Michael:
[0:00] This week in Linux, we have a jam-packed show for you with a brand new version of the Linux kernel with Linux 6.16. Then we have some new distros to talk about with KDE Linux and Helium OS. Plus, Feren OS is back on the show this week to celebrate a big milestone of their 10-year anniversary. Then we’ll talk about some bummer news with a new UK law that is wreaking havoc on the internet. All of this and more on this week in Linux. We’re about to reach a major milestone for my YouTube channel. We just hit 92,000 subscribers on YouTube and we are so close to hitting a milestone I never thought that I would ever hit. If you’re watching and aren’t subscribed, I would really appreciate it if you went ahead and did that because I hardly ever ask for people to subscribe except I guess at the very end of the episodes. But if you would like to help me reach that 100,000 subscriber mark, that would be awesome. I would really appreciate it. After a very long time on YouTube, I finally might be getting one of those YouTube play button plaques for the channel. So if you wanna help with that, that’d be awesome. All of this and more on This Week in Linux, the weekly news show that keeps you up to date with what’s going on in the Linux and open source world. Now let’s jump right into Your Source for Linux GNews.

Michael:
[1:24] This episode of TWIL is sponsored by Sandfly Security. More on them later. Linus Torvalds announced the latest release of the Linux kernel with Linux 6.16. And despite Linus himself referring to it as a nice and calm release with no big showstopper surprises, it comes with a lot of new features and additional hardware support and performance improvements and quite a bit. So what’s new with Linux 6.16? So the features include a major performance boost for OpenVPN users thanks to the new data channel offload driver being upstream to the kernel. Also, there is, and I quote, there’s some reports saying that it’s stupendous performance improvements for EXT4, thanks to large folio support for regular files. This brings massive performance gains with the kernel test robot reporting over 37% improvement on large sequential I/O operations.

Michael:
[2:22] Also, Atomic Write support has been added for the XFS file system with stronger data integrity guarantees. And also, initial support has been added for NVIDIA Blackwell and Hopper GPUs inside NUVO drivers. Although, don’t expect too much performance out of these because the NUVO drivers are limited in terms of the open source reverse engineering aspects. NVIDIA is not a big fan of open source when it comes to their GPU drivers. So you still will probably need to get the proprietary drivers if you have anything relatively new. Also, Intel’s advanced performance extensions are now ready to use in the kernel. Five-level paging is now unconditionally enabled, allowing up to 128 petabytes of memory instead of just the measly 256 terabytes. And also, Intel Trust domain extensions bring hardware-level memory encryption to KVM virtual machines, preventing an a compromised host system from viewing virtual machine memory. As well as many more, including hardware-wrapped encryption keys have been added, allowing file system encryption keys to be stored in dedicated security hardware instead of memory. Plus, we also have some improved hardware support with the Apple Magic Mouse 2. For those who, for some reason, like the Magic Mouse, even though when you charge it, you have to turn it upside down, it’s weird.

Michael:
[3:46] Also game controller support for the Acer Nitro NGR200 and the BioWave Proteus has been added to this latest version of the kernel and also suspend and resume support has been added for the Asus ROG Ally as well as many many more features if you’d like to learn more you can check out the links in the show notes for the full list of everything because there’s just way too much

Michael:
[4:09] to cover and we’re just gonna leave it right there there’s a lot of people who are wondering what’s the difference between KDE Neon and Kubuntu? Well, the big difference is that they’re both Ubuntu-based and they’re both KDE Plasma, but one is meant for daily drivers and one is meant for kind of like a playground testing of sorts. And Kubuntu is that daily driver and KDE Neon is the testing ground. If you take a look on the website for KDE Neon, it says that the user edition is ideal for adventurous KDE enthusiasts. That would describe me, but that is not the beginner type of user.

Michael:
[4:42] So Neon is made to be a testing ground and it is great. It is great for that, but it’s not a great option for the average user to use as a daily driver. The main reason is because the core focus of KDE Neon is the KDE stack and making sure that it is updated as fast as possible. But the base system is secondary at best. This is awesome for people like me who have been using Linux for a very long time and are big fans of KDE Plasma, which I am, but it’s not the ideal solution for those getting started with Linux. However, the KDE team is working on something new for all of those people who want something to be a daily driver. And that is KDE Linux, a new Linux distro made by KDE themselves. Now, real quick, it’s still in the testing stages. So this is the purpose of what it’s going to be. It’s not there yet. So you will need to wait until it’s ready to do that. But I’m very excited about this effort. So this is a really interesting distro as well, because similar to Bazzite and Bluefin, it has a root read only file system, which is also known as immutable in some sorts. It’s not technically immutable. That’s more complicated. I like to call it immutable ish. So it’s immutable ish based on Arch Linux. And although the immutability is very different to how Arch is typically used, so it’s kind of.

Michael:
[6:02] Saying it’s Arch-based is true, but for those who are expecting how it works a certain way, it’s not going to be like that. But it’s still an interesting effort. And I think there’s a lot of benefits to the read-only file system. And if you are interested in trying out something that’s similar right now, you can check out Aurora from the Universal Blue Team or Bazzite with the KDE edition. And you get something like this, but it’s not going to be based on Arch. It’ll be based on Fedora. So KDE Linux is going to be using an A-B image-based system, similar to how SteamOS works. So if there’s an update, there’s going to be going to the A version. And then if there’s ever a problem, it can easily revert back into the B side. So this is basically having two different systems that are parallel so that you can update and not have to worry about any kind of crash. Because if there is a crash, it can just revert back to the other one and be good to go. Now it’s only going to be Wayland supported and app distribution comes primarily from flat packs and snaps. One comparison I saw on Reddit that is somewhat accurate is that it’s sort of like SteamOS for the desktop but without Steam because they are both Arch based using the AB image update systems. Although KDE packages are compiled from source and not from the Arch repo. Flat packs and snaps are not the only option. You will also be having a distro box as an option that will be pre-installed, allowing you to use containers for apps built on any distribution.

Michael:
[7:25] And there’s also a kind of a big caveat. I think the biggest caveat is the lack of NVIDIA drivers for now. I’m not sure, well, not all NVIDIA drivers, but proprietary drivers. So if you’re wanting to do some gaming on this system, they say at the very bottom, where is this part? Why is a proprietary NVIDIA driver not supported? They say it needs to be loaded as a kernel module. This can’t be done at runtime because the base OS is immutable and it can’t be pre-installed because that violates the terms of NVIDIA’s license agreement. So there you go. That’s why maybe someday it will be. But at the moment, that is why that you would have to use the open source drivers only. And if you need the proprietary drivers, then KDE Linux might not be the best option for you. But I think this is really cool. And I think it’s really important that KDE makes this kind of thing because there are a lot of distributions that ship with KDE by default. There’s not that many that do it as the main go-to distribution. So I think it is a good idea for KDE to build one like this because they can show what they feel like is the best way to present the KDE Plasma desktop. And I think that’s a good idea. If you are interested in learning more about the KDE Linux distro, you can find links in the show notes.

Michael:
[8:39] Feren OS is celebrating its 10th anniversary for this first ever release that was released on July 29th, 2015. With this, they announced a few upcoming updates as well that look very good. First up, there will be doing a bug fix update that just fixes some bugs and updates the secure boot signature. So that’s good to see that’s happening. But it’s also much, much more coming for this Feren OS distribution. There’s will be a new store update bringing a new software store that is made from scratch, as well as a remade tour app. So this is for people who are just getting started with the distribution. It’s like a welcome app, that kind of thing, which is very good to have those. For any distribution that doesn’t have it and is trying to get beginners, you need one, do it. Not every distribution needs one, but if you’re going for beginners, you definitely should. But this isn’t even the biggest update coming because after that, they will be doing a 10th anniversary update, which adds a full rebase of Ubuntu on Ubuntu 24.04 rather than the 22.04, which is currently running. Also KDE Plasma 6, a new icon set made from scratch for Inspire 4.0, new default apps, and a new login screen.

Michael:
[9:52] And then there’s more coming after that because once the 10th anniversary update is out, there will also be new stuff with new wallpapers, icon sets, new global themes, and also a 10th anniversary boot screen, as well as ports of old wallpapers, themes, and icon sets. There is a lot of stuff coming with the update for Feren OS and the 10th anniversary. I think this is great to see because Feren OS has been around for a while and I have used it on many occasions and it is very good and I’m happy to see that they are jumping to the KDE Plasma 6 base because Plasma 6 is just very slick so I’m really happy to see that and if you are interested in checking out Feren OS as it is now they’re currently not able to have the Plasma 6 yet you’re going to have the Plasma 5 at the moment but the Feren OS 10th anniversary is coming out soon so if you want to wait you can you know you You can wait for that. But I am excited to see this because this is a project I’ve been following since they first started. And I’m really happy to see it continuing and especially hitting such a great milestone of 10 years.

Michael:
[10:56] Well done to the Feren OS team. You chose Linux for its stability and security. But as threats grow more sophisticated, detecting them in time without putting your system at risk is more critical than ever. Traditional endpoint agents can cause downtime and performance issues, leaving visibility gaps. I mean, there’s got to be a better way, right? And there is. That is Sandfly Security, the agentless Linux security platform.

Michael:
[11:20] Sandfly not only does endpoint detection in response, but it also performs SSH key tracking, password auditing, and drift detection to find the widest ranges of threats. Whether your servers are in the cloud, on-premises, or in embedded devices, Sandfly protects them all without the need of risky agent installation. Listen to what Timothy Lisko of DigitalOcean has to say. Sandfly is one of the most exciting pieces of security tech I’ve seen recently. We’re excited to not only be a customer, but also offer an integrated solution to our customers through the DigitalOcean Marketplace. This technology addresses Linux security in a really novel and compelling way. So get fast, non-invasive protection for your critical systems. No agents, no downtime, just smarter security that works. Dive into the future of Linux security at thisweekinlinux.com/sandfly. That’s thisweekinlinux.com/sandfly and see how Sandfly can transform your security strategy.

Michael:
[12:17] And if you’re as fascinated by cybersecurity as much as I am, then check out the interview we had with the CEO of Sandfly on Destination Linux, my podcast. You can go to destinationlinux.net/409 for that interview. And also, we just had him back on to do a kind of a Sandfly security scoop type of segment. It’s really cool. We have a lot of fun talking about various different security stuff. And if you want to learn more about that, you can check out the latest episode. And you can go to that by going to destinationlinux.net. Plus, if you want to save some money, you can get the HomeLab edition or discounted a 50% off by using the coupon code DESTINATION. So go to thisweekinlinux.com/sandfly to get started.

Michael:
[13:03] So we have some bummer news to talk about, and it’s actually many people are calling it the death of anonymity on the internet. In 2023, the UK passed the Online Safety Act 2023. 23 point of this law was to protect children which always you know that’s always what they use to do these kinds of things by preventing children from being able to access you know adult type of content or harmful content as they describe it this is a good cause i mean there’s it’s not necessarily going to have a problem with that kind of thing but there is a problem with implementation.

Michael:
[13:37] In that there isn’t any with the uk they didn’t offer an actual solution it’s up to everyone else to figure it out basically instead of saying hey here’s the problem here’s a solution they said here’s a problem now deal with it and that’s pretty much what people are going to have to do it so there’s different techniques and different implementations for basically every site that’s having to deal with this now instead of checking a box saying that you’re like 18 for age verification, you now have to verify your age in some way. This could be by checking credit card details. It could be by checking an ID or even using AI facial age estimation technology, as well as other ideas. We’re now seeing this law go into effect not only on these kinds of websites that they’re trying to block, but also on websites that you probably use because it’s a blanket declaration of having to do this stuff. It’s not just specific types of websites. It’s pretty much everywhere.

Michael:
[14:37] And it’s not limited to just the UK. Some of it is currently, but it is kind of expanding out. Some websites are just kind of accepting it as a UK only thing. And some are just doing it as like, you know, just to cover their own tracks, they’re going to be doing everyone. So that just depends on the site, but who knows going forward. Now, Reddit has introduced age verification on its UK site using an outside company called Persona for performing age verification through uploaded selfies or a photo of your government ID.

Michael:
[15:10] So X or Twitter, as I still refuse to call it X because X is silly, is planning on introducing AI facial recognition using its own AI technology or ID verification. Discord is also giving users a choice of face or ID scanning. Spotify is partnering with the company Yodi to prevent users from viewing 18 plus music videos underage, but also if you are under 13, they will delete your account if you are not on a family plan. The privacy implications for this are very huge. I mean.

Michael:
[15:43] I understand the basis, the premise for it, but they’re stretching it pretty far, like way too far, in my opinion. So all these types of websites, we’ll just call it pr0n, in the UK require it now, which does prevent children from accessing it, which in that sense makes sense. However, if the site gets hacked and you have your government ID tied to you watching that content, it’s not awesome. For some people this could be life ruining in fact but also the fact that these websites that are no longer that are not even associated to these kinds of things they’re not associated at all for that type of content are also having to do it because of the way this stuff was written making it so that these government id is going to be tying you to all sorts of stuff which personally i hope this doesn’t come to the u.s in this sense because i don’t want to do that I don’t want to put my ID for any account. And it looks like even getting a Reddit account is going to require you to do that sort of stuff. So no, thank you.

Michael:
[16:44] Regardless of the website and its intention or purpose, I don’t want to give my ID and details just because I want to use a website of any kind. It’s just ridiculous. But many of the third party companies have stated that any images used for verification are immediately deleted. But it has been found that AU10TIX auto 10 ticks i’m not sure how you’re supposed to say that an identity verification company already used by tiktok uber and x left user information and driver license photos exposed for months so uh yeah data leakage when you have the government ids is not the the best kind of thing so i hope that these kinds of companies do delete them because that is at least the lesser of the evil, I guess, if you can’t leak the stuff you don’t have. So…

Michael:
[17:32] There’s that. We’ll see. Obviously, that’s not happening for that company, but let’s see for the other ones. We’ll see about that. There’s nothing stopping companies like Google or TikTok from tying all the user data they have already to this now a government issued ID because there’s no this law does not necessarily address that kind of thing. So aside from the uk this is going globally across the internet some companies are having to do it based on you know just kind of covering their own tracks but also europe is rolling out digital ids australia is age-gating search engines now many u.s states have already implemented similar rules targeting the pr0n sites and also additionally youtube has already implemented age verification not just in the uk but in the u.s although the way the youtube does it is a little interesting because it’s not as it’s not as egregious. So YouTube is unique because it is using AI paired with your viewing history to determine if you are under age. So if you watch a lot of content that normally children watch, you’ll be prompted for ID verification.

Michael:
[18:39] And if you don’t do that, so it’s kind of interesting because it makes it where if you are not indicating that you are a child, it doesn’t ask you rather than, you know, all the time so i feel like that’s that’s it’s an interesting way of going about it but also at the same time if you watch a lot of minecraft videos or you watch a lot of gaming videos and stuff like that well then who knows what’s going to happen there so anyway i don’t really have a good way to end this topic it’s just this is happening this is a bummer and uh hopefully it doesn’t get any worse than it already is.

Michael:
[19:14] But knowing politics, who knows?

Michael:
[19:20] A few weeks ago, we covered Kapitano, a Linux virus antivirus scanner that was based on ClamAV. It’s basically was meant to be a GUI front end for ClamAV. So it’s a GTK4 slash LibidWeta antivirus that acts as the front end for the ClamAV project. Unfortunately, it is now abandoned and.

Michael:
[19:41] Due to bad experience the developer has had this is very sad not necessarily because the guy decided to get rid of it if he doesn’t want to work on it that’s totally understandable it’s an open source project it is what it is but the developer states recently had an unpleasant experience on issues 12 and 13 was accused of distributing malware although the issue wasn’t caused by the app the conversation escalated into personal attacks and harsh words so this person also goes on to say that this was a always a hobby project created in free time without any financial support incidents like this make it hard to stay motivated that said genuinely am grateful to everyone who tried the app appreciate the attention it received so with this the project is now released into public domain delisted from flat hub and marked as end of life if someone wants to fork it they can the repo will be archived online for a few months so you can do that but after that the dev plans on closing his Codeberg account entirely. If you’re looking for an alternative, there is Electron-Based Solutions that is currently in alpha right now.

Michael:
[20:44] That one’s called ClamAV-Desktop. And there are other ones that are working on stuff. But right now, I don’t know of any other ones that are ready to be used. And this one’s not, this one’s in alpha. So they, that one’s not ready to use either. So there are some people online who feel like they’re entitled to get stuff for free and can just yell at the people for not doing whatever they want or not getting a feature that they want or whatever and in this case this is someone like attacking them saying that they distributed malware which apparently this wasn’t the case and it wasn’t related to the app but they still just attacked them anyway and this person decided it’s not worth it so i’ll just leave and move on this is something that happens way too often because sometimes you see people talk about the linux community is toxic this is one of those times because only Only one instance really was required to make this happen and make this project end.

Michael:
[21:41] And yes, there are examples where the Linux community is awesome. The Linux community is awesome much more than it isn’t. Like 99% of the comments that I get on my channel are fantastic, really nice people. Occasionally, there’s a toxic one. And that’s also the case in pretty much any community. You’re going to have most people being great and a few toxic people. The sad thing is, is that it is depending on what someone is working on, if they’re doing a hobby project, they’re not really interested in dealing with that toxic person and they just move on. And I understand it’s a shame, but I understand. But to the people who are being toxic to any kind of project like this, get over yourself. It’s not that big a deal. You’re using a product for free. You aren’t entitled

Michael:
[22:33] to it. Get over yourself.

Michael:
[22:35] Helium OS is a brand new Linux distribution using the immutable-ish technology. And this one is built on top of AlmaLinux 10, and it uses KDE Plasma 6. And it’s just had its first non-beta release. Helium OS is using bootc, which is the technology that Bazzite and Bluefin and Aurora, and also Fedora Silverblue and Fedora Kino White, all of these distributions use bootc to make their systems work. This makes updates ultra-reliable and makes it almost impossible to break your system. It’s not impossible. If you try hard enough, you can do it. Just don’t, just don’t try.

Michael:
[23:15] Or don’t try hard enough, don’t try at all, but it makes the file system read only, which does make it so that you have to make modifications to a container image to modify anything. So this makes Helium OS a great option. If you just want to install a system that works without dealing with managing a Linux system. So the interesting thing about Helium OS is that it’s based on AlmaLinux. For those who don’t know, AlmaLinux is kind of a, it’s, it’s not a clone. It’s more of a derivative of rail. And it is very interesting because it’s kind of like this combination makes a Helium OS, sort of like an LTS type of distribution compared to Fedora, for example. And all of your apps on this distribution are shipped as flat packs.

Michael:
[23:53] Now, DistroBox is also pre-installed, which lets you make a container for any Linux distro and install anything through its package manager, making it great for development tasks or if you need an app that’s not available as a flat pack or an app image. Helium OS also has an experimental edge addition using CentOS Hyperscale kernel with newer hardware compatibility, similar to Ubuntu LTS hardware enablement packages. So you may need to use that version if you are on the very new hardware, but otherwise you can use the regular version. There’s also an experimental Helium OS add-ons project for installing non-containerized software powered by OverlayFS, and basically it’s a layer on top of the main system. And so far it allows you to install tools like NeoVim, VS Code Rustup, and NPM and more. I think this is a really interesting distribution because it’s basically doing similar things that Fedora Silverblue and the Universal Blue team are doing where they’re using, instead of Fedora, they’re using AlmaLinux to do it. And that is intriguing. So if you’d like to learn more about the Helium OS and the Helium OS 10 release,

Michael:
[24:58] I’ll have links in the show notes.

Michael:
[25:00] The lib input team have released lib input 1.29. For those who don’t know what lib input is, it’s the open source input handling used for both Xorg and Wayland desktop environments. So basically the input for like a mouse and keyboard.

Michael:
[25:17] So new features include with this release of lib input 1.29, its high resolution scroll wheels have better heuristics to avoid accidental scroll. This also results in better responsiveness for not so high resolution scroll wheels. Virtual devices such as U-Input are now detected and heuristics are disabled for those. You can now configure eraser buttons on drawing tablets.

Michael:
[25:43] Jumping cursors have been fixed on Asus touchpads. There is now an internal plugin pipeline paving the way for plugins in the Lib input 1.30 release. And there’s a new debug tablet pad tool for interactive tablet debugging, as well as many, many more. If you’d like to learn more about the latest release or just lib input in general,

Michael:
[26:05] you’ll find links in the show notes. Thanks for watching this episode of This Week in Linux. If you like what I do here on the show and want to be kept up to date with what’s going on in the Linux and open source world, then be sure to subscribe. And of course, remember to like that smash button. If you’d like to support the show and the TuxDigital network, then consider becoming a patron by going to tuxdigital.com/membership. We’ll get a bunch of cool perks like access to the patron only section of our discord server and much, much more. You can also support the show by ordering the Linux server t-shirt or the this weekend Linux shirt at tuxdigital.com/store. Plus while you’re there, check out all the other cool stuff we have like hats, mugs, hoodies, and more tuxdigital.com/store. I’ll see you next time for another episode of Your Source for Linux GNews. Thanks again for watching.

Michael:
[26:50] I’m doing swell. Be sure to ring that notification bell. And until next time, I bid you farewell.