Linux Magazine July 2025

Dear Reader, So much of the big news these days is all about AI. AI advances, AI politics, AI corporate maneuvering, AI power usage … I was feeling a bit downcast about the prospect of writing yet another AI column when, in fact, there isn’t that much I can say in one page that isn’t either speculation or well-trodden platitudes. Then I noticed a news item that swung the other way, into the deep, retro past: Picture the oldest PC-style home computer you can remember, maybe the first computer your father brought home? The BBC website recently posted an article on contemporary uses for really ancient Windows computer systems [1], and I’m not just talking about people logging onto a home PC to write a letter. I mean actual production…

Fedora Workstation 42 Live 64-bit Fedora, one of the largest and oldest distributions, is the source of packages for commercial distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, AlmaLinux, and Rocky Linux. Fedora Workstation is one of a half dozen download editions. Like Server, Core, and the newly added KDE Plasma, the Workstation edition traditionally features leading edge technology, and Fedora Workstation 42 is no exception. Many of these features continue the transition away from X11 towards Wayland. Notable features include the latest alpha release of COSMIC, the Rust-written desktop being developed by System76; FEX, a speedy new emulator for running x86 and x86-64 binaries on an AArch64 Linux host; and additional support for integrated cameras found in x86 laptops and tablets. More importantly, Fedora Workstation 42 is one of the…

If you’ve not heard of it yet, End of 10 (https://endof10.org/) is a collective of developers and others who are trying to help Windows 10 transition to Linux. With the Windows 10 end-of-life (EOL) on the horizon, it was only matter of time before something like this arrived onto the scene. From the End of 10 site comes this gem: “If you bought your computer after 2010, there’s most likely no reason to throw it out. By just installing an up-to-date Linux operating system you can keep using it for years to come.” Recently, it was announced that openSUSE would be joining the initiative. In fact, openSUSE has decided to transition its Upgrade to Freedom campaign to the End of 10 movement (https://news.opensuse.org/2025/05/05/utf-campaign-shifts-to-eot/). Douglas DeMaio says, “A new initiative called…

The development team behind Flatpak has unveiled the latest iteration of the universal package manager, which includes a number of enhancements. One of the biggest improvements comes by way of parental control enhancements. With the latest release, child accounts are now able to update existing applications, by default, when parental controls are enabled. Thanks to this addition, the installation of security and bug fix updates can be installed in a more timely manner. The release also includes a number of performance and system management improvements, such as the flatpak prune --dry-run command now runs much faster because it skips unnecessary calculations that are related to potential disk space recovery. Another improvement comes by way of the flatpak permission-reset command. Now, the command will only write entries that have actually changed,…

A new Linux server is now available from IBM, the LinuxONE Emperor 5, and it’s going to turn heads. The new server makes use of the Telum II CPU with built-in AI acceleration, as well as the IBM Spyre PCIe accelerator cards to help power the AI capabilities of the new server. According to the official IBM release statement (https://community.ibm.com/community/user/ibmz-and-linuxone/blogs/tina-tarquinio1/2025/05/06/the-next-generation-of-ibm-linuxone), “Confidential computing, significant crypto bandwidth, NIST-standardized post quantum algorithms, and cutting-edge hardware security module make LinuxONE 5 a compelling solution for end-to-end protection of workloads and data. This advanced level of security can help clients prepare for existing and emerging threats such as harvest-now, decrypt-later attacks in the post-quantum age.” This new server has been engineered specifically to help address the cost, space, and energy challenges that surround AI, such…

Linux Magazine www.linux-magazine.com ADMIN Online http://www.admin-magazine.com/ Flipper Zero Mobile Hacking Tool • Holger Reibold The Flipper Zero mobile hacking tool can check a wide range of wireless connections for vulnerabilities. Rootless Podman Containers • Koen Vervloesem Running rootless containers is easy with Podman. With Podman Quadlet files, these containers are seamlessly integrated into systemd services. Kick-Start Your AI Projects • Martin Loschwitz Training language models and AI algorithms requires a powerful infrastructure that is difficult to create manually. Although Kubeflow promises a remedy, it is itself a complex monster … unless you are familiar with the right approach that lets you get it up and running fairly quickly. Reducing the Attack Surface in Windows • Matthias Wübbeling Windows has built-in rules that minimize the attack surface; they simply need to…