Latest Linux and open source news from around the web
Version 4.0.0 of the OpenSSL cryptographic library has been released. This release includes support for a number of new cryptographic algorithms and has a number of incompatible changes as well; see the announcement for the details.
Security updates have been issued by Debian (gdk-pixbuf, gst-plugins-bad1.0, and xdg-dbus-proxy), Fedora (chromium, deepin-image-viewer, dtk6gui, dtkgui, efl, elementary-photos, entangle, flatpak, freeimage, geeqie, gegl04, gthumb, ImageMagick, kf5-kimageformats, kf5-libkdcraw, kf6-kimageformats, kstars, libkdcraw, libpasraw, LibRaw, luminance-hdr, nomacs, OpenImageIO, OpenImageIO2.5, photoqt, python-cryptography, rawtherapee, shotwell, siril, swayimg, vips, and webkitgtk), Red Hat (firefox and podman), Slackware (libarchive), SUSE (expat, glibc, GraphicsMagick, libcap-devel, libpng16, libtpms, nodejs24, openssl-1_0_0, openssl-1_1, openssl-3, openvswitch, polkit, python-requests, python311-biopython, python312, python39, and tigervnc), and Ubuntu (corosync, kvmtool, libxml-parser-perl, linux-azure, linux-azure, linux-azure-6.17, linux-azure, linux-azure-6.8, policykit-1, redis, lua5.1, lua-cjson, lua-bitop, rustc, vim, and xdg-dbus-proxy).
Linus Torvalds released the 7.0 kernel as expected on April 12, ending a relatively busy development cycle. The 7.0 release brings a large number of interesting changes; see the LWN merge-window summaries (part 1, part 2) for all the details. Here, instead, comes our traditional look at where those changes came from and who supported that work.
The OpenWrt One is a router powered by the open-source firmware from the OpenWrt project; it was also the subject of a keynote at SCALE in 2025 given by Denver Gingerich of the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), which played a big role in developing the router. Gingerich returned to the conference in 2026 to talk about the build system used by the OpenWrt One, which is focused on creating the needed binaries, naturally, but doing so in a way that makes it easy to comply with the licenses of the underlying code. That makes good sense for a project of this sort—and for a talk given by the director of compliance at SFC.
The Servo project has announced the first release of servo as a crate for use as a library. As you can see from the version number, this release is not a 1.0 release. In fact, we still haven't finished discussing what 1.0 means for Servo. Nevertheless, the increased version number reflects our growing confidence in Servo's embedding API and its ability to meet some users' needs. In the meantime we also decided to offer a long-term support (LTS) version of Servo, since breaking changes in the regular monthly releases are expected and some embedders might prefer doing major upgrades on a scheduled half-yearly basis while still receiving security updates and (hopefully!) some migration guides. For more details on the LTS release, see the respective section in the Servo book.
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (fontforge, freerdp, libtiff, nginx, nodejs22, and openssh), Debian (bind9, chromium, firefox-esr, flatpak, gdk-pixbuf, inetutils, mediawiki, and webkit2gtk), Fedora (corosync, libcap, libmicrohttpd, libpng, mingw-exiv2, mupdf, pdns-recursor, polkit, trafficserver, trivy, vim, and yarnpkg), Mageia (libpng12, openssl, python-django, python-tornado, squid, and tomcat), Red Hat (rhc), Slackware (openssl), SUSE (chromedriver, chromium, cockpit, cockpit-machines, cockpit-podman, cockpit-tukit, crun, firefox, fontforge-20251009, glibc, go1, helm3, libopenssl-3-devel, libpng16, libradcli10, libtasn1, nghttp2, openssl-1_0_0, openssl-1_1, ovmf, perl-XML-Parser, python-cryptography, python-Flask-HTTPAuth, python311-Django4, python313-Django6, python315, sudo, systemd, tar, tekton-cli, tigervnc, util-linux, and zlib), and Ubuntu (mongodb, qemu, and retroarch).
Linus has released the 7.0 kernel after a busy nine-week development cycle. The last week of the release continued the same "lots of small fixes" trend, but it all really does seem pretty benign, so I've tagged the final 7.0 and pushed it out. I suspect it's a lot of AI tool use that will keep finding corner cases for us for a while, so this may be the "new normal" at least for a while. Only time will tell. Significant changes in this release include the removal of the "experimental" status for Rust code, a new filtering mechanism for io_uring operations, a switch to lazy preemption by default in the CPU scheduler, support for time-slice extension, the nullfs filesystem, self-healing support for the XFS filesystem, a number of improvements to the swap subsystem (described in this article and this one), general support for AccECN congestion notification, and more. See the LWN merge-window summaries (part 1, part 2) and the KernelNewbies 7.0 page for more details.
The 6.19.12, 6.18.22, 6.12.81, 6.6.134, and 6.1.168 stable kernel updates have been released; each contains another set of important fixes.
Things do not always go the way kernel developers think they will. When the kernel gained support for the creation of read-only transparent huge pages for the page cache in 2019, the developer of that feature, Song Liu, added a Kconfig file entry promising that support for writable huge pages would arrive "in the next few release cycles". Over six years later, that promise is still present, but it will never be fulfilled. Instead, the read-only option will soon be removed, reflecting how the core of the memory-subsystem has changed underneath this particular feature.
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (container-tools:rhel8, fontforge, freerdp, go-toolset:rhel8, gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, gstreamer1-plugins-base, and gstreamer1-plugins-good, kernel, kernel-rt, libtasn1, mariadb:10.11, mysql:8.4, nginx:1.24, openssh, pcs, python-jinja2, python3.9, ruby:3.1, vim, virt:rhel and virt-devel:rhel, and xmlrpc-c), Debian (libyaml-syck-perl and openssh), Fedora (cockpit, crun, dnsdist, doctl, fido-device-onboard, libcgif, libpng12, libpng15, mbedtls, opensc, and util-linux), Red Hat (git-lfs, go-toolset:rhel8, grafana, grafana-pcp, and rhc), Slackware (libpng), SUSE (389-ds, aws-c-event-stream, bind, cockpit, cockpit-repos, corepack24, dcmtk, dnsdist, docker-compose, expat, firefox, firefox-esr, gnome-online-accounts, gvfs, gnutls, jupyter-jupyterlab-templates, kea, libIex-3_4-33, libpng16, mapserver, perl-XML-Parser, postgresql13, postgresql16, python-Pillow, python311-lupa, thunderbird, tigervnc, and tomcat10), and Ubuntu (linux-azure-fips,
The idea of using large language models (LLMs) to discover security problems is not new. Google's Project Zero investigated the feasibility of using LLMs for security research in 2024. At the time, they found that models could identify real problems, but required a good deal of structure and hand-holding to do so on small benchmark problems. In February 2026, Anthropic published a report claiming that the company's most recent LLM at that point in time, Claude Opus 4.6, had discovered real-world vulnerabilities in critical open-source software, including the Linux kernel, with far less scaffolding. On April 7, Anthropic announced a new experimental model that is supposedly even better; which they have partnered with the Linux Foundation to supply to some open-source developers with access to the tool for security reviews. LLMs seem to have progressed significantly in the last few months, a change which is being noticed in the open-source community.
The Free Software Foundation has published a short article on relicensing versus license compatibility. The FSF's Licensing and Compliance Lab receives many questions and license violation reports related to projects that had their license changed by a downstream distributor, or that are combined from two or more programs under different licenses. We collaborated with Yoni Rabkin, an experienced and long time FSF licensing volunteer, on an updated version of his article to provide the free software community with a general explanation on how the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) is intended to work in such situations.
Security updates have been issued by Debian (firefox-esr, postgresql-13, and tiff), Fedora (bind, bind-dyndb-ldap, cef, opensc, python-biopython, python-pydicom, and roundcubemail), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (ckermit, cockpit-repos, dnsdist, expat, freerdp, git-cliff, gnutls, heroic-games-launcher, libeverest, openssl-1_1, openssl-3, polkit, python-poetry, python-requests, python311-social-auth-app-django, and SDL2_image-devel), and Ubuntu (dogtag-pki, gdk-pixbuf, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.15, linux-intel-iotg, linux-intel-iotg-5.15, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-tegra, linux-nvidia-tegra-igx, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.15, linux-raspi, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux-aws-6.8, linux-gcp-6.8, linux-hwe-6.8, linux-ibm-6.8, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux-fips, linux-aws-fips, linux-gcp-fips, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-6.17, linux-raspi, linux-realtime, opens
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition: Front: TPM attacks; arithmetic overflow protection; Ubuntu GRUB changes; kernel IPC proposals; fre:ac; Scuttlebutt. Briefs: Nix vulnerability; OpenSSH 10.3; Sashiko reviews; FreeBSD testing; Gentoo GNU/Hurd; SFC on router ban; Quotes; ... Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.
It has been a little while since LWN last surveyed tools for managing a digital music collection. In the intervening decades, many Linux users have moved on to music streaming services, found them wanting, and are looking to curate their own collection once again. There are plenty of choices when it comes to ripping, managing, and playing digital audio; so many, in fact, that it can be a bit daunting. After years of tinkering, I've found a few tools that work well for managing my digital library: the first I'd like to cover is the fre:ac free audio encoder for ripping music from CDs and converting between audio formats.
Linux News