GNU/Linux and Free, Libre, and Open Source Software Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Aug 07, 2025

• GNU/Linux

  • Kernel Space

    • Bootlin ☛ Congatec Board Controller support into the upstream Linux Kernel

      Introduction Congatec’s x86 System-on-Modules (SoM) include a Board Controller component connected to the processor via an eSPI bus, and providing various features such as I²C buses, GPIOs, a watchdog timer, and various sensors for monitoring voltage, fan speed, and more. For their x86 System-on-Modules (SoMs), Congatec provides a Yocto meta-layer: meta-congatec-x86.

    • LWN ☛ A kbuild and kconfig maintainer change

      For eight years, Masahiro Yamada has been the sole maintainer of the

      kernel's build and configuration systems — two complex pieces of

      infrastructure that many people interact with, but few truly understand.

      Yamada has just stepped

      down from that position. Maintenance of the build system will be taken

      up by Nathan Chancellor and Nicolas Schier (in the "odd fixes" capacity),

      while the configuration system is now entirely unmaintained.

      Thanks are due to Yamada for all that work, and to Chancellor and Schier

      for stepping up. Hopefully a way will be found to better support these

      important subsystems in the near future.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Debian Family

    • Chiark ☛ Colin Watson: Free software activity in July 2025

      About 90% of my Debian contributions this month were

      DebConf

      I attended DebConf for the first time in 11 years (my last one was DebConf 14 in Portland). It was great! For once I had a conference where I had a fairly light load of things I absolutely had to do, so I was able to spend time catching up with old friends, making some new friends, and doing some volunteering - a bit of Front Desk, and quite a lot of video team work where I got to play with sound desks and such. Apparently one of the BoFs (“birds of a feather”, i.e. relatively open discussion sessions) where I was talkmeister managed to break the automatic video cutting system by starting and ending precisely on time, to the second, which I’m told has never happened before. I’ll take that.

  • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

    • Ubuntu ☛ Ubuntu Blog: What craft means for Canonical

      Last month Jon Seager (our Vice President for Ubuntu Engineering) wrote about crafting software:

      Over the past decade, Canonical has been refining a family of tools called “crafts” to tame [the complexity of packaging software] and make building, testing, and releasing software across ecosystems much simpler.

      Multiple Canonical products have craft in their names: Snapcraft, Charmcraft, Rockcraft (and there are others in the works). Our craft products are tools for making software, for the software craftsperson. To be a maker of tools comes with responsibilities – when you decide what tools should be like, you are also deciding how people should work.

• Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

  • Jamie Zawinski ☛ resize.pl

    After lo these many years, I think I might finally be getting close to understanding ffmpeg's filtergraph language. Maybe.

  • DJ Adams ☛ Neovim configuration for file and module navigation in CDS models

    In the context of CDS models, one of the best practices is to embrace aspects and "factor out separate concerns into separate files". In addition to files the CDS compiler supports Node.js packages (modules).

  • Web Browsers/Web Servers

    • The New Leaf Journal ☛ Finding the Best RSS/ATOM Feed

      If you rely on a feed reader for staying on top of interesting writing and reading from around the web, you will most likely eventually encounter issues with specific sites you want to follow. Occasionally, you may come across a more novel issue than the problems I focused on in my article on site-specific Google News feeds (site does not offer feeds or site blocks your specific feed reader). The two scenarios in this article represent what I consider to be relatively unusual feed problem cases. Understanding how WordPress feeds work by default guided me to a solution.

    • James G ☛ Browser extensions I use

      I have been thinking a lot about tech tips lately. How should I document the tools I use or configurations I have that improve my experience using technology? While I think about this, I wanted to start by publishing a list of browser extensions I use.

    • Daniel Stenberg ☛ Follow redirects but differently

      In curl 8.16.0, we introduce a different take on the problem, or better yet, a solution really: a new command line option that offers a modified behavior. Possibly the behavior people were thinking curl was having all along.

      Just learn to use --follow going forward (in curl 8.16.0 and later).

  • Programming/Development

    • Java

      • Ubuntu Handbook ☛ IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2 Released with JAVA 25 and Local Hey Hi (AI) Model Support

        JetBrains announced the 2025.2 release of its IntelliJ IDEA and PyCharm IDE yesterday. In the release, the AI-powered code completion now suggests code blocks for Java in offline, and lets you choose your preferred local code completion model.