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The 7.3-rc2 kernel prepatch is out for testing. Linus said: This didn't *feel* like a particularly busy rc2, but it clearly was. rc2 is usually the quietest time when people take a breather after the merge window and it takes a while to start finding bugs. But not this time - this is a "full fat" rc release. [...] Nothing looks particularly odd, even if the rc2 timing is a bit unusual. It might be just random, but we'll obviously all blame it on AI, because whether that's really the cause or no…

Python's support for multithreaded programs has improved considerably over the last few years with the advent of the "free-threaded" version of the language . But testing multithreaded programs is notoriously difficult, because the underlying host system determines the thread-execution ordering, which adds an element of non-determinism. At PyCon US, Larry Hastings gave a talk ( YouTube video ) about his blanket project, which is meant to provide mechanisms for deterministic testing of multithre…

Version 2026.09 , code-named "Hättiwaritätti", of the Debian-based Grml live Linux distribution for system administrators has been released. It is based on packages from the upcoming Debian 14 ("forky") release. Notable changes include an update to the Linux 7.1.8 kernel, support for booting from exfat-formatted USB devices, and an update to GNU Screen 5.0.1.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (chromium, firefox-esr, and pcre2), Fedora (cockpit, expat, freeipa, kbd, kernel, mrtg, python-pip, and valkey), Mageia (libopenmpt and python-gitpython), Oracle (dbus-broker, freerdp, gegl, gegl04, gimp:2.8, go-fdo-client, go-fdo-server, golang-github-openprinting-ipp-usb, grafana, gzip, image-builder, iperf3, kernel, libssh, libxml2, microcode_ctl, nodejs:22, nodejs:24, openssl-fips-provider, pam, php:7.4, php:8.2, tar, and wget), SUSE (apache2-mod_…

Tiered-memory systems are built with multiple types of memory, each of which has different performance characteristics. In addition to the usual DRAM, a tiered system might also provide faster high-bandwidth memory or slower CXL memory. On these systems, the placement of memory allocations has a significant effect on the performance that a workload will obtain. While work on tiered-memory improvements has been ongoing for years, it feels like the pace has slowed a bit recently. Even so, there a…

Version 4.0 of the Audacity audio editor has been released. Notable changes in this release include a rewritten interface using Qt, ability to save user-interface layouts as "Workspaces", improvements in working with audio clips, and a new .aup4 project format. The release is not fully feature-compatible with the Audacity 3.x series; see the compatibility notes for a list of missing features.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (freerdp, go-fdo-server, golang-github-openprinting-ipp-usb, kernel, kernel-rt, nodejs:24, perl-DBI, and php), Debian (firefox-esr, libapache2-mod-auth-openidc, and libass), Fedora (dracut, exiv2, firefox, freerdp, gvfs, mingw-expat, mingw-gstreamer1, mingw-gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, mingw-gstreamer1-plugins-base, mingw-gstreamer1-plugins-good, mingw-openexr, nss, proftpd, and syncthing), Mageia (apr-util, bubblewrap, libalsa2, libarchive, perl-N…

Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition: Front : Python JIT; rnull block driver; steal time; GNOME governance; 7.3 merge window; LUKS. Briefs : Kernel infrastructure; Debian AI; Dolphin 26.08; Firefox 155; Incus 7.4; OpenShot 4.0; Quotes; ... Announcements : Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

When a laptop is asleep, its memory is not unreadable. The right tooling can attach to the computer's memory bus and read out its contents, and cold-boot attacks can theoretically read values from memory for a short time after the computer loses power. That is really an unavoidable fact about the hardware, but some users would still like to ensure that, even if this happens, their long-term encryption keys, such as the key for full-disk encryption, remain unreadable. In June 2026, Ingo Blechsch…

Emmanuele Bassi kicked off a project to improve GNOME's technical governance with a presentation about his ideas ( video ) at GUADEC 2025 . His nudging has led the project to, slowly, work on creating more formal structures for technical governance. It is adopting a teams structure and looking toward creating a steering committee, as well as bootstrapping a Request for Comments (RFC) process. If adopted, GNOME would require RFCs for design, user experience, architectural, and other changes that…

Version 7.4 of the Incus container and virtual-machine management system has been released. Notable changes in this release include UEFI Secure Boot key management, "near-live" migration of containers between Incus instances, as well as burst I/O limits for disk and network devices.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the 7.2.3 , 7.1.13 , 6.18.49 , 6.12.108 , 6.6.156 , 6.1.187 , 5.15.220 , and 5.10.269 stable kernels. Each contains a number of important fixes throughout the tree. Users are advised to upgrade.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (dbus-broker, freerdp, gegl, gegl04, gimp, gimp:2.8, glib2, grafana, gzip, iperf3, libssh, nodejs22, nodejs24, nodejs:22, nodejs:24, php:7.4, php:8.2, pipewire, ruby:3.3, ruby:4.0, tar, wget, and xmlrpc-c), Debian (cyrus-imapd, keystone, and lemonldap-ng), Fedora (bubblewrap, cockpit, emacs, gdk-pixbuf2, openssl, openvkl, python-linkify-it-py, python-llm, and rkcommon), Gentoo (Chromium, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Vivaldi), Oracle (glib2…

The online publication industry, as a whole, is struggling, with challenges coming from multiple directions. Thanks to the support of all of you, our readers, LWN would appear to be doing better than most. But the world has changed around us and, in particular, prices have changed considerably. By now, you probably know where this is going: subscription prices at LWN will be increasing as of September 15.

In 2024 the Python 3.13 release added an experimental just-in-time (JIT) compiler to optimize the way that CPython executes Python code. Since then, work has proceeded on the JIT, albeit perhaps less formally than some might like. In June, Python's steering council (SC) put out an announcement that no new development on the JIT land (with the exception of bug and security fixes) in Python's main branch, until it accepts a Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP) that would make the case for the JIT as…