KDE Plasma 6.6 Showing Frequent Performance Advantage Over GNOME 50 With NVIDIA R595 Driver
Earlier this week I provided benchmarks looking at KDE Plasma 6.6’s performance advantage over GNOME 50 for Linux gaming with AMD Radeon graphics. That raised the question if the same was true when using NVIDIA graphics with their official Linux graphics driver stack. Here are such benchmarks looking at the KDE Plasma 6.6 and GNOME 50 performance on Ubuntu 26.04 beta while using the new NVIDIA 595.58.03 Linux driver. ⌘ Read more
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Beta Released: Powered By Linux 7.0 + GNOME 50 + Mesa 26.0
Right on schedule the beta for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is now available for testing. This is a great opportunity to help test this release ahead of the official Long Term Support release due out on 23 April… ⌘ Read more
Open-Source Nouveau Performance With Linux 7.0 + NVK Mesa 26.1-dev vs. NVIDIA Linux Driver
As a few months have passed since our prior round of testing the fully open-source NVIDIA Linux driver stack with the Nouveau kernel driver and Mesa NVK Vulkan driver plus Zink, here is a fresh round of benchmarks using Linux 7.0 and Mesa 26.1-dev compared to the open-source stack shipped by Ubuntu 25.10 (Linux 6.17 + Mesa 25.2) for showing how far the open-source NVIDIA driver has progressed the past few months. Plus testing aga … ⌘ Read more
Ubuntu Will Switch To ntpd-rs As Its Next Rust System Component
Canonical engineers are planning a switch to ntpd-rs as the newest Rust-based system component for Ubuntu Linux for handling time synchronization… ⌘ Read more
AMD ROCm 7.2.1 Released With Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS Support, Bug Fixes
Building off the release of ROCm 7.2 from January, ROCm 7.2.1 is now available with Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS support as well as various bug fixes to this open-source AMD Radeon/Instinct GPU compute stack… ⌘ Read more
KDE Plasma 6.6 Delivers An Impressive Edge For Radeon Graphics Over GNOME 50 On Ubuntu 26.04
In testing thus far on Ubuntu 26.04, the KDE Plasma 6.6 desktop with the Wayland session is working pretty darn well and delivering a performance edge across many games/graphics workloads compared to the default GNOME 50 desktop. At least as far as AMD Radeon graphics are concerned, Plasma 6.6 is in quite impressive shape for the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release. ⌘ Read more
Pop!_OS 24.04 vs. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS vs. 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. ⌘ Read more
Canonical Joins Rust Foundation
BrianFagioli writes: Canonical has joined the Rust Foundation as a Gold Member, signaling a deeper investment in the Rust programming language and its role in modern infrastructure. The company already maintains an up-to-date Rust toolchain for Ubuntu and has begun integrating Rust into parts of its stack, citing memory safety and reliability as key drivers. By joining at a higher tier, Canonical is not just ad … ⌘ Read more
Ubuntu Maker Canonical Joins The Rust Foundation
Canonical announced today that they have joined the Rust Foundation as a Gold Member… ⌘ Read more
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. ⌘ Read more
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. ⌘ Read more
Opera GX Web Browser Comes To Linux
BrianFagioli writes: Opera GX has officially landed on Linux, bringing its gamer-focused browser experience to Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE-based systems. The browser includes GX Control for limiting RAM and network usage, a Hot Tabs Killer to shut down resource-heavy tabs, and built-in sidebar integrations for Discord and Twitch. Opera says this is not just a one-off port, but a long-term effo … ⌘ Read more
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… ⌘ Read more
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… ⌘ Read more
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… ⌘ Read more
Canonical Plans To Integrate NVIDIA DOCA-OFED Into The Ubuntu Archive
An interesting Linux detail from today’s NVIDIA GTC 2026 kickoff is that Canonical will be integrating NVIDIA’s DOCA-OFED software framework into the Ubuntu Linux archive for leveraging the high-speed networking stack for HPC and AI… ⌘ Read more
Trying Out Snapdragon X Elite With The Acer Swift 14 AI Laptop On Ubuntu 26.04
This week I tried out the current Ubuntu 26.04 development state on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite with the Acer Swift 14 AI laptop I have been using for my X Elite benchmarks over the past year. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a smooth experience with new issues encountered for this Windows On ARM laptop… ⌘ Read more
Trying Out Snapdragon X Elite With The Acer Swift 14 AI Laptop On Ubuntu 26.04
This week I tried out the current Ubuntu 26.04 development state on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite with the Acer Swift 14 AI laptop I have been using for my X Elite benchmarks over the past year. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a smooth experience with new issues encountered for this Windows On ARM laptop… ⌘ Read more
Ubuntu’s AppArmor Hit By Several Security Issues - Can Yield Local Privilege Escalation
The AppArmor Linux kernel security module used notably by Ubuntu Linux and currently maintained by Canonical has been affected by several vulnerabilities made public today… ⌘ Read more
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. ⌘ Read more
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
EFF, Ubuntu and Other Distros Discuss How to Respond to Age-Verification Laws
System76 isn’t the only one criticizing new age-verification laws. The blog 9to5Linux published an “informal” look at other discussions in various Linux communities.
Earlier this week, Ubuntu developer Aaron Rainbolt proposed on the Ubuntu mailing list an optional D-Bus interface (org.freedesktop.AgeVerification1) that … ⌘ 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
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 distri … ⌘ Read more
Canonical Talks Up RISC-V This Year With Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
Canonical put out a new blog post today highlighting their RISC-V work over 2025 that included switching to the RVA23 profile baseline for Ubuntu 25.10 and moving forward. Now with RVA23-compatible RISC-V hardware coming to market this year, Canonical is talking up the RISC-V possibilities when paired with the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release… ⌘ Read more
LXD 6.7 Released With AMD GPU Passthrough Support
Canonical today released LXD 6.7 as the latest feature update to this system container and virtual machine manager commonly used in Ubuntu Linux environments… ⌘ Read more
Ubuntu 26.04 Resolute Snapshot 4 Released
The fourth and final monthly snapshot of Ubuntu 26.04 “Resolute Raccoon” is now available for testing. This alternative to the Ubuntu 26.04 daily ISOs is a monthly test release that also helps exercise the Ubuntu Linux release automation processes… ⌘ Read more
sudo-rs Breaks Historical Norms With Now Enabling Password Feedback By Default
On recent builds of Ubuntu 26.04 when being prompted by sudo for the password, password feedback is now enabled by default to show asterisk (*) characters when inputting your password. Traditionally sudo has not provided password feedback in the name of security to not divulge the length of your password in case anyone is looking/capturing your screen. But upstream sudo-rs has now changed the default behavior in the name of an improv … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 Features Include More Preparations For AMD Zen 6 & Intel Nova Lake
While the version bump to 7.0 is driven solely by Linus Torvalds’ versioning preferences, with Linux 7.0 there are many great changes to be found in this upcoming stable kernel version to power the likes of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. Here is a recap of all the interesting changes with Linux 7.0. ⌘ Read more
AppArmor Enhancements Merged For Linux 7.0
The AppArmour security module for the Linux kernel, which most notably is backed by Canonical for Ubuntu, has some small improvements and fixes for Linux 7.0… ⌘ Read more
eCryptfs Sees Renewed Patch Activity With Linux 7.0
We haven’t heard much about eCryptfs in recent years for that stackable in-tree Linux file-system providing per-directory encryption support. The FSCRYPT framework has shown its strong capabilities in recent years with various file-systems, Canonical hasn’t been pursuing its user home directory encryption like it did years ago for the Ubuntu desktop, and full disk encryption is the most secure approach for ensuring data security on your system. But to some surprise wi … ⌘ Read more
Ubuntu 26.04 Begins Its Feature Freeze
Canonical engineer Utkarsh Gupta announced today on the behalf of the Ubuntu Release Team that the Ubuntu 26.04 “Resolute Raccoon” has entered its feature freeze… ⌘ Read more
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Moving To OpenJDK 25 By Default
It’s not too surprising but the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 Long Term Support release will be transitioning to OpenJDK 25 as its default Java version… ⌘ Read more
XFS Introducing Autonomous Self-Healing Capabilities With Linux 7.0
The XFS file-system has some interesting new feature work and performance tuning with the Linux 7.0 kernel that will be used by the likes of Fedora 44 and Ubuntu 26.04 LTS this spring… ⌘ Read more
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… ⌘ Read more
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… ⌘ Read more
Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu Linux Performance For Intel Core Ultra X7 Panther Lake
Last week I began publishing the many exciting Panther Lake benchmarks under Linux from the interesting CPU performance and efficiency to the much anticipated Xe3 graphics with the Intel Arc B390 graphics. Up today is a look at how the out-of-the-box performance for the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H compares under Microsoft Windows 11 and the current Ubuntu Linux 26.04 development state. ⌘ Read more
New Raspberry Pi 4 Model Splits RAM Across Dual Chips
The blog OMG Ubuntu reports that a new version of the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B has been (quietly) introduced. “The key difference? It now uses a dual-RAM configuration.”
The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (PCB 13a) adopts a dual-RAM configuration to ‘improve supply chain flexibility’ and manufacturing efficiency, per a company product change notice document. Earlier versio … ⌘ Read more
Ubuntu To Support The SpacemiT K3 As One Of The First RISC-V RVA23 SoCs
Canonical and SpacemiT announced today that Ubuntu Linux will be officially supported on SpacemiT’s new K3 RISC-V SoC. What makes the K3 interesting is being one of the first available RISC-V RVA23 designs… ⌘ 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
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
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
Nvidia GeForce NOW Is Now Available Natively On Linux
NVIDIA has officially launched a native GeForce NOW client for Linux as a Flatpak, giving Linux gamers access to cloud-rendered RTX gaming. Phoronix reports: While confined to a Flatpak, for now NVIDIA is just “officially” supporting it on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and later. Granted, thanks to Flatpak it should run on other non-Ubuntu distributions too but in terms of the of … ⌘ 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
Former Canonical Developer Advocate Warns Snap Store Isn’t Safe After Slow Responses to Malware Reports
An anonymous reader shared this article from the blog Linuxiac
In a blog post, Alan Pope, a longtime Ubuntu community figure and former Canonical employee who remains an active Snap publisher… [warns of] a persistent campaign of malicious snaps impersonating cryptoc … ⌘ Read more
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… ⌘ Read more
Ubuntu 26.04 Aims To Deliver Better NVIDIA Wayland Performance Atop GNOME
If all goes well the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release will further enhance the NVIDIA graphics performance under its default GNOME Wayland session. The improvements might be upstreamed to GNOME 50 in time but otherwise it’s looking like Ubuntu 26.04 will carry its own patch(es) for improving the NVIDIA Wayland performance… ⌘ Read more
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. The … ⌘ Read more
Canonical Builds Steam Snap For Ubuntu ARM64 Leveraging FEX
Canonical is making it easier for ARM64 Ubuntu users like those on the NVIDIA DGX Spark to do a bit of gaming with Steam. Canonical engineers have assembled a Steam Snap for 64-bit ARM that comes complete with the FEX emulator for running Windows/Linux x86-based games on ARM64 Linux… ⌘ Read more