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LWN.net

[$] Inspecting and modifying Python types during type checking

Python has a unique approach to static typing. Python programs can contain type annotations, and even access those annotations at run time, but the annotations aren't evaluated by default. Instead, it is up to external programs to ascribe meaning to those annotations. The annotations themselves can be arbitrary Python expressions, but in practice usually involve using helpers from the built-in typing module, the meanings of which external type-checkers mostly agree upon. Yet the type system implicitly defined by the typing module and common type-checkers is insufficiently powerful to model all of the kinds of dynamic metaprogramming found in real-world Python programs. PEP 827 ("Type Manipulation") aims to add additional capabilities to Python's type system to fix this, but discussion of the PEP has been of mixed sentiment.

LWN.net

digiKam 9.0.0 released

Version 9.0.0 of the digiKam photo-management system has been released. "This major version introduces groundbreaking improvements in performance, usability, and workflow efficiency, with a strong focus on modernizing the user interface, enhancing metadata management, and expanding support for new camera models and file formats." Some of the changes include a new survey tool, more advanced search and sorting options, as well as bulk editing of geolocation coordinates.

LWN.net

Security updates for Monday

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (delve, git-lfs, and postgresql16), Fedora (cef, chezmoi, chromium, coturn, erlang-hex_core, firefox, gh, gimp, k9s, keylime, keylime-agent-rust, libsixel, microcode_ctl, nextcloud, nss, perl-Crypt-URandom, pgadmin4, php-zumba-json-serializer, postgresql16-anonymizer, prometheus, python-asyncmy, python3.10, python3.11, python3.9, staticcheck, valkey, and vim), SUSE (chromedriver, chromium, coredns, expat, freetype2-devel, gitea-tea, go1.24-openssl, go1.25-openssl, grpc, gstreamer-rtsp-server, gstreamer-plugins-ugly,, helm, jetty-annotations, kubeshark-cli, libaec, libblkid-devel, libsoup, libxml2, libxslt, NetworkManager-applet-strongswan, podman, python-joserfc, python-Markdown, python-pypdf2, python-tornado, python-uv, python311-Django, python311-joserfc, python311-nltk, roundcubemail, and valkey), and Ubuntu (python3.4, python3.5, python3.6, python3.7, python3.8, python3.9, python3.10, python3.11, python3.12, python3.13, python3.14).

Phoronix

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Officially Supporting Cloud-Based Authentication With Authd

Canonical for a while has been developing Authd as an authentication service for external cloud-based identity providers. Authd was designed from the ground-up to provide secure management of identity and access for Ubuntu systems while only with next month's Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release is it actually hitting the universe archive...

Phoronix

NVIDIA 595 Linux Driver Running Well In Early Benchmarks

Last week NVIDIA released the 595.45.04 beta Linux driver as their first public build in the R595 release branch. The NVIDIA R595 Linux driver is bringing a number of Vulkan driver improvements, HDR enhancements, DRI3 v1.2 support, and a variety of other improvements. Benchmarking the NVIDIA 595.45.04 Linux driver the past few days on GeForce RTX 50 "Blackwell" have been showing some nice incremental performance improvements over the current NVIDIA 590 driver stable series.

Phoronix

New Rust Driver Aims To Improve Upstream Linux On Synology NAS Devices

A set of patches posted to the Linux kernel mailing list last week introduce a new driver for enhancing the upstream/mainline Linux kernel support for Synology network attached storage (NAS) devices. This new driver is Synology Microp and is making use of the Linux kernel's modern Rust programming language support...