Linux Weekly News

While large language models and the expensive hardware they require are all the rage now, other areas of artificial intelligence work within much more constrained hardware environments. At FOSDEM 2025, Jon Nordby presented his open-source machine-learning inference engine for microcontrollers, named emlearn. The project also boasts bindings for MicroPython, thus making machine-learning applications even more accessible.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (firefox, kernel, kernel-rt, tbb, and thunderbird), Debian (bind9, cacti, pam-pkcs11, and ruby2.7), Fedora (bind, bind-dyndb-ldap, chromium, crun, and java-21-openjdk), Mageia (calibre, nginx, python-ansible-core, python-jinja2, python-pip, python-setuptools, python-twisted, and python-waitress), Red Hat (doxygen, firefox, gcc, gcc-toolset-13-gcc, gcc-toolset-14-gcc, tbb, and thunderbird), SUSE (go1.24, govulncheck-vulndb, java-1_8_0-openj9, kernel, openssl-3, ovmf, python3-numpy, python311, python36, qemu, and skopeo), and Ubuntu (bluez and openssl).

Most Linux systems depend on a suite of core utilities that the GNU Project started development on decades ago and are, of course, written in C. At FOSDEM 2025, Sylvestre Ledru made the case in his main stage talk that modern systems require safer, more maintainable tools. Over the past few years, Ledru has led the charge of rewriting the GNU Core Utilities (coreutils) in Rust, as the MIT-licensed uutils project. The goal is to offer what he said are more secure, and more performant drop-in replacements for the tools Linux users depend on. At FOSDEM, Ledru announced that the uutils project is setting its sights even higher.

High-performance networking is a highly tuned activity; the amount of time available to deal with each packet may be measured in nanoseconds, so care must be taken to avoid anything that might slow the process down. Recently, there has been a fair amount of attention given to a patch set merged for 6.13 that, it is claimed, can improve processing efficiency (and, thus, power savings) in data centers by as much as 30%. The change itself, contributed by Joe Damato and Martin Karsten, is a relatively small tweak to existing optimization techniques; it shows just how much care is needed to optimize a high-bandwidth server.

Version 6.3 of the Plasma desktop has been released.

One year on, with the teething problems a major new release inevitably brings firmly behind us, Plasma's developers have worked on fine-tuning, squashing bugs and adding features to Plasma 6 — turning it into the best desktop environment for everyone.

Changes include improved support for drawing tablets, better fractional-scaling support, and more.

The 6.6.77 stable kernel update has been released; it contains a single fix for a User Mode Linux build problem.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (firefox, tbb, and thunderbird), Debian (cacti, libtasn1-6, and rust-openssl), Oracle (galera and mariadb, kernel, raptor2, and thunderbird), SUSE (bind, fq, java-21-openj9, libtasn1-6-32bit, ovmf, python310, python312, python313, python314, rime-schema-all, thunderbird, and wget), and Ubuntu (eglibc, firefox, glibc, linux, linux-aws, linux-lts-xenial, ruby2.3, ruby2.5, and vim).

Miguel Ojeda gave a keynote at FOSDEM 2025 about the history of the Rust-for-Linux project, and the current attitude of people in the kernel community toward the experiment. Unlike his usual talks, this talk didn't focus so much on the current state of the project, but rather on discussing history and predictions for the future. He ended up presenting quotes from more than 30 people involved in kernel development about what they thought of the project and expected going forward.

Version 1.4.0 of Arti, the Tor Project's next-generation Tor client written in Rust, has been released. Notable improvements in this release include a new RPC interface, and preparatory work toward service-side onion service denial-of-service resistance. The release is dedicated to the memory of Jérémy Bobbio, better known by many as "Lunar". For full details on the release, see the changelog.

Miguel Ojeda has announced the posting of a new document describing policies around the use of Rust in the Linux kernel.

There has been a fair amount of confusion about what the kernel policies around Rust are, who maintains what and so on. This document tries to clarify some of these points with what, to the best of our knowledge, is the current status.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (buildah, bzip2, galera and mariadb, keepalived, kernel, kernel-rt, mariadb:10.11, mingw-glib2, and podman), Debian (ark, firefox-esr, kernel, sssd, and thunderbird), Fedora (abseil-cpp, clevis-pin-tpm2, dbus-parsec, envision, fido-device-onboard, firefox, golang-github-nvidia-container-toolkit, gotify-desktop, jpegxl, keylime-agent-rust, keyring-ima-signer, libkrun, php-phpseclib, python-cryptography, python3-docs, python3.12, python3.13, rust-afterburn, rust-cargo-vendor-filterer, rust-coreos-installer, rust-crypto-auditing-agent, rust-eif_build, rust-gst-plugin-reqwest, rust-nu, rust-oo7-cli, rust-openssl, rust-openssl-sys, rust-pore, rust-routinator, rust-rpm-sequoia, rust-sequoia-keyring-linter, rust-sequoia-octopus-librnp, rust-sequoia-policy-config, rust-sequoia-sop, rust-sequoia-sq, rust-sequoia-sqv, rust-sevctl, rust-snphost, rust-tealdeer, rustup, s390utils, stalld, and vaultwarden), Mageia (java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk & java-latest-openjdk, libtasn1, mariadb, nodejs, qtbase5 & qtbase6, rootcerts, nss & firefox, thunderbird, and xrdp), Red Hat (buildah, doxygen, podman, and thunderbird), Slackware (gnutls and openssl), SUSE (bind, chromedriver, crypto-policies, krb5, firefox, flannel, go1.22, go1.23, go1.23-1.23.6-1.1, go1.24-1.24rc3-1.1, openssl-1_1, openssl-3, python311-cryptography-vectors, python311-numba, python39, rsync, tomcat, and trivy), and Ubuntu (openrefine and rsync).

The second 6.14 kernel prepatch is out for testing.

It's Sunday afternoon, and I'm releasing the usual regularly scheduled release candidate while the rest of the US is getting ready for the biggest day in TV commercials interrupted by some kind of lawn bowling tournament.

The 6.13.2, 6.12.13, and 6.6.76 stable kernels have been released; each contains another set of important fixes.

The BPF verifier is charged with the challenging task of ensuring that a BPF program is safe for the kernel to run before that program is loaded. Among many other concerns, the verifier must ensure that any kfuncs (kernel functions that have been exported to BPF programs) are called with the correct parameters and from the right context. The "context" part of that enforcement is showing its age in ways that are hurting performance; Juntong Deng has been working on infrastructure to provide finer-grained control over when a kfunc can be called.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (openjdk-17), Fedora (firefox, FlightGear, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, java-latest-openjdk, and SimGear), Mageia (gstreamer), Red Hat (firefox, kernel, kernel-rt, libsoup, and python-jinja2), SUSE (bind, curl, dcmtk, etcd, firefox, google-osconfig-agent, krb5, openssl-1_1, podman, python311-cbor2, thunderbird, wget, and xrdp), and Ubuntu (glibc).

Jonathan Bryce has announced two open community meetings to hear input on the topic of the OpenInfra Foundation migrating to the Linux Foundation. Bryce wrote that the OpenInfra board has carefully evaluated its options, and sees joining the Linux Foundation as the best way forward.

Like the Linux Foundation, the OpenInfra Foundation is 501(c)(6) nonprofit. According to the FAQ, OpenInfra "is in great health, financially and otherwise" with a growth in membership of about 15% in the last year. However, its needs in 2025 are different than when it was founded as the OpenStack Foundation in 2012.

While the opportunities ahead for open source to make a positive impact on the world are greater than they have ever been, the challenges are more significant as well, particularly with respect to regulations, licensing and geopolitical tensions that threaten global collaboration.

The meetings will be held on February 11 and February 13 as Zoom calls. The OpenInfra board will schedule a vote after feedback has been collected and draft governance documents have been published.

Version 25.2 of the LibreOffice productivity suite is out. Changes include the ability to remove all personal information from any document, support for ODF version 1.4, a number of accessibility improvements, and more; see the release notes for details.

Version 24.10.0 of the OpenWrt router-oriented distribution has been released. Changes include an update to the 6.6 kernel, use of access control lists on larger systems, multipath TCP support, better WiFi6 support, the beginning of WiFi7 support, and more.

Open source is often described as a "gift economy"—an ecosystem where contributors are motivated by a desire to make the world a better place. That is, sometimes, true. However, James Bottomley used his main track slot at FOSDEM 2025, on February 1, to make the case that it is better to bank on the selfish motivations of individuals to drive community success than to rely on their altruism.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (asterisk and chromium), Fedora (FlightGear, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, java-latest-openjdk, and SimGear), Mageia (bind, chromium-browser-stable, python-django, and vim), Oracle (buildah, bzip2, firefox, keepalived, mariadb:10.11, and podman), Slackware (curl, mariadb, and mozilla), SUSE (cargo-audit-advisory-db-20250204 and python311-scikit-learn), and Ubuntu (ckeditor, krb5, and ruby2.7).