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Echoes #202625: y2026, w25

Weekly Echoes #2026W25: IT news, round-up, week 25; from 06/15 to 06/21.

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Agenda

Agenda:2026/06/19

⇒ Join us to celebrate FreeBSD Day!

FreeBSD Day, celebrated on June 19, commemorates the launch of the FreeBSD open source operating system and recognizes its pioneering and continued impact on technology.

Gaming

Gaming:2026/06/17

⇒ Epic Games Announces Lore Open-Source Version Control System

Epic Games announced today they have created a new version control system that is now open-source as Lore. Given the proliferation and excellence of Git, you may be wondering why Epic Games is pursuing another VCS option… They are specifically catering Lore to games and entertainment purposes with large file sizes.

Hardware

Hardware:2026/06/16

⇒ Raven Prism is a Linux Computer That Happens To Be A Pair of Glasses

This eye-controlled smart glass is a San Francisco-based startup’s bet on ambient computing.

IT

IT:2026/06/15

⇒ GNU Linux-libre 7.1-gnu Released With More Driver Deblobbing, Unhappy With i486 Removal

Following yesterday’s release of the upstream Linux 7.1 kernel release, GNU Linux-libre 7.1 is out with its new build for de-blobbing various drivers from loading non-free-software microcode/firmware and other sanitizing of the kernel code in the name of software freedom.

⇒ Flatpak-NG sounds like bad news for systemd refuseniks

Linux app packaging rethink could leave alternative-init distros in the cold

⇒ RFC 10008: The HTTP QUERY Method

This specification defines the QUERY method for HTTP. A QUERY requests that the request target process the enclosed content in a safe and idempotent manner and then respond with the result of that processing. This is similar to POST requests, but QUERY requests can be automatically repeated or restarted without concern for partial state changes.

⇒ FreeBSD 15 on a Laptop

FreeBSD 15 really feels like a breakthrough release.

IT:2026/06/16

⇒ FreeBSD Graphics Port Upgraded to Linux 6.12

Graphics support in FreeBSD has reached a milestone with the drm-kmod port now including the Linux 6.12 (LTS) graphics driver. This version of the port works with FreeBSD 15.1 onwards. The update marks an important upgrade in graphics in both functionality and security because it means that new versions of FreeBSD now benefit from sharing drivers with a newer LTS (Long Term Support) version of Linux. 6.12 is also the newest available version that is targeted for SLTS (super long term support) to 2036 via the CIP program.

⇒ To Make Things Easier, CachyOS Created a RUST-Based GUI Package Manager

There are a couple of graphical package managers for Arch-based distros, but CachyOS created a new one in Rust

⇒ What’s in the SOSS? Podcast #63 – S3E15 Big Thoughts, Open Sources: Driving Enterprise Security and Career Growth Through Open Source with Jamie Thomas (IBM)

In this episode of Big Thoughts, Open Sources, host CRob sits down with Jamie Thomas, IBM Enterprise Security Executive and OpenSSF Governing Board Member (former Chair!), to tackle the vital shifting dynamics of enterprise open source engagement. From IBM’s historical “billion-dollar bet” on Linux to modern supply chain wake-up calls like SolarWinds and Log4j, Jamie pulls back the curtain on what it truly means to move from accidental consumption to intentional stewardship. Tune in to discover how active participation in neutral foundations like the OpenSSF acts as a fast track for engineering career trajectories, why soft skills like “the art of influence” are critical for upstream collaboration, and how organizations can protect their crown jewels while implementing a powerful “give-back strategy.”

⇒ Linux kernel 7.1 sends Intel 486 support to silicon heaven

More than 140,000 lines of code bite the dust as ancient CPUs, bus mice, and other legacy leftovers face the chop

⇒ A 27-Year-Old Authentication Bypass in OpenBSD’s PPP Stack

OpenBSD’s sppp_pap_input function used attacker-controlled length fields as the bcmp comparison length for credential validation. Sending zero-length name and password fields caused bcmp to return 0 unconditionally, bypassing PAP authentication entirely. The vulnerability was introduced in 1999 and survived for 27 years before being fixed.

⇒ Replacing syslogd with syslog-ng (sysutils/syslog-ng) on FreeBSD

I will be using TLS between syslog-ng and victoria-logs – you will notice this is all on the same host, and some of you might say: you don’t need TLS for that. However, this is a proof-of-concept for remote hosts. They will be passing traffic through my VPN and my network. Or perhaps over the Internet. Things change. Let’s start with TLS.

⇒ Building a Soviet Nail Factory: how KPIs killed efficiency

In 2008, I landed my second job, in the network team at Orange Portails, the division behind the websites and search engine of the French telecom operator Orange. The place ran like clockwork: a comprehensive technical setup, a dedicated team for every part of the business, and room to focus on what I do best. A few years later, none of that mattered: thanks to an obsession with the numbers, we could no longer deliver new services on time.

IT:2026/06/17

⇒ Wine Wayland gains fractional scaling support

The Windows compatibility layer Wine is expanding its Wayland support some more, with fractional scaling support landing recently.

⇒ Manage Your Worktrees With Antigravity 2.0

Worktrees appeared in Git in July 2025 in the 2.5.0 version (cf. https://github.blog/open-source/git/git-2-5-including-multiple-worktrees-and-triangular-workflows/). However, this feature is not really known by developers. Articles explaining this concept are still being published today, such as this one released in June 2026 on the GitHub blog.

⇒ Getting Nginx logs into Victoria-Logs

My goal today: get nginx logs into Victoria-Logs. I’ve already gotten Victoria-Logs running on FreeBSD and replaced syslog with syslog-ng to get TLS

⇒ Adding an nginx proxy in front of Victoria-Labs

Victoria-Logs has an built-in UI – and it’s easier for me to access via my web browser if I put Nginx in front of it.

⇒ FreeBSoD: Leveraging Language Models to Find and Exploit Kernel Bugs (Part 1 of 2)

Earlier this year, a team at Praetorian was building Constantine, our automated 0-day discovery engine. I wanted to find techniques worth folding into it, so on the side I started poking at the FreeBSD kernel with Claude Code, running on Opus 4.6, which was the latest Opus model at the time. A few days of work turned up real bugs and a weekend after that produced two working exploits capable of escaping from a FreeBSD jail.

⇒ Torvalds attacks IT industry ‘security circus’

Linux creator calls OpenBSD crowd a bunch of “monkeys” and criticizes those who publicize security flaws to gain notoriety.

IT:2026/06/18

⇒ SSH port knocking with OpenBSD 7.9

Port knocking is mostly a bad idea. But people keep wanting to do it, for some false sense of security. If you don’t consider it a security control but a way to keep garbage out of your logs, it might be valid. In my case I’m using an old USG Pro 4 running OpenBSD as my firewall and I’d prefer to avoid writing stuff to the logs, as I’d prefer the flash not to wear out sooner than needed, definitely not thanks to background radiation on the internet.

⇒ Expand GELI Encrypted Bhyve VM ZFS Disk

The ZFS partition/volume expansion is generally not an ultra hard task … but needs one step at a time approach.

⇒ BSD Now—668: Wiring up the BSDs

FreeBSD to OpenBSD Wireguard, Object storage with OpenZFS and SeaweedFS, a zfs script for labeling drives, and more…

⇒ Proxy all the things: no device left behind

Discover how Open Home Foundation projects can help you give your beloved old devices a new lease of life for a more sustainable smart home.

⇒ The Danger of Abstraction: Why Deep Technical Curiosity is Still an Engineer’s Best Asset

The year was 1997. A younger, spikey-haired version of myself was running a shiny AMD K6 processor on Debian 1.3 “Bo.” At the time, I was working at a German ISP doing UNIX System Administration. It was a trial by fire where I learned how practical networking functioned whilst supporting customers in two languages.

⇒ FreeBSD 15.1 lands, but desktop dabblers still have to draw their own GUI

Better laptop sleep and Wi-Fi support make the beastie more portable-friendly, but getting beyond the shell remains a DIY job

IT:2026/06/19

⇒ Code That Built the Internet: The Impact of BSD, Part 1

Like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expected the internet. Its earliest appearance (as ARPANET) took place in the same year—1969—as the comedy troupe behind the Spanish Inquisition quip, Monty Python. But during its first decade, the internet was treated as a convenience for file-sharing and a couple other applications; few observers anticipated how it would alter modern life until decades later. The major institution that brought computers into the internet age was the University of California at Berkeley, which created a version of Unix that they called the Berkeley Software Distribution and is now known as BSD.

⇒ The FreeBSD Music Collection

This is my FreeBSD music collection. It consists of songs inspired by FreeBSD releases, experiments, and desktop and server experiences that have become part of everyday life. It was built using Suno AI and then tweaked and polished each one.

⇒ The freebsd-update(8) Screensaver

Today – which is 2026/06/19 – is another anniversary of FreeBSD Day. Because of that kinda special ‘holiday’ I also prepared something special … FreeBSD project slowly…

⇒ ZFS vs Ceph: Do You Actually Need Ceph?

ZFS and Ceph are both powerful open-source storage technologies, but they address fundamentally different challenges. This article explores the trade-offs between distributed storage and standalone storage architectures, helping infrastructure teams determine when Ceph’s scalability is necessary and when ZFS offers a simpler, faster, and cost-effective solution.

⇒ Running HomeAssistant Core in FreeBSD Jails with BastilleBSD

A complete guide to running HomeAssistant Core in a VNET FreeBSD jail managed with BastilleBSD, with separate jails for Mosquitto MQTT and Zigbee2MQTT with USB passthrough

⇒ Knod Box 0.2

What if we created puzzles one could play offline?

IT:2026/06/20

⇒ The (or my?) golden age for PC building

Jay from JaysTwoCents had an impromptu chat with Steve from our local Australian Hardware Unboxed channel where they discussed a bunch of issues around modern PC building, or lack thereof thanks to the proliferation of “AI” investors and their unprofitable, all-encompassing activities. This lead them to remember what they considered the golden age for the hobby.

⇒ Debian is Stable

People often mistake the word “stable” in different contexts and I wish to clear up the confusion. There are two main meanings in the world of GNU/Linux for the word above and these two meanings are vastly different: once booted the system does not crash, therefore it is stable once installed the system behaves exactly the same for the lifetime of this install, therefore it is stable In both examples above you can mix-in the word “reliable” in more than one way as well, but for me personally the word reliable means that I can rely on my computer to be ready to do my bidding when I am ready to use the system.

⇒ FreeBSD 14.3 end-of-life

As of June 30, 2026, FreeBSD 14.3 will reach end-of-life and will no longer be supported by the FreeBSD Security Team. Users of FreeBSD 14.3 are strongly encouraged to upgrade to a newer release as soon as possible.

IT:2026/06/21

⇒ Firefox Can Do All This? 21 Features Most Users Never Touch

Stop using Firefox like a rookie. Here are lesser known Firefox features that will improve your browing experience.

⇒ The Curious Case of aa.ns.charter.com

how a stray entry in a Pi-hole log led me to a seven-year-old bug in Charter’s authoritative DNS.

Release

Release:2026/06/15

⇒ Wine 11.11 Released

The Wine development release 11.11 is now available

Release:2026/06/16

⇒ FreeBSD 15.1-RELEASE Announcement

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 15.1-RELEASE. This is the second release of the stable/15 branch.

⇒ Minecraft Java Edition 26.2 ‘Chaos Cubed’ has landed

Another nice free upgrade for Minecraft Java Edition has arrived with version 26.2 ‘Chaos Cubed’ bringing new features and new creatures.

⇒ Audacity 4 Beta 2

Release:2026/06/17

⇒ Homebrew 6.0 released with new security mechanism, Linux sandbox and more

Homebrew was “less vulnerable 10 years ago than npm is today,” project lead tells us

Release:2026/06/18

⇒ Open VSX 1.0.0: Celebrating a Milestone and the Community Behind It

Reaching version 1.0.0 is a special moment for any open source project. It marks more than a collection of features or bug fixes. It reflects years of collaboration, thousands of commits, countless discussions, and a shared belief that an idea is worth building together. Today, we are pleased to celebrate the release of Eclipse Open VSX 1.0.0 While the recent articles in this series focused on security, scalability, infrastructure investments, and software sovereignty, this post is about something even more important: the people who made Open VSX what it is today.

⇒ Godot 4.7 Release—Lights, Camera, Action!

Like a cult classic movie, Godot 4 has only gotten better with age. The first few releases focused on stability, granting the engine a rock-solid foundation that could be safely and easily iterated upon. Gradually, this has shifted more towards polish and quality-of-life, peaking in Godot 4.6 giving developers the tools to put them and their workflow first.

Release:2026/06/19

⇒ MidnightBSD 4.0.6 RELEASE

MidnightBSD 4.0.6 has been released. It includes the following changes:

Release:2026/06/21

⇒ SteamOS 3.8.11 released to fix getting stuck on the Desktop Mode lock screen

With the huge SteamOS 3.8 update now out, a few hiccups were expected - but thankfully, they’ve already patched one of the major annoyances

Society

Society:2026/06/15

⇒ Red Hat gives Ubuntu a bootc up the backside at Canonical shindig

Bootable containers pitch shows how distro can be managed with familiar OCI tooling

Society:2026/06/16

⇒ European Commission rejects new laws for Stop Destroying Videogames

The European Commission released their full position now on the Stop Destroying Videogames initiative, and it’s not the response many will have been hoping for.

Society:2026/06/18

⇒ Canonical reveal Myna, a speech to text system for Ubuntu Linux

As part of their accessibility drive, Canonical have revealed Myna, their new in-development speech to text AI system for Ubuntu Linux.

⇒ Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in — and they’re not good

Reliance on artificial-intelligence tools degrades the abilities of physicians and software engineers, studies show.

Society:2026/06/19

⇒ What has (can) the EU Cyber Resilience Act done (do) for you?

The European Union Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) and its various international analogs are entering fully into force during 2026 and 2027, with new legal requirements that some have found to be perilous or challenging to software developers and possibly for open source developers in particular. Some have predicted this legislation will be the end of open source software and the end of the world as we know it. In the present article, we will show that this is far from the case.

AI

AI:2026/06/15

⇒ FreeBSD AI-assisted Vulnerability Discovery Project launch

The FreeBSD Foundation has launched its AI-assisted Vulnerability Discovery Project with the key goal of reducing the number of exploitable vulnerabilities in the FreeBSD source code. The 6-month project is being funded by a grant from the Alpha Omega project. The funds will be used to engage FreeBSD Security Team members under fixed-term contracts to find and patch vulnerabilities. The Security Team’s access to publicly available AI models and tokens will be provided free of charge. AI will be used for vulnerability discovery and analysis only, all patches will be manually created.

⇒ Intel Performance Skills: New Open-Source Project Leveraging AI For Linux Performance Optimizations

The newest open-source project out of Intel is the Intel Performance Skills project that is providing AI agent skills to help with CPU performance analysis and performance optimizations on Linux.

⇒ Yale researchers propose ‘copyleft’ rules for generative AI

A new study by Yale’s Digital Ethics Center proposes a novel “copyleft” licensing framework that would require AI models trained on open-source software to remain fully transparent.