XCP-ng is a CentOS-based Linux server distribution designed to be a high-performance enterprise-level virtualization platform that uses Xen, a free and open-source hypervisor that allows multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently. XCP-ng stands for Xen Cloud Platform - next generation, it is the modern successor to XCP, initially created as an open-source version of Citrix XenServer back in 2010. XCP-ng is a secure platform to run any kind of virtualization workload, while being managed by a central administration console called Xen Orchestra (XO).
Christopher Domas has
published a proof of concept with a description showing how to use AMD memory controllers' bank swizzle mode to bypass memory protection and read or write arbitrary data, including CPU microcode definitions and memory belonging to the
platform security processor. Among other things, this allows code running at the kernel level to directly manipulate the meaning of processor instructions, potentially bypassing other security measures such as memory encryption and virtual machine isolation.
This is not, strictly, unexpected behavior: it is
documented in AMD's manual (on page 113 of that PDF). But the fact that it can be used to access arbitrary memory and thereby rewrite supposedly immutable parts of the computer's firmware without crashing the host machine seems like an unintentional side-effect of the design. Fortunately, since enabling bank swizzle mode requires kernel-level privileges, the vulnerability is not an immediate problem for most software. Still, it seems likely that this technique will end up being used for nefarious purposes eventually.
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.
Version:next-20260813 (linux-next)
Released:2026-08-13
SolydX and SolydK are Debian-based distributions with the Xfce and KDE desktops respectively. SolydXK aims to be simple to use, providing an environment that is both stable and secure. SolydXK is an open-source alternative for small businesses, non-profit organisations and home users. The project started as an unofficial variant of Linux Mint's "Debian" edition with KDE as the default desktop, but it was later given its own identity as SolydK. SolydX was added after Linux Mint dropped its Debian-based flavour that used the Xfce desktop. The project also has a rolling release branch, called Enthusiast's Editions, which used Debian Testing as a base.
BOSS (Bharat Operating System Solutions) GNU/Linux is a Debian-based Linux distribution developed by C-DAC for enhancing the use of free and open source software in India. Made specifically for the Indian environment, it consists of a pleasing desktop environment coupled with support for several Indian languages (Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil) and other packages that are most relevant for use in the government domain.
Version
3.5.0 of rsync has been released with a huge
number of security fixes:
This release fixes 33 security issues found during a focused audit of
rsync's path handling and daemon protocol, a companion daemon-protocol
fuzzing pass, and reports from external researchers -- plus several
robustness hardenings. CVE IDs were assigned by VulnCheck (CNA); the
precise "introduced in" version ranges accompany each advisory, and
many are much narrower than "everything before 3.5.0". Every fix ships
with a regression test in the test suite that fails on the unfixed
tree.
The size of a processor's page-table entries directly limits how much
physical memory that processor is able to access. Back in the 32-bit days,
that limit was 4GB, an amount of memory that once seemed nearly infinite,
but which would now struggle to hold a basic AI-enabled "hello world" app.
The expansion to 64 bits on most popular architectures would seem to
have removed those limits now; some Arm systems, for example, can use
56 of those bits to access up to 72PB of memory. So it might be
surprising that the Arm architecture is evolving to support even larger
page-table entries (PTEs).
This
patch set from Anshuman Khandual adds support for 128-bit PTEs, but
who will benefit from this capability is not entirely clear.
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (abrt, dhcpcd, edk2, freerdp, gegl04, grafana, gstreamer1-plugins-good, iscsi-initiator-utils, isns-utils, kernel, kernel-rt, keylime, libarchive, libyang, nodejs-nodemon, opencryptoki, osbuild-composer, pacemaker, postgresql-jdbc, postgresql18, python-idna, python3.9, udisks2, valkey, vim, xorg-x11-server-Xwayland, and yggdrasil-worker-package-manager), Debian (flatpak, lemonldap-ng, neutron, python-django, spip, xdg-dbus-proxy, and xorg-server), Fedora (apr-util, cri-o1.34, libcupsfilters, linux-firmware, sqlite, and vaultwarden), Gentoo (FreeType), Oracle (dovecot, evince, fence-agents, gnutls, gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, gstreamer1-plugins-good, isns-utils, java-1.8.0-openjdk, kernel, libarchive, osbuild-composer, pipewire, postgresql, ruby, ruby:3.3, sudo, and udisks2), Red Hat (bind, bind9.16, gnome-remote-desktop, grafana, opentelemetry-collector, python-pillow, python3, python3.12, python3.14, python3.9, and rhc), SUSE (chromium, clusterctl, dracut, gd, git-cliff, gleam, govulncheck-vulndb, graphicsmagick, gzip, kernel, kubevirt, libheif, librest0_7, nodejs22, nodejs24, openssh, openvpn, python3, python313-scikit-learn, rpm, stunnel, and zk), and Ubuntu (kernel, libgit2, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-fips, linux-azure, linux-azure-6.8,
linux-azure-fde, linux-azure-fde-6.8, linux-azure-fips, linux-fips,
linux-gcp, linux-gcp-6.8, linux-gcp-fips, linux-gke, linux-gkeop,
linux-ibm, linux-ibm-6.8, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-6.8,
linux-nvidia-lowlatency, linux-realtime, linux-realtime-6.8, linux-xilinx, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-fips, linux-azure, linux-azure-fde,
linux-azure-fips, linux-gkeop, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.15,
linux-intel-iot-realtime, linux-intel-iotg, linux-intel-iotg-5.15,
linux-kvm, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-tegra, linux-nvidia-tegra-5.15,
linux-oracle-5.15, linux-realtime, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-fips, linux-azure-4.15, linux-azure-fips,
linux-fips, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-gcp-fips, linux-kvm, linux, linux-aws, linux-azure, linux-azure-fde, linux-ibm, linux-oracle,
linux-raspi, linux-realtime, linux-azure, linux-azure-6.17, linux-gcp-6.17, linux-hwe-6.17, linux-oem-6.17,
linux-realtime-6.17, node-follow-redirects, and yelp).
ThorOS is a Debian-based desktop Linux distribution featuring the GNOME desktop. Its principal feature is "voice control". Using artificial intelligence and a voice assistant called "Jarvis", it is capable to execute commands to accomplish a great variety of tasks. Examples include "Jarvis, open Firefox", "Jarvis, write a thank-you note to my landlord", or "Jarvis, what's 15% of 240". Jarvis is also able to create, open, read, write, move, rename, search and delete files, launch applications, answer general questions, remind the user about appointments, and run terminal commands. The distribution's artificial intelligence assistant is private by default, but can be configured to use a remote source of knowledge, if desired.
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:
- Front: BPF and binfmt_misc; CrossPoint ebook firmware; KVM planes; BPF formal verification; shadow-utils; new storage-code testing features.
- Briefs: Django releases; GNOME shell; LightDM 1.33.0; QEMU 11.1; uutils 0.10; Software Stewardship Lab; Quotes; ...
- Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.
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.
Storage code has to cope with hardware that fails in inconvenient
ways, but coaxing a healthy disk into producing those failures on
demand, for testing, is usually not possible. The kernel
provides several ways to inject block-layer I/O errors, but none of those can select the
operation to fail, pick the status code to return, or target a disk
directly without employing a stacked device on top. Use of a stacked device means
the test runs against the mapper device, not the disk it was meant to
exercise. A patch
series from Christoph Hellwig adds a configurable error-injection
interface that does all three things that the current error-injection code
lacks, controlled by a per-disk debugfs
file.
Version:next-20260812 (linux-next)
Released:2026-08-12
There are a number of small,
inexpensive, low-powered e-reader or e-paper devices that have promise as
ebook readers with one minor problem: the firmware they ship with does not
realize their full potential. To solve that problem, the CrossPoint Reader project looks to
provide replacement firmware that offers necessary features, better performance,
and a more pleasant reading experience. On August 7, the project released version
1.5.0, which opens large EPUBs more quickly, provides
offline dictionary lookups, and has reworked settings for changing layout and
font options. The release also improves support for right-to-left text as well
as Chinese, Japanese, and
Korean (CJK) text rendering.
Version
11.1 of the QEMU emulator has been released. The release contains
more than 3,200 commits from 285 authors and includes a long list of
improvements; see the announcement and changelog for the
details.
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (fence-agents, firefox, frr10, gstreamer1-plugins-good, iscsi-initiator-utils, isns-utils, kernel, kernel-rt, perl-DBI:1.641, postgresql, postgresql:12, and resource-agents), Debian (libgd2, openjdk-25, php7.4, php8.2, and postfix), Fedora (clamav, domoticz, and libidn), Red Hat (delve, edk2, firefox, go-fdo-client, go-fdo-server, grafana, host-metering, ignition, kernel, kernel package, kernel-rt, ldns, libarchive, mariadb10.11, mariadb:10.11, multiple packages, rhc, rhc-worker-playbook, rhc-worker-script, sssd, thunderbird, yggdrasil, and yggdrasil-worker-package-manager), Slackware (expat and openssh), and SUSE (avahi, chromedriver, erlang26, gawk, glib2, go-sendxmpp, google-guest-agent, google-osconfig-agent, gpg2, gstreamer-plugins-bad, gstreamer-plugins-base, helm, ignition, ImageMagick, java-11-openj9, java-17-openj9, java-1_8_0-openj9, java-21-openj9, java-25-openj9, libarchive, libkrun, libpcp-devel, libpng16, libssh, libssh2_org, multipath-tools, net-tools, nmap, openssl-1_1, openssl-3, pcp, perl, python-pip, python-pyasn1, python-urllib3, python3-pip, python313-Django5, runc, samba, snpguest, spice-vdagent, sssd, unbound, wget, wild, wpa_supplicant, xmlrpc-c, and zpaqfranz).
Manjaro Linux is a fast, user-friendly, desktop-oriented operating system based on Arch Linux. Key features include intuitive installation process, automatic hardware detection, stable rolling-release model, ability to install multiple kernels, special Bash scripts for managing graphics drivers and extensive desktop configurability. Manjaro Linux offers Xfce as the core desktop options, as well as KDE, GNOME and a minimalist Net edition for more advanced users. Community-supported desktop flavours are also available.
Vincent OS is Arch-based desktop Linux distribution with KDE Plasma as the preferred desktop. It comes with "Core LivePatch", an in-house patch system with an ability of applying critical and security updates without the need to reboot the computer. Some of the other interesting features and applications of Vincent OS are Microsoft PowerShell (with Bash compatibility), pre-installed Wine for running some Windows programs, out-of-the-box support for Flatpak packages, and the ClamAV toolkit for detecting malware and viruses.
Version:next-20260811 (linux-next)
Released:2026-08-11
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