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[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for March 5, 2026
Posted Mar 5, 2026 1:42 UTC (Thu)The LWN.net Weekly Edition for March 5, 2026 is available.
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition
- Front: Python's bitwise-inversion operator; atomic buffered I/O; keeping open source open; Magit and Majutsu; IIIF; free software and free tools.
- Briefs: Ad tracking; firmware updates; TCP zero-copy; Motorola GrapheneOS phones; Gram 1.0; groff 1.24.0; Texinfo 7.3; Quotes; ...
- Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.
[$] Magit and Majutsu: discoverable version-control
Jujutsu is an increasingly popular Git-compatible version-control system. It has a focus on simplifying Git's conceptual model to produce a smoother, clearer command-line experience. Some people already have a preferred replacement for Git's usual command-line interface, though: Magit, an Emacs package for working with Git repositories that also tries to make the interface more discoverable. Now, a handful of people are working to implement a Magit-style interface for Jujutsu: Majutsu.
[$] Free software needs free tools
One of the contradictions of the modern open-source movement is that projects which respect user freedoms often rely on proprietary tools that do not: communities often turn to non-free software for code hosting, communication, and more. At Configuration Management Camp (CfgMgmtCamp) 2026, Jan Ainali spoke about the need for open-source projects to adopt open tools; he hoped to persuade new and mature projects to switch to open alternatives, even if just one tool, to reduce their dependencies on tech giants and support community-driven infrastructure.
[$] The ongoing quest for atomic buffered writes
There are many applications that need to be able to write multi-block chunks of data to disk with the assurance that the operation will either complete successfully or fail altogether — that the write will not be partially completed (or "torn"), in other words. For years, kernel developers have worked on providing atomic writes as a way of satisfying that need; see, for example, sessions from the Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF (LSFMM+BPF) Summit from 2023, 2024, and 2025 (twice). While atomic direct I/O is now supported by some filesystems, atomic buffered I/O still is not. Filling that gap seems certain to be a 2026 LSFMM+BPF topic but, thanks to an early discussion, the shape of a solution might already be coming into focus.
[$] The exploitation paradox in open source
The free and open-source software (FOSS) movements have always been
about giving freedom and power to individuals and organizations;
throughout that history, though, there have also been actors trying
to exploit FOSS to their own advantage. At Configuration Management
Camp (CfgMgmtCamp) 2026 in Ghent, Belgium, Richard Fontana described
the "exploitation paradox
" of open source: the recurring
pattern of crises when actors exploit loopholes to restrict freedoms
or gain the upper hand over others in the community. He also talked
about the attempts to close those loopholes as well as the need to
look beyond licenses as a means of keeping freedom alive.
[$] The troubles with Boolean inversion in Python
The Python bitwise-inversion (or complement) operator, "~", behaves pretty much as expected when it is applied to integers—it toggles every bit, from one to zero and vice versa. It might be expected that applying the operator to a non-integer, a bool for example, would raise a TypeError, but, because the bool type is really an int in disguise, the complement operator is allowed, at least for now. For nearly 15 years (and perhaps longer), there have been discussions about the oddity of that behavior and whether it should be changed. Eventually, that resulted in the "feature" being deprecated, producing a warning, with removal slated for Python 3.16 (due October 2027). That has led to some reconsideration and the deprecation may itself be deprecated.
[$] IIIF: images and visual presentations for the web
The International Image Interoperability Framework, or IIIF ("triple-eye eff"), is a small set of standards that form a basis for serving, displaying, and reusing image data on the web. It consists of a number of API definitions that compose with each other to achieve a standard for providing, for example, presentations of high-resolution images at multiple zoom levels, as well as bundling multiple images together. Presentations may include metadata about details like authorship, dates, references to other representations of the same work, copyright information, bibliographic identifiers, etc. Presentations can be further grouped into collections, and metadata can be added in the form of transcriptions, annotations, or captions. IIIF is most popular with cultural-heritage organizations, such as libraries, universities, and archives.
LWN.net Weekly Edition for February 26, 2026
Posted Feb 26, 2026 0:20 UTC (Thu)The LWN.net Weekly Edition for February 26, 2026 is available.
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition
- Front: New flags for clone3(); Discord replacements; virtual swap spaces; BPF memory protection keys; PostgreSQL's lessons in attracting contributors; 7.0 merge window; Network Time Security.
- Briefs: OpenSUSE governance; Firefox 148.0; GNU Awk 5.4.0; GNU Octave 11.1.0; Rust in Ladybird; LibreOffice Online; Weston 15.0; RIP Robert Kaye; Quotes; ...
- Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.
No hardware memory isolation for BPF programs
On February 12, Yeoreum Yun posted a suggestion for an improvement to the security of the kernel's BPF implementation: use memory protection keys to prevent unauthorized access to memory by BPF programs. Yun wanted to put the topic on the list for discussion at the Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit in May, but the lack of engagement makes that unlikely. They also have a patch set implementing some of the proposed changes, but has not yet shared that with the mailing list. Yun's proposal does not seem likely to be accepted in its current form, but the kernel has added hardware-based hardening options in the past, sometimes after substantial discussion.
An effort to secure the Network Time Protocol
The Network Time Protocol (NTP) debuted in 1985; it is a universally used, open specification that is deeply important for all sorts of activities we take for granted. It also, despite a number of efforts, remains stubbornly unsecured. Ruben Nijveld presented work at FOSDEM 2026 to speed adoption of the thus-far largely ignored standard for securing NTP traffic: IETF's RFC-8915 that specifies Network Time Security (NTS) for NTP.
Seven new stable Linux kernels
Sasha Levin has announced the release of the 6.19.6, 6.18.16, 6.12.75, 6.6.128, 6.1.165, 5.15.202, and 5.10.252 stable kernels. Each contains important fixes throughout the tree; users of these kernels are advised to upgrade.
Security updates for Wednesday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (container-tools:rhel8, firefox, go-rpm-macros, kernel, kernel-rt, mingw-fontconfig, nginx:1.24, thunderbird, and valkey), Debian (gimp), Fedora (apt, avr-binutils, keylime, keylime-agent-rust, perl-Crypt-URandom, python-apt, and rsync), Red Hat (go-rpm-macros and yggdrasil-worker-package-manager), Slackware (python3), SUSE (busybox, cosign, cups, docker, evolution-data-server, freerdp, glibc, gnome-remote-desktop, go1.24-openssl, go1.25-openssl, govulncheck-vulndb, libpng16, libsoup, libssh, libxml2, patch, postgresql14, postgresql15, postgresql16, postgresql17, postgresql18, python, python311, rust-keylime, smc-tools, tracker-miners, and zlib), and Ubuntu (curl, imagemagick, intel-microcode, linux, linux-aws, linux-kvm, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.15, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-ibm, linux-ibm-5.15, linux-nvidia-tegra-5.15, linux-nvidia-tegra-igx, linux-oracle-5.15, linux-aws-fips, and linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4).
CBP Tapped Into the Online Advertising Ecosystem To Track Peoples’ Movements (404 Media)
This 404 Media article looks at how the US Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) is using location data from phones to track the location of people of interest.
Specifically, CBP says the data was in part sourced via real-time bidding, or RTB. Whenever an advertisement is displayed inside an app, a near instantaneous bidding process happens with companies vying to have their advert served to a certain demographic. A side effect of this is that surveillance firms, or rogue advertising companies working on their behalf, can observe this process and siphon information about mobile phones, including their location. All of this is essentially invisible to an ordinary phone user, but happens constantly.
We should note that the minimal advertising shown on LWN is not delivered via this bidding system.
Garrett: To update blobs or not to update blobs
Matthew Garrett examines the factors that go into the decision about whether to install a firmware update or not.
I trust my CPU vendor. I don't trust my CPU vendor because I want to, I trust my CPU vendor because I have no choice. I don't think it's likely that my CPU vendor has designed a CPU that identifies when I'm generating cryptographic keys and biases the RNG output so my keys are significantly weaker than they look, but it's not literally impossible. I generate keys on it anyway, because what choice do I have? At some point I will buy a new laptop because Electron will no longer fit in 32GB of RAM and I will have to make the same affirmation of trust, because the alternative is that I just don't have a computer.
Security updates for Tuesday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (containernetworking-plugins, gnutls, kernel, libpng, and skopeo), Debian (firefox-esr, php8.2, and spip), Fedora (erlang and python-pillow), Red Hat (go-toolset:rhel8, golang, and yggdrasil), SUSE (cups, fluidsynth, gvfs, haproxy, libsoup, libsoup-3_0-0, mozilla-nss, python-azure-core, and shim), and Ubuntu (git and mailman).
Høiland-Jørgensen: The inner workings of TCP zero-copy
Toke Høiland-Jørgensen has posted an overview of how zero-copy networking works in the Linux kernel.
Since the memory is being copied directly from userspace to the network device, the userspace application has to keep it around unmodified, until it has finished sending. The sendmsg() syscall itself is asynchronous, and will return without waiting for this. Instead, once the memory buffers are no longer needed by the stack, the kernel will return a notification to userspace that the buffers can be reused.
Texinfo 7.3 released
Version 7.3 of Texinfo, the GNU documentation-formatting system, has been released. It contains a number of new features, performance improvements, and enhancements.
Motorola announces a partnership with the GrapheneOS Foundation
Motorola has announced
that it will be working with the GrapheneOS Foundation, a producer of a
security-enhanced Android distribution. "Together, Motorola and the
GrapheneOS Foundation will work to strengthen smartphone security and
collaborate on future devices engineered with GrapheneOS
compatibility.
". LWN looked at
GrapheneOS last July.
Gram 1.0 released
Version
1.0 of Gram, an "opinionated fork of the Zed code editor
",
has been released. Gram removes telemetry, AI features, collaboration
features, and more. It adds built-in documentation, support for
additional languages, and tab-completion features similar to the Supertab
plugin for Vim. The mission statement for
the project explains:
At first, I tried to build some other efforts I found online to make Zed work without the AI features just so I could check it out, but didn't manage to get them to work. At some point, the curiosity turned into spite. I became determined to not only get the editor to run without all of the misfeatures, but to make it a full-blown fork of the project. Independent of corporate control, in the spirit of Vim and the late Bram Moolenaar who could have added subscription fees and abusive license agreements had he so wanted, but instead gave his work as a gift to the world and asked only for donations to a good cause close to his heart in return.
This is the result. Feel free to build it and see if it works for you. There is no license agreement or subscription beyond the open source license of the code (GPLv3). It is yours now, to do with as you please.
According to a blog post on the site, the plan for the editor is to diverge from Zed and proceed slowly.
Security updates for Monday
Security updates have been issued by Debian (lxd, orthanc, and thunderbird), Fedora (cef, chromium, gimp, nextcloud, pgadmin4, python-django4.2, python-django5, python3-docs, python3.12, python3.13, and python3.9), Oracle (container-tools:rhel8 and mingw-fontconfig), Slackware (gvfs, mozilla, and telnet), SUSE (avahi, cockpit-356, cockpit-podman, cockpit-podman-120, containerized-data-importer, digger-cli, docker, evolution-data-server, expat, firefox, freerdp2, gimp, glib2, glibc, go1, google-guest-agent, google-osconfig-agent, gosec, gpg2, heroic-games-launcher, ImageMagick, kernel, kernel-firmware, kubevirt, libIex-3_4-33, libjxl-devel, libpng16, libsodium, libsoup, libsoup2, libssh, libudisks2-0, libwireshark19, protobuf, python-pyasn1, python-urllib3, python311, python311-Flask, rust-keylime, thunderbird, ucode-intel, and valkey), and Ubuntu (git).