Firefox, a free browser built on the Quantum engine, developed and distributed by Mozilla Corporation, and the fourth most popular browser in the world, has been updated to version 122. What's new: Linux: Support for VA-API has been enabled for all architectures (previously it was only enabled for x86 and ARM). Deb packages for Ubuntu, Debian, and Linux Mint are now offered. Search engine suggestions are now […]
A vulnerability (CVE-2024-0684) has been discovered in the split utility, provided in the GNU coreutils package and used for splitting large files into parts. This vulnerability leads to a buffer overflow when processing long lines (several hundred bytes) when using the split option "—line-bytes" ("-C"). The vulnerability was identified during an analysis of crashes occurring when using the split utility to split data transmitted during […]
Ondsel has released a public version of the Ondsel Engineering Suite (ES). This is a free fork of the open-source CAD application FreeCAD with various modifications. Among the enhancements: A built-in workbench for creating assemblies (stage — technological preview). The UX/UI was modeled after the implementation in Onshape, using its own solver (the original code was previously written in Smalltalk by one of the team members and then ported to […]
The release of web browser Firefox 122 has taken place, and an update for the long-term support branch — 115.7.0 has been formed. Firefox 123 has entered beta testing, with a release scheduled for February 20. Key innovations in Firefox 122 include expanded capabilities related to displaying suggestions while typing in the address bar, and for certain search engines, the ability to show images in suggestions and […]
Google has analyzed the effectiveness of using the C++ code type MiraclePtr (raw_ptr<T>) instead of regular pointers to protect against vulnerabilities caused by accessing already freed memory areas (use-after-free). MiraclePtr provides a wrapper around pointers that performs additional checks and terminates execution if access to freed memory areas is detected. Support for MiraclePtr has been enabled by default in […]
The RubyWM project has been released, which develops a window manager based on the X11 protocol, written in Ruby, including a driver for working with the X11 protocol. RubyWM supports virtual desktops and can use both tiled (tiling) window layouts and arbitrary window positioning on the desktop. The RubyWM code is distributed under the MIT License. The project also develops the pure-X11 library with the implementation of […]
Valve has released an update for Proton 8.0-5, based on the Wine project codebase, aimed at enabling the launch of Windows applications on Linux through the Steam catalog. The project's developments are distributed under the BSD license. Proton allows games made exclusively for Windows to be run directly on the Linux Steam client. The package includes an implementation of DirectX […]
A new major version of Elektroid has been released — a free alternative to Elektron Transfer for managing presets and samples on hardware synthesizers and samplers from various manufacturers. Supported devices include: Elektron Model:Samples; Elektron Model:Cycles; Elektron Digitakt; Elektron Digitone and Digitone Keys; Elektron Syntakt; Elektron Analog Rytm MKI and MKII; Elektron Analog Four MKI, MKII, and Keys; Elektron Analog Heat +FX; […]
The release of the lightweight distribution MX Linux 23.2 has been announced, created through the collaborative efforts of communities around the antiX and MEPIS projects. This release is based on the Debian package base with enhancements from the antiX project and packages from its own repository. The distribution uses the sysVinit initialization system and its own tools for configuring and deploying the system. Versions for both 32- and 64-bit architectures are available for download […]
The bpftime project has been introduced, developing a runtime and virtual machine for executing eBPF handlers in user space. Bpftime allows eBPF tracing and intervention programs to run entirely in user space, utilizing capabilities such as uprobe and software interception of system calls. It is noted that by eliminating unnecessary context switches, bpftime achieves a tenfold reduction in overhead compared to […]
The release of the standard C library PicoLibc 1.8.6 has been published, developed by Keith Packard (the lead of the X.Org project) for use on embedded devices with limited permanent storage and RAM. During development, some code was borrowed from the newlib library from the Cygwin project and AVR Libc, which was developed for Atmel AVR microcontrollers. PicoLibc code is distributed under the BSD license. The library's build is supported […]
Jens Axboe, the creator of io_uring and the CFQ, Deadline, and Noop I/O schedulers, has continued his experiments on I/O optimization in the Linux kernel. This time, he focused on the BFQ and mq-deadline I/O schedulers, which turned out to be bottlenecks, at least for high-speed NVMe drives. The investigation revealed that one of the key reasons for the suboptimal performance of the subsystem […]