NVIDIA DLSS For Blender Under Review But Licensing Concerns Persist
A few months ago at SIGGRAPH was a demo of Blender with NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) integration. The pull request is now open for landing NVIDIA DLSS support into Blender for better quality upscaling/denoising and performance but concerns persist over the licensing due to NVIDIA DLSS binaries… ⌘ Read more

Dank Fedora MiracleWM & Other Fedora 44 Changes Approved
The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee “FESCo” has signed off on the latest batch of Fedora 44 change proposals as they work toward nearing the end of feature work for this spring update to Fedora Linux. Plus some early changes for Fedora 45 have also been granted… ⌘ Read more

GNOME 50 Lands Virtual Monitor / Remote Desktop Improvements - Including HiDPI
In time for next month’s GNOME 50 release are some improvements merged today for the Mutter compositor code adding HiDPI and monitor mode emulation support to the screen-casting API and DevKit… ⌘ Read more

Intel Panther Lake Shows Strong Linux CPU Performance & Power Efficiency With Core Ultra X7 358H Benchmarks
For those that have been very eager to hear about the Intel Core Ultra Series 3 “Panther Lake” performance on Linux, today’s the day! Last Thursday the MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ Evo laptop arrived that is powered by the Core Ultra X7 358H. Here is a look at how that Intel Core Ultra X7 358H competes for performance and power efficiency against a wide range of other laptops on an up-to-date Linux soft … ⌘ Read more

Linux Dropping SMC TCP ULP Support For Being “Fundamentally Broken”
Merged four years ago to the Linux kernel networking subsystem’s Shared Memory Communications (SMC) code was TCP Upper Layer Protocol (ULP) support for allowing applications to replace TCP with the SMC protocol in-place as a transparent replacement. Except for the next kernel cycle it’s set to be reverted after realizing it’s “fundamentally broken.”.. ⌘ Read more

OpenIndiana Is Porting Solaris’ IPS Package Management To Rust
OpenIndiana as the open-source project built atop Illumos that is continuing to maintain and advance the former OpenSolaris code is working on a big ambitions of modernizing the Image Packaging System (IPS) package management solution. As part of that they are working to move from a C and Python codebase over to Rust… ⌘ Read more

Reworked NTFS Linux Driver Posted With More Improvements & Fixes
Announced back in October was NTFS Plus as a new Linux driver for NTFS based on the former NTFS kernel driver prior to Paragon Software contributing the NTFS3 driver code. The intent with this new driver is for better performance. more features, public user-space utilities around it, and all-around a nice step forward for those reliant on this Microsoft file-system. Out this week is the sixth iteration of this remade NTFS driver… ⌘ Read more

Rust Coreutils 0.6 Brings Increased Compatibility, Removing Some Unsafe Code & More Perf
Following the Rust Coreutils presentation from FOSDEM this weekend, Rust Coreutils 0.6 is now available as the latest feature release for this Rust programming language re-implementation of GNU Coreutils… ⌘ Read more

Firefox 148 Ready With New Settings For AI Controls
With the concerns raised over comments by Mozilla’s new CEO with wanting to evolve Firefox into a “modern AI browser”, the Firefox 148 release due out later this month aims to address some of those concerns by having a new AI controls area within the web browser’s settings… ⌘ Read more

Linux Prepares To Support Microsoft’s “Turn On Display” DSM To Address Laptop Issues
Microsoft in Windows 11 22H2 introduced a new ACPI Device Specific Method (DSM) “Turn On Display” notification that the Linux 7.0 kernel will be adding support for in dealing with some otherwise problematic laptop behavior… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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 impleme … ⌘ Read more

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 gen … ⌘ Read more

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 translaction lookaside buffer (TLB) pressure without resorting to Hugetlbfs… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19-rc8 Released Ahead Of Linux 6.19 Stable Next Week
While typically the stable Linux kernel would come after the -rc7 release a week prior, for Linux 6.19 the release is being dragged out by an extra week not due to any scary bugs but rather due to the holiday downtime at the end of the year. As such Linux 6.19-rc8 is out today with the stable v6.19 release expected next Sunday… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 Aims To Replace More Caching Code With Sheaves For “Hopefully” Improved Performance
Introduced to the mainline Linux kernel last year was “sheaves” as an opt-in per-CPU array-based caching layer. Sheaves was merged back in Linux 6.18 and while it started as an opt-in caching layer, the plan is to replace more CPU slabs / caches with sheaves. Queued up for slated introduction in the upcoming Linux 7.0 cycle is replacing more of those caches with sheaves… ⌘ Read more

Shotcut Video Editor Now Using Hardware Decoding By Default Except For NVIDIA On Linux
Shotcut 26.1 is now available as the latest feature update to this open-source and cross-platform video editing solution. Shotcut 26.1 is finally defaulting to GPU hardware accelerated video decoding by default for all platforms sans NVIDIA GPUs on Linux… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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 t … ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

GTK Developers Plot Improvements To Tackle This Year - Possible Opt-In Unstable API
GNOME developers had a busy week in preparing for the GNOME 50 beta release, many GNOME developers attending FOSDEM this weekend in Brussels, and other happenings… ⌘ Read more

AI Code Review Prompts Initiative Making Progress For The Linux Kernel
Chris Mason, the longtime Linux kernel developer most known for being the creator of Btrfs, has been working on a Git repository with AI review prompts he has been working on for LLM-assisted code review of Linux kernel patches. This initiative has been happening for some weeks now while the latest work was posted today for comments… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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 … ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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 vs. 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 mont … ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Working On Improved vCPU Scheduler Support For Hyper-V Linux VMs
Microsoft posted a patch series for introducing Hyper-V integrated scheduler support into the Linux kernel for enhancing vCPU scheduling behavior for virtual machines running within Microsoft’s virtualized environment… ⌘ Read more

DDR5-4800 vs. DDR5-6000 Performance With The AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D In 300+ Benchmarks
With the incredible market demand around DDR5 memory and significantly elevated pricing on the more premium DDR5 memory modules, as part of the AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D launch there’s been some communication that thanks to 2nd Gen AMD 3D V-Cache, using lower memory speeds like DDR5-4800 can be suitable without much of an impact to the gaming performance. But what about for Linux gaming? And other workloads with the Ryzen 7 9850X3D? C … ⌘ Read more

Libcamera 0.7 Released - GPU Acceleration Support For SoftISP Can Deliver 15x Performance
Libcamera 0.7 was published today for this modern software library for image signal processors (ISPs) and embedded cameras under Linux. The standout change with libcamera 0.7 is initial plumbing for GPU acceleration in the software ISP “SoftISP” for delivering better performance than just CPU-based… ⌘ Read more

IO_uring Zero-Copy Large Receive Buffer Support To Provide A Nice Performance Win
Slated for introduction in the next kernel cycle (Linux 6.20~7.0) is introducing large receive buffer support for IO_uring’s zero-copy receive code path. This large receive buffer support can be very beneficial for those with higher-end networking hardware capable of handling the larger buffers for some significant performance and efficiency wins… ⌘ Read more