KDE Plasma 6.7 To Provide A Much Better Experience For CPU-Based Rendering
KDE developer Xaver Hugl has whipped up another nice improvement for the upcoming Plasma 6.7 desktop release. Due to QtWidgets still relying on CPU-based rendering and finding the performance subpar with Wayland shared memory “wl_shm” usage, Xaver has leveraged UDMABUF for avoiding excess buffer copies to provide a much more fluid experience when dealing with CPU-based rendering / shared memory usage on KDE under Wayland… ⌘ Read more

Three stable kernel updates
The
7.0.4,
6.18.27, and
6.12.86
stable kernels have been released; each contains another set of important
fixes. ⌘ Read more

D7VK 1.9 Brings Some Hefty Performance Improvements
D7VK continues advancing for this Vulkan-based implementation of Direct3D 7 that also supports D3D 6 / 5 / 3 APIs too for vintage games ultimately rendered using the modern Vulkan API… ⌘ Read more

Valve Releases Steam Controller CAD Files Under Creative Commons License
Valve has released CAD files for the new Steam Controller and its Puck under a Creative Commons license. “The idea is to let enterprising modders create their own Steam Controller add-ons, like skins, charging stands, grip extenders or smartphone mounts,” reports Digital Foundry. From the report: The Valve release includes file … ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.1 Released With Many Improvements For Open-Source Vulkan Drivers
Eric Engestrom just announced another timely feature release of the Mesa drivers. Mesa 26.1 is out today for this collection of predominantly OpenGL and Vulkan drivers for a variety of hardware as well as the likes of Rusticl for OpenCL, Zink for OpenGL-on-Vulkan, various Windows acceleration components, and more… ⌘ Read more

PCIe 8.0 Spec Draft 0.5 Released For 1TB/s Bi-Directional x16 Bandwidth
The PCI-SIG today held a briefing around PCIe 8.0 that follows the PCIe 7.0 specification that was released to members last June… ⌘ Read more

Incus 7.0 LTS released
Version\
7.0 of the Incus container and
virtual-machine management system has been released. Notable changes in this
release include the inclusion of a low-level backup API, the addition\
of basic S3 operations directly in Incus to replace the now-unmaintained
MinIO project, as well as the removal of support … ⌘ Read more

Vulkan SC SDK Released For Safety-Critical Graphics / Compute
Yesterday was the OpenCL 3.1 release and today is another exciting development for The Khronos Group standards: the debut of the Vulkan SC SDK for safety-critical applications… ⌘ Read more

VKD3D-Proton 3.0.1 Brings More Improvements For Direct3D 12 On Vulkan
Hans-Kristian Arntzen of Valve’s Linux graphics driver team announced the release today of VKD3D-Proton 3.0.1 for Direct3D 12 over the Vulkan API… ⌘ Read more

AMD Expands ROCm Support On Windows WSL To More Ryzen Hardware
Back in March AMD announced the open-source ROCDXG library for improved ROCm support on WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). The ROCDXG-based solution provides better ROCm compatibility within these Linux confines atop Windows 11 compared to their prior, now-legacy-based WSL support. A new ROCDXG release now available further expands the ROCm WSL2 support to more Ryzen hardware… ⌘ Read more

GCC Git Lands Fix For Missing AVX-512 Optimizations On AMD Zen 6
Last week marked the release of GCC 16.1 as the first GCC 16 stable release. While that release introduces initial AMD Zen 6 “znver6” support well in advance of those next-generation AMD processors debuting, it’s not yet in perfect shape with just today two missing optimizations around AVX-512 having been merged… ⌘ Read more

Flatpak 1.17.7 To Track The Age Of Configurations For Providing Much Better Performance
Flatpak 1.17.7 is now available for continuing to advance open-source app sandboxing and distribution on the Linux desktop. Some interesting new features are in tow with this Flatpak update plus there is also an updated XDG-Desktop-Portal release too… ⌘ Read more

US Government Warns of Severe CopyFail Bug Affecting Major Versions of Linux
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A severe security vulnerability affecting almost every version of the Linux operating system has caught defenders off-guard and scrambling to patch after security researchers publicly released exploit code that allows attackers to take complete control of vulnerable sys … ⌘ Read more

‘Notepad++ For Mac’ Release Is Disavowed By the Creator of the Original
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Andrew Cunningham: As its name implies, the venerable Notepad++ text editor began as a more capable version of the classic Windows Notepad, with features such as line numbering and syntax highlighting. It was created in 2003 by Don Ho, who continues to be its primary autho … ⌘ Read more

Manjaro 26.1 Preview Released With GNOME 50, KDE Plasma 6.6 & Xfce 4.20 Options
The preview release of the Arch Linux powered Manjaro 26.1 is now available for testing… ⌘ Read more

OpenCL 3.1 Released To Bolster AI & HPC Workloads
Six years after the debut of OpenCL 3.0 in provisional form, OpenCL 3.1 was announced today by The Khronos Group… ⌘ Read more

AlmaLinux 10.2 Beta Released With Legacy 32-bit Software Support
AlmaLinux 10.2 Beta released today as their next AlmaLinux 10 release coming down the pipe and derived from the upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.2 state. Plus this AlmaLinux release continues adding more changes on their own… ⌘ Read more

White House Considers Vetting AI Models Before They Are Released
The Trump administration is reportedly considering an executive order to create a working group that could review advanced AI models before public release. The shift follows concerns over Anthropic’s powerful Mythos model and its cyber capabilities, with officials weighing whether the government should get early access to frontier models without n … ⌘ Read more

ROCm 7.2.3 Brings Minor Updates, ROCm XIO Documentation
Less than one month after releasing ROCm 7.2.2, the ROCm 7.2.3 is now available with some minor improvements to this open-source AMD GPU compute and AI stack… ⌘ Read more

The Audio Industry Is Grappling With the Rise of ‘Podslop’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman: Welcome to the modern era of podcasting in which thousands of new shows are released into the world every day with a sizable portion likely being AI-generated. Figuring out exactly which ones fall into that growing category is becoming more difficult just as the industry is starting to take this is … ⌘ Read more

NetHack 5.0.0 released
Version 5.0.0
of the NetHack
dungeon-exploration game, a distant relative of Rogue and
Hack, has been released. NetHack’s code is now compliant with the
C99 standard, and the release includes more than 3,100
bug fixes and changes, detailed in doc/fixes5-0-0.txt
… ⌘ Read more

Omarchy 3.7 Linux Distribution Overhauls Gaming Support, Adds Unified CLI
Omarchy as the Arch Linux based desktop distribution using the Hyprland compositor and led by David Heinemeier Hansson “DHH” is out with a big OS update… ⌘ Read more

GCC 16 Compiler Delivering Some Decent Performance Gains Over GCC 15
With the GCC 16.1 compiler released last Thursday, I have begun running more compiler benchmarks on this first GCC 16 stable feature release. GCC 16 comes heavy on new changes in being the annual feature release and delivering changes from AMD Zen 6 and Arm AGI CPU support to new C++ features and even the Algol 68 programming language front-end. It’s also looking quite good in the performance department relative to the GCC 15 compiler from last year. ⌘ Read more

NetHack 5.0 Released
“So yesterday the Devteam (it is always the Devteam) released version 5.0 of legendary and venerable rogueike compuer game NetHack,” writes the Rogue-like games column @Play. “It is 39 years old…”

MilenCent (Slashdot reader #219,397) writes: In addition to play changes it’s left for players to discover, this version updates the code to compile with C99, makes it much easier to cross compile the code for other systems than the one … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1-rc2 Released With Audio Fix For Steam Deck OLED, Other Fixes
Linux 7.1-rc2 is out for testing with its accumulation of initial bug and regression fixes that have been collected over the past week since the Linux 7.1 merge window was capped off… ⌘ Read more

It’s Goodbye Time for Jeeves and Ask.com - Relics of Yesterday’s Internet
A 1999 press release bragged “Jeeves” answered 92.3 million questions in just three months. “In the digital wilds of Y2K, we came to him with our most probing questions,” remembers the New York Times — whether it was Britney Spears or tamagotchis:

We asked, and he answered: Jeeves, the digital butler of information, the online va … ⌘ Read more

AI tool ‘too dangerous to release’ could wreak havoc on businesses
It found a 27-year-old bug in software used in routers worldwide. Experts fear Anthropic’s Mythos model could trigger the next wave of major breaches. ⌘ Read more

Brush v0.4 Released As “Significant” Release For This Rust-Based Shell
Brush v0.4 debuted today for this “Bourne Rusty Shell” as a Bash/POSIX-compatible shell written in the Rust programming language… ⌘ Read more

New NTFS Driver Sees More Fixes With Linux 7.1-rc2
One of the most prominent changes with the upcoming Linux 7.1 kernel release is the introduction of the new NTFS driver in the Linux 7.1 kernel. This new driver provides more features and better performance than the Paragon NTFS3 driver that’s been in the kernel the past few years and far better off than the original NTFS read-only driver that previously was in the kernel and for which this new driver is based. Needless to say it’s also a big improvement o … ⌘ Read more

AMD’s GAIA Defaults To Better Model, Continued Improvements For Local AI
AMD software engineers on Friday released a new version of GAIA “Generative AI Is Awesome” as their open-source software for Windows and Linux leveraging the Lemonade SDK and aiming to make it easy to build AI agents on your PC with all local AI processing across AMD’s CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1-rc2 Bringing Some More Improvements/Fixes For Older AMD GPUs
Merged on Friday ahead of the Linux 7.1-rc2 kernel release due out tomorrow were this week’s batch of Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel graphics / display / accelerator driver fixes… ⌘ Read more

VideoLAN Publishes Dav2d For Open-Source AV2 Decoder
While the Alliance For Open Media had been aiming for the AV2 release by the end of 2025, as of right now the AV2 specification remains in a draft status. VideoLAN developers though for months have already been working on dav2d as an open-source AV2 decoder and that code was published this weekend… ⌘ Read more

FreeBSD 15.1 Beta Released For Early Testing
Following last year’s release of FreeBSD 15.0, FreeBSD 15.1 is working its way toward release release in June. For kicking off the release dance, FreeBSD 15.1 Beta 1 is available today for testing… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA Ships Fixes For Descriptor Heaps, More Vulkan Performance Optimizations
NVIDIA on Friday released the 595.44.06 beta driver build as their newest Vulkan developer beta for Linux. This was joined by the NVIDIA 595.46 Windows Vulkan beta and there are performance improvements in tow and more work on their descriptor heaps support… ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.6.5 Fixes Some NVIDIA Performance Issues, More Features Land For Plasma 6.7
We are now just one month out from the planned release of Plasma 6.7 in mid-June. Feature activity continues to be brisk for Plasma 6.7 while KDE developers also continue landing more fixes for the current Plasma 6.6 series… ⌘ Read more

Sony Coupons: 45% Off Sony Headphones, WF-1000XM6 Earbuds, and Sony Cameras for May
Upgrade your setup with Sony’s newest releases. Save on industry-leading noise-canceling audio, and pro-level Alpha cameras. ⌘ Read more

Wine 11.8 Improves VBScript Compatibility, Finally Fixes Microsoft Golf 1999
Wine 11.8 delivers the latest and greatest support for running Windows applications and games under Linux and other platforms. This newest bi-weekly development release brings several more enhancements in working toward Wine 12.0 stable due out in early 2027… ⌘ Read more

EndeavourOS “Trtion” To Ship New Desktop/WM Options, Titan Neo Brings Various Updates
In addition to today’s monthly ISO refresh of Arch Linux that is now pulling in the Linux 7.0 kernel and other updates, the downstream EndeavourOS also happens to be out with a new ISO release for starting the month of May… ⌘ Read more

Vulkan 1.4.350 Released With Three New Extensions
Vulkan 1.4.350 released earlier today as the newest routine spec update. Beyond the usual minor fixes/clarifications, Vulkan 1.4.350 tacks on three more extensions… ⌘ Read more

GPT-5.5 Matches Heavily Hyped Mythos Preview In New Cybersecurity Tests
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last month, Anthropic made a big deal about the supposedly outsize cybersecurity threat represented by its Mythos Preview model, leading the company to restrict the initial release to “critical industry partners.” But new research from the UK’s AI Security Institute (AISI) suggests … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 Release, Age Verification Laws, Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 & Other April Happenings
A lot happened in the Linux and open-source world during the month of April. Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Fedora 44 shipped, a lot of news around age attestation/verification laws, the Linux 7.0 kernel was released, Linux 7.1 is bringing many exciting changes as well as removing of old hardware drivers, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition CPU was released, we began testing the Intel Arc Pro B70 “BMG-G31”, and much more software and hardware co … ⌘ Read more

Shotcut 26.4 Released With Timeline Improvements, Vulkan Accelerated Speech-To-Text
Shotcut 26.4.30 shipped today as the latest and greatest version of this open-source, cross-platform video editor… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Open-Sources ‘Earliest DOS Source Code Discovered To Date’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Several times in the last couple of decades, Microsoft has released source code for the original MS-DOS operating system that kicked off its decades-long dominance of consumer PCs. This week, the company has reached further back than ever, releasing “the earliest DOS source code discove … ⌘ Read more

Linux Mint To Begin Publishing HWE ISOs For Better Hardware Support
Due to Linux Mint moving to a longer development cycle with their next release not due until December, Linux Mint developers have decided to begin regularly publishing hardware enablement “HWE” ISOs with newer Linux kernel versions to provide better support for new hardware… ⌘ Read more

CachyOS Linux Performance Leading Over Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, Fedora Workstation 44
It’s not too entirely surprising given the aggressive stance that the CachyOS Linux distribution has taken on out-of-the-box performance, but for those curious, it continues largely leading over the newly-released Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Fedora Workstation 44 distributions for the leading performance on modern hardware. ⌘ Read more

[$] Restartable sequences, TCMalloc, and Hyrum’s Law
Hyrum’s Law states that any
observable behavior of a system will eventually be depended upon by
somebody. The kernel community is currently contending with a clear
demonstration of that principle. The recent work to address some restartable-sequences\
performance problems in the 6.19 release maintained the documented API
in all respects, but that was not enough; Google’s [TCMalloc](https://google.github.io/tcmalloc/ … ⌘ Read more

GCC 16.1 released
Version\
16.1 of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) has been
released.

The C++ frontend now defaults to the GNU C++20 dialect and the corresponding
parts of the standard library are no longer experimental. Several
C++26 features receive experimental support, including Reflection
( -freflection), Contracts, expansion statements and std::simd.

Other changes include the introduction of an experimental compiler
frontend for the [Algol … ⌘ Read more

Seven new stable kernels for Thursday
Greg Kroah-Hartman has released the 7.0.3, 6.18.26, 6.12.85, 6.6.137, 6.1.170, 5.15.204, and 5.10.254 stable kernels. The 7.0.3 and
6.18.26 kernels only contain fixes needed for Xen users; he advises
that all users of the other kernel series … ⌘ Read more

Servo Browser Engine Seeing Progress On FreeBSD Support
Following the recent Servo 0.1 release, the Servo project has published their latest monthly status report to highlight recent development efforts around this modern open-source browser engine… ⌘ Read more

Sanctioned Chinese AI Firm SenseTime Releases Image Model Built for Speed
With US restrictions limiting its access to advanced tech, SenseTime is doubling down on open source with a new model optimized to run on Chinese-made chips. ⌘ Read more