today's leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Mar 27, 2025

• GNU/Linux

  • XDA ☛ 4 of the best operating systems for your virtual machines

    Let’s say you’ve assembled the best server PC money can buy and outfitted it with a powerful virtualization platform. The next step involves deploying some virtual guests where you can build your projects. But with a myriad of operating systems floating online, you might have a hard time choosing the perfect OS for your VMs. So, here’s a quick list of the best distros you can run inside virtual machines.

    [...]

    Designed to help you make the most of computationally-challenged SBCs, DietPi stands out from other CLI distros with its ultra-lightweight nature. Despite the name, DietPi is compatible with several platforms besides Raspberry Pi boards – including virtual machines.

    But you shouldn’t let its low resource overhead deceive you; this optimized distro can be armed with all the necessary packages for your demanding projects. While DietPi consumes more memory than Alpine Linux, it’s free from the musl compatibility issues you may encounter on the latter, making it a solid option when you want to get every last drop of performance out of your virtual machine.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

    • LWN ☛ Oxidizing Ubuntu: adopting Rust utilities by default [Ed: Is Ubuntu Compromised? Push Away From GNU and GPL Led by Army Officers.]

      If all goes according to plan, the Ubuntu project will soon be replacing many of the traditional GNU utilities with implementations written in Rust, such as those created by the uutils project, which we covered in February. Wholesale replacement of core utilities at the heart of a Linux distribution is no small matter, which is why Canonical's VP of engineering, Jon Seager, has released oxidizr. It is a command-line utility that helps users easily enable or disable the Rust-based utilities to test their suitability. Seager is calling for help with testing and for users to provide feedback with their experiences ahead of a possible switch for Ubuntu 25.10, an interim release scheduled for October 2025. So far, responses from the Ubuntu community seem positive if slightly skeptical of such a major change.

• Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

  • SJVN ☛ The Open Source Initiative Election is over [Ed: A rigged 'election']

    The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has confirmed the results of its recent board elections. The winners and new affiliate directors are Carlo Piana, an Italian corporate attorney who helped write the controversial Open Source AI Definition (OSAID), and Ruth Suehle, SAS Open Source Director and President of the Apache Software Foundation. At the same time, McCoy Smith, an American intellectual property (IP) lawyer, will join as an individual director. The election was conducted using the Scottish Single Transferable Vote (STV) system.

    In the Affiliate director polls, Piana and Suehle emerged as winners from a field of four valid candidates. The election saw 48 ballots, 47 being valid and one empty. Suehle was recommended by OSI Affiliates, while Piana secured his position through the Affiliate vote.