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LWN.net

What the FCC router ban means for FOSS

Denver Gingerich of the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) has published an article on the impact of the ban on the sale of all new home routers not made in the United States issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The SFC, of course, is the organization behind the OpenWrt One router. Since software updates to already-FCC-approved devices do not require a new FCC approval, it appears the FCC is trying to move beyond its usual authorization procedures to restrict what manufacturers are allowed to push to existing routers. However, the FCC notably does not restrict software changes made by owners of routers in the U.S. In particular, there is no indication that updates people make to their own routers, using software they have sourced themselves, would run afoul of any past or present FCC rule. As a result, we do not believe that this new FCC decision affects whether and how people can run OpenWrt or other user-selected firmware updates on routers they have already purchas

Foss Force

Proudly Canadian Maple Linux 1.4: Who Knew Tux Could Be So Polite?

More than a novelty from north of the 49th, this Debian‑based distro uses Canadian and EU privacy principles to offer a telemetry‑free, ready‑to‑work Cinnamon desktop. The post Proudly Canadian Maple Linux 1.4: Who Knew Tux Could Be So Polite? appeared first on FOSS Force.

Linux Journal

MX Linux Pushes Back Against Age Verification: A Stand for Privacy and Open Source Principles

by George Whittaker The MX Linux project has taken a firm stance in a growing controversy across the Linux ecosystem: mandatory age-verification requirements at the operating system level. In a recent update, the team made it clear, they have no intention of implementing such measures, citing concerns over privacy, practicality, and the core philosophy of open-source software. As governments begin introducing laws that could require operating systems to collect user age data, MX Linux is joining a group of projects resisting the shift. What Sparked the Debate? The discussion around age verification stems from new legislation, particularly in regions like the United States and Brazil, that aims to protect minors online. These laws may require operating systems to: Collect user age or date of birth during setup Provide age-related data to applications Enable content filtering based on age categories At the same time, underlying Linux components such as systemd have already begun explorin

OMG! Ubuntu

sudo-rs adds a keyboard shortcut to quickly hide password feedback

The Rust-based version of sudo shows password feedback by default in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, upending nearly 40 years of learned (and confusing) behaviour. Broadly, that decision has been well received, but those who want a quick option to temporarily mask their sudo input (no asterisks), just got one. You can now toggle sudo password feedback visibility by pressing the tab key. You can press it at any point during password entry (before you start or mid-way through, it doesn’t matter), and rather than asterisk, it shows (no-echo) instead. Here’s a video of it in action: The lack visible feedback during […]

LWN.net

[$] IPC medley: message-queue peeking, io_uring, and bus1

The kernel provides a number of ways for processes to communicate with each other, but they never quite seem to fit the bill for many users. There are currently a few proposals for interprocess communication (IPC) enhancements circulating on the mailing lists. The most straightforward one adds a new system call for POSIX message queues that enables the addition of new features. For those wanting an entirely new way to do interprocess communication, there is a proposal to add a new subsystem for that purpose to io_uring. Finally, the bus1 proposal has made a return after ten years.

LPI

Morrolinux: Matrix vs. Chat Control – Why Decentralization Matters

When I talk about Matrix, I’m not introducing “yet another messaging app.” I’m talking about a communication protocol that solves a series of structural problems introduced in centralized platforms. The discussion is not abstract anymore. Between political pressure, regulatory proposals ... Read more The post Morrolinux: Matrix vs. Chat Control – Why Decentralization Matters appeared first on Linux Professional Institute (LPI).

LWN.net

Exelbierd: What's actually in a Sashiko review?

Brian "bex" Exelbierd has published a blog post exploring follow-up questions raised by the recent debate about the use of the LLM-based review tool Sashiko in the memory-management subsystem. His main finding is that Sashiko reviews are bi-modal with regards to whether they contain reports about code not directly changed by the patch set — most do not, but the ones that do often have several such comments. Hypothesis 1: Reviewers are getting told about bugs they didn't create. Sashiko's review protocol explicitly instructs the LLM to read surrounding code, not just the diff. That's good review practice — but it means the tool might flag pre-existing bugs in code the patch author merely touched, putting those problems in their inbox. Hypothesis 2: The same pre-existing bugs surface repeatedly. If a known issue in a subsystem doesn't get fixed between review runs, every patch touching nearby code could trigger the same finding. That would create a steady drip of duplicate noise across t

LWN.net

OpenSSH 10.3 released

OpenSSH 10.3 has been released. Among the many changes in this release are a security fix to address late validation of metacharacters in user names, removal of bug compatibility for SSH implementations that do not support rekeying, and a fix to ensure that scp clears setuid/setgid bits from downloaded files when operating as root in legacy (-O) mode. See the release announcement for a full list of new features, bug fixes, and potentially incompatible changes.