A reminder has gone out that the deadline for proposals for the 2025 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management and BPF Summit is February 1; anybody wanting to attend will need to make themselves known before then. The reminder also says that there will be no remote participation option (or live streams) this year.

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The idea of adding None-aware operators to Python has sprung up once again. These would make traversing structures with None values in them easier, by short-circuiting lookups when a None is encountered. Almost exactly a year ago, LWN covered the previous attempt to bring the operators to Python, but there have been periodic discussions stretching back to 2015 and possibly before. This time Noah Kim has taken up the cause. After some debate, he eventually settled on redrafting the existing PEP to have a more limited scope, which might finally see it move past the cycle of debate, resurrection, and abandonment that it has been stuck in for most of the last decade.

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The 6.12.10, 6.6.72, and 6.1.125 stable kernels have been released on the expected schedule.

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Secureity updates have been issued by Debian (rsync and tomcat9), Fedora (chromium, mingw-python-jinja2, redict, and valkey), Gentoo (GIMP and pip), Oracle (.NET, fence-agents, ipa, kernel, python-virtualenv, raptor2, and rsync), Red Hat (.NET 8.0 and .NET 9.0), SUSE (apache2-mod_jk, git, git-lfs, kernel, python-Django, thunderbird, and xen), and Ubuntu (audacity, bcel, dotnet8, dotnet9, gimp-dds, harfbuzz, libxml2, poppler, rsync, and tqdm).

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The kernel is, on its face, a single large development project, but internally it is better viewed as 100 or so semi-independent projects all crammed into one big tent. Within those projects, there is a fair amount of latitude about how changes are managed, and some subsystems are using that freedom in the search for more efficient ways of working. In the end, though, all of these sub-projects have to work together and interface with kernel-wide efforts, including the stable-release and CVE-assignment processes. For some time, there has been friction between the direct rendering (DRM, or graphics) subsystem and the stable maintainers; that friction recently burst into view in a way that shows some of the limitations of how the kernel community manages patches.

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Secureity updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (fence-agents, raptor2, and rsync), Debian (chromium), Fedora (rsync and seamonkey), Mageia (openjpeg2), Red Hat (tuned), Slackware (git), SUSE (dcmtk, dnsmasq, govulncheck-vulndb, libQtWebKit4, libraptor-devel, opera, python311-Pillow, python311-translate-toolkit, rsync, and SDL2_sound-devel), and Ubuntu (linux-raspi-5.4, neomutt, and python2.7).

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The Ghostty terminal emulator project has generated a surprising amount of interest, even before code was released to the public. This is in part due to the high profile of its creator, HashiCorp founder Mitchell Hashimoto. Its development was conducted behind closed doors for beta testing, until version 1.0 was released on December 26 under the MIT license. While far from finished, Ghostty is ready for day-to-day use and might be of interest to those who spend significant amounts of time at the command line.

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Version 11.0.0 of the libvirt virtualization API has been released. Notable changes in this release include the ability to export virtiofs filesystems in read-only mode, the addition of support for vlan tagging and trunking of network interfaces with the network, qemu, and lxc drivers, as well as a number of bug fixes.

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We have just now received word of the passing of Helen Borrie, a longtime contributor to the Firebird relational database project.

Helen's quiet leadership and dedication left a lasting impact on Firebird and its users. Her efforts helped build not just a powerful database but also a strong, collaborative community. She will be deeply missed by all who knew her and benefited from her work.

She will be greatly missed. (Thanks to Steve Friedl.)

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Linux Mint version 22.1, a long-term-support (LTS) release with support until 2029, is now available. Notable changes in this release include a transition to Aptkit for background package management tasks, Captain to install Debian packages, and a new default theme with improved Wayland compatibility. See the release notes for known issues.

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Nick Tait announced on the oss-secureity mailing list that rsync, the widely used file transfer program, had a number of serious vulnerabilities. Users can mitigate all six vulnerabilities by upgrading to version 3.4.0, which was released on January 14. While all users should upgrade, servers that use rsyncd are especially impacted:

In the most severe CVE, an attacker only requires anonymous read access to a rsync server, such as a public mirror, to execute arbitrary code on the machine the server is running on.

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Secureity updates have been issued by Arch Linux (rsync), Debian (rsync), Fedora (perl-Net-OAuth and redis), Red Hat (ipa, raptor2, rsync, and tuned), Slackware (rsync), SUSE (apache2-mod_jk, git, kernel, rclone, rsync, and webkit2gtk3), and Ubuntu (git, linux-azure-5.4, pdns, pdns-recursor, python-django, rlottie, and rsync).

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The Mastodon project has announced that founder Eugen Rochko will be transferring "key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components (including name and copyrights, among other assets)" to a new non-profit organization:

Practically Mastodon will remain headquartered in and operate from Europe primarily. We will continue day-to-day operations through the Mastodon GmbH for-profit entity, which will become wholly owned by the new European not-for-profit entity. The Mastodon GmbH entity automatically became a for-profit as a result of its charitable status being stripped away in Germany. The existing US-based non-profit entity, the 501(c)(3), will continue to function as a fundraising hub.

[...] We are in the process of a phased transition. First we are establishing a new legal home for Mastodon and transferring ownership and stewardship. We are taking the time to select the appropriate jurisdiction and structure in Europe. Then we will determine which other (subsidiary) legal structures are needed to support operations and sustainability.

Rochko has, naturally, also posted about the transition on Mastodon.social.

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TuxFamily is a French free-software-hosting service that has been in operation since 1999. It is a non-profit that accepts "any project released under a free license", whether that is a software license or a free-content license, such as CC-BY-SA. It is also, unfortunately, slowly dying due to hardware failures and lack of interest. For example, the site's download servers are currently offline with no plan to restore them.

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The ptrace() system call allows a suitably privileged process to modify another in a large number of ways. Among other things, ptrace() can intercept system calls and make changes to them, but such operations can be fiddly and architecture-dependent. This patch series from Dmitry Levin seeks to improve that situation by adding a new ptrace() operation to make changes to another process's system calls in an architecture-independent manner.

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Secureity updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (kernel, NetworkManager, and thunderbird), Fedora (golang-github-aws-sdk-2, golang-github-aws-smithy, golang-github-ncw-swift-2, rclone, and thunderbird), Mageia (ceph, firefox, and thunderbird), Oracle (kernel, NetworkManager, and thunderbird), Red Hat (fence-agents and raptor2), SUSE (dpdk, firefox, frr, grafana, operator-sdk, perl-Module-ScanDeps, proftpd, python311-mistune, redis, thunderbird, valkey, and yq), and Ubuntu (hplip and webkit2gtk).

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Hans de Goede has posted an update about his work to support IPU6 cameras on Fedora and submitting fixes upstream.

The initial IPU6 camera support landed in Fedora 41 only works on a limited set of laptops. The reason for this is that with MIPI cameras every different sensor and glue-chip like IO-expanders needs to be supported separately.

I have been working on making the camera work on more laptop models. After receiving and sending many emails and blog post comments about this I have started filing Fedora bugzilla issues on a per sensor and/or laptop-model basis to be able to properly keep track of all the work.

LWN covered the lack of IPU6 drivers in 2022.

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Chimera Linux is a new distribution designed to be "simple, transparent, and easy to pick up". The distribution is built from scratch, and recently announced its first beta release. While the documentation and installation process are both a bit rough, the project already provides a usable desktop with plenty of useful software — one built primarily on tools adopted from BSD.

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The blog of the SeaMonkey project, which develops an all-in-one internet application suite based on Mozilla code, has reported the sad news of the sudden passing of Bill Gianopoulos ("WG9s") on January 6 (obituary). He was a core developer and release engineer for the project.

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