Operating Systems News Archives

More than a decade ago the DTrace tracing framework from Sun Microsystems was one of the long sought features from Solaris desired by Linux developers. Oracle ended up porting DTrace to Linux over the years but without too much fanfare outside of Oracle Linux especially since the advent of (e)BPF on Linux and other tracing/debugging open-source advancements. With the recent DTrace 2.0, it's now built atop the BPF engine and other upstream kernel tracing features on Linux. Gentoo Linux today announced their support for DTrace 2.0.

It was just one and a half years ago that Cloudflare began rolling out OpenBMC on their massive array of servers to replace traditional proprietary Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) firmware stacks. Since the end of last year they've been talking up their successes using OpenBMC and now as we approach two years of their OpenBMC use within production, they continue singing the praise of this open-source, Linux-based BMC software stack.

AlmaLinux Kitten 10 has been introduced today as what will be the next iteration of this community-based, RHEL/CentOS-derived enterprise-grade Linux distribution. AlmaLinux Kitten 10 is tracking the CentOS Stream 10 sources for what will eventually become the base of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.

Solus 4.6 is out as the newest version of this popular desktop Linux distribution that is known for its default Budgie desktop while also shipping with other desktop options.

The Haiku open-source operating system project inspired by BeOS is out with their newest monthly development summary to highlight advancements made to this unique OS.

Gentoo Linux will be working on better support for ARM64/AArch64 and 32-bit ARM now that they have received an Ampere Altra Max server to help expedite their ARM build times for binary packages and installation stage builds.

RPM 4.20 is out today as the newest feature release to this package manager system that's been in development the past year and featuring a variety of improvements for the likes of RHEL and Fedora based distributions.

The Redox OS open-source Rust-written operating system project has published their September 2024 status update.

The Linux Mint project has published their status update for September 2024 that outlines work on this desktop-focused, Ubuntu-derived Linux distribution as well as its in-house Cinnamon desktop environment.

The BeOS-inspired Haiku OS is out today with its fifth beta release as it works toward the long-awaited Haiku R1 stable release.

The Linux Mint project has at times forked various open-source projects to evolve them on their own such as the Cinnamon desktop starting out as forks of several GNOME 3 components. While their software forks and focus has mostly been at the desktop-level, they are going a bit further down the stack now to develop forks of several APT components that power package management on Debian/Ubuntu systems.

While Gentoo Linux recently ended their support for Itanium (IA-64) hardware, this popular source-based Linux distribution continues to support other aging platforms... Today they sent out an announcement highlighting their improved support for MIPS and Alpha based hardware.

AlmaLinux to further distinguish itself from other RHEL-based Linux distributions has announced a Certification Special Interest Group (SIG) and out of that is coming a AlmaLinux Hardware Certification Program.

Redox OS 0.9 has been released today as a big update to this from-scratch Rust-written open-source operating system.

The Rust-written Redox OS open-source operating system has managed to address a performance bottleneck allowing this platform to perform much faster now when running as a virtual machine (VM) and for some synthetic benchmarks even able to run "slightly faster" than Linux.

Armbian 24.8 has been released as the newest version of this Debian-based Linux distribution that began with a focus on ARM boards but has also expanded to include RISC-V as well as traditional x86_64 Intel/AMD systems too.

In addition to System76 software engineers being busy working on their new COSMIC desktop environment, on Thursday they also released a new version of the System76 Scheduler that is used by Pop!_OS.

Gentoo Linux was one of the last few Linux distributions continuing to maintain Itanium (IA-64) architecture builds but that is now being phased out for those discontinued Intel processors.

The BeOS-inspired Haiku open-source operating system is out with their latest status update that highlights various improvements made in recent weeks.

Valve has just released a SteamOS 3.6.9 beta as the newest update to their Arch Linux derived operating system powering the Steam Deck and other gaming devices.

The Redox OS project that is a from scratch open-source operating system written in the Rust programming language now has a working web server, among other improvements achieved during the month of July.

For those intrigued by Ikey Doherty's work in recent times on Serpent OS as a new from-scratch Linux distribution that makes use of lots of tooling, Ikey is kicking off August by releasing the first pre-alpha image of this Linux OS.

Vanilla OS 2 debuted on Sunday as a major release to this Linux distribution now built atop a Debian base for this distro that started out being an immutable and atomic version of Ubuntu. Vanilla OS 2 besides switching its packaging base has pulled in the GNOME 46 desktop, the Linux 6.9 kernel, and made a slew of other enhancements to polish its desktop experience while offering a great and secure platform.

While Red Hat Enterprise Linux is very popular with the VFX crowd, those relying on the SideFX Houdini 3D animation software are running into a bit of a pickle if trying to use RHEL 9.4. There's a glibc bug causing random crashes for Houdini that Red Hat has been slow to pickup but is now going to be shipped by AlmaLinux early to satisfy VFX users.

Linux Mint 22 was formally released today as the newest major release of this desktop-focused Linux distribution built atop the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS package base while featuring its in-house Cinnamon desktop environment and other software apps.

We have been eagerly awaiting the end of July for the planned alpha release of System76's Rust-written COSMIC desktop. For those awaiting COSMIC in the form of a new Pop!_OS development release, that at least will be coming in early August.

OpenMandriva ROME 24.07 debuted as stable today for this rolling release model of OpenMandriva. With the new release comes the transition to the KDE Plasma 6 desktop but the OpenMandriva developers aren't yet comfortable enough to use Wayland by default and thus the X11 session is preferred.

The Solus Linux project announced today they will be dropping the AppArmor patches carried by their kernels. In turn this means their Snap packaging support will only run with partial confinement.

With CentOS Stream 10 beginning to take shape as the basis for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, the Hyperscale Special Interest Group (SIG) has begun crafting CentOS Stream Hyperscale 10.

Ubuntu-based Linux Mint 22 aims for release this month after a busier than usual period of bug fixing.

The OpenMandriva ROME 24.07 RC is available for testing over the US holiday weekend or just summer downtime.

While CentOS 7 reached end of life a few days ago, CentOS Stream 10 as the future basis of RHEL 10 continues advancing along with other ongoing initiatives in the CentOS Stream space.

The GNU Hurd team has put out their Q2'2024 status update to outline recent activity around this micro-kernel platform.

The Rust-written Redox OS open-source operating system is out with its monthly development summary that notes some interesting work taking place.

Linux Mint has kicked off the start of July by releasing the beta of Linux Mint 22 "Wilma" as the next iteration of their desktop distribution built atop Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and with plans to support it until 2029.

Arch Linux built EndeavourOS has released new install media in celebrating the project's fifth anniversary. Making this 5th anniversary release all the more exciting is the project has restored support for EndeavourOS on ARM.

Just a friendly reminder that if you've been procrastinating in migrating past the once-great CentOS Linux 7, there is less than one week to go now until it's officially end-of-life.

Arch Linux derivative CachyOS that is optimized for a nice desktop experience and shipping a nice set of performance optimizations/tuning by default is out with its June 2024 refresh.

Jeremy Soller who is an engineer at System76 and manages a side hustle of leading development on the open-source, Rust-written Redox OS has shared the latest look at this open-source operating system with the System76 COSMIC desktop applications.

The Rust-written Redox OS operating system issued their May monthly status report to highlight the various improvements made to this original open-source OS.

The Linux Mint project is out with its monthly newsletter that highlights recent progress made on this Ubuntu (and Debian) derived, desktop-focused Linux distribution. In May they worked out enhancements to Linux Mint's software manager and also continued working on optimizing their package archive hosting.

Yocto 5.0 LTS has been released as the newest version from the Yocto Project that is popular for organizations assembling their own embedded/IoT-minded custom Linux distributions. The Linux Foundation also announced today that Boeing has become a Platinum Member with Yocto.

For those continuing to rely on the Enterprise Linux 8 series, AlmaLinux 8.10 has made its stable debut this morning as the newest version of this community-oriented operating system derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.10.

Alpine Linux 3.20 has been released as the newest feature release to this security-minded, lightweight Linux distribution that is popular for embedded and container use. Alpine Linux continues to set itself apart from others by making use of musl libc, Busybox, and other modifications in the name of security and small footprint.

Manjaro 24.0 has been released today as the newest version of this Arch Linux derived desktop OS. Manjaro 24.0 ships with the latest the newly-released Linux 6.9 kernel and a slew of other updated packages.

The ReactOS project has posted their latest newsletter that outlines progress made during the past two months. ReactOS continues working to be an open-source operating system that offers application and driver binary compatibility with Microsoft Windows to in effect serve as a "open-source Windows" albeit the hardware support and application support are still an ongoing affair.

Building off last week's release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4 (RHEL 9.4) has been AlmaLinux 9.4 and now the other notable community-focused downstream: Rocky Linux 9.4.

Following last week's release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4 stable, the AlmaLinux crew today announced AlmaLinux 9.4.

The AlmaLinux OS Foundation today is announcing they are establishing a special interest group (SIG) to advance interests around high performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) for this RHEL-derived operating system.

Serpent OS lead developer Ikey Doherty published a monthly status update for this original Linux distribution, which points to having a working OS installer soon so users can begin trying out this creation on real hardware.