Linux 6.19 Delivers Working USB3 Support For Apple Silicon Devices
Merged last night for the Linux 6.19 kernel merge window were all of the USB and Thunderbolt driver changes. Standing out this cycle is Apple Silicon devices like the M1 Macs now having working USB3 support on the mainline Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Delivers Working USB3 Support For Apple Silicon Devices
Merged last night for the Linux 6.19 kernel merge window were all of the USB and Thunderbolt driver changes. Standing out this cycle is Apple Silicon devices like the M1 Macs now having working USB3 support on the mainline Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA Plumbs DMA-BUF Support For VFIO PCI Devices In Linux 6.19
In addition to NVIDIA improving peer-to-peer (P2P) DMA for block devices in Linux 6.19, NVIDIA also led an effort providing DMA-BUF support for VFIO PCI devices for opening up some interesting new cases moving forward. As part of the VFIO pull request this new functionality has landed for Linux 6.19… ⌘ Read more

Rust Drivers In Linux 6.19 Will Now Support… Module Parameters
On top of the Rust driver core changes and other Rust code for Linux 6.19, the modules infrastructure for this new kernel version is also bringing some new code. Surprisingly, it’s taken until now for Rust kernel modules/drivers to support module parameters as is common practice for passing different options when booting the kernel or manually loading kernel drivers with extra non-default options… ⌘ Read more

New Jolla Phone Now Available for Pre-Order as an Independent Linux Phone
Jolla is “trying again with a new crowd-funded smartphone,” reports Phoronix:

Finnish company Jolla started out 14 years ago where Nokia left off with MeeGo and developed Sailfish OS as a new Linux smartphone platform. Jolla released their first smartphone in 2013 after crowdfunding but ultimately the Sailfish OS focus the pa … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Adds New Console Font To Better Handle Modern Laptops With HiDPI Displays
Sent in for the Linux 6.19 merge window when it comes to the frame-buffer device “FBDEV” subsystem are just a set of “fixes” for FBDEV drivers and code clean-ups. But it does also include a new console font option for better supporting modern laptops with high density displays… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft’s RAMDAX Driver Merged For Linux 6.19 To Carve Out RAM As NVDIMM Devices
The Non-Volatile Memory Device (NVDIMM) subsystem updates were merged today for the in-development Linux 6.19 kernel. Most notable this cycle for the NVDIMM code is a new open-source driver addition courtesy of Microsoft… ⌘ Read more

Tenstorrent Blackhole Support & Other New RISC-V + ARM64 Hardware In Linux 6.19
The set of six branches containing SoC and platform updates/additions for the Linux 6.19 kernel have been merged for enabling a lot of new RISC-V and ARM 64-bit hardware as well as enhancing some existing SoCs/platforms… ⌘ Read more

Linus Torvalds Defends Windows’ Blue Screen of Death
Linus Torvalds recently defended Windows’ infamous Blue Screen of Death during a video with Linus Sebastian of Linus Tech Tips, where the two built a PC together. It’s FOSS reports: In that video, Sebastian discussed Torvalds’ fondness for ECC (Error Correction Code). I am using their last name because Linus will be confused with Linus. This is where Torvalds says this: … ⌘ Read more

FEX 2512 Released With More Improvements For Gaming On ARM64 Linux
FEX 2512 is out toda as the newest monthly update for this software that enables running x86/x86_64 Linux binaries on ARM64 Linux, including the likes of Wine and Valve’s Steam Play (Proton) for being able to run Windows games on 64-bit ARM Linux devices… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Brings Many Driver Core Changes For Rust, Housekeeping CPUs Exposed
Beyond the main set of Rust changes to land in Linux 6.19 earlier this week, as we near the end of the first week of two for the Linux 6.19 merge window… More Rust changes. This time around the driver core updates for the kernel bring a number of Rust changes… ⌘ Read more

An Intel Fellow & Prominent Linux Performance Engineer Resigns From Intel
There have been many Intel Linux/open-source software engineers to leave the company over the past year among other setbacks for their Linux/open-source initiatives. Announced this Friday night is one of their highest profile departures of the year as it pertains to their Linux efforts… ⌘ Read more

Linux Still Dealing With Quirky Firewire Devices As We Enter 2026
For Linux 6.19 as what will be the first stable kernel release of 2026, the IEEE-1394 Firewire stack continues dealing with device quirks and improving support for different Firewire-connected devices. In 2026 is also when the Linux Firewire maintainer plans to begin recommending users migrate away from the IEEE-1394 bus followed by closing the Linux Firewire efforts in 2029… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA Improves Block Layer Peer-To-Peer DMA In Linux 6.19
The IO_uring and block subsystem changes have been merged for the Linux 6.19 merge window with a few improvements worth highlighting this cycle… ⌘ Read more

Jolla Trying Again To Develop A New Sailfish OS Linux Smartphone
Finnish company Jolla started out 14 years ago where Nokia left off with MeeGo and developed Sailfish OS as a new Linux smartphone platform. Jolla released their first smartphone in 2013 after crowdfunding but ultimately the Sailfish OS focus the past number of years now has been offering their software stack for use on other smartphone devices. But now it seems they are trying again with a new crowd-funded smartphone… ⌘ Read more

AMD EPYC 7773X “Milan-X” Performance & Power Nearly Four Years Later
Nearly four years have passed since AMD launched their EPYC Milan-X processors with 3D V-Cache. When recently rearranging some servers in the lab and realizing the four year anniversary was coming up in March, curiosity got the best of me in wondering where the Linux performance and energy efficiency on Milan-X is now with the latest Linux software stack compared to the numbers when Milan-X launched back in March 2022. ⌘ Read more

Intel Updates Cache Aware Scheduling For Linux With Better NUMA Balancing
Intel engineer Tim Chen has sent out a second version of the proposed Cache Aware Scheduling patches for the Linux kernel to enhance the CPU performance of modern processors sporting multiple cache domains… ⌘ Read more

Venus Vulkan Driver Lands Mesh Shader Support In Mesa 26.0
Venus is the VirtIO-GPU driver that allows for Vulkan support within guest virtual machines permitting sufficient host driver support and other requirements in place with hypervisors like CrosVM and QEMU. The Venus driver now supports Vulkan’s mesh shader capabilities and in turn advances the DXVK-Proton support for Linux gaming within VMs… ⌘ Read more

Intel Graphics Score A Big Win With Linux 6.19: Color Management & Xe VFIO Driver Merged
On top of enabling Xe3P graphics for Nova Lake and Crescent Island plus other changes like CASF adaptive sharpening for Lunar Lake and newer, another set of Intel kernel graphics driver updates were merged overnight as a big win for the open-source Intel graphics stack on Linux… ⌘ Read more

Intel Nova Lake Audio Support Merged For Linux 6.19
The sound subsystem updates were merged on Thursday for enabling a variety of new audio hardware with the Linux 6.19. Among the hardware standing out is getting Intel Nova Lake audio support in order… ⌘ Read more

next-20251205: linux-next
Version:next-20251205 (linux-next)Released:2025-12-05 ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 GPU Driver Features: Color Pipeline API, Intel Xe3P, AMDGPU For GCN 1.0/1.1
The big set of kernel graphics driver features were merged today for the Linux 6.19 kernel. As usual there is a lot of new feature work on the AMD Radeon, Intel, and NVIDIA graphics drivers plus the smaller Arm/embedded graphics like now having initial Qualcomm Gen8 GPU support. Plus the growing number of accelerator “accel” drivers for NPUs / AI accelerators… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Brings Temperature Monitoring For The Steam Deck APU, Apple Silicon SMC
The many hardware monitoring (HWMON) subsystem updates were merged today for Linux 6.19 that is predominantly around delivering new hardware support… ⌘ Read more

FWIW, day 03 and day 04 where solved on SuSE Linux 6.4:

Performance really is an issue. Anything is fast on a modern machine with modern Python. But that old stuff, oof, it takes a while … 😅

Should have used C or Java. 🤪 Well, maybe I do have to fall back on that for later puzzles. We’ll see.

Printk Improvement For Linux 6.19 Can Significantly Speed-Up Boot Times For Some Systems
The Linux kernel’s printk code for logging kernel messages has some useful improvements with the Linux 6.19 kernel… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Fixes A Thundering Herd Problem For Big NUMA Servers
The “timers/core” pull requests for updating Linux kernel timer-related code doesn’t tend to be too interesting each kernel cycle, but this time around for Linux 6.19 it is for addressing a problem HPE discovered on big NUMA servers… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Will Allow Enforcing IPE Security Checks On Indirectly Executed Scripts
Linux’s Integrity Policy Enforcement “IPE” module is gaining a useful addition with the in-development Linux 6.19 kernel… ⌘ Read more

EXT4 Optimizes Online Defragmentation, Improves Performance & Larger Block Sizes
The merged EXT4 changes for Linux 6.19 bring some of the most prominent feature changes in recent times for this mature and widely-used Linux file-system… ⌘ Read more

next-20251204: linux-next
Version:next-20251204 (linux-next)Released:2025-12-04 ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Goes Ahead And Enables Microsoft C Extensions Support
Last month I reported on Linux 6.19 looking to enable Microsoft C Extensions support throughout the Linux kernel with setting the -fms-extensions compiler option to allow Microsoft C Extensions when building the kernel. Linus Torvalds today merged that support without objections… ⌘ Read more

Sched_EXT With Linux 6.19 Improves Recovering For Misbehaving eBPF Schedulers
The Linux kernel’s innovative sched_ext code for being able to easily write extensible task schedulers using eBPF programs has some nice enhancements merged for Linux 6.19… ⌘ Read more

Alpine Linux 3.23 Released With APK Tools v3 For Package Management
Alpine Linux 3.23 is out today as the newest feature release for this lightweight Linux distribution built around musl libc and BusyBox that has become quite popular for containers and embedded uses… ⌘ Read more

Intel’s Open-Source Linux Graphics Driver Delivered Significant Improvements In 2025
Last week I provided a look at how Intel’s GPU compute performance on Battlemage evolved in 2025. In today’s article is a similar Intel Arc A-Series “Alchemist” and B-Series “Battlemage” look at how the OpenGL and Vulkan graphics performance has evolved over the past year. Simply put, the open-source Intel Linux graphics driver stack has evolved immensely this year… Not just for Vulkan but even the OpenGL support cont … ⌘ Read more

Fedora 44 Cleared To Replace Kernel Console With User-Space KMSCON
A proposal was raised a month ago for Fedora Linux 44 to replace the kernel’s frame-buffer console “FBCON” with KMSCON in user-space. The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) has now granted approval for making this change in Fedora 44 as part of a larger foal to eventually deprecate FBCON/FBDEV emulation in the kernel… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.18 Officially Promoted To Being An LTS Kernel
Not exactly a big surprise but the recently released Linux 6.18 kernel is now officially promoted to being this year’s Long Term Support “LTS” kernel… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft ACPI Fan Extensions & Configurable Hibernation Threads For Linux 6.19
The pull requests landing the power management subsystem updates for Linux 6.19 along with the ACPI and thermal control code have landed. There is new hardware support, Microsoft ACPI Fan Extensions support, and other new features for Linux power management in this new kernel… ⌘ Read more

5.4.302: longterm
Version:5.4.302 (EOL) (longterm)Released:2025-12-03Source:linux-5.4.302.tar.xzPGP Signature:linux-5.4.302.tar.signPatch:full ( incremental)ChangeLog:ChangeLog-5.4.302 ⌘ Read more

Sound Open Firmware 2.14 Released With Intel Wildcat Lake & Nova Lake Support
Sound Open Firmware is one of the projects started originally by Intel but has grown into a multi-vendor initiative for open-source audio digital signal processing (DSP) firmware and development tooling for a variety of platforms under the Linux Foundation umbrella… ⌘ Read more

Scoped User Access In Linux 6.19 To Reduce Speculation Barriers & Its Performance Hit
Merged yesterday to the Linux 6.19 Git codebase was the “core/uaccess” pull that introduces new scoped user-mode access with auto-cleanup functionality. This can reduce the number of speculation barriers encountered when needing to access user-mode memory and thereby avoiding some of the performance penalties incurred by speculation barriers… ⌘ Read more

AES-GCM Optimizations Land In Linux 6.19 - Benefiting AMD Zen 3, AVX-512 CPUs Too
Google engineer Eric Biggers who is known for his many Linux crypto subsystem performance optimizations has seen his latest pull requests land in Linux 6.19. Notable among them are some AES-GCM optimizations benefiting AMD Zen 3 processors and separately AVX-512 processors also benefit too from this latest round of optimization work… ⌘ Read more

next-20251203: linux-next
Version:next-20251203 (linux-next)Released:2025-12-03 ⌘ Read more

Intel LASS, SGX EUPDATESVN & Microcode Staging Features Land In Linux 6.19
In addition to new AMD CPU features being merged today for Linux 6.19, there are also some new Intel CPU features that hit Linux Git today that are worth highlighting… ⌘ Read more

AMD Zen 6 RAS Preparation, AMD SDCI Features Merged For Linux 6.19
Linus Torvalds just merged another set of pull requests to Git for the in-development Linux 6.19 kernel. With the latest round of merges, there are two separate AMD changes worth highlighting… ⌘ Read more

Important Performance Work: Overhaul Of RSEQ & CID Management Merged For Linux 6.19
An important set of patches were just merged a few minutes ago to Linux Git for the ongoing Linux 6.19 kernel with some important performance implications… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Merges “klp-build” As New Livepatch Module Generation Solution
Merged as part of the objtool changes for the Linux 6.19 kernel is introducing the “klp-build” script as a new solution to generate livepatch modules using a source .patch file as the input. This klp-build effort was spearheaded by Josh Poimboeuf with ideas learned from the out-of-tree Kpatch project over the past decade… ⌘ Read more

Steam On Linux Hits An All-Time High In November
Steam’s November 2025 survey shows Linux gaming climbed to its highest share in a decade “thanks to the success of the Steam Deck, the underlying Steam Play (Proton) software, and now further excitement thanks to the upcoming Steam Machine and Steam Frame,” writes Phoronix’s Michael Larabel. From the report: A decade ago in the early Steam days the initial use was around 3% an … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 To Allow File-Systems To Increase The Writeback Chunk Size
Linux has maintained a default 4MB minimum writeback chunk size but with the in-development Linux 6.19 kernel it will allow file-systems to override that minimum value. This in turn can help avoid fragmentation and yield a better experience for zoned rotation media and other uses… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA 590.44.01 Beta Linux Driver Released With Wayland Improvements
NVIDIA today released the 590.44.01 Linux driver build as the first beta of their R590 series driver branch for Linux customers… ⌘ Read more

Canonical Now Offering Ubuntu Pro For WSL
Evidently Canonical has been pretty pleased with the uptake of Ubuntu on Microsoft’s Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) within enterprise/corporate environments as they are now offering Ubuntu Pro for WSL… ⌘ Read more

Optimized NUMA Distances For Intel GNR & CWF, Other Scheduler Improvements In Linux 6.19
The big set of kernel scheduler changes were merged on Monday for the in-development Linux 6.19 kernel… ⌘ Read more