Founded in 2014 by Oliver Pinter and Shawn Webb, HardenedBSD is a security-enhanced fork of FreeBSD. The HardenedBSD Project is implementing many exploit mitigation and security technologies on top of FreeBSD. The project started with Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) as an initial focal point and is now implementing further exploit mitigation techniques.
Version:next-20260128 (linux-next)
Released:2026-01-28
PC Gamer has run
an
amusing review of the
scx_horoscope
scheduler for Linux, which uses astrology to optimize scheduling
decisions.
The scheduler is full of bizarre features, like its ability to
perform real planetary calculations based on accurate geocentric
planetary positions, lunar phase scheduling (the full moon gives a
1.4x boost to tasking, apparently) and "zodiac-based task
classification".
That latter feature is easily one of my favourite bits. Specific
planetary bodies "rule" over specific system tasks, so the Sun is
in charge of critical system processes, the Moon (tied to emotions,
of course) rules over interactive tasks, and Jupiter is assigned to
memory-heavy applications, among others.
Creating fair governance models for open-source projects is not
easy; defining criteria for participants to receive membership and
voting rights is a particularly thorny problem for projects that have
elections for representative bodies. The Fedora
Council, the project's top-level governance body, is wrestling
with that conundrum now. This was triggered by a Fedora special-interest
group (SIG) granting temporary membership to at least one person for the
sole purpose of allowing them to vote in the most recent Fedora
Engineering Steering Council (FESCo) election. That opened a large can
of worms about what it means to be a contributor and how contributors
can be identified for voting purposes.
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (java-1.8.0-openjdk), Debian (openssl), Fedora (assimp, chromium, curl, freerdp, gimp, and harfbuzz), Mageia (glibc, haproxy, iperf, and python-pyasn1), Red Hat (image-builder, openssl, and osbuild-composer), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (avahi, cups, gio-branding-upstream, google-osconfig-agent, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, java-21-openjdk, kernel-firmware, libmatio-devel, libopenjp2-7, nodejs22, php8, python-python-multipart, python311-urllib3_1, qemu, and xen), and Ubuntu (ffmpeg, jaraco.context, openssl, and openssl, openssl1.0).
SysLinuxOS is a Debian-based GNU/Linux live distribution designed for system administrators and system integrators. It offers a complete networking environment that is organised to integrate various software tools and has a friendly graphical interface using the MATE and GNOME desktops. SysLinuxOS was built to work right out of the box, with all networking tools already installed by default. It includes all major Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), several remote control clients, various browsers, as well as WINE, Wireshark, Etherape, Ettercap, PackETH, Packet Sender, Putty, Nmap, Cutecom, Packet Tracer, tools for serial console, and the latest stable Linux kernel.
Parrot (formerly Parrot Security OS) is a Debian-based, security-oriented distribution featuring a collection of utilities designed for penetration testing, computer forensics, reverse engineering, hacking, privacy, anonymity and cryptography. The product, developed by Frozenbox, comes with MATE as the default desktop environment.
Zorin OS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution designed especially for newcomers to Linux. It has a Windows-like graphical user interface and many programs similar to those found in Windows. Zorin OS also comes with an application that lets users run many Windows programs. The distribution's ultimate goal is to provide a Linux alternative to Windows and let Windows users enjoy all the features of Linux without complications.
FydeOS, developed by China's Fyde Innovations, is a lightweight operating system that carries a Linux kernel, a browser platform and a container technology driver. It is very similar to Google Chrome OS in use. FydeOS supports the latest web application standards, and is able to run Android and Linux applications (by activating the included Android and Debian subsystems), providing a Google Chromebook-like experience. Users have a choice to use cloud services provided by Google, services powered by Fyde Innovations, or a local account. FydeOS is based on the open-source ChromiumOS and includes the Chromium browser; it is available free of charge for most standard Intel/AMD personal computers.
GParted Live is a live distribution with a single purpose - to provide tools for partitioning hard disks in an intuitive, graphical environment. The distribution uses X.Org, the light-weight Fluxbox window manager, and the latest 4.x Linux kernel. GParted Live runs on most x86 machines with a Pentium II or better.
Alpine Linux is a community developed operating system designed for routers, firewalls, VPNs, VoIP boxes, containers, and servers. It was designed with security in mind; it has proactive security features like PaX and SSP that prevent security holes in the software to be exploited. The C library used is musl and the base tools are all in BusyBox. Those are normally found in embedded systems and are smaller than the tools found in GNU/Linux systems.
FUSS is a Debian-based Linux distribution for managing an educational network. It provides server, thin client and desktop solutions based on free software that go beyond any economic or technical reasons, maintaining an ethical choice of freedom and knowledge sharing. FUSS, which stands for "Free Upgrade in South Tyrol's Schools" started in 2005 in Italy's autonomous province of Bolza, with the aim of bringing free software to schools.
There is a new GnuPG update for a "critical security bug" in recent
GnuPG releases.
A crafted CMS (S/MIME) EnvelopedData message carrying an oversized
wrapped session key can cause a stack buffer overflow in gpg-agent
during the PKDECRYPT--kem=CMS handling. This can easily be used
for a DoS but, worse, the memory corruption can very likley also be
used to mount a remote code execution attack. The bug was
introduced while changing an internal API to the FIPS required KEM
API.
Only versions 2.5.13 through 2.5.16 are affected.
Version:next-20260127 (linux-next)
Released:2026-01-27
GNU C Library maintainer Carlos O'Donell has
announced
that the project will be moving its core services away from
Sourceware in favor of services hosted
at the Linux Foundation.
While it was clear to the GNU Toolchain leadership that
requirements were coming to improve the toolchain cyber-security
posture, these requirements were not clear to all project
developers. As part of receiving this feedback we have worked to
document and define a secure development policy for glibc and at a
higher level the GNU Toolchain. While Sourceware has started
making some critical technical changes, the GNU Toolchain still
faces serious, systemic concerns about securing a global, highly
available service and building a sustainable, diverse sponsorship
model.
This has been a long-running discussion; see this 2022 article for some background.
Flatcar Container Linux is a container-optimized operating system based on Gentoo Linux. It is a minimal operating system image which includes only the tools needed to run containers and it supports all of the popular methods for running containers. The distribution ships an immutable filesystem and includes automatic atomic updates. Flatcar Container Linux runs on most cloud providers, virtualization platforms and bare metal servers.
The kernel's "kfunc" mechanism is a way of exporting kernel functions so
that they can be called directly from BPF programs. There are over 300
kfuncs in current kernels, ranging in functionality from string processing
(
bpf_strnlen())
to custom schedulers (
scx_bpf_kick_cpu())
and beyond. Sometimes these kfuncs need access to context information that
is not directly available to BPF programs, and which thus cannot be passed
in as arguments. The
implicit
arguments patch set from Ihor Solodrai is the latest attempt to solve
this problem.
The Xfce team has announced that
it will be providing funding to Brian Tarricone to work on xfwl4,
a Wayland compositor for Xfce:
Xfwl4 will not be based on the existing xfwm4 code. Instead, it
will be written from scratch in rust, using smithay building
blocks.
The first attempt at creating an Xfce Wayland compositor involved
modifying the existing xfwm4 code to support both X11 and Wayland in
parallel. However, this approach turned out to be the wrong path
forward for several reasons:
- Xfwm4 is architected in a way that makes it very difficult to put the window management behavior behind generic interfaces that don't include X11 specifics.
- Refactoring Xfwm4 is risky, since it might introduce new bugs to X11. Having two parallel code bases will allow for rapid development and experimentation with the Wayland compositor, with zero risk to break xfwm4.
- Some X11 window management concepts just aren't available or supported by Wayland protocols at this time, and dealing with those differences can be difficult in an X11-first code base.
- Using the existing codebase would require us to use C and
wlroots, even if a better alternative is available.
Work has already commenced on the project, and the project hopes to
share a development release in mid-2026.
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (kernel, kernel-rt, python-urllib3, python3.11-urllib3, and python3.12-urllib3), Debian (imagemagick, openjdk-11, openjdk-17, and openjdk-21), Fedora (bind, bind-dyndb-ldap, chromium, ghostscript, glibc, mingw-glib2, mingw-harfbuzz, mingw-libsoup, mingw-openexr, and qownnotes), Mageia (kernel-linus), Red Hat (osbuild-composer), SUSE (go1.24-openssl, go1.25-openssl, govulncheck-vulndb, kernel, nodejs22, openCryptoki, openvswitch3, python-pyasn1, python311, and qemu), and Ubuntu (git-lfs, node-form-data, and screen).
CentOS as a group is a community of open source contributors and users which started in 2003 and has been sponsored by Red Hat since 2014. CentOS Linux versions up to CentOS Linux 8 are 100% compatible rebuilds of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in full compliance with Red Hat's redistribution requirements. In 2020 it was announced CentOS Linux is being discontinued and replaced with CentOS Stream, a developer-focused distribution which acts as a middle-stream between Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
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