The Linux Kernel AI Flood, Linux 7.2 Release & Other August Highlights
It was a very busy month of August with the Linux kernel developers continue to be flooded with AI/LLM-generated patches and bug reports. Plus there was the general resolution on AI usage within the Debian project and other open-source projects now evolving in the AI era. With the Linux 7.2 stable release and Linux 7.3 merge window, the past month was all the more eventful… ⌘ Read more
EDAC Changes Merged For Linux 7.3 After Being Forgotten About During The Merge Window
While the Linux 7.3 merge window officially closed on Sunday with the Linux 7.3-rc1 release, the Error Detection And Correction “EDAC” subsystem changes were mistakenly forgotten about during the two week window. The pull request ended up being sent out on Monday evening and the late feature changes were already merged to Git… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 Features Many Exciting Improvements, New Hardware Support & Faster Btrfs
With Linux 7.3-rc1 released to cap off the two week merge window, here is a look at the many exciting changes merged for the Linux 7.3 kernel that is working its way toward release in the second half of October. ⌘ Read more
Belated #Caturday memory: That time that Bonnie Prince Shadow declared himself king of the maneki-neko in an attempt to overthrow Emperor Maximilian I.
He gave up on the insurrection when he realized that waving was all they could do.
Linux 7.3-rc1 Close To 41 Million Lines, AMD Kernel Graphics Driver At 6.5 Million Lines
With Linus Torvalds remarking in the Linux 7.3-rc1 release announcement of the AMD kernel graphics driver changes for amounting around a third of the -rc1 changes due to the big AMD GPU register files for DCN 6.0 and other new IP additions, here are some fresh code stats at large… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3-rc1 With AMD Zen 6 Additions, Better Btrfs Performance & 2026 Steam Controller
Like clockwork, the Linux 7.3 merge window has concluded after two weeks and the Linux 7.3-rc1 kernel now available for testing… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 Lands More Audio Workarounds For Laptops & Other Devices
Following last week’s main set of sound subsystem updates for Linux 7.3 that brought a lot of new audio hardware support, a second round of sound updates were merged this weekend ahead of today’s Linux 7.3-rc1 release… ⌘ Read more
AMD Zen 6 Preparations, Ryzen AI Halo LED Driver & Many Laptop Changes For Linux 7.3
The x86 platform driver changes are now in place for the Linux 7.3 kernel with additions for upcoming AMD Zen 6 hardware, the RGB LED driver controls for the Ryzen AI Halo PC, and a lot of laptop support additions and improvements for a variety of devices from different hardware vendors. Plus some handheld gaming device updates too… ⌘ Read more
SpaceX Launching NASA’s Roman Space Telescope to Explore Dark Energy and Habitable Planets
SpaceX is scheduled to launch the Roman Space Telescope on a Falcon Heavy rocket, with the launch window opening at 7:26 a.m. EDT (1126 GMT). NASA will carry the launch live on YouTube.
CNN offers this mission overview from NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “Roman will investigate dark matte … ⌘ Read more
The “KVM Chainsaw” Clean-Up Merged For Linux 7.3 Along With Other Fixes
The Kernel-based Virtual Machine “KVM” changes have landed for the Linux 7.3 merge window that is wrapping up later today… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 Introduces 8250_mxpcie Driver For Moxa PCIe Multi-Port Serial Boards
The TTY/Serial code changes for Linux 7.3 were merged this week and include dropping the dated IPWireless driver while introducing the new 8250_mxpcie driver… ⌘ Read more
RTL8723BS Driver Continues Dominating The Staging Area Activity For Linux 7.3
Upstreamed back in 2017 for Linux 4.12 was the RTL8723BS driver in the kernel’s staging area. Nine years later it remains in staging and remains a frequent target for clean-ups and code improvements as it tries to work its way out… ⌘ Read more
F2FS With Now Handle Multi-Device Flushes In Parallel With Linux 7.3
Coming in as a late pull request ahead of the Linux 7.3 merge window closing this weekend were the Flash Friendly File-System (F2FS) updates that have now made it into Linux Git… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 UBI Adds Support For Per-Device Wear-Leveling Thresholds
The Unsorted Block Images “UBI” layer in the Linux kernel for NAND flash memory tracking and wear leveling finally has the notion of per-device wear-leveling thresholds… ⌘ Read more
Union QtWidgets Sees Initial Release For Advancing KDE Plasma’s Union
Premiering in KDE Plasma 6.7 was Union as the new CSS-based style/theming engine for Plasma. Union ultimately aims to address KDE’s fragmented ways of styling apps. As a step closer to that goal, there is now the initial release of Union for QtWidgets support… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 TPM Makes Cleanup Preparations For TrenchBoot
The Trusted Platform Module (TPM) subsystem changes for the Linux 7.3 kernel are centered around code clean-ups and improvements being made as a precursor toward TrenchBoot support… ⌘ Read more
The Linux Kernel Is Approaching 2,000 CVEs Per Release
With the proliferation of AI/LLM models analyzing the Linux kernel’s vast codebase, there has been a surge in the number of CVEs per kernel release. After typically being around 500 CVEs fixed per release, we are now approaching 2,000 CVEs fixed per release and perhaps will break that threshold for Linux 7.3… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 Will Begin Checking USB-C Cables For Alt-Mode Support
The USB and Thunderbolt changes have been merged for Linux 7.3. Two changes stand out for me in the USB subsystem code with Linux 7.3. First, the kernel arguably being long overdue for checking USB-C cables capabilities whether they support alt-modes. Second, a new low-latency USB4STREAM option for lower latency data transfers between USB4-connected systems… ⌘ Read more
Old IBM Driver Joins Insecure SGI Drivers In Being Removed For Linux 7.3
The char/misc changes were merged this week for the Linux 7.3 cycle. While there is a lot of IIO driver churn as usual and updates to the likes of the Google Binder drivers, there continues to be the 2026 trend of removing old hardware drivers that are rarely updated these days and likely have no active users left on the mainline Linux kernel. This trend is further pushed along by the surplus of AI/LLM-generated bug reports and patches … ⌘ Read more
AMD Preparing To Enable HDMI 2.1 FRL Support By Default For Linux
It was back in May that the surprising event happened of AMD posting HDMI 2.1 FRL patches for their open-source AMDGPU Linux driver as part of their broader HDMI 2.1 bring-up. For years the open-source HDMI 2.1 support in AMDGPU was blocked by the HDMI Forum but whether it was due to Valve or some other event, the code was finally unblocked. While it’s been part of the kernel since Linux 7.2, it’s been disabled by default – except that is now c … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 MGLRU Change Helps Executable Code Stays In Memory, Improving Performance
Following last week’s main set of memory management “MM” related updates for Linux 7.3, another batch of MM code updates were submitted and merged today as we prepare to close out the Linux 7.3 merge window. There are a few optimization patches that stand out along with other mostly small fixes/changes… ⌘ Read more
AMD Jumps From ROCm 7.14 To ROCm 10.0 With ROCm.AI
Back in July ROCm 7.14 was announced as their new production release built atop TheRock build system and introducing Ryzen AI 400 series support. The versioning choice was a bit odd since ROCm 7.2 was the stable release at the time while ROCm 7.9+ turned into “tech preview” releases. With ROCm 7.14, it was declared stable. In clearing up that versioning mess, they have done a major version bump… to ROCm 10.0… ⌘ Read more
Btrfs, EXT4, F2FS & XFS On Linux 7.2 vs. Linux 7.3 Performance
Earlier this week I showed off some of the very nice Btrfs performance gains on Linux 7.3. For those wondering what kernel optimizations may have carried over to other file-systems or other file-system specific enhancements, here are Linux 7.2 vs. 7.3 Git performance benchmarks across Btrfs, EXT4, F2FS, and XFS on the same system. ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 Adds RWF_DONTCACHE Support For Block Devices
With the never-ending quest for greater I/O performance in the HPC space and the demands all the more relentless in the AI era, the Linux kernel block subsystem activity continues to be as vibrant as ever along with the ongoing innovations in the IO_uring space… ⌘ Read more
AppArmor In Linux 7.3 Adds Support For User-Space Compressed Policies
The AppArmor improvements have been merged for Linux 7.3 for this kernel security module providing per-program Linux application security controls around system resources. Most notable this cycle is being able to load user-space compressed policies… ⌘ Read more
NFS Improvements Arrive For Linux 7.3
The Network File-System (NFS) improvements for both the client and server code have been merged for the nearly-over Linux 7.3 merge window… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 KSMBD Adds Interoperability For Apple Time Machine Backups
KSMBD as the in-kernel SMB3/CIFS server for higher performance and lower resource usage than user-space SMB/CIFS protocol implementations is becoming even more useful with the in-development Linux 7.3 kernel… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 FUSE Delivering Nice Performance Improvements
The Linux kernel’s FUSE code for enabling file-systems in user-space is enjoying some nice speed boosts with the in-development Linux 7.3 kernel… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 PCI Code Adds Advisory Non-Fatal Errors, Intel Dunlow Support
All of the PCI/PCIe subsystem updates for the in-development Linux 7.3 kernel were merged this week… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0-mk2 Released For Multi-Kernel Linux With Promising Performance Results
Last year a multi-kernel architecture was proposed for the Linux kernel to allow multiple independent kernel instances to co-exist on a single physical machine. Each kernel with “multikernel” Linux can run on dedicated CPU cores whole sharing the underlying hardware resources. Linux 7.0-mk2 released today with the kernel patched for this multi-kernel behavior… ⌘ Read more
COSMIC Epoch 1.7 Released: No Longer Slow Browsing Network Filesystems
COSMIC Epoch 1.7 is out today as the newest update to this Rust-based open-source desktop environment with development led by System76… ⌘ Read more
Apple Announces New Mac Mini With M6 and M5 Pro Chips
Apple has unveiled a new Mac mini with either its new M6 chip or the M5 Pro chip released earlier this year. It adds faster CPU, GPU, storage, and AI performance along with Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and 2.5Gb Ethernet as standard. There’s also a new higher starting price of $899, which is up from the previous $799 base price and far above the $599 starting price of th … ⌘ Read more
Benchmarking Some Incredible Performance Gains With Btrfs On Linux 7.3
With the Btrfs pull request for Linux 7.3 having delivered more performance optimizations with some ~3x and ~5x gains mentioned in specific areas, I was eager to test out the new Btrfs performance on the in-development kernel. In today’s article are some benchmarks of Btrfs on Linux 7.2 stable compared to Linux 7.3 Git with some very enticing performance gains confirmed in various workloads. ⌘ Read more
The Modern NTFS Linux Driver Adds Read Support For Windows System Compression (WOF)
The pull requests for the existing Paragon NTFS3 kernel driver as well as the new modern “NTFS” drivers have been submitted for the ongoing Linux 7.3 kernel cycle. Besides bug fixes, most notable among these NTFS file-system drivers are Windows System Compression “WOF” read support for the modern NTFS driver… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 Device Mapper Sees Many Fixes, Including Code Cleanups By Claude Opus
The Linux Device Mapper “DKM” framework for mapping block devices to higher-level virtual block devices doesn’t see any major new features for Linux 7.3 but there are many bug fixes, including code clean-ups carried out by AI… ⌘ Read more
DisplayPort 2.1 ALPM Still Being Worked On For Intel Xe3P / Nova Lake
The in-development Linux 7.3 kernel is marking Nova Lake Xe3P graphics as stable in being enabled by default and no longer hidden behind the “force probe” flag. While on-by-default, there still are some features that have yet to land like the DisplayPort 2.1 ALPM functionality… ⌘ Read more
Lots Of New Audio Hardware Support In Linux 7.3
Linux sound subsystem maintainer Takashi Iwai of SUSE submitted all of the sound feature updates last week for the Linux 7.3 kernel. Besides the continued AI/LLM-generated patch churn, the sound code for Linux 7.3 sees a lot of new hardware support… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 Merges Initial Kernel Driver Support For The 2026 Steam Controller
The HID subsystem updates were recently merged for the ongoing Linux 7.3 kernel merge window. Among other hardware additions, the 2026 Valve Steam Controller is seeing initial kernel driver support… ⌘ Read more
New AF_ALG Restrictions With Linux 7.3 Due To The Security & Maintenance Nightmare
The past few Linux kernel cycles have chipped away at AF_ALG functionality for that interface for user-space programs to access the kernel’s internal cryptography API. Linux has been dropping AF_ALG features like zero-copy support and offloading. AF_ALG was quickly deprecated in Linux 7.2 while now for Linux 7.3 it’s being further restricted… ⌘ Read more
China Delays Ambitious Chang’e 7 Lunar Mission Until 2027
China has delayed its ambitious Chang’e 7 lunar mission until at least 2027 after scrubbing an August 24 launch. Poor weather conditions were likely a factor, with China’s Manned Space Agency (CMSA) saying the decision reflects the need for “absolute safety.” Scientific American reports: China and the U.S. are in a race to send humans back to the moon, a fea … ⌘ Read more
Early Linux 7.3 Kernel Benchmarks Show Some Performance Improvements, Some Regressions
Being halfway through the Linux 7.3 kernel merge window and prior to wrapping up and sending back the HP Z4 G6i workstation powered by the Xeon 678X Granite Rapids WS processor, I decided to run some benchmarks to see how Linux 7.3 Git is performing relative to the prior stable kernel series. Here are the first benchmarks of this early state of Linux 7.3 with some performance improvements as well as some regressions. ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 Adds Support For Several Newer RISC-V Extensions
With the in-development Linux 7.3 is support for discovering and enumerating support for several newer RISC-V ISA extensions. Plus there are improvements to its control flow integrity Shadow Stack handling, CPU context switch support for QoS tagging, using UEFI runtime services for restart and powering off, and other improvements… ⌘ Read more
AMD k10temp Driver Adds EPYC Zen 5 Per-CCD Temperature Monitoring With Linux 7.3
Merged last week for the Linux 7.3 kernel were all the hardware monitoring (HWMON) driver updates for Linux 7.3, which included supporting several more ASUS desktop motherboards, a few AIO liquid cooling products, more Lenovo system support, and per-CCD temperature monitoring on AMD EPYC 9005 server processors… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 Improving RAID 5/6 Benchmark-Based Algorithm Selection
Following the main set of memory management “MM” changes submitted for Linux 7.3, Andrew Morton sent in his “non-MM” pull request of the other patches he’s been collecting from various developers for this next Linux kernel release. Standing out there were some improvements to the RAID 5/6 benchmark-based algorithm selection… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 Better Protects Against Buggy EFI Firmware Taking Down The Rest Of User-Space
The EFI updates were merged today for the in-development Linux 7.3 kernel. Most notable with the EFI updates is now enforcing a timeout foe EFI runtime service completions rather than potentially hanging indefinitely… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 Delivers Graphics Driver Improvements From Old GPUs To Next-Gen Hardware
The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem updates have been merged for the ongoing Linux 7.3 merge window. There is a lot of exciting GPU kernel driver improvements this cycle ranging from some notable enhancements to old AMD Radeon graphics hardware up through enabling support for some next-generation AMD graphics IP blocks to over on the Intel side where Nova Lake S graphics are being enabled by default… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 Makes Preparations Toward Upstreaming FAMFS File-System
The NVDIMM and direct access (DAX) patches have been merged for the Linux 7.3 cycle. Most of the DAX/NVDIMM activity this cycle is on making preparations for the upcoming submission of Micron’s FAMFS file-system… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 Introduces New AES Encryption APIs - Will Open Up More Performance
Eric Biggers of Google continues carrying out great work on the Linux kernel crypto code. For Linux 7.3 he’s landed work on new library APIs for most of the AES encryption modes used within the kernel. Moving forward this will open the door to more performance optimizations, reducing code duplication, and other enhancements… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.3 Input Subsystem Updates Merged With Security Fixes, Other Improvements
The big set of input subsystem updates were merged earlier this week for the Linux 7.3 cycle. It’s a random assortment of different improvements as well as bug/security fixes driven in part by the flow of AI/LLM generated discoveries… ⌘ Read more
Longtime Linux CIFS/SMB3 Maintainer Passes Away
There is a changing of the guard with Linux 7.3 as the maintainer of the Common Internet File System (CIFS) / SMB3 code within the Linux kernel. Longtime maintainer, principal Linux CIFS author, and current Microsoft employee Steve French has stepped down due to health reasons… ⌘ Read more