What's New in September 2024: CRIU, OpenSSH, GNOME, and New is*hosting Locations

September 2024 saw many exciting events occur in the world of technology. New versions of significant tools and applications were released, including CRIU 4.0, OpenSSH 9.9, and GNOME 47 Denver. The upgrade of Swift to version 6.0 was also significant, marking ten years of work on this language.

Also noteworthy was the expansion of the is*hosting network with new server locations, giving users access to more reliable and faster services.

New VPS Locations from is*hosting

The most exciting news this September is the introduction of new virtual private server locations from is*hosting. We have carefully analyzed the server locations that are already available, as well as potential ones that may be useful to you in the future.

The first location is Colombia - an ideal place to host your projects if you plan to cover South America and North America. The is*hosting server hardware is located in EdgeUno's Tier 3+ data center in Cota, one of the most modern data centers in the region. EdgeUno is certified by PCI DSS Level 1, SOC 1 Type 2, and SOC 2 Type 2.

VPS in Colombia is available now! You can choose a suitable configuration and start using the server whenever you’re ready.

Want to know which locations will follow? Let's just say that improving your presence in the Americas is about to get much easier. Keep an eye out for announcements, as we will soon reveal all the locations.

CRIU 4.0 Release for Saving Process States in Linux

CRIU (Checkpoint and Restore in Userspace) is an open-source system for saving and restoring the state of processes in Linux. The latest version, CRIU 4.0, was released on September 20, 2024.

CRIU allows you to save the state of one or more processes and resume their execution from that saved state, even after a system reboot or on another server, without breaking established network connections. This is a handy tool for those working with Linux-based servers.

Since CRIU's main use is live migration, there’s a P.Haul library for that. The project also provides two cool core functions as separate libraries: lib compel for parasite code injection and libsoccr for TCP connection checking and recovery.

The project is written in C and licensed under the GPLv2. Its components are used in container management systems such as OpenVZ, LXC/LXD, and Docker, and they are also included in the main Linux kernel.

Now for the details. CRIU 4.0 introduces several new features and enhancements, including:

• CUDA plugin is used to save and restore the state of applications based on Nvidia CUDA technology.
• Support for the Shadow Stack mechanism, which helps block many exploits by leveraging the hardware capabilities of Intel processors.
• Support for the ioctl PAGEMAP_SCAN command to retrieve information about the contents of memory page tables.
• Ability to restore a thread to a valid cgroup v1.

Other improvements include support for ioctl PAGEMAP_SCAN, IP_TTL recovery tests, use of close_range if supported, and other fixes.

OpenSSH 9.9 is Now Available

OpenSSH 9.9, released on September 19, 2024, introduces several significant improvements, primarily related to post-quantum cryptography. One major highlight is a new hybrid key exchange algorithm, "mlkem768x25519-sha256," which combines the Diffie-Hellman elliptic curve X25519 with ML-KEM (CRYSTALS-Kyber). This algorithm secures OpenSSH in an environment where quantum computers are increasingly vulnerable to traditional cryptographic hacking techniques.

Security has been improved by removing outdated algorithms such as DSA, now disabled by default, and introducing more robust controls such as the RefuseConnection directive, which can terminate a connection after a single failed authentication attempt. This is combined with new mechanisms such as PerSourcePenalties to protect against brute force attacks.

Other improvements include:

• No pre-authentication data compression to reduce attack surface.
• Improved configuration flexibility with support for environment variables.
• Improved error handling with options such as 'invalid-user'.
• Improved performance with faster implementation of encryption algorithms such as NTRUPrime.

When running in inetd mode, the absolute path requirement has been relaxed, the order of log messages has been fixed, stricter parsing of key types has been introduced, and the critical re-keying regression test has been improved, all relevant to OpenSSH 9.9.

Valkey 8.0.0.0 ‘in-memory data storage’ Release

Valkey, the open-source in-memory data warehouse, reached a major milestone in September with the major release of Valkey 8.0.0. This release builds on the Redis foundation, providing full compatibility with Redis OSS 7.2.4 while delivering significant improvements in performance, efficiency, and new features.

In-memory data storage is a data management system that stores data in random access memory (RAM) rather than on traditional discs. This provides much faster access to data and improves performance, especially for applications that require fast data processing.

Valkey's enthusiasts prioritized optimizing the code base, resulting in a remarkable threefold increase in speed over the previous open-source version of Redis. This achievement brought Valkey closer to its goal of handling one million requests per second (RPS).

Valkey 8.0.0 significantly improves memory use, making it a more efficient solution for managing large amounts of data.

While maintaining backward compatibility, Valkey 8.0.0 offers several new features, including the following.

• Improved monitoring and logging capabilities provide deeper insight into system performance and behavior.
• Enhanced replication mechanisms improve data consistency and availability.
• Valkey 8.0.0 further improves system reliability by minimizing downtime and data loss.

Valkey 8.0.0 is now available for download and can be easily integrated into existing infrastructure. Developers can evaluate the benefits of the latest release by building from source, installing pre-built binaries, or deploying containers.

Upgrading Swift to Version 6.0

Swift 6, the latest major release of the Swift programming language, delivers significant enhancements, expanded platform support, and new features that make it even more versatile and powerful. Notably, this update marks a decade of continuous development of the Swift language.

Language and standard library updates:

• An optional language mode has been introduced that extends safety guarantees to prevent data jumps in parallel code by allowing potential problems to be detected as compiler errors.
• Functions can now specify the type of error they produce as part of their signature, improving code readability and error handling, especially in shared code and resource-constrained environments.
• There is now support for non-copyable types in generics, allowing generic code to handle both copyable and non-copyable types. This enhancement enables non-copyable types to be used in all standard libraries.
• Swift 6 extends bi-directional interaction with C++, including move-only types, virtual methods, default arguments, and other standard library types. C++ virtual method calls to types annotated as SWIFT_SHARED_REFERENCE or SWIFT_IMMORTAL_REFERENCE are also supported.

Swift 6 also introduces a preview of Embedded Swift, a subset of the language and compilation mode designed for embedded software development, such as microcontroller programming using MacOS hosting. It allows the creation of small standalone binaries, making it suitable for platforms with limited memory and low-level environments.

Swift 6 also includes several performance enhancements, including count(where:) for efficient counting of elements in sequences, pack iteration for natural for-cycles over value parameter packs, access control for imports, @attached(body) macros for synthesizing function implementations, expression macros as default arguments, and more.

GNOME 47 Denver Desktop Environment Release

GNOME 47, codenamed "Denver", is a new release of the GNOME desktop environment that incorporates many of the improvements, new features, and visual enhancements that the GNOME community has been working on for the past six months.

One of the most notable changes in GNOME 47 is the introduction of accent colors. Users can now customize the existing blue accent color with several alternatives, adding a personal style to the system's appearance.

Here are some of the improvements:

• GNOME 47 optimizes the user experience on low-resolution screens by scaling icons and interface elements to appear more significant and accessible. Dylog windows have also received a fresh and updated design to improve usability on different screen sizes.
• Support for hardware encoding on Intel and AMD GPUs is now available for screen recording. This significantly reduces the system load during screen recording, resulting in a smoother experience and less impact on other running applications.
• GTK rendering has been significantly improved, especially for older hardware and mobile devices.
• GNOME's remote desktop support now includes persistent remote login sessions. If a user disconnects from a remote login session, it will continue, allowing them to log in again and pick up where they left off.
• GNOME 47 introduces completely new file opening and saving dialogs based on the existing Files application. These dialogs offer a more complete set of features, including zooming, changing sort order, renaming files and folders, previewing files, and more. They also provide consistency with the Files application in appearance, behavior, and search results.

The Files application in GNOME 47 has received several enhancements, including a new network view for viewing remote file locations, a display of physical internal drives in the sidebar, and the ability to remove more default sidebar items for customization.

GNOME 47 also introduced experimental features such as improved fractional display scaling and the ability to play games with virtual reality (VR) headsets when using Wayland desktop sessions.

The latest GNOME release also lays the groundwork for the robust and hardware-accelerated split-screen acceleration required by NVIDIA's proprietary driver.

Have a great month, and we’ll see you in the next is*hosting digest!