Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Officially Supporting Cloud-Based Authentication With Authd
Canonical for a while has been developing Authd as an authentication service for external cloud-based identity providers. Authd was designed from the ground-up to provide secure management of identity and access for Ubuntu systems while only with next month’s Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release is it actually hitting the universe archive… ⌘ Read more

Intel Publishes XeSS 3 SDK To GitHub - Still As Windows-Only Binaries
Intel just published the XeSS 3.0 SDK to GitHub as the newest version of their Xe Super Sampling AI-enhanced upscaling technology for gamers. Sadly though it remains proprietary software and only with native support for Windows… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA 595 Linux Driver Running Well In Early Benchmarks
Last week NVIDIA released the 595.45.04 beta Linux driver as their first public build in the R595 release branch. The NVIDIA R595 Linux driver is bringing a number of Vulkan driver improvements, HDR enhancements, DRI3 v1.2 support, and a variety of other improvements. Benchmarking the NVIDIA 595.45.04 Linux driver the past few days on GeForce RTX 50 “Blackwell” have been showing some nice incremental performance improvements over the current NVIDIA 590 driver sta … ⌘ Read more

AMD Formally Launches Ryzen AI Embedded P100 Series 8-12 Core Models
AMD announced back at CES the Ryzen AI Embedded P100 series with initially the models up to six Zen 5 cores launching while the eight through twelve core models would be available later in H1. Today AMD formally announced those higher-tier Ryzen AI Embedded P100 series parts… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA 595 Linux Driver Running Well In Early Benchmarks
Last week NVIDIA released the 595.45.04 beta Linux driver as their first public build in the R595 release branch. The NVIDIA R595 Linux driver is bringing a number of Vulkan driver improvements, HDR enhancements, DRI3 v1.2 support, and a variety of other improvements. Benchmarking the NVIDIA 595.45.04 Linux driver the past few days on GeForce RTX 50 “Blackwell” have been showing some nice incremental performance improvements over the current NVIDIA 590 driver sta … ⌘ Read more

New Rust Driver Aims To Improve Upstream Linux On Synology NAS Devices
A set of patches posted to the Linux kernel mailing list last week introduce a new driver for enhancing the upstream/mainline Linux kernel support for Synology network attached storage (NAS) devices. This new driver is Synology Microp and is making use of the Linux kernel’s modern Rust programming language support… ⌘ Read more

GCC 16 Compiler Aiming For Mid-April Release Candidate But “Slow” Progress On Fixes
Richard Biener of SUSE published a new status report on the state of GCC 16 development. Regression fixing has been going slow but they are hoping to publish a release candidate by mid-April… ⌘ Read more

Rust Coreutils 0.7 Released With Many Performance Optimizations
Rust Coreutils 0.7 released on Sunday as a performance-focused update to this popular alternative to GNU Coreutils that is still striving for 100% compatibility against the GNU Test Suite… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0-rc3 Released: “Some Of The Biggest In Recent History”
Linux 7.0-rc3 is out as the latest weekly test candidate in leading up to the stable Linux 7.0 release in mid-April… ⌘ Read more

CachyOS Handheld Edition Switches To Wayland, CachyOS Installer Drops Bcachefs
The March 2026 ISO refresh of the Arch Linux powered CachyOS distribution is now available for new installations and upgrading from existing CachyOS installs… ⌘ Read more

FFmpeg 8.1 Preparing For Release With Vulkan Improvements, JPEG-XS & More
FFmpeg developers are preparing to soon release FFmpeg 8.1 with some great new features and other improvements… ⌘ Read more

Experimental Intel Nova Lake P Device Bits Merged For Mesa 26.1
Merged this week for Mesa 26.1 are the initial Nova Lake P “NVL-P” device bits for Intel’s ANV Vulkan and Iris Gallium3D drivers. But this support isn’t yet exposed by default and not yet ready for end-users with more driver changes still to be published… ⌘ Read more

Notable Intel & AMD CPU Changes Merged For Linux 7.0-rc3
This week’s batch of “x86/urgent” patches that were merged overnight for Linux 7.0 contain some fixes and other adjustments worth highlighting for both AMD and Intel… ⌘ Read more

LLM-Driven Large Code Rewrites With Relicensing Are The Latest AI Concern
The newest open-source concern around AI that is seeing a lot of interest this weekend is when large language models / AI code generators may rewrite large parts of a codebase and then the “developers” claiming an alternative license incompatible with the original source license. This became a real concern this week with a popular Python project experiencing an AI-driven code rewrite and now published under an alternative license that … ⌘ Read more

digiKam 9.0 Leading Open-Source Digital Photo Manager Software Released
The KDE/Qt-aligned digiKam software for managing RAW digital photos is out today with the big digiKam 9.0 release… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 Adds A New Minor Performance Optimization Shown With AMD Zen 2 CPUs
The Linux event poll “epoll” code for efficient I/O multiplexing and monitoring of file descriptors for seeing when I/O is possible has a new optimization merged today for Linux 7.0… ⌘ Read more

Budgie 10.10.2 Brings Improved Labwc Wayland Compositor Integration
Out today is Budgie 10.10.2 as the latest minor update to this open-source desktop environment that began as part of the Solus Linux project… ⌘ Read more

AMD GAIA 0.16 Introduces C++17 Agent Framework For Building AI PC Agents In Pure C++
AMD’s GAIA open-source framework for building AI agents that run locally on Ryzen AI hardware via the Radeon iGPUs and/or NPUs is up to version 0.16. With this new GAIA release is support for developing AI agents purely in C++ with no longer needing to depend upon Python… ⌘ Read more

FreeBSD 15.1 On Track With Better Realtek WiFi & KDE Desktop Install Option
The effort around improving FreeBSD on laptops continues full speed ahead in 2026. The upcoming FreeBSD 15.1 remains on track with not only having a KDE desktop option from FreeBSD’s text-based installer UI but also improved Realtek WiFi adapter support is on the way, updating of the graphics drivers from Linux, and more… ⌘ Read more

New Maui.Gtk Project Provides A GTK4 Backend For Microsoft’s .NET MAUI
Maui.Gtk is a new open-source project providing a GTK4 Linux back-end for Microsoft’s .NET MAUI… ⌘ Read more

3mdeb Making Progress On AMD Ryzen AM5 Motherboard Port With Coreboot + openSIL
In addition to the 3mdeb firmware consulting firm porting Coreboot with AMD openSIL to an EPYC 9005 “Turin” Gigabyte motherboard, their developers have also been working on a similar Coreboot + openSIL port to an AM5 Ryzen consumer motherboard… ⌘ Read more

Resources For GNOME Adds Intel Xe GPU Power Usage & Intel NPU Frequency Reporting
Resources, the modern GNOME GTK4/libadwaita-based GUI application for system resource monitoring and an alternative to GNOME System Monitor, is out with a new update. Resources 1.10.2 brings some nice improvements for those running GNOME on modern Intel hardware… ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma Saw A Lot Of Bug/Crash Fixing & UI Polishing This Week
Nate Graham and John Veness are out today with the newest issue of This Week in Plasma. Notable for KDE Plasma 6.6.x~6.7 development this week were a lot of bug fixing – including multiple crash fixes – and some UI polishing too… ⌘ Read more

Wine 11.4 Released With More Improvements
Wine 11.4 is out today as the latest bi-weekly development release of this open-source software that powers Valve’s Steam Play (Proton) and allows for Windows games and applications to run on Linux and macOS… ⌘ Read more

GTK 4.22 Released With Improved SVG Support, Reduced Motion Option
Ahead of the GNOME 50 desktop release coming up in less than two weeks, GTK 4.22 is out today as the newest stable version of the GTK4 toolkit… ⌘ Read more

New ASUS, Dell & OneXPlayer Hardware Support In Linux 7.0-rc3
A pull request sent out today and already merged to Linux Git ahead of Sunday’s Linux 7.0-rc3 has some new hardware driver support additions for the likes of ASUS, HP, Dell, and OneXPlayer… ⌘ Read more

ZimaBoard 2: An Interesting Intel-Powered Linux Home Mini Server
For those looking for a low-power, well-built small office / home office Linux server with interesting connectivity options, the ZimaBoard 2 is an interesting option that has been available for some months now and powered by the Intel N150 processor. Besides the interesting single board hardware and well built aluminum chassis, the offering is rounded out by being preloaded with ZimaOS as a Linux-based “personal cloud OS” to easily get hosting for your own SOHO … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 Slab Fix On The Way For A “Severe Performance Regression”
Sent out today was this week’s batch of Slab allocator fixes for the Linux 7.0 development kernel. Making this pull notable is fixing a “severe performance regression” with a ~64% performance drop having been noted in late February… ⌘ Read more

AMD CPPC Performance Priority Being Prepared For Linux - New Zen 6 Feature
Patches were posted today to the Linux kernel mailing list for enabling a new feature called AMD CPPC Performance Priority as a new hardware feature being found with “future AMD processors”…. Which given the timing of these patches, almost certainly means the upcoming Zen 6 processors… ⌘ Read more

Intel Xeon Features To Be Supported By Ubuntu 26.04 LTS - Some Lacking User-Space Packages
Canonical engineer Serkan Uygungelen published a post outlining some of the Intel Xeon CPU features to be supported by the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release, some Xeon features already supported by the existing Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, and some features only partially supported for still not having packaged user-space libraries/support within the Ubuntu archive… ⌘ Read more

NetBSD 11.0-RC2 Released For Testing
The big NetBSD 11.0 release continues on approach with NetBSD 11.0-RC2 having been released as the latest test candidate… ⌘ Read more

Vulkan 1.4.345 Released With New ARM Shader Instrumentation Extension
Vulkan 1.4.345 released overnight as the latest routine spec update to this graphics and compute API. There is one new extension besides a handful of different clarifications and corrections to various elements of the spec… ⌘ Read more

Wayland 1.25 RC1 Released With Improved Documentation, Minor Changes
Simon Ser announced the release today of Wayland 1.25 RC1 (Wayland v1.24.91) in working toward this next stable release… ⌘ Read more

GNOME 50 Release Candidate Brings Last Minute Changes
GNOME 50.rc was christened today as the release candidate for the GNOME 50 desktop… ⌘ Read more

System76 Comments On Recent Age Verification Laws
System76 published a statement today regarding the recent laws coming about in California and likely Colorado and New York too around requiring age verification on operating system accounts and ultimately exposing the information (or at least age brackets) to apps and websites. System76’s position is interesting given that they sell Linux-loaded desktops, workstations and laptops plus being an operating system vendor with their in-house Pop!_OS distribution … ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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 … ⌘ Read more

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. ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

Notice: Brief Downtime Expected Overnight
Just a heads up that some brief downtime to Phoronix.com is expected overnight during the replacement of an NVMe drive in the RAID array for this web server… ⌘ Read more

FEX 2603 Released With A Partial Fix For The Steam GUI Crashing On AArch64
FEX 2603 as the Valve-sponsored open-source project allowing Linux x86/x86_64 binaries to run on AArch64 Linux – including the likes of Steam and various games as will become important with the Steam Frame – is now out with its newest monthly release… ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more

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 serve … ⌘ Read more

AMD EPYC Achieves 5G/6G RAN Performance Leadership With New OCUDU Project
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 … ⌘ Read more

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… ⌘ Read more