make is still one of the most useful tools in a developer's toolbox, but a lot of modern repositories need something more portable, more readable, and easier to share between local development and CI. Task is a fast, cross-platform task runner that keeps the good part of a Makefile, one command for common project workflows, while replacing the rough edges with a YAML-based Taskfile.yml, built-in dependency orchestration, variables, templating, caching, and first-class behavior on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
If you're using securitySpec to deploy VMware Cloud Foundation 9.x with external CA-signed ESX certificates, the bring-up can look successful while still leaving you with one surprise:
Post Deployment Configuration Drift
The first ESX host will be deployed with a VMCA-signed certificate instead of the external CA-signed certificate provided.
I ran into this while testing external CA-signed certificates through both the API and Ansible. The JSON payload was accepted, the instance bring-up completed, the ESX hosts retained their external CA-signed certificates except for first ESX host, the one used during the bootstrap for the vCenter appliance.
The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch does a little of both.
Pausch was a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. In 2006, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. By September 18, 2007, after learning the cancer had returned and that he had only months left to live, he gave his now-famous lecture, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams."
The talk became a book, but the real reason it endures is simpler than its title suggests:
It's not about dying. It's about how to live while you're still here.
That distinction matters. A lot of writing about mortality becomes soft around the edges. Pausch did something better. He stayed funny, practical, and honest about disappointment, work, family, and the ways adults drift from what once made them feel alive.
Today, him words feel especially clarifying because modern life is crowded with noise. We optimize calendars, answer messages at red lights, and confuse urgency with importance. We get very efficient at moving and very unclear about where we are going.
Pausch's voice cuts through that. He keeps asking a hard, useful question:
What would you do differently if you stopped pretending you had unlimited time?
Before you begin the upgrade, review the following checklist.
Back up anything you care about.
If the system is a VM, take a snapshot.
Make sure the current 24.04 LTS install is fully patched.
Make sure you have enough free disk space.
Be prepared to answer interactive prompts during the upgrade.
On Ubuntu Server, I would also review any third-party repositories or PPAs before you start. They are a common source of upgrade friction, and Ubuntu may disable them during the release upgrade anyway.
Every shared repository eventually rediscovers the same avoidable argument: tabs or spaces, LF or CRLF, trim trailing whitespace or leave it alone, final newline or not. None of these questions are hard. They are just repetitive, noisy, and surprisingly good at wasting review time.
EditorConfig exists to move those decisions out of personal editor settings and into the repository itself. It is a simple, cross-editor standard for defining basic text file formatting rules so contributors using different editors and IDEs still save files in a consistent way.
This matters more than style bikeshedding. Inconsistent indentation creates ugly diffs. Inconsistent line endings break shell scripts and CI jobs. Trailing whitespace produces review noise that hides the change you actually care about. EditorConfig is not glamorous, but it solves a class of problems that should stay boring.
This guide covers how EditorConfig works, the syntax of .editorconfig files, the standard properties you can rely on, where editor support stands, and how to build a practical starter template for a modern repository.
"Well, that didn't feel a bit of good. What was you aimin' for with that?" I said, my skin prickling under the weight of her stare. "What were you aimin' for?"
I felt the hackles rise like a dog backed into a corner of the yard.
"Reckon you could find a different way to say your piece?" I stammered.
She spat into the dust, her eyes as cold and gray as a dry creek bed.
"Your feelin's are valid," she said, her voice a low rattle. "But your feelin's are your own, and I ain't sayin' they're wrong. Tho the way you went and acted on 'em sure is. Just 'cause you’re bleedin' don't give you the right to stain my floors."
AI coding assistants were always going to force this conversation eventually. Tools like Copilot, ChatGPT, and Claude can draft code quickly, explain unfamiliar sections, and help contributors move through a patch faster than they could on their own. That is useful. It is also exactly the kind of shift that was bound to run into the Linux kernel's standards around trust, review, authorship, and licensing.
The kernel is not a project where code gets merged because it looks plausible. It is a project where contributors are expected to understand what they send, defend it under review, and stand behind it legally and technically. That is what makes the new guidance on AI-generated and tool-generated contributions worth paying attention to.
