Yesterday marked 34 years since Linus Torvalds, then a young computer science student, announced in the comp.os.minix newsgroup that he was working on a new operating system — “just a hobby, nothing big or professional like GNU,” as he put it. In hindsight, one of the most ironic understatements in tech history.

The first Linux version came out in September 1991 with about 10,000 lines of code, supporting only Intel 386/486 machines. Today, the Linux kernel runs on virtually all architectures — from smartphones to supercomputers.

Linux now powers all of the world’s top 500 supercomputers, over 96% of servers, and 44–46% of embedded systems. It holds a ~40% share in automotive, medical, and industrial applications, and about 27% of IoT devices run Linux via the Yocto Project.

At home, over 60% of smart TVs and a third of industrial PLCs use Linux. There are over 600 distributions, with Ubuntu being the most popular at around one-third of users.

From 10,000 lines of code, Linux has grown to over 38 million lines in its latest kernel version.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/dVGnX5kxTofphc3K/

RHEL 9 Customers want better security, and Red Hat will deliver it. Beyond the usual RHEL hardening, testing, and vulnerability scanning, RHEL 9 incorporates features that help address hardware-level security vulnerabilities like Spectre and Meltdown. This includes capabilities to help user-space processes create memory areas that are inaccessible to potentially malicious code. The platform provides readiness for customer security requirements as well, supporting PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and more.

Specific security features:

Smart Card authentication: Users can make use of smart card authentication to access remote hosts through the RHEL web console (Sudo, SSH, etc.).

Additional security profiles: You can improve your security intelligence gathering and remediation services such as Red Hat Insights and Red Hat Satellite with security standards such as PCI-DSS and HIPAA.

Detailed SSSD logging: SSSD, the enterprise single-sign-on framework, now includes more details for event logging. This includes time to complete tasks, errors, authentication flow, and more. New search capabilities also enable you to analyze performance and configuration issues.

Integrated OpenSSL 3: It supports the new OpenSSL 3 cryptographic frameworks. RHEL’s built-in utilities have been recompiled to utilize OpenSSL 3.

SSH root password login disabled by default: Yes, I know you ssh into your server with root passwords all the time. But it’s never been a smart idea. By default, RHEL won’t let you do this. Yes, this is annoying, but it’s even more annoying to hackers trying to log in as `root` using brute force password attacks. All-in-all, this is a win in my book.

In this release, Red Hat also introduces Integrity Measurement Architecture (IMA) digital hashes and signatures. With IMA, users can verify the integrity of the operating system with digital signatures and hashes. With this, you can detect rogue infrastructure modifications, so you can stop system compromises in their tracks.

AlmaLinux 9 Now Available!
https://almalinux.org/blog/almalinux-9-now-available/

Hello Community! The AlmaLinux OS Foundation is proud to announce general availability of AlmaLinux OS 9.0. AlmaLinux 9 supports the following 4 architectures providing full parity with upstream:

Intel/AMD (x86_64)

ARM64 (aarch64)

IBM PowerPC (ppc64le)

IBM Z (s390x)