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The 7.1 merge window opened on April 12 with the release of the 7.0 kernel. Since then, 3,855 non-merge changesets have been pulled into the mainline repository for the next release. This merge window is thus just getting started, but there has still been a fair amount of interesting work moving into the mainline.

Version 26.04 of the KDE Gear collection of applications has been released. Notable changes include improvements in the Merkuro Calendar schedule view and event editor, support for threads in the NeoChat Matrix chat client, as well as the ability to add keyboard shortcuts in the Dolphin file manager "to nearly any option in any menu, plugin or extension". See the changelog for a full list of updates, enhancements, and bug fixes.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (bind, bind9.16, bind9.18, cockpit, fence-agents, firefox, fontforge, git-lfs, grafana, grafana-pcp, kernel, nghttp2, nginx, nginx:1.24, nginx:1.26, nodejs:20, nodejs:22, nodejs:24, pcs, perl-XML-Parser, perl:5.32, resource-agents, squid:4, thunderbird, and vim), Debian (incus, lxd, and python3.9), Fedora (cef, composer, erlang, libpng, micropython, mingw-openexr, moby-engine, NetworkManager-ssh, perl, perl-Devel-Cover, perl-PAR-Packer, polymake, pypy, python-cairosvg, python-flask-httpauth, and python3.15), Mageia (kernel, kmod-virtualbox, kmod-xtables-addons and kernel-linus), Oracle (\cockpit, bind, bind9.16, bind9.18, firefox, git-lfs, go-toolset:ol8, grafana, grafana-pcp, grub2, kea, kernel, libtiff, nghttp2, nginx, nginx:1.24, nginx:1.26, nodejs22, nodejs24, nodejs:22, nodejs:24, perl-XML-Parser, python3.9, thunderbird, uek-kernel, and vim), Red Hat (delve, go-toolset:rhel8, golang, golang-github-openprinting-ipp-usb, osbuild-composer, and rhc), SUSE (bind, Botan, cockpit, cockpit-subscriptions, expat, flatpak, glibc, goshs, himmelblau, kea, kernel, kubo, libpng16, libssh, log4j, mariadb, Mesa, netty, netty-tcnative, nfs-utils, nghttp2, nodejs20, openssl-3, pam, pcre2, python, python310, python311, python311-aiohttp, python311-rfc3161-client, python313, python36, rubygem-bundler, sqlite3, sudo, tigervnc, tomcat, tomcat10, tomcat11, util-linux, vim, and webkit2gtk3), and Ubuntu (dotnet8, dotnet9, dotnet10, frr, and linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15).

Talos is a specialist Linux-based operating system for running Kubernetes, an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling and management of containerised applications. Minimal, immutable and hardened, it does not offer any shell or interactive console; instead, all system management is done via remote Application Programming Interface (API) calls, where messages sent from a client application are protected with mutual Transport Layer Security TLS (mTLS) authentication. Talos also delivers atomic updates, thus maintaining the Linux and Kubernetes versions up-to-date. Talos is developed in the USA by Sidero Labs, Inc.

SmartOS is an open-source UNIX-like operating system based on illumos, a community fork of OpenSolaris. It features four technologies - ZFS (a combined file system and logical volume manager), DTrace (a dynamic tracing framework for troubleshooting kernel and application problems), Zones (a lightweight virtualisation solution), KVM and bhyve (two full virtualisation solutions for running a variety of guest operating systems, including Linux, Windows, BSD and Plan9). SmartOS is designed to be particularly suitable for building clouds and generating appliances.

Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:

• Front: LLM security reports; OpenWrt One build system; Vim forks; removing read-only THPs; 7.0 statistics; MusicBrainz Picard.
• Briefs: OpenSSL 4.0.0; Relicensing; Servo; Zig 0.16.0; Quotes; ...
• Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

OnlyOffice CEO Lev Bannov has recently claimed that the Euro-Office fork of the OnlyOffice suite violates the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPLv3). Krzysztof Siewicz of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has published an article on the FSF's position on adding terms to the AGPLv3. In short, Siewicz concludes that OnlyOffice has added restrictions to the license that are not compatible with the AGPLv3, and those restrictions can be removed by recipients of the code.

We urge OnlyOffice to clarify the situation by making it unambiguous that OnlyOffice is licensed under the AGPLv3, and that users who already received copies of the software are allowed to remove any further restrictions. Additionally, if they intend to continue to use the AGPLv3 for future releases, they should state clearly that the program is licensed under the AGPLv3 and make sure they remove any further restrictions from their program documentation and source code. Confusing users by attaching further restrictions to any of the FSF's family of GNU General Public Licenses is not in line with free software.

Q4OS is a Debian-based desktop Linux distribution offering a choice of a classic-style user interface (Trinity) and a modern desktop environment (KDE Plasma). The project also develops various utilities, such as Desktop Profiler and Software Center, as well as installers for third-party applications.

RakuOS is an immutable Linux distribution based on Fedora, with a choice of KDE Plasma and GNOME desktops. It combines an immutable, read-only base system with the full package flexibility of a traditional Linux distribution. While the core system updates atomically and can be instantly rolled back, the system's persistent overlay lets the user install any package, either through the dnf package manager or the distribution's own software center called RakuOS Software. Installation of Flatpak packages is also supported. RakuOS uses the performance-optimised CachyOS Linux kernel and also includes a graphical CPU scheduling utility to fine-tune the system for gaming, workloads or power efficiency use cases.

Many people dislike the proliferation of Large Language Models (LLMs) in recent years, and so make an understandable attempt to avoid them. That may not be possible in general, but there are two new forks of Vim that seek to provide an editing environment with no LLM-generated code. EVi focuses on being a modern Vim without LLM-assisted contributions, while Vim Classic focuses on providing a long-term maintenance version of Vim 8. While both are still in their early phases, the projects look to be on track to provide stable alternatives — as long as enough people are interested.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (capstone, cockpit, firefox, git-lfs, golang-github-openprinting-ipp-usb, kea, kernel, nghttp2, nodejs24, openexr, perl-XML-Parser, rsync, squid, and vim), Debian (imagemagick, systemd, and thunderbird), Slackware (libexif and xorg), SUSE (bind, clamav, firefox, freerdp2, giflib, go1.25, go1.26, helm, ignition, libpng16, libssh, oci-cli, rust1.92, strongswan, sudo, xorg-x11-server, and xwayland), and Ubuntu (rust-tar and rustc, rustc-1.76, rustc-1.77, rustc-1.78, rustc-1.79, rustc-1.80).

Version:next-20260415 (linux-next) Released:2026-04-15

Alpine Linux is a community developed operating system designed for routers, firewalls, VPNs, VoIP boxes, containers, and servers. It was designed with security in mind; it has proactive security features like PaX and SSP that prevent security holes in the software to be exploited. The C library used is musl and the base tools are all in BusyBox. Those are normally found in embedded systems and are smaller than the tools found in GNU/Linux systems.

Zorin OS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution designed especially for newcomers to Linux. It has a Windows-like graphical user interface and many programs similar to those found in Windows. Zorin OS also comes with an application that lets users run many Windows programs. The distribution's ultimate goal is to provide a Linux alternative to Windows and let Windows users enjoy all the features of Linux without complications.

The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails) is a Debian-based live DVD/USB with the goal of providing complete Internet anonymity for the user. The product ships with several Internet applications, including web browser, IRC client, mail client and instant messenger, all pre-configured with security in mind and with all traffic anonymised. To achieve this, Incognito uses the Tor network to make Internet traffic very hard to trace.

TrueNAS CORE (previously known as FreeNAS) is a free and Open Source Network-Attached Storage (NAS) operating system that supports file, block and object storage. TrueNAS CORE is FreeBSD based and is a community-supported branch of the TrueNAS project, sponsored by iXsystems. It also has a commercial branch called TrueNAS Enterprise and a free and HyperConverged storage solution called TrueNAS SCALE. The TrueNAS SCALE branch is based on the Debian Linux distribution.

The Zig project has announced version 0.16.0 of the Zig programming language.

This release features 8 months of work: changes from 244 different contributors, spread among 1183 commits.

Perhaps most notably, this release debuts I/O as an Interface, but don't sleep on the Language Changes or enhancements to the Compiler, Build System, Linker, Fuzzer, and Toolchain which are also included in this release.

LWN last covered Zig in December 2025.

Part of the "fun" that comes with curating a self-hosted music library is tagging music so that it has accurate and uniform metadata, such as the band names, album titles, cover images, and so on. This can be a tedious endeavor, but there are quite a few open-source tools to make this process easier. One of the best, or at least my favorite, is MusicBrainz Picard. It is a cross-platform music-tagging application that pulls information from the well-curated, crowdsourced MusicBrainz database project and writes it to almost any audio file format.

Version 4.0.0 of the OpenSSL cryptographic library has been released. This release includes support for a number of new cryptographic algorithms and has a number of incompatible changes as well; see the announcement for the details.

Version:next-20260414 (linux-next) Released:2026-04-14