There are a number of small, inexpensive, low-powered e-reader or e-paper devices that have promise as ebook readers with one minor problem: the firmware they ship with does not realize their full potential. To solve that problem, the CrossPoint Reader project looks to provide replacement firmware that offers necessary features, better performance, and a more pleasant reading experience. On August 7, the project released version 1.5.0, which opens large EPUBs more quickly, provides offline dictionary lookups, and has reworked settings for changing layout and font options. The release also improves support for right-to-left text as well as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) text rendering.

Version 11.1 of the QEMU emulator has been released. The release contains more than 3,200 commits from 285 authors and includes a long list of improvements; see the announcement and changelog for the details.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (fence-agents, firefox, frr10, gstreamer1-plugins-good, iscsi-initiator-utils, isns-utils, kernel, kernel-rt, perl-DBI:1.641, postgresql, postgresql:12, and resource-agents), Debian (libgd2, openjdk-25, php7.4, php8.2, and postfix), Fedora (clamav, domoticz, and libidn), Red Hat (delve, edk2, firefox, go-fdo-client, go-fdo-server, grafana, host-metering, ignition, kernel, kernel package, kernel-rt, ldns, libarchive, mariadb10.11, mariadb:10.11, multiple packages, rhc, rhc-worker-playbook, rhc-worker-script, sssd, thunderbird, yggdrasil, and yggdrasil-worker-package-manager), Slackware (expat and openssh), and SUSE (avahi, chromedriver, erlang26, gawk, glib2, go-sendxmpp, google-guest-agent, google-osconfig-agent, gpg2, gstreamer-plugins-bad, gstreamer-plugins-base, helm, ignition, ImageMagick, java-11-openj9, java-17-openj9, java-1_8_0-openj9, java-21-openj9, java-25-openj9, libarchive, libkrun, libpcp-devel, libpng16, libssh, libssh2_org, multipath-tools, net-tools, nmap, openssl-1_1, openssl-3, pcp, perl, python-pip, python-pyasn1, python-urllib3, python3-pip, python313-Django5, runc, samba, snpguest, spice-vdagent, sssd, unbound, wget, wild, wpa_supplicant, xmlrpc-c, and zpaqfranz).

GNOME contributor Tobias Bernard has published a blog post that details some of the design team's ideas for the GNOME Shell over the long term:

Some of these we have relatively complete plans for, others are more vague ideas that need more research and prototyping. As always, getting things like these implemented depends on developer capacity and interest (and sometimes funding).

While each of these ideas may require additional discussion, prototyping, and testing, we (the design team) have collected them all together here to share our longer-term vision and to give each idea more visibility.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (gpsd), Debian (caddy, libyaml-syck-perl, nss, and wordpress), Fedora (chezmoi, chromium, emacs, kernel, knot, libcupsfilters, mingw-gstreamer1-plugins-good, mingw-libidn, mingw-python-pip, nghttp2, p11-kit, python-webob, suricata, and xen), Mageia (bind, openslide, php8.4, and php8.5), Oracle (gpsd-minimal, kernel, libarchive, libpng12, nodejs-nodemon, php:8.3, ruby:3.3, and ruby:4.0), SUSE (agama-web-ui, bind, bouncycastle, dhcpcd, ffmpeg, ffmpeg-4, freerdp, gd, gitoxide, kak-lsp, kernel-devel, librest-1_0-0, libsdb2_5_0, libssh2_org, nodejs22, PackageKit, perl, perl-Date-Manip, python-ujson, python3-sqlparse, python311, python312, python313-pymongo, ruby2.5, runc, suseconnect-ng, thunderbird, vlang, webkit2gtk3, and weechat), and Ubuntu (imagemagick and systemd).

The Django Python web-framework project has announced that it has accepted an annual release cycle proposal. This means that the project is moving from a somewhat complicated schedule that interspersed short-lived feature releases and long-term-support (LTS) releases to a simpler annual cycle where each release is supported for three years.

Every feature release gets three years of support: one year of mainstream bugfixes, then two years of security and data-loss fixes. The "LTS" label is retired — every feature release now carries that same, unique commitment.

No more LTS gap: no racing a deadline to jump two years of changes at once. Upgrade one year at a time, whenever suits you within the support window. Three versions are supported at any time, giving third-party packages a clear, rolling target.

This will take effect with the upcoming Django 2028 release, expected in January 2028.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (firefox, gpsd-minimal, kernel, libarchive, libgcrypt, and LibRaw), Debian (bind9, ca-certificates, chromium, dnsdist, icinga2, kitty, libheif, openjdk-21, pdns, pdns-recursor, thunderbird, and xen), Fedora (bird, erlang, kernel, mingw-glib2, nghttp2, p11-kit, perl, perl-Devel-Cover, perl-PAR-Packer, pgadmin4, polymake, python-nh3, python-wsgidav, python3.12, rabbitmq-server, rust-ammonia, seamonkey, and udisks2), Mageia (python-starlette), Oracle (gnutls, kernel, and LibRaw), Red Hat (container-tools:rhel8), Slackware (wpa_supplicant), and SUSE (azure-storage-azcopy, bouncycastle, ffmpeg-4, fuse-overlayfs, gleam, gstreamer-plugins-bad, libssh2-1, libssh2_org, libwireshark19, libXfont2-2, perl-Mojo-JWT, perl-Mojolicious, podman, python310, python313-Django4, and tekton-cli).

The shadow-utils project provides the tools that handle /etc/shadow, /etc/passwd, and other related databases; in general, it manages users and groups on many Linux systems. While most software releases are notable for what is added, the recent shadow-utils 4.20.0 release is most noteworthy for what has been removed. Specifically, several utilities and functionality related to periodic password expiry, which were deprecated in the December 2025 4.19.0 release, have been removed as planned. It is still possible to manage some aspects of password aging with shadow-utils, but organizations that depend on such features should start planning for their complete removal within a few years.

Version 1.33.0 of the LightDM display manager has been released. This is the first release in four years: the project had been sponsored by Canonical but was effectively unmaintained in recent years. It has been transferred to a new community repository and is now maintained by Joshua Peisach and Neal Gompa.

The new release includes Qt6 support, code optimizations, and a list of other fixes that had been in limbo pending a new release.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 6.12.102, 6.6.150, 6.1.182, 5.15.215, 5.10.264 stable kernels. This round of stable kernel releases contains a fix for a single bug, found by Thomas Lamprecht, that affected several of the kernels released yesterday in response to a security vulnerability (CVE-2026-68480) that could allow data leakage through speculative execution.

The 6.12.102 release adds the backported security fix for CVE-2026-68480 to the 6.12 series. As always, users are advised to upgrade.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (compat-libtiff3, fence-agents, firefox, freerdp, frr, gimp, gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, java-25-openjdk, kernel, kernel-rt, ldns, libgcrypt, libXfont2, nodejs:22, nodejs:24, p11-kit, pipewire, resource-agents, sg3_utils, thunderbird, and yelp), Debian (async-http-client, jq, kernel, linux-6.1, linux-6.12, redis, and udisks2), Fedora (abrt, chromium, coreutils, curl, freeipa, gst-devtools, gst-editing-services, gstreamer1, gstreamer1-doc, gstreamer1-plugin-libav, gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, gstreamer1-plugins-base, gstreamer1-plugins-good, gstreamer1-plugins-ugly-free, gstreamer1-rtsp-server, ImageMagick, kernel, libXfont2, php, python-gstreamer1, samba, tcpreplay, and trafficserver), Mageia (firefox, nss, rootcerts, python-django, and thunderbird), Oracle (freerdp, gimp, gpsd, kernel, kernel-uek, and osbuild-composer), Red Hat (buildah and container-tools:rhel8), Slackware (libXfont2 and p11-kit), and SUSE (amazon-ecs-init, azure-storage-azcopy, bind, bouncycastle, cockpit-repos, cockpit-subscriptions, dnsdist, ffmpeg-4, hawk-apiserver, nodejs22, nodejs24, OpenImageIO, openssl-1_1, openssl-3, perl-Mojo-JWT, php8, rsyslog, sssd, and wireshark).

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 7.1.7, 6.18.43, 6.6.149, 6.1.181, 5.15.214, and 5.10.263 stable kernels. These kernels fix a single security vulnerability (CVE-2026-68480) that could allow data leakage through speculative execution. Users of those kernels are advised to upgrade.

Version 0.10 of the uutils project's Rust Coreutils has been released. This release focused on compatibility with the GNU Core Utilities suite, with Rust Coreutils now passing 645 of 690 tests, up from 625 with version 0.9.0. Notable changes in this release include addition of the mv --exchange option, an OpenSSL backend for checksum utilities, applying SELinux labels at creation when using mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod, as well as a number of performance and security improvements.

The project has an online playground that runs the Rust Coreutils directly in the browser via WebAssembly for those who would like to try the utilities without installing them. LWN covered the uutils project in February 2025.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (7zip, kernel, libde265, and p7zip), Mageia (tomcat), Oracle (fence-agents, frr10, kernel, ldns, libgcrypt, mingw-glib2, nodejs24, osbuild-composer, p11-kit, php8.4, sg3_utils, and thunderbird), Red Hat (libXfont2), and SUSE (containerd, evince, libXfont2, nginx, openssl-3, pcp, php7, php8, python-Django, python-httplib2, python-nltk, rrdtool, vifm, and wireshark).

Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:

• Front: Process-builder API; Fedora COI; FUSE io_uring buffer sizes; BPF network namespaces; FUSE plans; BPF libraries; directory creation system call.
• Briefs: AISI hack; JFrog on CVEs; npm worm; AUR adoption; NetBSD 11.0; b4 0.16.0; C-Kermit 11; Rust LLM policy; Servo 0.4.0; Quotes; ...
• Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (fence-agents, gstreamer1-plugins-good, kernel, kernel-rt, p11-kit, perl-Archive-Tar, perl-DBI, and thunderbird), Debian (aom, botan3, and kernel), Fedora (abrt, coreutils, doctl, kernel, open62541, perl, perl-Devel-Cover, perl-PAR-Packer, and polymake), Mageia (acl and php), Oracle (firefox, frr, kernel, libreswan, nodejs-nodemon, nodejs22, perl-Archive-Tar, php:7.4, php:8.2, rsync, and thunderbird), Red Hat (compat-libtiff3, libpq, libtiff, postgresql, postgresql16, postgresql18, postgresql:12, postgresql:13, postgresql:15, postgresql:16, and postgresql:18), Slackware (stunnel), and SUSE (alloy, alsa, bind, chromedriver, corepack24, ffmpeg-4, golang-github-prometheus-prometheus, google-guest-agent, google-osconfig-agent, kubevirt, libgcrypt, libpng16, multipath-tools, netty, netty-tcnative, nodejs26, openssl-1_1, openssl-3, perl-HTTP-Tiny, perl-YAML-Syck, podman, python-sh, python-ujson, rsyslog, spice-vdagent, thrift, valkey, wpa_supplicant, and xen).

The Fedora Council is considering a conflict-of-interest (COI) policy for its decision-making bodies, such as the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo), special-interest groups (SIGs), and any other groups or individuals that report to the council and are responsible for decisions that impact the Fedora project. The current draft does not, however, apply to the council itself. The public discussion for the COI policy began on July 23 and seems to be nearing completion, with the council set to discuss the topic again during its meeting on August 13.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (frr, ldns, mingw-glib2, and perl-Archive-Tar), Debian (ruby2.7), Fedora (borgbackup, nebula, python-nh3, rust-ammonia, and seamonkey), Mageia (librabbitmq, libvncserver, packages, perl, perl-GD, perl-Unicode-LineBreak, squid, and unbound), Oracle (compat-libtiff3, frr, gstreamer1-plugins-good, javapackages-tools:201801, libreswan, nodejs:22, nodejs:24, p11-kit, perl-Archive-Tar, perl-DBI, php, pki-deps:10.6, and python-tornado), and SUSE (aws-iam-authenticator, bind, containerd, gawk, google-cloud-sap-agent, ignition, ImageMagick, java-11-openjdk, libpng16, libssh, mcphost, nginx, openssh, openssl-1_1, perl-DBI, perl-HTTP-Date, perl-Net-DNS, python-urwid, python3-dulwich, python312, python313, python3, python313-pydantic, python313-sentry-sdk, rrdtool, s390-tools, samba, spice-vdagent, vim, and xen).

John MacFarlane has published a lengthy retrospective to commemorate twenty years of the Pandoc document converter.

On August 3, 2006, I uploaded the first version of pandoc to my website, releasing it under the free GPL license. Pandoc 0.1 consisted of about 3000 lines of Haskell code, with no dependencies aside from GHC's standard library. It could convert Markdown, reStructuredText, HTML, and LaTeX documents into any of these formats, plus RTF or S5. I had no idea at the time that this would just be the first of over two hundred releases over the next twenty years; that the project would become the most popular program written in Haskell; that I would spend countless hours on bug-fixes, improvement, and project management; that I would collaborate with programmers in many other countries; that pandoc would come to support over fifty document formats; that it would allow automatic generation of citations and bibliographies; that it would become integrated into academic writing tools like Quarto and Jupyter Notebook; that it would be installed on millions of computers around the world.

How did this happen? I want to take advantage of pandoc's birthday to tell the story of the project, as best I can remember it.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 7.1.6, 6.18.42, 6.12.101, and 6.6.148 stable kernels. Each contains hundreds of patches—the 7.1.6 kernel has more than 700—with fixes throughout the tree. Users are advised to upgrade.