Version 31.1 of the Emacs editor has been released. There is a long list of changes including the removal of the Emacs dumper, a new user Lisp directory feature, a "Send to..." menu item in context-menu-mode, and many other changes; see the NEWS file for more information. Mickey Petersen, author of Mastering Emacs, also has a rundown of some of the quality-of-life features appearing in this release.
Quickshell is a toolkit for building desktop components, such as toolbars or menus. It uses QML, which is a declarative language for designing GUI applications. Quickshell helps developers create graphical tools for common desktop use cases with a focus on ease of development. It offers a convenient method for writing user interfaces and has been adopted by a number of projects, such as caelestia-shell and DankMaterialShell, that provide desktop environments for minimal window managers like Sway and niri.
Version 26.08 of the KDE Gear collection of applications has been released. Notable changes in this release include improvements in the signing features of Okular, improved file-grouping features in the Dolphin file manager, and a number of enhancements to the Kdenlive video editor. See the changelog for a full list of updates, enhancements, and bug fixes.
Version 6.1.0 of the RPM Package Manager has been released. Notable changes include the ability to provide modifiers to RPM macros at definition time, improved build and verification error handling, support for signing files with PKCS11 tokens using rpmsign, as well as the addition of several new man pages. The 6.1.0 release also debuts a new release model inspired by the Linux kernel's.
Go 1.27, the most recent version of the Go programming language, has been released with a number of new tools, the addition of support for the ML-DSA post-quantum algorithm, new JSON-processing packages, language updates, and more.
The Debian Project is voting on the usage of large language models (LLMs) to make contributions to the project. The first proposal, sent in late July by Matthias Geiger, would expressly forbid any contributions to Debian that are created by or with the assistance of LLMs. That kicked off a firestorm of discussion and a flood of alternate proposals. Debian developers are now voting on eight proposals in total that range from banning LLM-assisted contributions to explicitly approving them, as well as the standard "none of the above" option that would leave Debian with no agreed policy.
Version 0.11 of the Tuba fediverse client has been released. Notable changes in this release include support for Mastodon collections and quotes, ability to create custom thumbnails for attachments, a new emoji picker, a build for Android, as well as many other enhancements.
The Linux kernel's user-space interface (AF_ALG) to the Crypto API has been linked to a number of recent high-profile security problems, including Copy Fail and successor vulnerabilities. It was deprecated earlier this year. Eric Biggers, and other kernel developers, have been working to remove it from the kernel. With that in mind, the Fedora Project is planning to restrict use of AF_ALG in the next Fedora release in the hopes of nudging remaining users of the API to prepare for its eventual removal.
Version 5.0 of GNU Poke, a binary-data editor, has been released. This release includes a number of improvements to the Poke compiler, additions to the Poke language, as well as runtime and standard library updates. See below for the full list of changes.
The Software Freedom Conservancy has announced that Mark J. Wielaard has been honored with the second annual Distinguished Service Award in Software Freedom for his many years of service to software freedom.
Mark is one of many key FOSS developers who has designed his career so that his employers have funded much of his FOSS work. Nevertheless, Mark continues his volunteer work after hours as a key contributor who maintains Sourceware — the oldest FOSS collaboration and developer infrastructure hosting site in history.
In addition to his work on Sourceware, Wielaard is a member of the DWARF Debugging Standard Committee, the maintainer for Valgrind and elfutils, as well as a contributor to various other GNU projects.
The Python Software Foundation (PSF) has announced the candidates running for the Python packaging council that was approved by the Python steering council in April.
This inaugural election fills all five seats on the PPC. The two candidates receiving the highest number of votes shall be designated Cohort A with a two year term, and the three candidates receiving the next highest number of votes shall be designated Cohort B with a one year term.
In future elections, each cohort will be elected for a full two-year term in alternating years, so that roughly half of the PPC turns over each cycle.
There are 17 candidates running for the five open seats. PSF voting-eligible members must affirm their intention to vote in this election by August 25. Voting begins on September 1, and ends on September 15.
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