[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for July 3, 2025
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:
Front: Kernel features from Python; i686 in Fedora; Kernel development with
LLMs; Rust drivers; Load balancing with machine learning; Transparent huge
pages.
Briefs: Bcachefs removal; Coccinelle for Rust; Netdev
Foundation; Oracle Linux 10; GNU HHIS 5.0; Rust 1.88.0; Quotes; ...
Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and
more.
Debian looking for testers with Apple M1/M2 machines
Debian's Bananas team has put out a call for people with
Apple M1 or M2 systems to help test Debian on those machines: The Bananas Team
has set up an installer at with images for GNOME, KDE and console
installations. While we'd like to build an actual Debian installer sooner or
later (we may need a heads-up from the Debian Images team for that), at this
time we only provide an asahi-type installer, which installs both the
"bootloader" and the OS partitions to disk from the network (as opposed to only
installing the bootloader and then letting you install Debian using a d-i USB
stick). We haven't forked Trixie from Testing yet, so what you'll get is Debian
Testing quite deep into the freeze.
The Netdev Foundation launches
The Netdev Foundation, which is "a user-led effort under
the supervision of the Linux Foundation, focused on financially supporting Linux
networking development", has announced its existence.
The initial
motivation was to move the NIPA testing outside of Meta, so that more people
can help and contribute. But there should be sufficient budget to sponsor
more projects.
(NIPA is Netdev Infrastructure for Patch Automation).
[$] Accessing new kernel features from Python
Every release of the Linux kernel has lots of new features,
many of which are accessible from user space. Usually, though, the GNU C
Library (glibc) and tools that access the Linux user-space API lag behind the
kernel releases. Geoffrey Thomas showed how Python programs can access these
new kernel features as soon as the kernel is released in his "What's New in the
Linux Kernel... from Python" talk at PyCon US 2025. While he had two examples
of accessing new kernel features, the real goal of the talk was to demonstrate
how to go about connecting Python to the Linux kernel.
Copyleft-next project relaunched
The copyleft-next project is an effort to develop a next-
generation copyleft license; it was covered here back in 2013 (as well as in
2015 and 2021). The project has stalled in recent years, but now Richard
Fontana and Bradley Kuhn have announced a new effort to push copyleft-next
forward: Today, GPLv3 turns exactly 18 years old. This month, GPLv2
turned 34 years old. These are both great licenses and we love them.
Nevertheless, at least once in a generation, FOSS needs a new approach to
strong copyleft.