Fwupd 2.0.20 Brings New Hardware Support
Fwupd/LVFS lead developer Richard Hughes of Red Hat today released Fwupd 2.0.20 with continuing to advance firmware updating on Linux systems… ⌘ Read more
Mesa 26.0.1 Released With Important Security Fix For OOB Memory Access From WebGPU
Mesa 26.0.1 is now available as the first point release of this quarter’s Mesa 26.0 series. Besides the usual bug fixing, Mesa 26.0.1 is more pressing than usual since it contains a security fix for possible out-of-bounds memory access in WebGPU contexts from web browsers… ⌘ Read more
Sub-Scheduler Support Could Be One Of The Most Exciting Features To Come For Linux 7.1
While there are many great Linux 7.0 features with that still-young development cycle, looking ahead to Linux 7.1 this summer there’s an interesting feature on track: cgroup sub-scheduler support for sched_ext… ⌘ Read more
Systing 1.0 Released For Rust-Based eBPF-Based Tracing Tool Leveraging AI
Josef Bacik, of Btrfs notoriety before leaving Meta and stepping back from kernel development last year, announced the release of Systing 1.0. Systing is a newer eBPF-tracing tool for Linux complete with AI integration… ⌘ Read more
Lutris 0.5.21 Adds Support For Running Games Inside Valve’s Latest Steam Runtime
Lutris 0.5.21 is now available as the latest version of this open-source Linux game manager. With Lutris 0.5.21 comes some new runners for executing games in different environments… ⌘ Read more
COSMIC Epoch 1.0.8 Released With More Desktop Refinements
While System76 has been hard at work on a redesigned Thelio desktop chassis design, this hasn’t slowed down their software work. Today they shipped COSMIC Epoch 1.0.8 as the newest work on their open-source, Rust-based desktop environment used by their in-house Pop!_OS Linux distribution as well as found in other Linux distributions too… ⌘ Read more
Linus Torvalds Drops Old Linux Kconfig Option To Address Tiresome Kernel Log Spam
Following yesterday’s Linux 7.0-rc1 release, Linus Torvalds authored and merged a patch to get rid of the Linux kernel’s WARN_ALL_UNSEEDED_RANDOM Kconfig option. While that option was added with good intentions, on some systems it can yield a lot of unnecessary kernel log spam… ⌘ Read more
Linus Torvalds: Someone ‘More Competent Who Isn’t Afraid of Numbers Past the Teens’ Will Take Over Linux One Day
Linus Torvalds has pondered his professional mortality in a self-deprecating post to mark the release of the first release candidate for version 7.0 of the Linux kernel. From a report: “You all know the drill by now: two weeks have passed, and the kernel … ⌘ Read more
Intel Releases OpenVINO 2026 With Improved NPU Handling, Expanded LLM Support
Intel’s open-source OpenVINO AI toolkit is out with its first major release of 2026. With today’s OpenVINO 2026.0 release there is expanded large language model (LLM) support, improved Intel NPU support for Core Ultra systems, and a variety of other enhancements for benefiting Intel’s CPU / NPU / GPU range of products for AI… ⌘ 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
Modern AMD Graphics Driver Surpasses Six Million Lines Of Code In Linux 7.0
It was less than four years ago that the modern AMDGPU/AMDKFD open-source driver stack was at four million lines of C code and header files. Now with the Linux 7.0 kernel it has surpassed six million lines. Or put another way, by the same calculations Linux 7.0-rc1 is at 39.2 million with the modern AMD kernel graphics driver now making up 15% of the kernel’s entire codebase as the single largest driver… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 Credits Now Honor The Creator Of Linux-Next
There’s the usual flurry of last minute fixes and other items being herded into the Linux 7.0 codebase today right ahead of the merge window being closed with the imminent Linux 7.0-rc1 release. Among that last minute work is now recognizing Stephen Rothwell’s contributions to creating and maintaining Linux-Next over the past eighteen years… ⌘ Read more
AMD Zen 6 Performance Events & Metrics Merged For Linux 7.0
Ahead of the Linux 7.0 merge window closing later today with the Linux 7.0-rc1 release, the performance “perf” subsystem tooling changes were merged on Saturday. Among the notable changes here are the performance events and metrics handling for upcoming AMD Zen 6 processors… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 Further Prepares For Intel Diamond Rapids With NTB Driver Support
The upstream Linux kernel appears largely ready for Intel’s next-generation Xeon Diamond Rapids processors as the successor to Granite Rapids. Most of the driver support appears to have been settled for a while with just some stragglers remaining. With the ongoing Linux 7.0 kernel one new addition for Diamond Rapids is NTB driver support… ⌘ Read more
Microsoft Hyper-V Lands Some Useful Improvements In Linux 7.0
For those dealing with Microsoft Hyper-V for virtualization, the Linux 7.0 mainline kernel has seen a number of improvements there. This work follows KVM also bringing some nice improvements in Linux 7.0… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 Makes Preparations For Rust 1.95
Last week was the main feature pull of Rust programming language updates for the Linux 7.0 kernel merge window. Most notable with that pull was Rust officially concluding its “experimental” in now treating Rust for Linux kernel/driver programming as stable and here to stay. Sent out today was a round of Rust fixes for Linux 7.0 that includes preparations for the upcoming Rust 1.95 release… ⌘ 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
ollama 0.17 Released With Improved OpenClaw Onboarding
The open-source ollama project that makes it easy to get up and running with a variety of LLMs under Windows, macOS, and Linux is out with a new release. The ollama v0.17.0 release is driven by new functionality around enhancing the OpenClaw onboarding process… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 Lands More AMDGPU Fixes For Old Radeon Hardware
Following last week’s main set of DRM kernel graphics driver feature updates for Linux 7.0, merged on Friday to Linux 7.0 Git was the first round of fixes to these Direct Rendering Manager drivers. Dominating most of the code changes in this latest pull were AMDGPU fixes, including more enhancements for aging Radeon graphics processors… ⌘ Read more
AMD AOMP 23.0-0 Compiler Continues Enhancing Fortran Support
AMD AOMP 23.0-0 was released overnight as the latest build of this LLVM/Clang downstream that continues to carry the very latest AMD patches focused on delivering the best support for GPU offloading to Radeon/Instinct hardware with the likes of the OpenMP and OpenACC APIs. AOMP continues to serve as a great leading-edge compiler for the best AMD GPU offloading experience until the patches ultimately work their way into upstream LLVM… ⌘ Read more
Ceph In Linux 7.0 Lands Support For AES256K Keys
For those making use of the Ceph open-source, distributed storage platform, with the upcoming Linux 7.0 kernel they are introducing support for the AES256K key type… ⌘ Read more
Drgn v0.1 Released For Very Versatile Programmable Debugger
Drgn is the programmable debugger developed by Meta engineer Omar Sandoval that has proven quite versatile and popular with Linux kernel developers and others. After nearly two dozen releases already, Drgn v0.1 was released this week as another big step forward for this open-source debugger… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 Shows Significant PostgreSQL Performance Gains On AMD EPYC
When beginning some early Linux 7.0 kernel benchmarking this week for looking at its performance in its early development state, I started off testing on Core Ultra X7 “Panther Lake” in being hopeful for better performance with the maturing Arc B390 Xe3 graphics and the like. But I ended up finding Intel Panther Lake seeing some performance regressions on Linux 7.0. So next up I turned to an AMD EPYC Turin server since if regressions existed th … ⌘ Read more
Linux Begins Seeing Early Preparations For PCIe 7.0
While we are on the horizon of seeing PCI Express 6.0 devices, there are already early Linux kernel patches beginning to surface for PCI Express 7.0… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 Brings Apple Type-C PHY, Snapdragon X2 & Rockchip HDMI 2.1 FRL Additions
Ahead of the Linux 7.0 merge window ending this weekend, the PHY updates were merged this week for this next major kernel release. There are some notable PHY additions particularly for Apple Silicon USB Type-C support as well as additions for Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X2 laptop SoCs… ⌘ Read more
USB Driver For Google Tensor SoCs, UCSI Thunderbolt Alt Mode In Linux 7.0
All of the Thunderbolt/USB driver changes were merged this week for the nearly-over Linux 7.0 merge window… ⌘ Read more
Turbostat With Linux 7.0 Can Report New L2 Cache Statistics
The Turbostat command-line utility for reporting processor frequency and idle statistics along with other useful information for AMD and Intel CPUs can now report some L2 cache stats for recent Intel CPUs beginning with Linux 7.0… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 Speeds Up Reclaiming File-Backed Large Folios By 50~75%
Merged on Wednesday were some additional memory management “MM” updates for the Linux 7.0 merge window. Most interesting out of these latest three dozen patches is support for batched unmapping of file-backed large folios… ⌘ Read more
Linux Still Working To Clean Up The Realtek RTL8723BS 802.11b/g/n WiFi Driver In 2026
Introduced to the Linux 4.12 kernel’s staging area back in 2017 was the Realtek RTL8723BS WiFi driver. The Realtek RTL8723BS is an 802.11 b/g/ SDIO WLAN adapter with Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity too. In the nearly decade since this driver was added to the staging area, it’s continued to be cleaned up and with the Linux 7.0 merge window there is yet again a lot of work on cleaning up this WiFi driver for the old Realtek hardware… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 Showing Some Early Performance Regressions On Intel Panther Lake
With the Linux 7.0 merge window beginning to calm down ahead of the 7.0-rc1 release due out on Sunday, one of the areas I was most excited about benchmarking on Linux 7.0 was looking for any performance gains with the new Intel Core Ultra Series 3 “Panther Lake” given ongoing Intel Xe graphics driver improvements and other general kernel optimizations. Unfortunately, at large the Intel Panther Lake performance is moving in the wrong directio … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 Retires The IBM Mwave ACP Modem Driver Used By Some 1990s ThinkPads
Long past due for retirement, the Linux 7.0 kernel has removed the obsolete Mwave driver for the 3780i ACP Modem found in some Pentium II era IBM ThinkPads from the 1990s… ⌘ Read more
Linus Torvalds on How Linux Went From One-Man Show To Group Effort
Linus Torvalds has told The Register how Linux went from a solo hobby project on a single 386 PC in Helsinki to a genuinely collaborative effort, and the path involved crowdsourced checks, an FTP mirror at MIT, and a licensing decision that opened the floodgates.
Torvalds released the first public snapshot, Linux 0.02, on October 5, 1991, o … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 Brings Several Enhancements For Modern Laptops
The x86 platform driver updates were merged recently for the ongoing Linux 7.0 merge window. As is a common theme for platform-drivers-x86, a lot of the feature work is around Linux laptop drivers for enhancing the support on modern hardware… ⌘ Read more
LoongArch Ready With New Features In Linux 7.0
The Linux 7.0 kernel is shipping improvements for LoongArch, the Chinese CPU architecture inspired by MIPS64 and RISC-V and has been showing much potential for their domestic PC manufacturing… ⌘ Read more
FreeBSD’s KDE Desktop Install Option Ready For Testing
As part of enhancing the FreeBSD experience on laptops and desktops, FreeBSD developers have been working toward adding a convenient desktop install option to their text-based installer for easily deploying the KDE Plasma desktop along with the necessary GPU drivers. After it didn’t get wrapped up in time for the FreeBSD 15.0 release, that desktop installer option is now ready for testing… ⌘ Read more
Intel Lands Initial Preparations For DSA 3.0 Accelerators In Linux 7.0
Last year we began seeing Linux patches preparing the kernel for Intel Data Streaming Accelerator “DSA” 3.0 IP. Finally with the Linux 7.0 kernel those patches in updated form have now been merged… ⌘ Read more
FreeBSD’s KDE Desktop Install Option Ready For Testing
As part of enhancing the FreeBSD experience on laptops and desktops, FreeBSD developers have been working toward adding a convenient desktop install option to their text-based installer for easily deploying the KDE Plasma desktop along with the necessary GPU drivers. After it didn’t get wrapped up in time for the FreeBSD 15.0 release, that desktop installer option is now ready for testing… ⌘ Read more
KVM In Linux 7.0 Adds Support For Virtualizing AMD ERAPS
All of the KVM virtualization feature changes were recently merged for the in-development Linux 7.0 kernel… ⌘ Read more
NTFS3 Driver Sees Improvements In Linux 7.0 While “NTFS Remake” Driver Bakes
The NTFS3 driver maintained by Paragon Software for Microsoft NTFS file-systems today saw a batch of improvements merged for Linux 7.0 This comes as there is also the competing “NTFS Remake” driver that began a few months ago as the “NTFSPLUS” driver. That NTFS Remake driver isn’t looking like it will be submitted for the Linux 7.0 merge window so at least for now the NTFS3 driver continues seeing improvements with the latest mainline kernel code … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 Lands New TI RGB LED Driver With “Autonomous Animation Engine” Control
The LED subsystem updates for the Linux kernel typically aren’t too noteworthy each kernel cycle but with Linux 7.0 is a new TI RGB LED driver that captured my attention in being curious over its “autonomous animation engine” integration… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 Merges “Significant Improvement” For close_range System Call
The close_range system call for closing all file descriptors “FDs” in a given range should enjoy a nice speed boost with the in-development Linux 7.0 kernel… ⌘ Read more
Micron’s PCIe 6.0 SSD Hits Mass Production at 28 GB/s
Micron has begun mass production of the 9650 series, the industry’s first PCIe 6.0 SSD, capable of sequential read speeds up to 28 GB/s and random read performance of 5.5 million IOPS – roughly double the throughput of the fastest PCIe 5.0 drives available today.
The drive targets AI and data center workloads and ships in E1.S and E3.S form factors across two varia … ⌘ Read more
Nova Lake S Support Added To Intel LPSS Driver In Linux 7.0
The latest Nova Lake enablement work for the Linux kernel to land is adding support for Nova Lake S platforms to the Intel LPSS driver in the upcoming Linux 7.0 kernel… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 CXL Enables AMD Zen 5 Address Translation Feature
A long-in-development feature for AMD EPYC Zen 5 server platforms now merged for the Linux 7.0 kernel is ACPI PRMT-based address translation for the Compute Express Link (CXL) subsystem… ⌘ Read more
Lutris 0.5.20 Linux Game Manager Brings New Features, Wine Wayland Option
For fans of Lutris as the open-source desktop client for installing and playing many games on Linux, Lutris 0.5.20 is out today with new features that further enhance the integration with different emulators and compatibility layers… ⌘ Read more
RISC-V In Linux 7.0 Brings User-Space CFI & Optimized strlen Assembly
The RISC-V architecture updates have been merged for Linux 7.0 with a few items to note… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 Driver Core Changes Bring More Enhancements For Rust Kernel Drivers
Merged a few days ago for the Linux 7.0 kernel were all of the driver core enhancements. As has been the common theme in recent kernel releases, a lot of the driver core code churn revolves around additions for allowing more Rust kernel driver usage… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 Better Segregates Legacy CardBus Code To Avoid On Modern PCs
The PCI subsystem updates for Linux 7.0 are aplenty as usual and contain a wide assortment of different fixes and code improvements… ⌘ Read more
OpenRISC With Linux 7.0 Improves Out-Of-The-Box Support For More FPGA Dev Boards
While the OpenRISC project began ten years before RISC-V was started, it hasn’t enjoyed the hardware ecosystem successes of the latter but still the upstream Linux kernel support continues moving forward and the ability to run OpenRISC on FPGA developer boards… ⌘ Read more