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

Libgcrypt 1.12 Released With VAES/AVX-512 Accelerated AES: 2x Performance On AMD Zen 5
Werner Koch released libgcrypt 1.12 as the newest feature release to this library providing the cryptographic building blocks used by GnuPG and other software like email clients, file encryption utilities, and other software… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA GeForce NOW Is Now Available Natively On Linux In Flatpak Form
Following NVIDIA’s announcement back at CES of their GeForce NOW game streaming service coming to Linux as a native desktop application, today’s the day. The GeForce NOW Linux-native build is being published and the review embargo has lifted. ⌘ Read more

Valve Developer Improves Aging AMD APUs On Linux With VRR, DP/HDMI Audio, HDR & Atomic
Timur Kristóf of Valve’s Linux graphics team last year addressed remaining issues in the open-source AMDGPU kernel graphics driver so old AMD GCN 1.0 and GCN 1.1 GPUs could transition to using AMDGPU by default rather than the former “Radeon” kernel driver that is largely in maintenance mode for pre-GCN/RDNA GPUs. One caveat though was the GCN 1.1 APU support still having some limitations leading to Kaveri and friends no … ⌘ Read more

Intel Thermal Daemon 2.5.11 Released With Wildcat Lake Support
With Intel Panther Lake now shipping, open-source Intel engineers working on the client side are turning to tidying up support for their next target: Wildcat Lake. That more cost effective alternative to Panther Lake now has Intel Thermal Daemon support in getting ready for Linux desktops/laptops… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA VA-API Driver 0.0.15 Released With A Few Fixes
The NVIDIA-VAAPI-Driver 0.0.15 was released overnight as this VA-API driver implementation built atop NVIDIA’s NVDEC interface used by their proprietary user-space driver stack. The purpose of NVIDIA-VAAPI-Driver as this community open-source project continues to be around enabling video acceleration for NVIDIA GPUs with the Firefox web browser on Linux that supports the VA-API interface but not NVIDIA’s NVDEC… ⌘ Read more

GNU gettext Reaches Version 1.0 After 30+ Years In Development - Adds LLM Features
Sun Microsystems began developing gettext in the early 1990s and the GNU Project began GNU gettext development in 1995 for this widely-used internationalization and localization system commonly for multi-lingual integration. While GNU gettext is commonly used by countless open-source projects and adapted for many different programming languages, only an hour ago was GNU gettext 1.0 finally released… ⌘ Read more

Wasmer 7.0 Released For Advancing WebAssembly On The Desktop & Anywhere
Wasmer 7.0 is out today for this WebAssembly “WASM” run-time for enabling lightweight containers that can run “anywhere” from the desktop to cloud and the edge. The security-minded and extensible WASM runtime provided by Wasmer has already proven to be quite robust while with Wasmer 7.0 has become even more featureful… ⌘ Read more

GNOME 50 Finally Lands Improved Discrete GPU Detection
The upcoming release of GNOME 50 to be found in the likes of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Fedora Workstation 44 will feature improved discrete GPU detection within the GNOME Shell. This effort has been two years coming and finally merged this week… ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.0-rc2 Released With Numerous AMD, NVIDIA & Intel Driver Fixes
Following last week’s code branching / feature freeze and first release candidate of Mesa 26.0, Mesa 26.0-rc2 is now available with an initial batch of bug fixes for this quarter’s feature update to these open-source OpenGL and Vulkan drivers… ⌘ Read more

FreeType Speeds-Up ClearType-Like LCD Filter Rendering By 40%
The widely-used FreeType library used for rendering text onto bitmaps has landed a significant optimization for its LCD filtering code path for Microsoft ClearType-like rendering. Thanks to the improvement, the rendering can be around 40% faster… ⌘ Read more

AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D Linux Performance
Ahead of tomorrow’s official availability of the AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D at $499 USD, today the review embargo lifted. This faster variant to the existing Ryzen 7 9800X3D has been undergoing lots of Linux benchmarking the past two weeks for seeing the performance capabilities of this fastest 8-core 3D V-Cache processor. ⌘ Read more

Mesa NVK Driver Temporarily Disabling Support For Larger Pages Due To Bug
Upstreamed to the Nouveau open-source kernel driver in Linux 6.19 was support for larger pages and with that compression support available with the larger page sizes. Subsequently the Mesa NVK open-source Vulkan driver began making use of the larger pages and compressed image support dependent upon the larger page sizes as it should help with performance. But for now it’s being temporarily disabled due to a discovered issue… ⌘ Read more

Raspberry Pi Preparing To Introduce A Smart Display Module
Raspberry Pi is gearing up to launch another new product: a Raspberry Pi Smart Display Module… ⌘ Read more

FreeRDP 3.22 Released With Overhauled SDL-Based Client UI
FreeRDP 3.22 was just released as the newest version of this Apache-licensed open-source Remote Desktop protocol (RDP) implementation for interfacing with another computer over the network… ⌘ Read more

RFC Patches Posted For Klint Integration With The Linux Kernel: Rust-Based Linting Tool
A request for comments (RFC) patch series was sent out today for providing Klint integration with the Linux kernel. Klint is a new linting tool written in the Rust programming language that helps with static code analysis for errors/bugs as well as code styling inconsistencies… ⌘ Read more

Apple M3 Progress On Linux: Asahi Can Boot To KDE Desktop - But No GPU Acceleration Yet
While the Asahi Linux project has made good progress on bringing Linux to Apple Silicon hardware, much of the success and in turn upstreaming to the Linux kernel has been around the aging M1 and M2 Macs. Apple M3 and newer has been a struggle but progress is being made. One of the Asahi Linux developers shared the ability now to boot to the KDE Plasma desktop with the experimental Asahi Linux code on an M3 MacBook but withou … ⌘ Read more

New Intel Linux Driver Workaround Halves Initial Game Load Time For MHW
In addition to Mesa 26.1 today seeing Vulkan present timing support finally merged to help reduce game stuttering and separately another long-in-development Mesa merge request for DG2 / Meteor Lake to improve performance as much as 260% in some scenarios, there is another merge today to Mesa Git for enhancing Intel graphics on Linux. For Intel Linux gamers the newest Mesa code adds a new DriConf workaround that is capable of halving the initi … ⌘ Read more

GStreamer 1.28 Released With More Rust Code
GStreamer 1.28 is out today as the newest feature release for this widely-used, open-source multimedia framework… ⌘ Read more

GNU C Library Moving From Sourceware To Linux Foundation Hosted CTI
GNU C Library “glibc” developers have decided to move ahead with plans of migrating their core services from Sourcware.org infrastructure over to the Core Toolchain Infrastructure “CTI” project hosted by the Linux Foundation… ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.6 Beta 2 Released For Testing
Following the KDE Plasma 6.6 Beta from two weeks ago, a second beta of the upcoming Plasma 6.6 desktop is now available for testing. KDE Plasma 6.6 stable remains on-track for a mid-February release… ⌘ Read more

Google Axion CPU Performance With The New Google Cloud N4A Instances
Back in 2024 Google rolled out their Axion in-house ARM processors with the Google Cloud C4A instance type. Today they are expanding their Axion offerings in Google Cloud with the N4A instances now out of preview. The Google Cloud N4A instances are designed for scale-out web servers and microservices, containerized applications, back-end application services, databases, data analytics, and cost-effective development/staging/testing environments. ⌘ Read more

Systemd Founder Lennart Poettering Announces Amutable Company
Systemd founder and lead developer Lennart Poettering announced the creation of a new company called Amutable. The Amutable company being led by Chris Kühl (CEO), Christian Brauner (CTO) and Lennart Poettering (Chief Engineer) will be focused on delivering determinism and verifiable integrity to Linux systems… ⌘ Read more

TigerVNC 1.16 Released With “w0vncserver” For Sharing Wayland Desktop Sessions
TigerVNC 1.16 is out today for this high performance, multi-platform VNC server and client implementation. Most notable with TigerVNC 1.16 is “w0vncserver” as a new server for sharing Wayland desktops… ⌘ Read more

Zlib-rs Declares A Stable & Complete API For This Rust-Based Zlib Implementation
Following the release of zlib-rs 0.6 last week, the developers behind this Rust-based Zlib implementation have declared their API stable and complete… ⌘ Read more

Vulkan VK_EXT_present_timing Merged To Mesa 26.1 For X11 & Wayland
The Vulkan EXT_present_timing was in development for years to help avoid game stuttering and released this past November with Vulkan 1.4.335. This significant extension as of today has been wired up in Mesa 26.1-devel for the key Vulkan drivers and working on both X11 and Wayland… ⌘ Read more

ThinkPads On Linux Appear Nearly Ready For Improved Trackpoint Doubletap Handling
Being worked on for a while by Lenovo engineer Vishnu Sankar is nicely handling support for double-tap functionality with TrackPoints on ThinkPads under Linux. The sixth iteration of this enablement work was posted today and is just documentation updates, so it’s looking like this new TrackPoint doubletap code could soon be crossing the threshold for the mainline Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

Updated Linux Patches For Managing Out-Of-Memory Behavior Via BPF
Being worked on since last year by Google engineer Roman Gushchin was the latest attempt for the Linux kernel to support managing the out-of-memory “OOM” behavior using BPF programs. It’s been a while since there has been anything new to report on that front but published overnight is the latest iteration of those patches… ⌘ Read more

Picolibc Picks Up RISC-V Improvements, Hexagon Support & Better POSIX Compliance
Keith Packard published Picolibc 1.8.11 on Monday as the newest release for his C library designed for embedded 32-bit and 64-bit platforms. Picolibc continues tacking on new CPU architecture support and other features for this project that started out as a conglomeration of the Newlib and AVR Libc C library codebases… ⌘ Read more

AMD Radeon Linux Driver Introduces Low-Latency Video Decode Option
AMD’s RadeonSI Gallium3D driver for next quarter’s Mesa 26.1 release is introducing a new low-latency video decode mode. This lower-latency video decoding comes with a trade-off of increased GPU power consumption… ⌘ Read more

Valve’s Proton 10.0-4 Released With More Windows Games Now Running On Linux
Valve and CodeWeavers today released Proton 10.0-4 as their newest update to this downstream of Wine that powers Steam Play for running Windows games on Linux… ⌘ Read more

AMD Squeezing Out More More ROCm/HIP Performance With New Device-Side PGO
Compiler profile guided optimization (PGO) techniques have paid off well for increasing CPU performance via application/workload-specific profiles fed back to the compiler to make more informed decisions. AMD compiler engineers have been working on crafting device-side PGO for their AMDGPU LLVM back-end for allowing ROCm/HIP workloads to achieve greater GPU performance. An initial merge request is now open for upstream LLVM… ⌘ Read more

Firefox Nightly Enables Split-View Mode Option By Default
The latest Firefox Nightly builds have now enabled the Split View mode by default to easily view two web pages at once within a single window… ⌘ Read more

Godot 4.6 Ships Many Improvements For This Leading Open-Source Game Engine
Godot 4.6 is officially out today as the newest feature release for this leading open-source, cross-platform game engine… ⌘ Read more

Intel Panther Lake / Arc B390 Linux Benchmarks Still Coming
Ahead of tomorrow’s official availability of new Intel Core Ultra Series 3 “Panther Lake” laptops, the review embargo lifted on Panther Lake and its much anticipated Arc B390 graphics. There have been several Windows 11 reviews of Panther Lake out today, but what about Linux?.. ⌘ Read more

Revisiting The Linux 6.19 Performance With “NEXT_BUDDY” Now Disabled
Back at the start of the Linux 6.19 kernel cycle I ran benchmarks showing some scheduler performance regressions with the new kernel. Fortunately, two weeks out from the Linux 6.19 stable release, merged this weekend was disabling the scheduler’s NEXT_BUDDY feature due to performance regressions. Here are some fresh benchmarks looking at the latest Linux 6.19 Git state with/without NEXT_BUDDY and comparing it to Linux 6.18 stable for reference. ⌘ Read more

Patch Proposed To Allow Toggling Linux Kernel VT Support At Boot Time
A patch causing a healthy technical debate today on the Linux kernel mailing list would allow the kernel virtual terminal “VT” support to be enabled/disabled at boot time rather than being limited to the current CONFIG_VT build-time option… ⌘ Read more

Initial AMD GFX13 Target Merged To LLVM 23 Git - Presumably RDNA5
Added to the LLVM 23 Git codebase minutes ago is a pull request adding the initial AMDGPU GFX13 target for their next-generation graphics core IP. AMD GFX13 is presumably for RDNA5… ⌘ Read more

AMDGPU Patches Updated For HDMI Gaming Features On Linux With Radeon Graphics
A patch series posted last week for the open-source AMDGPU kernel driver implements HDMI Variable Rate Refresh “VRR” and other gaming features for HDMI displays. With the HDMI Forum blocking HDMI 2.1 open-source support, these HDMI gaming features for the AMDGPU driver were developed via trial-and-error and the limited public knowledge available. A second iteration of these patches are now available for testing… ⌘ Read more

LG Gram Style 14 Laptop To See Working Speaker Support With Linux 7.0
For the Intel-powered LG Gram Style 14 laptop one of the Linux support caveats is the internal speakers not working properly under Linux, but with a patch expected for the upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle it will finally fix the laptop speaker support for one of the laptop models in this series… ⌘ Read more

ASRock Rack PAUL PCIe IPMI Card Sees DT Patches For The Mainline Linux Kernel
ASRock Rack’s PAUL is a low-profile PCIe IPMI card built around the widely-used ASPEED AST2500 controller for providing IPMI/BMC capabilities for any platform. New patches provide mainline Linux kernel support for ASRock Rack PAUL with the necessary Device Tree bits… ⌘ Read more

New Patches Aim To Lower Linux Memory Use For Swap, Slightly Improve Performance
Kairui Song of Tencent sent out a new patch series overnight working on enhancing the Linux kernel’s swap code. With the patches there are some memory savings – and more on the way – while also providing for slightly faster performance… ⌘ Read more

Several New X.Org Libraries See 2026 Releases
While we wait to see what comes of the new X.Org Server Git branch plans and a possible X.Org Server 26.1 release, several X.Org libraries saw new point releases this weekend. These seldom-updated libraries saw new releases to ship various build fixes and other minor improvements… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19-rc7 Released With Kernel Continuity Plan, A Few Important Fixes
The Linux 6.19 kernel remains on track for its official release two weeks from today, with the extra RC being baked in due to the end of year holidays. Out today is Linux 6.19-rc7 with a few changes worth highlighting for the week… ⌘ Read more

LACT 0.8.4 Brings Improved Overclocking UI For GPUs On Linux
In the absence of any official GUI control panel from AMD or Intel for their graphics cards on Linux, LACT remains a popular choice particularly for AMD Radeon Linux gamers/enthusiasts to manage various aspects of their GPU from a convenient UI. LACT also supports Intel GPUs and some features on NVIDIA GPUs too. Out today is LACT 0.8.4 for further enhancing this third-party GPU driver user interface… ⌘ Read more

AMD Sends In A Variety Of Graphics Driver Fixes Ahead Of Linux 7.0 Cycle
This week’s batch of AMDGPU and AMDKFD changes queued up ahead of the next kernel merge window is focused on delivering a variety of driver fixes… ⌘ Read more

Linux Kernel Continuity Document Added: What Happens If Torvalds’ Git Repo Goes Away?
Following discussions from the 2025 Linux Maintainer Summit, merged overnight for the Linux 6.19 kernel is documentation concerning the Linux kernel project’s continuity in the event that Linus Torvalds’ official Git repository were to disappear or otherwise be inaccessible for continuing the upstream development of the Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

Focusrite Forte USB Audio Interface To Be Supported By Linux 7.0
The Focusrite Forte 2-in, 4-out USB audio interface as a portable audio recording solution will be supported by the mainline Linux 7.0 kernel. The patches are queued in the Linux kernel’s sound subsystem development tree. While a convenient little device, the Focusrite Forte is no longer manufactured but can still be found used online… ⌘ Read more

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Display Support & Old Adreno 225 Enablement For Linux 7.0
Rob Clark this week sent out the latest MSM DRM kernel driver updates for the latest Qualcomm display/graphics enhancements ahead of next month’s Linux 7.0 merge window… ⌘ Read more

SVT-AV1 4.0 Released With More Performance Optimizations
SVT-AV1 4.0 is out as the newest major feature release for this open-source AV1 video encoder that was originally started by Intel as an open-source project and now continuining on thanks to the Alliance For Open Media… ⌘ Read more