A New Linux Driver Could Make USB4 Cables a Blazing Fast Way to Move Data

Large data transfers are one of those things that always seem to find a way to be annoying. Tools like LocalSend make it easier over a local network, but wireless is not always an option, and some transfers are simply too important to leave to a Wi-Fi connection.

In such a scenario, a wired solution that does not require setting up networking at all would be ideal.

Intel's Thunderbolt maintainer Mika Westerberg and fellow Intel engineer Alan Borzeszkowski have been working on exactly that.

USB4STREAM explained

The two have put together a new protocol called USB4STREAM and a matching Linux driver called thunderbolt_stream. The approach is to let two or more machines transfer data directly over a USB4 or Thunderbolt cable without touching the networking stack at all.

Once configured, each host gets a character device at /dev/tbstreamX that behaves like a regular file. Any application that supports read(2) and write(2) operations works with it without needing any special patches.

In simple terms, any app that can perform read/write operations will be compatible with this.

How it works

Before data can flow, both machines need to have their streams configured. Streams are basically the individual data channels over the connection, and getting them set up is a matter of pointing both sides at each other through ConfigFS and assigning channel IDs.

This can be done automatically or manually, depending on how much control you require.

Once one side announces an active stream, the other can pick it up automatically just by using the same name for it. You can also run multiple streams at the same time, and the whole thing works alongside existing Thunderbolt plumbing without getting in the way.

Closing a stream notifies the other end as well, so both sides know when the transfer is complete.

When to expect?

The patch is currently sitting in the Thunderbolt git tree's next branch. Assuming it gets submitted to the USB/Thunderbolt tree ahead of the Linux 7.2 merge window, it should land in that release. The ABI documentation in the patch already marks the target as v7.2.

The driver ships as a loadable module named thunderbolt_stream and depends on USB4_CONFIGFS being enabled.

USB4 keeps getting more relevant

The USB4 standard has been around since 2019 and has been getting steady attention in the kernel cycle after cycle.

What was once an Intel exclusive, royalty-gated technology has gradually become the preferred high-speed port on modern motherboards across both AMD and Intel platforms, with Thunderbolt increasingly becoming a certification badge.

USB4STREAM adds yet another practical reason to put that cable to work. If you have a USB4 port on your machine, then this driver could open up a surprisingly neat way to move data around without spinning up any networking at all.

Via: Phoronix

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Linux is Getting a Free Pass on Age Verification in California and Colorado

Age verification laws have been spreading fast, and we have been keeping tabs on them for a while now. California's Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043) was the first to land, signed in October 2025, with Colorado following with its own version (SB26-051).

Neither made any concessions for open source software in the original language, which left Linux distributions and other community-run projects in a very uncomfortable dilemma.

Both have since moved to fix that, with Colorado having wrapped it up earlier this month and California heading for a full Assembly vote.

What's California doing?

Look at the blue bits.

AB 1043 required OS providers to collect a user's age or birth date at account setup and share it with apps through a real-time API, starting January 1, 2027. Open Source projects got no special treatment in the original text, which is something we wrote about when the bills started drawing attention.

Assembly Member Buffy Wicks, who authored AB 1043 herself, introduced AB 1856 in February to address that.

After four rounds of revisions, the bill has rewritten the definition of "operating system provider" to exclude anyone distributing an OS under terms that let recipients copy, redistribute, and modify the software.

Most Linux distributions under permissive or copyleft licenses fall cleanly within that.

In tandem, another change covers the application side, where software that is not offered as a standalone executable through a covered app store is no longer treated as an "application" under the law.

The bill passed the Appropriations Committee 11-0 on May 14. It was ordered to third reading on May 19 and is awaiting an assembly vote. Interestingly, Buffy is the chair of that committee.

What about Colorado?

The formatting of this bill document could be better. ☠️

Colorado's path here involved some direct community legwork. Carl Richell, the founder of System76, spent some considerable time working with Senator Matt Ball, one of SB26-051's co-authors, to get open source exclusions written into the bill.

The bill exempts OS providers and developers distributing software under terms that permit copying, redistribution, and modification. It also adds a requirement that exempt software have no platform-imposed technical or contractual restrictions on installing modified versions.

The extra clause is aimed at tivoization, where manufacturers lock down hardware to block modified software from running even when the source code is freely available.

Beyond that, code repository providers, containerized software distributions, and applications from free, publicly available code repositories are explicitly excluded too.

The law also has a narrower scope, only applying to OS providers that operate a covered app store or ship one pre-installed. An OS provider with no app store involvement does not come into scope at all.

Besides that, SB26-051 is now set to take effect on July 1, 2028.

Some closing words…

Neither state got here automatically. The open source exemptions did not exist in either bill to start with, and it took sustained community pressure and direct legislative outreach to get them added.

This is something that can be applied to many other issues, of course. Though, when the representatives are more interested in serving certain interests (say due to pressure from certain lobbies) than their constituents, disruption tends to be the only way out.

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AMD Pulls a Bait-and-Switch on Linux Users with Vivado Licensing Changes

Big tech companies have a habit of offering something for free, watching the user base grow, and then quietly walking it back once people are too invested to leave easily. A bait-and-switch, so to speak.

Redis did exactly this back in March 2024, dropping its long-standing BSD license for the more restrictive dual licensing model, and the blowback was severe enough that the community forked it into Valkey almost immediately.

Linux tends to get hit hardest by these moves. Its comparatively smaller user base means less commercial pressure, making it an easy target to throw under the bus whenever companies feel like cutting costs or boosting profits.

One such case has now surfaced that will make you wonder if this particular company's decision was really shortsighted or is just a cash grab.

It doesn't make sense!

Vivado is AMD's design suite for its FPGAs and adaptive SoCs. It is what engineers, students, and hardware hobbyists use to write, synthesize, and test their FPGA designs. Until now, it has been available for free on both Windows and Linux under what AMD called the Standard Edition.

Starting with the 2026.1 release, AMD is switching to a tiered licensing model. The free Basic tier covers entry-level devices but is restricted to Windows only. Linux support does not show up until the "Core" tier, which costs somewhere between $1,200-$1,800 per year.

AMD framed all of this on its download page as a move toward more flexible licensing. On its dedicated licensing options page, the company told free-tier users the only thing changing was a simple annual license renewal.

That's not all. 🤷

When users went to AMD's support forum asking for an explanation, forum moderator Anatoli Curran showed up in the thread. His first order of business was to warn people about "bad language or abusive behaviour towards AMD," before getting around to addressing anything of substance.

When pushed for a real answer, Anatoli pointed unhappy users toward Vivado 2025.2, suggesting they simply stick with it if they did not want to pay. He did mention that 2025.2 loses official support once Vivado 2026.3 ships, but that detail was buried in a thread reply, leaving users with little more than a dead-end recommendation.

Anatoli also started putting out numbers, claiming that 70% of their customers still use Windows. As expected, someone cross-questioned him, asking if much of their users were on Windows, then why was Linux support being locked away behind a paywall.

To which he replied in a very PR-coded manner, completely disregarding what was brought up:

From Core and higher tiers, both Windows and Linux are supported platforms.

As stated already, AMD expectation is that the BASIC tier is used for simple, entry‑level needs. While more advanced, production workflows are aligned with paid tiers. These tiers are specifically designed to deliver the full flexibility and capabilities needed for serious development.

Hence, all paid tier levels have options of both Windows and Linux platform usage. Only BASIC tier limited to Windows ONLY platform support.

That really doesn't instill one bit of clarity and shows how apathetic tech giants like AMD can sometimes get. The conversation in the thread then continued along the lines of how Xilinx, and later, AMD, had gained the trust of Linux users by keeping an open outlook towards the community.

But pulling off such a thing without considering how people benefited from having Vivado on Linux tells you a lot about what this company actually thinks of its non-enterprise user base.

Students, hardware tinkerers, and academic researchers who have relied on a native Linux workflow are now left hanging. Keep in mind that many of those people eventually end up in engineering and procurement roles where they have real influence over hardware-related decisions.

What now?

As of writing this, AMD hadn't put out a statement regarding this, and the stonewalling has continued. Of course, more and more people are getting to know about this. It is just a matter of time before someone at PR has to do something about this.

Plus, with the kind of flak they have been getting over some of their most bizarre choices lately, I would handle this now instead of later.

Until then, you can participate in the conversation either on the main thread where this shady behavior was first reported, or you could head over to Hacker News and join the others in calling out AMD.

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Suggested Read 📖: Bambu Lab Has Been Violating AGPLv3

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Bambu Lab Has Been Violating AGPLv3 for Years, SFC Says

The GNU Affero General Public License version 3, or AGPLv3, is one of the strongest copyleft licenses in the open source world.

Published by the Free Software Foundation in 2007, it requires that any software built on an AGPLv3-licensed project must make its complete source code available under the same terms.

That applies even when the software runs as a network service rather than being distributed as a standalone binary. I say that because what follows are two violations that the Software Freedom Conservancy has dug out after investigating Bambu Lab.

What the investigation found

For context, Bambu Studio is the slicing software that ships with Bambu Lab's 3D printers. It is what translates a 3D model file into printable layers before passing the instructions along to the printer.

It was built on top of PrusaSlicer, which itself came from Slic3r. Both predecessors carry the AGPLv3, and so does every derivative built from them. SFC looked at both the userspace software and the firmware running on Bambu's devices and pointed out the violations.

The first is about libbambu_networking, a networking library that ships with Bambu Studio across Linux, Windows, and macOS. It handles all communication between the slicer and Bambu's cloud.

Bambu has never made the source code for it available, despite AGPLv3 requiring that any code distributed alongside an AGPLv3 project be released under the same terms. SFC says Bambu's own README has effectively sat with this admission for years now.

The second violation comes from how Bambu handled Paweł Jarczak, a developer who built a fork of OrcaSlicer that could communicate with Bambu's servers by studying the incomplete Bambu Studio source code.

He did not touch the proprietary library at all. Bambu still contacted him, demanded removal, and stated a cease-and-desist letter had been prepared, arguing its terms of service take precedence over the license.

You see the problem? The AGPLv3 explicitly says no one can place additional restrictions on the rights it grants. The SFC says going after Pawel the way Bambu did is itself a violation.

What's their new initiative about?

SFC's response is a new project called baltobu, short for "Bringing Affero Licensed Things (On)to Bambu Users." It lives on SFC's Forgejo instance and has three repositories, each going after a different piece of the puzzle.

reverse-networking is working to reverse-engineer the libbambu_networking library and produce a replacement. Since the binary is itself covered by AGPLv3, SFC's position is that anyone holding a copy has the right to examine and reverse-engineer it.

The second is orca-slicer-for-bambu, a soft fork of OrcaSlicer built to be compatible with Bambu printers, eventually replacing Bambu Studio for those who want out of the Bambu Lab walled garden.

Then there is viscose, a fork of Bambu Studio itself. Part of it is keeping a copy of everything Bambu publishes in case anything disappears, and the longer-term aim is a version that respects users' software freedom better than the upstream does.

The next steps

SFC is also committing to act as a watchdog on Bambu Lab going forward. The organization says it does not usually go looking for violations proactively, but it is making an exception here and will keep checking.

A standing committee on software freedom in the 3D printer space is planned as well, with details expected in June 2026.

The plan is to conduct monthly meetings, pulling in manufacturers, users, licensing experts, and software freedom advocates to track new issues and figure out what to do about them.

And there's also a fundraiser running until July 17, 2026, with a target of $250,007. If SFC hits it, the money goes toward hiring dedicated staff for this work long-term. If not, whatever is raised goes to existing staff time and related right-to-repair efforts.

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Suggested Read 📖: Open Source Licenses Explained

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Firefox Just Saved Us All from Spammy Online PDF Tools

Firefox's built-in PDF viewer has been adding useful features for a while now. You can annotate, fill out forms, draw, insert images, and sign documents without leaving the browser.

The recent Firefox 151 release adds merging documents to that list.

If you've ever searched "merge PDF online" and ended up wading through ads and signup walls just to get your own file back, then you should know that there's a privacy angle worth thinking about too.

Every time you upload a document to one of those sites, you're handing your files over to a server you know nothing about.

Firefox handles everything locally, so your documents stay on your machine.

Merge PDFs using Firefox

First, you need to open a PDF file that you want merged with another. Then, unhide the sidebar menu by clicking on its toggle (looks like a square with a line in it), and click on the "+" button next to the Pages label.

Doing so will open the file picker. In my case, it was the Files (Nautilus) app on GNOME, but yours might be a different file manager on a different desktop environment with similar functionality.

Pick the PDF you want to merge in, then click Select. Firefox will append its pages to the end of the document you have open, and the page count in the toolbar will update to reflect the new total.

You can also reorder pages by dragging them in the sidebar, or delete any you don't need by selecting them and using the Manage menu. 👇

0:00

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Once the pages are in order, select all of them using the checkboxes, and then open the Manage dropdown and click "Export selected..." A save dialog will open up on your file manager.

Give the file a name, hit Save, and the merged PDF lands wherever you pointed it. Though if you mistakenly try to quit the application before the merged PDFs are saved, Firefox will promptly notify you. 👇

The prompt reads "Save PDF before leaving?" and clicking "Save" opens the same file picker. Hitting "Don't Save" will close Firefox without saving, and "Cancel" keeps you in the same window.

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In a Weird Case, German Deutsche Bahn's Website Was Locking Out Linux Users

Since a few days now, people trying to plan a trip on Deutsche Bahn's (DB) main booking website have been getting stopped by error 751. The site accused their web browser of acting like a bot, and even logging into accounts made no difference.

So, what was actually triggering it? Just the word "Linux" in the User-Agent string it looks like. heise online tested this by setting a Linux User-Agent on Firefox under Windows and on Safari under macOS, and both got blocked.

People noticed

Source: MaksDampf

Heise had picked up on a thread from Reddit's r/deutschebahn as evidence that real users were being affected. Someone had posted about getting locked out just from clicking "earlier connections" a few times while planning a trip.

They, as you know, tested it on their end and found out that Linux systems were being blocked.

Later in the thread, a commenter tied it to the wave of vibe-coded projects, specifically ones built to scrape Deutsche Bahn's fare data. Another commenter identified themselves as a DB employee, pointing out that internal staff have to deal with DB Systel's problems regularly.

Before you ask, DB Systel is the train operator's IT and digital solutions provider.

DB's official response

Deutsche Bahn has responded to heise online. A spokesperson said Linux users are supposed to be able to use bahn.de and DB Navigator without issues, and that the company's security systems look at traffic behavior, request origins, and browser traits to identify potential threats.

Normal traffic can get caught in this sometimes, they said, while emphasizing that they are working to bring those cases down. Heise ran a test again the same day and found out that a Linux User-Agent on a Windows machine still triggered the block.

I ran two tests of my own. The first was on a Fedora Workstation system with a VPN active, where I accessed bahn.de on Firefox in private mode and spammed various header menu options, reloading repeatedly.

The portal never locked me out. I did the same on an Ubuntu virtual machine and got the same result. So it is safe to assume the fixes have been made, though false positives may still happen occasionally.

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Suggested Read 📖: Rust Could Eliminate 80% of Linux Kernel CVEs

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Good News! After Lenovo and Dell, Now HP Pledges to Support Linux Vendor Firmware Service

As long as I've been a Linux user, I can remember one of the biggest issues being firmware support on the kernel.

The issue has been notorious, with a lot of new users being discouraged immediately after joining, and the benevolent dictator Linus Torvalds himself giving the bird to Nvidia, a sentiment shared by almost every user who had tried to make Nvidia work on Linux a few years ago.

Things have been getting better recently, though, especially with LVFS (Linux Vendor Firmware Service) on the scene now, providing hardware vendors a portal to upload firmware updates, which can then be downloaded and installed by users through clients such as GNOME Software or fwupdmgr.

Why does LVFS matter?

The relief and effort of LVFS cannot be understated, as before a central secure portal for firmware, the users only had the option to trust some random third party upload on the internet, often breaking or worse, infecting their systems. LVFS fills a space where the vendors can provide secure firmware, with Linux-specific .cab files.

The roadbloack...

The issue, however, obviously, had been funding with the largest contributors being the usual suspects, Framework and Open Source Framework Foundation, at $10K a year. Recently, however, Lenovo and Dell joined suite as Premier sponsors, which is the highest tier at $100K a year each, making the project more sustainable and manageable. These companies contributing makes a lot of sense, considering they are two of the bigger computer companies which offer Linux by default in some cases, especially with Lenovo's ThinkPads being the Linux users' favorite for decades.

Welcome the newcomer!

And now, as you'd have it, HP has followed suit as a Premier sponsor, also providing $100K a year, right alongside Dell and Lenovo. This is already being reflected on the homepage of LVFS, with a quote from HP's Senior Vice President as well:

“LVFS enables quick, easy and timely BIOS updates, so countless customers can enjoy the flexibility of open source Linux-based systems.”
— Xavi Garcia, HP

This calls for a celebration as users, of course, and also a major bout of appreciation for HP will be well deserved. I'm delighted as an HP user on Fedora myself, this is a remarkable day.

The question still remains, however, where are the other vendors? What are they waiting for?

Where are the others?

The image of Linux as a "niche" user community, left to their own devices (literally) to figure out the solutions to the hardware problems the vendors are unwilling to solve, is a view as outdated as it is ridiculous. It is like they expect us to unlock a door of which they have the only key.

This major move by these three companies should not only be seen as a sign of relief and wider acceptance of the usage of Linux, but as a beacon for other vendors to follow, who ought to make their hardware more accessible to the open-source community. This change is only in their best interest, as every year shows the percentage of Linux's desktop market share going upwards.

Wrapping Up

HP, Dell and Lenovo all being the highest possible contributors to Linux firmware inspires a lot of confidence among the users, a sign of better support and easier updates. Their efforts are much appreciated and applauded, and we hope that more companies show up to the party. Hope this brightens up your day a little bit, if you're a Linux user on HP. Cheers!

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