Linux.co.uk

The “Software Police” Are Coming

Oddjobz — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 02:21:45 +0000

The "Software Police" Are Coming: Why Open Source Is Terrified of the EU's New Laws

In recent years, the open-source community has watched the legislative horizon with growing dread. While governments publicly praise “innovation” and “digital sovereignty,” two massive pieces of EU legislation—the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) and the Product Liability Directive (PLD) – are set to rewrite the rules of software.

The goal of these laws is admirable: to force manufacturers to build more secure software and to make them liable when data breaches hurt consumers. But there is a catch. The internet wasn’t built by manufacturers. The vast majority of its critical infrastructure from the encryption that protects your bank account to the server software running the NHS is built by volunteers, academics, and small, independent projects.

For decades, this community has operated under a simple pact;

The code is free to use, but it is provided ‘As Is,’ with no warranty and no liability.

This new legislation attempts to shred that pact, treating open-source volunteers as if they were Apple or Microsoft. The result is a looming disaster for open source, innovation, and digital freedom.

The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA): Software Needs a CE Mark?

The CRA (often combined with the Cyber Solidarity Act) introduces mandatory security requirements for any “product with digital elements” sold in the EU. In short, it demands that software receive a CE mark—just like a physical toaster or a children’s toy—before it can be “placed on the market.”

The Problem: What does “On the Market” mean?

This is the single biggest question that is currently causing panic. Open-source developers do not typically “place software on the market.” They publish code to a public repository (like GitHub). Under the CRA, if a piece of open-source software is used by a company (even if the developer didn’t know or approve), the original developer could be defined as a “manufacturer.”

The Consequences

Mandatory Certification
If you maintain a popular open-source library, you could be legally required to perform complex risk assessments, undergo third-party audits, and maintain exhaustive technical documentation—all at your own considerable expense.
Strict Deadlines
If a vulnerability is found in your code, the CRA mandates that you patch it and report it to a government agency within 24 hours.
Massive Fines
Failure to comply can result in fines of up to €15 million or 2.5% of total global turnover (even if that turnover is zero).

For a small team of volunteers running a project for free, this is an impossible bureaucratic and financial hurdle.

The Product Liability Directive (PLD): Who Pays When Code Breaks?

While the CRA focuses on the rules of placing software on the market, the PLD focuses on who is responsible when things go wrong.

The updated PLD is trying to treat software as a physical product rather than a service. This means that if a security vulnerability in a “product” (like a web browser or an smart home hub) causes you to lose your data, the “manufacturer” is strictly liable for the damages.

The Problem – The “Supply Chain” Trick

If you build a smart light bulb and use free open-source code for its networking chip, and that light bulb causes a data leak, the consumer might sue you. Under the new PLD, you (the manufacturer) are incentivised to turn around and sue the open-source developer who built the networking code you used for free.

The Consequences

Open-source developers have always built in public on the understanding that they are providing knowledge, not a product with a guarantee. By erasing the distinction between software and physical products, the PLD is treating volunteers like they are manufacturing faulty brake pads.

The Final Outlook: "Let It Rot" or "Get Big"?

The open-source community isn’t just “complaining” about paperwork. They are raising the alarm because this legislation threatens the existence of independent software development.

If these laws are enforced as currently drafted:

Independent Projects Shut Down
Maintainers will simply archive their repositories and delete their code (“Let It Rot”). The legal risk of helping others for free will be too high.
The “Big Tech” Monopoly Is Cemented
Only giant corporations (like Meta, Google, or Microsoft) can afford the compliance costs, security audits, and legal insurance that the CRA and PLD demand. Open innovation dies.
Europe Is Blacklisted
To avoid legal liability, many developers will simply add a single line to their license: “NOT FOR USE IN THE EU.” This will starve European businesses and governments of the very innovation they claim to want.

By attempting to police “software quality” using tools designed for physical products, the state is making independent coding criminal by proxy. If they force the volunteers to quit, they will look back and realize they destroyed the foundation of the digital world, all in the name of making it “safe.”

Attribution: This explanation of the CRA and PLD was generated by Gemini (Google’s AI) in collaboration with the maintainers of this site to clarify the real-world impact of upcoming software legislation.

Now before you get too comfortable because we’re no longer in the EU, you should be aware that many of the promises made when the UK left the EU haven’t exactly been honoured in the way you might have expected. In this context, as you may have heard from ministers via the TV in recent times, the UK is trying to adopt parallel laws to make interactions and compliance with the EU easier (!)

So apparently in the UK we now have the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill which finished committee stage in February. As this is billed as “essential to national security” and has cross-party support the chances of adoption seem to be 99%+.

There is also the Software Security Code of Practice, which is the UK’s answer to the PLD. Now apparently (!) this is already in play, but on a “voluntary” basis. “That’s Ok” I hear you say, it’s just “voluntary”. Gemini seems to think that in English Common Law, once a “Code of Practice” exists, it becomes the benchmark for negligence, so in context “voluntary” is really all they need to get the same overall effect.

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The “Internet ID” Debate: Why is it so messy?

Oddjobz — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:35:43 +0000

The "Internet ID" Debate: Why is it so messy?

This article explores the unintended consequences of age-verification laws on the independent developer and open-source communities. It was generated by Gemini (Google’s AI) in collaboration with Mad Penguin to help clarify the technical and social impact of recent legislation.

Most people agree that children shouldn’t stumble across harmful content online. However, the UK’s current approach (the Online Safety Act) has created a massive divide. On one side is the Government saying, “We need to see your ID to keep kids safe.” On the other are the people who build the internet saying, “You are about to break the foundation of the digital world.”

Here is the breakdown of the Pros and Cons in plain English.

The Pros: Why the Government wants this

A “Digital Turnstile”
Just as you show ID at a pub, the law wants a “turnstile” at the door of social media and AI sites. This makes it much harder for children to lie about their age.
Accountability
If everyone is “verified,” it’s harder for anonymous trolls to bully or “groom” others, as their real-world identity is linked to their account.
Peace of Mind for Parents
It gives parents a “system-level” tool to ensure their kids aren’t seeing things they aren’t ready for.

The Cons: Why the "Tech Class" is worried

This is where the “Cons” go deeper than just “I want my privacy.” There are three major risks:

1. The "Honeypot" Risk (Security)

To prove you are an adult, you have to give your data (passport, credit card, or face scan) to a website.

The Problem:
Governments and big companies have a terrible track record of keeping this data safe.
Example:
Just this month (March 2026), a major flaw at Companies House allowed anyone to see the private home addresses and birthdays of 5 million directors just by clicking the “Back” button in their browser.
The Fear:
If the government can’t secure a simple business registry, why should we trust them—or a random social media app—with our passports?

2. The "Ghost Town" Effect (Innovation)

Building these “ID Checkpoints” is incredibly expensive.

The Problem:
Small, creative websites and independent developers (the people who actually build the tools we use) can’t afford the £10,000+ monthly fees to run these ID checks.
The Result:
Rather than risk a massive government fine, these creators are simply turning off their services or “archiving” their work. The internet becomes a “Ghost Town” where only the giant corporations (like Meta or Google) can afford to exist.

3. The "Dependency Collapse" (Stability)

This is the most “invisible” danger. The internet isn’t one single thing; it’s a giant tower of Lego bricks. Most government websites are built using “free bricks” (Open Source code) maintained by volunteers.

The Problem:
If a volunteer in their bedroom is told they are now “legally responsible” for verifying the age of everyone who looks at their code, they will simply delete the code.
The Result:
When those “bricks” vanish, the government’s own systems (like the NHS or tax offices) might stop working because they can’t “rebuild” their software.

The "Shotgun" Analogy

Imagine the government sees a fly on your boot.
They want to kill the fly to protect you.
To do it, they point a shotgun at your foot and pull the trigger.

The Fly (The Harm): Might be gone.
The Boot (The Internet): Has a massive hole in it.
The Foot (The Economy): Is shattered.

The Bottom Line

Opposing this legislation isn’t about “not wanting to protect children.” It’s about pointing out that the tool being used is too destructive. Critics argue that we are trading our privacy and a functional internet for a “safety system” that can be bypassed by anyone with a basic technical skill (like a VPN), leaving us with an internet that is less secure, less creative, and owned entirely by a few giant companies.

The post The “Internet ID” Debate: Why is it so messy? appeared first on Linux.co.uk.

Important Community Announcement

Oddjobz — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 11:05:01 +0000

Important Community Announcement

It is with profound regret that, after 15 years of dedicated, free support to the UK Linux community, the linuxforums.org.uk forum has permanently ceased operations.

Following the introduction of recently implemented government legislation, the maintainers no longer believe that providing this service is viable or sustainable under the new regulatory framework.

We wish to extend our deepest gratitude to everyone who contributed to making this forum a vital resource. We offer a special thanks to our volunteer moderators, whose tireless and selfless dedication supported countless users over the years.

While we have closed our doors, we remain committed to the principles of open support. Should we identify an equivalent, legally sustainable service for the UK Linux community, we will attempt to update this page with those details.

– the Mad Penguin team.

29Mar

The “Software Police” Are Coming

27Mar

The “Internet ID” Debate: Why is it..

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MocaccinoOS

Oddjobz — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 02:41:57 +0000

MocaccinoOS (25.09)

This appears to be one of a number of up and coming immutable style distro’s that aims to move users away from lots of locally installed native applications and all the risks they carry, towards a partitioned future where all applications exist in their own contained environment.

This concept is still early-days to an extent, but this looks like an interesting start. It comes as a standard Live ISO with an option to Install, so you can take it for a spin before committing it to your hard disk. For testing purposes I managed to spin it up and whizz through the installer in a virtual machine without any major issues.

It’s a relatively standard Calamares based installer, maybe not as polished as some of the latest offerings from the likes of Ubuntu, but neatly done and very functional. It comes in a number of flavours as you’d expect, in this instance I’m experimenting with the Gnome version.

There’s nothing much to say about the desktop itself, it’s the standard vanilla Gnome offering with customisation left up to you. What is more interesting is what you find under the hood if you dig a little.

The package manager is something call Luet, which is a very different animal to the likes of apt and yum. The number of applications installed in in the base image is surprising, I found things like btop and mysql already there and other applications like Chromium and LibreOffice available from the software installer via FlatPak.

Main Features as quoted in their Documentation

Focused on minimalism, small footprint, and ease of use
Native vanilla upstream kernel: We closely follow kernel versions from upstream, LTS included
Unique approach to package management: SAT-solving is also applied on packages built in containers (Docker, Kubernetes, etc.)
Meta distribution: It can be easily used to bootstrap other OS or spin-offs
Local iteration: With the container ecosystem, it’s easy to iterate development locally
Cloud first: Support for the most important cloud technology in the landscape
Different variants: From server to desktop, from systemd to runit!

It will be interesting to see where this goes, but for now this looks like a surprisingly easy-to-use cutting edge distro that addresses a number of recent concerns over things like supply chain attacks that look like being an issue both now and in the future. Notably I’m looking at my main system which is running the latest version of Debian (Trixie) which is sporting a 6.1.0 kernel. This feels a little “old”. Mocaccino on the other hand is showing 6.12.45, which is far more recent (!)

I’ve not had chance to play with some of the more advanced development and security features facilitated by it’s immutable nature, but if you’re looking to try something new it certainly feels like a contender.

For more information;

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Linux in August 2025

Oddjobz — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 13:29:23 +0000

News Roundup - August 2025

Despite the heat here in the UK, it’s been pretty busy in the world of Linux. There have been some major new releases, not least Debian “Trixie” which will be the next stable LTS base for many of the major Linux derivative distributions for the next few years.

CachyOS and Arch

In the “also ran” camp we have some other new releases like CachyOS. On the one hand this looks very nice and has lots of new features, but on the other hand as an Arch derivative they may be subject to some of the issues that have been plaguing the Arch OS distribution this week.

Not only have they been subject to a massive and prolonged DDOS attack, but this is off the back of a serious exploit in their AUR repository.

Intel and Clear Linux

Probably the most important Linux distribution you never heard of shuttered it’s doors at the end of last month. Clear Linux, which was developed and supported by Intel is no more. You can read the EOL notice and comments here. The distribution was used partly as a testing ground for new features and new optimisations leading to a Linux Kernel optimised for Intel hardware. It will be interesting to see how Linux fares over time as new Intel features appear and how quickly those features appear in the mainline kernel.

Linux Gaming

Not something that tends to make the technical news maybe as often as it should, but Linux is becoming a fairly serious gaming platform in it’s own right thanks to Steam. With active online users now up the the 30-40M+ range, they seem to have built up a user base that’s become more than sustainable.

Linux Hardware

We’re starting to see a huge range of new hardware appearing that supports Linux. Some of this is available with Linux pre-installed but there is a growing collection of very cost-effective hardware that seems explicitly designed for people who want to install their own version of Linux on it.

Linux turns 34

This month Linux had it’s 34th Birthday. August 25th 1991 and Linus announced the first release of Linux. It was pretty basic at the time and didn’t have support for critical features like networks (!) but even at that point it was clearly going to be a force to reckon with. I downloaded my first version from Compuserve a week later and have never looked back.

Firefox 143

Despite some of the negative press Firefox updates keep on coming on a regular basis, this one brings with it better sound support and support for some of the latest CSS coding features.

More News, More Vendors ...

If you have any news or would like to write for the site, please get in touch or visit the community forums and get involved. Similarly if you are a Linux Vendor (or know one) who would like to be listed under Vendors, drop up a line – it’s a free service.

Ads

You will notice – there aren’t any to slow you down or get in your face!

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Linux Web Hosting in 2025!

Oddjobz — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 22:25:18 +0000

Linux Web Hosting in 2025

Once upon a time, in order to host your own website you needed a paid-for web hosting service, a public folder, an index.html file and some HTML coding skills. Fortunately things have moved on a little since then.

Fancy running your own website on your own Linux PC?

You no longer need to know any HTML (although a little appreciation can help) and for relatively modest projects, you no longer need to pay for hosting services. I’m not talking about a specific short term ‘get it for free while it lasts’ product, this has become a long term standard facility offered by many providers.

Why is this free?

Well, it’s a great loss-leader and a way to pick up entry-level customers, with a minimal (if not pretty much zero) operational overhead.

Getting your own self-hosted site

There are many ways to approach this, I’m going to run through the method I use just to give you a flavour of what’s involved.

What you need

A PC running Linux, pretty much anything will do
A (free) Copy of WordPress to run on your PC
A (free) ‘pages’ account with an online provider

What you can expect to pay

For a personal website or small business website nothing. If you find yourself with a really popular site with lots and lots of visitors, probably still nothing. If you start to need dynamic features, user logins and other infrastructure, you may want to add some chargeable features, but you’ll likely still be in the £5 to £20 per month range.

Why Did I Think Websites Were Expensive?

In general the cost is associated with time spent generating and maintaining content, but if you’re doing this yourself, the only cost is your time. If you want a ‘commercial’ template to make your site look really professional (there are plenty of good / free templates) then expect to pay between £20 and £60 from a reputable design firm. (this is a one-off, not a subscription)

WordPress

If you’re unfamiliar with WordPress, it’s a relatively long-lived, open-source Content Management System which has adapted to become a solid platform for building maintainable websites that can be managed and updated by regular people.

Technically it’s a PHP application that runs on top of either Apache or NGINX and MySQL.

You will find a host of video’s on YouTube on how to install WordPress on your computer, or to make life really easy there are Docker images available for both WordPress and MySQL which involve only minimal installation and configuration.

A 'pages' provider

Some companies call the service a ‘pages’ service, others refer it it a ‘JamStack’ account. In each instance it’s typically a static web service that’s driven from either a GitHub or GitLab account. Companies that provide such a service include (but are certainly not limited to);

CloudFlare
GitHub
GitLab
MadPenguin

The idea in each instance is that you save your static HTML pages to your Git account, then point the Pages service at the Git account. Each time you make a change to your website, save the changes in Git and those changes are automatically re-provisioned in the Pages service.

The Missing Link ...

The problem with all this is that although WordPress solves the website design and maintenance issues, and a Pages provider solves the provisioning and delivery issues, there is a disconnect. WordPress stores it’s content in templates and a MySQL database, but the Pages service needs static HTML files.

The Solution

A service which will make a static copy of your WordPress site. There are a number of such (free) WordPress plugins available, but one in particular provides a seamless service, scanning your site directly into a GitLab repository.

The free “MakeMeStatic” plugin takes a snapshot of your WordPress site at any given point in time and synchronises it with your Git Repository. From there you can apply your own Pages provider who will host the site live for you.

Typically they will all allow you to point your own domain name (for free) at your new Pages site. I’m saying “free”, each provider will have their own Terms you’ll need to check for limitations, fair-use, etc.

By default the plugin will use the MadPenguin Git Repository and Pages platform, so subject to pointing your domain name it’s pretty much zero-config. All you need now is some content …

References

WordPress Open Source CMS
CloudFlare Pages
The MakeMeStatic Plugin (available from the WordPress plugin directory)
Theme Forest (for professional WordPress Templates)

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TheLinuxShop

Oddjobz — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 15:32:08 +0000

TheLinuxShop

The Linux Shop has been supplying Linux since 2004 to customers across the UK and Worldwide. We are renowned for our fast, friendly service and our aim is to make your Linux experience a simple and pleasurable one.

Key Services

Key Products

Linux on DVD
Linux on USB

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Debian 13 “trixie” released

Oddjobz — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 12:05:12 +0000

Debian 13 "trixie" released

This article is sourced from Debian News.

After 2 years, 1 month, and 30 days of development, the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 13 (code name trixie).

trixie will be supported for the next 5 years thanks to the combined work of the Debian Security team and the Debian Long Term Support team.

Debian 13 trixie ships with several desktop environments, such as:

GNOME 48,
KDE Plasma 6.3,
LXDE 13,
LXQt 2.1.0,
Xfce 4.20

This release contains over 14,100 new packages for a total count of 69,830 packages, while over 8,840 packages have been removed as obsolete. 44,326 packages were updated in this release. The overall disk usage for trixie is 403,854,660 kB (403 GB), and is made up of 1,463,291,186 lines of code.

Thanks to our translators who have made the man-pages for trixie available in multiple languages.

The manpages-l10n project has contributed many improved and new translations for manual pages. Especially Romanian and Polish translations are greatly enhanced since bookworm. All architectures other than i386 now use a 64-bit time_t ABI, supporting dates beyond 2038. Debian contributors have made significant progress towards ensuring package builds produce byte-for-byte reproducible results. You can check the status for packages installed on your system using the new package debian-repro-status, or visit reproduce.debian.net for Debian’s overall statistics for trixie and newer.

Debian 13 trixie includes numerous updated software packages (over 63% of all packages from the previous release), such as:

Apache 2.4.64
Bash 5.2.37
BIND DNS Server 9.20
Cryptsetup 2.7
curl/libcurl 8.14.1
Emacs 30.1
Exim (default email server) 4.98
GNUcash 5.10
GNU Compiler Collection 14.2
GIMP 3.0.4
GnuPG 2.4.7
Inkscape 1.4
the GNU C Library 2.41
LibreOffice 25.2
Linux kernel 6.12 LTS series
LLVM/Clang toolchain 19 (default), 17 and 18 available
MariaDB 11.8
Nginx 1.26
OpenJDK 21
OpenLDAP 2.6.10
OpenSSH 10.0p1
OpenSSL 3.5
Perl 5.40
PHP 8.4
Postfix 3.10
PostgreSQL 17
Python 3, 3.13
Rustc 1.85
Samba 4.22
Systemd 257
Vim 9.1

With this broad selection of packages and its traditional wide architecture support, Debian once again stays true to its goal of being The Universal Operating System. It is suitable for many different use cases: from desktop systems to netbooks; from development servers to cluster systems; and for database, web, and storage servers. At the same time, additional quality assurance efforts like automatic installation and upgrade tests for all packages in Debian’s archive ensure that trixie fulfills the high expectations that users have of a stable Debian release.

This release for the first time officially supports the riscv64 architecture, allowing users to run Debian on 64-bit RISC-V hardware and benefit from all Debian 13 features. A total of seven architectures are officially supported for trixie:

trixie

64-bit PC (amd64),
64-bit ARM (arm64),
ARM EABI (armel),
ARMv7 (EABI hard-float ABI, armhf),
64-bit little-endian PowerPC (ppc64el),
64-bit little-endian RISC-V (riscv64),
IBM System z (s390x)

i386 is no longer supported as a regular architecture: there is no official kernel and no Debian installer for i386 systems. The i386 architecture is now only intended to be used on a 64-bit (amd64) CPU. Users running i386 systems should not upgrade to trixie. Instead, Debian recommends either reinstalling them as amd64, where possible, or retiring the hardware.

trixie will be the last release for the armel architecture. See 5.1.3. Last release for armel in the release notes for more information on our ARM EABI support.

The Debian Cloud team publishes trixie for several cloud computing services:

Amazon EC2 (amd64 and arm64),
Microsoft Azure (amd64),
OpenStack (generic) (amd64, arm64, ppc64el),
PlainVM (amd64, arm64, ppc64el),
NoCloud (amd64, arm64, ppc64el)

The genericcloud image should be able to run in any virtualised environment, and there is also a nocloud image which is useful for testing the build process.

Cloud images provide automation hooks via “cloud-init“ and prioritize fast instance startup using specifically optimized kernel packages and grub configurations.

Want to give it a try?

If you simply want to try Debian 13 trixie without installing it, you can use one of the available live images which load and run the complete operating system in a read-only state via your computer’s memory.

These live images are provided for the amd64 and arm64 architectures and are available for DVDs, USB sticks, and netboot setups. The user can choose among different desktop environments to try: GNOME, KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, MATE, LXDE, LXQt, and Xfce. Debian Live trixie has a standard live image, so it is also possible to try a base Debian system without any of the graphical user interfaces.

Should you enjoy the operating system you have the option of installing from the live image onto your computer’s hard disk. The live image includes the Calamares independent installer as well as the standard Debian Installer. More information is available in the release notes and the live install images sections of the Debian website. Multi-architecture Debian trixie container images are also available on Docker Hub . In addition to the standard images, a slim variant is available to reduce disk usage. The Debian Installer and Debian Live Images can now be booted using HTTP Boot on supported UEFI and U-Boot firmware.

To install Debian 13 trixie directly onto your computer’s storage device you can choose from a variety of installation media types to Download such as: Blu-ray Disc, DVD, CD, USB stick, or via a network connection. See the Installation Guide for more details.

Debian can now be installed in 78 languages, with most of them available in both text-based and graphical user interfaces.

The installation images may be downloaded right now via bittorrent (the recommended method), jigdo, or HTTP; see Debian on CDs for further information. trixie will soon be available on physical DVD, CD-ROM, and Blu-ray Discs from numerous vendors too.

Upgrading Debian

Upgrades to Debian 13 trixie from the previous release, Debian 12 bookworm, are automatically handled by the APT package management tool for most configurations.

Before upgrading your system, it is strongly recommended that you make a full backup, or at least back up any data or configuration information you can’t afford to lose. The upgrade tools and process are quite reliable, but a hardware failure in the middle of an upgrade could result in a severely damaged system.

The main things you’ll want to back up are the contents of /etc, /var/lib/dpkg, /var/lib/apt/extended_states and the output of:

$ dpkg --get-selections '*' # (the quotes are important)

We welcome any information from users related to the upgrade from bookworm to trixie. Please share information by filing a bug in the Debian bug tracking system using the upgrade-reports package with your results.

There has been a lot of development on the Debian Installer since its previous official release with Debian 12, resulting in improved hardware support and some very useful new features such as

Improved hardware and software support for speech synthesis
Initial and restricted support for rescuing Debian installed to a btrfs subvolume
Changed default unit from MB to GB when partitioning disks
Disabled cdrom sources if installation medium is not a real CD (USB stick, SD card, ISO file), because APT cannot use it after the installation
Plus support for secure boot with systemd-boot

It is advisable to remove bookworm-backports entries from APT source-list files before the upgrade; after the upgrade consider adding trixie-backports.

If your APT configuration also involves pinning or APT::Default-Release, it is likely to require adjustments to allow the upgrade of packages to the new stable release. Please consider disabling APT pinning.

Under some circumstances, issues might arise during the upgrade process, or while running trixie.

For instance, the TLS support in the OpenLDAP client libldap2 and server slapd is now provided by OpenSSL instead of GnuTLS. This affects the available configuration options, as well as their behavior. If no TLS CA certificates are specified, the system default trust store will now be loaded automatically. If you do not want the default CAs to be used, you must configure the trusted CAs explicitly. For more information about LDAP client configuration, see the ldap.conf.5 man page.

We have documented this and other possible issues at 5. Issues to be aware of for trixie in the release notes. You’re advised to read that before upgrading.

As always, Debian systems may be upgraded painlessly, in place, without any forced downtime, but it is strongly recommended to read the release notes as well as the installation guide for possible issues, and for detailed instructions on installing and upgrading. The release notes will be further improved and translated to additional languages in the weeks after the release.

About Debian

Debian is a free operating system, developed by thousands of volunteers from all over the world who collaborate via the Internet. The Debian project’s key strengths are its volunteer base, its dedication to the Debian Social Contract and Free Software, and its commitment to provide the best operating system possible. This new release is another important step in that direction.

Contact Information

For further information, please visit the Debian web pages at https://www.debian.org/ or send mail to <press@debian.org>.

The post Debian 13 “trixie” released appeared first on Linux.co.uk.

Online Safety Act

Oddjobz — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 16:23:48 +0000

The Online Safety Act

This is something that’s been covered many times over recent years, but after coming into force recently it’s only now that people are starting to see what it actually means and how it’s going to effect them. Whereas child protection is something the majority of the population are likely to wholeheartedly agree with, passing an act of parliament containing the word “safety” isn’t necessarily the best means to approach this goal.

VPNS

Virtual Private Networks can be used for many purposes. They form the backbone of many Internet based solutions that allow disparate geographical locations to communicate securely and can be used to allow remote workers to communicate securely with their office.

They can also be used to try to hide or mask the identity and location of end users from service providers.

Historically this has been a major problem for companies who provide services in one particular country and for various reasons, charge for those services when provided to another country. Using a VPN can be a way to circumvent such a restriction and for the most part it’s something that very large well resourced companies have failed prevent over the years, despite that failure resulting in lost revenue. Now however, it appears that every company, regardless of size, is expected to be able to do this with a 100% success rate.

While Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are legal in the UK, according to this law, platforms have a clear responsibility to prevent children from bypassing safety protections.

So, this raises a number of questions, whereas there is a very precise technical definition of what constitutes a VPN, even if, buried somewhere deep in the fine-print, there is a contextual definition of what constitutes “a platform”, it would seem to be a fairly woolly term that could be applied to any kind of Internet facing service – should those enforcing the rules choose to do so.

I suppose the real question is whether it is even possible for an online service provider (i.e. a website) to “prevent children from bypassing safety protections”, or in context, from accessing an online service using a VPN given so many providers have failed in the past.

As well as legal duties to keep children safe, the very same law places clear and unequivocal duties on platforms to protect freedom of expression.

The clause goes on to mention financial penalties and gives example of content that children need to be protected from. The use of “such as” is key here, whereas you will probably agree with the examples given, this is another subjectively open-ended perspective where someone in “authority” may well view content from a completely different perspective. I find this a little paradoxical, on the one hand there is a need to prevent children from accessing certain unspecified content and limiting their interactions with other content, but on the other hand the penalties for failing to protect their freedom of expression are eye-watering.

Age verification keeps children safe

Of course it does. Since I was a boy it’s stopped under-age children from going into pubs and drinking alcohol, stopped under-age children from driving cars, and stopped under-age children from going into video rental shops and renting X-rated videos. For the avoidance of any confusion, in my experience age verification has very little impact in stopping people from doing what they are determined to do, or in the case of children, ‘what they want’.

The UK government has demanded to be able to access encrypted data stored by Apple users worldwide in its cloud service – BBC, Feb 2025

Before you connect the dots, this was under some “other” legislation that the government had previously introduced, one that they said was needed and gave them powers that they would clearly never abuse.

I’ve only looked at a couple of clauses here, there are more. If you’re interested in taking a look you can find the government publication here, helpfully layered in link upon link of connected documents.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/online-safety-act

It remains to be seen if they will abuse the powers of this new act (although you can Google for the words “isp”, “vpn” and “blocking”), the question is whether you want to wait to find out. If not, maybe consider taking a look at this link, at the time of writing the number is up over half a million. Worth a look at the full-text of the description of the petition.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903

As an avid gamer, when I logged in to my gaming platform last night, the one that I’ve been a member of for over 20 years, it informed me that unless I completed an age verification process I would lose access to various features of the platform that would make my game unplayable. I only play one game, it’s a “shoot-em-up” and I only play against other adults. I do wonder whether they are really obliged to do this, given they’ve had my credit card for 20 years, or whether this is just a cynical fishing expedition to obtain more of my personal details. Either way, this morning I cancelled my subscription.

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DreamQuest Mini PC – Review

Oddjobz — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 15:06:54 +0000

DreamQuest Mini PC – Review

Without wanting to keep everyone in suspense, at first sight it seems pretty incredible. I had the chance to spend a day or so playing around with one and it’s a pretty slick little machine. Mine came with Windows 11 pre-installed, so the first thing I did was to install Ubuntu 25.04 from a Universal Bootloader USB key. A relatively straightforward process with no surprises. As far as I can see, all hardware in the machine is supported ‘out of the box’ and there was nothing to do in terms of drivers. Here’s what it comes with;

Intel N150 Processor, feels like it’s on a par with (or better) a Raspberry Pi 5

16Gb RAM

512Gb M.2 SSD

2 x 1Gb Ethernet

4 x USB 3.x

SD Card slot (Mini?)

WiFi & Bluetooth

Multiple display choices, HDMI, Displayport and Type-C

I only tried the HDMI output, although apparently (!) you can use multiple connectors at the same time to run multiple 4k screens in parallel (not sure whether this implies two or three). It was tested with Ubuntu 25.04 and general performance is pretty good. Seemed quite happy playing full HD video, full-screen on a 4k screen.

I didn’t get around to measuring the power, but the documentation and other reviews I’ve seen say it works in the 6W (idle) to 25W bracket, which is pretty good compared standard desktop machines. Although slightly more than a Raspberry Pi which typically operates in the 5W to 12W range.

Summary

Makes a really good and cost effective desktop workstation. From a server perspective, while still very capable it’s a little limited in terms of IO throughput by the M.2 being SSD rather than NVME. I was only getting ~ 430Mb/sec on sustained read transfers whereas M.2 on a Raspberry Pi can clock around 900. Having said that it depends on your server priorities, with two 1Gb network interfaces and 16Gb of RAM it currently works out cheaper than the equivalent Raspberry Pi by some margin.

Notes

There are a number of models with different Pro’s and Con’s, I’ve only tried the one mentioned
At the time of purchase the Windows 11 version seemed to be cheaper than the Linux version
The BIOS seems not to have a Legacy, option so you’ll need a UEFI compatible USB key
The SSD brand seemed to be a company called “KingFast”, which isn’t one I’m familiar with
Please note this review is not a specific endorsement, just an observation / opinion
There’s a link to their UK Website here, or alternatively you can find them on Amazon.

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