What’s New in April 2025: MySQL, Fedora, QEMU & nginx

April brought a wave of useful updates — from virtualization and containerization tools to databases and operating systems. We’ve collected the most relevant releases for developers, system admins, and DevOps engineers.

In this digest: lightweight language models, stable releases of familiar tools, and upgrades for those focused on infrastructure security and performance. If you work with cloud environments, CI/CD, image building, or just like keeping your stack current, you’ll find something worth noting.

MySQL 9.3.0: JavaScript in Stored Procedures and Security Improvements

In mid-April, Oracle released MySQL 9.3.0 — part of the Innovation branch, focused on regular, experimental updates. While not an LTS release, it brings a lot of value for database developers and admins.

The main highlight is expanded JavaScript support in the Multilingual Engine (MLE). You can now write stored procedures in JS, use the DECIMAL type, and manage localization via Intl APIs. Dynamic module loading is also supported — just one line with await import() brings in what you need.

The mysqldump utility has also been reworked. It now supports exporting users and privileges (CREATE USER, GRANT) with new flags like --users, --add-drop-user, and --include-user. This simplifies audits and migrations.

Also:

• Improved optimization for subqueries with ANY and ALL
• The deprecated version_tokens plugin has been removed
• Setting replica_parallel_workers = 0 is now disallowed
• 28 vulnerabilities fixed, 26 of which were remotely exploitable

A solid release for anyone running MySQL in production or exploring JS + SQL integration. Oracle has already announced a 9.4 LTS for summer, followed by version 10.0.

VirtualBox 7.1.8 & QEMU 10.0: Spring Virtualization Updates

April brought two notable virtualization updates — perfect for testing environments and CI/CD tasks.

VirtualBox 7.1.8 is a minor but important release:

• Early support for Linux 6.14 and upcoming RHEL 9.6 kernel
• Fixes for VBoxClient crashes with XWayland
• Guest additions bugs resolved (GUI crashes, cursor bugs, install issues on non-X11 systems)
• Windows driver fixes, including excessive load from VBoxTray
• Three CVEs patched (up to 8.1 CVSS); CLI now supports bandwidth limits via VBoxManage bandwidthctl

QEMU 10.0 is a major update that lets you run apps built for one hardware platform on a completely different architecture. Highlights include:

• LoongArch64 architecture support
• Improved CPU emulation performance
• More flexible VM launch configuration
• Upgrades to network emulation and test automation features

QEMU 10 will be especially interesting to anyone working with non-standard architectures, custom builds, or automated low-level testing. The project now fully supports 14 architectures and over 400 hardware devices.

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Fedora Linux 42: GNOME 48, WebUI, and a Farewell to the Project Lead

Fedora remains a top choice for developers and Linux users, and version 42 delivers what people expected: fresh packages, modern environments, and a new install flow.

The Workstation edition now uses the Anaconda WebUI by default. It’s become much more flexible: improved partitioning, easy reinstalls, progress indicators, and inline help. Beginner-friendly, but still powerful.

Also updated:

• GNOME 48, KDE Plasma 6.3
• Linux kernel 6.14
• PHP 8.4, Golang 1.24, GCC 15, Django 5.x, and more

Fedora 42 is available for x86_64, Power64, and ARM64 — including Workstation, Server, Silverblue, IoT, CoreOS, Onyx, and Live editions with Xfce, MATE, Cinnamon, Budgie, and more.

One more note: this is the final release under longtime Fedora project lead Matthew Miller. He’s stepping down, with Jeff Spaleta taking over.

Wireshark 4.4.6: Stability-First Update

Wireshark 4.4.6 was released on April 17 and is a stable minor update focused on bug fixes and stability improvements. The new release does not add any major functionality, but addresses a number of specific issues that users of previous versions may have encountered.

Fixes include:

• Crashes during IP-over-InfiniBand analysis.
• TLS 1.3 crash caused by NULL pointers.
• Hanging when launched with -z endpoints,tcp.
• Improved filtering for QUIC, USB, 3GPP, and more.
• Updated protocol mnemonics and descriptors for readability.

Wireshark continues to support dozens of platforms and remains a gold standard in network analysis.

Docker DX Plugin for VS Code: More Actions, Fewer Clicks

The Docker team has released the Docker DX extension for Visual Studio Code — and it's a significant update for anyone working with containers directly from the editor. The new extension makes the interface more visual, simplifies working with Dev environments, and allows you to literally launch and manage projects in containers with a few clicks.

One of the most important new features of the extension is support for Dockerfile linting. Now VS Code not only prompts you for syntax errors, but also suggests best practices. For example, you will see warnings right in the editor if you are using outdated commands or an inefficient structure. In addition, the extension knows how to automatically send a Dockerfile to analyze vulnerabilities in images.

There is now full support for Docker Bake, a tool that allows you to build multiple images simultaneously using a single configuration. Now you can manage such builds directly from the Docker panel in VS Code: view targets, change parameters, and run builds without switching to the console.

Visualization of the docker-compose.yml structure has been added to the extension. The new Compose Outline allows you to quickly see the configuration of services, networks, volumes, and the dependencies between them in a tree view. This makes it easier to navigate through complex configurations, helps you find errors, and saves you the time of manually reading the YAML file. Everything is updated in real time as the file changes.

nginx 1.28.0: Stable Release with QUIC CUBIC Support

On April 23, nginx 1.28.0 launched as the first version in the new 1.28.x stable branch. It includes a handful of direct fixes and inherits several improvements from the 1.27 series, especially around HTTP/3 and QUIC.

Highlights:

• CUBIC congestion control for QUIC connections (from 1.27.5)
• Increased shared memory cache size for SSL sessions to 8192 bytes — better performance under load
• Fixes for _ssl_password_file directive when loading encrypted keys from variables
• Fixes for $ssl_curve and $ssl_curves with OpenSSL custom curves
• Successful builds with musl libc (important for Alpine Linux)
• HTTP/3 performance and stability improvements
• Build fixes with GCC 14 and 15 when using -O3 and -flto

A useful release for those working with QUIC, HTTP/3, OpenSSL, or compiling nginx in niche environments.

Microsoft BitNet: A Resource-Efficient Language Model

Microsoft has unveiled BitNet b1.58 2B4T — a highly efficient language model that uses just 1.58 bits per weight. Unlike most LLMs, which rely on 16- or 32-bit float weights, BitNet dramatically reduces memory and power consumption.

To achieve this, Microsoft engineers modified the transformer architecture by replacing standard layers with BitLinear ones and reducing activation functions to 8-bit. Still, performance is comparable to models 2–3x larger.

BitNet was trained on 4 trillion tokens, including websites, learning resources, and synthetic math datasets. The full model is just 0.4 GB and can run locally.

Microsoft has also released tools for BitNet — including a lightweight C++ implementation with CPU and GPU support.

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Have a great month, and we’ll see you for the next is*hosting digest!