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Phoronix

Fwupd 2.1.1 Released With Lots Of New Hardware Support

Richard Hughes of Red Hat just announced the release of Fwupd 2.1.1 as the newest feature update to this solution for deploying system firmware updates and other device/peripheral firmware updates under Linux. Paired with the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS), Fwupd has made firmware updating a breeze on Linux for an increasing number of devices...

OMG! Ubuntu

I tried Firefox’s new ‘Smart Window’ in a beta build

I recently updated Firefox’s beta build and noticed that the new AI-powered ‘Smart Window’ feature is looking a lot more fully-formed than last time I tried it. This feature is, as I’m sure you’re aware, part of Mozilla’s pivot to AI in Firefox. An AI kill-switch was added in Firefox 148, but the new AI-powered ‘smart mode’ is intended to juice Mozilla’s bottom-line and upend the traditional way of web browsing. None of what follows is finished or complete. I could only get Firefox Smart Window to work using a macOS beta build (v149.0b7). That is why the screenshots below […]

LWN.net

[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for March 12, 2026

Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition: Front: Chardet; Linux and age verification; Debian AI; Python lazy imports; Python type-system PEP; PQC HTTPS certificates; MGLRU; Fedora strategy. Briefs: LLM vulnerability; NTP security; OpenWrt 25.12.0; SUSE sale; Buildroot 2026.02; digiKam 9.0.0; Rust 1.94.0; Quotes; ... Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

LWN.net

[$] California's Digital Age Assurance Act and Linux distributions

A recently enacted law in California imposes an age-verification requirement on operating-system providers beginning next year. The language of the Digital Age Assurance Act does not restrict its requirements to proprietary or commercial operating systems; projects like Debian, FreeBSD, Fedora, and others seem to be on the hook just as much as Apple or Microsoft. There is some hope that the law will be amended, but there is no guarantee that it will be. This means that the developer communities behind Linux distributions are having to discuss whether and how to comply with the law with little time and even less legal guidance.