Three Snapd Bugs Let Any Local User Own Ubuntu — Patch Now
Canonical patched three snapd CVEs on July 21, including two high-severity privilege escalation flaws that hand a low-privilege account full root on default Ubuntu Desktop installs. »
The Last MPEG-4 Part 2 Patent Just Expired — DivX, Xvid, and a 26-Year Codec War Are Finally Over
On July 19, 2026, the final patent covering MPEG-4 Part 2 Visual expired in Brazil, making the codec that powered the era of internet video legally free worldwide for the first time. »
COSMIC Desktop 1.3 Is Here: System76's Rust Linux Desktop Gets Frosted Glass and GPU Monitoring
System76 shipped COSMIC Epoch 1.3.0 on July 14, 2026, delivering the long-awaited frosted glass visual effect, deeper AMD/Intel/NVIDIA GPU monitoring, and a Rust-native NetworkManager backend to its from-scratch Linux desktop environment. »
Your PC's 2013 Secure Boot Certificate Just Expired — Debian 13.6 Ships the Fix
Debian 13.6 addresses an industry-wide Secure Boot crisis: the UEFI certificate authority that signs bootloaders on most PCs since 2013 has expired, and fwupd 2.0.20 brings the tooling to fix it. »
GhostLock and Januscape: Two Ancient Linux Kernel Bugs Disclosed in the Same Week
GhostLock (CVE-2026-43499) gives any logged-in user full root in five seconds and breaks out of containers. Januscape lets a VM escape its host. Both were disclosed in July 2026 — both are over 15 years old. »