Software — Open Source — May 4th, 2026

8 Best Free and Open Source Linux MPRIS Tools
MPRIS (Media Player Remote Interfacing Specification) is a standard D-Bus interface which aims to provide a common programmatic API for controlling media players. This interface is most commonly used to pass media key control through to a media player, such as play and pause and music playback.
May 4th, 2026 — Source

16 Best Free and Open Source Color Scheme Generators
This roundup looks at useful software that generators color schemes.
May 4th, 2026 — Source

AMD is adding HDMI 2.1 support for Linux. That's good news for the Steam Machine.
Fixed Rate Link being added now; Display Stream Compression coming soon.
May 4th, 2026 — Source

AMD submits HDMI 2.1 FRL patches for open-source Linux driver
AMD has submitted a series of Linux kernel patches to the AMDGPU driver that introduce support for the HDMI 2.1 Fixed Rate Link (FRL) feature. The move follows years of rejection from the HDMI Forum regarding open-source implementations of the standard. This initial support enables higher bandwidth for Radeon GPUs on Linux, supporting resolutions such as 4K at 120Hz and 5K at 240Hz.
May 4th, 2026 — Source

Apache HTTP Server 2.4.67 released
Apache HTTP Server 2.4.67 drops with urgent patches for critical memory safety flaws in mod_proxy_ajp and a dangerous double free vulnerability in HTTP/2 that could allow remote code execution. The release also closes authentication bypass gaps, fixes proxy crashes, and corrects response splitting issues caused by compromised backend servers. Submodules like mod_md and mod_http2 get updated to resolve certificate renewal bugs and third-party memory allocator conflicts that frequently break custom setups.
May 4th, 2026 — Source

CachyOS Switches Python To Using Tail-Call Interpreter For 5~15% Better Performance
CachyOS is a very fast out-of-the-box Linux distribution and for those concerned about Python performance, the newest updates to this Arch Linux based distribution will provide even better performance.
May 4th, 2026 — Source

CISA flags actively exploited 'Copy Fail' Linux kernel flaw enabling root takeover across major distros — unpatched systems may remain vulnerable to attack
Researchers released a working exploit before patches were ready.
May 4th, 2026 — Source or Source

GCC 16 Compiler Delivering Some Decent Performance Gains Over GCC 15
With the GCC 16.1 compiler released last Thursday, I have begun running more compiler benchmarks on this first GCC 16 stable feature release. GCC 16 comes heavy on new changes in being the annual feature release and delivering changes from AMD Zen 6 and Arm AGI CPU support to new C++ features and even the Algol 68 programming language front-end. It's also looking quite good in the performance department relative to the GCC 15 compiler from last year.
May 4th, 2026 — Source

hexcurse-ng -- ncurses-based console hex editor
hexcurse-ng is an ncurses-based console hex editor for working with binary data in a terminal.
May 4th, 2026 — Source

Ketcher -- web-based chemical structure editor
Ketcher is a web-based chemical structure editor for drawing small molecules, biomolecules, and chemical reactions in a browser.
May 4th, 2026 — Source

Linux File-System Proliferation A Burden: Requirements Laid Out For Any Future File-Systems
The growing number of file-systems within the Linux kernel source tree is causing an ongoing burden for upstream developers maintaining the virtual file-system (VFS) code around it and associated code. As a result of the continuing rise of new file-systems being proposed for the Linux kernel, documentation is being introduced to establish clear guidelines for getting new file-systems accepted into the mainline kernel.
May 4th, 2026 — Source

Mesa Begins Seeing Patch Activity For AMD GFX12.1 Graphics
Since last November we've begun seeing new open-source driver activity for their next-gen GPU IP with their GFX12.1 graphics engine. GFX12 (12.0) was for the Radeon RX 9000 series RDNA4 hardware while GFX 12.1 is some new revision for yet-to-be-known products while there is also GFX13 bring-up and GFX12.5 too.
May 4th, 2026 — Source

nellaOS -- Linux distribution made in Venezuela
nellaOS is a Linux distribution made in Venezuela that aims to work on all 64-bit computers. Its goal is to provide a pleasant, lightweight, and attractive experience.
May 4th, 2026 — Source

Omarchy 3.7 Linux Distribution Overhauls Gaming Support, Adds Unified CLI
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Omarchy-3.7-Released
May 4th, 2026 — Source

RDKit -- cheminformatics and machine-learning software
RDKit is a cheminformatics toolkit that helps users work with molecular structures, chemical data, and machine-learning workflows.
May 4th, 2026 — Source

pff -- Pretty Fast Find
It's designed as an iterative, multithreaded alternative to the traditional find command, using breadth-first directory traversal to locate matching files and directories. The tool includes built-in filtering, sorting, and output labelling, reducing the need to pipe results through additional command-line utilities.
May 4th, 2026 — Source

Scaleclaw -- Linux distribution image built around Universal Blue's base image
Scaleclaw is a Linux distribution image built around Universal Blue's base image. It offers an opinionated atomic GNOME desktop with branded installation media, Flatpak integration, a minimal GNOME application set, and Universal Blue tooling underneath. The project provides regular and NVIDIA variants, with ISO generation instructions available for users who want to build or test the image themselves.
May 4th, 2026 — Source

Slim-Lint -- configurable tool for analyzing Slim templates
Slim-Lint is a command-line utility for checking Slim templates for style, consistency, and common problems.
May 4th, 2026 — Source

Tails 7.7.2 released
Tails 7.7.2 drops as an emergency patch that slams shut a critical Linux kernel flaw known as Copy Fail. The vulnerability lets attackers chain exploits to grab administrator rights, which could easily break system anonymity if left unpatched. Users must download the fresh ISO, verify its signature against official records, and flash it to a clean USB drive before booting. Alongside that kernel bump to 6.12.85, the release quietly fixes several stability hiccups that tend to derail long anonymous sessions anyway.
May 4th, 2026 — Source

Valve's Steam Controller Now Shipping
For those eager to get their hands on Valve's new Steam Controller, the gaming controller is now shipping.
May 4th, 2026 — Source

YARD-Lint -- lint YARD documentation
YARD-Lint is a command-line tool for Ruby and Ruby on Rails projects that lint YARD documentation.
May 4th, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — April 27th, 2026

AMD VPE 2.0 Support Merged For Mesa 26.2
Merged overnight to the latest Mesa graphics driver development code is enabling the VPE 2.0 engine to be found with future AMD Radeon GPUs.
April 27th, 2026 — Source

Easily Exploitable 'Pack2TheRoot' Linux Vulnerability Leads to Root Access
A race condition in PackageKit allows unprivileged users to escalate privileges when installing packages.
April 27th, 2026 — Source

fscrypt -- Go tool for managing Linux filesystem encryption
fscrypt is a high-level command-line utility for managing Linux native filesystem encryption on supported filesystems.
April 27th, 2026 — Source

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus Provides Exceptional Value For Linux Users
After looking at the new Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus processor earlier this month with its nice performance evolution for Arrow Lake on Linux, today we are looking at the other new Intel desktop CPU offering: the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus that retails for just $219 USD.
April 27th, 2026 — Source

Kdenlive 26.04.0 released
Kdenlive 26.04.0 delivers a practical workflow overhaul focused on smoother timeline navigation, including continuous panning, multi-clip speed adjustments, and a lockable playhead. Transitions now feature animated previews and auto-duration matching, while new effects like the Euclid Eraser expand creative options without cluttering the interface. Longstanding audio capture and subtitle editing bugs are finally resolved, giving editors more reliable control over external hardware and dialogue workflows. The update also adds useful quality-of-life tweaks like monitor mirroring, direct render-to-bin placement, and AMF encoding support for faster Windows exports.
April 27th, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel 7.0 Fedora Test Days: Safe Installation, QA Testing, and Bug Reporting Guide
The Fedora QA team is running Linux Kernel 7.0 test days on versions 43 and 44 to catch early regressions before they reach stable release channels. Users should prepare a dedicated virtual machine or spare system, then install the pre-release kernel using standard DNF updates for traditional setups or rpm-ostree overrides for atomic distributions like Silverblue. Testing involves running the built-in regression suite alongside real-world usage checks, with all issues documented through detailed Bugzilla reports that include exact reproduction steps and system logs.
April 27th, 2026 — Source

Linux kernel's 'second-in-command' uses local AI bot to hunt bugs, powered by 'clanker' system with AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ — Framework Desktop has resulted in close to two dozen patches
Greg Kroah-Hartman's "Clanker T1000" runs entirely on AMD Ryzen AI Max+ hardware.
April 27th, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.1 Adds SoC Slider Support To x86_energy_perf_policy Utility
One of the last feature pulls merged by Linus Torvalds prior to tagging Linux 7.1-rc1 this weekend were some power utility updates for those tools living within the kernel source tree.
April 27th, 2026 — Source

Metamorphosis -- inspect and change embedded metadata
Metamorphosis is a desktop utility for inspecting and changing embedded metadata across media and document files.
April 27th, 2026 — Source

New Hack Lets 30-Year-Old Windows PCs Run Modern Linux
WSL9x lets Windows 9x systems run a modern Linux 6.19 kernel without virtualization, showing how vintage PCs can still stretch beyond old limits.
April 27th, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu Linux Will Begin Landing AI Features Throughout The Next Year
Now that Ubuntu 26.04 LTS has shipped, Canonical is opening up on their next major focus for Ubuntu development: lots of AI features.
April 27th, 2026 — Source

UniGetUI 2026.1.7 released
UniGetUI 2026.1.7 finally brings Linux and macOS package management directly into its interface, supporting APT, DNF, Pacman, Snap, and styled .app bundles without forcing users back to the terminal. The update patches a few stubborn crashes, fixes Apple Silicon Homebrew errors, and adds a WinGet fallback that keeps the application from freezing when components misbehave. Developers also trimmed unnecessary bloat by removing the bundled Chocolatey CLI, which means separate installation becomes necessary but saves space and reduces security blind spots.
April 27th, 2026 — Source

TWSLA -- TWSNMP's Simple Log Analyzer
TWSLA is a command-line log analysis tool from the TWSNMP project. It's built for administrators and operators who want to work directly with large log sets without deploying a heavier log management stack.
April 27th, 2026 — Source

VictoriaLogs -- high-performance log database
VictoriaLogs is a high-performance log database designed to ingest, store, and query log data efficiently across everything from small single-node deployments to larger clustered environments.
April 27th, 2026 — Source

With Linux 7.1 The Mainline Kernel Now Supports Real-Time "RT" On ARM
The Linux 7.1 mainline kernel will allow building a real-time "PREEMPT_RT" kernel for the ARM architecture with no longer needing any out-of-tree patches.
April 27th, 2026 — Source

XWayland 24.1.11 Brings Crash Fixes
Red Hat's Olivier Fourdan announced today the availability of XWayland 24.1.11 that brings a few bug/regression fixes.
April 27th, 2026 — Source

ZelixOS -- Arch Linux based distribution
ZelixOS is an Arch Linux based distribution focused on offering a fast, approachable desktop system with polished defaults and custom tools.
April 27th, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — April 26th, 2026

11 Best Free and Open Source Console MPD Clients
MPD is a powerful server-side application for playing music. In a home environment, you can connect an MPD server to a Hi-Fi system, and control the server using a notebook or smartphone. You can, of course, play audio files on remote clients. MPD can be started system-wide or on a per-user basis.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

19 Best Free and Open Source Linux GUI News Aggregators
A news aggregator is software which collect news, weblog posts, and other information from the web so that they can be read in a single location for easy viewing. With the range of news sources available on the internet, news aggregators play an essential role in helping users to quickly locate breaking news.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Almighty Linux -- hybrid distribution based on Debian and Kali
It's designed for intelligence gathering and OSINT workflows, combining a MATE desktop environment with a curated collection of reconnaissance, analysis, privacy, isolation, and security tools. The distribution also includes custom-built OSINT utilities and a Chromium-based Almighty OSINT Browser tailored for investigation work.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Apple M3 Support On Asahi Linux Is Approaching The Original Alpha Quality Of The M1
A new progress report from the Asahi Linux project is now published that highlights recent upstreaming work for the Linux 7.0 kernel release as well as the latest additions to the downstream Asahi Linux code. The Asahi Linux project also pushed out their first updated Asahi installer in nearly two years.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

BigBlueButton -- virtual classroom platform
BigBlueButton is a virtual classroom platform designed for online teaching, tutoring, office hours, and collaborative learning.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

CachyOS April 2026 Update Fixes AMD Boot Glitches and Upgrades NVMe Scheduling for Faster Performance
CachyOS April 2026 swaps Octopi for Shelly as the default GUI package manager while automatically creating a permanent post-installation snapshot for easy recovery. Storage performance sees a practical boost by switching the NVMe scheduler to kyber, and AMD laptop display glitches during boot are finally resolved. Privacy and security get a meaningful upgrade with built-in DNS-over-HTTPS support and native fingerprint authentication for administrative commands.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

CachyOS Introduces New Default GUI Package Manager, Kyber For NVMe I/O Scheduler
The April 2026 ISO refresh of the Arch Linux based CachyOS is now available with a variety of refinements, new hardware support, and other polishing.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Developer of the Week: Greg Kroah-Hartman
This series shines a spotlight on open source developers who make a real difference. Too often, their contributions go unrecognised. By highlighting their achievements, this series aims to give these talented developers the recognition they deserve and to celebrate the dedication, creativity, and passion that drive the open source community forward.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

DistroRack -- Qt/QML-based GUI for Distrobox containers
DistroRack is a Qt/QML application that provides a graphical interface for creating and managing Distrobox containers on Linux.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Legacy NVIDIA xf86-video-nv Driver Sees First Release In Years
The legacy xf86-video-nv driver for user-space mode-setting on old NVIDIA GPUs is out with a rather rare release and the first in over two years with a collection of different bug fixes.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Nobara 43 2026-04-25 for NVIDIA released
The latest Nobara Linux NVIDIA build ships preconfigured drivers to get you to the desktop faster, though first boot will pause while DKMS compiles kernel modules on your hardware. This release draws a hard line at older graphics cards since Nvidia's shift to open source kernel modules completely drops support for Pascal architecture and anything before Turing. X11 has been stripped from the distribution entirely, forcing all users onto Wayland while offering four distinct desktop environments to match different workflows. Anyone still running a GTX 10 series or older will need to stick with legacy distributions since Nobara refuses to maintain outdated driver branches.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

OpenWebRX+ -- improved version of OpenWebRX
OpenWebRX+ is an improved version of OpenWebRX, a multi-user software defined radio receiver that runs through a web interface.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

PiPedal -- guitar effect pedal for Raspberry Pi
PiPedal turns a Raspberry Pi into a guitar effects pedal that you can configure and control from a phone, tablet, or desktop browser.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Power Tab Editor -- view and edit guitar tablature
Power Tab Editor is an easy-to-use cross-platform guitar tablature editor and viewer.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

SEE is a terminal user interface for inspecting logs from systemd services.
SEE is a terminal user interface for inspecting logs from systemd services.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

The New Linux Kernel AI Bot Uncovering Bugs Is A Local LLM On Framework Desktop + AMD Ryzen AI Max
Earlier this month on Phoronix we were the first to draw attention to a new fuzzing tool / AI bot uncovering kernel bugs by Greg Kroah-Hartman, the "second in command" for Linux kernel development and stable maintainer. Greg has now shared more light on the "gregkh_clanker_t1000" for this tool that has been uncovering more Linux kernel bugs the past few weeks.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

The Linux Kernel Tree About To Hit 40 Million Lines, AMD Driver Above 6 Million Lines
Ahead of the Linux 7.1-rc1 kernel release due out later today for closing the Linux 7.1 merge window, I was curious if all the code removals would lead to a negative change in line count over Linux 7.0. The removals were not enough and Linux 7.1 Git is fast approaching 40 million lines.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — April 24th, 2026

9 Best Free and Open Source Graphical SSH Frontends
SSH or Secure Shell is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. Typical applications include remote command-line, login, and remote command execution, but any network service can be secured with SSH.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

14 Best Free and Open Source Linux IPTV Players
IPTV is an acronym for Internet Protocol Television. It's a digital TV service that delivers video over the internet. IPTV can be live or on-demand.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

AMD SBI Driver Preps For EPYC Venice With Linux 7.1
The Linux kernel continues getting ready for AMD's upcoming Zen 6 processors.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Another IPTV Player -- IPTV streaming solution
Another IPTV Player is a Flutter-based IPTV client designed for Linux desktop systems and other major platforms.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Arm C1-Ultra Scheduling Model Merged For LLVM/Clang 23
Merged recently to the latest LLVM/Clang compiler development tree is the Arm C1-Ultra scheduling model for helping with delivering optimal binaries for that flagship next-gen Arm mobile CPU.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

capa -- command line malware analysis tool
It examines executable files and related analysis reports to identify behaviors such as persistence, command execution, file system access, network communication, encryption, anti-analysis checks, and other capabilities commonly relevant to reverse engineering and threat intelligence work.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Detect It Easy -- file inspection utility
Detect It Easy, also known as DiE, is a file inspection utility designed to identify executable formats, archives, packers, protectors, compilers, installers, and other file characteristics.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Duff Linux -- opinionated distro based on Void
Duff Linux is an opinionated desktop Linux distribution based on dani-77's d77void project.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Farewell ISDN, Ham Radio & Old Network Drivers: Linus Torvalds Merges 138k L.O.C. Removal
Linus Torvalds did it! He merged the pull request to rid the Linux kernel of the old Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) subsystem and various other old network drivers largely for PCMCIA era network adapters. This was the code suggested for removal given the recent influx of AI/LLM-generated bug reports against this dated code that likely has no active upstream users remaining.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

FLOSS -- malware analysis utility
FLARE Obfuscated String Solver (FLOSS) is a malware analysis utility that automatically extracts and deobfuscates strings from executable binaries.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Framework's new Linux laptop is selling faster than its Windows one
According to a promotional post, Framework is selling more Ubuntu versus Windows variants of its new premium Laptop 13 Pro.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Fwupd 2.1.2 Brings Support For Firmware Updates On More Hardware
Fwupd 2.1.2 is out today as the latest update to this open-source firmware updating utility that allows for updating system firmware and device/peripheral firmware under Linux.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

GCC Establishes Working Group To Decide On AI/LLM Policy
The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) now has a working group established by their steering committee to study the use of AI and large language models (LLMs) within the context of GCC compiler development.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

hashdeep -- generate and verify file hashes
hashdeep is a command line tool for generating and verifying file hashes across large collections of files.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.1 Is Performing Well Overall In Early Benchmarks
With the Linux 7.1 merge window winding down ahead of the planned Linux 7.1-rc1 release on Sunday, I have begun testing out the Linux 7.1 Git state on various systems in my lab. So far Linux 7.1 appears to be looking good in the performance department with seeing a number of performance improvements in different areas but also a few possible regressions.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.1 Removes Drivers For Long Obsolete Input Hardware: Bye Bus Mouse Support
Beyond Linux looking to remove old drivers due to the surge of AI/LLM bug reports, the Linux 7.1 kernel is also removing some old hardware drivers simply on the basis of long obsolete hardware. The input subsystem saw several drivers removed this week for decades old hardware.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Many Intel & AMD Laptop Improvements Merged For Linux 7.1
As usual in recent years, there were many x86 platform driver changes merged this cycle for benefiting modern AMD Ryzen and Intel Core (Ultra) laptops. A variety of new features and laptop hardware support additions were merged for Linux 7.1.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Megacubo -- IPTV streaming app
Megacubo is a multi-language, cross-platform IPTV player that lets users load M3U playlists and watch live TV streams through a simple desktop-style interface.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Minisforum MS-R1 ARM Mini Workstation running Linux: Power Consumption
This is a new series looking at the Minisforum MS-R1 ARM Mini Workstation running Linux. In this series, I'll examine every aspect of this mini workstation in detail from a Linux perspective. I'll compare the machine with other machines to put my findings into context.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

More ancient Linux device support faces the chop
One way to deal with bug hunting LLMs: ditch the old drivers
April 24th, 2026 — Source

NetTool -- web-based network diagnostic console
NetTool is a web-based network diagnostic console for Raspberry Pi and other Linux devices.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

New 'Pack2TheRoot' flaw gives hackers root Linux access
A new vulnerability dubbed Pack2TheRoot could be exploited in the PackageKit daemon to allow local Linux users to install or remove system packages and gain root permissions.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Pull Request For Linux To Remove Old Network Drivers, ISDN Subsystem Due To AI/LLM Noise
It was just days ago we reported on a proposal to drop old network drivers due to AI-driven bug reports becoming a burden on upstream kernel developers. Last night that culminated with an initial pull request to clear out some old, unused networking drivers plus also clearing out the entire ISDN subsystem and more.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

System76 Pangolin Pro is a 3.6 pound Linux laptop with a 16 inch screen and Ryzen AI 7 350
The new System76 Pangolin Pro is a Linux laptop with a 16 inch, 2560 x 1600 pixel, 165 Hz matte LTPS display, an AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 "Krackan Point" processor. Compared with the previous-gen Pangolin laptop, that processor upgrade along might be enough reason to call this a "pro" model. But it also has a few other improvements.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

This tool brings Linux to Windows 95 without using virtualization
WSL9X runs a modern Linux kernel inside Windows 95 with no emulation required.
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu Resolute Raccoon spits out Xorg, but still lets you run X11 apps
New LTS is here, with more tooling for GPGPU and AI workloads
April 24th, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — April 23rd, 2026

7 Best Free and Open Source Linux Graphical Port Scanners
A port scanner is a utility which probes a server or host to verify if the virtual ports of a system are open or closed. Ports allow different applications on the same computer to share network resources simultaneously.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

23 Best Free and Open Source DNS Servers
The internet uses numbers, not names, to find computers. Domain Name System (DNS) is the internet's directory service: It takes a human readable name, like "www.linuxlinks.com", and converts that name to a machine readable "IP" address that your computer can use to connect to www.linuxlinks.com.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

AlmaLinux 9.8 Beta released
AlmaLinux just dropped the 9.8 Beta preview across x86_64, ARM64, PowerPC, and IBM Z architectures so administrators can catch upgrade headaches before they hit actual servers. The build ships Python 3.14, refreshed database streams, updated container runtimes, and tightened security policies that routinely break legacy automation scripts when tested without proper isolation. Teams should only mount these ISOs in virtual machines or dedicated lab rigs since the foundation explicitly warns against touching production hardware with beta code.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Apache NetBeans IDE 30 RC2 released
Apache NetBeans IDE 30 RC2 arrives with a bundled Maven upgrade to version 3.9.15, which keeps build pipelines consistent and patches recent dependency resolution quirks. The preview also resolves a stubborn JavaScript formatting glitch that previously scrambled indentation whenever static initializer blocks appeared in the code. Editor developers get a quick win too since the environment file hints panel finally registers correctly for managing external configuration files. Teams should run this release candidate through their standard project workflows to catch edge cases before the stable build ships.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

AXEM-SX -- openSUSE based Linux distribution
AXEM-SX is a modular Linux operating system built on an openSUSE Leap foundation and distributed as bootable ISO images.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Better IPTV -- cross-platform IPTV player
Better IPTV is a cross-platform desktop IPTV player that combines a Rust backend with a Tauri-based interface for Linux, Windows, and macOS.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Exploring The Workloads Where The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Makes A Lot Of Sense
With this week's launch of the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition I've found some of the commentary quite surprising among those arguing it's really not a competitive or interesting product. While the cost may be hard to justify at $899 USD compared to the existing Ryzen 9000 series products or Intel's new Core Plus CPUs, particularly for developers, technical computing, etc the performance of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 is quite interesting. I've had much enjoyment benchmarking the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 for technical use-cases.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Framework Laptop 13 Pro Competes with the Best
Framework has released what might be considered the MacBook of Linux devices.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

FreeRDP 3.25 Adds Experimental AV1 Support
FreeRDP as a leading open-source implementation of the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) has introduced experimental AV1 codec support.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Godot 4.7 Will Finally Have HDR Output, Including On Linux With Wayland
The upcoming Godot 4.7 open-source, cross-platform game engine release is rolling out support for high dynamic range (HDR).
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

How open source ideals must expand for AI
The new definition of open must consider implementation, specification, and governance as three critical factors that must be woven together.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Intel shutters open-source evangelism program and archives key community projects — closures point to significant shift in open-source leadership
The latest round of GitHub closures underscores a broader pullback in Intel's open-source footprint amid ongoing restructuring.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

KDE neon 20260423 released
KDE neon 20260423 drops fresh Plasma updates and Qt libraries onto a stable Ubuntu base, targeting tinkerers who want bleeding edge desktop tools without waiting for full system refreshes. The setup deliberately skips corporate patches and forced configurations, which means technical users get exactly what upstream developers intended but must handle their own troubleshooting when things break. Graphics drivers especially fall outside official support, so anyone chasing high performance on NVIDIA hardware should expect to fix black screens or dependency conflicts independently. Keeping the system stable requires running sudo apt full-upgrade instead of standard upgrade commands, and casual desktop users will likely save themselves headaches by sticking with traditional LTS releases.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.1 Lands The Apple SMC Power Driver For Reporting Battery Metrics On MacBooks
The Linux Multi-Function Device "MFD" subsystem changes were merged this week for Linux 7.1 ahead of the merge window closing on Sunday.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Mages -- Matrix chat client
Mages is an experimental Matrix chat client built as a cross-platform application with a Rust core and a Compose Multiplatform interface.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Many USB Improvements & New Hardware Merged For Linux 7.1
Ready to go ahead of the Linux 7.1 merge window closing at week's end are numerous new USB device support additions and other USB subsystem enhancements.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Mesa 26.1.0 Release Candidate 2 released
Mesa 26.1.0-rc2 delivers targeted stability patches rather than new features, focusing on fixing real-world rendering bugs across multiple graphics drivers. AMD users get crucial updates that resolve GPU hangs in Vulkan titles and correct legacy r600 transparency issues, while Intel hardware receives improved compute queue detection and specific hardware workarounds. The Android and Windows sides of Mesa see cleaner performance counter handling and corrected shader compilation paths to prevent texture sampling errors and video playback glitches.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

OpenBLAS 0.3.33 Released With Automatic "BIGNUMA" For More Than 256 CPU Cores
OpenBLAS 0.3.33 is out today as the latest update to this vendor-neutral, optimized Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms "BLAS" library.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

PackageKit, strongSwan, Kernel updates for Ubuntu
Ubuntu released several security notices to address critical flaws in PackageKit, strongSwan, and multiple Linux kernel variants. The PackageKit update prevents local attackers from gaining root access through improper transaction handling, while the strongSwan patches fix remote vulnerabilities that could crash the VPN software or allow arbitrary code execution. Kernel updates for FIPS, Azure, and standard configurations resolve numerous issues across ARM64 architecture, cryptographic APIs, GPU drivers, and network subsystems on older LTS releases.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Plaso -- Python-based digital forensics framework
Plaso, also known as log2timeline, is a Python-based digital forensics framework that builds timelines from timestamped events found in individual files, directories, storage media images, and devices.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Tails 7.7 released
Tails 7.7 drops with routine upgrades to Tor Browser and Thunderbird while finally patching a permissions glitch that left the root directory wide open. The release adds a practical warning about expiring Secure Boot certificates, giving operators time to update firmware before legacy machines refuse to boot next year. Background tweaks tighten package pinning to block unpatched Debian updates and add exFAT support so kexec bootloaders can actually find the ISO on modern flash drives. Verify those checksums before flashing your drive and let the new certificate alerts guide any necessary motherboard updates.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

The Pod Prometheus Never Saw: Kubernetes' Sampling Blind Spot
Prometheus sampling gaps are irreducible — reducing the scrape interval just moves the threshold. The Kubernetes watch API eliminates it entirely.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Timesketch -- collaborative forensic timeline analysis
Timesketch is a collaborative forensic timeline analysis platform that helps investigators work with event data from multiple sources inside a shared sketch.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu 26.04 Allows "sudo apt install rocm" But It's Months Out-Of-Date
Canonical announced last year that in collaboration with AMD they would be bringing the ROCm software libraries into the Ubuntu archive for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. The plan has been to ship AMD ROCm AI/ML and HPC libraries in the Ubuntu archive so it would be as easy as sudo apt install rocm for getting started with AMD's open-source GPU compute stack. With today being the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release day, I decided to revisit the topic.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Moving the Industry forward with Linux 7.0 and More
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (Resolute Raccoon) was released today in April 2026 (hence the "26.04") with significant updates for server and infrastructure deployments. This long-term support release brings Linux kernel 7.0, a new HWE virtualization stack model, Intel TDX confidential computing host support, and numerous improvements across virtualization, databases, and security. Since the Ubuntu LTS edition releases only happen every two years and offer a five-year support cycle, they tend to be important industry milestones given how popular Ubuntu is. Let us get into some of the details.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Now Available & Powered By Linux 7.0
The official release ISOs of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, Ubuntu Server 26.04 LTS, and the various other Ubuntu flavors are now available for download.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu Linux 26.04 LTS released
Ubuntu Linux 26.04 LTS drops with TPM-backed encryption, GNOME 50 on Wayland, and Arm Livepatch support to tighten security while finally pushing modern desktop compositing into the mainstream. Existing users on version 25.10 get an automatic upgrade prompt right away, but those sticking with the current 24.04 LTS release will need to wait until August for the first point update before the system offers the transition. The main server and cloud editions carry five years of maintenance while most desktop flavors stick to three-year support windows unless you pay for extended security contracts.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu Server 26.04 LTS Will Now Automatically Install HWE/OEM Kernel Packages
Ubuntu LTS releases on the desktop have automatically installed OEM vendor kernels where needed and hardware enablement "HWE" kernels in later point releases by default. This provides a better out-of-the-box experience for Ubuntu desktop users and one less chore post-install if desiring a newer/better kernel. With Ubuntu Server 26.04 LTS, the server installer is finally doing the same.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Ventoy 1.1.12 released
Ventoy 1.1.12 drops a targeted patch set that finally resolves stubborn Ubuntu 24.04.4 install failures and Oracle Linux 6.9 compatibility snags while cleaning up VirtualBox UEFI display glitches. The upgrade process skips the usual reinstall headache by preserving every ISO already sitting on the USB drive, so users just run the installer and let it swap out the core boot files. A quiet side release called iVentoy also arrives to handle network based PXE deployments across x86 and ARM systems without forcing admins to wrestle with traditional DHCP or TFTP setups. Grabbing the official zip or tarball requires a quick SHA-256 verification step before flashing, but the update keeps the tool lean while fixing exactly what breaks in real world lab environments.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

XanMod Kernel 7.0.1, 6.19.14, and 6.18.24 LTS released
The latest XanMod kernel releases pack in memory management tweaks, BBRv3 networking improvements, and hardware optimizations that actually matter for desktop workstations and gaming rigs. Setting it up is straightforward through the official APT repository or standalone packages, though users should expect a short wait for NVIDIA and virtualization drivers to catch up. Power users juggling heavy compilations, streaming setups, or GPU passthrough will notice the performance gains, while casual office workers will barely register the difference. Testing the update in a safe environment first prevents broken display outputs from derailing the work week.
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

You can now run Linux on your ancient Windows 95 desktop with a new tool — very old Windows PCs, back to Intel 486, can cooperatively run very modern Linux kernels with WSL9x
Dev reckons the Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux is one of their 'greatest hacks of all time.'
April 23rd, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — April 21st, 2026

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Benchmarks: The Best Desktop Performance For Linux Developers, Creators
Today we can finally share performance benchmarks of the long-rumored AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition processor. This new halo product for the Ryzen 9000 series desktop line-up offers captivating performance for developers frequently compiling code, creators, technical computing workloads for students or hobbyists or those not able to afford a Threadripper / EPYC type workstation, or similar heavy computing use. With the 16 cores / 32 threads and both CCDs having 3D V-Cache, the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 offers leading performance among current generation desktop processors.
April 21st, 2026 — Source

Edconv – user-friendly FFmpeg GUI
Edconv is a desktop application that gives FFmpeg a more approachable graphical interface for audio and video work.
April 21st, 2026 — Source

Enterprises are rethinking Kubernetes
Enterprises once viewed Kubernetes as the universal answer to modern application deployment. Operational realities and the rise of better abstractions are driving a reassessment.
April 21st, 2026 — Source

Frame – desktop media conversion utility
Frame is a desktop media conversion utility that provides a native graphical interface for FFmpeg.
April 21st, 2026 — Source

Intel IRDMA Driver Adds Support For GEN4 Hardware In Linux 7.1
The IRDMA driver as Intel's modern Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) Linux driver for their high-end Ethernet network controllers is preparing support for new hardware.
April 21st, 2026 — Source

Initial Linux Driver Patches For Smart Data Accelerator Interface "SDXI"
Recently sent out on the Linux kernel mailing list was the initial patches for implementing the Smart Data Accelerator Interface (SDXI) as a vendor-neutral architecture for memory-to-memory data movement offload.
April 21st, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.1 Lands Workaround For Arm C1-Pro Erratum
Merged yesterday to the Linux 7.1 kernel is a workaround for an Arm C1-Pro CPU hardware bug around its Scalable Matrix Extension implementation.
April 21st, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.1 Staging Ushered In More Developers To Make Their First Kernel Contributions
Over the weekend Greg Kroah-Hartman sent out his various pull requests for the areas of the kernel he oversees. Among those is the staging area where this time around the notable activity isn't too much about feature work but many developers making some of their first contributions to the upstream kernel.
April 21st, 2026 — Source

Minisforum MS-R1 ARM Mini Workstation running Linux: Benchmarks
This is a new series looking at the Minisforum MS-R1 ARM Mini Workstation running Linux. In this series, I’ll examine every aspect of this mini workstation in detail from a Linux perspective. I’ll compare the machine with other machines to put my findings into context.
April 21st, 2026 — Source

OpenAI introduces Chronicle for Codex, a Recall-like memory feature for developers on macOS
OpenAI has introduced Chronicle, an opt-in research preview for the Codex app on macOS designed to streamline developer workflows.
April 21st, 2026 — Source

RADV Driver Enables Host Image Copy By Default For RDNA2 & Newer
Introduced back in 2023 with Vulkan 1.3.258 was VK_EXT_host_image_copy to copy data between host memory and images on the host processor without needing to stage the data through a CPU-accessible buffer. This direct CPU-to-GPU image data transfer path can reduce memory usage during asset loads and all around more efficiency and performance. Finally now the RADV open-source Radeon driver is enabling support by default.
April 21st, 2026 — Source

watch – small command-line utility written in C
watch is a small command-line utility written in C that periodically runs a shell command at a user-defined interval.
April 21st, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — April 17th, 2026

4 Best Microsoft Office Alternatives for Linux Users
Linux users seeking alternatives to Microsoft Office often face challenges balancing functionality, compatibility and cost. In a detailed breakdown by Explaining Computers, four prominent options are explored: LibreOffice, FreeOffice (and its paid version, SoftMaker Office), OnlyOffice and WPS Office. Each suite offers unique strengths, such as LibreOffice's open source flexibility or OnlyOffice's emphasis on collaboration and cloud integration. However, none of these alternatives achieve flawless compatibility with Microsoft Office files, especially when handling complex formatting or macros. This underscores the importance of aligning your choice with specific workflow needs.
April 17th, 2026 — Source

9 Best Free and Open Source Photo Metadata Editors
A metadata editor is computer software which allows users to view and edit metadata tags interactively and save them in the graphics file. So, metadata is information that is part of the image file and contains information about the image itself and the creation of the image. It can set textual information such as title, description, exposure time, ISO value, focal length, and copyright. Some modern digital cameras and camera phones are GPS enabled and they can save the location co-ordinates (latitude and longitude) with the photographs.
April 17th, 2026 — Source

19 Best Free and Open Source CLI Data Hashing Tools
Hashing is the process of passing data through a formula that produces a condensed fixed-value representation, called a hash value. That hash is typically a string of characters and the hashes generated by a formula are always the same length, regardless of how much data fed into it. For example, the MD5 formula produces 128-bit checksums. It converts data into blocks of specific sizes and manipulates that data a number of times.
April 17th, 2026 — Source

arTui -- keep up with recent arXiv submissions
arTui is a terminal user interface for keeping up with recent arXiv submissions from within the console.
April 17th, 2026 — Source

Fedora 44 Will Not Be Released Next Week
Fedora 44 final had been aiming for an early release target of 21 April, but due to outstanding blocker bugs, it's now revised to target a release on 28 April.
April 17th, 2026 — Source

GCC Compiler Adds Arm AGI CPU Target
The GCC open-source compiler has landed initial targeting support for Arm's newly-announced AGI CPU.
April 17th, 2026 — Source

Glibc Lands A Big Optimization For LoongArch CPUs
Merged yesterday to Glibc Git is a LoongArch-specific change to enable transparent hugepages (THP) aligned load segments by default for LoongArch64. Aligning ELF load segments to THP boundaries is providing a consistent performance win for large binaries by reducing transparent lookaside buffer (TLB) pressure and improving instruction fetch efficiency.
April 17th, 2026 — Source

icd -- makes changing directories quicker
It replaces the usual cd workflow with an interactive selector for previously visited paths, helping you jump around the filesystem without repeatedly typing long directory names. The project is lightweight, integrates with popular Zsh plugin managers, and also includes support for the Fish shell.
April 17th, 2026 — Source

IChingDiviner -- desktop I-Ching divination application
IChingDiviner is a desktop I-Ching divination application that brings the traditional Chinese oracle to Linux with a modern interface.
April 17th, 2026 — Source

Intel Xe2 Lunar Lake Linux Graphics Performance Up ~17% Over Past Year
Given the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release being imminent and also realizing it's been nearly one year to the day since reviewing the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition laptop under Linux, I ran some fresh benchmarks for seeing how the integrated Xe2 graphics have evolved on Linux over the past year.
April 17th, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.1 Crypto Code Rework Enables More Optimizations By Default
Linux libcrypto cryptography subsystem changes for the v7.1 kernel are enabling more optimizations by default and in turn helping to achieve better crypto/hashing performance on this next kernel version.
April 17th, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.1 x86/x86_64 Aligns With Other Architectures Now For Supporting Custom Restart Handlers
With the vast majority of x86/x86_64 systems supporting restarting the system using ACPi, BIOS, or even the KBD keyboard controller, with Linux 7.1 is now support in place for using custom restart handlers registered by drivers, such as in place for other CPU architectures.
April 17th, 2026 — Source

New Lenovo Fan Driver, More ASUS Motherboards With Sensor Monitoring For Linux 7.1
All of the hardware monitoring "HWMON" subsystem updates were merged this week for the Linux 7.1 kernel.
April 17th, 2026 — Source

Open source malware sees a 21 percent increase
A new report from Sonatype identifies 21,764 malicious open source packages in the first quarter of the year, up 21 percent from the same period last year and bringing the total logged since 2017 to 1,346,867.
April 17th, 2026 — Source

PangoTerm -- modern cross-platform SSH client
This is a series where I'll pick one proprietary Linux application each week. Although LinuxLinks primarily focuses on open source software, we'll explore proprietary software along the way.
April 17th, 2026 — Source

Sheets -- terminal-based spreadsheet application
Sheets is a terminal-based spreadsheet application for working with CSV data from the command line.
April 17th, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Final Freeze Explained: What Gets Blocked and How to Test Before Launch
The Ubuntu 26.04 LTS final freeze is now active, which means only critical installer fixes or post-release SRU patches will clear the gate before next week's launch. Anyone pushing packages must tie their changes to a Launchpad bug report and include the standard SRU template, otherwise the upload queue just rejects them automatically. Testing those upcoming release candidate images stays mandatory since catching broken drivers or missing firmware now saves everyone from day one panic on fresh installs.
April 17th, 2026 — Source

Valve Developer Lands RADV/ACO Changes For AMD's GFX11.7 / RDNA 4m
The open-source Linux graphics driver work continues around AMD's GFX11.7 GPU target for some yet-to-be-launched APUs/SoCs and to be branded as "RDNA 4m".
April 17th, 2026 — Source

Zorin OS 18.1 adds guided migrations, stronger app compatibility and wider hardware support, making switching from Windows far more practical for millions [clone]
A practical update that reduces friction for Windows users considering a move to Linux.
April 17th, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — April 14th, 2026

16 Best Free and Open Source Linux Web Servers
In hardware terms, a web server is a computer that stores web server software and a website's component files such as HTML documents, images, CSS and JavaScript files. A web server connects to the Internet and supports physical data interchange with other devices connected to the web.
April 14th, 2026 — Source

AMD Ready With CPPC Performance Priority & Dynamic/Raw EPP In Linux 7.1
Power management and ACPI subsystem maintainer Rafael Wysocki of Intel sent out the feature pull requests this weekend for Linux 7.1. There are some new AMD and Intel updates worth mentioning along with a lot of smaller, low-level code improvements for this next kernel version as it pertains to power management.
April 14th, 2026 — Source

Archium Linux -- Arch-based distribution
Archium Linux is an Arch-based Linux distribution designed to simplify installation and initial system setup without sacrificing the flexibility and transparency of Arch Linux.
April 14th, 2026 — Source

BeOS-Inspired Haiku OS Gets ARM64 Port Booting
Over the course of March there was much progress made on the ARM64 port of Haiku OS, the open-source operating system serving as the spiritual successor to BeOS.
April 14th, 2026 — Source

Beyond One-Click: Designing an Enterprise-Grade Observability Extension for Docker
Docker Extensions extend Docker Desktop beyond a local development environment. With minimal setup, developers can install tools that display logs, metrics, and traces directly within their workflow. This instant visibility reduces debugging cycles and improves understanding of container behavior during development.
April 14th, 2026 — Source

GrimRipper -- graphical application for ripping audio CDs
GrimRipper is a graphical application for ripping audio CDs on Linux.
April 14th, 2026 — Source

KDE Merges Per-Screen Virtual Desktops After 21 Years
A request made a KDE user all the way back in June 2005 on KDE 3.3.2 is finally resolved. After being sought after for 21 years, the latest KWin code now has support for per-screen virtual desktops.
April 14th, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.1 Lands ARM64 NEON-Accelerated CRC64-NVMe For ~6x Improvement
Merged yesterday were all the CRC code updates for the Linux 7.1 kernel. Most notable with that pull is an ARM64-optimized CRC64-NVMe implementation that can deliver multiple times faster performance.
April 14th, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.1 Revamps T10 PI Data Integrity Handling For Better Read Performance
Merged yesterday for the Linux 7.1 kernel is overhauling the T10 PI code for generating and verifying data integrity information. In turn the new code is cleaner while also allowing for better read storage performance.
April 14th, 2026 — Source

Mesa 26.1 RADV Driver Merges Vulkan Descriptor Heap As Big Improvement For Steam Play
As a big helper for Valve's Steam Play with DXVK and VKD3D-Proton, the Mesa Radeon Vulkan driver "RADV" has merged its initial support for the VK_EXT_descriptor_heap Vulkan extension.
April 14th, 2026 — Source

OpenSSL 4.0 Released With Encrypted Client Hello, RFC 8998 Support
OpenSSL 4.0 was just released as a big update for this widely-used SSL/TLS and crypto library.
April 14th, 2026 — Source

Phantom Overload -- atmospheric first person shooter game
Phantom Overload is an atmospheric first person shooter built with Godot for Linux and Windows.
April 14th, 2026 — Source

Sunshine Game Streaming Introduces Vulkan Video Encode Support
Sunshine v2026.413.143228 released this week as a new feature release for this self-hosted game stream host for Moonlight, an open-source game streaming client that is an implementation of the NVIDIA GameStream protocol. Notable with this Sunshine release is Vulkan Video encode support as an alternative to using the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) for game streaming.
April 14th, 2026 — Source

The Windows 11 customization scene is thriving because Microsoft won't give users what they want
Third-party tools are increasingly becoming popular among Windows 11 users, and it's likely that Microsoft is to blame.
April 14th, 2026 — Source

X.Org Server 21.1.22 Released Due To Five New Security Vulnerabilities
X.Org Server 21.1.22 is out today and driven by five new security vulnerabilities being disclosed for the aging codebase. In turn these vulnerabilities also impact XWayland too and thus necessitating the XWayland 24.1.10 release.
April 14th, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — April 13th, 2026

7 Best Free and Open Source Terminal-Based File Sharing Tools
There are many ways you can transfer files between computers. Here's a few methods. We can transfer files between two hosts on Linux using the scp command. The scp command establishes a secure connection between the two hosts and it uses the standard SSH port in order to transfer files. Alternatively, many people send files as attachments although there are often limitations with this method. Or users frequently use file hosting services in the cloud, WebTorrents, a personal server, wormhole and many others.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

10 Microsoft account settings I wish I had checked sooner
Secure your Microsoft account, secure your PC.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

28 Best Free and Open Source Linux Graphical Task Managers
A task manager is software which enables users to compile a list of tasks to be completed. This list is also known as a to-do list or things-to-do. For the purposes of this article, the term 'task manager' should not be confused with monitoring software which provides information about programs and processes running on a computer.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

33 Best Free and Open Source Linux GUI Time Tracking Software
Time tracking software is a type of computer software that records time spent on tasks. This category of software can enable users to run billing reports, and prepare invoices for clients.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

Apple HFS / HFS+ File-System Support Seeing Many Fixes For Linux 7.1
Nearly one year ago to the day I noted Linux developers were considering the removal of the Apple HFS and HFS+ file-system drivers from the kernel. They were orphaned the past decade and turning into a maintenance burden for upstream developers. But then to some surprise, a few developers stepped up to maintain the HFS(+) drivers. One year later it's proving to be a success story with more fixes for this aging Apple file-system support continuing.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

AutoTidy -- desktop file organiser
AutoTidy is a desktop file organiser that helps keep folders such as Downloads, Screenshots, and Desktop under control.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

axe -- xargs alternative
axe is a command-line utility that serves as an alternative to xargs, with a particular focus on argument processing and argument ordering.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

Beware! This "Windows 11 24H2" update download can quietly steal your sensitive data
The malicious 24H2 update download website is able to evade detection from anti-virus and other boot-time security on Windows 11.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

Btrfs Brings Performance Improvements, Shutdown ioctl Stable With Linux 7.1
Among the early pull requests sent out to Linus Torvalds even before the Linux 7.0 kernel officially released on Sunday were the Btrfs file-system updates. This feature-packed CoW file-system is seeing more performance optimizations for Linux 7.1 as well as its shutdown ioctl feature no longer being experimental and a variety of fixes.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

cargo-audit -- Cargo subcommand
cargo-audit is a Cargo subcommand for Rust projects that checks the dependencies recorded in Cargo.lock against the RustSec Advisory Database to help identify crates with known security vulnerabilities.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

CoreX -- hardware monitor
CoreX is a Linux hardware monitor that helps you keep track of system health and performance from a desktop dashboard.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

France's digital directorate dumping Windows desktops, adopting Linux instead
Après ça, le deluge, as plans call for move away from plenty more American software and hardware
April 13th, 2026 — Source

FTRFS: New Fault-Tolerant File-System Proposed For Linux
Sent out today was an initial patch series for comment on introducing the FTRFS file-system. The FTRFS proposal is more interesting than last week's VMUFAT file-system proposal.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

GNU Linux-libre 7.0 Deals With Deblobbing More Drivers & Cleansing DT Files
Building off last night's release of the Linux 7.0 kernel is now the GNU Linux-libre 7.0-gnu kernel release for that downstream kernel that removes support for loading non-free-software kernel modules, blocks the loading of loadable microcode/firmware even when it means greatly reduced hardware support, and other sanitization of code in the name of software freedom.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

Kanri -- modern offline Kanban board
Kanri is a modern desktop Kanban board application for personal task and project management.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 arrives as Linus Torvalds embraces a new era of AI-driven kernel development
The milestone Linux 7.0 release brings massive hardware gains for Intel and AMD alongside a surge of AI-refined code and self-healing filesystems.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 is out, bringing XFS repair features and more Intel and AMD support
Linux 7.0 released with better swapping, and new hardware support
April 13th, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.1 Kernel Starts Enabling Intel FRED, Expands AMD GPU Defaults, And Dropping Of Intel 486 CPU Support
Early Linux 7.1 Patches Reveal a Major Cleanup and Modern CPU Enablement, and Driver Improvements for AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA Hardware
April 13th, 2026 — Source

Linux's Power Sequencing PCIe M.2 Driver To Support M.2 Key-E Connectors
Merged for the Linux 7.0 kernel was a power sequencing driver for PCIe M.2 connectors as part of an effort to allow describing PCIe M.2 connectors in Device Tree files. For Linux 7.1, that driver is extending support for PCIe M.2 Key E connectors.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

Mesa 26.1 RadeonSI Driver Lands Improvement For AMD APUs With Rusticl
For those wishing to make use of modern OpenCL 3.0 capabilities on AMD APUs/SoCs with integrated Radeon graphics using Mesa's Rusticl driver, an improvement was merged this weekend to the RadeonSI driver ahead of this quarter's Mesa 26.1 release.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

Mold 2.41 Linker Released With New Features & Fixes
Mold 2.41 is out as the latest major update to this high performance linker and viable alternative to the linkers from the GNU and LLVM projects.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

NVIDIA Hiring More LLVM Engineers To Work On CUDA Tile
Last year NVIDIA announced the new CUDA Tile programming model as one of the biggest updates ever to the CUDA platform. CUDA Tile brings a virtual ISA for tile-based parallel programming and they subsequently open-sourced the CUDA Tile IR as an intermediate representation built atop LLVM's MLIR. Now they are looking to hire additional LLVM compiler engineers to help foster their CUDA Tile initiatives.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

Qualcomm and NetEase expand Snapdragon X gaming support with 25 PC games
Snapdragon X PCs add 25 NetEase titles
April 13th, 2026 — Source

Rust For Linux 7.1 Bringing Experimental Option That Can Help Performance
In advance of the Linux 7.1 merge window opening, Miguel Ojeda sent out all of the Rust feature updates on Friday. This includes bumping the minimum Rust version for building the Linux kernel as well as a new experimental option that can provide better performance for Rust code within the kernel, alongside other updates.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

Servo Browser Engine Making It Easier For Embedded Use
The open-source, Rust-based Servo browser engine has been improving its Servoshell demo browser application while one of the most promising potentials for this engine is around embedded use as an alternative to the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF). With the latest moves by Servo developers, they are making for a more compelling story for its use.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

Super Productivity -- todo app with timeboxing & time tracking capabilities
This is a series where I hand-pick an open source Linux application each week that has not previously been covered on LinuxLinks. Each application must meet a very high standard.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

Why Linux Is Quietly Becoming the Ultimate Gaming Platform in 2026
Linux gaming has undergone a remarkable evolution, becoming a legitimate choice for gamers seeking alternatives to traditional platforms. A key factor in this progress is Valve's Proton compatibility layer, which enables many Windows-exclusive games to run smoothly on Linux by translating Windows APIs into Linux-friendly instructions. Hardware Overview examines how recent updates to Proton, such as improved DirectX 12 translation and optimized shader compilation, have significantly enhanced performance and reduced stuttering in demanding titles. These advancements, combined with strides in graphics driver development, have made Linux a more accessible and capable platform for gaming.
April 13th, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — April 12th, 2026

5 Useful Free and Open Source Graphical GRUB Config Tools
GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader) is a boot loader software commonly used in Linux systems.
April 12th, 2026 — Source

10 Best Free and Open Source Linux GUI Typing Tutors
Being able to touch type is the ability of typing without looking at the keyboard. When touch-typing, the individual uses all fingers instead of just a few fingers. Consequently, typing speed increases dramatically.
April 12th, 2026 — Source

11 Best Free and Open Source Linux Terminal-Based Clocks
One of the strengths of Linux is the vast number of small, niche utilities that are made available under an open source license.
April 12th, 2026 — Source

12 Best Free and Open Source Linux GUI Clocks
One of the strengths of Linux is the vast number of small, niche utilities that are made available under an open source license.
April 12th, 2026 — Source

15 Best Free and Open Source Linux TUI Typing Tutors
Being able to touch type is the ability of typing without looking at the keyboard. When touch-typing, the individual uses all fingers instead of just a few fingers. Consequently, typing speed increases dramatically.
April 12th, 2026 — Source

Alternatives to popular CLI tools: cal
This article spotlights alternative tools to cal.
April 12th, 2026 — Source

CMake Pursuing Tighter Integration With Package Managers, Other Improvements
While the Meson build system has been capturing much of the limelight in recent years by open-source projects, the cross-platform CMake build system also shows no signs of slowing down and continues evolving with new features and functionality.
April 12th, 2026 — Source

Developer of the Week: Matthias Ettrich
This series shines a spotlight on open source developers who make a real difference. Too often, their contributions go unrecognised. By highlighting their achievements, this series aims to give these talented developers the recognition they deserve and to celebrate the dedication, creativity, and passion that drive the open source community forward.
April 12th, 2026 — Source

Katalog -- manage catalogs of disks and files
Katalog is a desktop application for cataloging files and storage devices so you can search, browse, and analyze their contents even when the original media is offline.
April 12th, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 enables three new AI-specific keys for keyboards, an apparent expansion beyond the Copilot key — Google authors both the HID spec and the kernel patch
New "Action on Selection," "Contextual Insertion," and "Contextual Query" keys go beyond Microsoft's Copilot button.
April 12th, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 Sees Last Minute Fix For Bogus Hardware Errors On AMD Zen 3
Ahead of the Linux 7.0 stable kernel release expected later today are some last minute pull requests sent out this morning. Notable for those using AMD Zen 3 hardware is addressing some bogus hardware errors that began appearing for some users on recent versions of the Linux kernel.
April 12th, 2026 — Source

Linux lays down the law on AI-generated code, says yes to Copilot, no to AI slop, and humans take the fall for mistakes — after months of fierce debate, Torvalds and maintainers come to an agreement
After months of fierce debate, Linus Torvalds and the Linux kernel maintainers have laid down the law on AI-generated code.
April 12th, 2026 — Source

Linux Out-Of-Bounds Access Fixed For Unprivileged Users With Specially Crafted Certs
An out-of-bounds access within the Linux kernel has existed in mainline the past three years that could be exploited by an unprivileged user submitting a specially crafted certificate to the kernel.
April 12th, 2026 — Source

Many Wonderful Improvements Expected For Linux 7.1, Especially For AMD & Intel
With Linux 7.0 expected for release later today, in turn the Linux 7.1 merge window will kick off for the two week period of landing all sorts of exciting new features, changes, and removal of old features from the kernel. Here is a look at some of what is on the table for the Linux 7.1 merge window.
April 12th, 2026 — Source

MODOS -- small Debian-based operating system
MODOS, formerly known as G0ll0'Z SmollOS, is a small Debian-based operating system aimed at people who want a portable Linux desktop on external storage such as a USB drive.
April 12th, 2026 — Source

rush -- command-line tool for executing jobs in parallel
It is intended for users who want a flexible alternative to parallel and similar utilities, with support for complex command construction, replacement strings, retries, timeouts, and resumable workflows. The project is particularly well suited to shell-based batch processing and data-heavy pipelines where you need controlled parallel execution from the command line.
April 12th, 2026 — Source

solidtime -- modern time tracking application
solidtime is a modern time tracking application aimed at freelancers, agencies, and teams.
April 12th, 2026 — Source

Trisquel 12.0 Released For Free Software Foundation Endorsed Distribution
For those sticking to absolute free software ideals, Trisquel 12.0 was released this weekend for this Free Software Foundation (FSF) approved distribution for only containing free software and foregoing loadable microcode/firmware and running on the Linux-libre kernel even with its reduced scope in hardware support.
April 12th, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — April 11th, 2026

11 Best Free and Open Source Wireless Security Tools
Wireless security is the prevention of unauthorized access or damage to computers or data using wireless networks, which include Wi-Fi networks. The term may also refer to the protection of the wireless network itself from adversaries seeking to damage the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of the network.
April 11th, 2026 — Source

13 Best Free and Open Source Linux Graphical IRC Clients
13 Best Free and Open Source Linux Graphical IRC Clients
April 11th, 2026 — Source

AIFiles -- organize your files
AIFiles is a command-line application that uses AI to analyse files and help organise them into structured folders with meaningful names.
April 11th, 2026 — Source

AMD's GAIA Now Allows Building Custom AI Agents Via Chat, Becomes "True Desktop App"
In addition to their efforts around the Lemonade SDK itself, AMD software engineers working on their AI initiatives continue to be investing quite a bit into the Lemonade-using GAIA, the project that originally stood for "Generative AI Is Awesome". AMD's GAIA now allows building your own custom AI agents via chatting with GAIA as well as becoming a "true desktop app" so it's easier to deploy across Windows, Linux, and macOS environments.
April 11th, 2026 — Source

Cage 0.3 Released With New Wayland Protocol Support
Cage as the Wayland compositor providing a kiosk mode for single, maximized apps is out with a new feature release more than six months after its prior version.
April 11th, 2026 — Source

D7VK 1.7 Brings More Improvements For Legacy Direct3D On Vulkan
D7VK as the open-source project that began as a fork of DXVK in adding support for Direct3D 7 atop Vulkan has with time extended its range to also supporting Direct3D 6, 5, and 3 APIs. Out today is D7VK 1.7 in continuing to better support those vintage versions of Microsoft's Direct3D API.
April 11th, 2026 — Source

darya -- disk usage explorer
Darya is a keyboard-driven disk usage explorer for the terminal written in Rust.
April 11th, 2026 — Source

FSMOUNT_NAMESPACE Feature Coming For Linux 7.1
FSMOUNT_NAMESPACE is a new feature developed by Christian Brauner. Using the FSMOUNT_NAMESPACE flag with fsmount() allows creating a new mount namespace with the newly-created file-system attached to a copy of the real root file-system. A namespace file descriptor is returned rather than the O_PATH mount file descriptor.
April 11th, 2026 — Source

GNOME-Aligned Amberol 2026.1 Music Player Released, Phosh Improves X11 Support
A few weeks past the GNOME 50 release and there continues to be a lot of ongoing GNOME app activity worth highlighting.
April 11th, 2026 — Source

Krita AI Diffusion 1.49.1 released
This update to the Krita AI Diffusion plugin targets the visual artifacts and model errors that often plague generative painting sessions. Artists using Flux models will finally get relief from the border glitches that left ugly lines after internal resizing. Custom workflow creators benefit from a new reset button while seed controls expand to support much larger numbers for precise randomness. Legacy users get a reprieve as the installer attempts pulling older PyTorch versions for GTX cards that typically fail with newer builds.
April 11th, 2026 — Source

Laser -- simple CD ripper for the GNOME desktop
It offers a straightforward graphical interface for extracting audio tracks from compact discs to common audio formats, while integrating metadata lookup and artwork handling so albums can be archived with tags and cover images intact.
April 11th, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.1.168, 6.6.134, 6.12.81, 6.18.22, 6.19.12 released
Linux Kernel 6.1.168, 6.6.134, 6.12.81, 6.18.22, and 6.19.12 are now available. The USB gadget subsystem took the biggest hit with patches fixing race conditions that caused crashes when users unbound devices or entered suspend modes. Kernel memory safety also gets a boost by ensuring kallsyms and thermal zones handle module removal and power events without dangling pointers.
April 11th, 2026 — Source

Microsoft Upgrades Its WSL2 Kernel Against Linux 6.18 LTS
Microsoft on Friday released linux-msft-wsl-6.18.20.1 as the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) kernel updated against the Linux 6.18 LTS series.
April 11th, 2026 — Source

Original Apollo 11 code open-sourced by NASA — original Command Module and Lunar Module code repos are now public domain resources
View and download this historic assembly code for your own space program
April 11th, 2026 — Source

RISC-V BeagleV Ahead Single Board Computer To See Working HDMI With Linux 7.1
The BeagleV Ahead is an open-source RISC-V single board computer S(BC) built around the quad-core TH1520 SoC. With the Linux 7.1 mainline kernel there is HDMI display support coming now that the Device Tree bits have been added.
April 11th, 2026 — Source

StartOS -- Debian-based Linux distribution optimised for personal servers
StartOS is a graphical Linux distribution designed to turn a computer into a personal server for self-hosting services.
April 11th, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — April 9th, 2026

25 Essential Free and Open Source LaTeX Tools -- typeset beautifully
LaTeX is a document preparation system and document markup language for high-quality typesetting. The system was originally developed by Leslie Lamport in the early 1980s. LaTeX is based on Donald E. Knuth's TeX typesetting language. Lamport says that LaTeX "represents a balance between functionality and ease of use".
April 9th, 2026 — Source

AMD Making It Easier To Embed Lemonade AI Capabilities Into Other Apps
The open-source Lemonade local AI server that enables using Ryzen AI NPUs on Linux for LLM usage as well as AMD Radeon GPU support and common x86_64 CPU support (in addition to Microsoft Windows support) is now becoming easier to embed within other apps for AI usage.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

ASUS Armoury Driver Supports A Few More Laptops With Linux 7.0
Merged back in Linux 6.19 was the ASUS Armoury driver to enhance support for the ROG Ally gaming handhelds and modern ASUS laptops. The ASUS Armoury driver enables various laptop features to be toggled under Linux and since its introduction it has continued expanding support for more ASUS devices. Ahead of Linux 7.0 coming out on Sunday, a few more devices are now supported by this upstream driver.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

Bringing databases and Kubernetes together
OpenEverest is an open-source platform for automating the provisioning and management of any database on any Kubernetes infrastructure.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

FFmpeg Introduces Vulkan-Accelerated 360 Degree Video Conversion
Beyond the capabilities of just the Vulkan Video API, the FFmpeg multimedia library has made interesting Vulkan-accelerated adaptations using compute shaders. With Vulkan compute they've implemented Apple ProRes video acceleration, FFV1 decode, and other features. The newest Vulkan feature now in place for FFmpeg is 360 degree video conversion.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

How Claude's Computer Use Update Unlocks Full Desktop Automations
Claude Code's latest update introduces the ability to directly interact with graphical user interfaces (GUIs), expanding its automation capabilities. As highlighted by World of AI, this feature enables users to perform tasks such as automating spreadsheet workflows, testing application interfaces and debugging visual components. Currently offered as a research preview for Mac OS Pro and Max users, the update integrates code-based operations with GUI interactions. For those on Windows or Linux, similar functionality can be achieved through an open source workaround using Node.js and the Playwright framework.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

Intel NPU Linux Driver To Allow Limiting Frequency For Power & Thermal Management
The Intel IVPU accelerator driver used on Linux for the neural processing unit (NPU) on Core Ultra SoCs saw a patch posted for allowing the NPU clock frequency to be limited in the name of power and thermal management.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

KDE neon 20260409 released
The latest build of KDE neon showcases latest KDE software for users who want immediate access to Plasma updates. Enthusiasts should expect some instability since the team does not guarantee stability when using bleeding edge applications daily. Owners of Nvidia hardware must install proprietary drivers themselves because the project offers no support for issues outside the core KDE stack. Upgrading requires running sudo apt full-upgrade instead of standard commands to ensure all packages install correctly on this fast-moving system.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

lazyjira -- terminal user interface for Jira
lazyjira is a terminal user interface for Jira designed to reduce the friction of working with tickets through the browser.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

MinIO Client -- work with object storage
MinIO Client, usually invoked as mc, is a command-line utility for working with object storage from a Unix-style shell.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

Mir-Based Miracle-WM 0.9 Introduces A WebAssembly Plugin System
Miracle-WM as the Wayland compositor / window manager built atop Canonical's Mir project is out with a big new feature release. This "hackable" and i3/Sway-inspired Wayland compositor has landed a WebAssembly-based plug-in system for opening up new possibilities as well as a new Rust API with this week's v0.9 release.
April 9th, 2026 — Source or Watch Video

RadioGoGo -- surf global radio waves
Internet radio, also known as web radio, online radio, or streaming radio, is a digital broadcasting service that delivers audio content over the internet rather than through traditional AM or FM frequencies.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

RADV Lands Support For Vulkan's New Primitive Restart Index Extension
The newest Vulkan API extension now wired up for Mesa's Radeon Vulkan driver "RADV" is VK_EXT_primitive_restart_index that was introduced last week.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

RISC-V Optimized strnlen Implementation For Linux 7.1 Yields Big Speed-Up
In addition to RISC-V discontinuing its eXecute In Place "XIP" kernel support for Linux 7.1, there is an optimized strnlen() function coming for Linux 7.1 on RISC-V as well as some other optimized functions.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

SafeScript -- code snippet manager
It gives developers a dedicated place to store and organize reusable code fragments in a local SQLite database, helping keep snippets accessible in a focused native application instead of scattered across text files.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

Samba 4.22.9 released
Samba 4.22.9 is out and it fixes a nasty regression where Kerberos authentication would silently break on Linux file servers. Administrators running long-term deployments should upgrade immediately because rpc workers were leaking memory until they consumed all available RAM. The update also patches critical failover bugs in CTDB clusters that caused state synchronization errors during node switches. Get this patch applied before your next maintenance window to keep Windows clients connected without authentication headaches.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

ShredOS -- disk eraser operating system
ShredOS is a small bootable Linux distribution built specifically for secure disk erasure.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

Siggy -- terminal-based client for the Signal messaging service
Siggy is a terminal-based client for the Signal messaging service that uses signal-cli as its messaging backend and presents conversations in a text user interface with an IRC-inspired look and feel.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

SiFive Raises $400M To Double Down On High Performance RISC-V For Data Centers
RISC-V processor IP purveyor SiFive just announced they have raised $400 million USD in an over-subscribed Series G financing round. This latest funding is so they can further focus on delivering high performance RISC-V designs for the data center.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

Super Lite Linux -- lightweight distribution
Super Lite Linux is a lightweight Linux distribution that aims to make lightweight systems more visually appealing to new users.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

Top Text-to-Speech Models of 2026: Proprietary vs Open Source Compared
Text-to-speech (TTS) technology in 2026 has reached a level where synthesized voices can closely mimic human speech in both accuracy and expressiveness. Trelis Research examines this progress by analyzing leading TTS models using metrics like Character Error Rate (CER) and Mean Opinion Score (MOS). For a rigorous evaluation, the "Tricky TTS" dataset was employed, presenting challenges such as proper noun pronunciation and prosody handling. This guide highlights how proprietary models like Gemini and Eleven Labs excel in naturalness, while open source options like Kokoro offer competitive performance for resource-constrained environments.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

Valve Developer Improves The Linux Gaming Experience For Limited vRAM Hardware
Natalie Vock of Valve's Linux graphics driver team primarily working on the RADV Vulkan driver has come up with a new interesting creation: patches to the Linux kernel and KDE for sharply improving the gaming experience for those running systems with limited amounts of video memory. Such as for graphics cards with just 8GB of dedicated vRAM, the patches now available -- initially on CachyOS for a nice out-of-the-box experience -- provide a noticeably better Linux gaming experience.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

Why Developers Are Switching to Qwen 3.6 Plus for Complex Coding
Qwen 3.6 Plus has made waves in the open source AI landscape with its impressive ability to handle up to 1 million tokens in a single context. Highlighted by World of AI, this model is particularly suited for large-scale, complex tasks like project-level coding, strategic planning and comprehensive document analysis. Its standout features, such as multimodal reasoning and agentic coding, enable it to integrate text, images and videos while automating workflows and debugging intricate systems. These capabilities position Qwen 3.6 Plus as a versatile option for professionals tackling resource-intensive challenges.
April 9th, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — April 8th, 2026

5 Useful Free and Open Source Linux Background Noise Generators
Ambient noise generators occupy a niche on Linux: they don't demand attention, but they can make a workspace feel calmer, less distracting, and more comfortable for long sessions at the keyboard.
April 8th, 2026 — Source

12 Best Free and Open Source GUI Image Compression Tools
Data compression is the process of storing data in a format that uses less space than the original representation would use. Compressing data can be very useful particularly in the field of communications as it enables devices to transmit or store data in fewer bits. Besides reducing transmission bandwidth, compression increases the amount of information that can be stored on a hard disk drive or other storage device.
April 8th, 2026 — Source

Bazzite Linux Updates Shrink Image Size and Bring Better Handheld Control to Steam UI
Bazzite Linux has dropped a new kernel and Mesa update into its testing branch to prepare for the upcoming version 44 release. Security protocols now include signed ISOs while image sizes shrink by shifting emulation tools to the separate DX variant. Handheld owners will notice TDP control moving directly into the Steam UI alongside an OpenGamepadUI overlay for better access to hidden settings. Desktop users can test these changes right now but should hold off on updating handheld images until the team confirms stability.
April 8th, 2026 — Source

Chrome 147 Stable Released With New Restrictions, Web Printing API
Google on Tuesday announced the Chrome 147 stable release to all Windows, macOS, and Linux users. There are a number of refinements in this latest routine Chrome stable update paired with various fixes and new developer capabilities.
April 8th, 2026 — Source

Fedora Linux 44 RC 1.1 released
Fedora Linux 44 has finally reached its first release candidate stage so testers can start hunting for critical bugs before the final launch. Testers will find detailed test coverage statistics on the OpenQA dashboard. Anyone running an evaluation should check the tracker for known blocker bugs because some configurations might face a rough upgrade path without warning. Community support remains available on the Fedora Quality chat channel or through the Discourse if real-time assistance is needed during testing failures.
April 8th, 2026 — Source

Hugging Face Contributes Safetensors To PyTorch Foundation To Secure AI Model Execution
Announced today from the PyTorch Conference EU in Paris is word that Hugging Face has contributed their Safetensors project to the PyTorch Foundation, which is an umbrella organization under the Linux Foundation for hosting AI initiatives. Safetensors aims to help mitigate arbitrary code execution risks and more.
April 8th, 2026 — Source

Intel Arc Pro B70 Benchmarks With LLM / AI, OpenCL, OpenGL & Vulkan
Last month Intel announced the Arc Pro B70 with 32GB of GDDR6 video memory for this long-awaited Battlemage G31 graphics card. This new top-end Battlemage graphics card with 32 Xe cores and 32GB of GDDR6 video memory offers a lot of potential for LLM/AI and other use cases, especially when running multiple Arc Pro B70s. Last week Intel sent over four Arc Pro B70 graphics cards for Linux testing at Phoronix. Given the current re-testing for the imminent Ubuntu 26.04 release, I am still going through all of the benchmarks especially for the multi-GPU scenarios. In this article are some initial Arc Pro B70 single card benchmarks on Linux compared to other Intel Arc Graphics hardware across AI / LLM with OpenVINO and Llama.cpp, OpenCL compute benchmarks, and also some OpenGL and Vulkan benchmarks.
April 8th, 2026 — Source

Intel Releases OpenVINO 2026.1 With Backend For Llama.cpp, New Hardware Support
Intel's OpenVINO toolkit for optimizing and deploying AI inferencing across their range of hardware platforms is out with its newest quarterly feature update. There is official support for Intel's latest hardware as well as enabling more large language models and other new AI innovations for this excellent open-source Intel software project.
April 8th, 2026 — Source

Lenovo Laptops To Enjoy Better Fan Speed Monitoring With Linux 7.1
Set to be merged for the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window is the "Yogafan" hardware monitoring driver to provide fan speed monitoring not only for Lenovo Yoga laptops but also various Legion and IdeaPad laptops too.
April 8th, 2026 — Source

mpdscribble -- MPD client
mpdscribble is a client for Music Player Daemon that submits information about tracks being played to scrobbler services such as Last.fm.
April 8th, 2026 — Source

otel-tui -- terminal-based observability viewer
otel-tui is a terminal-based observability viewer that lets you inspect telemetry data directly from a text user interface.
April 8th, 2026 — Source

PHP 8.4.20 released
The PHP 8.4.20 update addresses critical Opcache JIT compiler bugs that silently produced incorrect arithmetic results alongside infinite loop vulnerabilities and use-after-free memory corruption issues. Multiple extensions including FFI, Sysvshm, and SNMP received fixes for resource leaks and undefined behavior that could cause gradual performance degradation or random crashes in long-running processes. Web developers get corrections to XML attribute handling in the DOM parser, AVIF image detection support through GD, and XSLT compatibility improvements between different document object types.
April 8th, 2026 — Source

Purple -- terminal-based SSH host manager
Purple is a terminal-based SSH host manager that helps administrators work with large or frequently changing server inventories from a single text user interface.
April 8th, 2026 — Source

ShrikeLinux -- Arch-based Linux distribution
ShrikeLinux is an Arch-based distribution with a customised Xfce desktop and Nordic-inspired theming, designed to deliver a minimal, fast, and polished Linux experience.
April 8th, 2026 — Source

Tails 7.6.1 released
The Tails team just pushed out version 7.6.1 as an emergency update to patch critical security vulnerabilities found in Tor Browser. Even though developers say they have not seen these flaws actively exploited yet, ignoring them leaves anonymity tools open to potential traffic analysis attacks. This release brings the Tor Client and Thunderbird up to date while also fixing firmware packages that struggle with newer Wi-Fi cards on laptops. Users should treat this as a mandatory fix rather than an optional upgrade since the underlying browser engine received significant security hardening.
April 8th, 2026 — Source

Zen Browser 1.19.7b released
Zen Browser version 1.19.7b updates its Firefox engine to 149.0.2 while fixing a critical bug that made toolbars unresponsive on Linux systems after dragging tabs in Wayland sessions. The release also resolves issues where addon installation failed in compact mode and disabling page swipe broke workspace switching on MacOS devices. A new keyboard shortcut for duplicating tabs has been added to settings alongside several minor visual fixes like double separator lines in menus. Users upgrading should check if they had workarounds enabled for the previously broken Linux input handling or MacOS gesture conflicts.
April 8th, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — April 6th, 2026

6 Best Free and Open Source Graphical Audio Grabbers
CD audio grabbers are designed to extract ("rip") the raw digital audio (in a format commonly called CDDA) from a compact disc to a file or other output. This type of software enables a user to encode the digital audio into a variety of formats, and download and upload disc info from freedb, an internet compact disc database.
April 6th, 2026 — Source

A Small But Useful Debugging Addition For AMD Zen Systems With Linux 7.1
A small but convenient feature is coming with the Linux 7.1 that will be useful in debugging AMD Zen system problems and information reporting/transparency purposes.
April 6th, 2026 — Source

Alternatives to popular CLI tools: awk
This article spotlights alternative tools to awk, software specialized for textual data manipulation. It reads a text file line by line, and for each line that matches a pattern expression, it executes an action (which normally prints output).
April 6th, 2026 — Source

claws -- terminal user interface for managing AWS resources
Inspired by k9s, it provides a keyboard-driven interface with vim-style navigation for browsing, inspecting, filtering, and acting on resources across a wide range of AWS services, including compute, storage, databases, containers, and serverless components. It also supports working across multiple AWS profiles and regions, and includes an AI chat assistant that uses AWS Bedrock for contextual analysis.
April 6th, 2026 — Source

Google Proposes JSIR As A High-Level IR For JavaScript
Google engineers have been developing JSIR as a high-level intermediate representation (JSIR) for JavaScript that they are already using in production at the company code code analysis and transforming other code/bytecode to JavaScript as well as for deobfuscating JavaScript code.
April 6th, 2026 — Source

Duolingo's Kubernetes Leap
Franka Passing discusses the architectural shift of Duolingo's 500+ backend services to Kubernetes. She explains the move toward GitOps with Argo CD, the transition to IPv6-only pods, and the "cellular architecture" used to isolate environments. She shares "reports from the trenches" on managing developer trust, navigating AWS rate limits, and productionizing early adopter services.
April 6th, 2026 — Source

KDE is bringing back the Oxygen and Air themes, here's what they look like
Oxygen and its close sibling, Air, were removed back in 2024. Now, KDE is restoring them as optional packages for Plasma 6.7.
April 6th, 2026 — Source

Linux devs start removing support for 37-year-old Intel 486 CPU — head honcho Linus Torvalds says 'zero real reason' to continue support
Linus Torvalds recently telegraphed that there was 'zero real reason' to continue support for these ancient CPUs.
April 6th, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.6.133 released
Linux Kernel 6.6.133 releases as a quick fix designed to stop systems from crashing after a bad update slipped through. The issue stemmed from a previous change that removed vital checks for invalid file descriptors used in extended attribute calls. This release undoes those changes to prevent kernel panics reported by security researchers and admins alike. Anyone running production servers should install this version right away since stability matters more than new code tweaks.
April 6th, 2026 — Source

Many MediaTek MT76 WiFi Driver Improvements Coming For Linux 7.1
Separate from the recently discussed work on MediaTek MT7927 "Filogic 380" support being worked on for the MT76 Linux driver (still undergoing review), a number of other MediaTek MT76 wireless driver improvements are queued up ahead of the Linux 7.1 merge window opening as soon as next week.
April 6th, 2026 — Source

mplay -- command-line music player inspired by cplay
mplay is a command-line music player inspired by cplay, but with a richer terminal interface and a strong emphasis on customization.
April 6th, 2026 — Source

NetBSD 11.0 Nears Release With RC3 Released For Testing
For the better part of the past year NetBSD developers have been preparing for the NetBSD 11.0 release and in February NetBSD 11.0-RC1 released followed by 11.0-RC2 and now a third release candidate was announced today.
April 6th, 2026 — Source

onsen -- rain sounds and white noise
onsen is a small Python command line utility that brings a relaxing hot-springs theme to the terminal.
April 6th, 2026 — Source

OWASP Amass- attack surface mapping and asset discovery framework
OWASP Amass is an attack surface mapping and asset discovery framework. It performs network mapping of attack surfaces and external asset discovery using open source information gathering and active reconnaissance techniques.
April 6th, 2026 — Source

PaddleOCR -- OCR and document-parsing toolkit
This is a series where I hand-pick an open source Linux application each week that has not previously been covered on LinuxLinks. Each application must meet a very high standard.
April 6th, 2026 — Source

Patch to end i486 support hits Linux kernel merge queue
After a year of patchwork, maintainers look ready to start retiring 486-class CPUs
April 6th, 2026 — Source

Tiny Corp Begins Accepting Pre-Orders For Their $10M Exabox
Open-source friendly company Tiny Corp that is behind the Tinygrad MIT-licensed neural network framework and developing a "sovereign" AMD GPU driver stack with their Tinybox hardware offerings has their sights on shipping the Exabox next year. The Tiny Corp's Exabox is expected to retail for around $10M USD but offer immense AI compute power.
April 6th, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS makes it even easier to enable 10 years of security updates
Canonical is adding Ubuntu Pro enrollment to the Welcome tool in the upcoming 26.04 LTS release, simplifying 10-year support access.
April 6th, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu's latest version now needs more RAM than Windows 11
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS requires a dual-core 2GHz CPU and 6GB RAM, which is more than Windows 11's 1GHz and 4GB minimums.
April 6th, 2026 — Source

Wine Staging 11.6 Ships Big Patch Series For Working On DirectComposition
Following Friday's release of Wine 11.6 with reviving the Android driver and improving game mod support as part of DLL loader updates, Wine-Staging 11.6 is out today with extra patches atop.
April 6th, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — April 3rd, 2026

13 Best Free and Open Source Linux Photo Management Software
Photo management software is a type of computer application that helps users to organize their digital image collection.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

A popular Linux distro now has higher system hardware requirements than Windows 11
Ubuntu, a popular Linux distro, is getting a new version soon, and its requirements are seemingly higher than that of Windows 11.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

AMDGPU Driver Ready To Be The Default For Aging Kaveri / Kabini / Mullins APUs
With Linux 6.19 AMD GCN 1.1 and GCN 1.1 dGPUs now default to the AMDGPU driver rather than the legacy Radeon Linux driver. For these Southern Islands and Sea Islands graphics cards it means much better performance, RADV Vulkan support out-of-the-box, and other improved functionality in using this modern AMDGPU kernel graphics driver on Linux.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

CachyOS Delivers More Performance Out Of Intel Panther Lake
Most of my Intel Panther Lake benchmarking over the past two months for the new Core Ultra Series 3 hardware has been done with Ubuntu Linux given the pervasiveness of it, especially in the corporate/enterprise space. But for those looking at achieving even greater out-of-the-box Linux performance on Intel Panther Lake, the Arch Linux based CachyOS does a pretty fine job at further advancing the performance.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

FreeBSD Laptop Project Hopes To Port Newer Linux Graphics Drivers This Year
Developers working on the FreeBSD laptop initiative to make the FreeBSD operating system more suitable for running on modern laptop hardware have drafted their road-map of further action items they hope to accomplish in 2026.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

Gentoo Releases Experimental Images Using GNU/Hurd
Following an April Fools' Day tease of Gentoo claiming they were going to switch to GNU Hurd as their primary kernel moving forward, they have now acknowledged the joke but in fact also announcing there are now experimental Gentoo GNU/Hurd images available.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

Gnucap -- general purpose circuit simulator
Gnucap is a general purpose circuit simulator aimed at analysing and simulating electronic circuits. It supports both analog and digital simulation, allowing engineers, researchers, and students to experiment with circuit designs and evaluate behaviour under different conditions.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

Hands On with OpenClaw Node for VS Code: Real Workflow, Real Friction
With all the hoopla around OpenClaw and its potential for proactive assistants and personal agents, I have been curious about how it would actually work in a real editor-based workflow.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

Intel Linux NPU Driver 1.32 Adds Wildcat Lake Support
Intel today released their Linux NPU Driver 1.32 as the user-space driver components that interacts with the upstream IVPU kernel accelerator driver for supporting the NPU hardware with Core Ultra processors.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

Internet Bug Bounty program hits pause on payouts
HackerOne is the latest organization to struggle with AI submissions.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

KDE neon 20260402 released
KDE neon loads fresh Plasma software onto an Ubuntu LTS foundation specifically for enthusiasts who care more about new features than rock-solid stability. Developers prioritize new features over guaranteeing a system that works without issues during critical tasks so users need to manage their own risk. Proprietary Nvidia drivers require manual installation and are unsupported, meaning anyone with graphics issues must handle troubleshooting without official backing. System updates demand the use of apt full-upgrade instead of standard commands to prevent dependency breakages on this rolling software stack.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

Linux NPU Driver v1.32.0 released
Intel Linux NPU Driver v1.32.0 brings essential Wildcat Lake support and cleans up the messy dependency chains that frustrated Ubuntu users for months. Automatic Level Zero resolution removes the headache of manually hunting down binaries while a new documentation file clarifies exactly what features are active in the UMD driver. Successful installation demands purging legacy packages first to avoid conflicts with the specific libze1 version pulled directly from the graphics PPA snapshot. Users must confirm hardware recognition by inspecting /dev/accel devices and dmesg logs instead of trusting a silent install process.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

Meta Has A New Linux Optimization To Avoid Throttling TCP Throughput Unnecessarily
Meta's great Linux engineering team have been working through some fresh performance optimizations recently from optimizing /proc/interrupts outputs to renewing their investment in jemalloc. A new Linux kernel patch this week provides another optimization to avoid a possible situation of throttling the TCP throughput unnecessarily on Linux systems.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

OpenAI executive shuffle includes new role for COO Brad Lightcap to lead 'special projects'
A handful of OpenAI executives are transitioning into new roles, according to a report from Bloomberg. An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the personnel changes to TechCrunch.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

Pulse -- local-first burnout and energy tracker for GNOME
Pulse is a GNOME application designed to help users monitor their energy levels and manage burnout.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

Redox OS Introducing New CPU Scheduler For ~1.5x Performance In Heavy Tasks
The Rust-based Redox OS operating system is preparing to land a new CPU scheduler thanks to work being carried out by open-source developer Akshit Gaur on modernizing the platform's process scheduling subsystem.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

ShoopDaLoop -- advanced live looping application with DAW-like elements
ShoopDaLoop is an advanced live looping application with DAW-like elements.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

Snapdragon X2's Adreno X2-85 GPU Sees Driver Improvements For Linux 7.1
Rob Clark on Thursday sent out the batch of MSM DRM driver feature changes targeting the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window. This new work for DRM-Next includes enhancements to the Adreno X2-85 GPU support as found within the new Snapdragon X2 laptop SoCs plus various enhancements to existing Qualcomm graphics/display hardware.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

Snu Photo Manager -- feature-rich photo manager
Snu Photo Manager is a feature-rich desktop application for managing and editing photos and videos, written in Python and built using the Kivy framework.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

Speed of Sound -- voice typing for the Linux desktop
Speed of Sound is a voice typing application for the Linux desktop that enables users to dictate text and have it automatically transcribed into any focused application.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

SteamOS propels Linux to record 5.33% share in latest Steam Survey
The latest Steam Hardware and Software Survey results for March 2026 show Linux crossing the 5% market share threshold for the first time in the platform's history. According to the data, Linux-based systems jumped to 5.33% of the total user base, a massive 3.10% increase over the previous month.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

Tencent is building an enterprise empire on top of an Austrian developer's open-source lobster
Tencent Holdings has launched ClawPro, an enterprise AI agent management platform built on OpenClaw, the open-source framework that has become the fastest-growing project in GitHub's history and the unlikely centrepiece of a national technology craze in China. The tool, released in public beta by Tencent's cloud division on Thursday, allows businesses to deploy OpenClaw-based AI agents in as little as 10 minutes, with controls for template selection, model switching, token-consumption tracking, and security compliance. During its internal beta, ClawPro was adopted by more than 200 organisations across finance, government, and manufacturing, sectors that require the kind of strict data governance that the open-source version of OpenClaw was never designed to provide.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu Raises CPU And RAM Requirements Above Windows 11 Amid Linux's Steam Surge
Canonical has posted a new set of system requirements for the release of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, otherwise known as Resolute Raccoon, and they are now higher than what Microsoft recommends for Windows 11. Notably, the new requirements arrive amid another surge in Linux usage on Steam, with the latest Steam survey revealing an all-time high metric for Linux.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

Vulkan 1.4.348 Ships Four New Extensions - Including One To Help OpenGL Emulation
Vulkan 1.4.348 released this morning as the latest routine update to this high performance graphics and compute API. With Vulkan 1.4.348 comes four new extensions.
April 3rd, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — April 2nd, 2026

AMD Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" Enjoys Great Performance Gains With Latest Linux Software
With the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release due out in three weeks, I have been re-testing a number of different devices on this newest Ubuntu release. One of the most significant improvements to note was when running the Framework Desktop with Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" and quantifying the performance gains of the Radeon 8060S Graphics since launch last year. Here's a look at how the Vulkan and OpenGL performance has evolved for the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 since its launch last year in going from Ubuntu 25.04 to Ubuntu 26.04.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

Bottles 63.2 released
Bottles 63.2 has dropped as a quick fix for the crash that was killing Wine apps whenever GTK tried to refresh from another thread. This threading conflict caused applications to quit without warning, which is exactly the kind of instability nobody needs after setting up a complex environment. Users should grab the update through Flatpak or their package manager immediately before running any containers. Ignoring this release means risking unexpected failures that could ruin testing sessions or gaming setups.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

CentOS Launches Accelerated Infrastructure Enablement For Driving NVIDIA AI Factories
The CentOS project has established the Accelerated Infrastructure Enablement "AIE" special interest group with a focus on providing a "fast lane" for "in-flight" patches. This CentOS AIE SIG is particularly focused on carrying the code needed for enabling NVIDIA AI factories.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

Glate -- Google Translator and Text To Speech Service on Linux Desktop
Glate is a desktop application for Linux that provides text translation and text-to-speech capabilities using Google's translation services. It offers a straightforward interface for translating text between a wide range of languages while also allowing users to listen to pronunciations or generate speech audio files. The application is designed for everyday use, combining translation and speech synthesis into a single, lightweight tool.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

hyprquickshot -- screenshot utility for Hyprland built with Quickshell
hyprquickshot is a screenshot utility for Hyprland built with Quickshell. It provides a graphical capture interface with smooth animations, giving users a more polished workflow than a simple shell script or basic command-line frontend.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

IBM Collaborating With Arm For Dual-Architecture Hardware
IBM announced today a strategic collaboration with Arm around new dual-architecture hardware.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

IBM Lays Out Patches For ARM Virtualization Acceleration On IBM Z Servers
Following this morning's announcement of IBM working with Arm on "dual architecture" hardware, we have some more details on at least what's happening from the software side... It's improving Arm virtualization on IBM Z Systems (s390).
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

Intel Posts Fourth Version Of Cache Aware Scheduling For Linux
Just over one year ago Intel Linux engineers began working on cache-aware load balancing for Linux or more commonly referred to as Cache Aware Scheduling. The functionality for helping modern Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC processors especially hasn't yet been upstreamed to the Linux kernel but yesterday the fourth version of these patches were posted for review.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

KTransformers Adds AVX2 MoE Support For Viable Performance On CPUs Without AMX/AVX-512
KTransformers 0.5.3 released today for this framework for efficient inferencing and fine-tuning of large language models (LLMs) with a focus on CPU-GPU heterogeneous computing. With this release, KTransformers 0.5.3 is now more applicable for CPUs lacking Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX) and AVX-512 in now providing some AVX2-only kernels too.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

Linux Fixes Performance Bug Affecting Qualcomm Ath11k & Ath12k WiFi Drivers
Sent out today were the networking subsystem fixes for the ongoing Linux 7.0 kernel. These networking fixes in time for Sunday's Linux 7.0-rc7 release include addressing performance issues within the Qualcomm Ath11k and Ath12k WiFi drivers that have always existed ever since the drivers were upstreamed.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

Linux Installations Rise to 5% in Latest Steam Hardware Survey, RTX 5070 Falls Back
The latest Steam hardware survey has shown a very interesting picture, with strong growth in Linux installations among gamers. The share of users using Linux rose from 2.13% in February to 5.33% in March. This is a significant jump, putting the open-source operating system well ahead of macOS, which stands at 2.35%, although it still remains far behind Windows, which continues to dominate with 92.33%, despite a drop of 4.28%.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.19.11, 6.18.21, 6.12.80, 6.6.132 released
The latest Linux kernel drops for versions 6.19.11, 6.18.21, 6.12.80, and 6.6.132 prioritize boring stability work over exciting new features. Ext4 receives patches to prevent panic messages when unmounting or handling corrupted block groups during normal file operations. Drivers for Xilinx DMA engines and Intel Bluetooth stacks are fixed to manage hardware resets properly without leaking memory. System administrators managing servers should apply these patches quickly to avoid crashes caused by critical use-after-free bugs.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

Linux users surge on Steam, doubling in a year
The Steam Deck is a huge part of that, obviously... but it's a smaller factor in the total Linux number than you might think.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

Microsoft's Newest Open-Source Project: Runtime Security For AI Agents
Microsoft today announced their newest open-source (MIT-licensed) software project.. the Agent Governance Toolkit. Microsoft is trying their hand at coming up with runtime security governance for autonomous AI agents.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

New Red Hat subscription simplifies long-term enterprise Linux support
Red Hat has announced Red Hat Enterprise Linux Extended Life Cycle Premium, a new subscription that provides a predictable 14-year life cycle for major Red Hat Enterprise Linux releases. This stand-alone subscription consolidates extended support, simplifying the management of multiple support streams. It helps organizations maintain their most sensitive, change-averse workloads on a single, hardened foundation for more than a decade.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

OpenAI just bought TBPN
The talk show will reportedly maintain editorial independence but also help with OpenAI comms and marketing.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

OpenSSH 10.3 released
OpenSSH 10.3 arrives with critical patches that fix command injection vulnerabilities capable of executing arbitrary shell commands through user names. The update enforces stricter certificate rules so an empty principals section fails authentication instead of acting as a dangerous wildcard. New escape sequences and multiplexing flags make debugging active connections significantly easier without killing background sessions. System administrators should prioritize this upgrade immediately because the patches close known exploitation paths in standard setups.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

pgAdmin 4 v9.14 released
The pgAdmin 4 v9.14 update finally puts an end to the frustration of seeing AI tools when they are disabled in the settings. Power users can now copy text directly from chat panels and download binary data without hunting for external utilities. Underneath the hood, fixes prevent crashes during OAuth2 authentication and stop geometry viewers from displaying stale information. The team also improved how the AI Assistant manages conversation context to keep token budgets in check during long sessions.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

Proposed Wine Code Uses Zink For OpenGL-On-Vulkan By Default
A CodeWeavers engineer opened a merge request yesterday for Wine to use Mesa's Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan driver by default. This would build Zink as a Windows Portable Executable (PE) for allowing OpenGL to go straight to the Vulkan API with the host Vulkan drivers.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

Steam on Linux Surpasses 5% Market Share in the Latest Survey Update
As we enter a new month, Steam's Hardware and Software Survey data has been processed, providing us with a clearer view of the overall gaming market that uses Steam platform. Today, the most notable change in the Steam Survey is the increase in Linux gamers, who have moved from their historically low single-digit market share to mid-single digits. As of March, Linux-based operating systems were running Steam on 5.33% of all polled systems. This represents an impressive 3.10% increase over February's data, which showed a dip in Linux market share from January's 3.5%.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

Switchfin -- third-party native Jellyfin client
Switchfin is a third-party PC player for Jellyfin that provides a native user interface to browse and play movies and series.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

SystemRescue 13 lands with Linux 6.18 and bcachefs support
And other handy tools that could save your data in a crisis
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Raises Recommended Memory Requirement to 6 GB
Canonical increased the recommended system memory for the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS "Resolute Raccoon" to 6 GB of RAM, a first major change since 2018. According to the release note, the 26.04 LTS now lists 6 GB of RAM as the baseline for a comfortable desktop experience, alongside a 2 GHz dual-core CPU and 25 GB of storage, unchanged from previous generations. This represents a 50% increase over Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, which in 2018 raised the bar to 4 GB, and a notable shift from earlier releases that ran on as little as 1 GB. The change is not caused by a heavier core OS. Instead, it reflects the reality of modern workloads.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu Linux raises minimum system memory requirements by 50% — requirements bumped to 6GB of RAM, previously raised from 1GB to 4GB in 2018
Not the best timing due to the RAMpocalypse, but there are leaner distros like Lubuntu available if you need them.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

The Best Lightweight Linux Distros to Revive Your Old Hardware
Lightweight Linux distributions offer an effective way to rejuvenate older computers, allowing them to perform everyday tasks efficiently despite hardware limitations. As highlighted by ExplainingComputers, these distros are designed to minimize resource usage, making them ideal for systems with constrained memory or processing power. For instance, Lubuntu, which runs on as little as 1 GB of RAM and a 1 GHz CPU, provides a modern interface while remaining highly resource-efficient. By carefully matching a distro like Lubuntu, MX Linux, or Antix Linux to your computer's specifications, you can ensure optimal performance even on aging hardware.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

wak -- compact implementation of the awk programming language
wak is a compact implementation of the awk programming language designed for both standalone use and integration with Toybox.
April 2nd, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — April 1st, 2026

20 Best Free and Open Source Linux Speech Synthesis Tools
Speech synthesizers are text-to-speech systems used with computers. This type of software is programmed to include phonemes and the grammatical rules of a language, so that words are pronounced correctly. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal language text into speech. The reverse process is speech recognition. We cover speech recognition in a separate roundup.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

April 1 Linux Patches: Verified Birth Date For File Creation, Block Emacs From Running
What's more annoying: half-baked AI slop open-source patches or April Fools' Day with programmers trying to have some fun? This year, April 1 is seeming more patches than usual.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

Bazaar 0.7.13 released
Bazaar version 0.7.13 lands with a focus on stability rather than flashy new features for its Flatpak application store. The update forces the GNOME 50 runtime while resolving nasty bugs where opening random URIs would crash the app entirely. Visual tweaks clean up double shadows and fix label wrapping issues that plagued high DPI displays during recent testing. While permission editing made a brief appearance, it was removed to prioritize fixing crashes and ensuring bundles open correctly for users.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

Briefkasten -- self-hosted bookmarking application
Briefkasten is a self-hosted bookmarking application for users who want to manage saved links on their own infrastructure.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

Daphne -- audio player and music library manager for Linux
Daphne is a modern Linux music player that's built with GTK4 and the giD bindings for D. It's free and open source software.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

Dell XPS 13 Snapdragon Elite Laptop Sees New EC Linux Driver To Improve Support
Last month Dell upstreamed the firmware needed for their XPS 13 935 Snapdragon X1 Elite laptop. This makes the Linux outlook for this ARM-based Dell XPS laptop much better than before in not having to worry about extracting necessary firmware blobs from Windows 11. Now another step forward for the Dell XPS 13 9345 is being made with a new EC driver being posted to enhance the hardware support.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

camera-streamer -- low-latency camera streaming project for Raspberry Pi systems
camera-streamer is a high-performance, low-latency camera streaming project for Raspberry Pi systems and similar single-board computers.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

Change of Platform Coming Soon to LinuxLinks
After a great deal of reflection, benchmarking, soul-searching, and one suspiciously long meeting near the photocopier, we're thrilled to announce a bold new direction for the future of our computing life.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

grimblast -- helper for screenshots within Hyprland
grimblast is a command-line screenshot utility for Hyprland. Based on grimshot, it offers a simple interface over grim, slurp, and jq, making it easier to capture screenshots in Wayland sessions.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

HarfBuzz 14.0 Released With New GPU Accelerated Text Rendering Library
HarfBuzz is the open-source text shaping engine originally born out of the FreeType project and now widely-used by GNOME, KDE, Java, Flutter, Godot, Chromium, LibreOffice, and countless other applications. HarfBuzz 14.0 released today and making this release quite exciting is introducing a GPU-accelerated text rendering library.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

Javi-OS -- Debian-based Linux distribution
Javi-OS is a Linux distribution designed to deliver a smooth and secure user experience. It's based on Debian for Spanish users.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

KDE Linux Hardening Their OS Against Updates Making Systems Unbootable
KDE Linux as the in-house, leading-edge Linux distribution for showcasing the latest KDE Plasma innovations has promoted itself as being an atomically updated Linux distribution. But these atomic updates didn't quite work out as planned recently with some users finding their system(s) unbootable. But improvements are being made now for better robustness moving forward.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

MeloTTS -- high-quality multi-lingual text-to-speech library
MeloTTS is a multilingual text-to-speech library written in Python for generating natural-sounding speech locally.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

New Patches Allow Building Linux IPv6-Only, Option To Deprecate "Legacy" IPv4
Longtime Linux developer David Woodhouse sent out a patch series today to "deprecate legacy IP" support within the Linux kernel. While some of his commentary his April 1st-esque, he does acknowledge much of this work has merit. Ultimately it can allow for building a Linux kernel with IPv6-only support and working on allowing "legacy" IPv4 support to be disabled as part of the kernel build.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

OpenAI raises $122 billion in boosted funding round
OpenAI on Tuesday said that the startup was valued at $852 billion in a freshly closed funding round that raised $122 billion.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

PLD Linux -- RPM-based Linux distribution
PLD Linux is a free, RPM-based Linux distribution for advanced users and administrators who value flexibility and are comfortable with occasional manual tweaking.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

Raspberry Pi 4 3GB Launches, Raspberry Pi Prices Go Up Again Due To RAM
Raspberry Pi prices are going up yet again due to the continued memory squeeze on the industry. To help offset the memory prices for some use-cases, Raspberry Pi also announced the introduction of the Raspberry Pi 4 3GB model at $83 to help fill the void between the 2GB and 4GB options.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

rawk -- POSIX compatible AWK written in Rust
rawk is an AWK implementation written in Rust for people who want a Rust-based take on the classic text-processing language.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

The Linux Kernel's Minimum Rust Version Supported Prepares For Rust 1.85 Baseline
The Rust-For-Linux crew is preparing to raise the minimum supported Rust version for building the Linux kernel and and similarly also bumping the minimum supported version of bindgen, the tool for generating Rust FFI bindings for C code in the kernel.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

Wayland Protocols 1.48 Released With XDG Session Management
Wayland Protocols 1.48 is out today with the long-awaited XDG Session Management protocol in tow as well as several new experimental protocols.
April 1st, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — March 31st, 2026

16 Useful Free and Open Source Linux Column-Oriented Databases
A database is a collection of records or data that is stored in a computer system. Database tools and applications are designed to help you store and manage data in a controlled and structured manner. A database is a vital system for any organisation that stores mission critical information. The continual failure of a company's database system will inevitably lead to the demise of the organisation; companies cannot function without a fully working database system.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

A Lot Of Rust Graphics Driver Changes For Linux 7.1, NVIDIA Nova Driver Additions
Sent out yesterday were the DRM Rust feature changes for DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 7.1 merge window coming in April. The Rust graphics/display driver code for Linux 7.1 includes more programming language abstractions and other Rust infrastructure work to make graphics drivers written in Rust more capable.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

Best Free and Open Source Software: March 2026 Updates
Here's the newest scoop on our handpicked software recommendations! This month marks another record for us — we've published 163 new and updated roundups in the month. But our focus doesn't end with software; our website is also brimming with informative hardware content.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

French open-source orchestration platform Kestra raises $25M
The French open-source orchestration platform has grown enterprise revenue 25x in 18 months and executed over 2 billion workflows in 2025. RTP Global leads the round; total funding reaches $36M.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

GNOME 49.5 released
The GNOME 49.5 release lands as a stable bugfix update that warrants immediate attention for its critical security patches within the GLib library. Epiphany has reverted its default content filters to fix site compatibility issues caused by overly aggressive adblocking rules in recent versions. This build also resolves several common interface glitches including unexpected keyboard layout changes and Nautilus crashes during daily use. Meanwhile, developers should note that GTK+ 3 is officially entering maintenance mode with major updates unlikely until March 2027.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

gscreenshot -- screenshot utility for Linux
gscreenshot is a screenshot utility for Linux that provides both a graphical interface and command line frontend for multiple screenshot backends. It supports X11 and Wayland environments, automatically detects the available backend tools on the system, and can adapt its functionality based on the installed dependencies.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

How Apache Kafka flexed to support queues
The latest release of Apache Kafka delivers the queue-like consumption semantics of point-to-point messaging. Here's the how, what, and why.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

Intel Panther Lake & Linux AI/LLM Debates Dominated Q1 For Linux Users
With Q1 wrapping up, here is a look back at the most popular news and reviews for the quarter that excited Linux readers the most. During this quarter on Phoronix were 881 original news articles thus far and 61 featured Linux hardware reviews / multi-page benchmark articles.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

Kodi 22 'Piers' Alpha 3 is out -- download it now!
It's been three months -- 101 days, to be exact -- since the Kodi Foundation released the second Alpha build of Kodi 22 "Piers," the long-awaited next generation of its widely used home theater software. During that time, the development team has continued refining the platform, addressing early feedback, fixing bugs, and steadily improving performance and compatibility across supported devices.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

Krita 5.3.1 released
This update mainly fixes a nasty Windows performance bug where accessibility tools like PowerToys caused menus to crawl due to excessive system queries. Version 6.0.1 stays experimental because of the Qt6 migration so anyone needing reliability should probably stick with version 5.3.1 for now. Android and Linux users get several patches fixing stylus quirks and clipboard issues that broke workflows on specific hardware setups.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

Kubernetes Autoscaling Demands New Observability Focus beyond Vendor Tooling
As adoption of Kubernetes autoscalers like Karpenter accelerates, a new set of platform-agnostic observability practices is emerging, shifting focus from traditional infrastructure metrics to deeper insights into provisioning behavior, scheduling latency, and cost efficiency. While highlighted in a recent blog by Datadog, these principles reflect a broader industry trend: understanding autoscaling systems requires visibility into how and why infrastructure changes occur, not just whether systems are healthy.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

KubeVirt v1.8 Brings Multi-Hypervisor Support and Confidential Computing to Kubernetes
Version 1.8 of KubeVirt was announced at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026. The release is aligned with Kubernetes v1.35, and the most significant addition is a Hypervisor Abstraction Layer (HAL) that allows the project to use backends other than KVM. In an announcement post on the CNCF blog, the maintainers announced the new release, broken down by their SIGs (special interest groups): compute, networking, storage, and scale & performance.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

MediaTek MT7927 "Filogic 380" WiFi Support Coming Together For Linux
In addition to the MediaTek MT7902 WiFI Linux support emerging in recent months, the Linux support for the MediaTek MT7927 is also coming together for WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 support for the upstream Linux kernel.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

Meta Optimizing /proc/interrupts Reading As It's Too Costly At Scale: 29% Speedup
One of the latest Linux kernel optimizations being worked on by Meta's large kernel engineering team is making reading of /proc/interrupts less costly. Due to monitoring of their servers frequently reading /proc/interrupts, it's actually become a noticeable cost over time with their massive fleet of systems.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

Orpheus-FastAPI -- high-performance self-hosted text-to-speech server
Orpheus-FastAPI is a high-performance self-hosted text-to-speech server built with FastAPI.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

Raspberry Pi Imager -- create bootable media
Raspberry Pi Imager is a cross-platform application designed to simplify the process of preparing bootable media for Raspberry Pi devices.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

Servo 0.0.6 Released With Many Great Improvements
Servo 0.0.6 is out today to round out the month with many great improvements made in recent weeks to this Rust-based browser engine advancing with its servoshell implementation and many prospects around using it for embedded browser use cases.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

The Integrated ROCm Story For Ubuntu 26.04 Still Playing Out
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is just three weeks out for release with many great features in tow from the GNOME 50 desktop to the very leading-edge Linux 7.0 kernel and many other package updates. One feature that many had been looking forward to is Canonical's plans to ship AMD ROCm directly in the Ubuntu archive for a much cleaner experience for those wanting to make use of AMD's open-source GPU compute stack. As a common question in recent weeks from readers, it remains to be seen if that milestone will be achieved for the Ubuntu 26.04 launch day.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

The Next LVFS Actions Begin Tomorrow To Encourage More Hardware Vendors To Step Up
Last year the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) announced plans for major vendors to pay or contribute code to this project that makes it easy for deploying new system and device firmware on Linux systems. They are asking those with less than 99 employees to contribute $10k USD annually or those larger organizations to contribute $100k USD annually or to be employing engineer(s) to work full-time on LVFS/Fwupd. Beginning tomorrow the next phase of their transition to encourage vendors to support the open-source project goes into effect.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

unFTP -- modern FTP(S) server
unFTP is a modern FTP(S) server designed with cloud-native environments in mind. Built on top of the libunftp library and the Tokio asynchronous runtime, it offers a flexible and extensible approach to running FTP services while integrating with modern infrastructure such as cloud storage, monitoring systems, and container platforms.
March 31st, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu 26.04 beta arrives packing GNOME 50, which no longer supports Google Drive
Yep, you read that right. And there's no official Linux client from Google
March 31st, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — March 24th, 2026

4 Fun Free and Open Source Meme Generation Tools
The popular Syrian artist and meme creator Saint Hoax, who has millions of Instagram followers, defines a meme as a piece of media that is repurposed to deliver a cultural, social or political expression, mainly through humour.
March 24th, 2026 — Source

6 Best Free and Open Source Virtual Globes
A virtual globe is a three-dimensional (3D) software model or representation of Earth or another world. A virtual globe provides the user with the ability to freely move around in the virtual environment by changing the viewing angle and position. Virtual globes may be used for study or navigation (by connecting to a GPS device) and their design varies considerably according to their purpose.
March 24th, 2026 — Source

17 Best Free and Open Source Linux File Managers
A file manager is software which provides a user interface to assist in the organisation of files. It helps users with their daily work in managing their files on a hard drive or other storage device. With terabyte hard disks becoming prevalent, file managers represent an essential tool in managing file systems.
March 24th, 2026 — Source

30 Best Free and Open Source Linux Shells
The shell is a program that takes commands from the keyboard and gives them to the operating system to perform. This environment lets users run commands, programs, and shell scripts. The shell is both an interactive command language and a scripting language, and is used by the operating system to control the execution of the system using shell scripts.
March 24th, 2026 — Source

Additional AMD RDNA 4m GPU Targets Coming: GFX1171 & GFX1172
Back in February AMD engineers introduced a new GFX1170 GPU target in LLVM for their AMDGPU shader compiler and was marked with new "RDNA 4m" branding. It's part of the GFX11 family associated with RDNA3 but carrying this new "4m" branding. In follow-up commits they made further ISA changes distinguishing it from existing RDNA 3 GPUs. Now there are two more RDNA 4m targets being added.
March 24th, 2026 — Source

amux -- terminal UI for running multiple coding agents in parallel
amux is a terminal user interface for running multiple coding agents in parallel with a workspace-first model.
March 24th, 2026 — Source

Blender Optimization Leads To Twice As Fast Performance With CPU Bottlenecked Scenes
Proposed code for Blender's EEVEE engine can lead to both the OpenGL and Vulkan performance doubling in instancing-heavy scenes that are CPU bottlenecked.
March 24th, 2026 — Source

BOSGAME M4 Plus Mini PC running Linux: BIOS
This is a series looking at the BOSGAME M4 Plus Mini PC running Linux. In this series, I examine every aspect of this Mini PC in detail from a Linux perspective.
March 24th, 2026 — Source

Krita 5.3.0 and 6.0.0 released
Krita has officially released versions 5.3.0 and 6.0.0 simultaneously, though users are advised to stick with 5.3.0 for stable daily work since version 6 relies on experimental Qt 6 technology. The update brings major workflow improvements including on-canvas text editing with full OpenType support and a smarter fill tool capable of closing gaps automatically during inking tasks.
March 24th, 2026 — Source

Krita 6.0 Released With Qt6 Port & Better Wayland Support
Krita 6.0 debuted today as the Qt6 port of this digital painting program aligned with KDE/Qt development. Krita 6.0 also brings improved Wayland support while Krita 5.3 is being simultaneously released for running on the mature Qt5 toolkit.
March 24th, 2026 — Source

NVIDIA 595.58.03 Linux Driver Debuts As Stable R595 Build
Building off the NVIDIA 595.45.04 Linux beta driver that brought DRI3 v1.2 support and new Vulkan capabilities, the NVIDIA 595.58.03 Linux driver released this morning as the first stable Linux driver build in the R595 release branch.
March 24th, 2026 — Source

NVIDIA Talks Up "Expanding The Open-Source Horizon" Around AI & Kubernetes
KubeCon Europe is running this week in Amsterdam and NVIDIA used the event to talk up their open-source work around AI and newest open-source contributions.
March 24th, 2026 — Source

OpenBLAS 0.3.32 Brings Improved Detection Of Newer Intel CPUs
OpenBLAS 0.3.32 is now available for this optimized open-source Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms "BLAS" library. Notable with the OpenBLAS 0.3.32 release is improving CPU auto-detection for newer Intel processors.
March 24th, 2026 — Source

Playwright -- framework for web testing and automation
Playwright is a framework for web testing and automation. It lets developers automate Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit with a single API, making it suitable for end-to-end testing, browser automation, and cross-browser quality assurance workflows.
March 24th, 2026 — Source

Pop!_OS 24.04 versus Ubuntu 24.04 LTS versus Ubuntu 26.04 Development Benchmarks
While having the new System76 Thelio Mira desktop in the lab, I took the opportunity to run some benchmarks to see how Pop!_OS 24.04 is currently performing relative to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for which it is based as well as looking ahead at how Ubuntu 26.04 LTS in its current near-final development form is looking on the same hardware.
March 24th, 2026 — Source

Ruby on Rails 8.1.2.1, 8.0.4.1, and 7.2.3.1 released
Rails versions 7.2, 8.0, and 8.1 just received emergency patches for critical vulnerabilities that could let attackers steal data or crash your servers entirely. The update blocks path traversal attempts in Active Storage while the DebugExceptions middleware gets protection against accidental cross-site scripting leaks. Ignoring this leaves the door wide open for denial of service attacks through oversized file streams or malicious glob injection during deletions. Running bundle update now is better than waiting until a breach forces everyone's hand later.
March 24th, 2026 — Source

Some Linux Distros Skirt Age Verification Laws
To get around this, MidnightBSD has decided to add a clause in its license that reads, "California residents are not authorized to use MidnightBSD for desktop use in the state of California effective January 1, 2027."
March 24th, 2026 — Source

svelte-jsoneditor -- view, edit, format, transform, and validate JSON
svelte-jsoneditor is a web-based tool to view, edit, format, transform, and validate JSON.
March 24th, 2026 — Source

System76 Retools Thelio Desktop
The new Thelio Mira has landed with improved performance, repairability, and front-facing ports alongside a high-quality tempered glass facade.
March 24th, 2026 — Source

Systemd-free antiX Linux 26: Debian 13, in bonsai form
Plus: Still supports 32-bit hardware or VMs
March 24th, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — March 22nd, 2026

Bottles 63.0 released
Bottles 63 lands to stop Windows software from crashing mid-installation or failing to launch on Linux. The update fixes crashes caused by zero-byte ghost files and ignores temporary data that often ruins registry backups during interruptions. The interface gets smarter with alphabetical sorting, automatic font loading, and reliable Steam shortcut integration for daily use. Users behind firewalls will appreciate the new proxy settings while terminal commands finally handle special characters correctly.
March 22nd, 2026 — Source

D7VK 1.6 Overhauls Interaction With DXVK's D3D9 Backend
D7VK is the open-source project that began as a Direct3D 7 implementation atop the Vulkan API for Linux gamers and with time expanded to support all the way back to Direct3D 3. Out today is D7VK 1.6 with continuing to enhance this D3D compatibility layer atop Vulkan for enhancing retro/vintage gaming on Linux.
March 22nd, 2026 — Source

Electron's Investment Into Good Wayland Support
For years Electron apps were notorious for continuing to depend upon X11/XWayland and not jive well with the modern Wayland experience on modern Linux desktops. But for the past several months, Wayland has been well supported out-of-the-box on upstream Electron. An Electron blog post this week outlined the technical work done for achieving good Wayland support.
March 22nd, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0-rc5 Released: Linux 7.0 "Starting To Calm Down"
Linus Torvalds just issued Linux 7.0-rc5 as we inch toward the stable Linux 7.0 kernel release in April.
March 22nd, 2026 — Source

Linux Security Roundup for Week 12, 2026
Many Linux distributions released security notifications covering AlmaLinux, Debian, Fedora, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux which contain critical flaws in core system files. Administrators should install patches immediately for applications like Chromium and ImageMagick because these vulnerabilities could enable denial of service attacks or remote code execution risks. Critical fixes address issues within tools like Python and libpng to stop attackers from exploiting known flaws. Users on other distributions such as Oracle and Ubuntu also need to prioritize updates for kernel components and webmail software to ensure safety against active exploits in the wild.
March 22nd, 2026 — Source

Loongson Linux Display Driver No Longer Orphaned
The Loongson Direct Rendering Manager driver for handling the display controller on LS7A/LS2K SoCs is no longer orphaned with new Loongson engineers stepping up to maintain the code moving forward.
March 22nd, 2026 — Source

mdadm 4.6 Released With Boot Failure Fixes, New Lockless Bitmap
The mdadm utility for managing software RAID on Linux systems is out with a new release that adds new features while addressing some recent boot failure issues that were reported.
March 22nd, 2026 — Source

OneXPlayer Configuration HID Driver Posted For Linux By Valve Developer
Open-source developer Derek Clark of Valve's Linux engineering team has been responsible for many improvements for gaming handheld devices. Such as Lenovo Legion improvements for Linux, Ayn gaming handheld improvements, and most recently Linux 7.1 set to introduce the new Lenovo Legion Go HID drivers. With the latest Lenovo Legion driver work wrapped up for Linux 7.1, Derek Clark today posted a set of patches providing a OneXPlayer Configuration HID Driver.
March 22nd, 2026 — Source

Wine-Staging 11.5 Released With A Few New Patches
Building off Friday's exciting release of Wine 11.5 with Syscall User Dispatch support, Wine-Staging 11.5 is now available for this experimental/testing build of Wine that at the moment is some 228 patches atop the upstream code.
March 22nd, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — March 21st, 2026

Godot 4.6.2 RC 2 released
The Godot team has released a second release candidate for version 4.6.2 because the first pass required more critical bugfixes than usual. Core stability gets a serious boost with fixes for crashes on empty strings and memory buffer overreading issues that could crash projects unexpectedly. Editor users will appreciate improvements to animation keyframes selection while platform teams see Windows driver handling and macOS VM rendering sorted out. Developers should wait for the final stable release unless they are specifically hunting down one of these known regressions right now.
March 21st, 2026 — Source

GraphicsMagick, Python, Mumble, Tempo, Composer updates for SUSE
Several security updates have been released for openSUSE Tumbleweed, Leap, and SUSE Linux Enterprise distributions to patch known vulnerabilities. GraphicsMagick receives an important update addressing buffer overflows while moderate fixes cover packages like Python libraries and the Mumble voice chat tool.
March 21st, 2026 — Source

ImageMagick, Libvirt, Chromium updates for Debian
Three Debian security advisories were released regarding critical package vulnerabilities. Libvirt users running bullseye must upgrade because a recent Linux update caused valid netlink flags to be rejected incorrectly. Chromium requires immediate attention for both oldstable and stable systems since the discovered flaws enable attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause denial of service attacks on affected machines. Finally, imagemagick users on stretch need patches for over twenty flaws including potential security policy bypasses and information leaks.
March 21st, 2026 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.7's KWin Lands Support For 3D LUTs To Help With Modern GPUs
In addition to releasing Plasma 6.6.3 this week, KDE developers remain quite busy working on new features for the Plasma 6.7 desktop while also already queuing some changes for the next Plasma 6.6.4 point release.
March 21st, 2026 — Source

LibreOffice 26.8 To Add A Donation Banner To Its Start Center
LibreOffice 26.8 merged initial support for adding a donation banner to its Start Center. This initial UI when launching LibreOffice aims to make users aware of the community-driven focus of the project and to hopefully solicit additional donations from the community.
March 21st, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 Lands Fix For Years Old Bug Affecting AMD Hainan GPUs
Merged overnight for Linux 7.0 and set to be back-ported to existing Linux stable kernel versions is a fix for aging AMD GCN 1.0 "Hainan" GPU models. This closes a 2021 bug report that was long neglected and ended up being just a small tweak to fix the issue reported of GPU hangs.
March 21st, 2026 — Source

Linux Driver Being Worked On For Pulsar Gaming Mice
A Linux HID driver is being developed for Pulsar branded gaming mice to expose additional information and capabilities.
March 21st, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel updates for Ubuntu
Two Ubuntu Security Notices address critical flaws found within the Linux kernel affecting versions 18.04 and 16.04 LTS. These issues impact critical areas like x86 architecture and access control frameworks which could allow an attacker to compromise the system.
March 21st, 2026 — Source

OpenSSH, Uxplay, Wordpress, and more updates for Fedora
A batch of security advisories was issued for Fedora Linux versions 42, 43, and 44. These updates address significant flaws in packages such as openssh and cpp-httplib that could allow unauthorized access or denial of service events. System administrators must apply these changes using the dnf upgrade program with specific advisory identifiers.
March 21st, 2026 — Source

Payment biz pulls plug on open source charity after KYC spat
Free Software Foundation Europe says it was asked for supporters' passwords; Nexi insists it only wanted test credentials to check cancellation flows
March 21st, 2026 — Source

Qualcomm shuts door on Snapdragon X DSP headers open-sourcing, Linux support hopes fade
Qualcomm says no to open DSP headers for Snapdragon X
March 21st, 2026 — Source

SUSE's Agama Installer Sees Architectural Revamp
The modern Agama OS installer for SUSE/openSUSE is out with its first new release since November. With the time since the prior release, SUSE engineers have been making key improvements to Agama and enhancing its architecture to more align with their original vision for it.
March 21st, 2026 — Source

SysV Init 3.16 Released With Cleanups, Improved systemd Unit To SysV Script Conversion
For any holdouts still running SysV Init instead of systemd or other alternatives like OpenRC, SysV Init 3.16 is out as the first release in a half-year and bringing a few refinements.
March 21st, 2026 — Source

Wine 11.5 released
Wine developers have pushed out version 11.5 of the compatibility layer, bringing critical fixes for games that rely on direct syscall instructions. The release incorporates C++ build support and includes bundled ICU libraries to improve how the software handles international text. Gamers will see stability improvements for demanding titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 while office users get fixes for apps like Evernote that previously failed to install.
March 21st, 2026 — Source

Wine Staging 11.5 released
Wine Staging 11.5 drops experimental patches for storage files and Vulkan graphics that aim to smooth out compatibility issues on Linux systems. This testing branch pushes features faster than the main release, meaning users get fixes sooner but must accept a bit more instability alongside them. Installation is straightforward for most distributions since packages land in /opt/wine-staging rather than the standard system paths by default. Those attempting to build from source must rely on the patchinstall.py utility to handle dependencies and apply patches in the proper order.
March 21st, 2026 — Source

Yggdrasil, Libarchive, VIM, and more updates for AlmaLinux
AlmaLinux released several security notifications covering versions eight through ten during late March 2026. Important fixes address critical flaws in applications like GIMP and libarchive that could allow remote code execution or denial of service attacks. Moderate severity patches also resolve issues within the Linux kernel, Python modules, and network utilities used across these distributions.
March 21st, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — March 20th, 2026

Dell Upstreams Firmware For The XPS Snapdragon X Elite Laptop
When it comes to using Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Elite laptops on Linux, one of the big challenges have involved the need to extract the necessary firmware from the Windows 11 partition due to most vendors not providing the firmware in an easily redistributable and public form. The one exception has been the Lenovo ThinkPad with X1 Elite having upstream firmware in linux-firmware.git while now the Dell XPS model has joined the party too.
March 20th, 2026 — Source

KDE neon 20260319 released
KDE neon 20260319 released
March 20th, 2026 — Source

Kubernetes Scheduler Plugins: Optimizing AI/ML Workloads
Custom Kubernetes scheduler plugins improve GPU utilization by understanding GPU topology, workload types, and gang scheduling requirements.
March 20th, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.1 Adding DRM Dedicated CRTC Background Color Property
Sent out today was the latest weekly round of drm-misc-next patches for queuing ahead of the Linux 7.1 merge window that is set to happen in mid-to-late April.
March 20th, 2026 — Source

Linux Patches Updated To Steal Tasks For Improving CPU Utilization
Huawei engineer Chen Jinghuang posted the latest request for comments (RFC) patches for stealing tasks from overloaded CPUs in the same last level cache (LLC) in order to improve overall CPU utilization with today's large core count servers.
March 20th, 2026 — Source

Mageia 10 Beta 1 released
Beta 1 of Mageia 10 has been released for testing. This build brings significant upgrades like kernel 6.18 LTS, Plasma 6.5, and GNOME 49 though users should expect to deal with bugs before the official April 2026 launch. The team intends to prioritize fixing blockers and updating documentation for Beta 2 since rushing an April 2026 release would just guarantee user frustration. Both classical and live desktop images are available for download so users with either legacy hardware or modern systems can give them a spin.
March 20th, 2026 — Source

Mageia 10 Beta Now Available For Those Who Reminisce About Mandrake Linux
It's been nearly three years since the release of Mageia 9 for this Linux distribution who's lineage traces back to the glorious Mandrake Linux. Following the Mageia 10 alpha release back in January, Mageia 10 beta builds are now available.
March 20th, 2026 — Source

Mesa 26.0.3 released
An unscheduled bugfix release for Mesa 26.0.3 landed to fix critical raytracing issues affecting games on Linux systems. This update specifically targets stability problems in the radv and Zink drivers that previously caused crashes during mesh shader operations. While most distributions will roll this patch through package managers within days, users needing immediate fixes can grab the source tarball directly from the project site. It remains worth checking version numbers after updating to ensure the system received the necessary improvements before launching demanding titles.
March 20th, 2026 — Source

Mutt 2.3.1 released
Mutt 2.3.1 released
March 20th, 2026 — Source

Patches Sent Out For Booting Linux On Apple M3 But Without Much Functionality
Asahi Linux developers have been working for a while now on porting Asahi Linux to the Apple M3 hardware that launched back in 2023. Sent out today to the Linux kernel mailing list were finally Device Tree files for booting Linux on Apple M3 hardware but it's far from functional for end-users.
March 20th, 2026 — Source

Opera GX has finally been released for Linux
After years of sustained community demand across subreddits and forums, Opera has officially released Opera GX for Linux. The gaming browser finally brings its suite of resource-limiting tools and gamer-centric aesthetics to the Linux ecosystem.
March 20th, 2026 — Source

Sashiko: AI code review system for the Linux kernel spots bugs humans miss
Beats getting roasted on the mailing list
March 20th, 2026 — Source

Steam Linux Beta Prepares For 64-bit, Can Be Run Inside Steam Runtime Container
An interesting new Steam client beta dropped overnight from Valve with some exciting low-level enhancements.
March 20th, 2026 — Source

SteamOS 3.8 Preview Preps For Steam Machine, KDE Plasma Desktop With Wayland By Default
In addition to last night's SteamOS 3.8 Preview Preps For Steam Machine, KDE Plasma Desktop With Wayland By Default
In addition to last night's Steam client beta with Steam Runtime container support for the client and that " target="new" class="RM1">Steam client beta with Steam Runtime container support for the client and that SteamRT3 client now a 64-bit build, Valve also released a big preview update to the forthcoming SteamOS 3.8. The SteamOS 3.8 preview release brings initial support for Steam Machine hardware, various handheld gaming device support improvements, various other Steam Deck updates, improved compatibility with newer Intel and AMD platforms, and its KDE Plasma desktop is now using Wayland by default
March 20th, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu 26.04 Delivers Enhanced Performance For AMD Radeon Linux Gaming
Earlier this month was a preview of the Ubuntu 26.04 performance benefits for NVIDIA Linux gaming while today's article is providing an early look at how the open-source AMD Radeon gaming experience is looking for the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release.
March 20th, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu Maker Canonical Announces MicroCloud Cluster Manager
Ubuntu maker Canonical announced today MicroCloud Cluster Manager that is now in beta as a new cloud platform for managing lightweight cloud clusters.
March 20th, 2026 — Source

Ungoogled Chromium 146.0.7680.153-1 released
The newest ungoogled chromium update arrives with a strict focus on cutting off connections to Google servers while maintaining the standard engine experience. It enforces this by replacing internal domains with fake addresses and blocking any attempts to reach them at runtime through domain substitution techniques. Most privacy controls remain disabled by default so users must manually enable features within chrome://flags to gain full transparency over their browsing data.
March 20th, 2026 — Source

VSCodium 1.112.01907 released
VSCodium version 1.112.0 brings targeted fixes for Linux AppImage users while patching internal dependencies to keep the editor stable. The update resolves reporting glitches in the insiders channel and corrects CSS order issues that can mess up dark mode layouts during editing sessions. A bump in the flatted library prevents configuration crashes caused by nested JSON objects, which often go unnoticed until startup fails silently.
March 20th, 2026 — Source

Vulkan 1.4.347 Debuts With Three New Extensions
Vulkan 1.4.347 made its debut overnight as the latest routine update to this high performance graphics and compute API. Beyond the usual maintenance churn over the past week, Vulkan 1.4.347 brings three new extensions.
March 20th, 2026 — Source

WSL graphics driver update brings better GPU support for Linux apps
Meanwhile, WINE and OpenGL tweaks speed Windows apps on 64-bit hosts
March 20th, 2026 — Source

XanMod Kernel 6.19.9 and 6.18.19 LTS released
The XanMod team has pushed out kernel versions 6.19.9 and 6.18.19 LTS for users who want to squeeze extra performance out of their Linux desktops without waiting for standard cycles. These builds ship with Google's BBRv3 congestion control enabled by default alongside specific tweaks for AMD 3D V-Cache processors that most distros ignore. Installation requires adding a new repository key and ensuring DKMS dependencies are present before attempting an update on Debian or Ubuntu systems.
March 20th, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — March 18th, 2026

6 reasons a minimal Linux install might be the smartest move you make
It turns out, there are reasons why those tiny 'minimal install' options are available on Linux.
March 18th, 2026 — Source

Arm Preparing Live Firmware Activation Support For Linux
A new platform feature being worked on by Arm engineers for the Linux kernel is Live Firmware Activation to allow for updated firmware components to be deployed without requiring a system reboot.
March 18th, 2026 — Source

Btrfs Performance From Linux 6.12 To Linux 7.0 Shows Regressions
Last week I provided a look at the EXT4 and XFS performance from Linux 6.12 LTS through Linux 7.0 in its current development form. As mentioned in that article and as requested by many Phoronix readers, benchmarks have since wrapped up looking at how the Btrfs copy-on-write file-system performance has evolved since that late 2024 period and all major Linux kernel releases past that Long Term Support version.
March 18th, 2026 — Source

Fedora Asahi Remix 43 released
Fedora Asahi Remix 43 lands with a heavy backend update swapping to RPM 6.0 and the DNF5 package manager for better speed. Apple Silicon owners gain actual support for Mac Pros, M2 microphone input, and smoother 120Hz refresh rates on compatible screens.
March 18th, 2026 — Source or Source

GE-Proton10-33 released
GE-Proton10-33 has been released by Glorious Eggroll with bleeding-edge Wine updates and core component refreshes for Linux gaming compatibility. The build introduces new VR capabilities through WiVRn support, allowing players to run specific titles on Meta Quest 3 without relying solely on Steam. Specific game fixes target popular releases like Star Citizen and Planet Crafter to resolve launch errors and enable demo save imports. Additionally, an improved umu.exe launcher mimics steam behavior to help third-party applications run more reliably within the environment.
March 18th, 2026 — Source

GNOME 50 Released With Many Fantastic Improvements
GNOME 50 is out today, on-schedule and just in time for being the default desktop of the likes of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Fedora Workstation 44.
March 18th, 2026 — Source

Google Engineers Launch "Sashiko" For Agentic AI Code Review Of The Linux Kernel
Google engineers have been spending the past number of months developing Sashiko as an agentic AI code review system for the Linux kernel. It's now open-source and publicly available and will continue to do upstream Linux kernel code review thanks to funding from Google.
March 18th, 2026 — Source

GRUB Bootloader Development Moves To FreeDesktop.org
The widely-used GRUB bootloader is now being developed on FreeDesktop.org with a modern GitLab-based workflow.
March 18th, 2026 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.6.3 released
KDE Plasma 6.6.3 serves as a March bugfix release that follows February's feature refinements and includes new translations from contributors. Key corrections address font category icons in Discover and prevent false search results when running Kate sessions as Flatpaks. Updates resolve segmentation faults during pointer mode changes in KWin and improve dimming responsiveness for specific display hardware. The patch set stabilizes panel animations and fixes widget resizing issues to ensure consistent behavior on both X11 and Wayland sessions.
March 18th, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 Better Supporting The Logitech MX Master 4 Bluetooth Mouse
For those that happen to have the Logitech MX Master 4 wireless mouse or are considering this high-end ~$120 USD Bluetooth mouse, better support for it was merged yesterday to Linux 7.0.
March 18th, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel, LibSSH, VIM, Snapd updates for Ubuntu
Ubuntu Security Notices detail critical vulnerabilities affecting core system software. The majority of these notifications concern kernel vulnerabilities where attackers could manipulate AppArmor profiles or exploit network drivers to escalate privileges on cloud instances. Other affected packages like Vim, libssh, and snapd also contain bugs that allow privilege escalation or denial of service attacks if exploited by local attackers. System administrators must apply the specific package updates listed in the notices immediately to patch these security holes and maintain overall system stability.
March 18th, 2026 — Source

Linux MGLRU Improvements Net A 30% Increase For MongoDB, More Than 100% On HDDs
It's been a while since having any improvements to talk about for the MGLRU multi-gen LRU functionality for the Linux kernel to optimize page reclamation and help with system performance especially when enduring memory pressure. But this week a Tencent engineer posted some very promising patches for further enhancing this kernel feature.
March 18th, 2026 — Source

PS5 Linux hack leads to first Mesa update for Sony GPU
Mesa 26.1-devel adds PS5 GPU support as AMDGPU patches follow
March 18th, 2026 — Source

Roundcube Webmail 1.5.14, 1.6.14, and 1.7 RC5 released
Roundcube Webmail has released new versions to patch several critical vulnerabilities that could compromise user accounts and mail servers. Administrators should update production installations immediately because flaws exist that allow attackers to change passwords without knowing the old credentials. The fixes also address dangerous issues like IMAP injection and XSS bugs in HTML previews that might let scripts run inside the client interface. Backing up data before applying these changes remains a necessary precaution since skipping them leaves the system exposed to known exploits.
March 18th, 2026 — Source

Samba 4.24 Released With Remote Password Management Support, Other Improvements
Samba continues strong in 2026 for this leading open-source SMB protocol re-implementation for Microsoft Windows file and print services interoperability. Samba 4.24 brings more features, including remote password management support.
March 18th, 2026 — Source

Samba 4.24.0 released
The Samba team has released version 4.24 as the first stable update for this series, bringing essential security hardening to Linux-based Active Directory controllers. Defaulting to AES encryption types and enforcing stricter certificate bindings helps plug vulnerabilities that previously allowed attackers to exploit weaker authentication protocols. Administrators will find the new samba-tool commands for managing Windows Hello keys particularly useful alongside improved compatibility with cloud password reset systems like Entra ID. It remains a solid upgrade for any server acting as a domain controller, provided administrators review their smb.conf settings to ensure legacy clients do not get locked out by the stricter Kerberos policies.
March 18th, 2026 — Source

Systemd 260 kills SysV, tells AI not to misbehave
The latest release of the most widely used Linux init system is here, and between dropping init script support and AI-assisted coding, we feel sure that this release will win it yet more admirers.
March 18th, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu's Snap Affected By Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability
Last week it was security issues with AppArmor to worry about on Ubuntu Linux while this week a "high" rated vulnerability for Ubuntu's Snap daemon has been revealed.
March 18th, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — March 16th, 2026

AMD Preps More Graphics Driver Code For Linux 7.1
Last week yet more AMDGPU kernel graphics driver updates were submitted to DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 7.1 merge window happening in April.
March 16th, 2026 — Source

Fedora Workstation 44 Beta Benchmarks On The AMD Ryzen AI Max Framework Desktop
Since last week's Fedora 44 Beta release I have been testing out this upcoming Fedora Linux version on a few systems in the lab, most notably with the Framework Desktop powered by the powerful AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo". Fedora Workstation 44 Beta has been looking nice and running stable albeit in some instances seeing lower performance at this point than Fedora Workstation 43 but overall in good shape.
March 16th, 2026 — Source

I tried Zenclora, a hyper-fast Linux distro with no bloat - and one truly standout feature
This Debian-based distribution is an absolute delight to use and relatively easy to use, with some minor caveats.
March 16th, 2026 — Source

Imagination's Open-Source PowerVR Vulkan Driver Now Plays Nicely With Zink OpenGL
The past several years Imagination Tech has been investing in an upstream and open-source DRM kernel graphics driver as well as a PowerVR Vulkan driver in Mesa. Their Mesa focus has exclusively been on the PowerVR Vulkan driver with the plans all along to use the Zink generic OpenGL-on-Vulkan implementation. With next quarter's Mesa 26.1 release, that goal is being realized with Zink now working nicely atop the PowerVR Vulkan driver for in turn achieving open-source OpenGL support on PowerVR.
March 16th, 2026 — Source

Lenovo Legion Go HID Drivers Queued Ahead Of Linux 7.1
The work by Derek Clark on enhancing the Lenovo Legion Go gaming handheld support for Linux continues panning out nicely. The latest driver effort, the creation of the Lenovo Legion Go and Go S Series HID Drivers to help with controller configuration, is set to be introduced in Linux 7.1.
March 16th, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.1 adds power reporting for AMD Ryzen AI NPUs
AMD Ryzen AI NPUs gain live power metrics in Linux 7.1
March 16th, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.1 Kernel Will Enhance Support for AMD Ryzen AI NPUs
AMD's hardware has generally enjoyed better support on Linux than its Intel and NVIDIA competition, although adoption and feature-parity to Windows can sometimes be a little slow. This has been the case with the AMD's APUs, which only just received power and usage monitoring via a pull request for Linux 7.1. The new AMDXDNA driver will expose power monitoring metrics for AMD Ryzen AI NPUs via DRM_IOCTL_AMDXDNA_GET_INFO, alongside new metrics to expose real-time NPU busy metrics to applications.
March 16th, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.1 To Retire UDP-Lite - Allows For Better Performance With Cleansed Code
The upcoming Linux 7.1 kernel cycle is set to retire UDP-Lite support. The UDP-Lite protocol allowed for partial checksums where potentially damaged/corrupted packets are still delivered to the application. Since the Linux 2.6.20 days there has been UDP-Lite support but the kernel is now set to retire it given breakage that has persisted for years and cleaning up the networking code can yield a performance advantage for non-UDP-Lite users.
March 16th, 2026 — Source

RADV Driver Lands Another Optimization: "Missing In RADV For A Very Long Time"
A four year old optimization idea for the RADV driver was scratched off the TODO list last week for next quarter's Mesa 26.1 release.
March 16th, 2026 — Source

Zen Browser 1.19.3b released
Zen Browser version 1.19.3b introduces workflow controls such as background tab duplication and selective space unloading from the context menu. Critical fixes address split view behavior during fullscreen toggles and ensure the chrome hide toolbar flag is respected for new windows. Navigation updates stop accidental urlbar reactivation when pressing CTRL+T while the search field remains open. Additional quality of life changes keep bookmarks visible on full screen and improve accessibility options for split view controls.
March 16th, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — March 13th, 2026

After 30 years with Linux, I gave Windows 11 a chance - and found 9 clear problems
Going from Linux to Windows felt like taking one step forward and two steps back. Here's a list of what went wrong.
March 13th, 2026 — Source

After years of being stood up, ARM64 Linux users finally get Chrome date
Someone, somewhere, ticked a box on a build farm. The wait is over
March 13th, 2026 — Source

FreeRDP 3.24 Released With Security Fixes & Improved X11 Client Support
FreeRDP as this open-source and cross-platform Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) implementation is out with FreeRDP 3.24 to ship new security fixes as well as other improvements.
March 13th, 2026 — Source

GNOME Infrastructure Now Battling Bots & AI Scrapers Using Fastly
GNOME's GitLab infrastructure has already been using Anubis for a while to help fend off bots and AI scraper traffic from wreacking havoc on their server resources and also their hosting budget. GNOME recently began redirecting some GitLab traffic to their GitHub repositories as another step in dealing with bots/scrapers. Now they have taken an added step of using the commercial, closed-source Fastly in their battle with bots.
March 13th, 2026 — Source

Google Chrome is coming to Arm-powered Linux devices later this year
Because of existing demand? Or because of what's next?
March 13th, 2026 — Source

Google is ready to bring Chrome to ARM64 Linux devices
Like so many web browsers, Chrome is available for just about every platform imaginable -- but not all. Looking to change this, Google has announced that it is about to bring Chrome to ARM64 Linux devices.
March 13th, 2026 — Source

I used Omega Linux to revitalize a junk PC, and it's noticeably better than Ubuntu
If you're looking for a distribution for an aging machine, consider Omega, based on Arch.
March 13th, 2026 — Source

Intel NPU Driver 1.30 Released For Linux
For going along with the Intel IVPU kernel accelerator driver in the mainline Linux kernel is the Intel NPU driver support in user-space. Released yesterday was the Intel NPU Driver 1.30 milestone for advancing the Intel NPU user-space support on Linux with this open-source support for Core Ultra SoCs.
March 13th, 2026 — Source

Intel Updates LLM-Scaler-vLLM With Support For More Qwen3/3.5 Models
Intel's LLM-Scaler project that makes it easy to deploy various large language models on modern Arc Graphics hardware is out with a new test release to expand its LLM coverage.
March 13th, 2026 — Source

Intel Xe Driver In Linux 7.1 Preps For Intel Nova Lake P, Introduces VM_BIND DECOMPRESS
Sent out this week were more Intel Xe driver feature patches to DRM-Next for queuing ahead of next month's Linux 7.1 merge window.
March 13th, 2026 — Source

Linux 6.12 Through Linux 7.0 File-System Benchmarks For EXT4 + XFS
Earlier this month were various Linux 7.0 file-system benchmarks showing how XFS is leading the race in the overall upstream Linux file-system performance on this forthcoming kernel. Stemming from that testing some premium supporters requested a fresh look at the historical performance of XFS as well as EXT4. So today's article is a look at how XFS and EXT4 have performed on every kernel release going back to Linux 6.12 LTS.
March 13th, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 AMDGPU Fixing Idle Power Issue For RDNA4 GPUs After Compute Workloads
A fix is on the way to the Linux 7.0 kernel today for addressing an idle power issue with AMD RDNA4 GPUs reporting high power consumption and full utilization even after being "idle" following compute workloads like Llama.cpp.
March 13th, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel API Specification Framework Advances Past RFC Stage
After going through five rounds of review under a Request For Comments (RFC) flag, today the latest round of Kernel API Specification Framework patches were sent out with the RFC flag removed.
March 13th, 2026 — Source

Miss Windows 7? How I went back to basics with PCLinuxOS
There's another Linux distribution that's ready to welcome Windows users with open arms, and this one's been around for a long time.
March 13th, 2026 — Source

Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting
Age-verification laws target operating systems because apparently teenagers having root access is now a safeguarding crisis
March 13th, 2026 — Source

Vulkan 1.4.346 Released With Notable VK_KHR_device_address_commands
Vulkan 1.4.346 was published today with one big new extension in tow: VK_KHR_device_address_commands.
March 13th, 2026 — Source

Your Linux PC should never be running slow when this built-in diagnostic tool exists (for free)
If your Linux machine is taking its own sweet time to boot, you have a built-in tool to help you discover where the problem lies.
March 13th, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — March 12th, 2026

After 30 years with Linux, I gave Windows 11 a chance - and found 9 clear problems
Going from Linux to Windows felt like taking one step forward and two steps back. Here's a list of what went wrong.
March 12, 2026 — Source

AMD HDR/Color Improvement For Their Linux Driver & KDE - Co-Developed By Claude Code
Introduced with Linux 6.19 was the long in development DRM Color Pipeline API while it's not the end of the road yet on enhancing the Linux desktop for modern high dynamic range (HDR) displays and color pipeline handling. AMD engineer Harry Wentland has more improvements pending for the AMDGPU driver as well as example compositor/desktop-side integration with KDE's KWin.
March 12, 2026 — Source

AMD ZenDNN 5.2 Brings A Major Redesign, AOCC 5.1 Recently Released
AMD today released ZenDNN 5.2 as the latest versio nof their deep nueral network library that now introduces their next-generation runtime architecture. ZenDNN 5.2 is designed to deliver better performance and geater scalability over earlier versions of this AMD library that began as their take on Intel's open-source oneDNN.
March 12, 2026 — Source

AMD, NVIDIA, OpenAI & Others Form An Optical Scale-up Consortium
AMD, Broadcom, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA and OpenAI jointly announced today the formation of the Optical Compute Interconnect (OCI) Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) optical scale-up consortium.
March 12, 2026 — Source

EndeavourOS Titan Released With Linux 6.19, Improved GPU Driver Integration
EndeavourOS Titan is out today as the latest ISO refresh for this Arch Linux powered distribution. There is a lot of updates as part of this routine ISO refresh as well as some new tooling and GPU driver integration enhancements.
March 12, 2026 — Source

Fedora Linux 44 Beta Released: Key Features, Updates and Downloads
The Fedora Linux 44 Beta has made several key changes, including switching both Budgie and KDE Plasma to run on Wayland by default, eliminating the need for X11. This shift reduces flicker on high-refresh monitors and improves power management. In addition to this major change, the beta introduces various new package updates, such as Go 1.26 and MariaDB 11.8. The release also includes several tweaks to improve user experience and security.
March 12, 2026 — Source

Fwupd 2.1.1 Released With Lots Of New Hardware Support
Richard Hughes of Red Hat just announced the release of Fwupd 2.1.1 as the newest feature update to this solution for deploying system firmware updates and other device/peripheral firmware updates under Linux. Paired with the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS), Fwupd has made firmware updating a breeze on Linux for an increasing number of devices.
March 12, 2026 — Source

I didn't need this, but I found a free Linux app that makes memes in seconds (no GIMP required)
If you want to make memes using your own images - without AI or complicated editors - there's a free Linux tool that you can try today.
March 12, 2026 — Source

Igalia Developing Moonforge As New Linux Distribution
Linux consulting firm Igalia announced this week Moonforge, a new in-house Linux distribution by them based on Yocto and OpenEmbedded.
March 12, 2026 — Source

Intel Linux NPU Driver v1.30.0 released: How to install on Ubuntu 24.04
Intel has released version 1.30.0 of its Linux NPU driver, which can be installed on Ubuntu 24.04 with a quick-start guide that skips unnecessary steps and focuses on getting the fresh NPU stack up and running. To install the driver, you'll need to strip away old Intel components using a single purge command and then download the release archive from GitHub, which contains all Debian packages for Ubuntu 24.04.
March 12, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.18.17 Update: Key Fixes for Smoother Performance and Improved Security
The latest Linux kernel patch series, version 6.18.17, brings over 500 tweaks to improve performance and security on PCs. Key fixes include tighter networking, which eliminates mysterious crashes and packet drops, as well as smoother GPU performance for Intel and AMD cards. Memory safety has also been improved with patches that prevent potential crashes when using huge pages or accessing SMB shares. Additionally, peripheral drivers have been fixed to behave correctly, resolving issues like kernel panics on ThinkPads during boot.
March 12, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.19.7 Update: What's New and How It Improves Network Stability
The latest Linux kernel update, 6.19.7, focuses on addressing subtle networking bugs and improving BPF-related issues. Key fixes include resolving a negative XDP tailroom bug that could cause system crashes, as well as other tweaks such as security hardening and memory-allocation fixes for NVMe drivers. The patch set also brings discipline to BPF helper macros by caching indirect calls, tightening reference counts, and adding sanity checks to prevent race conditions.
March 12, 2026 — Source

Mesa 26.0.2 Has Plenty Of Graphics Driver Fixes From Intel & RADV Vulkan To Old R300g
Mesa 26.0.2 is now available as the latest bi-weekly stable point release for this set of open-source graphics drivers predominantly used on Linux systems.
March 12, 2026 — Source

Mesa 26.0.2 Released: Quick Fixes for Radeon, Intel, and Zink GPU Glitches
Mesa 26.0.2, the latest bug‑fix patch for the open‑source graphics stack, has just been released and includes over twenty fixes that resolve rendering glitches on Radeon, Intel, and NVidia hardware. The update removes a race condition that could crash the X server under heavy OpenGL use, tightens shader constant folding to prevent frame‑rate drops on older GPUs, and eliminates a memory leak in Intel's Zink path.
March 12, 2026 — Source

Qt Creator 19 IDE Released With Minimap, Built-In MCP Server For AI / LLMs
Qt developers today released Qt Creator 19 as the newest version of this cross-platform integrated development environment (IDE).
March 12, 2026 — Source

Radeon "RADV" Vulkan Driver Finally Lands VK_KHR_copy_memory_indirect
In Mesa 26.1 the Radeon Vulkan driver "RADV" has finally landed support for the VK_KHR_copy_memory_indirect extension that was introduced to the Vulkan API last year.
March 12, 2026 — Source

Unity expands official support for Steam, Linux, Steam Deck, and Steam Machine
Unity says official Steam and native Linux support are expanding
March 12, 2026 — Source

Unity Officially Gets Steam, SteamOS, and Linux Support
Unity game engine is finally getting native integration and support across more gaming platforms, according to James Stone. What we are getting now is the first actual native port instead of the emulation we've been dealing with until now. Game developers using the Unity engine have been shipping Unity games on Steam. However, Steam was never an official Unity platform, and developers used Steamworks in the past to make it happen. That's now a thing of the past, as Unity is officially supporting one of the biggest gaming platforms in existence.
March 12, 2026 — Source or Watch Video

XanMod Kernel 6.19.7 and 6.18.17: How to Install, What Drivers Need Updating, and When the Default Debian Kernel Still Wins
XanMod has released kernel versions 6.19.7 and 6.18.17, built with LLVM ThinLTO and enhanced scheduling that can lower CPU usage and improve latency for heavy workloads. Installing the kernel is as easy as adding a signed repository line to APT, updating the package list, and running sudo apt install linux-xanmod-x64v3. Users with NVIDIA, OpenZFS, VirtualBox, or VMware modules should verify driver compatibility first, since some proprietary modules lag behind the new thinlto patches and can cause panics.
March 12, 2026 — Source

Your Linux PC should never be running slow when this built-in diagnostic tool exists (for free)
If your Linux machine is taking its own sweet time to boot, you have a built-in tool to help you discover where the problem lies.
March 12, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — March 11th, 2026

8 powerful apt commands every Linux user should know - or else you're missing out
The Debian/Ubuntu package manager isn't just for installing and removing software. There's more to Apt than you might know.
March 11, 2026 — Source

Node.js 25.8.1 Release Corrects CommonJS Module Errors in ES‑Module Projects
Node.js 25.8.1 finally resolves the annoying "extensionless CommonJS in type: module" issue by forcing Node to treat such files as CommonJS rather than silently misinterpreting them as ES modules—a fix that has saved projects from mysterious syntax errors when adding new utilities without a .js suffix. The crypto API now scopes --use-system-ca per‑environment, eliminating cross‑process leakage, and restores missing AES dictionaries so encryption behaves exactly as the spec describes. Additionally, an unsafe use‑after‑free in HTTP parsing is patched, V8 dependencies are trimmed for non‑bundled builds, and async context helpers are exposed to JavaScript for clearer debugging.
March 11, 2026 — Source

AlmaLinux To Focus On Increased Testing & Other Goals For 2026
Developers behind AlmaLinux as this popular community alternative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) have drafted some new goals for 2026.
March 11, 2026 — Source

AMD Ryzen AI NPUs Are Finally Useful Under Linux For Running LLMs
Over the past two years AMD has developed the AMDXDNA accelerator driver in the mainline Linux kernel for supporting the AMD Ryzen AI NPUs. But when it comes to user-space software on Linux actually able to leave the Ryzen AI NPUs it's been... extremely limited with nothing really useful besides some niche bits of code. Even AMD's own software like their GAIA on Linux has used Vulkan with their iGPUs rather than any NPU support. But finally today there is a significant shift with the Ryzen AI NPUs becoming useful on Linux and able to handle LLMs.
March 11, 2026 — Source

Another Linux distro has dropped KDE Plasma, and I'm not surprised to see why
The rolling release distro switches to Niri, a scrollable, tiling compositor that's better than you'd think. See why.
March 11, 2026 — Source

Azure Linux 3.0 Enables Core Scheduling, More Tracing Capabilities
Microsoft on Tuesday released Azure Linux 3.0.20260304 as the newest monhtly update to their in-house Linux platform.
March 11, 2026 — Source

D7VK 1.5 Released With Direct3D 3 Now Implemented Over Vulkan
The open-source D7VK project began to implement Direct3D 7 over Vulkan similar to DXVK and VKD3D-Proton providing support for newer Direct3D APIs atop Vulkan. With succeeding releases D7VK was extended to Direct3D 6 too and then Direct3D 5 support. Now with today's D7VK 1.5 release, Direct3D 3 is implemented for faster acceleration using Vulkan.
March 11, 2026 — Source

Entangled Kubernetes Objects
A multimodal neural network that unifies per-modality losses and optimizers into a single cumulative loss, enabling flexible, scalable training across heterogeneous data.
March 11, 2026 — Source

Fedora 44 Beta Goes Live With Updated Gnome and KDE Desktops and Linux 6.19 Kernel
The full release of Fedora Linux 44 is drawing near, and, as such, the Fedora Project has officially made Fedora 44 Beta available for download for those who want to test the upcoming version of the workstation Linux distribution. Fedora 44 has a long changelog, but some of the biggest changes are simply newer versions of the included defaults, like the move to Gnome 50 and KDE Plasma 6.6 as well as an update to Linux 6.19. Like many distributions that use KDE, the Fedora 44 KDE Desktop edition officially makes the move from SDDM to Plasma Login Manager as the default
March 11, 2026 — Source

I tried Zenclora, a hyper-fast Linux distro with no bloat - and one truly standout feature
This Debian-based distribution is an absolute delight to use and relatively easy to use, with some minor caveats.
March 11, 2026 — Source

Intel Posts New Linux Graphics Driver Patches For Improved Adaptive Sync Support
Posted today were new Intel kernel graphics driver patches for Linux to enable Adaptive Sync SDP (Secondary Data Packet) handling for Panel Replay and Auxless Adaptive Link Power Management (ALPM) modes.
March 11, 2026 — Source

Linux Patches Make The IPv6 Stack Less Modular To Lower Architectural Burden
Currently the Linux IPv6 networking stack can be built into the Linux kernel, built as a loadable kernel module, or not built at all. With proposed patches from a SUSE engineer, the IPv6 networking stack would be limited to being a kernel built-in or not at all. In doing away with IPv6 as a loadable kernel module would allow simplifying some code and lowering the Linux networking maintenance burden.
March 11, 2026 — Source

Linux's KVM Virtualization Preparing For Intel Advanced Performance Extensions (APX)
Intel's Advanced Performance Extensions (APX) debuting with Nova Lake and Diamond Rapids is ready with Linux 6.16+ and recent open-source compilers. One piece of the support puzzle still coming together though that will be especially important for Xeon Diamond Rapids is the KVM virtualization support. New patches there were posted this week.
March 11, 2026 — Source

NVIDIA Linux Driver 580.142 Fixes Adaptive‑Sync Blanks and Vulkan Swapchain Freezes
NVIDIA's 580.142 Linux driver squashes three nagging bugs that have been creeping into the 470.x line. Adaptive‑sync monitors now stay lit even when a USB‑C‑to‑HDMI dongle is in use, a Vulkan swapchain no longer stalls after a few seconds of heavy X11 rendering, and four 4K screens configured as separate X screens on one GPU will finally mode‑set correctly at boot. Those fixes stop the sudden blackouts, frame freezes, or display failures that can ruin both gaming sessions and professional workflows. After applying the update, monitors should stay bright, frames keep rolling, and multi‑screen setups resume functioning without a hitch.
March 11, 2026 — Source

Nvidia Reportedly Preps NemoClaw as Open-Source Enterprise AI Agent Rival
Nvidia is reportedly preparing a new entry into the AI agent market, with Wired claiming the company is building an open-source platform called NemoClaw aimed squarely at enterprise deployments. The reported project would place Nvidia in more direct competition with OpenClaw, the fast-rising open-source agent framework that helped push autonomous AI tools into the mainstream discussion over the past few months. What makes the report notable is the way NemoClaw is said to be positioned. Rather than focusing on consumers or hobbyist experimentation, Nvidia appears to be targeting business users that want stronger privacy, security, and governance around AI-driven automation.
March 11, 2026 — Source

OpenSUSE Leap 15.6 Reaches End‑of‑Life - Upgrade to Leap 16.0 for Ongoing Security Updates
The last security patch for openSUSE Leap 15.6 will be removed from the mirrors on April 30, 2026, ending all future updates and leaving systems exposed to new vulnerabilities. After that date, the operating system will no longer receive bug‑fixes or driver support, which can break development workflows that depend on up‑to‑date libraries. The recommended remedy is to upgrade to openSUSE Leap 16.0 using the official zypper tool or a manual reinstall of packages from a saved list, ensuring all kernel modules and proprietary drivers are recompiled for the newer kernel.
March 11, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu 26.04 With GNOME 50 Offering Some Performance Benefits For NVIDIA Linux Gaming
With GNOME 50 that is being used by default with the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release, you may be curious about the out-of-the-box performance especially compared to prior Ubuntu Linux releases -- especially with Mutter 50 having some NVIDIA optimizations. In today's article is a first look at how the NVIDIA Linux gaming performance on Ubuntu 26.04 is looking compared to the current Ubuntu 25.10 release.
March 11, 2026 — Source

Zen Browser 1.19.2b Release Brings Security Fixes and Faster Space Switching
Zen Browser 1.19.2b delivers a tightened security layer and a jump to Firefox 148.0.2, giving users newer web‑standard support and fewer vulnerabilities. It fixes broken RSS live folders for feeds that were stuck at "no updates," so readers can keep their daily digests running. Performance improvements now make switching between spaces feel almost instant, especially with many tabs open. After the update, some legacy add‑ons may need a quick reinstall due to the engine change.
March 11, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — March 5th, 2026

AMD DCN 4.2 IP, GFX 12.1 Updates For AMDGPU Driver In Linux 7.1 Plus GCN 1.1 APU DC
AMD has begun staging AMDGPU and AMDKFD kernel driver improvements for the upcoming Linux 7.1 cycle.
March 5, 2026 — Source

AMD HSMP Linux Driver Preps For Zen 6 EPYC With Finer Power Controls
The AMD Host System Management Port (HSMP) Linux driver that provides access to various system management features on modern EPYC server processors is preparing for the upcoming EPYC Zen 6 "Venice" processors.
March 5, 2026 — Source

Best OpenLens Alternatives for Kubernetes Visibility in 2025
OpenLens is a solid Kubernetes IDE, but as environments scale, teams need alternatives with better multi-cluster visibility and governance.
March 5, 2026 — Source

Debian Still Debating AI Contributions Plus A Need For More Diverse Contributors
Debian Project Leader "DPL" Andreas Tille provided an update today on various happenings within the project and personal reflections on some recent topics. Among the topics in today's DPL updates were around AI contributions, Debian's need to become more diverse with its contributors, and needing more "thank yous" to show appreciation for contributions.
March 5, 2026 — Source

Intel GMA500 "Poulsbo" Driver Still Seeing New Open-Source Activity In 2026
Approaching twenty years after Intel's Poulsbo platform began giving Linux users nightmares due to its Imagination PowerVR SGX graphics IP that blocked open-source 3D driver support, the GMA500 driver that ended up coming about to provide open-source display support at least is still seeing occasional upstream activity for the Linux kernel.
March 5, 2026 — Source

Intel Xe Linux Driver Ready With Fix For Brand New Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 7 Laptop
This week at MWC 2026, Lenovo announced the ThinkPad T14 Gen 7 as one of their new Intel Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" powered laptops alongside other products. With Panther Lake running rather well on Linux, the new ThinkPad T14 G7 should be in good standing on Linux and especially with a pending Xe graphics driver fix that is on the way.
March 5, 2026 — Source

libavif 1.4 Released For Advancing AVIF Image Support
The Alliance For Open Media on Wednesday released libavif 1.4, the latest version of this reference library for encoding and decoding AV1 Image File Format (AVIF) content.
March 5, 2026 — Source

Linux Foundation Reports that Open Source Delivers Better ROI
In a report that may surprise no one in the Linux community, the Linux Foundation found that businesses are finding a 5X return on investment with open source software.
March 5, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.12.76, 6.6.129 and 6.1.166 Updates: Fixes, Reverts and Download Links
The latest stable Linux update, version 6.12.76, 6.6.129, and 6.1.166, has been released on March 5th with a range of fixes aimed at both everyday users and developers who build their own kernels from scratch. A key change is the rollback of a recent patch that added an IMA sanity check for kexec due to implicit function declaration errors in multiple stable streams. This change affects mainly those compiling the kernel from source, particularly hobbyists building custom boot loaders or embedded devices.
March 5, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 File-System Benchmarks With XFS Leading The Way
With a number of file-system improvements in Linux 6.19 and more file-system optimizations in Linux 7.0, it's past due for running some fresh file-system benchmarks. Here is a look at how the prominent file-system contenders are performing on the latest Linux 7.0 development kernel.
March 5, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.1 To Prevent Intel NPUs From Being Exhausted By Single Programs
The Intel IVPU accelerator driver will be introducing limits on Intel NPU resource usage by non-root user-space programs beginning with the Linux 7.1 kernel.
March 5, 2026 — Source

Linux MAINTAINERS Cleaning For Recently Departed Intel Devs, Altera Drivers Oprhaned
The layoffs and restructuring at Intel in 2025 caused unfortunate hits to their Linux/open-source engineering including various driver maintainers leaving and even their CPU temperature driver being orphaned for lack of maintainers. Sent out today were a number of additional updates to the MAINTAINERS file for the Linux kernel to reflect other Intel departures in recent months. Plus some of the Altera drivers have also been orphaned now for having no upstream maintainers.
March 5, 2026 — Source

Liquorix Kernel 6.19-1 released: The Smoother Gaming and AV Experience
Liquorix Kernel 6.19-1 has been released, offering a smoother gaming and AV experience by tweaking scheduler parameters and disabling performance-dragging features. Users who tested the previous 6.18 release reported less "jitter" in video editing timelines and improved frame rates while playing competitive titles. The new build includes bug fixes from earlier iterations and can be installed on Debian, Ubuntu, or Arch using a single-liner installer that pulls the package from the Liquorix repository.
March 5, 2026 — Source

Nginx CGI Tutorial: How to Install and Configure Version 0.15
A new version of the Nginx CGI module, version 0.15, can be easily installed on recent Debian or Ubuntu releases by adding the GetPageSpeed repository keyring and then installing the nginx and nginx-module-cgi packages. To use the module, you need to add a load statement to your configuration file if Nginx was compiled manually or stores modules in a custom location, and enable CGI for specific URI prefixes with the cgi on directive. A minimal shell script that prints a greeting can be created by placing a bash file in the document root's cgi-bin directory and ensuring it has execute permission.
March 5, 2026 — Source

Node.js 22.22.1 LTS and 20.20.1 LTS Released: Key Updates and What You Need to Know
Node.js has released two long-term support versions: 22.22.1 LTS and 20.20.1 LTS, both of which bring important fixes and performance tweaks to the JavaScript runtime environment. One key change is that Node now uses a newer set of root certificates, known as NSS 3.119, which replaces old CA files and helps prevent TLS connections from failing on services like GitHub or AWS. Another significant update is that Buffer.of no longer allocates memory on the stack, but instead uses the heap, which can help prevent accidental overflows and improve memory usage patterns.
March 5, 2026 — Source

NVIDIA R595 Linux Driver Beta Brings New Vulkan Support & DRI3 v1.2
Following the recent NVIDIA R595 driver release for Windows, NVIDIA today released the 595.45.04 driver for Linux users as a beta version in the R595 release stream.
March 5, 2026 — Source

pgAdmin 4 Version 9.13: AI Features, ERD Fixes, and More
A new version of pgAdmin 4, version 9.13, is out with several notable updates and fixes. This release includes a rewritten core infrastructure for language models, allowing users to integrate their own AI providers or run them locally, which provides features like instant security report scans and schema summaries. Additionally, the ERD tool has been improved by restoring foreign key relationships when copying diagrams and making the drag-and-drop interface more intuitive.
March 5, 2026 — Source

Redox OS Gets Vulkan & Node.js Working On This Rust-Based Open-Source OS
There were some fairly exciting improvements made by the Redox OS developers over the course of February. They have the Vulkan API working on Redox OS for the first time along with more COSMIC desktop software and even Node.js.
March 5, 2026 — Source

Rust 1.94 Released With Stable Support For AVX-512 FP16 Intrinsics, Array Windows
Rust 1.94 was rolled out today as the newest routine stable update for the Rust programming language.
March 5, 2026 — Source

Upgrade to XanMod Kernels: Boost Linux Performance with Optimized 6.19.6 and 6.18.16 LTS Releases
XanMod has released two new kernels, 6.19.6 and 6.18.16 LTS, which offer significant performance improvements for tasks like number crunching and high-resolution video streaming. To install these kernels on Debian or Ubuntu systems, you'll need to add a PGP key and register the XanMod repository; this process involves running two commands in the terminal. After installing the kernel, be sure to reboot your system and verify that it's working correctly by checking the version number in /proc/version; if everything went smoothly, the output should contain "xanmod" followed by the exact version number.
March 5, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — March 4th, 2026

AMD Engineer Leverages AI To Help Make A Pure-Python AMD GPU User-Space Driver
AMD's VP of AI Software, Anush Elangovan, has used Claude Code to help craft a pure-Python AMD GPU user-space driver. This Python user-space driver is currently being created to help exercise other ROCm code and for debugging in passing through the ROCm/HIP user-space stack.
March 4, 2026 — Source

AMD EPYC Achieves Performance Leadership In New OCUDU Project For 5G/6G RAN
Announced this week at Mobile World Congress (MWC) by the Linux Foundation was the establishing of the OCUDU Ecosystem Foundation for advancing open-source AI-RAN (Radio Access Network) innovations. OCUDU is building a reference platform and innovations around 5G and early 6G network solutions. With OCUDU being benchmark-friendly, I have been putting the early code through some performance tests on current AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon server platforms.
March 4, 2026 — Source

Intel Begins Preparations For Xe3P Upstreaming To Open-Source OpenGL & Vulkan Drivers
Following the mainline Linux kernel beginning to see Xe3P graphics enablement for upcoming Nova Lake integrated graphics as well as the Crescent Island AI inference accelerator, Intel's Mesa OpenGL "Iris" and Vulkan "ANV" drivers are preparing to begin laying out their Xe3P driver support.
March 4, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.19.6 Update: Key Features and Benefits for Improved Stability
The latest Linux Kernel, version 6.19.6, has been released with a handful of driver tweaks and security patches that aim to improve stability and security. The updates include fixes for AMDGPU and Intel NIC drivers, which could cause issues like random "page faults" or link drops on Wi-Fi cards. Security-related changes include hardening the tracing ring buffer against out-of-bounds reads and preventing use-after-free errors in the swap subsystem. Overall, the update should provide a slightly safer kernel with fewer driver crashes and improved system stability.
March 4, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel Updates: 6.18.16, 6.6.128, 6.12.75, 6.1.165, 5.15.202, and 5.10.252 LTS
The latest Linux updates, including versions 6.18.16, 6.6.128, 6.12.75, 6.1.165, 5.15.202, and 5.10.252 LTS, bring various bug fixes and performance enhancements that affect nearly every part of the system. These patches resolve issues with AMD GPUs and performance counters, GPU fence handling, perf tool reliability, MOST driver resource leaks, ARM64 counter stability, and other problems in the kernel, such as incorrect slot tracking and clamp allocation hints for io_uring. Additionally, updates to device drivers like Intel i40e/iwp2200, macb (Zynq Ethernet), and AMD Radeon display driver have improved their functionality and reduced instability in networking and graphics.
March 4, 2026 — Source

Linux Mint Ready With Its Wayland-Compatible Cinnamon Screensaver
Linux Mint developers recently outlined their work on developing a new Wayland-compatible screensaver for use with their Cinnamon desktop environment. Linux Mint developers announced today that their new screensaver solution is ready for use.
March 4, 2026 — Source

Linux Preps IBPB-On-Entry Feature For AMD SEV-SNP Guest VMs
Heading toward the Linux 7.0 kernel and marked for back-porting to current stable Linux kernel versions is employing a new SEV-SNP security feature found on AMD Zen 5 processors for enhancing security of guest virtual machines.
March 4, 2026 — Source

ML4W 2.11.1 Update: Fresh Look, Easier Setup, and Enhanced Features
The latest release of ML4W, version 2.11.1, brings a fresh new look and feel to the desktop with its updated icon theme and cursor combo. The default kora-pgrey icon set and return to Bibata cursor theme provide a cleaner and more polished interface that works well on both dark and light backgrounds. Additionally, the release introduces Hyprsunset as a replacement for Hyprshade, offering more flexible color overlays and smoother transitions between light and dark modes.
March 4, 2026 — Source

Old ATI R300 Open-Source Driver Sees Another New Fix In 2026
The Radeon R300 series turns 24 years old this year and thanks to the open-source ATI R300 Gallium3D driver that began via reverse engineering, it's still continuing to see the occasional random fixes from the open-source community.
March 4, 2026 — Source

systemd 260-rc2 Released With More Changes
Last week marked the release of systemd 260-rc1 with a new "mstack" feature, a new "FANCY_NAME" field for os-release, dropping System V service script support, and other changes. Out today is systemd 260-rc2 release with more changes in further working its way toward a stable release for empowering 2026 Linux distributions.
March 4, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu Still Figuring Out A Plan For Dealing With California's Digital Age Assurance Act
The talk this week among open-source projects from Linux distributions to app stores like Flathub is how to deal with California's latest insanity: the Digital Age Assurance Act. California's AB 1043 state law is mandating that operating systems -- Linux included -- collect age information during account setup and exposing that age to eligible apps beginning on 1 January 2027. That leaves much uncertainty for Linux distributions and other repositories/stores and more. Canonical issued a statement today to clarify that they basically don't have a solution to announce yet.
March 4, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — March 3rd, 2026

AMD DPTCi Driver Posted For Linux To Better Enhance Ryzen Gaming Handhelds
A request for comments (RFC) patch series was posted today to the Linux kernel mailing list to introduce the AMD Dynamic Power and Thermal Configuration Interface "DPTCi" driver. With this driver it would provide better upstream Linux kernel support for tuning the power / performance / thermals of modern Ryzen-powered gaming handheld devices. Though don't get too excited right away as the driver was assembled in part by AI that is already causing a bit of a ruckus on the LKML due to lack of disclosure.
March 3, 2026 — Source

AMD Makes rocprof-trace-decoder Open-Source
AMD open-sourced the ROCprof Trace Decoder "rocprof-trace-decoder", a tool useful for developers targeting the AMD GPU compute stack.
March 3, 2026 — Source

Apple Announces "Fusion Architecture" With M5 Pro & M5 Max
Apple announced today the new Fusion Architecture with the M5 Pro and M5 Max SoCs that also feature a next-generation GPU.
March 3, 2026 — Source

ARCTIC Cooling Publishes ARCTIC Fan Controller Driver For Linux
A Linux driver has been published for the ARCTIC Fan Controller to be able to read fan speeds under Linux as well as setting the PWM fan speed for each of the ten fans supported by this controller. Making this driver all the more exciting is that ARCTIC Cooling is directly working on this driver rather than just being a community/third-party creation. Furthermore, ARCTIC Cooling is working on getting this driver to the upstream Linux kernel.
March 3, 2026 — Source

BunsenLabs Carbon keeps the CrunchBang flame alive with Debian 13
Release lays the groundwork for going Wayland, if that's your sort of thing
March 3, 2026 — Source

GitHub's Points to a More Global, AI-Challenged Open Source Ecosystem in 2026
GitHub has released its yearly look at open-source trends. They used data from the Octoverse 2025 report to help the open-source community get ready for the coming year. The picture that emerges is one of extraordinary scale and the structural strains that come with it.
March 3, 2026 — Source

GNOME Mutter 50.rc Released With Better NVIDIA Performance, SDR-Native & Better HDR
There is two weeks to go until the GNOME 50 stable release while out today is the release candidate of Mutter 50. This Mutter 50.rc release brings some exciting last-minute enhancements to this Wayland compositor.
March 3, 2026 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.6.2 Bug Fix Release: Bug Fixes, UI Enhancements and New Device Support
KDE Plasma 6.6.2 brings a large set of stability improvements and bug fixes throughout the system, from UI quirks in KWin and Plasma Desktop to backend issues in Flatpak Permissions and libplasma. Developers addressed critical crashes such as output device mode updates, RDP connection destructors, and missing include files, while also tightening security by fixing permission traversal and session sorting logic. New hardware support was added with Fairphone 5 and Nothing Phone (1), and several mobile and network manager features were refined to better handle bridges, VLANs, and activity information via D‑Bus.
March 3, 2026 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.6.2 ships with several bug fixes and improvements
KDE Plasma 6.6 shipped less than a month ago with new features like the new First-Run Wizard, a dedicated Plasma Login Manager, OCR support in Spectacle, and font management in Discover. Now, it is getting its second bug fix release, dubbed version 6.6.2, bringing fixes for issues in kdrp, KWin, Discover, and more.
March 3, 2026 — Source

Keep Android Open
Google has announced that, soon, anyone looking to develop Android apps will have to first register centrally with Google.
March 3, 2026 — Source

Intel Adapting Linux's LAM In Preparing For ChkTag
Last year AMD and Intel as part of the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group announced ChkTag for x86 memory tagging across processors to better fight buffer overflows and use-after-free errors. In preparing for ChkTag with future processors, Intel has begun adapting their Linear Address Masking (LAM) support to more nicely jive with it.
March 3, 2026 — Source

Intel Preps A Lot Of Xe3 Code For Linux 7.1 Kernel
Intel yesterday sent out their first "drm-xe-next" pull request to DRM-Next of new Xe kernel graphics driver improvements they have readied for their eventual upstreaming into the Linux 7.1 kernel.
March 3, 2026 — Source

Intel Rendering Toolkit & OpenVINO AI GPU Performance On Intel Panther Lake's Xe3 B390
Over the past month I have been running a lot of Linux benchmarks on Intel's new Panther Lake using the Core Ultra X7 358H and its Xe3-based Arc B390 Graphics. The Arc B390 on Linux has been quite interesting with its OpenGL and Vulkan graphics performance compared to prior generations of Intel graphics plus the Intel Compute Runtime / OpenCL performance too.
March 3, 2026 — Source

Linux PC booting slowly? This handy tool shows why in seconds - here's how
If your Linux machine is taking its own sweet time booting, you have a built-in tool to help discover where the problem lies.
March 3, 2026 — Source

Node.js 25.8.0 Released: New API Docs, SQLite Limits, Security Fixes
Node.js 25.8.0 has been released, bringing a range of updates to documentation tooling, SQLite integration, diagnostic channels, and permission auditing. The new release introduces an enhanced API doc workflow, adds a limits property to DatabaseSync, brings C++ support for diagnostics, and adds a --permission‑audit flag to the command line interface. Numerous commits refine performance and security, such as optimizing buffer.concat, adding null pointer checks in crypto routines, validating ClientRequest paths, and bumping dependencies like undici, minimatch, npm, and simdjson.
March 3, 2026 — Source< or Source

Open-Source GitOps at the Edge: Deploying to Thousands of Clusters With Rancher Fleet
Establish GitOps-driven CI/CD pipelines to create zero-downtime deployments across thousands of edge locations with automated rollbacks.
March 3, 2026 — Source

Sovereign Tech Fellowship Opens Up To Community Managers, Technical Writers
Germany's Sovereign Tech Agency announced a new and expanded Sovereign Tech Fellowship program that is now open to community managers and technical writers, beyond just FOSS maintainers from the prior round.
March 3, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — March 2nd, 2026

AMD Announces Ryzen AI PRO 400 Series Desktop CPUs For AI-Focused Computing
AMD is using Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this week to announce new Ryzen AI PRO 400 Series products, including Ryzen AI PRO 400 desktop processors.
March 2, 2026 — Source

AMD EPYC Turin 128 Core Comparison: EPYC 9745 "Zen 5C" versus EPYC 9755 "Zen 5"
The AMD EPYC 9755 128-core Zen 5 server processor has been benchmarked a lot at Phoronix since the EPYC 9005 "Turin" launch as their top-end Zen 5 server processor with "full fat" cores compared to the denser Zen 5C cores that extend up to the EPYC 9965 at 192 cores. For those eyeing the 128 core per socket sweet spot, there is also the EPYC 9745 that is made up of 128 Zen 5C cores that allows for a 400 Watt TDP compared to the 500 Watt EPYC 9755.
March 2, 2026 — Source

Armbian 26.02 Released: New Boards, Powered By Linux 6.18 LTS & RISC-V Xfce Desktop
Armbian 26.02 has been released released for this Debian-derived Linux distribution primarily focused on supporting a range of Arm and RISC-V platforms. With Armbian 26.02 there is yet more new boards added while moving to the Linux 6.18 LTS kernel and also adding a RISC-V Xfce desktop install option.
March 2, 2026 — Source

Got an old PC? Omega Linux can make it feel new again - here's how
If you're looking for a distribution for an aging machine and you want to go with something other than a Ubuntu-based distribution, walk through the Arch with Omega.
March 2, 2026 — Source

Intel Releases llm-scaler-vllm 0.14.0-b8, Talks Up 1.49x Performance With BMG-G31
Intel kicked off the new month by releasing the latest version of LLM Scaler vLLM (llm-scaler-vllm) as their Docker-based solution for running vLLM on Intel Battlemage GPUs for AI inferencing.
March 2, 2026 — Source

IPFire 2.29 Core Update 200: New Features, Security Patches, and DNS Firewall Preview
IPFire 2.29 Core Update 200: New Features, Security Patches, and DNS Firewall Preview
March 2, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 Shows Off Nice Performance Gains For Databases In Small AMD EPYC Servers
Last week with my ongoing testing of the in-development Linux 7.0 kernel I found nice performance improvements for PostgreSQL and other workloads when testing on a 128-core AMD EPYC 9755 "Turin" server. Curious if those wins were due to optimizations focused on better scalability with today's "big" servers, I also ran some comparison Linux 7.0 benchmarks on the smaller AMD EPYC 4005 class servers too. Some nice wins carried over.
March 2, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.1 Will Power Off The System By Default If A Fatal ACPI Error Occurs
An important default kernel behavior change worth noting in advance for the upcoming Linux 7.1 kernel is that the system will attempt to power-off automatically if encountering any fatal ACPI errors. Up to now the Linux kernel has just logged ACPI fatal errors.
March 2, 2026 — Source

More ASUS Desktop Motherboards Will Support Sensor Monitoring With Linux 7.1
ASUS desktop motherboards have been seeing broader sensor monitoring support on Linux in recent years. ASUS motherboards for Intel and AMD processors have been seeing more support added thanks to the open-source community with new additions to the likes of the ASUS-EC-Sensors driver and other hardware monitoring (HWMON) driver code. This is continuing for Linux 7.1.
March 2, 2026 — Source

NebiOS turns your Linux desktop into a Google Workspace alternative - with one caveat
If the developers stick with it, NebiOS has the potential to become something truly special.
March 2, 2026 — Source

New Zlib-rs Delivers More Performance With AVX-512 VNNI Adler32 Implementation
Zlib-rs as the Rust programming language implementation of Zlib from the Trifetca Tech Foundation is out with a shiny new release (actually, releases) today.
March 2, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — February 24th, 2026

AIDA64 Download Version 8.25
AIDA64 released version 8.25, adding updated hardware detection and benchmarking capabilities for modern computing platforms. The update includes improved support for NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5000-series GPUs, alongside enhanced compatibility with the latest AMD and Intel CPU architectures. Several stability and stress-testing components were refined to help evaluate memory bandwidth, GPU processing behavior and overall system reliability under sustained workloads.
February 24, 2026 — Source

AMD's HIP Moves To Using LLVM's New Offload Driver By Default
A change merged to upstream LLVM Git yesterday for LLVM 23 is moving AMD's HIP to using the new/modern offload driver by default. This aligns with a prior change for NVIDIA CUDA and already in place for OpenMP offloading too.
February 24, 2026 — Source

CGIT 1.3 Web Frontend For Git Released After Six Years
Jason Donenfeld of WireGuard and Linux cryptography fame has taken a break from that to release a new version of CGIT, the lightweight web interface for Git repositories. CGIT 1.3 is the first new release in six years and comes with a lot of changes.
February 24, 2026 — Source

D7VK 1.4 Released With More Improvements For Old Direct3D On Vulkan Under Linux
D7VK 1.4 has continued improving the Direct3D D3D6 / D3D5 game compatibility with more games now working correctly under this portability layer. There is also initial support for depth write-back, support for color key transparency, consolidating the legacy DDraw interoperability, and other fixes and enhancements.
February 24, 2026 — Source

Google Cloud N4 Series Benchmarks: Google Axion versus Intel Xeon versus AMD EPYC Performance
Google Cloud recently launched their N4A series powered by their in-house Axion ARM64 processors. In that launch-day benchmarking last month was looking at how the N4A with Axion compared to their prior-generation ARM64 VMs powered by Ampere Altra. There were dramatic generational gains, but how does the N4A stand up to the AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon instances?
February 24, 2026 — Source

Intel Formally Ends Four Of Their Go Language Open-Source Projects
This latest round of Intel open-source projects being archived were focused on various codebases targeting Google's Go programming language. These Intel Go projects weren't exactly popular or widely-used as far as I know so not necessarily a big impact besides those programmers that are fans of the Go system programming language as an alternative to the likes of C or Rust.
February 24, 2026 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.6 isn't forcing systemd but the arguments rage on
BSD support improves, FreeBSD eyes a desktop option, and the init wars refuse to die
February 24, 2026 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.6.1 Released With Initial Batch Of Bug Fixes
KDE Plasma 6.6.1 Released With Initial Batch Of Bug Fixes
February 24, 2026 — Source

LLVM/Clang 22 Compiler Officially Released With Many Improvements
LLVM/Clang 22.1 was released overnight as the first stable release of the LLVM 22 series. This is a nice, feature-packaged half-year update to this prominent open-source compiler stack with many great refinements.
February 24, 2026 — Source

Mabox 26.02 Release: New Features, Fixes, and Enhancements
The latest Mabox build introduces a fresh audio menu that can be accessed with the W-a shortcut, allowing users to launch music players or activate visualizers. The Cava Colorizer has been rebuilt from scratch and now features more vibrant color shifts, along with new options for customizing its behavior. Screen recording in Mabox 26.02 finally captures audio correctly, eliminating a problem introduced by a previous driver update. Additionally, the Picom compositor is disabled by default to improve performance on older machines, but can be manually enabled for users who need translucency or shadows.
February 24, 2026 — Source

NVIDIA job listings mention Vulkan and Proton performance work on Linux
NVIDIA looking at Proton games compatibility
February 24, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — February 17th, 2026

3 ways to switch Linux distros without losing all your data
If you're thinking about distro-hopping, and you're wanting to retain your data, here's how you can do it.
February 17, 2026 — Source

5 atomic Linux distros I trust for stress-free OS updates - and why
Atomic Linux distros keep updates from breaking your system. Here's how, and which ones I prefer.
February 17, 2026 — Source

AMD Preparing Linux Kernel For "RMPOPT" To Help Reduce Overhead On SEV-SNP Servers
AMD sent out a set of Linux kernel patches today for enabling use of a new instruction dubbed RMPOPT. Given the timing of these patches, RMPOPT is presumably a feature coming with next-gen AMD EPYC Zen 6 "Venice" processors.
February 17, 2026 — Source

DNF 5.4 Released With Some New Options & AI Contributions Policy
DNF 5.4 is out today as the latest release for this next-generation RPM package management solution used by Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and various other RPM-based Linux distributions.
February 17, 2026 — Source

Experimental Out-Of-Tree Code Aims To Provide HDMI 2.1 FRL For AMD Linux Driver
One of the limitations of the AMDGPU Linux kernel graphics driver has been the lack of its support for HDMI 2.1 and later. AMD has wanted to support HDMI 2.1+ functionality under Linux but it's been legally blocked by the HDMI Forum. But anxious independent users have been working on open-source patches for wiring up HDMI 2.1 into the AMDGPU driver outside of the realm of AMD and the HDMI Forum's blessings.
February 17, 2026 — Source

Gentoo dumps GitHub over Copilot nagware
Gentoo's official migration from Microsoft-owned GitHub to Codeberg is underway, as the Linux distribution fulfills a pledge to ditch the code shack due to "continuous attempts to force Copilot usage for our repositories."
February 17, 2026 — Source

GhostBSD To Use XLibre Server, MATE versus Gershwin Desktop Decision In Future
GhostBSD lead developer Eric Turgeon published an update regarding X.Org Server versus XLibre versus Wayland planning for the GhostBSD distribution moving forward as well as some future uncertainties to this desktop-focused, FreeBSD-derived OS.
February 17, 2026 — Source

Intel Xeon 6 Granite Rapids Memory Scaling Performance From 6 To 12 MRDIMMs
With memory pricing being as wild as it is these days and with MRDIMMs on Xeon 6 Granite Rapids offering much more memory bandwidth than conventional DDR5 RDIMMs, you may be wondering about the performance impact when not populating all twelve memory channels on the Xeon 6900 series processors. In this article are benchmarks to demonstrate the performance difference of MRDIMM-8800 memory across using six, eight, ten, and twelve MRDIMMs with a Xeon 6980P server.
February 17, 2026 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.6 is finally here with lots of new goodies to try out
The new stable version, KDE Plasma 6.6, is now available for download, bringing features like OCR in Spectacle and more.
February 17, 2026 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.6 Officially Released
KDE released Plasma 6.6 today, the latest version of the popular Linux desktop environment, also used in Steam Deck desktop mode. The biggest addition is the new Plasma Login Manager, a potential replacement for Simple Desktop Display Manager (SDDM) in distributions like Fedora Linux 44, CachyOS, and EndeavourOS. Note that it requires systemd, so it won't work on systemd-free distros. The Spectacle screenshot tool gains OCR capabilities, and a new USB portal lets sandboxed apps request access to USB devices. Users running Linux kernel 6.19 can now adjust the visual sharpness of all on-screen content. You can also turn your current Plasma setup into a global theme.
February 17, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 Lands New TI RGB LED Driver With "Autonomous Animation Engine" Control
The LED subsystem updates for the Linux kernel typically aren't too noteworthy each kernel cycle but with Linux 7.0 is a new TI RGB LED driver that captured my attention in being curious over its "autonomous animation engine" integration.
February 17, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 Merges "Significant Improvement" For close_range System Call
The close_range system call for closing all file descriptors "FDs" in a given range should enjoy a nice speed boost with the in-development Linux 7.0 kernel.
February 17, 2026 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.6 Brings Useful Upgrades and Accessibility Improvements
KDE Plasma 6.6 brings several quality-of-life upgrades, including an improved on-screen keyboard that can auto-detect focused text fields and slide up from the bottom. Other new features include Spectacle's ability to run OCR on screenshots, making it easier to extract text from images, and a QR code scanner for joining Wi-Fi networks with a webcam. The update also includes tweaks like direct volume control from the task manager and an emoji skin tone selector, as well as significant accessibility improvements such as color-blind filters and a reduced motion toggle.
February 17, 2026 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.6 Released With Many Excellent Improvements
KDE Plasma 6.6 is now officially out as the newest feature update to this prominent open-source desktop environment. Plasma 6.6 is self-described by KDE developers as "the best desktop in the known universe (according to us). Plasma 6.6 is all about making your life as easy as possible without sacrificing any of the flexibility."
February 17, 2026 — Source

Microsoft .NET On Linux Patches Use IO_uring For Massive Performance Benefits
A pull request for the Microsoft .NET Runtime build on Linux to use IO_uring for sockets is showing some massive performance benefits.
February 17, 2026 — Source

Nova Lake S Support Added To Intel LPSS Driver In Linux 7.0
The latest Nova Lake enablement work for the Linux kernel to land is adding support for Nova Lake S platforms to the Intel LPSS driver in the upcoming Linux 7.0 kernel.
February 17, 2026 — Source

OpenAI Publishes Codex App Server Architecture for Unifying AI Agent Surfaces
OpenAI has recently published a detailed architecture description of the Codex App Server, a bidirectional protocol that decouples the Codex coding agent's core logic from its various client surfaces. The App Server now powers every Codex experience, including the CLI, the VS Code extension, the web app, the macOS desktop app, and third-party IDE integrations from JetBrains and Apple's Xcode, through a single, stable API.
February 17, 2026 — Source

Proactive Autoscaling for Edge Applications in Kubernetes
Over the past ten years, Kubernetes has evolved into one of the foundational platforms underlying today's modern IT infrastructure. Kubernetes allows organizations to manage large-scale, highly distributed, container-based workloads through its ability to provide an extendable architecture, as well as to automate a variety of tasks by providing a declarative model for defining resources.
February 17, 2026 — Source

SparkyLinux 8.2 arrives with updated desktops and packages
The second quarterly update to the Sparky 8 "Seven Sisters" stable series has arrived. SparkyLinux 8.2 features updated packages and desktop environments, plus a handful of fixes. The release keeps close compatibility with Debian 13 Trixie, so users get a familiar base with a lightweight, ready-to-use system that stays current.
February 17, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — February 15th, 2026

GE-Proton 10.31 Hotfix Brings Fixes for Wayland Users and Specific Titles
GloriousEggroll has released GE-Proton 10.31, a hotfix that patches several regressions affecting Wayland users and players of specific titles. The update addresses issues such as crashes in Warhammer 40k Darktide and Nioh 3, as well as video playback problems in various games. For gamers who regularly play these affected titles, switching to GE-Proton 10.31 is a no-brainer, but users with stable Proton installations may prefer to stay on the safe side due to experimental Wine code.
February 15, 2026 — Source

Installing PHP 8.5.3, 8.4.18, and Backported Security Builds on Debian with Ondřej Surý's Repository
Ondřej Surý has released updated PHP packages for Debian users, including PHP 8.5.3 and 8.4.18, which offer improved performance, bug fixes, and security patches over Debian's native PHP stack. By adding Surý's repository to their system, users can access the latest PHP versions without having to wait months for official updates or turn their system into a "Frankenstein build." To install these packages, users need to ensure their host can speak HTTPS to apt and then run a series of commands to fetch the signing key, add the repository source, and refresh the package index.
February 15, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel Improvement Can Make Hibernation Several Times Faster With Slow SSDs
A patch series sent out for review this weekend can significantly improve the system hibernation performance under Linux. Particularly for those with slower SSDs, the patches can make Linux hibernate up to several times faster.
February 15, 2026 — Source

Mesa's KosmicKrisp Vulkan-On-Metal Achieves MoltenVK Feature Parity
Announced last year by consulting firm LunarG was KosmicKrisp as a Vulkan-on-Metal driver for efficiently leveraging the Vulkan API on Apple macOS systems as an alternative to the MoltenVK project. KosmicKrisp was upstreamed for Mesa 26.0 and continues making great progress for opening up more Vulkan possibilities in Apple's world.
February 15, 2026 — Source

New world for users and brands as ads hit AI chatbots
The introduction of advertisements and sponsored content in chatbots has spawned privacy concerns for AI users as brands scramble to stay relevant in a fast-changing online environment.
February 15, 2026 — Source

NFS Server Adds Dynamic Thread Pool Sizing In Linux 7.0
NFSD is now capable of handling dynamic thread pool sizing to adjust the thread pool as needed. There is also a new control to set the minimum number of threads and from there it can scale up as needed or ramp down when the server is idle. The knob for server administrators to be aware of is "min-threads" for setting the desired minimum number of threads for an NFS server via the nfsdctl Netlink interface.
February 15, 2026 — Source

Power Sequencing Driver For PCIe M.2 Connectors Makes It Into Linux 7.0
The power sequencing subsystem updates have been merged for the Linux 7.0 cycle. Typically not an area of the kernel too exciting but one new driver addition is the "pwrseq-pcie-m2" to provide power sequencing for PCIe M.2 connectors.
February 15, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — February 14th, 2026

A Quiet Polish: What's New in GNOME 49.4
GNOME 49.4 is the latest stable bug-fix release for distributions that ship GNOME 49, promising a smooth transition with under-the-hood tweaks. The bulk of the work in 49.4 involves minor polishing and stability patches to prevent random crashes, including fixes for Evolution, Nautilus, and libadwaita. Upgrading now saves you from potential bugs and annoyances later on, especially if you rely on Evolution for contacts, and ensures you have the latest security patches.
February 14, 2026 — Source

Contain your Windows apps inside Linux Windows
Can't live without Adobe? Get on board WinBoat -- or WinApps sails a similar course
February 14, 2026 — Source

Firmware Upstreamed For Linux Speaker Support On The ASUS Zenbook 14 UM3406GA
For those that may be considering the new ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED (UM3406GA) laptop that has been refreshed for the new AMD Ryzen AI 400 series, Cirrus Logic has now upstreamed the necessary firmware for the cs35l41 audio amplifier for working speaker support.
February 14, 2026 — Source

GNOME 50 Beta Arrives: What Developers Need to Know Before Upgrading
The GNOME 50 beta release is now available, marking the start of the UI, feature, and API freezes known as The Freeze. This freeze locks in new features and requires developers to squash any remaining bugs before the final 50 release. Developers are encouraged to test their applications early, especially those that rely on libraries or extensions with breaking changes between beta and stable releases. By testing early, developers can adjust to any necessary updates and ensure a smooth transition when GNOME 50 is released.
February 14, 2026 — Source

GNOME OS To Use systemd-confext, RustConn Provides Modern GTK4 Connection Manager
In addition to this week's GNOME 50 beta release, there were also other exciting developments in the GNOME ecosystem.
February 14, 2026 — Source

Godot 4.7 Dev 1 Snapshot: Essential fixes and New Tools
The Godot 4.7 development snapshot introduces a built‑in VirtualJoystick node with three practical modes, eliminating the need for external mobile input plugins. DrawableTexture offers a straightforward API for drawing directly onto textures, removing the cumbersome viewport workaround most users relied on. Path3D now includes an optional collider‑snap feature that aligns points to nearby geometry, and the Remote Tree Inspector preserves enum names even when they aren't exported.
February 14, 2026 — Source

Intel Ends Work On Quantum Compiler Open-Source Bits
Following Intel recently discontinuing a number of open-source projects, this week they formally discontinued their Quantum Passes open-source project that was intended to provide additional passes for their LLVM-based compiler in the Intel Quantum SDK.
February 14, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 Lands 8D-8D-8D Octal DTR Support In SPI NAND For Better Performance
The Linux Memory Technology Device (MTD) subsystem updates have been merged for the Linux 7.0 kernel and include introducing Octal DTR "8D-8D-8D" support in SPI NAND for better performance.
February 14, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 Merges Support For Rock Band 4 PS4 / PS5 Guitars Plus More Laptop Quirks
The HID subsystem changes were merged this week for the ongoing Linux 7.0 kernel merge window. Among the Human Interface Devices (HID) work this cycle were supporting more guitars while also adding more device IDs and different laptop quirks.
February 14, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 Wires Up Arm's 64-byte Single-Copy Atomic Instructions LS64/LS64V
Beyond all of the exciting Intel/AMD x86_64 changes and improvements to enjoy with the upcoming Linux 7.0, there is one notable ARM64 feature addition this kernel cycle.
February 14, 2026 — Source

Roundcube 1.7 RC4 Released: Important Bug Fixes and Improved Installer
Roundcube 1.7 RC4 has been released with several important bug fixes that resolve minor issues affecting sysadmins. The most notable change is the correction of file permissions, which previously prevented users from writing logs or saving settings due to inadequate folder access. Additionally, the installer now correctly links to download the generated configuration file, making it easier to retrieve config.inc.php without searching through the filesystem. This release candidate addresses two minor issues and is primarily intended to resolve a file permission problem that hindered fresh installs of Roundcube 1.7.
February 14, 2026 — Source

Vim 9.2: What You Need to Know About the Latest Update
Vim 9.2 has introduced several changes that can impact daily workflows, including a revamped completion engine with fuzzy matching and improved performance when dealing with large files. The new version also introduces diff improvements, allowing users to split large files into logical sections for easier comparison. Additionally, Linux users can now enjoy native Wayland clipboard handling and UI integration, although this feature is still experimental. Overall, the update brings incremental improvements that are solid enough for everyday editing, but may not necessitate a massive overhaul of existing settings or workflows.
February 14, 2026 — Source

Zen Browser 1.18.7b Update Brings Accessibility Improvements and Crash Fixes
Zen Browser  1.18.7b finally adds proper ARIA labels to the workspace‑switcher and other toolbar buttons, so screen‑readers can announce each control correctly. The build also forces the session cache to flush before a crash, which stops the blank‑tab nightmare that showed up after Windows forced a reboot. Anyone who relies on accessibility tools should upgrade right away, and even users without those needs will notice a steadier tab restore. The update is tiny, installs cleanly, and doesn't demand a restart—so there's really no excuse to stick with the buggy predecessor.
February 14, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — February 13th, 2026

4 Linux distros that made Hyprland easy to use - and this one seriously impressed me
Hyprland is a hot topic among Linux users and will only continue to grow in popularity. But which distributions make this new(ish) desktop viable for most people?
February 13, 2026 — Source

A Few More ASUS Motherboards Now Support Sensor Reporting With Linux 7.0
All of the hardware monitoring "HWMON" subsystem updates have been merged for the ongoing Linux 7.0 merge window.
February 13, 2026 — Source

Atomic versus immutable Linux: Why choose one when these nine distros offer both?
If immutable and atomic distributions are the path forward for Linux, how do you choose? Maybe you don't have to. I break it all down.
February 13, 2026 — Source

Evaluating The Performance Cost To AMD SEV-SNP On Modern EPYC VMs
AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization with Secure Nested Paging (SEV-SNP) provides memory encryption and integrity protections that can be especially useful in modern cloud computing. Typically a 2~10% performance overhead is reported when engaging AMD SEV-SNP for these hardware-backed security protections. In this article is an extensive look at the current AMD SEV-SNP performance impact for confidential computing on EPYC servers.
February 13, 2026 — Source

GNOME 50 Beta Released With Stable VRR, GDM Improvements
The GNOME 50 beta release is now available ahead of the official GNOME 50 desktop due out in March.
February 13, 2026 — Source

Gnome 50 Desktop Environment Public Beta Launches with VRR and dGPU Improvements
The Gnome Project has officially announced the Gnome 50 public beta testing phase and API, feature, and UI freeze ahead of the desktop environment's official launch later this year. The freeze effectively means that the features that are part of the new public beta version will be part of the official release when that lands on March 18, 2026.
February 13, 2026 — Source

Haiku OS Lands Improved Touchpad Support, Still Working Toward Beta 6
The Haiku open-source operating system project inspired by BeOS kicked off 2026 by making many improvements to its kernel, device drivers, and user-space software.
February 13, 2026 — Source

Intel Nova Lake Sound Support In Linux 7.0
Merged for the Linux 6.19 kernel was initial Nova Lake S audio support. Now merged this week for the Linux 7.0 kernel is enabling sound support for additional Nova Lake platforms.
February 13, 2026 — Source

KDE Frameworks 6.23.0 Brings Faster Baloo Indexing and Improved Memory Safety
KDE Frameworks 6.23.0 has been released to improve Baloo indexing and overall memory safety, with a focus on cleaning up the file-indexing pipeline and tightening ownership rules across core components. The update also includes changes to Bluez Qt and Breeze icons, such as a new "update-busy" state and color-aware kdeconnect-symbolic assets that respect dark themes. LeakSanitizer has been enabled in the release to catch memory bugs before they ship, although this may result in a modest increase in build time for some projects. Developers who rely on Baloo should consider upgrading to 6.23.0, but those using older Qt versions will need to upgrade their packages first.
February 13, 2026 — Source

Libinput 1.31 Released With Configurable Timeouts, Fast 3-Finger Swipes
Red Hat's leading input expert Peter Hutterer announced the release overnight of libinput 1.31, the input handling library used by the Linux desktop on both X.Org and Wayland desktop sessions.
February 13, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 Lands ML-DSA Quantum-Resistant Signature Support
Adding to the exciting features for the big Linux 7.0 kernel release is support for the Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Algorithm "ML-DSA" quantum-resistant signature algorithm.
February 13, 2026 — Source

Linux Gets Rid Of Intel 440BX EDAC Driver For Old Pentium CPUs After Being Broken For 19+ Years
Linux Gets Rid Of Intel 440BX EDAC Driver For Old Pentium CPUs After Being Broken For 19+ Years
February 13, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.12.71 Brings Subtle Fixes for Smoother Performance
The latest point release of the Linux Kernel 6.12 series has arrived, bringing a few focused fixes that address subtle bugs in areas like virtual socket tests and VLAN packet handling in tunnels. The patches aim to improve the kernel's networking and storage subsystems by ensuring accurate data storage, streamlining io_uring reads for better async performance, and providing clearer error messages when packets are dropped due to VLAN tags.
February 13, 2026 — Source

MariaDB 12.3.1 RC: Unlock Lightning-Fast Performance with Crash-Safe Binlog
MariaDB 12.3.1 has been released as a first candidate for its long-term support line, bringing significant changes to the binary log, XML data type, and Oracle-compatibility tweaks. The new binlog implementation embeds it inside InnoDB, reducing commit latency by up to 50% and making the binlog crash-safe even with relaxed flush settings. To enable this feature, users must add a specific directive to their my.cnf file, but should not treat this as a production release due to potential replication issues until at least one point release is available. The update also brings new features in MariaDB 12.2.2, including expanded Oracle compatibility and improved JSON handling, making it a safer upgrade for those already on the 12.1 series.
February 13, 2026 — Source

Multi-Lane SPI Support Merged For Linux 7.0
With the Serial Peripheral Interface "SPI" subsystem updates for the Linux 7.0 kernel comes support for multi-lane SPI.
February 13, 2026 — Source

NVIDIA Posts Open-Source Nouveau GSP Driver Support For GA100
One of the latest NVIDIA open-source contributions this week wasn't for the in-development Nova kernel driver but for enhancing the existing Nouveau kernel driver. The patch posted is for bringing up the NVIDIA GA100 GPU under Nouveau using the GPU System Processor (GSP).
February 13, 2026 — Source

Sheaves Ready To Play A Bigger Role In Linux 7.0
The slab memory allocator feature updates have been merged for the Linux 7.0 kernel. Most notable this cycle is expanded use of the recently-introduced Sheaves functionality.
February 13, 2026 — Source

Why my favorite Linux distro is slowing down - and I'm thrilled about it
Linux Mint release cycles are changing: Here's why and when to expect the next one.
February 13, 2026 — Source

Zen Browser 1.18.6b: Enhancing Performance and User Experience with Enhanced UI
Zen Browser 1.18.6b moves overflowing extensions to a row below the address bar in single‑sidebar mode, clearing up a crowded UI. The program now stores its Linux configuration under ~/.config/zen and respects XDG standards while still supporting the legacy folder if it exists. Crash recovery has been tightened so unpinned tabs stay closed when "Restore previous session" is disabled, and bookmark syncing with Mozilla accounts finally functions reliably. A new --blank-window command‑line switch opens a clean window without any pinned tabs or restored spaces, which is handy for testing or starting fresh.
February 13, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — February 12th, 2026

Apache NetBeans IDE  29 RC3 Fixes Missing Localization Keys
The third release candidate for Apache NetBeans IDE 29 mainly fixes missing resource‑bundle keys that caused placeholder text to appear in several language packs. The update cleans up the UI for non‑English locales, eliminating the "???" labels that could confuse users. It also includes minor internal tweaks such as reduced console logging noise and removal of obsolete test cases.
February 12, 2026 — Source

Arch Linux Running Well On LoongArch - Loongson 3B6000 Benchmarks
Earlier this month I posted benchmarks of the Loongson 3B6000 for this 12-core / 24-thread LoongArch Chinese CPU with DDR4 ECC memory. Those initial benchmarks were done with Debian LoongArch64 while since then I've shifted over to using Arch Linux on LoongArch.
February 12, 2026 — Source

How to use your Android phone to master Linux Bash scripts (instead of doomscrolling)
Enable the Linux terminal on any Android device, and you can practice your Bash scripting on the go. Here's how.
February 12, 2026 — Source

Intel Is Making It Easier In Linux 7.0 To Monitor Energy Use For A Group Of Tasks
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.
February 12, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 Brings A Significant Improvement For Workqueue Rescuer
The Linux kernel's workqueue for async task handling within a dedicated kernel thread is seeing some useful improvements with Linux 7.0.
February 12, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 Networking: Prepping For WiFi 8 UHR While Dropping Last Parallel Port Ethernet Driver
The Linux 7.0 networking pull request showcases two extremes and the diversity and robustness of the open-source kernel ecosystem. Linux 7.0 is laying the groundwork for WiFi 8 Ultra-High Reliability (UHR) support while this kernel version is also bidding farewell to the last Ethernet driver for use over parallel printer ports.
February 12, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 Performance Events Prep For Intel Xeon Diamond Rapids
The performance "perf" events changes for the Linux 7.0 kernel are continuing to prepare for next-generation Xeon Diamond Rapids processors as the successor to current Xeon 6 Granite Rapids.
February 12, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 Removes Support For Signing Modules With Insecure SHA-1
The Linux 7.0 kernel has removed support for signing kernel modules using SHA-1 as it's no longer considered secure but existing SHA-1 signed modules can still be loaded.
February 12, 2026 — Source

Linux Mint team considers longer gaps between releases in attempt to accelerate development efforts — current six-month cycle means 'we spend more time testing, fixing, and releasing than developing'
Renowned for its slow and steady approach, Mint's pace of change may become even slower and steadier.
February 12, 2026 — Source

Media Driver Updates Merged For Linux 7.0 - Still Without The AMD ISP4 Driver
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.
February 12, 2026 — Source

Mesa 26.0 Rolls Out, Bringing Major Vulkan And Ray-Tracing Improvements For Radeon GPUs On Linux
The open-source Mesa 3D graphics stack has reached a major milestone with the official release of Mesa 26.0, which brings significant improvements for AMD GPUs.
February 12, 2026 — Source

Mesa 26.0.0 Release: Boosting Performance and Graphics on Linux
The latest release of Mesa brings several performance tweaks, including new Vulkan-to-Metal layer, KosmicKrisp, which allows for smoother gameplay on macOS without needing proprietary software. RADV raytracing also gets faster with a more aggressive geometry handling path that reduces stutter in games like Quake II RTX. RadeonSI switches to ACO by default, cutting down shader compilation time and improving performance, but it may resurface some obscure edge-case bugs.
February 12, 2026 — Source

PikaOS 26.02.11 Release: Smoother Gameplay and Performance
The latest PikaOS 26.02.11 release includes a fresh package set that promises smoother gameplay and improved performance, particularly for users who have struggled with driver issues on other operating systems. The PikaOS comes in several editions, including GNOME, KDE, Hyprland, COSMIC, Niri, and a Handheld ISO (coming soon), each offering unique features and desktop experiences. Users can choose between regular and NVIDIA variants of each edition, depending on their graphics card - the NVIDIA ISO is required for RTX-series cards or GTX 1650 and newer models.
February 12, 2026 — Source

Sad news? Linux Mint may soon be shutting down its shorter development cycle
The Linux Mint team has published its January report, outlining several improvements and plans to move to a longer development cycle.
February 12, 2026 — Source

SPARC & Alpha CPU Ports Still Seeing Activity In 2026 With Linux 7.0
In addition to all of the exciting Intel and AMD x86_64 enhancements that have been landing this week so far for the Linux 7.0 kernel, the aging SPARC, Alpha, and Motorola 680x0 "m68k" CPU ports have also seen some patches for this new kernel.
February 12, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS Now Available With Linux 6.17 HWE Kernel
Canonical released Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS today as the newest point release to the Noble Numbat.
February 12, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu Linux 24.04.4 LTS Update Brings New Kernel, Mesa, and Firefox Improvements
Ubuntu Linux 24.04.4 LTS brings several key updates, including a new Linux kernel 6.17 and Mesa 25.2.8, which add support for fresh hardware and improve gaming performance. The update also includes newer versions of Firefox, Snapd, and LibreOffice, making most users' experiences smoother and more stable.
February 12, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — February 11th, 2026

AMD ROCm TheRock 7.11 Released, Ubuntu Making Progress On Shipping ROCm Packages
Two useful bits of ROCm news today for those interested in AMD's open-source GPU compute stack.
February 11, 2026 — Source

Compiler-Driven Static Analysis Locking Context Checking Merged For Linux 7.0
The locking code changes have been merged for the Linux 7.0 kernel and it introduces support for a new compiler-driven feature being introduced on the compiler side with the upcoming LLVM Clang 22.
February 11, 2026 — Source

GNOME 48.9: A Breakdown of New Features, Fixes, and Upgrades
GNOME 48.9 is an incremental update that patches several memory leaks, thumbnail issues, and MTP crashes without adding any new features. The core desktop components have been tightened up for security and cleaning up stray memory allocations, making it a solid update for users who run third-party apps in containers or notice thumbnail glitches. For those heavily reliant on file management, remote mounts, or online accounts, the Nautilus and GVFS fixes alone make 48.9 worth upgrading to, while others may not see significant changes.
February 11, 2026 — Source

Intel Arc B390 Panther Lake Generational Performance Since The Gen9 Graphics Era
Last week on Phoronix we provided initial Linux graphics benchmarks for the new Xe3-based Arc B390 graphics found with the higher-end Panther Lake SoCs with 12 Xe cores. Those benchmarks showed great gains over recent generations of Intel graphics like with Lunar Lake, Meteor Lake, and even Alder/Raptor Lake... But what if you hold onto your laptop for even longer? In this article is an Intel integrated graphics comparison looking at the general performance and power efficiency going all the way back to the Gen9 graphics era for what seemed like an eternity of Gen9-derived graphics during the Skylake era.
February 11, 2026 — Source

Intel Releases New Compute Runtime, Upstreams More SYCL Code To LLVM
Intel today released a new version of their Compute Runtime stack and IGC graphics compiler for Level Zero and OpenCL usage with their integrated and discrete graphics. Separately they also upstreamed more SYCL code this week into mainline LLVM.
February 11, 2026 — Source

Kubernetes Drives AI Expansion as Cultural Shift Becomes Critical
Kubernetes has transitioned from a versatile framework for container orchestration to the primary engine powering the global surge in artificial intelligence development.
February 11, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 Now Defaults To Intel TSX Auto Mode For Performance Benefits On Newer CPUs
The x86/cpu changes have been merged for Linux 7.0 and include finally setting the default Intel TSX mode to "auto" rather than being off by default.
February 11, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 Scores +12% In UDP Network Performance Test From Manually Inlining Function
The core timer changes to the Linux 7.0 kernel score a rather nice performance improvement in a UDP receive network stress test from inlining a function that compilers haven't been able to tackle with their optimizations.
February 11, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernels 6.18.10, 6.12.70, 6.6.124, 6.1.163, 5.15.200, and 5.10.250 released
The Linux Kernels 6.18.10, 6.12.70, 6.6.124, 6.1.163, 5.15.200, and 5.10.250 have been released with various fixes and improvements. The latest kernel series addresses issues with sound cards, Wi-Fi radios, NVMe storage, and power management on laptops, among other things. Specific problems that are now resolved include audio glitches with the Behringer UMC2020HD, erratic behavior of Intel and AMD GPU drivers, and bogus disconnect warnings when switching between wireless networks.
February 11, 2026 — Source

Linux Mint Developing New Wayland-Compatible Screensaver
The Linux Mint developers have been hard at work continuing to develop new features following their recent Mint 22.3 release. There is continued enhancements around keyboard support, a new administration tool for users, and there are also considerations being made around moving to a longer development cycle between Linux Mint releases.
February 11, 2026 — Source

OpenVPN 2.7 Released With Multi-Socket Server & DCO Linux Kernel Driver Support
For those using the open-source OpenVPN for your virtual private networking (VPN) needs, OpenVPN 2.7 is out today with some notable improvements.
February 11, 2026 — Source

Python 3.15 Alpha 6 Unveiled: Top Features, Performance Boosts, and What Developers Need to Know
Python 3.15 alpha 6 brings several changes, including a built-in statistical profiler and default UTF-8 encoding. The release also includes an upgraded just-in-time compiler that provides modest speed improvements, about three to four percent on x86-64 Linux and seven to eight percent on AArch64 macOS. Additionally, the new release introduces features such as unpacking inside comprehensions and typed dictionaries with extra items, but warns that these additions are still experimental and may change before the final release.
February 11, 2026 — Source

Tails 7.4.2 Release: Critical Security Fix for Linux Users
Tails 7.4.2 has been released with critical kernel bug fixes and several minor annoyances resolved. The update patches a dangerous Linux-kernel flaw, bumps Thunderbird to 140.7.1, and improves language handling on the welcome screen. Skipping this upgrade leaves the operating system exposed to an attacker who could potentially seize admin rights and strip away anonymity. To upgrade safely, you can either use the built-in automatic updater or manually run a script in a terminal to download and install the new image.
February 11, 2026 — Source

Upstream Wine Making Progress On Patches For Satisfying Adobe Photoshop
There were recently patches for getting the Adobe Photoshop 2025 installer to work on Linux under Wine. Those patches were picked up by Wine-Staging and now more traction is coming for getting those patches into the upstream Wine codebase, some of which have now been merged.
February 11, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — February 6th, 2026

AMD Introduces New GPU Target To AMDGPU LLVM: GFX1170 "RDNA 4m"
In addition to their ongoing AMDGPU LLVM compiler back-end work for upcoming GFX1250 and recently the GFX13 target for their graphics IP, today AMD compiler engineers introduced a new "GFX1170" target to the LLVM codebase that is also called RDNA 4m.
February 6, 2026 — Source or Source

"DHEI" Proposed For Linux To Help Cloud-Native Orchestrators & High Frequency Traders
Sent out today as a request for comments is a new patch series for Dynamic Housekeeping and Enhanced Isolation (DHEI). DHEI aims to provide run-time adjustments to kernel behavior around CPU isolation for helping with latency-sensitive tasks. The expressed goal is for helping cloud-native orchestrators and high frequency trading platforms dynamically re-partition CPU resources without downtime.
February 6, 2026 — Source

DKnife Linux toolkit hijacks router traffic to spy, deliver malware
A newly discovered toolkit called DKnife has been used since 2019 to hijack traffic at the edge-device level and deliver malware in espionage campaigns.
February 6, 2026 — Source

Forget VirtualBox - I discovered a better, more reliable VM manager for Linux
Virt-Manager is a free and easy-to-install virtual machine manager. Here's how it compares to VirtualBox.
February 6, 2026 — Source

GTK Developers Working On Session Saving Support & Better Accessibility This Year
GTK toolkit developers met in Brussels once again for their annual hackfest during FOSDEM week.
February 6, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.18.9 released
The latest point release of the Linux kernel, version 6.18.9, arrives with a focused set of patches that tighten stability and eliminate subtle bugs across many subsystems. It cleans up crashes from driver races in AMDGPU, Intel Xe, and network devices like mlx5e while also correcting misleading error counters on Intel NICs and fixing memory leaks in bcache, btrfs, and NFC routines.
February 6, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernels 6.12.69, 6.6.123, 6.1.162, 5.15.199, 5.10.249 released
Linux Kernel 6.12.69 has been released alongside earlier stable branches such as 5.10.249, 5.15.199, 6.1.162, and 6.6.123, bringing a wide array of bug fixes and feature refinements across the kernel. The log shows improvements to bpf self‑tests, RDMA device handling under Hyper‑V, pinctrl driver changes for Qualcomm SoCs, AMDGPU queue resets, and a critical writeback CPU‑usage fix that stops infinite busy loops when the dirtytime interval is zero.
February 6, 2026 — Source

ML-LIB: Machine Learning Library Proposed For The Linux Kernel
Sent out today as a request for comments (RFC) by a Linux kernel engineer employed by IBM is a machine learning library for the Linux kernel. The intent is on plugging in running ML models to the Linux kernel that could be used for system performance optimizations and various other purposes.
February 6, 2026 — Source

OpenAI inks huge lease in Bellevue, doubling down on Seattle region near Microsoft and Amazon HQs
OpenAI is placing a bigger bet on the Seattle region, signing a massive new lease in Bellevue as the ChatGPT-maker expands near the headquarters of two key corporate cloud partners.
February 6, 2026 — Source

Toyota Developing A Console-Grade, Open-Source Game Engine - Using Flutter & Dart
Well, here's an unexpected combination... Toyota's Toyota Connected North America unit is developing a console-grade open-source game engine. Making it even more unusual is their engineering choices of building around the Flutter toolkit and in turn the Dart programming language. This new game engine creation is called Fluorite.
February 6, 2026 — Source

VRR Improvements Merged To GNOME 50 For Lower Latency, Wayland Commit Timing
While just missing out on the recent Mutter 50 beta release, merged today to Mutter Git ahead of next month's GNOME 50 desktop release are some improvements to the Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) support.
February 6, 2026 — Source

Wine 11.2 Released With More Improvements & 32 Bug Fixes
Wine 11.2 is out as the latest bi-weekly development release in the road toward the Wine 12.0 stable release next January.
February 6, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — February 4th, 2026

AMD Expands FPGA Offerings With Mid-Range Kintex UltraScale+ Gen 2
AMD announced today an expansion of their FPGA prodict line-up with the Kintex UltraScale+ Gen 2 for "intelligent, high performance systems" for medical, industrial, and other fields.
February 4, 2026 — Source

ConnectSecure introduces Linux patching capability to simplify cross-distro updates
ConnectSecure announced the launch of a new cross-platform Linux operating system patching capability. The update eliminates the complexity of managing fragmented Linux environments by delivering a single, unified interface for deploying critical security updates across the four most widely used Linux distributions: Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian, and CentOS.
February 4, 2026 — Source

GIMP Post-3.2 Will Be Looking At Hardware Acceleration, Full CMYK & More
With GIMP 3.2 releasing soon, GIMP developer Ondřej Míchal presented at FOSDEM 2026 this past weekend on some of the feature work being eyed for post-3.2 developments.
February 4, 2026 — Source

GNU Coreutils 9.10 Released With Many Improvements
Earlier this week Rust Coreutils 0.6 released while out today is GNU Coreutils 9.10 as the de facto standard for this set of core utilities on Linux systems and other platforms.
February 4, 2026 — Source

Intel Driver Disabling Vulkan Video Encode On Newer Hardware Due To Insufficient Testing
While Vulkan Video is a cross-vendor, cross-platform video encode and decode API that is beginning to gain traction by multimedia applications and frameworks, the Intel "ANV" open-source Vulkan driver has for now taken a step-back on its encode support with newer hardware. Newer Intel graphics hardware is seeing Vulkan Video encode support disabled due to insufficient testing.
February 4, 2026 — Source

libinput 1.31 Bringing Support For Fast Three-Finger Swipes
Linux input expert Peter Hutterer of Red Hat announced today the first release candidate of libinput 1.31, the input handling library used by both modern X.Org Server and Wayland desktop environments.
February 4, 2026 — Source

LibreOffice 26.2 released
LibreOffice 26.2 is the latest free office suite from The Document Foundation, offering improvements in speed, Markdown support, and better Microsoft file compatibility. A performance boost allows for faster opening of large documents and smoother scrolling in Calc, while Markdown import/export enables users to easily convert between formats. While upgrading isn't necessary if your workflow with LibreOffice 26.1 is smooth, the new version solves several long-standing annoyances for power users, such as anchored objects and connector support in Calc.
February 4, 2026 — Source

Mesa Will Now Prevent Compiling With LTO Due To "Random Impossible-To-Debug Bugs"
While link-time optimizations "LTO" can deliver some nice performance benefits out of this compiler optimization technique, it can make debugging said binaries more challenging. Due to various bugs in Mesa being attributed to the use of compiler link-time optimizations when compiling Mesa, the builds are being blocked on using LTO.
February 4, 2026 — Source

Microsoft is even gobbling up PC resources on Linux — Visual Studio Code could be hogging hard drive space
An issue first raised back in 2024 with VS Code continues to plague the official Snap package.
February 4, 2026 — Source

Nginx 1.29.5 and 1.28.2 released
A new security pupdate, Nginx 1.29.5, has been released to fix a critical SSL upstream injection bug (CVE-2026-1642) that could allow attackers to bypass host-based access controls and expose internal data to the internet. This vulnerability affects Nginx instances with SSL termination and is particularly relevant for public-facing servers using TLS. The patch adds proper logging and tightens read-before-write logic to prevent the attack, but users should still upgrade their Nginx version as soon as possible to ensure security.
February 4, 2026 — Source

One Line Fix Coming For Achieving Better Linux Performance On The HP OMEN 8E41 Laptop
A one-line patch to the HP WMI x86 platform driver for Linux was posted for allowing the HP OMEN Transcend Gaming Laptop 14-fb1xxx to correctly hit its rated TDP limit for allowing better performance outside of the Microsoft Windows confines.
February 4, 2026 — Source

OWASP CRS 4.23.0 released
The latest OWASP CRS 4.23.0 release includes new detection rules, false-positive clean-ups, and housekeeping efforts that most users won't notice. The new rules include protection against Vite.js path traversal attacks, fake Mozilla user-agent blocks, and "trap" command block exploitation attempts, as well as PHP session file upload prevention. Additionally, the release fixes several common false-positives, such as ad and tracker cookie noise and malformed SSRF URLs.
February 4, 2026 — Source

PikaOS 26.02.03 released
PikaOS 26.02.03 has been released with a new kernel and drivers, but users who upgraded from an older ISO need to run a migration script to fix their console keymap and encrypted boot issues. The migration involves deleting old config files, setting a generic keymap, fixing package references, installing the kbd stack, refreshing packages, applying the actual keymap, and recreating initramfs images.
February 4, 2026 — Source

This new Linux desktop runs like an app on your existing desktop - and I highly recommend it
Orbitiny is snappy, portable, and feels like a native experience - but it's not. Here's how it works.
February 4, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu 26.04 surprised me - this upcoming release is seriously secure
The next release of Ubuntu desktop Linux is on the horizon, so I dove into the latest daily build to see what was what, and came away nodding my head in approval at the heightened security.
February 4, 2026 — Source

Zen Browser 1.18.4b released
Zen Browser has released version 1.18.4b, which fixes a major issue with drag-and-drop functionality in split views, allowing users to finally reorganize tabs without frustration. The update also includes several minor quality-of-life tweaks and bug fixes, but no new UI features or major changes. Users who regularly work with multiple windows or rely on drag-and-drop for research are recommended to upgrade now, as the fix removes a significant hiccup that can cost minutes of focus.
February 4, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — February 2nd, 2026

Barman 3.17 released
Barman 3.17, a disaster recovery solution for PostgreSQL, introduces several practical improvements that make remote backups easier, such as allowing commands like list‑backup and get‑wal to run against servers marked inactive so you can query or restore without re‑enabling a node. It also adds safety for S3 Object Lock by aborting deletes when locked objects exist and lets users specify non‑standard SSH ports during restores with a single flag. The release drops the old custom_compression filter, urging teams to switch to built‑in algorithms like gzip, lz4, or zstd for faster, supported compression.
February 2, 2026 — Source

Experimental Linux Code For 1GB PUD-Level THPs Shows 34% Faster Memory Access Times
Early, experimental code for implementing 1GB PUD-level THPs in the Linux kernel are showing positive benchmark results but other upstream stakeholders were surprised by this patch series appearing and it looking like it could be a while until if/when the patches are mainlined for helping to reduce transaction lookaside buffer (TLB) pressure without resorting to Hugetlbfs.
February 2, 2026 — Source

Forget Google Search: I found a search tool that doesn't track me or push AI - and it gets better
YaCy is fully private and can be installed on Linux, Mac, and Windows PCs. Here's my experience so far, and how to use it yourself.
February 2, 2026 — Source

Gear Lever  4.3.1 released
Gear Lever has released version 4.3.1 on Flathub and GitHub, fixing bugs that had frustrated Portuguese users by adding missing pt‑PT translations The update also adds a proper source repository link to the About page, satisfying Flathub's open‑source compliance requirement and allowing anyone to inspect the code behind their AppImages. Additionally, Gear Lever now correctly handles pre‑release GitHub update URLs, pulling the latest "nightly" or "beta" builds without error.
February 2, 2026 — Source

Git 2.53 Released With More Optimizations, One Step Closer To Making Rust Mandatory
While we might see Git 3.0 released around the end of 2026, Git 2.53 is out today as the latest feature release and continuing to make changes with an eye toward that big Git 3.0 milestone.
February 2, 2026 — Source

Help! Does anyone on the bus know Linux?
Open source operating system fans, your time has come
February 2, 2026 — Source

Intel ISH Firmware Upstreamed For Linux With Dell's New Panther Lake Laptops
Ahead of Dell's new XPS 14 and XPS 16 laptops powered by Intel Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" expected to be shipping in volume beginning in March, more of the Linux support for these premium Panther Lake laptops continues to be finished up.
February 2, 2026 — Source

Linux From Scratch Abandoning SysVinit Support
Linux From Scratch was one of the holdouts continuing optional SysVinit init system support through 2026, but that's now ending. Linux From Scratch "LFS" and Beyond Linux From Scratch "BLFS" are ending their System V Init support moving forward.
February 2, 2026 — Source

ML4W OS 2.10.0 released
ML4W OS 2.10.0, the latest Hyprland‑based dotfiles collection rebranded from "ML4W Dotfiles", now ships a beta live ISO that boots directly into Hyprland with wallpaper‑derived adaptive material colors, adds a calendar app, improves btop's theme support, and stabilises the Welcome and Settings apps. The ISO is an Arch base configured for systemd‑boot, so you should write it to a UEFI bootable USB; installing on Arch requires running sudo install-ml4w-os from the live session, while other distros can copy dotfiles via the Flathub Dotfiles Installer but still need to resolve dependencies manually.
February 2, 2026 — Source

My proven way to speed up Linux when RAM upgrades aren't worth it (and it's free to do)
RAM prices are out of control. Here's how to speed up Linux without buying more.
February 2, 2026 — Source

Loongson 3B6000 Benchmarks: How China's LoongArch CPU Compares To AMD Zen 5, Intel Arrow Lake & Raspberry Pi 5
Recently I finally got my hands on a LoongArch processor, the ISA developed by China's Loongson Technology as an evolution from their earlier use of the MIPS64 ISA and inspired by RISC-V and other modern ISAs. The Loongson-3B6000 features 12 cores / 24 threads with dual channel DDR4 ECC memory support. Here is a look at how that latest-generation LoongArch desktop processor compares to the current generation AMD Zen 5 and Intel Arrow Lake desktop processors under Linux. Plus also tossing in the Raspberry Pi 5 (Raspberry Pi 500+) for an ARM reference point.
February 2, 2026 — Source

Raspberry Pi Raises Prices As Much As $60 Due To Memory Demand
Last year Raspberry Pi announced price increases due to memory demand. Today they have announced another round of increased prices as a result of the memory shortages going on industry-wide.
February 2, 2026 — Source

Rust Coreutils Continues Working Toward 100% GNU Compatibility, Proving Trolls Wrong
Sylvestre Ledru who serves as the lead developer of the uutils project for the Rust Coreutils implementation presented at FOSDEM 2026 this weekend on this initiative. Ledru has spoken at FOSDEM in prior years on Rust Coreutils and this year's talk focused primarily on Ubuntu 25.10's adoption of it in place of GNU Coreutils.
February 2, 2026 — Source

Security Researchers Find Current RISC-V CPU Implementations Coming Up Short
While many open-source enthusiasts like to flaunt RISC-V as not having the security challenges as x86_64 CPUs have seen over the past several years with various speculative execution / side-channel attacks and arguing for the benefits of an open-source ISA in stronger security, in practice it's not so clear-cut. Security researchers at Germany's CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security have found current RISC-V CPU implementations coming up short for their actual security.
February 2, 2026 — Source

Steam Survey Results For January 2026
After Steam on Linux gaming hit a record high in December of 3.58%, the January 2026 numbers are now published.
February 2, 2026 — Source

This Debian-based Linux distro has one of the smartest security features I've tested in years
If you're looking for a bit of extra security with an MX Linux-based distribution, iDeal OS might be an ideal solution.
February 2, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — February 1st, 2026

AI Arms Race Targets Google TPUs as DOJ Charges Ex-Googler with Espionage
The AI arms race is now in full swing, and corporate espionage is reaching levels beyond what we previously imagined. According to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), former Google software engineer Linwei Ding has been convicted of economic espionage and theft of confidential AI technology, specifically related to Google Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). An FBI investigation revealed that the ex-Googler was suspected of stealing information about the entire infrastructure surrounding TPUs, including chip architecture, external connectivity, and more.
February 1, 2026 — Source

AI security startup CEO posts a job. Deepfake candidate applies, inner turmoil ensues.
'I did not think it was going to happen to me, but here we are'
February 1, 2026 — Source

Arch Linux 2026.02.01 released
Arch Linux has released new install media with kernel version 6.18.7, providing a stable foundation for computing needs. Characterized by its "Keep It Simple" philosophy, Arch Linux offers a straightforward and flexible experience through its optimized packages and community-operated repository. The distribution's community is diverse and supportive, making it an excellent resource for users seeking help or knowledge on various aspects of Arch Linux.
February 1, 2026 — Source

cTGP Graphics Power Setting Coming For Uniwill / TUXEDO Laptops With Linux 7.0
Upstreamed for the Linux 6.19 kernel is the Uniwill laptop platform driver for exposing more features/settings for laptops made by this Taiwanese OEM/ODM, including the laptops from TUXEDO Computers. Coming for the next kernel cycle is further extending the Uniwill platform driver for now having support for adjusting the custom total graphics power "cTGP" for those laptops with a dedicated GPU.
February 1, 2026 — Source

Framework 13 To See Fan Target & Fan Temperature Thresholds Support With Linux 7.0
For newer Framework devices like the Framework 13 AMD that make use of the ChromeOS Embedded Controller (EC), the upcoming Linux 7.0 kernel is adding fan target support as well as fan temperature threshold handling.
February 1, 2026 — Source

GNOME Resources 1.10 Adds Monitoring Support For AMD Ryzen AI NPUs
GNOME Resources 1.10 was christened today as the newest version of this modern system monitoring app for the GNOME desktop that is now used by default on the likes of the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. With GNOME Resources 1.10 they have added AMD Ryzen AI NPU monitoring support and other new capabilities.
February 1, 2026 — Source

GNU Hurd Is "Almost There" With x86_64, SMP & ~75% Of Debian Packages Building
Samuel Thibault offered up a status update on the current state of GNU/Hurd from a presentation in Brussels at FOSDEM 2026. Thibault has previously shared updates on GNU Hurd from the annual FOSDEM event while this year's was a bit more optimistic thanks to recent driver progress and more software now successfully building for Hurd.
February 1, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel AI Chatter, ReactOS Developments & AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D Topped January
During the last month on Phoronix were 296 original news articles from the Linux/open-source perspective as well as another 18 featured articles / Linux hardware reviews, written by your's truly. Here is a look back at the most popular news and reviews in the Linux world over the past month.
February 1, 2026 — Source

Linux's b4 Kernel Development Tool Now Dog-Feeding Its AI Agent Code Review Helper
The b4 tool used by Linux kernel developers to help manage their patch workflow around contributions to the Linux kernel has been seeing work on a text user interface to help with AI agent assisted code reviews. This weekend it successfully was dog feeding with b4 review TUI reviewing patches on the b4 tool itself.
February 1, 2026 — Source

PikaOS 26.01.31 released
PikaOS has released version 26.01.31 with several new features and updates. The update includes new install images based on different desktop environments, such as GNOME 49, KDE 6.5.4, Hyprland, Niri, and COSMIC, each offering unique features like improved rendering speed or flexible window management. Additionally, the kernel has been upgraded to 6.18.7 for smoother system performance and stability, and graphics-related updates include the latest Mesa driver.
February 1, 2026 — Source or Source

smolBSD Builds On The NetBSD-MicroVM Kernel For Booting To Service VMs In Milliseconds
A new BSD distribution I only learned about for the first time this weekend is smolBSD, a project built atop the netbsd-MICROVM kernel coming with NetBSD 11 for providing insanely fast booting micro-VMs intended for micro-services and similar environments.
February 1, 2026 — Source

UniGetUI 3.3.7 released
UniGetUI version 3.3.7 has been released, focusing on improving its user interface and stability after some beta testing with .NET 8 and AppSdk 1.7. New features include automatic updates for specific software components, better handling of unfamiliar package versions, and improved detection of the NPM dependency manager. Under the hood, several fixes have been made to address issues such as stuck update checks, failed version upgrades, and crashes during certain update sequences. Additionally, aesthetic upgrades include proper dark mode support and refreshed installer iconography, making the interface more modern and user-friendly.
February 1, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — January 31st, 2026

Budgie 10.10.1 Released With Better Stability & Improved Labwc Integration
Following the Budgie 10.10 release from earlier this month, Budgie 10.10.1 is now here for closing out January.
January 31, 2026 — Source

GNOME 50 Is No Longer Treating Variable Rate Refresh "VRR" As Experimental
Another great albeit overdue improvement for GNOME 50 has landed: Variable Rate Refresh "VRR" functionality for modern displays is now promoted and no longer treated as an experimental feature.
January 31, 2026 — Source

Linuxulator-Steam-Utils To Enjoy Steam Play Gaming On FreeBSD & Other Options
Presented today at FOSDEM in Brussels was the state of gaming on FreeBSD by Thibault Payet. Besides various open-source games able to be compiled natively for FreeBSD, this BSD can get in on the Steam Play gaming scene thanks to the "linuxulator-steam-utils" project as a set of workarounds for the Steam Linux client on FreeBSD 14 and newer. Linuxulator-steam-utils builds off FreeBSD's Linuxulator support for running Linux binaries to enjoy the likes of Steam and even Steam Play (Proton) Windows games running on this translation layer for Linux and in turn running on FreeBSD.
January 31, 2026 — Source

Nvidia launches official GeForce Now client for Linux in beta
Over 4,500 titles are now available to stream on Linux desktops and laptops
January 31, 2026 — Source

Plasma 6.7 Restoring The Air Plasma Theme, Fixes KWin Issue With Intense Alt+Tab'ing
KDE Plasma developers remain quite busy preparing for the Plasma 6.6 desktop release coming up in a little more than two weeks while at the same time continuing to land early features for the Plasma 6.7 release coming later in the year.
January 31, 2026 — Source

Phosh Mobile Phone UI Making Progress On GTK4 Port
Evangelos Ribeiro Tzaras presented today at FOSDEM on the latest work around Phosh, the mobile phone user interface / Wayland shell project for mobile Linux environments. Phosh has been making steady progress and has more features out on the horizon.
January 31, 2026 — Source

The Last Of The Dolby Digital Plus "E-AC3" Patents Might Now Be Expired
For those interested in the Dolby Digital Plus "Enhanced AC-3" audio compression format for open-source software, the last of the patents for this widely-used format by streaming services and more appears to have expired.
January 31, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — January 30th, 2026

AerynOS Establishes Policy Against LLM Contributions, 2026.01 ISO Refresh
In kicking off 2026, AerynOS developers have continued to make progress on their build tooling and infrastructure for this Linux distribution formerly known as Serpent OS. They have also been working on a new website design and other updated branding to start the new year.
January 30, 2026 — Source

AMD EPYC 9755 Delivers Decisive Performance Leadership Over Xeon 6 Granite Rapids With Nearly 500 Benchmarks
Back in December I carried out some fresh benchmarks of the Intel Xeon 6980P versus AMD EPYC 9755 for these competing 128 core server processors using the latest Linux software stack before closing out 2025. That was done with nearly 200 benchmarks and the AMD EPYC Turin Zen 5 processor delivered terrific performance as we have come to enjoy out of the 5th Gen EPYC line-up over the past year and several months.
January 30, 2026 — Source

GeForce Now launches on Linux with a Flatpak build — native app brings 5K and 360FPS support to Linux gamers
Linux gamers can enjoy all the benefits the GeForce Now native app has over the web browser version.
January 30, 2026 — Source

Intel Releases LLM-Scaler-vLLM 1.3 With New LLM Model Support
Intel today released the LLM-Scaler-vLLM 1.3 update with expanding the array of large language models that can run on Intel Arc Battlemage graphics cards with this Docker-based stack for deploying vLLM.
January 30, 2026 — Source

Intel Xe Linux Driver Updated To Disable GuC Power DCC For Panther Lake
Queued up in DRM-Next for the Intel open-source graphics driver ahead of the Linux 7.0 kernel cycle is expanding GPU temperature sensor reporting, multi-device SVM prep, multi-queue support for Crescent Island, Nova Lake display support, and other feature work. With the Linux 6.19 stable release fast approaching, DRM-Next is now focusing in on reading early fixes with concluding feature activity for this next merge window.
January 30, 2026 — Source

IPFire 2.29 - Core Update 200 is available for testing
IPFire 2.29 - Core Update 200 is now available for testing, featuring a rebase onto Linux kernel 6.18 LTS with improvements in security defenses, performance, and system stability. This update also introduces the new IPFire Domain Blocklist (DBL) system, which aims to block unwanted web traffic by identifying domains that may be malicious. Other changes include updates to the built-in Intrusion Prevention System, reporter utility, OpenVPN configuration system, and various package upgrades for improved security and features.
January 30, 2026 — Source

KDE neon 20260129 released
KDE neon has released its latest version, offering users direct access to the newest KDE Plasma 6.5.5 features and solidifying its position as a platform for exploring cutting-edge software. This distribution is based on Ubuntu's long-term support base and presents unmodified versions of KDE applications exactly how their developers intended, free from proprietary driver tweaks or stability-holding patches by default. KDE neon caters to enthusiasts who want to try out new things quickly and align their systems closely with ongoing KDE development cycles, making it an ideal playground for those excited about rapid software changes.
January 30, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.6.122 released
Linux Kernel 6.6.122 has been released, featuring bug fixes and enhancements that address various issues with network device drivers, CPU states, wireless drivers, graphics, and filesystems. A notable fix addresses the phylib state machine in network devices, which now correctly handles suspend and resume operations to prevent unnecessary state machine operations and potential crashes. Other updates include improvements to guest XSAVE state handling on x86 systems, fixes for memory leaks in AMDGPU and NTFS3 file systems, and a patch for a crash-causing issue with the ath11k driver.
January 30, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.12.68 released
The Linux Kernel version 6.12.68 has been released with numerous bug fixes and enhancements. This release addresses several issues, including a previous problem with communication performance regression in vsock/virtio network modules, which has been fixed by using the skb_copy_datagram_from_iter_full() function to properly reset data when errors occur. In addition to this fix, other notable changes include improvements in filesystem security, prevention of potential slowdowns caused by scheduling glitches, and fixes for bitfield write issues in Btrfs.
January 30, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.18.8 released
Linux Kernel 6.18.8 has been released, featuring several important bug fixes and performance enhancements. The release includes a significant fix for virtual memory management during forks, ensuring that potential security issues are addressed. Another notable change addresses a spurious interrupt problem in the Renesas RZ/V2H(P) driver, which was causing issues during system resume from idle. In addition to these headline fixes, several smaller tweaks and comment cleanups have been integrated into this kernel release.
January 30, 2026 — Source

Linux's ublk Adding Batch I/O Dispatch Capability For Greater Performance
Linux's user-space block device driver framework "ublk" for implementing virtual block device drivers in user-space relayed by IO_uring is introducing batch I/O dispatch infrastructure.
January 30, 2026 — Source

Microsoft Reportedly Working On Building Back Trust In Windows As More Users Leave For Linux
Windows engineers have been tasked with improving some of the core issues plagueing Windows 11.
January 30, 2026 — Source

Nvidia Launches Native GeForce Now App For Linux In Growing Support For The Operating System
Following on from the Steam Deck native app, more Linux users can now make use of GeForce Now.
January 30, 2026 — Source or Watch Video

Open Gaming Collective (OGC) formed to unify Linux gaming
A number of major Linux gaming projects are joining forces to form the Open Gaming Collective. The goal here is to reduce duplicated work across several crucial projects and centralise development efforts for critical components like kernel patches, input frameworks and display compositors.
January 30, 2026 — Source

Open-Source Nova Driver In Linux 7.0 Continues Preparing For NVIDIA Turing GPU Support
This week the Rust DRM changes intended for the Linux 7.0 merge window were sent out by Danilo Krummrich. The Apple Silicon Asahi Linux "AGX" DRM kernel driver still isn't positioned for upstreaming to the mainline kernel so that leaves most of the Rust DRM upstream work currently around the NVIDIA Nova driver as well as the Arm Mali Tyr drivers.
January 30, 2026 — Source

RISC-V User-Space Control Flow Integrity / Shadow Stack Appears Finally Ready
Similar to what has been available on Intel and AMD processors for users with the shadow stack for control-flow integrity, Linux on RISC-V is finally ready to roll-out its user-space control-flow integrity support.
January 30, 2026 — Source

Some Of Linux's Biggest Players Are Unifying Their Gaming Efforts
Some of the best and most popular gaming distributions on Linux are collaborating to make future updates quicker and more stable.
January 30, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Still Committed To Linux 6.20~7.0 Even If Not Finalized For Release Time
Last year Canonical committed to shipping the latest upstream Linux kernel versions in new Ubuntu releases compared to their more conservative choices in prior releases that didn't always align nicely for the latest Linux kernel upstream. Back in December they confirmed Ubuntu 26.04 plans for Linux 6.20~7.0 and their plans remain that way, even if it means the stable Linux 6.20~7.0 stable release won't be officially out quite in time for the initial ISO release.
January 30, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu 26.04 Resolute Snapshot 3 Released For Testing
Resolute Snapshot 3 is now available as the newest monthly test candidate leading up the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release in April.
January 30, 2026 — Source

Tails 7.4.1 released
Tails 7.4.1 has been released, and it's not just a minor update; there are significant security fixes under the hood. A critical OpenSSL fix has addressed serious vulnerabilities that could have allowed attackers to compromise user anonymity online through Tor relays. Although there's no evidence of these flaws being actively exploited yet, the update still includes other important upgrades, such as an updated Tor client and Thunderbird email app.
January 30, 2026 — Source

Vulkan 1.4.342 Published With Cooperative Matrix Conversion Extension
Following last week's Vulkan spec updates that brought descriptor heaps and other notable new extensions and the Vulkan Roadmap 2026 Milestone, Vulkan 1.4.342 was published this morning as the latest routine spec update plus one new extension.
January 30, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — January 19th, 2026

A new Wine update could finally bring Adobe Photoshop to Linux
One developer is taking on Linux's most stubborn compatibility problem
January 19, 2026 — Source or Source

Bazzite Linux 43.20260118 released
Bazzite Linux has been updated to version 43.20260118, bringing several key changes to enhance user experience and resolve existing issues. The update includes a fresh kernel (6.17.7-ba24) for smoother performance across all hardware, as well as updates to system firmware, desktop environments, and security packages. In addition to these major changes, the release also features numerous smaller fixes and tweaks contributed by developers to polish the overall feel of the operating system.
January 19, 2026 — Source

CAKE_MQ Slated For Linux 7.0 To Adapt SCH_CAKE For Today's Multi-Core World
Queued into the Linux networking subsystem's "net-next" branch ahead of the Linux 6.20~7.0 merge window next month is cake_mq as a multi-queue aware variant of the sch_cake network scheduler. The intent with cake_mq is to better scale the network traffic rate shaper across multiple CPU cores.
January 19, 2026 — Source

How much RAM does your Linux PC actually need in 2026? An expert's sweet spot
Don't settle for the minimum - this is the RAM Linux needs to perform at its fullest potential.
January 19, 2026 — Source

How NVIDIA GB10 Performance With the Dell Pro Max GB10 Compares To The GH200
Earlier this month we looked at the Dell Pro Max GB10 performance up against AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ "Strix Halo" with the superior performance for the green team for performance and power efficiency. For those wondering how the Dell Pro Max GB10 performance comes up for the much talked about NVIDIA GH200, here are some comparison benchmarks.
January 19, 2026 — Source

How to run Windows apps on Linux with Wine - it's easy
Considering a switch from Windows to Linux? The good news is you don't have to give up your favorite Windows apps. Here's how to run them on Linux.
January 19, 2026 — Source

Intel LLM-Scaler-Omni Update Brings ComfyUI & SGLang Improvements On Arc Graphics
Following last week's updated Intel LLM-Scaler-vLLM release for helping advance vLLM usage on Intel Arc Graphics, LLM Scaler Omni is out with a new release today for that LLM-Scaler environment focused on image / voice / video generation using Omni Studio and Omni Serving modes.
January 19, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernels 5.15.198, 5.10.248, 6.1.151, and 6.6.121 released
Linux has released several new Long Term Support (LTS) kernel versions, including Linux 5.15.198, Linux 5.10.248, Linux 6.1.161, and Linux 6.6.121.
January 19, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.18.6 released
Linux Kernel 6.18.6 has been released, featuring various bug fixes and improvements contributed by the kernel community. The release includes fixes for several areas, including the Cadence Quasi-SPI driver, which resolved a race condition that could cause lost completion signals, and the SCSI side's sg subsystem, which was experiencing bogus elapsed times due to two separate race conditions. Other notable changes include enabling woofer speakers on Medion NM14LNL systems, improving support for devices handling DSD format, and addressing issues in the CAN network stack, block driver area, and powercap.
January 19, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.19-rc6 released
Linus Torvalds has announced the sixth release candidate for Linux Kernel 6.19, which is slightly larger than usual due to a backlog of work from the holiday season or random fluctuations in pull request timings. The kernel appears stable but still needs thorough testing before being called stable. This release candidate features significant updates to drivers, networking, and GPU drivers, as well as bug fixes and performance improvements across various areas, including memory management, security posture, and hardware platforms.
January 19, 2026 — Source

Linux versus Windows 11: Proton PC Gaming GPU Benchmarks on Bazzite
What if you could move beyond the frustrations of Windows 11 gaming, bloated updates, intrusive data collection, and system inefficiencies, and embrace a platform designed to give you more control? In this guide, Gamers Nexus explains how the Linux-based Bazzite distribution is reshaping gaming benchmarks, offering a compelling alternative to the Windows ecosystem. With the rise of Linux gaming fueled by advancements like SteamOS and Proton, Bazzite stands out as a promising contender, aiming to deliver a smoother and more reliable experience.
January 19, 2026 — Source

Mozilla Now Providing RPM Packages For Firefox Nightly Builds
In late 2023 Mozilla began providing Debian packages of Firefox Nightly builds complete with an APT repository. Those on Debian/Ubuntu distributions have a much easier path for enjoying Firefox Nightly since then and now Mozilla engineers are providing similar RPM builds of Firefox nightly too.
January 19, 2026 — Source

Myrlyn 1.0 Released For Package Manager GUI Spawned By SUSE's Hack Week
Myrlyn 1.0 was released today as the package manager GUI developed by SUSE engineers and started out just over one year ago during a SUSE Hack Week event as a SUSE/Qt package manager program not dependent upon YaST or Ruby.
January 19, 2026 — Source

New Patches Provide HDMI VRR & Auto Low Latency Mode Gaming Features For AMD Linux GPU Driver
Support for newer HDMI features in the open-source AMD Linux graphics driver have been limited due to being blocked by the HDMI Forum. There are though some new HDMI gaming features being enabled via new AMDGPU kernel driver patches that are coming outside of AMD and based on public knowledge and/or "trying things out until they work/break" for functionality like HDMI Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) and Auto Low Latency Mode.
January 19, 2026 — Source

OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE To Provide A Security & Performance Win For Dealing With Containers
A new feature expected to be merged for the upcoming Linux 7.0 kernel cycle is adding an OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE flag for the open_tree() system call. This OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE option can provide a nice performance win with added security benefits if you are dealing a lot with containerized workloads on Linux.
January 19, 2026 — Source or Source

Opera's gamer-centric browser is coming to Steam Deck and Linux — raising questions about whether Windows is losing its grip on PC gaming
With Linux adoption climbing and frustration growing around Windows AI features, Opera GX's Linux plans feel timely and potentially significant for everyday users.
January 19, 2026 — Source

RADV Vulkan Driver Now Implements HPLOC For Even Faster Ray-Tracing Performance
There have been a number of nice RADV driver Vulkan ray-tracing performance optimizations for Mesa in recent times... Here is yet another merge request now merged for Mesa 26.0 and helping deliver some nice performance uplift for ray-traced games on Linux. And, yes, this is yet another Valve contribution to this open-source AMD Radeon Linux graphics driver.
January 19, 2026 — Source

Revocable Resource Management Appears On Track For Linux 7.0
A new feature that appears ready for introduction in the upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle is revocable resource management.
January 19, 2026 — Source

SPDX SBOM Generation Tool Proposed For The Linux Kernel
For those organizations on the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) bandwagon for increasing transparency around software components with license compliance, vulnerability management, and securing the software supply chain, proposed patches to the Linux kernel would introduce an SPDX SBOM Generation Tool.
January 19, 2026 — Source

What is Bazzite, and is it better than Windows for PC gaming? I installed this trending Linux distribution to see for myself
Let's see if this emerging distro is a threat to Windows, or if it lacks too many features to appeal outside the PC gaming crowd.
January 19, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — January 15th, 2026

Burn 0.20 Released: Rust-Based Deep Learning With Speedy Perf Across CPUs & GPUs
A significant update to Burn was released today, the MIT and Apache 2.0 licensed tensor library and deep learning framework written in the Rust programming language. Burn 0.20 brings some low-level changes as it continues to strive to deliver high performance AI across the diverse hardware ecosystem.
January 15, 2026 — Source

Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 8: A High-End, Intel + NVIDIA Mobile Workstation Great For Linux Use
For those shopping for an AI-ready mobile workstation with NVIDIA RTX PRO Blackwell graphics, the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 8 offers a lot of potential for developers, AI researchers, content creators, and others. This Linux-friendly mobile workstation is well built and aligns with ThinkPad P-Series expectations while being ready to be tasked with demanding workloads.
January 15, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 To Expand Temperature Reporting For Intel Graphics Cards
The upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle will provide expanded GPU temperature reporting capabilities for Intel graphics cards. Additional temperature sensors will now be exposed under Linux with the Intel Xe driver using the hardware monitoring (HWMON) interface for easy consumption by different Linux user-space software.
January 15, 2026 — Source

OBS Studio 32.1.0 Beta 1 released
A beta version of OBS Studio, 32.1.0 Beta 1, has been released for testing. This new build includes several notable updates and improvements, such as a brand-new audio mixer and an enhanced Add Source dialog that streamlines audio configuration. Additionally, scene management gets a boost with the return of undo/redo functionality, while advanced filtering options have been added to cover various aspects like scale filtering and deinterlacing modes.
January 15, 2026 — Source

Tails 7.4 released
Tails version 7.4 has been released, bringing several new changes and upgrades. One notable improvement is the ability for the system to remember your language preference, keyboard setup, and format choices across sessions, which can be saved onto a USB stick for automatic application on subsequent boots. The update also includes standard software updates, such as a newer version of Tor Browser (15.0.4) and Thunderbird (140.6.0), as well as an updated Linux kernel (v6.12.63).
January 15, 2026 — Source

Ungoogled Chromium 144.0.7559.59-1 released
A new version of Ungoogled Chromium has been released, offering a Google-free alternative to standard browser releases. This version dials back on Google integration by removing features tied to Google domains and blocking tracking requests, resulting in a lighter and more focused browsing experience. Beyond basic privacy tweaks, Ungoogled Chromium also provides users with additional customization options through new command-line switches, flag settings, and search suggestion customizations.
January 15, 2026 — Source

VSCodium 1.108.10359 released
VSCodium, the open-source alternative to Visual Studio Code, has been updated to version 1.108.10359. This release brings several key improvements that refine the user experience, including updating a crucial dependency for GCC setup from version 1 to 2 automatically. The update also focuses on reliability and security, with specific tweaks aimed at smoothing out potential roadblocks during installation or configuration on Windows.
January 15, 2026 — Source

Whisper.cpp 1.8.3 Delivers A "12x Performance Boost" With Integrated Graphics
Whisper.cpp as the open-source high performance inference project built around OpenAI's Whisper and from the same developers as Llama.cpp / GGML is out with a big new release. Whisper.cpp 1.8.3 is capable of delivering a 12x performance boost for systems with integrated AMD and Intel graphics.
January 15, 2026 — Source

Wine 11 runs Windows apps in Linux and macOS better than ever
Transparently runs 16, 32, and 64-bit Windows apps, but still doesn't use the Microsoft store.
January 15, 2026 — Source

Wireshark 4.6.3 and 4.4.13 released
Wireshark has released new versions of its network protocol analyzer software: 4.6.3 and 4.4.13, focusing on keeping the tool running smoothly and reliably. These updates address various issues, including crashes in specific dissectors and fixes for streaming quirks with RTP Player, among other minor annoyances. The release notes detail what changed in each version, including updates to existing protocols such as DCT2000, DHCP, H.248, and HomePlug AV.
January 15, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — January 14th, 2026

An Early Run With Ubuntu 26.04 On AMD EPYC Turin - The Current Performance Gains Over Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
There still are several months to go until the official Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release -- including one month until the feature freeze and the future Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel is expected to land too before the latter kernel freeze in early April. But for those curious how Ubuntu 26.04 is looking so far for servers, here are some very early benchmarks of it on AMD EPYC 9005 "Turin" in its present development state.
January 14, 2026 — Source

Fedora Games Lab Approved To Switch To KDE Plasma, Become A Better Linux Gaming Showcase
Back in December we reported on drafted plans for revitalizing Fedora Games Lab to be a modern Linux gaming showcase. This Fedora Labs initiative has featured some open-source games paired with an Xfce desktop while moving forward they are looking to better position it as a modern Linux gaming showcase.
January 14, 2026 — Source

GlobalFoundries Acquires Synopsys ARC Processor IP, To Be Integrated Into MIPS
Last year GlobalFoundries acquired MIPS while an interesting new development announced today is that GlobalFoundries has acquired the ARC Processor IP and its solutions business from Synopsys. The Synopsys ARC Processor IP will be brought into the MIPS umbrella.
January 14, 2026 — Source

GNOME Mutter 50 Alpha Released With X11 Backend Removed
In preparing for the GNOME 50 Alpha release, the "50.alpha" tags just occurred for the Mutter compositor and GNOME Shell. Most notable with GNOME Mutter 50 Alpha is the X11 back-end indeed being removed to focus exclusively on the Wayland session.
January 14, 2026 — Source

Intel Compute Runtime Updated With Initial Crescent Island & Nova Lake S Support
The Intel Compute Runtime 26.01.36711.4 was published today as their first release of 2026 for this open-source GPU compute stack providing Level Zero and OpenCL support across their range of graphics hardware going back to Tiger Lake. Notable with this new Compute Runtime release is having now production-ready Panther Lake support while also introducing early support for next-generation hardware.
January 14, 2026 — Source

Intel Panther Lake GSC Firmware Published Ahead Of Laptop Availability
While Intel has been upstreaming various Panther Lake firmware bits to linux-firmware.git for pairing with their open-source kernel drivers ahead of Core Ultra Series 3 laptops shipping, one piece of the puzzle only published today is the GSC firmware for the Panther Lake graphics.
January 14, 2026 — Source

Linux 7.0 To Focus Just On Full & Lazy Preemption Models For Up-To-Date CPU Archs
A Linux scheduler patch queued up into a TIP branch this past week further restrict is the preemption modes that will be advertised. With it hitting the "sched/core" branch, it will likely be submitted for the upcoming Linux 7.0 (or alternatively, what could be known as Linux 6.20 instead).
January 14, 2026 — Source

Manjaro Linux 26.0.1 Anh-Linh released
Manjaro Linux 26.0.1, codenamed Anh-Linh, has been released with several updates and improvements. For GNOME users, the edition now includes updates from September 2025, which may result in fewer bugs and smoother system operation. The release also brings upgrades to Plasma, including rounded window corners, an automatic theme switcher, and improved Application Permissions management.
January 14, 2026 — Source

New RADV Code Can Deliver 10x Faster Ray-Tracing Pipeline Compilation For Some Games
A new merge request opened today for Mesa's Radeon Vulkan driver "RADV" by Valve contractor Natalie Vock provides another significant boost for the Vulkan ray-tracing performance in multiple titles.
January 14, 2026 — Source

New "Thames" Linux Accelerator Driver Posted Along With Companion Gallium3D Driver
Thames is a new DRM accelerator driver for Texas Instruments C7x DSPs. The C7x DSPs are found in SoCs like the TI J722S that powers the likes of the BeagleY-AI.
January 14, 2026 — Source

This distro makes it easy to switch from Windows to Linux - here's how
If you're looking to migrate from Windows to Linux, you'll want a distribution with a familiar UI and a dependable base. VailuxOS easily checks both of those boxes.
January 14, 2026 — Source

XWayland RandR Improvements Merged For Kicking Off 2026 X.Org Server Activity
Michel Dänzer of Red Hat has kicked off 2026 xorg-server activity with landing a patch series enhancing the Resize and Rotate (RandR) extension support under XWayland for improving mode handling by X11 clients.
January 14, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — January 9th, 2026

AMD Enabling New GFX12.1 & More RDNA 3.5 Hardware Blocks With Linux 6.20~7.0
AMD today sent out their latest pull request to DRM-Next of new AMDGPU/AMDKFD kernel driver changes they are looking to get into the next kernel cycle, which will either be known as Linux 6.20 or more than likely be called Linux 7.0. Notable with this week's pull request is enabling a lot of new GPU hardware IP blocks, including GC/GFX 12.1 as a new addition past the current GFX12.0 / RDNA4.
January 9, 2026 — Source

Latest SteamOS Beta Now Includes NTSYNC Kernel Driver
Valve released the SteamOS 3.7.20 beta overnight and with it they are finally building the NTSYNC kernel driver for helping accelerate Windows NT synchronization primitives.
January 9, 2026 — Source

Linux 6.19-rc5 To Fix Broken Nouveau Driver With Newer NVIDIA GPUs
Now past the end-of-year holidays, this round of Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) fixes for the in-development Linux 6.19 are a bit more meaningful following those light holiday weeks. Sent out today were the DRM fixes for Linux 6.19-rc5 that includes a fix for broken support for newer NVIDIA GPUs on the Nouveau open-source driver.
January 9, 2026 — Source

Manjaro 26.0 Primary Desktop Environments Default to Wayland
If you want to stick with X.Org, you'll be limited to the desktop environments you can choose.
January 9, 2026 — Source

Mesa 26.0 RADV Lands Dedicated Transfer-Only Queue Using SDMA
There is another open-source Radeon Vulkan driver (RADV) improvement to look forward to in the upcoming Mesa 26.0 release that was worked on by one of Valve's Linux graphics driver developers.
January 9, 2026 — Source

Qualcomm Sends Out Linux Patches For RAS Support On RISC-V For Reporting Hardware Errors
The latest work by Qualcomm on the RISC-V CPU architecture is sending out their first non-RFC patch series for enabling Reliability, Availability and Serviceability (RAS) support by making use of the RISC-V RERI specification. This RISC-V RAS support is useful for conveying hardware errors to users and will be especially important with future RISC-V Linux servers.
January 9, 2026 — Source

Rails 8.1.2 released
Rails 8.1.2 has been officially released, featuring upgrades and bug fixes for various parts of the framework. Active Support received significant updates, including improved handling of delegate methods with BasicObject subclasses, locale inflector work, and enhanced UTF-8 string returns from as_json. Active Record also saw important fixes, such as updated query count management in the RuntimeRegistry and proper handling of SQLite3 schema dumps.
January 9, 2026 — Source

TrueNAS WebShare: ZFS-Backed, Enterprise-Grade File Sharing From The Web Browser
For situations where Samba (SMB) or NFS usage aren't appropriate or desiring the convenience of accessing files from a web browser on any device, TrueNAS is introducing TrueNAS WebShare as an easy-to-use solution for enterprise-grade file sharing in the web browser.
January 9, 2026 — Source

Wine 11.0-rc5 Brings 32 Bug Fixes
With no Wine 11.0 release candidate last Friday due to the New Year festivities, Wine 11.0-rc5 is out today and it comes packing 32 bug fixes for the past two weeks.
January 9, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — January 8th, 2026

Etnaviv Driver Wires Up PPU Flop Reset Support Needed By Some Vivante Hardware
Sent out today was the latest batch of drm-misc-next changes to DRM-Next for staging ahead of the upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle. The reverse-engineered Etnaviv DRM driver for Vivante graphics/NPU hardware has added a new "PPU flop reset" feature gleaned off studying the downstream vendor kernel driver.
January 8, 2026 — Source

Intel Panther Lake Laptops For Pre-Order Scarce So Far
On Monday at CES Intel announced Panther Lake as Core Ultra Series 3 with the initial laptop designs to be available for pre-order starting the following day, 6 January, while global availability is expected around 27 January. Now a few days after pre-orders opened up, few options are available and some of the models will not be shipping until mid-February.
January 8, 2026 — Source

IPFire 2.29 - Core Update 199 released
IPFire 2.29 has been released with Core Update 199, which brings improvements to network stability and speed. The update supports WiFi standards, including 6E, allowing for faster wireless connections and better performance with modern hardware. Additionally, IPFire now includes native support for LLDP and CDP, making it easier to see connected devices in complex networks, as well as security and stability updates for the kernel and other core components. Other features include improved Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) handling, updated OpenVPN settings, and fixes for proxy vulnerabilities and web UI bugs.
January 8, 2026 — Source

KDE neon 20260108 released
KDE neon has released its latest version, offering users direct access to cutting-edge software from Ubuntu's long-term support base. This distribution presents unmodified versions of KDE applications and tools exactly as their developers intended, without proprietary driver tweaks or stability-holding patches by default. For enthusiasts who relish trying out new things quickly, KDE neon provides an ideal playground with a targeted rolling release approach that focuses on necessary KDE packages while keeping most system elements stable underneath them.
January 8, 2026 — Source

Linus Torvalds: "The AI Slop Issue Is *NOT* Going To Be Solved With Documentation"
The Linux kernel developers for months now have been debating proposed guidelines for tool-generated submissions to the Linux kernel. As part of the "tools", the main motivator for this documentation has been around the era of AI and large language models with coding assistants and more. Torvalds made some remarks on the Linux kernel mailing list around his belief in focusing the documentation on "tools" rather than explicitly focusing on AI, given the likelihood of AI-assisted contributions continuing regardless of documentation.
January 8, 2026 — Source

Linux 6.18 LTS versus Liquorix Kernel On AMD Ryzen Threadripper Workstation Performance
It's been a while since running benchmarks of the Liquorix kernel as an enthusiast-tailored downstream version of the Linux kernel focused on responsiveness for gaming, audio/video production, and other creator/enthusiast workloads. In today's article is a look at how the latest Liquorix kernel derived from Linux 6.18 is competing against the upstream Linux 6.18 LTS kernel on the same system.
January 8, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.18.4 and 6.12.64 released
The latest Linux Kernel release, version 6.18.4, has been rolled out with a focus on stability and reliability. One notable tweak is the reversal of a previous change that caused issues for some laptops, specifically the Dell XPS13, due to label-based lookups. Additionally, the kernel has seen solid work aimed at tackling tricky memory issues and resolving problems with device access techniques in VFIO/PCI drivers. The release also adds support for Intel's RAPL interface on specific processors, enhancing power management and efficiency features.
January 8, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel Considers Linking The Relocatable x86 Kernel As PIE In 2026
To allow for additional security hardening of the Linux kernel, a patch series has been updated more than one year later to link the relocatable x86_64 kernel as Position Independent Executable (PIE) code.
January 8, 2026 — Source

Linux Patches Enable Intel GPU Firmware Updating From Non-x86 Systems
The modern Intel Xe kernel graphics driver was designed from the start to be more broadly compatible with non-x86 architectures given their discrete graphics processors being front and center, unlike the legacy i915 kernel graphics driver being very x86 minded. While this allows running Intel Arc Graphics on ARM or RISC-V, there are some other kinks still being ironed out with using Intel graphics in the non-x86 world.
January 8, 2026 — Source

Logitech MX Anywhere 3S Mouse With Linux 6.19 Now Supports High Resolution Scrolling
For those that happen to have a Logitech MX Anywhere 3S mouse connected via Bluetooth, the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel release is enabling HID++ support for it to enjoy high resolution scrolling and other functionality of the updated protocol.
January 8, 2026 — Source

Mesa 26.0 RADV Merges The Big Ray-Tracing Improvement For UE5 Lumen
The RADV ray-tracing improvement covered earlier this week for some big performance gains for Unreal Engine 5 titles running under Linux thanks to Steam Play has been merged for Mesa 26.0.
January 8, 2026 — Source

Mesa 26.0 Now Supports GPU Hardware Replay With The Intel Xe Kernel Driver
The Intel Mesa graphics drivers have supported a GPU hardware replay feature for making it easier to reproduce issues. But until now that functionality has only worked with the i915 kernel driver while for Mesa 26.0 the Intel Xe driver will also be supported.
January 8, 2026 — Source

Nvidia Brings GeForce Now to Linux and Fire TV
Users can connect flight sticks and throttle systems to their laptops and stream titles like Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.
January 8, 2026 — Source

NVIDIA Optimizes Printing Of Linux Memory Stats For 11% System Time Savings
A NVIDIA engineer restructuring some of the printf-related code within the memory resource controller "memcg" statistics printing code to reduce the system time by 11% for dumping those stats.
January 8, 2026 — Source

This free tool gives you one easy way to install apps on Linux and Mac - here's how
With Homebrew, you get access to even more apps - maintained by both Linux and MacOS developers.
January 8, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — January 7th, 2026

Acer Laptop Battery Control Driver Looks Toward The Upstream Linux Kernel
For those with Acer laptops running Linux on GitHub there has been an out-of-tree driver providing an experimental "acer-wmi-battery" kernel module to allow controlling battery-related features. Now a cleaned-up version of that driver is working on getting into the mainline Linux kernel.
January 7, 2026 — Source

AMD Linux GPU Driver Improvement Coming For DP-HDMI Dongles
For those using a DisplayPort to HDMI dongle currently with the AMDGPU Linux kernel graphics driver may find some higher resolutions / modes unavailable. Fortunately, a fix is on the way for dealing with this situation due to an oversight in the kernel driver.
January 7, 2026 — Source

Compiler-Based Context & Locking Analysis On Deck For Linux 7.0 Paired With Clang 22+
A new feature in the queue for likely introduction with the next version of the Linux kernel (Linux 6.20~7.0) is compiler-based context and locking analysis. This kernel code depends on the yet-to-be-released LLVM Clang 22 compiler but can provide some powerful insights to kernel developers.
January 7, 2026 — Source

Dell Pro Max GB10 versus AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Framework Desktop For Llama.cpp, OpenCL & Vulkan Compute
Over the past number of weeks the Dell Pro Max with GB10 has been undergoing a lot of testing at Phoronix. This NVIDIA GB10 powered mini PC with its 20 Arm cores (10 x Cortex-X925, 10 x Cortex-A725) and Blackwell GPU offers a lot of combined compute potential for AI and other workloads. In this article is a look at how the Dell Pro Max with GB10 competes with AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo" within the Framework Desktop SFF PC.
January 7, 2026 — Source

DRM Splash Screen Updated To Simply Drawing A Colored Background, Displaying A BMP Image
Back in October was an initial proposal for a DRM splash screen client for the Linux kernel that would be primarily useful for embedded systems for rendering a simple "splash screen" when updating the system firmware/software, early display activation at boot, during system recovery, or similar processes. Sent out today was a second revision to the DRM splash screen code.
January 7, 2026 — Source

Eclipse Foundation and Germany's VDA Expand Open-Source Vehicle Software Pact to 32 Companies
The Eclipse Foundation, an international non-profit that hosts hundreds of open-source software projects, and Germany's automotive industry association, VDA, say they have expanded an industry memorandum to build an "automotive-grade" open-source software ecosystem for software-defined vehicles.
January 7, 2026 — Source

Fish 4.3.3 released
Fish Shell has released version 4.3.3, addressing numerous bugs and introducing beneficial enhancements to improve user experience. The new release fixes issues such as annoying command suggestions not inserting full tokens, soft-wrapped autosuggestions affecting the fish_right_prompt, spurious tmux echo problems, and a theme selection issue with the "tomorrow" theme. In addition to these fixes, Fish 4.3.3 includes upgrades like syntax highlighting for various commands using the --color option and improved command output readability. The release also tweaks sample prompts, themes, and existing file path highlighting in redirection targets.
January 7, 2026 — Source

GLib and Kernel (Raspberry Pi) updates for Ubuntu
Ubuntu has released security notices for two vulnerabilities: USN-7942-1 affects GLib libraries in Ubuntu 25.10, 25.04, 24.04 LTS, and 22.04 LTS, while USN-7922-4 affects Linux kernel versions in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and 18.04 LTS. The GLib vulnerabilities could cause a denial of service or allow execution of arbitrary code if exploited, while the Linux kernel issues may compromise system security.
January 7, 2026 — Source

GNOME dev gives fans of Linux's middle-click paste the middle finger
Proposal targets long-standing behavior as 'an X11ism'
January 7, 2026 — Source

Intel FSP Improvements With Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake"
While for years open-source firmware enthusiasts have been after an open-source Firmware Support Package "FSP" for Intel CPUs and back during Raja Koduri's tenure at Intel it sounded like it might happen, it has yet to happen. But at least with the forthcoming Intel Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" there are some FSP improvements.
January 7, 2026 — Source

Kernel, Dcmtk, Rsync, and more updates for SUSE
Security updates have been released for SUSE Linux, addressing various vulnerabilities and security issues. The updates include patches for the Linux Kernel (important), dcmtk (moderate), libpcap (low), govulncheck-vulndb (moderate), qemu (important), rsync (moderate), and usbmuxd (moderate).
January 7, 2026 — Source

Libpcap update for Fedora
Fedora 43 users are notified of an update for the libpcap package, which provides a system-independent interface for user-level packet capture. The new version is 1.10.6 and includes fixes for a memory corruption vulnerability via malformed MAC-48 address input.
January 7, 2026 — Source

Libsodium update for Slackware
New packages for libsodium are available to fix a security issue in Slackware 15.0 and -current. The update fixes an insufficient validation vulnerability in crypto_core_ed25519_is_valid_point() and can be found at the official Slackware FTP site. To upgrade, users should run the "upgradepkg libsodium-1.0.18-i586-4_slack15.0.txz" command as root. The security issue is documented on the CVE website with ID CVE-2025-69277.
January 7, 2026 — Source

Next-Gen AMD Server SoCs To Enjoy Firmware-Agnostic Platform Configuration Approach
Next-generation AMD server SoCs -- presumably the AMD EPYC "Venice" on Zen 6 -- is poised to introduce a firmware-agnostic platform configuration platform configuration change method/format. This is This aims to improve server platform interoperability and eliminate redundant configuration efforts for different firmware solutions.
January 7, 2026 — Source

NodeJS, Thunderbird, Rsync, and more updates for Oracle Linux
Oracle Linux has released several security updates for various platforms. These updates include bug fixes and enhancements for Oracle Linux 8's nodejs versions (20, 22, and 24), as well as a security update for Thunderbird on Oracle Linux 8. Additionally, security patches have been issued for other applications such as rsync on Oracle Linux 7, mingw-expat on Oracle Linux 8, and tar and gcc-toolset-14-binutils on Oracle Linux 9.
January 7, 2026 — Source

Radeon RADV Vulkan Driver Is On The Verge Of Another Big Ray-Tracing Performance Gain
Natalie Vock as one of the open-source developers on Valve's Linux graphics team has been spearheading another big ray-tracing performance improvement for the AMD Radeon Vulkan driver. RADV ray-tracing performance improved a lot in 2025 but it's looking like 2026 could be even more exciting.
January 7, 2026 — Source

Razer Intros AIKit: an Open-Source Project for Easier Local LLM Development
Razer AIKit is an open-source platform that simplifies the entire AI development lifecycle. It automatically configures GPUs, forms clusters, and optimizes settings for local LLM inference and fine-tuning—delivering cloud-grade performance with lower latency and full local control. Designed for AI researchers and developers, AIKit enables fast, secure, and cost-efficient workflows with a single launch command.
January 7, 2026 — Source

Ruby, Thunderbird, Kernel updates for AlmaLinux
Three AlmaLinux security updates have been released to address potential security vulnerabilities: an update for Ruby (ALSA-2025:23141), which is considered moderate, and two updates for Mozilla Thunderbird and kernel packages, both rated important. The Ruby update fixes Denial of Service issues in the resolv and rexml gems, while the other updates fix various memory safety bugs, use-after-free vulnerabilities, sandbox escapes, and JIT miscompilations in Firefox and the kernel.
January 7, 2026 — Source

Tar, GCC-Toolset, PHP updates for Rocky Linux
Updates are available for several packages, including tar and gcc-toolset-14-binutils, which affect Rocky Linux 9. An update is also available for various PHP modules that affect Rocky Linux 8. Each of these updates addresses security vulnerabilities, with detailed severity ratings available from the CVE list.
January 7, 2026 — Source

Tar, Poppler, Firefox, and more updates for RHEL
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has received several updates, including security fixes for various packages such as tar, Quarkus, Thunderbird, and Firefox. Other updated packages include poppler, Python 3.12, MariaDB, gcc-toolset-15-binutils, httpd, git-lfs, kernel, grafana-pcp, and Red Hat build of Quarkus 3.27.1.SP1. The updates address issues ranging from moderate to important in severity. Multiple security patches have been released for some packages, such as mariadb and git-lfs.
January 7, 2026 — Source

Want to try the original KDE desktop from 1996? I did, and it took me back - here's how
You can revisit the early days of Linux through MiDesktop, a modern fork of the original KDE 1. It's a must-try nostalgic experiment.
January 7, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — January 6th, 2026

All Fedora 44 KDE Variants To Use Plasma Login Manager Rather Than SDDM
The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) has approved a Fedora 44 change for switching all KDE variants away from using the SDDM display manager to instead use the newer Plasma Login Manager.
January 6, 2026 — Source

AMD Releases GAIA 0.15 - Positioning It As A Framework/SDK For Building AI PC Agents
Last year AMD announced GAIA as short for "Generative AI Is Awesome". It started off as a Windows-only AI demo but over time added Linux support along with introducing different AI agents. For going along with AMD's AI announcements at CES 2026, AMD released GAIA 0.15 where they are now positioning this software as a framework/SDK for building AI PC agents.
January 6, 2026 — Source

AMD ROCm, open source Nvidia CUDA rival, gets massive Windows & Linux improvements
Alongside new hardware launches of the Ryzen AI 400 series, Ryzen 9850X3D, and new Max+ SKUs, AMD at CES 2026 today has expanded ROCm support across Windows and Linux, boosting AI performance in Ryzen and Radeon platforms.
January 6, 2026 — Source

Digital sovereignty: Linux as an Active Directory domain controller
Instead of Windows Server, you can also use a Linux system with Samba as a domain controller for Active Directory. A reader pointed this out to me some time ago, writing that he uses it in his environment.
January 6, 2026 — Source

Flatpak Exploring GPU Virtualization To Ease Driver Challenges
Open-source developer Sebastian Wick has written a blog post outlining work to improve the graphics driver situation for Flatpaks. Particularly around situations like the NVIDIA driver stack that may depend upon a specific kernel version or where a Flatpak runtime may be end-of-life, dealing with GPU drivers in Flatpaks can be a burden. A solution being explored is GPU virtualization to deal with those GPU driver handling challenges while still providing robust and secure GPU access.
January 6, 2026 — Source

Gentoo Linux Made Progress On RISC-V, WSL & More In 2025 While Pulling In Just $12k USD
The Gentoo Linux project published their 2025 retrospective this week with their many accomplishments, including the recruitment of four more developers and now being up to 31,663 ebuilds and a total of 89GB worth of x86_64 binary packages on mirrors.
January 6, 2026 — Source

Gimp, U-Boot, ImageMagick, Adminer, Ruby-Rmagick, Libsodium updates for Debian
Debian GNU/Linux has released several updates to address security concerns. The updates include fixes for ImageMagick, GIMP, U-Boot, Adminer, and Ruby-RMagick vulnerabilities. Additionally, a libsodium security update was also made available.
January 6, 2026 — Source

GStreamer 1.28-RC1 Brings A Rust-Based GIF Decoder, Other New Rust Components
On Monday the first release candidate of the GStreamer 1.28 multimedia framework was released. As is a recurring focus in recent releases, more GStreamer code is written in Rust for memory safety especially around decoding content.
January 6, 2026 — Source

Linux at CES 2026: Tux is alive and well in IoT, cars, and AI
Linux and open source aren't making headlines at CES 2026, but they're working behind the scenes in embedded, automotive, and edge AI.
January 6, 2026 — Source

NVIDIA Brings GeForce NOW To Linux And Fire TV With RTX 5080‑Class Cloud Gaming
It took a minute, but NVIDIA has finally answered the call to deliver a native Linux app for its GeForce NOW cloud gaming service (timely too, with recent Steam's survey data showing Linux on the rise for gaming). Same goes for select Amazon Fire TV Stick devices, both of which can tap into the service's GeForce RTX 5080-class pods to stream supported games at up to a 5K resolution and 120 frames per second, or 360 fps at 1080p.
January 6, 2026 — Source

OWASP CRS 4.22.0 and 3.3.8 released
The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) has released versions 4.22.0 and 3.3.8 of its Core Rule Set, which includes fixes for a serious security issue that allowed attackers to bypass security measures using different types of content. The update addresses CVE-2023-55182 and reduces false positives, allowing system admins to focus on real threats rather than harmless traffic or mistakes. Additionally, the update ensures compatibility with Rust's regex library and removes outdated code patterns and spelling variants, making maintaining the security rules easier in the long run.
January 6, 2026 — Source

Pre-Compiled Headers Being Debated For LLVM/Clang To Speed-Up Build By 1.5~2x
LLVM developers and other stakeholders have begun debating the use of pre-compiled headers "PCH" as a means of speeding up the compiulation of the LLVM compiler infrastructure by 1.5x to 2x than with non-PCH builds.
January 6, 2026 — Source

Redox OS Begins Developing Its Own Intel Graphics Driver
The Rust-written Redox OS operating system had an exciting end to the year as it began developing its own native Intel graphics driver.
January 6, 2026 — Source

Revised Steam Survey For December 2025 Puts Linux Gaming Marketshare At 3.58%
Back on the 1st Valve published the Steam Survey results for December 2025 and they put the Linux gaming marketshare at 3.19%, a 0.01% dip from November. But now the December results have been revised with a nice bump to the Linux marketshare.
January 6, 2026 — Source

The 6 Linux distros I expect to rule 2026 - and why
Which Linux distributions will rise above the competition in 2026 to dethrone the old guard? These are my picks.
January 6, 2026 — Source

Transparent Hugepage Performance On Linux 6.18 LTS: Madvise versus Always
With some Linux distributions like Fedora Workstation and Ubuntu defaulting to "madvise" Transparent Hugepages (THP) while others like CachyOS and openSUSE defaulting to "always", you may be curious about the madvise versus always THP difference in modern Linux environments. If so this round of benchmarking is for you in looking at the performance impact of madvise versus always THP.
January 6, 2026 — Source

Ubuntu 25.04 will reach its end of support on January 15, 2026
Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) will reach its end of life on January 15, 2026, marking the date when no further updates or support will be available. This includes security patches, bug fixes, and other essential updates that are crucial to keeping systems secure. Users running Ubuntu 25.04 are highly recommended to upgrade to the latest supported version, Ubuntu 25.10, for continued stability and security.
January 6, 2026 — Source

WebKitGTK update for Ubuntu
A security notice (USN-7941-1) has been issued for Ubuntu and its derivatives, affecting systems including Ubuntu 25.10, 25.04, 24.04 LTS, and 22.04 LTS. Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in WebKitGTK, a library for web content, which could allow remote attackers to exploit cross-site scripting attacks, denial of service attacks, and arbitrary code execution. To fix these issues, users need to update their systems to the latest package versions, which include new upstream releases with additional bug fixes. After updating, applications that use WebKitGTK, such as Epiphany, may require a restart to apply the necessary changes.
January 6, 2026 — Source

What if Linux ran Windows... and meant it? Meet Loss32
It's crazy, a million-to-one shot, but it might just work
January 6, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — January 5th, 2026

AnduinOS 1.3.9, 1.1.12, and 1.4.2 released
AnduinOS has released new builds, including 1.3.9, 1.1.12, and 1.4.2, which address several issues and improve video support, audio handling, and system stability. The core changes in the latest update focus on significant shifts in these areas, with notable upgrades in video codec support and system repair processes. The new build v1.4.2 also includes security improvements by modifying the repair script to prevent potential damage risks to the initrd component and introduces an error message for server connection issues during upgrades.
January 5, 2026 — Source or Source

Apple SMC Power Driver Posted For Linux Kernel To Finally Expose Battery Stats
The newest open-source Apple Silicon driver being submitted for review in working toward its inclusion in the mainline Linux kernel is the Apple Silicon SMC power driver for being able to expose MacBook battery power metrics as well as AC power adapter status reporting under Linux.
January 5, 2026 — Source

FreeBSD versus Slackware: Which super stable OS is right for you?
One is the world's oldest Linux distro, the other isn't Linux at all. Each delivers superb stability - let's compare.
January 5, 2026 — Source

GCC 16 Lands Support For Using Picolibc
While veteran open-source developer Keith Packard is known for his X.Org Server contributions over many years, another more recent open-source creation of his is Picolibc as a C library for embedded systems. As the latest achievement on that front, merged this weekend to the GCC 16 compiler codebase is support for using Picolibc.
January 5, 2026 — Source

GNOME & Firefox Consider Disabling Middle Click Paste By Default: "An X11'ism...Dumpster Fire"
Both the GNOME desktop and Mozilla Firefox browser projects are considering disabling middle-click-paste functionality by default.
January 5, 2026 — Source

Gnome Says No to AI-Generated Extensions
If you're a developer wanting to create a new Gnome extension, you'd best set aside that AI code generator, because the extension team will have none of that.
January 5, 2026 — Source

Intel Xe Driver Preps THP Support For "Significant" SVM Performance Gains
Intel engineer Francois Dugast today sent out the new patch series for enabling Transparent Hugepages (THP) support within the drm_pagemap code with a focus on the Intel Xe kernel driver usage. This enabling of THP support and in turn 2MB pages by the Xe driver is yielding "significant" performance improvements when using Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) such as for GPU compute workloads.
January 5, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel AES Library Seeing Improvements For Better Performance & More
A set of 36 patches sent out overnight is making big improvements to the Linux kernel's AES library. The patches allow for making use of the kernel's existing architecture-optimized AES code for better performance, that code is also constant-time, lower memory use, and all-around a nice improvement over the status quo.
January 5, 2026 — Source

NVIDIA Prepares Native GeForce NOW Support for Linux-Powered Operating Systems
NVIDIA is reportedly preparing to offer native support for its GeForce NOW streaming service on Linux-based operating systems. This development is significant for gamers who have had to rely on unstable workarounds on their Linux desktop PCs, which often broke after updates. With native support, GeForce NOW on Linux will enhance gaming beyond traditional hardware-based acceleration, as cloud GPUs are typically more powerful than what most gamers own.
January 5, 2026 — Source or Source

Patches Posted Seeking To Mainline Support For The Acer Swift SFA14-11 Snapdragon Laptop
Patches posted to the Linux kernel mailing list are hoping to provide mainline support for the Acer Swift SFA14-11 laptop powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Elite X1E78100 SoC.
January 5, 2026 — Source

PHP 8.3.30RC1, 8.4.17RC1 and 8.5.2RC1 Fedora/RHEL Packages released
Release Candidate versions of PHP 8.3.30RC1, 8.4.17RC1, and 8.5.2RC1 are now available for testing on Fedora and Enterprise Linux (RHEL/CentOS/Alma/Rocky) systems. These versions can be installed separately as software collections (SCL), allowing users to test new features without interfering with their regular setup.
January 5, 2026 — Source

Radeon Linux Driver Patches For Next-Gen Hardware Point To New NPU Integration
Back in November AMD began posting open-source Linux graphics driver patches for some next-gen graphics IP. Those IP block patches were for MMHUB, PSP, and other blocks making up modern AMD GPUs. The GFXHUB patch pointed it to being part of the GFX12 / RDNA4 family. Out today are new patches for enabling the SMU15 IP and an interesting takeaway there is some apparent NPU integration for future Radeon graphics.
January 5, 2026 — Source

Radeon RADV Driver Lands Another Ray-Tracing Improvement: 30% Faster On RDNA2
Konstantin Seurer as one of the open-source developers working on the RADV driver for Valve has landed another ray-tracing performance optimization for the upcoming Mesa 26.0 release.
January 5, 2026 — Source

The last supported version of HP-UX is no more
Remember when HP made its own CPUs and Unix? We wonder if it does
January 5, 2026 — Source

There Is No One Left On Debian's Data Protection Team
Besides Debian's aging bug tracker interface, another challenge as the Debian Linux distribution project begins 2026 is that all volunteers have left their Data Protection Team. The Debian Data Protection Team deals with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) issues and related data protection/privacy related matters.
January 5, 2026 — Source

This modern take on Xfce is the perfect distro for audio fans - here's why
Building on an already established Linux distribution, Extrox has plenty to offer to a wide range of users.
January 5, 2026 — Source

Valve & AMD Developers Delivered The Most Code Contributions To Mesa In 2025
A developer from Valve working on the RADV Vulkan driver was once again the most prolific contributor to Mesa in 2025 followed by AMD's Marek Olšák with continued improvements around RadeonSI and Gallium3D.
January 5, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — January 2nd, 2026

Bazzite Linux 43.20260101 released
The latest version of Bazzite Linux, version 43.20260101, has been released and brings several updates and improvements to the operating system. This release includes upgrades to core packages such as the kernel, firmware, and Mesa, as well as refreshed versions of Gamescope, Bazaar, and Ptyxis. Additionally, desktop environments Gnome and KDE have been updated with their latest versions, and Nvidia users can now access driver updates for both newer and long-term support cards.
January 2, 2026 — Source

Debian maintainer criticizes email-managed bug tracker as outdated for modern development — there is a web interface for viewing, but email remains the only way to perform critical functions
Meson creator Jussi Pakkanen says Debian's decades-old bug handling workflow is discouraging maintainers and slowing fixes.
January 2, 2026 — Source

Debian's Bug Tracker With No Web UI For Editing Bugs Is Very Obscure For 2026
Debian's maintainer of the Meson build system package is calling attention to the unfortunate state of Debian's bug tracker in 2026. Editing bug data within Debian's bug tracker still relies on writing custom-formatted emails and submitting them via your mail client. There still is no modern web UI for managing the Debian bug tracker as it was largely written in the early 90s.
January 2, 2026 — Source

Devuan 6.1.0 Excalibur released
Devuan GNU+Linux 6.1.0 Excalibur has been updated with new ISOs available from mirrors worldwide, bringing its software current with updates seen in Debian 13.2 and including several important fixes. A long-standing issue with speech synthesis has been resolved, and bugs related to the slim login manager have also been addressed. For users building an Excalibur system on Raspberry Pi or upgrading existing installs, online documentation is available to guide them through the process.
January 2, 2026 — Source

GE-Proton10-28 released
GloriousEggroll has released an update to his custom build of the Proton compatibility layer, called GE-Proton10-28. This latest version brings several notable improvements and fixes, including an updated Wine codebase, DXVK and VKD3D components, and bug fixes for various games such as World of Tanks, Blade & Soul Neo, and the Uplay overlay issue. A significant change in GE-Proton10-28 is the fix for spatial audio using Wine's ALSA driver, which allows games to work with headphones properly. The update also includes several smaller game patches and tweaks that provide more options and stability for users running games on Linux.
January 2, 2026 — Source

Goverlay 1.6.9 released
Goverlay has been updated to version 1.6.9 with several key improvements. The update primarily focuses on enhancing Flatpak compatibility by fixing issues related to runtime detection and improving overlay detection for users of MangoHud and vkBasalt. Additionally, the release includes a new configuration option for using multiple GPUs and improved handling for gpu_list settings. Proper Wayland support is also now included when using Goverlay via Flatpak in a Wayland session.
January 2, 2026 — Source

Kepler update for SUSE
openSUSE has released a security update to fix two vulnerabilities in the Kepler package on openSUSE Tumbleweed. The update, rated as moderate, addresses issues identified by CVE-2025-47911 and CVE-2025-58190. Two CVSS scores are provided for each vulnerability: one under the CVSS 3.1 scheme and another under the CVSS 4.0 scheme. The affected package is Kepler version 0.11.3-1.1, which can now be installed to resolve these security issues.
January 2, 2026 — Source

Libpcap and Seamonkey updates for Slackware
New packages are available for Slackware 15.0 and -current to fix security issues with libpcap and seamonkey. The updates include fixes for bugs and security vulnerabilities, including a bug that affected character encoding mapping from UTF-16 to UTF-8 and other issues with OOBR and OOBW in pcap_ether_aton().
January 2, 2026 — Source

Linux Addressing Out-Of-Memory Killer Inaccuracy On Large Core Count Systems
A patch is on the way to the Linux kernel and looks like it could be ready for the 6.20~7.0 kernel for addressing out-of-memory "OOM" killer inaccuracy behavior when dealing with large core count systems.
January 2, 2026 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.18.3 released
The Linux Kernel version 6.18.3 has been released, representing another step forward in making the system smoother and safer. A team of dedicated developers across the globe worked together to fix various issues with the kernel, including bugs related to FUSE component reference counting and io-uring list corruption. The release also addressed device management, memory handling, zoned block devices, security features, and crypto code, resolving issues such as deadlocks, system hangs, and potential crashes.
January 2, 2026 — Source

Mesa 25.3.3 released
Mesa has released a new version, 25.3.3, which is a relatively small update due to some developers taking time off during the holidays. Despite its size, the update includes various fixes for issues reported by users and developers, covering a wide range of topics. The changes, contributed by several developers including Ahmed Hesham, Alyssa Rosenzweig, and Dylan Baker, address minor memory leaks, complex glitches in graphics rendering, and other problems.
January 2, 2026 — Source

New Linux Patches Allow More Easily Changing The Tux Kernel Boot Logo
A new patch series that was posted this week allow for users to more easily replace the default kernel boot logo. While many of us are long accustomed to seeing the picture of Tux as the kernel boot logo, for those preferring to better customize your console boot experience these patches allow it to be easily manipulated via the kernel configuration "Kconfig" options.
January 2, 2026 — Source

Net-Snmp and Smb4k security update for Debian
A security update for the net-snmp package has been released to fix a vulnerability that allows an attacker to crash the snmptrapd daemon with a specially crafted packet. The bug is not mitigatable, so the only solution is to ensure the SNMP port is firewalled or upgrade the package. A separate update also addressed a parsing issue on Linux systems 6.7 and above. Additionally, two vulnerabilities were found in the smb4k utility, allowing for local denial of service or privilege escalation, which have been fixed with an updated version of the package.
January 2, 2026 — Source

Jony Ive's first OpenAI device said to be 'audio-based'
OpenAI is intensifying its focus on audio artificial intelligence technologies, consolidating teams and overhauling its voice models to support an upcoming AI-powered personal device that emphasizes voice interaction over traditional screens.
January 2, 2026 — Source

Radeon Linux Driver Enhancements, Linux 6.19 Activity & Other December Highlights
During the month of December on Phoronix there was new and original content each and every day, ending the month with 305 original news articles and 25 featured Linux hardware reviews / multi-page benchmark articles. Here is a look back at the most exciting Linux/open-source hardware content in ending out 2025.
January 2, 2026 — Source

RadeonSI Starts 2026 With NIR Compilation Refactoring For Better Performance, Lower GLSL Compile Times
Merged on New Year's Day was a set of 36 patches authored by well known AMD Mesa developer Marek Olšák for refactoring the NIR compilation code for the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver.
January 2, 2026 — Source

Six Years Since The Reiser5 File-System Was Announced
With the start of the New Year it now marks six years since the unexpected announcement of the Reiser5 file-system being developed as the continuation of the never-upstreamed Reiser4 file-system. But Reiser5 development never saw too much upstream interest and it's now been several years without any updated patches for Reiser5 or Reiser4.
January 2, 2026 — Source

WebkitGTK, Gh, Direwolf, USD updates for Fedora
Fedora Linux has released several security updates to ensure the operating system's stability and protection. These updates include webkitgtk for Fedora 42, gh for Fedora 43, direwolf for both Fedora 42 and 43, and usd for Fedora 43. The releases aim to address potential security vulnerabilities and keep users' systems secure.
January 2, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — January 1ST, 2026

Arch Linux 2026.01.01 released
Arch Linux has released new install media with kernel version 6.18.2, providing a stable foundation for computing needs. Characterized by its "Keep It Simple" philosophy, Arch Linux offers a straightforward and flexible experience through its optimized packages and community-operated repository. The distribution's community is diverse and supportive, making it an excellent resource for users seeking help or knowledge on various aspects of Arch Linux.
January 1, 2026 — Source

Golang and Delve updates for Fedora
Fedora Linux has released several security updates to enhance the system's protection and stability. The latest security patches include updates for golang-github-google-wire, delve, and golang-github-googlecloudplatform-cloudsql-proxy in Fedora 42. In addition, updates have been made available for delve and golang-github-googlecloudplatform-cloudsql-proxy in Fedora 43.
January 1, 2026 — Source

IceWM 4.0 Improves Alt-Tab Window Switcher, Alpha Blending + 32-bit RGBA Default
For fans of the IceWM X11 window manager, the project kicked off 2026 by releasing IceWM 4.0.
January 1, 2026 — Source

IceWM 4.0.0 released
IceWM 4.0.0 has been released, bringing significant enhancements to the window switching feature. The Alt+Tab interface can now handle a large number of application windows without slowing down, and it also includes a new "QuickSwitchPreview" feature that lets users peek at available applications while switching. In addition to these improvements, the release addresses several issues, including problems with keyboard layout switching and external programs updating workspace names in the taskbar. Overall, IceWM 4.0.0 improves performance on high-resolution screens, cleans up preferences, and enhances display handling across different locales and hardware setups.
January 1, 2026 — Source

Imagemagick security update for Debian 11 LTS
A security update has been released for the ImageMagick package in Debian GNU/Linux 11 (Bullseye) LTS, which is a popular image processing suite. The update fixes multiple vulnerabilities that were found in ImageMagick, including issues with memory management, integer overflows, and crashes when processing crafted TIFF files or MVG files. The fixed version of ImageMagick is 8:6.9.11.60+dfsg-1.3+deb11u8, which addresses CVEs CVE-2025-65955 to CVE-2025-69204.
January 1, 2026 — Source

KDE neon 20260101 released
KDE neon has released its latest version, offering users immediate access to new features of KDE Plasma 6.5.4 directly from Ubuntu's long-term support base. This release provides an unmodified experience of fresh KDE releases, free from proprietary driver tweaks or patches by default, making it ideal for enthusiasts who want to try out new software quickly. The distribution is designed for users willing to test upcoming KDE releases and offers a unique rolling release approach that focuses on necessary KDE packages while keeping the rest of the system stable.
January 1, 2026 — Source

Linux 6.19 Lands Fix For Dead WiFi With MediaTek MT792x Wireless
Merged to Linux Git on New Year's Eve was a fix in the form of a code revert for broken MediaTek WiFi on the in-development Linux 6.19 kernel.
January 1, 2026 — Source

Manjaro Linux 26.0 Anh-Linh RC3 released
Manjaro Linux 26.0 Anh-Linh RC3 has been released, offering a fresh snapshot of the Plasma 6.5 series along with GNOME 49 and the long-awaited Cosmic release. This build includes updates to various system components, such as the Mesa driver, Vulkan SDK, and real-time Linux kernel series (6.17-rt).
January 1, 2026 — Source

More Improvements To Old AMD GPU Support On Linux Are Planned For 2026
With Linux 6.19 aging AMD GCN 1.0 and GCN 1.1 GPUs switched the default kernel driver used to provide for much better performance, RADV Vulkan support out-of-the-box, and other improvements compared to using the legacy Radeon DRM kernel driver. For 2026, Timur Kristóf of Valve's Linux graphics team has more improvements still planned to enhance these older AMD graphics cards on Linux.
January 1, 2026 — Source

Podman update for SUSE
A security update for Podman has been released to fix a vulnerability (CVE-2025-47914) that could cause a panic due to an out-of-bounds read with non-validated message sizes. The update affects several SUSE products, including openSUSE Leap 15.3 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 5.2.
January 1, 2026 — Source

ReactOS Starts 2026 With Another "Major Step" Toward Windows NT6 Compatibility
The ReactOS free software project is turning 30 this year and its "open-source Windows" OS ambitions remain. They are starting out this year with another "major step" towards Windows NT 6.0 compatibility.
January 1, 2026 — Source

SDL 3.4 Released With Many New APIs, Better Emscripten & Native PNG Support
Kicking off the new year for Linux gaming and cross-platform gaming at large is the release of the SDL 3.4 library. SDL is part of the Steam runtime and continues to be widely-used for abstracting software/hardware for creating more portable games and other applications.
January 1, 2026 — Source

This new Linux desktop runs like an app on your existing desktop - and I highly recommend it
Portable and modular, Orbitiny runs on top of your existing window manager - such as KDE Plasma or GNOME - like a regular app.
January 1, 2026 — Source

Two years after launch Intel Meteor Lake offers 93% of original performance on Linux, tests show
Intel Meteor Lake on Linux: benchmarks show 93% of launch day performance two years later
January 1, 2026 — Source

Software — Open Source — December 26th, 2025

Coreboot 25.12 Released With Qualcomm X1 Plus Platform Support, AMD Turin PoC
Coreboot 25.12 is out today as the latest quarterly feature update to this open-source BIOS/firmware solution.
December 26, 2025 — Source

My 11 favorite Linux distributions of all time, ranked
After using Linux for nearly 30 years, I've created a list of the best Linux distributions I've used since the beginning. Here they are.
December 26, 2025 — Source

New Linux Patches Improve exFAT Read Performance Via Multi-Cluster Mapping
For those using Microsoft's exFAT file-system under Linux for the likes of flash drives and SD cards, a new patch series posted today aims to enhance the read performance. The new patches are shown to improve performance by about 10% while also having lower overhead.
December 26, 2025 — Source

New Runtime Standby ABI Proposed For Linux Akin To Microsoft Windows' "Modern Standby"
An exciting post-Christmas patch series out on the Linux kernel mailing list this morning is proposing a new runtime standby ABI that is similar in nature to the "Modern Standby" functionality found with Microsoft Windows.
December 26, 2025 — Source

Nova Driver Progress & Other NVIDIA Linux News From 2025
This year there was a lot of going on in the NVIDIA Linux world from their official driver stack seeing better Wayland support to a lot on the open-source scene from NVIDIA engineers contributing a lot directly to the Rust-based Nova open-source driver that continues taking shape, the Mesa NVK Vulkan driver becoming more performant and capable, and a lot of other happenings. Here is a look back at the most popular NVIDIA content of 2025 on Phoronix.
December 26, 2025 — Source

Ubuntu's Rust Infatuation, New Optimizations & Other Ubuntu Linux 2025 Highlights
It was a very interesting year for Ubuntu Linux. Ahead of the important Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release due out this coming April, Ubuntu Linux this year was expeditiously migrating to new Rust-based system tools like sudo-rs and Rust Coreutils, new performance optimizations continued to be explored for bettering the out-of-the-box Ubuntu performance, better ARM64 support with its desktop ISO, and enhancing the Snapdragon X Elite laptop support were among the Ubuntu highlights in 2025.
December 26, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — December 25th, 2025

Arch Linux kills off Nvidia Pascal GPU support — users still running GTX 10-series graphics cards will have to manually install older drivers
Nvidia Linux driver 590 axes support for GTX 10 series GPUs
December 25, 2025 — Source

Final Benchmarks Of AMDVLK versus RADV AMD Radeon Vulkan Drivers
One of the pleasant surprises this year was AMD ending the AMDVLK driver development with AMD dropping their proprietary OpenGL and Vulkan driver components on Linux at long last for their Radeon Software for Linux packages. This was arguably long overdue with enthusiasts and Linux gamers long preferring the RadeonSI+RADV Mesa drivers and those drivers even doing very well in recent years for workstation graphics workloads.
December 25, 2025 — Source

Google Looks To Upstream Its Propeller Tool To LLVM For More Performance
Google's Propeller is a profile-guided, reflinking optimizer for large codebases. Propeller is built atop LLVM and can allow for whole-program optimizations. Google compiler engineers are now hoping to bring the Propeller tool into the upstream LLVM codebase.
December 25, 2025 — Source

KDE neon 20251225 released
KDE neon's latest release offers users immediate access to the newest KDE Plasma 6.5.4 features, solidifying its position as a platform for exploring cutting-edge software directly from Ubuntu's long-term support base.
December 25, 2025 — Source

Mobileye Eyeq6Lplus SoC Support Being Worked On For Mainline Linux Kernel
The mainline Linux kernel already supports several different Mobileye SoCs for that company focused on self-driving tech and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Consulting firm Bootlin has been working on bringing their latest SoC, the Mobileye Eyeq6Lplus, to the mainline Linux kernel.
December 25, 2025 — Source

Phoenix: A New X Server Written From Scratch With Zig
For X11/X.Org fans there is a new Christmas surprise: Phoenix as an in-development X Server written from scratch using the Zig programming language.
December 25, 2025 — Source

Ruby 4.0 Released With Ruby Box Experimental Feature, ZJIT Compiler
The past several years we have seen new releases of the Ruby programming language implementation for Christmas (25 December). This year is no different with Ruby 4.0 having been released this morning.
December 25, 2025 — Source

The Death Of Clear Linux, Other Intel Linux Engineering Setbacks In 2025
When it came to the most viewed AMD Linux/open-source news of 2025 there were a lot of accomplishments for the company this year both on the CPU and graphics side of the house and from consumer to server hardware. Today is a look back at the most popular Intel open-source/Linux news of the year, which unfortunately, their layoffs and other cuts to their software engineering were attracting a lot of interest.
December 25, 2025 — Source

VSCodium 1.107.18627 released
So, there's news about VSCodium: its latest version, 1.107.18627, has arrived. This update specifically tackles a problem reported by users running macOS x64 bundles who were using the arm64 version of vscodium-policy-watcher.
December 25, 2025 — Source

You don't need Linux to run free and open source software
Alternative apps to empower older versions of macOS or Windows
December 25, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — December 21st, 2025

AMD ISP4 Linux Driver Patches Update Again For HP ZBook Ultra G1a, Future Ryzen Laptops
One of the features that sadly didn't make it into the recent Linux 6.19 merge window was the long-awaited AMD ISP4 driver for supporting the web camera found with the high-end HP ZBook Ultra G1a and also expected to be used by future flagship AMD Ryzen laptops.
December 21, 2025 — Source

Darktable 5.4 RAW Photography Software Reaches Parity Between X11 & Wayland
Darktable 5.4 is out today as the newest feature release to this open-source RAW photography software. Besides improving camera support, UI enhancements, and more the Wayland support has been improved with Darktable. With today's Darktable 5.4 release, the Wayland support should be on par with the X11 support.
December 21, 2025 — Source

Darktable 5.4.0 released
Darktable v5.4.0 is now available as a free and open-source update for its photography workflow application. The release benefited from extensive development involving over 996 commits contributed by community members.
December 21, 2025 — Source

Intel Prepares For KVM Guest VMs To Support Advanced Performance Extensions (APX)
Since Linux 6.16 the Intel APX support has been ready for the kernel infrastructure and goes along with the compiler toolchain support for Advanced Performance Extensions with the likes of GCC and LLVM/Clang. The latest element being worked on for APX enablement in the open-source/Linux world is for allowing KVM guest virtual machines (VMs) to make use of APX.
December 21, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.19 Lands Fix For Seagate Barracuda HDD Taking Down The SATA Bus
It's not often getting to talk about hard drives on Phoronix these days, but there's an important fix merged to the Linux 6.19 kernel today ahead of Linux 6.19-rc2. If you happen to be using a Seagate ST2000DM008 Barracuda 2TB HDD, an important fix was merged to avoid it taking down the systems' SATA bus and/or potentially other issues.
December 21, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.19-rc2 Adding Support For CRKD Guitar Controllers
Most notable with the input subsystem updates sent out today ahead of the Linux 6.19-rc2 release is some new hardware support. New this week is adding support for CRKD Guitars for those into musical gaming/apps.
December 21, 2025 — Source

Linux Security Roundup for Week 51, 2025
This week's roundup includes security updates from various Linux distributions to address vulnerabilities and ensure system security and stability. The updates cover multiple packages across different distributions, including AlmaLinux, Debian GNU/Linux, Fedora Linux, Oracle Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Slackware Linux, SUSE Linux, and Ubuntu Linux. Specific issues addressed in the updates include identity takeover via duplicate UUID registration, denial of service, memory corruption, and arbitrary code execution in affected packages. The security patches aim to protect users from potential threats and ensure the smooth functioning of various applications on their respective operating systems.
December 21, 2025 — Source

Sparky 2025.12 Special Editions released
Sparky Linux has released new Special Edition ISO images, including GameOver, Multimedia, and Rescue, which are now available for download. These editions are based on Debian 14 testing's "Forky" branch, providing a solid foundation with up-to-date packages from both Debian and Sparky's own repositories. The new images include the latest Linux kernel 6.17, as well as recent updates to various kernels in the Sparky blurry repos, such as 6.18.2 and LTS options like 6.6.119-LTS. Users who have a rolling edition can update their installation without reinstalling everything from scratch, making it easy to keep up with the latest packages.
December 21, 2025 — Source

Ventoy 1.1.10 released
Ventoy, a popular tool for creating bootable USB drives, has been updated to version 1.1.10. The latest release includes several fixes and improvements that address common issues, such as compatibility problems with Kylin Server V11 and Windows booting in F2 mode. Additionally, Ventoy now supports musl libc environments, and the LinuxGUI component can run on Wayland setups alongside X support. Users of AerynOS also benefit from the update, which simplifies USB installs across more distributions.
December 21, 2025 — Source

Week in review: Exploited zero-day in Cisco email security appliances, Kali Linux 2025.4 released
Here's an overview of some of last week's most interesting news, articles, interviews and videos:
December 21, 2025 — Source

WMI Marshalling Support For Linux Aims To Match Windows' ACPI/WMI Handling
Open-source developer Armin Wolf has been working most recently on marshalling support for the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) platform code within the Linux kernel. This WMI marshalling support is to better match the behavior of Microsoft Windows' WMI ACPI driver and ultimately to allow for better compatibility with some ACPI firmware and enhancing some WMI drivers.
December 21, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — December 20th, 2025

Chromium, MariaDB, LibPNG, and more updates for SUSE
Several SUSE updates have been released, including security updates and other patches. The openSUSE project has received important updates for Chromium and MariaDB, as well as critical fixes for libpng16, Xen, and MariaDB. Additionally, moderate-level updates were applied to various packages on General Availability (GA) media, including Ruby, coredns-for-k8s, rsync, and Netty. These security patches aim to address vulnerabilities and enhance system stability across the SUSE ecosystem.
December 20, 2025 — Source

Chromium, Mqttcli, Fonttools, and more updates for Fedora
Security updates have been released for Fedora Linux, specifically targeting versions 42 and 43. Several packages have received updates to enhance security, including Chromium, mqttcli, python-unicodedata2, fonttools, gosec, and uriparser. The updates cover multiple versions of Fedora Linux, with some updates shared across both versions, 42 and 43. These updates are designed to improve the security of Fedora Linux installations running these packages.
December 20, 2025 — Source

Curl, Binutils, Dracut, and more updates for Oracle Linux
Oracle has released several updates for Oracle Linux, including security patches and bug fixes. These updates affect various packages such as curl, binutils, autofs, util-linux, and pam, among others. Additionally, webkit2gtk3, a critical component of the system, has received important security updates. The list of updates covers multiple areas of Oracle Linux 8, including security and bug fixes for various packages and tools.
December 20, 2025 — Source

DragonFlyBSD's VirtIO Block Driver Lands Multi-Queue Support
For helping with the I/O performance in virtualized environments, merged this week to the DragonFlyBSD development code is multi-queue support for its VirtIO block "virtio_blk" driver.
December 20, 2025 — Source

Gemini AI Yielding Sloppy Code For Ubuntu Development With New Helper Script
A few weeks ago it was mentioned by a Canonical engineer how trying to use AI to modernize the Ubuntu Error Tracker yielded some code that was "plain wrong" and other issues raised by that Microsoft GitHub Copilot code. The same Ubuntu developer shifted to trying Gemini AI to generate a helper script to assist in Ubuntu's monthly ISO snapshot releases. Google's Gemini AI also generated some sloppy code for a Python script to assist in those Ubuntu releases.
December 20, 2025 — Source

GNU Debugger 17.1 Released With CET Shadow Stack Support, New DAP Features
The GNU Debugger "GDB" 17.1 is out today with a number of new features for enhancing the open-source debugging experience.
December 20, 2025 — Source

Godot 4.6 Beta 2 released
Godot 4.6 Beta 2 has been released, which marks an important moment in the engine's development journey. The update focuses on addressing issues and improving user experience through various refinements to the editor interface and other features. Notable enhancements include fixes for shader editor window sizing and GUI-related updates like a text editor scrolling fix that works better with certain vertical screen setups. This release also includes platform-specific upgrades, such as an automatic performance boost activation for iOS projects and significant rendering updates involving motion vectors.
December 20, 2025 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.6 Finally Supporting Ambient Light Sensors, Fixing Windows Games With HDR
There are some nice KDE Plasma 6.6 improvements that were merged ahead of Christmas.
December 20, 2025 — Source

Linux Kernel updates for Ubuntu
Ubuntu Linux has released security updates to address several vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel. Specifically, updates have been issued for Raspberry Pi, Real-time, Oracle, and Xilinx variants of the Linux kernel.
December 20, 2025 — Source

LoongArch Promoted To Being An Official Architecture For Debian 14
Two years and a few months after LoongArch 64-bit "Loong64" was added to Debian Ports, it's now been promoted to being an official architecture for Debian Linux.
December 20, 2025 — Source

Mesa 26.0 NVK Driver Lands Improvement For NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 "Turing" GPUs
In addition to the open-source NVIDIA "NVK" Vulkan driver in Mesa merging compression support for big performance wins, another performance optimization was merged earlier in the week that stand to benefit GeForce RTX 20 "Turing" graphics processors.
December 20, 2025 — Source

PHP 8.5.1, PHP 8.4.16, 8.3.29, 8.2.30, 8.1.34 Debian packages released
Ondřej Surý has released updated PHP packages for Debian GNU/Linux users, including versions from 5.6 to 8.5, addressing security issues across multiple versions. The updates fix three vulnerabilities: command injection via proc_open, CVE-2024-1874; a cookie bypass attack related to CVE-2022-31629 and patched as CVE-2024-2756; and an issue with PHP's password verification function. To add the repository to your Debian installation, you can use a provided script that installs necessary dependencies and configures the repository.
December 20, 2025 — Source

php (SSA:2025-353-01)
New packages for PHP have been released to address security issues in Slackware 15.0 and -current. The updates fix vulnerabilities in PDO quoting, array_merge(), and getimagesize(). Users can find the updated packages at various mirror sites, including ftp.slackware.com and osuosl.org. To install the new package, users should upgrade as root and then restart Apache httpd.
December 20, 2025 — Source

Podman, Python, LibSSH, and more updates for Rocky Linux
Several updates are available for various packages on Rocky Linux 8 and 9, including podman, python, libssh, binutils, webkit2gtk3, skopeo, php, container-tools, curl, and others.
December 20, 2025 — Source

Roundcube, Dropbear, MediaWiki updates for Debian
There are multiple security updates for Debian GNU/Linux distributions, including Roundcube, Dropbear, and MediaWiki. The Roundcube update, which is available for Debian 10 ELTS, 12, and 13, fixes two vulnerabilities: an information disclosure vulnerability in its HTML style sanitizer and a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability via SVG's animate tag. The dropbear update for Debian 12 and 13 addresses a privilege escalation issue caused by incorrect permission handling in the Dropbear SSH server.
December 20, 2025 — Source

Ungoogled Chromium 143.0.7499.169-1 released
A new version of Ungoogled Chromium has arrived, offering an alternative to standard browser releases by dialing back on Google integration.
December 20, 2025 — Source

Wine 11.0 Release Candidate 3 released
There's a new release candidate out for Wine 11.0, which is now available for download from WineHQ. It marks the third release candidate ahead of this upcoming major point update, Wine 11.0. This specific milestone prioritizes bug fixes over the introduction of new features. With code freeze effectively in place, the main goal here is to resolve various issues reported by users trying out the software.
December 20, 2025 — Source

You can force FSR 4 Redstone to work on RDNA 3 GPUs with new workaround for Linux systems — solution requires Proton compatibility to work properly
This mod proving that FSR4 Redstone works with RDNA 3 has got some gamers up in arms with AMD's limitation.
December 20, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — December 19th, 2025

2025 Brought "Transformative Changes" For FreeBSD On Laptops
As we have been covering over the past year, major investments have been made to better the outlook for running FreeBSD on laptop hardware. From WiFi driver improvements to enhancing suspend/resume, power management, graphics drivers, and other features, it's been a big undertaking to make FreeBSD work better on laptops. The FreeBSD Foundation calls 2025 as having brought "transformative changes" for the FreeBSD laptop experience.
December 19, 2025 — Source

Cloud Hypervisor 50 Released With QCOW2 Compression, Performance Improvements
Cloud Hypervisor 50.0 is out today for this cloud-minded, security-focused and Rust-based hypervisor. Cloud Hypervsior began as an open-source Intel project while in more recent times has shifted to being largely maintained by Microsoft, Crusoe, Cyberus Tech, Rivos, and others.
December 19, 2025 — Source

FUSE 3.18 Released With FUSE-Over-IO-uring, Statx Support
Linux creator Linus Torvalds previously referred to file-systems in user-space as for toys and misguided people. But FUSE has shown a lot of interesting use-cases over the years and has grown more capable in the decade since Torvalds' prior comments. Out today is FUSE 3.18 as the latest release for the FUSE library.
December 19, 2025 — Source

Kubernetes 101: Understanding the Foundation and Getting Started
Learn when Kubernetes truly solves your problems versus when it adds unnecessary complexity — and get hands-on with both local and production cluster setup.
December 19, 2025 — Source

Intel Readies Nova Lake Display Support For Linux 6.20~7.0
For the in-development Linux 6.19 kernel the initial Xe3P_LPD GPU support was merged for the integrated graphics to be found with Nova Lake processors. There were some initial Xe3P_LPD display patches also merged for Linux 6.19 but it looks like for Linux 6.20 (or what may end up being known as Linux 7.0), the display support will actually be functional for driving monitors from Nova Lake.
December 19, 2025 — Source

Intel's Linux NPU User-Space Driver Adds Panther Lake Support
Since late 2024 Intel has been working on 5th Gen NPU support for their Linux IVPU driver. That 5th Gen NPU support for Intel Core Ultra "Panther Lake" SoCs was upstreamed back in Linux 6.13. Now today the Intel Linux NPU user-space driver has seen its official support added for Panther Lake.
December 19, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.12 To Linux 6.18 LTS Upgrade Offers Worthwhile Benefits For 5th Gen AMD EPYC
The recently released Linux 6.18 kernel is this year's Long Term Support version. As such it's sure to a see a lot of enterprise and hyperscaler uptake in being the annual LTS kernel version. While Linux 6.12 LTS will be maintained at least through the end of next year, upgrading to Linux 6.18 LTS can be very worthwhile from the performance perspective beyond the extended timeline until it will reach end-of-life.
December 19, 2025 — Source

Linux NPU Driver v1.28.0 released
Intel has released a new version of its Linux driver for Neural Processing Units (NPUs), bringing the software to 1.28.0. This update primarily affects users with Intel Core Ultra CPUs, such as Meteor Lake and Lunar Lake, which now feature improved support thanks to their built-in NPUs. The new driver has been verified on various platforms, including Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, and Panther Lake, making it easier for users with these devices to get up and running. Support for Ubuntu 22.04 has been discontinued, but the driver is now compatible with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and other systems.
December 19, 2025 — Source

Linux Preps For "Slow Workload Hints" With Intel Panther Lake
Five years ago Intel began introducing "workload hints" used for thermal and power purposes with their SoCs and in turn on the software-side being enabled with their INT340X kernel driver on Linux systems. That Intel workload hint coverage was added to the Linux kernel in late 2020 and then a big addition in 2023 with Meteor Lake introducing new workload hint type capabilities.
December 19, 2025 — Source

Mageia 10 Planning For April Release While Still Maintaining 32-bit Support
The Mageia development team recently met to solidify their plans for releasing Mageia 10 as the next major release of this LInux distribution with its roots that trace back to the days of Mandrake Linux.
December 19, 2025 — Source

ML4W Dotfiles for Hyprland 2.9.9.4 released
The ML4W Dotfiles team has released a new update, version 2.9.9.4, for Hyprland users, which includes several tweaks and additions to enhance efficiency on Linux desktops. The update introduces global theme support, allowing users to easily switch between themes using the keyboard shortcut CTRL+ALT+T. Additionally, animation smoothness has been improved by managing this setting directly through the Settings app, and the default cursor has been refreshed with new options.
December 19, 2025 — Source

pearOS is a Linux that falls rather close to the Apple tree
Revived distro returns on Arch with KDE Plasma, global menus, and a familiar macOS-style sheen
December 19, 2025 — Source

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Plans Confirmed For Linux 6.20 / Linux 7.0
Canonical confirmed their Linux kernel plans today for the Ubuntu 26.04 Long Term Support (LTS) release due out in April.
December 19, 2025 — Source or Source

Wine 11.0-rc3 Released With Another Week Of Bug Fixing
In working toward the Wine 11.0 stable release in January, Wine 11.0-rc3 is out today as the latest weekly release candidate.
December 19, 2025 — Source

Xorgproto 2025.1 Released To Recognize Newer Keyboard Keys
For X.Org Server users there is a new release of xorgproto for the holidays. Xorgproto as the set of headers and specifications for the X11 core protocols and extensions is out with its first new release since March 2024.
December 19, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — December 15th, 2025

AmpereOne M Finally Appears - In The Oracle Cloud With A4
Back in July 2024, Ampere Computing announced AmpereOne M on their road-map for Q4'2024 to provide AmpereOne with 12 channel DDR5 memory compared to eight memory channels with the original AmpereOne processors. Then this past May the AmpereOne M SKUs were announced while Ampere Computing stated these "M" processors had been shipping since Q4 of last year. Since then we haven't seen or heard anything more about AmpereOne M nor the AmpereOne MX processors with up to 256 cores. Since then, the acquisition of Ampere Computing by SoftBank also was completed that made us wonder more about impacts to the roadmap and what hardware may or may not make it out to market.
December 15, 2025 — Source

As Meta fades in open-source AI, Nvidia senses its chance to lead
Nvidia emphasizes greater transparency in its Nemotron 3 models, especially with respect to training data that enterprises care about.
December 15, 2025 — Source

Fedora 44 Could Work Nicely "Out Of The Box" On Snapdragon-Powered Windows ARM Laptops
Longtime Red Hat engineer Hans de Goede who worked on many Intel/AMD laptop enhancements over the years left Red Hat and ended up joining Qualcomm. Now it turns out one of his projects at Qualcomm is enhancing the Fedora Linux support for running nicely out-of-the-box on Snapdragon-powered Windows on ARM laptops.
December 15, 2025 — Source

Flatpak Adds Support For Building OCI Bundles Using Zstd Compressed Layers
Back in November Flatpak 1.17 released with support for sideloading from OCI images and other improvements in working toward the Flatpak 1.18 stable release. Out today is Flatpak 1.17.1 and was then followed quickly by Flatpak 1.17.2 to fix a mistake in the release artifacts.
December 15, 2025 — Source

GCC Developers Considering Whether To Accept AI/LLM-Generated Patches
The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) developers now have a need to set a policy whether AI / Large Language Model (LLM) generated patches will be accepted for this open-source compiler stack.
December 15, 2025 — Source

GIMP 3.2-RC2 Brings Bug Fixes & Minor Refinements
GIMP 3.2-RC2 is out today as what could be the last release candidate of GIMP 3.2 before its stable release. This leading open-source image editor/creation alternative to the likes of Adobe Photoshop continues becoming much more refined and polished in the GIMP 3 series.
December 15, 2025 — Source

GNOME bans AI-generated extensions
A glut of extensions from programmers who don't understand their AI-written code has delayed reviews.
December 15, 2025 — Source

Igalia's Work Improving The Linux Kernel For Helping Steam Play Gaming On ARM64
Besides Valve funding FEX-Emu for x86_64 binaries to run on AArch64 Linux as part of their Steam Play (Proton) efforts in being able to get Windows x86/x64 games running on AArch64 SteamOS for the Snapdragon-powered Steam Frame, there is also work happening in kernel-space to help this emulated gaming experience on AArch64.
December 15, 2025 — Source

Intel Quietly Discontinues Its Open-Source User-Space Gaudi Driver Code
There's another setback to the open-source driver code around Intel's Gaudi accelerator support on Linux.
December 15, 2025 — Source

Kali Linux 2025.4: New tools and "quality-of-life" improvements
OffSec has released Kali Linux 2025.4, a new version of its widely used penetration testing and digital forensics platform.
December 15, 2025 — Source

Kernel Graphics Driver Changes Already Begin Lining Up For Linux 6.20~7.0
Even before the Linux 6.19 merge window wrapped up this weekend with the Linux 6.19-rc1 release, there was already the first pull request to DRM-Next of the first batch of new material to be queued for Linux 6.19's successor.
December 15, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.19 Features: LUO, PCIe Link Encryption, ASUS Armoury, DRM Color Pipeline API & More
With Linux 6.19-rc1 released, the merge window for Linux 6.19 has now concluded. Here is a summary of the interesting Linux 6.19 new features and changes with this kernel version.
December 15, 2025 — Source

Manjaro Linux 25.1 Anh-Linh Preview 2 released
Manjaro Linux 25.1 Anh-Linh Preview 2 has been released, featuring an updated Plasma desktop environment with version 6.5 and GNOME 49 as an alternative option. The release also includes updates to graphics performance, with the Mesa driver at version 25.3.1 and Vulkan SDK at 1.4.328.1. Various applications have received updates, including Firefox, Thunderbird, and LXQt, while the system stack has been refreshed with a new real-time Linux kernel series (6.17-rt).
December 15, 2025 — Source

OpenSnitch 1.8.0 released
OpenSnitch 1.8.0 has been released, bringing significant changes, including a GUI overhaul built on PyQt6 instead of PyQt5. This update reflects the shift away from PyQt5 by many GNU/Linux distributions and aims to keep OpenSnitch modern going forward, although it may no longer be compatible with older distros like Linux Mint 21.2 or Ubuntu 22.04. The new version includes several substantial enhancements, such as streamlined firewall rule management, improved backend upgrades, and task automation features.
December 15, 2025 — Source

Roundcube 1.7 RC2 released
Roundcube has released its second release candidate for version 1.7, focusing on resolving serious issues discovered since the first release candidate dropped. Two security problems were addressed: a cross-site scripting vulnerability and an update to prevent information disclosure, both thanks to contributions from outside developers. For Postgres users, the developer fixed a long-standing syntax error in database migration scripts, a significant step towards making 1.7 ready for prime time.
December 15, 2025 — Source

SparkyLinux 2025.12 released
The latest version of SparkyLinux, "Tiamat," has been released in the semi-rolling line with updated ISO images available for download. This release includes kernel updates up to version 6.17.11 and other variants, as well as updated versions of Firefox (Extended Support Release) and Thunderbird. Users installing on UEFI systems may need an internet connection due to improvements made to the Calamares installer, while those with BIOS and 64-bit support can still use the CLI option. The new release also features two additional package mirror servers and multiple installation options, including six different desktop environments.
December 15, 2025 — Source

System76 Launches Pop!_OS Linux Distro To Much Fanfare, Check It Out
Pop!_OS is a new Ubuntu-based Linux distribution from System76, flaunting the COSMIC Desktop Environment and available on either a PC of your choice or one of many US-made laptops or desktops. While the naming of Pop!_OS recalls a more distant era of computing, the operating system itself is quite modern, featuring all the core features you've come to expect from Windows plus some enticing additions.
December 15, 2025 — Source or Watch Video

The latest Pop!_OS 24.04 update has this longtime Linux user more excited than ever
As a Pop!_OS veteran, I've not been this excited about a release since I first started using System76's in-house distribution.
December 15, 2025 — Source

Torvalds On Linux Security Modules: "I Already Think We Have Too Many Of Those Pointless Things"
Stemming from a security researcher and his team proposing a new Linux Security Module (LSM) three years ago and it not being accepted to the mainline kernel, he raised issue over the lack of review/action to Linus Torvalds and the mailing lists. In particular, seeking more guidance for how new LSMs should be introduced and raised the possibility of taking the issue to the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board (TAB).
December 15, 2025 — Source

Wayland Protocols 1.47 Released With Updated Color Management Protocol
Following the Color Management protocol introduced in Wayland Protocols 1.41, out today is Wayland Protocols 1.47 with various revisions to that color management and HDR support.
December 15, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — December 12th, 2025

AI is already part of Linux's plumbing - whether developers like it or not
AI is quietly doing some of Linux's dirtiest work, but not everyone is comfortable with it.
December 12, 2025 — Source

AMD ROCm 7.10 Released - Strix Point APUs Now Officially Supported
Sure enough, yesterday's inaugural TheRock 7.10 release tag ended up being a precursor to ROCm 7.10 as predicted in the earlier article. Overnight ROCm 7.10 was released as a new developer preview and with it comes expanded hardware support -- including for Ryzen AI 300 Strix Point APUs finally being officially mentioned.
December 12, 2025 — Source

Bazzite 43.20251210 released
A new version of Bazzite Linux, version 43.20251210, has been released with improvements for gamers and streamers, including built-in HDR support and new CPU schedulers to reduce lag during games. The operating system comes with Steam pre-installed, making it easy to access your game collection, and includes user-contributed tools to make game launches faster and more tailored to gaming and streaming needs. Bazzite 43 also features integration with Lutris, a game launcher that can pull games from multiple sources beyond Steam, keeping them separate and clean during Steam sessions.
December 12, 2025 — Source

Blender Working On KosmicKrisp Support For Vulkan On macOS
The Blender 3D modeling software could enjoy better macOS support with better cross-platform code paths thanks to in-development work for leveraging KosmicKrisp for Vulkan API usage on macOS via Metal.
December 12, 2025 — Source

Bye, Windows: Which Linux distribution is right for you?
There are many reasons to switch to Linux, such as security, free software, and data protection. We compare the distributions.
December 12, 2025 — Source

Cache Aware Scheduling Raises Performance For Intel Xeon 6 Granite Rapids
The October round of Cache Aware Scheduling tests were done on a dual AMD EPYC 9965 server and showed nice results in a variety of workloads from this proposed kernel code. Thanks to Giga Computing having sent over the Gigabyte R284-A92-AAL1 barebones server a while back to address my failed Granite Rapids AP reference server platform, I am now able to run some Cache Aware Scheduling benchmarks with the Xeon 6900P series processors.
December 12, 2025 — Source

Kali Linux 2025.4 released
Kali Linux 2025.4 has been released with several notable changes, focusing on the three main desktop environments: GNOME, KDE Plasma, and Xfce. The update brings modern features such as Wayland as the default window server, an improved app grid, fuzzy search in KRunner, and color theme support to Xfce. In addition to these updates, Kali Linux 2025.4 also includes new tools like bpf-linker, evil-winrm-py, and Hexstrike-AI; package updates with a kernel upgrade to 6.16; and expanded support for Android devices through Kali NetHunter.
December 12, 2025 — Source or Source

Linux 6.19 Improves User-Space I/O "UIO" With Shared Virtual Addressing
Merged a few days ago for the ongoing Linux 6.19 merge window were all of the "char/misc" updates. A lot of random changes throughout this time from the Industrial I/O "IIO" drivers to an interesting new feature for User-Space I/O "UIO" for PCI/PCIe devices.
December 12, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.19 Lands x2AVIC Patches For AMD SVM Handling Up To 4096 vCPUs
The Kernel-based Virtual Machine "KVM" updates for Linux 6.19 include preparations by AMD for handling up to a possible 4,096 virtual CPUs for VMs.
December 12, 2025 — Source

Linux Patches Fix eMMC Secure Erase Of 1GB Taking ~10 Minutes To Now Just 2 Seconds
A new patch series from an NXP engineer optimizes the secure erase performance for certain Kingston eMMC devices. Currently with the Linux kernel performing a secure erase on 1GB of data can take around ten minutes. With these new patches that 1GB secure erase can be done in around two seconds.
December 12, 2025 — Source

New Patches Lay Out Linux Kernel Adjustments For RISC-V RVA23 Hardware
With the first of RISC-V RVA23-compatible hardware expected to be released in 2026, we are beginning to see more Linux developers prepare for this RVA23 profile and the now-mandated extensions. Sent out this week was an initial "request for comments" patch series on RVA23 adjustments for the Linux kernel.
December 12, 2025 — Source

NVIDIA Linux x64 (AMD64/EM64T) Display Driver 580.119.02 released
NVIDIA has released a new Linux x64 Display Driver, version 580.119.02, which addresses several issues from earlier versions. A particularly annoying bug that caused visual distortions on LG Ultragear monitors in specific modes is now fixed, and workstation GPUs with X-Plane are also no longer affected by a long-standing problem. The driver reverts changes made in previous versions that resulted in missing display options for certain resolutions and fixes user-reported issues with specific monitors causing display mode problems.
December 12, 2025 — Source

Parents call for New York governor to sign landmark AI safety bill
They called it "minimalist guardrails" that should set a standard.
December 12, 2025 — Source

ReBAR Code Cleaned Up For Linux 6.19 Along With A Few New PCIe Controller Drivers
All of the PCI subsystem updates were merged last week for the nearly-over Linux 6.19 merge window. Standing out this cycle are Resizable BAR improvements as well as introducing a few new PCIe controller drivers.
December 12, 2025 — Source

Rebellions and Red Hat Introduce Red Hat OpenShift AI Powered by Rebellions NPUs
Rebellions and Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced Red Hat OpenShift AI powered by Rebellions neural processing units (NPUs), integrating Red Hat's scalable, flexible and open source AI inference capabilities with Rebellions' energy-efficient NPUs to deliver a validated full-stack enterprise AI platform. This collaboration fully supports Red Hat's goal to deliver "any model, any accelerator, any cloud" to customers globally by enabling more choice and optionality in the architectures underpinning AI workloads.
December 12, 2025 — Source

Roundcube 1.7 RC released
The Roundcube development team has released a candidate build for Roundcube 1.7, featuring substantial changes and fixes over beta2. New additions include better CSV import support, a markdown editor plugin for composing messages, and improved security through the default 'noopener' attribute settings on links opening in new tabs. However, there are breaking changes that users should know when upgrading, including the removal of the contact_search_name setting and changes to user session timeouts.
December 12, 2025 — Source

Samba 4.23.4 released
The latest stable release of the Samba 4.23 series has been announced, bringing new fixes and enhancements to this widely used open-source file and print sharing system. This update addresses several issues related to sharing files and folders, including problems with Time Machine backups, the mdssvc service, winbind cache consistency, and a function called vfswrap_openat that could cause issues when handling directories. The samba-bgqd daemon's man page has also been updated alongside other changes in the release.
December 12, 2025 — Source

Synergizing Intelligence and Orchestration: Transforming Cloud Deployments with AI and Kubernetes
Leverage AI's predictive analytics and automation with Kubernetes autoscaling and self‑healing to transform cloud deployments more efficiently.
December 12, 2025 — This Company Thinks It Can Power AI Data Centers With Supersonic Jet Engines
The same tech that could bring back supersonic aircraft may also let data centers continue to operate at scale.
December 12, 2025 — Source

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Ubuntu Studio 26.04 May Modernize Its Desktop Layout
Ubuntu Studio is the variant of Ubuntu Linux focused on content creation and audio recording needs, video editing, and other creative workloads. Ubuntu Studio's desktop hasn't seen too many changes since Ubuntu 12.04 LTS some 13+ years ago. But Ubuntu Studio developers are now considering desktop layout changes to help modernize its appearance.
December 12, 2025 — Source

Vulkan 1.4.336 Released With NVIDIA Compute Occupancy Priority Extension
Vulkan 1.4.336 is out today as the first spec update in two weeks for this high performance graphics and compute API.
December 12, 2025 — Source

Ventoy 1.1.09 released
Ventoy, a popular bootable USB drive utility, has been updated to version 1.1.09 with several key improvements and new features. A frustrating bug that prevented openSUSE users from booting has been fixed, making it smoother for affected users. The update also includes experimental support for the Btrfs file system, but with limitations: it only works in non-RAID setups and doesn't support compressing ISO files made for btrfs. Additionally, several other bugs were addressed, including an issue affecting persistence plugins for Arch Linux users and problems related to the web interface for managing VentoyPlugsons.
December 12, 2025 — Source

Zen Browser 1.17.13b released
Zen Browser 1.17.13b has been released with several security updates and notable feature additions. The main focus of this release was on addressing high-impact bugs, including fixes for CVE-2025-14321 and CVE-2025-14322, which resolved use-after-free issues in WebRTC Signaling and sandbox escape problems in the Graphics CanvasWebGL part. Additionally, the developers plugged up other security holes, such as JIT miscompilations and same-origin policy bypasses. The update also brings feature additions like support for fractional scaled displays on Linux Wayland, a dedicated GPU process on MacOS, and improved theme customization options.
December 12, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — December 11th, 2025

D7VK 1.0 Released For "Production Ready" Direct3D 7 On Vulkan
The D7VK project recently started as the Direct3D 7 API implemented atop the Vulkan API akin to DXVK and VKD3D-Proton with newer versions of Microsoft Direct3D. Today marks the D7VK 1.0 release for this project in now declaring itself "production ready" for Linux gamers.
December 11, 2025 — Source

dtSearch Adds Linux ARM64 Build and Boosts JSON/CSV Support in 2025.02 Release
dtSearch has released version 2025.02 of its enterprise and developer product line, expanding platform coverage and strengthening support for modern data formats used in large-scale applications. The update targets organizations and developers who need to instantly search terabytes of text across mixed on-premises and cloud environments.
December 11, 2025 — Source

Qualcomm Acquires RISC-V Specialists At Ventana Microsystems
An acquisition announcement that flew under the radar yesterday but then I only noticed today with a GCC MAINTAINERS file update, "with the acquisition of Ventana Microsystems by Qualcomm..." Qualcomm has acquired Ventana as a RISC-V high performance CPU start-up.
December 11, 2025 — Source

Rust 1.92.0 released
Rust has released its latest stable version, 1.92.0, which can be updated using the command $ rustup update stable for users already set up with rustup. Alternatively, those without rustup can download it from the official website along with full release notes. One key change in this version is the introduction of deny-by-default never type lints, intended to ensure future compatibility and prevent code patterns that may cause issues once "never" types become stable.
December 11, 2025 — Source

System76 Launches Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS With COSMIC Desktop
Back in October System76 announced a planned release date for Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS and the COSMIC Desktop... And they've made it! The new Pop!_OS 24.04 is now available for download as the long-awaited update atop an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS base while using their Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment.
December 11, 2025 — Source

Tails 7.3.1 released
Tails 7.3.1 has been released to the public, representing a minor update that addresses a security vulnerability discovered in one of its software libraries. This version includes several key upgrades focused on improving overall security, stability, and usability for users, including updates to Thunderbird and the Tor Browser. Additionally, there have been significant improvements to how Tails handles releases itself, including adjustments for custom about:tor patches and enhancements to the test suite.
December 11, 2025 — Source

Ubuntu 26.04 Snapshot 2 Released As Latest Monthly ISOs
It was just at the end of month that Ubuntu 26.04 Snapshot 1 ISOs were published for the first "Resolute Raccoon" milestone. Out already is now Snapshot 2 with Canonical releasing these images ahead of their engineers having time off for end-of-year holidays.
December 11, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — December 5th, 2025

AMD EPYC 7773X "Milan-X" Performance & Power Nearly Four Years Later
Nearly four years have passed since AMD launched their EPYC Milan-X processors with 3D V-Cache. When recently rearranging some servers in the lab and realizing the four year anniversary was coming up in March, curiosity got the best of me in wondering where the Linux performance and energy efficiency on Milan-X is now with the latest Linux software stack compared to the numbers when Milan-X launched back in March 2022.
December 5, 2025 — Source

Fedora versus Arch Linux: How to choose your next Linux distro (and which one I use)
If you're trying to decide between two powerhouse Linux distributions, let's see if I can help you make the call.
December 5, 2025 — Source

FreeBSD 15 trims legacy fat and revamps how OS is built
Project retires 32-bit ports, embraces pkgbase, and modernizes build process
December 5, 2025 — Source

Intel Graphics Score A Big Win With Linux 6.19: Color Management & Xe VFIO Driver Merged
On top of enabling Xe3P graphics for Nova Lake and Crescent Island plus other changes like CASF adaptive sharpening for Lunar Lake and newer, another set of Intel kernel graphics driver updates were merged overnight as a big win for the open-source Intel graphics stack on Linux.
December 5, 2025 — Source

Intel Nova Lake Audio Support Merged For Linux 6.19
The sound subsystem updates were merged on Thursday for enabling a variety of new audio hardware with the Linux 6.19. Among the hardware standing out is getting Intel Nova Lake audio support in order.
December 5, 2025 — Source

Intel Updates Cache Aware Scheduling For Linux With Better NUMA Balancing
Intel engineer Tim Chen has sent out a second version of the proposed Cache Aware Scheduling patches for the Linux kernel to enhance the CPU performance of modern processors sporting multiple cache domains.
December 5, 2025 — Source

Jolla Trying Again To Develop A New Sailfish OS Linux Smartphone
Finnish company Jolla started out 14 years ago where Nokia left off with MeeGo and developed Sailfish OS as a new Linux smartphone platform. Jolla released their first smartphone in 2013 after crowdfunding but ultimately the Sailfish OS focus the past number of years now has been offering their software stack for use on other smartphone devices. But now it seems they are trying again with a new crowd-funded smartphone.
December 5, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 crowned LTS kernel -- and Alpine 3.23 wastes no time adopting it
Umpteen other distros just put out new versions, but this one is our favorite
December 5, 2025 — Source

Linux founder Linus Torvalds defends Windows' Blue Screens of Death
Linus Torvalds believes that Windows doesn't deserve jokes about the Blue Screen of Death. He argues that the reasons for the infamous BSOD often don't lie with Microsoft.
December 5, 2025 — Source

Linux NTFS3 Driver Will Now Support Timestamps Prior To 1970
While NTFSPLUS continues to be developed as a new and modern NTFS open-source driver for Linux systems, at the moment NTFS3 from Paragon Software remains the most capable NTFS file-system driver within the mainline kernel. For the Linux 6.19 merge window a variety of fixes have landed for this driver.
December 5, 2025 — Source

Linux Still Dealing With Quirky Firewire Devices As We Enter 2026
For Linux 6.19 as what will be the first stable kernel release of 2026, the IEEE-1394 Firewire stack continues dealing with device quirks and improving support for different Firewire-connected devices. In 2026 is also when the Linux Firewire maintainer plans to begin recommending users migrate away from the IEEE-1394 bus followed by closing the Linux Firewire efforts in 2029.
December 5, 2025 — Source

Next ChatGPT upgrade imminent following 'code red' declaration
Earlier this week, it was reported that OpenAI was in a bit of a tizzy over the current state of Google's Gemini generative AI model. A so-called "code red" declaration was made, which will reportedly result in the next upgrade to ChatGPT arriving sooner than expected.
December 5, 2025 — Source

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang admits he doesn't know if AI will eventually destroy humanity
Huang also praised Trump's handling of the US economy
December 5, 2025 — Source

NVIDIA Improves Block Layer Peer-To-Peer DMA In Linux 6.19
The IO_uring and block subsystem changes have been merged for the Linux 6.19 merge window with a few improvements worth highlighting this cycle.
December 5, 2025 — Source

OpenAI strikes deal on US$4.6 bn AI center in Australia
ChatGPT maker OpenAI and an Australian data center operator have agreed to develop a multibillion-dollar AI center in Sydney.
December 5, 2025 — Source

OpenAI's Code Red Strategy Explained: Plan to Make ChatGPT Faster, Steadier & Clearer
What happens when a tech giant sounds the alarm? OpenAI's recent declaration of a "Code Red" has sent ripples through the artificial intelligence industry, signaling a moment of intense urgency and recalibration. Once the undisputed leader in conversational AI, OpenAI now faces mounting pressure from rivals like Google and Anthropic, whose advancements threaten to outpace its flagship product, ChatGPT. Simultaneously, internal hurdles, ranging from talent attrition to soaring operational costs, have compounded the company's challenges. This bold move by OpenAI isn't just a response to competition; it's a high-stakes bid to redefine its future in a rapidly evolving landscape.
December 5, 2025 — Source

OpenAI's GPT-5.2 'code red' response to Google is coming next week
OpenAI's Gemini 3 response is coming sooner than expected.
December 5, 2025 — Source

PHP 8.3.29RC1, 8.4.16RC1, and 8.5.1RC1 Fedora/RHEL Packages released
PHP developer Remi Collet has just released three new Release Candidate versions for testing: PHP 8.3.29RC1, 8.4.16RC1, and the highly anticipated 8.5.1RC.
December 5, 2025 — Source

Tuxedo unveils Gemini 17 Gen4 Linux laptop for high performance workloads
Tuxedo Computers has launched its latest Linux laptop, the Gemini 17 Gen4. The new 17.3 inch notebook is designed as as a desktop replacement and combines an Intel Core i9 processor, Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti graphics and a 2560 x 1440 240Hz display. It's aimed at users who want workstation performance in a portable form.
December 5, 2025 — Source

Wine 11.0-rc1 Released With TWAINDSM 64-bit Module For Scanners
As anticipated the first release candidate of Wine 11.0 is now available in working toward the annual stable release in January.
December 5, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — December 3rd, 2025

Alpine Linux 3.23 Released With APK Tools v3 For Package Management
Alpine Linux 3.23 is out today as the newest feature release for this lightweight Linux distribution built around musl libc and BusyBox that has become quite popular for containers and embedded uses.
December 3, 2025 — Source

elementary OS versus Ubuntu Budgie: Two beautiful Linux distros, but which is right for you?
These Linux distros are as elegant as they are user-friendly. Here's how to decide between them.
December 3, 2025 — Source

Fedora 44 Cleared To Replace Kernel Console With User-Space KMSCON
A proposal was raised a month ago for Fedora Linux 44 to replace the kernel's frame-buffer console "FBCON" with KMSCON in user-space. The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) has now granted approval for making this change in Fedora 44 as part of a larger foal to eventually deprecate FBCON/FBDEV emulation in the kernel.
December 3, 2025 — Source

Intel's Open-Source Linux Graphics Driver Delivered Significant Improvements In 2025
Last week I provided a look at how Intel's GPU compute performance on Battlemage evolved in 2025. In today's article is a similar Intel Arc A-Series "Alchemist" and B-Series "Battlemage" look at how the OpenGL and Vulkan graphics performance has evolved over the past year. Simply put, the open-source Intel Linux graphics driver stack has evolved immensely this year... Not just for Vulkan but even the OpenGL support continues moving in the right direction too.
December 3, 2025 — Source

LibreOffice 26.2 Alpha 1 Released For Testing
The first alpha release of the LibreOffice 26.2 open-source and cross platform office suite is now available for testing ahead of its official release in February.
December 3, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 arrives as the year's final drop and likely next LTS
The last new kernel release of 2025 is here, and it's looking likely this will be the new LTS kernel release.
December 3, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 Officially Promoted To Being An LTS Kernel
Not exactly a big surprise but the recently released Linux 6.18 kernel is now officially promoted to being this year's Long Term Support "LTS" kernel.
December 3, 2025 — Source

Linux usage hits an all-time high in Steam Hardware Survey—and AMD processors continue their march against Intel
Windows 11 seems to be good at making enemies.
December 3, 2025 — Source

Microsoft ACPI Fan Extensions & Configurable Hibernation Threads For Linux 6.19
The pull requests landing the power management subsystem updates for Linux 6.19 along with the ACPI and thermal control code have landed. There is new hardware support, Microsoft ACPI Fan Extensions support, and other new features for Linux power management in this new kernel.
December 3, 2025 — Source

Microsoft finds an unlikely ally — Linux developer defends Windows against BSoD jokes
It turns out unreliable hardware might have more to do with your Windows BSoD errors than software bugs.
December 3, 2025 — Source

Sam Altman orders "code red" for ChatGPT as rival AI models catch up
Under pressure from Google Gemini and Anthropic's Claude
December 3, 2025 — Source

Scoped User Access In Linux 6.19 To Reduce Speculation Barriers & Its Performance Hit
Merged yesterday to the Linux 6.19 Git codebase was the "core/uaccess" pull that introduces new scoped user-mode access with auto-cleanup functionality. This can reduce the number of speculation barriers encountered when needing to access user-mode memory and thereby avoiding some of the performance penalties incurred by speculation barriers.
December 3, 2025 — Source

Sound Open Firmware 2.14 Released With Intel Wildcat Lake & Nova Lake Support
Sound Open Firmware is one of the projects started originally by Intel but has grown into a multi-vendor initiative for open-source audio digital signal processing (DSP) firmware and development tooling for a variety of platforms under the Linux Foundation umbrella.
December 3, 2025 — Source

X.Org Server's xkbcomp Updated For Four Security Issues Dating Back Years
Red Hat's Peter Hutterer announced the release today of xkbcomp 1.5, the CLI utility used for compiling X Keyboard Extension (XBD) keyboard descriptions for the X.Org Server. Driving this new xkbcomp release are fixes for four security issues.
December 3, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — November 30th, 2025

Bazzite Gaming OS 43.20251127
Bazzite makes gaming and everyday use smoother and simpler across desktop PCs, handhelds, tablets, and home theater PCs.
November 30, 2025 — Source

Black Sesame SoC Support To Be Merged For Linux 6.19
A new SoC vendor and in turn new SoC/platform support is set to premiere in the Linux 6.19 kernel with the initial Black Sesame Technologies C1200 support.
November 30, 2025 — Source

Broadcom "BNG_RE" Next-Generation RoCE Driver Slated For Linux 6.19
Queued up via the Linux kernel's RDMA development Git tree is "BNG_RE" as the next-generation RoCE driver from Broadcom.
November 30, 2025 — Source

Features Expected For Linux 6.19: ASUS Armoury, Many Intel Bits, AMD GCN 1.0/1.1 Enhanced
With the Linux 6.18 kernel likely being released later today, here is a look at some of the features on the table for the next kernel cycle, Linux 6.19. The list is based on changes queued in various "-next" branches ahead of the Linux 6.19 merge window. There's always the possibility of last minute change of plans or objections raised by Linus Torvalds, but this should provide an early look at some of the features more than likely to be merged for Linux 6.19.
November 30, 2025 — Source

Genode OS Framework 25.11 Adds Intel Alder Lake Graphics Support
The Genode OS Framework 25.11 release was issued this weekend as the newest update to this original open-source operating system effort built around a micro-kernel design and various novel design approaches.
November 30, 2025 — Source

Helm Improves Kubernetes Package Management with Biggest Release in 6 Years
Helm, the Kubernetes application package manager, has officially reached version 4.0.0. Helm 4 is the first major upgrade in six years, and also marks Helm's 10th anniversary under the guidance of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). The update aims to address several challenges around scalability, security, and developer workflow.
November 30, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 Released With Many New Features, Likely This Year's LTS Kernel
Linux 6.18 stable is now available! Linux 6.18 ushers in many new features and changes while also is expected to become this year's Long Term Support "LTS" kernel version.
November 30, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.19 Will Allow You To Write I2C Drivers In Rust
With the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel cycle there are yet more Rust kernel bindings being introduced and other additions to make it possible to write more Linux kernel drivers within the Rust programming language. Among the new Rust additions expected for Linux 6.19 are making it possible to write Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) bus drivers in Rust.
November 30, 2025 — Source

NixOS 25.11 Released With 7,002 New Packages Added
It's been an exciting weekend for Linux distribution released with new versions of Endeavour OS, CachyOS, Solus and now a new NixOS release.
November 30, 2025 — Source

Sylve Maturing As A FreeBSD Unified Web Management Interface
Ahead of the FreeBSD 15.0 stable release expected to be announced next week, the FreeBSD project today published their Q3-2025 status report to outline their various development accomplishments from July through September.
November 30, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — November 29th, 2025

Arch Linux Based Endeavour OS Updated After ISO Refresh Hiatus
Endeavour OS is one of the popular desktop Linux distributions built around Arch Linux providing a nice out-of-the-box experience. Since their last ISO refresh back in March there hadn't been much news from the project nor any new ISO releases for this rolling-release distro. But thankfully today they are back in the saddle with a new ISO release, Endeavour OS 2025.11.24 "Ganymede".
November 29, 2025 — Source

CachyOS Improves Intel Video Acceleration Experience
In addition to the release today of a big refresh to Endeavour OS, CachyOS is out with their latest ISO refresh for this additional Arch Linux powered desktop OS. CachyOS for its November 2025 refresh brings installer improvements, now installs additional packages for media acceleration when capable Intel graphics are detected, handling for Bcachefs with its DKMS module, and other improvements.
November 29, 2025 — Source

Docker Releases Desktop 4.50, Adds Free Debugging Tools and AI-Native Enhancements
Docker recently announced the release of Docker Desktop 4.50, marking another update for developers seeking faster, more secure workflows and expanded AI-integration capabilities. The release introduces a free version of Docker Debug for all users, deeper IDE integration (including VSCode and Cursor), improved multi-service to Kubernetes conversion support, new enterprise-grade governance controls, and early support for Model Context Protocol (MCP) tooling.
November 29, 2025 — Source

Framework Computer Now Sponsoring LVFS / Fwupd Development
With the Linux Vendor Firmware Service serving more than 135 million downloads for Linux users updating their system and device firmware, LVFS has been working to get more hardware vendors to contribute either engineering resources or directly contributing annual dues as sponsors. Framework Computer is now the first one to have executed an agreement under these new sponsorship efforts.
November 29, 2025 — Source

GNOME Gains New Clipboard Manager Option With "Copyous"
For those looking to improve their clipboard management experience on the GNOME desktop, Copyous is a new GNOME Shell extension serving as a new clipboard manager.
November 29, 2025 — Source

Intel Hiring Two More Experienced Linux Kernel Engineers
While there have been a number of Intel Linux engineers laid off over roughly the past year, other Linux kernel engineers opting to pursue employment opportunities elsewhere amid the ongoing challenges and restructuring at the company, and shifts in their open-source strategy, there's some good news as we work toward the 2025 holidays. Intel is currently hiring for two more experienced Linux kernel software engineers.
November 29, 2025 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.6's KWin Implements RandR Emulation For Better XWayland Experience
KDE developers have been busy ending out the month of November with a number of new features and fixes queued up for next year's Plasma 6.6 desktop release.
November 29, 2025 — Source

Kubernetes Community Retires Popular Ingress NGINX Controller
The Kubernetes SIG Network and the Security Response Committee has announced the retirement of Ingress NGINX, one of the most widely deployed ingress controllers in the ecosystem. Best-effort maintenance will continue until March 2026, after which there will be no further releases, bug fixes, or security updates, according to an announcement made at Kubecon NA 2025.
November 29, 2025 — Source

Niri 25.11 Rust-Written Wayland Compositor Adds Alt-Tab Switcher, New Animations
Niri 25.11 is now available as the latest feature release for this Rust-written, scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor.
November 29, 2025 — Source

Solus Linux 4.8 Released With Python 2 Finally Removed, Abandons Solus Software Center
In addition to the releases today of updated Endeavour OS and CachyOS, Solus 4.8 is out as the latest version of another desktop Linux distribution popular with enthusiasts.
November 29, 2025 — Source

Wine Staging 10.20 released
The latest version of Wine Staging, 10.20, has been released with a range of updates that are being tested and refined before entering the main development branch. This version serves as a testing ground where users can try out new ideas in collaboration with developers, allowing for real-time feedback and better results. The release includes a rebase against Wine 10.20 and updated graphics technologies, specifically the vkd3d-latest patchset, which is advancing innovative solutions within the ecosystem.
November 29, 2025 — Source

Zen Browser 1.17.11B released
Zen Browser has released an update to version 1.17.11b with several enhancements. The update fixes common issues for Windows users, including opening a tab from the sidebar now requiring only one click and entering fullscreen mode on multi-monitor setups no longer displaying a brief border. Additionally, the browser's performance has been improved by fixing page load hiccups caused by HTTP/3 connection failures, resulting in faster load times when encountering this issue. For Mac users with pinned tabs, the update addresses issues where certain pins wouldn't restore after quitting or relaunching the browser, making tab management more stable on macOS devices.
November 29, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — November 26th, 2025

5 Linux desktop environments that make ditching Windows 10 easy - including my top pick
If you're looking to migrate from Windows 10 or 11 and Linux is in your sights, you might want to try one of these desktop environments to ease the transition.
November 23, 2025 — Source

Collabora Office is an open source desktop suite for Windows, macOS and Linux
Collabora Office is an open source desktop suite for Windows, macOS and Linux
November 23, 2025 — Source

Debian versus Ubuntu: How to pick the right Linux for your workflow
Debian is the classic server Linux, but tends to be the second choice on desktop hardware. It'd be wrong to write off Debian on the desktop.
November 23, 2025 — Source

Fedora SIG Proposed To Improve Production Stability
A Fedora special interest group is being proposed to help improve production stability of Fedora Linux and better handling incident management when problems do arise.
November 23, 2025 — Source

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K "Arrow Lake" Linux Performance Up ~9% One Year Later At ~85% Power Use
It's been just over one year now since the launch of the Core Ultra 9 285K and other Arrow Lake desktop processors. For those that may be considering an Arrow Lake CPU this holiday season for a Linux desktop or just curious how the power and performance has evolved one year later, here are some leading-edge benchmarks of the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K compared to the launch-day performance last October.
November 23, 2025 — Source

IPFire 2.29 - Core Update 199 is available for testing
IPFire 2.29 - Core Update 199 is now available for testing, bringing significant enhancements to the platform's networking capabilities, including support for WiFi 7 and automatic setup for newer wireless capabilities. The update also includes native LLDP/CDP integration, allowing users to better understand their network layout, as well as security patches and stability fixes based on Linux 6.12.58. Other notable improvements include a refreshed Intrusion Prevention System using Suricata version 8.0.2, updated OpenVPN features, and improved system boot management with draceng.
November 23, 2025 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive In Dropping X11 Session Support
KDE developers announced they are going "all-in on a Wayland future" and with the Plasma 6.8 desktop it will become Wayland-exclusive. The Plasma X11 session is going away.
November 23, 2025 — Source

Librnp update for Gentoo Linux
A security advisory has been issued for Gentoo Linux, warning users about a vulnerability in the librnp package due to weak random number generation that can be easily cracked. The affected version of librnp, 0.18.0, generates weak session keys for public key encryption, potentially allowing attackers with just the public key to read encrypted messages. Users are advised to upgrade to the latest version of librnp (0.18.1 or higher) as soon as possible and be aware that sensitive information sent using affected software may have been compromised.
November 23, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.19 Overhauling The Intel TDX Locking Code For KVM
Sean Christopherson of Google sent out the pull requests to the KVM tree of the various x86_64-related areas of virtualization he oversees. With these updates ahead of the Linux 6.19 merge window there is a significant overhaul of Intel's Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) code to address various outstanding problems.
November 23, 2025 — Source

Linux, Erlang, Rails, and more updates for Debian
Multiple Debian security advisories (DSA) were issued, addressing vulnerabilities in various packages, including Linux kernel, pdfminer, tryton-sao, rails, cups-filters, libsdl2, and net-snmp. These updates fix issues related to privilege escalation, denial of service, information leaks, cross-site scripting (XSS), and out-of-bounds reads or writes. The affected packages have been updated with new versions that include security patches, including CVE-2025-21861, CVE-2025-39929, and others.
November 23, 2025 — Source

LXQt-Panel 2.3.1 released
The LXQt team has released a new point update for the LXQt desktop environment, making version 2.3.1 of the lxqt-panel available for download. The LXQt panel serves as the taskbar and central hub where users interact with their system, utilizing interactive elements known as "plugins" or "widgets." This latest release includes updates that improve stability for developers working on older systems, particularly those using Qt < 6.8, by adjusting the build process to work with earlier versions of the Qt library.
November 23, 2025 — Source

NVIDIA Is Interested In Helping Bring Vulkan Video To Chrome
NVIDIA engineers are interested in helping Google bring Vulkan Video accelerated GPU video decoding to the Chrome/Chromium web browser.
November 23, 2025 — Source

OpenJDK, Kernel, MuPDF updates for Ubuntu
Several security updates are available for Ubuntu Linux, addressing various vulnerabilities. These include updates for OpenJDK 21, 25, 8, 11, and 17, as well as the MuPDF library. Additionally, there are kernel vulnerability patches available for Linux on Raspberry Pi and general Linux systems.
November 23, 2025 — Source

Radeon Software for Linux 25.20.3 Released - "Exclusively Open-Source" With RADV
With the great upstream support for AMD Radeon graphics in the Linux kernel and Mesa, most desktop users / gamers / enthusiasts are best off just using the latest code shipped by their distributions or via the enthusiast-supported third-party archives/repositories. But for those on older enterprise Linux distributions, Radeon Software for Linux 25.20.3 was recently released for shipping that packaged AMD Linux graphics driver stack. This 25.20 series is the big one where they are now officially supporting the Mesa RADV Vulkan driver in place of their own former Vulkan Linux driver.
November 23, 2025 — Source

Rocky Linux 10.1 released
The Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation has released Rocky Linux 10.1, built from sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.1 and designed to provide a reliable platform for applications. This new version includes notable features such as systemd soft reboots, post-quantum cryptography (PQC) updates, and XFS file system upgrades, in addition to updated software packages like .NET 10 and Node.js 24. Rocky Linux prioritizes thorough testing, with this release undergoing two weeks of rigorous checks across various environments before its release.
November 23, 2025 — Source

Rocky Linux 10.1 Released As Community Alternative To RHEL 10.1
Following the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.1 earlier this month, Rocky Linux 10.1 is now available for this popular community-driven alternative to RHEL 10.1.
November 23, 2025 — Source

Tuxedo Computers slams lid on Arm Linux laptop after 18 months of pain
Planned Snapdragon goes puff and disappears, but the code will survive
November 23, 2025 — Source

Urgent ACPI Revert For Linux 6.18 To Deal With Some Hardware Crashing
The Linux 6.18 kernel is anticipated for release this coming Sunday while this week a last-minute crisis was averted following reports of a kernel crash from recent ACPI code changes.
November 23, 2025 — Source

Windows 10 retirement pushes 780,000 users to Linux as Zorin OS Hits 1M downloads — but Microsoft still wants to evolve Windows 11 into an agentic AI OS
The Zorin OS developer recently disclosed that the Linux distro gained approximately 780,000 users from Windows, a little over a month since Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows 10.
November 23, 2025 — Source

Zen Browser 1.17.10b released
Zen Browser has released a new version, 1.17.10b, which brings the browser up to date with the latest Firefox version (145.0.2). This update includes various bug fixes to improve the overall performance and stability of Zen Browser. Specifically, developers have resolved issues with the download animation and the Glance feature's activation when using Ctrl or Shift while clicking links.
November 23, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — November 23rd, 2025

Frustrated users crowdfund a $2,000 fix for Lenovo Legion 'speakers not working properly' error — bug bounty posted, coder wins the cash by fixing complex audio annoyance in just a month
Six folks pledged lumps of cash to make it happen.
November 23, 2025 — Source

Google Looks To Bring JPEG-XL Support Back To Chrome / Chromium
Back in 2022 was the surprising decision by Google that they were going to deprecate JPEG-XL image support in Chrome. By the end of 2022 they went ahead and removed JPEG-XL support from Chrome/Chromium to the frustration of many web developers and end-users interested in this image format. Now though as we get ready to roll into 2026, Google engineers are looking at bringing back JPEG-XL support to the Chrome web browser.
November 23, 2025 — Source

Glibc Math Code Sees 4x Improvement On AMD Zen By Changing FMA Implementation
Merged this week to the GNU C Library "glibc" code is dropping the ldbl-96 FMA implementation from this library as in doing so they found a 4x improvement to throughput and latency on AMD Zen 3 hardware.
November 23, 2025 — Source

Linux Patches Improve Intel Nested VM Memory Performance Up To ~2353x In Synthetic Test
AWS engineers have been working on Linux kernel improvements to KVM's VMX code for enhancing the unmanaged guest memory when dealing with nested virtual machines. The improved code addresses some correctness issues as well as delivering wild performance improvements within a synthetic benchmark.
November 23, 2025 — Source

Linux Security Roundup for Week 47, 2025
Several Linux distributions released security updates last week to address various vulnerabilities and patches for packages such as kernel, libssh, vim, and others. Distributions including AlmaLinux, Debian GNU/Linux, Fedora Linux, Oracle Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Rocky Linux, Slackware Linux, SUSE Linux, and Ubuntu Linux have received these updates, with some affecting multiple versions of the operating system. The security issues addressed include arbitrary code execution, denial-of-service attacks, heap buffer over-reads, NULL pointer dereferences, and other types of vulnerabilities in software packages like Chromium, Firefox, Thunderbird, and more. These updates can be installed using package managers such as dnf for Fedora Linux or by applying a valid GPG key for some distributions.
November 23, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — November 22nd, 2025

Algol 68 GCC Compiler Patches Updated With Modules System Added
Since the start of the new year, there have been patches being posted for proposing a new GCC compiler front-end for the half-century old Algol 68 programming language. Oracle engineer Jose Marchesi has been leading the Algol 68 effort for GCC and this weekend posted a new revision of the patches, which now includes a working modules system implementation.
November 22, 2025 — Source

FreeBSD 15.0-RC3 Ships Latest OpenZFS, KDE Dropped From DVD ISO Due To Size Constraints
FreeBSD 15.0 is working toward its stable release in early December. As part of reaching that major release, FreeBSD 15.0-RC3 released today as what may be the final release candidate before FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE.
November 21, 2025 — Source

Grafana Unveils Smarter Logs, an MCP Server, and TraceQL Upgrades in Latest Releases
Grafana Labs has published major updates across two of its core observability products: Grafana 12.3, and Grafana Tempo 2.9. The two releases have distinct improvements in monitoring and tracing for Grafana users.
November 21, 2025 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.6 Will Provide A Much Better Experience For High Refresh Rate Displays
More features continue piling on for the KDE Plasma 6.6 desktop, including an important performance fix this week for those running displays with a higher than 60Hz refresh rate.
November 21, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 To Enable Both Touchscreens On The AYANEO Flip DS Dual-Screen Handheld
Sent out today were a set of input subsystem fixes for the near-final Linux 6.18 kernel. A bit of a notable addition via this "fixes" pull is getting both touchscreens working on the AYANEO Flip DS, a dual-screen gaming handheld device that can be loaded up with Linux.
November 21, 2025 — Source

Linux Device Trees For Cancelled Products? Don't "Waste Time"
Yesterday TUXEDO Computers cancelled their Snapdragon X Elite Linux laptop plans. In their announcement discontinuing work on this X1E Linux laptop, they said they would still upstream the Device Tree support to the mainline Linux kernel. Indeed they posted a new revision of their DT patches on Friday for the Linux kernel, but there is diminishing outlook that they will be accepted upstream for this cancelled product.
November 21, 2025 — Source

Olmo 3 Release Provides Full Transparency into Model Development and Training
The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence has launched Olmo 3, an open-source language model family that offers researchers and developers comprehensive access to the entire model development process. Unlike earlier releases that provided only final weights, Olmo 3 includes checkpoints, training datasets, and tools for every stage of development, encompassing pretraining and post-training for reasoning, instruction following, and reinforcement learning.
November 21, 2025 — Source

PHP 8.5.0, PHP 8.4.15, and 8.3.28 Debian packages released
Ondřej Surý has released the latest PHP packages for Debian GNU/Linux users, including updates for PHP 8.5.0, PHP 8.4.15, and PHP 8.3.28 for various Debian versions. The new PHP 8.5 major release introduces several notable features, such as a "URI" extension that allows direct manipulation of URIs in code. Other enhancements include the pipe operator (|>), which streamlines complex operations by letting you chain commands naturally, and improvements to object and array cloning, function return values, and closure usage.
November 21, 2025 — Source

RISC-V Testing Lapse Resulted In Wrong MIPS RISC-V Vendor ID Landing In Linux 6.18
An interesting anecdote from this week's batch of RISC-V fixes for the Linux 6.18 kernel exposed that the MIPS RISC-V/JEDEC vendor ID was wrong for code merged at the start of the kernel cycle. The testing hadn't caught it either as the QEMU emulation also ended up inadvertently using the wrong vendor ID too.
November 21, 2025 — Source

Snapdragon X1 Elite Linux laptop cancelled due to performance concerns — Linux PC maker says Qualcomm CPU is 'less suitable for Linux than expected'
Developing Linux for the Snapdragon X1 Elite took way too long.
November 21, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — November 21st, 2025

ASUS Armoury Driver Set To Be Introduced In Linux 6.19
Expected to be introduced in the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel cycle is the ASUS Armoury "asus-armoury" driver for enhancing support for the ASUS ROG Ally gaming handhelds and other ASUS enthusiast/gaming devices under Linux.
November 21, 2025 — Source

Clang 21 Delivering Nice Performance Gains On AMD EPYC Zen 4 With HBM3
One of the areas I've been meaning to run more benchmarks on this season has been for the recently released Clang 21 compiler. Back in September when LLVM Clang 21 was debuting I ran some initial benchmarks and found it to deliver some nice performance gains on AMD EPYC Zen 5 but then have been busy with other benchmarks/articles for expanding that testing.
November 21, 2025 — Source

Intel Continues Working On Dynamic PAMT To Reduce Memory Overhead For TDX
One of the improvements that Intel software engineers have been working on for the Linux kernel around their Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) functionality for confidential computing VMs is reducing the memory use. That work is under the Dynamic PAMT umbrella and this week brought the latest iteration of patches to help lower RAM use when engaging TDX for confidential VMs.
November 21, 2025 — Source

Intel Linux Driver Working To Enable "CMTG" Feature For Lunar Lake Onwards
With Lunar Lake and newer Intel graphics there is a new feature called the Common Mode Timing Generator (CMTG) that so far hasn't been enabled by the open-source Intel Linux graphics driver. But patches being worked on are enabling this CMTG feature that will unlock other functionality moving forward.
November 21, 2025 — Source

KDE neon 20251120 released
KDE neon has released its latest version, offering users immediate access to the newest KDE Plasma features directly from Ubuntu's long-term support base. This distribution presents unmodified versions of KDE applications and tools, allowing enthusiasts to experience fresh KDE releases without waiting for community adjustments.
November 21, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.19 To Add Support For The Realtek RTL8125K
The upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel cycle is set to introduce support for the Realtek RTL8125K as a forthcoming Ethernet ASIC.
November 21, 2025 — Source

NVIDIA 580.94.11 Linux Driver Brings HDR Metadata Support
NVIDIA today issued the 580.94.11 driver release as their newest Vulkan beta driver for Linux customers. Most notable with this beta driver update is adding VK_EXT_hdr_metadata support.
November 21, 2025 — Source

Rust dev shoots down hopes of playing the hit survival game on Valve's Steam Machine: "There are no plans to support Proton or Linux"
Valve's Steam Machine is an exciting prospect, not least because it allows for all sorts of popular games to now be played comfortably in your living room. Players of survival game Rust are keen for such an option; however, their hopes have been dashed due to that most irritating of hurdles: compatibility issues.
November 21, 2025 — Source

Servo Announces Sponsorship Tiers To Get More Organizations Backing This Browser Engine
The Servo open-source web browser engine has been making good progress in recent times. Long outside the confines of Mozilla and working as a Linux Foundation Europe project, Servo has been advancing thanks to Igalia and other open-source developers while getting by on around ~$5.7k USD per month thanks mostly to donations from individuals. Servo has now announced sponsorship tiers in hopefully to solicit more donations from larger organizations.
November 21, 2025 — Source

Sovereign Tech Fund Hiring A New Leader For Driving Open-Source Funding
Germany's Sovereign Tech Fund / Sovereign Tech Agency has been a godsend the past few years for the open-source community. This funding from the German government has led to significant funding for dozens of prominent open-source infrastructure projects to provide more resources for enhancing security, enabling new features, and more. As the Sovereign Tech Fund prepares for the next phase of growth, they are hiring a new head to lead the efforts.
November 21, 2025 — Source

Steam Frame Using Mesa's Turnip Vulkan Open-Source Driver
In addition to Valve contributing to the open-source Radeon Vulkan driver for enhancing the Linux gaming experience and their AMD-powered Steam Deck, the upcoming Steam Frame VR headset is making use of Mesa's open-source "Turnip" Vulkan driver for Qualcomm Adreno graphics.
November 21, 2025 — Source

TUXEDO Computers Drops Snapdragon X1 Elite Linux Laptop Plans
Back in mid-2024, the Bavarian Linux PC vendor TUXEDO Computers teased plans for developing a Snapdragon X Elite Linux laptop. Initially they hoped to have it out by Christmas 2024. That didn't happen and now approaching Christmas 2025 they confirmed they have stopped their plans for shipping a Snapdragon X1 Elite laptop for Linux customers.
November 21, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — November 20th, 2025

Canonical Gets Flutter Up And Running On RISC-V For Ubuntu
Canonical has been bullish on RISC-V with Ubuntu being one of the most common Linux distributions endorsed by RISC-V board vendors. Canonical also has been bullish on the Flutter toolkit for crafting their desktop installer UI and other modern UI/app interfaces. But these two together haven't panned out with Flutter not currently supporting RISC-V. Canonical has submitted pull requests now for enabling RISC-V support with Flutter.
November 20, 2025 — Source

Dell Now Shipping Laptop With Qualcomm NPU On Linux Ahead Of Windows 11
Dell announced today that their new Pro Max 16 Plus laptop with a Qualcomm discrete NPU is now shipping... That is if you are running Ubuntu Linux while the Windows 11 pre-load option is expected in early 2026. An exciting twist with the Linux version of the Dell Pro Max 16 Plus shipping before Microsoft Windows.
November 20, 2025 — Source

Firefox 147 Will Support The XDG Base Directory Specification
A 21 year old bug report requesting support of the XDG Base Directory specification is finally being addressed by Firefox. The Firefox 147 release should respect this XDG specification around where files should be positioned within Linux users' home directory.
November 20, 2025 — Source

Intel Preps Linux KVM For Diamond Rapids' AVX10.2 & Expanded AMX
The latest feature enablement work happening by Intel for the Linux kernel with next-generation Diamond Rapids server processors are the adjustments to the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) for readying the new CPU ISA capabilities for a virtualized world.
November 20, 2025 — Source

Kubernetes CSI Drivers
What does a storage standard specification look like? Why do we need it, and which problem does it solve? How does it work in practice, and what impact can it have?
November 20, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 Sees Late Improvements For Xbox Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, & Alienware Laptops
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.18-x86-Plat-Near-Final
November 20, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.19 Nova Driver Landing Boot42 Support For Next-Gen NVIDIA GPUs
Along with getting the NVIDIA GSP fully booted and initialized for Ampere GPUs with the Nova driver code coming to Linux 6.19, this next kernel version is also beginning to make preparations for eyeing next-generation NVIDIA GPU support on this open-source driver.
November 20, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.19 Slated To Land "mm/cid" Rewrite That Has Very Positive Performance Potential
A set of Linux kernel patches posted back in October for rewriting the kernel's memory-mapped concurrency ID code for some nice performance wins looks like it will land for Linux 6.19. This is the code that prominent Intel engineer Thomas Gleixner found to yield up to an 18% improvement for the PostgreSQL database. My testing of this "mm/cid" code has also shown some nice performance wins too.
November 20, 2025 — Source

Linux Mint versus Zorin OS: I compared the two Windows alternatives, and here's my advice
Linux Mint and Zorin OS are both popular Linux distros - but which one should you install? Here's my reasoning.
November 20, 2025 — Source

PHP 8.3.28 and 8.4.15 Fedora/RHEL Packages released
Remi Collet has released updated Fedora packages for PHP 8.3.28 and 8.4.15, which address various issues, including bugs in the core code and its extensions. These updates are available through the remi-modular repository and can be installed on Fedora systems running version 41 or higher, as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), AlmaLinux, CentOS Stream, and Rocky Linux. The bug fixes resolve problems with auto_globals_jit, assertion failures, memory leaks, and security vulnerabilities in extensions such as DOM, Exif, FPM, GD, Intl, MySQLnd, Opcache, PgSql, Phar, Random, SimpleXML, Streams API, Tidy, XMLReader, and Windows extensions.
November 20, 2025 — Source

PHP 8.5 Released With New Pipe Operator, New URI Extension & Clone With
PHP 8.5 is out today as the annual major feature release for this popular scripting language.
November 20, 2025 — Source

Rusticl Has Turned Out Remarkably Well For Open-Source OpenCL For Mesa Drivers
Rusticl as a modern OpenCL implementation for Mesa Gallium3D drivers has turned out remarkably well. Rusticl performance has evolved quite well for this Rust-based OpenCL driver and it continues tacking on new features / OpenCL extensions as well as working gracefully with more Mesa drivers. Rusticl lead developer Karol Herbst presented on some of the recent accomplishments for this driver back at XDC2025.
November 20, 2025 — Source

Systemd 259 release candidate flexes musl support -- with long list of caveats
PostmarketOS pushed for the change, but devs warn it may not last
November 20, 2025 — Source

Updated Steam Runtime Switches To Debian 13 Libraries, SDL2 Using Compatibility Layer
An updated version of the Steam Linux Runtime 4 branch was rolled out that has now shifted from Debian 11 to Debian 13 libraries for some significant upgrades. In the process more libraries have gone x86_64 only in foregoing the i386 builds. In addition, the SDL 2 library support for the Steam Runtime is now provided by sdl2-compat as the compatibility layer for SDL2 atop SDL3.
November 20, 2025 — Source

vkd3d 1.18 released
The vkd3d team has released version 1.18, a significant update to their Direct3D-to-Vulkan translation library that brings numerous improvements and new features. The update includes advancements such as support for CreateCommandList1() on ID3D12Device4 interface, improved performance through constant folding, and enhanced shader execution flow. Additionally, the team has refined older systems by adding support for integer types in conditional expressions and translating Direct3D bytecode instructions from the past.
November 20, 2025 — Source or Source

Software — Open Source — November 14th, 2025

AMD GAIA 0.13 Released With New AI Coding & Docker Agents
AMD's GAIA open-source project as a reminder is their "Generrative AI Is Awesome" quick-setup solution for demonstrating generative AI use on AMD hardware platforms with Ryzen CPUs, Radeon GPUs, and/or Ryzen AI NPUs. GAIA is predominantly Microsoft Windows focused but recently they did introduce limited support for Linux that is currently bound to Vulkan-accelerated GPU support.
November 14, 2025 — Source

AMD GCN 1.0/1.1 GPUs Will Default To AMDGPU Driver In Linux 6.19, SMART POWER OLED Added
Sent out today is likely the last batch of AMDGPU kernel graphics driver feature updates ahead of the Linux 6.19 merge window getting underway around the start of December. And it's an exciting one too from adding a new SMART POWER OLED feature to switching from the Radeon to AMDGPU drivers by default for aging GCN 1.0 Southern Islands and GCN 1.1 Sea Islands GPUs.
November 14, 2025 — Source

Bazzite 43.20251114 released
Bazzite Linux has released its latest version, 43.20251114, which brings several improvements to the gaming experience on the platform. This build comes with pre-installed Steam, HDR and VRR support, and updated CPU schedulers for smoother performance. The release also streamlines game installation, allowing users to easily access games on various platforms, like GOG and Epic Games Store, through a familiar Steam-like interface. Overall, this update reflects the ongoing collaboration between developers and users, with tweaks and removals aimed at enhancing user experience and making Bazzite a solid choice for gaming on Linux.
November 14, 2025 — Source

Fedora 44 Looking At Replacing FBCON With KMSCON As Default VT Console
Fedora 44 is looking at replacing the Linux kernel's console "FBCON" with the user-space-based KMSCON implementation. Eventually the hope remains to deprecate the FBCON/FBDEV code within the Linux kernel.
November 14, 2025 — Source

GNU C Library Adds Linux "mseal" Function For Memory Sealing
Introduced last year in the Linux 6.10 kernel was the mseal system call for memory sealing to protect the memory mapping against modifications to seal non-writable memory segments or better protecting sensitive data structures. The GNU C Library has finally introduced its mseal function making use of this modern Linux kernel functionality.
November 14, 2025 — Source

Intel Submits Last Batch Of Xe Driver Feature Updates For Linux 6.19
Intel today sent out their last batch of planned feature patches for their Xe kernel graphics driver of material intended for Linux 6.19.
November 14, 2025 — Source

KDE Frameworks 6.20 released
KDE Frameworks 6.20.0 has been released, bringing a mix of upgrades, performance boosts, and bug fixes to developers. The Attica team made significant progress in this release, improving session management and overall stability. Other notable updates include improved support via Bluez Qt, smoother Breeze Icons, and enhanced functionality in modules such as KArchive and Framework Integration. This release marks another step forward for KDE's steady and regular delivery of developer tools and improvements.
November 14, 2025 — Source

KDE neon 20251113 released
KDE neon has released its latest version, offering users immediate access to the newest KDE Plasma features directly from Ubuntu's long-term support base. This distribution presents unmodified versions of KDE applications and tools, allowing enthusiasts to experience fresh KDE releases without waiting for community adjustments. The "Testing" or "Unstable" editions cater specifically to users willing to help polish upcoming KDE releases by receiving early access builds before broader release. KDE neon employs a targeted rolling release approach, focusing on updating specific KDE packages while keeping most system elements stable underneath them.
November 14, 2025 — Source

Liquorix Linux Kernel 6.17-9 released
Liquorix Linux Kernel 6.17-9 has been released, offering improved performance and responsiveness for desktop users, particularly those engaged in multimedia and gaming workloads. The kernel features several notable improvements, including Zen Interactive Tuning, which prioritizes system speed over power savings, as well as optimized I/O and memory management. Additionally, Liquorix 6.17-9 has several technical upgrades, like better scheduling for high-resolution tasks, improved handling of real-time systems, and support for Budget Fair Queue (BFQ) and TCP BBR2 Congestion Control.
November 14, 2025 — Source

Nouveau Driver To Support Larger Pages & Compression Support With Linux 6.19
While the "Nova" driver continues to be developed as a modern Rust-written, open-source and in-kernel NVIDIA graphics driver for Linux, for the time being Nouveau is what's working for end-users for those wanting a mainline open-source NVIDIA graphics driver for gaming and other workloads. With Linux 6.19 the Nouveau driver is picking up support for handling larger pages as well as compression support.
November 14, 2025 — Source

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.1 and 9.7 released
Red Hat has released two major updates to its Enterprise Linux platform: RHEL 10.1 and RHEL 9.7, which bring various improvements to enhance security, reliability, and productivity. A notable feature in RHEL 10.1 is an offline command-line AI assistant, currently in development preview, that helps with common tasks like installation and troubleshooting without an internet connection. The update also includes enhancements such as a higher context limit, validated AI accelerator drivers for integrating machine learning hardware, and improved system management features like reproducible builds and soft reboots.
November 14, 2025 — Source

Vulkan 1.4.333 Released With New Ray-Tracing Extension
One of the new extensions in Vulkan 1.4.333 is VK_EXT_custom_resolve. This extension allows using shaders to resolve multi-sample rendering attachments. VK_EXT_custom_resolve was worked on by several Valve engineers including Mike Blumenkrantz, Connor Abbott, and Samuel Pitoiset. Plus engineers from Qualcomm, ARM, Igalia, LunarG, and NVIDIA.
November 14, 2025 — Source

The Headaches Supporting Content Protection With Linux GPU Drivers
Intel driver engineer Suraj Kandpal presented at the recent X.Org Developer's Conference (XDC2025) on the challenges around supporting content protection on Linux such as for High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) and Protected Audio Video Path (PAVP).
November 14, 2025 — Source

WinBoat 0.9 Alpha released
WinBoat 0.9 Alpha has been released, allowing users to test running Windows applications on their Linux system using an Electron app designed with Docker or Podman support. This update includes new features such as Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app detection and launch capabilities, customizable shortcuts for launching specific programs, and improved configuration options like adjustable scaling settings and FreeRDP argument modification. The team has also made significant changes to improve stability, including automatic unmounting of installation ISOs and corrections to typographical errors.
November 14, 2025 — Source

Wine 10.19 Released With More Improvements
Ahead of the Wine 11.0 code freeze beginning in early December, Wine 10.19 is out today as the newest bi-weekly development release for running Windows games and applications on Linux.
November 14, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — November 13th, 2025

Avalonia brings Linux, browser support to Microsoft's MAUI cross-platform app solution
Third-party framework builds alternative backend using its own renderer and WebAssembly
November 13, 2025 — Source

Banned Russian antivirus maker Kaspersky rolls out new products — basic plan for Linux starts at $59.99 a year
Kaspersky wants a piece of the Linux pie.
November 13, 2025 — Source

Bcachefs Rolls Out Metadata Version Reconcile "rebalance_v2" Feature
For those making use of the out-of-tree Bcachefs file-system driver, rolling out to the snapshot/nightly testing channel is the long-in-development "rebalance_v2" functionality now known as the "bcachefs_metadata_version_reconcile" feature.
November 13, 2025 — Source

Canonical To Now Provide Up To 15 Years Commercial Support For Ubuntu LTS Releases
Canonical To Now Provide Up To 15 Years Commercial Support For Ubuntu LTS Releases
November 13, 2025 — Source

Fish 4.2.1 released
Fish version 4.2.1 has been released, addressing some important issues that were causing trouble for users. A common setup for installing Fish would sometimes lead to missing internal help files and man pages, even when documentation settings were disabled or dependencies were met. This problem has been resolved in the latest update, ensuring that built-in resources appear correctly under these conditions.
November 13, 2025 — Source

LibreOffice 25.8.3 released
LibreOffice 25.8.3 has been released as the third minor update of the year for the free office suite designed to help users get work done. This latest version includes seventy improvements compared to its October release. LibreOffice's core technology, LibreOffice Technology, allows developers to create desktop apps, mobile versions, and cloud services that support both open ODF formats and Microsoft's OOXML standard. The software is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, iOS, and can be accessed from the cloud.
November 13, 2025 — Source

Linux Has Another Maintainer Now For Its DEC Alpha Port
The Linux kernel's port to the DEC Alpha processors remains alive over 30 years after these processors first appeared.
November 13, 2025 — Source

Linux Looks To Remove SHA1 Support For Signing Kernel Modules
Patches posted to the Linux kernel mailing list this week are seeking to remove SHA1 support for signing of kernel modules. This is part of the larger effort in the industry for moving away from SHA1 given its vulnerabilities to hash collisions and superior hashing algorithms being available.
November 13, 2025 — Source

Miracle-WM 0.8 Adds More Features For This Mir-Powered Wayland Compositor
Miracle-WM 0.8 was released on Wednesday as another step forward for this tiling Wayland compositor built atop Canonical's Mir software. Canonical engineer Matthew Kosarek continues driving new features into Miracle-WM as it works toward its v1.0 milestone.
November 13, 2025 — Source or Watch Video

NVIDIA CUDA 13.0 U2 Brings DGX Spark Performance Improvements
CUDA 13.0 Update 2 is now available as the latest incremental improvement to NVIDIA's compute stack.
November 13, 2025 — Source

OpenAI and NYT Clash Over Millions of Private ChatGPT Conversations
When 800 million people use ChatGPT weekly for their most personal digital conversations, a fight like this does not stay in the courtroom.
November 13, 2025 — Source

OpenAI rolls out GPT-5.1 model with upgrades to speed and customization
Eight new style presets mean to enhance conversations
November 13, 2025 — Source

OpenAI's colossal AI data center targets would consume as much electricity as entire nation of India — 250GW target would require 30 million GPUs annually to ensure continuous operation, emit twice as much carbon dioxide as ExxonMobil
How much more artificial intelligence can the planet take?
November 13, 2025 — Source

Possible Setback For Linux x86_64 Laptops: Prominent Developer Joins Qualcomm
Back in early September we reported on a Linux hardware enablement leader planning to leave Red Hat. Hans de Goede has been a longtime contributor to improving Intel/AMD Linux desktop/laptop hardware support and in fact an x86 platform drivers subsystem maintainer. We now found out where this lead Linux x86 driver developer ended up: Qualcomm.
November 13, 2025 — Source

RadeonSI OpenGL Mesh Shader Support Is Now Completed For Mesa 26.0
For next quarter's Mesa 26.0 release, the AMD RadeonSI Gallium3D driver will present OpenGL mesh shaders support. It's been a long journey from the GL_EXT_mesh_shader extension being crafted and merged to wiring up the Mesa driver support while now it's in place for the AMD Radeon Linux graphics driver.
November 13, 2025 — Source

Tails 7.2 released
Tails 7.2 has been released for download, featuring an updated Tor Browser integration with version 15.0.1 and improved organization options through vertical tabs and tab groups. The update also includes a polished address bar search function and a bumped-up Thunderbird version to 140.4.0, which brings its own set of enhancements and refinements. Power users should note that Root Console access is no longer available directly within the OS, requiring the use of a command to access it instead.
November 13, 2025 — Source or Source

The Incredible Evolution Of AMD EPYC HPC Performance Shown In The Azure Cloud
Last week the Microsoft Azure HBv5 instances reached general availability as powered by the custom EPYC 9V64H CPUs with HBM3 memory. These very interesting EPYC processors for memory bandwidth intensive workloads were announced last year while have finally reached GA with jaw-dropping results for software able to take advantage of the 6.7 TB/s memory bandwidth thanks to the HBM memory.
November 13, 2025 — Source

To 'Infinity' ... and beyond: MX Linux 25 has arrived
Systemd-free option still available if you choose that download
November 13, 2025 — Source

Top Microsoft exec's boast about Windows 'evolving into an agentic OS' provokes furious backlash over AI — users fed up with forced AI and cloud features
The post's comments section quickly turned into a ravenous pool of AI- and cloud-hating piranhas.
November 13, 2025 — Source

Ubuntu 25.10's Rusty sudo holes quickly welded shut
The goal of 'oxidizing' the Linux distro hits another bump
November 13, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — November 9th, 2025

AMD Preps More Graphics Driver Changes For Linux 6.19
AMD continues preparing more kernel driver code for Linux 6.19. This week another round of AMDGPU kernel graphics driver updates were submitted to DRM-Next ahead of the early December merge window.
November 9, 2025 — Source

Cloud Hypervisor 49 Released With AArch64 + Microsoft Hyper-V Improvements
For what began as an Intel open-source project focused on delivering a modern VMM for cloud workloads and written in Rust is seeing increasingly more exposure on AArch64 and Microsoft Windows platforms. In fact, Intel remains largely inactive now with Cloud Hypervisor after their lead maintainer left the company last year and has now been one year since seeing any significant contributions from Intel to this open-source project.
November 9, 2025 — Source

Lenovo IdeaPad Linux Driver Adding Support For Rapid Charge Mode
Queued into the platform-drivers-x86 "for-next" Git branch ahead of the Linux 6.19 merge window is introducing the handling for the "Rapid Charge" USB-C charging mode to the Lenovo IdeaPad laptop driver.
November 9, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.19 Will Better Deal With Corrupt Minix File-Systems
For anyone dealing with Minix file-systems still for this nearly 40 year old creation, the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel is expected to bring some fixes to the Minix driver for better handling corrupted file-system images.
November 9, 2025 — Source

The Linux Kernel Looks To "Bite The Bullet" In Enabling Microsoft C Extensions
Two patches queued into the Linux kernel's build system development tree, kbuild-next, would enable the -fms-extensions compiler argument everywhere for allowing GCC and LLVM/Clang to use the Microsoft C Extensions when compiling the Linux kernel. Being in kbuild-next these patches will likely be submitted for the Linux 6.19 kernel merge window next month but remains to be seen if there will be any last minute objections to this change.
November 9, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — November 8th, 2025

AMD Sends Out Initial GNU Binutils Patch For AMD Zen 6 - Confirms New AVX-512 Features
AMD has begun their open-source compiler enablement upstreaming effort for Zen 6 processors! The first "Znver6" patch was sent out on Friday in preparing for new instructions to be found with these next-generation AMD Ryzen and EPYC processors.
November 8, 2025 — Source

Bottles 52.1 released
Bottles has released version 52.1, which brings several useful changes. A key feature allows users to run scripts before launching programs in their Wine containers, making setup tasks easier. The update also includes improved playtime tracking thanks to an upgraded backend system, as well as better integration with the app's other features. Additionally, the release fixes common bugs, such as dedicated sandboxed apps not launching properly and crashes during "bottle" creation setup.
November 8, 2025 — Source

FreeBSD 15.0 Beta 5 Released With Build Fixes For Google & Azure Clouds
FreeBSD 15.0-RC1 had been expected this weekend but instead a fifth beta release of FreeBSD 15.0 was deemed warranted.
November 8, 2025 — Source

Good news for Linux users: This long-requested feature is finally coming to KDE Plasma
Throughout the week, the KDE team worked on the various parts of its desktop environment, finally addressing a 19-year-old (yes, really!) request from users. The developers also fixed a ton of bugs and improved performance.
November 8, 2025 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.6 Shaving Off 100MB Of Memory Use, Fixing DrKonqi Crash Reporter Crashing
KDE developers were off to a busy start for the month of November. A lot of feature activity continues happening for Plasma 6.6 while a lot of bug fixing is still going on for Plasma 6.5 and related KDE components.
November 8, 2025 — Source

Linux Kernel Patches & Device Tree Additions For PCIe M.2 Connectors
On ACPI-enabled systems Linux users can enjoy PCIe M.2 connected peripherals that "just work" without any extra fuss. But for those relying on Device Tree (DT) handling by the kernel, new patches from Qualcomm are working on representing PCIe M.2 connectors within DT files.
November 8, 2025 — Source

oneDNN 3.10 Continues Preparing For Future Intel CPUs With AVX 10.2
Released one Friday was the newest version of oneDNN as this library started off by Intel and now officially under the UXL Foundation umbrella for serving as building blocks for deep learning software.
November 8, 2025 — Source

Qt Merges Wayland Color Management "color-management-v1"
The Qt toolkit has merged support for Wayland's color-management-v1 protocol to replace the former xx-color-management-v4 protocol shipped by this open-source toolkit. The change was merged for Qt 6.11 development but also back-ported for the Qt 6.10 series.
November 8, 2025 — Source

Ryzen AI Software 1.6.1 Advertises Linux Support
Ryzen AI Software as AMD's collection of tools and libraries for AI inferencing on AMD Ryzen AI class PCs has Linux support with its newest point release. Though this "early access" Linux support is restricted to registered AMD customers.
November 8, 2025 — Source

Tuxedo InfinityBook Max 15 Linux laptop offers desktop-grade power
Tuxedo designs and builds Linux computers. The InfinityBook Max 15 is the German firm's newest Linux laptop, and it arrives with Wayland as the standard graphics system, even on models that use Nvidia GPUs.
November 8, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — November 7th, 2025

D7VK Aims To Deliver Direct3D 7 Atop Vulkan
DXVK is an important piece of Steam Play (Proton) that over time expanded to supporting Direct3D 9 / 10 / 11 and even D3D8 too. Meanwhile VKD3D-Proton delivers Direct3D 12 atop Vulkan. Now there is a fork of the DXVK project working to bring Direct3D 7 support atop Vulkan.
November 7, 2025 — Source

How much RAM does your Linux PC really need? My expert advice for 2025
Forget the bare minimum - here's how much RAM you actually need to get the best performance out of your Linux system.
November 7, 2025 — Source

IncusOS Announced As Immutable Linux OS With ZFS For Running Containers
It has been two years already since the Linux Containers project forked Canonical's LXD project as Incus. Now joining the Incus family is IncusOS as an immutable Linux OS built atop a Debian base with OpenZFS file-system support and designed around running containers with Incus.
November 7, 2025 — Source

Intel's Rewrite Of Linux MM CID Code Showing Some Nice Gains For AMD
Posted last month were new Linux kernel scheduler-related patches rewriting the MM CID management code. The main takeaway for end-users from this set of 19 Linux kernel patches from an Intel engineer was seeing 14~18% improvement in a PostgreSQL database benchmark but that more benchmarks were needed. Curiosity got the best of me and I recently tested these patches on an AMD EPYC server to seeing some very enticing results for this in-development code.
November 7, 2025 — Source

Kdenlive 25.08.3 released
Kdenlive 25.08.3 is a maintenance update that fixes several common issues with the open-source video editor. The update addresses problems related to pasting clips onto projects with different frame rates, which caused crashes in previous versions, as well as issues with rendering subtitles and managing image sequences. Additionally, version 25.08.3 adds new features such as support for using SVG files, improved disk space management during archiving, and a usability tweak that only applies resize effects to video or image clips.
November 7, 2025 — Source

Linux software management made simple with Discover
Some chores don't have to be difficult
November 7, 2025 — Source

MariaDB 11.8.4, 11.4.9, 10.11.15, and 10.6.24 released
The MariaDB team has released new versions of their popular open-source database, including 11.8.4, 11.4.9, 10.11.15, and 10.6.24, which will receive ongoing support over the next five years. These updates mainly aim to make the InnoDB storage engine more stable and faster, fixing problems like crashes that happen during table operations or with saved statistics.
November 7, 2025 — Source

Mesa 25.3.0 Release Candidate 4 released
Mesa 25.3.0 Release Candidate 4 has been released, marking a significant step towards the final version of the software. This update addresses numerous issues that have arisen in previous releases and is the result of the team's continued efforts to iron out these problems. Several contributors have made notable improvements, including fixes for AMD GPU drivers, virtualization components, and Intel graphics.
November 7, 2025 — Source

Mesa Lands Fixes For HDR With Vulkan Drivers
Merged overnight to Mesa 26.0-devel and likely to be back-ported for the upcoming Mesa 25.3 release are a few fixes around high dynamic range (HDR) support within the common Vulkan windowing system integration (WSI) / display code.
November 7, 2025 — Source

Microsoft Contributing "RAMDAX" Driver For Upcoming Linux 6.19 Kernel
A new driver planned to be sent to the mainline Linux kernel for the upcoming Linux 6.19 merge window is yet another new contribution from Microsoft.
November 7, 2025 — Source

PHP 8.3.28RC1 and 8.4.15RC1 Fedora/RHEL Packages released
Remi Collet has released new RC packages for PHP versions 8.3.28 and 8.4.15, which are now available for Fedora and RHEL-based systems. The update includes various bug fixes across different components of the programming language, including Core, DOM, Exif, FPM, FTP & SSL, GD, Intl, LibXML, MySQLnd, and Opcache. Notably, PHP 8.4.15RC1 addresses critical issues such as memory leaks, assertion failures, and SSL certificate handling problems. These updates can be accessed through the remi-modular-test repository for recent Fedora versions or the remi-test repository for compatibility checks or testing environments.
November 7, 2025 — Source

PixiEditor 2.0.1.18 released
PixiEditor 2.0.1.18 has received an update with several improvements. The editor's interface remains straightforward and familiar, allowing users of all skill levels to create game sprites or animations and perform general image editing tasks. The update focuses on resolving identified bugs and smoothing out performance issues, such as potential crashes related to null checks and problems with chunk calculations.
November 7, 2025 — Source

Samba 4.23.3 released
A new stable version of Samba is now available, addressing various issues reported since its previous release, including Time Machine compatibility problems introduced by older versions like 4.22. This latest update resolves several key issues, such as Spotlight search restrictions and a potential crash related to name mangling in 'rpcd_mdssvc.'
November 7, 2025 — Source or Source

Vulkan 1.4.332 Brings A New Qualcomm Extension For AI / ML
Vulkan 1.4.332 is out today as the latest weekly update to this high performance graphics and compute API specification. Besides a number of documentation clarifications/corrections, there is one new extension this week in the name of AI / machine learning.
November 7, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — November 6th, 2025

/e/OS 3.2 released
The e.foundation has released /e/OS 3.2, introducing several enhancements to its privacy-focused mobile operating system. The update includes real-time leak warnings for apps that try to share data without permission, as well as refinements to the App Lounge, which now displays app sizes and shows region-specific applications. Fairphone users can also look forward to new customization options for their side button and an optimized camera experience on Gen. 6 devices.
November 6, 2025 — Source

CachyOS Continues Delivering Leading Performance Over Ubuntu 25.10, Fedora Workstation 43
With Intel having sunset Clear Linux, when it comes to aggressive out-of-the-box Linux performance there is the Arch Linux based CachyOS as the leading contender. Given the recent releases of Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora Workstation 43, if you are curious about the out-of-the-box performance here are some fresh benchmarks of all three using the Framework Desktop.
November 6, 2025 — Source

Cloudflare Makes Open-Source The Rust Code To Tokio-Quiche
Cloudflare announced today they have open-sourced the code to Tokio-Quiche as their async QUIC library that combines their previously-open-sourced Quiche QUIC implementation with Rust's Tokio async runtime.
November 6, 2025 — Source

CodeWeavers Launches CrossOver Preview For Linux ARM64
CodeWeavers announced this morning a new CrossOver Preview that includes Linux ARM64 support for the first time. This commercial software built atop Wine is now comfortable with the state of running Windows x86/x64 apps on Linux ARM64 and even the ability ro enjoy many Windows games on ARM64 Linux devices like the System76 Thelio Astra.
November 6, 2025 — Source

FreeDesktop.org Adopts The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard
Adding to the array of software projects and specifications under the FreeDesktop.org umbrella, the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard "FHS" has been adopted by these desktop-focused open-source developers.
November 6, 2025 — Source

Grafana and GitLab Introduce Serverless CI/CD Observability Integration
In a move to streamline development workflows, Daniel Fritzgerald of GrafanaLabs has published a new open-source solution that links GitLab CI/CD events into Grafana's observability stack via a serverless architecture. The integration enables teams to channel GitLab webhooks, such as pushes, merge requests, and pipeline completions, directly into Grafana Cloud Logs (built on Grafana Loki) for real-time visibility and correlation between deploy events and performance metrics.
November 6, 2025 — Source

How to Use Samba File Sharing: Easy Setup for Linux and Windows
Learn how to install, configure, and connect to Samba for Linux & Windows. Share files securely in just minutes with this easy guide.
November 6, 2025 — Source

I got tired of Windows 11, so I converted this Mini PC into a Linux powerhouse - here's how
If you're moving on from Windows, this compact powerhouse from Minix delivers more than enough performance with the right OS.
November 6, 2025 — Source

Intel ANV Vulkan Driver Finally Exposes Pipeline Binary "VK_KHR_pipeline_binary"
Introduced back in August of 2024 with Vulkan 1.3.294 was VK_KHR_pipeline_binary as a pipeline binary extension to retrieve binary data associated with individual pipelines. The focus of this is to bypass the Vulkan pipeline caching mechanism and so applications can manage caches themselves. Finally today for Mesa 26.0-devel the Intel "ANV" open-source Vulkan driver has enabled this extension.
November 6, 2025 — Source

KDE neon 20251106 released
KDE neon 20251106 offers users direct access to the newest KDE Plasma 6.5.2 features, built on top of Ubuntu's long-term support base. This means users get unmodified versions of KDE applications and tools exactly as their developers intended, without proprietary driver tweaks or stability patches. KDE neon is ideal for enthusiasts who want to try out new software quickly and keep their systems aligned with ongoing KDE development cycles from day one.
November 6, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 Lands Electronic Privacy Screen Hotkey Handling For Some Dell Laptops
Merged yesterday to the mainline Linux 6.18 development kernel were the latest round of x86 platform driver fixes. Mostly some small fixes but standing out is electronic privacy screen hotkey support for some Dell laptops.
November 6, 2025 — Source

Logging in as root on Linux? Here's why that disaster waiting to happen
If your Linux distro still lets you log in as root, here's why you should never do it.
November 6, 2025 — Source

NVIDIA Preparing For Hopper & Blackwell GPU Support With Open-Source Nova Driver
NVIDIA engineers continue working a lot on the open-source and upstream Nova driver for the Linux kernel. This modern, Rust-written open-source NVIDIA driver is still taking shape as an alternative to NVIDIA's official downstream open-source driver and the aging and reverse-engineered Nouveau driver. Out on the horizon for Nova is Hopper and Blackwell GPU support.
November 6, 2025 — Source

RadeonSI + ACO Brings Some Performance Gains For Radeon Workstation Graphics
Last week Mesa 26.0-devel enabled the ACO back-end by default within the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver for all supported Radeon graphics cards by this open-source Linux driver. This move was done in the name of better performance, faster shader compilation times, and ACO being all-around better than the AMDGPU LLVM back-end these days for both OpenGL and Vulkan use. It was also noted that RadeonSI has "slightly better" viewperf performance with NIR+ACO than using the AMDGPU LLVM back-end.
November 6, 2025 — Source

Zed 0.211.4 released
A new version of the Zed editor, 0.211.4, has been released, bringing several updates and improvements to enhance user experience. The update incorporates features like optimizing the Windows build for ARM64 chips, enabling direct Git branch comparison through the command palette, and enhancing the quality of life in the markdown preview for HTML tables and lists. Other notable changes include improved editing of previous messages, enhanced debugging with inline variable viewing, and various UI tweaks, including warnings for outdated settings and improved navigation.
November 6, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — November 5th, 2025

3mdeb Achieves Good Progress Porting Coreboot+OpenSIL To AMD Turin Motherboard
Over the past few months the open-source firmware consulting firm 3mdeb has been porting Coreboot and AMD's new openSIL silicon initialization library to the Gigabyte MZ33-AR1. The Gigabyte MZ33-AR1 is a broadly available motherboard that supports the latest-generation AMD EPYC 9005 "Turin" server processors. 3mdeb has been fairly successful in their quest and an early demonstrator for openSIL.
November 5, 2025 — Source

7 Linux commands I can't live without after 20 years in the terminal
You don't need the Linux terminal - but once you try it, you'll never go back.
November 5, 2025 — Source

Devuan 6.0.0 Excalibur released
Devuan GNU+Linux 6.0.0 Excalibur has been officially released as an alternative to mainstream Linux distributions that rely on systemd, built upon Debian GNU/Linux 13 (Trixie). This version boasts several significant improvements, including a Long-Term Support (LTS) kernel version 6.12 with real-time PREEMPT_RT features for high-performance computing and a revamped package management system with APT 3.0 and Solver3.
November 5, 2025 — Source

Fwupd 2.0.17 Released With More Hardware Support & Features
Days after the Linux Vendor Firmware Service celebrated 135 million firmware downloads, a new version of the Fwupd utility is now available for firmware updating systems and peripherals under Linux.
November 5, 2025 — Source

GNOME Mutter Now "Completely Drops The Whole X11 Backend"
The merge to GNOME Mutter has finally happened that "completely drops" the X11 back-end to make GNOME strictly focused on Wayland-based environments.
November 5, 2025 — Source

Intel Xeon 6 Performance Feature Benchmarks: Latency Optimized Mode
A new feature of Intel Xeon 6 "Birch Stream" platforms is the "Latency Optimized Mode" performance setting. The Intel Latency Optimized Mode will keep the uncore clock frequencies higher for more consistent performance but at the cost of increased power use. For those wondering about the performance and power impact, here are some comparison benchmarks of engaging this Latency Optimized Mode with Intel Xeon 6980P "Granite Rapids" server processors.
November 5, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.19 To Support Additional Arm Mali & Vivante Graphics Hardware
Sent out today to DRM-Next was the latest weekly batch of drm-misc-next patches for enhancing the various smaller Direct Rendering Manager drivers within the kernel. Included with this week's update is supporting some additional Mali and Vivante hardware as well as continuing to enhance the in-kernel accelerator "accel" drivers.
November 5, 2025 — Source

Linux Patches Updated For Snapdragon X Elite Powered TUXEDO Elite 14 Gen1 Laptop
New Linux kernel patches have been posted for the TUXEDO Elite 14 Gen1 laptop, which is powered by a Snapdragon X Elite, indicating continued development toward its release.
November 5, 2025 — Source

LXQt 2.3 released
The LXQt team has released version 2.3.0 of the Lightweight Qt Desktop Environment, featuring several key improvements and new features. Notable advancements include enhanced Wayland support, particularly with the LXQt Panel and Custom Command plugin, as well as additions to ScreenGrab and lxqt-qdbus for easier qdbus command access on Wayland compositors. Other notable updates include the addition of "Safely Remove" in PCManFM-Qt, improved user interface options such as disabling file tooltips, and enhancements to QTerminal and QTermWidget with emoji flag support.
November 5, 2025 — Source

LXQt 2.3 Released With Improved Wayland Support
LXQt 2.3 is out today as the newest release of this lightwight, Qt-based desktop environment.
November 5, 2025 — Source

systemd-appd Is A New Component Being Planned By Flatpak Developers
Given this week's release of Flatpak 1.17 for app sandboxing, open-source developer Sebastian Wick published a blog post on Tuesday around the latest Flatpak developments and a look ahead at some of the feature development planned. Arguably most significant of that is the plans for systemd-appd.
November 5, 2025 — Source

The first 8 Linux commands every new user should learn
I learned Linux in the 90s when the command line was mandatory - and it's still the best place to start.
November 5, 2025 — Source

When Debian won't do, Devuan 6 'Excalibur' Linux makes the grade
Debian 13 base, minus systemd and RISC-V build
November 5, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — October 31st, 2025

AerynOS 2025.10 ISOs Released - GNOME 49, Switches Back To GNU libstdc++
AerynOS 2025.10 ISOs were released today for closing out the month of October. AerynOS as a reminder is the Linux distribution that was started by Ikey Doherty and originally known as Serpent OS that has since evolved into an open-source team effort.
October 31, 2025 — Source

AMD Windows Driver Changes For RX 5000/6000 Series Won't Impact Linux Users
Over the past day there have been many reports of AMD planning to no longer provide game optimizations for the Radeon RX 5000 and RX 6000 series graphics cards for their Microsoft Windows driver. Surprisingly many in the Linux community still seem to think it will impact the Linux drivers, but long story short, there is no real concern for Linux users/gamers.
October 31, 2025 — Source

Another European agency shifts off Big Tech, as digital sovereignty movement gains steam
European Union states are increasingly shifting toward European-based companies that offer open-source solutions.
October 31, 2025 — Source

CISA: High-severity Linux flaw now exploited by ransomware gangs
CISA confirmed on Thursday that a high-severity privilege escalation flaw in the Linux kernel is now being exploited in ransomware attacks.
October 31, 2025 — Source

KosmicKrisp Now Vulkan 1.3 Compliant For Apple Devices
Over the summer months LunarG announced KosmicKrisp as a new Vulkan-on-Metal implementation for Apple devices and built around Mesa. That alternative to MoltenVK was upstreamed for next quarter's Mesa 26.0 release and now it's also celebrating being an officially Vulkan 1.3 conformant implementation.
October 31, 2025 — Source

Krita Lands Basic HDR Support On Wayland
The KDE/Qt-aligned Krita digital painting application is the latest creative app now supporting high dynamic range (HDR) on Linux when using Wayland.
October 31, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18-rc4 Fixes Another Performance Regression In The Power Management Code
Last week there was a fix for a "serious performance regression" in the Linux kernel's power management code that affected some Intel-powered Chromebooks. This week the power management fixes ahead of Linux 6.18-rc4 is addressing another performance regression.
October 31, 2025 — Source

Linux vendors are getting into Ubuntu -- and Snap
Ubuntu's much-maligned format may be finally reaching critical mass
October 31, 2025 — Source

Ubuntu 25.10 amd64v3 Benchmarks: Some Minor & Rare Performance Advantages For Desktop Workloads
Yesterday Canonical announced architecture variants for Ubuntu Linux with Ubuntu 25.10 seeing the introduction of "amd64v3" packages that are built for the x86_64-v3 micro-architecture feature level to assume AVX/AVX2 and other newer CPU ISA features found since Intel Haswell and AMD Excavator processors. Eager to run some initial tests, here is a first look at the Ubuntu 25.10 amd64v3 performance for desktop workloads.
October 31, 2025 — Source

Vulkan 1.4.331 Brings Two New Extensions
Just one week after Vulkan 1.4.330 brought five new extensions, Vulkan 1.4.331 is now available with another two new extensions for this high performance graphics and compute API.
October 31, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — October 30th, 2025

AMD ROCm 7.1 Release Appears Imminent
AMD continues with their aggressive efforts to enhance their GPU software compute ecosystem with ROCm. The fire under them has been lit and they have been taking their software efforts more expeditiously in recent times to better compete with NVIDIA's CUDA ecosystem and ensuring their Instinct hardware is properly primed to compete. The release dance has begun for ROCm 7.1.
October 30, 2025 — Source or Source

AMD Strix Point Performance Continues Evolving Nicely With Ubuntu 25.10
This week marks fifteen months since AMD Strix Point laptops began shipping. Back at the end of July 2024 the Linux performance and support was already in good shape while since then the Linux performance has only evolved even more to make these AMD Zen 5 laptops perform even better. Here is a fresh look at how the performance has evolved since launch day and the added gains when moving to the recently released Ubuntu 25.10 and some performance advantages too if moving to the in-development Linux 6.18 kernel.
October 30, 2025 — Source

Cameo sues OpenAI for trademark infringement over new AI-generated celebrity video app
Cameo, the Chicago-based celebrity video messaging website, has become the latest company to sue OpenAI, alleging trademark infringement for the technology giant's new service that makes AI-generated celebrity videos under the same Cameo name.
October 30, 2025 — Source

KDE neon 20251030 released
KDE neon 20251030 has been released, offering users access to the latest KDE updates and software features. Based on Ubuntu's long-term support release, KDE neon showcases KDE software exactly as the developers intended it without patches or modifications. The distribution is geared towards tech-savvy individuals who value quick access to new KDE features and includes a rolling release model specifically for KDE software, where certain packages are updated as needed.
October 30, 2025 — Source

KDE tidies up Plasma 6.5 with 60-odd fixes and smoother setup for OEMs
Big release with a lot of new features -- and a few inevitable glitches
October 30, 2025 — Source

LVFS + Fwupd Serve Up More Than 135 Million Firmware Downloads For Linux Users
The Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) that goes hand-in-hand with the Fwupd open-source firmware updating utility celebrated the milestone on Wednesday of crossing 135 million firmware updates.
October 30, 2025 — Source

Mesa 25.2.6 released
Mesa, a free and open-source library for 3D graphics rendering, has released its latest version - Mesa 25.2.6, which includes various enhancements and bug fixes across multiple components. The release features improvements to Vulkan support, including better performance and stability, as well as enhancements to OpenGL support, such as fixing issues with store operations and precompiled shaders. Additionally, the Radeon and RadeonSI drivers have seen significant enhancements, including improvements to video encoding and vertex buffer emission.
October 30, 2025 — Source

OpenAI's Sora App Adds Character Cameos and Video Stitching Tools
OpenAI has rolled out another update to its Sora AI video app, one that builds on its existing video generation features with new tools designed to help users create longer, more narrative-driven content.
October 30, 2025 — Source

Qt Creator 18 Released With Experimental Support For Development Containers
Qt Creator 18 is now available as the latest version of this Qt/C++-focused integrated development environment.
October 30, 2025 — Source

Rust 1.91 Promotes Windows On 64-bit ARM To Tier-1 Status
The Rust project announced today the release of Rust 1.91 as the latest update to this popular programming language priding itself on memory safety capabilities.
October 30, 2025 — Source

X.Org X Server update for Ubuntu
A security issue was discovered in the X.Org X Server, which affects Ubuntu 25.10, 25.04, 24.04 LTS, and 22.04 LTS. The vulnerability allows an attacker to cause a denial of service, obtain sensitive information, or possibly execute arbitrary code by exploiting incorrect memory operations handled by the X Server. To fix the issue, users need to update their system to the latest package versions, which include xserver-xorg-core 2:21.1.18-1ubuntu1.1 and xwayland 2:24.1.6-1ubuntu1.1 for Ubuntu 25.10.
October 30, 2025 — Source

Xorg-Server, OpenSSL, Pdns-Recursor, Intel-Microcode updates for Debian
Several Debian Security Advisories have been released to address vulnerabilities in various packages, including xorg-server, openssl, pdns-recursor, and intel-microcode. The advisories recommend upgrading the affected packages to their latest versions, which can be found on the security tracker page for each package. For example, the xorg-server vulnerability has been fixed in version 2:21.1.7-3+deb12u11 (bookworm) and 2:21.1.16-1.3+deb13u1 (trixie).
October 30, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — October 26th, 2025

Debian Establishes Archive Operations Team, Licensing & New Packages Team
Debian Project Leader Andreas Tille announced today that their "FTP Master" team is being disbanded and instead establishing the Debian Archive Operations Team "Archive Team" and DFSG, Licensing and New Packages Team "DFSG Team" in its place.
October 26, 2025 — Source

EXT4 Patches Enable Block Size Greater Than Page Size Support
EXT4 is preparing patches to enable support for block sizes larger than the kernel's page size, improving BIO write performance by around 50%.
October 26, 2025 — Source

FFmpeg Introduces Vulkan Acceleration For Apple ProRes Video Decoding
The talented FFmpeg developers continue to be quite innovative with their performance optimizations and other features for this widely-used, open-source multimedia library. The latest addition to FFmpeg this weekend is introducing Vulkan accelerated video decoding for Apple ProRes content.
October 26, 2025 — Source

Intel Sends Out Initial Graphics Driver Patches For Multi-Device SVM
Intel has released initial patches for multi-device Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) support within their Linux graphics drivers, part of Project Battlematrix, enabling up to eight Intel Arc Pro GPUs.
October 26, 2025 — Source

Linux Prepping For "Extreme" Mode On Lenovo Legion Devices
A new Linux patch series is preparing Lenovo WMI GameZone drivers for an "Extreme" platform profile, addressing performance issues and BIOS bugs on some Lenovo Legion devices.
October 26, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — October 25th, 2025

FreeBSD 15.0 Beta 3 Brings Working Support For MediaTek MT76 WiFi
FreeBSD 15 at large has been working on progress around reproducible builds, better hardware support especially among laptops and WiFi devices and more, various desktop experience enhancements, and a ton of other updates both for kernel and user-space. With FreeBSD 15.0 Beta 3 are yet more fixes while also now having working MediaTek MT76 WiFi support.
October 25, 2025 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.6 Will Cater To Windows Power Users With "winver"
Plasma 6.5 debuted this week that KDE developers and users have been celebrating. But it's already on to working out fixes for Plasma 6.5.1 as well as new feature activity toward Plasma 6.6.
October 25, 2025 — Source

NVIDIA Starts Posting Open-Source Nova Driver Patches To Prep For Next-Gen GPUs
NVIDIA is taking the open-source and upstream "Nova" kernel graphics driver quite seriously for their hardware. Hitting the mailing lists on Friday night were initial patches in beginning to make preparations toward "next-gen GPU" support. Digging into the comments, it's indeed for post-Blackwell GPUs.
October 25, 2025 — Source

OpenAI Atlas Omnibox Is Vulnerable to Jailbreaks
Researchers have discovered that a prompt can be disguised as an url, and accepted by Atlas as an url in the omnibox.
October 25, 2025 — Source

Resources 1.9 Brings Intel Xe GPU Support & Other System Resource Monitoring For GNOME
Resources 1.9, a GNOME system resource monitoring app, now supports Intel Xe GPUs, WiFi link information, and includes various performance and detection enhancements.
October 25, 2025 — Source

Servo's Demo Browser Adds Experimental Mode & More Performance Improvements
The Servo open-source browser engine is out with their September 2025 development highlights. This Rust-based browser engine originally started by Mozilla continues making steady progress as well as to the "servoshell" demo/example browser implementation.
October 25, 2025 — Source

Zen Browser 1.17.3b released
Zen Browser version 1.17.3b has been released with improvements to user experience and stability. The latest update includes a redesigned control center layout that provides faster access to frequently used features for better navigation. Additionally, several bugs have been addressed, including issues with the bookmarks popup and a memory leak in glance tabs.
October 25, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — October 24th, 2025

AMD EPYC Turin versus Intel Xeon 6 Granite Rapids versus Graviton4 Benchmarks With AWS M8 Instances
With Amazon recently launching their M8a AWS instances powered by 5th Gen AMD EPYC "Turin", for their M8 class instance types there now are all the latest-generation CPU options with AMD EPYC Turin (M8a), Intel Xeon 6 Granite Rapids (M8i), and their in-house Graviton4 processors (M8g). After recently looking at the M7a versus M8a performance with Amazon EC2, many Phoronix readers expressed interest in seeing an M8a versus M8i versus M8g performance showdown so here are those benchmarks.
October 24, 2025 — Source

Asahi Linux Still Working On Apple M3 Support, m1n1 Bootloader Going Rust
The Asahi Linux developers involved with working on Linux support for Apple Silicon M-Series devices have put out a new progress report on their development efforts.
October 24, 2025 — Source

Claude AI Memory Rolls Out To Pro & Max Users to Help Simplify Complex Projects
What if your AI assistant could remember your preferences, projects, and conversations, just like a trusted colleague? With the rollout of Claude's new Memory feature to all paid subscribers Pro and Max users, this vision is now a reality. Imagine never having to re-explain your goals or reintroduce your work context during every session. Whether you're managing a complex marketing campaign, drafting a research paper, or collaborating on a design project, Claude's ability to retain and recall information transforms it from a helpful tool into a true partner in productivity.
October 24, 2025 — Source

Claude Code comes to the web — so you can pay to manage the AI that's taking your job
Anthropic brings its AI coding assistant to the browser, making Claude Code more accessible than ever.
October 24, 2025 — Source

Clear Kubernetes namespace contents before deleting the namespace, or else
Our Kubernetes platform test suite creates namespaces with their corresponding contents, then deletes everything during cleanup. We noticed a strange problem: namespace deletion would sometimes get stuck indefinitely. The root cause was surprising — we had to clear the contents before deleting the namespace! We also learned that getting stuck isn't the only issue that can occur if we don't do this.
October 24, 2025 — Source

Fedora 43 is coming next week following Go/No-Go meeting
Unlike some Linux distributions, Fedora has quite a fluid release cycle where planned launch dates are known to slip. It has been the case with Fedora 43, where the initial target date was set for October 21, but this wasn't met. Now, however, Fedora 43 has been cleared for release on October 28 following a Go/No-Go meeting.
October 24, 2025 — Source

Intel Xe3P Spotted In Latest Linux Kernel Patches, Confirms Pairing With Nova Lake CPUs
The latest Linux patches reveal that the Xe3P graphics is tied to Nova Lake, Intel's next-gen CPU family for desktop and mobile.
October 24, 2025 — Source or Source

Linux Lands Fix For "Serious Performance Regression" Affecting Some Intel Chromebooks
Merged this week to Linux Git ahead of Linux 6.18-rc3 this Sunday were the latest power management fixes for the kernel. Standing out in the power management code is a fix for a "serious performance regression" affecting some Intel-powered Chromebooks.
October 24, 2025 — Source

Linux's Kconfig Is No Longer Orphaned
Kconfig, a Linux kernel configuration system, was previously orphaned but now Nathan Chancellor and Nicolas Schier are its official maintainers.
October 24, 2025 — Source

New Code Allows VCE 1.0 Video Acceleration To Work On AMDGPU Driver For GCN 1.0 GPUs
A Valve contractor has enabled Video Coding Engine 1.0 (VCE 1.0) support for older AMD GCN 1.0 GPUs, improving AMDGPU driver functionality.
October 24, 2025 — Source

OBS Studio 32.0.2 released
OBS Studio 32.0.2 has been released, addressing two significant issues affecting macOS users' experience. The update resolves a critical login issue with service integrations that caused system crashes and another issue with Syphon Client sources appearing blank or transparent.
October 24, 2025 — Source

Patina 13.0 Released As Rust UEFI Firmware Implementation
Patina 13.0 is now available as this Rust implementation of UEFI firmware. Patina has been working to replace the core UEFI firmware components in a pure Rust implementation to avoid the use of C code.
October 24, 2025 — Source

Updated AMD ISP4 Driver Posted For Linux With Fixes & Improvements
AMD's ISP4 image signal processing IP is so far just used by the HP ZBook Ultra G1a laptop but will presumably be used by more of the higher-end AMD Ryzen next-gen laptops. AMD engineers today posted their fifth iteration of their open-source Linux driver for enabling the ISP4 use.
October 24, 2025 — Source

Vulkan 1.4.330 Released With Five New Extensions
Vulkan 1.4.330 is out today with a few specification corrections/clarifications plus five new extensions.
October 24, 2025 — Source

Why open source may not survive the rise of generative AI
Generative AI may be eroding the foundation of open source software. Provenance, licensing, and reciprocity are breaking down.
October 24, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — October 20th, 2025

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X versus 9950X3D On Windows 11 & Ubuntu Linux
For those wondering how the AMD 3D V-Cache performance with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is looking on Linux relative to Microsoft Windows, a few weeks back I carried out some comparison benchmarks of Windows 11 25H2 against Ubuntu Linux both the Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS release and an Ubuntu 25.10 development build using both the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9950X3D processors.
October 20, 2025 — Source

Europe's plan to ditch US tech giants is built on open source - and it's gaining steam
One topic dominated the recent 2025 OpenInfra Summit Europe, and it wasn't AI.
October 20, 2025 — Source

GE-Proton10-21 released
GloriousEggroll has released GE-Proton10-21, a major update to their compatibility layer that brings several significant changes. This release incorporates the latest development version of Wine and the current state of DXVK and VKD3D-Proton from their respective Git repositories. Fixes for issues in Black Desert Online (news loading) and Blue Protocol (player count crashing) have also been implemented, along with a restoration of write copy options for Battle.net, Uplay, and EA App that were previously removed.
October 20, 2025 — Source

Initial Intel Xe3P Graphics Support To Be Submitted For Linux 6.19
Initial Intel Xe3P graphics support is expected to be merged into the Linux 6.19 kernel, with preliminary code focused on Nova Lake.
October 20, 2025 — Source

Initial Tenstorrent Blackhole Support Aiming For Linux 6.19
It looks like the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel could land initial Tenstorrent vendor support and provide initial support for the Blackhole SoC with the initial Blackhole P100/P150 PCIe accelerator cards.
October 20, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 sees large second release candidate, but everything is on track
Linus Torvalds, the founder and maintainer of the Linux kernel, has just released the second release candidate of Linux 6.18. Torvalds said this week contained no huge surprises, which is certainly promising for a stable development cycle and timely release. With that said, there were a number of regressions found in the first release candidate so some of those needed to be fixed, luckily some turned out to be trivial configuration issues.
October 20, 2025 — Source

LMDE 7 Now Available
Linux Mint Debian Edition, version 7, has been officially released and is based on upstream Debian.
October 20, 2025 — Source

Napster's next act is an AI assistant made for the Mac
Napster thinks AI is the solution to your search for good help.
October 20, 2025 — Source

NPM Ecosystem Suffers Two AI-Enabled Credential Stealing Supply Chain Attacks
The Node Package Manager (npm) ecosystem has suffered from two major supply chain attacks in recent months, affecting hundreds of packages and exposing developers to credential theft and data exfiltration. The attack vector of these incidents shows an AI-enabled evolution of how open-source software dependencies can be compromised.
October 20, 2025 — Source

NTFSPLUS Announced: A New Linux Driver For NTFS With Better Performance, More Features
Well this wasn't on my bingo card for 2025... There is now yet another NTFS file-system driver for Linux. There's long been the read-only NTFS driver in the Linux kernel, the more capable NTFS FUSE driver in user-space, and then in recent years the NTFS3 driver that was upstreamed to the Linux kernel by Paragon Software. NTFS3 offers read/write support and other improvements over the prior kernel driver. Now there is "NTFSPLUS" as a new driver with read/write support and claiming to offer better performance and features than NTFS3.
October 20, 2025 — Source

OpenAI Codex IDE Extension: The AI Partner Every Developer Needs Right Now
Imagine a world where your code editor doesn't just passively display your work but actively collaborates with you, anticipating your needs, offering solutions, and even tackling tedious tasks on your behalf. This isn't some far-off vision of the future; it's the reality that OpenAI Codex IDE brings to developers today. By embedding itself seamlessly into popular IDEs like Visual Studio Code and Windsor, Codex transforms your coding environment into a dynamic partner, capable of generating boilerplate code, debugging with precision, and explaining complex functions in real time.
October 20, 2025 — Source

Ready to ditch Windows? I found a powerful mini PC that's optimized for Linux
The Kubuntu Focus NX Gen 3 comes preloaded with one of my favorite Linux distributions and takes only minutes to set up.
October 20, 2025 — Source

Servo 0.0.1 Browser Engine Released
It was to much surprise waking up this morning and seeing the Servo 0.0.1 release for this Rust-based web layout engine that began as a Mozilla project and is now being developed independently via Linux Foundation Europe and other parties.
October 20, 2025 — Source

Xubuntu downloads section injection threatens users with crypto infection
Attempted exploit was a feeble effort to target Windows users
October 20, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — October 17th, 2025

AES-GCM Crypto Performance Up To ~74% Faster For AMD Zen 3 With Linux 6.19
Improvements to the Linux kernel's AES-GCM Galois/Counter Mode crypto block cipher code will yield up to 74% faster performance for AMD Zen 3 processors with the Linux 6.19 kernel in the new year.
October 17, 2025 — Source

AnduinOS 1.4 released
Built on top of Ubuntu 25.10, AnduinOS has released version 1.4, a Linux distribution that mimics the look and feel of modern Windows. This new version includes various improvements, such as the introduction of the Pytxis terminal, updated GNOME 49, and Linux kernel 6.17 for optimal system performance and security.
October 17, 2025 — Source

Big Tech is paying millions to train teachers on AI, in a push to bring chatbots into classrooms
Major technology companies are investing millions to fund AI training for teachers, aiming to integrate AI tools like chatbots into classrooms. Teachers unions are partnering with these companies to develop training hubs and online resources, with educators leading the design and delivery. The initiatives seek to enhance instruction and AI literacy, while addressing concerns about privacy, safety, and the evolving role of teachers.
October 17, 2025 — Source

Boris Johnson confesses: He's fallen for ChatGPT
As OpenAI allows chatbot to spout erotic content, former British prime minister makes true feelings known
October 17, 2025 — Source

Britain's AI gold rush hits a wall -- not enough electricity
Energy secretary Miliband promises renewable utopia for green and pleasant land... filled with datacenters
October 17, 2025 — Source

Empowering Parents, Protecting Teens: Meta's Approach to AI Safety
Today, we're sharing our vision for supporting parents as they help their teens navigate AI, including announcing new controls that let parents see -- and manage -- how their teens are interacting with AI characters. Every day, teens use our platforms to stay in touch with friends and explore their interests, and AI can unlock even more of these opportunities, empowering them to learn new skills, like coding or graphic design, or helping them with tricky subjects after school.
October 17, 2025 — Source

Chromium, Linux Kernel, PgPool2 updates for Debian
Debian released security advisories (DSA-6026-1, ELA-1543-1, DLA-4334-1) addressing vulnerabilities in Chromium, the Linux kernel, and pgpool2.
October 17, 2025 — Source

Fedora Cloud Looks To Switch /boot To Btrfs Subvolume
Fedora 44 may switch Fedora Cloud images' /boot to a Btrfs subvolume for better space and smaller images, pending approval and bug fixes.
October 17, 2025 — Source

Gemini Live Brings Native Audio Support to Android for More Natural Conversations
Google is rolling out native audio support for Gemini Live on Android, enhancing how the AI adapts its tone and emotion to user speech. The feature, exclusive to paid Gemini users for now, makes conversations feel more human-like and allows customization of accent and voice speed.
October 17, 2025 — Source

GNOME Has A New Security Threat Scanner Powered By VirusTotal
For those interested in scanning files for malware and other threat detection under Linux and using the GNOME desktop, Lenspect is a new GNOME-aligned application that is a GUI powered by VirusTotal for being a Linux-native security threat scanner.
October 17, 2025 — Source

Google's Deepmind Gemini 3.0 Capabilities Tested for Coding, Research & Design
What if the most powerful AI model ever created wasn't just a distant dream but a reality you could access today? Imagine a tool so advanced it could solve unsolvable mathematical problems, automate intricate coding tasks, and even conceptualize futuristic designs, all at a fraction of the cost of its competitors. Enter the Gemini 3.0 Pro, the latest breakthrough from Google DeepMind, a model that doesn't just set new standards in artificial intelligence, it obliterates them.
October 17, 2025 — Source

How Anthropic's Claude AI now enhances Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive — here's what you need to know
Microsoft's AI diversification continues as it pulls away from overreliance on OpenAI.
October 17, 2025 — Source

Kernel and Libsoup updates for AlmaLinux
The AlmaLinux Security team has released two security updates: one for kernel (moderate severity) and one for libsoup3 (important severity). The kernel update fixes four vulnerabilities, including ones that affect HID, eventpoll, ALSA, and crypto components. The libsoup3 update addresses a single vulnerability related to an out-of-bounds read in cookie date handling in the HTTP library.
October 17, 2025 — Source

Linux Graphics Driver Fixes Readied For Linux 6.18-rc2
Ahead of the Linux 6.18-rc2 release on Sunday, the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) fixes for the week were sent out today. There is the usual assortment of different kernel graphics driver fixes, mostly with the Intel and AMD drivers as usual. In particular a few Intel driver fixes make this week's pull worth mentioning.
October 17, 2025 — Source

Intel Vulkan Driver Adds Support For Xe Driver's Low Latency Hint
One of the early changes merged for the in-development Mesa 26.0 is adding support to Intel's "ANV" open-source Vulkan driver for supporting the low-latency hint supported by the modern Intel Xe kernel graphics driver.
October 17, 2025 — Source

Massive AI data center buildouts are squeezing energy supplies — New energy methods are being explored as power demands are set to skyrocket
A perfect storm of massive data centre buildout and new innovations in energy could materially change what our supplies look like in the future.
October 17, 2025 — Source

MCP versus gRPC: Comparing AI Protocols for Real-World Applications
What happens when innovative AI agents meet the challenge of connecting to real-world tools and data? The answer lies in the protocols that bridge the gap between static training models and dynamic, ever-changing environments. Enter Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Google Remote Procedure Call (gRPC)—two frameworks that are transforming how large language models (LLMs) interact with external systems.
October 17, 2025 — Source

Mesa 25.3.0 Release Candidate 1 released
Mesa 25.3.0 has reached a big milestone with the release of its first release candidate. This is the start of the testing phase for the next version, which will add new features and improve performance for many graphics standards, such as OpenGL, OpenGL ES, Vulkan, OpenCL, and others.
October 17, 2025 — Source

Meta previews new parental controls for its AI experiences
Meta on Friday previewed its upcoming parental control features for teens' conversations with AI characters on its platforms. The features, which will be rolled out next year, include the ability to block certain characters and monitor conversation topics.
October 17, 2025 — Source

New Linux Kernel Patches From Intel Delivering +18% Database Performance
In addition to the recent Linux kernel patches out of Intel for Cache Aware Scheduling for better performance, separately, another interesting new patch series was sent out this week for the Linux kernel. The patches rework some low-level Linux kernel memory management code and at least for database workloads the early benchmarks are showing possible 14~18% faster database performance with PostgreSQL.
October 17, 2025 — Source

OpenAI Blocks Users From Making AI Videos of Martin Luther King Jr.
The company says it's adding new "guardrails" to protect historical figures from AI misuse.
October 17, 2025 — Source

OpenAI pauses AI media generation of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after misuse
OpenAI recently posted on X that it worked with the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. (King, Inc.) to ensure that the late civil rights icon's image is treated with integrity on its platforms. At the estate's request, OpenAI has currently paused any Sora generations depicting Dr. King while it says it is implementing stronger guardrails to prevent misuse.
October 17, 2025 — Source

Samba, Kernel, ImageMagick, Python311-LDAP updates for SUSE
SUSE Linux has released several security updates for its users. The updates include critical patches for Samba, which are essential to secure network file sharing and authentication. Additionally, other security updates have been released for the Linux Kernel and ImageMagick, as well as a non-critical update for openSUSE's python311-ldap package.
October 17, 2025 — Source

Samba, Redis, Subversion, .NET, MuPDF updates for Ubuntu
Ubuntu has released several security notices to address vulnerabilities in various packages. The affected packages include Samba (USN-7826-1), Redis (USN-7824-3, USN-7824-2, and USN-7824-1), Redict (USN-7824-2), Apache Subversion (USN-7818-2), .NET (USN-7822-1), and MuPDF (USN-7825-1). These vulnerabilities affect various Ubuntu releases, including 25.10, 25.04, 24.04 LTS, 22.04 LTS, 20.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS, and 14.04 LTS.
October 17, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — October 15th, 2025

AMD EPYC 9005 Brings Incredible Performance To The Cloud With Amazon M8a Benchmarks
Last week Amazon/AWS announced the new EC2 M8a instances as their latest-generation, general-purpose compute instances now powered by AMD EPYC 9005 "Turin" processors. Amazon announced the M8a as having up to 30% higher performance and up to 19% better price performance over M7a. With my testing of both at 32 vCPUs, the new AMD EPYC Turin instance provided 1.59x the performance over the prior-generation EPYC Genoa instance!
October 15, 2025 — Source

AMD HIP-RT Is Stable For Blender 5.0 But Will Be Off By Default Until Blender 5.1
AMD's HIP-RT is used by the Blender 3D modeling software for GPU-accelerated ray-tracing on Radeon GPUs. For Blender 5.0 the AMD HIP-RT support is expected to be declared "stable" but will not be enabled by default until Blender 5.1.
October 15, 2025 — Source

Apple Announces M5 With Much Faster GPU For AI
Apple today announced the M5 SoC as the newest in the Apple Silicon family and with claims of 4x the peak GPU compute performance for AI of the M4.
October 15, 2025 — Source

Basic HDR Support For AMD Radeon Accelerated Video Processing On Linux
David Rosca at AMD continues leading the efforts for improving the open-source Radeon video acceleration support under Linux with the Mesa Gallium3D code. This is especially important now that AMD is encouraging customers to no longer use the AMD Multimedia Framework (AMF) on Linux but resort to using VA-API and the Mesa multimedia capabilities instead.
October 15, 2025 — Source

Commodore Tells Windows 10 Users Shunned By Microsoft To Join Its Linux Sanctuary
Commodore is attempting to come to the rescue for hundreds of millions of users who are still running Windows 10, which has now reached official EOL (end of life) status. In a message posted to social media platform X, Commodore pitched its free Linux-based Vision 3.0 OS as a sanctuary for those left behind, calling it not just an upgrade, but a "reset." It also took a shot at Microsoft.
October 15, 2025 — Source or Source

Godot 4.5.1 released
Godot 4.5.1 has been released by the development team, addressing issues and bugs reported since the previous version. This update includes over 90 fixes contributed by around 50 people, improving performance, fixing bugs, and making the engine easier to use. The update resolves various problems across different departments, including 2D graphics, animation, audio, core, documentation, editor improvements, export, and rendering, making the engine more stable for developers.
October 15, 2025 — Source

I found the easiest way to transfer files to and from my Linux PC - and it's so fast
Once you start using QuickDAV, you'll find this simple app indispensable for easy file transfers from any OS to Linux.
October 15, 2025 — Source

Intel begins laying the groundwork for Xe3P GPUs on Linux
Just as the open-source drivers for Intel's Xe3 graphics devices are reaching maturity, the company's Linux development team is already gearing up for the next generation. The first batch of patches to enable the Xe3P graphics architecture has been fired off, marking the beginning of the long road to supporting Intel's upcoming GPUs on Linux.
October 15, 2025 — Source

Intel ISH Firmware Upstreamed Ahead Of Intel Panther Lake Laptops
In preparation for Panther Lake laptops shipping in early 2026, after Intel appears to have largely wrapped up work on the Linux driver enablement they are now ensuring the necessary firmware bits are out in time.
October 15, 2025 — Source

Intel Wildcat Lake "-march=wildcatlake" Added To GCC & LLVM Clang Compilers
While the open-source GCC and LLVM/Clang compilers saw Panther Lake support added in early 2024, only overnight was support upstreamed to GCC and Clang for the similar Wildcat Lake target.
October 15, 2025 — Source

Linux Gains Tool For Defragmenting exFAT Filesystems
A new release of exfatprogs is now available as the user-space programs on Linux for the exFAT file-system to complement the in-tree kernel driver for the Microsoft exFAT support.
October 15, 2025 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.12.53, 6.6.112, and 6.1.156 released
The Linux Kernel has released several new versions, including 6.12.53, 6.6.112, and 6.1.156, which bring various important updates to make the system faster, more stable, and safer. Some key changes include improved handling of interrupt handlers, addition of support for DMA handles, and fixes to security holes in the USB 9pfs transport layer that could cause heap buffer overflows. Other notable updates include validation to prevent attackers from exploiting packet size inconsistencies and a fix to a use-after-free problem that occurred on certain M2 Mac mini systems.
October 15, 2025 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.17.3 released
The Linux Kernel 6.17.3 has been released, featuring several important patches and fixes for various parts of the operating system. The release includes better performance for the VCN dump buffer, the CDNSP-PCI driver, and the USB network settings, along with fixes for a data race in the CDNSP-PCI driver and a security issue in the USB 9pfs transport layer. Additionally, the kernel has added ACPI support for FSL-MC and fixed various other issues, including use-after-free bugs, NULL pointer dereferences, and potential memory leaks.
October 15, 2025 — Source

Mesa 25.2.5 Released With Very Important Intel Driver Fix
Mesa 25.2.5 is out today as the newest bi-weekly point release for these open-source OpenGL and Vulkan drivers. Particularly if you are on Intel graphics of Battlemage or Lunar Lake and potentially older, Mesa 25.2.5 contains a very important bug fix for various rendering issues and potential game hangs/crashes.
October 15, 2025 — Source

Mesa's Zink OpenGL-On-Vulkan Driver Lands Mesh Shader Support
The GL_EXT_mesh_shader extension for OpenGL, the first new extension in a while, has been finalized. Mesa's Zink driver now fully supports it.
October 15, 2025 — Source

NordVPN's GUI app for Linux is now open source
Back in May, NordVPN released a graphical user interface for its Linux app, finally giving users an alternative to the command line. With features like Dedicated IP, Double VPN, and Threat Protection via DNS filtering, the GUI eliminated the need for most users to ever open a terminal to secure their connection.
October 15, 2025 — Source

Open 3D Engine O3DE 25.10 Brings Build Improvements, Vulkan & Linux Fixes
It's been four years now since the Open 3D Engine was born out of Amazon's Lumberyard project and hosted by the Linux Foundation. Today marks the release of the Open 3D Engine "O3DE" 25.10 release with the newest features and fixes for this cross-platform game/graphics engine.
October 15, 2025 — Source

Raspberry Pi OS, LMDE, Peppermint OS join the Debian 13 club
Downstream Linux projects line up behind the latest release
October 15, 2025 — Source

Samba 4.23.2, 4.22.5, and 4.21.9 released
Three new versions of Samba, 4.23.2, 4.22.5, and 4.21.9, have been released with critical security updates to fix serious flaws in the open-source SMB and Active Directory protocols. The updates address two vulnerabilities: CVE-2025-9640, which can lead to data breaches by exposing uninitialized memory, and CVE-2025-10230, a WINS support issue that allows attackers to send malicious commands to compromised hosts. These issues highlight the importance of keeping Samba systems up-to-date to prevent security problems.
October 15, 2025 — Source

Tinygrad Gains A Mesa NIR Backend - Initially Supporting NVK/NAK & LLVMpipe Execution
Merged today to the Tinygrad deep learning framework is a Mesa NIR back-end to allow targeting that common intermediate representation used by these open-source Linux GPU drivers. Initially supported with this Tinygrad NIR back-end is the open-source NVIDIA Vulkan driver "NVK" with its Rust-based NAK compiler as well as the CPU-based LLVMpipe driver.
October 15, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — October 13th, 2025

Blender Experimenting With Vulkan Ray Queries
As part of Blender continuing to build out the Vulkan API capabilities for this open-source 3D modeling software, a proof of concept merge request was opened for beginning to make use of Vulkan ray queries.
October 13, 2025 — Source

Box64 0.3.8 Brings DynaCache As Disk Cache For Generated Native Code From x86_64
Box64 0.3.8 is now available for this x86_64 user-space emulator for Linux that allows ARM64 and RISC-V 64-bit and LoongArch 64-bit systems to enjoy running x86_64 games and applications. Box64 along with the likes of FEX-Emu are the leading options for those needing to run x86_64 programs on ARM64 and elsewhere.
October 13, 2025 — Source

GNOME's Flatpak Runtime Drops 32-bit Compatibility Extension
With last month's GNOME 49 release, the 32-bit Compatibility extension for the GNOME Flatpak Runtime is no more. This is part of the broader effort of phasing out 32-bit support.
October 13, 2025 — Source

Intel Removing AMX-TRANSPOSE From The GCC Compiler
One year ago updated Intel documentation noted AMX-TRANSPOSE as one of the new ISA additions for Diamond Rapids. But in updated Intel architecture documentation last month, it oddly removed all references to AMX-TRANSPOSE. Confirming that the Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX) addition for TRANSPOSE is now dead, an Intel engineer posted a patch to remove AMX-TRANSPOSE from the GCC compiler.
October 13, 2025 — Source

ReactOS Making Progress On Windows WDDM Driver Support
The ReactOS project that continues striving toward being an "open-source Windows" ABI compatible operating system has been seeing some activity recently around supporting Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) display drivers as the newer evolution of XDDM drivers.
October 13, 2025 — Source

Updated Intel Patches For Cache Aware Scheduling Net A 44% Win For AMD EPYC
In the works the past number of months has been cache-aware load balancing / cache aware scheduling support for Linux. The latest iteration of those patches by Intel were posted this weekend and are enjoying the most uplift on AMD EPYC Genoa and newer platforms.
October 13, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — October 10th, 2025

AI Chatbots Use Emotional Farewells to Keep Users Engaged: Study
Asking something like "You're leaving already?" can manipulate a user into sticking around.
October 13, 2025 — Source

AI Is the 'Biggest Driver' of Electricity Use in North America, a New Energy Report Shows
By 2040, AI data centers alone will account for 12% of North American electricity consumption, according to a report on the global energy transition.
October 13, 2025 — Source

AI-Assisted Kubernetes Diagnostics: A Practical Implementation
Proof-of-concept tool using GPT-4 to detect failing Kubernetes pods, analyze logs and events, and suggest fixes with human approval for common issues.
October 13, 2025 — Source

AMD ROCm 7.0.2 Released With Radeon RX 9060 Officially Supported
AMD today released ROCm 7.0.2 as the newest update to the ROCm 7.0 compute stack.
October 13, 2025 — Source

Bazaar 0.5.5 released
The newest version of Bazaar, 0.5.5, has been released with several improvements to its user interface and functionality. The update includes visual changes such as a new design for transaction dialogs and sidebars, as well as updates to translations in various languages. Additionally, the app size dialog now provides users more control and information about package sizes, while texture caching has also been improved for a smoother user experience.
October 13, 2025 — Source

GCC Patches Posted For C++26 SIMD Support
One of the exciting additions on the way for the C++26 programming language is a standardized library around Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) operations. This portable SIMD implementation makes it easier to leverage SIMD and data parallelism in C++ for better performance and to work across SIMD architectures like AVX-512.
October 13, 2025 — Source

Linux Mint Debian Edition 7 (LMDE) released
Linux Mint Debian Edition 7 (LMDE) has been released with improvements made in Linux Mint 22.2 and an updated Debian GNU/Linux 13 package base. LMDE 7 offers support for OEM installations, allowing users to set up their systems for specific hardware configurations. This release showcases Linux Mint's dedication to crafting an adaptable, user-friendly operating system that caters to diverse needs. By combining the stability of Debian with the polish of Linux Mint, LMDE is an excellent option for those seeking a reliable and feature-rich platform.
October 13, 2025 — Source

Linux Now Disabling TPM Bus Encryption By Default For Performance Reasons
Linux is disabling TPM bus encryption by default in kernel versions 6.18 and later due to performance overhead, though it remains available for those who want it.
October 13, 2025 — Source

Microsoft Hyper-V Support Further Improved With Linux 6.18
Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization support within the Linux kernel continues to be steadily enhanced and it's inched along further for Linux 6.18.
October 13, 2025 — Source or Source

New Input Drivers Merged For Linux 6.18
In addition to last week's HID subsystem pull that brought haptic touchpad support and other exciting additions for Linux 6.18, the input subsystem pull was merged this week to introduce a few new input drivers.
October 13, 2025 — Source

NVIDIA Posts Latest Linux Driver Patches For Open-Source vGPU Support
NVIDIA recently revised open-source Linux driver patches for vGPU support, aiming for upstream integration with their Nova driver and demonstrating functionality on Windows 11.
October 13, 2025 — Source

OpenSSH 10.2 released
OpenSSH version 10.2 has been released and is now available for download from its official mirrors. The new release includes important fixes, such as correcting terminal connection handling when ControlPersist is active and resolving issues with CA signing operations in ssh-keygen(1). Additionally, due to known flaws in the SHA1 hash function, SHA1 SSHFP records will be deprecated starting from the next release, with a default change in ssh-keygen -r to only create SHA256 SSHFP records.
October 13, 2025 — Source

Proton 10.0-3 RC released
Valve has released the release candidate for Proton 10.0-3 for testing, which aims to improve PC game performance on Linux and the Steam Deck. The new build is available as a beta branch in the Steam client, allowing users to test its features. Proton 10.0-3 includes numerous fixes and improvements, enabling previously unplayable games like Mary Skelter: Nightmares and Grim Fandango Remastered to run smoothly.
October 13, 2025 — Source

Python 3.12.12, 3.11.14, 3.10.19, and 3.9.24 released
Python releases four new security updates: 3.12.12, 3.11.14, 3.10.19, and 3.9.24, addressing vulnerabilities in XML parsing and improving handling of archive and ZIP files. The HTML parsing capabilities have been significantly enhanced to align with the HTML5 standard, resolving various issues related to tag name recognition, attribute handling, CDATA section parsing, and comment termination. Better support for non-ASCII whitespaces, disregard for unnecessary characters, and more accurate parsing of attributes, tags, and comments are among these improvements.
October 13, 2025 — Source

Python 3.14 Performance Looking Good In Benchmarks
With this week's release of Python 3.14 bringing performance improvements, debugging improvements, a new Zstd compression module, and other enhancements I have been eager to run some benchmarks seeing how Python 3.14 compares to prior Python releases.
October 13, 2025 — Source

Ubuntu 25.10 Questing Quokka suffers Flatpak installation failures, fix issued
Canonical only released Ubuntu 25.10 Questing Quokka yesterday, but a major issue has already been found (and thankfully fixed); users couldn't install or update Flatpak applications. According to a bug report on Launchpad, Flatpak installs were failing, displaying a critical error.
October 13, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — October 8th, 2025

4 ways KDE Plasma 6.5 beta is shaping up to be a beautiful, customizable Linux desktop
One of Linux's most popular desktops is getting a huge upgrade.
October 8, 2025 — Source

Alpine 3.19.9, 3.20.8, 3.21.5, and 3.22.2 released
Alpine Linux has released new stable versions—3.19.9, 3.20.8, 3.21.5, and 3.22.2—including security fixes for OpenSSL.
October 8, 2025 — Source

AOMedia Will Be Talking More About The AV2 Video Codec Later This Month
Last month the Alliance for Open Media "AOMedia" began teasing that the AV2 video codec will release later this year. They have now sent us word that later this month will be a virtual event talking more about this successor to AV1.
October 8, 2025 — Source

Blender 5.0 Beta Builds Available Ahead Of Next Month's Official Release
Beta builds of Blender 5.0 are now available for testing, focusing on bug fixes. The stable release is planned for around November 11, featuring animation enhancements and other improvements.
October 8, 2025 — Source

GCC 16 Compiler Shifting To "Stage 3" Development Next Month
The GNU Compiler Collection will shift to "stage three" development in November, prioritizing bug fixing and new ports. AMD Zen 6 support is hoped for in GCC 16.
October 8, 2025 — Source

KVM Virtualization Sees Several Exciting Improvements For AMD & Intel In Linux 6.18
Linux 6.18 brings numerous KVM improvements for AMD and Intel, including virtualization support, performance enhancements, and security features across various CPU architectures.
October 8, 2025 — Source

My 5 favorite cloud sync tools for Linux - including free options
If you're looking to sync your folders and files to a cloud storage account, you'll find plenty of options in Linux.
October 8, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 Block Code Introduces Lockless Bitmap For Software RAID
Last week the block subsystem and IO_uring updates were merged for the Linux 6.18 kernel with a few items to draw attention to.
October 8, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 exFAT Driver Lands An Enticing Optimization
Linux 6.18 includes notable updates to the exFAT driver, optimizing bitmap loading time by up to 16.5x, alongside support for file-system labels and remount options.
October 8, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 RISC-V Default Kernel Builds To Support Front Panel Shutdown/Reboot Buttons
Linux 6.18 updates for RISC-V include standardized interface support, boot logo enablement, and default GPIO keyboard/event device support for shutdown/reboot buttons.
October 8, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 USB Brings Intel USBIO Drivers, Offload Improvements
In addition to the Linux 6.18 kernel bringing initial bindings for writing Rust USB drivers, the main USB/Thunderbolt subsystem updates for Linux 6.18 brought a variety of other enhancements.
October 8, 2025 — Source

Linux Fair DRM Scheduler Graduates Out Of The "RFC" Phase
Tvrtko Ursulin of Igalia has been leading the work on developing a "fair" DRM scheduler for Linux kernel graphics drivers. This scheduling algorithm is inspired by CFS and aims to improve the experience of running interactive graphical clients in parallel with heavy GPU workloads. This scheduler is inching closer to being ready for the mainline Linux kernel.
October 8, 2025 — Source

Open-source software advances design of offshore structures by testing wave-structure interactions
A Cornell doctoral student has developed an open-source software package that could transform how engineers design floating offshore structures for renewable energy and other ocean applications.
October 8, 2025 — Source

PixiEditor 2.0.1.17 released
PixiEditor 2.0.1.17 has been released, addressing a specific crash that users may have encountered. PixiEditor is a powerful universal 2D editor designed to cater to all your graphical needs, from creating sprites for games to editing images and logos. Its intuitive interface and comprehensive toolsets, including pixel art, painting, and vector tools, provide an unparalleled level of flexibility and precision. PixiEditor also comes equipped with advanced animation capabilities, including a built-in timeline and node-based render system that enables users to bring their creations to life.
October 8, 2025 — Source

System76 Pop!_OS 24.04 Beta Performing Well In Early Benchmarks
Last week System76 released the Pop!_OS 24.04 beta along with the beta COSMIC desktop. This long overdue update to Pop!_OS re-bases against the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS base while featuring their modern, Rust-based desktop environment. For those curious I ran some benchmarks of Pop!_OS 24.04 beta compared to the current Pop!_OS 22.04 stable release.
October 8, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — October 3rd, 2025

Free Software Foundation Names New President
A new Free Software Foundation president has been elected.
October 3, 2025 — Source

Intel NPU Linux Driver 1.24 Released
Intel released NPU Linux Driver 1.24, validated on Core Ultra Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake, and Lunar Lake SoCs, with updated firmware and components.
October 3, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 Device Tree Prepares For Arm C1 Nano / Pro / Premium / Ultra CPUs
The Linux 6.18 kernel's Device Tree now includes support strings for upcoming Arm C1 Nano, Pro, Premium, and Ultra processor cores, replacing Cortex-A and Cortex-X branding.
October 3, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 Non-MM Pull Request: "A Mere 150x Speedup Was Measured..."
Andrew Morton on Thursday submitted his collection of "non-MM" patches for areas of the kernel he oversees. There is one patch series that stands out in this pull request for Linux 6.18.
October 3, 2025 — Source

Qualcomm Iris Driver Adds H.264/H.265 Encode, Sadly No AMD ISP4 Driver For Linux 6.18
All of the multimedia subsystem feature updates have been merged for the Linux 6.18 merge window.
October 3, 2025 — Source

Red Hat fesses up to GitLab breach after attackers brag of data theft
Red Hat confirmed attackers accessed and copied data from a dedicated consulting GitLab instance, claiming the incident was limited and notifying authorities.
October 3, 2025 — Source or Source

Rusticl Performance For AMD Strix Halo Against ROCm OpenCL
After recently carrying out ROCm 7.0 benchmarks on AMD Ryzen AI Max+ "Strix Halo", I ran some complementary tests looking at the OpenCL performance. In particular, the ROCm OpenCL performance compared to using the Mesa-based Rusticl OpenCL driver on Strix Halo. It was an interesting benchmark battle with some healthy competition.
October 3, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — September 29th, 2025

5 Reasons You Should Move To Linux Instead Of Windows 11
You've likely heard people talking about Linux as a more stable, secure, and customizable operating system than Windows 11. That might be hard to believe, but in some cases, it's true. If you're tired of Windows' endless updates and slowdowns, you should consider taking a look at Linux, which has never been easier to download and run.
September 29, 2025 — Source

Blender 5.0 Vulkan Render Tests Passing On AMD & NVIDIA But Failing For Intel
Blender 5.0 is working its way toward an official release in mid-November and is soon transitioning from its alpha to beta stage. Among the key changes with Blender 5.0 are its Vulkan renderer being in good shape overall, HDR support when using Vulkan and Wayland on Linux, and other enhancements. Today some brief details were shared around the current state of the Vulkan support for Blender 5.0.
September 29, 2025 — Source

elementary OS 8.0.2
Elementary OS is a Linux distribution that offers a sleek, accessible alternative to Windows and macOS. Its signature interface, Pantheon, is designed with simplicity and consistency in mind. Unlike many Linux setups, which emphasize heavy customization, elementary focuses on a curated, cohesive user experience.
September 29, 2025 — Source

GNU Linux-libre 6.17 Deblobs The New Intel IPU7 Driver, Adjusts Existing Drivers
Building off yesterday's release of Linux 6.17, the GNU Linux-libre 6.17-gnu kernel is now available for this downstream kernel variant that strips away support for loading non-free microcode and other elements not aligned with the Free Software Foundation principles. This ultimately ends up limiting the hardware support available with most of today's modern hardware requiring microcode/firmware but alas here is the latest release with a fresh round of de-blobbing.
September 29, 2025 — Source

Intel Releases New LLM Scaler Betas For GenAI On Battlemage GPUs
Back in August Intel released LLM-Scaler 1.0 as part of Project Battlematrix for help getting generative AI "GenAI" workloads running on Arc (Pro) B-Series graphics cards. Out today are two new LLM Scaler beta releases for further enhancing the AI capabilities on Intel Battlemage GPUs.
September 29, 2025 — Source

IPFire 2.29 - Core Update 198 is available for testing
IPFire 2.29 - Core Update 198 has been released for testing, bringing significant improvements to the IPFire Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and an upgraded toolchain. The enhanced IPS now offers advanced reporting capabilities, including real-time email notifications, scheduled PDF reports, and remote syslog forwarding, which dramatically enhance its auditability and accountability. Additionally, the update includes an upgrade to Suricata 8.0.1, caching for compiled rules, sturdier memory handling, and expanded protocol support.
September 29, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 Power Management Brings Panther Lake Power Slider & New Drivers
Linux ACPI and power management maintainer Rafael Wysocki today sent out all of the feature updates and changes intended for the now-started Linux 6.18 merge window. There are some new Intel additions as well as for the growing range of different ARM-based SoCs and other hardware.
September 29, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 Updating The Baseline For Marking Intel CPU Microcode As Outdated
Introduced this year with the Linux 6.16 kernel was the new functionality for reporting to users when running on outdated Intel CPU microcode since it can pose security vulnerability issues and/or functionality problems. The Linux kernel support for propagating this "old_microcode" reporting via sysfs relies on a static list of microcode versions corresponding to different Intel CPU generations. For the Linux 6.18 kernel this list is being updated to reflect modern baselines for Intel recommendations on CPU microcode.
September 29, 2025 — Source

Microsoft to remove crucial SQL Server on Linux VM images, forcing temporary manual installs
Microsoft is removing all Linux-based SQL Server VM images from the Azure Marketplace. The Redmond giant said these images will no longer be available in the Azure SQL hub, CLI, Azure Portal, or PowerShell scripts for new virtual machine (VM) provisioning. The deprecation is expected to start soon and be finished over the next couple of months, during which time images may be unavailable. For those with existing deployments using old images, these should continue working properly.
September 29, 2025 — Source

NVIDIA, Disney & Google Contribute Open-Source Newton Engine To The Linux Foundation
Earlier this year NVIDIA announced Newton as an open-source physics engine focused on robotic simulations. This physics engine was developed by NVIDIA in cooperation with Google DeepMind and Disney Research. Today it's been contributed to the Linux Foundation.
September 29, 2025 — Source

PikaOS 25.09.26 released
PikaOS 25.09.26 has been released as the latest version of a cutting-edge Linux distribution focused on gaming and optimization. Built on Debian with custom-compiled packages, PikaOS achieves a balance between stability and up-to-dateness, delivering seamless gaming experiences out of the box with exceptional performance. The operating system boasts high compatibility due to its Debian SID base with custom patches, supporting various software and hardware configurations.
September 29, 2025 — Source

RISC-V With Linux 6.18 Brings Support For MIPS Vendor Extensions
Back during the Linux 6.17 merge window the RISC-V changes were rejected as "garbage" for being submitted too late in the merge window and with some code choices that upset Linus Torvalds. With lessons learned, the RISC-V changes for Linux 6.18 were submitted today during the first official day of this new kernel cycle.
September 29, 2025 — Source

Ryzen AI Max+ With Framework Desktop, File-System Tests & EPYC 4005 Dominated Q3
With Q3 coming to an end this week, here is a look back at the most popular Linux hardware reviews and featured multi-page benchmark articles during the third quarter of this year on Phoronix.
September 29, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — September 26th, 2025

Features Expected For Linux 6.18: File-System Improvements, Sheaves, New Drivers & More Perf
With Linux 6.17 expected for release this weekend, the Linux 6.18 merge window will in turn kick-off for its usual two week dance. Here is a look at some of the features on our radar that are expected to be merged for Linux 6.18, which is also likely to be the 2025 LTS kernel version.
September 26, 2025 — Source

Intel Returns To Working On The Habana Labs AI Accelerator Linux Driver
After being on a hiatus for more than one year and going through several rounds of Habana Labs driver maintainers due to Intel layoffs, there finally is some updated "habanalabs" AI accelerator kernel driver code slated to go into the upcoming Linux 6.18 kernel cycle. There is some new feature work but still no Gaudi 3 support for the upstream Linux kernel.
September 26, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.17 Gets Ready For Release With Intel Panther Lake & More Performance
The Linux 6.17 kernel is tracking well for its planned stable release on Sunday. Here is a look back at some of the most interesting changes to find with this next kernel version.
September 26, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 Landing Patch For Old AMD Bulldozer CPUs With XOP Instruction Set
The Linux 6.18 kernel is bringing a new patch to benefit those using the decade-old AMD Bulldozer processors and wanting to make use of Linux's X86_NATIVE_CPU build option for enhancing performance in some areas by optimizing the kernel build for your particular processor/ISA capabilities.
September 26, 2025 — Source

PHP 8.3.26 and 8.4.13 packages for Fedora/RHEL released
Remi Collet has announced the availability of RPM packages for PHP versions 8.3.26 and 8.4.13, which can be accessed through his repositories on Fedora 41 or higher and Enterprise Linux systems version 8 or higher. The new PHP versions include bug fixes and performance improvements in various areas such as core, CLI, date functionality, DBA, DOM, FPM, Intl, opcache, OpenSSL, and Phar. Users can install the latest PHP versions using dnf on their system, with options to replace the default version or install it as a software collection.
September 26, 2025 — Source

Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS Beta released
System76 has released the first beta for Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS, a long-term support version of its Linux distribution featuring the new COSMIC Desktop Environment (DE). The COSMIC DE includes several improvements and new features, but users can expect some bugs and minor issues due to the beta phase. To use the beta version smoothly, users may need to configure their browsers and make some adjustments to work with certain applications and games.
September 26, 2025 — Source

Samba 4.23.1 released
Samba 4.23.1 has been released, addressing several critical issues in the previous version. The update includes fixes for bugs such as incomplete bind configuration and winbind crashes, ensuring improved stability and performance.
September 26, 2025 — Source

System76 Releases Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS Beta Alongside COSMIC Desktop Beta
Overnight the Linux PC vendor System76 released their long-awaited Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS Beta operating system along with the beta milestone of their COSMIC desktop environment.
September 26, 2025 — Source

Today Is The Last Day On Our Autumn Deal To Help Support Linux Hardware Reviews
Just a friendly reminder that today is the last day for those wishing to join Phoronix Premium at a discounted rate. Less than 1% of readers currently do so for helping to support the site and its Linux hardware testing and open-source news operations over the past 21 years.
September 26, 2025 — Source

Ubuntu 25.10's Move To Rust Coreutils Is Causing Major Breakage For Some Executables
I noticed a number of benchmarks failing to run on Ubuntu 25.10 this week with reported checksum errors on the files... I quickly realized it's due to the recent Rust Coreutils transition for Ubuntu 25.10 causing some major breakage for those relying on Makeself archives.
September 26, 2025 — Source

Vulkan 1.4.328 Published With Copy Memory Indirect Extension
Vulkan 1.4.328 is now available as the latest specification update to this high performance graphics and compute API from The Khronos Group.
September 26, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — September 25th, 2025

AMD Radeon Software for Linux 25.10.4 released
AMD has released its Radeon Software for Linux 25.10.4, which introduces support for the AMD Radeon PRO W7900D and preliminary ROCm support on the Ryzen AI Max 300 platform. Starting with version 25.20, AMD will shift focus to officially supporting the Mesa Vulkan driver, Mesa OpenGL, and multimedia support, while eliminating proprietary drivers from its releases. Users are advised to transition from AMD Media Framework (AMF) to VA-API/Mesa Multimedia for seamless media processing, as demonstrated by the provided ffmpeg use cases.
September 25, 2025 — Source

Archinstall 3.0.11 has been released.
Additionally, the release includes a quick adjustment that aligns with systemd's recommendations for enabling services during installation. Overall, these enhancements aim to provide a smoother and more efficient user experience for Arch Linux installations.
September 25, 2025 — Source

Bcachefs goes DKMS after Torvalds' kernel banishment
Performance of new version mostly good, but future uncertain
September 25, 2025 — Source

BPF With Linux 6.18 To Support Signed Programs & Deferred Task Execution
Queued this week into the BPF subsystem's "bpf-next" Git branch ahead of the Linux 6.18 merge window are some exciting feature additions.
September 25, 2025 — Source

Fractal 13 Beta released
A new beta version of Fractal, a Matrix messaging app for GNOME written in Rust, has been released for testing. The latest beta release introduces a brand-new audio player, streamlined user profiles, and a more visually appealing design using GNOME document and monospace fonts. Fractal 13 beta is available for installation via Flathub Beta, with contributors' efforts resulting in other enhancements, fixes, and new translations.
September 25, 2025 — Source

GE-Proton10-17 released
GloriousEggroll has released GE-Proton10-17, a minor update to the GE-Proton series. This release serves as a hotfix or refresh, ensuring that users have the latest version of key components. Specifically, it updates DXVK and other main components, which should resolve issues such as the Warframe crash.
September 25, 2025 — Source or Source

Intel Media Driver 2025Q3 Prepares For Panther Lake
The Intel Media Driver 2025Q3 release is available today as the quarterly update to this open-source Video Acceleration API (VA-API) driver used by Intel hardware under Linux for video encode/decode.
September 25, 2025 — Source

Intel Posts New Linux Patches To Reduce Overhead Of VMSCAPE Mitigation
Earlier this month the VMSCAPE CPU security vulnerability was made public and affecting both AMD and Intel processors. VMSCAPE can lead to leaking information from a user-space hypervisor via speculative side channels. An Intel engineer today posted a new set of patches for helping to reduce the mitigation costs of VMSCAPE protections on modern Intel processors.
September 25, 2025 — Source

Intel Releases IGSC 1.0 For Applying Firmware Updates To Graphics Cards
Overnight Intel released IGSC 1.0 as their library for handling graphics system firmware updates for rolling out firmware updates to Intel discrete graphics card devices.
September 25, 2025 — Source

KDE neon 20250925 released
KDE neon 20250925 has been released, offering users the latest KDE updates built upon Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. This unique Linux distribution caters primarily to tech-savvy users who want instant access to the latest KDE innovations and serves as a testing ground for adventurous Linux enthusiasts. While KDE neon provides cutting-edge KDE software, it may not be suitable for users with stringent reliability requirements due to its rolling nature and potential system stability issues.
September 25, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 Linear RAID "md-linear" To Support Atomic Writes
Building off the work in months prior around Device Mapper atomic write support and related infrastructure, the md-linear target for linear software RAID support will enable atomic write support with the upcoming Linux 6.18 merge window.
September 25, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.1.154 released
Linux kernel version 6.1.154 is now available:
September 25, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.6.108 released
Linux kernel version 6.6.108 is now available:
September 25, 2025 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.12.49 released
Linux kernel version 6.12.49 is now available:
September 25, 2025 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.16.9 released
Linux Kernel 6.16.9 has been released with various bug fixes and improvements to its functionality. The release addresses critical issues such as a bug in the io_uring subsystem, memory management leaks, and incorrect clock rate readbacks. Additionally, patches have been applied to fix problems in serial drivers, mptcp, crypto, smb clients, and other kernel components.
September 25, 2025 — Source

MariaDB 12.2 Preview released
MariaDB 12.2, a preview version of the popular open-source relational database, introduces several new features and improvements to its functionality. The update includes compatibility features such as the TO_NUMBER() function, TRUNC() function, global temporary tables, and enhanced replication capabilities between tables with different structures. Additionally, MariaDB 12.2 offers improved optimizer hints for query performance optimization and additional information in the INFORMATION_SCHEMA table for better database management.
September 25, 2025 — Source

Open source to closed doors: RubyGems control fight erupts
Ruby Central is accused of ousting maintainers from core gems under pressure from Shopify
September 25, 2025 — Source

PostgreSQL 18 released
PostgreSQL 18 has been released, bringing significant performance improvements, new features, and enhanced security measures to the world's most advanced open-source database. Key enhancements include a novel I/O subsystem with asynchronous operations that boost overall throughput, faster major-version upgrades, and improved query and general performance through optimizations for indexing and table joins.
September 25, 2025 — Source

PostgreSQL 18.0 Released With Async I/O, Performance Improvements
PostgreSQL 18.0 is out today as the annual major feature release for this widely-used SQL database server. PostgreSQL 18 is a big one with many exciting performance optimizations and other new features.
September 25, 2025 — Source

Qualcomm Begins Posting Linux Patches For Snapdragon X2 Elite, 8 Elite Gen 5 SoCs
Yesterday at the Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon X2 Elite SoCs for upcoming laptops. In addition Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 mobile platform too. With those announcements out there, the Qualcomm open-source engineers have been busy in rolling out their latest patches for beginning to enable these new platforms with the Linux kernel.
September 25, 2025 — Source

Raspberry Pi 500+ Benchmarks: Mechanical Keyboard Computer, 16GB RAM & NVMe SSD
Last year Raspberry Pi launched the Raspberry Pi 500 for taking their Raspberry Pi keyboard computer into the Raspberry Pi 5 world. Today they are announcing the Raspberry Pi 500+ as an upgraded version of the device now with a mechanical keyboard, LED lighting, 16GB of RAM, and NVMe SSD storage.
September 25, 2025 — Source

Wild: A Very Fast Linker Written In Rust, Aims To Outperform Mold Linker
While the Mold linker has been very impressive for its speed the past few years compared to the linkers out of the LLVM and GNU toolchain projects, there is a new high speed linker on the scene and it's written in Rust: meet Wild.
September 25, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — September 22nd, 2025

A Major Trading Firm Has Open-Sourced The Latest Linux File-System: TernFS
XTX Markets as one of the largest algorithmic trading firms that handles $250 billion in daily traded volume and relies on around 650+ petabytes of storage for its price forecasts and other algorithmic trading data has open-sourced its Linux file-system. XTX developed TernFS for distributed storage after they outgrew their original NFS usage and other file-system alternatives.
September 22, 2025 — Source

AMD Ryzen AI Max+ "Strix Halo" Performance With ROCm 7.0
With last week's official release of ROCm 7.0 failing to mention the AMD Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" SoCs on the supported GPU list, a number of Phoronix readers and from elsewhere were inquiring whether or not Strix Halo works with the new ROCm release. Various AMD folks have mentioned Strix Halo with ROCm, so I decided to run some benchmarks for myself of ROCm 7.0 on Ubuntu Linux with the AMD Ryzen AI Max 395 with Radeon 8060S Graphics on the Framework Desktop.
September 22, 2025 — Source

Firefox and Python 3 updates for RHEL
Updates are available for Firefox and Python3 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. The Firefox update has been rated as Important by Red Hat Product Security, while the Python 3 update has been rated as Moderate.
September 22, 2025 — Source

FreeBSD 15.0 Alpha 3 Brings WiFi Driver Updates
FreeBSD 15.0 continues hiking toward a stable release in December. This is the third of four planned alphas before moving on to the beta and release candidate phases. It's also in early October when FreeBSD 15.0 will be branched in the development tree.
September 22, 2025 — Source

How to rebase to Fedora Silverblue 43 Beta
Fedora Magazine published a tutorial on how to rebase to Fedora Silverblue 43 Beta, an operating system built on Fedora Linux that offers advantages such as being able to roll back in case of problems. The tutorial provides steps to update from a previous version and how to revert if anything unforeseen happens during the process. Users are advised not to skip versions during rebase but rather update one version above at a time to avoid errors and have specific instructions for users with RPM Fusion layered on their Silverblue installation.
September 22, 2025 — Source

Kdenlive 25.08.1 released
Kdenlive 25.08.1 has been released, focusing on stability and polish with numerous bug fixes and usability improvements. This update addresses various issues, including crashes triggered by user actions or project conditions, and resolves problems related to rendering, audio signals, and macOS compatibility. The Kdenlive development team has also worked on refining the user interface, allowing curve editors to occupy the full width of their panels and improving the appearance of icons in UI components.
September 22, 2025 — Source

Linus Torvalds releases Linux 6.17-rc7 with a mix of bug fixes
The seventh release candidate of Linux kernel 6.17 has just landed. The good news is that this will be the final release candidate before the official 6.17 release next week, as long as no unexpected issues arise. The Linux founder, Linus Torvalds, described the week as "normal" with "mixed random small changes." This week doesn't seem to include an "obvious big concentration of fixes anywhere."
September 22, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 Adding A New Power Savings Option For The Intel Graphics Driver
Queued up into DRM-Next is a last batch of Intel Xe kernel graphics driver improvements ahead of the Linux 6.18 merge window that is expected to begin next week. With this last minute Intel Xe driver activity is also a new power management knob for those wanting to run their Intel graphics slightly more efficient.
September 22, 2025 — Source

Linux has the lineage to out-evolve the deadliest of cyber threats, given the right push
Darwin would understand microkernels. We need microkernels that understand Darwin.
September 22, 2025 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.17-rc7 released
Linus Torvalds has announced the availability of Linux Kernel 6.17-rc7, marking the seventh release candidate before the final version. This update includes over 700 commits from more than 100 contributors, addressing various issues and improving performance across different areas of the kernel, including device drivers, networking, filesystems, and core kernel code. The KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) subsystem has seen significant improvements with a large number of commits aimed at enhancing its performance.
September 22, 2025 — Source

MX Linux 25 Beta 1 released
MX Linux has released the MX-25 "Infinity" beta 1, built from Debian 13, which combines elegant desktops with high stability and performance. This release includes various updates, such as Qt6 migration for MX Tools, new deb822 format support, and improvements to the installer, including UEFI Secure Boot support. Users can test the beta 1 and provide feedback on areas like the installer and MX tools, particularly for popular app entries in MX Package Installer.
September 22, 2025 — Source

OpenAI GPT-5 Codex: Agentic Coding Model MCP Tested
What if coding wasn't just a skill but a conversation, one where your AI collaborator anticipates your needs, adapts to your workflow, and executes complex tasks with precision? OpenAI's GPT-5 Codex is reshaping this vision into reality. As one of the most advanced AI-driven coding tools to date, it promises to streamline multi-component processing (MCP) and redefine how developers interact with code. Imagine seamlessly transitioning between AI models or generating intricate video segments without a hitch, GPT-5 Codex claims to make such scenarios not just possible but routine.
September 22, 2025 — Source

OpenLovable Open Source AI: Build Apps With Ease Without Coding
What if building your next app or website didn't require endless hours of coding or expensive subscriptions? Imagine a tool that lets you describe your vision in plain language and transforms it into functional code, no technical expertise required. Enter OpenLovable, a new open source platform that's reshaping the way developers approach projects. Developed by Firecrawl, OpenLovable combines innovative technologies like React, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS with an intuitive chat interface, offering a seamless, self-hosted solution for development.
September 22, 2025 — Source

PAM, FFmpeg, Jq, Shibboleth-SP updates for Debian
Multiple security advisories have been issued for various Debian GNU/Linux packages, including pam, ffmpeg, jq, and shibboleth-sp. Attackers could exploit vulnerabilities such as denial of service, privilege escalation, SQL injection, and heap buffer overflows, which these advisories address. The affected packages include pam (CVE-2024-22365 and CVE-2025-6020), ffmpeg (CVE-2025-1594, CVE-2025-7700, and CVE-2025-10256), jq (CVE-2025-48060), and shibboleth-sp (CVE-2025-9943).
September 22, 2025 — Source

Prometheus-Podman-Exporter and Podman-TUI updates for Fedora
Fedora has released security updates for several packages, including prometheus-podman-exporter and podman-tui. The updates address a memory leak vulnerability (CVE-2025-58058) in the xz library used by these packages. Updates are available for Fedora 41, 42, and 43 Beta.
September 22, 2025 — Source

ProtonUp-Qt 2.14.0 released
ProtonUp-Qt 2.14.0 has been released with improved features and enhanced compatibility tools for Linux systems. This update allows users to install various compatibility layers, such as Proton-GE and Luxtorpeda, for gaming platforms like Steam, Lutris, and Heroic Games Launcher. The release has also undergone testing on Ubuntu 18.04 or newer, Fedora 34, and Manjaro 20.2, ensuring its stability across different platforms.
September 22, 2025 — Source

Qt Creator 18 Beta Brings Development Container Support
The beta release of the Qt Creator 18 integrated development environment is now available for testing for this Qt/C++-focused IDE.
September 22, 2025 — Source

Raspberry Pi Releases M.2 HAT+ Compact For $15
Raspberry Pi today announced the M.2 HAT+ Compact as a new smaller version of their M.2 HAT+ for these single board computers.
September 22, 2025 — Source

Rke2 update for SUSE
A security update is available for openSUSE Tumbleweed that resolves one vulnerability. The update addresses an issue fixed in the rke2-1.33-1.33.5+rke2r1-1.1 package, which is classified as having a moderate rating. The affected product is openSUSE Tumbleweed, and the relevant security reference can be found on Suse's website regarding CVE-2025-1974.
September 22, 2025 — Source

RPM 6.0 Released With OpenPGP Improvements & Enforces Signature Checking By Default
RPM 6.0 is out today as the newest major update to the RPM Package Manager as the package management system most commonly associated with Red Hat / Fedora, openSUSE, Mageia / OpenMandriva, and others.
September 22, 2025 — Source

Sparky 2025.09 Special Editions released
SparkyLinux 2025.09 Special Editions have been released, offering three distinct versions: GameOver for gamers, Multimedia for web developers and multimedia enthusiasts, and Rescue for system rescue operations. Built on Debian 14 testing, this release includes Linux kernel 6.16 and updated packages from Debian and Sparky testing repositories.
September 22, 2025 — Source

Why ZorinOS 18 might be the new best Linux distro - and I've tried them all
The team behind ZorinOS has released the beta version of the open-source operating system, and it's not only stunning but also more user-friendly.
September 22, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — September 19th, 2025

2025 year of Linux? Data suggests unsupported Windows 11 users overwhelmingly choosing one
This week, The Restart Project, a right-to-repair activist group published new statements regarding the upcoming end of support for Windows 10. The group once again urged Microsoft to consider extending the support for the OS and also reminded users about its "End of Windows 10 toolkit". One of the recommendations of the group is that users install Linux on systems that are deemed ineligible for a Windows 11 upgrade due to the hardware not meeting the OS requirements.
September 19, 2025 — Source

Fedora Linux 43 Beta Now Available for Testing
That's right, my friends, the beta of the latest iteration of your favorite RPM-based distribution is now available for testing. The final release before the stable release is made available this fall, Fedora Linux 43 Beta has plenty of improvements and additions.
September 19, 2025 — Source

I've been using Linux for a quarter of a century, so why do I keep coming back to Ubuntu?
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"
September 19, 2025 — Source

IPFire 2.29 - Core Update 197 released
IPFire 2.29 - Core Update 197 has been released, marking a significant milestone for this professional-grade open-source firewall and security platform. The update includes a comprehensive overhaul of OpenVPN to version 2.6, bringing improved security, client compatibility, and codebase modernization, as well as fine-tuned system performance to reduce energy consumption while maintaining lightning-fast speed. Additionally, IPFire has been rebased on Linux 6.12.41, features new mitigations against Transient Scheduler Attacks, and includes numerous package upgrades and add-on updates.
September 19, 2025 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.5 beta is out bringing KNightTime module, Wayland PiP support, and more
The KDE team has announced Plasma 6.5 Beta today, meaning you can finally test out all the changes and improvements that have been in the works, some of which we've covered in our previous "This Week in Plasma" coverage. The final release is scheduled for October 21.
September 19, 2025 — Source

Lubuntu 25.10 Questing Quokka beta arrives with controversial Rust-based core changes
Lubuntu has released the beta version of Lubuntu 25.10, codenamed Questing Quokka, which will be the 29th release overall and the 15th with the LXQt desktop (LXDE was used before). While still a big update, it is an interim release between long term versions and has a shorter lifespan. It will be supported for nine months with the end of life occurring in July 2026.
September 19, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.1.153 released
Linux kernel version 6.1.153 is now available:
September 19, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.6.107 released
Linux kernel version 6.6.107 is now available:
September 19, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.12.48 released
Linux kernel version 6.12.48 is now available:
September 19, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.16.8 released
Linux kernel version 6.16.8 is now available:
September 19, 2025 — Source

Linux Mint unveils anticipated LMDE 7 "Gigi" beta release
Linux Mint has released the beta for LMDE 7, codenamed Gigi. The project's goal is to ensure Linux Mint's user experience can be maintained even if Ubuntu, on which Linux Mint is usually based, were to become unavailable. LMDE also serves as a development target to ensure the software built by the team is compatible outside of the Ubuntu base. As it's not based on Ubuntu, LMDE uses the package base provided by Debian.
September 19, 2025 — Source

Python 3.14.0rc3 released
Python 3.14.0rc3 is the final release candidate available for testing ahead of its scheduled release on October 7th, 2025. This version introduces significant new features including support for free-threaded Python, deferred evaluation of annotations, and template string literals for custom string processing. Major updates also include improved error messages, a built-in implementation of HMAC with formally verified code, and better color support in various command-line interfaces.
September 19, 2025 — Source

Ubuntu Linux 25.10 Beta released
Ubuntu Linux 25.10, codenamed Questing Quokka, has reached its beta stage, which constitutes an important step towards the final release expected in October 2025. The beta release includes images for various Ubuntu products and community-developed flavors, featuring updated kernel version 6.17 (release candidate) and other new features.
September 19, 2025 — Source

Ungoogled Chromium 140.0.7339.185-1 released
Ungoogled Chromium is a lightweight browser built upon the latest Chromium 140.0.7339.185 release, designed to provide enhanced security and privacy by eliminating Google dependencies. The browser maintains a standard interface experience while introducing tweaks that promote user control and awareness of their online activities. Key features include disabling or removing functionality related to Google domains, blocking internal requests, and stripping unnecessary binaries from the source code.
September 19, 2025 — Source

VSCodium 1.104.16282 released
VSCodium, a community-driven project based on Microsoft's VS Code repository, has released its latest version built upon VS Code 1.104.1. The new release addresses several critical issues, including a fix for the CVE-2025-10585 security vulnerability and various bugs related to user experience, API fixes, and authentication problems.
September 19, 2025 — Source

"Windows alternate" Zorin OS 18 claims even better performance, adds huge features list
If you are a fan of Linux and were hoping that with the upcoming end of support for Windows 10, there would be a user exodus towards Linux as they won't officially be able to upgrade, you are in for disappointment. That is because the latest JPR data has suggested that that is simply not the case.
September 19, 2025 — Source

Zorin OS 18 Beta released
Zorin OS 18 Beta has been released, featuring a visually stunning redesign with a refreshed default theme and innovative user interface enhancements. The operating system introduces Advanced Window Tiling, Seamless Integration with Web Apps, and OneDrive file integration, catering to users who have migrated from Windows.
September 19, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — September 16th, 2025

AMD ROCm 7.0 Begins Rocking Out On GitHub
As a pleasant surprise waking up this morning is AMD ROCm 7.0 release tags beginning to appear on GitHub, indicating the likely imminent official release of the ROCm 7.0 compute stack as the open-source AMD Radeon/Instinct software stack aimed to be the open alternative to NVIDIA's CUDA ecosystem.
September 16, 2025 — Source or Source

Bazaar 0.4.11 released
Bazaar 0.4.11 has been released. The release addresses a few critical bugs, including disabling the curated tab when there is no content to display and improving blocklist handling. Additionally, Arabic and Italian translations have been updated, while untranslated strings have been fixed by community contributors
September 16, 2025 — Source

Fedora 43 Beta ISOs Released For Testing This Leading-Edge Linux OS
Fedora 43 Beta ISOs are now available for those wanting to help in testing this next major Fedora Linux release. Fedora 43 is powered by the Linux 6.17 kernel, GNOME 49 is powering Fedora Workstation 43, and there are a wealth of updates as covered in countless Phoronix articles.
September 16, 2025 — Source

Fedora Linux 43 Beta released
The Fedora Project has released the beta version of Fedora Linux 43, a crucial step towards its final official release in October. The beta build includes various desktop environments with updates that benefit users and developers, such as the XFCE 4.20 and LXQt 2.1, which now use Wayland for improved performance and functionality. For developers, Fedora Linux 43 Beta introduces features like Copilot Runtime Verification Framework, Ruby 3.4, PHP 8.4, and updates to the GNU Toolchain with GCC 15 and Binutils 2.44.
September 16, 2025 — Source

Fedora Workstation 43 Beta Is Running Well On AMD Strix Halo / Framework Desktop
Fedora 43 Beta is releasing today as we work toward the official release in either late October or early November. I have been testing out the Fedora Workstation 43 Beta candidate to great success on the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ "Strix Halo" powered Framework Desktop. Here are some benchmarks of Fedora Workstation 42 compared to the Fedora Workstation 43 Beta.
September 16, 2025 — Source

FEX-2509.1 released
FEX 2509.1, a powerful tool that enables running x86 applications on ARM64 Linux devices with broad compatibility for both 32-bit and 64-bit binaries, has been released to address some minor regressions from the initial 2509 version, providing a more stable experience for users. FEX supports seamless integration with Wine/Proton to play Windows games on Linux systems, leveraging API call forwarding to native libraries like OpenGL or Vulkan
September 16, 2025 — Source

Godot 4.5 released
Godot 4.5 has been released, focusing on making game development more accessible and feature-rich with various enhancements across rendering, visuals, scripting, and development workflow. Key improvements include advanced visual effects, improved performance, and enhanced user experience through features like screen reader support, custom loggers, and a dedicated 2D navigation server. The update also includes platform-specific enhancements for Android, Linux, macOS, Windows, and Web, as well as significant overhauls of systems such as animation, import, input, navigation, physics, rendering, and XR.
September 16, 2025 — Source

Here's how I multi-task in the Linux terminal with Tmux
Elevate your sys admin powers!
September 16, 2025 — Source

Intel USBIO USB IO Expander Drivers Expected To Be Merged For Linux 6.18
Queued up in the past few days to the USB subsystem's "usb-next" Git branch are the Intel USBIO drivers for Linux 6.18. These drivers are needed to support the web cameras on various newer Intel laptop models.
September 16, 2025 — Source

Intel Xeon 6980P "Granite Rapids" Linux Performance One Year Later
Next week marks one year since the launch of the Xeon 6900P series Granite Rapids server processors. Given the occasion and a new server in the lab, here is a look at how Intel's Granite Rapids top-end Xeon 6980P server processors are performing one year after the original introduction with a production-grade server platform as well as incorporating all of the Linux software improvements over the past year.
September 16, 2025 — Source

Linux Mint picks up the pace with LMDE 7 and Wayland-ready Cinnamon
Devs sketch plans for two more releases this year, blending Debian foundations with modern display tech
September 16, 2025 — Source

Linux Security Tools Bypassed by io_uring Rootkit Technique, ARMO Research Reveals
Security researchers at ARMO have uncovered a significant vulnerability in Linux runtime security tools that stems from the io_uring interface, an asynchronous I/O mechanism that can completely bypass traditional system call monitoring. The research demonstrates how attackers can exploit this blind spot to operate undetected by most existing security solutions.
September 16, 2025 — Source

Python-Django and Node-SHA.js updates for Debian 11 LTS
Two security updates have been issued for Debian GNU/Linux 11 (Bullseye) LTS. The first update addresses a potential SQL injection attack in the Django web development framework, which has been fixed in version 2:2.2.28-1~deb11u8. The second update fixes an improper input validation vulnerability in node-sha.js, a popular streamable SHA hashes implementation, which has been addressed in version 2.4.11-2+deb11u1.
September 16, 2025 — Source

ROCm 7.0.0 released
ROCm 7.0.0 is a major release that brings significant updates and new features across its comprehensive platform, focusing on expanded hardware support, enhanced deep learning framework integration, improved compiler capabilities, and refined tooling. The release introduces support for AMD Instinct MI355X and MI350X GPUs, expands OS compatibility to include Ubuntu 24.04.3 and Rocky Linux 9, and enhances support for popular deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch and TensorFlow.
September 16, 2025 — Source

SQLite, JSON-XS, Vim, RubyGems updates for Ubuntu
Ubuntu has released several security notices (USN) to address vulnerabilities in various packages. The affected releases include Ubuntu 25.04, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. The vulnerabilities include a JSON-XS issue that could cause a denial of service by crashing if it parses specially crafted JSON data, as well as issues with SQLite, cPanel-JSON-XS, Vim, and RubyGems that could potentially lead to code execution or resource consumption.
September 16, 2025 — Source

The Open Source Initiative's executive director departs - what it means for the OSAID debate
Will the OSI continue with its current AI definition path? This issue continues to be debated in both AI and open-source circles.
September 16, 2025 — Source

Transform Your Raspberry Pi 5 Into a Desktop Powerhouse with Alpine Linux
Have you ever wondered how to turn your Raspberry Pi 5 into a sleek, ultra-lightweight desktop system? While many Linux distributions promise simplicity, few can match the sheer efficiency of Alpine Linux. Known for its minimalistic design and server-first approach, Alpine Linux is a hidden gem for tech enthusiasts who value performance and customization. But here's the catch: transforming this lightweight OS into a functional desktop environment isn't a plug-and-play affair.
September 16, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — September 9th, 2025

7 most Windows-like Linux distros - if you're ready to ditch Microsoft
These Linux distributions will let you revive your PC after Windows 10 ends, without the learning curve.
September 9, 2025 — Source

AlmaLinux 10.1 will ship with CRB enabled by default
AlmaLinux is a community-owned and governed, free, and open-source Linux distribution that is binary-compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The project started after Red Hat announced in 2020 that it was discontinuing the stable CentOS Linux release.
September 9, 2025 — Source

AlmaLinux OS 10: Enhancing User Experience with CodeReady Linux Builder Repository
AlmaLinux has announced that the CodeReady Linux Builder (CRB) repository will be enabled by default in AlmaLinux OS 10, aiming to resolve common issues with installing packages from Fedora Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL). This change is designed to simplify the user experience and reduce the number of erroneous bug reports filed with EPEL maintainers.
September 9, 2025 — Source

AMD openSIL Production Phase Reaffirmed For 2026
One of the AMD software initiatives we have been most excited about in recent times has been openSIL. AMD openSIL is working toward open-source CPU silicon initialization that will jive better with the likes of Coreboot and ultimately replace their existing AGESA implementation. AMD openSIL is expected to span AMD's wide gamut of processors from client/embedded through server offerings. It's still looking to be on track for production readiness in 2026.
September 9, 2025 — Source

Fedora 44 Considering Additional Kernel Hardening For Better Security
A change proposal has been filed to mitigate additional kernel vulnerabilities/attacks via additional kernel tuning by default.
September 9, 2025 — Source

Fedora's Modern OS Installer UI Working Well & Expanding Scope Before Deprecating GTK UI
The long-in-development web-based user interface for the Anaconda installer used by Fedora (and Red Hat Enterprise Linux) continues maturing well and expanding its usage before eventually seeing the Anaconda GTK-based UI deprecated in the future.
September 9, 2025 — Source

FEX 2509 Delivers More Performance For x86 Binaries On ARM64 Linux
FEX 2509 is out today as the latest monthly update to this open-source emulator allowing unmodified x86/x86_64 games and applications to run in ARM64 Linux environments.
September 9, 2025 — Source or Source

FEX 2509 released
The latest version of FEX (2509) has been released, providing improvements to ensure smooth execution of x86 applications on ARM64 Linux devices. Key features include an advanced binary recompiler, custom IR generation, and a per-app configuration system for optimized performance settings. FEX 2509 boasts various JIT enhancements, Mono performance hacks, and fixes for specific issues like black screen rendering in games.
September 9, 2025 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.4.5 Released With Fix For "Extreme Stuttering" On Intel Graphics
KDE Plasma 6.4.5 is out today as the newest monthly point release for the current Plasma 6.4 desktop series. Making this month's Plasma 6 point release notable are a number of KWin compositor fixes.
September 9, 2025 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.4.5 released with multiple bug fixes for KWin, Plasma Addons, and more
KDE Plasma 6.4.5, the fifth bug fix release for version 6.4, is now live, addressing bugs in different components like KWin, Discover, and Dr. Konqi.
September 9, 2025 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.5 Beta Released With KNightTime, Rounded Bottom Window Corners
The beta release of KDE's Plasma 6.5 desktop took place on Thursday as they work toward the stable release expected on 21 October.
September 9, 2025 — Source

Linus Torvalds warns Linux devs: Stop cluttering patches with automated, useless links
'Stop this garbage already.'
September 9, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 5.4.299 released
Linux kernel version 5.4.299 is now available:
September 9, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 5.10.243 released
Linux kernel version 5.10.243 is now available:
September 9, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 5.15.192 released
Linux kernel version 5.15.192 is now available:
September 9, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.1.151 released
Linux kernel version 6.1.151 is now available:
September 9, 2025 — Source or Source

Linux Kernel 6.6.105 released
Linux kernel version 6.6.105 is now available:
September 9, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.16.6 released
Linux kernel version 6.16.6 is now available:
September 9, 2025 — Source

Linux Sensor Driver Coming For GPD Handhelds
The upcoming Linux 6.18 kernel cycle is likely to see the new "gpd-fan" driver merged as a hardware monitoring driver for the increasing number of GPD gaming handheld devices.
September 9, 2025 — Source

NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit 13.0 Update 1 Brings Some Performance Enhancements
Released just over one month ago was the general availability of CUDA 13.0 while out this week is CUDA 13.0 Update 1 as the first incremental step forward to CUDA 13.
September 9, 2025 — Source

PHP 8.4.13 RC1 released
The release candidate for PHP 8.4.13 has been announced, which addresses numerous bugs and security vulnerabilities across various components of the PHP ecosystem. The update fixes over 20 issues, including core, CLI, date, DBA, DOM, FPM, Intl, Opcache, OpenSSL, PGSQL, Phar, and Streams-related problems. Key fixes include resolving memory leaks, potential use-after-free errors, and integer overflow issues, as well as improving error messages and handling for various scenarios.
September 9, 2025 — Source

PixiEditor 2.0.1.13 released
PixiEditor 2.0.1.13, a powerful 2D graphics editor offering tools for all 2D needs, including pixel art, painting, and vector creation. This latest version introduces a timeline and animation capabilities, as well as a node render system that enables customization and procedural art/animations. The release includes several fixes and improvements, such as enhanced shape selection and symmetry features, improved resize undo functionality, and compatibility with various formats.
September 9, 2025 — Source

Rust Coreutils 0.2.2 Released With Faster base64: Outperforming GNU's base64
It was just a few days ago that Rust Coreutils 0.2 released with "massive" performance gains and production-ready Ubuntu support. Rust Coreutils 0.2.2 is out today and is delivering a few more enhancements -- most excitingly is a faster base64 command that can now outperform the GNU Coreutils version.
September 9, 2025 — Source

Samba 4.21.8 Now Available
Samba 4.21.8 is now available for download, marking a new stable release in the 4.21 series. This open-source implementation of SMB and Active Directory protocols provides secure, fast file and print services to clients on Linux and UNIX-like systems. The latest release addresses several critical issues, including improved netlogon functionality, fixes for kinit command errors, and resolved conflicts between shadow copy and virusfilter module
September 9, 2025 — Source

This Fedora spin is perfect for one particular kind of new Linux user
With Windows 10 support ending, you might be looking for an alternative. If you like the idea of Fedora, but are afraid it isn't user-friendly enough, Nobara has your back.
September 9, 2025 — Source

Ubuntu's Launchpad Deprecating Code Imports From CVS & Subversion
Canonical's Launchpad service that is closely aligned with the Ubuntu project is finally deprecating code imports from CVS and Subversion repositories that go through the defunct Bazaar.
September 9, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — September 5th, 2025

A First Look At Ubuntu 25.10 Performance On AMD Strix Halo / Framework Desktop
It has been a lot of fun over the past month looking at the performance of AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ Strix Halo powering the Framework Desktop. The newest area being explored is how the upcoming Ubuntu 25.10 is looking compared to the current Ubuntu 25.04 release.
September 5, 2025 — Source

Firefox Ending 32-bit Linux Support Next Year
Mozilla announced today that they will be ending 32-bit Linux support for the Firefox web browser in 2026.
September 5, 2025 — Source

Four Months Have Passed Since The Last AMDVLK Driver Release
Back in May was the surprise but welcoming decision out of AMD that they would begin officially supporting the Mesa Vulkan driver (RADV) and that their proprietary OpenGL and Vulkan drivers would no longer be included in their Radeon Software for Linux releases. This indeed appears to have effectively spelled the end to their AMDVLK driver with Mesa's RADV taking the cake.
September 5, 2025 — Source

Intel's Vulkan Linux Driver Finally Exposes VK_EXT_shader_object
As of today in Mesa 25.3-devel Git, the Intel "ANV" open-source Vulkan driver for Linux systems is finally exposing the VK_EXT_shader_object extension.
September 5, 2025 — Source

KDE neon 20250904 released
KDE neon 20250904 offers the latest and greatest software from the KDE community, providing users with cutting-edge features directly from the developers. This distro is ideal for adventurous KDE enthusiasts who want to experience new software releases as soon as they become available. With KDE neon, Plasma Desktop and KDE applications are continuously updated, allowing users to customize their desktops with the latest visuals and work patterns.
September 5, 2025 — Source

Linux Mint 22.2 polishes the desktop, but kernel updates are the real deal
Point release brings Cinnamon tweaks, shiny apps, and Ubuntu's Hardware Enablement stack
September 5, 2025 — Source

Liquorix Linux Kernel 6.16-4 released
Liquorix Linux Kernel 6.16-4, based on Kernel 6.16.5, has been released. Liquorix is a custom kernel designed for desktop, multimedia, and gaming workloads, offering improved responsiveness at the cost of throughput and power usage. It features various optimizations, including a different scheduler (bfq), improved virtual memory management, and enhanced CPUFreq settings to improve system performance under heavy loads.
September 5, 2025 — Source

NVIDIA's Open-Source Nova Driver Now Explicitly Requires 64-bit Support
The first batch of changes from the drm-rust-fixes branch for the Linux 6.17 kernel include one item worth highlighting: the open-source NVIDIA "Nova" driver now is explicitly requiring 64-bit kernels for building and using the driver. In reality this shouldn't impact any users with real-world workflows. The Nova driver just works with the NVIDIA Turing (RTX 20) and newer GPUs due to the dependence on the NVIDIA GPU System Processor (GSP).
September 5, 2025 — Source

RISC-V Zalasr Support Now Under Review For The Linux Kernel
Linux kernel patches for supporting RISC-V's Zalasr ISA extension are now under review. This extension provides "real" load acquire/store release instructions for RISC-V processors.
September 5, 2025 — Source

Samba 4.23.0rc4 Release Candidate Now Available for Testing
Samba 4.23.0rc4 is now available for testing, featuring several new enhancements and improvements, including enabled SMB3 Unix Extensions by default and support for SMB3 over QUIC. The release also includes modern write-time update logic, an initial version of the smb_prometheus_endpoint utility, and updated CTDB features.
September 5, 2025 — Source

Linux Kernel Runtime Guard 1.0 Released For Security Vulnerability Exploit Detection
Linux Kernel Runtime Guard 1.0 has been released. LKRG is a project providing runtime integrity checking of the Linux kernel and is able to detect security vulnerability exploits against the running kernel.
September 5, 2025 — Source

Wine 10.15 To Feature Initial Support For Using NTSYNC On Linux
With Wine 10.15 expected to be released next Friday there will be initial support for using the NTSYNC driver found within the Linux kernel.
September 5, 2025 — Source

Xiaomi Redmibook Laptops To See Better Support With Linux 6.18
The upcoming Linux 6.18 kernel cycle will present better support for Xiaomi Redmibook laptops thanks to a WMI driver being queued into the x86 platform drivers "-next" branch for providing better handling of the keyboards found with these laptops.
September 5, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — September 4th, 2025

Fedora 44 Change Proposal Aims To Ensure A Nice Wine/Proton + NTSYNC Experience
A change proposal filed for next year's Fedora 44 release wants to aim for a nice experience when running Wine or the Proton variants supporting the Linux kernel's NTSYNC driver for better emulating the Microsoft Windows NT synchronization primitives.
September 4, 2025 — Source

GNOME 49.rc released: The final release is imminent
The latest development version of the GNOME desktop environment, GNOME 49.rc, has been released, signaling that the final release is imminent. This version includes a wide range of updates and changes across various modules, with key enhancements detailed for several applications and core components. The updates focus on improving performance, stability, security, and user experience, with fixes for numerous bugs and deprecations of outdated code.
September 4, 2025 — Source

HIP-RT Update For Blender 5.0 To Deliver Improved Ray-Tracing On RDNA4 GPUs
AMD engineers have submitted a HIP-RT update for Blender developers ahead of the big Blender 5.0 release to enhance the RDNA4 ray-tracing performance.
September 4, 2025 — Source

Intel Releases OpenVINO 2025.3 With More GenAI Enhancements & Arc Pro B-Series Support
On the same day as beginning to ship the Intel Arc Pro B50 ~$349 USD workstation graphics card, Intel also shipped OpenVINO 2025.3 as the newest feature release for this open-source AI toolkit.
September 4, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 5.4.298 released
Linux kernel version 5.4.298 is now available:
September 4, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 5.10.242 released
Linux kernel version 5.10.242 is now available:
September 4, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 5.15.191 released
Linux kernel version 5.15.191 is now available:
September 4, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.1.150 released
Linux kernel version 6.1.150 is now available:
September 4, 2025 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.6.104 released
Linux kernel 6.6.104 has been released.
September 4, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.12.45 released
Linux kernel version 6.12.45 is now available:
September 4, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.16.5 released
Linux kernel version 6.16.5 is now available:
September 4, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.17 With EXT4 Showing Some Nice Performance Improvements
With the Linux 6.17 kernel there are some block allocation scalability improvements for EXT4 on top of other file-system enhancements with this new kernel and other new features. Linux 6.17 performance has been looking good and when drilling down to the EXT4 file-system performance, it's looking extremely good. Here are some benchmarks of EXT4 on Linux 6.17 compared to the 6.15 and 6.16 stable kernels.
September 4, 2025 — Source

Linux Lite relief: 7.6 keeps it simple, shiny, and mostly slim
Ubuntu 24.04.3, with a prettified Xfce 4.18
September 4, 2025 — Source

Linux Mint 22.2 Officially Released With Fingwit, UI Tweaks
Linux Mint 22.2 is officially out today as the newest version of this popular desktop Linux distribution built atop an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS package base.
September 4, 2025 — Source

Linux Mint 22.2 Zara arrives as a long term support release backed until 2029
Popular Ubuntu-based distribution Linux Mint has been updated to version 22.2, codenamed Zara. This new long term support version promises updates until 2029.
September 4, 2025 — Source

Linux Mint 22.2 'Zara' makes my favorite distro even better - what's new
For those who want a Linux desktop that works and keeps getting better, release after release, Zara is the upgrade you've been waiting for.
September 4, 2025 — Source

Linux Mint 22.2 'Zara' now available, here's everything that's new
Linux Mint is a particularly popular distribution, and one that is often highly recommended for Windows users who want to get a taste of Linux. In May, we learned that Linux Mint 22.1 Xia's successor is going to be called Linux Mint 22.2 Zara. Subsequent beta releases brought support for native fingerprint login, better themes, Wayland fixes, and a more "comfortable" desktop. Now, Linux Mint 22.2 Zara is generally available.
September 4, 2025 — Source

Microsoft Building Out Its "OS Guard" Functionality For Azure Linux
A new feature Microsoft has been working on for its Azure Linux operating system is OS Guard as a container-host platform that enforces immutability, code integrity, mandatory access control, and other features. Microsoft quietly revealed more about OS Guard last month and yesterday's release of Azure Linux 3.0.20250822 builds out more of the OS Guard functionality.
September 4, 2025 — Source

Node.js v20.19.5 (LTS) released
Node.js v20.19.5 (LTS) released
September 4, 2025 — Source

NVIDIA Posts Initial Linux Patches For Extended GPU Memory "EGM" Virtualization
NVIDIA engineer Ankit Agrawal today posted a request for comments (RFC) patch series working on Linux virtualization support for Extended GPU Memory (EGM).
September 4, 2025 — Source

OWASP CRS 4.18.0 released with enhanced security features
The OWASP Community Repository (CRS) has released version 4.18.0, featuring enhanced security features and threat detection capabilities. The update includes new rules to detect malicious attacks on web applications protected by ModSecurity or similar firewalls, such as SSH command detection and support for 'application/reports+json' content-type headers. Additionally, fixes have been implemented to remove unnecessary patterns, prevent false positives, and improve overall system accuracy.
September 4, 2025 — Source

pgAdmin 4 v9.8 released with Debian Trixie support
The pgAdmin Development Team announces the release of pgAdmin 4 version 9.8, featuring numerous bug fixes and exciting new enhancements. Notable additions include menu items for truncating foreign tables, support for Debian Trixie as a platform, and the ability to configure security-related parameters for Gunicorn.
September 4, 2025 — Source

PostgreSQL 18 eyes analytics boost and distributed future
Async I/O and UUID v7 highlights of the September release, though some SQL features are delayed
September 4, 2025 — Source or Source

PostgreSQL 18 Release Candidate Now Available
The PostgreSQL Global Development Group has announced the availability of the first release candidate (RC) for PostgreSQL 18, with a planned general availability date of September 25, 2025. To upgrade from earlier versions, users will need to employ a major version upgrade strategy such as pg_upgrade or pg_dump/pg_restore. Several bug fixes were applied since Beta 3, including improvements to vacuumdb and guidance on reindexing full-text search indexes after upgrading. The RC is expected to be nearly identical to the final release, with minor fixes made before its general availability.
September 4, 2025 — Source

Ready to ditch Windows 10? I debunked 7 Linux myths so you can switch with confidence
No, Linux isn't ugly. Let's bust this and several other myths that might keep you from adopting it as a Windows 10 replacement.
September 4, 2025 — Source

Ruby on Rails 8.1.0 Beta 1 released
Ruby on Rails 8.1.0 Beta 1 has been released and introduces significant updates across its core components, including Active Support, Active Record, Action View, Action Pack, and Active Job. The release brings improvements to performance, security, and developer experience, with features such as better cache management, enhanced validation and attribute handling, and improved support for parallel testing and database configuration.
September 4, 2025 — Source

Ubuntu 25.10 Proceeding With Its Rust Coreutils Transition
Canonical engineer Julian Andres Klode announced that the rust-coreutils transition is landing within a release pocket later today. This is as part of their transition from GNU Coreutils to using the Rust Coreutils "uutils" project as part of further leveraging Rust within Ubuntu Linux system components.
September 4, 2025 — Source

Virtualizing your infrastructure (ITSAP.70.011)
Virtualization is a method of hardware abstraction that allows the creation of software versions of IT systems and services which are traditionally implemented on separate physical hardware. These software versions, or virtual instances, can dramatically increase efficiency and decrease costs. Virtualization uses hardware to its full capacity by distributing its capabilities among many different services.
September 4, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — September 1st, 2025

AMD Linux Testing Captured All Top 10 Spots For Our Most-Viewed Articles In August
Over the course of August on Phoronix were 267 original news articles and 17 featured Linux hardware reviews / multi-page benchmark articles. Coming somewhat as a surprise, AMD Linux testing articles and hardware reviews managed to capture all top 10 spots for the most viewed content... Something no single vendor has pulled off in the past 21 years of Phoronix. But with the launch of the Framework Desktop, AMD Krackan Point Linux testing for sub-$500 laptops, Threadripper 9000 series, and other hardware excitement, that feat happened in August.
September 1, 2025 — Source

Bazaar 0.4.5 released
A new version of Bazaar, a cutting-edge app store for FlatPak apps, is now available. This small release addresses keypresses incorrectly initializing search and includes other UI fixes to ensure an even smoother user experience.
September 1, 2025 — Source

Exim 4.99-RC1 released
The first release candidate for the Exim 4.99 Mail Transport Agent has been released for testing, marking a new milestone towards a major update with numerous improvements and fixes since Exim 4.98. The release candidate is available for testing as a tarball or directly from Git. Notable features and enhancements include support for JSON, LDAP lookup, loadable modules, and improved security fixes for CVE-2025-26794 and CVE-2025-30232.
September 1, 2025 — Source

Gentex PLACE Any Space PL1AS / PL1K As A Replacement For Nest Protect Smoke Detectors
Not your typical review on Phoronix today but rather a brief look at the Gentex PLACE Any Space smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors. For those facing ten years on their Nest Protect smoke detectors and looking for an end-of-life replacement to these smoke detectors discontinued by Google, the Gentex PLACE smart smoke detectors are an interesting and capable alternative.
September 1, 2025 — Source

Linux gaming OS Kazeta promises 'console gaming experience of the 1990s' for PC users — supports almost any DRM-free game, past or present
With the Kazeta OS you just 'insert cart, power on, play.'
September 1, 2025 — Source

Linux Lite 7.6 is the perfect Windows 11 alternative for older PCs
Linux Lite has released version 7.6, an update to the superb Ubuntu-based distribution aimed at Windows users seeking a simple Linux alternative. If you're using aging hardware or just fed up with Windows 11, this might be the lightweight Linux distro you've been waiting for.
September 1, 2025 — Source

Linux Sensor Monitoring Coming For The ASUS Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE
For those looking at assembling an AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO workstation and interested in having working system sensor monitoring support, the ASUS EC Sensors hardware monitoring (HWMON) driver is in the process of introducing support for the Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE motherboard.
September 1, 2025 — Source

Linux's exFAT File-System Driver Optimization Leads To 16.5x Speedup For Loading Time
A patch queued up into the Linux exFAT driver's development tree optimizes the allocation bitmap loading time. For cases of small cluster sizes on large partitions this can yield around 16x faster loading times.
September 1, 2025 — Source

New EC Driver Coming For The Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen6 With Snapdragon X Elite SoC
The Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen6 is one of the best supported Snapdragon X Elite laptops under Linux thus far. Thanks to active developer engagement and cooperation from Lenovo there are firmware files in upstream linux-firmware.git and Lenovo's generally robust Linux support make it one of the better choices for the Snapdragon X laptops currently out there. In further enhancing the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen6 on Linux, a new EC driver has been posted for supporting this Snapdragon powered laptop.
September 1, 2025 — Source

Open-Source NVIDIA Linux Driver Usage About To Become Much More Reliable
For those using the upstream open-source NVIDIA Linux driver "Nouveau", with a pending fix coming for Linux 6.17 and existing kernel releases it should be a much more stable and reliable experience.
September 1, 2025 — Source

Redox OS Gets COSMIC Reader Working, Other Improvements To This Rust OS
The open-source Redox OS operating system project written in the Rust programming language is out with its status update covering August 2025.
September 1, 2025 — Source

Rusticl Driver Lands Support For OpenCL Semaphores
In addition to working on new OpenCL performance optimizations, Red Hat engineer Karol Herbst just landed another important feature into Rusticl: OpenCL semaphores.
September 1, 2025 — Source

Top Metrics to Watch in Kubernetes
Explore the most impactful Kubernetes metrics that drive better observability, reduce downtime, and help teams scale clusters with confidence.
September 1, 2025 — Source

Zen Browser 1.15.3b released
Zen Browser 1.15.3b has been released, offering several new features and enhancements aimed at boosting productivity. The update includes improved functionality for closing pending pinned tabs with wheel clicking, integration of system accent colors, and fixes to resolve issues like memory management problems and startup freezes. Additionally, the browser's compact mode stability has been improved, and the URL bar hover bug has been addressed.
September 1, 2025 — Source

Zotac Zone Pro Ryzen 9 Linux Gaming Handheld Set To Challenge ROG Xbox Ally
Zotac's Zone handheld, launched last year, was an interesting device, with an 800 cd/m² HDR AMOLED display and dual touchpads like the Steam Deck, and it also made use of standard AMD Ryzen laptop chips instead of the handheld-targeted Ryzen Z family. The company's trying again with the Zone Pro handheld, this time powered by "Strix Point" instead of "Phoenix".
September 1, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — August 29th, 2025

Armbian 25.8.1 Brings Expanded Board Support, Linux 6.16 Option For Many Boards
Armbian 25.8.1 is now available as a significant update over the Armbian 25.5 release for this Debian-based Linux distribution focused on offering broad support for ARM64 and RISC-V single board computers as well as other devices.
August 29, 2025 — Source

Btrfs Developer Josef Bacik Leaving Meta & Stepping Back From Kernel Development
Josef Bacik who is a long-time Btrfs developer and active co-maintainer alongside David Sterba is leaving Meta. Additionally, he's also stepping back from Linux kernel development as his primary job.
August 29, 2025 — Source

Fwupd 2.0.14 Brings New Framework & SteelSeries Hardware Support
Fwupd 2.0.14 is out today as the newest version of this open-source firmware updating utility that is widely-used on Linux systems for BIOS/system firmware updates as well as an ever increasing array of different peripheral devices.
August 29, 2025 — Source

Genode OS 25.08 Introduces New Kernel Scheduler, Updates Linux Drivers
Version 25.08 of the Genode OS Framework has been released for this open-source operating system framework designed for software safety and security.
August 29, 2025 — Source

GNOME Executive Director Steps Down After Four Months
It was barely four months ago that the GNOME Foundation announced its new Executive Director, Steven Deobald, who was taking over afterHolly Million stepped down after less than one year. Today Deobald announced he is stepping down as the Executive Director.
August 29, 2025 — Source

Godot 4.5 Beta 7 released
Godot 4.5 Beta 7 has been released, featuring significant improvements, including the addition of debug symbols for Android platforms. The latest snapshot includes regression fixes, such as correcting audio playback position on web platforms and treating missing shader variants as cache misses.
August 29, 2025 — Source

LibreOffice 25.8.1 released
The Document Foundation has released LibreOffice 25.8.1, a minor update that addresses nearly 100 bug and regression fixes over the previous version. This release addresses critical issues, including an application crash related to the NoteBookBar UI option and bugs affecting document opening in Microsoft proprietary formats.
August 29, 2025 — Source

Linus Torvalds Marks Bcachefs As Now "Externally Maintained"
Linus Torvalds has finally come to a decision following his plans to part ways with the Bcachefs file-system and then not merging any Bcachefs updates for Linux 6.17.
August 29, 2025 — Source

My top 6 productivity apps for Linux that are lesser known - but shouldn't be
Linux has a ton of applications you can install, some of which you may not have heard of. These obscure apps are waiting to help improve your productivity.
August 29, 2025 — Source

OBS Studio 32 Beta Introduces A Plugin Manager, Hybrid MOV Support
Released overnight in beta form is OBS Studio 32.0, the next feature release for this widely-used, open-source and cross-platform application for desktop streaming/recording.
August 29, 2025 — Source

Qualcomm Packet Processing Engine "PPE" Going Upstream For Linux 6.18
Recently queued into the Linux networking subsystem's net-next branch ahead of the Linux 6.18 merge window is the Qualcomm PPE driver to support their Packet Processing Engine on select SoCs.
August 29, 2025 — Source

RefreshOS 2.5: The Debian remix that borrows from every desk in the house
A remarkable mixture of different components, but it works
August 29, 2025 — Source

Samba 4.23.0rc3 released
Samba 4.23.0rc3 is available for testng. The new version introduces several key features, including SMB3 Unix Extensions enabled by default, support for SMB3 over QUIC, modern write time update logic, and an initial version of smb_prometheus_endpoint for Prometheus-compatible metrics. Additionally, CTDB now supports loading tunables from a new directory, and per-share profiling stats are available with some configurations removed from the smb.conf file.
August 29, 2025 — Source

Switching From i915 To Xe Linux Drivers Can Yield Some Big Gains For Intel Arc A-Series
For those using Intel Arc A-Series graphics cards on Linux, the i915 kernel driver remains the default but switching over to the Xe driver can yield some incremental performance benefits. For OpenCL / GPU compute workloads especially, switching to the Xe kernel driver can be rather dramatic.
August 29, 2025 — Source

Zen Browser 1.15.2b released
Another Zen Browser update has been released, which includes a remedy for an issue that prevented folder renaming from working when using the double toolbar feature. This update addresses a specific bug, making it more stable and user-friendly.
August 29, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — August 25th, 2025

Arch Linux Project Responding to Week-Long DDoS Attack
The Arch Linux Project has been targeted in a DDoS attack that disrupted its website, repository, and forums.
August 25, 2025 — Source

Check out PCWorld's new Linux podcast, the Dual Boot Diaries
Dual Boot Diaries is a limited series where Adam and Will try out Linux options... and make a big decision.
August 25, 2025 — Source

Firefox, Kernel, Webkit2GTK3 updates for RHEL
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has received several security updates, including fixes for Firefox, kernel, and webkit2gtk3 vulnerabilities. These updates have been rated by Red Hat Product Security as having a security impact ranging from Moderate to Important, with some providing additional details through CVSS base scores. The affected versions include the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and 9 series:
August 25, 2025 — Source

Google Veles is a New Open-Source Secret Scanner Powering GCP
Google Veles is a newly released open-source secret scanner, launched as part of Google's broader OSV-SCALIBR (Software Composition Analysis LIBRary) ecosystem. Veles integrates seamlessly with other OSV-SCALIBR tools and also powers secret scanning in Google Cloud, while remaining available as a standalone module.
August 25, 2025 — Source

Happy Birthday, Linux
On August 25, Linux officially turns 34.
August 25, 2025 — Source

Iperf3, Unbound, Firebird updates for Debian
Multiple security updates have been released for Debian GNU/Linux systems, including iperf3, unbound, and firebird3.0, to address vulnerabilities such as heap buffer overflows, shell code injection, and denial of service attacks via specially timed DNS queries and answers. The affected versions include 3.9-1+deb11u3deb9u1 for iperf3 and 1.9.0-2+deb10u2deb9u6 for unbound, both for Debian 9 (Stretch) ELTS; 1.9.0-2+deb10u6 for unbound on Debian 10 (Buster) ELTS; and 3.0.7.33374.ds4-2+deb11u1 for firebird3.0 on Debian 11 (Bullseye) LTS:
August 25, 2025 — Source

Kernel, ProFTPD, PAM, cmake3, FFMpeg updates for SUSE
Security updates have been released for several SUSE Linux packages, including the Linux Kernel and proftpd. The updates address various vulnerabilities and are categorized as important (kernel, proftpd), moderate (pam, ffmpeg-4), or low (cmake3):
August 25, 2025 — Source

Linux 5.15 LTS To 6.17 Benchmarks: Four Years Of Kernel Improvement Net 37% Improvement On AMD EPYC
Stemming from a request by a Phoronix Premium reader wondering about some fresh historical kernel performance comparison numbers, today's benchmarking is looking at the performance of the LTS and latest stable Linux kernel versions going back to Linux 5.15 LTS in 2021.
August 25, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.18 Will Begin Preparing For ASPEED AST2700 BMC Support
The upcoming Linux 6.18 kernel will begin upstreaming hardware enablement for the ASPEED AST2700 as the next-gen baseboard management controller "BMC" that will likely appear in the majority of future generation servers.
August 25, 2025 — Source

Linux Foundation says yes to NoSQL via DocumentDB
PostgreSQL implementation of document-oriented NoSQL datastore adopted under permissive MIT license
August 25, 2025 — Source or Source

Linux is 34 years old today — Linus Torvalds meekly announced this free new OS in the comp.os.minix newsgroup on this day in 1991
From its roots of being 'just a hobby, [which] won't be big and professional like GNU' it has come a long way.
August 25, 2025 — Source

Linux's Floppy Disk Driver Code Sees Some Cleanups In 2025
On this 34th birthday since the Linux kernel was announced, coincidentally there's a new patch series out there for one of the oldest drivers: the floppy disk driver.
August 25, 2025 — Source

Liquorix Linux Kernel 6.16-2 released
Liquorix Kernel 6.16-2, a custom kernel replacement designed for desktop, multimedia, and gaming workloads, featuring several major optimizations and tweaks compared to standard kernel configurations, has been released based on the latest Linux Kernel 6.16.3. Some important features are Zen Interactive Tuning, Budget Fair Queue, Hard Kernel Preemption, and TCP BBR2 Congestion Control, which are designed to make the system respond faster and work better in different situations.
August 25, 2025 — Source

My 4 favorite Linux distros for streaming - and why choosing the right one makes a huge difference
If you stream a lot of content, you'll want to use a Linux distribution with certain qualities. Here are my favorite distributions for streaming.
August 25, 2025 — Source

Meson 1.9 Released With New Rust Features, Adds Swift/C++ Interoperability
Meson 1.9 released this weekend as the newest feature update to this build system / build automation tool that works well across different software platforms. With Meson 1.9 there is enhanced Rust support, introducing Swift and C++ code interoperability, and other enhancements to this increasingly used alternative to the likes of CMake and Autotools.
August 25, 2025 — Source

Open Platform For Enterprise AI's GenAI Code Adds Guardrails, AMD EPYC Support
The Open Platform for Enterprise AI "OPEA" that is a sub-project of the Linux Foundation and backed by a wide variety of different organizations to provide open solutions for Generative AI announced today their newest GenAI code examples.
August 25, 2025 — Source

Red Hat Releases TuneD 2.26 For Adaptively Tuning Linux Systems
Red Hat's performance team is now shipping TuneD 2.26 as the latest feature release for this tuning profile delivery mechanism for Linux systems to monitor and adaptively adjust the power/performance characteristics of different system components and more.
August 25, 2025 — Source

The KDE team wants your feedback on the new virtual keyboard coming to Plasma 6.5
Last month, in one of our "This Week in Plasma" coverages, we told you that the KDE team was working on a new virtual keyboard set to release with Plasma 6.5, which will eventually replace the current Maliit. This project was initiated by KDE developer Aleix Pol, who felt that it would be beneficial to develop an alternative using QtVirtualKeyboard.
August 25, 2025 — Source

Zemlin at Open Source Summit EU: Even in the Age of AI, the Software's Future is Still Open Source
During the Open Source Summit Europe keynote, Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, revisited the LLM landscape with an emphasis on the effect it has on the industry, the security, quantity and quality of the developed code. He emphasised that DeepSeek's revolution was validated by the gpt-oss release, OpenAI's first open-source model.
August 25, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — August 22nd, 2025

Apache NetBeans IDE 27 released
Neil C. Smith has announced the release of Apache NetBeans IDE 27, featuring a range of enhancements and corrections. The updates include improvements in Gradle, Maven, Ant, Java, PHP, the PHP Editor, Javadoc build on JDK 25, TreeRuleTestBase, fixing external link errors in Javadoc, better handling of module imports, optimizing hints for unused packages, organizing member hints, and updates to the lib
August 22, 2025 — Source

APT36 hackers abuse Linux .desktop files to install malware in new attacks
The Pakistani APT36 cyberspies are using Linux .desktop files to load malware in new attacks against government and defense entities in India.
August 22, 2025 — Source

Arch Linux continues to feel the force of a DDoS attack after two brutal weeks — attackers yet to be identified as project struggles to restore full service
The motive for the attack has not yet been disclosed
August 22, 2025 — Source

Arch Linux remains under attack as DDoS enters week 2 - here's a workaround
Something mysterious is happening to the popular Linux distro's website. Here's what we know so far.
August 22, 2025 — Source

Arch Linux takes a pounding as DDoS attack enters week two
Project scrambles for mitigation as AUR, forums, and main site feel the strain
August 22, 2025 — Source

FFmpeg 8.0 Released With OpenAI Whisper Filter, Many Vulkan Video Improvements
FFmpeg 8.0 is now available! FFmpeg 8.0 is a magnificent update to this widely-used open-source multimedia library and with this new version is the introduction of an OpenAI Whisper filter for automatic speech recognition, many Vulkan Video improvements for greater GPU-accelerated video handling, and a number of CPU performance optimizations.
August 22, 2025 — Source

First release of Kodi 22 'Piers' is available to download NOW
It's been a whopping seven months since The Kodi Foundation rolled out Kodi 21.2 'Omega', coming five months after the previous release.
August 22, 2025 — Source

FreeRDP 3.17 Released With Fullchain Support
FreeRDP as one of the leading open-source / free software implementations of Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is out with a new release. While FreeRDP 3.17 is primarily focused on shipping bug fixes, there is one noteworthy addition: fullchain support.
August 22, 2025 — Source

Intel's New LLM-Scaler Beta Update Brings Whisper Model & GLM-4.5-Air Support
Earlier this month Intel released LLM-Scaler 1.0 as part of their Project Battlematrix initiative. This is a Docker container effort to deliver speedy AI inference performance with multi-GPU scaling and PCIe P2P support and more.
August 22, 2025 — Source

Mesa 25.3 Lands More Changes To Prepare For OpenGL Mesh Shaders
Being worked on for a number of months now is GL_EXT_mesh_shader as an extension for bringing mesh shaders to OpenGL. This is an alternative to NVIDIA's GL_NV_mesh_shader extension being worked on for Mesa drivers and in particular the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver.
August 22, 2025 — Source

New Ubuntu Snapdragon X1E Concept ISO Published - Still A Mess On The Acer Swift 14 AI
Released on Thursday were new Ubuntu X1E "Concept" install images for installing the modified Ubuntu 25.04 environment on Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 powered laptops.
August 22, 2025 — Source

Samba 4.23.0rc2 released
The Samba Team has announced the availability of the second release candidate for the upcoming Samba 4.23 release, intended solely for testing purposes. The update encompasses new functionalities, including samba-tool domain backup, CTDB modifications, and per-share profiling statistics.
August 22, 2025 — Source

Servo Lands APNG & Animated WebP Support, Vello Backends For Faster 2D Graphics
The Servo browser project has published a monthly status report to outline all of the interesting changes made to this interesting, Rust-based browser layout engine over the past several weeks. Development continues moving along with Servo as more critical functionality continues to be added as well as new performance optimizations and other features to make it a compelling option for future embedded web use and more.
August 22, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — August 21st, 2025

AI is creeping into the Linux kernel - and official policy is needed ASAP
AI tools can help Linux maintainers, but they can also cause chaos. Here's what needs to be addressed - fast - before things get out of control.
August 21, 2025 — Source

Intel Compute Runtime 25.31.34666.3 Continues Prepping For Panther Lake
Released minutes ago was the newest monthly feature release to the Intel Compute Runtime providing open-source OpenCL and Level Zero capabilities on Intel graphics hardware.
August 21, 2025 — Source

Linux Driver Under Review For Apple Laptop Lid Events & Power Button
Following the recent Apple SMC driver upstreaming to handle rebooting Apple Silicon Macs under Linux, the latest code volleyed on the kernel mailing list for review is support for handling laptop lid events and power buttons. Plus Apple sensor monitoring driver support too.
August 21, 2025 — Source

NVIDIA Begins Linux Kernel Upstreaming Work For Their Vera Rubin NLV144 Platform
The first Linux kernel patches specific to their next-gen Vera Rubin NLV144 "VR144NVL" were posted today to the public Linux kernel mailing list.
August 21, 2025 — Source

Panthor Open-Source Driver To Support Many More Arm Mali GPUs In Linux 6.18
The open-source Panthor Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver providing the modern kernel graphics driver support for recent Arm Mali GPUs will be supporting a number of additional GPU models with the Linux 6.18 kernel later this year.
August 21, 2025 — Source

pgAdmin 4 v9.7 released
The pgAdmin Development Team has announced the release of pgAdmin 4 version 9.7, featuring 22 bug fixes and new enhancements. Important updates include automatic updates for the desktop app on macOS, new options like GENERIC_PLAN, MEMORY, and SERIALIZE for the EXPLAIN/EXPLAIN ANALYZE command, changes to how fast the cursor blinks, filtering by server tags in the Object Explorer, and a built-in locale provider for Issues identified include elevated CPU usage, difficulties in adding breakpoints, resetting custom column widths, and problems with dashboard tables.
August 21, 2025 — Source

Tails 6.19 released
Tails 6.19 has been released and features updates to the Tor Browser, Tor client, and Thunderbird, along with resolved issues. It also eliminates unnecessary error messages during the configuration of bridges in Tor Connection.
August 21, 2025 — Source

Ungoogled Chromium 139.0.7258.138-1 released
Google Chromium, sans integration with Google. Contribute to ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium development by creating an account on GitHub.
August 21, 2025 — Source

VKD3D 1.17 Released With More Improvements For Direct3D 12 On Vulkan
VKD3D 1.17 made its debut this morning as the newest version of this Direct3D 12 over Vulkan API implementation.
August 21, 2025 — Source or Source

Software — Open Source — August 19th, 2025

10 open-source apps I recommend every Windows user download - for free
Open-source might not be the first thing you think of with Windows, but these free tools can seriously boost your productivity.
August 19, 2025 — Source

Apple SoC DT Updates Already Begin Lining Up For Linux 6.18
While the Linux v6.17 merge window only wrapped up earlier this month, Apple Silicon DeviceTree "DT" updates have already begun queuing for the Linux 6.18 merge window that will happen in October.
August 19, 2025 — Source

DripDropper Linux malware cleans up after itself - how it works
This malware will still foul you up; it just doesn't want anyone messing with your servers while it's using you.
August 19, 2025 — Source

Intel Upstreams XeVM Into LLVM
Intel's newest contribution to the upstream LLVM compiler stack is XeVM as their Multi-Level Intermediate Representation "MLIR" dialect catering to modern Intel graphics processors.
August 19, 2025 — Source

Linux Adding Detection For BSD's Bhyve Hypervisor To Support 255+ vCPUs
Bhyve is the BSD hypervisor / virtual machine manager (VMM) developed by FreeBSD that supports a range of operating systems and across CPU vendors. With time Bhyve has also been ported to other BSDs and even Illumos and macOS. The Linux kernel is now in the process of adding guest detection for the Bhyve hypervisor in order to support VMs with 255+ vCPUs.
August 19, 2025 — Source

Pinned Device Memory Patches For Intel's Multi-GPU "Project Battlematrix" Linux Efforts
As part of Intel's ongoing Project Battlematrix efforts that include SR-IOV support for Arc Pro cards as well as multi-device (multi-GPU) support for allowing up to eight Intel Arc Pro graphics cards in a single system, today Intel engineers posted their preliminary Linux driver patches for pinned device memory functionality that is important for multi-GPU usage.
August 19, 2025 — Source

Postfix 3.10.4 and legacy releases 3.9.5, 3.8.11, 3.7.16 released
Postfix has issued multiple updates for its stable release 3.10.4 as well as for the legacy versions 3.9.5, 3.8.11, and 3.7.16. The updates resolve concerns related to postscreen and tlsproxy and aim to minimize process churn. The updates resolve problems related to the previous postscreen process, including the logging of an ENOTSOCK error, maintaining an exclusive lock, incorrect backward compatibility for legacy configuration parameters, and the dereferencing of a null pointer during the handling of tlsproxy client requests.
August 19, 2025 — Source

Rusticl versus AMD ROCm Performance On Ryzen AI Max+ "Strix Halo"
One of the set of tests I have been meaning to carry out for a number of months has been comparing the Mesa Rusticl performance to different dedicated hardware drivers. Rusticl is the Rust-based OpenCL 3.0 driver within Mesa that works across Gallium3D drivers and over the past many months has been maturing rather well. Among the targets I have been wanting to compare is how well Rusticl competes with the AMD ROCm OpenCL implementation for Radeon GPUs
August 19, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — August 17th, 2025

Linux 6.17 Performance Looking Even Better After Early Fallout Addressed
Last week I ran some early Linux 6.17 benchmarks showing some improvements and regressions when testing with AMD Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo". Since then there have been some performance regression fixes along with addressing other early fallout from this fresh kernel code. Repeating the tests now on the latest Linux 6.17 Git state ahead of today's Linux 6.17-rc2 tagging is showing some nice improvements and fixes from the code churn this week.
August 17, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.17-rc2 To Better Tune Attack Vector Controls For SRSO Mitigation
One of the new exciting security features with Linux 6.17 is Attack Vector Controls as a means of easier managing CPU security mitigations depending upon the system/server use-case. It drastically simplifies CPU security mitigation management for only activating the mitigations relevant to intended use. With the Linux 6.17-rc2 kernel due out later today, Attack Vector Controls refines its logic around the Speculative Return Stack Overflow (SRSO) mitigation.
August 17, 2025 — Source

Linux Merges Headset Detection Workaround For Framework 13 Ryzen AI 300 Series
Merged this week as part of the sound fixes for the Linux 6.17 cycle and now to be back-ported to the stable kernel versions is a headset detection fix/workaround for the Framework 13 Laptop powered by the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series.
August 17, 2025 — Source

Shotcut 25.08 Brings More Bug Fixes To This Open-Source Video Editor
Released last month was Shotcut 25.07 with many improvements to this popular open-source and cross platform video editor. Released today was Shotcut 25.08 to provide more fixes atop that latest video editor release.
August 17, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — August 16th, 2025

GNOME Disks Continues Being Ported To Rust
In addition to yesterday's GNOME 49 beta release marking the 28th birthday of GNOME, a lot of other exciting GNOME developments materialized this week.
August 16, 2025 — Source

KDE Breeze Drops Colorful Third-Party App Icons, Plasma Adds Plug-In Device Notification
KDE Breeze Drops Colorful Third-Party App Icons, Plasma Adds Plug-In Device Notification
August 16, 2025 — Source

KDE is removing all of the colorful third-party app icons from its Breeze icon theme
The KDE team has released its weekly update on the work done this week, and unlike previous weeks, it does not contain many new features. The team instead focused on improving things like UI, performance, and, as always, bug fixes.
August 16, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.16.1 Fixes A Large Intel GPU Driver Performance Regression - Up To 30%
Released on Friday were the Linux 6.16.1 and Linux 6.15.10 stable kernel point releases. Notable there is an Intel i915 kernel graphics driver performance regression fix with some users having reported as much as a 30% performance hit on prior Linux kernel versions.
August 16, 2025 — Source

PixiEditor 2.0.1.9 released
PixiEditor 2.0.1.9 is a comprehensive 2D editor tailored for the creation of impressive sprites suitable for games, animations, image editing, and logo design. The software includes three distinct toolsets: Pixel art, Painting, and Vector. These tools are compatible with a single canvas, allowing for integration with raster graphics, and can be exported in multiple formats including PNG, JPG, SVG, GIF, and MP4. The most recent release of PixiEditor 2.0.1.9 features bug fixes, enhancements to native menu functionality, and resolutions for issues related to infinite recursion, pasting on macOS, and invalid indirect return types.
August 16, 2025 — Source

Wine-Staging 10.13 Adds Patch For 13 Year Old Bug
Building off yesterday's Wine 10.13 release following the month-long summer release hiatus, Wine-Staging 10.13 is out today with some 300 patches atop the upstream codebase.
August 16, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — August 10th, 2025

Debian 13 "trixie" release brings RISC-V support plus to the popular GNU/Linux distro, plus thousands of other updates
Debian is a free and open source, Linux-based operating system that's bee around for more than three decades. And computers have changed a lot in that time. So while Debian has a reputation for releasing updates on a slow, steady, and stable basis rather than pushing bleeding edge features, the operating system has made some major changes over the years.
August 10, 2025 — Source

Debian 14 Eyes LoongArch CPU Support
Debian 13.0 released yesterday while already Debian developers are beginning to think about Debian 14 as the next major release due out in 2027. Debian 14 is codenamed Forky and among the changes expected is LoongArch64 "Loong64" CPU port support being improved.
August 10, 2025 — Source

GNOME Shell 49 Beta Finally Brings Media Controls To The Lock Screen
In preparing for the GNOME 49 beta release, GNOME Shell this weekend released 49.beta.1 with a few changes worth highlighting.
August 10, 2025 — Source

Linus Torvalds calls RISC-V code from Google engineer 'garbage' and says it 'makes the world actively a worse place to live' — Linux honcho puts dev on notice for late submissions, too
Pull request got rejected for Linux 6.17. And as a late submission, it already lit Torvald's fuse.
August 10, 2025 — Source

Linux Security Roundup for Week 32, 2025
Here is a roundup of last week's Linux security updates for AlmaLinux, Debian GNU/Linux, Fedora Linux, Gentoo Linux, Oracle Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux, and Ubuntu Linux.
August 10, 2025 — Source

Major Intel Linux driver projects are dying due to Intel layoffs and corporate restructuring — compatibility and reliability issues could increase over time
Intel's presence in the Linux community as a driver developer and maintainer is impacted by layoffs.
August 10, 2025 — Source

Turbostat Now Displays CPU L3 Cache Topology Information
Ahead of the Linux 6.17-rc1 release due out in the coming hours, the Turbostat updates for that tool living within the kernel source tree were merged.
August 10, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — August 9th, 2025

AMD Radeon Software for Linux 25.10.2.1 released
AMD Radeon Software for Linux 25.10.2.1 released
August 9, 2025 — Source

GNOME Mutter On Wayland Adds ICC Profile Support, Backlight Improvements
There were a lot of interesting changes that landed in GNOME's Mutter compositor codebase to end out the weekend and ahead of next month's big GNOME 49 release.
August 9, 2025 — Source

GNU/Hurd Now An Official Platform For SDL Cross-Platform Gaming Library
GNU/Hurd has made it as an official platform target within SDL that is the open-source library widely-used by cross-platform games and other applications for software/hardware abstractions across operating systems.
August 9, 2025 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.5 Continues Seeing More Features Added & Polishing
Like clockwork KDE developer Nate Graham is out with his weekly recap of all the interesting Plasma changes for the week. There continues to be a lot of feature work and polishing that is building up for the Plasma 6.5 desktop release.
August 9, 2025 — Source

Linus Torvalds Rejects RISC-V Changes For Linux 6.17: "Garbage"
Linus Torvalds has used his authority to reject the RISC-V architecture changes for the Linux 6.17 kernel. The RISC-V updates won't land this cycle and will need to try again for v6.18 later in the year. Linus refers to at least some of the proposed RISC-V code as garbage along with being submitted rather late during the merge window.
August 9, 2025 — Source

OpenAI announces ChatGPT changes following user feedback
Earlier this week, OpenAI announced GPT-5, its most powerful model to date. The rollout of GPT-5 to ChatGPT users drew a lot of criticism, as OpenAI immediately replaced all existing models, including the popular GPT-4o and o3, with the new GPT-5.
August 9, 2025 — Source

The best Linux distros for beginners in 2025 make switching from MacOS or Windows so easy
Why switch to Linux? More security, more privacy, and freedom from vendor lock-in. And these distributions are as simple to install and use as MacOS or Windows.
August 9, 2025 — Source

Vulkan 1.4.325 Released With Untyped Pointers Extension
Vulkan 1.4.325 was released on Friday with one new extension in tow: VK_KHR_shader_untyped_pointers for untyped pointers.
August 9, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — August 8th, 2025

Additional Intel Linux Drivers Left Orphaned & Maintainers Let Go
Well, it's an unpleasant afternoon in Linux land with more signs of the ongoing impact from Intel's corporate-wide restructuring. Just after writing about Intel's CPU temperature monitoring driver now left unmaintained/orphaned, more patches hit the public Linux kernel mailing list to mark additional Intel drivers as orphaned and removing maintainer entries for Linux developers no longer at Intel.
August 8, 2025 — Source

AM 9.8.2 released
The release of "AM" 9.8.2 marks a significant update to the "am-extras" repository, which focuses on AM extensions. The update has assigned the management of all Python AppImage scripts to "am-extras," providing users with greater flexibility in selecting and adding software. This innovative method has streamlined the process for users to submit straightforward AppImages without the need to wait for the author to address the script or authorize a pull request.
August 8, 2025 — Source

AMD ROCm 6.4.3 Released With A Few Fixes
While we eagerly await the release of ROCm 7.0, ROCm 6.4.3 is out today as the newest point release to the ROCm 6.4 open-source GPU compute stack.
August 8, 2025 — Source

Bcachefs Maintainer Comments On The LKML While Waiting To See What Happens
We still don't know what's going to happen for Bcachefs in the Linux 6.17 kernel even with the merge window set to end on Sunday with the Linux 6.17-rc1 release. Linus Torvalds commented over one month ago that they would be parting ways for Linux 6.17. At the start of the Linux 6.17 merge window a Bcachefs pull request was submitted but nearly two weeks later it's still not been pulled and Linus Torvalds hasn't commented on the matter.
August 8, 2025 — Source

Chromium, Libtiff-Devel, Ghostscript, and more updates for SUSE
SUSE Linux has received several security updates, including chromium, libtiff-devel, traefik, libpoppler-cpp2, libIex, traefik, agama, iperf, ghostscript, and kubo:.
August 8, 2025 — Source

Cifs-Utils update for Ubuntu 14.04/16.04 LTS
New Cifs-Utils packages have been made available for Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS and 16.04 LTS to resolve four security vulnerabilities:
August 8, 2025 — Source

DDR5-6400 versus DDR5-4800 R-DIMM Performance For Threadripper 9980X / 9970X CPUs
Last week the Threadripper 9000 series began shipping and as shown in our launch-day Linux testing there was stunning performance with the 32-core Threadripper 9970X and 64-core Threadripper 9980X processors. Beyond the improvements thanks to the Zen 5 microarchitecture enhancements, the new Threadrippers while working as a drop-in replacement to existing TRX50 workstation motherboards now can handle DDR5-6400 R-DIMMs up from DDR5-4800 R-DIMMs with the Threadripper 7000 series.
August 8, 2025 — Source

FFmpeg 8.0 Merges Vulkan AV1 Encoding & VP9 Decoding
Ahead of the upcoming FFmpeg 8.0 release for this widely-used, open-source multimedia library some more last minute features continue to land. Hitting FFmpeg Git today are some Vulkan Video additions.
August 8, 2025 — Source

GCC 15.2 Released With More Than 123 Bugs Fixed
Following the release of GCC 15.1 at the end of April as the first stable version of the GCC 15 compiler, GCC 15.2 is now available with a variety of bug fixes back-ported.
August 8, 2025 — Source

Intel CPU Temperature Monitoring Driver For Linux Now Unmaintained After Layoffs
There is yet more apparent fallout from Intel's recent layoffs/restructurings as it impacts the Linux kernel... The coretemp driver that provides CPU core temperature monitoring support for all Intel processors going back many years is now set to an orphaned state with the former driver maintainer no longer at Intel and no one immediately available to serve as its new maintainer.
August 8, 2025 — Source

Intel Is Reportedly Preparing Arc B380; Adds New Battlemage PCI ID to Linux Kernel
Intel's new offering in the Battlemage lineup is supposedly a budget GPU, which should be succeeding the Arc A380.
August 8, 2025 — Source

KDE Frameworks 6.17 released
KDE has announced the release of Frameworks 6.16.0, continuing its commitment to providing timely and consistent updates for developers. The release introduces new features, including Baloo, which eliminates certain QString is_shared/detach checks, as well as a benchmark for term lists. The update encompasses resolutions for code duplication, DBPostingDB, and the elimination of redundant icons. The release additionally features supplementary CMake modules, including ECMGenerateQDoc and KDECMakeSettings, along with an updated version of KDE Frameworks.
August 8, 2025 — Source

Kernel 6.16 Test Week for Fedora Linux
The Fedora Linux kernel team is currently finalizing the integration of Linux kernel 6.16, which will be released in Fedora Linux shortly. A test week is scheduled for August 10-16, 2025, concentrating on regressions during rebasing and challenges related to USB installations on both virtual machines and bare metal systems.
August 8, 2025 — Source

LVFS Introducing Fair-Use Quota: Asking Major Vendors To Pay Or Contribute Code
The Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) is rolling out a "fair use" quota where they will be asking the major hardware vendors (OEMs) to sponsor the project or contribute developer resources for the biggest users that rely on LVFS/Fwupd for serving system and device firmware to customers.
August 8, 2025 — Source

My 4 favorite image editing apps on Linux - and two are free Photoshop alternatives
These image editing apps offer all the tools you'll ever need on Linux. MacOS and Windows not required.
August 8, 2025 — Source

RADV Implements Triangle Pair Compression For AMD RDNA4 GPUs
The latest Radeon RADV driver ray-tracing optimization being merged to Mesa 25.3 is support for triangle pair compression with RDNA4 (GFX12) graphics processors.
August 8, 2025 — Source

ROCm 6.4.3 released
AMD has released ROCm 6.4.3, a significant release that addresses multiple issues, featuring updates for AMD Radeon PRO and Radeon GPU drivers, enhancements to ROCm SMI, and improvements to ROCm documentation. The update addresses a problem that was leading to performance degradation in communication operations due to heightened latency in specific RCCL applications. The update addresses a problem in the AMDGPU driver's scheduler constraints that may lead to failures in queue preemption during workload execution.
August 8, 2025 — Source

PCIe Improvements With Linux 6.17: Intel Panther Lake, Qualcomm, Sophgo SG2044 & More
The PCI changes were merged last week for the Linux 6.17 merge window. There is new PCIe controller support and some other additions worth mentioning with the new PCI feature code.
August 8, 2025 — Source

Star leaky app of the week: StarDict
Fun feature found in Debian 13: send your selected text to China -- in plaintext
August 8, 2025 — Source

Tails 7.0 RC1 released
The first release candidate for Tails 7.0 has been released for testing. This is the first release of Tails, built on Debian 13 Trixie and GNOME 48, featuring updated versions of numerous applications. The release candidate incorporates modifications including the substitution of GNOME Terminal with GNOME Console, the removal of Kleopatra from the Favorites menu, and the elimination of the outdated Network Connection option. The software package comprises updates for the Tor client, Thunderbird, and the Linux kernel, along with resolutions for issues such as selecting the appropriate keyboard for specific languages.
August 8, 2025 — Source

U.S. Judiciary confirms breach of court electronic records
The U.S. Federal Judiciary confirms that it suffered a cyberattack on its electronic case management systems hosting confidential court documents and is strengthening cybersecurity measures.
August 8, 2025 — Source

Ubuntu 24.04.3: Noble Numbat point release slips out quietly
The latest point release of the current Ubuntu LTS is here, with a new kernel and a host of improvements for server and desktop alike.
August 8, 2025 — Source

Zed 0.198.3 released
An update for the Zed editor has been launched, featuring support for GPT-5.
August 8, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — August 4th, 2025

5 of my favorite Linux system-monitoring tools - and why I use them
When I want to monitor my Linux system's performance, I turn to these handy apps to collect more data than I'll probably ever need.
August 4, 2025 — Source

AMD Ryzen AI 5 340 "Krackan Point" Offers Outstanding Value In Sub-$500 Laptops
Over the past three months we have been excitedly testing AMD's Strix Halo SoC with the Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 flagship model as well as the Ryzen AI Max PRO 390 as one step below. Strix Halo offers excellent CPU and GPU performance capabilities at the top-end if your budget allows. But at the opposite end and a step below the Strix Point SoCs that have been available the past year is Krackan Point.
August 4, 2025 — Source

AppArmor For Linux 6.17 Set To Introduce AF_UNIX Mediation, Other Improvements
Canonical engineer John Johansen sent out the AppArmor pull request today for the Linux 6.17 merge window that is heavy on changes for this Linux kernel security module.
August 4, 2025 — Source

Git 2.51-rc0 Makes More Preparations For Git 3.0 Where It Will Use SHA-256 By Default
Junio Hamano announced the release of Git 2.51-rc0 to kick off the new week and the first step toward Git 2.51 as the next milestone for this open-source distributed version control system.
August 4, 2025 — Source

GNOME Shell 49 Beta Brings Restart/Shutdown Support To The Lock Screen
Along with the release of the Mutter 49 beta, GNOME Shell 49 beta was released on Sunday in preparation for the imminent GNOME 49 beta release. Notable here is long sought after support for having the ability to restart or shutdown the computer from GNOME's lock screen.
August 4, 2025 — Source

Google Preparing To Ship Chrome With "--ozone-platform-hint=auto" For Wayland
Google Chrome/Chromium is preparing to ship with "--ozone-platform-hint=auto" functionality by default so the web browser will play nicer out-of-the-box with Wayland.
August 4, 2025 — Source

Heroic Games Launcher 2.18.1 Hotfix #1 released
The release of HeroicGamesLauncher version 2.18.1 Hotfix #1 addresses a significant change for Linux users, specifically the default setting that hides Proton versions other than Proton-GE. The update now exclusively conceals Proton Experimental and operates on an Opt-in basis rather than an Opt-out approach. The update addresses the Environmental variables table and introduces configurations for utilizing WoW64 on Linux.
August 4, 2025 — Source

KDE Plasma prepares crackdown on focus-stealing window behavior under Wayland
One of the most interesting things about Wayland is how it handles window focus, unlike X11, where focus stealing can be frustrating and even a security risk. Its main advantage is a mechanism that prevents focus stealing. The protocol that plays a role in this is known as "XDG Activation."
August 4, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.17 Making Kdump Crash Kernel More Reliable, Less Wasted Memory
In addition to the many MM changes merged this weekend for Linux 6.17, Andrew Morton on Sunday also sent out his "non-MM" pull request for this new kernel. Notable there is improving the Kdump code to allow for crash kernel reservation made from the contiguous memory allocator to help yield less wasted RAM and greater reliability.
August 4, 2025 — Source

Mesa NVK Driver Now Exposes Vulkan 1.4 For NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 "Blackwell" GPUs
Merged a short time ago to Mesa 25.3-devel Git and marked for back-porting to the Mesa 25.2 series is advertising Vulkan 1.4 conformance for NVIDIA's latest Blackwell GPUs.
August 4, 2025 — Source

New Plague Linux malware stealthily maintains SSH access
A newly discovered Linux malware, which has evaded detection for over a year, allows attackers to gain persistent SSH access and bypass authentication on compromised systems.
August 4, 2025 — Source

NVIDIA 580 Beta Linux Driver Brings Fixes, Wayland fifo-v1 Support With Vulkan
NVIDIA today published the v580.65.06 as their first beta driver version in the new NVIDIA 580 Linux driver series.
August 4, 2025 — Source

NVIDIA CUDA 13.0 Available With Unified Arm Platform Support
Along with today's NVIDIA R580 Linux driver beta, the CUDA 13.0 toolkit is now available to download and depends upon the new R580 Linux driver series.
August 4, 2025 — Source

Project Banana ripens into a pre-alpha for KDE Linux, and you can test it
Desktop project's in-house distro is impressively ambitious, but nowhere near ready
August 4, 2025 — Source

Yes, you need a firewall on Linux - here's why and which to use
Out of the box, Linux is a highly secure operating system, but does that mean you can get by without a bit of help? Let's find out.
August 4, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — August 3rd, 2025

Apple HFS/HFS+ File-System Drivers See Many Fixes In Linux 6.17
Earlier this year there was talk of Linux potentially dropping its Apple HFS and HFS+ file-system drivers as they had been orphaned for a decade and proving to be a maintenance burden. Following that some developers stepped up to better maintain the code for HFS and HFS+ file-system support. In Linux 6.17 we are seeing some of the fruits of that work.
August 3, 2025 — Source

Compute Express Link Code Further Cleaned Up In Linux 6.17
The Compute Express Link code changes landed this weekend for the Linux 6.17 kernel with development continuing to be quite active around this subsystem for supporting latest and next-generation servers.
August 3, 2025 — Source

Corsair HX1200i 2025 Power Supply Monitoring Now Works Under Linux
For those shopping for a high-end desktop power supply for use under Linux and interested in being able to take advantage of sensor monitoring capabilities, the 2025 edition of the Corsair HX1200i PSU can now enjoy working sensor monitoring under Linux.
August 3, 2025 — Source

Intel QuickAssist Hit By Second Demotion In Linux 6.17 Due To Lack Of Kernel Benefit
A few days ago the Intel QuickAssist "QAT" accelerators were demoted by FSCRYPT in the Linux 6.17 development code due to being slow and bug prone with AVX-512 showing to be much faster than leveraging the QAT accelerators in this file encryption framework. With the Linux 6.17 crypto subsystem is a second separate demotion to Intel's QAT support for kernel use.
August 3, 2025 — Source

Linus Torvalds confirms he's still running a Radeon RX 580
While the Radeon RX 580, based on the Polaris architecture, is nearly a decade old, some users still see no need to upgrade. And it's not just any user -- it's the creator of Linux himself, Linus Torvalds.
August 3, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — August 2nd, 2025

FEX 2508 Delivers Major Speedups For x86_64 Binaries On ARM: 39% Faster Cyberpunk 2077
FEX 2508 as the open-source emulator that allows running x86_64 Linux binaries on AArch64, including the likes of Wine and Valve's Steam Play, is boasting some "big juicy" optimizations with its new release. Many games are now significantly faster atop FEX.
August 2, 2025 — Source

FireWire IEEE-1394 Support Further Refined In Linux 6.17
While Apple removed FireWire support from the upcoming macOS 26 "Tahoe" release, Linux support for the IEEE-1394 standard continues. With the in-development Linux 6.17 there is some modernization work on the FireWire subsystem code with plan still being to maintain FireWire support on Linux until at least 2029.
August 2, 2025 — Source

GNOME AI Virtual Assistant "Newelle" Reaches Version 1.0 Milestone
Newelle is a virtual AI assistant developed for the GNOME desktop that supports voice chat and can handle carrying out web searches, terminal command execution, website reading, file management, document editing, and more. Newell v1.0 was released this week for advancing this GNOME AI virtual assistant.
August 2, 2025 — Source

I took a look at AnduinOS, a Linux distro that feels like home for Windows users
AnduinOS is a custom Ubuntu-based Linux distro with one goal: to smoothly transition Windows users to Linux. It achieves this by mimicking the workflows and look of Windows 11.
August 2, 2025 — Source

Intel begins Linux enablement of next-gen Nova Lake series
While Nova Lake is not expected for another year, Intel is already preparing its software infrastructure to support the new platform, which will power laptops, desktops, and potentially gaming handhelds. The new series also marks a significant shift in Intel's product family classification. Family 6, the designation used for Intel CPUs for over 20 years, is now being replaced with Family 18, with Nova Lake as the first product under this new category.
August 2, 2025 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.5 Finally Adds Automatic Day/Night Theme Switching
KDE developer Nate Graham is out with his weekly report on the interesting Plasma desktop changes for the week. This week a long-sought feature for the Plasma desktop was finally merged.
August 2, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.17 Enables x86 MacBook Pro Touch Bars, Intel THC Wake-On-Touch
All of the HID subsystem device driver updates have been merged for the Linux 6.17 merge window.
August 2, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.17 Memory Management Optimizations, DAMON_STAT & Other Improvements
All of the memory management "MM" changes were merged this week for the ongoing Linux 6.17 merge window.
August 2, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — August 1st, 2025

Another one bites the dust as KubeSphere kills open source edition
Company blames license violations and infrastructure changes for abrupt move
August 1, 2025 — Source

Arch Linux 2025.08.01 released
A new Arch Linux installation image based on Linux kernel 6.15.4 has been released. Arch Linux is a lightweight distribution designed for expert users who want the most up-to-date packages. The installation image, which includes the most important Linux tools, also serves as a recovery or emergency image. The installation image now includes a guided installer.
August 1, 2025 — Source

Attack Vector Controls Land In Linux 6.17 To Better Control CPU Security Mitigations
The Attack Vector Controls work is now in Linux 6.17 for those new tuning knobs worked on by AMD engineer David Kaplan to make it more straight-forward for Linux server administrators and power users to more easily select the CPU security mitigations relevant to their system(s) and intended workloads.
August 1, 2025 — Source

CloudNativePG 1.26.1, 1.25.3 and 1.27.0-rc1 released
CloudNativePG has released versions 1.26.1 and 1.25.3, which focus on bug fixes and stability enhancements for PostgreSQL clusters. Users are strongly advised to upgrade to these versions. The first release candidate of the upcoming 1.27.0 release introduces features like dynamic loading of extensions, logical decoding slot synchronization, primary isolation checks, and experimental failover quorum. Feedback will shape the final release in the coming weeks.
August 1, 2025 — Source

EXT4 Shows Wild Gains With Better Block Allocation Scalability In Linux 6.17
The EXT4 file-system enhancements for Linux 6.17 were merged on Thursday and bring better scalability to the block allocation code as well as fixing the file-system's large folios support. The scalability work can show some wild gains in select areas.
August 1, 2025 — Source

Intel IPU7 Driver Merged For Linux 6.17 For Webcams On Lunar Lake & Panther Lake Laptops
The media subsystem updates were submitted and subsequently merged on Thursday for the ongoing Linux 6.17 merge window. There are several notable media changes for Linux 6.17 but arguably most prominent is the IPU7 driver entering staging for working on web camera support for Intel Lunar Lake and next-generation Panther Lake laptops.
August 1, 2025 — Source

KDE neon 20250731 released
KDE neon 20250731 has been released. KDE neon is a Linux distribution built on Ubuntu, featuring the latest version of the KDE Plasma desktop environment.
August 1, 2025 — Source

Linux Enablement Begins For Intel Nova Lake - The First "Family 18" CPUs
Today the first Linux kernel patch was posted for Intel's Nova Lake as the anticipated successor to the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 "Arrow Lake" processors. Today's patch confirms that Intel Nova Lake will be the first Intel processors under their new "Family 18" umbrella.
August 1, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.6.101 released
Linux kernel version 6.6.101 is now available:
August 1, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.12.41 released
Linux kernel version 6.12.41 is now available:
August 1, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.15.9 released
Linux kernel version 6.15.9 is now available:
August 1, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.17 EDAC Code Supports Several Newer Intel CPUs
The Error Detection And Correction "EDAC" driver improvements were merged earlier this week for the ongoing Linux 6.17 merge window and with that comes a number of Intel hardware platforms now being supported.
August 1, 2025 — Source

Liquorix Linux Kernel 6.15-9 released
Steven Barrett has released a new Liquorix kernel derived from Linux kernel 6.15.9. The Liquorix Linux kernel is an enthusiast Linux kernel that is optimized for low-latency computing in audiovisual production, reduced frame time variations in games, and unparalleled responsiveness in interactive systems. It is available for Debian, Ubuntu, and Arch Linux.
August 1, 2025 — Source

MCP Logic: How to Make It 40x Simpler
MCP requires logic. A declarative approach reduces code 40x using spreadsheet-like business rules. Here's a project comparing procedural and declarative.
August 1, 2025 — Source

More Intel Driver Maintainer Changes In Linux 6.17
Following the recent Intel driver being orphaned due to layoffs at the company and other Intel Linux engineering changes due to the ongoing restructuring at the company, for the Linux 6.17 kernel there are some additional Intel driver maintainer changes spotted.
August 1, 2025 — Source

Vulkan 1.4.324 Adds Experimental AMD Extension To Help With Ray-Tracing
Vulkan 1.4.324 is out today as the first Vulkan API specification update in two weeks with a variety of clarifications/corrections plus a new extension from AMD.
August 1, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — July 29th, 2025

A 10x Workaround & Less Network Egress Downtime Change Submitted For Linux 6.17
The kernel locking changes submitted today for Linux 6.17 contain a temporary change worth discussion for yielding a 10x speed-up of a particular function call and as part of that yielding less network egress downtime until a better solution is developed.
July 29, 2025 — Source

AMD Streaming SDK Updated With Linux Support - But Recommending X.Org Over Wayland
AMD's GPUOpen group today released the AMD Interactive Streaming SDK 1.1 release that now delivers Linux support alongside the existing Microsoft Windows support. The AMD Interactive Streaming SDK is designed to provide pieces for developers to build-out low-latency streaming solutions for cloud gaming, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and embedded applications.
July 29, 2025 — Source

EROFS Metadata Compression Lands Plus A ~2.5x Speedup For Reading Directories
Merged on Monday were the EROFS file-system updates for Linux 6.17. EROFS continues to be a common read-only file-system choice for some mobile/embedded devices as well as container use-cases.
July 29, 2025 — Source

Farewell Benchmarks Of Intel's Clear Linux On AMD EPYC Shows More Performance Left To Tap
Last week I ran the last planned benchmarks of Intel CPU performance on Clear Linux versus Ubuntu with Intel having ceased development of Clear Linux following the restructuring at the company. In today's article is a final look at how the AMD EPYC performance compares on Clear Linux relative to Ubuntu Linux and AlmaLinux.
July 29, 2025 — Source

Huge Speedups For CRC32C With Modern AVX-512 CPUs Merged To Linux 6.17
The CRC32C cyclic redundancy check code path within the Linux kernel for error detection is much, much faster with the in-development Linux 6.17 kernel when running on modern Intel and AMD AVX-512 processors.
July 29, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.16 brings faster file systems, improved confidential memory support, and more Rust support
Linux continues to grow bigger and better. Here's what's new and notable in the 6.16 release, plus what you need to know about 6.17.
July 29, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.17 Lands New file_getattr & file_setattr System Calls
Along with the better handling of multi-device file-systems such as Btrfs' native RAID capabilities and now allowing more efficient writing of zeroes to modern storage devices, the number of VFS pull requests for Linux 6.17 also added some other extra goodies.
July 29, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.17 Will Allow Writing Zeroes More Efficiently To SSDs
In addition to the VFS changes merrged yesterday for allowing multi-device file-systems to better cope with losing a disk, another notable change as part of the VFS pull requests for Linux 6.17 allows more efficiently zeroing out a range on modern NVMe SSDs or SCSI drives.
July 29, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.16 lands without any headline features but 38M lines of code
Mostly minor changes under the hood -- a lot of them
July 29, 2025 — Source

MSI Claw A8 Gaming Performance Review: RYZEN Z2 Extreme
What if the future of handheld gaming wasn't tied to Windows or consoles? Imagine a device that combines the raw power of AMD's Ryzen Z2 Extreme with the open source flexibility of Linux, delivering a portable gaming experience that challenges the status quo. Enter the MSI Claw A8, a bold contender in the handheld market that dares to redefine what's possible for Linux gaming. With its innovative hardware and promising benchmarks, it's easy to see why this device is making waves. But as with any innovation, the road to perfection is paved with challenges—software limitations and incomplete functionality hint at the hurdles still ahead.
July 29, 2025 — Source

This handy Linux tool snitches on sneaky apps - here's why and how it's helpful
OpenSnitch makes it easy to track outgoing internet requests from installed apps, so you can take action if necessary.
July 29, 2025 — Source

TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 15 Gen10 Laptop Announced - Powered By AMD Strix Point
For those shopping for a Linux friendly laptop powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" with Zen 5 cores and integrated Radeon graphics plus allowing up to 128GB of RAM, the 15.3-inch InfinityBook Pro 15 Gen10 was announced this morning.
July 29, 2025 — Source

With Windows 10's fast-approaching demise, this Linux migration tool could let you ditch Microsoft's ecosystem with your data and apps intact — but it's limited to one distro
Operese is a Windows-to-Linux migration tool designed to make the transition seamless, but it is still in its early development phase.
July 29, 2025 — Source

xf86-video-amdgpu 25.0.0 Released With Two Years Worth Of Fixes
It had been two years since the last update to the AMDGPU X.Org DDX driver but now xf86-video-amdgpu 25.0.0 is now available for those relying on this driver/hardware-specific driver for X.Org enabled Linux systems rather than the xf86-video-modesetting generic driver or a Wayland-based desktop.
July 29, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — July 27th, 2025

AMD Kernel Graphics Driver Exceeds 5.9 Million Lines In Linux 6.16
The modern AMD Kernel graphics driver consisting of AMDGPU, the AMDKFD compute code, and associated infrastructure continues to easily be the largest mainline open-source driver. With the Linux 6.16 kernel debuting as stable as soon as later today, the AMD kernel graphics driver cracks the 5.9 million line threshold. In comparison, the entire Linux kernel source tree comes in at
July 27, 2025 — Source

AMD SEV Optimizations Ready For Linux 6.17 Plus A 10x Improvement For Intel TDX
There are a few AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization improvements on the way for the Linux 6.17 kernel worth noting.
July 27, 2025 — Source

Flyoobe (Flyby11) 0.23.28 released
Belim has announced the release of another update for Flyoobe, an enhancement to Flyby11 that offers a more intelligent post-upgrade experience that addresses all aspects following the upgrade, including elements that Windows typically conceals or hastily navigates users through.
July 27, 2025 — Source

GNU Binutils 2.45 Released With Continued Work Around SFrame Stack Tracing
GNU Binutils 2.45 was released on Sunday morning as the newest version of this set of open-source binary tools.
July 27, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.17 Introducing Support For The NVIDIA Tegra T264/Thor, New RISC-V SoCs
In advance of the Linux 6.17 merge window expected to open soon following the Linux 6.16 release, all of the SoC updates have been submitted to Linus Torvalds for this next kernel version.
July 27, 2025 — Source

New Ubuntu Concept Snapdragon X Laptop ISOs Published - Your Mileage May Vary
A few days back I wrote about Canonical releasing new Ubuntu 25.04 "Concept" ISOs for the Snapdragon X laptops with the new install images being re-based to the Linux 6.16 kernel and expanding the device support. But as I found out from my own testing, depending upon the laptop the support was still less than ideal. Since then there have been two more ISO releases and addressing one of my show-stopping problems albeit encountering another.
July 27, 2025 — Source

Shotcut 25.07 Video Editor Brings Numerous Improvements
Shotcut 25.07 is out today as the newest feature release for this prominent open-source and cross-platform video editing solution.
July 27, 2025 — Source

Zen Browser 1.14.9b released
The Zen Browser 1.14.9b has been updated to address a regression issue with closing glance that was present in previous versions.
July 27, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — July 26th, 2025

FFmpeg 8.0 Preparing For Release In August With Many Great Features
We are just a few weeks out from seeing the release of the FFmpeg 8.0 multimedia library with many new features and improvements for this widely-used open-source software.
July 26, 2025 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.5 will notify you if your printer's ink is low
This week, the KDE team continued work on the upcoming Plasma 6.5.0 as well as Plasma 6.4's fourth bug fix release, 6.4.4. As usual, both Plasma versions saw several UI tweaks, bug fixes, and performance improvements. The most notable changes are discussed in this article.
July 26, 2025 — Source

Intel oneDNN 3.9 Making More Preparations For Xe3, Nova Lake & Diamond Rapids
Released on Friday was a new version of the oneDNN deep neural network library maintained by Intel and the UXL Foundation. This library used by various deep learning applications continues preparing for upcoming Intel CPUs and GPUs.
July 26, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.17 Sound Code Prepares For Upcoming AMD Hardware
Linux sound subsystem maintainer Takashi Iwai of SUSE submitted already the sound code feature changes ready for Linux 6.17.
July 26, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.17 To Support Arm's BRBE
One of the new features coming for ARM64 in this next version of the Linux kernel is enabling BRBE support within the Linux kernel's perf subsystem. BRBE is short for the Branch Record Buffer Extension and has been part of the Arm ISA spec the past five years. The Branch Record Buffer Extension allows for capturing a recent sequence of branches for low-compute and low-memory overhead capture/analysis for tracing/debug purposes. Tied into the Linux perf subsystem should be useful for low overhead profiling of AArch64 systems.
July 26, 2025 — Source

Linux's Modern NTFS Driver Will Now Correctly Handle Symlinks Created On Windows
One of the nice Linux kernel accomplishments during the pandemic was getting the NTFS3 driver upstreamed for that modern NTFS file-system read/write driver developed by Paragon Software. In recent times that NTFS3 driver has been seeing occasional fixes and for the Linux 6.17 kernel -- and perhaps then back-ported to existing kernels -- are some notable fixes for those relying on drives formatted with this Microsoft file-system.
July 26, 2025 — Source

OpenAI nearly confirms GPT-5 launch today - how to tune in
The wait for GPT-5 seems to be over. Here's why this model is a big deal.
July 26, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — July 25th, 2025

Ayn Gaming Handhelds To See Better Linux Support With New Open-Source Driver
Ayn is a Chinese brand of handheld gaming devices that have included Arm-based devices shipping Android as well as AMD Ryzen powered handhelds with Windows 11 or even the option of installing Ubuntu. Better support for the Ayn x86 gaming handheld devices is on the way with patches posted for a new Ayn platform driver for the Linux kernel.
July 25, 2025 — Source

Bcachefs Lands Last Minute Fixes For Linux 6.16
Ahead of the Linux 6.16 stable kernel expected to be released on Sunday, some last minute Bcachefs file-system fixes join various other kernel regression/bug fixes landing today in Git.
July 25, 2025 — Source

Fedora 43 Looks To Offer Support For The Hare Programming Language
Fedora 43 is looking to offer packages to support the Hare system programming language.
July 25, 2025 — Source

Fedora Considers Reducing The Scope That BIOS Systems Can Hold Up A Release
Given that non-UEFI BIOS systems are quite old at this point and Intel/AMD systems for the past number of years have all supported UEFI, another change proposal being considered this week by Fedora Linux is limiting the release-blocking status of various (non-UEFI) BIOS systems.
July 25, 2025 — Source

Final Benchmarks Of Clear Linux On Intel: ~48% Faster Than Ubuntu Out-Of-The-Box
Last week Friday the unfortunate news came down that Intel was discontinuing their Clear Linux project effective immediately. For the past ten years Intel software engineers have been crafting Clear Linux as a high performance distribution that is extensively optimized for x86_64 processors via aggressive compiler tuning, various patches to the Linux kernel and other packages, and a variety of other optimizations throughout the operating system.
July 25, 2025 — Source

FreeBSD 15 installer to offer minimal KDE desktop
The FreeBSD Laptop project continues -- and plans to offer a very visible change
July 25, 2025 — Source

Intel Quietly Sunset Its PlaidML Open-Source Deep Learning Software
Another hit to the open-source Intel software ecosystem this year was the company formally archiving/discontinuing work on the PlaidML deep learning software. PlaidML was the deep learning framework that Intel acquired back in 2018 as part of their acquisition of Vertex.AI. PlaidML had a goal of "deep learning for every platform" but unfortunately those ambitions didn't materialize.
July 25, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.16 Is Exciting For Open-Source NVIDIA, OpenVPN DCO & More Performance
The Linux 6.16 kernel is expected to be released as stable this coming Sunday, 27 July, barring any last minute issues that cause Linus Torvalds to have reservations over issuing v6.16 stable and to instead do a v6.16-rc8 test release. With Linux 6.16 imminent, here's a reminder about some of the most interesting features in this next Linux kernel version.
July 25, 2025 — Source

Linux Will Finally Be Able To Reboot Apple M1/M2 Macs With The v6.17 Kernel
While there have been various elements of the Apple M1 and M2 SoC support in the mainline Linux kernel along with support for various Macs, different features have been missing from the upstream kernel such as the Apple GPU kernel graphics driver as one big example. On a more fundamental level, the upcoming Linux 6.17 kernel is going to cross off another low-level expectation for Apple Silicon Macs on the mainline kernel: the ability to reboot the system.
July 25, 2025 — Source

Red Hat Has Been Rewriting Bash-Based Greenboot In Rust
Greenboot is a generic health check framework for systemd on RPM-OSTree based Linux distributions. Red Hat engineers have worked on Greenboot as part of the likes of Fedora IoT and their other RPM-OSTree initiatives for checking on the overall system health with ease.
July 25, 2025 — Source

Supply-chain attacks on open source software are getting out of hand
Attacks affected packages, including one with ~2.8 million weekly downloads.
July 25, 2025 — Source

Trump's AI plan says a lot about open source - but here's what it leaves out
The AI Action Plan pretty much frees up AI companies to do what they want, but it also supports the use of open source for AI. What that means is one big open question.
July 25, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — July 22nd, 2025

A Number Of Problems Make Debian & Other Linux Distros A Pain On Snapdragon X Laptops
While downstream Ubuntu is the most popular Linux option for the Qualcomm Snapdragon X powered "Windows on Arm" laptops, that's because of their concept images containing a number of "hacked packages" to lead to a decent user experience. But for upstream Debian Linux the prospects of running it on Snapdragon X Elite/Plus laptops is less than ideal with a number of problems persisting -- similar to other Linux distributions focused on running the mainline Linux kernel and other upstream software.
July 22, 2025 — Source

AMDGPU LLVM Backend Flips On "True16" Mode For All RDNA3 GPUs
A late change to the AMDGPU LLVM compiler back-end that may help efforts particularly for the ROCm compute support on RDNA3 hardware is finally merging support for using true 16-bit instructions and registers on all RDNA3 GPUs.
July 22, 2025 — Source

Apple Silicon 2SoC/DT Changes Submitted Ahead Of Linux 6.17
Sven Peter today sent out all of the Apple SoC driver and DeviceTree (DT) updates aiming for the soon-to-happen Linux 6.17 merge window.
July 22, 2025 — Source

Arch Linux users told to purge Firefox forks after AUR malware scare
The distro's greatest asset is arguably also its greatest weakness
July 22, 2025 — Source

Arm Preparing Support For Latest Mali GPUs With Panthor Open-Source Driver
Arm engineer Karunika Choo has been leading the effort to enable support for the latest Mali GPUs within the open-source and upstream "Panthor" DRM kernel graphics driver for Linux. This work includes being able to enable the latest Mali 5th Gen GPUs on this open-source graphics driver.
July 22, 2025 — Source

Azure Linux 2.0 reaches end of life, requiring AKS Arc users to upgrade
Microsoft has warned that Azure Linux 2.0, used in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) enabled by Azure Arc, will reach its end of life on July 31, 2025, necessitating users to upgrade. After this date, Microsoft will no longer provide updates, security patches, or support for Azure Linux 2.0. The longer it is used after this date, the more vulnerable systems will become due to a lack of patches.
July 22, 2025 — Source

Fedora 43 Cleared To Ship With Zstd Initrd, Updated Compiler Toolchains & More
The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) this week voted to approve a number of new features/changes for the upcoming Fedora 43 release.
July 22, 2025 — Source

Fedora Weighs Dropping Release Criteria For DVD Optical Media
The Fedora project is seeking feedback from its user and developer community over potentially updating its release criteria to no longer block on optical media boot issues (DVD images) as well as whether to continue honoring dual boot issues for Intel-based Macs as release-blocking.
July 22, 2025 — Source

Fwupd 2.0.13 Released With New Hardware Support, Numerous Fixes
LVFS/Fwupd lead developer Richard Hughes of Red Hat today announced the availability of Fwupd 2.0.13 for handling firmware updates on modern Linux systems.
July 22, 2025 — Source

Saying no to Windows 11 just got easier -- Operese automatically transfers your Windows 10 files and settings to Linux
While some users may be considering buying a new computer or paying for extended support, one student developer is offering another path: switching to Linux with the help of a free migration tool called Operese.
July 22, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — July 20th, 2025

Debian 13.0 Ready To Introduce Formal RISC-V Support But Still Bound By Slow Hardware
With the Debian 13.0 release planned for 9 August, one of the notable fundamental features with this Debian "Trixie" release is now supporting RISC-V as an official CPU architecture. This is the first release where RISC-V 64-bit is officially supported by Debian Linux albeit with limited board support and the Debian RISC-V build process is handicapped by slow hardware.
July 20, 2025 — Source

KDE neon 20250720 released
KDE neon 20250720 has been released. KDE neon is a Linux distribution built on Ubuntu, featuring the latest version of the KDE Plasma desktop environment.
July 20, 2025 — Source or Watch Video

Linux Kernel Patches Speed-Up CRC32 Performance For CPUs With "Good" AVX-512
Google engineer Eric Biggers who has been responsible for many great Linux cryptography subsystem performance optimizations in recent years has another exciting patch series. Biggers has done some great work for optimizing various functions for modern Intel/AMD CPUs especially around AVX-512 implementations and now he has another big optimization coming for the CRC32 checksum performance.
July 20, 2025 — Source

SFrame Support Beginning To Materialize For LLVM/Clang
SFrame is the lightweight stack trace format that can overcome some of the performance obstacles for tracing ELF files compared to frame pointers. In addition to the SFrame support coming together in the GNU toolchain, the SFrame support for LLVM/Clang is beginning to reach upstream.
July 20, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — July 19th, 2025

Debian 13.0 "Trixie" Planning For Release On August 9
The Debian release team today shared their final release plans for Debian 13 "Trixie" that aims to be out as stable in less than one month's time.
July 19, 2025 — Source

Intel Shuts Down "Clear Linux" Distribution Development
Linux enthusiasts gather to hear the latest news: Intel is officially shutting down its Clear Linux distribution after ten years of development and optimizations. As many recall, Clear Linux is an Intel-optimized Linux distribution that serves as a high-performance, optimized OS designed to extract every last ounce of performance from Intel hardware, especially Intel Xeons.
July 19, 2025 — Source or Source or Source

KDE Plasma 6.5 Brings Rounded Bottom Corners For Windows By Default
KDE Plasma 6.5 is introducing a change that has been "years in the wanting" and that is rounded bottom corners for windows.
July 19, 2025 — Source

Microsoft stops using China-based engineers to support US defense clients
Microsoft announced on Friday that its China-based engineers can no longer provide technical support to the US military and other defence clients using the company's cloud services.
July 19, 2025 — Source or Source

Open-Source & Rust-Written Burn MATMUL Kernels Can Compete With NVIDIA's CUDA/cuBLAS
The open-source and Rust-based Burn deep learning framework developed by Tracel AI shared that their open-source matrix multiplication kernel performance can compete with and even outperform the NVIDIA CUDA cuBLAS performance. Plus Burn isn't limited to just NVIDIA GPUs but can work on most hardware/drivers, including a Vulkan back-end.
July 19, 2025 — Source

Popular npm linter packages hijacked via phishing to drop malware
Popular JavaScript libraries were hijacked this week and turned into malware droppers, in a supply chain attack achieved via targeted phishing and credential theft.
July 19, 2025 — Source

Rust-Written NOVA Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Being Further Built Out In Linux 6.17
For Linux 6.17 in addition to Intel enabling SR-IOV for Battlemage graphics cards and many other big Intel Xe kernel graphics cards and then more AMD graphics driver features too, the NOVA driver for modern open-source NVIDIA driver support is continuing to be further built out in this next kernel version.
July 19, 2025 — Source

Wayland Color Management For HDR Under Review For Chrome/Chromium
The latest software with pending Wayland color management support for enabling HDR display support is the open-source Google Chromium code for the Chrome web browser.
July 19, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — July 18th, 2025

AMD Announces ROCm-LS, hipCIM As Port Of NVIDIA's cuCIM
Back in May was the announcement by AMD of ROCm-DS as a new toolkit geared for real-world data science problems with various helpers to accelerate data processing on Instinct accelerators. AMD today is complementing ROCm-DS by announcing ROCm-LS and hipCIM.
July 18, 2025 — Source

Arch Linux pulls AUR packages that installed Chaos RAT malware
Arch Linux has pulled three malicious packages uploaded to the Arch User Repository (AUR), which were used to install the CHAOS remote access trojan (RAT) on Linux devices.
July 18, 2025 — Source

Imagination Kernel Graphics Driver Being Extended To AM62P/AM67A/J722S SoCs
The open-source and upstream Imagination Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel graphics driver for supporting their modern graphics IP and pairing with their PowerVR Vulkan driver within Mesa is now being extended to work on the TI AM62P, AM67A, and J722S SoCs.
July 18, 2025 — Source

Intel Compute Runtime 25.27.34303.5 Brings Support For Wildcat Lake & BMG G31
Intel is out today with its monthly feature update to the Compute Runtime as their open-source GPU compute stack providing Level Zero and OpenCL API support on Windows and Linux systems. This month there is new hardware support, more performance optimizations, and some new features.
July 18, 2025 — Source

Intel QATlib 25.08 Brings Hugepages Support & Other Improvements
Intel engineers yesterday released QATlib 25.08 as the first new update in nearly one year for this QuickAssist Technology library. Intel QuickAssist allows hardware-accelerated offloading of various security authentication and compression operations from the CPU onto dedicated accelerator IP found in recent Xeon processors. Intel's QATlib is the open-source library for enabling that magic to happen from the user-space side.
July 18, 2025 — Source

PhaseFieldX: An open-source tool for simulating material fracture and fatigue
The Python package PhaseFieldX, developed by researcher Miguel Castillón at IMDEA Materials Institute, has been published in the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) in a paper titled "PhaseFieldX: An Open-Source Framework for Advanced Phase-Field Simulations."
July 18, 2025 — Source

PHP 8.3.24RC1 and 8.4.11RC1 packages for Fedora/RHEL released
Remi Collet has released PHP 8.3.24RC1 and 8.4.11RC1 packages for Fedora and RHEL-based Linux distributions.
July 18, 2025 — Source

Servo Web Engine Further Tuning Performance, Screen Reader & Other New Features
The Servo open-source web layout engine continues advancing with its demo Servoshell and continued work around making it suitable for embedding into other software. The Servo project this morning published their latest monthly status update to inform the community what they have been up to the past several weeks.
July 18, 2025 — Source

This new Windows 11 clone is actually Linux and runs faster on your old PC -- get it now
The latest long-term support release of Linuxfx, version 11.25.07 "NOBLE," is now available.
July 18, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — July 17th, 2025

Google Continues Working On "Magma" For Mesa Cross-Platform System Call Interface
Mesa 25.2 entered its feature freeze yesterday with many exciting driver improvements with new features and performance optimizations while one feature that wasn't ready for merging in this quarter's release is Magma, which is a recent effort by Google engineers working on a cross-platform system call interface for Mesa. And it's written in Rust.
July 17, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.17 To Fix AMDGPU Hibernation So It Doesn't Take ~50 Minutes On Large GPU Servers
While late in the Linux 6.16 cycle and hitting the cut-off for when the period to queue new DRM driver feature material for Linux 6.17 ends, an additional drm-misc-next pull request was sent out today with some last minute kernel graphics driver changes for this next kernel cycle. Motivating this extra pull were the recent AMDGPU system hibernation patches.
July 17, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.17 To Upstream Support For The Decade Old Marvell PXA1908 SoC
Launched back in 2014 was the Marvell PXA1908 SoC intended for 4G LTE smartphones and featured four Arm Cortex-A53 cores. Not too impressive for its time and far less so today. Though after a decade of not seeing mainline Linux kernel support and some vendor kernels stuck in the Linux 3.14 era, the upcoming Linux 6.17 cycle is expected to upstream support for this old smartphone SoC.
July 17, 2025 — Source

Linux surpasses 5% market share on US desktops for the first time
Linux's momentum is largely driven by user dissatisfaction with Microsoft's ecosystem
July 17, 2025 — Source

Mesa 25.1.6 released
The bugfix release 25.1.6 is now available for Mesa 25.1 users. The release includes fixes for various issues, such as handling NULL pColorAttachmentLocations in vkCmdSetRenderingAttachmentLocations, lower maxImageDimension{2D,3D,Cube} to match HW caps, and fixing tiling for H.265 and VP9 video surfaces on GFX 12.5+. The release also includes fixes for leaking fences in GetImage/PutImage, radeonsi/video, and radv/video.
July 17, 2025 — Source

OpenAI Has Not Extended A "Material Cash Advance" To CoreWeave (CRWV) Despite Providing A $15 Billion Commitment, Claims HSBC
CoreWeave's current liquidity position looks stretched to HSBC, partially due to a lack of follow through on the part of OpenAI on a $15 billion cash commitment.
July 17, 2025 — Source

PostgreSQL 18 Beta 2 released
The second beta version of PostgreSQL 18 is now available for download, featuring fixes and improvements such as support for prepared statements, foreign key validation, injection point testing, and pg_dump for complex tables. It also addresses stack overflow for OAuth parsers, pg_dump and pg_dumpall default behavior, LOAD $libdir/ functionality, GIN amcheck improvements, and removal of PQservice() from libpq.
July 17, 2025 — Source

Single RunQueue Proxy Execution Appears Ready For Linux 6.17
The long in development work around proxy execution for the Linux kernel appears to be ready for the upcoming Linux 6.17 merge window with the Single RunQueue Proxy Execution patches queued into a TIP branch after going through 19 rounds of patch review/revisions.
July 17, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — July 14th, 2025

CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
July 14, 2025 — Source

Debian GNU/Linux 13 Trixie Testing 20250714 Live Images
New weekly Debian GNU/Linux 13 Trixie live testing images are now available, featuring a range of desktop environments such as GNOME 48.2, KDE 6.3.5, Xfce 4.20, Cinnamon 6.4.10, MATE 1.26, LXQt 2.1.0, and LXDE 0.99.3.
July 14, 2025 — Source

Debian's DebConf25 Kicks Off On France - Video Streams Available
Debian's annual Debian Conference "DebConf" started this morning and runs all week in Brest, France.
July 14, 2025 — Source

IceWM 3.8.1 released
IceWM 3.8.1 has been released and addresses issues related to user memory calculation, toolbar reloading, and the positioning of message dialogs above the WindowList. Enhances the speed and memory efficiency of BrowseMenu, while also incorporating Hungarian translations.
July 14, 2025 — Source

Intel Mesa Drivers Add Option To Disable Xe3's Variable Register Thread "VRT" Feature
One of the interesting new additions with the upcoming Intel Xe3 integrated and discrete graphics is the Variable Register Thread "VRT" feature. Making use of Variable Register Thread can reduce register splitting, reduce bandwidth consumption, and improve overall performance. More background information on Intel VRT can be found in that aforelinked Phoronix article.
July 14, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 5.15.188 released
Linux kernel version 5.15.188 is now available:
July 14, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.1.145 released
Linux kernel version 6.1.145 is now available:
July 14, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.6.98 released
Linux kernel version 6.6.98 is now available:
July 14, 2025 — Source

Linux Kernel 6.12.38 released
Linux kernel 6.12.38 has been released.
July 14, 2025 — Source

Linux Mint 22.2 beta to bring fingerprint login, better themes, and Wayland fixes
Clem Lefebvre, head of the Linux Mint project, has announced that the Linux Mint 22.2 "Zara" beta will be released at the end of July or early August. As always, it's a notable upgrade, bringing with it an updated Hardware Enablement (HWE) kernel, which means it'll have better support for newer hardware like CPUs, GPUs, and wireless cards.
July 14, 2025 — Source

LMDE 7 Will Follow Linux Mint 22.2
The Linux Mint developers have put out their monthly status update to outline their work in recent weeks. Over the course of June, Linux Mint developers were primarily focused on Linux Mint 22.2 with the beta release expected soon.
July 14, 2025 — Source

Mesa 25.2 NVK versus NVIDIA R575 Linux Graphics Performance For GeForce RTX 40 Series
A number of Phoronix readers have been interested in seeing some fresh benchmarks of Mesa's NVK Vulkan driver in providing open-source Vulkan API support on NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards as well as the modern OpenGL approach of using Zink for layering OpenGL atop Vulkan. Here are some fresh benchmarks using the very latest Mesa 25.2 code for NVK on the latest upstream stable Linux kernel compared to the NVIDIA R575 official Linux graphics driver stack.
July 14, 2025 — Source

NVMe Controller Data Queue "CDQ" Patches Posted For Linux
New feature patches posted for review today on the Linux kernel mailing list are working to implement the NVMe specification's Controller Data Queue (CDQ) functionality within the NVMe storage driver.
July 14, 2025 — Source

Old Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 GPUs Still Seeing Open-Source Driver Fixes In 2025
In addition to last minute feature work on the latest AMD RDNA4 graphics cards ahead of the Mesa 25.2 code branching, there's also some new fixes going into Mesa for the open-source Radeon driver code... Coming in this Monday morning by surprise are some fixes for the Radeon HD 2000/3000 series approaching two decades old as well as a fix for the Radeon HD 4000 graphics processors.
July 14, 2025 — Source

RADV Vulkan Video Improvements Make It Into Mesa 25.2 For AMD RDNA4 GPUs
Ahead of the Mesa 25.2 code branching / feature freeze expected later this week, last minute feature additions and other changes continue landing in the codebase for these open-source OpenGL and Vulkan drivers. One of the additions today worth mentioning are continued Vulkan Video improvements for AMD Radeon graphics.
July 14, 2025 — Source

SFrame Support Upstreamed To GNU C Library For Glibc 2.42
Merged today into the upstream GNU C Library code ahead of next month's Glibc 2.42 release is support for SFrame stack tracing with ELF binaries on x86 and AArch64 architectures.
July 14, 2025 — Source

Zen Browser 1.14.5b released
Zen Browser 1.14.5b has addressed the problem of compact mode deactivating upon window restoration and resolved accessibility concerns related to the use of custom colors.
July 14, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — July 13th, 2025

AMD NGG Improvements Make It Into Mesa 25.2 Ahead Of Next Week's Code Branching
Last week I wrote about a number of patches coming out of AMD for Next-Gen Geometry "NGG" improvements to the AMD OpenGL and Vulkan drivers for Linux. Some of that code hadn't been merged as of writing but fortunately this week the remainder of the NGG improvements were successfully merged to Mesa Git for this quarter's Mesa 25.2 release.
July 13, 2025 — Source

Another Longtime Intel Linux Engineer Leaves The Company
Amid Intel's ongoing financial difficulties and multiple rounds of layoffs some Linux engineers at Intel left last year and there's been at least one prominent departure this week amid the latest round of challenges at the company.
July 13, 2025 — Source

G2Streamer 1.27.1 Release Brings AMD HIP Plugin & Better Vulkan Video
GStreamer 1.27.1 released this week as the first development version toward the GStreamer 1.28 release coming later in the year. GStreamer 1.27/1.28 is bringing a lot of modern feature enhancements for this widely-used multimedia library.
July 13, 2025 — Source

Haiku OS Sees Work On Better App HiDPI Scaling, Better Intel WiFI Driver From OpenBSD
The Haiku open-source operating system project inspired by BeOS had a busy month of June with a number of enhancements made to this OS. Haiku just published their convenient monthly recap that highlights all of the interesting changes made the past month to this open-source OS.
July 13, 2025 — Source

KDE neon 20250713 released
KDE neon 20250713 has been released. KDE neon is a Linux distribution built on Ubuntu, featuring the latest version of the KDE Plasma desktop environment.
July 13, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.16 Ready With Fixes For Old AMD Hardware "Which Wasn't Even Supposed To Run Linux"
Ahead of the Linux 6.16-rc6 kernel release due out later today, an x86/urgent pull request was sent out today that includes some fixes for old AMD Zen 2 hardware.
July 13, 2025 — Source

Linux Patches Updated For The New Fairphone 6 Smartphone
Last month when the Fairphone 6 smartphone was announced, same-day Linux support patches were posted for this modular and repair-friendly smartphone. That Linux support code with the Device Tree (DT) files have been under review and out today is the second iteration of those enablement patches.
July 13, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — July 12th, 2025

Can a Linux laptop replace my MacBook? This one is off to a good start
Tuxedo Computers' Infinity Book Pro 14 is a sleek-looking laptop with Linux pre-installed. But its performance is backed up by some smart design options.
July 12, 2025 — Source

GNOME Builder & Digital Wellbeing Code Improved This Week
On top of this week's release of the GNOME 49 Alpha, other application improvements and more came about in the past few days.
July 12, 2025 — Source

I put Linux on this 8-inch mini laptop, and it's filled a niche role for me
The Piccolo N150 is a tiny eight-inch laptop with more power than it suggests and a nice display. But as a writer, I've found it to be great for capturing ideas on the go.
July 12, 2025 — Source

KDE Plasma 6.5 will let you configure what the rotatable dials on your drawing tablet do
It's the weekend, and you know what that means: a new update from the KDE team on the happenings around the KDE ecosystem. This Week, as with the past few weeks, saw bug fixes, UI improvements, and more across different versions of Plasma, specifically 6.4.3 and 6.5. Let's get into it.
July 12, 2025 — Source

KDE Preps More Crash KWin Crash Fixes, New Feature Work For Plasma 6.5
KDE developer Nate Graham is out with his weekly development recap of all interesting things and fixes merged for the week to Plasma.
July 12, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.17 Readies EDAC Support For Intel Granite Rapids D, Wildcat Lake, Raptor Lake HX
In addition to Intel preparing Bartlett Lake S EDAC driver support for Linux 6.17, several other recent and upcoming Intel processors are also set to see Error Detection and Correction (EDAC) driver coverage with this next version of the Linux kernel.
July 12, 2025 — Source

NVIDIA Publishes RTXNTC 0.7 Beta For Neural Texture Compression
NVIDIA software engineers ended out the week by releasing a new beta of their RTX Neural Texture Compression (NTC) SDK. The RTXNTC software is NVIDIA's interesting solution for compressing material texture sets with very promising results for helping to reduce game data sizes moving forward.
July 12, 2025 — Source

The price of software freedom is eternal politics
Many don't realize or forget, but the FOSS world has ideological wings, too
July 12, 2025 — Source

Wine Staging 10.12 released
Wine Staging 10.12 has been released and includes several updates, such as a rebase against Wine 10.12, the addition of msxml_normalize_line, a patchset for comctl32_animate_avi, and an update to the msxml3-element_props patchset.
July 12, 2025 — Source

Wine-Staging 10.12 Release Brings Patch For 11 Year Old Bug
It's been a while since there have been any new patches in the Wine-Staging experimental area to note. More patches though have continued working their way from Wine-Staging to upstream/mainline Wine while this weekend Wine-Staging 10.12 is out at 292 patches atop upstream Wine and containing two new patches.
July 12, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — July 11th, 2025

AMD Radeon RX 9070 Ray-Tracing Performance Improving With Mesa 25.2
With the feature freeze and code branching for Mesa 25.2 expected to take place next week and kick off the release process for this quarterly Mesa 3D version to debut as stable in August, I've begun running more benchmarks of this latest code on popular GPUs. As it pertains to the newest AMD Radeon RX 9000 series RDNA4 graphics processors, the most exciting area with Mesa 25.2 are the Vulkan ray-tracing improvements.
July 11, 2025 — Source

Attack Vector Controls Could Be Ready For Linux 6.17 Introduction
The AMD engineering led work on Attack Vector Controls for the Linux kernel could be mainlined with the upcoming Linux 6.17 kernel with the remaining patches now being queued within a TIP branch.
July 11, 2025 — Source

GCC 12.5 Compiler Released To End Out The GCC 12 Series With 241+ Bug Fixes
For those who seldom update to new compiler versions, GCC 12.5 was released today as the newest and final update to the GCC 12 compiler that debuted back in 2022.
July 11, 2025 — Source

Improved Debugging Support For AMDGPU Driver Expected For Linux 6.17
Sent out on Thursday along with Intel's huge Xe driver pull request with new features was the drm-misc-next material for the week. Notable with the drm-misc-next code were actually a set of AMDGPU driver patches to enhance the debugging with the information exposed via the DebugFS interface.
July 11, 2025 — Source

KDE ISO Image Writer is finally getting a UI redesign and new features
Now, another GSoC project is on the way that aims to port the KDE ISO Image Writer's UI to Kirigami, add the ability to download operating system images directly, and address a bunch of other issues. The project is led by Akki (@Holychicken), who has been working on it for a while now as part of Google Summer of Code 2025.
July 11, 2025 — Source

QuestDB 9.0 Released For High Performance, Time-Series Database
QuestDB 9.0 debuted today as the latest major update to this high performance, time-series database that is open-source under an Apache 2.0 license. QuestDB continues to be built using a combination of Java, C++, and Rust for being an interesting time-series database.
July 11, 2025 — Source or Source

RadeonSI Begins Upstreaming Its OpenGL Mesh Shader Support
OpenGL doesn't receive nearly as much love these days as the Vulkan API, but over the past several months there's been at least one notable new extension in the works: cross-vendor mesh shader support with the pending GL_EXT_mesh_shader extension.
July 11, 2025 — Source

Smarter Cache Flushing For AMD SEV KVM Guest VMs Expected For Linux 6.17
Going back several months have been patches out of Google to optimize AMD cache flushing for KVM-based Linux guest virtual machines when making use of Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV). As anticipated, that AMD SEV cache flushing optimization work looks like it will be merged for the upcoming Linux 6.17 kernel cycle.
July 11, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — July 10th, 2025

Apache HTTP Server 2.4.64 released
Apache HTTP Server 2.4.64 has been released to resolve multiple security vulnerabilities. The initial issue pertains to the delayed memory release following a vulnerability related to effective lifetime in Apache HTTP Server, impacting versions 2.4.17 through 2.4.63. This vulnerability allows an attacker to compromise an HTTP session by using a TLS upgrade.
July 10, 2025 — Source

Blender 4.5 RC1 Released With Much Better Vulkan Support
The release candidate of the Blender 4.5 3D modeling software is now available for testing. There are many great improvements to find with Blender 4.5 and this new version is all the more important in being the next Long Term Support (LTS) release for this popular cross-platform 3D modeling software.
July 10, 2025 — Source

Canonical Releases Multipass 1.16 As Now Fully Open-Source Project
Ubuntu maker Canonical today released Multipass 1.16 stable for this Linux / Windows / macOS means of deploying Ubuntu VM instances using this lightweight VM manager built atop Linux's KVM, Windows' Hyper-V, and QEMU on macOS. Notable with Multipass 1.16 is that it's now fully open-source software.
July 10, 2025 — Source

FEX-2507 released
The FEX-2507 release encompasses a range of fixes and enhancements for users. The game Horizon Zero Dawn was observed to be operating in slow-motion, with the physics functioning at approximately one-third of the normal speed. This issue arose from a bug in WINE's reliability check, resulting in the game reverting to the CPU's maximum clock speed. The resolution addressed this issue, enabling the game to execute its animations at the appropriate speed.
July 10, 2025 — Source

If you care about privacy stop using this popular Linux email client, sysadmin warns
When it comes to email clients, you have things like Outlook, which has been around forever, but if you're on Linux, there's a good chance you've heard about Evolution, even with its long history starting back in 2000. Some might call it the Outlook of Linux for being a complete open-source personal information manager, not just an email app, and for supporting protocols ranging from IMAP and POP to Microsoft Exchange.
July 10, 2025 — Source

KDE's native virtual machine manager, Karton, inches closer to potential stable release
Nearly two months ago, we told you about Karton, a project by Google Summer of Code student Derek Lin, which is hoped to replace tools like virt-manager and GNOME Boxes as a native option for KDE Plasma users.
July 10, 2025 — Source

libinput 1.29 Improving Scroll Wheel Responsiveness For Most Devices
Peter Hutterer of Red Hat announced today the first release candidate of libinput 1.29, the newest version of this input handling library used across both X.Org and Wayland environments with the modern Linux desktop.
July 10, 2025 — Source

LibreOffice 25.8 RC1 Released With Various File Performance Improvements
The first release candidate of the LibreOffice 25.8 open-source office suite is now available for testing. This half-year update as the leading free software alternative to Microsoft Office has been working on performance improvements for various file types, dropping support for old versions of Windows, and various other enhancements.
July 10, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.17 Looks To Drop The pktcdvd Packet Writing CD/DVD Driver
Linux block maintainer Jens Axboe queued up a patch this week to drop the pktcdvd driver from the mainline kernel, which is expected to be submitted for the upcoming Linux 6.17 cycle. The pktcdvd driver has been in the kernel for over two decades since the Linux 2.6 days for packet-writing CD/DVD support albeit is hardly useful in today's world.
July 10, 2025 — Source

Linux 6.15.6, 6.12.37 LTS & Other Stable Kernels Deliver TSA Mitigations
Greg Kroah-Hartman just released the Linux 6.15.6 point release as well as the Linux 6.12.37 LTS kernel and new point releases in prior-year Long Term Support kernel versions. The main headline of today's stable kernel releases are picking up the mitigations for the Transient Scheduler Attacks (TSA) mitigations that were disclosed this week for AMD processors.
July 10, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 5.15.187 released
Linux kernel version 5.15.187 is now available:
July 10, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.1.144 released
Linux kernel version 6.1.144 is now available:
July 10, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.6.97 released
Linux kernel version 6.6.97 is now available:
July 10, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.12.37 released
Linux kernel version 6.12.37 is now available:
July 10, 2025 — Source

Linux kernel 6.15.6 released
Linux kernel version 6.15.6 is now available:
July 10, 2025 — Source

New Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Business Developers is available for free
Linux stalwart Red Hat has announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Business Developers. Designed for enterprise development use, the new platform is free of charge as Red Hat seeks to make things easier and more accessible for business development teams.
July 10, 2025 — Source

Nouveau NAK Lands A Big Improvement For NVIDIA Kepler GPUs: As Much As 2.5x Faster
Merged today to the open-source NVIDIA "NAK" compiler code within Mesa 25.2 is Kepler instruction scheduling. This real instruction scheduling support for GeForce GTX 600/700 "Kepler" graphics processors can provide some significant performance benefits in select workloads.
July 10, 2025 — Source

OpenCL 3.0.19 Released With SPIR-V Queries & Android Hardware Buffer Extensions
The Khronos Group today published the OpenCL 3.0.19 documentation as the latest specification for the OpenCL 3.0 compute API.
July 10, 2025 — Source

openSUSE Is Deciding Whether To End 32-bit ARM Support
The openSUSE project is currently contemplating if it's time to end support for 32-bit ARM devices.
July 10, 2025 — Source

pgmoneta 0.18 released
The PostgreSQL database server tool pgmoneta has been updated. The new version 0.18 features the introduction of hot standby directories, online/offline server modes, a cascade option for retention/expunge, and enhanced configuration get/set functionality.
July 10, 2025 — Source

Postfix 3.10.3 released
The Postfix 3.10.3 mail server addresses issues that were introduced in Postfix 3.10. The updates include adding the current TLS security level to the keys used for looking up the SMTP connection and TLS sessions, and making sure that the Postfix SMTP client doesn't try to find TLSA records when the "TLS-Required: no" header is there, which helps prevent unnecessary errors.
July 10, 2025 — Source

Red Hat sweetens the RHEL deal for biz devs -- just don't put it in prod
Up to 25 instances for free, but only to play with
July 10, 2025 — Source

Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
July 10, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — July 7th, 2025

AMD openSIL PoC Still Being Worked On For Phoenix SoCs, Turin Code Published
One topic we haven't heard AMD talk too much about publicly this year has been their openSIL effort that was announced back in 2023 as their eventual replacement to AGESA and being an open-source CPU silicon initialization effort. They still appear to be working toward making openSIL production-ready for next-generation Zen 6 platforms but some of their proof-of-concept milestones have been running behind schedule.
July 7, 2025 — Source

AMDKFD Kernel Compute Driver Used By ROCm Can Work On LoongArch Hardware
The AMDKFD "Kernel Fusion Driver" used as the Linux kernel GPU compute driver and necessary part of their ROCm compute stack it turns out can build and run on the Chinese-developed LoongArch systems rather easily.
July 7, 2025 — Source

Apache 2.4.64-rc1-candidate released
The release candidate for Apache 2.4.64 is available for testing and has implemented several updates, such as the introduction of iobuffersize configured at the worker level for IO buffer size, the removal of $SSLKEYLOGFILE handling for OpenSSL 3.5 builds, adjustments to the log level for message AH01236, enhancements in reusing ProxyRemote connections when feasible, the addition of support for systemd socket activation, and the logging of the SELinux context during startup.
July 7, 2025 — Source

Ceph RBD Turns 15: a Story of Open Source Creation
This year marks fifteen years of RADOS Block Device (RBD), the Ceph block storage interface. Ceph is a distributed storage system. It was started by Sage Weil for his doctoral dissertation at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and was originally designed only as a distributed filesystem built to scale from the ground-up. Having evolved into a unified, enterprise-grade storage platform and, in addition, to a filesystem interface, Ceph now supports object and block storage.
July 7, 2025 — Source

Debian GNU/Linux 13 Trixie Testing 20250707 Live Images
New weekly Debian GNU/Linux 13 Trixie live testing images are now available, featuring a range of desktop environments such as GNOME 48.2, KDE 6.3.5, Xfce 4.20, Cinnamon 6.4.10, MATE 1.26, LXQt 2.1.0, and LXDE 0.99.3.
July 7, 2025 — Source

Fedora Linux 42-20250701 Updated ISOs released
The Fedora Respins SIG has announced the release of new Fedora Linux 42 live ISO images, incorporating the latest updates.
July 7, 2025 — Source

GNOME 49 Alpha Released With X11 Support Disabled By Default, Many New Features
The GNOME 49 Alpha "49.alpha" release was just announced as the first formal test release in the road to the GNOME 49 desktop release due out in September.
July 7, 2025 — Source

GNOME 49.alpha released
The first alpha version of GNOME 49 has been released, marking the first unstable release in the 49 series and showcasing several significant changes. Applications such as Showtime, Papers, and Manuals have successfully completed the Incubator program. The release eliminates the default X11 Session, introduces a new Gdk-Pixbuf loader based on glycin, and substitutes the built-in fallback session management with systemd's.
July 7, 2025 — Source

Intel VSEC/PMT Discovery Driver Expected For Linux 6.17 To Enhance Telemetry
With the upcoming Linux 6.17 kernel cycle Intel is further building out their Platform Monitoring Technology (PMT) capabilities with the introduction of a new discovery driver.
July 7, 2025 — Source

Lenovo WMI Gaming Series Drivers Expected To Debut In Linux 6.17
Being worked on for a number of months now has been the Lenovo Gaming Series WMI Drivers for Linux to expose additional power/performance settings for Lenovo gaming series hardware like the Lenovo Legion Go S gaming handheld with Steam OS. With the upcoming Linux 6.17 kernel, the Lenovo WMI Gaming Series Drivers are expected to be finally upstreamed.
July 7, 2025 — Source

LibreOffice Begins Landing Markdown File Import Support
While coming a few weeks too late for making it into the LibreOffice 25.8 open-source office suite release, merged today to LibreOffice Git for next year's LibreOffice 26.2 is adding initial support for importing Markdown files into the LibreOffice Writer word processor.
July 7, 2025 — Source

LLVM Clang Merges -mcpu=gb10 Support For NVIDIA GB10 Superchip
Merged today for the LLVM/Clang compiler is -mcpu=gb10 support for catering to NVIDIA's forthcoming Grace Blackwell GB10 Superchip.
July 7, 2025 — Source

TornadoVM 1.1.1 Released For Java Programming Of Heterogeneous Hardware
TornadoVM version 1.1.1 is now available for this OpenJDK and GraalVM plug-in that supports Java offloading to GPUs, FPGAs, and other heterogeneous hardware. The past few years TornadoVM has been making a lot of progress to automatically run Java programs across GPUs and other devices supporting OpenCL, NVIDIA PTX, and Khronos SPIR-V/Vulkan.
July 7, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — July 5th, 2025

DXVK 2.7 released
DXVK 2.7 has been released with a range of enhancements aimed at optimizing performance and ensuring better compatibility with games. The Vulkan extension VK_KHR_maintenance5 is now mandatory, and the fallbacks enabling older drivers to operate have been eliminated. The upcoming changes will predominantly impact Windows users utilizing AMD Polaris and Vega GPUs, for which AMD has officially ceased driver support.
July 5, 2025 — Source

DXVK 2.7 Released With Many Improvements & Better Support On Newer Intel GPUs
DXVK 2.7 released today as a major feature update for this translation layer for enabling Direct3D 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 based games and applications to run atop the Vulkan API. DXVK is a critical piece of Valve's Steam Play (Proton) software stack for enabling Windows games on Linux.
July 5, 2025 — Source

Fedora 43 GNU & LLVM 21 Toolchain Updates Planned
It shouldn't be particularly surprising as Fedora Linux has always been known for shipping with a leading-edge compiler toolchain, but the formalities have now been submitted for Fedora 43 to ship with the latest GNU and LLVM toolchain components.
July 5, 2025 — Source

GNOME's Glycin Continues Being Built Out, Papers Ready For Document Viewing
It was another exciting week in the GNOME space to kick off July.
July 5, 2025 — Source

Intel Wildcat Lake HID Support & Dell + ASUS Additions Ahead Of Linux 6.16-rc5
Ahead of the Linux 6.16-rc5 kernel expected to be released tomorrow, a round of x86 platform driver updates were merged this week with several fixes as well as some new device additions.
July 5, 2025 — Source

KDE is fixing blurry screens by snapping almost-1x scale factors back to 1x on Wayland
A new issue of This Week in Plasma is out, and it contains a nice mix of bug fixes for the recently released Plasma 6.4, UI improvements for the upcoming Plasma 6.5, and more.
July 5, 2025 — Source

KDE Working On New Virtual Keyboard, Many Plasma Improvements Kick Off July
KDE developer Nate Graham is out with his usual weekly summary to highlight all of the interesting Plasma desktop developments for the past week.
July 5, 2025 — Source

SUSE's Agama Installer Switches From X.Org To Wayland For Installation GUI
SUSE developers working on their new operating system installer "Agama" have been making steady progress and on Friday debuted Agama 16. With Agama 16 they have moved from X.Org to Wayland for powering their installer UI along with a number of other changes.
July 5, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — July 2nd, 2025

Better Late Than Never: Linux 6.17 To Enable Intel DG1 Graphics By Default
Prior to the DG2/Alchemist discrete GPUs from Intel there was the DG1 graphics processor that served primarily as the initial developer vehicle for facilitating Intel's modern discrete GPU push. DG1 ended up being in the Intel Xe MAX GPU for a small number of laptops and then there's also been a select number of DG1 graphics cards surfacing on eBay in the years since. Only now in 2025 is the upstream Linux kernel driver set to enable Intel DG1 graphics out-of-the-box for modern Linux distributions.
July 2, 2025 — Source

Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
July 2, 2025 — Source

Firefox 120 To Firefox 141 Web Browser Benchmarks
For those curious about the direction of Mozilla Firefox web browser performance over the past year and a half, here are web browser benchmarks for every Firefox release from Firefox 120 in November 2023 through the newest Firefox 140 stable and Firefox 140 beta releases from a few days ago. Every major Firefox release was benchmarked on the same Ubuntu Linux system with AMD Ryzen 9 9950X for evaluating the performance and memory usage of this open-source web browser.
July 2, 2025 — Source

GNOME Papers Document Viewer Approved To Replace Evince In GNOME 49
GNOME Papers has been in development as a modern GTK4-based document viewer. There have been many improvements made to Papers and now ahead of the GNOME 49 release in September, it's been approved to replace Evince as the official document viewer of the GNOME desktop.
July 2, 2025 — Source

Linux Patches Posted For Axiado AX3000 SoC Support
The newest Arm SoC seeing Linux kernel patches working their way toward the mainline kernel is the Axiado AX3000 as a security processor designed for cloud data center, network gear, and more.
July 2, 2025 — Source

Mesa's Zink Preps NV_timeline_semaphore For Better OpenGL-Vulkan Interoperability
Mike Blumenkrantz with Valve's Linux graphics driver team continues working on enhancements to Mesa's Zink driver for OpenGL implemented over the Vulkan API. A new merge request is further enhancing OpenGL and Vulkan interoperability by supporting the GL_NV_timeline_semaphore extension.
July 2, 2025 — Source

NVIDIA Linux x64 (AMD64/EM64T) Display Driver 575.64.03 released
NVIDIA has released Linux x64 (AMD64/EM64T) Display Driver 575.64.03, incorporating minor bug fixes and enhancements.
July 2, 2025 — Source

PikaOS IV June 2025 ISO released
New PikaOS ISO images have been released and include several notable changes: the introduction of the Pikman Update Manager switch, new Swap Options for automatic partitioning, Refind timeout options, BOOTX64 mode, Jan DGPU Switching patches, and a default Steam update.
July 2, 2025 — Source

Wayback Hopes To Be Ready Next Year With Alpine Linux Planning To Use It By Default
A few days ago Wayback was announced as an X11 compatibility layer for X11 desktops environments leveraging a rootful XWayland server. While currently experimental, the hope is that it will be production-ready next year and Alpine Linux is looking at using it by default for its X11 environment.
July 2, 2025 — Source

Zen Browser 1.14.1b released
Zen Browser version 1.14.1b has been released to address a crash issue associated with third-party tools.
July 2, 2025 — Source

ZLUDA Making Progress In 2025 On Bringing CUDA To Non-NVIDIA GPUs
The ZLUDA open-source effort that started off a half-decade ago as a drop-in CUDA implementation for Intel GPUs and then for several years was funded by AMD as a CUDA implementation for Radeon GPUs atop ROCm and then open-sourced but then reverted has been continuing to push along a new path since last year.
July 2, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — June 30th, 2025

4MLinux 48.1 released
4MLinux 48.1, a minor release in the 4MLinux stable channel, is now available for download on Sourceforge, bundled with the Linux kernel 6.12.34.
June 30, 2025 — Source

AMD Instinct Accelerators With So Much vRAM Have Exposed Linux Hibernation Issues
Too much vRAM and too many Instinct accelerators per server is causing system hibernation to fail on some high-end AMD AI Linux-powered servers. Having eight accelerators each with 192GB of device memory can in turn cause system hibernation to run into problems if the Linux server has only 2TB of system RAM... But a new patch series was posted today in working to address this problem with the Linux kernel for high-end systems failing to hibernate.
June 30, 2025 — Source

Btrfs Preps Experimental Large Data Folios For Better Performance
It looks like Linux 6.17 could end up enabling experimental support for large data folios that could help with bringing some performance improvements under real-world workloads for this copy-on-write file-system.
June 30, 2025 — Source

Cloud lobby warns EU: Clamp down on water rules and we'll evaporate
CISPE floats reforms to avoid new costs, fragmentation, and infrastructure flight
June 30, 2025 — Source

Debian GNU/Linux 13 Trixie Testing 20250630 Live Images
New weekly Debian GNU/Linux 13 Trixie live testing images are now available, featuring a range of desktop environments such as GNOME 48.2, KDE 6.3.5, Xfce 4.20, Cinnamon 6.4.10, MATE 1.26, LXQt 2.1.0, and LXDE 0.99.3.
June 30, 2025 — Source

Fedora 44 Will Not Pursue The Idea Of Ending 32-bit x86 Software Packages
A proposal raised last week for Fedora 44 was to drop i686 support with ending multi-lib and x86 32-bit packages support. But following a fair amount of opposition to the idea, this matter isn't going to be pursued for next spring's Fedora 44 release.
June 30, 2025 — Source

How I easily added Mac-like multitouch gestures to my Linux machine
Here's how to add and configure multitouch gestures on Linux - and why you should.
June 30, 2025 — Source

It's Now Been Three Months Since The Last AerynOS Release
Released three months ago was the first AerynOS ISO release for that Linux distribution led by Ikey Doherty and from there plans were laid to provide "accelerated delivery of milestone ISOs." But now Q2 is ending without any further announcements from this interesting
June 30, 2025 — Source

KDE Improving Its Clock With Wayland Picture-In-Picture Protocol
KDE developers are improving its clock "KClock" app with leveraging the experimental Wayland picture-in-picture protocol support.
June 30, 2025 — Source

The Best Boring Benchmarks: Rocky Linux 10 & AlmaLinux 10 Performance Against RHEL 10
AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux remain two of the most popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux derivatives that are maintained by the open-source community. With the recent Rocky Linux 10 GA release that followed the recent AlmaLinux 10 release for re-basing against Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, here are some benchmarks looking at the performance of these popular downstreams compared to RHEL 10.
June 30, 2025 — Source

Ubuntu 24.10 (Oracular Oriole) reaches End of Life on 10th July 2025
Ubuntu Linux 24.10 is scheduled to reach its end of life on July 10th, 2025. Ubuntu Security Notices will cease to provide information or updated packages for this version. The recommended upgrade path is to Ubuntu 25.04, which remains actively supported with security updates and certain bug fixes.
June 30, 2025 — Source

Ubuntu and Tuxedo duke it out for Linux on Snapdragon X Elite laptops
So far, Snapdragon X Elite laptops with super-long battery life have only been able to run Windows. But things are looking hopeful for Linux users.
June 30, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — June 29th, 2025

AMD Prepares Linux Driver Support For New APUs Still Relying On RDNA1 Graphics
It looks like AMD is preparing to introduce some new APUs/SoCs still relying on RDNA1-based graphics with open-source GPU driver patches posted this week extending the "Cyan Skillfish" support to some new APU devices.
June 29, 2025 — Source

AMD Strix Halo, Snapdragon X & Linux Graphics Were Most Popular This Quarter
With Q2 quickly drawing to a close, here is a look back at the most popular Linux hardware reviews and other Linux/open-source news for the quarter.
June 29, 2025 — Source

GE-Proton10-5 released
GE-Proton10-5 has been released, primarily updating upstream code. Wine-wayland patches have been rebased, addressing NVIDIA crashes and eliminating the need for the Mesa patch.
June 29, 2025 — Source

KDE neon 20250629 released
KDE neon 20250629 has been released. KDE neon is a Linux distribution built on Ubuntu, featuring the latest version of the KDE Plasma desktop environment.
June 29, 2025 — Source

GNOME Shell & Mutter 49 Alpha 1 Released With More Changes
Released earlier this month were various GNOME 49 Alpha 0 packages including for GNOME Shell and the Mutter compositor while out this weekend are the "Alpha 1" releases.
June 29, 2025 — Source

Wayback Is An Experimental X11 Compatibility Layer For X11 Desktops Using Wayland
Wayback is a new open-source project working on providing an X11 compatibility layer for running full X11 desktop environments using Wayland components with a rootful XWayland server.
June 29, 2025 — Source

Wine-Based Hangover Project Drops QEMU In Favor Of FEX & Box64 For Emulation
Building off Friday's release of Wine 10.11 for running Windows games and applications on Linux is now Hangover 10.11 for this Wine-based software used for running Windows games/applications cross-architecture such as on AArch64/ARM64 systems.
June 29, 2025 — Source

Software — Open Source — June 28th, 2025

KDE Devs Add Wayland Session Management To Qt 6.10, Inertial Scrolling For Qt Quick Apps
KDE developers this week have been busy with a mix of polishing the recent Plasma 6.4 release as well as taking on more feature development work for Plasma 6.5 coming later in the year.
June 28, 2025 — Source

LACT 0.8.0 released
LACT Linux GPU Configuration and Monitoring Tool version 0.8.0 has been released, introducing enhanced profile management, a process monitor, and additional Nvidia metrics. The tool now facilitates the export and import of profiles to JSON files and is compatible with all three GPU vendors. The update incorporates additional metrics for GPU voltage, GPU hotspot temperature, and VRAM temperature.
June 28, 2025 — Source or Source

Linux 6.16 Extends Cleaner Shader Support To More AMD CDNA/GFX9 GPUs
The past number of months has seen work by AMD Linux driver engineers in enabling cleaner shader functionality for various generations of GPUs to help ensure user/application isolation. Being merged overnight as part of the AMDGPU "fixes" for Linux 6.16 is cleaner shader support for more AMD GFX9 / CDNA hardware, notably to benefit various Instinct accelerators with this security feature.
June 28, 2025 — Source

RADV Ray-Tracing Lands Pointer Flags Support For RDNA3 & Newer
The RADV Vulkan driver's ray-tracing performance has improved a lot over time such as shown within yesterday's RADV versus AMDVLK performance comparison on Strix Point. Coincidentally, merged today is yet another ray-tracing optimization to benefit RDNA3 (GFX11) and newer AMD graphics processors.
June 28, 2025 — Source

Open Source Software — Resources