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The OpenBSD project produces a free, multi-platform BSD 4.4-based UNIX-like operating system. Its efforts emphasize portability, standardisation, correctness, proactive security and integrated cryptography. The project also develops the widely-used and popular OpenSSH (OpenBSD Secure Shell) software, which provides encrypted communication sessions over a computer network using the SSH protocol.

Version:next-20260519 (linux-next) Released:2026-05-19

In April, David Steele, maintainer of the popular pgBackRest backup and restore project for PostgreSQL, announced that he had archived the project and it would no longer be maintained due to lack of sponsorship. On May 18, he announced that a number of sponsors have stepped forward to ensure its continued development:

Over the last few weeks, a coalition of sponsors has come together to fund ongoing development. Their support means the project is no longer reliant on a single sponsor, giving pgBackRest the stability it needs for the long term.

[...] I'm looking forward to getting back to work. There are features and optimizations in the pipeline that I'm excited to share in upcoming releases. Thank you to our sponsors for making this possible, and thank you to the community for your patience and support during this transition.

Thanks to Paul Wise for the tip.

DietPi is a Debian-based Linux distribution, primarily developed for single-board computers such as Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi or Odroid. It also supplies builds for 64-bit x86 personal computers and virtual machines, including VMware, VirtualBox, UTM, Hyper-V, Proxmox and Parallels. The base installation of DietPi comes without any desktop, but a desktop option can be activated via the built-in "dietpi-software" program. The distribution ships with a number of menu-driven configuration tools which can be run from the terminal.

Vendefoul Wolf is a set of lightweight, Devuan-based Linux distributions featuring various popular desktop environments, including Budgie, Cinnamon, KDE Plasma, LXQt, Trinity and Xfce. As the init software, it offers a choice between SysV and runit. Some of the distribution's other main features include the LibreWolf web browser, the Calamares system installer, an application store, and its own repository of software packages. Besides the main edition, Vendefoul Wolf also produces various community spins with alternative desktops and window managers.

Version:next-20260518 (linux-next) Released:2026-05-18

Zenclora OS is a desktop Linux distribution based on Debian's "Stable" branch, featuring a customised GNOME desktop. One of its more interesting features is the integration of custom package and system management commands, such as "update" (to update the entire system), "cleanup" (to clean up the system and free up space), "install-flatpak", "install-steam", "install-chrome", "install-liquorix" (to install the Flatpak utility, Steam gaming client, Chrome browser or Liquorix kernel), and many others. It also offers quick network and system information overviews with "net-info" and "zenclora-fetch" commands. The distribution is optimised for stability and intensive daily use.

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.

The kernel's swap subsystem is charged with managing anonymous pages in secondary storage when those pages are (hopefully) not being used and the memory they occupy is needed elsewhere. This long-unloved subsystem has seen a resurgence of developer interest in recent times, so it is not surprising that it was the topic of three separate sessions in the memory-management track at the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit. Two of those sessions were concerned with improving the performance and maintainability of the swap code, while one (shared with the storage track) was about how swapping could be friendlier to solid-state storage devices.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (freerdp, gimp:2.8, jq, kernel, and rsync), Debian (chromium, ffmpeg, firewalld, kernel, nginx, openjpeg2, openssh, php7.4, and redis), Fedora (apptainer, chromium, coturn, dnsmasq, firefox, kernel, libgit2_1.8, libmetal, nginx, nginx-mod-brotli, nginx-mod-fancyindex, nginx-mod-headers-more, nginx-mod-js-challenge, nginx-mod-modsecurity, nginx-mod-naxsi, nginx-mod-vts, open-amp, perl-Net-CIDR-Lite, pgbouncer, pypy, python-jupytext, python-uv-build, rsync, rust-astral-tokio-tar, uriparser, uv, valkey, and yelp), Mageia (dpkg, firefox, thunderbird, golang, haproxy, and samba), Slackware (dnsmasq and kernel), and SUSE (apache-commons-configuration2, apache2, apptainer, chromedriver, cups-filters, curl, dnsmasq, expat, ffmpeg-4, ffmpeg-7, firebird, firewalld, flux2-cli, glibc, go1.25, go1.26, gosec, grub2, ImageMagick, java-11-openj9, java-17-openj9, java-1_8_0-openj9, java-1_8_0-openjdk, java-21-openj9, java-25-openj9, kdenlive, kernel, kernel-devel, keylime-config, krb5, libIex-3_4-33, mozjs115, mozjs78, nginx, openssh, openvswitch, ovmf, PackageKit, perl-Crypt-URandom, perl-CryptX, perl-libwww-perl, perl-Net-CIDR-Lite, perl-Text-CSV_XS, podman, postgresql17, postgresql18, python-pyOpenSSL, python310, rsync, sed, tekton-cli, valkey, xen, and zypper-docker).

NetHydra (formerly HydraPWK GNU/Linux) is a Debian-based distribution designed primarily for penetration testing. It contains a collection of penetration testing tools, including tools for information gathering, scanning, stress testing, exploitation, cracking, reversing engineering and forensics. Formerly known as BlackTrack, the distribution uses a real-time Linux kernel and features the Xfce desktop.

NebiOS is an Ubuntu-based desktop Linux distribution with a custom Wayland compositor called NebiDE (based on Wayfire). It features various user interface enhancements, an initial setup module called OOBE, the NebiOS App Runtime (napp-runtime) portable application format with bubblewrap containerization, improved gaming performance with Steam Proton integration, a kernel switcher for easy multi-kernel installation, and the Wine compatibility layer for running some Windows applications. NebiOS is intended as a general-purpose operating system for daily computing tasks, including creative work and gaming.

The 7.1-rc4 kernel prepatch is out for testing.

Some of the documentation updates might be worth highlighting: the continued flood of AI reports has basically made the security list almost entirely unmanageable, with enormous duplication due to different people finding the same things with the same tools. People spend all their time just forwarding things to the right people or saying "that was already fixed a week/month ago" and pointing to the public discussion.

Which is all entirely pointless churn, and we're making it clear that AI detected bugs are pretty much by definition not secret, and treating them on some private list is a waste of time for everybody involved - and only makes that duplication worse because the reporters can't even see each other's reports.

(He is referring to this pull request with patches from Willy Tarreau defining what constitutes a security bug and responsible ways to use AI to find bugs).

Version:7.1-rc4 (mainline) Released:2026-05-17 Source:linux-7.1-rc4.tar.gz Patch:full (incremental)

We have received word that Peter G. Neumann, who, among many other things, ran the RISKS Digest for decades, has passed away. He will be much missed.

Update: the New York Times has published an obituary of Dr. Neuman.

The 7.0.9, 6.18.32, 6.12.90, and 6.6.140 stable kernels have been released. Each contains yet another set of important fixes.

Version:6.6.140 (longterm) Released:2026-05-17 Source:linux-6.6.140.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.6.140.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.6.140

Version:7.0.9 (stable) Released:2026-05-17 Source:linux-7.0.9.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-7.0.9.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-7.0.9

Version:6.18.32 (longterm) Released:2026-05-17 Source:linux-6.18.32.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.18.32.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.18.32

Version:6.12.90 (longterm) Released:2026-05-17 Source:linux-6.12.90.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.12.90.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.12.90