Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 6.13.8, 6.12.20, and 6.6.84 stable kernels. Each contains a number of important fixes throughout the kernel tree; users of those series should upgrade.
[Read more](https://lwn.net/Articles/1015183/) ## [$] OSI election ends with unsatisfying results **Category:** Linux **Tags:** General **Published:** Fri, 21 Mar 2025 21:46:10 +0000 **TL;DR:** Here is a 2-sentence summary: The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has announced the results of its recent board of directors election, with Ruth Suehle and McCoy Smith joining the board and Carlo Piana serving another term. However, some have raised concerns about the fairness of the election process, which was marred by missteps and ultimately led to the exclusion of three candidates who didn't meet a newly-added requirement.The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has announced the results of its recent board of directors election. Ruth Suehle and McCoy Smith are new to the board, while Carlo Piana will serve another term. The results, however, seem tainted in the eyes of some participants and observers. The election has been plagued by missteps from the beginning. It has culminated with the exclusion of three candidates for failing to meet a requirement to sign the OSI board agreement, which was added after the election was over and before results were tallied or announced.
[Read more](https://lwn.net/Articles/1014603/) ## [$] The guaranteed contiguous memory allocator **Category:** Linux **Tags:** Linux **Published:** Fri, 21 Mar 2025 17:33:53 +0000 **TL;DR:** Here is a 2-sentence summary: As a system runs and its memory becomes fragmented, it becomes increasingly difficult to allocate large, physically contiguous regions of memory. A new patch set, led by Suren Baghdasaryan, aims to improve the kernel's contiguous memory allocator (CMA) subsystem to make such allocations more possible and efficient. As a system runs and its memory becomes fragmented, allocating large, physically contiguous regions of memory becomes increasingly difficult. Much effort over the years has gone into avoiding the need to make such allocations whenever possible, but there are times when they simply cannot be avoided. The kernel's contiguous memory allocator (CMA) subsystem attempts to make such allocations possible, but it has never been a perfect solution. Suren Baghdasaryan is is trying to improve that situation with the guaranteed contiguous memory allocator patch set, which includes work from Minchan Kim as well. [Read more](https://lwn.net/Articles/1015000/)