Linux Age Laws, Valve Wins, Linux Root Exploits, 10GbE USB & Framework Shocks Microsoft

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]We got a lot to cover today as we're going to talk about a big change coming to Debian that's going to affect developers. We also have some big Linux vulnerabilities that we've been made aware of this week. We also have some performance improvements coming in Linux and much more. Let's get into it by talking about how Debian is tightening its software security rules. In this recent post by the Debian release team, we're about halfway through Forky release. That's Debian 14, which is code named Forky. and we'd like to update you on a small step in code, but a giant leap in commitment. Aided by the efforts of the reproducible builds project, we've decided it's time to say that Debian must ship reproducible packages.

[00:00:35]This means that users should be able to rebuild a package from source and get the exact same binary result bit for bit. This is a big deal as it's going to help improve and prove that software that people download really matches the source code and has not been tampered with. We have seen some supply chain incidents over the years like the XZ utilities back door which was malicious code that was inserted into the XZ utilities compression tool which the release was different than the reproducible git repository build and is exactly the type of problem that this practice tends to expose. Debian 14 will be the first major Debian release with this new rule and also one of the first if not the first distribution that has implemented this rule. This does cause some pain for maintainers and developers as packages may be blocked from moving forward if the binaries cannot be reproduced. It also forces build scripts to get cleaner. Continuous integration and quality assurance become more important and it will definitely cause more work as code packaging is going to get stricter with these rules. All to benefit the downstream software user in the supply chain. A very interesting announcement from the Debian release team. Here's a funny bug where some Intel Barlet Lake CPUs were coded to have a CPU max frequency of up to 7 to 7.3 GHz which exceeded the data sheet max turbo frequency of 5.7. This must have been a misread as this patch currently is fixing the issue. The problem here is that the Intel Pstate driver in Linux which handles CPU frequency scaling had the wrong scaling factor for these particular PC core only chips. We're getting a QAP engineer here who is submitting a small patch to fix the reporting so that Linux can actually show the correct maximum CPU usage. The numbers were wrong. Intel does not have chips that are running at 7 GHz and Linux was reading the wrong correction factor number and that is now fixed. A goofy one in patch fixes this week.

[00:02:31]Linux developers in the colonel are working towards a new cleanup tool called K confirm. This new tool would check the Linux kernel's Kconfig system which controls all the build-time configuration options for the kernel.

[00:02:43]The major job here is that K confirm would detect misusage of Kconfig. It would also detect dead code constant conditions and invalid reverse ranges.

[00:02:52]There are also optional checks to detect config options that select visible config options and to check for dead links in the help text. The tool has already found useful uses including dead Kconig code which duplicated more than 700 dependencies in Linux 7.0. K confirm is written in Rust and is being proposed as a possible inclusion into the mainline Linux kernel tools. Very interesting as this patch series is a request for comment to figure out if this new K confirm checker could help the Linux kernel's huge configuration system become cleaner and less buggy.

[00:03:26]Always cool to see new tools being introduced to Linux. Here's something that's getting a bit out of hand. As we're adding guidelines for submitting new file systems, Linux kernel maintainers say that there are too many file systems in the Linux kernel, and it's becoming overwhelming to maintain.

[00:03:41]Linux already supports dozens of file systems, including major ones like ext4, Butterfs, XFS, and others. But it also supports very niche ones or older ones like BFS and JFS. The problem here is that every single file system needs ongoing maintenance, testing, and updates as the kernel changes or updates. If a file system is abandoned or hard to test, it creates extra work on virtual file system developers. So, maintainers are now writing out clearer rules for accepting new file systems into the Linux kernel. and talking about the old file systems that could potentially be removed. New file systems will have to have certain requirements including having active maintainers, having real users, including documentation, user space tools, and support for modern virtual file system interfaces. So, this new documentation is really outlining the considerations that we must take in order to actually maintain the gamut of file systems that we already have, including new file systems. I do want to get into this in the future and actually talk about all the file systems that show up in the Linux kernel. how they came to be and how they got abandoned and of course the most popular ones. If if you want to see a video like that, make sure to subscribe below and smash that like button. You wouldn't want to miss that video. Let's get into something being added to Linux 7.2. This is actually a big deal. The Realtech RTL 8159 USB Ethernet adapters are now going to be enabled on Linux. What's so special about these types of adapters is that it supports 10 gigabit Ethernet through USB. It's a networking chip that's used in newer USB network adapters, and some cheaper models are selling under $100 right now. This means that Linux users could use realte drivers with Linux 7.2 to get 10 GB Ethernet through USB. Now, the big catch here is that any chip with these USB devices needs firmware to actually reach that 10 GB speed. Without the latest firmware, it may only hit 5 Gbits, which still is amazing. That makes it so much easier to just attach a USB device to your computer and have a driver that's going to get you 10 gigabit Ethernet. That's pretty sweet.

[00:05:39]The firmware is expected to be submitted separately into the Linux firmware repository soon. And with Linux 7.2, we'll see the enablement of these new speeds. Very cool. Speaking about speeds, the PCI SIG technical group are working on the PCI Express 8.0 specification, and it's pretty wild. As it's moving forward, a new draft.5 version of the draft is now available for PCI SIG members to review. The latest draft includes information about its major goal, which is PCI Express 8.0, aiming for 256 giga transfers per second and up to 1 terabte per second birectional bandwidth on x16 connections. The standard will also look at new connector technology, better reliability, lower latency, improved efficiency, including low power usage, and of course being backwards compatible with older PCI Express versions. So what's the reasoning behind this? Well, the goal of the PCI 8.0 specification is to deliver high bandwidth and low latency needed to drive data inensive markets including AI, data centers, high speeded networking, edge computing, and quantum computing and more. Of course, these are all the buzzwords, but it is fascinating to see just how fast we can get the PCI Express bus to go as we're getting future high performance systems.

[00:06:53]It looks like PCI Express 8 is going to drive us there. While it's still years away, it is on track to bring another major leap at least in bandwidth for future systems. And since we mentioned AI a little bit, let's talk about Cute Creator 20 beta being released as it is gaining AI support. The new beta adds agent client support, which is known as ACP, which lets developers chat and use AI agents inside the IDE. These agents can now help understand the codebase and potentially perform actions like we see in many of our editors today, including helping make edits to the code, creating builds, and just doing general development tasks. Cute Creator 20 will also add a new setting that helps you manage the model context protocol, MCP for short, which is a big move towards using AI in Cute Creator. For those of you unaware, Q Creator is an IDE mainly helping you build applications that allow you to use the Cute Graphics framework and C++ together. It integrates a code editor, project manager, debugger, and build tools all together while adding a UI designer on top of all that. Cute is used around building cross-platform apps that target Linux, Windows, Mac OS, and many others when it comes to embedded systems. So it's definitely an interesting move as it is used quite a bit across embedded design a little bit in desktop apps but mainly in the automotive industry or more industrial applications. We get infotainment systems that are built on this thing, dashboards, control screens, medical devices, kiosks, that sort of thing is where Q comes into play. So it's interesting to see how we're going to get updated developer and engineering tools with this specific Q creator update. So Linux storage performance may be getting a massive boost. Jen's here, a lead IO uring developer and Linux block maintainer is working on a new kernel patch that should improve per core IO performance on storage by around 60%. That's massive. Nothing like LSFMM session on can we get a closer look to the SPDK for motivation hacked up a concept on flight back home that increases per core performance by 50%.

[00:08:53]and kernel will never be able to beat bypass, but we can get a lot closer with not a huge amount of work. Well, what does this cryptic message actually mean?

[00:09:01]Well, SPDK is a storage framework that often bypasses much of the normal Linux kernel IO path. Using it can help make things faster because it avoids kernel overhead, but is more sophisticated and specialized and involves using Linux less. Even though Linux probably cannot fully bypass the system, this patch idea here, which has been submitted already, will help prepare more of the IO workload ahead of time. So when the app actually sends a read or write request, Linux has less setup to do, meaning it can work on more information at once, giving you higher throughput because it has to do less setup less of the time.

[00:09:34]Now, this isn't going to mean that your laptop suddenly feels 50% faster, as it's mostly applied to very high performance storage workloads where CPU overhead becomes the bottleneck. In most cases, that's not the case anyway. But as meaningful as Jen's here made a follow-up post saying instead of 50%, let's make it 60%. as this is a big deal as these patches could make Linux handle much more storage IO per CPU core especially for those very fast NVME drives on high performance servers. A massive win for Linux as we see wonderful development continue on. And if you're ready for a massive win on Linux yourself, check out starlabs.system/savvy3 where you can get an extra 3% off these amazing laptops. I personally use one as it's Linux first with no compromises. It comes pre-installed with Linux and has a wonderful premium build for a workstation that is Linux first. All with core boot, which is an open source firmware ideal for people who care about open code, privacy, and performance.

[00:10:28]Anyways, you can get your new Linux workstation today at starlabs.systems/savvy3.

[00:10:34]You can also use code savvy3 at the checkout for an extra 3% off. Now, let's get into a blog post from Zavver here on KD Plasma 6.7 as it hits on some big issues with Wayland on KD Plasma as some older CPU rendered apps feel much slower and they're trying to attack that issue especially when it comes to cute widget apps that still render using the CPU instead of the GPU. This is because they send their finished image to the compositor using whin shared memory called WLSHM.

[00:11:03]That can be slow in itself because the compositor often has to copy the image back before the GPU can use it. Well, this KD developer found a better path forward using UDMA buff which can wrap shared memory into a DMA buffer so the GPU can access images more efficiently.

[00:11:19]In the best case, it would avoid an extra copy entirely. The result here is a big performance improvement. In K develop scrolling test, K win CPU usage dropped from 80 to 90% on one core to about 20% which is a massive improvement. This means that the cursor movement stayed smooth and these improvements are expected in plasma 6.7 and cute 6.11.2.

[00:11:40]It's cool to read about this from Zaver as KD is making CPU rendered apps on Whan much better by cutting out unnecessary memory copies. The KD devs are constantly trying to improve things as a lot of us use KD Plasma as our default desktops. Big news on a Steam controller as it sold out nearly within a few hours of its initial launch. We're finally starting to see some word that the Steam Frame and Steam Machine are shortly behind the controller, but this new controller is the first Valve hardware product to actually ship. Right now, they're going out in shipments.

[00:12:12]Some of you may have already received them. The cost is $99, and this controller includes features like magnetic thumb sticks, four haptic motors, and an 8.39Wh battery. It has wired and wireless support and on Linux it should work through Steam runtime. And it's a big deal as we see the success of this Steam controller getting sold out. Valve is helping Linux become a big deal as it continues to drive efforts in the Linux software stack and specifically in gaming as Valve keeps investing in Proton and translation layers between DirectX games to Vulcan. We're also seeing improvements in Mesa, AMD GPU work, kernel fixes, and graphical drivers. All because of Valve's Linux gaming push and Valve actually contributing themselves as if people are this excited about the controller. Can't wait to see what happens with the Steam machine. Anyways, congrats to Valve for successful launch on their controller.

[00:13:01]Now for some not so great news. A second big Linux security issue, this time called dirty frag was disclosed earlier than planned. What they call an embargo was broken. I talk about this in more depth in another video. I'll post a link in the description below, but this is known as a local privilege escalation bug, LPE for short, meaning that someone who already has access to your Linux system, such as a normal user, can gain root privileges very easily. This affects almost all major Linux distributions and is in kernel code.

[00:13:28]It's related to three different modules, ESP4, ESP6, and RXRPC. And the embargo was accidentally broken as someone known as dev beef online or sick saw a commit which led them to start thinking about a previous exploit called copy fail which was just last week that exploited in a very similar fashion the kernel to get you root access. So the researcher began reverse engineering and then exposed the exploit first before the coordinated disclosure process actually finished.

[00:13:58]Anyways, patches are starting to come out. If you're worried about this one, know that someone has to have local access to your computer to actually use the vulnerability, making it very hard in real practice to do anything. Mainly, you're going to have to update your Linux kernel for security patches here soon as some Linux distributions are actually releasing a fix for this at this point. Anyways, a big deal as it is our second massive CVE in the last week right after copy fail. And a pretty big announcement, Open CL 3.1 is officially here. Why is this so important? While OpenCL is a standard for running compute workloads across GPUs, CPUs, and other accelerators, it's used in areas like AI, scientific computing, media processing, and HPC, which is known as heterogeneous platform compute. The new Open CL 3.1 release has major improvements, including adding in Spur 5 kernels, subgroups, integer.products, and better device identification. These changes are meant for Open CL to be useful with modern AI and high performance computing workloads. Open source implementations including Mesa and Rusty CL already are working towards Open CL 3.1 support. It is a massive improvement in evolution when it comes to making Open CL more dependable, more compiler friendly, and more useful for for AI HPC workloads across different types of hardware. This is great news for developers and frameworks that rely heavily on Open CL. I'm Archie. 3.7 was just released. This Archbased Linux desktop distribution is going allin on gaming. This release improves Steam setup, adds preconfigured RetroArc, improves controller support, and better integrates gaming tools like Lutris, Heroric, and Moonlight. It also adds an Xbox cloud gaming web application option. Version 3.7 introduces a new unified Amarie command which now users can use one command center with tab completion for tasks like installing software, taking screenshots, analyzing issues, and helping others. Other additions include a built-in OCR text extraction tool which help you extract text anywhere from the screen. Kind of cool as those are the big updates here.

[00:16:02]Now, let's talk about Cachios. It's making things faster as a Python update has been pushed which enables a new tail call interpreter. This is now supported with GCC16 to be used and improve the performance for around 5 to 15% depending on the workload. What does this mean for users? Well, Cashios rebuilt Python so the Python code can run a bit faster through a newer faster interpreter design. Cachios is claiming that it's around 5 to 15% faster based on specific compiler and tool chain choices. It doesn't mean that every app built on Python is going to run 15% faster, but it does have some real world performance improvements. So Cash EOS is now shipping with this faster build Python 3.14 so that many programs may run a little faster for free which is a cool update to see. Brush a rustbased shell in which brush is short for born rusty shell is trying to make a compatible bash and pix style shell behavior but implemented through using rust. And with their point4 release, they're saying that that they have a meaningful step towards bash compatibility, including having major language features like set E, set U, pipe fail, fail glob, and error traps.

[00:17:06]It also handles messy situations better like broken pipes, closed standard output, unusual file descriptors, and non UTF8 history files. Brush can now also be used as a login shell on Mac OS.

[00:17:18]We'll see how long it takes Brush to become a bash drop in replacement as they continue on to their goal. React OS has made two major improvements including ATA storage driver support which will help support storage types like SATA pa and it is plugandplay aware. Now for those of you unaware, React OS is an open source operating system that tries to be compatible with Microsoft Windows.

[00:17:43]The goal is not to be Linux-like. The goal is to let Windows programs and drivers run completely on a free and open- source operating system that behaves like Windows, especially older Windows NT style systems. So even though React OS is still experimental, it's making some big improvements as this project has been actually running for 30 years at this point and is only at version.45.

[00:18:06]Here are some screenshots as it looks much like Windows XP which a lot of us love that version of Windows. They have been making pretty big strides, but things are still pretty far behind. They do offer certain applications like Misilla's suite to run on the operating system. They got and Critter and a few other things. Here's to another 30 years of development. In big news, there was an LVFS sponsorship announcement.

[00:18:30]LVFS is the service that lets Linux users update firmware through tools like firmware update. This includes things like BIOS and UEFI updates, meaning a user can update laptop firmware, docs, SSD firmware and other device firmware, which is awesome as firmware updates used to be much harder on Linux. Users often had to boot Windows or or vendor specific tools. LVFS makes it much easier and closer to a normal system update where you can do it directly from your desktop. I use this a lot on my Star Lab Starf Fighter laptop. Again, code savvy 3 if you want a 3% off. But now Dell and Lenovo are major sponsors of the Linux vendor firmware service.

[00:19:09]This is awesome as this announcement that both the companies are premier sponsors as a part of the new sustainability effort with over 145 million firmware updates that have been deployed from over 100 different vendors. And is it a big deal because Dell and Lenovo are relying more and more on Linux laptops and desktops. When large companies like this support LVFS, it means Linux firmware updates are going to be treated as a normal support path, not just some side project. This gives Linux users better security, more confidence, and pressures the rest of the industry to join along. This gives LVFS long-term project stability and enterprise adoption. Great news for LVFS.

[00:19:49]And in another big win for Linux and Linux laptops, Framework officially has said it's selling more Linux laptops than Windows ones as the new Framework Laptop 13 Pro sells out of its first seven batches. That's amazing. As in a post on X, Framework says Framework Laptop 13 Pro is selling far above our forecast and we've sold out of our first six batches already. Also, nice validation of our approach. The Ubuntu configurations are out selling the Windows ones. That is massive, massive news. As Windows biggest advantage has always been that it comes pre-installed and you don't really have a choice. Most people do not choose Windows after comparing operating systems. They just buy a laptop that already had Windows on it. Linux usually requires a user to know what to do to download to flash to install and troubleshoot any hardware issues. But this here proves that there's a real demand for Linux ready laptops. It also weakens that everyone just wants Windows assumption. They don't. When hardware vendors support Linux properly, like framework, like Star Labs, it connects with users that Linux is simply better than Windows. And it's being shown here with people actually putting their money up. Also, it's been getting really hard to purchase hardware and where people can save a few bucks. Well, why wouldn't they get a free and open source operating system instead of a proprietary closed garbage one like Windows? It's not that we can all get away from Windows, but it is nice to finally see Linux beating out Windows when it comes to hardware. CUDA Oxide just got released which is Nvidia's new experimental project for writing CUDA GPU kernels in Rust. CUDA is Nvidia's platform for running compute code on NVIDIA GPUs and traditionally CUDA kernels have been written mostly in C and C++. CUDA oxide aims to let developers write those GPU kernels directly in Rust. As you can see here, mainly written in Rust. What does it offer? Well, single source compilation, a Rust C codegen backend that compiles functions into CUDA PTX device side abstractions, a host side runtime for memory management and kernel launching, and a Rust native compilation pipeline using Plyron and Mlir like IR framework in Rust. As this is very early on, Nvidia describes it as being experimental and alpha quality with bugs, missing features, and API changes likely, but is a show from Nvidia that it wants CUDA to stay attractive to the next generation of developers who are using Rust. As Rust has many advantages over things like C and C++ and has many, many years to catch up to be actually as stable and widely used as C. It has been showing a promising developer adoption over the years. So, it does make sense why Nvidia wants to focus on something like this. And while we're talking about Nvidia, let's move on to AMD as AMD's Gaia is getting new features that let local AI assistants interact with Gmail.

[00:22:30]Who wanted this? I don't think anybody, but let's hear them out for a second.

[00:22:33]Version 17.6 adds Gmail integration using OOTH login. And once it's connected, the local AI can now can use its tools for email tasks like reading, organizing, replying, deleting, and also interacting with calendar features.

[00:22:46]What's nice about Gaia is it's actually allowing local LLMs to run on Linux.

[00:22:51]That's the focus on AMD making local AI more useful as it's trying to connect to real personal applications like Gmail to try and keep that data local and user controlled. For those of you unaware, Gaia is an AMD open source local AI assistant and project for keeping local LLMs on your machine and using AMD hardware like Ryzen CPUs and Radeon GPUs to run AI. Think of it as AMD's attempt to make a local chat GPT style tool. And they're very focused on Linux. As Nvidia dominates AI with CUDA, AMD's answer here is going to depend a lot on open standards, open source software, and Rockm, making it Linux friendly tooling.

[00:23:27]Developers and power users often use Linux, and most people likely want to experiment with local LLMs, agents, and model servers on Linux. So, it looks like AMD is trying to get ahead of the game, focusing again with Gaia Linux support. Now, the last deal I want to get into is some massive news. I'm going to forewarn you, there's going to be a flashbang here as the next screen is pretty bright. The age laws and VPN bans have been getting out of control, but we're finally starting to see some push back as a a group of privacy, digital rights, VPN, gaming, and open web organizations are all banning together to try and warn UK policy makers about the proposed online age restriction, warning UK policy makers on how bad the proposed online age restrictions are. In this joint statement, they're pushing for UK policymakers to prioritize addressing the roots of online harm, not undermining the open web. Their main concern here is age verification and VPN bans. They say these rules are aimed at hurting privacy, creating new data security risks, and restricting access to information, making the open web more fragmented. They also worry that this could strengthen big app stores, closed operating systems, and closed platforms because open web services and smaller organizations may struggle to comply.

[00:24:36]They also say that young people do face real risks online. But access bans are too blunt. Instead, they want policymakers to focus on keeping platforms accountable as they purposely design harmful platforms, collect data, and target ads, including the fact that this could lead into surveillance, lockin, and business models that are completely harmful for user engagement.

[00:24:57]Anyways, the bottom line here is that the statement that the UK should protect people online by holding a tech platforms accountable and not turning the web into an agegated system that affects everyone. I get into this in more depth in my previous video. I'll post a link in the description below.

[00:25:12]You'll want to check that one out for sure next as it is going to affect us all. But this is some good news. There are some push backs from organizations including Misilla, MolvadVPN, Proton, the Tour Project, and many others, including the EFF and ExpressVPN.

[00:25:27]Anyways, these age laws and VPN bans are going to keep expanding if we don't stop them now. I hope you enjoyed the Linux and open source news for this week. If you did, make sure to subscribe below and smash that like button. You made it to the end of the video. you're a true fan. Catch me in a great community in the comments. I'll catch you in the next one. Thanks for watching. Linux can be hard to understand, but I take the most commonly used terms, commands, and subjects in Linux, and I break them down into simple to read documents, including Linux terms, flashcards, a checklist, a cheat sheet, and a mindm. And if you're ready to level up your Linux experience and knowledge, go to savvyick.com now and get access to these sheets.