KDE Plasma 6.8 Seeing More Polishing & Fixes, Plasma 6.9 Begins Seeing More Activity
Following last week’s Plasma 6.8 beta release, KDE desktop developers have spent this week mostly working on bug fixes as well as some early changes toward Plasma 6.9… ⌘ Read more

Google’s “Painful To Maintain” Binder C Linux Driver Being Removed In Favor Of Rust
Google’s Binder driver written in the C programming language has long been part of the mainline kernel as the inter-process communication (IPC) mechanism used on Android. The past few years the Binder driver was rewritten in Rust as one of the first “real” drivers in the Rust programming language. The Rust Binder driver was upstreamed in Linux 6.18 and now for the upcoming Linux 7.4 kernel cycle, the old Binder C-based driver is se … ⌘ Read more

AMD Sends Out Linux Patches For Enabling SEV-TIO TDISP With PCIe 6.0+
The newest Linux kernel patches out of AMD for enhancing the upstream support with the new AMD EPYC 9006 “Venice” processors is for enabling SEV-TIO TDISP that is supported with PCI Express 6.0 and beyond… ⌘ Read more

AMD P-State Driver For Linux 7.4 Will Tune For Zen 6 Client CPUs
Linux 7.4 looks like it will be a very exciting kernel update for AMD customers. On the AMD Radeon graphics side HDMI 2.1 is being enabled by default with the AMDGPU driver with the HDMI FreeSync, VRR, and ALLM features in tow. On the AMD Ryzen client CPU side, there will be Zen 6 tuning with the AMD P-State CPU frequency scaling driver… ⌘ Read more

Something felt definitely wrong, I got up much earlier during the camp than when I have to work. Typically, I woke up beween 6 and 7 because I really had to go to the loo. There was almost always somebody already awake from the kitchen teammates or leaders. So, I always decided to not return to bed. When I was the very first one, I turned on the coffee machine and water kettle to the delight of the others and five minutes later, another person arrived at the kitchen. As a bonus, we sometimes got to enjoy the sunrises, like this one: https://lyse.isobeef.org/2026-09-07-morgensonne/

KDE Plasma 6.8 Remote Desktop To Enjoy Lower Latency Performance
Along with KDE Plasma 6.8 beta releasing this week, there were some other interesting Plasma changes this week worthy of a shout-out… ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.8 Beta released for testing
The next main release of the KDE Plasma desktop is coming soon, and a first Beta is available for you to check it out and go hunting for bugs.

Image

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux. ⌘ Read more

BeOS-Inspired Haiku Now Supports Changing Audio Outputs Live, Other Improvements
In addition to August bringing the long-awaited Haiku R1 Beta 6 release, there was also a lot of development progress on this BeOS-inspired operating system too during the course of the past month… ⌘ Read more

GIMP 3.2.6 Released With Some Early Preparations Toward Eventual GTK4 Port
The long-awaited GIMP 3.0 release for transitioning from GTK2 to GTK3 only saw its stable release last year. But with GTK4 already being out for years, GIMP developers have begun making some very early preparations toward an inevitable GTK4 port… ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Targets Work of Wall Street Junior Bankers
OpenAI has launched ChatGPT for Financial Services, a Wall Street-focused version of ChatGPT Work developed with Morgan Stanley and Evercore that can research companies, analyze financial data, and build presentations using the company’s latest and most advanced model, GPT-6 Astra. “We’re effectively teaching ChatGPT to research like an analyst and back up its conclusions like … ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.8 Beta Released With Many Great Improvements, Kup Backup Scheduler
Ahead of the stable release of Plasma 6.8 due out on 14 October that also marks the 30th anniversary of the KDE project, out today is the much anticipated beta release… ⌘ Read more

Apple Unveils the iPhone Duo, Its First Foldable iPhone
At its September event today, Apple unveiled the iPhone Duo, its first foldable iPhone and one of the biggest changes to the device’s form factor since its debut. Starting at $1,999 and available for preorder beginning October 16th, the device is roughly the size of a passport when closed and pairs a 5.4-inch outer screen with a 7.6-inch Super Retina XDR inner di … ⌘ Read more

Meta Debuts Muse, Its Long-Planned Personal AI Agent
Meta has launched Muse, a personal AI agent developed under chief AI officer Alexandr Wang. “The product, long in development, was touted as a key next step by CEO Mark Zuckerberg in his recent 6,500-word manifesto,” reports Axios. From the report: Muse, as the agent is known, exists in a chat interface, similar to a text thread. It’s designed to be more proactive and lo … ⌘ Read more

Linux Preps For New AMD Zen 6 BTB CTX Isolation Security Feature
A recently posted Linux kernel patch has revealed a new security improvement with Zen 6 processors… ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.8 gets a Windows-like Autoscroll feature
KDE Plasma 6.8 is due out in mid-October and it’s coming with all sorts of new features, and one I’m particularly happy to see with autoscrolling.

Image

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux. ⌘ Read more

To Promote Grand Theft Auto 6, Mayor Might Transform Miami into ‘Vice City’
Rockstar Games and the mayor of Miami-Dade county are discussing a joint marketing campaign transforming parts of the county to look like areas from Grand Theft Auto 6, reports the blog Rock Paper Shotgun:

The proposed publicity event would include “an immersive arrival experience” at Miami International Airport. with signs f … ⌘ Read more

The World Now Has More Seniors Than Young People - for the First Time In History
“There are now more seniors in the world than young children,” reports the International Business Times, citing a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau report. And it warns that “The share of the population aged 65 and over is projected to nearly double, from 10.5 percent (about 1 in 10 people) in 2025 to 19.6 percent … ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.8 Lands Windows-Like Auto-Scrolling, Lower vRAM Usage For Breeze Theme
It’s been an exciting start to the month of September for KDE Plasma developers with continuing to land last minute improvements for Plasma 6.8 ahead of its official release in mid-October… ⌘ Read more

‘Welcome to the AGI Era,’ OpenAI Says As GPT-6 Astra Debuts
OpenAI has released GPT-6 Astra, a new model that president Greg Brockman called a “generational leap” and suggested may represent the arrival of AGI. “I think it might be about this model,” Brockman said in a briefing with reporters. He ended the briefing by saying: “Welcome to the AGI era.” Axios reports: Astra pushes AI agents closer to doing complex profession … ⌘ Read more

Perplexity Will Open Source Its Faster Lily AI Engine For Apple Silicon
BrianFagioli writes: Perplexity has built a local artificial intelligence engine designed specifically for Apple silicon and the Qwen3.6-35B-A3B model. Called Lily, the engine uses a Rust runtime and custom Metal kernels, with neither PyTorch nor MLX in its execution path. Perplexity says Lily averaged 23 percent faster pro … ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.8 Lands Dwell Clicker Support To Improve Accessibility On Wayland
In preparations for Plasma 6.8 going Wayland-exclusive in abandoning the X11 session, another feature gap compared to X11 has been addressed… ⌘ Read more

Dell Stock Surges On Record Orders For AI Servers
Dell reported record fiscal Q2 results as AI server demand surged, booking $60.9 billion in AI server orders and ending the quarter with a $95 billion backlog. From a report: The company posted record revenue of $47 billion, up 58% year over year. Earnings per share came in at $6.34, up 273% from a year ago. Adjusted earnings rose 203% to $7.04 per share.

“With AI momentum accele … ⌘ Read more

AVX-512 xor_gen For Linux Updated & Looking Real Good For RAID Arrays
Being worked on the past few months for the Linux kernel has been an AVX-512 optimized version of xor_gen() that is used for generating and validating parity blocks such as with Linux’s software RAID 5 and RAID 6 arrays. The latest iteration of AVX-512 xor_gen() was posted today and shows some impressive results on AMD Zen 5 hardware… ⌘ Read more

Linux Changes For CPPC On Zen 6 Clients - Hard-Coded Default Puts Low-Power Core At 0.47x
Following yesterday’s Linux kernel patches for tuning ACPI EPP for Ryzen Zen 6 client processors, another patch series made it out on the mailing list with adjustments for ACPI Collaborative Processor Performance Control (CPPC) with upcoming Zen 6 client processors… ⌘ Read more

Hytale Update 6 adds Hardcore Mode, Mod Browser, Gyro Controls, Networking Upgrades and much more
Hytale, the in-development open world RPG, has expanded with another huge update and there’s lots of fun features added this time.

Image

Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/08/hytale-update-6-adds-hardcore-mode-m … ⌘ Read more

New Linux Patches Tune AMD Ryzen Zen 6 To Optimize Performance & Power Consumption
Ahead of the next-generation AMD Ryzen Zen 6 client processors debuting, an important patch series was posted overnight to the Linux kernel mailing list. These patches provide new Zen 6 client Energy Performance Preference “EPP” tunings that are important for optimizing performance and power consumption for these upcoming AMD Zen 6 desktop and laptop processors… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.3-rc1 Close To 41 Million Lines, AMD Kernel Graphics Driver At 6.5 Million Lines
With Linus Torvalds remarking in the Linux 7.3-rc1 release announcement of the AMD kernel graphics driver changes for amounting around a third of the -rc1 changes due to the big AMD GPU register files for DCN 6.0 and other new IP additions, here are some fresh code stats at large… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.3-rc1 With AMD Zen 6 Additions, Better Btrfs Performance & 2026 Steam Controller
Like clockwork, the Linux 7.3 merge window has concluded after two weeks and the Linux 7.3-rc1 kernel now available for testing… ⌘ Read more

AMD Zen 6 Preparations, Ryzen AI Halo LED Driver & Many Laptop Changes For Linux 7.3
The x86 platform driver changes are now in place for the Linux 7.3 kernel with additions for upcoming AMD Zen 6 hardware, the RGB LED driver controls for the Ryzen AI Halo PC, and a lot of laptop support additions and improvements for a variety of devices from different hardware vendors. Plus some handheld gaming device updates too… ⌘ Read more

‘Grand Theft Auto 6’ Preview Signals Blockbuster Demand, Analysts Say
Rockstar Games has released a 26-minute “extended look” at Grand Theft Auto VI, due for release November 19th.
After one day the video had nearly 10 million views on YouTube, and when Netflix streamed the footage, “some viewers had to refresh the page after receiving error messages, indicating high usage levels,” reports CNBC:

“Some memb … ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.8 Improving Performance & Efficiency For Some Full Screen Content
In addition to the Union QtWidgets initial release happening this week, a number of other improvements also landed in the past few days in making Plasma 6.8 all the more exciting… ⌘ Read more

GE-Proton 11-6 released with updates for Wayland, PS5 Controllers and more upgrades
The community build of Valve’s compatibility layer GE-Proton 11-6 is out now, bringing major new features and changes to running Windows games SteamOS / Linux.

Image

Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/08/ge-proton-11-6-released-with-updates-for-waylan … ⌘ Read more

Union QtWidgets Sees Initial Release For Advancing KDE Plasma’s Union
Premiering in KDE Plasma 6.7 was Union as the new CSS-based style/theming engine for Plasma. Union ultimately aims to address KDE’s fragmented ways of styling apps. As a step closer to that goal, there is now the initial release of Union for QtWidgets support… ⌘ Read more

Bill Gates Proposes Major Limits On AI Development
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates argued on Wednesday that artificial intelligence needs significant limits or else the harm to humans will outweigh any potential good. “AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice,” he said in a 6,000-word essay, entitled “The turbulent AI era is he … ⌘ Read more

Intel Granite Rapids WS Core Scaling Performance With The Xeon 678X
Last week I provided a look at the Intel Xeon 600 series Hyper Threading performance with the Xeon 678X “Granite Rapids WS” processor for HT/SMT on and off. That was interesting while another reader request was to look at the CPU core scaling performance for this high-end workstation processor. Here are those benchmarks for showing the performance, power, and frequency/thermal impact of the Xeon 678X when limited to 6 cores, 12 cores, 24 cores, … ⌘ Read more

Haiku R1 Beta 6 Released After Two Years, BeOS-Inspired Project Turns 25 Next Week
Haiku R1 Beta 5 came out in September 2026 while out today is the long-awaited sixth beta for this open-source operating system inspired by BeOS. This beta release also comes one week ahead of the project’s 25th anniversary… ⌘ Read more

LLVM/Clang 23.1 Released With AMD Zen 6 & NVIDIA Rigel Support, Partial C++26 Support
LLVM 23.1 was released today on-schedule as the first stable release of the LLVM 23 series as the H2’2026 update to this open-source compiler stack… ⌘ Read more

Apple Announces New Mac Mini With M6 and M5 Pro Chips
Apple has unveiled a new Mac mini with either its new M6 chip or the M5 Pro chip released earlier this year. It adds faster CPU, GPU, storage, and AI performance along with Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and 2.5Gb Ethernet as standard. There’s also a new higher starting price of $899, which is up from the previous $799 base price and far above the $599 starting price of th … ⌘ Read more

KDE Remote Desktop Experience Improving For Closing The X11 vs. Wayland Gap
KDE developer David Edmundson is out today with a blog post around improvements that have been ongoing for the Plasma 6.8 release in improving the KDE remote desktop experience. As part of ensuring a good Wayland experience and hitting all the needs fulfilled by X11, Plasma 6.8 is seeing improvements for its remote desktop functionality… ⌘ Read more

Linux ath11k Driver Improvements For Qualcomm WiFi 6 Hardware Yields 7x Lower Latency
A patch series being worked on for the ath11k mainline wireless networking driver for Qualcomm WiFi 6 / 802.11ax chipsets is yielding 7x lower latency or 2.2x throughput at identical latency… ⌘ Read more

FDA Approves First Alzheimer’s Blood Test For Americans As Young As 40
The FDA has cleared the first Alzheimer’s blood test for symptomatic patients as young as 40. The test measures amyloid and tau biomarkers from a single blood draw and identified positive biomarkers with 97.6% accuracy in a validation study. New Atlas reports: PrecivityAD2 is a single blood test that quickly assesses the proteins am … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.3 Improving RAID 5/6 Benchmark-Based Algorithm Selection
Following the main set of memory management “MM” changes submitted for Linux 7.3, Andrew Morton sent in his “non-MM” pull request of the other patches he’s been collecting from various developers for this next Linux kernel release. Standing out there were some improvements to the RAID 5/6 benchmark-based algorithm selection… ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.8 Lands Some Enticing Performance Optimizations This Week
This Week in Plasma is out with its latest issue to highlight interesting developments in the trek towards Plasma 6.8… ⌘ Read more

RPM 6.1 Released With Clang Build Fixes, New Release Model
RPM 6.1 is out today as the newest feature release for this package management system. With RPM 6.1 comes a number of features and improvements as well as a new release model… ⌘ Read more

PHP 7.4 To PHP 8.6 Benchmarks, PHP 8.6 JIT Performance
A Phoronix Premium supporter recently relayed a request to see some fresh PHP performance benchmarks. So here are some fresh numbers of PHP 7.4 through the latest PHP 8.5 code plus the current Git state of PHP 8.6 ahead of the official PHP 8.6.0 release later in the year. With PHP 8.6 is also a fresh look at the JIT performance enabled too… ⌘ Read more

New AMD Low-Power Core & Unified Intel/AMD CPU Core Type Handling In Linux 7.3
Covered first on Phoronix back in June was an AMD Linux patch for introducing a new “low power” CPU core type to complement their typical “performance” cores and their “efficiency” cores like with Zen 4C/5C. That low power core is presumed for some Zen 6 clients and that integration is now merged for Linux 7.3 as well as unifying the Intel/AMD CPU core type handling… ⌘ Read more

COSMIC Epoch 1.6 Released With Per-App Volume Control, Remote Desktop Preparations
COSMIC Epoch 1.6 was released this evening as the latest milestone for this open-source, Rust-based desktop environment led by System76 as part of the work on their Pop!_OS Linux distribution… ⌘ Read more

Bluesky’s Active User Base Shrinks 52% Over 18 Months, But Its Protocol is Spreading
An anonymous reader shared this report from TechCrunch:

According to data from digital intelligence provider Similarweb, Bluesky’s mobile app had 10.4 million monthly active users worldwide in June 2026, down 27.2% year-over-year. In addition, mobile daily active users continued to decline, falling 25.6% year … ⌘ Read more

How Larry Ellison Dropped From World’s 2nd-Richest To No. 8 In Just 2 Months
Less than a year ago he was the #1 richest man in the world. 10 weeks ago he was #2. But yesterday Larry Ellison dropped to #8, Forbes reports, falling behind Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Ellison’s net worth is now estimated at just $192.6 billion — after a $104 billion decline:

Shares of Oracle plunged roughly 54% betwe … ⌘ Read more

Why Are Big Tech CEOs Writing Long Manifestos About AI?
This week Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a 6,500 word open letter titled “The Future is for Everyone”.

But the BBC is more interested in why big tech executives keep writing manifestos about AI:

[Zuckerberg’s] vision echoes what AI leaders have expressed in various forms: the product they are building is among the “most important technologies in history.” Marc A … ⌘ Read more