Security updates have been issued by Debian (w3m), Fedora (libqb), Mageia (docker-containerd, kernel, kernel-linus, microcode, php, redis, and samba), Oracle (kernel, kernel-container, and openssh), Scientific Linux (subscription-manager), SUSE (ca-certificates-mozilla, erlang, gawk, gstreamer-plugins-base, indent, java-1_8_0-ibm, kernel, kernel-firmware, krb5, libcares2, nodejs14, nodejs16, openssl-1_1, openssl-3, poppler, postfix, redis, webkit2gtk3, and xen), and Ubuntu (php8.1).

The LWN.net Weekly Edition for August 24, 2023 is available.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of two new stable kernels: 6.4.12 and 6.1.47. Both contain lots of important fixes throughout the kernel tree.

Over the years, there have been multiple examples of open-source software that, suddenly, was no longer open source; on August 10, some further examples were added to the pile. That happened when HashiCorp announced that it would be switching the license on its products from the Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL) to the Business Source License 1.1 (BSL or BUSL). At least one of the products affected by the change, the Terraform infrastructure-automation tool, has attracted an effort to continue it as an open-source tool in the form of a fork that would be maintained by the nascent OpenTF Foundation. That seems like a sensible reaction to the move, but it also helps serve up yet another reminder that code which is controlled by a single entity is normally always at risk of such adverse changes.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (mediawiki and qt4-x11), Fedora (java-17-openjdk, linux-firmware, and python-yfinance), Red Hat (kernel, kpatch-patch, and subscription-manager), SUSE (evolution, janino, kernel, nodejs16, nodejs18, postgresql15, qt6-base, and ucode-intel), and Ubuntu (inetutils).

The PineTime is an inexpensive smartwatch developed by PINE64 that is designed to run open-source operating systems. Despite its low cost, however, it has most of the features expected from more expensive, proprietary smartwatches. Because it runs open-source software, though, interested developers can add any other useful features that they dream up.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (intel-microcode, lxc, and zabbix), Fedora (clamav), SUSE (python-configobj), and Ubuntu (clamav).

Making a filesystem implementation robust in the face of maliciously created filesystem images is a challenging task even when the implementation is actively maintained, which many in the kernel are not. There is a way to make that task even harder, though: modify that filesystem image behind the implementation's back while it is mounted. A recent discussion on the linux-fsdevel list reveals an ongoing disagreement over whether (and how) this threat should be addressed.

The Document Foundation has announced the release of LibreOffice 7.6 Community. It is the last release using the existing numbering scheme as the office suite will move to date-based release numbers starting with LibreOffice 24.2 in February, 2024. Highlights of this release include support for document themes, including import and export of them, a new navigation panel for Impress and Draw, zoom-gesture support, font-handling improvements, and lots more; the release notes have all the details. LibreOffice 7.6 Community's new features have been developed by 148 contributors: 61% of code commits are from the 52 developers employed by three companies sitting in TDF's Advisory Board – Collabora, Red Hat and allotropia – or other organizations, 15% are from 7 developers at The Document Foundation, and the remaining 24% are from 89 individual volunteers.

Other 202 volunteers – representing hundreds of other people providing translations – have committed localizations in 160 languages. LibreOffice 7.6 Community is released in 120 different language versions, more than any other free or proprietary software, and as such can be used in the native language (L1) by over 5.4 billion people worldwide. In addition, over 2.3 billion people speak one of those 120 languages as their second language (L2).

Security updates have been issued by Debian (fastdds, flask, and kernel), Fedora (chromium, dotnet6.0, dotnet7.0, gerbv, java-1.8.0-openjdk, libreswan, procps-ng, and spectre-meltdown-checker), SUSE (chromium, kernel-firmware, krb5, opensuse-welcome, and python-mitmproxy), and Ubuntu (clamav, firefox, and vim).

Linus Torvalds has released the 6.5-rc7 kernel prepatch, which looks to be the final release candidate before the likely release of Linux 6.5 next Sunday. Torvalds released it a little earlier than usual due to some travel; overall things look to be in good shape: But apart from the timezone difference, everything looks entirely normal. Drivers (GPU, networking and sound dominate - the usual suspects, in other words) and architecture fixes. The latter are mostly arm devicetree fixlets, but also some x86 cleanups and fallout from the embargo last week.

Not a huge amount of patches, and I really get the feeling that a lot of maintainers are on vacation. But I will be optimistic and also blame it all being quiet on things working fairly well.

It is fair to say that the DNF package manager is not the favorite tool of many Fedora users. It was brought in as a replacement for Yum but got off to a rather rocky start; DNF has stabilized over the years, though and the complaints have subsided. That can only mean one thing: it must be time to throw it away and start over from the beginning. The replacement, called DNF5, was slated to be a part of the Fedora 39 release, due in October, but that is not going to happen.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (chromium, rar, and unrar-nonfree), Fedora (microcode_ctl, trafficserver, and webkitgtk), SUSE (ImageMagick, kernel, nodejs16, nodejs18, postgresql12, postgresql15, re2c, and samba), and Ubuntu (ghostscript, haproxy, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.15, linux-gcp, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-ibm, linux-intel-iotg, linux-intel-iotg-5.15, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-nvidia, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.15, linux-raspi, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, poppler, and zziplib).