Vue lecture

Górny: why Gentoo?

✇LWN
Par : jzb

Gentoo developer Michał Górny has written a lengthy article explaining the philosophy and purpose of the Gentoo Linux distribution, in response to a thread on Mastodon:

Gentoo is a source-first distribution, which means the primary method of installing software is to build it from source. Of course, that doesn't mean manually building stuff, following some kind of how-to: finding all the dependencies, installing them manually, going through a series of magical incantations, and eventually ending up no better than if we were installing a binary package. The package manager takes care of all the necessary steps and more, making package installs easy; well, at least unless something fails. But I'm digressing...

[...] We try to build a friendly and welcoming community around Gentoo, and we truly want using Gentoo be an enjoyable experience. We want it to be a system that doesn't betray you.

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Security updates for Thursday

✇LWN
Par : jzb
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (firefox, gdk-pixbuf2, glibc, gnutls, kernel, libexif, mysql8.4, postgresql16, postgresql18, python3.14, ruby:3.3, and ruby:4.0), Debian (krb5, roundcube, starlette, unbound, and varnish), Fedora (kernel, nginx, nginx-mod-brotli, nginx-mod-fancyindex, nginx-mod-headers-more, nginx-mod-js-challenge, nginx-mod-modsecurity, nginx-mod-naxsi, nginx-mod-vts, perl-Imager, poppler, python-uv-build, rrdtool, rust-astral-tokio-tar, rust-astral_async_http_range_reader, rust-astral_async_zip, uv, and xen), Oracle (.NET 10.0, .NET 9.0, glibc, ruby:3.3, and thunderbird), Red Hat (.NET 10.0, .NET 8.0, .NET 9.0, containernetworking-plugins, gvisor-tap-vsock, podman, runc, and skopeo), SUSE (agama, alloy, bubblewrap, cockpit, cups, dnsmasq, emacs, glibc, gnutls, go1.25, go1.25-openssl, go1.26, go1.26-openssl, google-guest-agent, hplip, ibus-rime, librime, kernel, libarchive, libzypp, nginx, openexr, openssh, php7, postgresql14, postgresql15, postgresql16, python311-pytest-html, redis, redis7, rsync, tree-sitter, valkey, xen, and yq), and Ubuntu (cableswig, commons-beanutils, dnsmasq, ffmpeg, foomuuri, gst-plugins-good1.0, libcaca, libgcrypt20, mediawiki, memcached, papers, postorius, tgt, and tika).
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[$] MOT: a tool to fight openwashing in AI

✇LWN
Par : jzb

Many large language models (LLMs) are described as open source, but if one looks a bit deeper it turns out that is not actually so; the model may be free to download, it may be "open weight", but it does not fit the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Open Source Definition (OSD). Assessing the actual openness of models is not easy, as Arnaud Le Hors explained in his talk about the Model Openness Tool (MOT) at Open Source Summit North America 2026. The tool is designed to help users of LLMs understand to what degree a model is (or is not) open, and to combat the openwashing that is prevalent with LLMs.

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Security updates for Wednesday

✇LWN
Par : jzb
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (bind, buildah, compat-libtiff3, compat-openssl11, containernetworking-plugins, crun, delve, dnsmasq, dovecot, edk2, firefox, freeipmi, gdk-pixbuf2, giflib, git-lfs, glib2, go-fdo-client, go-fdo-server, golang, grafana, grafana-pcp, gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, gstreamer1-plugins-base, gstreamer1-plugins-good, and gstreamer1-plugins-ugly-free, iputils, jq, kernel, krb5, libcap, LibRaw, libsndfile, libsoup, libsoup3, libssh, libtiff, libvirt, linux-sgx, luksmeta, mingw-glib2, NetworkManager, nginx, nginx:1.24, nginx:1.26, openexr, openssh, openssl, opentelemetry-collector, p11-kit, PackageKit, podman, python-jwcrypto, python-markdown, python-tornado, python3.11, python3.12, python3.14, python3.9, qemu-kvm, rsync, skopeo, sudo, systemd, thunderbird, tomcat, unbound, vim, xorg-x11-server, xorg-x11-server-Xwayland, yggdrasil, and yggdrasil-worker-package-manager), Debian (imagemagick, kdenlive, memcached, node-shell-quote, and samba), Fedora (chromium, curl, editorconfig, haproxy, perl-Crypt-DSA, perl-HTTP-Tiny, poppler, rust-afterburn, rust-coreos-installer, rust-eif_build, rust-rpm-sequoia, rust-sequoia-chameleon-gnupg, rust-sequoia-git, rust-sequoia-keystore-server, rust-sequoia-octopus-librnp, rust-sequoia-openpgp, rust-sequoia-sop, rust-sequoia-sq, rust-sequoia-sqv, and uriparser), Oracle (compat-libtiff3, dnsmasq, firefox, freeipmi, kernel, and uek-kernel), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (assimp, firefox, glibc, gnutls, go1.25-openssl, go1.26-openssl, kernel, kubevirt, leancrypto, libarchive, libsndfile, mcphost, nginx, openssh, podman, python-GitPython, rsync, and samba), and Ubuntu (ayttm, dnsmasq, libssh2, linux-azure, linux-azure, linux-azure-6.17, linux-iot, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, ngtcp2, onnx, opencc, protobuf, python-git, samba, xdg-dbus-proxy, and xmlrpc-c).
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Arias: Human proof for FOSS contributions

✇LWN
Par : jzb

Rodrigo Arias Mallo, maintainer of the Dillo web browser, has written a blog post with a proposal on one way to ensure that a contribution is written by a human and not AI; he suggests asking new contributors to record their programming session using asciinema.

In the same way that LLMs generate patches, they can also generate the asciinema recordings themselves. Then, the contributors can lie to the reviewers pretending to have made the edits. Perhaps surprisingly, this is not a easy task for LLMs, at least from my observations. The corpus of recordings of developers making mistakes and thinking the whole process of editing a file is not as large as the corpus of FOSS programs and patches in which to train an LLM. During my very simple tests I haven't been able to generate an asciinema session that remotely resembles what I would expect from a human, and even less so from a human with a nice editor theme and editing an existing Dillo source file.

The Dillo project is not yet requiring asciinema recordings, but he said that he would like to test the theory further. LWN covered asciinema in January 2026.

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Security updates for Tuesday

✇LWN
Par : jzb
Security updates have been issued by Debian (postorius and spip), Fedora (bind, bind-dyndb-ldap, linux-firmware, tor, and unbound), Mageia (ffmpeg, nginx, perl-Imager, and tigervnc, x11-server, x11-server-xwayland), Oracle (firefox and kernel), Red Hat (buildah, git-lfs, go-toolset:rhel8, golang, golang-github-openprinting-ipp-usb, grafana, grafana-pcp, gvisor-tap-vsock, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, java-21-openjdk, opentelemetry-collector, osbuild-composer, podman, rhc, rhc-worker-playbook, skopeo, and yggdrasil), SUSE (amazon-ecs-init, assimp, azure-storage-azcopy, busybox, firefox, gnutls, graphicsmagick, helm, kernel, leancrypto, libpng16, libppsdocument4_0-6, libsndfile, mcphost, nano, nginx, perl-http-tiny, perl-XML-LibXML, python-urllib3, python-urllib3_1, python311-ocrmypdf, python312, rclone, rsync, xen, and xz), and Ubuntu (dotnet8, dotnet9, dotnet10, linux-intel-iot-realtime, linux-lowlatency, linux-nvidia-6.8, linux-nvidia-tegra, linux-nvidia-tegra-igx, nltk, simpleeval, and vim).
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[$] Dirk and Linus discuss AI and kernel development

✇LWN
Par : jzb

Linus Torvalds does not enjoy giving talks, but he does consent to the occasional on-stage conversation with Dirk Hohndel at Linux Foundation events. The pair held the 30th of their fire-less fireside chats during a keynote session on May 20, at the 2026 Open Source Summit North America. Topics included 3D printing, guitar pedals, the recent 7.1-rc4 release of the kernel, and Torvalds's complicated relationship with AI tooling.

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[$] The tenth OpenPGP email summit

✇LWN
Par : jzb

The OpenPGP Email Summit is an annual meeting for those who work on encrypted email and related topics. The tenth installment of this meeting took place in March 2026 and the minutes have now been published. As usual, a wide range of topics were discussed. Highlights included support for post-quantum cryptography (PQC) with multiple actors planning rollouts within this year, a promising new approach for making email signatures ubiquitous with the plan of making OpenPGP signed email a default, a new draft that brings reliable deletion (or "forward secrecy") features to OpenPGP, as well as a plan for transferring ownership of the OpenPGP.org domain.

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[$] openSUSE "terms of site" raise complaints about age restrictions

✇LWN
Par : jzb

Many people in the Linux community began using the operating system—and contributing to open source—at a tender age, often well before their 16th birthday. Thus, a recent change in openSUSE's terms of site (ToS) that required users of the project's web site to be "at least 16 years of age or the age of majority" in their jurisdiction has raised objections. The terms have since been modified, though users must still have parental approval to create accounts if they are younger than 16.

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