Latest Linux and open source news from around the web

Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3 Sponsored · View on Amazon → Blue Light Blocking Glasses Sponsored · View on Amazon →
LWN.net

Hefty stable kernel updates for Friday

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 7.1.5, 6.18.40, 6.12.97, 6.6.145, 6.1.178, 5.15.212, and 5.10.261 stable Linux kernels. This batch of kernels includes a hefty set of updates, possibly the the largest ever. 7.1.5-rc1, for example, included more than 2,000 patches, 6.18.40-rc1 included 1,611 patches, and so forth. Users are advised to upgrade.

LWN.net

Linux Plumbers Conference 2026 registration open

Registration is now open for the 2026 Linux Plumbers Conference, to be held October 5 to 7 in Prague, Czechia. Tickets to this event tend to sell out quickly, so interested attendees probably should not procrastinate.

OMG! Ubuntu

Firefox’s new tab page adds AI-powered daily crossword widget

More widgets are coming to Firefox’s New Tab page, including an interactive crossword puzzle powered by the AI news service Particle. The mini crossword game is updated daily, with puzzles based around recent content from the AI summary app Particle, replete with links to articles from the service which you can read to help you deduce crossword answers from the clues provided. You click on a square to activate the row or column (clicking on it again switches between β€œAcross” and β€œDown”). You read the clue at the bottom, and then you type in your answer. Use the hint button […]

LWN.net

De Vlieger: The Fedora 45 sausage factory

Fedora contributor Simon de Vlieger has published a blog post with a walkthrough of how the project turns source code and packages into the final release that users install on their systems. It follows the a package from a packager's git push to a composed release: ISOs, cloud images, container images, and OSTree deployments. The walkthrough describes how the Fedora 'sausage' is created as of Fedora 45, things change all the time; I hope to have time to update this document every cycle or every few cycles of Fedora releases so there's both history and people can find up to date information.

LWN.net

[$] An update on netkit and the use of BPF in user space

Daniel Borkmann led a session at the 2026 Linux Filesystem, Memory-Management, and BPF Summit about the progress that has been made with netkit, the subsystem that allows virtual machines (VMs) running on Linux to perform networking efficiently. When that did not fill the full time, he went on to discuss his idea for using BPF to live-patch user-space applications. While netkit is making progress, and can now support zero-copy receipt of packets into a VM in a network namespace, the idea of using BPF for patching user-space programs remains entirely speculative.

LWN.net

Home Assistant Device Database public preview

The Open Home Foundation, which governs the Home Assistant home-automation project, has announced the "public preview" of its Device Database: Providing a public, open way to browse the anonymous, aggregated device data we collect was always part of the plan, and this preview is our first step toward it. You can already use it to search and filter devices to see aggregated community insights, starting with a deliberately focused set of specifics, such as whether a device requires an internet connection, and which protocols and integrations it works with. We've kept that initial scope narrow on purpose, giving us a solid foundation we can build on together with you, our community, as the database grows. LWN looked at Home Assistant in May 2025.

LWN.net

Security updates for Friday

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (glibc, java-21-openjdk, kernel, and libpq), Debian (imagemagick, spice-vdagent, and webkit2gtk), Fedora (cryptlib, dotnet8.0, dotnet9.0, firefox, python-black, python-lsp-black, and python-pytokens), Mageia (apache, cifs-utils, dnsmasq, lrzip, and socat), Oracle (.NET 10.0, .NET 9.0, 389-ds-base, cups, edk2, fence-agents, firefox, freeipmi, freerdp, git-lfs, glib2, gnutls, golang, gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, gstreamer1-plugins-good, gstreamer1-plugins-ugly-free, hplip, libinput, libvirt, libxml2, memcached, nginx, openexr, perl-DBI, perl-XML-LibXML, php, php8.4, plexus-utils, postgresql16, python3.12, python3.14, sssd, tomcat, tomcat9, unbound, vim, xorg-x11-server-Xwayland, yggdrasil, and yggdrasil-worker-package-manager), Red Hat (container-tools:rhel8, git-lfs, go-toolset:rhel8, golang, golang-github-openprinting-ipp-usb, grafana, grafana-pcp, host-metering, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk with Extended Lifecycle Support, java-17-