today's leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Mar 13, 2025

• GNU/Linux

  • Built In ☛ Navigating the Enterprise Challenge of Linux Management

    Linux, the open-source family of operating systems preferred by developers, is at an all-time high.

    Today, it accounts for almost 5 percent of the global desktop market, double where it was two years ago, according to a report from Statcounter. This represents a big jump in absolute numbers and is especially impressive for an essentially free product line without marketing muscle. Interestingly, enterprises are getting in on the operating system act as much as consumers, citing smoother implementation than Microsoft and better affordability than Apple.

  • Applications

    • It's FOSS ☛ FOSS Weekly #25.11: Limit Battery Charging, File Searching, Sudo Tweaks and More GNU/Linux Stuff

      Go with the flow and open source :)

  • Desktop Environments (DE)/Window Managers (WM)

    • University of Toronto ☛ The commodification of desktop GUI behavior

      Desktop GUIs differ in how they look and to some extent in how you do certain things and how you expect 'native' programs to behave; I'm sure the fans of any particular platform can tell you all about little behaviors that they expect from native applications that imported ones lack. But I think we've pretty much converged on a set of fundamental behaviors for how to interact with GUI programs, or at least how to deal with basic ones, so in a lot of cases the question about GUIs is how things look, not how you do things at all.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD ☛ Improvements to the FreeBSD CI/CD systems

      FreeBSD’s continuous integration system enables developers to discover regressions automatically through comprehensive tests. This effort aims to make adoption by new developers less cumbersome and reduce the time and effort required for new contributions to be developed.

      Some of the highlights this work aims to make improvements on: [...]

  • Open Hardware/Modding

    • CNX Software ☛ Synaptics Astra SR series Arm Cortex-M55 MCUs feature Arm Ethos-U55 NPU, low-power Cortex-M4 core with microNPU

      Synaptics unveiled an extension to its Astra Native Hey Hi (AI) platform with the new SR series of MCUs. This new product family, unlike the Astra SL series released last year, isn’t comprised of Linux-capable application processors. Instead, the Arm Cortex-M55 microcontrollers focus on providing high-performance, AI-native processing for Edge Hey Hi (AI) applications leveraging a built-in Arm Ethos-U55 NPU.

    • Linux Gizmos ☛ IMDT V2N SBC: A Vision-AI Computing Platform with Dual MIPI CSI and Renesas RZ/V2N Processor

      IMDT has introduced its latest System-on-Module and Single-Board Computer, both powered by the Renesas RZ/V2N processor. These new platforms are designed to deliver cost-effective, high-performance Hey Hi (AI) computing at the edge, supporting applications in robotics, smart cities, industrial automation, IoT, and smart retail.

• Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

  • Web Browsers/Web Servers

    • University of Toronto ☛ Some views on the common Apache modules for SAML or OIDC authentication

      Suppose that you want to restrict access to parts of your Apache based website but you want something more sophisticated and modern than Apache Basic HTTP authentication. The traditional reason for this was to support 'single sign on' across all your (internal) websites; the modern reason is that a central authentication server is the easiest place to add full multi-factor authentication. The two dominant protocols for this are SAML and OIDC. There are commonly available Apache authentication modules for both protocols, in the form of Mellon (also) for SAML and OpenIDC for OIDC.

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla ☛ Mozilla Security Blog: Enhancing CA Practices: Key Updates in Mozilla Root Store Policy, v3.0

        Mozilla remains committed to fostering a secure, agile, and transparent Web PKI ecosystem. The new Mozilla Root Store Policy (MRSP) v3.0, effective March 15, 2025, introduces critical updates to strengthen Certificate Authority (CA) practices and enhance compliance.

  • SaaS/Back End/Databases

    • The Register UK ☛ MariaDB reboots DBaaS plans with open source at the core

      Speaking to The Register, De Souza says MariaDB is planning to build another database service and serverless system through closer collaboration with its open source community, which might arrive later this year or early next year.

  • Education

    • Evan Hahn ☛ Filling in the gaps of the internet

      Here’s a small philosophy I have about the [Internet]:

      I believe that it’s my duty to publish the answer to previously-unanswered questions. That way, the next person who comes along has an easier time.

    • PowerDNS ☛ FOSDEM 2025: A Look Back at the DNS Devroom

      Beyond the many talks and discussions with fellow open-source enthusiasts, the highlight for our PowerDNS engineers was, of course, the DNS Devroom. We were honored to co-organize this track and were thrilled with the diverse lineup of speakers and topics. If you missed any of the sessions, you can catch up by following the recordings linked below.

  • FSF

    • FSF ☛ FSF Events: Free Software Directory meeting on IRC: Friday, March 14, starting at 12:00 EDT (16:00 UTC)

      Join the FSF and friends on Friday, March 14 from 12:00 to 15:00 EDT (16:00 to 19:00 UTC) to help improve the Free Software Directory.