section
FOSS
Kernel, distros, and the wider free and open source software world.
491 stories archived
[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for November 5, 2026
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition: Front : Kernel cells; Debian LLM reviews; glibc system-call wrappers; Binder in Rust; Kernel CVE flood; Fedora KDE and X11 removal; 7.4 merge window part two; Portable Python. Briefs : MTCP RCE; Bash security; XCPE botnet; Bazzite 45; Fedora 45; openSUSE Leap 16.1; Tor Browser 16.0; Quotes; ... Announcements : Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.
Ubuntu users say Canonical “asleep at the wheel” over critical Linux kernel bug
Canonical is fixing a critical Linux kernel flaw in Ubuntu, weeks after Debian and other distros did – and users aren’t happy about the wait. As of 3 November, patched kernels for CVE-2026-98432 are in testing for Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04 and 26.04 LTS, but are yet to hit the stable updates pocket. Canonical hasn’t given a date for when it expects them to. 9.8 CVE on Linux servers since 2016 The CVE involved a type of bug known as a use-after-free. It affects the part of the Linux kernel that handles incoming network connections, specifically the TCP handshake over IPv4. […] You're reading Ubuntu users say Canonical “asleep at the wheel” over critical Linux kernel bug , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
LZ4 1.11 Introduces Multi-Threaded Compression For liblz4, Other Performance Gains
For those making use of the LZ4 extremely fast compression algorithm, LZ4 1.11 released today and brings multi-threaded compression support to its library (liblz4)...
NVIDIA CUDA 13.5 Released With Production Support For Vera Rubin
Along with today's release of the NVIDIA 620.70.06 Linux driver, NVIDIA also released CUDA 13.5 that brings general availability (GA) support for Vera Rubin...
Intel One Mono Font Family Updated With Various Enhancements
Back in 2023 Intel introduced One Mono as a new font for developers. Intel in September had discontinued the One Mono project but then days later revived it. Now the project is out with its first update since that mishap...
[$] Plasma X11 session removal surprises some Fedora users
The KDE Project announced, in 2025, that Plasma 6.7 would be the last version of the desktop environment that would support X11 sessions. Those who keep up with KDE's announcements no doubt expected it when Plasma 6.8 dropped X11 support as promised. What seems to have come as a surprise, at least to a number of Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop users, is that the Fedora 44 release—which shipped in April with Plasma 6.6 —received an update to Plasma 6.8 that swept away the X11 session without much warning. Despite the surprise, it is gone for good: the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) has voted against a request to revert the update for Fedora 44 and the just-released Fedora 45.
Linux 7.4 Showing Few Performance Gains With Initial Benchmarks On AMD Ryzen Threadripper
In the first round of benchmarking the in-development Linux 7.4 kernel there are some performance improvements -- and some small regressions -- worth noting over the current Linux 7.3 stable kernel. This first round of Linux 7.4 kernel benchmarking was on a System76 Thelio Major workstation with AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9980X.
Bazzite 45 released
Version 45 of Bazzite , the image-based gaming distribution based on Fedora Linux, has been released. Notable changes in this release include a rebase to Fedora 45, updated Open Gaming Collective (OGC) kernels, support for Logitech TrueWheel devices, and more. LWN covered Bazzite in December 2025.
Schools That Say No to Google’s AI Will Be Saying Goodbye to its Search Too
Meanwhile, schools in six German states can choose an open source cloud solution.
[$] Portable Python scripts with dependencies
A basic Python script is portable: it can be copied between machines with little concern about compatibility. A script that depends on third-party packages requires quite a bit more care and consideration, however. In 2023, PEP 723 ("Inline script metadata") introduced a standard for declaring a Python script's dependencies inside the script itself. Several third-party tools can now automatically install and manage those dependencies, but there is still little official support for this standard within Python itself.
NVIDIA 620.70.06 Linux Driver Released With Wayland Fixes & Performance Work
Out today is the first NVIDIA Linux driver release in the R620 release branch. This NVIDIA 620.70.06 Linux driver release isn't too feature heavy but comes with some bug fixes, improved performance of explicit sync on Wayland, and some other refinements...
Debian's APT Affected By Man-In-The-Middle Attack For Arbitrary Code Execution As Root
A new vulnerability was disclosed today affecting Debian's APT package manager where a man-in-the-middle attacker could carry out arbitrary code execution as root...
Linux 7.3 Will More Than Likely Be This Year's LTS Kernel
While the Linux 7.4 kernel will be released in the 2026 calendar year in the last week or two of December if the schedule holds, it turns out Linux 7.3 is likely to be this year's Long Term Support kernel version...
systemd With Its Initial Support For Rust
Systemd recently merged support for Rust programs. This initial systemd Rust support is limited to leaf components / individual binaries while eventually they hope to be able to support Rust within root components of systemd. More details on this initiative were shared this week...
Synaptics Appears To Use Legal Threats To Block Open-Source DisplayLink Driver
From earlier in the year you may recall a new experimental open-source Linux driver for modern DisplayLink hardware. That "Vino" driver for DisplayLink driver was a clean-room reverse-engineered DisplayLink driver that was developed in part by AI and written in Rust. Unfortunately, that open-source driver has disappeared following legal threats by Synaptics...
Linux 7.4’s Merge Window is Huge, and Linus Says it Might Not Just Be AI
Another possible factor is that people expect 7.4 to be the next LTS release.
"AMD Loves Omarchy" Linux With More Collaboration Coming
In addition to organizations like Alibaba, SpaceXSI, DigitalOcean, Meta SuperIntelligence Labs, and others contributing millions of dollars toward the development of the Omarchy Linux distribution, it turns out AMD also has a thing for this Linux distribution built around the Hyprland compositor...
Experimental Project Gets Intel XeSS On XMX Working With Valve's Steam Play (Proton)
Last month I wrote about Intel working on adding proper XeSS support to Steam Play (Proton). While those efforts haven't yet been completed for benefiting Linux gamers running Intel Arc Graphics, in the meantime an independent open-source developer has managed to get XMX-accelerated XeSS working under Proton...
AMD Releases ZenDNN 6.1 With New Kernels & Optimizations
Last month Intel and AMD jointly announced they would be collaborating on software optimizations with PyTorch/oneDNN. That already led to the UXL Foundation's release of oneDNN 3.14 with initial AMD Zen optimizations. It looks though like for now at least AMD will also continue to concurrently push new work into their ZenDNN library and not exclusively tied to oneDNN. Out today is ZenDNN 6.1...
Domicile Desktop Brings Web Technologies To Building Wayland Desktops
Domicile is a new Wayland compositor that leverages Chromium for allowing custom Linux desktops to be built using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript/TypeScript...
GIMP 3.2.8 Released With Many Refinements, Numerous Security Fixes Due To AI Reports
GIMP 3.2.8 is out today as the newest stable release of this open-source image editing application that's most popular on the Linux desktop...
NetBSD 11.1 Released With Security Fixes & Other Improvements
Following the release of NetBSD 11.0 in August, NetBSD 11.1 is out today with a collection of security fixes and other improvements...
GIMP 3.2.8 brings bug fixes, fixes & fixes
GIMP 3.2.8 is out, the fourth maintenance update in the current stable series, which first launched in March 2026. No major new features ship, as fixes and fine-tuning are the primary focus. Major work is happening alongside maintenance, but the fruits of that will arrive in the next major series update – those do come out sooner now, so patience. GIMP 3.2.8 changes since the v3.2.6 update includes better initial positioning of dialogs, makes the Preferences page load faster and bolsters the text tool’s support for right-to-left (RTL) languages. Arrow keys behave correctly and direction icons show on the on-canvas […] You're reading GIMP 3.2.8 brings bug fixes, fixes & fixes , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
OpenSUSE Leap 16.1
The openSUSE project has announced the release of openSUSE Leap 16.1. The release is notable for allowing both traditional installations and immutable images with transactional updates. While immutable images had previously been available for Leap Micro, they are now available across all platforms that Leap supports, including servers, desktops, and virtual machines. "Leap's image gives the best of both for traditional and immutable users, and we expect that Tumbleweed will follow when Agama becomes the default installer for Tumbleweed as well." said Leap release manager Lubos Kocman. "The Leap Micro experience people relied on is still here, but now it shares the same release, the same life cycle and the same maintenance updates as the rest of Leap, so users only have to pick the mode that fits their workload."