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Git maintainer Junio Hamano has announced Git 2.55.0, which has non-merge commits from 100 people; 33 of those are first-time contributors to the project. LWN recently covered some of the noteworthy changes in 2.55, including new features for the experimental "git history" command, addition of the Git fsmonitor daemon for Linux systems, and more.

Linus Torvalds released 7.2-rc1 and closed the 7.2 merge window on June 28; by that time, 13,412 non-merge commits had found their way into the mainline. That makes this the busiest merge window since the 6.7 development cycle in 2024 (15,418 commits, including 2,800 for the entire bcachefs development history). Just under half of those commits arrived after LWN's summary of the first half of the merge window was written. As usual, the commits in the latter part of the merge window were more heavily focused on fixes, but there were still a lot of new features and significant changes merged as well.

The xsnow application, which generates an animated snowfall effect (and other pleasant diversions) for X11 desktops, does not seem like an obvious channel for political statements. Nevertheless, xsnow's maintainer seems to have included a political protest in the program: an Easter egg that is triggered when the program's language is set to Russia ("ru"). One user has complained that this functionality should be removed from the Debian xsnow package, but Debian does not seem to have any rules that forbid such a feature outright.

The Kubernetes project has published a blog post explaining its AI policy:

The main problem is that AI has made generating code fast but there has been very little improvement in maintaining code bases. In this post, we will highlight the ways the Kubernetes community is adapting to the world of AI assisted coding.

The first step of this journey was to develop an AI policy. This seems mundane and bureaucratic but there were many PRs that derailed into discussions around AI usage. The AI policy helps steer the conversation around the project's stance on AI and provides a clear signal to contributors on how to use these tools responsibly.

Of note, the project requires disclosure when AI tools have been used to assist in the creation of a contribution but forbids the use of listing AI as a co-author or including "assisted-by" or "co-developed" trailers to attribute work to an LLM tool.

Mageia 10 has been released with the 6.18 Linux kernel, DNF 5.4.0, RPM 4.20.1, and an increase in hardware requirements for x86 32-bit systems; users now need a CPU with SSE2 features. See the release notes for a full list of updates, and the errata page for known problems.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (containernetworking-plugins, golang, kernel, libpng, libpng15, nginx, opencryptoki, perl-IO-Compress, thunderbird, and tigervnc), Debian (chromium, gdcm, incus, libhtml-parser-perl, lxd, openvpn, tor, and xorg-server), Fedora (chromium, docker-buildkit, docker-buildx, dotnet10.0, dotnet8.0, dotnet9.0, krita, ldns, libssh2, liferea, lighttpd, mariadb10.11, mariadb11.8, moby-engine, nginx, nginx-mod-brotli, nginx-mod-fancyindex, nginx-mod-headers-more, nginx-mod-js-challenge, nginx-mod-modsecurity, nginx-mod-naxsi, nginx-mod-vts, openbao, pacemaker, pgadmin4, podman-tui, prometheus-podman-exporter, python-jupyter-server, python-mistune, python-postorius, python-pydantic-settings, python3-docs, python3.14, thunderbird, tigervnc, tinyproxy, and util-linux), Mageia (krb5), Oracle (.NET 10.0, .NET 8.0, .NET 9.0, bind, dracut, fence-agents, firefox, frr, frr10, glib2, glibc, gnutls, golang, kernel, libpng, libpng15, libreoffice, libxml2, libxslt, mod_http2, mysql:8.4, nginx:1.26, openssl, php:8.3, podman, postgresql-jdbc, python3.14, redis, rsync, thunderbird, tomcat, valkey, and vim), Red Hat (osbuild-composer), and SUSE (agama-web-ui, asn1c, assimp, assimp-devel, aws-iam-authenticator, calibre, clamav, corepack24, dovecot22, exiv2, frr, giflib, glances-common, google-osconfig-agent, GraphicsMagick, gvim, haproxy, hydra, ImageMagick, jupyter-nbclassic, kernel, libsoup, libsoup2, libssh2-1, nano, NetworkManager-applet-openvpn, nodejs22, openbabel, opensc, openssl-3, pacemaker, python, python-base, python-doc, python311-pdm, python311-py7zr, python311-pypdf, python36, tar, trivy, util-linux, xen, and xtrabackup).

The 7.2-rc1 kernel prepatch is out for testing. Linus said: "So two weeks have passed, and the merge window is closed. Things look reasonably normal for this release (knock wood)."

The 7.1.2, 7.0.14, and 6.18.37 stable kernel updates have been released; each contains a relatively small number of important fixes.

The Power Management and Scheduling in the Linux Kernel Summit, which still goes by the historical acronym OSPM, was held in Cambridge, UK, in mid-April. As has become traditional, the presenters at that event have since written summaries of their sessions, and this work has kindly been made available to LWN for publication. The third day's sessions covered a wide range of topics, including GPU affinity, profile-guided scheduling, paravirtualization scheduling, quality of service, and more.

Writeback is the process of ensuring that dirty pages or folios in the page cache are flushed to the disk, so that changes to those files are made persistent. In a filesystem-track session at the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, Jeff Layton wanted to discuss whether the writeback operation should be initiated earlier than it is today. The consensus seemed to be that it should be done earlier, but the path toward making that happen was less clear.

Lennart Poettering has posted a list of Mastodon posts about the changes in the systemd v261 release. The Mastodon format makes the reading harder, but there is a lot of useful information there.

The Git v2.55.0-rc2 testing release appeared on June 23, suggesting that the final Git 2.55 release can be expected in the near future. While this Git update lacks radical new features, it does include a number of improvements that regular Git users will appreciate, including commands to easily edit the commit history, more formatting options, fsmonitor support for Linux, and more.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (buildah, coreutils, evince, libpng, libreoffice, libtasn1, libxml2, libxslt, nginx, nginx:1.24, nginx:1.26, postgresql:12, python-urllib3, python3.12-urllib3, python3.14, python3.14-urllib3, skopeo, tigervnc, tomcat, and vim), Debian (chromium, dnsdist, giflib, libdbi-perl, libssh2, libtext-csv-xs-perl, pdns, pdns-recursor, python-urllib3, and sogo), Fedora (goose, httpd, librabbitmq, perl-Compress-Raw-Bzip2, perl-DBI, perl-IO-Compress, perl-Socket, python-django-allauth, rsync, and strongswan), Oracle (389-ds-base, buildah, containernetworking-plugins, coreutils, evince, fence-agents, giflib, git-lfs, hplip, krb5, libcap, libexif, libtasn1, memcached, opencryptoki, podman, postfix, postgresql:12, postgresql:13, postgresql:15, postgresql:16, python-urllib3, python3.12-urllib3, python3.14-urllib3, python3.9, runc, skopeo, tigervnc, vim, webkit2gtk3, xorg-x11-server, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), SUSE (apache-commons-configuration2, apache-commons-text, apache2, containerd, kernel, libnilfs3, libopenbabel8, libtar, libzypp, lrzip, nodejs24, ofono, perl-Net-Dropbox-API, podman, python-pip, python-PyJWT, python311-aiohttp, python311-nltk, python311-python-multipart, python312, and python315), and Ubuntu (amd64-microcode, containerd, containerd-app, containerd-stable, cpp-httplib, imagemagick, mina2, node-pbkdf2, NSD, and xrdp).

The Linux Foundation, in a letter co-signed by a large range of organizations and companies, has announced the launch of "Akrites", a project to fast-track vulnerability fixes into projects.

As Akrites works upstream to fix projects at the source, we commit to support downstream efforts to secure critical infrastructure before it can be exploited. When patches are released to the public, adversaries are able to utilize AI to rapidly reverse engineer the underlying vulnerabilities, develop exploits, and launch attacks. The success of our efforts therefore will be measured in patch deployment, not publication. We will partner with critical infrastructure owners and operators, civil society efforts, and governments as they increase coordination to achieve these goals.

Confidentiality is non-negotiable: An undisclosed flaw in a widely deployed package is, in effect, a weapon, and the program is built first to prevent leaks. Fixes flow back into each project's own home, working with the maintainers. The engineering resources and other capabilities provided by Akrites participants contribute to this effort. Additionally, when a critical package has no one maintaining it, Akrites will stand as the maintainer of last resort so a fix can still reach everyone in a timely fashion. We will also align with government efforts so that public and private defenders move together, rather than in a disjointed fashion.

MinIO is a popular object-storage server that offered compatibility with the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) API. In December 2025, the company behind the project (also named MinIO) announced that the project was in maintenance mode and would not accept new changes; it was archived completely in February 2026. MinIO users have been hunting for alternatives since then, but the array of choices can be baffling. While many other projects aim to fill the space, their strengths and areas of focus tend to vary. Two of the alternatives—Ceph and Garage—are particularly compelling, and both offer solid S3 compatibility.

Version 6.0.0 of the Podman container-management tool has been released. Notable new features include the ability to set multiple static IP addresses for containers, improvements in network isolation that make Podman more compatible with Docker, changes to the way Quadlet commands function, many new options for many existing podman commands, and a rewrite of Podman's configuration file handling. There are many breaking changes; see the release notes for a full list of all new features, changes, and bug fixes.

There is a lot of work going into eliminating exploitable bugs from the kernel and preventing the addition of new ones. Even if this work is maximally successful, though, there is no chance that the kernel will be free of these bugs anytime soon. Thus, there is also ongoing interest in hardening the kernel to make the existing bugs more difficult to exploit. The upcoming 7.2 kernel release will include a change to how dynamically allocated structures are placed in memory to make them harder to overwrite, while a project to randomize structure layout at boot time has a rather longer timeline.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (libpng, libsolv, libtasn1, libxml2, libxslt, python3.14, tigervnc, and vim), Debian (cloud-init, postgresql-13, and yelp), Mageia (nats-server), Oracle (.NET 10.0, .NET 8.0, .NET 9.0, bind9.18, cockpit, compat-openssl11, dnsmasq, dovecot, evince, expat, flatpak, freerdp, gimp, golang, grafana, grafana-pcp, httpd, jmc, jq, kernel, libsndfile, libsoup, libtiff, mod_http2, mysql:8.0, nginx, nginx:1.24, openexr, php:8.2, poppler, pyOpenSSL, python-markdown, redis:7, samba, thunderbird, tigervnc, unbound, and vim), Red Hat (libpng, libpng12, and libpng15), SUSE (apptainer, bind, crun, freeipmi, ghc-crypton-x509-store, ghc-crypton-x509-system, google-guest-agent, google-osconfig-agent, GraphicsMagick, gstreamer-plugins-bad, hamlib, iproute2, java-1_8_0-openjdk, kubevirt1, libarchive, libheif, libpng15, mbedtls, mbedtls-2, openssl-1_1, python-biopython, python-PyJWT, tar, webkit2gtk3, and xen), and Ubuntu (ffmpeg, libdbi-perl, and perl).

Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:

• Front: Free-threaded Python; AUR attacks; Fedora 2FA; 7.2 merge window; BPF arenas; BPF coroutines; BPF JIT; RMR and BRMR; OSPM.
• Briefs: Tor deprecations; GIMP 0.54.1 flatpak; Mastodon 4.6; Systemd v261; Xfce on Wayland; Quotes; ...
• Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

Compromised accounts are one of the most common ways that attackers can sneak malware into the open-source supply chain. One way to reduce account compromise is for projects to require two-factor authentication (2FA) or multi-factor authentication (MFA), but that is easier said than done. However, Fedora is currently discussing putting 2FA requirements in place soon, following an an alleged account compromise that led to an AI agent causing a number of problems for the project. After some discussion, Fedora will begin by requiring packagers in the "provenpackager" group to enable 2FA within the next three months or so.