GNU/Linux and Development Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 09, 2025

• GNU/Linux

  • Applications

    • ZDNet ☛ My 5 favorite cloud sync tools for Linux - including free options

      Syncthing can connect to any computer on your LAN, which makes it one of the more flexible and useful cloud sync tools on the list. If you're really clever, you can also use Syncthing to sync local files/folders to your Google Drive account. To do that, you have to mount your Google account locally (more on that in a bit) and then use Syncthing to sync local files/folders to the newly mounted Google Drive. Yes, it's a kludgy workaround, but it's certainly possible.

      The great thing about Syncthing is that you can use it to sync files and folders to any device on your network. Because of that, here's another handy trick. Say you have a MacOS machine that syncs with your Google Drive account (because Google offers a MacOS client for Drive). You could then use Syncthing to sync from Linux to MacOS, such that your Linux files/folders sync with the local Drive folder on MacOS. Instant Google Drive syncing.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • SUSE/OpenSUSE

    • LWN ☛ Jumping into openSUSE Leap 16

      The openSUSE project is nearing the release of Leap 16, its first major release since openSUSE Leap 15 in May 2018. This release brings some changes to the core of the distribution aside from the usual software upgrades; YaST has been retired, SELinux has replaced AppArmor as the default mandatory access control (MAC) system, and more. If all goes according to plan, Leap 16 final should be released in early October, with planned support through 2031.

      A lot has happened behind the scenes at SUSE since the last major Leap release: the company was sold by Micro Focus to EQT Partners in 2018, acquired Kubernetes management company Rancher Labs in 2020, went public in 2021, and then was taken private again in 2023. Through all that, the folks making SUSE have tried to continue business as usual to keep developing all of the offerings from SUSE and openSUSE.

  • Fedora Family / IBM

    • LWN ☛ Fedora floats AI-assisted contributions policy

      The Fedora Council began a process to create a policy on AI-assisted contributions in 2024, starting with a survey to ask the community its opinions about AI and using AI technologies in Fedora. On September 25, Jason Brooks published a draft policy for discussion; so far, in keeping with the spirit of compromise, it has something to make everyone unhappy. For some it is too AI-friendly, while others have complained that it holds Fedora back from experimenting with AI tooling.

      [...]

      Aoife Moloney asked for suggestions in May 2024, via Fedora's discussion forum, on survey questions to learn ""what our community would like and perhaps even need from AI capabilities in Fedora"". Many of Fedora's contributor conversations take place on the Fedora devel mailing list, but Moloney did not solicit input for the survey questions there.

      Tulio Magno Quites Machado Filho suggested asking whether the community should accept contributions generated by AI, and if AI-generated responses to mailing lists should be prohibited. Josh Boyer had ideas for the survey, including how Fedora defines AI and whether contributions to the project should be used as data by Fedora to create models. Justin Wheeler wanted to understand ""the feelings that someone might have when we talk about 'Open Source' and 'AI/ML' at the same time"". People likely have strong opinions about both, he said, but what about when the topics are combined?

      Overall, there were only a handful of suggested questions. Matthew Miller, who was the Fedora Project Leader (FPL) at the time, pointed out that some of the questions proposed by commenters were good questions but not good survey questions.

      In July, Moloney announced on the forum and via Fedora's devel-announce list that the survey had been published. Unfortunately, it is no longer available online, and the questions were not included in the announcements.

• Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

  • Development

    • Linux Foundation

      • Decisive Media Limited ☛ Camara Project’s latest drop boasts 60 network APIs [Ed: APIs as "open"]

        The Camara Project, the Linux Foundation’s open-source telco API alliance, has announced the third ‘meta’ release of its network APIs, which are becoming the de facto standard for telcos seeking to expose their network assets and engage with application developers.

    • Rust

      • LWN ☛ Linting Rust code in the kernel

        Klint is a Rust compiler extension developed by Gary Guo to run some kernel-specific lint rules, which may also be useful for embedded system development. He spoke about his recent work on the project at Kangrejos 2025. The next day, Alejandra González led a discussion about Rust's normal linter, Clippy. The two tools offer complementary approaches to analyzing Rust kernel code, although both need some additional direction and support from kernel developers to reach their full potential.

        Klint

        Klint was started in 2021 to find places where Rust code in the kernel was ignoring allocation errors. That is no longer necessary — the Rust for Linux project ended up rewriting the allocation interfaces to make ignoring allocation failures more difficult — but klint still has a few other useful checks. Mainly, klint is used to check that code does not sleep while holding a spinlock.