Table of contents for November 2025 in Linux Magazine

Dear Reader, Is it just me, or is this so-called “AI bubble” so complicated and odd that it’s hard to even come up with the words to speak about it meaningfully? Everyone has a lot to say (including me), but the words hover around the edges, never really capturing what is actually going on and what it might mean for our industry and our civilization. I don’t want to make it sound ominous – one legitimate viewpoint is that it might not mean much of anything at all, but the hard part is coming up with the arguments to justify whatever position you take. With that in mind, I was interested in a post at Fast Company by Faisal Hoque [1], who argues that what we are calling the AI…

One of the primary Intel developers (https://www.phoronix.com/news/USB4-Thunderbolt-Maintainer) charged with maintaining the USB4 and Thunderbolt drivers has moved on from his position at Intel, which does not bode well for Linux, because this is not the first Linux developer to leave the company. Intel has faced dramatic staff reductions. Back in July, the company cut 15 percent of its staff (https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/24/tech/intel-layoffs-15-percent-q2-earnings), which was (according to EO Lip-Bu Tan) done to help Intel’s profitability. Intel has already lost developers in graphics and networking. This is coming on the heels of enhanced support for USB4 having been added to kernel 6.15. For those in the data sector, the loss of yet another Linux developer at Intel could have a devastating effect, because USB4 and Thunderbolt make working with high-speed peripherals much easier in…

AMD has initiated a new graphics driver integration for the Linux 6.18 kernel. First reported by Phoronix, the AMD engineers submitted the first changes for the kernel graphics driver, which hopefully portends an update cycle that will benefit users of all types (including both home and enterprise). These updates are mostly focused on the Linux AMDGPU driver for Radeon GPUs. The changes include improved power management, display handling, and hardware acceleration, and the submission was entered in plenty of time for testing and refinement prior to the 6.18 release window. AMD’s submissions will benefit both desktop and server deployments with newer GPU hardware and should prevent kernel parameter conflicts that interfere with Kernel Mode Setting (KMS). In addition, these AMDGPU updates will deliver reduced latency, better debugging and deployment tools…

If you use Arch Linux, you know about Arch User Repository (AUR), which houses a large number of user-submitted applications. Also, if you’ve been paying attention to Linux news, you know that the AUR has been under a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack since early August (and is ongoing at of the time of writing). In addition to the attack on AUR, Arch’s main web page and forums have also been under attack. The good news is that both the web page and forum are now available (at least for some – I was able to reach both). At the moment, it seems someone has released a botnet to bring down the repository. Regarding recent service outages (https://archlinux.org/), the Arch developers have said, “We are aware of the problems that this…

Okay, people, you know the drill: It’s time to update. In this case, it’s VirtualBox, and this time it’s a major update with plenty of new additions, polish, and bug fixes. The latest iteration of the virtual machine manager not only adds initial support for kernel 6.17, but it also improves the Linux Guest Additions support for both Oracle Linux and RHEL 10 guests, as well as Windows 11/ARM guests. VirtualBox 7.2 also brings improvement to the vboxvideo kernel module for Linux guests. On top of that, you get the enabling of video decoding acceleration for Linux hosts (when the 3D option is used). It also fixes a swapped scan code issue and a VBoxClient start failure for Linux kernels older than 2.6. There have been a few minor GUI…

Budgie is a Linux desktop environment that is heralded as one of the more attractive options available, and version 10.9.3 is now available for installation. While this new version is a minor upgrade, it holds a rather important purpose – aligning with Gnome 49. With Gnome deprecating several features in gnome-settings-daemon (including the deprecation of their. desktop files), the Budgie developers have developed their own in-tree forks for MediaKeys, Power, and Wacom support. In addition to alignment with changes in Gnome, Budgie also adds fixes for things such as Mutter overlay-key change, libxfce4windowing API changes, and Vala 0.56.18+ compact class removal changes. In the official Budgie 10.9.3 changelog (https://github.com/BuddiesOfBudgie/budgie-desktop/releases/tag/v10.9.3), the developers offer this warning for packagers: “Please also update budgie-control-center to its latest release, as that will have support for…

Linux Magazine www.linux-magazine.com ADMIN Online http://www.admin-magazine.com/ Identifying Malicious Network Traffic • Holger Reibold This traffic analysis software identifies malicious traffic on your network with the use of established sources. Mounting Archives with ratarmount • Jeff Layton The ratarmount archive mounting tool offers fast, random access to archived resources. Simplify Migrating from Docker to Podman • Holger Reibold Podman has become an attractive alternative to Docker, in part because it does not require a central daemon. We show you how to simplify your migration using the Podman Desktop. Self-Hosted Pritunl VPN Server • Conor Fitzgerald We give you the ultimate guide to deploying a self-hosted Pritunl VPN server with multifactor authentication. Application-Aware Batch Scheduler • Abe Sharp Volcano optimizes high-performance workloads on Kubernetes to avoid deadlocks.…

RingReaper, a new sophisticated malware in the wild, targets Linux systems and allows applications to perform operations such as reading, writing, and receiving files. Instead of routing through traditional system calls, RingReaper uses io_uring to dramatically reduce traces that typical endpoint protection tools rely on to spot malicious behavior in a system. By doing this, RingReaper becomes practically invisible. RingReaper is one of the first post-exploitations to use io_uring operations to bypass security. According to a blog post on the Picus Security Validation Platform by Sıla Özeren Hacıoğlu (https://www.picussecurity.com/resource/blog/ringreaper-linux-malware-edr-evasion-tactics-and-technical-analysis), “This method allows the malware to efficiently gather user session data without relying on traditional synchronous commands like who or w.” Özeren continues, “By doing so, it reduces system calloverhead and minimizes the likelihood of detection by security monitoring tools.” Özeren’s…

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Managing a household is already a lot of work. As a result, plants typically don’t receive the attention they require. Unfortunately, neglecting to water or fertilize them at the appropriate times can result in their demise. This is regrettable, because caring for your plants doesn’t have to be complex. You just need a comprehensive overview of your gardening tasks and timely reminders. The Plant-it [1] project is designed to assist you in managing your plants and associated tasks, including a calendar and reminders through email or push notifications. In this article, I’ll demonstrate how to install Plant-it on a Debian 12 server using Docker Compose [2] and explore its capabilities. Installation Listing 1 shows the docker-compose.yml file’s contents with the definition of three containers: the Plant-it server, MySQL for the…

Users, developers, and vendors meet at Linux events around the world. We at Linux Magazine are proud to sponsor the Featured Events shown here. For other events near you, check our extensive events calendar online at https://www.linux-magazine.com/events. If you know of another Linux event you would like us to add to our calendar, please send a message with all the details to info@linux-magazine.com. FOSDEM 2026 Date: January 31 – February 1,2026 Location: Brussels, Belgium Website: https://fosdem.org/2026/ FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas, and collaborate. Every year, thousands of developers of free and open source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels. You don't need to register. Just turn up and join in! State of Open Con 2026 Date: February 3-4,…

Linux From Scratch (LFS) and Beyond Linux From Scratch (BLFS) are online tutorials that provide step-by-step instructions for how to compile and assemble your own Linux system from freely available sources. The abbreviation LFS refers to both the documentation and the resulting Linux system. If you’ve been around Linux long enough, you have probably come across the need to compile software – either from a homegrown application or possibly from source code available at an open source project website. You might think that compiling an operating system is similar, and in some ways it is, but building a complete operating system is vastly more complicated than compiling your average desktop application. Keep in mind that the modern distro you are using to build that desktop app already has a complete…

If you’ve been antsy to get your hands on KDE Linux (https://kde.org/linux), now’s your time. However, this is a first (alpha) release, so don’t expect it to perform well, be stable, or be worth your time. First off, KDE Linux is only available as a raw image, which means you’ll need to burn it to a USB drive with an app such as ISO Image Writer (https://apps.kde.org/isoimagewriter). You also cannot run KDE Linux as a virtual machine, so if you don’t have a spare PC lying around, you won’t be testing this distribution. Why release another KDE Plasma-based distribution? The developers want to create a KDE operating system that is immutable, based on Arch Linux, and as user-friendly as it gets. The goal here is to create the best implementation…

AerynOS 2025.08 (alpha) lets you choose between Gnome, COSMIC Alpha 7, KDE Plasma, or the Sway tiling window manager for your desktop environment. An independent Linux distribution (meaning it’s not based on any other distribution) created by Ikey Doherty (the originator of Solus), AerynOS 2025.08 offers quite a few updates and improvements. First off, there are plenty of software updates, such as Gnome 48.4, Plasma 6.4.4, Sway 1.11, COSMIC Alpha 7, Linux kernel 6.15.11, Mesa 25.2.1, LLVM 20.1.8, sudo-rs 0.2.8, and much more. This release is also transitioning to a package-set model for core packages. Package sets are a collection of packages that are related, making them much easier to manage. Each of the different desktop environments has its own package set. According to the official announcement, package sets are…

August 25, 1991 marks an important date for Linux and open source enthusiasts, because that’s the day Linus Torvalds posted (https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~awb/linux.history.html) to the comp.os.minix newsgroup (remember newsgroups?) the following message: “Hello everyone out there using minix – ”I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.” The message continued with, “This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I’d like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).” The first release, version 0.01, was officially released in September of the same year and included just over 10 thousand lines of code. In comparison, the current Linux…

Idiscovered Linux in 1999 while working for two commercial distributions. As a product manager, at first I was mostly concerned with half a dozen potential business rivals. However, I quickly discovered that there was much more to Linux. Accustomed to Windows and OS/2, I struggled to grasp the idea that distributions – versions of Linux each customized for particular purposes – could even exist. But I soon learned that despite pundits’ claims, Linux’s diversity was a strength rather than weakness. Like many new users, I began to distro-hop, and the pleasure of discovery never entirely left me. A few years ago, when given the chance to write the Distro Walk column, I was happy to be paid for what I was already doing. Still, I realize that the sheer number…

300 issues of Linux Magazine Two months ago, the staff at Linux New Media alerted me to the fact that this issue was the 300th issue of Linux Magazine, a milestone in Linux journalism, with my column for the issue to be submitted in August, the month of my 75th birthday. Of course, I am tempted to wail about the history of data processing (as we used to call it) as it changed to “computer science” from “computer black magic,” or how I never really got into computer games because writing every program and solving every problem was a game for me. However, I put aside those temptations and instead write about the future as I see it. I started programming with systems that were physically large and expensive and…

Sparkling gems and new releases from the world of Free and Open Source Software The FOSS Rises If you visit www.killedbygoogle.com, you’ll find almost 300 projects that have been relegated to Google’s graveyard. These include the Google toolbar, which for over 20 years provided a Google search bar in browsers such as Internet Explorer. Linux users are unlikely to mourn this, but gamers everywhere have been lamenting Google’s decision to kill off Steam for Chromebook after less than four years. Most Chromebooks run a heavily modified version of Gentoo (ChromeOS), so in theory, users can keep gaming by installing the Linux version of Steam. However, this will run in a container within a VM and there’s no dedicated GPU access. Like the Chrome browser, ChromeOS is based on an open…