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[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for October 8, 2026
Posted Oct 8, 2026 0:22 UTC (Thu)The LWN.net Weekly Edition for October 8, 2026 is available.
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition
- Front: Kernel bugs; Gentoo's Chromium package; Rust smart pointers; Sashiko; Charon; LAVD scheduler; Python random-number modules.
- Briefs: OpenSSH 10.6; RustConf recordings; Rust 1.99.0; Picard 3.0; Zig 0.17; Quotes; ...
- Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.
[$] Analyzing Rust programs with Charon
Nadrieril is a long-time Rust contributor, and the maintainer of the rustc pattern-matching infrastructure. During his involvement with Rust, he has noticed a problem with the usability of the language: it is difficult to automatically extract information from a Rust crate for use with other tooling. The Charon project aims to fix that by providing a stable API for accessing internal information from the Rust compiler.
[$] Evolving the LAVD scheduler from gaming to servers
The extensible scheduler class, which enables the creation of custom CPU schedulers with BPF, has led to a burst of innovation in this area; the LAVD scheduler has, perhaps, been one of the most noteworthy schedulers to emerge. Though it was originally designed for gaming applications, the LAVD scheduler has since grown to serve other types of workloads as well. At the 2026 edition of Kernel Recipes, Changwoo Min and Gavin Guo presented an overview of this scheduler and how it has evolved over time.
[$] Python's two modules for random numbers
Python's random and secrets modules both include utilities for obtaining random values, but only one of them is suitable for generating passwords and security tokens. For much of Python's history, random was used for passwords and tokens anyway, despite documentation that called it unsuitable for cryptography. In 2015, Python's core team debated whether to fix that misuse by making random secure by default. Instead, in 2016, Python 3.6 added a second module: secrets. The random module is still misused at times, so it is instructive to look into how the random-number modules should be used.
[$] Last rites for Gentoo's Chromium package
Chromium, the open-source upstream project for Google's Chrome web browser, is the browser of choice for many Linux users. It has also gained a reputation as being difficult for Linux distributions to package and build: Chromium has a complex build system, the project bundles many of its dependencies, and it has frequent releases. All of that, plus user complaints, has led the maintainers of the Gentoo Chromium package to give up on trying to maintain the package.
[$] An update on the Sashiko patch-review system
Patch review has long been one of the limiting constraints for the kernel project (and most others); there just aren't enough people to properly review all of the code that is submitted for inclusion. The Sashiko system, which uses a large language model (LLM) to generate reviews automatically, offers the prospect of some relief, and has already become an important part of the kernel's development process. At the 2026 edition of Kernel Recipes, Roman Gushchin, the maintainer of Sashiko, provided an overview of how the system works and what is being done to improve it.
[$] Beyond the &
Rust has a number of kinds of smart pointers, both in the standard library and defined by users. Still, some operations that are possible with built-in references are not possible to perform with user-defined smart pointers. Tyler Mandry, lead of the Rust project's language team, spoke at RustConf 2026 about the lengthy effort to change that, and make smart pointers just as flexible as built-in references.
[$] Coping with the onslaught of kernel security bugs
By now it is no secret that large language models (LLMs) have made it easy
for people to identify security bugs, and that has resulted in a flood of
bug reports to almost every free-software project, including the kernel.
At the 2026 edition of Kernel
Recipes, Greg Kroah-Hartman took the stage to talk about how the
kernel's security team is handling this deluge. His core message was
"don't panic
".
LWN.net Weekly Edition for October 1, 2026
Posted Oct 1, 2026 0:30 UTC (Thu)The LWN.net Weekly Edition for October 1, 2026 is available.
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition
- Front: PostgreSQL and the kernel; Rust on the GPU; KDE Plasma; C and memory safety; Rust radio; KDE funding; Chromium development.
- Briefs: File-notification attacks; Kernel report; TAB election; F-Droid 2.0; Firefox 157.0; GDB 18.1; Git v2.56.0; Quotes; ...
- Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.
The year in Plasma and what's ahead
A lot has happened in the KDE Plasma desktop environment in the last year. Marco Martin, a KDE contributor who spends most of his time working on Plasma, took the stage at Akademy 2026 in Graz, Austria to give an update on Plasma's major new features, some of the minor-but-interesting ones, and a preview of what's coming soon. The biggest upcoming change, dropping X11 support from Plasma, has been well-advertised; but there are also plans afoot to further improve remote-desktop support and more.
A new Raspberry Pi Desktop release is finally available for x86-64
Simon Long has announced a long-awaited release of Raspberry Pi OS, based on Debian 13 ("trixie"), for x86-64 systems.
We managed to find the time to update the Desktop for the Buster and Bullseye releases of Debian, but then we all just got too busy with other things, and, while we left the Bullseye version on the website for anyone who wanted it, we simply didn't have time to release any newer versions. But people kept on asking for it – we get two or three emails every week asking when the PC Desktop will be updated, and we haven't had an answer, because we honestly didn't know when we might get a chance to do it. We've continually tried to allocate time to be able to work on this, but it hasn't been easy. [...]
Earlier this year, we (or rather Serge) finally got the latest version of the Desktop running on top of a Debian Trixie image. It's now based on 64-bit Debian (the amd64 architecture) rather than the older 32-bit version, as Debian itself has stopped supporting 32-bit for PC architectures. This shouldn't be a major problem – most PCs made in the last 15 years or so will quite happily run the 64-bit version of Debian, as will most Intel-based Macs. (Debian support for Apple Silicon is still experimental, so unfortunately those of you with the latest and greatest shiny fruit products will not be able to run this.)
Security updates for Wednesday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (bind, dovecot, freerdp, kernel, mariadb-connector-c, mod_auth_openidc, nodejs22, nodejs:22, sudo, and vim), Debian (node-shell-quote, puma, rails, ruby-jwt, and suricata-update), Fedora (chromium, cockpit, flocq, freerdp, gappalib-coq, golang-x-mod, httpd, janus, libical, musescore, python3-docs, python3.14, python3.15, rocq, rocq-stdlib, tesseract, why3, and zenon), Mageia (srt and tor), Oracle (freerdp, kernel, libpcap, mariadb-connector-c, nodejs22, sudo, and vim), Red Hat (expat and grafana), Slackware (openssh), SUSE (chromium, docker-stable, firefox, jupyter-jupyterlab, libtcnative-1-0, tomcat, tomcat10, libtcnative-1-0, tomcat11, openexr, python310, python313-azure-storage-queue, python313-langchain-anthropic, python313-sglang, python313-Werkzeug, and valkey), and Ubuntu (fluidsynth, freerdp3, freetype, golang-1.18, golang-1.21, golang-1.24, gst-plugins-good1.0, libsoup2.4, libsoup3, libwebsockets, linux, linux-aws, linux-gcp, linux-gke, linux-ibm, linux-oracle, linux-realtime, linux-azure, linux-azure-fde, linux-nvidia-tegra, linux-oem-7.0, redis, sg3-utils, tesseract, and u-boot).
OpenSSH 10.6 released
Version 10.6 of OpenSSH
has been released. The announcement notes that the OpenSSH team has been
receiving a large number of AI-assisted security bug reports. "We very much
welcome these reports, especially when combined with human triage, analysis,
test-cases and particularly when accompanied by proposed fixes
". As a
result, the project expects to be making more frequent releases to get updates
to users more quickly rather than batching the bug fixes until the next planned
release.
Notable changes in this release include enabling the hybrid post-quantum ssh-mldsa44-ed25519 signature algorithm, addition of a -p option for sftp's lmkdir/mkdir commands, as well as disabling the LZ77 dictionary coder in ssh and sshd to mitigate side-channel leaks (which will result in reduced effectiveness of the Compression option). The scp -R option, which allows copies between two remote hosts, is being deprecated due to security risks; the option will be ignored in the future. See the announcement for full details of all changes and bug fixes.
Security updates for Tuesday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (gd, gimp, kernel, kernel-rt, libpcap, librabbitmq, mariadb-connector-c, osbuild-composer, ruby:2.5, and sudo), Debian (libmodule-cpants-analyse-perl, libpng1.6, libreoffice, roundcube, ruby-oauth2, and sabnzbdplus), Fedora (0install, alt-ergo, apron, brltty, chromium, coccinelle, cri-o1.36, emacs-common-tuareg, flocq, frama-c, freetennis, gappalib-coq, guestfs-tools, haxe, hevea, hivex, kernel, lem, libguestfs, libnbd, nbdkit, not-ocamlfind, ocaml, ocaml-afl-persistent, ocaml-alcotest, ocaml-astring, ocaml-atd, ocaml-augeas, ocaml-b0, ocaml-base, ocaml-base64, ocaml-benchmark, ocaml-bin-prot, ocaml-biniou, ocaml-bisect-ppx, ocaml-bos, ocaml-cairo, ocaml-calendar, ocaml-camlbz2, ocaml-camlidl, ocaml-camlimages, ocaml-camlp-streams, ocaml-camlp5, ocaml-camlp5-buildscripts, ocaml-camlpdf, ocaml-camomile, ocaml-capitalization, ocaml-cinaps, ocaml-cmdliner, ocaml-compiler-libs-janestreet, ocaml-cpdf, ocaml-cppo, ocaml-crowbar, ocaml-cryptokit, ocaml-csexp, ocaml-csv, ocaml-ctypes, ocaml-cudf, ocaml-curl, ocaml-curses, ocaml-dbus, ocaml-domain-name, ocaml-dose3, ocaml-dune, ocaml-easy-format, ocaml-expat, ocaml-extlib, ocaml-facile, ocaml-fieldslib, ocaml-fileutils, ocaml-findlib, ocaml-fmt, ocaml-fpath, ocaml-gen, ocaml-gettext, ocaml-graphics, ocaml-gsl, ocaml-integers, ocaml-intrinsics-kernel, ocaml-jane-street-headers, ocaml-jsonm, ocaml-jst-config, ocaml-lablgl, ocaml-lablgtk, ocaml-lablgtk3, ocaml-labltk, ocaml-lacaml, ocaml-lambda-term, ocaml-libvirt, ocaml-linenoise, ocaml-logs, ocaml-luv, ocaml-lwt, ocaml-mccs, ocaml-mdx, ocaml-menhir, ocaml-merlin, ocaml-mew, ocaml-mew-vi, ocaml-mlgmpidl, ocaml-mlmpfr, ocaml-monolith, ocaml-mtime, ocaml-mysql, ocaml-num, ocaml-obuild, ocaml-ocamlbuild, ocaml-ocamlgraph, ocaml-ocamlnet, ocaml-ocp-indent, ocaml-ocplib-endian, ocaml-ocplib-simplex, ocaml-omake, ocaml-omd, ocaml-opam-0install-cudf, ocaml-opam-file-format, ocaml-ounit, ocaml-parmap, ocaml-parsexp, ocaml-patch, ocaml-pcre2, ocaml-perl4caml, ocaml-postgresql, ocaml-pp, ocaml-pprint, ocaml-ppx-assert, ocaml-ppx-base, ocaml-ppx-bench, ocaml-ppx-bin-prot, ocaml-ppx-cold, ocaml-ppx-compare, ocaml-ppx-custom-printf, ocaml-ppx-derivers, ocaml-ppx-deriving, ocaml-ppx-deriving-yaml, ocaml-ppx-deriving-yojson, ocaml-ppx-enumerate, ocaml-ppx-expect, ocaml-ppx-fields-conv, ocaml-ppx-globalize, ocaml-ppx-hash, ocaml-ppx-here, ocaml-ppx-inline-test, ocaml-ppx-let, ocaml-ppx-optcomp, ocaml-ppx-sexp-conv, ocaml-ppx-stable-witness, ocaml-ppx-variants-conv, ocaml-ppxlib, ocaml-ppxlib-jane, ocaml-psmt2-frontend, ocaml-ptmap, ocaml-pyml, ocaml-qcheck, ocaml-qtest, ocaml-re, ocaml-react, ocaml-res, ocaml-result, ocaml-rresult, ocaml-SDL, ocaml-sedlex, ocaml-sexplib, ocaml-sexplib0, ocaml-sha, ocaml-spdx-licenses, ocaml-sqlite, ocaml-ssl, ocaml-stdcompat, ocaml-stdio, ocaml-stdlib-random, ocaml-store, ocaml-swhid-core, ocaml-testo, ocaml-time-now, ocaml-topkg, ocaml-trie, ocaml-unionfind, ocaml-uucd, ocaml-uucp, ocaml-uunf, ocaml-uuseg, ocaml-uutf, ocaml-variantslib, ocaml-version, ocaml-xml-light, ocaml-xmlm, ocaml-xmlrpc-light, ocaml-yaml, ocaml-yamlx, ocaml-yojson, ocaml-zarith, ocaml-zed, ocaml-zip, ocaml-zmq, ocamlify, ocamlmod, opam, perl-DBI, planets, plplot, prooftree, python3.12, rocq, rocq-stdlib, supermin, unison, utop, virt-top, virt-v2v, why3, xen, z3, and zenon), Oracle (bind, expat, gawk, gdb, ghostscript, gimp, gvfs, kernel, libpcap, libvirt, mod_auth_openidc, openssh, rsync, thunderbird, and webkit2gtk3), Red Hat (vim), Slackware (cups), SUSE (apache-sshd, binutils, cups, docker-stable, java-11-openjdk, libraw-devel, libX11, pcre2, perl-DBI, python-msgpack, python312, python313-tokenizers, rpcbind, rpm, rubygem-rails-html-sanitizer, squid, sssd, terraform-provider-susepubliccloud, valkey, and wpa_supplicant), and Ubuntu (aodh, watcher, edk2, libreoffice, libxmltok, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.15, linux-aws-fips, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.15, linux-azure-fde-5.15, linux-azure-fips, linux-fips, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.15, linux-intel-iot-realtime, linux-intel-iotg, linux-intel-iotg-5.15, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-oracle, linux-realtime, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux-azure-5.4, linux-azure-fde, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-fips, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-oracle-5.15, linux-raspi, rabbitmq-server, and unbound).
RustConf recordings
The Rust Foundation has posted the recordings from RustConf 2026 in Montreal, Canada. Photos of the event are also available. LWN covered four talks from RustConf this year.
Picard 3.0 released
Version
3.0 of the MusicBrainz Picard
tag editor has been released. "This release brings many changes, including an
upgrade to Qt6, a completely new plugin system, several improvements to the user
interface, cover art processing, [International Standard Recording
Code (ISRC)] submission and many more.
"
LWN covered Picard in April.
Security updates for Monday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (ghostscript, libvirt, and osbuild-composer), Debian (freecad, linux-6.12, node-lodash, pcre2, perl, php8.2, ruby-rack-session, wireshark, and xen), Fedora (assimp, budgie-control-center, budgie-desktop, budgie-desktop-services, budgie-desktop-view, chromium, cri-o1.36, curl, flatpak, lemonldap-ng, libX11, nagios-plugins, nanosvg, noctalia, openssl, pgbouncer, pocillo-gtk-theme, prometheus, python-streamlink, python-urllib3, python-uv-build, python3.12, ruff, rust-libcst, rust-libcst_derive, rust-salsa, rust-salsa-macro-rules, rust-salsa-macros, ty, and uv), Red Hat (rhc-worker-script), SUSE (amazon-ecs-init, binaryen-133, bind, chromium, distribution, firefox, firefox-esr, glib2, gnumeric, helm, jline3, kubevirt-1.6, libparted-fs-resize0, libslirp-devel, libtcnative-1-0, libtcnative-2-0, tomcat, tomcat10, tomcat11, libwireshark19, openai-codex, python313-litellm, rpcbind, rustup, sccache, suseconnect-ng, valkey, wget, and xdg-dbus-proxy), and Ubuntu (ceph).
Kernel prepatch 7.3-rc6
The 7.3-rc6 kernel prepatch is out for testing. Linus said:
Next week might look a bit different: we've got the annual maintainer summit and the Linux plumbers conference going on , so I'll be on the road, as will a number of other maintainers. That may or may not end up changing the stats for -rc7. But it's unlikely to affect the release schedule, although the fact that I have my yearly family vacation the week after that might make the next merge window a bit wonky.
Zig 0.17 released
Version 0.17 of the Zig programming language has been released.
This release features 5 months of work: changes from 206 different contributors, spread among 925 commits.
Originally predicted to be shorter, this release cycle ended up [being] substantial, with the Build System reworked, including the introduction of the Build Server Protocol, and the ELF Linker enhanced to the point where we expect Incremental Compilation to work for everyone on x86_64-linux.
LWN last covered Zig in December 2025.
