Category Archives: Linux

FreeBSD Developers Deciding What To Do For WiFi With FreeBSD 15: Stable Or Unstable

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FreeBSD developers have been working a lot on their wireless/WiFi driver support in recent months as part of their broader initiative for improving their operating system support for laptops. While a lot of progress has been made on seeing more modern WiFi support and recent WiFi chipsets being enabled, it’s still not complete and that puts FreeBSD 15 in a tough position. FreeBSD 15 is set to be released later this year and will likely declare their wireless support as “unstable” to allow time for making future breaking modifications…

[$] Fending off unwanted file descriptors

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One of the more obscure features provided by Unix-domain sockets is the
ability to pass a file descriptor from one process to another. This
feature is often used to provide access to a specific file or network
connection to a process running in a relatively unprivileged context. But
what if the recipient doesn’t want a new file descriptor? A feature
added for the 6.16 release makes it possible to refuse that offer.

PanVK Open-Source Vulkan Driver for ARM Mali GPUs Is Now Vulkan 1.2 Conformant

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Only six months after reaching Vulkan 1.1 conformance, the PanVK open-source graphics driver for ARM Mali GPUs is now officially conformant with the Vulkan 1.2 specification on Mali-G610 GPUs. With that crossed from the list, Collabora is now working on updating PanVK’s Vulkan specification to Vulkan 1.3 and 1.4.

The post PanVK Open-Source Vulkan Driver for ARM Mali GPUs Is Now Vulkan 1.2 Conformant appeared first on Linux Today.

Avalue Introduces ACP-PI Boards as Raspberry Pi Alternatives

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Avalue Technology has introduced two industrial single-board computers designed to match the Raspberry Pi form factor while addressing the requirements of edge computing and IoT integration. The new models, ACP-3566-PI and ACP-IMX8-PI, offer ARM-based platforms for different embedded applications and performance demands. The ACP-3566-PI is based on the Rockchip RK3566 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor operating at […]

Meta’s Latest Move: Why You Shouldn’t Trust AI with Everything You Say

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Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has made headlines again with a controversial move that raises serious concerns about privacy and data ethics. According to a recent report by Heise, Meta is updating its privacy policy to explicitly allow user data—including public posts, comments, and interactions—to be used for training its generative AI models.

This news comes in the wake of broader privacy concerns tied to Meta’s messaging platforms, particularly WhatsApp. A deeper dive into how WhatsApp handles private data can be found in this post, which outlines how vague language and shifting terms make it difficult for users to truly understand what data is being collected—and how it’s used.

The implications of this new AI training policy are troubling. Meta’s ability to vacuum up user data and feed it into AI systems doesn’t just raise privacy issues; it highlights a deeper risk we rarely acknowledge: the illusion of safety when talking to or through AI-powered systems.

The post Meta’s Latest Move: Why You Shouldn’t Trust AI with Everything You Say appeared first on Linux Today.

Marking 21 Years Of Covering Linux Hardware

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Phoronix has made it another year. Today marks 21 years since I started Phoronix.com with a focus on providing Linux hardware reviews. Linux hardware support is a night and day difference then to today as is the overall ecosystem with all the major hardware vendors these days having some — often significant — levels of interest in Linux support. No longer is it typically a worry of whether your mouse, 56K modem, WiFi adapter, or other basic peripherals working but most often just a matter of how well the performance is on Linux, whether there is LVFS/Fwupd firmware updating support, and if other non-show-stopping features are supported. We still haven’t managed the “year of the Linux desktop” but it’s been wild with Chrome OS and Android being based on Linux, Linux coming to dominate the server world, Linux being ubiquitous to cloud computing, and Valve revolutionizing the Linux gaming space…

The Exploitation Layer: Who Builds Open Source and Who Profits?

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Open-source software is built on contributions from both volunteers and corporations, but an emerging body of research and commentary suggests that unpaid or underpaid contributors are often exploited to sustain enterprise-backed projects. Companies frequently benefit from community labor under the pretexts of “learning opportunities,” “future job prospects,” “developer prestige,” or doing “service” for the community. Below, we examine evidence of this dynamic across major projects and foundations, and how ideological frameworks like meritocracy help justify the extraction of free labor.