Linux NewsLinux 7.2 Gets Rid Of The Last Optimized MD5 Implementation
The Linux kernel has dropped the last of its architecture-specific optimized MD5 hashing algorithm implementations...
FOSS Weekly #26.25: AUR Supply Chain Attack, Commodore Phones, SonicDE, Y Server, Kernel 7.1 and More
14 years of It's FOSS thanks you for your support
After the AUR Malware Flood, Yay v13 Lets You Script Your Own Safety Net
The release adds Lua-based hooks alongside a simpler way to see how recently a PKGBUILD was last touched.
Someone Wants Linux to Still Boot 1,000 Years From Now
Eternal is an open-source project that runs Linux on a tiny virtual machine designed for long-term software preservation.
The Software Freedom Conservancy's LLM-backed generative AI recommendations
The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) has announced the release of its recommendations for using LLM-backed generative AI systems for FOSS contributions. The recommendations were created by the SFC and volunteers from the free-software community. The recommendations reflect the extremely difficult dilemmas that these systems pose for FOSS contributors. SFC and its volunteers understand that FOSS developers are approaching LLM-gen-AI from a variety of perspectives. The recommendations offer practical assistance to minimize the damage caused by using proprietary systems, whether FOSS contributors reject LLM-gen-AI or choose (voluntarily or by employer mandate) to use them. These recommendations are best practices (but not definitions or requirements) that SFC and its volunteers formulated after careful study of the growing LLM-gen-AI use among FOSS contributors. SFC will follow these recommendations with a series of supporting materials, including documents, online tutorials, public Q&A
The Growth of Vulnerability Management: The Rise of Agentic AI Pentesting
by Malana VanTyler Cybersecurity shifts fast. Manual penetration tests remain valuable, especially for nuanced attack paths and business-logic issues, but they are expensive, point-in-time, and difficult to run continuously. By the time a report is delivered, the environment may have already changed. Automated scanners improved coverage and frequency, but most still rely on known signatures, templated checks, and shallow validation. They can find obvious issues, but they rarely match the adaptive reasoning, chaining, and persistence of a skilled attacker.Platforms like XBOW help security teams move toward continuous validation by running AI-driven tests that mimic large-scale human attackers. This shift moves the focus from periodic assessment and reactive patching toward ongoing exposure management and earlier prevention. From Automation to Agency To appreciate the value of these modern platforms, it’s important to separate traditional automation from what is called “agentic” AI. Earl
Godot 4.7 Released With HDR Output Support
Godot 4.7 is out today as the newest feature release for this leading open-source, cross-platform game engine...
Mastodon 4.6 Released with Collections and Redesigned Profiles
Mastodon 4.6 brings curated profile Collections, redesigned profiles, email subscriptions, landing page changes, and more to the decentralized social media platform.
How NVIDIA Vera CPU Performance Compares To The Ampere Altra Max
Last month on Phoronix was an exclusive first look at the NVIDIA Vera CPU performance compared to prior-generation NVIDIA Grace as well as the current AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon competition. Following that was looking at how the ARM Linux server performance has evolved over the past eight years of AArch64 Linux servers. A Phoronix Premium supporter recently requested wanting to see how Vera compares to Ampere Altra. While Ampere Altra has been in the marketplace now for more than five years, they are some of the most readily available ARM Linux server options for DIY/enthusiast builds given the scarcity of AmpereOne and lack of other readily available socketed ARM CPU options. This article shows how the performance compares between Ampere Altra Max and NVIDIA Vera.
Ubuntu flavours now need a beta release to ship
Ubuntu has announced an ‘important policy update’, making beta releases mandatory for all Ubuntu flavours, no exceptions. Most flavours already hit the beta milestone every six months without issue. But until now a flavour that missed the deadline could still be granted a one-off exception. During the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS cycle, that’s what happened with Ubuntu Kylin, the Chinese-orientated spin that uses the UKUI desktop. It missed the Beta window but still made the final release. That won’t happen again. To get an official stable release, a flavour now must have a beta release out the same time as every […]
Mozilla Opens Up Firefox Roadmap with Big Browser Changes Ahead
Mozilla plans native Containers, expanded PDF editing, Quick Answers, Smart Window, and other upcoming Firefox features.
EXT4 Reworks Fast Commit Handling & Faster Directory Hash Computation
The EXT4 file-system improvements were merged today for Linux 7.2 with some enticing optimizations...
[$] The first half of the 7.2 merge window
The 7.2 merge window started with the 7.1 kernel release on June 14. As of this writing, just over 7,000 non-merge changesets have been pulled into the mainline for the next kernel release. Many of the core subsystems have been pulled at this point, meaning that most of the changes that can be expected in 7.2 have now come into focus.
Mastodon 4.6 released
Version 4.6 of the Mastodon fediverse platform has been released. The headliner of this release is Collections, a way to create and share curated collections of profiles. Part of Mastodon's work ethos is our commitment to trust and safety, so we've put a lot of thought and care into the design of this feature to avoid some of the pitfalls and abuse people have experienced with similar features on other platforms, while focusing on its primary goal: Helping new users discover more of the Fediverse. Other new features include support for subscribing to posts via email, the ability to generate a "year in review" post, accessibility improvements, and more.
[$] Single-hop block replication with RMR and BRMR
How can cloud providers efficiently supply durable virtual block devices? Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) provides a way for servers in a cluster to share chunks of memory, but there still needs to be a protocol that operates on top of RDMA to provide the guarantees expected of a block device. The kernel's RDMA transport library (RTRS) provides a way to send messages via RDMA. I presented about two new components built on top of RTRS at the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management and BPF Summit: Reliable Multicast over RTRS (RMR) and Block device over RMR (BRMR). These modules, which I am working on with Jia Li, could be a way for cloud providers to expose durable block devices with as little overhead as possible. To accomplish that, however, we need some discussion and feedback from the community before sending the modules upstream.