Systemd 260 has been released, bringing one of the most disruptive updates in recent cycles. It removes long-deprecated legacy components, raises baseline requirements, and introduces new frameworks for modern Linux systems.

The most notable change is the complete removal of System V init script support. Components like systemd-sysv-generator, systemd-sysv-install, and rc-local.service are gone, ending compatibility with legacy init scripts. Systems and software that still rely on SysV must now provide native systemd unit files to continue working.

Systemd 260 also raises minimum requirements across the stack. The baseline Linux kernel moves to version 5.10, with newer kernels recommended for full functionality. Several core dependencies have been updated, including glibc 2.34, OpenSSL 3.0, and Python 3.9, reflecting a shift toward newer platform standards.

FFmpeg 8.1 has been released today as a minor update to this open-source multimedia framework that introduces new decoders, encoders, filters, as well as various improvements.

Coming almost seven months after FFmpeg 8.0, the FFmpeg 8.1 release introduces D3D12 H.264 and AV1 encoding, support for parsing and forwarding metadata for LCEVC, and an experimental xHE-AAC Mps212 MPEG-H decoder via the libmpeghdec library.

FFmpeg 8.1 also introduces EXIF metadata parsing support, Vulkan-based ProRes encoding and decoding, and DPX decoding, Rockchip H.264/HEVC hardware encoding, an HXVS demuxer for HXVS/HXVT IP camera format, as well as projection mode Ambisonic Audio Elements muxing and demuxing.

Open-source developer Andy Nguyen recently demonstrated porting Linux to the Sony PlayStation 5. The PS5 notably uses a custom AMD SoC and with some patches is able to play nicely with the open-source AMD graphics driver stack.

Beyond just demonstrating an experimental Linux port for the Sony PlayStation 5, Andy Nguyen has followed through and begun upstreaming some of the patches where relevant. Recently there have been AMDGPU kernel graphics driver and Mesa patches for dealing with the Sony PlayStation 5 GPU that is a combination of IP from different generations and on the CPU side is Zen 2 derived.

The Arch-based Linux distribution EndeavourOS Titan is out now, bringing with it plenty of nice sounding upgrades and some comments on age verification.

With lots of the Linux / FOSS community not happy about all the age verifications laws appearing, more distributions have been chiming in to give their thoughts. So it's pleasing to see the EndeavourOS devs also comment on this too. Here's what they said in the release announcement

Today, the Blender Foundation released Blender 5.1 as a major update of this powerful, free, open-source, and cross-platform 3D graphics software for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Highlights of Blender 5.1 include hardware ray-tracing enablement for AMD GPUs by default through HIP RT, improved GPU rendering performance by up to 10 percent on various benchmark scenes, and a new F-Curve modifier called “Gaussian Smooth” that allows non-destructive smoothing of F-Curves.

For Linux users, Blender 5.1 adds support for opening windows without decorations on Wayland by using the–no-window-frame argument, removing the dependence on the libdecor client-side decorations library for Wayland clients. Also, Blender now uses TBB_MALLOC_PROXY for memory allocation on Linux

The KDE team has released Plasma 6.6.3, the third bugfix update in the Plasma 6.6 series. A significant portion of this update focuses on KWin, KDE’s Wayland compositor. The release addresses several crashes, including a segmentation fault in the zoom plugin and output handling issues.

Additional improvements enhance input handling, screencasting, display management, and support for monitor modes and DDC/CI quirks on specific hardware.

The Discover software center receives several usability fixes, resolving issues with category selection, refresh behavior, and icon consistency.

Over the past few months, our former payment provider Nexi S.p.A. (“Nexi”) requested access to private data, which we understood to be specifically the usernames and passwords of our supporters. We have refused this request. All our attempts to clarify Nexi’s request, or to understand how their need for such information was necessary and legal, were met with what we consider to be vague and unsatisfactory explanations relating to a general need for risk analysis.

Subsequently, we found ourselves unable to receive credit card donations through Nexi’s system. In the afternoon of 10 March, we were further informed that our contract had been cancelled a few days prior on 7 March, due to our supposed failure to meet their deadline to fulfil their request. This deadline was not communicated to us beforehand, despite us having been Nexi’s customer for the past 15 years.

This is completely crazy! As 450 supporters are affected, that is a huge amount of donations that were cut off!

Now you don't have to sideload an .xpi, they've approved it. i'll release an update with a few more bugfixes and better implementation of some stuff this week but it's in a pretty much usable state right now, if you have any suggestions please let me know!

Dev @gary_host_laptop@lemmy.ml