Archive

The FreeBSD Foundation published a report yesterday on the status of FreeBSD running on 64-bit ARM processors. Work to port FreeBSD to the 64-bit ARM architecture has been progressing quickly and it is now possible to boot a FreeBSD installation into single user mode on the young architecture.

The NetBSD project has announced two important stability updates for its highly portable operating system.

Details on the two updated branches of NetBSD can be found in the release notes for NetBSD 5.1.5 and NetBSD 5.2.3.

Starting on November 5th the Debian developers went to the polls to vote on a general resolution which would determine how init software and dependencies are handled in the venerable open source distribution. The result of the resolution will determine whether software packaged for Debian can depend on a specific implementation of init software. The init process is the first to start on Linux and UNIX operating systems and is responsible for bringing the operating system up and managing services.

The general resolution stirred up quite a bit of controversy with some developers wishing to keep software uncoupled from any specific init implementation. Others felt packages and upstream developers should be able to depend on a specific init package for the sake of simplicity or convenience. In the end, the votes were counted and it was decided no resolution would be passed addressing coupling software to init. This means, essentially, it will be up to individual packagers and upstream developers to decide whether to depend on one specific init implementation.

OS X Yosemite Server reviewed in-depth by Ars Technica's Andrew Cunningham.

The latest version of FreeBSD has been released. The new version, 10.1, is a incremental update to the 10.x series and mostly focuses on minor updates, bug fixes and performance improvements. A few of the more interesting new features listed in the release announcement include support for booting from UEFI, the ability to utilitize SMP on multicore ARM processors, ZFS performance enhancements and the ability to automatically generate host keys for OpenSSH if keys have not already been created.

The new version of FreeBSD is an extended support release and will receive security updates through to the end of December 2016. Further details on the FreeBSD 10.1 release, along with instructions for upgrading from previous releases, are available in the project's release notes. Installation images can be downloaded from the project's mirrors.

Since the MATE desktop forked away from the abanndoned GNOME 2 project many users have reported problems getting the Compiz compositing manager to work properly with the MATE desktop environment. The Linux Mint distribution plans to fix this issue in their upcoming 17.1 release.

There are also plans to bring the latest version of the Cinnamon desktop to Linux Mint's Debian Edition. The next release of Mint's Debian Edition will be based on Debian's upcoming stable release, code name "Jessie". Details on developments happening across all editions of Linux Mint can be found in the project's latest blog post.

The OpenBSD operating system, famous for its proactive approach to security, has gained support for USB 3.0 devices. A brief announcement was made on November 10th, letting OpenBSD users know USB 3.0 support had arrived.

The post said legacy USB 1.x devices would continue to work on USB 3.0 ports.

Members of the Mageia Linux community have been waiting for a few weeks now for a beta release of Mageia 5. Several delays have held back the Mageia 5 beta and the project's developers have posted an update explaining why. It seems the problems started when Mageia updated its copy of the RPM package manager.

Problems continued when another software update, this time the GNU C library, caused the distribution's system installer to stop functioning properly.

All show stopping bugs have been fixed and Mageiia has finally pushed out their beta release for people to test. The upcoming launch of Mageia 5 is expected to take place at the end of January.

One common method attackers use when attempting to compromise a server is brute forcing login credentials. Given enough time, automated tools can guess a person's username and password, granting the attacker access to an unprotected server. To counter these sorts of attacks, where passwords are guessed by trial and error, several tools have been created. Utilities such as Fail2Ban and DenyHost monitor login attempts and automatically block the computers performing these types of attacks.

Last week the DenyHost project added a feature which allows the utility to block attacks by using the PF firewall. PF is typically used on the OpenBSD and FreeBSD operating systems to block or forward network traffic. The project's website reports:

Debian is one of the largest and longest lived GNU/Linux distributions. The project forms the foundation of many other popular Linux-based operating systems, including Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Raspbian. The Debian project announced this week that the distribution's Testing repository, called "Jessie", has entered a feature freeze. This means Debian's Jessie branch will not receive any new features nor any significant software upgrades. From now until Debian's upcoming stable release is launched, the Jessie repository will accept only important bug fixes and updated translations. Based on the time-line presented by Debian's freeze policy it seems as though Debian 8.0 will be released in late February.

The openSUSE project released openSUSE 13.2 on Tuesday. The latest version of the big, green distro ships with updated desktop software, including KDE 4.14 and GNOME 3.14. The new release also features new artwork, a streamlined installer and faster YaST modules. Perhaps most importantly, openSUSE ships with the advanced Btrfs file system by default and will automatically take snapshots of the operating system whenever configuration changes are made. This allows administrators to roll back disruptive changes quickly and without using backups. Further details of the new openSUSE release can be found in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.

Over the past year I've been reading a lot of opinions on the new init technology, systemd. Some people think systemd is wonderful, the bee's knees. Others claim that systemd is broken by design. Some see systemd as a unifying force, a way to unite the majority of the Linux distributions. Others see systemd as a growing blob that is slowly becoming an overly large portion of the operating system. One thing that has surprised me a little is just how much people care about systemd, whether their opinion of the technology is good or bad. People in favour faithfully (and sometimes falsely) make wonderful claims about what systemd is and what it can supposedly do. Opponents claim systemd will divide the Linux community and drive many technical users to other operating systems. There is a lot of hype and surprisingly few people presenting facts.

VIA is working on a new x86 compatible CPU codenamed Isaiah II, the first in years from the company. Its low power, highly efficient design compares favorably to offerings from AMD and Intel in the same market. It was tested on a VIA branded motherboard with a VIA chipset, giving hope to Free Software users who currently struggle with locked down or unsupported boards from the major manufacturers.