Steam Machine Launches, Priced $1049 To $1428 USD
Valve today finally revealed pricing on their SteamOS Linux-powered Steam Machine living room PC. Given the ongoing RAM and storage pricing pressure, the Steam Machine pricing comes in at the high-end… ⌘ Read more
Linux Finally Lands Battery/Charger Driver For 14 Year Old Microsoft Surface RT Tablet
It’s been 14 years already since Microsoft announced the Surface RT hybrid tablet as their first-generation Surface device for going up against the Apple iPad. All these years later, this NVIDIA Tegra 3 powered device is finally seeing a mainline Linux kernel driver for supporting battery and charger status… ⌘ Read more
AMD Updates ROCDXG To Deliver Better ROCm Experience On WSL
Back in March AMD introduced ROCDXG to improve their Windows Subsystem for Linux support. This improved Windows Subsystem for Linux “WSL” support with the ROCm compute stack is a cleaneer architecture, open-source compared to their legacy WSL code having closed bits, and more robust handling. Today they issued a new ROCDXG library release to further enhance their WSL support… ⌘ Read more
Valve Creates The Ray-Tracing Inspector “RTI” To Help Further Optimize Linux GPU Drivers
Merged today to Mesa 26.1 is the Ray-Tracing Inspector “RTI” as a new GUI created by developers on Valve’s open-source Linux graphics team. The Ray-Tracing Inspector is designed to help in analyzing and optimizing the Vulkan ray-tracing performance as part of their continued work on further bettering the Radeon RADV RT performance for Steam Play / Linux gaming… ⌘ Read more
OneXPlayer Configuration Driver Merged For Linux 7.2 Along With Other New Hardware
The HID subsystem updates have landed in the Linux 7.2 kernel with some treats that will excite Linux gamers and other desktop users… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.2 sched_ext Continues Working Toward Sub-Scheduler Support
Merged last week for the Linux 7.2 kernel were all of the sched_ext changes for this extensible scheduler support that allows loading BPF programs from user-space for handling scheduling tasks. Linux 7.2 continues building out sched_ext’s sub-scheduler support… ⌘ Read more
Someone Forked systemd Over Its New Birth Date Field
The blog Linuxiac reports:
A new systemd fork has appeared with a specific purpose: removing systemd’s recently added support for storing a user’s birth date in JSON user records.
The fork, called Liberated systemd, published its first tagged release as v261 shortly after the official systemd 261 release. In other words, the fork follows upstream systemd while reverti … ⌘ Read more
Early AMD GCN GPUs Seeing Improved GPU Recovery - Another Valve-Led Linux Improvement
Early AMD Radeon Graphics Core Next “GCN” GPUs are seeing work to improve the GPU recovery process in the event of hangs. This work is yet another improvement for older AMD GPUs being led by Valve’s open-source Linux graphics driver team… ⌘ Read more
After Six Years Of Work and Over 360 Patches, Linux 7.2 Finally Removes Bug-Prone strncpy
Tech Times reports:
Linux 7.2’s merge window closed out a cleanup campaign on Friday that most kernel developers had stopped expecting to see end: the complete removal of strncpy(), a C string-copy function that the kernel’s own documentation labels “actively dangerous,” from every subsystem, driv … ⌘ Read more
Qualcomm Posts Linux Patches For HP EliteBook X G2q X2 Elite Laptop
Last month Qualcomm engineers posted patches bringing up the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen11 Snapdragon X2 laptop on Linux. Sent out this weekend were a new set of patches from Qualcomm for bringing up the HP EliteBook X G2q laptop model powered by the Snapdragon X2 Elite SoC… ⌘ Read more
Google’s Gemini Partially Figures Out A Lengthy Linux Boot Time On Modern ASUS Laptop
Google Antigravity with the Gemini 3.5 Flash model helped a Linux user sort out a situation where his laptop was taking around 36 seconds to boot the kernel, which shouldn’t be the case for the high-end laptop with AMD Ryzen 9 processor and 32GB of RAM. It ended up being yet another case of device firmware issues, but now a Linux kernel patch is pending for working around the issue on the ASUS ROG Strix G16 G614 laptop while … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.2 Begins Making Preparations For NVIDIA “Blackwell-Next”
When going through the VFIO subsystem patches for the ongoing Linux 7.2 merge window, there isn’t too much to get excited about for end users with these changes. But there is the first time mentioning “Blackwell-Next” enablement by NVIDIA for the Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more
Broadcom Working On VMware Zero-Copy Buffer Sharing Between VMs And Hypervisor
Interesting feature work for VMware virtualization on Linux now being pursued by Broadcom is to support zero-copy buffer sharing between the VM(s) and host hypervisor, which would equate to an efficiency and performance win… ⌘ Read more
Linux Finally Eliminates The strncpy API After Six Years Of Work, 360+ Patches
Linux 7.2 has finally eliminated the strncpy API from the Linux kernel. The strncpy() function for copying up to a specified number of bytes has long been deprecated and after six years of work and hundreds of patches, no more users of the strncpy within the Linux kernel remained that it has now been eliminated… ⌘ Read more
Linux’s ARM64 NEON Intrinsics CRC64 Code Adapted To Work On 32-bit ARM
Merged for Linux 7.1 was ARMM64 NEON-accelerated CRC64-NVMe support for around 6x the performance out of that checksumming algorithm. The generic code had been a bottleneck in NVMe and other storage subsystem code of the Linux kernel with CRC64-NVMe being used to help verify against data corruption. Now for Linux 7.2, the NEON-accelerated code will also work for those still relying on 32-bit ARM… ⌘ Read more
GIMP v0.54 From 1996 With Motif Toolkit Now Flatpak’ed For Modern Linux Desktops
The open-source world waited long enough for the GIMP 3.0 release that finally came last year with its GTK3 port and more, but for those with time on their hands this weekend and want to relive GIMP’s past from long ago, GIMP 0.54 has been adapted for Flatpak to work on modern Linux desktops. What makes this version of GIMP from 1996 notable is that it was the last to use the Motif toolkit… ⌘ Read more
New NTFS Driver Sees Hardening & Fixes, Windows Native Symlinks With Linux 7.2
Happening back in Linux 7.1 was the “NTFS resurrection” with landing a new NTFS driver into the Linux kernel that had been years in the making and began as the former NTFS read-only kernel driver many years back before the stint of the Paragon NTFS3 driver in the Linux kernel. For Linux 7.2 that new/modern NTFS driver has seen more hardening work, some fixes, and Windows native symbolic links support… ⌘ Read more
Open-Source NVIDIA NVK Vulkan Driver Now Supports DLSS
With the code merged today to Mesa 26.2-devel, the open-source NVIDIA “NVK” Vulkan driver is capable of handling Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) with modern game titles running on Linux / Steam Play… ⌘ Read more
AMD-Powered Barco MXRT Graphics Cards Finally Seeing Linux Driver Support Patches
Barco, the Europeean technology company that manufactures the AMD GPU based MXRT graphics cards for for multi-display medical imaging systems (and also MXRV for their NVIDIA based graphics cards), have to date only seen Windows drivers published for their professional-grade graphics cards even with using Radeon Pro derived GPUs. But a patch published today to the AMD graphics mailing list is opening the door for Linux support… ⌘ Read more
systemd 261 Released With New systemd-sysinstall OS Installer, IMDSD & Storagectl
Systemd 261 is out as stable today with a number of new features and ready to coincide with H2’2026 Linux distributions… ⌘ Read more
AMD ACP7.D/7.E/7.F Driver Added In Linux 7.2: “Substantial Design Changes” For AMD Audio
It looks like AMD’s next-gen SoCs not only will be exciting on the CPU side with the much anticipated Zen 6 cores but the AMD Audio Co-Processor “ACP” IP looks to be going through some significant updates… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.2 Brings More Work Around WiFi Aware, WiFi 8 / UHR & More Networking Hardware
The networking subsystem changes have been merged for Linux 7.2 with a lot happening around the core networking code as well as the many wired and wireless networking device drivers… ⌘ Read more
Behold, I bring you (reincarnated) mbox.blue – A tiny shared linux server based on / around containers (my own implemtnation).
Raspberry Pi OS Moves To Linux 6.18 LTS Kernel, Updated LabWC Compositor
Raspberry Pi engineers have released their first update to Raspberry Pi OS since April. With this new version comes the upgrade to the latest Linux 6.18 LTS kernel… ⌘ Read more
Apple M3 Booting On Linux After Three Years Plus Other SoC Updates In Linux 7.2
Just shy of 1,000 new patches were merged on the SoC side for the Linux 7.2 kernel. Among all those patches are enabling five more SoCs to work with the mainline Linux kernel – including the long-awaited Apple M3 support… ⌘ Read more
ARCTIC Fan Controller, More ASUS & ASRock Boards Have Sensor Monitoring With Linux 7.2
For those that enjoy keeping an eye on all their system vitals from temperatures to voltages, the hardware monitoring “HWMON” updates have seen many device additions for Linux 7.2… ⌘ Read more
AMD ISP4 Driver Merged To Linux 7.2 Kernel
The media subsystem changes were merged tonight for the Linux 7.2 merge window and it includes the long-awaited AMD ISP4 driver now in the mainline kernel.. This ISP4 driver is what completes the loop for enabling the web camera on the HP ZBook Ultra G1a and other future high-end AMD Ryzen laptops… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.2 Gets Rid Of The Last Optimized MD5 Implementation
The Linux kernel has dropped the last of its architecture-specific optimized MD5 hashing algorithm implementations… ⌘ Read more
How NVIDIA Vera CPU Performance Compares To The Ampere Altra Max
Last month on Phoronix was an exclusive first look at the NVIDIA Vera CPU performance compared to prior-generation NVIDIA Grace as well as the current AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon competition. Following that was looking at how the ARM Linux server performance has evolved over the past eight years of AArch64 Linux servers. A Phoronix Premium supporter recently requested wanting to see how Vera compares to Ampere Altra. While Ampere Altra has been in the … ⌘ Read more
EXT4 Reworks Fast Commit Handling & Faster Directory Hash Computation
The EXT4 file-system improvements were merged today for Linux 7.2 with some enticing optimizations… ⌘ Read more
Claude AI Assists In Fixing Years Old AMD Radeon Linux Display Bug Affecting Numerous Laptops
A bug in the AMDGPU Linux kernel graphics driver leading to some laptop displays freezing after periods of use may finally be close to being resolved. Given the length and quantity of bug reports and one of the problematic commits being tracked back to 2017, it’s a heavy hitting issue for some Linux users. With the help of Claude Code, it looks like a fix is on the way to the Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more
AF_ALG Deprecation Approved For Linux 7.2, Useless & Insecure Crypto Driver Code Removed
The cryptographic subsystem updates have been merged for the ongoing Linux 7.2 kernel merge window… ⌘ Read more
Latest LLVM Patch Further Points To AMD GFX1250/GFX1251 Being Instinct Hardware
With the ongoing work around the AMD GFX1250 (and GFX1251) in the open-source AMD Linux driver stack, it’s led to a lot of speculation about these parts in the GFX12 series associated with RDNA4. RDNA4 refresh? Or a lot of signals have pointed to GFX125x being possible AI/HPC accelerators such as for the upcoming Instinct MI400 series. Adding to the intrigue is GFX1251 being an APU. The latest LLVM compiler activity is further pointi … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.2 EDAC Drivers Prep For Diamond Rapids, Nova Lake H
The Error Detection And Correction (EDAC) drivers, such as for dealing with ECC memory error reporting, are heavy on the Intel side with Linux 7.2 in preparing for upcoming hardware… ⌘ Read more
SteamOS 3.8.10 Stable Released With Updated Arch, Steam Machine Support & Wayland Desktop Default
Overnight Valve released SteamOS 3.8.10 into the stable channel. for succeeding SteamOS 3.7. There’s a lot happening across the board to their in-house Linux platform for the likes of the Steam Deck and upcoming Steam Machine hardware… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.2 Protects Against “Stupid Or Malicious” DoS Attempts By Arming Timers In The Past
There are a number of time® core subsystem changes for the Linux 7.2 kernel to better harden the kernel… ⌘ Read more
AI/LLM Patch Craziness Having An Impact On ARM64 Linux Kernel Development
The ongoing rise in AI/LLM-generated patches hitting the mailing lists and affecting development workflows continues to impact Linux kernel development. For the ARM64 architecture updates in Linux 7.2 is an interesting anecdote over over feeling like this activity has “slowed us down a little on the feature side” and having to deal with this AI/LLM patch activity resulted in some features now being postponed from making it for this current L … ⌘ Read more
Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI Back Linux Foundation’s Appia AI Standards Initiative
BrianFagioli writes: Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Arm, Mastercard, Siemens, and other companies have joined the newly launched Appia Foundation under the Linux Foundation. The project aims to create common specifications and assessment frameworks that organizations can use to demonstrate AI systems meet emerging s … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.2 Slab Changes Include More Performance Optimizations
The slab memory allocation changes for Linux 7.2 have been merged and continue to see more work around shaves and performance optimizations… ⌘ Read more
AMD’s Lemonade AI Server Now Much More Useful With MCP Server Integration
The open-source Lemonade AI server for “100% free and private” AI usage across Windows and Linux in leveraging AMD Ryzen AI NPUs, Radeon GPUs, and x86_64 CPUs, is now much more powerful with today’s v10.8 release… ⌘ Read more
Intel Core Ultra X7 Panther Lake Performance On Linux 7.1
After recently noting the Intel Arc B580 Battlemage performance improving with Linux 7.1 and similarly finding performance gains for the Arc Pro B70 on Linux 7.1, several Phoronix readers have been wondering whether the newer Xe3 graphics with Panther Lake similarly benefit. Here are some CPU and iGPU benchmarks of the Core Ultra X7 358H “Panther Lake” SoC between Linux 7.0 and the recently stabilized Linux 7.1 kernel. ⌘ Read more
Initial AMDGPU HDMI 2.1 FRL Support Successfully Merged For Linux 7.2
The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel graphics/display and accelerator driver changes have been merged for Linux 7.2. The Linux 7.2 DRM merge is headlined by the long-awaited HDMI 2.1 Fixed Rate Link (FRL) support for the AMDGPU open-source driver as part of the larger effort of finally proceeding with a full HDMI 2.1 implementation for this AMD Radeon Linux driver… ⌘ Read more
FreeBSD Updates Its Graphics Driver Port From Linux 6.12 LTS
As part of improving the experience of FreeBSD on laptops and desktops, FreeBSD developers have updated their drm-kmod port against the state of the Linux 6.12 LTS kernel… ⌘ Read more
Linux Finally Ends AppleTalk Protocol Support
While the AppleTalk networking protocols were innovative when they first appeared for their plug-and-play capabilities, Apple itself ended their AppleTalk support back in 2009. Now 17 years later, the Linux kernel is ending AppleTalk support due to a recent surge of AI-generated patches… ⌘ Read more
IO_uring, NVMe & Other Block + Device Mapper Changes Merged For Linux 7.2
Linux 7.2 continues seeing a fair amount of storage-related changes from file-systems to the block device code itself, software RAID, the wonderful IO_uring interface, and more. Here is some of the latest feature work that has been merged for Linux 7.2… ⌘ Read more
Linux Enacts Guidance To Tighten Acceptance Of New File-Systems Into The Kernel
There is no shortage of different file-systems available for Linux. New file-systems continue to come about in the open-source world but ultimately many of them end up not being well maintained or having very limited users and not necessarily innovating enough to make them worthwhile over other alternatives. Given the continued increase in file-systems looking to get into the Linux kernel, such as FTRFS and VMUFAT being some of the … ⌘ Read more
Btrfs Now Enables Large Folios By Default, Lands Huge Folios With Linux 7.2
The Btrfs file-system feature updates have been merged for the Linux 7.2 kernel with a few noteworthy changes for this copy-on-write file-system… ⌘ Read more
Speaking of UIs, this is how Thunderbird looks now:
So we continue to let every program make up its own UI style (and then we complain that “the Linux desktop” looks “messy” and “inconsistent”). I guess this uses GTK, but it doesn’t look like any other GTK program. Buttons, tabs, drop-downs, whatever, it’s all different. It even has its own subwindow system (i.e., popups that you can’t move).
I didn’t say this in the blog post, but I’m convinced that programmers these days absolutely positively hate everything that looks even remotely like Windows 95 or Motif – with a passion. I see that in my coworkers as well, they really can’t stand it. It’s an emotional thing.
Linux 7.2 Improves Anonymous/Unnamed Pipe Performance For Shell Pipelines & More
Yet another performance optimization merged for the in-development Linux 7.2 kernel is improving the speed of anon_pipe_write, the kernel function used for writing data into anonymous/unnamed pipes such as when using shell pipelines or standard streams from applications… ⌘ Read more
Russian Spam and Profanities Are Now Plaguing the Arch Linux AUR
The Arch Linux User Repository “AUR” is facing another issue just days after more than 1,500 packages were found carrying malware. According to Phoronix, over 70 AUR packages have reportedly been modified to insert Russian spam and profane messages into users’ shell configuration files. From the report: Nicolas Boichat with his AI/LLM detection bot … ⌘ Read more