Version 19 of the Agama installer for openSUSE and SUSE has been released. This release includes major changes in Agama's architectural design, organization of the web interface, and more.
We always wanted Agama to follow the schema [...] in which the core of the installer could be controlled through a consistent and simple programming interface (an API, in developers jargon). In that schema, the web-based user interface, the command-line tools and the unattended installation are built on top of that generic API.
But previous versions of Agama were full of quirks that didn't allow us to define an API that would match our quality standards as a solid foundation to build a simple but comprehensive installer. Agama 19 represents a quite significant architectural overhaul, needed to leave all those quirks behind and to define mechanisms that can be the cornerstone for any future development.
LWN last looked at Agama in September 2025.
Members of the Manjaro Linux distribution's community have published
a "Manjaro 2.0 Manifesto"
that contains a list of complaints and a demand to restructure the project to provide
a clear separation between the community and Manjaro as a company. The manifesto
asserts that the project's leadership is not acting in the best interests of the
community, which has caused developers to leave and innovation to stagnate. It
also demands a handover of the Manjaro trademark and other assets to a
to-be-formed nonprofit association. The responses on the Manjaro forum showed widespread support
for the manifesto; Philip Müller, project lead and CEO of the Manjaro
company, largely stayed out of the discussion. However, he surfaced
on March 19 to say he was "open to serious discussions
", but only
after a nonprofit had actually been set up.
Here are the steps:
- Enable developer options by tapping the software build number in About Phone seven times
- In Settings > System, open Developer Options and scroll down to "Allow Unverified Packages."
- Flip the toggle and tap to confirm you are not being coerced
- Enter device unlock code
- Restart your device
- Wait 24 hours
- Return to the unverified packages menu at the end of the security delay
- Scroll past additional warnings and select either "Allow temporarily" (seven days) or "Allow indefinitely."
- Check the box confirming you understand the risks.
- You can now install unverified packages on the device by tapping the "Install anyway" option in the package manager.
Version 1.7.0 ("Daffodil") of the Radicle peer-to-peer, local-first code collaboration stack has been released. Some of the changes in this release include improved I/O usage, the ability to block nodes at the connection level, and clearer errors for rad id updates. See the release notes for a full list of changes and bug fixes.
GNOME 50 has been
released. Notable changes in this release include enhancements to the
Orca screen-reader application, interface and performance improvements
for GNOME's file manager (Files), a "massive set of stability and
performance updates
" for its display-handling technologies, and
much more. See also the "What's new
for developers" article that covers changes of interest to GNOME
and GNOME application developers.
Qualys has discovered a local-privilege escalation (LPE) vulnerability affecting Ubuntu Desktop 24.04 and later:
This flaw (CVE-2026-3888) allows an unprivileged local attacker to escalate privileges to full root access through the interaction of two standard system components: snap-confine and systemd-tmpfiles.
More details are available in the security advisory. Canonical has published updated packages as well as instructions for verifying if a system is vulnerable and how to upgrade if so.
Fedora Asahi Remix 43 is now available:
This release incorporates all the exciting improvements brought by Fedora Linux 43. Notably, package management is significantly upgraded with RPM 6.0 and the new DNF5 backend for PackageKit for Plasma Discover and GNOME Software ahead of Fedora Linux 44. It also continues to provide extensive device support. This includes newly added support for the Mac Pro, microphones in M2 Pro/Max MacBooks, and 120Hz refresh rate for the built-in displays for MacBook Pro 14/16 models.
The kernel's asynchronous io_uring interface maintains two shared ring buffers: a submission queue for sending requests to the kernel, and a completion queue containing the results of those requests. Even with shared memory removing much of the overhead of communicating with user space, there is still some overhead whenever the kernel must switch to user space to give it the opportunity to process completion requests and queue up any subsequent work items. A patch set from Pavel Begunkov minimizes this overhead by letting programmers extend the io_uring event loop with a BPF program that can enqueue additional work in response to completion events. The patch set has been in development for a long time, but has finally been accepted.
In my measurement, Sashiko was able to find 53% of bugs based on a completely unfiltered set of 1,000 recent upstream issues using "Fixes:" tags (using Gemini 3.1 Pro). Some might say that 53% is not that impressive, but 100% of these issues were missed by human reviewers.
Sashiko is built on Chris Mason's review prompts (covered here in October 2025), but the implementation has evolved considerably.
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is reporting that payment provider Nexi has terminated its contract without prior notice, which means that a number of FSFE supporters' recurring payments have been halted:
Over the past few months, our former payment provider Nexi S.p.A. ("Nexi") requested access to private data, which we understood to be specifically the usernames and passwords of our supporters. We have refused this request. All our attempts to clarify Nexi's request, or to understand how their need for such information was necessary and legal, were met with what we consider to be vague and unsatisfactory explanations relating to a general need for risk analysis.
[...] The decisions that Nexi has made are incomprehensible to us. Over the last months, as part of a security audit that Nexi claimed to be conducting, we have provided them with large amounts of the FSFE's financial documentation, which even included private information of our executive staff. We have answered all of their questions. But we have to draw a line when private companies like Nexi demand access to the sensitive and private data of our supporters.
According to the blog post, more than 450 supporters have been affected by this. The FSFE's donation pages have been updated with its new payment provider.
Fedora Project Leader (FPL) Jef Spaleta has issued
a "modest proposal
" for a technology-innovation-lifecycle process
that would provide more formal structure for adopting technologies in
Fedora. The idea is to spur innovation in the project without having an adverse
impact on stability or the release process. Spaleta's proposal is
somewhat light on details, particularly as far as specific examples of
which projects would benefit; however, the reception so far is mostly
positive and some think that it could make Fedora more "competitive" by being the
place where open-source projects come to grow.
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