Tumbleweed ARM Monthly Update - November 2026

This past month has brought several software package updates for openSUSE Tumbleweed ARM with less than a handful of snapshots reaching the ARM port.

The second half of October brought a two-version jump of GRUB2 to 2.16 with serial console and NVMe boot features, a security-focused Linux kernel 7.2.11 and Plasma 6.8.0, while the first half of November opened the 7.3 kernel series, moved u-boot to 2026.10 for the Raspberry Pi, delivered QEMU 11.1.3 with emulated ARM hardware fixes, and refreshed Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Tegra firmware across the SBC spectrum.

Raspberry Pi

The u-boot update to 2026.10 moves the bootloader behind the 64-bit Raspberry Pi images to the newest upstream release, picking up a quarter’s worth of fixes for boot, USB and PCIe device handling; the full changelog is available now that the package pulls its source from GitHub after the denx FTP server went down. Keeping U-Boot current matters on the Pi because it enumerates devices before the kernel loads, so quirks with USB storage or NVMe hats are often fixed in the bootloader rather than the kernel. As with any Pi bootloader update, it pays to keep a spare boot medium within reach the first time a new version reaches your board.

GRUB2 2.16 is the biggest bootloader change of the window, and several of its new features matter directly on ARM boards. Native NVMe disk support improves booting a Pi 5 with an NVMe drive on the PCIe slot, and AMBA PL011 UART support brings bootloader output to the serial console that the Pi and most other ARM SoCs expose, which makes a failed boot far easier to diagnose without a display attached. New btrfs-info, btrfs-list-subvols and btrfs-get-default-subvol commands let users inspect snapper-style btrfs layouts straight from the GRUB shell, and a one-shot efibootnext module simplifies booting a different entry the next time around. The release also adds DHCPv6 support with network configuration from the UEFI device path, plus ML-DSA post-quantum signature support for appended signatures.

The Linux kernel 7.2.11 update fixed two vc4 driver issues that touch the Raspberry Pi graphics stack: binner slot allocation no longer fails on an idle GPU, which could previously break rendering that resumed after a quiet period, and the V3D interrupt is now disabled across runtime suspend so the GPU does not keep waking the SoC. Both apply to the Pi boards served by the vc4 KMS driver and the V3D GPU, so display and 3D work becomes steadier after idle periods and suspend cycles.

libpisp 1.8.0 fixes a detail in the Pi 5 camera and video pipeline: the GStreamer backend now always applies smart resize and crop when configuring a stream, so hardware-accelerated scaling and format conversion through the PiSP backend honors the requested geometry consistently. Anyone capturing or converting video on a Pi 5 gets more predictable output dimensions and fewer surprise crops.

Rockchip & Other SBCs

The Nov 8 snapshot carried a broad kernel-firmware refresh that reached deep into the SBC world. Rockchip boards gained PCIe3 PHY firmware for the Synopsys snps-pcie3 controller, the fast lanes RK3588 boards like the Rock 5B and Orange Pi 5 use for NVMe drives and PCIe cards, plus the first panthor firmware for Mali GPUs of Architecture 14.8, the generation behind the RK3588’s Mali-G610. Qualcomm firmware refreshed ADSP, CDSP and LPAICP images for the shikra platform, the Rubik Pi 3 and qcs615 boards, added GPU firmware for the Nord chipset, and enabled CDSP support for the Snapdragon x1e80100 Lenovo Yoga Slim 7. Wireless silicon was refreshed across the spectrum: MediaTek MT7922 and MT7925, Realtek rtw89 8852c and 8922d, ath10k WCN3990, ath11k QCA2066, ath12k WCN7850, Microchip wilc1000/WILC3000 at v16.5.2, and a first drop for NXP’s IW610. The Bluetooth package added the AIC8800D80 combo chip and updated QCA2066, so boards carrying those chips get matched fixes on both radios.

Kernel 7.2.11 also cleared a batch of SBC-relevant security fixes. The Samsung Exynos power-management-unit code no longer triggers a use-after-free (CVE-2026-98415), which matters for Exynos-based boards like the ODROID family, and the TI K3 UDMA glue driver avoids a NULL dereference when receive-channel setup fails (CVE-2026-98416), protecting K3-family boards such as the BeaglePlay. Wi-Fi saw two corrections: the Marvell mwifiex driver stops leaking MSI-X interrupts during cleanup (CVE-2026-98426), and Redpine rsi SDIO hardware avoids a heap out-of-bounds write when a key is removed (CVE-2026-98407). The Dialog DA9063 watchdog now also handles suspend and resume correctly (CVE-2026-98410), a fix for the many boards built around that PMIC.

The first 7.3-series kernel, 7.3.1, arrived in the Nov 5 snapshot with a Bluetooth fix that refuses adding an L2CAP channel that already has a connection, preventing the confusion that could follow when the same channel was registered twice. Bluetooth audio and pairing on boards using the BlueZ stack becomes steadier as a result. SDL3 3.4.20 rounded out the gaming side with controller fixes: Nintendo Switch controllers that failed because of missing stick and IMU calibration now work, the 8BitDo Ultimate 2C Wireless is supported through HIDAPI, and the Flydigi Vader 5 Pro gained rumble and trigger-rumble support. These fixes land on ARM handhelds and SBC-based consoles where a single controller quirk can ruin a gaming session.

NVIDIA Jetson & Tegra

The nvidia portion of the Nov 8 firmware refresh updated and added missing firmware files for Tegra SoCs, closing gaps that could leave Jetson modules without blobs their drivers expect. Tegra boards rely on these files for peripheral blocks, so filling in the missing pieces improves out-of-the-box behavior on the Jetson family. The open NVIDIA GPU driver made a large branch jump from 595.112.07 to 620.70.06, built against kernel 7.3.1, and the update supersedes the compatibility patch that the older 615.71.09 series needed for kernel 7.3 (boo#1289478). The CUDA variant made the same jump, so aarch64 systems pairing NVIDIA discrete GPUs with the 7.3 kernel stay in step.

aarch64 Virtualization, UEFI & Toolchain

QEMU 11.1.3 is the virtualization highlight, backporting the upstream stable-queue fixes, and the full list is available for digging. Emulated ARM hardware got direct attention: the Samsung Exynos interrupt combiner now range-checks its group registers, the Raspberry Pi bcm2835 clock manager treats an invalid mux source as ground instead of producing garbage clocks, and GICv5 redistributor ID reads return their actual values. Guest memory translation now follows the 52-bit TTBR table layout when TCR.DS is set and clears the reserved low bits from a 52-bit base, matching ARM CPUs that address beyond 48 bits. A long list of USB fixes covers MTP heap out-of-bounds reads and use-after-frees, XHCI reentrancy, OHCI endpoint mismatches and usb-host cleanup, and the emulated NVMe controller stops leaking memory when SR-IOV-capable controllers are removed. QEMU also dropped libpmem support (bsc#1288103) and fixed a block-layer read-modify-write atomicity bug that could corrupt images.

The 7.3.1 kernel packaging adjusted the spec for the 32-bit ARM arch rename, specifying both the OBS and rpm architecture variants, so armv7 kernel packages keep building cleanly. gdb 17.2 follows the 16.3 series with the GDB 17 feature set, including Debug Adapter Protocol completions and attach requests that accept a core file parameter, plus openSUSE testsuite stabilization patches. xfsprogs 7.2.0 landed for XFS users with quota and mkfs configuration rework and fixes for an rtreflink validation off-by-one, a 32-bit pointer arithmetic bug and growfs reporting, with the 32-bit fix the one most relevant to ARM systems.

UEFI and boot tooling saw useful maintenance. efivar 39 fixes a stack overflow in device path node parsing that could crash UEFI variable tools on malformed paths (CVE-2026-6862), and ipxe gained TLS 1.3 support while fixing virtio-net PXE boot on legacy BIOS virtual machines (bsc#1271200), which matters for network-booted VMs on ARM hosts. iPXE also added AES acceleration using the Arm Cryptographic Extensions, so encrypted network boot costs less CPU on ARM hardware. dtc 1.8.1 ported its build system to Meson, added fdt_get_property_namelen_w and fdt_setprop_namelen APIs, improved decompiling with label and phandle restoration, and added overlay checks that warn about missing #address-cells for interrupt parents.

Desktop users saw two refreshes: Plasma 6.8.0 in the Oct 18 snapshot, tightened by 6.8.2 in Nov 5, and the GNOME 51 stack with GTK4 4.24.1, gnome-shell 51.1, libadwaita 1.10.0, harfbuzz 15.0.0 and gvfs 1.62.0. Mesa 26.2.5 was a steady bugfix release for the graphics stack that backs Panfrost, vc4 and the other ARM drivers.

Snapshots at a Glance

Snapshot	Kernel	Headline changes
2026-10-18	7.2.11	grub2 2.16 (PL011 UART, NVMe boot, btrfs commands), kernel vc4 and Exynos/K3/Wi-Fi CVE fixes, Plasma 6.8.0, curl 8.23.0 security batch, Mesa 26.2.5
2026-10-20	7.2.11	Firefox 158 MFSA security fixes, GraphicsMagick CVE fixes, mozilla-nss 3.130
2026-11-05	7.3.1	first 7.3-series kernel, u-boot-rpiarm64 2026.10, GNOME 51, dnsmasq/expat/brotli/efivar/unbound/cups CVE fixes, dtc 1.8.1, ipxe TLS 1.3, SDL3 3.4.20
2026-11-08	7.3.1	QEMU 11.1.3 ARM fixes, libpisp 1.8.0, Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/Tegra firmware refresh, nvidia-open-driver 620.70.06, gdb 17.2, KDE Gear 26.08.3

Conclusion

The second half of October and the first half of November kept the ARM port moving with the Linux kernel advancing from 7.2.11 into the 7.3 series at 7.3.1, GRUB2 2.16 adding AMBA PL011 serial output and native NVMe boot support, and u-boot 2026.10 landing for the 64-bit Raspberry Pi boards. QEMU 11.1.3 hardened emulated ARM hardware from the Exynos interrupt combiner and the Raspberry Pi clock manager to 52-bit address translation, while the Nov 8 firmware refresh reached MediaTek, Qualcomm, Realtek, NXP, AIC and Tegra silicon and delivered the first panthor firmware for RK3588-class Mali GPUs. gdb reached 17.2, GNOME 51 and Plasma 6.8.2 refreshed both desktops, and libpisp 1.8.0 polished the Pi 5 camera pipeline.

Security updates covered the Linux kernel, curl, dnsmasq, expat, brotli, unbound, cups, GraphicsMagick, libsndfile, freetype2 and Firefox, with curl 8.23.0 clearing 23 CVEs and dropping SMB support, dnsmasq fixing five flaws across its TFTP, TCP DNS, DHCPv6 and DNSSEC handling, and the kernel batch aligning ksmbd’s SMB2 session expiration with the specification (CVE-2026-98420). If any snapshot causes trouble on your board, snapper can roll the system back to the previous state from the boot menu, which keeps the jump to the 7.3 kernel low-risk.

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.

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