LWN.net

LWN.net is a comprehensive source of news and opinions from and about the Linux community. This is the main LWN.net feed, listing all articles which are posted to the site front page.



Wed, 01 Apr 2026 14:41:07 +0000
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Pandoc is a document-conversion program that can translate among a myriad of formats, including LaTeX, HTML, Office Open XML (docx), plain text, and Markdown. It is also extensible by writing Lua filters that can manipulate the document structure and perform arbitrary computations. Pandoc has appeared in various LWN articles over the years, such as my look at Typst and at the importance of free software to science in 2025, but we have missed providing an overview of the tool. The February release of Pandoc 3.9, which comes with the ability to compile the program to WebAssembly (Wasm), allowing Pandoc to run in web browsers, will likely also be of interest.
Wed, 01 Apr 2026 14:25:27 +0000
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Version 0.0.6 of the Rust-based Servo web browser rendering engine has been released. This release boasts a long list of new features, performance enhancements, improvements, and bug fixes. Some of the notable changes include layout performance improvements, a servo:config page for setting any preference, and developer tools enhancements.

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 13:11:12 +0000
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Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (freerdp, libxslt, python3.11, and python3.12), Debian (libpng1.6, lxd, netty, and python-tornado), Fedora (chunkah, cpp-httplib, firefox, freerdp, gst-devtools, gst-editing-services, gstreamer1, gstreamer1-doc, gstreamer1-plugin-libav, gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, gstreamer1-plugins-base, gstreamer1-plugins-good, gstreamer1-plugins-ugly-free, gstreamer1-rtsp-server, gstreamer1-vaapi, insight, python-gstreamer1, python3.14, rust, rust-cargo-rpmstatus, rust-cargo-vendor-filterer, rust-resctl-bench, rust-scx_layered, rust-scx_rustland, rust-scx_rusty, and xen), Mageia (freeipmi, python-openssl, python-ply, ruby-rack, vim, and zlib), Oracle (firefox, freerdp, kernel, libpng, thunderbird, uek-kernel, and virt:ol and virt-devel:ol), Red Hat (golang), SUSE (bind, expat, fetchmail, ffmpeg-7, freerdp, gsl, incus, kernel, libjavamapscript, libjxl, libpng16-16, libpolkit-agent-1-0-127, net-snmp, net-tools, openexr, perl-XML-Parser, python-ldap, python-pyasn1, python-PyJWT, python311-requests, tailscale, thunderbird, tinyproxy, and ucode-intel), and Ubuntu (golang-golang-x-net-dev and ruby2.3, ruby2.5, ruby2.7, ruby3.0, ruby3.2, ruby3.3).
Tue, 31 Mar 2026 15:40:56 +0000
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Discussion of a memory-management patch set intended to clean up a helper function for handling huge pages spiraled into something else entirely after it was posted on March 19. Memory-management maintainer Andrew Morton proposed making changes to the subsystem's review process, to require patch authors to respond to feedback from Sashiko, the recently released LLM-based kernel patch review system. Other sub-maintainers, particularly Lorenzo Stoakes, objected. The resulting discussion about how and when to adopt Sashiko is potentially relevant to many other parts of the kernel.

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:52:50 +0000
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In early March, Dylan M. Taylor submitted a pull request to add a field to store a user's birth date in systemd's JSON user records. This was done to allow applications to store the date to facilitate compliance with age-attestation and -verification laws. It was to be expected that some members of the community would object; the actual response, however, has been shockingly hostile. Some of this has been fueled by a misinformation campaign that has targeted the systemd project and Taylor specifically, resulting in Taylor being doxxed and receiving death threats. Such behavior is not just problematic; it is also deeply misguided given the actual nature of the changes.

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:26:42 +0000
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There is a blog post on sockpuppet.org arguing that we are not prepared for the upcoming flood of high-quality, LLM-generated vulnerability reports and exploits.

Now consider the poor open source developers who, for the last 18 months, have complained about a torrent of slop vulnerability reports. I'd had mixed sympathies, but the complaints were at least empirically correct. That could change real fast. The new models find real stuff. Forget the slop; will projects be able to keep up with a steady feed of verified, reproducible, reliably-exploitable sev:hi vulnerabilities? That's what's coming down the pipe.

Everything is up in the air. The industry is sold on memory-safe software, but the shift is slow going. We've bought time with sandboxing and attack surface restriction. How well will these countermeasures hold up? A 4 layer system of sandboxes, kernels, hypervisors, and IPC schemes are, to an agent, an iterated version of the same problem. Agents will generate full-chain exploits, and they will do so soon.

Meanwhile, no defense looks flimsier now than closed source code. Reversing was already mostly a speed-bump even for entry-level teams, who lift binaries into IR or decompile them all the way back to source. Agents can do this too, but they can also reason directly from assembly. If you want a problem better suited to LLMs than bug hunting, program translation is a good place to start.

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:09:56 +0000
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Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (firefox, kernel, and kernel-rt), Debian (phpseclib and roundcube), Fedora (bind, bind-dyndb-ldap, dotnet8.0, dotnet9.0, firefox, freerdp, mingw-expat, musescore, nss, ntpd-rs, perl-YAML-Syck, php-phpseclib3, polkit, pyOpenSSL, python3.12, rust, rust-cargo-rpmstatus, rust-cargo-vendor-filterer, stgit, webkitgtk, and xen), SUSE (dovecot24, ImageMagick, jupyter-nbclassic, kernel, libjxl, libsuricata8_0_4, obs-service-recompress, obs-service-tar_scm, obs-service-set_version, openbao, perl-Crypt-URandom, plexus-utils, python-pyasn1, python-PyJWT, strongswan, traefik, traefik2, and webkit2gtk3), and Ubuntu (gst-plugins-base1.0, gst-plugins-good1.0, imagemagick, pillow, pyasn1, pyjwt, and roundcube).
Mon, 30 Mar 2026 17:25:40 +0000
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SystemRescue 13.00 has been released. The SystemRescue distribution is a live boot system-rescue toolkit, based on Arch Linux, for repairing systems in the event of a crash. This release includes the 6.18.20 LTS kernel, updates bcachefs tools and kernel module to 1.37.3, and many upgraded packages. See the step-by-step guide for instructions on performing common operations such as recovering files, creating disk clones, and resetting lost passwords.

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 17:12:44 +0000
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Version 4.0.0 of the Rspamd spam-filtering system has been released. Notable new features include HTML fuzzy phishing detection, support for up to eight flags with fuzzy hashes, and more. See the changelog for more on improvements, breaking changes, and bug fixes.

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 14:24:34 +0000
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Rust's compiler team has been working on a long-term project to rewrite the trait solver — the part of the compiler that determines which concrete function should be called when a programmer uses a trait method that is implemented for multiple types. The rewrite is intended to simplify future changes to the trait system, fix a handful of tricky soundness bugs, and provide faster compile times. It's also nearly finished, with a relatively small number of remaining blocking bugs.

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 13:07:53 +0000
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Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (freerdp, golang, and ncurses), Debian (asterisk, bind9, gst-plugins-base1.0, gst-plugins-ugly1.0, gvfs, incus, libxml-parser-perl, nodejs, php-phpseclib, php-phpseclib3, phpseclib, and strongswan), Fedora (bcftools, bind, bind-dyndb-ldap, chromium, dotnet10.0, dotnet8.0, dotnet9.0, giflib, htslib, libsoup3, libtasn1, maturin, mingw-expat, mingw-freetype, mongo-c-driver, perl-XML-Parser, php-phpseclib, php-phpseclib3, pypy, pypy3.10, pypy3.11, python-cryptography, python-fastar, python-ply, python-pycparser, python-uv-build, python3.11, python3.12, python3.13, python3.6, roundcubemail, rubygem-json, rust-ambient-id, rust-astral-reqwest-middleware, rust-astral-reqwest-retry, rust-astral-tokio-tar, rust-astral_async_http_range_reader, rust-cargo-c, rust-ingredients, rust-native-tls, rust-nix, rust-openssl-probe, rust-openssl-probe0.1, rust-pty-process, rust-reqsign, rust-reqsign-aliyun-oss, rust-reqsign-aws-v4, rust-reqsign-azure-storage, rust-reqsign-command-execute-tokio, rust-reqsign-core, rust-reqsign-file-read-tokio, rust-reqsign-google, rust-reqsign-http-send-reqwest, rust-reqsign-huaweicloud-obs, rust-reqsign-tencent-cos, rust-rustls-native-certs, rust-sequoia-chameleon-gnupg, rust-tar, rust-webpki-root-certs, rustup, samtools, suricata, uv, and vim), Mageia (cmake, libpng, nodejs, python-ujson, and strongswan), Red Hat (python3 and python3.9), SUSE (389-ds, amazon-cloudwatch-agent, capstone, chromium, containerd, cosign, curl, docker-compose, docker-stable, exiv2, expat, firefox, freeipmi, freerdp, gimp, glusterfs, govulncheck-vulndb, gstreamer-plugins-ugly, jupyter-bqplot-jupyterlab, jupyter-jupyterlab-templates, jupyter-matplotlib, kea, kernel, libsodium, libtpms-devel, LibVNCServer, nghttp2, nginx, poppler, python-dynaconf, python-ldap, python-nltk, python-orjson, python-pyasn1, python-pydicom, python-PyJWT, python-pyopenssl, python-tornado6, python311, python311-cbor2, python311-deepdiff, python311-intake, python311-jsonpath-ng, python311-lmdb, python311-oci-sdk, python312, rclone, redis, salt, tomcat11, v2ray-core, and vim), and Ubuntu (linux-ibm-5.4).
Sun, 29 Mar 2026 23:28:17 +0000
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The 7.0-rc6 kernel prepatch is out for testing.

Anyway, exactly because it's just "more than usual" rather than feeling *worse* than usual, I don't currently feel this merits extending the release, and I still hope that next weekend will be the last rc. But it's just a bit unnerving how this release doesn't want to calm down, so no promises.
Fri, 27 Mar 2026 16:44:31 +0000
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LiteLLM is a gateway library providing access to a number of large language models (LLMs); it is popular and widely used. On March 24, the word went out that the version of LiteLLM found in the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository had been compromised with information-stealing malware and downloaded thousands of times, sparking concern across the net. This may look like just another supply-chain attack — and it is — but the way it came about reveals just how many weak links there are in the software supply chains that we all depend on.
Fri, 27 Mar 2026 16:21:17 +0000
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The SafeDep blog reports that compromised versions of the telnyx package have been found in the PyPI repository:

Two versions of telnyx (4.87.1 and 4.87.2) published to PyPI on March 27, 2026 contain malicious code injected into telnyx/_client.py. The telnyx package averages over 1 million downloads per month (~30,000/day), making this a high-impact supply chain compromise. The payload downloads a second-stage binary hidden inside WAV audio files from a remote server, then either drops a persistent executable on Windows or harvests credentials on Linux/macOS.
Fri, 27 Mar 2026 13:32:07 +0000
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Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 6.12.79 stable kernel. This release only reverts a patch that caused a regression on the LoongArch platform; users who could not build 6.12.78 on LoongArch need to upgrade.