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Greg Kroah-Hartman has released the 6.12.2, 6.11.11, and 4.19.325 stable kernels. Note that both 6.11.11 and 4.19.325 are the last kernels in those series, "please move off to a newer kernel version". In the 4.19.325 release notice, he has a rather longer-than-usual message, including: As a "fun" proof that this one is finished (and that any company saying they care about it really should...

Security updates have been issued by Fedora (thunderbird, tuned, and webkitgtk), Mageia (python-aiohttp and qemu), Oracle (container-tools:ol8, firefox, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, kernel, kernel:4.18.0, krb5, pam, postgresql:16, python-tornado, python3:3.6.8, thunderbird, tigervnc, tuned, and webkit2gtk3), Red Hat (bzip2, postgresql, postgresql:13, postgresql:15, postgresql:16, python-tornado, and ruby:3.1), Slackware (python3), SUSE (postgresql, postgresql16, postgresql17, postgresql13, postgresql14, postgresql15, python-python-multipart, and python3), and Ubuntu (python-django and recutils).

Fedora Project Leader Matthew Miller reports that the project's search to replace Pagure as its git forge is almost complete, with the Fedora Council strongly in favor of Forgejo: The Council, currently, has a clear preference for Forgejo. This is a big decision and we don't want it to feel rushed. Therefore, we're opening this up one last time to everyone's comments. After two...

Linus Walleij writes about a pair of security features for 32-bit Arm systems; these landed in 6.10, but, he says, have now stabilized to the point that distributors may want to enable them. PAN is an abbreviation for the somewhat grammatically incorrect Privileged Access Never. [...] For modern ARM32 systems with large memories configured to use LPAE nothing like PAN was available: this version...

Linux offers two broad ways of performing I/O to files. Buffered I/O, which is the usual way of accessing a file, stores a copy of the transferred data in the kernel's page cache to speed future accesses. Direct I/O, instead, moves data directly between the storage device and a user-space buffer, avoiding the page cache. Both modes have their advantages and disadvantages. In 2019,...

Version 6.0.0 of the Hurl command-line tool has been released. Hurl is a curl-powered utility that runs HTTP requests and tests defined in a plain-text Hurl file. Notable features in this release include the ability to generate dynamic values with functions, shorter syntax, and an option to export Hurl files to a list of curl commands. See the release notes for a full list...

Security updates have been issued by Red Hat (go-toolset:rhel8, grafana, kernel, kernel-rt, kernel:4.18.0, pam, pam:1.5.1, pcs, postgresql:12, postgresql:15, postgresql:16, python3:3.6.8, qemu-kvm, rhc, rhc-worker-playbook, and virt:rhel and virt-devel:rhel) and SUSE (ansible-10, ansible-core, avahi, bpftool, python, python3, python36, webkit2gtk3, and xen).

The traditional structure of a compiler forms a pipeline — parsing, type-checking, optimization, and code-generation, usually in that order. But modern programming languages have requirements that are ill-suited to such a design. Increasingly, compilers are moving toward other designs in order to support incremental compilation and low-latency responses for uses like integration into IDEs. Rust has, for the last eight years, been pursuing a...

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (container-tools:rhel8, kernel, kernel-rt:4.18.0, kernel:4.18.0, pam, pam:1.5.1, perl-App-cpanminus, perl-App-cpanminus:1.7044, python-tornado, tigervnc, tuned, and webkit2gtk3), Debian (needrestart and webkit2gtk), Mageia (firefox, glib2.0, krb5, and thunderbird), Red Hat (firefox, postgresql, postgresql:12, postgresql:13, postgresql:15, postgresql:16, and thunderbird), SUSE (editorconfig-core-c, kernel, php7, php8, python, python-tornado6, python3-virtualenv, python310, python39, thunderbird, wget, and wireshark), and Ubuntu (firefox and haproxy).

The most recent version of NixOS, 24.11, was released on November 30. It contains GNOME 47, Plasma 6.2, LLVM 19, and lots more: The 24.11 release was made possible due to the efforts of 2669 contributors, who authored 49079 commits since the previous release. Our thanks go the contributors who also take care of the continued stability and security of our stable release. NixOS is already known as the most up...

Security updates have been issued by Debian (dnsmasq, editorconfig-core, lemonldap-ng, proftpd-dfsg, python3.9, simplesamlphp, tgt, and xfpt), Fedora (qbittorrent, webkitgtk, and wireshark), Mageia (libsoup3 & libsoup), Red Hat (buildah, grafana, grafana-pcp, and podman), SUSE (gimp, kernel, postgresql14, python, webkit2gtk3, xen, and zabbix), and Ubuntu (ansible and postgresql-12, postgresql-14, postgresql-16).

The 6.13 merge window closed with the release of 6.13-rc1 on December 1. By that time, 11,307 non-merge commits had been pulled into the mainline repository; about 9,500 of those landed after our first-half merge-window summary was written. There was a lot of new material in these patches, including architecture-support improvements, new BPF features, an efficient way to add guard pages to an address space,...

Linus has released 6.13-rc1 and closed the merge window for this release. "And for once - possibly the first time ever - it looks like the release cycle doesn't clash horribly up with the holiday season, and we'll have time both to stabilize this release, _and_ the work for 6.14 won't be starting until well into January."

Version 1.83.0 of the Rust language has been released. This release includes several large extensions to what code running in const contexts can do. This refers to all code that the compiler has to evaluate at compile-time: the initial value of const and static items, array lengths, enum discriminant values, const generic arguments, and functions callable from such contexts (const fn). There are also...

The OpenWrt One router, which was reviewed here recently, is now generally available. This is the first wireless Internet router designed and built with your software freedom and right to repair in mind. The OpenWrt One will never be locked down and is forever unbrickable. This device services your needs as its owner and user. Everyone deserves control of their computing. The OpenWrt One...

Security updates have been issued by Debian (firefox-esr, redis, twisted, and tzdata), Fedora (firefox, nss, pam, rust-rustls, rust-zlib-rs, thunderbird, tuned, and xen), and SUSE (cobbler, kernel, libjxl-devel, libuv, postgresql12, postgresql14, postgresql15, python-waitress, seamonkey, tomcat, and tomcat10).

Earlier today, one of our subscribers, anselm, posted the one millionth item in our database during a discussion in the comments about the GPL. One million articles and comments is a big milestone — one representing twenty two years of work by both the editors of LWN and the community. I think reaching this milestone on Thanksgiving is a lovely coincidental reminder of how...

The long-awaited release of the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) 3.0 is on the way, marking the first major update since version 2.10 was released in April 2018. It now features a GTK 3 user interface and GIMP 3.0 introduces significant changes to the core platform and plugins. This release also brings performance and usability improvements, as well as more compatibility with Wayland and complex input sources.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (firefox-esr, netatalk, and thunderbird), Fedora (firefox, libsoup3, mingw-glib2, mingw-libsoup, mingw-python-waitress, mingw-python3, nss, perl-Module-ScanDeps, php, and python-aiohttp), Mageia (dcmtk, golang, iptraf-ng, libsndfile, microcode, php, postgresql15 & postgresql13, rapidjson, tomcat, wget, and zbar), Red Hat (openssl and openssl-fips-provider, toolbox, and webkit2gtk3), SUSE (firefox, frr, glib2, hplip, kernel, neomutt-20241114, ovmf, python-aiohttp, python-virtualenv, python310-tornado6, qemu, webkit2gtk3, and xen), and Ubuntu (mpg123...

Version 8 of the Ubuntu-based elementary OS has been released. This release includes a rewritten Dock, new window-management features, improvements in the installation and initial setup procedures for visually impaired users, as well as a new Secure Session mode: In the Secure Session, apps will be more restricted and will require your consent for access to system features. When an app wants to listen...

For the most part, the 6.13 merge window has gone smoothly, with relatively few problems or disagreements — other than this one, of course. There is one other exception, though, relating to the kernel's presentation of a process's command line to interested user-space observers when a relatively new system call is used. A pull request with a simple change to make that information more...

Security updates have been issued by Debian (mpg123 and php8.2), Fedora (libsndfile, mingw-glib2, mingw-libsoup, mingw-python3, and qbittorrent), Oracle (pam:1.5.1 and perl-App-cpanminus), Red Hat (firefox, thunderbird, and webkit2gtk3), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (firefox, rclone, tomcat, tomcat10, and xen), and Ubuntu (gh, libsoup2.4, libsoup3, pygments, TinyGLTF, and twisted).

Arch Linux is popular as a base for other Linux distributions; examples of Arch-derivatives include EndeavourOS, Manjaro, Parabola, and SteamOS. There's one small problem: the control files used to describe how to build packages for Arch Linux have no stated license. That creates a bit of uncertainty about the rights and responsibilities for the downstream derivatives. So far, that doesn't seem to have been...