Security updates have been issued by Debian (sslh), Oracle (container-tools:rhel8, gnome-remote-desktop, golang, javapackages-tools:201801, jq, libvpx, libxml2, mpfr, and perl-File-Find-Rule-Perl), Red Hat (glib2, libblockdev, and sudo), Slackware (git), SUSE (avif-tools, containerd, djvulibre, gpg2, helm, kernel, libpoppler-cpp2, libxml2, libxml2-2, openssl-3, perl-YAML-LibYAML, python-cryptography, python-setuptools, python311-pycares, tomcat10, and wireshark), and Ubuntu (djvulibre, git, libyaml-libyaml-perl, and protobuf).

Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:

• Front: Python packaging; Kernel API specification; Kselftests and KUnit; niri; pedalboard.
• Briefs: Git security fixes; Amarok 3.3; Bash 5.3; Thunderbird 140; tmux-rs; U-Boot 2025.07; Quotes; ...
• Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

Version 3.3 of the Amarok music player has been released. This is the first release of Amarok based on KDE Frameworks 6 and Qt 6. Amarok 3.3 also includes a major rework of its audio engine to use GStreamer for audio playback.

The reworked audio engine provides unified feature set for all users and should provide a solid and future-proof sonic experience for years to come. Notable improvements have also landed to the database system: improved character set support helps with e.g. emojis in podcast descriptions and other very exotic symbols, date handling has been improved ('year 2038 problem'), and various other potential and actual database-related issues have been fixed.

The AlmaLinux project has announced new upgrade paths for its ELevate utility, which allows users to upgrade between major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux derivatives. The new paths include upgrades from AlmaLinux 9 to AlmaLinux 10 and CentOS Stream 9 to CentOS Stream 10, with support for EPEL, Docker CE, and PostgreSQL third-party package repositories. LWN covered ELevate last year.

It is no secret that the Python packaging world is at something of a crossroads; there have been debates and discussions about the packaging landscape that started long before our 2023 series describing some of the difficulties. There has been progress since then—and incremental improvements all along, in truth—but a new initiative is looking to overhaul packaging for the language. At PyCon US 2025, Barry Warsaw and Jonathan Dekhtiar gave a presentation on the WheelNext project, which is a community effort that aims improve the experience for users and providers of Python packages while also working with toolmakers and other parts of the ecosystem to "reinvent the wheel". While the project's name refers to Python's wheel binary distribution format, its goals stretch much further than simply the format.

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (container-tools:rhel8, jq, kernel, podman, python-setuptools, socat, and thunderbird), Gentoo (Chromium, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge. Opera, ClamAV, Git, NTP, REXML, and strongSwan), Oracle (buildah, gnome-remote-desktop, ipa, jq, kernel, podman, python-setuptools, ruby:3.3, socat, uek-kernel, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), SUSE (kernel), and Ubuntu (freerdp3, git, gnupg2, linux-aws, linux-oracle, linux-azure, linux-azure, linux-azure-6.11, linux-fips, linux-aws-fips, linux-azure-fips, linux-gcp-fips, linux-ibm-5.15, linux-intel-iotg, linux-nvidia-tegra, linux-nvidia-tegra-5.15, linux-nvidia-tegra-igx, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency, linux-oem-6.11, and onionshare).

Versions v2.43.7, v2.44.4, v2.45.4, v2.46.4, v2.47.3, v2.48.2, v2.49.1 and v2.50.1 of the Git source-code management system have been released. "This is a set of coordinated security fix releases. Please update at your earliest convenience". See the announcement for details; many of the vulnerabilities have to do with tricks buried in untrusted repositories.

Version 140 of the Thunderbird mail client has been released. Notable features include "dark message mode" to adapt message content to dark mode, the ability to easily transfer desktop settings to the mobile Thunderbird client, experimental support for Microsoft Exchange, as well as global controls for message threading and sort order.

Thunderbird 140 is an extended-support release (ESR) which will be supported for 12 months. However, the Thunderbird project is trying to encourage users to adopt the Release channel for monthly updates instead. The project is staggering upgrades to 140 for existing Thunderbird users in order to catch any significant bugs before they are widely deployed, but users can upgrade manually via the Help > About menu. See the release notes for a full list of changes.

The kernel project, for many years, lacked a formal testing setup; it was often joked that testing was the project's main reason for keeping users around. While many types of kernel testing can only be done in the presence of specific hardware, there are other parts of the kernel that could be more widely tested. Over time, though, the kernel has gained two separate testing frameworks and a growing body of automated tests to go with them. These two frameworks — kselftests and KUnit — take different approaches to the testing problem; now this patch series from Thomas Weißschuh aims to bring them together.

Security updates have been issued by Debian (djvulibre and slurm-wlm), Red Hat (apache-commons-vfs, container-tools:rhel8, kernel, kernel-rt, podman, python3, rsync, socat, and sudo), SUSE (apache2, helm-mirror, incus, kernel, openssl-3, python-Django, and systemd), and Ubuntu (dcmtk, File::Find::Rule, ghostscript, jquery, and libssh).