Linux Magazine April 2025

Dear Reader, The Linux universe had a serious discussion a few years ago about how to talk to each other, and it seemed like things were going better, but the recent dust-up between the Rust for Linux (R4L) community and some of the kernel maintainers has left me wondering if more needs to be said. At the core of the argument is the fact that the community is contending with two wholly incompatible truths. On one hand, the world would be better off if programming were done in memory-safe languages. On the other hand, retooling a huge project like the Linux kernel to support development in multiple languages is a massive undertaking that could add chaos and, some would argue, is not worth the risk and trouble despite the potential…

Debian 12.9 Live Gnome 64-bit Debian is one of the oldest and most influential distributions, the foundation of almost two-thirds of the currently active releases. Codenamed bookworm, Debian 12 is scheduled to be supported until mid-2028. This month’s DVD features a Live Gnome version of the first point release for 2025. As a point release, Debian 12.9 does not contain new features. Instead, it contains the latest bug fixes, corrections for security issues, and an updated installer. In other words, it brings the Debian stable release up to date. Those interested in changes to specific packages should refer to the release notes (https://www.debian.​org/News/2025/20250111). + Arch Linux 2025.02.01 64-bit Arch Linux is among the best-known rolling distributions. Instead of making general releases like Debian does, Arch Linux releases updates to each…

Plasma 6.3 Now Available If you’re a fan of KDE’s Plasma desktop and use it on a laptop, there’s a new feature in version 6.3 that should have you excited for the update. The new feature gives you the ability to view the battery cycle count on your laptop from within the Info Center. Speaking of batteries, Plasma 6.3 also shows a low battery notification for any pair of wireless headphones or earbuds that provide that information. Another cool new feature is the ability to clone panels. This feature has been requested for quite some time and now users will be able to create the perfect panel and then clone it. There have also been several improvements for Plasma 6.3, including better fractional scaling (and the ability to choose a…

The LibreOffice 25.2 is now available with some new features, UI customization, and security. One of the biggest changes in LibreOffice 25.2 is the addition of a theming engine. This new feature allows users to customize the color of nearly every aspect of the application. Anyone will now be able to spend minutes or hours tweaking the UI’s theme. For those who don’t like to spend their time customizing UI elements, new prebuilt themes are available for download. At the moment, there aren’t many themes from which to choose, but we imagine that number will grow fairly quickly. Along with the ability to get fairly granular with UI theming, there’s another important feature that’s all about security. Version 25.2 introduces the ability for the user to customize what type of…

TuxCare announced it completed a STIG for AlmaLinux 9 to usher in new opportunities for the open source operating system that could open doors for the OS within the realm of government and other enterprise deployments that demand stringent safeguards and assurances. Michael Canavan, Chief Revenue Officer at TuxCare for TuxCare, said in a press release (https://www.abc27.com/business/press-releases/ein-presswire/782789923/tuxcare-enables-enterprise-class-compliant-almalinux-os-deployments-with-publication-of-disa-stig/), “TuxCare is pleased to play a notable role in AlmaLinux’s growth through developments such as the completion of a DISA STIG and a fast-growing number of team members devoted to FIPS for AlmaLinux and other compliance necessities.” Canavan continued to say, “We’re pleased to harness our security expertise for the fast-growing AlmaLinux community that is further bolstered by these compliance milestones.” The new DISA STIG and FIPS 140-2 compliance combination is a welcome…

The latest Linux kernel now has a release candidate (6.14-rc1) available for testing (https://www.kernel.org/). Within the 500,000 lines of code, there were over 10,000 commits and 9,300 merges. Although this is one of the smaller releases recently, it still includes some important changes, specifically in the areas of x86 architecture, filesystems, networking, hardware support, and security. The new release candidate updates Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability and includes fixes for CPU speculation, enhancements for Secure Encrypted Virtualization, improvements to several filesystems, several networking fixes, support for ARM architecture, and improvements for RISC-V hardware. Although Torvalds says this is a “tiny” release (because less development occurred over the holidays), he believes the development team was finally able to get the whole holiday-season release timing right. Other changes to the kernel include support…