Agenda
Agenda:2026/08/27
⇒ Join OpenSSF at AGNTCon + MCPCon North America: Securing Agentic AI
The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) is proud to be a Silver Sponsor at AGNTCon + MCPCon North America in San Jose, CA, on October 22 – 23, 2026. Securing agentic AI is the defining challenge of the year. This event is the perfect venue to establish the vital standards for open source security in the age of artificial intelligence.
AI
AI:2026/08/27
⇒ Nvidia’s interest in Hugging Face is a hedge against a future dominated by OpenAI and Anthropic
What does $13 billion buy Nvidia these days? A bigger say in what AI gets built and what it runs on.
AI:2026/08/28
⇒ Introducing Hy4 preview
Today we’re releasing Hy4 preview, our most capable model to date. It’s a 770B-parameter model with 49B active parameters and a 1M-token context window, and it makes the biggest gains where the work is hardest: long-horizon software engineering, document-heavy office work, and scientific research.
AI:2026/08/29
⇒ Debian Linux developers vote to allow “Responsible Use of Generative AI”
The flood gates for generative AI in Debian Linux are now seemingly open, with the results from a recent vote now available.
- https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/08/debian-linux-developers-vote-to-allow-responsible-use-of-generative-ai/
- https://www.phoronix.com/news/Debian-Votes-Responsible-AI-Use
- https://www.debian.org/vote/2026/vote_002#texte
AI:2026/08/30
⇒ Debian AI Vote has Divided the Community
Debian is a big name, a leader in the community, so the decision Debian made is going to set a precedent. It may lead to more projects embracing AI as Debian leads the way.
Gaming
Game:2026/08/24
⇒ Linux 7.3 Merges Initial Kernel Driver Support For The 2026 Steam Controller
The HID subsystem updates were recently merged for the ongoing Linux 7.3 kernel merge window. Among other hardware additions, the 2026 Valve Steam Controller is seeing initial kernel driver support.
Hardware
Hardware:2026/08/26
⇒ Openterface KeyMod
Pocket USB multi-tool bridge for tech, professionals and gaming
- https://www.crowdsupply.com/techxartisan/openterface-keymod
- https://openterface.com/
- https://itsfoss.com/news/openterface-keymod-crowdfunding-campaign/
⇒ Openterface Mini-KVM
Your Laptop as a KVM Console
IT
IT:2026/08/24
⇒ volt-gui is an AMD Adrenaline / NVIDIA Settings alternative for Linux
Coming from the developer of DXVK-Sarek that recently got updated is the volt-gui app, an alternative to AMD Adrenaline / NVIDIA Settings for Linux.
- https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/08/volt-gui-is-an-amd-adrenaline-nvidia-settings-alternative-for-linux/
- https://github.com/pythonlover02/volt-gui
⇒ TeamSpeak Will Let You Call Your Friends Directly
The feature is in alpha testing now and is set to bring 4K screensharing and picture-in-picture support.
⇒ Reintroducing 4 TB drives into our FreeBSD server
One of the primary purposes for our homelab FreeBSD box is for data backups and storage for myself, Clara, and our family. Just over four years ago to the day, we replaced a couple of 4 TB Western Digital Blues with two 12 TB drives. It’s always a good day when you can replace a drive because you’re adding capacity, not because you’ve had a failure.
⇒ FreeBSD Foundation Intern Sourojeet Adhikari on Bringing ROCm to FreeBSD
For University of Waterloo student Sourojeet Adhikari, an early interest in understanding how computers work eventually grew into a summer spent helping bring AMD’s ROCm GPU computing platform to FreeBSD.
⇒ Linux 7.3 is Shaping Up to Be One of The Most Performance-Focused Kernel Releases in Years
The merge window is still open, but faster filesystems, a smarter scheduler, and real-time latency fixes are already in.
⇒ Emperor Penguin Linus Torvalds banishes a bug – with a bot
The lad himself finds and fixes a tricky one… or does he?
⇒ Browser fingerprint tool shows how easy you are to track using the latest sneaky tricks
Glassbox dev admits he had some help from Claude to build locally running tool
IT:2026/08/25
⇒ Linux 35th Anniversary
Everything you need to celebrate #Linux35
IT:2026/08/27
⇒ BSD Now—678: Ceiling Cat has another meaning
Switches in your ceiling, AI affecting interest in things, Commodore Phone and more…
⇒ You Should Keep an Eye Out on Chromium’s Flatpak Experiment
There’s no guarantee it leads to an official release, but it would give Linux users another way to run Chromium or Chrome.
⇒ You Can Now Run Multiple Linux Kernels on One Machine at Once
Multikernel has had its first public release, and it boots each kernel directly on the hardware, not inside a virtual machine.
⇒ bhyve Inside a Jail: The FreeBSD Feature Nobody Uses
I have written about jails on this blog often enough that the position is not in doubt. Jails are cheap, they are fast, they are the right default, and the vast majority of what people run in virtual machines would be happier in a jail. That is still what I believe.
IT:2026/08/28
⇒ Lenovo XClarity Administrator in FreeBSD Bhyve VM
This is another entry that is sponsored by fme AG company. If You have multiple Lenovo ThinkServer systems to manage You may do that by hand with entering UEFI/BIOS setup and doing needed things by hand … or You can setup a Lenovo XClarity Administrator VM.
IT:2026/08/29
⇒ I Wanted an IPv4 Toast and Accidentally Built an IP Service
At 10:15 this morning I added a small feature to hofstede.it, my static personal website. Visitors whose providers still cannot deliver IPv6 would get this toast in the lower-right corner:
⇒ Trying Out an ATAPI Zip drive again
One of the first things I bought with my own money as a kid was an internal 100 MB Iomega Zip drive with an ATAPI interface. I remember asking my computer teacher Mr Jones where he’d got his, and he wrote me a referral that got me a bit of a discount, which was great. I used that drive for everything for years, amassing a small tower of the grey disks and their jewel cases. I envied the MO disks my Japanese friends had, but I couldn’t fault my Zip drive.
IT:2026/08/30
⇒ The Challenges In Bringing AMD ROCm To FreeBSD
This summer an intern with the FreeBSD Foundation worked on porting AMD ROCm to FreeBSD. The internship is concluding while the FreeBSD ROCm code is almost to the stage of being able to perform simple vector addition workloads.
Release
Release:2026/08/24
⇒ rpki-client 9.9 released
It’s a big day for routing security aficionados. The OpenBGPD project (a sub-project of the OpenBSD project) have announced version 9.9 of rpki-client(8), with various improvements, enhancements and fixes.
Release:2026/08/27
⇒ LibreOffice 26.8 Doubles Down on No AI, Right After Collabora Welcomed It
TDF is not interested in providing any AI features, sticking to the basics of an open source office suite.
- https://itsfoss.com/news/libreoffice-26-8-release/
- https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/08/26/libreoffice-26-8/
⇒ Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS Released With Initial Collection Of Fixes
Canonical today published Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS as their first point release in the long-term support series for the “Resolute Raccoon”.
- https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-26.04.1-LTS-Released
- https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2026-August/000326.html
Release:2026/08/28
⇒ Titan Nova is available
It’s been a while since we released Titan Neo back in March. And to be honest, we thought we would have our next major release, Triton, out by now. But as with most things in life, the road to the next step isn’t easy.
Release:2026/08/29
⇒ ReactOS 0.4.16 Released With New Graphical Installer, Better Hardware Support
ReactOS 0.4.16 released today as the newest major update to this “open-source Windows” project providing an open-source OS with Windows driver and application compatibility.
Security
Security:2026/08/26
⇒ Case Study: Conquering the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) with 1,400 Upstream Security Fixes
Ericsson Software Technology successfully met the stringent obligations of the EU Cyber Resilience Act by fundamentally changing their engineering strategy. Instead of maintaining private forks, the team engaged in upstream collaboration guided by OpenSSF principles. They contributed 214 direct security fixes and over 1,400 dependency updates to open source communities, significantly lowering lifecycle costs and strengthening the global supply chain against vulnerabilities.
Security:2026/08/27
⇒ 4 new ways Android is protecting your network connections
Android 17 introduces powerful new protections to secure your connections, defend against cellular vulnerabilities and keep your home network private.
Society
Society:2026/08/25
⇒ SiFive pushes development server to take RISC-V into the datacenter
Rack-mount system intended for software porting, workload optimization, to bring open standard to the bitbarn
⇒ Linux Foundation Welcomes TRACE to Advance Verifiable Runtime Evidence for AI Workloads
New open specification supported by AMD, Intel, Microsoft, OPAQUE and TII enables reliable hardware-attested runtime and compliance evidence for AI agents
- https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-welcomes-trace-to-advance-verifiable-runtime-evidence-for-ai-workloads
- http://trace.agentrust-io.com/
Society:2026/08/26
⇒ Anonymous and open to all: The Home Assistant survey dataset
We surveyed 8,616 Home Assistant users about their smart homes – see the anonymized results, what we learned, and how you can explore the data yourself.
Society:2026/08/27
⇒ AROS, the FOSS recreation of AmigaOS, comes to Raspberry Pi
AROS is an all-FOSS re-implementation of AmigaOS, and after years of effort, it now supports Arm kit – both 32-bit and 64-bit Raspberry Pi hardware, especially the Pi 3.
Society:2026/08/28
⇒ Introducing BOMHort: Kubernetes-Native SBOM Visualization & Governance at Scale Joins the OpenSSF Sandbox
As regulatory requirements like the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), NIST SSDF, and Executive Order 14028 take effect, generating a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) has shifted from a best practice to a strict requirement. However, for platform and security teams, generating SBOMs is only half the battle. Managing, querying, and analyzing thousands of SPDX and CycloneDX documents across microservice architectures creates massive operational overhead.