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Version 18.1 of the GDB interactive debugger has been released. Changes include new commands to manipulate the environment of the subprocess, the ability to save the command history to a file, support for a couple of new targets, several Python API additions, and more. See the NEWS file for the complete list.

The Sovereign Tech Agency (STA) is investing nearly €1.3 million in KDE through 2027. At Akademy 2026 in Graz, Austria, Nate Graham and Kevin Ottens, two of the contributors who helped bring in the investment, explained how the funding was secured, provided tips on how projects should approach organizations like STA, and talked about how that money will be improving KDE for everyone. In addition to keeping the community informed about the work, the pair hoped to pass on what they have learned to encourage others to help raise funds for development as well.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 7.2.8 and 6.18.54 stable kernels. Each contains a number of important fixes throughout the tree; users are advised to upgrade.

Johannes Schindelin has posted a detailed summary of the discussions held at the 2026 Git Contributors' Summit. Topics covered include Git 3.0, security process, documentation, the pluggable object database, use of LLMs, and more.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (kernel, kernel-rt, perl-DBI:1.641, and unbound), Debian (jq, libreoffice, openssl, and redis), Fedora (389-ds-base, bcm283x-firmware, cockpit, flatpak-builder, mingw-gdk-pixbuf, openssl3, pcs, rust-cryptoki, squid, uboot-tools, and webkitgtk), Mageia (fuse3, perl-Net-DNS, python-gitpython, python-webob, thunderbird, thunderbird-l10n, and unbound), Oracle (postgresql:12, postgresql:15, postgresql:16, and skopeo), Slackware (php), SUSE (alloy, amazon-ssm-agent, ant, apptainer, chromium, corosync, cyrus-imapd, distribution, exiv2, ffmpeg-7, freeipmi, gdb, gnome-remote-desktop, google-osconfig-agent, govulncheck-vulndb, gvfs, hplip, ImageMagick, imagemagick, java-11-openjdk, jsoup, re2j, kernel, keybase-client, libsoup, libx11, libxrender, mcphost, memcached, opensc, perl-DBI, python-gitpython, python-weasyprint, rabbitmq-server, ruby3.4, util-linux, and zstd-jni), and Ubuntu (curl, expat, gdal, libass, libpcap, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-7.0, linux-hwe-7.0, linux-ibm, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, linux-realtime, linux, linux-azure, linux-azure-6.8, linux-azure-fde, linux-azure-fde-6.8, linux-azure-fips, linux-fips, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-6.8, linux-gcp-fips, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-ibm, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-6.8, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-realtime, linux-realtime, linux-realtime-6.8, linux, linux-hwe, linux-kvm, linux-aws, linux-aws-fips, linux-azure, linux-azure-fde, linux-azure-fips, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-fips, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-ibm, linux-intel-iot-realtime, linux-intel-iotg, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-oracle, linux-realtime, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux-aws, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-gcp-fips, linux-aws-fips, linux-ibm-5.15, linux-intel-iotg-5.15, octavia, and swift).

The F-Droid project has announced the release of F-Droid 2.0, which is a complete redesign of the official app. Notable changes in the release include making it easier to discover and install applications, more useful app categories, improved search, and much more.

For more than a decade, F-Droid has helped people discover and install free and open source Android apps. F-Droid 2.0 builds on that foundation with a modern interface, better app discovery, improved search, and a simpler experience that works well, whether you're new to F-Droid or have been using it for years.

This isn't just a visual refresh. The user experience was redesigned to integrate smoothly with current Android patterns, like Material Design, while keeping familiar F-Droid interactions in place. Key components were reworked and rewritten using Kotlin Compose, the standard toolkit these days, creating a foundation that will help us deliver improvements more quickly in the years ahead.

Sudheendra Raghav Neela, a member of a group of researchers from Graz University of Technology, has announced the release of research into file-notification attacks that would allow spying on user activity on Android, Linux, macOS, and Windows. The group has published a paper with details on the research as well as a web site with demonstrations of the vulnerabilities.

On Linux, an attacker can use inotifywatch to monitor a directory to conduct an inter-keystroke timing attack—even if they do not have read access to the files within a directory. The group also discovered a method to conduct a UI-redress attack (or "clickjacking" attack) on KDE 5 and KDE 6 by monitoring /usr/bin/pkexec to detect when Polkit spawns an authentication prompt. An attacker could draw a fake password window on top of the real window to collect a user's credentials.

Both of these flaws are still present today, though the Linux kernel did partially mitigate the issue with a fix that was included in the 5.10.248, 5.15.198, 6.1.160, 6.6.120, 6.12.65, and 6.18.3 kernels shipped in January. See the web site for more information and a mitigation to prevent password-prompt windows from losing focus.

Many of the transmissions sent over the radio spectrum can be decoded with a relatively cheap hardware dongle. Thomas Eckert presented at RustConf 2026 in Montreal about his hobby: decoding radio transmissions with Rust. In his presentation, he covered all of the math necessary to get started with software-defined radio, and gave demonstrations of listening to AM and FM radio, as well as decoding transmissions from aircraft transponders. His slides and example code are available on GitHub.

After a two-year hiatus, LWN's Jonathan Corbet presented an updated edition of his Kernel Report at the Kernel Recipes conference. Corbet looked at what is happening in the kernel community, how it's dealing with a period of accelerated change, and where things might go in the future. Video of the talk is available on YouTube for those who'd like to tune in.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (buildah, containernetworking-plugins, firefox, kernel, kernel-rt, openexr, perl-DBI, podman, postgresql, postgresql16, postgresql:15, runc, skopeo, and tar), Debian (libdatetime-timezone-perl, tzdata, xdg-dbus-proxy, and znc), Fedora (chromium, evolution, evolution-data-server, evolution-ews, kernel, libheif, mingw-pcre2, nginx-mod-modsecurity, unbound, and webkitgtk), Mageia (borgbackup, coreutils, firefox, nss, kbd, libnfs, libwebsockets, perl-URI, pipewire, and xdg-dbus-proxy), Oracle (apr-util, containernetworking-plugins, coreutils, curl, firefox, freerdp, gstreamer1-plugins-base, host-metering, libarchive, libtiff, libxml2, openexr, openssh, perl-DBI, podman, postgresql16, postgresql18-postgis, postgresql:15, rsyslog, runc, tar, and unbound), SUSE (apptainer, gimp, librepods, libX11-6, perl-Authen-SASL, podofo, python-WebOb, and python313-graphifyy), and Ubuntu (imagemagick, libgit2, moodle, network-manager, Open-iSNS, python-urllib3, sqlparse, and xdg-desktop-portal).

Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:

• Front: Git 2.56; gccrs; NetBSD and compat_linux; io_uring; Desktop UX.
• Briefs: WordPress vulnerability; Radicle vulnerability; Systemtap 5.6; GNOME 51; Systemd v262; Quotes; ...
• Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

Scott Jenson has been working on user interfaces (UIs) and user experience (UX) for many years at Apple, Google, and other companies. Now, he's trying to convince open-source projects to experiment more and drive the desktop beyond the age-old "windows, icons, menus, pointer" (WIMP) model. At Akademy 2026, KDE's annual developer conference, he shared his complaints and ideas in a talk aimed at convincing those in attendance to take the lead on desktop design.

Systemd v262 has been released. Some of the notable new features include the ability to build systemd as a single statically linked binary for small containers, support for the kernel coredump socket protocol introduced with Linux 6.17, addition of OpenSSL 4 support, and many other changes. See the release notes for a full list of changes.

The Radicle peer-to-peer code-collaboration project has disclosed two critical vulnerabilities in the network protocol used by Radicle nodes. The first flaw is that the network protocol used by Radicle "does not give the confidentiality it was expected to give", which allows anyone who can observe the network between two nodes to read the data exchanged. The second is that peer authentication is broken and allows impersonation, so an attacker can spoof their Node ID and read private repositories they should not be able to read.

In practice, the two flaws are most useful when they can be exploited together: an attacker on the path sees the Node IDs at both ends of a connection, and both are normally on the allow-list. That attacker can read whatever is exchanged while they watch, and can then use a Node ID they saw to fetch the whole repository on demand. The realistic threat is anyone on the path between your node and node it syncs with, and no setting or allow-list protects against them.

We are publishing this before the security update is available. You can act on it today, and no fix we release later can undo an exposure that has already happened.

See the post for workarounds that can be used today; a major update that will be backward-incompatible is underway.

A critical vulnerability has been discovered in WordPress's get_page_template() function for page-template resolution that could allow remote-code execution (RCE) by an unauthenticated attacker, in some limited circumstances. The project has provided an update for the most recent branch of WordPress, as well as backports of the fix for branches back to 4.7. See the vulnerability report for the conditions required for an RCE attack to be successful.

The vulnerability also affects the ClassicPress fork of WordPress, though a security update has not been provided for that project yet. LWN covered ClassicPress in 2024. Users of either content-management system should update soon.