Security updates have been issued by Debian (dns-root-data and xorg-server), Fedora (glibc, mingw-glib2, and optipng), Red Hat (iputils, kernel, kernel-rt, krb5, libarchive, mod_auth_openidc, mod_proxy_cluster, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), SUSE (python313), and Ubuntu (fig2dev, gnuplot, gss-ntlmssp, linux, linux-gcp, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-ibm, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-tegra, linux-nvidia-tegra-igx, linux-oracle, linux-aws-5.15, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-ibm-5.15, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-oracle-5.15, linux-aws-fips, linux-fips, linux-gcp-fips, linux-hwe-5.15, and linux-intel-iot-realtime, linux-realtime).

KDE contributor Nate Graham recently wrote about the KDE Project's plans for Plasma's X11 session. He notes that the project will continue to ensure that Plasma "continues to compile and deploy on X11" and isn't horribly broken. Major regressions will probably be fixed, eventually, but the writing is on the wall:

X11's upstream development has dropped off significantly in recent years, and X11 isn't able to perform up to the standards of what people expect today with respect to HDR, 10 bits-per-color monitors, other fancy monitor features, multi-monitor setups (especially with mixed DPIs or refresh rates), multi-GPU setups, screen tearing, security, crash robustness, input handling, and more.

As for when Plasma will drop support for X11? There's currently no firm timeline for this, and I certainly don't expect it to happen in the next year, or even the next two years. But that's just a guess; it depends on how quickly we implement everything on https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Wayland_Known_Significant_Issues. Our plan is to handle everything on that page such that even the most hardcore X11 user doesn't notice anything missing when they move to Wayland.

The postmarketOS project, which creates a Linux distribution for mobile devices, announced it was working on adding a version with systemd last March. That day has arrived with the announcement of version 25.06:

We considered supporting an upgrade from OpenRC to systemd in our upgrade script, but then decided against it as such an upgrade path might introduce its own bugs and we would rather spend the time improving other parts of postmarketOS. So for this one-time scenario we ask you to please reinstall postmarketOS to get from OpenRC to systemd. Thank you for your understanding!

Adrian Vovk, a GNOME contributor and member of its release team, recently announced in a blog post that GNOME would be adding new dependencies on systemd, and soon. The idea is to shed GNOME's homegrown service manager in favor of using systemd, and to improve GNOME's ability to run concurrent user sessions. However, the move is also going to throw a spanner in the works for the BSDs and Linux distributions without systemd when the changes take effect in the GNOME 49 release that is set for September.

The Collabora blog has a summary, written by Nicolas Dufresne, about the Linux Media Summit held on May 13 in Nice, France. It was co-located with the Embedded Recipes conference and had sessions on stateless video encoders, camera support, staging drivers, memory accounting, and a multi-committer model for the media subsystem. "Our largest Media Summit to date brought together around 20 engaged participants. Engagement was strong, marked by thoughtful questions and lively discussions."

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (libblockdev and open-vm-tools), Debian (debian-security-support, gdk-pixbuf, konsole, and node-send), Fedora (apache-commons-beanutils, chromium, clamav, dotnet9.0, libblockdev, mediawiki, mingw-python-setuptools, pam, perl-File-Find-Rule, python-pycares, python-setuptools, spdlog, udisks2, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), Mageia (chromium-browser-stable), Oracle (apache-commons-beanutils, container-tools:ol8, gimp:2.8, idm:DL1, perl-FCGI:0.78, and postgresql), Red Hat (container-tools:rhel8, delve, git-lfs, go-toolset:rhel8, grafana, kernel, mod_auth_openidc, and spice-client-win), SUSE (apache-commons-beanutils, apache2-mod_security2, distribution, gstreamer-plugins-good, icu, ignition, perl, python310, python311, python312, and python39), and Ubuntu (apache-log4j1.2 and botan).

Linus has released 6.16-rc3 for testing. "So rc2 was smaller than usual, but rc3 seems to be right in the usual ballpark for this time, so everything looks entirely normal."

The Linux kernel is seeing a steady accumulation of Rust code. As it becomes more prevalent, maintainers may want to know how to read, review, and test the Rust code that relates to their areas of expertise. Just as kernel C code is different from user-space C code, so too is kernel Rust code somewhat different from user-space Rust code. That fact makes Rust's extensive documentation of less use than it otherwise would be, and means that potential contributors with user-space experience will need some additional instruction. This article is the first in a multi-part series aimed at helping existing kernel contributors become familiar with Rust, and helping existing Rust programmers become familiar with what the kernel does differently from the typical Rust project.

A new filesystem was the topic of a session led by Zach Brown at the 2025 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit (LSFMM+BPF). The ngnfs filesystem is not a "next generation" NFS, as might be guessed from the name; Brown said that he did not think about that linkage ("I hate naming so much") until it was pointed out to him by Chuck Lever in an email. It is, instead, a filesystem for enormous data sets that are mostly stored offline.

Debian's long-awaited tag2upload service is now ready for Debian maintainers to use in some circumstances. Tag2upload makes it easier for maintainers to upload packages, by allowing them to push a signed Git commit that will automatically be picked up and built, instead of pushing a build from their local machine. LWN covered the discussion around the service in July of last year. With the timing of its readiness, it's likely to become more useful once Debian 13 ("trixie") is released.

Be very aware of the freeze! Do not just upload to unstable as your first test! Uploads to unstable, targeting trixie, can be done with tag2upload - but in most cases you will probably want to upload the same package to experimental first.