Sent out and already merged today for the Linux 7.0 kernel are the EXT4 file-system updates.

One of the changes for EXT4 in this next kernel version that stands out for me is improving write performance when dealing with concurrent direct I/O writes to multiple files. This performance improvement comes by deferring the splitting of unwritten extents to I/O completion.

EXT4 in Linux 7.0 also now avoids unnecessary cache invalidation in the extent status cache, avoids unnecessary forced ordered writes when appending to a file with delayed allocation, and a variety of bug fixes.

Mitchell Hashimoto from Vagrant, Terraform, HashiCorp, and Ghostty fame has introduced Vouch, new trust management system for open source projects.

With this in place, maintainers can implement a trust-based system where contributors must be vouched before submitting code to designated areas.

The system also allows blocking bad actors entirely through a denouncement feature and maintains a simple list of approved and blocked contributors for easy management (stored as a .td file).

Thanks to this, vouch lists of other projects can be aggregated to create a network where open source projects can check if someone is already trusted elsewhere. This means contributors don't need to get vouched separately for every project they want to contribute to.

“You are one of my most trusted friends in very [sic] sense of the word, you have never let me down, not once, not half of once.”

Those were the words used in June 2013 by Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and convicted sex offender, to describe Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem.

Sulayem is one of the most powerful business figures in the United Arab Emirates. Born in Dubai to a well-connected family, his father was an adviser to the city’s ruling Al Maktoum family.

Sulayem has been its chair since 2007, and its chief executive since 2016. The role has made him a leading Emirati business figure on the global stage. He frequently appears in international forums, often alongside UAE royalty.

Now, emails released by the US Department of Justice, as well as further emails seen by Bloomberg and Drop Site News, reveal that Sulayem had maintained a decades-long professional and personal relationship with Epstein.

The Emirati figure is mentioned thousands of times in the Epstein files.

All of the media subsystem driver updates have been merged for the in-development Linux 7.0 kernel and brings some new work around AV1 acceleration as well as other driver updates.

The merged code for the media feature updates in Linux 7.0 include introducing the TI VIP driver, adding support to the MGB4 driver for GMSL1 and GMSL‑coax modules, new camera sensor drivers, the Synopsys CSI‑2 receiver driver, VeriSilicon and Rockchip RKVDEC video driver improvements, Intel IPU6 / IPU7 image processing fixes, and also AV1 kernel support in the media subsystem.

The TI VIP driver is for the Texas Instruments Video Input Port found on their DRA7xx, AM5x, and other hardware as a video source for sensor(s) or TV decoder.

Ubuntu has taken another step that, honestly, leaves me scratching my head. While most distributions try to offer as many convenient GUI tools as possible to help users manage every part of their system, Ubuntu… apparently sees things a bit differently.

I say this because Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (scheduled for release on April, 23) will no longer ship the long-standing “Software & Updates” graphical tool by default on fresh desktop installs, following a change proposed in Launchpad as bug 2140527.

The adjustment replaces the software-properties-gtk package in the desktop seed with software-properties-common, effectively removing the visible GUI while keeping the underlying repository management tools in place.

Intel has upstreamed some Resource Control "resctrl" improvements to Linux 7.0 for enhanced telemetry monitoring. This is the good kind of telemetry with this new code being useful for being able to monitor how much energy or work is attributed to a group of tasks / process IDs on the system.

The x86/cache pull request for the Linux 7.0 merge window comes down to the Intel resctrl additions for being able to more easily monitor energy use for a defined group of tasks:

"Extend the resctrl machinery to support telemetry monitoring on Intel. The practical usage of this is being able to tell how much energy or how much work can be attributed to a group of tasks tracked under a single idenitifier. Prepend this work with proper refactoring of resctrl domains handling code. Work by Tony Luck."

7-Zip, a popular open-source tool for compressing and extracting files, has released version 26.0. This update refreshes the internal code for several archive formats, such as ZIP, CPIO, RAR, UDF, QCOW, and Compound.

The 7-Zip File Manager has also been updated. Now, file lists are sorted more consistently by using the file name as a secondary sorting key, making it easier to view archive contents.

Benchmarking features have been improved, too. The built-in benchmark tool now works with systems that have more than 64 CPU threads, so it is more accurate and compatible with modern workstations and servers.

Today, the German Federal Constitutional Court dismissed the constitutional complaint brought by a Palestinian living in Gaza challenging German arms exports to Israel. With this decision, the Court does not intervene to ensure effective legal protection for people whose lives are endangered by German arms exports.

“The Court acknowledges the duty to protect but only in the abstract and refuses to ensure its practical enforcement. For people whose lives are endangered by the consequences of German arms exports, access to justice remains effectively closed,” says Dr. Alexander Schwarz, Co-Director of the International Crimes and Accountability Program at ECCHR. “Especially when life and death are at stake, the rule of law must allow for judicial oversight. Instead, this decision largely removes state action in this sensitive area from review. This is not persuasive.”

The proceedings concern transmission components for Israeli Merkava and Namer tanks. These tanks are widely deployed by the Israeli armed forces in Gaza and, according to reports, have repeatedly been used in violation of international law. The Israeli ground offensive could not be conducted without these tanks being kept operational through German spare parts. They pose a direct threat to the life and physical integrity of the complainant living in Gaza – as well as many others.