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[$] Do androids dream of accepted pull requests?
Various forms of tools, colloquially known as "AI", have been rapidly pervading all aspects of open-source development. Many developers are embracing LLM tools for code creation and review. Some project maintainers complain about suffering from a deluge of slop-laden pull requests, as well as fabricated bug and security reports. Too many projects are reeling from scraperbot attacks that effectively DDoS important infrastructure. But an AI bot flaming an open-source maintainer was not on our bingo card for 2026; that seemed a bit too far-fetched. However, it appears that is just what happened recently after a project rejected a bot-driven pull request.
[$] Open source security in spite of AI
The curl project has found AI-powered tools to be a mixed bag when it comes to security reports. At FOSDEM 2026, curl creator and lead developer Daniel Stenberg used his keynote session to discuss his experience receiving a slew of low-quality reports and, at the same time, realizing that large language model (LLM) tools can sometimes find flaws that other tools have missed.
[$] Compact formats for debugging—and more
At the 2025 Linux Plumbers Conference in Tokyo, Stephen Brennan gave a
presentation on the debuginfo
format, which contains the symbols and other information needed for
debugging, along with some alternatives. Debuginfo files are large and, he
believes, are a bit scary to customers because of the "debug" in their name.
By rethinking debuginfo and the tools that use it, he hopes that
free-software developers "can add new, interesting capabilities to tools
that we are already using or build new interesting tools
".
[$] The first half of the 7.0 merge window
The merge window for Linux 7.0 has opened, and with it comes a number of interesting improvements and enhancements. At the time of writing, there have been 7,695 non-merge commits accepted. The 7.0 release is not special, according to the kernel's versioning scheme — just the release that comes after 6.19. Humans love symbolism and round numbers, though, so it may feel like something of a milestone.
[$] Open-source mapping for disaster response
At FOSDEM 2026 Petya
Kangalova, a senior tech partnership and engagement manager for the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap
Team (HOT) spoke about how
the project helps people map their surroundings to assist in
disaster response and humanitarian aid. The project has
developed a stack of technology to help volunteers collectively map an
area and add in local knowledge metadata. "One of the core things
that we believe is that when we speak about disaster response or
people having access to data is that they really need accessible
technology that's free and open for anyone to use
."
[$] Poisoning scraperbots with iocaine
Web sites are being increasingly beset by AI scraperbots — a problem that we have written about before, and which has slowly ramped up to an occasional de-facto DDoS attack. This has not gone uncontested, however: web site operators from around the world have been working on inventive countermeasures. These solutions target the problem posed by scraperbots in different ways; iocaine, a MIT-licensed nonsense generator, is designed to make scraped text less useful by poisoning it with fake data. The hope is to make running scraperbots not economically viable, and thereby address the problem at its root instead of playing an eternal game of Whac-A-Mole.
[$] The reverting of revocable
Transient devices pose a special challenge for an operating-system kernel. They can disappear at any time, leaving behind kernel data structures that no longer refer to an existing device, but which may still be in use by unknown kernel code. Managing the resulting lifecycle issues has frustrated kernel developers for years. In September 2025, the revocable resource-management patch series from Tzung-Bi Shih appeared to offer a partial solution to this problem. Since then, though, other problems have arisen, and the planned merging of this series into the 7.0 release has been called off.
[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for February 12, 2026
Posted Feb 12, 2026 0:02 UTC (Thu)The LWN.net Weekly Edition for February 12, 2026 is available.
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition
- Front: Git; GCC and KCFI; modernizing swapping; 6.18 statistics; modern FOSS challenges.
- Briefs: Kernel ML; tag2upload; LFS sysvinit; postmarketOS FOSDEM; Ardour 9.0; Offpunk 3.0; Dave Farber RIP; Quotes; ...
- Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.
[$] Evolving Git for the next decade
Git is ubiquitous; in the last two decades, the version-control system has truly achieved world domination. Almost every developer uses it and the vast majority of open-source projects are hosted in Git repositories. That does not mean, however, that it is perfect. Patrick Steinhardt used his main-track session at FOSDEM 2026 to discuss some of its shortcomings and how they are being addressed to prepare Git for the next decade.
[$] FOSS in times of war, scarcity, and AI
Michiel Leenaars, director of strategy at the NLnet Foundation, used his keynote at FOSDEM to sound warnings for the community for free and open-source software (FOSS); in particular, he talked about the threats posed by geopolitical politics, dangerous allies, and large language models (LLMs). His talk was a mix of observations and suggestions that pertain to FOSS in general and to Europe in particular as geopolitical tensions have mounted in recent months.
Plasma 6.6.0 released
Version 6.6.0 of KDE's Plasma desktop environment has been released. Notable additions in this release include the ability to create global themes for Plasma, an "extract text" feature in the Spectacle screenshot utility, accessibility improvements, and a new on-screen keyboard. See the changelog for a full list of new features, enhancements, and bug fixes.
The release is dedicated to the memory of Björn Balazs, a KDE
contributor who passed away in September 2025. "Björn's drive to
help people achieve the privacy and control over technology that he
believed they deserved is the stuff FLOSS legends are made of.
"
An update on upki
In December 2025, Canonical announced a plan to develop a universal Public Key Infrastructure called upki. Jon Seager has published an update about the project with instructions on trying it out.
In the few weeks since we announced upki, the core revocation engine has been established and is now functional, the CRLite mirroring tool is working and a production deployment in Canonical's datacentres is ongoing. We're now preparing for an alpha release and remain on track for an opt-in preview for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.
Security updates for Tuesday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (gimp, go-toolset:rhel8, and golang), Debian (roundcube), Fedora (gnupg2, libpng, and rsync), Mageia (dcmtk and usbmuxd), Oracle (gcc-toolset-14-binutils, gimp, gnupg2, go-toolset:ol8, golang, kernel, and openssl), Slackware (libssh, lrzip, and mozilla), SUSE (abseil-cpp, chromium, curl, elemental-toolkit, elemental-operator, expat, freerdp, iperf, libnvidia-container, libsoup, libxml2, net-snmp, openCryptoki, openssl-3, patch, protobuf, python-urllib3, python-xmltodict, python311, screen, systemd, and util-linux), and Ubuntu (alsa-lib, gnutls28, and linux-aws, linux-oracle).
Four stable kernels to fix problematic commit
Greg-Kroah Hartman has released the 6.19.2, 6.18.12, 6.12.73, and 6.6.126 stable kernels. These kernels
each contain a single change; Kroah-Hartman has reverted one
problematic commit that prevents some systems from booting. "If the
last stable release worked just fine, no need to upgrade.
"
Four stable kernels for Monday
Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 6.19.1, 6.18.11, 6.12.72, and 6.6.125 stable kernels. As always, each contains important fixes throughout the tree; users of these kernels are advised to upgrade.
Security updates for Monday
Security updates have been issued by Debian (chromium, pdns-recursor, python-django, and wireshark), Fedora (gnutls, linux-sgx, mingw-expat, nginx, nginx-mod-brotli, nginx-mod-fancyindex, nginx-mod-headers-more, nginx-mod-modsecurity, nginx-mod-naxsi, nginx-mod-vts, p11-kit, python-aiohttp, vim, and xen), Red Hat (kernel, kernel-rt, python-s3transfer, python-urllib3, and resource-agents), SUSE (aaa_base, abseil-cpp, build-20260202, cargo-auditable, cargo-c, chromedriver, cockpit, cockpit-packages, cockpit-subscriptions, curl, elemental-toolkit, elemental-operator, gnome-remote-desktop, go1.24, go1.25, gpg2, haproxy, himmelblau, htmldoc, ImageMagick, iperf, java-1_8_0-openjdk, kernel, krb5, kubevirt, libowncloudsync-devel, libpng16-16, libsodium, libsoup, libsoup2, micropython, net-snmp, opencryptoki, openjfx, openssl1, ovmf, postgresql14, postgresql15, postgresql16, protobuf, python-aiohttp, python-brotli, python-maturin, python-pip, python-urllib3, python310, python311, python-rpm-macros, python311-cryptography, python314, screen, systemd, u-boot, util-linux, and vim), and Ubuntu (dotnet8, dotnet10, expat, freerdp2, freerdp3, and python-aiohttp).
Vim 9.2 released
Version 9.2 of the
Vim text editor has been released. "Vim 9.2 brings significant
enhancements to the Vim9 scripting language, improved diff mode,
comprehensive completion features, and platform-specific improvements
including experimental Wayland support.
" Also included is a new
interactive tutor mode.
New delegation for Debian's data protection team
Debian Project Leader (DPL) Andreas Tille has announced a new delegation for Debian's data protection team:
Following the end of the previous delegation, Debian was left without an active Data Protection team. This situation has understandably drawn external attention and highlighted the importance of having a clearly identified point of contact for data protection matters within the project.
I am therefore very pleased to announce that new volunteers have stepped forward, allowing us to re-establish the Debian Data Protection team with a fresh delegation.
Tille had put out a call for volunteers in January after all previous members of the team had stepped down. He has appointed Aigars Mahinovs, Andrew M.A. Cater, Bart Martens, Emmanuel Arias, Gunnar Wolf, Kiran S Kunjumon, and Salvo Tomaselli as the new members of the team. The team provides a central coordination and advisory function around Debian's data handling, retention, dealing with deletion requests, and more.
Security updates for Friday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (firefox, gcc-toolset-14-binutils, nodejs:20, nodejs:22, nodejs:24, php:7.4, and python3.12), Debian (haproxy, nginx, postgresql-15, and postgresql-17), Fedora (libssh), Oracle (glib2, libsoup, nodejs:20, nodejs:22, and php:7.4), SUSE (assimp, gnutls, helm, kernel, kubevirt, virt-api-container, virt-controller-container, virt-exportproxy-container, virt-exportserver-container, virt-handler-container, virt-launcher-container, virt-libguestfs-t, libmunge2, libsodium, libsoup, micropython, munge, openCryptoki, python-azure-core, rust-keylime, rustup, sccache, snpguest, tcpreplay, xorg-x11-server, xrdp, and zabbix), and Ubuntu (dnsdist, dotnet8, dotnet9, dotnet10, haproxy, libpng1.6, linux-aws-5.15, linux-azure, linux-azure-fips, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4, munge, nginx, and node-dottie).
Debian DFSG Team announces new dashboard and queue processes
Reinhard Tartler of Debian's new DFSG, Licensing & New Packages Team, or simply "DFSG Team", has announced that the team is now operational and is deploying new tooling to improve the NEW queue experience for Debian developers and maintainers.
Our primary and immediate goal is simple: get the queue down.
We are currently settling in and refining our processes to ensure stability and consistency. While our focus right now is on clearing the backlog, our long-term vision is to enable all Debian Developers to meaningfully contribute to DFSG reviewing activities, distributing the workload and knowledge more effectively across the project.
The announcement includes information on the new dashboard for packages in the NEW queue, the rationale for the new tooling, and an introduction to the members of the team.