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Version:next-20260217 (linux-next) Released:2026-02-17

Various forms of tools, colloquially known as "AI", have been rapidly pervading all aspects of open-source development. Many developers are embracing LLM tools for code creation and review. Some project maintainers complain about suffering from a deluge of slop-laden pull requests, as well as fabricated bug and security reports. Too many projects are reeling from scraperbot attacks that effectively DDoS important infrastructure. But an AI bot flaming an open-source maintainer was not on our bingo card for 2026; that seemed a bit too far-fetched. However, it appears that is just what happened recently after a project rejected a bot-driven pull request.

Version 6.6.0 of KDE's Plasma desktop environment has been released. Notable additions in this release include the ability to create global themes for Plasma, an "extract text" feature in the Spectacle screenshot utility, accessibility improvements, and a new on-screen keyboard. See the changelog for a full list of new features, enhancements, and bug fixes.

The release is dedicated to the memory of Björn Balazs, a KDE contributor who passed away in September 2025. "Björn's drive to help people achieve the privacy and control over technology that he believed they deserved is the stuff FLOSS legends are made of."

In December 2025, Canonical announced a plan to develop a universal Public Key Infrastructure called upki. Jon Seager has published an update about the project with instructions on trying it out.

In the few weeks since we announced upki, the core revocation engine has been established and is now functional, the CRLite mirroring tool is working and a production deployment in Canonical's datacentres is ongoing. We're now preparing for an alpha release and remain on track for an opt-in preview for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (gimp, go-toolset:rhel8, and golang), Debian (roundcube), Fedora (gnupg2, libpng, and rsync), Mageia (dcmtk and usbmuxd), Oracle (gcc-toolset-14-binutils, gimp, gnupg2, go-toolset:ol8, golang, kernel, and openssl), Slackware (libssh, lrzip, and mozilla), SUSE (abseil-cpp, chromium, curl, elemental-toolkit, elemental-operator, expat, freerdp, iperf, libnvidia-container, libsoup, libxml2, net-snmp, openCryptoki, openssl-3, patch, protobuf, python-urllib3, python-xmltodict, python311, screen, systemd, and util-linux), and Ubuntu (alsa-lib, gnutls28, and linux-aws, linux-oracle).

CentOS as a group is a community of open source contributors and users which started in 2003 and has been sponsored by Red Hat since 2014. CentOS Linux versions up to CentOS Linux 8 are 100% compatible rebuilds of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in full compliance with Red Hat's redistribution requirements. In 2020 it was announced CentOS Linux is being discontinued and replaced with CentOS Stream, a developer-focused distribution which acts as a middle-stream between Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

MidnightBSD is a FreeBSD-derived operating system. A critical goal of the project is to create an easy-to-use desktop environment with graphical ports management, and system configuration using GNUstep. The vast majority of the operating system will maintain a BSD license. MidnightBSD was forked from FreeBSD 6.1 beta.

Founded in 2014 by Oliver Pinter and Shawn Webb, HardenedBSD is a security-enhanced fork of FreeBSD. The HardenedBSD Project is implementing many exploit mitigation and security technologies on top of FreeBSD. The project started with Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) as an initial focal point and is now implementing further exploit mitigation techniques.

NuTyX is a French Linux distribution (with multi-language support) built from Linux From Scratch and Beyond Linux From Scratch, with a custom package manager called "cards". The package manager can install individual binary packages, a group of related binary packages (e.g. desktop packages, such as KDE or Xfce), and compile source packages from "ports". The distribution is designed for intermediate and advanced Linux users.

The curl project has found AI-powered tools to be a mixed bag when it comes to security reports. At FOSDEM 2026, curl creator and lead developer Daniel Stenberg used his keynote session to discuss his experience receiving a slew of low-quality reports and, at the same time, realizing that large language model (LLM) tools can sometimes find flaws that other tools have missed.

Greg-Kroah Hartman has released the 6.19.2, 6.18.12, 6.12.73, and 6.6.126 stable kernels. These kernels each contain a single change; Kroah-Hartman has reverted one problematic commit that prevents some systems from booting. "If the last stable release worked just fine, no need to upgrade."

Version:6.19.2 (stable) Released:2026-02-16 Source:linux-6.19.2.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.19.2.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.19.2

Version:6.18.12 (stable) Released:2026-02-16 Source:linux-6.18.12.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.18.12.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.18.12

Version:6.12.73 (longterm) Released:2026-02-16 Source:linux-6.12.73.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.12.73.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.12.73

Version:6.6.126 (longterm) Released:2026-02-16 Source:linux-6.6.126.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.6.126.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.6.126

Version:next-20260216 (linux-next) Released:2026-02-16

At the 2025 Linux Plumbers Conference in Tokyo, Stephen Brennan gave a presentation on the debuginfo format, which contains the symbols and other information needed for debugging, along with some alternatives. Debuginfo files are large and, he believes, are a bit scary to customers because of the "debug" in their name. By rethinking debuginfo and the tools that use it, he hopes that free-software developers "can add new, interesting capabilities to tools that we are already using or build new interesting tools".

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 6.19.1, 6.18.11, 6.12.72, and 6.6.125 stable kernels. As always, each contains important fixes throughout the tree; users of these kernels are advised to upgrade.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (chromium, pdns-recursor, python-django, and wireshark), Fedora (gnutls, linux-sgx, mingw-expat, nginx, nginx-mod-brotli, nginx-mod-fancyindex, nginx-mod-headers-more, nginx-mod-modsecurity, nginx-mod-naxsi, nginx-mod-vts, p11-kit, python-aiohttp, vim, and xen), Red Hat (kernel, kernel-rt, python-s3transfer, python-urllib3, and resource-agents), SUSE (aaa_base, abseil-cpp, build-20260202, cargo-auditable, cargo-c, chromedriver, cockpit, cockpit-packages, cockpit-subscriptions, curl, elemental-toolkit, elemental-operator, gnome-remote-desktop, go1.24, go1.25, gpg2, haproxy, himmelblau, htmldoc, ImageMagick, iperf, java-1_8_0-openjdk, kernel, krb5, kubevirt, libowncloudsync-devel, libpng16-16, libsodium, libsoup, libsoup2, micropython, net-snmp, opencryptoki, openjfx, openssl1, ovmf, postgresql14, postgresql15, postgresql16, protobuf, python-aiohttp, python-brotli, python-maturin, python-pip, python-urllib3, python310, python311, python-rpm-macros, python311-cryptography, python314, screen, systemd, u-boot, util-linux, and vim), and Ubuntu (dotnet8, dotnet10, expat, freerdp2, freerdp3, and python-aiohttp).

Version:6.18.11 (stable) Released:2026-02-16 Source:linux-6.18.11.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.18.11.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.18.11