From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from atuin.qyliss.net (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by atuin.qyliss.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id E97918D11; Wed, 05 Aug 2026 14:55:19 +0000 (UTC) Received: by atuin.qyliss.net (Postfix, from userid 993) id 016368CAE; Wed, 05 Aug 2026 14:55:17 +0000 (UTC) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 4.0.1 (2024-03-26) on atuin.qyliss.net X-Spam-Level: ** X-Spam-Status: No, score=2.4 required=3.0 tests=DKIM_SIGNED,DKIM_VALID, DKIM_VALID_AU,DMARC_MISSING,FROM_SUSPICIOUS_NTLD,PDS_OTHER_BAD_TLD, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE,SPF_HELO_NONE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=4.0.1 Received: from mail-108-mta236.mxroute.com (mail-108-mta236.mxroute.com [136.175.108.236]) by atuin.qyliss.net (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 9BA878D04 for ; Wed, 05 Aug 2026 14:55:15 +0000 (UTC) Received: from filter006.mxroute.com ([136.175.111.3] filter006.mxroute.com) (Authenticated sender: mN4UYu2MZsgR) by mail-108-mta236.mxroute.com (ZoneMTA) with ESMTPSA id 19fd26bd74a000c8ef.002 for (version=TLSv1.3 cipher=TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384); Wed, 05 Aug 2026 14:55:10 +0000 X-Zone-Loop: 14bcba379ab33b4552bd06ef51ae1e738687c57cb39f X-Originating-IP: [136.175.111.3] DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gagarin.work; s=x; h=Content-Transfer-Encoding:MIME-Version:References: In-Reply-To:Message-ID:Date:Subject:Cc:To:From:Sender:Reply-To:Content-Type: Content-ID:Content-Description:Resent-Date:Resent-From:Resent-Sender: Resent-To:Resent-Cc:Resent-Message-ID:List-Id:List-Help:List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe:List-Post:List-Owner:List-Archive; bh=KsGhx9TE0HG5PNHGIooMpxg8Jbyw3fr7jkxkHEycPq4=; b=b9nnecxlxDBDdppnbTrFha4yxw 1KlJ1lFn7psblSjG67MUfTGQzMmoJlAuCneOdLLEQ7p5Nq7ttvzI09j7ZD/TLIT6PD2fuWBkRH2DS ol5O+u8v34LUPzuDPzqAtmU7mXqE+lP71hPuDmwsVgUJI9DpqsTA3eXJfOmqUpGwWMTxk4pSqyoRb fkqn7+h/BvyOsa+8R0p6PmYrp9ivhjOLKaxPzeAgEV1pIl+ap43omGm4yCkzveXB1tlVuEManxroC anITBGoF1k03VnCbb3aGzrJfwqQ3m4/fzx9dBQ5M0r9W+LhsqsWzunUqSDU9WpTtz9GozAoM/4sHw Imlz+K8g==; From: Valentin Gagarin To: hi@alyssa.is Subject: Re: Spectrum community call! Date: Wed, 5 Aug 2026 16:54:40 +0200 Message-ID: <20260805145440.271056-1-valentin@gagarin.work> In-Reply-To: <87jyrdy7do.fsf@alyssa.is> References: <87jyrdy7do.fsf@alyssa.is> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Authenticated-Id: valentin@gagarin.work Message-ID-Hash: JNIAKLZJ7QQBWKXYWDAK3DDHYR3N5IXM X-Message-ID-Hash: JNIAKLZJ7QQBWKXYWDAK3DDHYR3N5IXM X-MailFrom: valentin@gagarin.work X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; loop; banned-address; header-match-discuss.spectrum-os.org-0; header-match-discuss.spectrum-os.org-1; header-match-discuss.spectrum-os.org-2; header-match-discuss.spectrum-os.org-3; header-match-discuss.spectrum-os.org-4; emergency; member-moderation; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: discuss@spectrum-os.org, Valentin Gagarin X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.10 Precedence: list List-Id: General high-level discussion about Spectrum Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: # 2026-07-12 Spectrum community call Attendees: - Alyssa - Lilla - Demi - Valentin - Johannes - (3 more guests) Notes: Valentin, edited for correctness by Alyssa ## Agenda - Updates on what's been happening recently - Q&A ## Updates from contributors - Alyssa: - Trying to get back to publishing weekly updates, but no promises - Worked on updating Spectrum's Nixpkgs pin - Hasn't been moved in 6 months - This sort of delay should be exceptional, but was focused on project management issues in the first half of the year - In the future, updates should be regular and automatic - Caught a crash in [Mesa] (via [cosmic-files]) that wasn't covered by tests, submitted [first PR to fix that] - We had been working on integrating [COSMIC] since 2023 (with contributions to upstream and its dependencies), and now [COSMIC on Spectrum is almost ready to go] - Vaida has been working on UX design for Spectrum - We had lots of conversations how applications should interact, how security concepts should be communicated to users, etc. - [Discussion of initial use cases] should soon make it into the public development space [Mesa]: https://mesa3d.org/ [cosmic-files]: https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-files/ [first PR to fix that]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/159145 [COSMIC]: https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-epoch [COSMIC on Spectrum is almost ready to go]: https://inbox.spectrum-os.org/spectrum-devel/20260710195907.98981-1-hi@alyssa.is/ [Discussion of initial use cases]: https://inbox.spectrum-os.org/spectrum-devel/CALi2N8TtTTyoK90DAm24jBTpJQBmNq5J8BnY935r62b-x0t+dA@mail.gmail.com/T/#u - Johannes: - Started working on the installer in October/November 2025, when Alyssa and Demi were discussing the new update system - The current installer wouldn't really work with that - Tried options from other distros, but didn't find anything suitable Started implementing our own in Rust - Turned out there was already development at GNOME OS on [gnome-setup], also in Rust and also using [systemd-repart] - Looks promising, we can probably use that once it's there - In the meantime, can use the [systemd-sysinstall] - Have it working for the latest Spectrum pin of Nixpkgs - Demi: The [GNOME] project has a history of focusing on their needs - Alyssa: We've spoken to them about whether they're open to contributions not strictly related to GNOME and got positive feedback - Also it's only one or two people there, and they seem to be receptive to accommodating us. - [GTK] appeared less flexible - Alyssa: That is a much bigger project [gnome-setup]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/STF/setup [systemd-repart]: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/systemd-repart.html [systemd-sysinstall]: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/devel/systemd-sysinstall.html [GNOME]: https://www.gnome.org/ [GTK]: https://www.gtk.org/ - Demi: - Making device backends run on the host - Linux assumes that every USB device (and hardware in general) is trusted; it's just not considered a security issue that a USB device would do arbitrarily bad things, such as taking over the kernel - Example: https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/cve-2024-50302 - ChromeOS and Android would like otherwise, but Google hasn't paid anyone to go over the Linux USB stack to find vulnerabilities (they could but don't) - So essentially you can take over the kernel with a compromised device - But we want the system to be robust against vulnerable drivers - Linux is important because it runs a lot of hardware, not because it's particularly secure or well-designed - The goal of Spectrum is to make it secure but also to make it look like a sufficiently normal system to processes - Qubes is secure, but isn't particularly normal - The ideal is a [capability-based operating system], and Spectrum is the minimum viable increment over the current state of affairs - One long-term goal is to expose hardware via VMs, and that requires a communication mechanism between these VMs in the first place - The protocol would be [virtio-vhost-user], see also the [issue on virtio-vhost-user support in Cloud Hypervisor] - Have been working to get the spec and implementation over the finish line - Updated the spec - Eventually this might risk becoming co-maintainer of a lot of virtio drivers for different device types (block device, microphone, camera, ...), but even with insecure drivers there's also a degree of protection of hardware against malicious apps - The benefit would be that the physical device never comes into contact with the application, and the scope of a vulnerable driver would be constrained to just the VM handling the device - Network is easier, because networking is by design able to be routed between multiple VMs - Exposing [virtio-gpu] 3D acceleration - People want to run graphical applications efficiently - Short of passing through the entire GPU (which would limit us to only one VM being able to access it), the best we can do is virtio-gpu native context - Context on that is worth a full talk: [Reasonably Secure GPU Acceleration at Xen Project Summit 2024] - Lilla: Heard that [ChromeOS is deprecating graphical acceleration] - Demi: Know that they got rid of it on Intel devices, not sure about ARM - They added a note on their website that it's still available but unsupported - Demi: That may have been specific to platforms that don't have native context - Alyssa: found this [note on Reddit mentioning virgl]; emulated OpenGL is hard to do securely - Demi: A future option could be a thing called [magma-gpu], but that would require more upstream work on [Mesa] - Graphics drivers are basically their own kernels; that's the level of complexity we're talking about... - [Control groups] in Spectrum - Main goal is to watch resource use - Secondary goal is shutting things down cleanly - Normally this is done by systemd, but Spectrum doesn't use systemd after evaluating it (should be in an FAQ) - Main remaining issues: - No locking for concurrent operations on a cgroup tab - Found a way to do it recently - You get a deadlock on an empty cgroup - You can't even kill it and the network locks up, no idea why - Still work in progress [capabililty-based operating system]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_operating_system [virtio-host-vuser]: https://inbox.spectrum-os.org/spectrum-discuss/878s4i3ixs.fsf@alyssa.is/T/ [issue on virtio-vhost-user support in Cloud Hypervisor]: https://github.com/cloud-hypervisor/cloud-hypervisor/issues/7045 [virtio-gpu]: https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/system/devices/virtio/virtio-gpu.html [Reasonably Secure GPU Acceleration at Xen Project Summit 2024]: https://youtu.be/FrKEUVB-BYM [ChromeOS is deprecating graphical accelleration]: https://developers.google.com/chromeos/app-development/develop/news#:~:text=deprecated%2C%20are%20no%20longer%20supported [note on Reddit mentioning virgl]: https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/1mzim3e/is_it_technically_possible_to_use_gpu_in_chromeos/?solution=c6f8bbdad1b0bf7ec6f8bbdad1b0bf7e [magma-gpu]: https://github.com/magma-gpu [Control groups]: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/cgroup-v1/cgroups.html - Valentin: - Working on Spectrum documentation - Recently changed the rendering to display all of the material in the same style - Updating things for readability and discoverability in small increments - What do people expect from documentation? - Interested in any input! What would help you get going, e.g. with contributing? - Everyone is invited to introduce themselves and share work related to Spectrum! ## Questions None today.