This week’s biggest news is the release of Fedora Linux 36. The latest version of the popular distro is shipped with GNOME 42 and Linux Kernel 5.17. The Red Hat team announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6, which focuses on access and application development. Also, the popular CentOS alternative AlmaLinux announced the release of version 8.6. This week we also saw F5’s BIG-IP being targeted by the attackers, as expected. CISA warned organizations to patch the vulnerability as soon as possible.
Fedora Linux 36 is now available for download
The Fedora Project announced that the Fedora Linux 36 is now available with GNOME 42, which also includes the new Text Editor and Console, and Linux Kernel 5.17. Users’ desktop sessions with the NVIDIA proprietary drivers will be using the Wayland protocol by default. Fedora Linux 36 also includes Ansible 5, allowing users to split the engine into an ansible-core package and collections packages.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6 is now available
The Red Hat team announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6, which focuses on access and application development. RHEL 8.6 also comes with various new features and enhancements. The latest release enables support for SAP HANA in production with Red Hat and SAP, a jointly-tested RHEL configuration with SELinux. The release also enhances security features designed for SAP solutions, helping organizations to adhere to higher security standards.
F5’s BIG-IP vulnerability is under attack
Security researchers stated that the vulnerability which affects F5 BIG-IP modules is being exploited by threat actors. The company published a security advisory and urged users to patch the vulnerability, which has a 9.8 severity rating. It allows threat actors to run arbitrary system commands, create or delete files, or disable services. Security researchers stated that some attackers are using “rm -rf /*” command, which erases all of the files on the device, including configuration files.
AlmaLinux 8.6 Stable is ready to download
The AlmaLinux OS Foundation announced the general availability of AlmaLinux OS 8.6 Stable for the x86_64, aarch64, and ppc64le architectures. AlmaLinux Live Images, Raspberry Pi, Cloud, and Container images updates will be available soon. AlmaLinux OS 8.6 comes with new System Roles that make it easier for system administrators. AlmaLinux OS 8.6 Stable also includes web console enhancements.
NVIDIA publishes open-source GPU Kernel Modules
NVIDIA announced the release of GPU kernel modules as open-source with a dual GPL/MIT license. The first release is the R515 driver. Developers will be able to find the source code for the kernel modules in the NVIDIA Open GPU Kernel Modules repo. The modules aim to will make it easier for Linux distribution providers and improve the out-of-the-box user experience to sign and distribute the NVIDIA GPU driver. Also, snapshots of the source code will be published on GitHub with each new driver release.
Hackers targeting Russian TV and RuTube
Hackers attacking Russian TV displayed the message “blood is on your hands” and took down the RuTube video streaming service. Russian users who accessed the TV schedule on their smart TVs saw the name of every program was changed to “On your hands is the blood of thousands of Ukrainians and their hundreds of murdered children. TV and the authorities are lying. No to war.” Russian video streaming platform RuTube also suffered a cyberattack and went offline.
Linus Torvalds is satisfied with the newest release candidate
After releasing another Linux release candidate, Torvalds stated that 5.18 will be one of the larger releases. The latest release candidate, Linux Kernel 5.18-rc6, marks an important step. Torvalds stated that he is satisfied with the development of 5.18 so far and noted that 5.18 will be one of the largest releases. According to the announcement, the work that remains to be done is mostly btrfs fixes, core networking, and small one-offs.