Operating Systems: NetBSD, OpenSUSE, Qubes, and Ubuntu

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 04, 2026

• NetBSD ☛ Google Summer of Code 2026 Reports: Improving and Stabilizing the racoon2 IKE Daemon in NetBSD

  racoon2 is a system to exchange and install security parameters for IPsec. It consists of an IKEv1/IKEv2 key exchange daemon, a security policy management daemon, and a Kerberos-based key exchange daemon. The project lives at zoulasc/racoon2 and is being modernized so that it can serve as a reliable L2TP/IPsec or IKEv2 VPN server on NetBSD and Linux for built-in Windows, iOS and Android VPN clients.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • OpenSUSE ☛ Post-Quantum Backups Land in openSUSE Factory with ZUPT

    Security is one of ZUPT’s main technical highlights. In addition to AES-256-based encryption, the tool supports a hybrid cryptographic scheme based on ML-KEM-768 + X25519. This approach combines established public-key cryptography with a post-quantum key encapsulation mechanism designed to provide stronger protection against future cryptographic threats. For users handling long-lived or sensitive backups, this adds an additional layer of protection against so-called “harvest now, decrypt later” scenarios, in which encrypted data collected today could potentially be targeted by more powerful computing systems in the future. ZUPT also includes file integrity verification features to help detect corruption, modification, or unexpected changes in archived data.

• Qubes

  • Distro Watch ☛ Distribution Release: Qubes OS 4.3.2

    The Qubes team has announced the release of Qubes OS 4.3.2, an updated build of the project's security-oriented operating system for single-user desktop computing: [...]

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Medium ☛ Ubuntu Hate is So Overblown. It’s Still a Great Distro.

    Of all Linux distros these days, the one that I hear getting the most hate seems to be Ubuntu. Hordes of people are loud about their dislike of Canonical’s Linux distribution. And to be fair, they have good reasons for some of that hate.

    I myself have really disliked how Canonical has handled certain things. Like Snaps, for example. And some of the decisions the Ubuntu team has made have been a bit frustrating.

    Overall though? Let’s be real. Ubuntu is still a fantastic distribution of Linux that’s hard for me to not recommend.

    Here’s why.