Linux

With Firefox 146 being released today to the stable channel, Mozilla has promoted the next major version of its open-source, free, and cross-platform web browser, Firefox 147, to the beta channel for public testing.

Firefox 147 promises support for the Freedesktop.org XDG Base Directory Specification, zero-copy hardware-decoded video support on AMD GPUs to improve video playback performance, support for the Safe Browsing V5 protocol, and WebGPU support for all Apple Silicon Macs.

Firefox 147 also promises to improve the Picture-in-Picture feature by adding support to automatically open a new player window for a playing video in a tab if that tab is ever backgrounded, which was previously in Firefox Labs, as well as support for Compression Dictionaries, IETF RFC 9842.

The Mozilla Firefox 146.0 release binaries are now available with a very exciting improvement for Linux users relying on Wayland.

With Firefox 146, the most exciting change for this last browser release before the holidays is: "Firefox now natively supports fractional scaled displays on Linux(Wayland), making rendering more effective."

Yes, Firefox on Linux is now natively supporting fractional scaling on Wayland!

The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee "FESCo" today signed off on a new feature for Fedora Cloud 44 to switch /boot to being as a Btrfs sub-volume rather than a separate partition.

Fedora Cloud moving forward will drop the separate /boot partition in favor of just using a Btrfs sub-volume for the directory. Though this functionality doesn't currently work for UEFI-UKI and s390x cloud images so there they will continue using the separate boot partition.

The argument in going for a Btrfs sub-volume as the boot partition is that these images tend to be fixed sizes and grow on deployment thus by eliminating the separate partition they can minimize the initial footprint of each cloud image. In the case of Fedora Cloud and cloud environments in general with not having to worry about bootloader prompts and the like, this can ease the migration to having /boot be a Btrfs subvolume given current GRUB limitations.

Arch Linux’s pkgstats data provides one of the few large-scale, opt-in snapshots of how real users configure their systems. While not a perfect census (participation is voluntary), the long-running dataset offers a clear picture of how desktop environment and window managers’ preferences have shifted across more than a decade.

At the same time, the data (to some extent) also reflects a broader trend for one key reason: as you know, a default Arch installation gives you only a base system, and you build everything else according to your own needs and tastes. In other words, there’s no predefined desktop environment that users are locked into, unlike most other distributions.

That means these statistics give us a very accurate look at which desktop environments and window managers Arch users actually choose to install and use. But enough talk, let’s move on to the data.

The Linux Foundation today announced it's formed another foundation under its growing umbrella that extends well beyond the traditional "Linux" landscape: the Agentic AI Foundation.

The Agentic AI Foundation "AAIF" has been formed with Anthropic contributing the Model Context Protocol (MCP), Block's goose, and OpenAI contributing their AGENTS.md specification for guiding coding agents.

The Agentic AI Foundation aims for "a neutral, open foundation to ensure agentic AI evolves transparently and collaboratively."

Manjaro has pushed the first stable-branch update in the upcoming “Anh-Linh” cycle, serving as a preview of the 25.1 release and introducing major changes to the desktop, kernel, and system components. However, the team is issuing a warning to users: do not update yet.

The reason is that several parts of the update require manual intervention, and in some cases, applying them without preparation may break existing systems (more on this below).

The release brings major upgrades such as Plasma 6.5.3, GNOME 49.2, (eventually) COSMIC Beta 9, LXQt 2.3, updated NVIDIA drivers, Blender 5.0, LibreOffice 25.8.3, a refreshed Mesa stack, and the first build of the Manjaro Control Panel.

Beyond technical improvements, Linux Kernel 6.19 will also deliver something that, oddly enough, can be seen from a more aesthetic point of view. And more specifically, it is set to introduce a new Terminus 10×18 console bitmap font, offering a clearer, more balanced option for users who rely on text-mode consoles.

The addition arrives through a recent PR as part of a broader set of fbdev updates targeting the 6.19-rc1 cycle. Expectations are that the new font will improve readability in environments where console clarity still matters, especially on modern laptops and framebuffer-based systems.

The Terminus 10×18 font is designed specifically for mid-density 13–16-inch laptop displays with resolutions such as 1280×800 and 1440×900. Existing built-in fonts, most notably the long-standing 8×16 fallback used by the kernel for decades, tend to appear cramped or thin on these panels.

The developers of the ParrotOS ethical hacking and penetration testing distribution announced today the general availability of the beta version of the upcoming Parrot 7.0 release with major changes.

The biggest change in the upcoming Parrot 7.0 release is the switch from the lightweight MATE desktop environment to the more modern KDE Plasma as the default desktop environment for all editions, along with extending the classic terminal green style across the entire system.

For the past 15 years the Smatch static analysis tool has been routinely run for uncovering countless bugs within the Linux kernel. Dan Carpenter who authored Smatch and has been routinely analyzing the Linux kernel with it has authored more than 5,568 patches over the years to become one of the top bug fixers for the kernel. But his funding at Linaro has been cut and the project's future now in question.

The Smatch static analysis on the kernel in recent years has been led by Dan Carpenter while working for Linaro. It's fallen under a "Linux kernel quality" project but now that Linaro project is surprisingly ending

In addition to approving Fedora Cloud switching /boot to a Btrfs subvolume, another change approved this week by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) is for shipping the Budgie 10.10 desktop packages in Fedora 44.

Fedora already enjoys Budgie in the package repository as an alternative desktop option. There is also the Fedora Budgie Spin for those wanting to enjoy the Budgie desktop experience out-of-the-box. Now for Fedora 44, it will get Budgie 10.10 thanks to the FESCo approval

A performance fix has been submitted to the Linux kernel for dealing with a regression in the Slab memory allocation code.

The sole patch with today's slab pull request for Linux 6.19 and to be back-ported to Linux 6.18 LTS stable is fixing a performance regression for code involving heavy kmem_cache_destroy() usage.

Thinkpad P15v gen 3 running arch. I played around with fedora a bit but it was boring. I got a working gentoo install running but that was too complicated, so I settled on arch.

TL;DR - About switching from Linux Mint to Qubes OS from among various other options that try to provide security out-of-the-box (also discussed: OpenBSD, SculptOS, Ghaf, GrapheneOS)

I'd like to set up a self-hosted newsletter. Do you have any recommendations of free software solutions? I would obviously host it on top of a Linux VM.

(Is there a more suitable community for tjis question?)

Today I released a new version of SSH Pilot, a user-friendly SSH connection manager.

SSH Pilot packs some useful features:

• Built-in terminal
• Dual-pane SFTP file manager
• SCP file transfers
• SSH Key generation and transfer
• Secure storage for SSH secrets using libsecret and automatic login
• Server grouping and color taggings
• and more

It is available for major linux distributions, and there is a Flatpak that should run on any distro with Flatpak support.

Developer @mfat@lemmy.ml

The KDE team has announced Plasma 6.5.4, the fourth bugfix update to the major 6.5 series, which follows three weeks after the previous 6.5.3 release. While no new features are introduced, Plasma 6.5.4 focuses on refinement and reliability.

The release adds updated translations and a long list of targeted fixes. Discover receives several corrections to its Flatpak handling, improving installation management, notifier behavior, and support on aarch64 systems. Headless update scenarios are also addressed, and UI actions now behave consistently across desktop and mobile interfaces.

KWin, the window manager, includes numerous improvements. These range from better handling of input methods and tablet devices to corrections for HiDPI rendering and transformed item painting.

Merged to the mainline Linux kernel last year was GPIB drivers in the kernel's "staging" area. GPIB is the General Purpose Interface Bus launched by HP back in 1972 for lab equipment and more. After a year of cleaning up the code in the kernel's staging area, for Linux 6.19 the GPIB drivers have been promoted out of the staging area and into the Linux kernel proper. The Linux kernel now has stable driver support for this 8 Mbyte/s parallel bus that was introduced 53 years ago.

Since being accepted into the kernel's staging area last year, the GPIB code for supporting vintage lab instruments and other hardware has continued to be cleaned up in newer kernel versions and was nearing the point of graduating staging. That's thanks to passionate hardware folks with the standard itself being long obsolete thanks to the likes of USB, Firewire, and Ethernet. The Linux kernel's staging area as a reminder for any new users is effectively a proving grounds / portion of the kernel where code can reside until it's cleaned-up and in better shape for being formally maintained within the Linux kernel source tree.

Yesterday I noted some early performance regressions I've found on the Linux 6.19 kernel compared to Linux 6.18 LTS stable. Those initial benchmarks were on an AMD EPYC server. Since then I've seen many of the same workloads regressing similarly on an AMD Ryzen Threadripper workstation between Linux 6.18 and Linux 6.19 Git. Given the significant impact and AMD Threadripper processors always helping out to speed-up Linux kernel build times to make for a quicker and more manageable kernel bisecting experience, here is a look at some of the results for the Linux 6.19 performance regressions.

Use case: I want to mirror a bunch of repositories of a project. I suppose this would be pretty easy with a script.

But to the git part: I fear that the developers might force push things and thus revert commits and de facto delete code.

Is there a way to git clone and auto-checking out to a different branch or something else, to avoid force pulling and reverting commits?

Finnish company Jolla started out 14 years ago where Nokia left off with MeeGo and developed Sailfish OS as a new Linux smartphone platform. Jolla released their first smartphone in 2013 after crowdfunding but ultimately the Sailfish OS focus the past number of years now has been offering their software stack for use on other smartphone devices. But now it seems they are trying again with a new crowd-funded smartphone.

Sailfish OS has supported a number of Sony Xperia smartphones and a variety of OnePlus / Samsung / Google / Xiaomi devices and more maintained by the community. Last year Jolla also announced an "AI computer" as part of the AI hardware craze. Now though they are apparently trying again at their own in-house smartphone.

AerynOS, an atomic-update-based (not to be confused with immutability) still-in-development Linux distro currently in alpha, has shared its latest project update for December 2025.

The distro released its latest Alpha ISO, version 2025.12. This GNOME-based live environment includes Linux kernel 6.17.10 and uses the Lichen installer, which still requires a network connection to fetch pkgsets during installation.

The update brings COSMIC Beta9, GNOME 49.2, KDE Plasma 6.5.4, KDE Frameworks 6.20, and KDE Gear 25.08.2, alongside updates to core tools such as the Bash shell, Mesa with Vulkan anti-lag, LLVM, Buildah, Docker, OpenVPN, SCX schedulers, Vim, Wine, Zed, and more.

[TL;DR: I'm looking for resources on Linux so I can catch up and become reacquainted with it. Are there any all-encompassing media about Linux itself, and stuff like backing up, snapshots, file systems, dual-booting, customization, etc. I can use as a reference/ learning material?]

Some background: I used Linux Mint a small bit about 10 or so years ago to save some old hard drives. (Windows 7 era)

I braved Windows 10 but played in Linux VMs as I started to self-teach programming. Things changed when I got my hands on a Steam Deck a few months ago and I fell back in love with Linux. I had no idea how much progress got made. It runs so well and I like the ecosystem.

Last month, I built a new computer. Right before the RAM and SSD shortage (I'm talking mere days). Because of some programs I use, I put Windows 11 LTSC on it, but I want to downgrade back to 10 because it's just so awful. And I'm sick of M$ antics and performance, so I want to dual boot.

All that being said, if there are resources for learning Linux from the ground up or anyone I can approach with questions, I would appreciate some direction there. Many thanks!

Beginning with the Linux 6.19 kernel, the hung task detector and system lock-up detector are now optionally able to provide greater insight into the issues by dumping additional system information. The new lockup_sys_info and hung_task_sys_info sysctl knobs were merged over as part of the pull requests managed by Andrew Morton.

Andrew Morton first sent in the memory management "MM" updates for Linux 6.19. Overall a number of low-level kernel code clean-ups and various minor optimizations