Linux

Landlock: What Is It?

Landlock is a Linux API that lets applications explicitly declare which resources they are allowed to access. Its philosophy is similar to OpenBSD’s unveil() and (less so) pledge(): programs can make a contract with the kernel stating, “I only need these files or resources — deny me everything else if I’m compromised.”

It provides a simple, developer-friendly way to add defense-in-depth to applications. Compared to traditional Linux security mechanisms, Landlock is vastly easier to understand and integrate.

This post is meant to be an accessible introduction, and hopefully persuade you to give Landlock a try.

Im a total child in terms oft Linux distros. Since im sick of Microsoft i decided to switch my gaming completely to Linux (Xbox to Tower with bazzite, switch to steamdeck). Im quite happy that i installed the distro by my self and found the place where i was able to change the keyboard layout. Because i want to play in my livingroom form the couch i got a bluetooth keyboard. The mouse i already have connected perfectly the keyboard didnt. I tried finding a solution online but soon realised that i have to learn to read the Linux lingo.

Can please someone teach me or point me in the right direction were i can learn the basics. Treat me like i know nothing about distros (because i dont) and PC (because i barely do).

This is also to try the Linux community. Show me what you got.

Edit: First of all, im very happy how this turned out. You people are very kind. I did manage to connect everything and got it running. Now i need to find out why dota 2 isnt running smothly.

We’re nearing the holiday season, and what better way to kick it off than by releasing new Solus ISOs? This release is called Opportunity, for all the new opportunities that are open to us. A lot has happened since we released Solus 4.7 at the beginning of this year, so let’s go over the changes.

General Epoch jump In October, we made the jump to a new epoch, the final chapter of our “Usr-Merge” saga. With the new epoch, we started using a new package repository, named Polaris, after the North Star. This unlocked our ability to remove “Usr-Merge” compatibility symbolic links from packages, update our systemd package, and more.

With the Linux Vendor Firmware Service serving more than 135 million downloads for Linux users updating their system and device firmware, LVFS has been working to get more hardware vendors to contribute either engineering resources or directly contributing annual dues as sponsors. Framework Computer is now the first one to have executed an agreement under these new sponsorship efforts.

Red Hat in employing lead developer Richard Hughes has contributed the most to LVFS/Fwupd's success, the Linux Foundation has also hosted the project since it has shifted into their umbrella, AMD's Mario Limonciello is among the significant contributors, and now Framework Computer is a new sponsor to the project.

Three months after its previous 25.08 release, Niri, a Wayland compositor known for its scrollable-tiling layout, where windows are arranged in columns on an infinite strip, rolls out a new 25.11 version, bringing many improvements.

The headline feature is the new Alt-Tab switcher, developed through multiple design iterations. It shows large live previews, fades long window titles, and properly masks windows blocked from screencasts.

Because Niri users often work with many terminal windows, the switcher operates on windows rather than applications, and it uses a debounce delay so that transient focus changes don’t pollute the recent-windows list. It can also scope switching to the current workspace or monitor.

Eight months after the previous Mercury Neo release, the Arch-based EndeavourOS rolls out its long-awaited Ganymede ISO refresh, introducing the first major update to the live environment and offline installer in quite some time. The developers say the long gap between releases isn’t a sign of trouble, and that the project is doing just fine.

“We still love what we do over here, but we all have chosen to let our lives and loved ones come first over the project. That certainly doesn’t mean we will let you down by letting the community hang there and our releases left to deteriorate. No, we are still active within the community, and our released ISO does receive the necessary updates regularly for the online installer to run smoothly over time.”

The new Ganymede release now brings the ISO back in sync with the current Arch base and includes KDE Plasma 6.5.3, Calamares 25.11, Firefox 145, Linux kernel 6.17, Mesa 25.2, xorg-server 21.1.20, and NVIDIA-utils 580.105.

One of the most significant changes is a complete overhaul of NVIDIA support. The ISO now automatically detects whether a GPU requires the proprietary nvidia driver or the open nvidia-open variant and loads the correct modules in both the live session and the installed system.

Over a month after its previous August update, and after topping DistroWatch’s rankings, the Arch-based performance-focused CachyOS has released its seventh refreshed ISO snapshot for the year, powered by Linux kernel 6.17.

The ISO and installer now ship with Orca and espeak-ng, providing screen-reading capability throughout the installation process. Under the hood, the team has enabled the mkinitcpio systemd hook on supported configurations.

For compatibility reasons, however, the hook is automatically disabled when users select ZFS or Bcachefs as the root filesystem. Bcachefs users now receive bcachefs-dkms, replacing the stock kernel module to provide better filesystem integration.

Ten months after the previous 4.7 “Endurance” release, the Solus team announced the immediate availability of Solus 4.8, codenamed “Opportunity,” which delivers a wide range of system updates, desktop improvements, and infrastructure changes across all editions, along with a completely redesigned website.

With this release, the team finally completed its long-running Usr-Merge transition. With the new epoch, the project moved to the Polaris package repository, enabling the removal of compatibility symlinks and unblocking major upgrades such as systemd 257.10. The update also allowed the distribution to drop Python 2 entirely after migrating all tooling to Python 3.

For Solus 4.8, the Plymouth boot splash system is now enabled by default. Earlier concerns about performance no longer apply, and its inclusion provides a cleaner interface for offline updates through GNOME Software and Discover. Offline updates download packages in advance and install them at boot, reducing the chance of breakage during active sessions.

Hello everyone, I hope you are doing well.

I was a wee bit tired of staring at default folders in my home folder for the Games, Build, and Books locations, so I ended up making my own icons for each by using outlines of different already-existing icons from applications. Feedback is greatly appreciated.

In case any of you just so happen to use the Qogir icon theme, and that you have these folders in your home folder, the SVGs are available here if you are interested.

Please note that I threw these files together using the scalable version of the folder icon, and that I don't have any dedicated 32, 48, 96 etc versions of these files. On top of that, I only have the folder versions of these icons, not symbolic. SVGs are difficult (due to my lack of experience), and so I had to cheat by targeting each individual colour, rather than making an outline and then messing with transparency like the rest of the icon set. Needless to say, if anyone has good inkscape tips, please let me know!

OC by @OutwateredFish@lemmy.ca

Finally making the transition from Windows to a Linux. I'm pretty sure it's been asked several times but which Linux OS would you recommend a beginner to use? I've seen Ubuntu and Mint as a good start. Not looking to do much. Game here and there (not too worried about Linux compatibility), streaming, editing videos. If I break any rules. I'm sorry.

The oldest of the open source Linux desktops is planning its final steps away from X11, while an even older Unix desktop is getting freshened up.

The team behind the KDE Plasma desktop announced it is going all-in on a Wayland future. The Plasma version 6.8, "which we expect will be sometime in early 2027," will completely drop X11 support.

You don't need to worry just yet. Plasma 6.5 appeared less than a month ago, and it's currently at version 6.5.3. That means there are the entire 6.6 and 6.7 release sequences to get through, which will probably take most of 2026 and some of 2027.

We eagerly await to see if the AMD ISP4 driver will be ready for mainlining in the imminent Linux v6.19 merge window but it's getting down to the wire and thus looking less likely it will make it unless action is taken in the coming days. Today though a sixth version of this AMD ISP4 image signal processor driver was posted for this last piece of the puzzle in enabling the web camera on the HP ZBook Ultra G1a Strix Halo laptop as well as future Ryzen high-end laptops.

Getting this AMD ISP4 driver to the mainline kernel is all that's needed for getting the HP ZBook Ultra G1a laptop's web camera working nicely under Linux -- complete with working offloading unlike the latest Intel IPU-enabled web cameras relying on the CPU-based "Soft ISP" when relying on the open-source user-space software. For now the ISP4 IP is used by just the high-end HP ZBook Ultra G1a Ryzen AI Max+ PRO laptops but it's expected to be used by more next-generation AMD Ryzen laptops for a leading web camera experience. This is the last piece as well for making a nice well-rounded Linux experience for the HP ZBook Ultra G1a with all of the other hardware support in great shape -- even LVFS/Fwupd support!

By this I mean the psensor applet icon (second from the left) being to big.

I was messing arround trying to customize my desktop and i followed a guide on how to install and setup latte-dock (kde). Long story short, i failed removed latte (although I think it may have left some stuff behind) and when I restored my cinnamon panel the icon was like this. I've already restored the system with timeshift but it made no difference and tried to set "symbolic icon size" in panel settings but it completely ignores it. I googled for a solution but cant find any :c

Any ideas?

P.S. If I set panel height too small, all the applet icons go halfway off screen through the bottom, something they didnt used to do.

SOLVED: Using this comand:

gsettings reset-recursively org.cinnamon

Reverts the icons to their normal behaviour. Thanks to potatoguy

As some additional enticing Linux kernel patches posted this week for review, an updated patch series is working to optimize code generation during context switching.

Xie Yuanbin pposted the set of three patches working to optimize the compiler's code generation during context switching, which given its frequency can be an expensive task especially with the ever-increasing number of CPU security mitigations often making context switching even more costly.

Wine 10.20 is out as the newest bi-weekly development release of this open-source software enabling Windows applications and games to run on Linux. This is also with Wine 11.0 stable quickly approaching.

Wine 10.20 was released a few minutes ago while coming next Friday on 5 December will be Wine 11.0-rc1 to mark the beginning of the code freeze for the annual Wine stable release. Wine 11.0 is planning for a January debut and for that to happen the plan is to start the code freeze on 5 December, as previously communicated. Wine 11.0 is a big one with upstream NTSYNC support in the Linux kernel, continued WoW64 support, and many other features having landed over the past year.

I had a program sorta freeze up my system without apparently using much resources and its something I have seen a lot in windows and it not happening as much in linux but it does happen. That made me wonder if a system that isolated it more would prevent that. So I guess two questions. Im curious about any distros that isolate the non os programs more and also if anyone knows if this actually would stop what I see happening (my theory is maybe it makes some sort of micro ask for resources that bogs down the system but im not really sure why it happens or for sure which program did it.)

OQB @HubertManne@piefed.social

For those Linux desktop users in the US needing another reason to be thankful this Thanksgiving, a huge and long-awaited accomplishment is ready for merging to the kernel: the Color Pipeline API that is important for HDR is ready for merging! As of last night the code is queued in DRM-Misc-Next for this years-in-the-making effort.

AMD, Igalia, Valve, and other stakeholders have long been working on the Color Pipeline API for advanced color management. Much of the focus has been on the AMDGPU driver and the hardware capabilities of recent AMD Radeon GPUs, since after all, much of the Valve-aligned and Valve-funded work has been focused on the needs of the Steam Deck and now Steam Machine too.

Oracle Linux 9.7 is now globally available, continuing Oracle’s alignment with Red Hat Enterprise Linux by maintaining full application binary compatibility while offering its own enhancements through the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel.

The release highlight is an expanded support for post-quantum cryptographic algorithms. System-wide crypto-policies now prioritize hybrid ML-KEM and pure ML-DSA, and OpenSSL has been updated to include ML-KEM, ML-DSA, and SLH-DSA.

QUIC transport support has also been added, improving performance for latency-sensitive applications and boosting the overall efficiency of encrypted connections.

It's been two months since there were any notable Intel Linux engineering departures to note following various layoffs and voluntary departures this year that have unfortunately impacted their Linux/open-source talent. Sadly this US Thanksgiving is a new departure to note: one of Intel's maintainers for the Xe open-source Linux kernel graphics driver is leaving the company. This is for the modern Xe driver used by default since Lunar Lake and playing a pivotal role for Intel Linux graphics moving forward

After a long development cycle, AV Linux 25 and MX Moksha 25 are now available, bringing two distinct approaches to the Enlightenment ecosystem.

AV Linux remains focused on providing a full, production-ready environment for content creation, built around the Enlightenment 0.27.1 desktop environment, while the new MX Moksha edition introduces the Moksha 0.4.1 desktop from the Bodhi Linux project in a minimal, highly customizable form. Both systems share the same MX Linux 25/Debian Trixie base and Liquorix 6.12 LTS kernels.

And while the two releases differ in purpose, they rely on the same underlying infrastructure. AV Linux continues as a complete workstation with its familiar suite of multimedia tools. At the same time, MX Moksha strips the environment down to essentials, letting users build up their own software stack.

Whonix 18.0 is now available as a major release upgrade. However, if you haven’t heard of it, let me start with a brief introduction.

It’s a Debian-based distro, targeting privacy-focused individuals who require maximum anonymity protections, designed around a security architecture that separates all activities into two virtual machines: a Gateway VM that routes all traffic exclusively through the Tor network, and a Workstation VM that has no direct internet access and can only communicate through the Gateway.

This design isolates applications from the networking stack, preventing IP leaks even if software inside the Workstation is compromised. Now, back to the novelties in the new release.

The NTFSPLUS Linux kernel driver as a modern NTFS file-system driver implementation continues quickly taking shape as it aims to become the most performant and feature-rich NTFS read/write driver for Linux systems.

It was just one month ago that NTFSPLUS was announced by veteran Linux storage/file-system developer Namjae Jeon. Since then Namjae Jeon has been quickly working on addressing remaining gaps in NTFSPLUS compared to Paragon's NTFS3 driver and other NTFS driver alternatives.

Earlier this week I wrote about NTFSPLUS continuing to develop and "v2" patches in an "ntfs-next" Git branch. It remains to be seen how quickly Namjae Jeon will try to get NTFSPLUS in the mainline Linux kernel tree, but he has now announced the v2 iteration of NTFSPLUS and outlined its new features and capabilities.

Zorin OS 18 arrived, hitting 1M downloads in just one month. It’s packed with new features and improvements, so many users are already itching to make the jump to the latest stable release of this user-friendly, visually appealing Linux distro. If that’s you, you’re in the right place.

While the upgrade process is relatively straightforward, it’s always best to do it the safe way—following the proper steps in the correct order with the right guidance. And that’s precisely the purpose of this article.

I’ll walk you through the process of upgrading from Zorin OS 17 to 18, covering all key points. For most cases, the entire process typically takes between 30 and 60 minutes. Needless to say, everything you’ll see below has been tested and proven to work. So, let’s do it.

In addition to the proposed Hierarchical Queued NUMA-aware spinlocks for better performance, another interesting performance-enhancing patch series posted in the past 24 hours for the Linux kernel is for improving the performance of single-threaded tasks running on high core count CPU desktops / workstations / servers.

Gabriel Krisman Bertazi of SUSE posted the request for comments (RFC) patch series to better the performance of single-threaded tasks with today's many-core CPUs. The optimization is focused around the Linux kernel's "rss_stat" structure that holds statistics around the Resident Set Size (RSS) for the process with the amount of memory in use.