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Version 3.4.0 of the OpenSSL SSL/TLS library has been released. It adds a number of new encryption algorithms, support for "directly fetched composite signature algorithms such as RSA-SHA2-256", and more. See the release notes for details.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (ffmpeg, ghostscript, libsepol, openjdk-11, openjdk-17, perl, and python-sql), Oracle (389-ds-base, buildah, containernetworking-plugins, edk2, httpd, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, java-21-openjdk, kernel, python-setuptools, skopeo, and webkit2gtk3), Red Hat (buildah), Slackware (openssl), SUSE (apache2, firefox, libopenssl-3-devel, podman, and python310-starlette), and Ubuntu (cups-browsed, firefox, libgsf, and linux-gke).

Sasha Levin has announced a new tree that is intended to perform continuous-integration tests of pull requests aimed at the mainline. The plan is for this tree to hold more finished work than sometimes ends up in linux-next; in a name that seems destined to create typographical confusion, it is called "linus-next". The linus-next tree aims to provide a more stable and testable integration...

Version 1.1.0 of the bootc utility for performing transactional, in-place operating system updates using Open Container Initative (OCI) images, has been released. This release "officially stabilizes all APIs" for bootc and includes a number of bug fixes. LWN covered bootc in June.

Sigstore is a project that is meant to simplify and improve the process of signing, verifying, and protecting software. It is a relatively new project, declared "generally available" in 2022. Python is an early adopter of sigstore; it started providing signatures for CPython artifacts with Python 3.11 in 2022. This is in addition to the OpenPGP signatures it has been providing since at least 2001. Now, Seth Michael Larson—the...

Security updates have been issued by Debian (asterisk, chromium, php-horde-mime-viewer, and php-horde-turba), Fedora (apache-commons-io, buildah, chromium, containers-common, libarchive, libdigidocpp, oath-toolkit, podman, rust-hyper-rustls, rust-reqwest, rust-rustls-native-certs, rust-rustls-native-certs0.7, rust-tonic, rust-tonic-build, rust-tonic-types, rust-tower, rust-tower-http, rust-tower-http0.5, rust-tower0.4, thunderbird, and unbound), SUSE (buildah, chromedriver, chromium, element-desktop, element-web, jetty-annotations, nodejs-electron, php7, php74, php8, podman, python3-virtualbox, qemu, thunderbird, and valkey), and Ubuntu (amd64-microcode).

The Guix project has disclosed a security vulnerability in the build daemon that the distribution uses to build and install software locally. The vulnerability allows an existing unprivileged user to get access to a setuid binary, and from there potentially interfere with any other software built or installed on the computer. The project recommends upgrading the guix daemon now, to avoid the issue. This...

Linus has released 6.12-rc4 for testing. "I'm not happy with how big this is - it's probably far from the biggest rc4 ever, but it _is_ the biggest rc4 we've had in the 6.x series at least in number of commits."

The kernel's CPU scheduler currently offers several preemption modes that implement a range of tradeoffs between system throughput and response time. Back in September 2023, a discussion on scheduling led to the concept of "lazy preemption", which could simplify scheduling in the kernel while providing better results. Things went quiet for a while, but lazy preemption has returned in the form of this patch...

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, java-21-openjdk, and webkit2gtk3), Debian (apache2), Red Hat (expat), SUSE (cups-filters, jetty-minimal, OpenIPMI, and python-starlette), and Ubuntu (linux-azure, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.15, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, and oath-toolkit).

Version 1.82.0 of the Rust language has been released. There are a lot of new features this time, including a cargo info command, tier-1 support for 64-bit Apple Arm systems, a new native syntax (&raw) to create raw pointers, changes to unsafe extern, unsafe attributes, standardized rules around the handling of floating-point not-a-number values, and more.

Email has become somewhat unfashionable as a collaboration tool for open-source projects, but there are still a number of projects—such as PostgreSQL and the Linux kernel—that expect contributors to send and review patches via email. The aerc mail client is aimed at developers looking for a text-based, efficient, and extensible client that is meant to be used for working with Git and email. It...

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 6.11.4, 6.6.57, 6.1.113, 5.15.168, and 5.10.227 stable kernels. As usual, this set of updates contains a long list of important fixes throughout the kernel tree.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (python-cryptography), Fedora (dnsdist and python-virtualenv), Red Hat (java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, and java-21-openjdk), Slackware (libssh2 and mozilla), SUSE (haproxy, keepalived, libarchive, libnss_slurm2, php8, and python310-pytest-html), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-gkeop, linux-gkeop-5.15, linux-hwe-5.15, 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-oracle, linux-oracle-5.15, linux-raspi, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-bluefield, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.4, linux-kvm,...

Version 9.0 of the Forgejo software forge system has been released. Changes include a switch to the GPLv3 license, the beginning of a quota system, the removal of go-git support, and a lot of fixes. (LWN looked at Forgejo in February).

Rust, like C, has its own memory model describing how concurrent access to the same data by multiple threads can behave. The Linux kernel, however, has its own ideas. The Linux kernel memory model (LKMM) is subtly different from both the standard C memory model and Rust's model. At Kangrejos, Boqun Feng gave a presentation about the need to reconcile the memory models used...

The pidfd mechanism, which uses file descriptors to refer to processes in an unambiguous and race-free way, was first introduced in 2018. Since then, the interface has gained a number of new features, but development has slowed over time as the interface has matured. There are, however, a couple of patches in circulation that are meant to make working with pidfds simpler in some...

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (buildah, containernetworking-plugins, and skopeo), Fedora (pdns-recursor and valkey), Mageia (unbound), Red Hat (fence-agents, firefox, java-11-openjdk, python-setuptools, python3-setuptools, resource-agents, and thunderbird), SUSE (etcd-for-k8s, libsonivox3, rubygem-puma, and unbound), and Ubuntu (apr, libarchive, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-azure-4.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-hwe, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, nano, and vim).

Version 4.0.0 of the LibreSSL TLS/cryptography stack has been released. Changes include a cleanup of the MD4 and MD5 implementations, removal of unused DSA methods, changes in libtls protocol parsing to ignore unsupported TLSv1.1 and TLSv1.0 protocols, and many more internal changes and bug fixes.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (container-tools:rhel8, firefox, OpenIPMI, podman, and thunderbird), Debian (libapache-mod-jk, php7.4, and webkit2gtk), Fedora (edk2, koji, libgsf, rust-hyper-rustls, rust-reqwest, rust-rustls-native-certs, rust-rustls-native-certs0.7, rust-tonic, rust-tonic-build, rust-tonic-types, rust-tower, rust-tower-http, rust-tower-http0.5, and rust-tower0.4), Mageia (packages and thunderbird), Oracle (bind, container-tools:ol8, kernel, kernel-container, OpenIPMI, podman, and thunderbird), Red Hat (container-tools:rhel8, containernetworking-plugins, podman, and skopeo), SUSE (argocd-cli, bsdtar, keepalived, kernel, kyverno, libmozjs-115-0, libmozjs-128-0, libmozjs-78-0, OpenIPMI,...

Paul McKenney gave a presentation at Kangrejos this year that wasn't (directly) related to Rust. Instead, he spoke about the work he has been doing in concert with many other contributors on improving the handling of subtle concurrency problems in C++. Although he cautioned that his talk was only an overview, and not a substitute for reading the relevant papers, he hoped that the...

Version 1.4 of the Inkscape open-source vector-graphics editor has been released. Highlights of this release include a filter gallery, import for Affinity Designer files, internal links in exported PDFs, and more. See the release notes for all of the new features. LWN previewed the 1.4 release in early October.

It is too early to say what the outcome will be in the ongoing fight between Automattic and WP Engine, but the WordPress community at large is already the loser. Automattic founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg has been using his control of the project, and the WordPress.org infrastructure, to punish WP Engine and remove some dissenting contributors from discussion channels. Most recently, Mullenweg has instituted a...