linux

Linux 7.0, expected in mid-April 2026, formally ends the three-year Rust experiment in the kernel. The decision, reached at the 2025 Maintainers Summit in Tokyo, promotes Rust from experimental status to a core kernel language alongside C and assembly.

Systemd 260 removes SysV init script support, introduces OverlayFS-based mstack container tooling, adds a Varlink metrics framework, and raises the minimum kernel to Linux 5.10.

Canonical has joined the Rust Foundation at the Gold membership tier, pledging $150,000 annually to support language governance and ecosystem security as Ubuntu 26.04 LTS prepares to ship with Rust-based coreutils and sudo by default.

Kali Linux 2026.1 commemorates BackTrack's 20th anniversary with a retro desktop mode, adds eight new security tools including an MCP server for Metasploit, and upgrades to kernel 6.18.

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS enters beta on March 26, shipping Rust-based coreutils and sudo, GNOME 50 without X11, post-quantum SSH, and AMD ROCm in official repositories.

GNOME 50 completely removes X11 from Mutter, Shell, and GDM, making Wayland the sole display protocol. The release stabilizes VRR and fractional scaling, and will ship in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Fedora 44.

Qualys discovers nine confused deputy flaws in AppArmor that have lurked since 2017, enabling unprivileged users to escalate to root, escape containers, and crash kernels across Ubuntu, Debian, and SUSE.

Linus Torvalds confirms the next kernel will be 7.0, citing confusion over large numbers, as the first RC ships with one of the largest merge windows on record.

Linux 6.19 brings Rust into 'actual driver development' phase with I2C support and Nova GPU driver progress