BRGV-OS is a rolling-release Linux distribution based on Void and featuring a customised GNOME desktop with variety of unique themes. It offers out-of-the-box support for English and Romanian languages. The project aims to facilitate developers, researchers and users to transition from Windows or macOS to Linux by maintaining familiar operational habits and workflows. BRGV-OS was originally created for Banca de Resurse Genetice Vegetale (BRGV), a gene bank research institute in Suceava, Romania, and is now also available to the general public.
KDE neon is a Ubuntu-based Linux distribution and live DVD featuring the latest KDE Plasma desktop and other KDE community software. Besides the installable DVD image, the project provides a rapidly-evolving software repository with all the latest KDE software. Two editions of the product are available - a "User" edition, designed for those interested in checking out the latest KDE software as it gets released, and a "Developer's" edition, created as a platform for testing cutting-edge KDE applications.
The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails) is a Debian-based live DVD/USB with the goal of providing complete Internet anonymity for the user. The product ships with several Internet applications, including web browser, IRC client, mail client and instant messenger, all pre-configured with security in mind and with all traffic anonymised. To achieve this, Incognito uses the Tor network to make Internet traffic very hard to trace.
BlueOnyx is a server distribution based on AlmaLinux OS. It is the mission of BlueOnyx to provide a fully-integrated Internet hosting platform that includes web, e-mail, DNS and file transfer services from a simple, user-friendly web-based interface that is easily installed on commodity hardware or virtual private server.
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:
- Front: New flags for clone3(); Discord replacements; virtual swap spaces; BPF memory protection keys; PostgreSQL's lessons in attracting contributors; 7.0 merge window; Network Time Security.
- Briefs: OpenSUSE governance; Firefox 148.0; GNU Awk 5.4.0; GNU Octave 11.1.0; Rust in Ladybird; LibreOffice Online; Weston 15.0; RIP Robert Kaye; Quotes; ...
- Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.
The stated support periods for the 6.6, 6.12, and 6.18 kernels has been
extended.
The 6.6 kernel will be supported with stable updates through the end of
2027 (for four years of support total), while 6.12 and 6.18 will get
updates through the end of 2028, for four and three years of support.
Version:next-20260225 (linux-next)
Released:2026-02-25
BashCore is a Debian-based live Linux distribution designed for security professionals, networking enthusiasts and students. It is available in several editions. The original BashCore is a minimalist command-line only product based on Debian's "Oldstable" branch, while BashCoreX comes with the Xfce desktop, several privacy-oriented web browsers and other productivity tools. BashCoreZ, BashCoreT and BashCoreTX, based on Debian "Stable", are editions that range from ultra-minimal to a complete Xfce desktop. Finally, the BashLabOS variant is a general-purpose distribution for everyday use, with Xfce, GIMP, LibreOffice and several web browsers. The distribution also includes Tor and other privacy tools.
On February 12, Yeoreum Yun posted a
suggestion
for an improvement to the security of the kernel's BPF implementation: use
memory protection keys to prevent unauthorized access to memory by BPF
programs.
Yun wanted to put the topic on the list for discussion at the Linux
Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit in May, but the
lack of engagement makes that unlikely. They also have a patch set implementing
some of the proposed changes, but has not yet shared that with the mailing list.
Yun's proposal does not seem likely to be accepted in its
current form, but the kernel has
added hardware-based hardening options in the
past, sometimes after substantial discussion.
The Network Time
Protocol (NTP) debuted in 1985; it is a universally used, open
specification that is deeply important for all sorts of activities we
take for granted. It also, despite a number of efforts, remains
stubbornly unsecured. Ruben Nijveld presented work at FOSDEM 2026 to
speed adoption of the thus-far largely ignored standard for securing
NTP traffic: IETF's RFC-8915 that specifies Network Time
Security (NTS) for NTP.
The MetaBrainz Foundation has announced the unexpected passing of
its founder and executive director, Robert Kaye:
Robert's vision and leadership shaped MetaBrainz and left a lasting
mark on the music industry and open source movement. His contributions
were significant and his loss is deeply felt across our global
community.
The Board is actively overseeing a smooth leadership transition and
has measures in place to ensure that MetaBrainz continues to operate
without interruption. Further updates will be shared in due
course.
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (grafana and grafana-pcp), Debian (gnutls28), Fedora (chromium and yt-dlp), Oracle (389-ds-base, kernel, munge, and openssl), Red Hat (buildah, containernetworking-plugins, opentelemetry-collector, podman, runc, and skopeo), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (chromium, cosign, firefox, freerdp, gimp, heroic-games-launcher, kernel, libopenssl-3-devel, libxml2, libxslt, mosquitto, openqa, os-autoinst, openqa-devel-container, openvswitch, phpunit, postgresql14, postgresql15, postgresql16, protobuf, python310, python311-PyPDF2, python36, snpguest, warewulf4, and weblate), and Ubuntu (curl, kernel, linux, linux-gcp, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-intel-iotg, linux-intel-iotg-5.15, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-nvidia-tegra, linux-oracle, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-6.8, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, linux-fips, linux-fips, linux-gcp-fips, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-6.8, linux-gke, linux-oracle-6.8, linux-gcp-fips, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-6.8, linux-intel-iot-realtime, linux-realtime, linux-raspi-realtime, linux-realtime, linux-realtime-6.8, and linux-xilinx).
VyOS is a community fork of Vyatta, a Linux distribution discontinued in 2013. It is a network operating system that provides software-based network routing, firewall and VPN functionality. VyOS is based on Debian; its features include the ability to run on both physical and virtual platforms, and support for para-virtual drivers and integration packages for virtual platforms. VyOS was completely free to download and use until the release of version 1.2.0 in January 2019 when the project turned commercial, providing the operating system with various levels of support subscriptions. Daily "rolling" images are still available for free download though.
NebiOS is an Ubuntu-based desktop Linux distribution with a custom Wayland compositor called NebiDE (based on Wayfire). It features various user interface enhancements, an initial setup module called OOBE, the NebiOS App Runtime (napp-runtime) portable application format with bubblewrap containerization, improved gaming performance with Steam Proton integration, a kernel switcher for easy multi-kernel installation, and the Wine compatibility layer for running some Windows applications. NebiOS is intended as a general-purpose operating system for daily computing tasks, including creative work and gaming.
Unraid OS is a Linux-based commercial operating system designed to provide an easy-to-use and flexible platform for building and managing a Network-Attached Storage (NAS). Some of Unraid's main features include the ability to mix and match drives of different sizes, an easy-to-use web interface for managing storage, virtual machines and Docker containers, protection to safeguard against drive failures, ability to expand the storage by adding more drives.
LibreOffice online is a web-based version of the LibreOffice suite that can
be hosted on anybody's infrastructure. This project was
put into stasis back in 2022, a move marked by
some tension with Collabora, a major LibreOffice developer that has
its own online offering. Now,
the Document Foundation has
announced
a new effort to breathe life into this project.
We plan to reopen the repository for LibreOffice Online at The
Document Foundation for contributions, but provide warnings about
the state of the repository until TDF's team agrees that it's safe
and usable – while at the same time encourage the community to join
in with code, technologies and other contributions that can be used
to move forward.
Meanwhile, this
post from Michael Meeks suggests that the tension around online
versions of LibreOffice has not abated.
4MLinux is a miniature Linux distribution focusing on four capabilities: maintenance (as a system rescue live CD), multimedia (for playing video DVDs and other multimedia files), miniserver (using the inetd daemon), and mystery (providing several small Linux games). The distribution includes support for booting on UEFI-enabled machines.
Mabox Linux is a Manjaro-based rolling-release distribution. It features the Openbox window manager as its default user interface and provides a welcome screen with access to utilities which add additional software to the operating system.
Version
5.4.0 of GNU awk
(gawk) has been released. This is a major release with a change in
gawk's default regular-expression matcher: it now uses MinRX
as the default regular-expression engine.
This matcher is fully POSIX compliant, which the current GNU matchers
are not. In particular it follows POSIX rules for finding the longest
leftmost submatches. It is also more strict as to regular expression
syntax, but primarily in a few corner cases that normal, correct,
regular expression usage should not encounter.
Because regular expression matching is such a fundamental part of
awk/gawk, the original GNU matchers are still included in gawk. In order
to use them, give a value to the GAWK_GNU_MATCHERS environment variable
before invoking gawk.
[...] The original GNU matchers will eventually be removed from
gawk. So, please take the time to notice and report any issues in the
MinRX matcher, so that they can be ironed out sooner rather than later.
See the release announcement for additional changes.
Ultimate Edition, first released in December 2006, was a fork of Ubuntu and Linux Mint though recent versions (starting in 2024) have been based on Arch Linux. The goal of the project is to create a complete, seamlessly integrated, visually stimulating, and easy-to-install operating system. Single-button upgrade is one of several special characteristics of this distribution. Other main features include custom desktop and theme with 3D effects, support for a wide range of networking options, including WiFi and Bluetooth, and integration of many extra applications and package repositories.
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