Tux Machines
GNU/Linux and More
Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jul 06, 2025
Long Weekend in the US, Hard Weekend for Microsoft Staff
Kernel Space
University of Toronto ☛ Filesystems and the problems of exposing their internal features
↺ Filesystems and the problems of exposing their internal features
Even when exposing a feature doesn't necessarily require providing programs with internal information from the filesystem, filesystems may not want to make promises to user space about what they do and when they do it. One place this comes up is the periodic request that filesystems like ZFS expose some sort of 'transaction' feature, where the filesystem promises that either all of a certain set of operations are visible or none of them are. Supporting such a feature doesn't just require ZFS or some other filesystem to promise to tell you when all of the things are durably on disk; it also requires the filesystem to not make any of them visible early, despite things like memory pressure or the filesystem's other natural activities.
University of Toronto ☛ Operating system kernels could return multiple values from system calls
↺ Operating system kernels could return multiple values from system calls
In yesterday's entry, I talked about how Unix's errno is so limited partly because of how the early Unix kernels didn't return multiple values from system calls. It's worth noting that this isn't a limitation in operating system kernels and typical system call interfaces; instead, it's a limitation imposed by C. If anything, it's natural to return multiple values from system calls.
Desktop Environments (DE)/Window Managers (WM)
K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt
KDE Gear 25.08 branches created
↺ KDE Gear 25.08 branches created
GNOME Desktop/GTK
GNOME ☛ Steven Deobald: 2025-07-05 GNOME Foundation Update
↺ Steven Deobald: 2025-07-05 GNOME Foundation Update
Since some of you are bound to see this Reddit comment, and my reply, it’s probably useful for me to address it in a more public forum, even if it violates my “No Promises” rule.
↺ this Reddit comment, and my reply
No, this wasn’t a shoot-from-the-hip reply. This has been the plan since I proposed a fundraising strategy to the Board. It is my intention to direct more of the Foundation’s resources toward GNOME development, once the Foundation’s basic expenses are taken care of. (Currently they are not.) The GNOME Foundation won’t stop running infrastructure, planning GUADEC, providing travel grants, or any of the other good things we do. But rather than the Foundation contributing to GNOME’s development exclusively through inbound/restricted grants, we will start to produce grants and fellowships ourselves.
↺ this Reddit comment, and my reply
Distributions and Operating Systems
Fedora Family / IBM
Kevin Fenzi: whew. Datacenter move (mostly) over
↺ Kevin Fenzi: whew. Datacenter move (mostly) over
Hey everyone. Welcome to the far side of the 2025 Datacenter Move. Everything is now moved over and (mostly) working from the new location.
There are of course some things to fix still. We have been tracking the smaller items in: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/issue/12620 and larger ones in their own tickets. At this point if you see an issue please check if it's been mentioned above or in another infra ticket and if not, let us know.
↺ https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/issue/12620
↺ https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/issue/12620
Open Hardware/Modding
Coreboot (Official) ☛ Announcing the coreboot release 25.06
↺ Announcing the coreboot release 25.06
The coreboot project is pleased to announce the release of coreboot 25.06, another milestone in our work promoting the use of open-source firmware. This release incorporates almost 900 commits from more than 120 contributors, including 28 first time contributors. It brings enhanced boot splash screen capabilities, improved build tooling support, and expanded wireless power management features. Along with these headline improvements, we’ve delivered numerous stability enhancements and infrastructure updates that strengthen coreboot’s foundation across all supported platforms.
Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
The Register UK ☛ iFixit gives Fairphone 6 top marks for repairability
↺ iFixit gives Fairphone 6 top marks for repairability
The sixth generation of the Fairphone repairable mobile was launched at the end of June. Now spunger-flingers iFixit have got their hands on it, and liked the result.
Source