Tails is an unusual Linux
distribution developed by the Tor Project; it
is designed to help users work around internet censorship and avoid
surveillance. It is a "portable" operating system that is meant to be
run from a USB stick or ISO image and to leave no trace on the
computer it was run on. Tails routes connections to the internet over
the Tor
network and includes a selection of applications and tools
suited to working with sensitive documents, communicating securely,
and preserving users' anonymity. The tradeoff, of course, is that
Tails is less convenient and requires users to learn a new set of
tools to avoid compromising their own security and anonymity. Tails 7.1 was
released in October, and it seemed like as good a time as any to take
it for a spin.
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (bind, expat, kernel, osbuild-composer, qt6-qtsvg, runc, valkey, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), Debian (incus), Fedora (cef and dotnet8.0), Mageia (strongswan), Red Hat (fence-agents and python-requests), SUSE (chromium, colord, erlang26, java-1_8_0-openjdk, libsoup, python-django, thunderbird, tiff, and warewulf4), and Ubuntu (intel-microcode and rust-sudo-rs).
SparkyLinux is a lightweight, fast and simple Linux distribution designed for both old and new computers featuring customised Enlightenment and LXDE desktops. It has been built on the "testing" branch of Debian GNU/Linux.
Slimbook OS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution customised for the Slimbook line of Linux computers assembled in Spain. It offers a choice of GNOME or KDE Plasma desktops on a single ISO image which also includes some custom extensions and utilities. The distribution provides its own repositories for some software, prioritising DEB and Flatpak packages over Ubuntu's snap options. Some of the other interesting features of Slimbook OS include touchpad gestures (enabled by default), Slimbook service notifications, window tiling, the Terminator terminal emulator, a Ulauncher application for fast searching, and a day/night mode switcher.
Version:next-20251111 (linux-next)
Released:2025-11-11
Version 2.0.0 of public-inbox, the mail archiving system behind
lore.kernel.org and LWN's email archive, has been released. "This
release includes several new features and fixes; mostly around improved
integration between inboxes and coderepos for solver. Portability and
reliability is also improved, especially in the internal process management
of lei."
Volumio (formerly RaspyFi) is a Debian-based distribution originally made for the Raspberry Pi single-board computer, but later expanded to other embedded devices, including CuBox, BeagleBone Black and UDOO. It aims to fully integrate Music Player Daemon, an open-source music player server, into the current Debian releases and to optimise it for Audiophile-quality music playback. Volumio also makes it simple to play music library directly from a USB storage device or from any network-attached storage and it also enables users to listen to web-based radio stations from Spotify, Last.fm and SoundCloud. Starting in October 2014 the project no longer provided a complete Linux distribution; instead it develops Volumio as a music player application only which it makes available for various platforms. The Volumio distribution resumed development in 2016 and is available for x86 computers as well as several ARM devices.
When programs written in BPF (the kernel's hot-loadable virtual-machine
bytecode) call kernel functions (kfuncs), it may be useful
for those functions to have additional information about the context in which
those BPF programs are executing. Rather than requiring it to supply
that information, it would be convenient to let the BPF verifier pass that
information to the called function automatically. That is already possible, but
a recent patch set from Ihor Solodrai would make it more ergonomic.
It allows kernel
developers to specify that a kfunc should be passed additional
parameters inferred by the verifier, invisibly to the BPF program. The
discussion included concerns that Solodrai's implementation was unnecessarily
complex, however.
Version
9.0.0 of pytest has been released. Notable changes in this release
include the addition of
subtests,
native support for TOML configuration files, and a new
strict
mode. See the
changelog
for a complete list of new features, enhancements, and bug fixes.
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (galera and mariadb, kernel, kernel-rt, mingw-libtiff, redis:7, tigervnc, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), Fedora (bind, bind-dyndb-ldap, bpfman, chromium, dolphin-emu, dotnet9.0, golang-github-openprinting-ipp-usb, kea, libnbd, luksmeta, python-cloudpickle, python-pydantic, python-pydantic-core, python-uv-build, ruby, ruff, rust-get-size-derive2, rust-get-size2, rust-regex, rust-regex-automata, rust-reqsign, rust-reqsign-aws-v4, rust-reqsign-command-execute-tokio, rust-reqsign-core, rust-reqsign-file-read-tokio, rust-reqsign-http-send-reqwest, singularity-ce, uv, xen, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), Mageia (libxml2, libxslt, opencontainers-runc, and xen), Oracle (bind, galera and mariadb, libsoup, linux-firmware, mariadb:10.5, mingw-libtiff, osbuild-composer, qt5-qt3d, tigervnc, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), SUSE (chromium, erlang, google-osconfig-agent, govulncheck-vulndb, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, java-1_8_0-openj9, opentofu, python-djangorestframework-simplejwt, python311-Django, python315, squid, thunderbird, tiff, tomcat, tomcat11, and xen), and Ubuntu (linux-fips, linux-hwe-6.14, and linux-nvidia-tegra, linux-nvidia-tegra-5.15, linux-nvidia-tegra-igx,
linux-raspi).
Version:next-20251110 (linux-next)
Released:2025-11-10
DESERT OS Linux is a Russian desktop Linux distribution based on Ubuntu and featuring the Xfce desktop. It supports Pacstall, a package manager inspired by Arch's AUR and capable of creating native Ubuntu DEB packages from source and binary packages, git repositories, AppImage apps, release artifacts and non-Ubuntu DEB packages. The distribution also offers out-of-the box support for Flatpak packages.
The
6.18-rc5 kernel prepatch is out for
testing. "In other words: it all looks just the way I like it at this
point: small and boring."
Tribblix is a general-purpose operating system derived from OpenSolaris, OpenIndiana and illumos. The base kernel and commands come from illumos, with everything else rebuilt from scratch. It is a traditional system where software is distributed as SVR4 packages and lightweight window managers are preferred over heavy desktop environments. Xfce is the primary desktop option, with MATE, Enlightenment and various window managers also available for installation. While Tribblix inherits many of the key illumos technologies, such as ZFS, zones, DTrace and SMF, it uses its own build and packaging system.
The KeePassXC project has recently updated its contribution
policy and README
to note its policy around contributions created with generative AI
tools. The project's use of those tools, such as GitHub Copilot, have
raised a number of questions and concerns, which the project has
responded
to:
There are no AI features inside KeePassXC and there never
will be!
The use of Copilot for drafting pull requests is reserved for very
simple and focused tasks with a small handful of changes, such as
simple bugfixes or UI changes. We use it sparingly (mostly because
it's not very good at complex tasks) and only where we think it offers
a benefit. Copilot is good at helping developers plan complex changes
by reviewing the code base and writing suggestions in markdown, as
well as boilerplate tasks such as test development. Copilot can mess
up, and we catch that in our standard review process (e.g., by
committing a full directory of rubbish, which we identified and
fixed). You can review our copilot instructions. Would we ever let AI
rewrite our crypto stack? No. Would we let it refactor and rewrite
large parts of the application? No. Would we ask it to fix a
regression or add more test cases? Yes, sometimes.
Emphasis in the original. See the full post to learn more about the
project's processes and pull requests that have been created with AI
assistance.
The kernel community is currently reviewing
a
proposed policy for contributors who are using large language models to
assist in the creation of their patches; the primary focus is on disclosure
of the use of those tools. "The goal here is to clarify community
expectations around tools. This lets everyone become more productive while
also maintaining high degrees of trust between submitters and
reviewers."
PorteuX is a Linux distribution based on Slackware Linux, inspired by Slax and Porteus and available to the public for free. Its main goal is to be fast, small, portable (run from a thumb drive), modular and optionally immutable. It is pre-configured for basic usage, including lightweight applications for each one of the seven desktop environments (Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE Plasma, LXDE, LXQt, MATE and Xfce) available. No browser is included, but an app store is provided for downloading any of the most popular browsers, as well as other applications.
Kicksecure is a security-hardened Linux distribution based on Debian's "Stable" branch, with Xfce as the default desktop user interface. It is a hardened operating system designed to be resistant to viruses, malware and attacks, and extensively reconfigured in accordance with an advanced multi-layer defense model, thereby providing in-depth security. Kicksecure provides protection from many types of malware in its default configuration with no customization required.
MX Linux, a desktop-oriented Linux distribution based on Debian's "Stable" branch, is a cooperative venture between the antiX and former MEPIS Linux communities. Using Xfce as the default desktop (with separate KDE Plasma and Fluxbox editions also available), it is a mid-weight operating system designed to combine an elegant and efficient desktop with simple configuration, high stability, solid performance and medium-sized footprint.
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