India has one of the highest rates of (desktop) Linux usages in the world - hovering around 10% according to StatCounter. Why is this? One reason is concerns over software controlled by foreign countries - particularly the US and China. But another is cost.

The first major boost for Linux and other free software in India came in 2006, when VS Achuthanandan - who passed away today - was elected Chief Minister of the state of Kerala. His government came up with a policy to shift all government computers to free software, starting with schools and colleges.

When the financial benefits became apparent, other states and the Union government followed suit.

From the diaspora to the occupied territories and the Palestinian minority in Israel, left-wing forces have played a major role in organizing popular struggles for democratic rights in Palestine. A new Jacobin podcast series looks at their impact and legacy.

This is the first release where RISC-V 64-bit is officially supported by Debian Linux albeit with limited board support and the Debian RISC-V build process is handicapped by slow hardware.

Linux users who have Secure Boot enabled on their systems knowingly or unknowingly rely on a key from Microsoft that is set to expire in September. After that point, Microsoft will no longer use that key to sign the shim first-stage UEFI bootloader that is used by Linux distributions to boot the kernel with Secure Boot. But the replacement key, which has been available since 2023, may not be installed on many systems; worse yet, it may require the hardware vendor to issue an update for the system firmware, which may or may not happen. It seems that the vast majority of systems will not be lost in the shuffle, but it may require extra work from distributors and users.