Linux NewsYour Old Potato PC Might Game Better With This Linux Kernel Patch
A proposed scheduler update shows frame time improvements on aging hardware under heavy CPU load.
Fragnesia Is Yet Another Dirty Frag Style Linux Kernel Exploit
Fragnesia exposes another Linux kernel page-cache attack path, allowing local root escalation through ESP handling.
Dirty Frag, Copy Fail, and How Tails Under Tor Delivers ‘Open Source Done Right’
Two kernel zero‑day fixes, two quick Tails releases, and one Tor‑backed project determined to keep its privacy‑minded users safe — this is open source security hygiene in action. The post Dirty Frag, Copy Fail, and How Tails Under Tor Delivers ‘Open Source Done Right’ appeared first on FOSS Force.
PipeWire 1.6.5 Multimedia Framework Fixes Muted Audio Output Issues
PipeWire 1.6.5 fixes muted audio output issues, improves jack detection behavior, and adds more PulseAudio server hardening.
[$] Friction in Fedora over AI developer desktop initiative
A push by Red Hat employees to create a Fedora "AI Developer Desktop" with support for out-of-tree kernel drivers and AI toolkits has been met with objections from some long-time members of the Fedora community. After more than a month of sometimes heated discussion, the Fedora Council had voted to approve the initiative; however, a last-minute change to vote against the proposal by council member Justin Wheeler has (at least temporarily) sent it back to the drawing board.
Graphs 2.0 Beta Brings Serious Plotting Power to the Linux Desktop
With new data types, improved imports, error bars, and UI tweaks, Graphs 2.0 beta aims to become the go-to plotting tool for serious Linux data work. The post Graphs 2.0 Beta Brings Serious Plotting Power to the Linux Desktop appeared first on FOSS Force.
Linux kernel Developers Considering a Kill Switch
With the rise of Linux vulnerabilities, the kernel developers are now considering adding a component that could help temporarily mitigate against them… in the form of a kill switch.
Yet another Dirty Frag type vulnerability: Fragnesia
Sam James has sent an announcement to the OSS Security mailing list about another local-privilege-escalation (LPE) exploit in the same class as Dirty Frag, called "Fragnesia". From the disclosure: This is a separate bug in the ESP/XFRM from dirtyfrag which has received its own patch. However, it is in the same surface and the mitigation is the same as for dirtyfrag. It abuses a logic bug in the Linux XFRM ESP-in-TCP subsystem to achieve arbitrary byte writes into the kernel page cache of read-only files, without requiring any race condition. James noted that there is a patch in the works, but it has not yet been pulled into Linus Torvalds's tree nor into any of the stable kernels. A proof of concept is also available.
[$] Managing pages outside of the direct map
When Brendan Jackman proposed a session for the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, his topic was "a pagetable library for the kernel". During the actual memory-management-track session, though, he stated that the idea had "fizzled" and he was going to cover related topics instead. What resulted was a session on ways to efficiently manage pages that are not present in the kernel's direct map.
[$] Revisiting mshare
Linux can share memory between processes, but each process (almost always) has its own set of page tables. In situations where vast numbers of processes are sharing a memory region, the combined size of the page tables can exceed that of the shared memory itself. There has, thus, long been an interest in enabling unrelated processes to share page tables referring to shared memory. Anthony Yznaga is the latest developer to try to push this idea (known as "mshare") forward; he described the status of that work in a memory-management-track discussion at the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit (LSFMM+BPF).
Security updates for Wednesday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (corosync, freerdp, git-lfs, glib2, jq, kernel-rt, krb5, libpng, libtiff, openexr, and thunderbird), Debian (exim4), Mageia (apache, perl-Gazelle, php, and sed), Slackware (expat), SUSE (assimp-devel, go1.26, libQt6Svg6, python-jupyterlab, raylib, thunderbird, tor, and trivy), and Ubuntu (exim4).
KDE Lands Over €1 Million Investment for Open Source Desktop Work
KDE has secured over €1 million from the Sovereign Tech Fund to enhance Plasma, KDE Linux, testing, security, and core infrastructure.
Sovereign Tech Fund invests in KDE
The KDE project has announced that it has been awarded over €1 million from the Sovereign Tech Fund to improve its desktop-environment software. "The investment will be used to strengthen the structural reliability and security of KDE's core infrastructure, including Plasma, KDE Linux, and the frameworks underlying its communication services."
Linux Driver Posted For Intel Silicon Security Engine Interface "ISSEI"
Since Intel Meteor Lake has been the Intel Silicon Security Engine to serve as a silicon root-of-trust for secure firmware loading, boot measurements, and similar functionality. This Intel Silicon Security Engine has been built on with Lunar Lake and Panther Lake as well as set to take on more importance with future Intel hardware platforms. We are now seeing a Linux driver come for this silicon RoT with the Intel Silicon Security Engine Interface (ISSEI)...
Dirty Frag Linux Vulnerability Raises New Root Access Risks
A newly disclosed Linux privilege escalation flaw dubbed "Dirty Frag" is raising concerns among security researchers who warn it could give attackers reliable root access across a wide range of enterprise environments. The post Dirty Frag Linux Vulnerability Raises New Root Access Risks appeared first on LinuxInsider.