Linux NewsFOSS Weekly #26.20: Killswitch in Linux, Fedora's AI Move, Rat in Terminal, KDE Dolphine Tweaks and More
The kernel vulnerabilities and their fixes.
This New Terminal is Absurd (But Totally Fun)
Not every day you come across something absurd and fun and amusing at the same time.
OpenTofu 1.12 IaC Tool Adds Dynamic prevent_destroy Support
OpenTofu 1.12 IaC tool adds dynamic prevent_destroy support, provider checksum improvements, faster installs, and CLI output updates.
I became a better Linux user by watching these 10 YouTube channels
There's no end to learning Linux.
[$] Keeping COWs in context (a.k.a. anonymous reverse mapping)
The kernel's reverse-mapping machinery is charged with locating the page-table entries that refer to a given page in memory. The reverse mapping of anonymous pages is handled differently than for file-backed pages. The kernel's implementation of reverse mapping for anonymous pages is, according to Lorenzo Stoakes in his proposal for a memory-management-track session at the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, "a very broken abstraction", due to its complexity. It also has some performance problems. Stoakes was there to present, in raw form, a proposed replacement that he calls a "COW context".
Security updates for Thursday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (gimp, jq, and yggdrasil), Debian (nghttp2 and thunderbird), Fedora (chromium, firefox, freerdp, GitPython, kernel, kernel-headers, krb5, nano, nix, nodejs20, php, python-click, python-django5, SDL2_image, and xen), Mageia (dnsmasq, flatpak, kernel, kmod-virtualbox, kernel-linus, perl-Net-CIDR-Lite, perl-XML-LibXML, and redis), SUSE (dnsmasq, firefox, jupyter-jupyterlab, kernel, krb5, libvinylapi3, log4j, Mesa, mozjs60, NetworkManager, OpenImageIO, python-Mako, python-Pillow, and python39), and Ubuntu (dnsmasq and nginx).
NetworkManager 1.56.1 Adds GENEVE Interface Support
NetworkManager 1.56.1 adds GENEVE interface support, persistent managed state handling, and updated nmcli and D-Bus device controls.
KDE Plasma 6.7 Desktop Environment Is Now Available for Public Beta Testing
KDE Plasma 6.7 desktop environment is now available for public beta testing with various new features, improvements, and bug fixes. Here’s what’s new!
ROCm 7.0.0 vs. ROCm 7.2.3 Performance On The AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700
With the new System76 Thelio Major workstation review unit having arrived equipped with an AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700 graphics card, I took the opportunity of having the extra RDNA4 workstation GPU to satisfy a curiosity over whether there has been any meaningful performance gains from ROCm 7.0.0 released last year to now with the latest ROCm 7.2.3 stable release. Here are those benchmarks results if you are curious about the impact of just updating the user-space ROCm components from the end of last summer to the latest ROCm 7.2.3 milestone.
AMD Preps More AIE4 NPU Hardware Enablement For AMDXDNA Driver In Linux 7.2
Since March we have been seeing patches from AMD software engineers beginning to enable their next-generation "AIE4" NPU platform under Linux. We still don't know for sure when this AIE4 NPU will premiere for sure in new Ryzen AI products, but the Linux enablement continues coming along nicely for the AMDXDNA accelerator driver...
Hyprland 0.55.1 Rolls Out with Fixes for Lua Configs and Rendering
Hyprland 0.55.1 backports fixes from the main branch, addressing groups, monitors, Lua configs, rendering, and crash-related issues.
Intel's Cache Aware Scheduling Inches Closer To Being Merged For Linux
I have been writing about the Cache Aware Scheduling work led by Intel engineers on the Linux kernel for more than a year. I've also tested out Cache Aware Scheduling on both Intel and AMD CPUs with the patched Linux kernel to great success. And thus very happy to see the Cache Aware Scheduling patches inching closer to the mainline Linux kernel...
KDE Plasma 6.7 Beta Released With Plasma Big Screen, Union Modules
In working toward the stable Plasma 6.7 desktop release in mid-June, out today is the first beta of KDE Plasma 6.7...
Fragnesia Is Yet Another Local Privilege Escalation Flaw in Linux Kernel
Fragnesia is a new local privilege escalation flaw in the Linux kernel that may lead to local privilege escalation. Patch now!
New AMDGPU Driver Pull Request For Linux 7.2 Preps For HDML 2.1 FRL
Sent out on Wednesday was the latest AMDGPU/AMDKFD driver pull request of new feature code ready for DRM-Next as the staging area ahead of the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel. This doesn't yet land the HDMI 2.1 enablement work that's finally been taking place but it is preparing for that with the FRL register headers now in place as part of this merge...
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