LWN.net

The 7.1.10, 6.18.46, 6.12.105, 6.6.153, 6.1.184, 5.15.217, and 5.10.266 stable kernels have all been released; each contains another set of important fixes.

From Jeremy Allison we have the sad news of the passing of Steve French. He was the maintainer of the kernel's SMB filesystem code for many years, having only dropped that role due to health issues in the last week. "I've known Steve for over 20 years. He was a legend in the community, and a really good friend. He will be greatly missed. Farewell Steve." He will indeed be missed.

The open-source world has been struggling for a few years now to understand how to approach large language models (LLMs) and the licensing applied to them. What constitutes "freedom" with respect to a black box filled with numerical weights? The process taken by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) in the development of its Open Source AI Definition was controversial at best, as was its output. Now, the Linux Foundation's Mike Dolan has brought a new license to the OSI for approval. It is called the OpenMDW ("Open Model, Data, and Weights"), and it aims to clarify licensing for the distribution of LLMs and related materials, but consensus is proving hard to find for this license as well.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (ansible-core and pcp), Debian (chromium, libgit2, python-httplib2, and sabnzbdplus), Fedora (dokuwiki, domoticz, dotnet10.0, dotnet8.0, dotnet9.0, firefox, i2c-display, libgit2, lyx, ntpsec, openssh, perl-DBI, php-phpseclib3, python-alembic, python-asyncmy, python-sqlalchemy, python3.13, roundcubemail, trafficserver, wireshark, and wordpress), Red Hat (compat-openssl10, compat-openssl11, fence-agents, gnutls, kernel, kernel-rt, libarchive, libreswan, multiple packages, openssl, python-idna, python-pillow, qemu-kvm, resource-agents, rh-podman-desktop, ruby, unbound, and vim), SUSE (buildah, chromium, container-suseconnect, containerd, cosign, ctop, docker, firefox, forgejo-cli, gitea-tea, go1.25, go1.26, helm, kubernetes, kubernetes-old, kubevirt1.8, podman, python-pytest-html, python-unearth, python311, python313, rootlesskit, and rsync), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-azure, linux-bluefield, linux-fips, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.4, linux-iot, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-7.0, linux-ibm, linux-oem-7.0, linux-raspi, linux-realtime, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-fips, linux-azure-fips, linux-gkeop, linux-ibm-5.15, linux-intel-iot-realtime, linux-intel-iotg, linux-intel-iotg-5.15, linux-kvm, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-tegra, linux-nvidia-tegra-5.15, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.15, linux-realtime, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux, linux-aws, linux-kvm, linux-lts-xenial, linux-aws-6.8, linux-azure-5.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-fips, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-gcp-fips, linux-gcp, linux-gke, linux-gke, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux-hwe-6.8, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-7.0, linux-nvidia-bos, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-realtime, netty, postgresql-14, postgresql-16, postgresql-18, vim, and wget).

Quickshell is a toolkit for building desktop components, such as toolbars or menus. It uses QML, which is a declarative language for designing GUI applications. Quickshell helps developers create graphical tools for common desktop use cases with a focus on ease of development. It offers a convenient method for writing user interfaces and has been adopted by a number of projects, such as caelestia-shell and DankMaterialShell, that provide desktop environments for minimal window managers like Sway and niri.

Version 26.08 of the KDE Gear collection of applications has been released. Notable changes in this release include improvements in the signing features of Okular, improved file-grouping features in the Dolphin file manager, and a number of enhancements to the Kdenlive video editor. See the changelog for a full list of updates, enhancements, and bug fixes.

The Rust blog reports on a malicious crate, called proc-macro1, that was uploaded to the crates.io repository.

Furthermore, we discovered that the popular arrayref crate had recently been republished and made to depend on this crate, with the most recent versions yanked. We have removed the malicious version and unyanked the maliciously-yanked versions. Other crates by that author (internment, append-only-vec) were also affected so we have done the same for those, and locked the account as a precaution. We do not believe the author of arrayref to be acting maliciously, but their computer or credentials are likely compromised, and we are attempting to contact them.

Version 6.1.0 of the RPM Package Manager has been released. Notable changes include the ability to provide modifiers to RPM macros at definition time, improved build and verification error handling, support for signing files with PKCS11 tokens using rpmsign, as well as the addition of several new man pages. The 6.1.0 release also debuts a new release model inspired by the Linux kernel's.

As of this writing, 2,346 non-merge changesets have been pulled into the mainline repository for the 7.3 kernel release. That, clearly, is a mere down payment on the flood that is to come. Even so, those early pulls brought in some noteworthy changes, including (but not limited to) a significant reworking of how group scheduling works on multiprocessor systems.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (bind9.18, glib2, gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, gstreamer1-plugins-good, kernel-rt, libcupsfilters, mysql8.4, mysql:8.4, pcp, perl-Date-Manip, php8.4, php:7.4, php:8.2, php:8.3, python3, and yggdrasil), Debian (designate, firefox-esr, and swift), Gentoo (acl, attr, Emacs, libssh2, and quickjs-ng), Oracle (.NET 10.0, .NET 9.0, attr, bind9.18, curl, glib2, gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, gstreamer1-plugins-good, kernel, libXfont2, mysql8.4, nghttp2, nodejs:22, nodejs:24, pam, pcp, perl-Date-Manip, php8.4, python3, sg3_utils, and yggdrasil), Slackware (mozilla-firefox and mozilla-thunderbird), SUSE (open-iscsi, podman, python311, and python313), and Ubuntu (bind9, capnproto, curl, libheif, libpng, libpng1.6, libssh, nginx, and tiff).

Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:

• Front: Debian AI GR; Python pathlib; bootstrappable builds; Fedora and AF_ALG; Arm 128-bit PTEs; BPF CI; 7.2 statistics.
• Briefs: Brief news items from throughout the community.
• Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

Go 1.27, the most recent version of the Go programming language, has been released with a number of new tools, the addition of support for the ML-DSA post-quantum algorithm, new JSON-processing packages, language updates, and more.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 7.1.9, 6.18.45, 6.12.104, 6.6.152, 6.1.183, 5.15.216, and 5.10.265 stable kernels. Each contains important fixes throughout the tree; users are advised to upgrade.

The Debian Project is voting on the usage of large language models (LLMs) to make contributions to the project. The first proposal, sent in late July by Matthias Geiger, would expressly forbid any contributions to Debian that are created by or with the assistance of LLMs. That kicked off a firestorm of discussion and a flood of alternate proposals. Debian developers are now voting on eight proposals in total that range from banning LLM-assisted contributions to explicitly approving them, as well as the standard "none of the above" option that would leave Debian with no agreed policy.

Version 0.11 of the Tuba fediverse client has been released. Notable changes in this release include support for Mastodon collections and quotes, ability to create custom thumbnails for attachments, a new emoji picker, a build for Android, as well as many other enhancements.