Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1042221/
Inside this week’s LWN.net Weekly Edition:
Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1042172/
The Git source-code management system is a foundational tool upon which
much of the free-software community is based. For many people, Git simply
works, though perhaps in quirky ways, so the activity of its development
community may not often appear on their radar. There is a lot happening in
the Git world at the moment, though, as the project works toward a 3.0
release sometime in 2026. Topics of interest in the Git community include
the SHA-256 transition, the introduction of code written in Rust, and how
the project should view contributions created with the assistance of large
language models.
Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1042823/
Version
8.8.0 of the digiKam photo-management system has been released.
“This version delivers significant improvements in performance,
“. Changes
stability, and user experience, with a particular focus on image
processing, color management, and workflow efficiency
include an import/export feature for tag hierarchies, focus-point
visualization for some camera models, automatic use of the monitor color
profile, and a background-blur tool.
Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1042822/
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (.NET 8.0, firefox, kernel, kernel-rt, libssh, and perl-JSON-XS), Debian (ark and libphp-adodb), Fedora (chromium and gi-docgen), Mageia (quictls), Oracle (.NET 8.0, .NET 9.0, firefox, httpd, kernel, libsoup3, libssh, microcode_ctl, and webkit2gtk3), SUSE (go1.24, go1.25, krb5, python-ldap, and webkit2gtk3), and Ubuntu (gst-plugins-base1.0, linux, linux-aws, linux-gcp, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-5.15,
linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.15, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15,
linux-nvidia, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.15, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux-fips, linux-aws-fips, linux-azure-fips, linux-gcp-fips,
linux-intel-iot-realtime, linux-realtime, and python-ldap).
Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1042593/
The 6.18-rc2 kernel prepatch is out.
End result: rc2 is on the bigger side, and we still have some of
the remaining regressions outstanding, but we should be making slow
progress. It’s fairly early days yet, so I’m not very
worried. Things on the whole look fairly normal.
Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1041694/
There have been many discussions in the free-software community about the
role of large language models (LLMs) in software development. For the most
part, though, those conversations have focused on whether projects should
be accepting code output by those models, and under what conditions. But
there are other ways in which these systems might participate in the
development process. Chris Mason recently started a
discussion on the Kernel Summit discussion list about how these models
can be used to review patches, rather than create them.
Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1041303/
Inside this week’s LWN.net Weekly Edition:
Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1041952/
The Free Software Foundation has announced the launch
of the Librephone project, which is aimed at the creation of a fully-free
operating system for mobile devices.
Practically, Librephone aims to close the last gaps between
existing distributions of the Android operating system and software
freedom. The FSF has hired experienced developer Rob Savoye
(DejaGNU, Gnash, OpenStreetMap, and more) to lead the technical
project. He is currently investigating the state of device firmware
and binary blobs in other mobile phone freedom projects,
prioritizing the free software work done by the not entirely free
software mobile phone operating system LineageOS.
Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1041915/
Version
144.0 of the Firefox browser has been released. Changes this time
include improvements to tab-group and profile management, stronger
encryption for stored passwords, a “search image with Google Lens”
operation, and “Perplexity, an AI-powered answer engine built into the
“.
browser
Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1040888/
The Free Software Foundation’s Licensing and Compliance Lab
concerns itself with many aspects of software licensing, Krzysztof Siewicz
said at the beginning of his 2025 GNU Tools
Cauldron session. These include supporting projects that are facing
licensing challenges, collecting copyright assignments, and addressing GPL
violations. In this session, though, there was really only one topic that
the audience wanted to know about: the interaction between free-software
licensing and large language models (LLMs).
Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1041886/
Security updates have been issued by Debian (ghostscript and libfcgi), Fedora (qt5-qtsvg), Red Hat (kernel, perl-FCGI, perl-FCGI:0.78, and vim), SUSE (bluez, curl, podman, postgresql14, python-xmltodict, and udisks2), and Ubuntu (linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, linux-azure-fips, linux-oracle, and subversion).
Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1041658/
Linus has released 6.18-rc1 and closed the
merge window for this development cycle. “This was one of the good
“
merge windows where I didn’t end up having to bisect any particular problem
on nay of the machines I was testing. Let’s hope that success mostly
translates to the bigger picture too.
Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1040197/
Despite its increasing popularity, the Rust programming language is still
supported by a single compiler, the LLVM-based rustc. At the 2025 GNU Tools
Cauldron, Pierre-Emmanuel Patry said that a lot of people are waiting
for a GCC-based Rust compiler before jumping into the language. Patry, who
is working on just that compiler (known as “gccrs”), provided an update on
the status of that project and what is coming next.
Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1040456/
Inside this week’s LWN.net Weekly Edition:
Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1041102/
Version
3.14.0 of the Python language has been released. There are a lot of
changes this time around, including official support for free threading, template string literals, and much more; see
the announcement for details.
Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1041058/
Taylor Blau has posted an
extensive set of notes from the recently concluded Git Contributor’s
Summit. Covered topics include the SHA-256 transition, Rust, Change-ID
headers, Git 3.0, and many more. The note are also available on
Google Docs for those who prefer that format.
Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1041069/
Security updates have been issued by Fedora (chromium), Red Hat (kernel, open-vm-tools, and postgresql), SUSE (chromedriver and chromium), and Ubuntu (haproxy and pam-u2f).
Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1039827/
Support for BPF in the kernel has been tied to the LLVM toolchain since the
advent of extended BPF. There has been a growing effort to add BPF support
to the GNU toolchain as well, though. At the 2025 GNU Tools Cauldron, the
developers involved got together with representatives of the kernel
community to talk about the state of that work and what needs to happen
next.
Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1040870/
OpenSSH 10.1 has
been released. Along with “a minor security fix
” and some other bug
fixes, this release disallows control characters in user names passed via
the command line, adds better logging around certificate refusals, and a
new RefuseConnection server configuration option.
Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1040663/
The Free Software Foundation has announced
the selection of Ian Kelling as the organization’s president.
Kelling, age forty-three, has held the role of a board member and a
voting member since March 2021. The board said of Kelling’s
confirmation: “His hands-on technical experience resulting from his
position as the organization’s senior systems administrator proved
invaluable for his work on the board of directors. The board is
confident Kelling is the right person to help the organization
achieve its long-term goals. His commitment to free software comes
from a life of exploring ways to exert user control. He has the
technical knowledge to speak with authority on most free software
issues, and he has a strong connection with the community as an
active speaker and blogger.”