Linux Weekly News

At Flock, Fedora's annual developer conference, held in Prague from June 5 to June 8, two members of the Fedora documentation team, Petr Bokoč and Peter Boy, led a session on the state of Fedora documentation. The pair covered a brief history of the project's documentation since the days of Fedora Core 1, challenges the documentation team faces, as well as plans to improve Fedora's documentation by enticing more people to contribute.

The FreeBSD Foundation has announced a report for work completed in April to improve FreeBSD support for laptops. This includes installer updates, improved suspend/resume behavior, as well as progress on a port of Linux 6.7 and 6.8 graphics drivers to drm-kmod. A roadmap for the FreeBSD laptop work is also available.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (golang, nodejs22, thunderbird, and varnish), Debian (gimp, modsecurity-apache, python-tornado, and roundcube), Fedora (chromium, coreutils, fcgi, ghostscript, krb5, libvpx, mingw-gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, mingw-libsoup, mod_security, and samba), Mageia (php-adodb, systemd, and tomcat), Red Hat (buildah, firefox, glibc, grafana, kernel, libsoup, libxslt, mod_security, perl-FCGI, podman, python-tornado, and skopeo), Slackware (libvpx), and SUSE (helm-mirror, iputils, and libraw).

Linus has released 6.16-rc1 and closed the merge window for this release.

I think we had a fairly normal merge window, although I did get the feeling that there were a few more "late straggler" pull requests than usual. Not to a huge degree, but there was definitely an upward bump at the end of the second week.

But on the whole, all the stats look pretty normal.

Nyxt is an unusual web browser that tries to answer the question, "what if Emacs was a good web browser?". Nyxt is not an Emacs package, but a full web browser written in Common Lisp and available under the BSD three-clause license. Its target audience is developers who want a browser that is keyboard-driven and extensible; Nyxt is also developed for Linux first, rather than Linux being an afterthought or just a sliver of its audience. The philosophy (as described in its FAQ) behind the project is that users should be able to customize all of the browser's functionality.

The Netdev 0x19 conference was held in Zagreb, Croatia from March 10 through March 13. The organizers announced today that the videos and slides for all sessions are now online. Topics from the conference include IRQ suspension, the future of SO_TIMESTAMPING, remote TCP connection offloading, and more.

The 6.16 kernel will include a number of changes to how the kernel handles the processing of core dumps for crashed processes. Christian Brauner explained his reasons for doing this work as: "Because I'm a clown and also I had it with all the CVEs because we provide a **** API for userspace". The handling of core dumps has indeed been a constant source of vulnerabilities; with luck, the 6.16 work will result in rather fewer of them in the future.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (go-toolset:rhel8, golang, nodejs:20, nodejs:22, openssh, and python36:3.6), Debian (edk2, libfile-find-rule-perl, and webkit2gtk), Fedora (emacs, libvpx, perl-FCGI, and seamonkey), Mageia (cifs-utils), Red Hat (containernetworking-plugins, go-toolset:rhel8, golang, gvisor-tap-vsock, krb5, mod_auth_openidc:2.3, protobuf, and thunderbird), Slackware (seamonkey), SUSE (gimp, gnutls, haproxy, opensaml, openssh, openvpn, python-cryptography, python-tornado, python311-nh3, and python311-selenium), and Ubuntu (gst-plugins-bad1.0 and linux-fips).

In a combined storage and filesystem session at the 2025 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit (LSFMM+BPF), Keith Busch led a discussion about zero-copy operations for the Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) subsystem. The session was proposed by his colleague, David Wei, who could not make it to the summit, so Busch filled in, though he noted that "I do not really know FUSE so well". The idea is to eliminate data copies in the data path to and from the FUSE server in user space.

The European Union's Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) has caused a stir in the software-development world. Thanks to advocacy by the Eclipse Foundation, Open Source Initiative, Linux Foundation, Mozilla, and others, open-source software projects generally have minimal requirements under the CRA — but nothing to do with law is ever quite so simple. Marta Rybczyńska spoke at Linaro Connect 2025 about the impact of the CRA on the open-source ecosystem, with an emphasis on the importance of understanding a project's role under the CRA. She later participated in a panel discussion with Joakim Bech, Kate Stewart, and Mike Bursell about how the CRA would impact embedded open-source development.

Version 3.0 of the privacy-centric, open-source mobile operating system has been released. Notable changes in this release include improved privacy tools, a "find my device" feature, and more. LWN looked at /e/OS in March.

One of the more obscure features provided by Unix-domain sockets is the ability to pass a file descriptor from one process to another. This feature is often used to provide access to a specific file or network connection to a process running in a relatively unprivileged context. But what if the recipient doesn't want a new file descriptor? A feature added for the 6.16 release makes it possible to refuse that offer.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (chromium and mariadb-10.5), Oracle (firefox, ghostscript, git, go-toolset:ol8, golang, kernel, krb5, mingw-freetype and spice-client-win, nodejs:20, nodejs:22, perl-CPAN, python36:3.6, rsync, varnish, and varnish:6), Red Hat (firefox, thunderbird, and webkit2gtk3), Slackware (curl and python3), SUSE (apache-commons-beanutils, apache2-mod_security2, avahi, buildkit, ca-certificates-mozilla, cloud-regionsrv-client, cloud-regionsrv-client, python-toml, containerd, containerized-data-importer, cups, curl, dnsmasq, docker, elemental-operator, elemental-toolkit, expat, firefox, freetype2, gdk-pixbuf, git, glib2, glibc, gnuplot, gnutls, gpg2, gstreamer, gstreamer-plugins-base, gtk3, haproxy, helm, java-17-openjdk, java-1_8_0-openjdk, keepalived, kernel, kernel-firmware, krb5, kubevirt, less, libarchive, libcryptopp, libdb-4_8, libndp, libpcap, libsoup, libtasn1, libvirt, libX11, libxml2, libxslt, Mesa, mozilla-nss, nghttp2, nvidia-open-driver-G06-signed, opensc, openssh, openssl-3, openssl-3, libpulp, ulp-macros, orc, pam, pam_pkcs11, pam_u2f, patch, pcp, pcr-oracle, shim, perl-Crypt-OpenSSL-RSA, podman, postgresql16, procps, protobuf, python-dnspython, python-Jinja2, python-requests, python-setuptools, python-tornado6, python-urllib3, python311, python311, python-rpm-macros, qemu, rsync, runc, rust-keylime, selinux-policy, sevctl, skopeo, sssd, SUSE Manager Client Tools, systemd, thunderbird, tiff, tpm2.0-tools, tpm2-0-tss, u-boot, ucode-intel, unbound, util-linux, vim, wget, and wpa_supplicant), and Ubuntu (linux-nvidia, python-django, twitter-bootstrap3, twitter-bootstrap4, and wireshark).

Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:

• Front: OpenH264 in Fedora; Wallabag; Safety certification; 6.16 Merge window; Bounce buffering; Hardening repository problems; Device-initiated I/O; Faster networking; OSPM 2025; Free software in science.
• Briefs: Kea vulnerabilities; Alpine Linux 3.22.0; Fedora strategy; Quotes; ...
• Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

Peer-to-peer DMA (P2PDMA) has been part of the kernel since the 4.20 release in 2018; it provides a framework that allows devices to transfer data between themselves directly, without using system RAM for the transfer. At the 2025 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit (LSFMM+BPF), Stephen Bates led a combined storage, filesystems, and memory-management session on device-initiated I/O, which is perhaps what P2PDMA is evolving toward. Two years ago, he led a session on P2PDMA at the summit; this year's session was a brief update on P2PDMA with a look at where it may be heading.

Outgoing Fedora Project Leader Matthew Miller has posted an update on Fedora's high-level plan through 2028:

[Fedora] Council members identified potential Initiatives that we believe are important to work on next. We came up with a list of thirteen — which is way more than we can handle at once. We previously set a limit of four Initiatives at a time. We decided to keep to that rule, and are planning to launch four initiatives in the next months

The initiatives are: making Fedora releases block on accessibility issues, experimenting with a "GitOps" workflow for packaging, migrating from Pagure to Forgejo, and "making sure Fedora Linux is ready for people who want to work on machine learning and AI development".

Cong Wang and Daniel Borkmann each led session at the 2025 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit about their respective plans to speed up networking in the Linux kernel. Both sessions described ways to remove unnecessary operations in the networking stack, but they focused on different areas. Wang spoke about using BPF to speed up socket operations, while Borkmann spoke about eliminating the overhead of networking operations on virtual machines.

Free software plays a critical role in science, both in research and in disseminating it. Aspects of software freedom are directly relevant to simulation, analysis, document preparation and preservation, security, reproducibility, and usability. Free software brings practical and specific advantages, beyond just its ideological roots, to science, while proprietary software comes with equally specific risks. As a practicing scientist, I would like to help others—scientists or not—see the benefits from free software in science.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 6.15.1, 6.14.10, 6.12.32, 6.6.93, 6.1.141, 5.15.185, 5.10.238, and 5.4.294 stable kernels. As usual, each contains a set of important fixes.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (git, krb5, perl-CPAN, and rsync), Debian (tcpdf), Fedora (libmodsecurity, lua-http, microcode_ctl, and nextcloud), Red Hat (osbuild-composer), SUSE (389-ds, avahi, ca-certificates-mozilla, docker, expat, freetype2, glib2, gnuplot, gnutls, golang-github-teddysun-v2ray-plugin, golang-github-v2fly-v2ray-core, govulncheck-vulndb, helm, iperf, kernel, kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0_Update_2, kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0_Update_4, krb5, libarchive, libsoup, libsoup2, libtasn1, libX11, libxml2, libxslt, orc, podman, python-Jinja2, python-requests, python3-setuptools, python310, python311, python39, rubygem-rack, sslh, SUSE Manager Client Tools, SUSE Manager Client Tools and Salt Bundle, ucode-intel, util-linux, and wget), and Ubuntu (libvpx, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-hwe, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux, linux-aws, linux-azure, linux-gcp, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-ibm, linux-intel-iotg, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency, linux-nvidia-tegra, linux-oracle, linux, linux-aws, linux-kvm, linux-aws, linux-lts-xenial, linux-aws-fips, linux-azure-fips, linux-fips, linux-gcp-fips, linux-aws-fips, linux-gcp-fips, linux-azure-fde, linux-fips, and linux-intel-iot-realtime, linux-realtime).