Tumbleweed ARM Update by mid-October

There were a few software package updates for openSUSE Tumbleweed ARM this month with snapshots reaching the ARM port.

The second half of September and the first half of October carried the Linux kernel from 7.2.6 through 7.2.9 with a steady run of SBC and AArch64 security fixes, while binutils 2.47 added the newest Armv9.6 and Armv9.7 instructions, QEMU reached 11.1.2 with Raspberry Pi and ARM virtualization fixes, and firmware updates refreshed Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support for Raspberry Pi and Qualcomm and MediaTek boards.

Raspberry Pi

The kernel-firmware-brcm update refreshes the Cypress cyfmac43455 SDIO firmware, the Wi-Fi chip used on the Raspberry Pi 3, 4 and 5, so wireless reliability improves on those boards. The raspberrypi-firmware-dt package fixes a regression in the SRAM range (bsc#1282097), and QEMU 11.1.2 hardens the emulated BCM2835 interrupt controller by rejecting out-of-range FIQ source values (hw/intc/bcm2835_ic). The GRUB2 aarch64-efi package also gained SBAT metadata to satisfy shim SBAT dependency checks (bsc#1278729).

Rockchip & Other SBCs

Firmware coverage widened across the boards. kernel-firmware-qcom added ADSP, CDSP and GPU firmware for the Hawi and Maili platforms, the Radxa Dragon Q8B (sc8280xp), QCM6490, sa8775p, qcs8300, qcs615 and Rubik Pi 3, plus GPU and Wi-Fi firmware for the SHIFT6mq (sdm845). Media firmware added Gen2 VPU binaries for Hawi, Maili, sc8280xp and Glymur, and the ath12k and Bluetooth firmware brought new board files and QCA2066 and WCN7750 (Maili) support.

Kernel 7.2.8 fixed an Allwinner sun4i timer issue (CVE-2026-93219), and kernel 7.2.9 hardened the MediaTek mt7921 Wi-Fi driver against malformed CLC firmware records (CVE-2026-98159). bluez made a large jump to 5.87 with LE Audio, BAP/BASS and HFP additions, then fixed a UUID discovery crash and an A2DP remote SEP cache issue that broke codec negotiation on some LE Audio headsets. NetworkManager 1.58.1 fixed auto-connect to SAE (WPA3) networks and the normalization of Bluetooth NAP connections.

i.MX & NXP

Kernel 7.2.7 fixed an IRQ leak in the nxp-pit clocksource driver used on i.MX SoCs (CVE-2026-89769), and kernel 7.2.8 stopped a USB Type-C switch leak in the fsl-imx8mq PHY driver (CVE-2026-93225). SDL3 3.4.18 fixed KMSDRM initialization on i.MX 6 hardware.

aarch64 Virtualization, UEFI & Toolchain

QEMU 11.1.2 is the virtualization highlight, fixing ARM register handling in the HVF and WHPX accelerators, treating MDCCSR_EL0 as read-as-zero, correcting the ARM_CP_CONST sync path and the ENCODE_AA64_CP_REG argument order, and adding an ARM regression test alongside the TCG fold_multiply2 fix.

binutils 2.47 brings the biggest toolchain news with the remaining Armv9.6 instructions (+sme-mop4, +sme-tmop, +ssve-bitperm, +ssve-fexpa), several Armv9.7 extensions (+f16f32dot, +f16f32mm, +f16mm, +gcie, +lscp, +mtetc, +sme2p3, +sve-b16mm, +sve2p3, +tlbid), future POE2 and vMTE extensions, and an aarch64 objdump -M annotate fix. A GNU Compiler Collection 16 update fixed an internal compiler error building Firefox on ARM (bsc#1268791).

ovmf dropped the DEBUG_TO_MEM build option for AArch64 because it caused softdog reboot failures (bsc#1272814). sdbootutil improved encrypted-device detection with RAID and btrfs RAID1, uses bootctl to generate the random seed, detects a full grubenv and fixes the GRUB2 EFI bootcounter and loader_conf_set for paths.

glibc patched a resolv search-list assertion failure (CVE-2026-8674) and a $ORIGIN rpath issue in AT_SECURE programs (CVE-2026-86805); elfutils 0.196 added AArch64 and 32-bit ARM support to libdwfl_stacktrace, and mozilla-nss 3.129 fixed non-Linux arm64 makefile builds. LLVM 23.1.2 and Mesa 26.2.3 and 26.2.4 were bugfix releases, and soxr and highway both gained aarch64/arm build fixes.

Snapshots at a Glance

Snapshot	Kernel	Headline changes
2026-09-19	7.2.6	ovmf drops AArch64 DEBUG_TO_MEM (softdog fix), grub2 SBAT Provides, bluez 5.87 LE Audio, nvidia-open-driver rebuilds
2026-09-21	7.2.6	Mesa 26.2.3, xxhash 0.8.4 prefers NEON over SVE on AArch64, mozilla-nss 3.128
2026-09-24	7.2.7	NXP PIT clocksource IRQ leak fix (CVE-2026-89769), gzip aarch64 build fix, nvidia driver rc rebuild
2026-09-30	7.2.8	binutils 2.47 Armv9.6/9.7, kernel-firmware-brcm cyfmac43455 and qcom ADSP, raspberrypi-firmware-dt SRAM fix, sdbootutil, Allwinner/Tegra/SMMU fixes
2026-10-03	7.2.8	NetworkManager 1.58.1 WPA3 and Bluetooth fixes, gcc16 ARM ICE fix, Mesa 26.2.4
2026-10-07	7.2.9	arm_scmi firmware fixes, mt7921 CLC validation, SDL3 i.MX 6 KMSDRM fix, elfutils ARM stack trace support, glibc CVEs
2026-10-11	7.2.9	QEMU 11.1.2 ARM/HVF and bcm2835 FIQ fixes, libvirt 12.8.0, highway aarch64 LTO workaround, mozilla-nss arm64 build fix

Conclusion

The second half of September and first half of October kept the ARM port moving with the Linux kernel advancing from 7.2.6 to 7.2.9 through a long list of SBC fixes covering Allwinner’s sun4i timer, the Tegra video driver, Arm SMMUv3 teardown, the arm64 page-table walk and a batch of arm_scmi firmware corrections. binutils 2.47 delivered the month’s biggest ARM headline with Armv9.6 and Armv9.7 instruction support, QEMU 11.1.2 fixed ARM HVF/WHPX register handling and the emulated Raspberry Pi interrupt controller, and ovmf removed an AArch64 build option that caused softdog reboot failures. Firmware refreshes for Broadcom, Qualcomm and MediaTek Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips plus the raspberrypi-firmware-dt SRAM fix improved connectivity and stability on boards, while bluez 5.87, NetworkManager 1.58.1, sdbootutil, glibc, elfutils and mozilla-nss rounded out security and toolchain work.

ARM Resources

For ARM-specific discussions and support, subscribe to the openSUSE ARM mailing list and check the openSUSE ARM wiki for device support information, image downloads, and documentation. New and existing ARM users can also join the openSUSE ARM IRC channel for real-time help.

Your contributions and feedback make openSUSE Tumbleweed ARM better with every update. Whether reporting bugs, suggesting features, or participating in community discussions, your involvement is highly valued.