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Version 25.2 of the Armbian Linux distribution for single-board computers (SBCs) has been released. Notable changes in this release include support for many new SBCs, an upgrade to Linux kernel 6.12.x, and more. See the changelog for a complete list.

The Faster CPython project has been working to speed up the Python interpreter for the past several years. Now, Ken Jin, a member of the project, has merged a new set of changes that have been benchmarked as improving performance by 10% for some architectures. The only change is switching from using computed goto statements to using tail calls as part of the implementation...

Security updates have been issued by Fedora (crun, gnutls, libtasn1, and openssl), Mageia (emacs, gnutls, iniparser, kernel, kmod-virtualbox, kmod-xtables-addons, kernel-linus, krb5, libxml2, and vim), Slackware (tigervnc and xorg), SUSE (libprotobuf-lite28_3_0 and Maven), and Ubuntu (dropbear, kernel, libxml2, linux, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux, linux-lts-xenial, linux-aws-5.4 linux-raspi-5.4, linux-gcp, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-ibm, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-6.8, linux-nvidia-lowlatency, linux-raspi, ProFTPD, python-virtualenv, rails, and xorg-server, xwayland).

The conversation around the merging of a set of Rust abstractions for the kernel's DMA-mapping layer has mostly settled after Linus Torvalds made it clear that the code would be accepted. One other consequence of this decision, though, is that Christoph Hellwig has quietly stepped down from the maintenance of the DMA-mapping code. Marek Szyprowski will be the maintainer of that layer going forward....

The Linux kernel supports attaching BPF programs to many operations. This is generally safe because the BPF verifier ensures that BPF programs can't misuse kernel resources, run indefinitely, or otherwise escape their boundaries. There is continuing tension, however, between trying to expand the capabilities of BPF programs and ensuring that the verifier can handle every edge case. On February 14, Juntong Deng shared a proof-of-concept...

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (libpq, postgresql:13, postgresql:15, and postgresql:16), Debian (nodejs and php-nesbot-carbon), Mageia (neomutt), Red Hat (python3.11-urllib3 and tuned), SUSE (crun, ovmf, pam_pkcs11, qemu, and webkit2gtk3), and Ubuntu (iniparser, libcap2, linux, linux-hwe, linux, linux-hwe-5.4, linux, linux-lowlatency, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, linux-bluefield, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-ibm-5.4, linux-azure, linux-azure-fde, linux-gkeop, linux-nvidia, linux-oracle, linux-azure-5.15, linux-azure-fde-5.15, linux-oracle-5.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-gke, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, and linux-xilinx-zynqmp).

Version 2.0 of the Aqualung gapless music player has been released. Aqualung supports playback of a wide range of audio formats, ripping CDs to WAV, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, or MP3, and subscribing to podcasts via RSS or Atom feeds. The primary change in this release is the migration from GTK2 to GTK3, and dropping support for custom skins as a result.

The kernel's slab allocator is responsible for the allocation of small (usually sub-page) chunks of memory. For many workloads, the speed of object allocation and freeing is one of the key factors in overall performance, so it is not surprising that a lot of effort has gone into optimizing the slab allocator over time. Now that the kernel is down to a single slab...

The AlmaLinux project has published a request for comments (RFC) on rebuilding Fedora's Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL), which provides additional software for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and its derivatives, to support older x86_64 hardware that is not supported by EPEL 10. While this may sound simple on the surface, the proposed rebuild carries a few potential risks that the AlmaLinux and EPEL...

The Emacs extensible text editor (among other things) has made a security release to address two vulnerabilities. Emacs 30.1 has fixes for CVE-2025-1244, which is a shell-command-injection flaw in the man.el man page browser and for CVE-2024-53920, which is a code-execution vulnerability in the flymake syntax-checking mode. LWN covered the flymake problems back in December.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (bind, bind9.18, libpq, mysql, postgresql, postgresql:15, and postgresql:16), Debian (fort-validator, gnutls28, krb5, libxml2, and python-werkzeug), Fedora (chromium, openssh, proftpd, python3.8, vaultwarden, and vim), Oracle (bind, bind9.16, bind9.18, libpq, libsoup, mysql, mysql:8.0, nodejs:18, nodejs:22, postgresql, postgresql:13, postgresql:15, and postgresql:16), Red Hat (mysql, mysql:8.0, and python3), SUSE (chromedriver, dcmtk, grub2, java-1_8_0-ibm, java-23-openjdk, luanti, openssh, postgresql14, postgresql15, postgresql16, postgresql17, proftpd,...

The 6.14-rc4 kernel prepatch is out for testing. "This continues to be the right kind of 'boring' release: nothing in particular stands out in rc4".

The pytest-mh project is a plugin that provides a multi-host test framework for the popular pytest unit-testing framework and test runner. Work on pytest-mh started in 2023 to solve a multitude of issues that cropped up for developers and testers when testing the SSSD project, which is a client for enterprise identity management. I was not happy with the state of testing of the...

Greg Kroah-Hartman has released another four stable kernels: 6.13.4, 6.12.16, 6.6.79, and 6.1.129. As usual, all users are advised to upgrade.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (bind, bind9.16, and mysql:8.0), Debian (chromium, djoser, libtasn1-6, and postgresql-13), Fedora (python3.12 and vim), Red Hat (libpq, postgresql, postgresql:13, postgresql:15, and postgresql:16), Slackware (ark), SUSE (brise, chromium, emacs, google-osconfig-agent, grafana, grub2, helm, kernel, openssh, openssl-1_1, ovmf, postgresql13, postgresql14, postgresql15, and postgresql17), and Ubuntu (gnutls28, libtasn1-6, openssl, python3.10, python3.12, python3.8, and webkit2gtk).

At the end of January we ran this article on the discussions around a set of Rust bindings for the kernel's DMA-mapping layer. Many pixels have been expended on the topic since across the net, most recently in this sprawling email thread. Linus Torvalds has now made his feelings known on the topic: You are not forced to take any Rust code, or care...

Version 1.85.0 of the Rust language has been released. Changes in the release include support for async closures, some convenience iterators for tuples, and a number of stabilized APIs. The headline feature, though, is that this release stabilizes the Rust 2024 edition, described as "the largest edition we have released". The 2024 edition guide has a detailed listing of all the changes that were...

The maximum filesystem block size that the kernel can support has always been limited by the host page size for Linux, even if the filesystems could handle larger block sizes. The large-block-size (LBS) patches that were merged for the 6.12 kernel removed this limitation in XFS, thereby decoupling the page size from the filesystem block size. XFS is the first filesystem to gain this support,...

Atomic block writes, which have been discussed here a few times in the past, are block operations that either complete fully or do not occur at all, ensuring data consistency and preventing partial (or "torn") writes. This means the disk will, at all times, contain either the complete new data from the atomic write operation or the complete old data from a previous write....

Security updates have been issued by Debian (mosquitto), Fedora (gnutls, kernel, libtasn1, microcode_ctl, openssh, python3.10, python3.11, and python3.9), Red Hat (bind, bind9.16, buildah, container-tools:rhel8, podman, and redis:6), Slackware (libxml2), SUSE (dcmtk, google-osconfig-agent, java-17-openj9, kubernetes1.30-apiserver, kubernetes1.31-apiserver, openssh, and ruby3.4-rubygem-grpc), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-lowlatency and linux-aws, linux-azure, linux-gcp, linux-oracle, linux-raspi, linux-realtime).

Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition: Front: Systemd; AI scraperbots; Time-slice extension; FUSE regression; Multi-size THPs; Memcached; Meshtastic. Briefs: Asahi leadership; Debian images; RISC-V Fedora; OpenSUSE; Mesa 25.0.0; Pi-hole v6; Quotes; ... Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

Mark Surman, president of the Mozilla Corporation, has announced leadership updates for Mozilla. This includes a Mozilla Leadership Council made up of executives from each Mozilla organization, and new board chairs for the not-for-profit Mozilla Foundation, the Mozilla Corporation, and Mozilla.ai. The announcement also indicates a desire to further "diversify" Mozilla's focus: We've recognized that Mozilla faces major headwinds in terms of both financial...

Steven Rostedt recently posted a patch set that could help improve the performance of certain user-space applications by giving the scheduler more context about when they are safe to interrupt. The patch set lets programs request a small grace window before they can be interrupted so that they can relinquish any locks, decreasing the amount of time that other threads have to spend waiting....

Version 25.0.0 of the Mesa graphics library has been released. "The flashiest addition is probably the support for Vulkan 1.4 by Anv (Intel), Asahi (Apple), Lavapipe (software), NVK (NVIDIA), PanVK (Mali), RADV (AMD), and Turnip (Qualcomm). Users can expect the usual flurry of improvements across all drivers and components."