Version 8.0.0 of Varnish Cache has been released. In addition to a number of changes to varnishd parameters, the ability to access some runtime parameters using the Varnish Configuration Language, and other improvements, 8.0.0 comes with big news; the project is forming an organization called a forening that will set out formal governance for the project.

The move also comes with a name change due to legal difficulties in securing the Varnish Cache name:

The new association and the new project will be named "The Vinyl Cache Project", and this release 8.0.0, will be the last under the "Varnish Cache" name. The next release, in March will be under the new name, and will include compatility scripts, to make the transition as smooth as possible for everybody.

I want to make it absolutely clear that this is 100% a mess of my making: I should have insisted on a firm written agreement about the name sharing, but I did not.

I will also state for the record, that there are no hard feelings between Varnish Software and the FOSS project.

Varnish Software has always been, and still is, an important and valued contributor to the FOSS project, but sometimes even friends can make a mess of a situation.

At Akademy 2025, the KDE Project released an alpha version of KDE Linux, a distribution built by the project to "include the best implementation of everything KDE has to offer, using the most advanced technologies". It is aimed at providing an operating system suitable for home use, business use, OEM installations, and more "eventually". For now there are many rough edges and missing features that users should be aware of before taking the plunge; but it is an interesting look at the kind of complete Linux system that KDE developers would like to see.

At Open Source Summit Europe, LWN's Jonathan Corbet presented "Three Decades in Kernelland"; the talk provides a look at how the kernel got to where it is, what makes it successful, and what may be coming next. The video of the talk is now online for LWN readers who would like to check it out.

Security updates have been issued by Fedora (buildah, containers-common, glycin, loupe, podman, rust-matchers, and rust-tracing-subscriber), Red Hat (fence-agents, jackson-annotations, jackson-core, jackson-databind, jackson-jaxrs-providers, and jackson-modules-base, pki-deps:10.6, python-requests, python3.12-cryptography, redis:6, redis:7, and resource-agents), Slackware (libssh), SUSE (aide, cloud-init, iperf, java-1_8_0-openjdk, jq, kernel-devel, python-deepdiff, regionServiceClientConfigAzure, regionServiceClientConfigEC2, and regionServiceClientConfigGCE), and Ubuntu (gnutls28).

Fedora's Community Blog has a short update on the progress of Fedora's new installer with a web-based interface. The new installer was introduced for the Workstation edition in Fedora Linux 42, it is now approved to be included in all Fedora spins and the KDE edition for Fedora 43. Final deprecation of the GTK-based installer is set for Fedora 45. LWN covered the installer changes in April.

Framework Computer is a US-based computer manufacturer with a line of Linux-supported, modular, easily repairable and upgradeable laptops. In February, the company announced a new model, the Framework Laptop 12, an "entry-level" 12.2-inch convertible notebook that can be used as a laptop or tablet. The systems were made available for pre-order in April, I received mine in mid-August. Since then, I have been putting it through its paces with Debian 13 ("trixie") and Fedora Linux 42. It's a good choice for users who want a Linux-friendly, lightweight, 2-in-1 device—if they are willing to make a few concessions on storage capacity, RAM, and CPU/GPU choices.

Version 25.08 of the niri scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor has been released. Notable changes include xwayland-satellite integration, modal exit confirmation, and the introduction of basic support for screen readers:

A series of posts by fireborn earlier this year on the screen reader situation in Linux got me curious: how does one support screen readers in a Wayland compositor? The documentation is unfortunately scarce and difficult to find. Thankfully, @DataTriny from the AccessKit project came across my issue, pointed me at the right protocols, and answered a lot of my questions.

So, as of this release, niri has basic support for screen readers! We implement the org.freedesktop.a11y.KeyboardMonitor D-Bus interface for Orca to listen and grab keyboard keys, and we expose the main niri UI elements via AccessKit. [...]

The current screen reader support and further considerations are documented on the new Accessibility wiki page.

LWN covered niri in July.

Version 12.4 of Linux From Scratch (LFS) and Beyond Linux From Scratch (BLFS) have been released. LFS provides step-by-step instructions on building a customized Linux system entirely from source, and BLFS helps to extend an LFS installation into a more usable system. Notable changes in this release include updates to GNU Binutils 2.45, GCC 15.2, GNU C Library (glibc) 2.42, and Linux 6.15.1. See the Changelog for all updates since 12.3.

Cary Coutant has announced a draft for version 4.3 of the Executable and Linking Format (ELF) object file format. The specification was formerly part of the Unix System V Release 4 (SVR4) gABI document:

The last published gABI documents were the Fourth Edition and a draft of Edition 4.1, both published in March 1997. The ELF portions of the document were updated several times between 1998 and 2015, published online [...]

I've published the last draft from 2015 as Version 4.2, and collected the several changes since then, along with new e_machine values, as Version 4.3.

The source for the draft is on GitHub in reStructuredText format, and Coutant has collected the mailing list discussions for changes in 4.3 as GitHub issues. Thanks to Jose E. Marchesi for the tip.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (httpd, kernel, and kernel-rt), Debian (python-eventlet and python-h2), Mageia (aide, gnutls, tomcat, and vim), Oracle (httpd, mod_http2, postgresql:15, python3.11, python3.12, python3.9, and udisks2), Red Hat (kernel, postgresql, postgresql:12, and postgresql:15), SUSE (dcmtk, jupyter-bqplot-jupyterlab, kured, libudisks2-0, munge, python-eventlet, python-future, python311-eventlet, rekor, traefik2, and ucode-intel), and Ubuntu (linux-aws, linux-azure-5.15, linux-gcp-6.8, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-hwe-6.8, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-6.8, linux-nvidia-lowlatency, linux-raspi, linux-gke, linux-ibm-5.15, linux-kvm, and protobuf).

As a rule, if a package is shipped with a Debian release, users can count on it being available, and updated, for the entire life of the release. If package foo is included in the stable release—currently Debian 13 ("trixie")—a user can reasonably expect that it will continue to be available with security backports as long as that release is supported, though it may not be included in Debian 14 ("forky"). However, it is likely that the Guix package manager will soon be removed from the repositories for Debian 13 and Debian 12 ("bookworm", also called oldstable).

The next release of systemd has been percolating for an unusually long time. Systemd releases are usually about six months apart, but v257 came out in December 2024, and v258 just now seems to be nearing the finish line; the third release candidate for v258 was published on August 20 (release notes). Now is a good time to dig in and take a look at some of the new features, enhancements, and removals coming soon to systemd. These include new workload-management features, a concept for multiple home-directory environments, and the final, once-and-for-all removal of support for control groups version 1.

Attendees at EuroPython had the chance to preview part of Python: The Documentary during a keynote panel. The full film, created by CultRepo, is now available on YouTube:

This is the story of the world's most beloved programming language: Python. What began as a side project in Amsterdam during the 1990s became the software powering artificial intelligence, data science and some of the world's biggest companies. But Python's future wasn't certain; at one point it almost disappeared.

This 90-minute documentary features Guido van Rossum, Travis Oliphant, Barry Warsaw, and many more, and they tell the story of Python's rise, its community-driven evolution, the conflicts that almost tore it apart, and the language's impact on... well... everything.

The video of the keynote is also available.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 6.16.4, 6.12.44, 6.6.103, 6.1.149, 5.15.190, 5.10.241, and 5.4.297 stable Linux kernels. Each one contains important fixes.

Alyssa Rosenzweig has written a blog post about her work to help ship a "great driver" for the Apple M1 GPU that supports OpenGL, Vulkan, and enables gaming with Proton.

We've succeeded beyond my dreams. The challenges I chased, I have tackled. The drivers are fully upstream in Mesa. Performance isn't too bad. With the Vulkan on Apple myth busted, conformant Vulkan is now coming to macOS via LunarG's KosmicKrisp project building on my work.

Satisfied, I am now stepping away from the Apple ecosystem. My friends in the Asahi Linux orbit will carry the torch from here.

Rosenzweig indicates her next project will be working on Intel's X^e-HPG graphics architecture. LWN covered her talk on Apple M1/M2 GPU drivers in October 2024.

The Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) language is used by web browsers to style XML content to make it easily readable; XSLT is part of the HTML living standard that is maintained by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG). Only a small fraction of web sites serve content that requires web browsers to support XSLT, in part because major browser implementations have neglected the technology over the past 25 years. Now, it seems, they would like to rid themselves of it entirely. A plan to disable XSLT in Blink (Chrome's rendering engine) and a pull request by a Google Chrome developer to remove mentions of the specification from the HTML standard have been met with opposition, but arguments in favor of XSLT have proven ineffective.

The GhostBSD project has released version 25.02 of the FreeBSD-based desktop operating system. This release brings GhostBSD up to date with FreeBSD 14.3, includes enhancements for the Software Station package management application, and introduces an "OS X-like" desktop environment based on GNUstep called Gershwin:

This early preview includes:

• GNUstep-based desktop environment with familiar OS X-style interface
• Seamless integration with GhostBSD tools through wrappers for installer, Software Station, Backup Station, and Update Station
• Support for running non-GNUstep applications alongside GNUstep apps
• Several included GNUstep applications to get you started

LWN covered GhostBSD in June 2024.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (node-cipher-base), Fedora (keylime-agent-rust and libtiff), Oracle (aide, kernel, mod_http2, pam, pki-deps:10.6, python-cryptography, python3, python3.12, and thunderbird), SUSE (cheat, ffmpeg, firebird, govulncheck-vulndb, postgresql17, tomcat, tomcat10, tomcat11, ucode-intel-20250812, and v2ray-core), and Ubuntu (binutils, gst-plugins-base1.0, gst-plugins-good1.0, and linux-raspi-realtime).

The PyCon team has announced that all PyCon US 2025 recordings are now available on its YouTube channel.

We had an amazing and diverse group of community members join us for PyCon US 2025, attending from 58 different countries! By the numbers, we welcomed a total attendance of 2,225 Pythonistas to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. We couldn't be more grateful for all who supported the Python ecosystem and helped make PyCon US 2025 a huge success.

See the LWN conference index for coverage of some of the talks from PyCon US 2025.

The Arch Linux project has posted an update about recent service outages that have affected its infrastructure:

The Arch Linux Project is currently experiencing an ongoing denial of service attack that primarily impacts our main webpage, the Arch User Repository (AUR), and the Forums.

We are aware of the problems that this creates for our end users and will continue to actively work with our hosting provider to mitigate the attack. We are also evaluating DDoS protection providers while carefully considering factors including cost, security, and ethical standards.

The post contains information on workarounds to use during the service disruption, and notes that Arch is not sharing technical details about the attack or mitigation while the attack is still ongoing.