AMD Introducing New Linux Driver For Their Halo Box: For Its RGB LED Light Bar
AMD CEO Lisa Su back at CES 2026 showed off the Ryzen AI Halo box as a mini PC built around their excellent Strix Halo SoC. The Ryzen AI halo box is to serve as an AI development platform to compete with the likes of NVIDIA’s DGX Spark and Dell GB10. This week is the first time I am seeing new Linux driver activity specifically referencing this exciting AMD “Halo Box” system… ⌘ Read more

Remembering Seth Nickell
LWN has received the sad news that Seth Nickell passed away, on
April 16, from his father, Eric Nickell:

Many of you knew Seth from his work in the GNOME Usability Project, but his
roots in that community trace back to his high school years. As a father of
a high school junior, I remember being terrified when he flashed the hard
drive of a computer he purchased for himself with this weird “Linux” thing.
And I was a bit awed by the college application essay he wrote about open
source and Linus Tor … ⌘ Read more

IBM Updates Linux Patches For Introducing ARM64 KVM Virtualization On s390
At the start of April was the peculiar announcement of IBM collaborating with Arm on “dual architecture” hardware. The initial fruits of that collaboration at least are Linux kernel patches for enabling ARM64 virtualization acceleration on IBM Z servers. As we approach the end of the month, IBM has now posted a second iteration of those patches for enabling AArch64 software to run on IBM s390 via the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)… ⌘ Read more

AMD’s Lemonade SDK 10.3 Now 10x Smaller By Getting Rid Of Electron
Lemonade as the open-source local AI server backed by AMD and supported across AMD CPUs / GPUs / NPUs on Windows and Linux is out with a big update… ⌘ Read more

Fedora Linux 44 has been released
The Fedora Project has announced
the release of Fedora Linux 44. There are “what’s new”
articles for Fedora\
Workstation, Fedora\
KDE Plasma Desktop, and Fedora\
Atomic Desktops. The Fedora Asahi Remix for Apple Silicon Macs,
ba … ⌘ Read more

[$] Strawberry is ripe for managing music collections
There are dozens of music-player applications for Linux; the options range
from bare-bones programs that only play local files to full-blown
music-management projects with a full suite of tools for managing (and playing)
a music collection. Strawberry
is in the latter category; it has a bumper crop of features, including smart
playlists, support for editing music metadata tags, the ability to organize music
files, and more. ⌘ Read more

Fedora 44 Released For Living On The Leading-Edge Of Linux Innovations
Fedora 44 is officially released for providing the very latest Linux innovations with GNOME 50 being the default desktop of Fedora Workstation 44, an improved KDE experience with Plasma 6.6 complete with the Plasma Log-in Manager, and other up-to-date software packages… ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu’s “AI Kill Switch” Is Achieved By Removing Snaps, Initially Opt-In
Following yesterday’s polarizing news of Canonical to begin shipping AI features in Ubuntu Linux over the course of the next year, Jon Seager as the VP of Engineering at Canonical has now provided some clarifications around their AI plans… ⌘ Read more

7-Zip 26.01 Now Allows Making Use Of Huge Pages On Linux For Faster Compression
7-Zip 26.01 was released on Monday and making this release significant are huge pages support on Linux and some users may be interested in the new options around the path generation mode for the output directory when extracting archives… ⌘ Read more

Red Hat’s Stratis Storage 3.9 Released With Online Encryption/Decryption/Reencryption
It’s crazy to realize it has been ten years already since Red Hat abandoned their Btrfs plans for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and dropped it, which was a technology preview feature since RHEL6. In its place Red Hat engineers began developing Stratis for next-gen Linux storage with ZFS/Btrfs-like features but instead building atop XFS, LUKS, Device Mapper, and Clevis. After a while since the last major release, Stratis Storage 3 … ⌘ Read more

Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus Provides Exceptional Value For Linux Users
After looking at the new Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus processor earlier this month with its nice performance evolution for Arrow Lake on Linux, today we are looking at the other new Intel desktop CPU offering: the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus that retails for just $219 USD. ⌘ Read more

With Linux 7.1 The Mainline Kernel Now Supports Real-Time “RT” On ARM
The Linux 7.1 mainline kernel will allow building a real-time “PREEMPT_RT” kernel for the ARM architecture with no longer needing any out-of-tree patches… ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu Linux Will Begin Landing AI Features Throughout The Next Year
Now that Ubuntu 26.04 LTS has shipped, Canonical is opening up on their next major focus for Ubuntu development: lots of AI features… ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu Linux Will Begin Landing AI Features Throughout The Next Year
Now that Ubuntu 26.04 LTS has shipped, Canonical is opening up on their next major focus for Ubuntu development: lots of AI features… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1-rc1 Released With New NTFS Driver, FRED By Default & Much More
The Linux 7.1-rc1 kernel was just released for concluding the Linux 7.1 merge window. A lot of new features are in tow for this next kernel version that will then be out as stable in mid-June… ⌘ Read more

Linux Version of Framework’s Laptop 13 Pro is Outselling Its Windows Variant
Framework began shipping its new Laptop 13 Pro this week. And the Ubuntu variant is outselling the Windows variant, reports PC World:

[I]t’s selling quickly by Framework’s internal metrics, with six batches of the Intel version of the laptop already sold out. [A later Framework social media post added “Spoke too soon, w … ⌘ Read more

CachyOS Introduces New Default GUI Package Manager, Kyber For NVMe I/O Scheduler
The April 2026 ISO refresh of the Arch Linux based CachyOS is now available with a variety of refinements, new hardware support, and other polishing… ⌘ Read more

The Linux Kernel Tree About To Hit 40 Million Lines, AMD Driver Above 6 Million Lines
Ahead of the Linux 7.1-rc1 kernel release due out later today for closing the Linux 7.1 merge window, I was curious if all the code removals would lead to a negative change in line count over Linux 7.0. The removals were not enough and Linux 7.1 Git is fast approaching 40 million lines… ⌘ Read more

The New Linux Kernel AI Bot Uncovering Bugs Is A Local LLM On Framework Desktop + AMD Ryzen AI Max
Earlier this month on Phoronix we were the first to draw attention to a new fuzzing tool / AI bot uncovering kernel bugs by Greg Kroah-Hartman, the “second in command” for Linux kernel development and stable maintainer. Greg has now shared more light on the “gregkh_clanker_t1000” for this tool that has been uncovering more Linux kernel bugs the past few weeks… ⌘ Read more

Apple M3 Support On Asahi Linux Is Approaching The Original Alpha Quality Of The M1
A new progress report from the Asahi Linux project is now published that highlights recent upstreaming work for the Linux 7.0 kernel release as well as the latest additions to the downstream Asahi Linux code. The Asahi Linux project also pushed out their first updated Asahi installer in nearly two years… ⌘ Read more

LACT 0.9 Released With UI Updates, Voltage-Frequency Curve Editor For NVIDIA
LACT, one of the leading open-source solutions to provide a graphics card management GUI that works across AMD / NVIDIA / Intel graphics hardware on Linux, is out with a major update this weekend… ⌘ Read more

Open Source Developer Brings Linux to Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME
Microsoft released the “Windows Subsystem for Linux” in 2016, adding an optional Linux environment into every operating system since Windows 10. But now an open source developer has brought Linux to Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me, reports the blog It’s FOSS, “with Linux kernel 6.19 running alongside the Windows 9x ker … ⌘ Read more

Linux Drops ISDN Subsystem and Other Old Network Drivers
“Old code like amateur radio and NFC have long been a burden to core networking developers,” reads the pull request.

And so Thursday Linus Torvald merged the pull request “to rid the Linux kernel of the old Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) subsystem,” reports Phoronix, “and various other old network drivers largely for PCMCIA era network adapters.”
… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Reportedly Looking At Rebasing Azure Linux On Fedora
Microsoft’s in-house Azure Linux operating system used within Azure and for WSL and other purposes is reportedly pursuing an overhaul where it would be derived from Fedora Linux… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Brings Audio Support For The Line6 POD HD PRO & NexiGo N930W Webcam
Following last week’s Linux 7.1 sound subsystem feature pull that added bus keeper support in working toward better Apple Silicon support along with a variety of other new audio hardware support, a secondary set of sound updates were merged as we approach the end of the Linux 7.1 merge window… ⌘ Read more

New NTFS Driver Sees A Number Of Fixes Ahead Of Linux 7.1-rc1
With the Linux 7.1-rc1 kernel release due out tomorrow to cap off the Linux 7.1 merge window, one of the most notable additions this cycle is the introduction of the new NTFS driver that aims to provide better performance and more modern features than the existing NTFS3 in-kernel driver that was originally contributed by Paragon Software… ⌘ Read more

Farewell ISDN, Ham Radio & Old Network Drivers: Linus Torvalds Merges 138k L.O.C. Removal
Linus Torvalds did it! He merged the pull request to rid the Linux kernel of the old Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) subsystem and various other old network drivers largely for PCMCIA era network adapters. This was the code suggested for removal given the recent influx of AI/LLM-generated bug reports against this dated code that likely has no active upstream users remaining… ⌘ Read more

Fwupd 2.1.2 Brings Support For Firmware Updates On More Hardware
Fwupd 2.1.2 is out today as the latest update to this open-source firmware updating utility that allows for updating system firmware and device/peripheral firmware under Linux… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Is Performing Well Overall In Early Benchmarks
With the Linux 7.1 merge window winding down ahead of the planned Linux 7.1-rc1 release on Sunday, I have begun testing out the Linux 7.1 Git state on various systems in my lab. So far Linux 7.1 appears to be looking good in the performance department with seeing a number of performance improvements in different areas but also a few possible regressions. ⌘ Read more

Many Intel & AMD Laptop Improvements Merged For Linux 7.1
As usual in recent years, there were many x86 platform driver changes merged this cycle for benefiting modern AMD Ryzen and Intel Core (Ultra) laptops. A variety of new features and laptop hardware support additions were merged for Linux 7.1… ⌘ Read more

AMD SBI Driver Preps For EPYC Venice With Linux 7.1
The Linux kernel continues getting ready for AMD’s upcoming Zen 6 processors… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Removes Drivers For Long Obsolete Input Hardware: Bye Bus Mouse Support
Beyond Linux looking to remove old drivers due to the surge of AI/LLM bug reports, the Linux 7.1 kernel is also removing some old hardware drivers simply on the basis of long obsolete hardware. The input subsystem saw several drivers removed this week for decades old hardware… ⌘ Read more

Pull Request For Linux To Remove Old Network Drivers, ISDN Subsystem Due To AI/LLM Noise
It was just days ago we reported on a proposal to drop old network drivers due to AI-driven bug reports becoming a burden on upstream kernel developers. Last night that culminated with an initial pull request to clear out some old, unused networking drivers plus also clearing out the entire ISDN subsystem and more… ⌘ Read more

HDMI FRL Support Achieved With Open-Source Nouveau For NVIDIA GPUs
While the AMDGPU open-source driver has struggled with HDMI 2.1 support due to the HDMI Forum blocking open-source implementations, HDMI Fixed Rate Link (FRL) as a feature of the HDMI 2.1 specification is enjoying success now with the open-source Nouveau graphics driver on Linux for NVIDIA GPUs… ⌘ Read more

Opera GX Browser Gets Flatpak’ed & Snap’ed On Linux
Last month Opera released the Opera GX gaming-focused web browser for Linux. It rolled out in RPM and Debian package format support while now for those interested is also available via Flatpak and Snap sandboxed app formats… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Removes Some Obsolete PCMCIA Drivers That Likely Haven’t Been Used In Years
In addition to some network drivers on the chopping block due to AI bug reports for obsolete hardware/drivers and Linux 7.1 dropping various drivers for Russia’s Baikal CPUs, the Linux 7.1 kernel as of today also dropped some obsolete PCMCIA host controller drivers… ⌘ Read more

Godot 4.7 Will Finally Have HDR Output, Including On Linux With Wayland
The upcoming Godor 4.7 open-source, cross-platform game engine release is rolling out support for high dynamic range (HDR)… ⌘ Read more

[$] Famfs, FUSE, and BPF
The famfs filesystem first showed up on the\
mailing lists in early 2024; since then, it has been the topic of
regular discussions at the Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management and
BPF (LSFMM+BPF) Summit. It has also, as result of those discussions, been
through some significant changes since that initial posting. So it is not
surprising that a suggestion that it needed to be rewritten yet again was
not entirely well received. How much more … ⌘ Read more

Many USB Improvements & New Hardware Merged For Linux 7.1
Ready to go ahead of the Linux 7.1 merge window closing at week’s end are numerous new USB device support additions and other USB subsystem enhancements… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Adds Support For 12 New SoCs, Other ARM & RISC-V Hardware
All of the SoC updates were recently merged for the ongoing Linux 7.1 kernel cycle. Most of the activity as usual is on the Arm side but also with some RISC-V additions too for the Linux 7.1 kernel… ⌘ Read more

KMSCON Continues Improving For VT Terminal Emulator In User-Space
KMSCON 9.3.4 is out today for this virtual terminal (VT) emulator in user-space that runs atop the Linux DRM/KMS APIs for those wanting to enjoy a CONFIG_VT=n Linux kernel experience… ⌘ Read more

Many Great Networking Improvements Arrive In Linux 7.1
Merged recently to Linux Git were the big set of networking changes for the Linux 7.1 kernel… ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu Looks Toward More Snap-Based Devpacks Moving Forward
Canonical is out with a new blog post today outlining toolchain changes to Ubuntu Linux from Ubuntu 24.04 LTS to Ubuntu 26.04 LTS due for release tomorrow. While those changes over the past two years aren’t too news worthy if you have been following the interim Ubuntu releases, what’s interesting is their road ahead on the Ubuntu toolchain front for developers… ⌘ Read more

Intel Media Driver 2026Q1 Continues Nova Lake S Enablement
Intel today published their official quarterly feature release to their open-source Media Driver providing Video Acceleration API (VA-API) support on Linux… ⌘ Read more

QEMU 11.0 Released With CET Virtualization Support, Native Nitro Enclaves
The QEMU 11.0 emulator is now available for this important piece of the open-source Linux virtualization stack… ⌘ Read more

F2FS, EXT4 & XFS Focus On Fixes For Linux 7.1
The Flash Friendly File-System (F2FS) updates have been merged for the ongoing Linux 7.1 merge window that will wrap up on Sunday. This follows earlier merges for the XFS and EXT4 drivers too… ⌘ Read more

Linux May Drop Old Network Drivers Now That AI-Driven Bug Reports Are Causing A Burden
Old network maintenance drivers are becoming a maintenance burden in the era of fuzzing and predominantly AI-driven bug detection causing an uptick in possible bug/security reports to upstream Linux kernel developers but with these drivers potentially having no actual users… ⌘ Read more

AlmaLinux Comments On California Age Verification Law
The RHEL-derived AlmaLinux is the latest Linux distribution commenting on the recent age verification laws led by California with their Digital Age Assurance Act… ⌘ Read more

NTFS-3G FUSE Driver Sees First New Release In Four Years
Coming today as a big surprise – one week after the new NTFS file-system driver was merged for Linux 7.1 and separately the existing NTFS3 kernel driver seeing some fixes – is a new release of the NTFS-3G driver providing a FUSE-based user-space driver for NTFS on Linux and other platforms… ⌘ Read more

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Benchmarks: The Best Desktop Performance For Linux Developers, Creators
Today we can finally share performance benchmarks of the long-rumored AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition processor. This new halo product for the Ryzen 9000 series desktop line-up offers captivating performance for developers frequently compiling code, creators, technical computing workloads for students or hobbyists or those not able to afford a Threadripper / EPYC type workstation, or similar heavy computing use. With … ⌘ Read more