News briefs for February 18, 2019.

Debian 9.8 was released over the weekend. This release mostly addresses security issues and bug fixes. See the post for the full list of changes and visit the mirror list to upgrade an existing installation.

Linux kernel 5.0-rc7 was released yesterday. Linus writes "A nice and calm week, with statistics looking normal. Just under half drivers (gpu, networking, input, md, block, sound, ...), with the rest being architecture fixes (arm64, arm, x86, kvm), networking and misc (filesystem etc). Nothing particularly odd stands out, and everything is pretty small. Just the way I like it."

Creative Commons publishes update on the EU copyright changes that the European Parliament will vote on this spring. The final text of Articles 13 and 11 has been changed somewhat, but according to the Creative Commons post, "With Article 13, it's no exaggeration to say that it'll fundamentally change the way people are able to use the internet and share online. And the European copyright changes will affect how copyright develops in the rest of the world. Even with some of the minor improvements to other aspects of the copyright file, it's hard to see how the reform—taken as a whole—will be a net gain except for the most powerful special interests." If you live in Europe, visit www.saveyourinternet.eu for more information and to contact your MEPs before the vote.

Slax 9.8 was released yesterday. This point release updates some of the included packages; it doesn't include new features. To download the new version, go here.

Mozilla has started testing picture-in-picture mode in Firefox Nightly. According to Softpedia News, "the current implementation of picture-in-picture mode in Firefox is very limited, and I expect Mozilla to accelerate work on it as we approach its target release date. No specifics in this regard are available, however." Picture-in-picture mode is already available in other browsers, such as Google Chrome and Vivaldi.