Stephen Rothwell, who has maintained the kernel's linux-next integration
tree from its inception, has
announced his
retirement from that role:
I will be stepping down as Linux-Next maintainer on Jan 16, 2026.
Mark Brown has generously volunteered to take up the challenge. He
has helped in the past filling in when I have been unavailable, so
hopefully knows what he is getting in to. I hope you will all
treat him with the same (or better) level of respect that I have
received.
It has been a long but mostly interesting task and I hope it has
been helpful to others. It seems a long time since I read Andrew
Morton's "I have a dream" email and decided that I could help out
there - little did I know what I was heading for.
Over the last two decades or so, the kernel's development process has evolved
from an unorganized mess with irregular releases to a smooth machine with a
new release every nine or ten weeks. That would not have happened without
linux-next; thanks are due to Stephen for helping to make the current
process possible.
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.
Flatcar Container Linux is a container-optimized operating system based on Gentoo Linux. It is a minimal operating system image which includes only the tools needed to run containers and it supports all of the popular methods for running containers. The distribution ships an immutable filesystem and includes automatic atomic updates. Flatcar Container Linux runs on most cloud providers, virtualization platforms and bare metal servers.
Linus Torvalds is famously averse to presenting prepared talks, but the
wider community is always interested in what he has to say about the
condition of the Linux kernel. So, for some time now, his appearances have
been in the form of an informal conversation with Dirk Hohndel. At the
2025 Open Source Summit Japan, the pair followed that tradition for the
29th time. Topics covered include the state of the development process,
what Torvalds actually does, and how machine-learning tools might fit into
the kernel project.
Systemd
v259 has been released. Notable changes include a new
"--empower" option for run0 that provides elevated
privileges to a user without switching to root, ability to propagate a
user's home directory into a VM with systemd-vmspawn, and
more. Support for System V service scripts has been deprecated, and
will be removed in v260. See the release notes for other changes,
feature removals, and deprecated features.
Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the
6.18.2,
6.17.13, and
6.12.63 stable kernels. As always, each
contains important fixes throughout the tree. He notes that
6.17.13 is the last release of the 6.17.y kernel; users are
advised to move to the 6.18.y kernel branch.
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (kernel, keylime, mysql:8.4, and tomcat), Debian (c-ares and webkit2gtk), Fedora (brotli, cups, golang-github-facebook-time, nebula, NetworkManager, perl-Alien-Brotli, python-django4.2, python-django5, and vips), Red Hat (binutils, buildah, curl, go-toolset:rhel8, golang, grafana, multiple packages, php:8.3, podman, python3.12, python39:3.9, ruby:3.3, and skopeo), SUSE (buildah, cups, firefox, glib2, grub2, helm, icinga-php-library, icingaweb2, ImageMagick, imagemagick, kernel, libpng12, libpng16, mariadb, openssl-3, poppler, python39, usbmuxd, webkit2gtk3, wireshark, and xkbcomp), and Ubuntu (linux-azure-fips).
Nyarch Linux is an Arch-based, rolling-release Linux distribution designed for "weebs", or non-Japanese persons interested in anime, manga, cosplay and other aspects of the Japanese culture. Some of the distribution's custom features include "Catgirl Downloader" which downloads random pictures of cute catgirls, "Nyarch Assistant", a digital companion which helps with a range of computing and real-life tasks, "Material UwU" which serves as a desktop wallpaper and theme chooser, and "Nyarch Customize", a tool to facilitate desktop layout customisations and animations. Besides the standard release, the project also provides a special variant with pre-configured proprietary NVIDIA display drivers; both come with the GNOME desktop.
Trace Labs OSINT VM is a Kali Linux-based distribution with specialist open-source intelligence (OSINT) tools to help find missing persons and reunite them with their families. It is provided as a set of pre-built images for VMware and Virtual Box virtual machines. The OSINT tools, which need to be downloaded separately via a helper script, include Email Search (to perform email searches via social media, breach info, and other sources), Multi Search (to perform searches over multiple sources, such as social media, domains, IPs, phone numbers), Username Search (to check username availability across multiple platforms), Social Media (to gather OSINT from popular social media platforms). Also included are Phone Numbers, Images & Video Analysis, Documentation & Capture; Geolocation & Mapping, among various other useful tools.
Version:next-20251218 (linux-next)
Released:2025-12-18
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:
- Front: Civil Infrastructure Platform; COSMIC desktop; Calibre adds AI; Maintainer's Summit; ML tools for kernel development; linux-next; Rust in the kernel; kernel development tools; Linux process improvements; 6.19 merge window part 2.
- Briefs: capsudo; Asahi Linux 6.18; Pop!_OS 24.04; Vojtux; KDE Gear 25.12; Rust 1.92.0; Quotes; ...
- Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.
antiX is a fast, lightweight and easy-to-install Linux live CD distribution based on Debian's "Stable" branch for x86 compatible systems. antiX offers users the "antiX Magic" in an environment suitable for old computers. The goal of antiX is to provide a light, but fully functional and flexible free operating system for both newcomers and experienced users of Linux. It should run on most computers, ranging from 256 MB old PIII systems with pre-configured swap to the latest powerful boxes. 256 MB RAM is recommended minimum for antiX. The installer needs minimum 2.7 GB hard disk size. antiX can also be used as a fast-booting rescue CD, or run "live" on a USB stick, with or without persistent file storage.
Voyager Live is an Xubuntu-based distribution and live DVD showcasing the Xfce desktop environment. Its features include the Avant Window Navigator or AWN (a dock-like navigation bar), Conky (a program which displays useful information on the desktop), and over 300 photographs and animations that can be used as desktop backgrounds. The project also develops several other editions of Voyager Live - a "GE" edition with GNOME Shell, a "GS" variant for Gamers, and a separately-maintained flavour based on Debian's "stable" branch.
After three years of development, Linux hardware provider System76
has declared
the COSMIC desktop
environment stable. It shipped COSMIC Epoch 1 as part of the
long-awaited Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS
release on December 11, just in time for Linux enthusiasts to
have something to tinker with over the end-of-year holidays. With the
stable release out the door, it seemed like a good time to check back
in on COSMIC and see how it has evolved since the first alpha. For a first
stable release of a new desktop environment, COSMIC shows a lot of
promise and room to grow.
The Asahi Linux project has published
its progress report following the release of Linux 6.18. This time
around the project reports progress on many fronts, including
microphone support for M2 Pro/Max MacBooks, work queued for Linux 6.19
to support USB3 via the USB-C ports, and work to improve the Asahi
Linux installation experience. The project is also enabling as
additional System Management Controller (SMC) drivers, which means
that "the myriad voltage, current, temperature and power sensors
controlled by the SMC will be readable using the standard hwmon
interfaces".
The
Civil Infrastructure Platform
(CIP) first launched in that form in April 2016, so it has a
tenth-anniversary celebration in its near future. At the 2025
Open
Source Summit Japan, Yoshitake Kobayashi talked about the goals of this
project and where it is headed in the future. Supporting a Linux system
for even one year is a challenging task; maintaining that support for a
decade or more is rather more so, and a changing regulatory environment
complicates the task further.
Security updates have been issued by Debian (node-url-parse), Fedora (assimp, conda-build, mod_md, util-linux, and webkitgtk), Oracle (firefox), SUSE (chromium, librsvg, poppler, python311, qemu, strongswan, webkit2gtk3, wireshark, and xen), and Ubuntu (linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, linux-azure-5.15, linux-azure-fips, and linux-raspi, linux-raspi-realtime, linux-xilinx).
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