Richard Stallman in Prague: Unyielding Spirit Amidst Health Challenges

The Free Software community witnessed a blend of resilience and unwavering dedication as Richard Stallman made a poignant appearance at the Hackers Congress Paralelní Polis 2023 in Prague on October 1, 2023. Despite battling a severe health condition, Stallman’s presence at the congress underscored his enduring commitment to the Free Software ideology.

Source: LXer – Richard Stallman in Prague: Unyielding Spirit Amidst Health Challenges

[$] BPF and security

The eBPF in-kernel virtual machine is
approaching its tenth anniversary as part of Linux; it has grown into a
tool with many types of uses in the ecosystem. Alexei Starovoitov, who
was the creator of eBPF and did much of the development of it, especially
in the early going, gave the opening talk at
Linux
Security Summit Europe
 2023 on the relationship between BPF and
security. In it, he related some interesting history, from a somewhat
different perspective than what is often described, he said. Among other
things, it shows how BPF
has been both a security problem and a security solution along the way.

Source: LWN.net – [$] BPF and security

Linux 6.7 To Update Intel IBRS Mitigation Handling To Enhance System Performance

Motivated by a 25% performance degradation seen on an Intel Xeon Scalable dual socket server due to Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (IBRS), Red Hat’s Waiman Long has been working on a patch series to update the IBRS handling in different conditions for affected Intel processors on Linux…

Source: Phoronix – Linux 6.7 To Update Intel IBRS Mitigation Handling To Enhance System Performance

GNOME's VTE Seeing Improvements For Faster Terminal Performance

GNOME developer Christian Hergert recently demonstrated how Linux terminal emulators have the potential of running much faster. At the time it didn’t sound like he would pursue the matter further but more recently he’s begun working on folding some performance improvements into GNOME’s VTE for a faster terminal experience…

Source: Phoronix – GNOME’s VTE Seeing Improvements For Faster Terminal Performance