Kernel and OS Core News: Linux and Beyond

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 16, 2025

• LWN ☛ 6.18 merge window, part 1

  At the time of writing, there have been 9,099 commits in the 6.18 merge window, 8,475 non-merges and 624 merges. The changes so far include core-kernel, graphics, and networking work, among others. There are no big surprises, but several items that were discussed at this year's LFSMM+BPF Summit have now been merged.

• LWN ☛ Next steps for BPF support in the GNU toolchain

  Support for BPF in the kernel has been tied to the LLVM toolchain since the advent of extended BPF. There has been a growing effort to add BPF support to the GNU toolchain as well, though. At the 2025 GNU Tools Cauldron, the developers involved got together with representatives of the kernel community to talk about the state of that work and what needs to happen next.

• LWN ☛ Kernel hackers at Cauldron, 2025 edition

  The GNU Tools Cauldron is almost entirely focused on user-space tools, but kernel developers need a solid toolchain too. In what appears to be a developing tradition (started in 2024), some kernel developers attended the 2025 Cauldron for the second year in a row to discuss their needs with the assembled toolchain developers. Topics covered in this year's gathering include Rust, better BPF type format (BTF) support, SFrame, and more.

• LWN ☛ Highlights from systemd v258: part two

  Systemd v258 was released on September 17 after more than nine months of development. LWN has already covered some of the features and changes being readied for v258 before it was final. Now that the release is out, it is time to look at more of what came in v258, including a sandbox shell, new boot options, service-level disk quotas, and enhancements to systemd-resolved.

• TuMFatig ☛ Software-control a Dell monitor KVM from Linux

  I own a DELL U2723QE 4K monitor that ships with a KVM so that I can connect two computers. One via an USB-c connection and one via either an HDMI or a DisplayPort connector. Switch to either is controlled by a physical button on the back of the screen. But it can also be done software-wise.

• Announcing Istio 1.27.2

  This release contains bug fixes to improve robustness. This release note describes what’s different between Istio 1.27.1 and 1.27.2.