20 Jun 2025

feedOMG! Ubuntu

ONLYOFFICE 9.0 Released with New Themes, AI Tools + More

A new version of open source productivity suite ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors is available, packed out with another round of welcome improvements. ONLYOFFICE 9.0 introduces brand new theme (Modern Light/Modern Dark) with restyled UI elements, more use of spacing in floating 'island' toolbars, and new icons. The modern theme is available across the full suite of document, spreadsheet, presentation, form, and PDF editors. You can see how 'Modern Light' compares to 'Classic Light' (which remains available to switch back to, for those who prefer it) in the screenshot above. A redesigned Start screen (shown when opening the app) also features. This […]

You're reading ONLYOFFICE 9.0 Released with New Themes, AI Tools + More, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

20 Jun 2025 2:39pm GMT

feedPlanet Ubuntu

Ubuntu Blog: Effective infrastructure automation to reduce data center costs

Data centers are expensive: automation is the solution

Today, managing a data center requires striking a balance between cost, security, and performance. Long-term costs are a different matter, even though upfront capital expenditures (CapEx) like real estate and hardware are well-known and reasonably predictable. According to industry surveys, operational expenses (OpEx), which include system provisioning, patching, compliance, and troubleshooting, steadily increase over time and frequently exceed 50% of total cost of ownership (TCO) by the third year.

This growing OpEx burden is complicated and involves more than just money. The more expansive and varied your infrastructure is, the more human labor it takes to maintain security and functionality. These manual procedures are time-consuming, prone to mistakes, and are falling out of rhythm with the quick, scalable, and automated methods of public cloud providers.

It is becoming evident that traditional data center operations cannot be sustained without a new strategy, especially when you combine that with the increased demands for security and compliance. Whether you are a company running your own data center, a company selling Private Cloud services, or any other entity managing infrastructure, you must reevaluate how you conduct business in order to remain competitive. The key is to commoditize operations in order to reduce OpEx.

Reduce infrastructure OpEx by commoditizing operations

To truly reduce OpEx, you must shift your perspective from seeing operations as custom, artisanal work to one where operations are standardized, automated, and repeatable. In other words, commoditized.

Commoditization means applying software engineering principles like version control, CI/CD, and abstraction to infrastructure. By doing so, you shift from manual tasks to policy-driven automation that works reliably at scale.

In that model, your infrastructure should:

With policy-driven automation, your infrastructure practically "runs itself" while your team concentrates on higher-value tasks.

Above all, commoditized operations are scalable and predictable. You avoid the high expenses of putting out fires, reduce your reliance on tribal knowledge and minimize human error. You gradually create a platform that is not only economical but also quick, safe, and flexible.

Matching the public cloud model

Public cloud providers have a distinct cost advantage, and it's not just scale. Their secret sauce is radical automation. From provisioning to monitoring, remediation to upgrades, nearly every operational task is handled by software. Human intervention is minimized, ensuring that they can operate massive fleets of machines with minimal staff.

This efficiency is possible because these providers treat infrastructure, especially at the bare metal level, as programmable, ephemeral, and fully automated. Physical servers are provisioned, repurposed, and retired without human interaction. This reduces OpEx dramatically and ensures that every system is consistently configured, secure, and ready for use.

Private data centers can't match the scale of hyperscalers, but they can adopt the same principles. The first step is recognizing that automation shouldn't start at the VM or container layer: it must start at the metal. Without this, the rest of the stack inherits fragility, inefficiency, and manual bottlenecks.

Automation that only begins after the OS is installed or only covers cloud-like abstractions misses the foundational opportunity to cut costs and complexity at their root.

MAAS streamlines bare metal automation

Effective automation requires tools designed for physical infrastructure. Canonical MAAS (Metal-as-a-Service) was designed specifically to provide cloud-like agility to bare metal environments. It offers a cloud-like abstraction layer for operators to simplify bare metal management.

MAAS acts as a private cloud infrastructure provider, offering a programmatic interface and a well-defined machine lifecycle. With well-developed automations, this makes it easier to handle tasks like inventory management, OS installation, and server repurposing.

As MAAS is operating system and hardware agnostic, it supports a variety of environments, including operating systems like Windows, Linux, and VMware ESXi, as well as CPUs, GPUs, and DPUs from different vendors. This adaptability is essential for the sophisticated data centers of today.

Furthermore, MAAS enables effective machine lifecycle management, with tools that guide each machine from onboarding to retirement. This systematic approach streamlines operations and allows machines to be treated similarly to VMs. This unlocks the ability to quickly repurpose machines, allocate additional resources during peak times, and then power them down, resulting in cost savings and more sustainable data center operations.

This level of automation enables private data centers to:

In summary, MAAS empowers organizations to commoditize bare metal operations.

And how is MAAS used in practice? By handling the underlying bare metal provisioning, MAAS lays the foundation for Private Cloud platforms like OpenStack or MicroCloud. As a result, those platforms can focus exclusively on higher-level services like virtual machine management and network overlays. Similarly, workload orchestrators like Juju rely on MAAS as the bare metal infrastructure provider.

Another particularly powerful use case is running Kubernetes directly on bare metal. This method provides optimal performance, reduced latency, and a more straightforward architecture by doing away with the virtualisation layer. High-performance computing (HPC), telco workloads, and any use case where control and efficiency are crucial are particularly well-suited for MAAS.

Try MAAS and transform how you run infrastructure

The cost of running a data center is no longer just about the hardware you buy, it's about how efficiently you operate it. As operational expenses overtake CapEx in the TCO, reducing manual intervention is critical. The key is infrastructure automation, starting where it matters most: at the bare metal layer.

By automating physical server provisioning and standardizing operations from the ground up, you can:

Now is the time to rethink your data center strategy.

Start by identifying the most time-consuming operational tasks in your environment. Could they be automated? Are they tied to hardware provisioning or repetitive infrastructure setup? Chances are that the answer is yes, and they're costing you more than they should.

Canonical MAAS empowers you to bring cloud-like capabilities to your on-prem infrastructure, whether you're running a private cloud, deploying Kubernetes at scale, or supporting HPC or telco workloads. MAAS is open source and free to use. Test it out, read the documentation or get in touch with the Canonical team to see how MAAS can help you transform your data center with automated bare metal provisioning.

Further reading

20 Jun 2025 10:28am GMT

feedUbuntu blog

Effective infrastructure automation to reduce data center costs

To truly reduce OpEx, you must shift your perspective from seeing operations as custom, artisanal work to one where operations are standardized, automated, and repeatable. In other words, commoditized.

20 Jun 2025 10:28am GMT

19 Jun 2025

feedOMG! Ubuntu

Mozilla Axes its AI-Generated Text Detector Add-On

Mozilla is axing another project that felt a perfect fit for a company founded on the idea of making the web better for everyone. Next week, on June 26 2025, the Fakespot Deep Fake Detector extension, which let users vet content to gauge if it was written by a human or generated by AI for a human, will stop working - news first reported by Soeren Hentzschel. As an AI-powered tool, the Fakespot Deep Fake Detector wasn't perfect at separating the wheat from the statistically-glued collage of plagiarised and paraphrased words, but it was at least powered by multiple open […]

You're reading Mozilla Axes its AI-Generated Text Detector Add-On, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

19 Jun 2025 10:16pm GMT

feedPlanet Ubuntu

Jonathan Carter: My first tag2upload upload

Tag2upload?

The tag2upload service has finally gone live for Debian Developers in an open beta.

If you've never heard of tag2upload before, here is a great primer presented by Ian Jackson and prepared by Ian Jackson and Sean Whitton.

In short, the world has moved on to hosting and working with source code in Git repositories. In Debian, we work with source packages that are used to generated the binary artifacts that users know as .deb files. In Debian, there is so much tooling and culture built around this. For example, our workflow passes what we call the island test - you could take every source package in Debian along with you to an island with no Internet, and you'll still be able to rebuild or modify every package. When changing the workflows, you risk losing benefits like this, and over the years there has been a number of different ideas on how to move to a purely or partially git flow for Debian, none that really managed to gain enough momentum or project-wide support.

Tag2upload makes a lot of sense. It doesn't take away any of the benefits of the current way of working (whether technical or social), but it does make some aspects of Debian packages significantly simpler and faster. Even so, if you're a Debian Developer and more familiar with how the sausage have made, you'll have noticed that this has been a very long road for the tag2upload maintainers, they've hit multiple speed bumps since 2019, but with a lot of patience and communication and persistence from all involved (and almost even a GR), it is finally materializing.

Performing my first tag2upload

So, first, I needed to choose which package I want to upload. We're currently in hard freeze for the trixie release, so I'll look for something simple that I can upload to experimental.

I chose bundlewrap, it's quote a straightforward python package, and updates are usually just as straightforward, so it's probably a good package to work on without having to deal with extra complexities in learning how to use tag2upload.

So, I do the usual uscan and dch -i to update my package…

And then I realise that I still want to build a source package to test it in cowbuilder. Hmm, I remember that Helmut showed me that building a source package isn't necessary in sbuild, but I have a habit of breaking my sbuild configs somehow, but I guess I should revisit that.

So, I do a dpkg-buildpackage -S -sa and test it out with cowbuilder, because that's just how I roll (at least for now, fixing my local sbuild setup is yak shaving for another day, let's focus!).

I end up with a binary that looks good, so I'm satisfied that I can upload this package to the Debian archives. So, time to configure tag2upload.

The first step is to set up the webhook in Salsa. I was surprised two find two webhooks already configured:

I know of KGB that posts to IRC, didn't know that this was the mechanism it does that by before. Nice! Also don't know what the tagpending one does, I'll go look into that some other time.

Configuring a tag2upload webhook is quite simple, add a URL, call the name tag2upload, and select only tag push events:

I run the test webhook, and it returned a code 400 message about a missing 'message' header, which the documentation says is normal.

Next, I install git-debpush from experimental.

The wiki page simply states that you can use the git-debpush command to upload, but doesn't give any examples on how to use it, and its manpage doesn't either. And when I run just git-debpush I get:

jonathan@lapcloud:~/devel/debian/python-team/bundlewrap/bundlewrap-4.23.1$ git-debpush
git-debpush: check failed: upstream tag upstream/4.22.0 is not an ancestor of refs/heads/debian/master; probably a mistake ('upstream-nonancestor' check)
pristine-tar is /usr/bin/pristine-tar
git-debpush: some check(s) failed; you can pass --force to ignore them

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. I was also not sure whether I should tag anything to begin with, or if some part of the tag2upload machinery automatically does it. I think I might have tagged debian/4.23-1 before tagging upstream/4.23 and perhaps it didn't like it, I reverted and did it the other way around and got a new error message. Progress!

jonathan@lapcloud:~/devel/debian/python-team/bundlewrap/bundlewrap-4.23.1$ git-debpush
git-debpush: could not determine the git branch layout
git-debpush: please supply a --quilt= argument

Looking at the manpage, it looks like -quilt=baredebian matches my package the best, so I try that:

jonathan@lapcloud:~/devel/debian/python-team/bundlewrap/bundlewrap-4.23.1$ git-debpush --quilt=baredebian
Enumerating objects: 70, done.
Counting objects: 100% (70/70), done.
Delta compression using up to 12 threads
Compressing objects: 100% (37/37), done.
Writing objects: 100% (37/37), 8.97 KiB | 2.99 MiB/s, done.
Total 37 (delta 30), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0 (from 0)
To salsa.debian.org:python-team/packages/bundlewrap.git
6f55d99..3d5498f debian/master -> debian/master

 * [new tag] upstream/4.23.1 -> upstream/4.23.1
 * [new tag] debian/4.23.1-1_exp1 -> debian/4.23.1-1_exp1

Ooh! That looked like it did something! And a minute later I received the notification of the upload in my inbox:

So, I'm not 100% sure that this makes things much easier for me than doing a dput, but, it's not any more difficult or more work either (once you know how it works), so I'll be using git-debpush from now on, and I'm sure as I get more used to the git workflow of doing things I'll understand more of the benefits. And at last, my one last use case for using FTP is now properly dead. RIP FTP :)

19 Jun 2025 7:49pm GMT

feedUbuntu blog

What are our partners building for device makers? Explore the highlights from Ubuntu IoT Day Singapore

Our first Ubuntu IoT Day in Southeast Asia - and our first ever event in Singapore! It was long overdue, as several attendees were quick to remind us. Ubuntu has long been a quiet force in the region, powered by its rich ecosystem of innovators. More than 150 participants came together to represent Southeast Asia's […]

19 Jun 2025 4:48am GMT

feedPlanet Ubuntu

Ubuntu Blog: What are our partners building for device makers? Explore the highlights from Ubuntu IoT Day Singapore

Our first Ubuntu IoT Day in Southeast Asia - and our first ever event in Singapore! It was long overdue, as several attendees were quick to remind us. Ubuntu has long been a quiet force in the region, powered by its rich ecosystem of innovators. More than 150 participants came together to represent Southeast Asia's diversity of thought and culture; to challenge, learn, and discuss the future of IoT.

The event took place on May 27th, and it featured 9 presentations from leading industry experts like ARM, Intel, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Advantech, and Aaeon, discussing topics like edge AI deployment challenges, trends in robotics, regulatory compliance, as well as hardware and software tools for the IoT sector. In this blog, we'll dive into the three key topics covered in these sessions.

From training to deployment: the challenge of AI at the edge

A theme that quickly arose was how to manage the challenge of deploying AI at the edge. Several presenters highlighted the complexities companies face: having the right data, selecting the right model, tuning it for performance, validating it on-device, and managing updates at scale.

Qualcomm's presentation addressed these points head-on, introducing their AI Hub - a repository of pre-optimised models designed to run efficiently on Qualcomm chipsets. The solution appeals to developers and product teams in sectors like automotive, robotics, and smart devices who work with Qualcomm hardware and need high-performance AI at the edge deployments. Their approach emphasises simplifying deployment pipelines and reducing time-to-market, particularly in industries where real-time performance matters.

Intel also participated in this theme, noting that despite high interest, only a small fraction of edge AI projects actually reach production. The reasons vary - from lack of clean data to the complexities of hardware-software integration - but the result is the same: delayed innovation. Intel's solution is to accelerate deployment through Verified Reference Blueprints, providing a clear, validated stack that includes hardware configurations, memory, storage, and the software layers needed to bring AI to life at the edge. These blueprints could be especially valuable for solution architects and engineering teams looking to streamline proof-of-concept to production transitions.

MediaTek, too, contributed to this conversation by showcasing how their Genio platform uses Snap packages to securely deliver AI applications. By leveraging Canonical's Snap technology, they enable modular and transactional updates - ensuring devices stay current, without disrupting operations. This approach is particularly relevant for OEMs and device manufacturers aiming to maintain secure, updatable AI capabilities across diverse product lines.

Software defining hardware - the new reality for Silicon and ODMs

Silicon and ODMs, traditionally hardware-first companies, today are operating in an increasingly software-first world. ARM, Intel, Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Aaeon all echoed this sentiment in different ways. Hardware must now come with software ecosystems that allow developers to quickly build, test, and deploy. Otherwise, their current offering fails to adequately meet the needs and usage requirements of their products.

ARM, for example, presented Kleidi-a middleware layer that abstracts its hardware complexities, allowing AI engineers to run models using standard frameworks like PyTorch. With Kleidi, ARM is aiming for more models to be deployed directly on CPUs, removing the need for proprietary GPU SDKs and licensing constraints. This is especially compelling for AI developers and platform vendors seeking greater portability, reduced costs, and streamlined deployment across ARM-based devices.

Their message was clear: they no longer see themselves purely as a hardware provider, but as a middleware company, delivering integrated, secure solutions for enterprise edge environments.

How to ensure secure deployments and meet compliance

The event was also packed with sessions covering security compliance and tooling. These topics were enthusiastically welcomed by the audience - we saw the same reactions during our IoT London day last year.

Compliance, particularly in the context of the European Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), was a hot topic. Attendees expressed strong interest in what the CRA means for global markets. While the CRA is an EU regulation, many vendors recognize its global implications. Advantech, for example, is already aligning with IEC 62443 standards and is confident that CRA-like regulation will soon come to Asia. The general consensus was that regulatory pressure will only grow, and companies that embed secure development practices now will have a significant advantage.

Canonical presented a deep dive into the CRA. You can find more information about the implications for device manufacturers in our blog post. Canonical is dedicated to fulfilling the requirements of the CRA. This includes delivering compliant software, conducting attestation for our non-critical software, and adhering to manufacturers' specifications for the software our customers obtain through us.

Advantech also showcased its DeviceON platform -a remote management tool that helps enterprises monitor and update fleets of devices in the field. The solution seems particularly valuable for system integrators and IoT solution providers looking to simplify large-scale device deployment and maintenance. Advantech highlighted Ubuntu Pro as a key component in their security story, bringing security maintenance for more than 36K packages, for up to 15 years.

'Til next time

It's always a privilege to engage with our Ubuntu users, especially when we can host them. Our IoT days aim to deliver an event that expands the technical knowledge of our participants and allows them to grow their professional network through our partners.

Singapore might be our first stop in Southeast Asia, but it definitely won't be the last.

19 Jun 2025 4:48am GMT

Podcast Ubuntu Portugal: E352 Triunfo Do Kejserpingvin

Enquanto os pólos derretem, falámos de MARP e criação de diapositivos com Markdown; como o Ubuntu recria o Tratado de Tordesilhas com satélites; a Dinamarca será o primeiro passo para a Grande Expansão do Império do Pinguim Imperador; dicas sobre como evitar buracos traseiros nas telecomunicações, onde se enfiam toda a espécie de raias de espionagem; como a Apple fez um Linux aguado com 2% de sumo à base de concentrado; o Oracle Oriole tropeça nos atacadores quando tenta actualizar-se; refrescámos a agenda de eventos para as próximas semanas - e fomos ao Bazaar.

Já sabem: oiçam, subscrevam e partilhem!

Atribuição e licenças

Este episódio foi produzido por Diogo Constantino, Miguel e Tiago Carrondo e editado pelo Senhor Podcast. O website é produzido por Tiago Carrondo e o código aberto está licenciado nos termos da Licença MIT. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). A música do genérico é: "Won't see it comin' (Feat Aequality & N'sorte d'autruche)", por Alpha Hydrae e está licenciada nos termos da CC0 1.0 Universal License. Os efeitos sonoros deste episódio possuem as seguintes licenças: Apito Naval - Boatswains whistle 1.wav by waterboy920 - https://freesound.org/s/207329/ - License: Attribution 4.0; Isto é um Alerta Ubuntu - Breaking news intro music by humanoide9000 - https://freesound.org/s/760770/ - License: Attribution 4.0. Este episódio e a imagem utilizada estão licenciados nos termos da licença: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), cujo texto integral pode ser lido aqui. Estamos abertos a licenciar para permitir outros tipos de utilização, contactem-nos para validação e autorização. A arte de episódio foi criada por encomenda pela Shizamura - artista, ilustradora e autora de BD. Podem ficar a conhecer melhor a Shizamura na Ciberlândia e no seu sítio web.

19 Jun 2025 12:00am GMT

18 Jun 2025

feedOMG! Ubuntu

This GNOME Extension Simplifies iPhone Screen Sharing on Linux

A new GNOME Shell extension makes it easy to control the UxPlay AirPlay server on Ubuntu. Start and stop mirroring your iPhone or iPad screen with a click.

You're reading This GNOME Extension Simplifies iPhone Screen Sharing on Linux, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

18 Jun 2025 10:59pm GMT

feedUbuntu blog

Fixes available for local privilege escalation vulnerability in libblockdev using udisks

Qualys discovered two vulnerabilities in various Linux distributions which allow local attackers to escalate privileges. The first vulnerability (CVE-2025-6018) was found in the PAM configuration. This CVE does not impact default Ubuntu installations because of how the pam_systemd.so and pam_env.so modules are invoked. The second vulnerability (CVE-2025-6019) affects both libblockdev and udisks2 source packages available […]

18 Jun 2025 4:19pm GMT

feedPlanet Ubuntu

Aaron Rainbolt: The bug that code couldn't fix...

This isn't a tech-related post, so if you're only here for the tech, feel free to skip over.

Any of y'all hate spiders? If you had asked me that last week, I would have said "no". Turns out you just need to get in a fight with the wrong spider to change that. I'm in the central United States, so thankfully I don't have to deal with the horror spiders places like Australia have. But even in my not-intrinsically-hostile-to-human-life area of the world, we have some horror spiders of our own turns out. The two most common ones (the Brown Recluse and Black Widow) are basically memes at this point because they get mentioned so often; I've been bitten by both so far. The Brown Recluse bite wasn't really that dramatic before, during, or after treatment, so there's not really a story to tell there. The Black Widow bite on the other hand… oh boy. Holy moly.

I woke up last Saturday since the alternative was to sleep for 24 hours straight and that sounded awful. There's lots of good things to do with a Sabbath, why waste the day on sleep? Usually I spend (or at least am supposed to spend) this day with my family, generally doing Bible study and board games. Over the last few weeks though, I had been using the time to clean up various areas of the house that needed it, and this time I decided to clean up a room that had been flooded some time back. I entered the Room of Despair, with the Sword of Paper Towels in one hand and the Shield of Trash Bags in the other. In front of me stood the vast armies of UghYuck-Hai. (LotR fans will get the joke.1) Convinced that I was effectively invulnerable to anything the hoards could do to me, I entered the fray, and thus was the battle joined in the land of MyHome.

Fast forward two hours of sorting, scrubbing, and hauling. I had made a pretty decent dent in the mess. I was also pretty tired at that point, and our family's dog needed me to take him outside, so I decided it was time to take a break. I put the leash on the dog, and headed into the great outdoors for a much-needed breath of fresh air.

It was at about that time I realized there was something that felt weird on my left hip. In my neck of the woods, we have to deal with pretty extreme concentrations of mosquitoes, so I figured I probably just had some of my blood repurposed by a flying mini-vampire. Upon closer inspection though, I didn't see localized swelling indicating a mosquito bite (or any other bite for that matter). The troubled area was just far enough toward my back that I couldn't see if it had a bite hole or not, and I didn't notice any kind of discoloration to give me a heads-up either. All I knew is that there was a decent-sized patch of my left hip that HURT if I poked it lightly. I'd previously had random areas of my body hurt when poked (probably from minor bruises), so I just lumped this event in with the rest of the mystery injuries I've been through and went on with my day.

Upon coming back from helping the dog out, I still felt pretty winded. I chalked that up to doing strenuous work in an area with bad air for too long, and decided to spend some time in bed to recover. One hour in bed turned into two. Two turned into three. Regardless of how long I laid there, I still just felt exhausted. "Did I really work that hard?", I wondered. It didn't seem like I had done enough work to warrant this level of tiredness. Thankfully I did get to chat with my mom about Bible stuff for a good portion of that time, so I thought the day had been pretty successful nonetheless.

The sun went down. I was still unreasonably tired. Usually this was when me and my mom would play a board game together, but I just wasn't up for it. I ended up needing to use the restroom, so I went to do that, and that's when I noticed my now-even-sorer hip wasn't the only thing that was wrong.

While in the restroom, I felt like my digestive system was starting to get sick. This too was pretty easily explainable, I had just worked in filth and probably got exposed to too much yuck for my system to handle. My temperature was a bit higher than normal. Whatever, not like I hadn't had fevers before. My head felt sore and stuffed up, which again just felt like I was getting sick in general. My vision also wasn't great, but for all I know that could have just been because I was focusing more on feeling bad and less on the wall of the bathroom I was looking at. At this point, I didn't think that the sore hip and the sudden onset fever might be related.

After coming out of the bathroom, I huddled in bed to try to help the minor fever burn out whatever crud I had gotten into. My mom came to help take care of me while I was sick. To my surprise, the fever didn't stay minor for long - I suddenly started shivering like crazy even though I wasn't even remotely cold. My temperature skyrocketed, getting to the point where I was worried it could be dangerously high. I started aching all over and my muscles felt like they got a lot weaker. My heart started pounding furiously, and I felt short of breath. We always keep colloidal silver in the house since it helps with immunity, so my mom gave me some sprays of it and had me hold it under my tongue. I noticed I was salivating a bunch for absolutely no reason while trying to hold the silver spray there as long as I could. Things weren't really improving, and I noticed my hip was starting to hurt more. I mentioned the sore hip issue to my mom, and we chose to put some aloe vera lotion and colloidal silver on it, just in case I had been bitten by a spider of some sort.

That turned out to be a very good, very very VERY painful idea. After rubbing in the lotion, the bitten area started experiencing severe, relentless stabbing pains, gradually growing in intensity as time progressed. For the first few minutes, I was thinking "wow, this really hurts, what in the world bit me?", but that pretty quickly gave way to "AAAAA! AAAAA! AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" I kept most of the screaming in my mind, but after a while it got so bad I just rocked back and forth and groaned for what felt like forever. I'd never had pain like this just keep going and going, so I thought if I just toughed it out for long enough it would eventually go away. This thing didn't seem to work like that though. After who-knows-how-long, I finally realized this wasn't going to go away on its own, and so, for reasons only my pain-deranged mind could understand, I tried rolling over on my left side to see if squishing the area would get it to shut up. Beyond all logic, that actually seemed to work, so I just stayed there for quite some time.

At this point, my mom realized the sore hip and the rest of my sickness might be related (I never managed to put the two together). The symptoms I had originally looked like scarlet fever plus random weirdness, but they turned out to match extremely well with the symptoms of a black widow bite (I didn't have the sweating yet but that ended up happening too). The bite area also started looking discolored, so something was definitely not right. At about this point my kidneys started hurting pretty badly, not as badly as the bite but not too far from it.

I'll try to go over the rest of the mess relatively quickly. In summary:

We kept applying peppermint oil infused aloe vera lotion and colloidal silver to the bite, which helped reduce pain (well, except for the first time anyway :P) and seems to have helped keep the toxins from spreading too much.

A couple of questions come to mind at this point. For one, how do I know that it was a black widow that bit me? Unfortunately, I never saw or felt the spider, so I can't know for an absolute certainty that I was bitten by a black widow (some people report false widows can cause similar symptoms if they inject you with enough venom). But false widows don't live anywhere even remotely close to where I live, and black widows are both known to live here and we've seen them here before. The symptoms certainly aren't anything remotely close to a brown recluse bite, and while I am not a medical professional, they seem to match the symptoms of black widow bites very, very well. So even if by some chance this wasn't a black widow, whatever bit me had just as bad of an effect on me as a black widow would have.

For two, why didn't I go to a hospital? Number one, everything I looked up said the most they could do is give you antivenom (which can cause anaphylaxis, no thank you), or painkillers like fentanyl (which I don't want anywhere near me, I'd rather feel like I'm dying from a spider bite than take a narcotic painkiller, thanks anyway). Number two, last time a family member had to go to the hospital, the ambulance just about killed him trying to get him there in the first place. I lost most of my respect for my city's medical facilities that day; if I'm not literally dying, I don't need a hospital, and if I am dying, my hospitals will probably just kill me off quicker.

I'm currently on day 4 of recovery (including the day I was bitten). I'm still lightheaded, but I can stand without passing out finally. The kidney pain went away, as did the stabbing pain in the bite area (though it still aches a bit, and hurts if you poke it). The fever is mostly gone, my eyes are working normally again and aren't constantly trying to superglue themselves closed, and my breathing is mostly fine again. I'm definitely still feeling the effects of the bite, but they aren't crippling anymore. I'll probably be able to work from home in the morning (I'd try to do household chores too but my mom would probably have a heart attack since I just about killed myself trying to get out of the bathroom).

Speaking of working from home, it's half past midnight here, I should be going to bed. Thanks for reading!

1

The army of Saruman sent against the fortress of Helm's Deep was made up of half-elven, half-orc creatures known as Uruk-Hai. "Ugh, yuck!" and "Uruk" sounded humorously similar, so I just went with it.

18 Jun 2025 5:35am GMT

17 Jun 2025

feedOMG! Ubuntu

Microsoft’s New CLI Text Editor Works Great on Ubuntu

Edit is a new open source command line text editor from Microsoft that supports Windows, macOS and Linux. Learn what it can do, and how to try it on Ubuntu.

You're reading Microsoft's New CLI Text Editor Works Great on Ubuntu, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

17 Jun 2025 10:15pm GMT

KDE Plasma 6.4 Released, This is What’s New

white text that reads KDE plasma 6.4; KDE plasma 6.4 screenshot on a laptopKDE Plasma 6.4 has been released with a huge range of improvements, including an HDR configuration wizard, per-desktop tiling, and more.

You're reading KDE Plasma 6.4 Released, This is What's New, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

17 Jun 2025 10:45am GMT

16 Jun 2025

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Ubuntu Adopts Chrony + NTS for Secure Network Time

Ubuntu 25.10 switches to Chrony with Network Time Security (NTS) for authenticated time sync, improving security over the existing setup.

You're reading Ubuntu Adopts Chrony + NTS for Secure Network Time, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

16 Jun 2025 10:59pm GMT

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Join Canonical at HPE Discover Las Vegas 2025

Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu and trusted open source solutions provider, is proud to sponsor HPE Discover Las Vegas 2025. Join us from June 23-26 to explore how our collaboration with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is transforming the future of enterprise IT, from virtualization and cloud infrastructure to AI/ML workloads. Register to HPE Discover Las Vegas 2025 What to expect at booth #2235 Stop by our booth […]

16 Jun 2025 10:51pm GMT

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The Fridge: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 896

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 896 for the week of June 8 - 14, 2025. The full version of this issue is available here.

In this issue we cover:

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

.

16 Jun 2025 10:26pm GMT

Paul Tagliamonte: The Promised LAN

The Internet has changed a lot in the last 40+ years. Fads have come and gone. Network protocols have been designed, deployed, adopted, and abandoned. Industries have come and gone. The types of people on the internet have changed a lot. The number of people on the internet has changed a lot, creating an information medium unlike anything ever seen before in human history. There's a lot of good things about the Internet as of 2025, but there's also an inescapable hole in what it used to be, for me.

I miss being able to throw a site up to send around to friends to play with without worrying about hordes of AI-feeding HTML combine harvesters DoS-ing my website, costing me thousands in network transfer for the privilege. I miss being able to put a lightly authenticated game server up and not worry too much at night - wondering if that process is now mining bitcoin. I miss being able to run a server in my home closet. Decades of cat and mouse games have rendered running a mail server nearly impossible. Those who are "brave" enough to try are met with weekslong stretches of delivery failures and countless hours yelling ineffectually into a pipe that leads from the cheerful lobby of some disinterested corporation directly into a void somewhere 4 layers below ground level.

I miss the spirit of curiosity, exploration, and trying new things. I miss building things for fun without having to worry about being too successful, after which "security" offices start demanding my supplier paperwork in triplicate as heartfelt thanks from their engineering teams. I miss communities that are run because it is important to them, not for ad revenue. I miss community operated spaces and having more than four websites that are all full of nothing except screenshots of each other.

Every other page I find myself on now has an AI generated click-bait title, shared for rage-clicks all brought-to-you-by-our-sponsors-completely covered wall-to-wall with popup modals, telling me how much they respect my privacy, with the real content hidden at the bottom bracketed by deceptive ads served by companies that definitely know which new coffee shop I went to last month.

This is wrong, and those who have seen what was know it.

I can't keep doing it. I'm not doing it any more. I reject the notion that this is as it needs to be. It is wrong. The hole left in what the Internet used to be must be filled. I will fill it.

What comes before part b?

Throughout the 2000s, some of my favorite memories were from LAN parties at my friends' places. Dragging your setup somewhere, long nights playing games, goofing off, even building software all night to get something working-being able to do something fiercely technical in the context of a uniquely social activity. It wasn't really much about the games or the projects-it was an excuse to spend time together, just hanging out. A huge reason I learned so much in college was that campus was a non-stop LAN party - we could freely stand up servers, talk between dorms on the LAN, and hit my dorm room computer from the lab. Things could go from individual to social in the matter of seconds. The Internet used to work this way-my dorm had public IPs handed out by DHCP, and my workstation could serve traffic from anywhere on the internet. I haven't been back to campus in a few years, but I'd be surprised if this were still the case.

In December of 2021, three of us got together and connected our houses together in what we now call The Promised LAN. The idea is simple-fill the hole we feel is gone from our lives. Build our own always-on 24/7 nonstop LAN party. Build a space that is intrinsically social, even though we're doing technical things. We can freely host insecure game servers or one-off side projects without worrying about what someone will do with it.

Over the years, it's evolved very slowly-we haven't pulled any all-nighters. Our mantra has become "old growth", building each layer carefully. As of May 2025, the LAN is now 19 friends running around 25 network segments. Those 25 networks are connected to 3 backbone nodes, exchanging routes and IP traffic for the LAN. We refer to the set of backbone operators as "The Bureau of LAN Management". Combined decades of operating critical infrastructure has driven The Bureau to make a set of well-understood, boring, predictable, interoperable and easily debuggable decisions to make this all happen. Nothing here is exotic or even technically interesting.

Applications of trusting trust

The hardest part, however, is rejecting the idea that anything outside our own LAN is untrustworthy-nearly irreversible damage inflicted on us by the Internet. We have solved this by not solving it. We strictly control membership-the absolute hard minimum for joining the LAN requires 10 years of friendship with at least one member of the Bureau, with another 10 years of friendship planned. Members of the LAN can veto new members even if all other criteria is met. Even with those strict rules, there's no shortage of friends that meet the qualifications-but we are not equipped to take that many folks on. It's hard to join--both socially and technically. Doing something malicious on the LAN requires a lot of highly technical effort upfront, and it would endanger a decade of friendship. We have relied on those human, social, interpersonal bonds to bring us all together. It's worked for the last 4 years, and it should continue working until we think of something better.

We assume roommates, partners, kids, and visitors all have access to The Promised LAN. If they're let into our friends' network, there is a level of trust that works transitively for us-I trust them to be on mine. This LAN is not for "security", rather, the network border is a social one. Benign "hacking"-in the original sense of misusing systems to do fun and interesting things-is encouraged. Robust ACLs and firewalls on the LAN are, by definition, an interpersonal-not technical-failure. We all trust every other network operator to run their segment in a way that aligns with our collective values and norms.

Over the last 4 years, we've grown our own culture and fads-around half of the people on the LAN have thermal receipt printers with open access, for printing out quips or jokes on each other's counters. It's incredible how much network transport and a trusting culture gets you-there's a 3-node IRC network, exotic hardware to gawk at, radios galore, a NAS storage swap, LAN only email, and even a SIP phone network of "redphones".

DIY

We do not wish to, nor will we, rebuild the internet. We do not wish to, nor will we, scale this. We will never be friends with enough people, as hard as we may try. Participation hinges on us all having fun. As a result, membership will never be open, and we will never have enough connected LANs to deal with the technical and social problems that start to happen with scale. This is a feature, not a bug.

This is a call for you to do the same. Build your own LAN. Connect it with friends' homes. Remember what is missing from your life, and fill it in. Use software you know how to operate and get it running. Build slowly. Build your community. Do it with joy. Remember how we got here. Rebuild a community space that doesn't need to be mediated by faceless corporations and ad revenue. Build something sustainable that brings you joy. Rebuild something you use daily.

Bring back what we're missing.

16 Jun 2025 3:58pm GMT

15 Jun 2025

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Find ASCII Emoji Easily with this GNOME Shell Applet

A simple GNOME Shell extension that lets you search and copy ASCII emoji from your panel without needing to open a browser and hit up a website.

You're reading Find ASCII Emoji Easily with this GNOME Shell Applet, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

15 Jun 2025 10:45pm GMT

High Tide (GTK4/libadwaita TIDAL Client for Linux) Hits Flathub


High Tide, an unofficial desktop TIDAL client for Linux, is now available on Flathub. It also adds Discord integration, animated covers, and more.

You're reading High Tide (GTK4/libadwaita TIDAL Client for Linux) Hits Flathub, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

15 Jun 2025 6:29pm GMT

13 Jun 2025

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Ubuntu 25.10 Adds New Rust Library to Default Installs

A new Rust-based library, rust-hwlib, is included by default in Ubuntu 25.10 'Questing Quokka' to help support Ubuntu Pro.

You're reading Ubuntu 25.10 Adds New Rust Library to Default Installs, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

13 Jun 2025 5:00pm GMT

Denmark’s Government Ditches Microsoft for Open Source

Denmark is making 'digital sovereignty' a priority, replacing Microsoft and other US big tech products with Linux and open source.

You're reading Denmark's Government Ditches Microsoft for Open Source, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

13 Jun 2025 4:26pm GMT

Kapitano is a New GTK ClamAV Frontend for Linux

Kapitano is a ClamAV frontend for Linux that scans files for malware, ideal if you want to check Windows files safely on the Ubuntu desktop.

You're reading Kapitano is a New GTK ClamAV Frontend for Linux, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

13 Jun 2025 1:44am GMT

12 Jun 2025

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Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Adds Power Warnings for EU Compliance

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS now shows energy usage warnings when disabling auto-suspend to comply with new EU ecodesign regulations.

You're reading Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Adds Power Warnings for EU Compliance, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

12 Jun 2025 6:05pm GMT

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Podcast Ubuntu Portugal: E351 Beringela Nuclear

Ainda a braços com livros electrónicos e cachuchos espertos, o Miguel e o Diogo dão belas lições sobre como Reduzir, Reutilizar e Reciclar que envolvem passarinhos e ovos estrelados; dizem mal do Windows 11 e como dizer adeus ao Windows 10 da melhor maneira - e ainda têm tempo, entre reuniões muito LoCo, para fazerem rebentar a última bomba da Canonical - que está a dar prémios! - mas também envolve deixar X.org para trás na berma da estrada. Depois revimos as novidades sobre cimeiras variadas, datas novas para as agendas e o que podemos esperar das novas versões de Ubuntu Touch e Questing Cueca (é assim que se diz, não é…?).

Já sabem: oiçam, subscrevam e partilhem!

Atribuição e licenças

Este episódio foi produzido por Diogo Constantino, Miguel e Tiago Carrondo e editado pelo Senhor Podcast. O website é produzido por Tiago Carrondo e o código aberto está licenciado nos termos da Licença MIT. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). A música do genérico é: "Won't see it comin' (Feat Aequality & N'sorte d'autruche)", por Alpha Hydrae e está licenciada nos termos da CC0 1.0 Universal License. Os efeitos sonoros deste episódio possuem as seguintes licenças: Risos de piadas secas; patrons laughing.mp3 by pbrproductions - https://freesound.org/s/418831/ - License: Attribution 3.0; Trombone: wah wah sad trombone.wav by kirbydx - https://freesound.org/s/175409/ - License: Creative Commons 0; Quem ganhou? 01 WINNER.mp3 by jordanielmills - https://freesound.org/s/167535/ - License: Creative Commons 0; Isto é um Alerta Ubuntu: Breaking news intro music by humanoide9000 - https://freesound.org/s/760770/ - License: Attribution 4.0. Este episódio e a imagem utilizada estão licenciados nos termos da licença: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), cujo texto integral pode ser lido aqui. Estamos abertos a licenciar para permitir outros tipos de utilização, contactem-nos para validação e autorização. A arte de episódio foi criada por encomenda pela Shizamura - artista, ilustradora e autora de BD. Podem ficar a conhecer melhor a Shizamura na Ciberlândia e no seu sítio web.

12 Jun 2025 12:00am GMT

11 Jun 2025

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Salih Emin: Apple Unveils “Containerization” for macOS: A New Era for Linux Containers on macOS

Apple has introduced a new open-source Swift framework named Containerization, designed to fundamentally reshape how Linux containers are run on macOS. In a detailed presentation, Apple revealed a new architecture that prioritizes security, privacy, and performance, moving away from traditional methods to offer a more integrated and efficient experience for developers.

The new framework aims to provide each container with the same level of robust isolation previously reserved for large, monolithic virtual machines, but with the speed and efficiency of a lightweight solution.

Here is the video:

The Old Way: A Single, Heavy Virtual Machine

A New Vision: Security, Privacy, and Performance

The Containerization framework was built with three core goals to address these challenges:

  1. Security: Provide every single container with its own isolated virtual machine. This dramatically reduces the attack surface by eliminating shared kernels and system utilities between containers.
  2. Privacy: Enable file and directory sharing on a strict, per-container basis. Only the container that requests access to a directory will receive it.
  3. Performance: Achieve sub-second start times for containers while respecting the user's system resources. If no containers are running, no resources are allocated.

Under the Hood: How Containerization Works

Containerization is more than just an API; it's a complete rethinking of the container runtime on macOS.

Lightweight, Per-Container Virtual Machines

The most significant architectural shift is that each container runs inside its own dedicated, lightweight virtual machine. This approach provides profound benefits:

vminitd: The Swift-Powered Heart of the Container

Once a VM starts, a minimal initial process called vminitd takes over. This is not a standard Linux init system; it's a custom-built solution with remarkable characteristics:

vminitd is responsible for setting up the entire container environment, including assigning IP addresses, mounting the container's filesystem, and supervising all processes that run within the container.

Getting Started: The container Command-Line Tool

To showcase the power of the framework, Apple has also released an open-source command-line tool simply called container. This tool allows developers to immediately begin working with Linux containers in this new, secure environment.

container image pull alpine:latest
container run -ti alpine:latest sh

Within milliseconds, the user is dropped into a shell running inside a fully isolated Linux environment. Running the ps aux command from within the container reveals only the shell process and the ps process itself, a clear testament to the powerful process isolation at work.

Apple Unveils

An Open Invitation to the Community

Both the Containerization framework and the container tool are available on GitHub. Apple is inviting developers to explore the source code, integrate the framework into their own projects, and contribute to its future by submitting issues and pull requests.

This move signals a strong commitment from Apple to making macOS a first-class platform for modern, Linux container-based development, offering a solution that is uniquely secure, private, and performant.

Source:

The post Apple Unveils "Containerization" for macOS: A New Era for Linux Containers on macOS appeared first on Utappia.

11 Jun 2025 10:06pm GMT

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Apple Release New Tools for Running Linux Containers on Mac

Apple has released new open source tools for running Linux containers on Macs natively, with improved performance. More details inside.

You're reading Apple Release New Tools for Running Linux Containers on Mac, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

11 Jun 2025 7:31pm GMT

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Scarlett Gately Moore: KDE Application snaps 25.04.2 released!

KDE MascotKDE Mascot

Release notes: https://kde.org/announcements/gear/25.04.2/

Now available in the snap store!

Along with that, I have fixed some outstanding bugs:

Ark: now can open/save files in removable media

Kasts: Once again has sound

WIP: Updating Qt6 to 6.9 and frameworks to 6.14

Enjoy everyone!

Unlike our software, life is not free. Please consider a donation, thanks!

11 Jun 2025 1:14pm GMT

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Canonical delivers Kubernetes platform and open-source security with NVIDIA Enterprise AI Factory validated design 

Reference architectures speed up time to market for agentic AI projects To ease the path of enterprise AI adoption and accelerate the conversion of AI insights into business value, NVIDIA recently published the NVIDIA Enterprise AI Factory validated design, an ecosystem of solutions that integrates seamlessly with enterprise systems, data sources, and security infrastructure. The […]

11 Jun 2025 11:04am GMT

Canonical Kubernetes meets NVIDIA DOCA Platform Framework (DPF): building the future of DPU-driven infrastructure

The combined solutions simplify infrastructure operations and accelerate time-to-value for AI, telecom, and enterprise computing workloads. Accelerate deployment and operations of BlueField DPUs with Canonical Kubernetes At GTC Paris today, Canonical announced support for the NVIDIA DOCA Platform Framework (DPF) with Canonical Kubernetes LTS. This milestone strengthens the strategic collaboration between the two companies and […]

11 Jun 2025 11:04am GMT

10 Jun 2025

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Ubuntu 25.10 Drops Support for Using GNOME on Xorg/X11

Wayland and X11 logos overlaid on GNOME and Ubuntu logosUbuntu 25.10 drops GNOME Xorg support, moving to Wayland-only desktop sessions. Learn what's changing, who's affected, and what to do about it.

You're reading Ubuntu 25.10 Drops Support for Using GNOME on Xorg/X11, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

10 Jun 2025 6:39pm GMT

Ubuntu 24.10 Support Ends July 10th – Upgrade Soon

Ubuntu 24.10 Oracular Oriole reaches end of life July 10, 2025. All users will need to upgrade to Ubuntu 25.04 Plucky Puffin to continue receiving security updates.

You're reading Ubuntu 24.10 Support Ends July 10th - Upgrade Soon, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

10 Jun 2025 2:22pm GMT

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Apache Spark security: start with a solid foundation

Everyone agrees security matters - yet when it comes to big data analytics with Apache Spark, it's not just another checkbox. Spark's open source Java architecture introduces special security concerns that, if neglected, can quietly reveal sensitive information and interrupt vital functions. Unlike standard software, Spark design permits user-provided code to execute with extensive control […]

10 Jun 2025 9:28am GMT

09 Jun 2025

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The Fridge: Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 895

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 895 for the week of June 1 - 7, 2025. The full version of this issue is available here.

In this issue we cover:

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

.

09 Jun 2025 10:46pm GMT

Simon Quigley: Thanks, Mailbox!

https://medium.com/media/553e1df568153a684bfe861e27692fcb/href

A gentleman by the name of Arif Ali reached out to me on LinkedIn. I won't share the actual text of the message, but I'll paraphrase:
"I hope everything is going well with you. I'm applying to be an Ubuntu 'Per Package Uploader' for the SOS package, and I was wondering if you could endorse my application."

Arif, thank you! I have always appreciated our chats, and I truly believe you're doing great work. I don't want to interfere with anything by jumping on the wiki, but just know you have my full backing.

"So, who actually lets Arif upload new versions of SOS to Ubuntu, and what is it?"
Great question!

Firstly, I realized that I needed some more info on what SOS is, so I can explain it to you all. On a quick search, this was the first result.

Okay, so genuine question…

Why does the first DuckDuckGo result for "sosreport" point to an article for a release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux that is two versions old? In other words, hey DuckDuckGo, your grass is starting to get long. Or maybe Red Hat? Can't tell, I give you both the benefit of the doubt, in good faith.

So, I clarified the search and found this. Canonical, you've done a great job. Red Hat, you could work on your SEO so I can actually find the RHEL 10 docs quicker, but hey… B+ for effort. ;)

Anyway, let me tell you about Arif. Just from my own experiences.

He's incredible. He shows love to others, and whenever I would sponsor one of his packages during my time in Ubuntu, he was always incredibly receptive to feedback. I really appreciate the way he reached out to me, as well. That was really kind, and to be honest, I needed it.

As for character, he has my +1. In terms of the members of the DMB (aside from one person who I will not mention by name, who has caused me immense trouble elsewhere), here's what I'd tell you if you asked me privately…

"It's just PPU. Arif works on SOS as part of his job. Please, do still grill him. The test, and ensuring people know that they actually need to pass a test to get permissions, that's pretty important."

That being said, I think he deserves it.

Good luck, Arif. I wish you well in your meeting. I genuinely hope this helps. :)

And to my friends in Ubuntu, I miss you. Please reach out. I'd be happy to write you a public letter, too. Only if you want. :)

09 Jun 2025 5:20pm GMT

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Mozilla Kills Off Orbit, Its AI Add-On for Firefox

Orbit, Mozilla's AI assistant add-on for its Firefox web browser, is being discontinued as most of its features are now available natively.

You're reading Mozilla Kills Off Orbit, Its AI Add-On for Firefox, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

09 Jun 2025 11:11am GMT

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Simon Quigley: People in the Arena

Theodore Roosevelt is someone I have admired for a long time. I especially appreciate what has been coined the Man in the Arena speech.

A specific excerpt comes to mind after reading world news over the last twelve hours:

"It is well if a large proportion of the leaders in any republic, in any democracy, are, as a matter of course, drawn from the classes represented in this audience to-day; but only provided that those classes possess the gifts of sympathy with plain people and of devotion to great ideals. You and those like you have received special advantages; you have all of you had the opportunity for mental training; many of you have had leisure; most of you have had a chance for enjoyment of life far greater than comes to the majority of your fellows. To you and your kind much has been given, and from you much should be expected. Yet there are certain failings against which it is especially incumbent that both men of trained and cultivated intellect, and men of inherited wealth and position should especially guard themselves, because to these failings they are especially liable; and if yielded to, their- your- chances of useful service are at an end. Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as a cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twister pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities - all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The rôle is easy; there is none easier, save only the rôle of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance."

The riots in LA are seriously concerning to me. If something doesn't happen soon, this is going to get out of control.

If you are participating in these events, or know someone who is, tell them to calm down. Physical violence is never the answer, no matter your political party.

De-escalate immediately.

Be well. Show love to one another!

09 Jun 2025 5:58am GMT

08 Jun 2025

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Colin Watson: Free software activity in May 2025

My Debian contributions this month were all sponsored by Freexian. Things were a bit quieter than usual, as for the most part I was sticking to things that seemed urgent for the upcoming trixie release.

You can also support my work directly via Liberapay or GitHub Sponsors.

OpenSSH

After my appeal for help last month to debug intermittent sshd crashes, Michel Casabona helped me put together an environment where I could reproduce it, which allowed me to track it down to a root cause and fix it. (I also found a misuse of strlcpy affecting at least glibc-based systems in passing, though I think that was unrelated.)

I worked with Daniel Kahn Gillmor to fix a regression in ssh-agent socket handling.

I fixed a reproducibility bug depending on whether passwd is installed on the build system, which would have affected security updates during the lifetime of trixie.

I backported openssh 1:10.0p1-5 to bookworm-backports.

I issued bookworm and bullseye updates for CVE-2025-32728.

groff

I backported a fix for incorrect output when formatting multiple documents as PDF/PostScript at once.

debmirror

I added a simple autopkgtest.

Python team

I upgraded these packages to new upstream versions:

In bookworm-backports, I updated these packages:

I fixed problems building these packages reproducibly:

I backported fixes for some security vulnerabilities to unstable (since we're in freeze now so it's not always appropriate to upgrade to new upstream versions):

I fixed various other build/test failures:

I added non-superficial autopkgtests to these packages:

I packaged python-django-hashids and python-django-pgbulk, needed for new upstream versions of python-django-pgtrigger.

I ported storm to Python 3.14.

Science team

I fixed a build failure in apertium-oci-fra.

08 Jun 2025 12:20am GMT

06 Jun 2025

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Salih Emin: uCareSystem 25.05.06: Because Even Your WSL Deserves a Spa Day!

Hey everyone,

Get ready to dust off those virtual cobwebs and crack open a cold one (or a digital one, if you're in a VM) because uCareSystem 25.05.06 has officially landed! And let me tell you, this release is so good, it's practically a love letter to your Linux system - especially if that system happens to be chilling out in Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

That's right, folks, the big news is out: WSL support for uCareSystem has finally landed! We know you've been asking, we've heard your pleas, and we've stopped pretending we didn't see you waving those "Free WSL" signs.

Now, your WSL instances can enjoy the same tender loving care that uCareSystem provides for your "bare metal" Ubuntu/Debian Linux setups. No more feeling left out, little WSLs! You can now join the cool kids at the digital spa.

Here is a video of it:

But wait, there's more! (Isn't there always?) We didn't just stop at making friends with Windows. We also tackled some pesky gremlins that have been lurking in the shadows:

So, what are you waiting for? Head over to utappia.org (or wherever you get your uCareSystem goodness) and give your system the pampering it deserves with uCareSystem 25.05.06. Your WSL instance will thank you, probably with a digital high-five.

Download the latest release and give it a spin. As always, feedback is welcome.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the following users for their support:

Your involvement helps keep this project alive, evolving, and aligned with real-world needs. Thank you.

Happy maintaining!

Where can I download uCareSystem ?

As always, I want to express my gratitude for your support over the past 15 years. I have received countless messages from inside and outside Greece about how useful they found the application. I hope you find the new version useful as well.

If you've found uCareSystem to be valuable and it has saved you time, consider showing your appreciation with a donation. You can contribute via PayPal or Debit/Credit Card by clicking on the banner.

Pay what you want Maybe next time
Click the donate button and enter the amount you want to donate. Then you will be navigated to the page with the latest version to download the installer If you don't want to Donate this time, just click the download icon to be navigated to the page with the latest version to download the installer
btn_donateCC_LG ucare-system-download

Once installed, the updates for new versions will be installed along with your regular system updates.

The post uCareSystem 25.05.06: Because Even Your WSL Deserves a Spa Day! appeared first on Utappia.

06 Jun 2025 10:59pm GMT

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What is CMMC compliance?

CMMC version 2.0 came into effect on December 26, 2023, and is designed to ensure adherence to rigorous cybersecurity policies and practices within the public sector and amongst wider industry partners.

06 Jun 2025 1:27pm GMT

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Launchpad News: Phasing out Bazaar code hosting

What is Bazaar code hosting?

Bazaar is a distributed revision control system, originally developed by Canonical. It provides similar functionality compared to the now dominant Git.

Bazaar code hosting is an offering from Launchpad to both provide a Bazaar backend for hosting code, but also a web frontend for browsing the code. The frontend is provided by the Loggerhead application on Launchpad.

Sunsetting Bazaar

Bazaar passed its peak a decade ago. Breezy is a fork of Bazaar that has kept a form of Bazaar alive, but the last release of Bazaar was in 2016. Since then the impact has declined, and there are modern replacements like Git.

Just keeping Bazaar running requires a non-trivial amount of development, operations time, and infrastructure resources - all of which could be better used elsewhere.

Launchpad will now begin the process of discontinuing support for Bazaar.

Timelines

We are aware that the migration of the repositories and updating workflows will take some time, that is why we planned sunsetting in two phases.

Phase 1

Loggerhead, the web frontend, which is used to browse the code in a web browser, will be shut down imminently. Analyzing access logs showed that there are hardly any more requests from legit users, but almost the entire traffic comes from scrapers and other abusers. Sunsetting Loggerhead will not affect the ability to pull, push and merge changes.

Phase 2

From September 1st, 2025, we do not intend to have Bazaar, the code hosting backend, any more. Users need to migrate all repositories from Bazaar to Git between now and this deadline.

Migration paths

The following blog post describes all the necessary steps on how to convert a Bazaar repository hosted on Launchpad to Git.

Migrate a Repository From Bazaar to Git

Call for action

Our users are extremely important to us. Ubuntu, for instance, has a long history of Bazaar usage, and we will need to work with the Ubuntu Engineering team to find ways to move forward to remove the reliance on the integration with Bazaar for the development of Ubuntu. If you are also using Bazaar and you have a special use case, or you do not see a clear way forward, please reach out to us to discuss your use case and how we can help you.

You can reach us in #launchpad:ubuntu.com on Matrix, or submit a question or send us an e-mail via feedback@launchpad.net.

It is also recommended to join the ongoing discussion at https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/phasing-out-bazaar-code-hosting/62189.

06 Jun 2025 9:26am GMT

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Ubuntu Summit 25.10 is coming to your circle of friends, from London

London calling… We have an exciting announcement about the Ubuntu Summit. We've been chatting with our community and contributors to see how we can bring our event, and the impact of open source, to even more people. This year, the Ubuntu Summit is reborn - read on to find out what changes we're making. Twice […]

27 May 2025 1:58pm GMT