There have been many discussions in the free-software community about the role of large language models (LLMs) in software development. For the most part, though, those conversations have focused on whether projects should be accepting code output by those models, and under what conditions. But there are other ways in which these systems might participate in the development process. Chris Mason recently started a discussion on the Kernel Summit discussion list about how these models can be used to review patches, rather than create them.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (kernel and libsoup3), Debian (chromium and firefox-esr), Fedora (httpd), Oracle (cups, ImageMagick, kernel, and vim), Red Hat (libssh), Slackware (samba), SUSE (alloy, exim, firefox-esr, ImageMagick, kernel, libcryptopp-devel, libQt6Svg6, libsoup-3_0-0, libtiff-devel-32bit, lsd, python3-gi-docgen, python311-Authlib, qt6-base, samba, and squid), and Ubuntu (ffmpeg, linux-oracle-6.8, redict, redis, samba, and subversion).

Version 13.0 of the Forgejo software forge has been released. Notable changes in this release include content moderation features, ability to require 2FA for users or administrators, and a migration feature for Pagure repositories. The last will be useful for Fedora's move to Forgejo as its new git forge. See the release notes for all changes in 13.0.

Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:

• Front: LLMs and copyright; Systemd packaging in Debian; Gccrs; FineIBT; 6.18 Merge window; Interrupt-aware spinlocks; Fedora's /boot.
• Briefs: Linux 6.18-rc1; Librephone; LMDE 7; Ubuntu 25.10; Firefox 144.0; Julia 1.12; Quotes; ...
• Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

Boqun Feng spoke at Kangrejos 2025 about adding a frequently needed API for Rust drivers that need to handle interrupts: interrupt-aware spinlocks. Most drivers will need to communicate information from interrupt handlers to main driver code, and this exchange is frequently synchronized with the use of spinlocks. While his first attempts ran into problems, Feng's ultimate solution could help prevent bugs in C code as well, by tracking the number of nested scopes that have disabled interrupts. The patch set, which contains work from Feng and Lyude Paul, is still under review.

Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) 7, based on Debian 13 ("trixie"), has been released:

Its goal is to ensure Linux Mint would be able to continue to deliver the same user experience, and how much work would be involved, if Ubuntu was ever to disappear. LMDE is also one of our development targets, to guarantee the software we develop is compatible outside of Ubuntu.

The LMDE release notes are rather sparse; users are also advised to review Debian 13's release notes.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (kernel, kernel-rt, vim, and webkit2gtk3), Debian (distro-info-data, https-everywhere, and php-horde-css-parser), Fedora (inih, mingw-exiv2, mirrorlist-server, rust-maxminddb, rust-monitord-exporter, rust-prometheus, rust-prometheus_exporter, rust-protobuf, rust-protobuf-codegen, rust-protobuf-parse, and rust-protobuf-support), Mageia (fetchmail), Oracle (gnutls, kernel, vim, and webkit2gtk3), Red Hat (kernel, kernel-rt, and webkit2gtk3), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (curl, libxslt, and net-tools), and Ubuntu (linux-azure-5.15, linux-azure-6.8, linux-azure-fips, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-6.14, and linux-raspi).

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 6.17.3, 6.12.53, 6.6.112, and 6.1.156 stable kernels. As usual, each contains important fixes throughout the kernel tree. Users of these kernels are advised to upgrade.

The Free Software Foundation has announced the launch of the Librephone project, which is aimed at the creation of a fully-free operating system for mobile devices.

Practically, Librephone aims to close the last gaps between existing distributions of the Android operating system and software freedom. The FSF has hired experienced developer Rob Savoye (DejaGNU, Gnash, OpenStreetMap, and more) to lead the technical project. He is currently investigating the state of device firmware and binary blobs in other mobile phone freedom projects, prioritizing the free software work done by the not entirely free software mobile phone operating system LineageOS.

The 6.18 merge window has come to an end, bringing with it a total of 11,974 non-merge commits, 3,499 of which came in after LWN's first-half summary. The total is a little higher than the 6.17 merge window, which saw 11,404 non-merge commits. There are once again a good number of changes and new features included in this release.

Version 1.12 of Julia has been released. Highlights of the release include new multi-threading features, new tracing flags and macros, and an experimental --trim feature. See the release notes for a full list of new features, changes, and improvements. LWN last covered Julia in January.

Version 144.0 of the Firefox browser has been released. Changes this time include improvements to tab-group and profile management, stronger encryption for stored passwords, a "search image with Google Lens" operation, and "Perplexity, an AI-powered answer engine built into the browser".

The Free Software Foundation's Licensing and Compliance Lab concerns itself with many aspects of software licensing, Krzysztof Siewicz said at the beginning of his 2025 GNU Tools Cauldron session. These include supporting projects that are facing licensing challenges, collecting copyright assignments, and addressing GPL violations. In this session, though, there was really only one topic that the audience wanted to know about: the interaction between free-software licensing and large language models (LLMs).

Security updates have been issued by Debian (ghostscript and libfcgi), Fedora (qt5-qtsvg), Red Hat (kernel, perl-FCGI, perl-FCGI:0.78, and vim), SUSE (bluez, curl, podman, postgresql14, python-xmltodict, and udisks2), and Ubuntu (linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, linux-azure-fips, linux-oracle, and subversion).

Debian packagers have a great deal of latitude when it comes to the configuration of the software they package; they may opt, for example, to disable default features in software that they feel are a security hazard. However, packagers are expected to ensure that their packages comply with Debian Policy, regardless of the upstream's preferences. If a packager fails to comply with the policy, the Debian Technical Committee (TC) can step in to override them, which it has done in the case of a recent systemd change that broke several programs that depend on a world-writable /run/lock directory.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 6.17.2, 6.16.12, 6.12.52, and 6.6.111 stable kernels. They each contain a relatively small set of important fixes. In addition: "Note, this is the LAST 6.16.y kernel release, this branch is now end-of-life. Please move to the 6.17.y branch at this point in time."

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (compat-libtiff3, iputils, kernel, open-vm-tools, and vim), Debian (asterisk, ghostscript, kernel, linux-6.1, and tiff), Fedora (cef, chromium, cri-o1.31, cri-o1.32, cri-o1.33, cri-o1.34, docker-buildx, log4cxx, mingw-poppler, openssl, podman-tui, prometheus-podman-exporter, python-socketio, python3.10, python3.11, python3.12, python3.9, skopeo, and valkey), Mageia (open-vm-tools), Red Hat (compat-libtiff3, kernel, kernel-rt, vim, and webkit2gtk3), and SUSE (distrobuilder, docker-stable, expat, forgejo, forgejo-longterm, gitea-tea, go1.25, haproxy, headscale, open-vm-tools, openssl-3, podman, podofo, ruby3.4-rubygem-rack, and weblate).

Linus has released 6.18-rc1 and closed the merge window for this development cycle. "This was one of the good merge windows where I didn't end up having to bisect any particular problem on [any] of the machines I was testing. Let's hope that success mostly translates to the bigger picture too."

At the Linux Security Summit Europe (LSS EU), Scott Constable and Sebastian Österlund gave a talk on an enhancement to a control-flow integrity (CFI) protection that was added to the kernel several years ago. The "FineIBT: Fine-grain Control-flow Enforcement with Indirect Branch Tracking" mechanism was merged for Linux 6.2 in early 2023 to harden the kernel against CFI attacks of various sorts, but needed some fixes and enhancements more recently. The talk looked at the CFI vulnerability problem, FineIBT, and an enhanced version that is hoped to be able to unify all of the disparate hardware and software mitigations to address both regular and speculative CFI vulnerabilities.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (redis and valkey), Fedora (docker-buildkit, ibus-bamboo, pgadmin4, webkitgtk, and wordpress), Mageia (kernel-linus, kmod-virtualbox & kmod-xtables-addons, and microcode), Oracle (compat-libtiff3 and udisks2), Red Hat (rsync), Slackware (python3), SUSE (chromium, cJSON, digger-cli, glow, go1.24, go1.25, go1.25-openssl, grafana, libexslt0, libruby3_4-3_4, pgadmin4, python311-python-socketio, and squid), and Ubuntu (dpdk, libhtp, vim, and webkit2gtk).