area, etc.

Six months after the previous 25.05 “Warbler” release, the new stable version, NixOS 25.05 “Xantusia,” is officially here. Targeted at advanced users and developers, NixOS bets on an immutable design and an atomic update model, emphasizing reproducibility and reliability with the Nix package manager.

Nixpkgs adds 7,002 new packages and updates 25,252 existing entries. A cleanup effort removed 6,338 outdated packages to keep the repository manageable and secure. On the NixOS side, the release introduces 107 new modules, adds 1,778 configuration options, and removes older, unused components.

The desktop stack is updated to GNOME 49. This version ends X11 session availability, includes a new video player and document viewer, and ships a redesigned calendar application. Other applications across the GNOME suite receive updates as part of the regular upstream cycle.

While some Linux distributions have begun establishing AI policies, we haven't seen any communicated from the Ubuntu camp yet but will apparently be permitted at least for project infrastructure. AI is being used currently in an effort to help modernize the Ubuntu Error Tracker.

Catching my eye while going through last week's Ubuntu Foundations Team updates is Canonical employee Skia commenting on beginning to "play with AI" for helping port the Ubuntu Error Tracker web user interface to modern standards.