05 Aug 2025

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Fedora Infrastructure Status: Updates and Reboots

05 Aug 2025 9:00pm GMT

30 Jul 2025

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Ben Cotton: It’s okay to stop doing things

Ben Cotton's avatar

One important rule in running a project that people depend on is: don't start something you're not willing to keep doing indefinitely. Another important rule is: it's okay to stop doing things. These two rules are seemingly at odds with each other, but together they form a key principle: reliably do what makes sense to do.

The reason you shouldn't start doing something that you're not willing (or able) to continue doing is that people will start to rely on it. If you start doing things and then stop them after a time or two, you'll lose credibility. This harms your project's reputation over the long run, and it can be hard to regain that lost trust. Your processes and practices must be sustainable.

On the other hand, there is no virtue in continuing to do things that aren't valuable. When conditions change - because of contributor availability, technology evolution, etc - what used to be a good use of time may not be any longer. Contributor time is the most valuable resource a project has, so if it's not a good use of time, stop doing it.

Recent departures from the Red Hat team that does Fedora QA have prompted the team to reevaluate some of the work they do. Fedora is a project with a long and mature history, so it has built up a lot of cruft over the decades. Some of that is in the form of the release criteria. (Chapter 11 of Program Management for Open Source Projects goes into depth on how to manage your project's release criteria.) Booting from optical media (CD or DVD) used to be a critical function of the installer, so it made sense to block the release if that didn't work. These days, a lot of hardware doesn't include an optical drive; the hardware that does almost always supports booting from USB or network (e.g. PXE), so optical boot may not be worth blocking for. This reduces the testing load.

When you think it's time to stop doing something that you had been doing, the first step is understanding what you want to stop doing. Do the conditions that lead you to start still exist? Do you have the time and resources you need to continue? Are there other things that are more valuable that you can do instead? With your answers to those questions, you can work out a final answer with the rest of the community. If you decide to stop doing something, make sure it's communicated to the people who need to know. If it involves something no longer working, try to give as long of an off-ramp as you can reasonably provide.

This post's featured photo by Dim Hou on Unsplash.

The post It's okay to stop doing things appeared first on Duck Alignment Academy.

30 Jul 2025 12:00pm GMT

Avi Alkalay: PDFs must die

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Important and well written article by Sydney Butler on How-To Geek: PDFs Must Die

❝PDFs were created as a way to give a document an absolute, invariable design suitable for PRINT. It was never meant to be how we consumed documents on a screen.❞

And I must add:

We the data professionals, we hate PDFs. They might look good and structured for your human eyes, but the data inside them is a mess, unstructured and not suitable to be processed by computer programs.

Although we still didn't reached an agreement for ubiquitous formats, here are some better options:

Also on my LinkedIn.

30 Jul 2025 11:38am GMT

29 Jul 2025

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Akashdeep Dhar: Day One - Flock To Fedora 2025

Akashdeep Dhar's avatar Day One - Flock To Fedora 2025

05th June 2025 was the first day of the Flock To Fedora 2025 conference proceedings, and it began for me with waking up as early as 0430am Central European Summer Time. While I had the alarm set for a couple of hours later, I struggled with sleeping on the soft bed and instead decided to begin my daily schedule. I had planned with Michal Konecny to head over to the event venue together, but it would not be for another four hours, so I had plenty of time to have a chat with my family in India. I also connected with the likes of Ankur Sinha, who was arriving at the Vienna House Andel Prague early that day, as I was working with him for the Fedora Join SIG talk. At around 0630am Central European Summer Time, I headed downstairs to meet up with folks like Alexander Bokovoy, Frantisek Lachman, Lenka Segura, and Lukas Brabec in the breakfast area.

I decided to share some snacks that I brought from India with Tomas Hrcka before heading downstairs for the breakfast. I had ordered a cab for Yashwanth Rathakrishnan, and he had arrived at Ibis Praha Mala Strana by around 0800am Central European Summer Time. With a bunch of us finishing up our breakfasts, we decided to head off for the event venue. On reaching there, I realized that even though I had around four talks selected for the event, I had forgotten to register for it as an attendee! I assumed it would be a sane default for a speaker to be automatically registered as an attendee, but my assumption was clearly misplaced. I left the queue and spent some time registering for the event on the Eventbrite platform before rejoining to claim the amazing Flock To Fedora 2025 tee, event badge and Fedora Linux 42 "Don't Panic" towel from the event reception.

Day One - Flock To Fedora 2025
Light breakfast at Ibis Praha Mala Strana

The reception desk was staffed by the likes of Greg Sutcliffe and Luis Bazan, who made themselves available for the first slot of the event, thus taking on the majority wave of the enthusiastic attendees. After catching up with those at the reception, I moved to the hallway track, where I met up with Michael Scherer and David Cantrell. I was super ecstatic to meet Ankur Sinha, with whom I was finally meeting in person after such a long time, as he had onboarded me to the beautiful Fedora Project community about six years ago. We headed into the plenary hall to attend the Opening Remarks and the Fedora Project Leader Exchange sessions after some time. Matthew Miller went into detail about how things had changed over the years with him at the helm of the Fedora Project community, before passing on the serving responsibilities to the newly recruited Jef Spaleta.

A magical experience like this is not something you get to see every day, as the talk was much more significant than just being a presentation. The responsibilities of the Fedora Project Leader were being passed on to another pair of hands, and we had interesting times ahead of us. Jef also shared his experiences with his previous employments that brought him here and what his vision looked like for the Fedora Project community. Following this session, we had an Ask Me Anything session with the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee. After the elected members introduced themselves to the attendees, I took the opportunity to ask a couple of questions to the FESCo ensemble: one about the role of artificial intelligence technologies in the future of the Fedora Project, and the other about the extent of FESCo's involvement in evaluating and supporting community initiatives.

Day One - Flock To Fedora 2025
Some scribbling during Flock To Fedora presentations

The event was followed by a refreshment break, and the plenary hall was soon to be divided into three parts: Opal, Topaz, and Quartz, for three parallel tracks of sessions. I avoided the bakery items served there, as I had limited myself to only the greens for roughage and fluids for circulation. I headed back into the plenary hall for the next couple of talks related to the Forgejo Fedora initiative and Bazzite Fedora downstream, starting at 1130am Central European Summer Time. With some interesting findings from the planned features of Forgejo and the gaming impact made by Bazzite, it was soon time for the lunch break, where we assembled for the Mentor Mentee Lunch and Learn session. I helped Jona Azizaj assemble the participants for the event, heading off to join my assigned group titled "Fedora Infrastructure - Software Development" to share my lunch chat with.

Our group consisted of four people, with Aurelien Bompard acting as the group mentor, while Smera Goel, Jona, and I acted as group mentees for the interaction. While my meal mostly consisted of some bland celery salad, seasoned Tuna cuts, and boiled Chicken meat, the conversations we shared were absolutely flavorful. Once we were done with the meal, I caught up with Ankur again, who was occupied finishing off some of his work, and with Aurelien and Michael, who were discussing just how easy (read, difficult) it would be for members to be able to rename their Fedora Project Account System usernames. At around 0230pm Central European Summer Time, I also met with Luis and Alexandra Fedorova, whom I congratulated for being among the winners of the Fedora Mindshare and Fedora Council elections, respectively, in the Fedora Linux 42 electoral term.

Day One - Flock To Fedora 2025
Julia Bley at the Mentor Mentee Lunch and Learn session

I briefly returned to the dining area to share conversations with the likes of Julia Bley, Nikita Tripathi, and Sumantro Mukherjee before leaving to find Greg and obtain a custom 3D-printed Fedora Project logo keychain from him. I also went ahead and shared some snacks and spices that I was carrying in my backpack with him in the hallway track. It was soon 0345 pm Central European Summer Time, which meant it was the time for yet another round of refreshments to be served (and avoided, on my part). After a brief conversation with Ant Carrol and Ankur on onboarding, we headed into the Topaz hall to deliver the talk on the Fedora Join SIG at around 0400pm Central European Summer Time. While the talk was received well, I did realize that I had over-optimized for the time and ended up glossing over some details that could have been helpful in providing context.

Ankur had been a stellar orator, as usual, and he ended the second half of our presentation, consisting of the call to action for the community members, with pure elegance. As our talk ended, the Topaz hall was repurposed for yet another Ask Me Anything session by the Community Linux Engineering management. I wanted to stay back for the session, but I also wanted to attend Greg's talk on community building in the Quartz hall at the same time. I ended up choosing the latter and swiftly found myself a place to sit at around 0430pm Central European Summer Time. He remarked in a chat we shared after his talk that the version of this presentation he delivered at DevConf.CZ previously was better than this one - which made absolutely no sense to me, as he was absolutely phenomenal here as well - so much so that it made me want to be possibly as amazing a speaker as him.

Day One - Flock To Fedora 2025
From left to right - Aurelien, Smera, Nikita, Akashdeep and Jona at the Mentor Mentee Lunch and Learn session

I decided to head back to the hotel with Sumantro and wondered whether I would want to make it to the International Candy Swap event, which was going to take place in an arcade store with limited seating. That was, of course, going to happen after the planned Community Linux Engineering team dinner at 0600pm Central European Summer Time, lasting for a couple of hours. On our way out, I ran into Aoife Moloney, who checked with me about how my talk went - a gesture I really appreciated, as I was still feeling down with how my Fedora Join SIG talk could have been better. After the supportive conversation with her, I decided to use the learnings from that day to enhance the upcoming talks the next day. Sumantro briefly introduced me to Debarshi Ray, after which Fabian Arrotin, Yashwanth, Sumantro, and I were on our way back to the hotel to quickly get freshened up.

While I had booked a taxi using the Bolt service for Yashwanth's return, I had to cancel it as he was also invited to the Community Linux Engineering team dinner at the last moment. As I headed downstairs with Michal to the reception area, I was surprised by Ant in traditional Indian dress, i.e., Kurta, along with Samyak Jain, which was a good sight to see. We marched towards a nearby restaurant for some quick dinner bites at around 0615pm Central European Summer Time, and the food was swiftly served. Yashwanth, Matthew, and I had to wait for some time to get our hands on some bird meat while being seated near the likes of Tomas, Lukas, Kamil Paral, and Lukas Ruzicka. I sipped on some Red Bull that I had ordered as the beverage, as I was barely able to keep my eyes open after having barely five hours of sleep the previous night while waiting for food.

Day One - Flock To Fedora 2025
Glimpses from the dinner shared by the Red Hat Community Linux Engineering team

As Michal was about to leave for the International Candy Swap after getting some homemade bakery items from the hotel, I decided to depart as well since I was satisfied. I also decided not to attend the following event, as I had forgotten about it with all the things I was occupied with, and it would not have looked good if I were to turn up there without something to offer. Additionally, I was not quite sure if I would have found a place there, as the venue for the event had a maximum capacity of only fifty people, and I wanted to give this opportunity to someone else who was probably attending it for the first time. After waiting for Yashwanth and Sumantro for five minutes or so, Michal and I were started on our way back to the hotel, where we met up with Sherif Nagy. Sumantro and I briefly met at the hotel before heading over to TESCO to make some needed purchases.

We (coincidentally and hilariously) happened to run into Ant a couple of times while visiting the Nový Smíchov Shopping Centre, as we were waiting to hear back from Yashwanth on his safe departure from the dining place. At TESCO, I purchased a pair of boots for my brother, Soumadeep Dhar, who was getting married that year, and a clamcase carrier for the remaining luggage, as with all the goods I received from Tomas, the space would clearly not have been enough. On my return to the hotel reception, I requested for my room to be cleaned due to hygiene issues, but as cleaners were not available, I was moved from #225 to #517. After a quick inspection of the changed room, I moved my things over at around 0930pm Central European Summer Time. I got myself freshened up and decided to call it a day a bit early to catch up on some well-deserved respite.

29 Jul 2025 6:30pm GMT

Jeremy Cline: Fedora signing protocol tweaks

29 Jul 2025 2:01pm GMT

Peter Czanik: Syslog-ng development and AI

29 Jul 2025 11:36am GMT

28 Jul 2025

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Fedora Magazine: Contribute to the Anaconda Installer DNF 5 Test Days, July 28 – August 1

Fedora Magazine's avatar

The Anaconda team have done some great changes over the last few Fedora Linux releasese. For Fedora Linux 43, they would like your help testing their latest changes - switching Anaconda installer to DNF5 and removing DNF modularity support from Anaconda.

With the help of the Fedora QA team, a number of test matrices have been created to help folks who can take part test the new features and provide their results.

What are we looking for?

We are looking for folks to test the following and file your results in the Test Days app:

More details on what the new features for Anaconda brings to Fedora and users can be found on the Anaconnda change pages, Switch Anaconda installer to DNF5 and Remove DNF modularity support from Anaconda.

How does a test week work?

A test week is an event where anyone can help ensure changes in Fedora Linux work well in an upcoming release. Fedora community members often participate, and the public is welcome at these events. If you've never contributed before, this is a perfect way to get started.

To contribute, you only need to be able to do the following things:

The wiki page for the Anaconda Installer has a lot of good information on what and how to test. After you've done some testing, you can log your results in the test day web application. If you're available on or around the days of the event, please do some testing and report your results.

28 Jul 2025 10:20pm GMT

26 Jul 2025

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Kevin Fenzi: Misc fedora bits: fourth week of july 2025

Kevin Fenzi's avatar Scrye into the crystal ball

Another week, another recap. :)

New vlan, who this?

One of the datacenters we have machines in is reorganizing things and is moving us to a new vlan. This is just fine, it will allow more speration, consolidating ips and makes sense.

So, they added tagging for the new vlan to our switch there, and this week I setup things so we could have a seperate bridge on that vlan. There was a bit of a hiccup with ipv6 routing, but that was quickly fixed. Now we should be able to move vm's as we like to the new vlan by just changing their IP address and moving them to use the new bridge over the old. Once everything is moved, we can drop the old bridge and be all on the new one.

IPV6 now live in main datacenter

Speaking of ipv6, we added ipv6 AAAA records to our new datacenter machines/applications on thursday. Finally ipv6 users should be able to reach some services that were not available before. Please let us know if you see any problems with it, or notice any services that are not yet enabled.

Fun with bonding / LCAP 802.3ad

Machines in our new datacenter use two bonded interfaces. This allows us to reboot/upgrade switches and/or continue to operate normally if a switch dies. This is great, but when initially provisioning a machine you want to be able to do so on one interface until it's installed and the bonding setup is configured. So, one of the two interfaces is set to allow this. On our x86_64 machines, it's always the lower numbered/sorting first interface. However, this week I found that when I couldn't get any aarch64 machines to pxe boot that on those machines the initial live interface is THE HIGHER numbered one. Frustrating, but easy to work with once you figure it out.

Mass rebuild

The f43 mass rebuild was started wed per the schedule. There was a bit of a hiccup thursday morning as the koji db restarted and stopped the mass rebuild script from submitting, but things resumed after that. Everything pretty much finished friday night. This is a good deal faster than in the past where it usually took until sunday afternoon. I expect we will be merging it into rawhide very soon, so look for... everything to update.

Datacenter Move Retrospective

We had a bit of a retrospective meeting for the datacenter move. You can see our list of items at: https://hackmd.io/wB6rboFvS3uCErEOpuzp4g and the recording at: https://fedorapeople.org/~kevin/DC-Move-Retrospective-2025-07-24.mp4 (warning, it's large).

Upcoming time off / conference

I'll be off monday relaxing, and then thursday and friday I will be up at https://2025.fossy.us/

comments? additions? reactions?

As always, comment on mastodon: https://fosstodon.org/@nirik/114921101058883523

26 Jul 2025 6:47pm GMT

25 Jul 2025

feedFedora People

Remi Collet: 📝 Redis version 8.0

Remi Collet's avatar

With version 7.4 Redis Labs choose to switch to RSALv2 and SSPLv1 licenses, so leaving the OpenSource World.

Most linux distributions choose to drop it from their repositories. Various forks exist and Valkey seems a serious one and was chosen as a replacement.

So starting with Fedora 41 or Entreprise Linux 10 (CentOS, RHEL, AlmaLinux, RockyLinux...) redis is no more available, but valkey is.

With version 8.0 Redis Labs choose to switch to AGPLv3 license, and so is back as an OpenSource project.

RPMs of Redis version 8.0.3 are available in the remi-modular repository for Fedora ≥ 40 and Enterprise Linux ≥ 8 (RHEL, Alma, CentOS, Rocky...).

1. Installation

Packages are available in the redis:remi-8.0 module stream.

1.1. Using dnf4 on Enterprise Linux

# dnf install https://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-<ver>.rpm
# dnf module switch-to redis:remi-8.0/common

1.2. Using dnf5 on Fedora

# dnf install https://rpms.remirepo.net/fedora/remi-release-<ver>.rpm
# dnf module enable redis:remi-8.0
# dnf install redis --allowerasing

You may have to remove the valkey-compat-redis compatibilty package.

2. Modules

Some optional modules are also available:

These packages are weak dependencies of Redis, so they are installed by default (if install_weak_deps is not disabled in the dnf configuration).

The modules are automatically loaded after installation and service (re)start.

The modules are not available for Enterprise Linux 8.

3. Future

Valkey also provides a similar set of modules, requiring some packaging changes already proposed for Fedora official repository.

Redis may be proposed for unretirement and be back in the Fedora official repository, by me if I find enough motivation and energy, or by someone else.

I may also try to solve packaging issues for other modules (e.g. RediSearch). For now, module packages are very far from Packaging Guidelines, so obviously not ready for a review.

4. Statistics

redis

redis-bloom

redis-json

redis-timeseries

25 Jul 2025 1:12pm GMT

Fedora Community Blog: Infra and RelEng Update – Week 30 2025

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This is a weekly report from the I&R (Infrastructure & Release Engineering) Team. We provide you both infographic and text version of the weekly report. If you just want to quickly look at what we did, just look at the infographic. If you are interested in more in depth details look below the infographic.

Week: 21st - 25th July 2025

Infrastructure & Release Engineering

The purpose of this team is to take care of day to day business regarding CentOS and Fedora Infrastructure and Fedora release engineering work.
It's responsible for services running in Fedora and CentOS infrastructure and preparing things for the new Fedora release (mirrors, mass branching, new namespaces etc.).
List of planned/in-progress issues

Fedora Infra

CentOS Infra including CentOS CI

Release Engineering

If you have any questions or feedback, please respond to this report or contact us on #redhat-cpe channel on matrix.

The post Infra and RelEng Update - Week 30 2025 appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

25 Jul 2025 12:00pm GMT

Vedran Miletić: The academic and the free software community ideals

25 Jul 2025 9:44am GMT

Vedran Miletić: Free to know: Open access and open source

25 Jul 2025 9:44am GMT

Vedran Miletić: Enabling HTTP/2, HTTPS, and going HTTPS-only on inf2

25 Jul 2025 9:44am GMT

Vedran Miletić: Celebrating Graphics and Compute Freedom Day

25 Jul 2025 9:44am GMT

Vedran Miletić: Browser wars

25 Jul 2025 9:44am GMT

Vedran Miletić: AMD and the open-source community are writing history

25 Jul 2025 9:44am GMT