Kernel Credential Guards Merged For Linux 6.19
Merged yesterday for the Linux 6.19 kernel were “substantial” improvements to the kernel’s credential infrastructure to provide guard-based management that allows for kernel code simplification and avoiding manual reference counting across many subsystems… ⌘ Read more

next-20251202: linux-next
Version:next-20251202 (linux-next)Released:2025-12-02 ⌘ Read more

Steam On Linux Use Easily Hits An All-Time High In November
The Steam Survey results are out for November 2025 and continue to be very positive for the growing adoption of Linux gaming 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… ⌘ Read more

Btrfs In Linux 6.19 Adds Experimental Features, Continues Preparations For FSCRYPT
SUSE engineer David Sterba submitted the Btrfs pull request for Linux 6.19 on Friday, ahead of the Linux 6.18 stable kernel release that took place on Sunday. This copy-on-write file-system continues seeing some enticing feature work and other improvements for this next version of the Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

AI Is Being Used To Help Modernize The Ubuntu Error Tracker
While some Linux distributions have begun establishing AI policies, we haven’t seen any communicated from the Ubuntu camp yet but will apparently be permitted at least for project infrastructure. AI is being used currently in an effort to help modernize the Ubuntu Error Tracker… ⌘ Read more

Rust Updates For Linux 6.19, Rust Minimum Baseline To Likely Follow Debian Stable
Miguel Ojeda has already submitted the core Rust programming language infrastructure updates intended for the Linux 6.19 merge window. In the pull request he also notes that moving forward the minimum supported Rust version for compiling the Linux kernel will likely follow whatever the minimum Rust version currently in use by the latest Debian stable release… ⌘ Read more

Intel Gaudi 3 Driver Support Already Rejected For Linux 6.19
Last night Intel finally posted their Gaudi 3 accelerator open-source driver support for the mainline Linux kernel with hopes of getting that long-delayed AI accelerator support into the in-development Linux 6.19 kernel. But as I pointed out, the pull request was coming unusually late for being such a large set of patches and would face an uphill battle to make it for the Linux 6.19 merge window. Sure enough, the pull request was already rejected an … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.18 Adding New Option For More Detailed Bug Reporting But Cost Of Greater Memory
Among the big flow of pull requests today for this first day of the Linux 6.19 merge window are some core kernel bug handling improvements… ⌘ Read more

Fwupd 2.0.18 Enables Linux Firmware Updating For More Hardware
Fresh off Framework Computer becoming a new corporate sponsor of the LVFS / Fwupd, there is a new Fwpd 2.0.18 update for this solution that enables convenient and easy system and device/peripheral firmware updating under Linux… ⌘ Read more

GNU Linux-libre 6.18 Neuters More Functionality Due To Blobs With Intel Xe, NVIDIA Nova
Following yesterday’s Linux 6.18 kernel release, GNU Linux-libre 6.18-gnu is out today as the latest release of this free software purist kernel that will drop/block drivers from loading microcode/firmware considered non-free-software and other restrictions in the name of not pushing binary blobs even when needed for hardware support/functionality on otherwise open-source drivers… ⌘ Read more

New Rockchip RKCIF & RKVDEC HEVC Media Drivers For Linux 6.19
The media subsystem updates were sent out this morning for the now-open Linux 6.19 merge window. There are some new Rockchip drivers and other media drivers that are new for Linux 6.19… ⌘ Read more

Apple HFS/HFS+ File-System Drivers Receive Corruption Fixes & More For Linux 6.19
It was just earlier this year that Linux developers considered dropping the Apple HFS and HFS+ file-system drivers from the mainline Linux kernel for being unmaintained. But then some new developers stepped up to maintain the drivers and there has been new HFS/HFS+ file-system patches each kernel cycle since. With the now in-development Linux 6.19 kernel there are some nice year-end clean-ups to these file-system drivers… ⌘ Read more

6.6.118: longterm
Version:6.6.118 (longterm)Released:2025-12-01Source:linux-6.6.118.tar.xzPGP Signature:linux-6.6.118.tar.signPatch:full ( incremental)ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.6.118 ⌘ Read more

Steam Machine, Continued Open-Source Rust Usage & Linux Kernel Happenings In November
It was an eventful past month with Valve announcing the new Steam Machine, a lot of new Linux kernel activity, the continued increase of Rust programming language adoption by open-source projects, a lot of fun hardware benchmarks, and more. There were 283 original news articles on Phoronix the past month about Linux/open-source software and hardware plus another 18 featured Linux hardware reviews / multi-page benchmark articles. … ⌘ Read more

Linux Kernel 6.18 Officially Released
From the blog 9to5Linux:

Linux kernel 6.18 is now available for download, as announced today by Linus Torvalds himself, featuring enhanced hardware support through new and updated drivers, improvements to file systems and networking, and more.

Highlights of Linux 6.18 include the removal of the Bcachefs file system, support for the Rust Binder driver, a new dm-pcache device-mapper target to enable … ⌘ Read more

next-20251201: linux-next
Version:next-20251201 (linux-next)Released:2025-12-01 ⌘ Read more

Intel Finally Posts Open-Source Gaudi 3 Driver Code For The Linux Kernel
The good news is that Intel tonight posted a pull request for open-source Gaudi 3 accelerator support for the mainline Linux kernel! The bad news is that it’s coming quite late in the product cycle, much later than the former excellent Habana Labs open-source track record, and their hopes of squeezing this code into the Linux 6.19 kernel may be dashed… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.18 Released With Many New Features, Likely This Year’s LTS Kernel
Linux 6.18 stable is now available! Linux 6.18 ushers in many new features and changes while also is expected to become this year’s Long Term Support “LTS” kernel version… ⌘ Read more

NixOS 25.11 Released With 7,002 New Packages Added
It’s been an exciting weekend for Linux distribution released with new versions of Endeavour OS, CachyOS, Solus and now a new NixOS release… ⌘ Read more

Features Expected For Linux 6.19: ASUS Armoury, Many Intel Bits, AMD GCN 1.0/1.1 Enhanced
With the Linux 6.18 kernel likely being released later today, here is a look at some of the features on the table for the next kernel cycle, Linux 6.19. The list is based on changes queued in various “-next” branches ahead of the Linux 6.19 merge window. There’s always the possibility of last minute change of plans or objections raised by Linus Torvalds, but this should provide an early look at some of the features more … ⌘ Read more

Advent of Code 2025 starts tomorrow. 🥳🎄

This year, I’m going to use Python 1 on SuSE Linux 6.4, writing the code on my trusty old Pentium 133 with its 64 MB of RAM. No idea if that old version of Python will be fast enough for later puzzles. We’ll see.

Linux 6.19 Will Allow You To Write I2C Drivers In Rust
With the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel cycle there are yet more Rust kernel bindings being introduced and other additions to make it possible to write more Linux kernel drivers within the Rust programming language. Among the new Rust additions expected for Linux 6.19 are making it possible to write Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) bus drivers in Rust… ⌘ Read more

Broadcom “BNG_RE” Next-Generation RoCE Driver Slated For Linux 6.19
Queued up via the Linux kernel’s RDMA development Git tree is “BNG_RE” as the next-generation RoCE driver from Broadcom… ⌘ Read more

Black Sesame SoC Support To Be Merged For Linux 6.19
A new SoC vendor and in turn new SoC/platform support is set to premiere in the Linux 6.19 kernel with the initial Black Sesame Technologies C1200 support… ⌘ Read more

Are There More Linux Users Than We Think?
“By my count, Linux has over 11% of the desktop market,” writes ZDNet’s Steven Vaughan-Nichols:

In StatCounter’s latest US numbers, which cover through October, Linux shows up as only 3.49%. But if you look closer, “unknown” accounts for 4.21%. Allow me to make an educated guess here: I suspect those unknown desktops are actually running Linux. What else could it be? FreeBSD? Unix? OS/2? Unl … ⌘ Read more

Solus Linux 4.8 Released With Python 2 Finally Removed, Abandons Solus Software Center
In addition to the releases today of updated Endeavour OS and CachyOS, Solus 4.8 is out as the latest version of another desktop Linux distribution popular with enthusiasts… ⌘ Read more

CachyOS Improves Intel Video Acceleration Experience
In addition to the release today of a big refresh to Endeavour OS, CachyOS is out with their latest ISO refresh for this additional Arch Linux powered desktop OS. CachyOS for its November 2025 refresh brings installer improvements, now installs additional packages for media acceleration when capable Intel graphics are detected, handling for Bcachefs with its DKMS module, and other improvements… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.18 Features From Apple M2 To Sheaves, DM-PCACHE & More Intel + AMD Hardware
With the Linux 6.18 stable kernel release expected to take place tomorrow on 30 November, here is a reminder about some of the new hardware support and other interesting features coming in this next stable version of the Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

Arch Linux Based Endeavour OS Updated After ISO Refresh Hiatus
Endeavour OS is one of the popular desktop Linux distributions built around Arch Linux providing a nice out-of-the-box experience. Since their last ISO refresh back in March there hadn’t been much news from the project nor any new ISO releases for this rolling-release distro. But thankfully today they are back in the saddle with a new ISO release, Endeavour OS 2025.11.24 “Ganymede”… ⌘ Read more

Framework Computer Now Sponsoring LVFS / Fwupd Development
With the Linux Vendor Firmware Service serving more than 135 million downloads for Linux users updating their system and device firmware, LVFS has been working to get more hardware vendors to contribute either engineering resources or directly contributing annual dues as sponsors. Framework Computer is now the first one to have executed an agreement under these new sponsorship efforts… ⌘ Read more

Intel Hiring Two More Experienced Linux Kernel Engineers
While there have been a number of Intel Linux engineers laid off over roughly the past year, other Linux kernel engineers opting to pursue employment opportunities elsewhere amid the ongoing challenges and restructuring at the company, and shifts in their open-source strategy, there’s some good news as we work toward the 2025 holidays. Intel is currently hiring for two more experienced Linux kernel software engineers… ⌘ Read more

Wine 10.20 Released With VKD3D 1.18 Upgrade For Direct3D 12
Wine 10.20 is out as the newest bi-weekly development release of this open-source software enabling Windows applications and games to run on Linux. This is also with Wine 11.0 stable quickly approaching… ⌘ Read more

New Patches Work To Optimize Code Generation For Linux Context Switching
As some additional enticing Linux kernel patches posted this week for review, an updated patch series is working to optimize code generation during context switching… ⌘ Read more

Open-Source Nouveau+NVK vs. NVIDIA 580 Linux Gaming/Graphics & Compute Driver Performance
This Black Friday is an in-depth look at the current performance of the open-source NVIDIA Linux driver stack with the Nouveau kernel driver (the Nova driver not yet being ready for end-users) paired with the latest Mesa NVK driver for open-source Vulkan API support. With that NVK Vulkan driver is also looking at the OpenGL performance using the Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan driver used now for OpenGL on modern NVIDIA GPUs rat … ⌘ Read more

New Linux Patches Enhance Single-Threaded Performance On Many-Core CPUs
In addition to the proposed Hierarchical Queued NUMA-aware spinlocks for better performance, another interesting performance-enhancing patch series posted in the past 24 hours for the Linux kernel is for improving the performance of single-threaded tasks running on high core count CPU desktops / workstations / servers… ⌘ Read more

Black Friday Reminder For Those Hating Ads But Loving Linux Hardware/Software
As the one and last friendly reminder, if you enjoy the daily and original content found on Phoronix.com but not liking ads and wanting to view multi-page articles on a single page, native dark mode, and more: the 2025 Black Friday / Cyber Week deal is ending Monday to help support the site while enjoying a discounted rate… ⌘ Read more

AMD ISP4 Linux Webcam Driver Updated For HP ZBook Ultra G1a & Future Ryzen Laptops
We eagerly await to see if the AMD ISP4 driver will be ready for mainlining in the imminent Linux v6.19 merge window but it’s getting down to the wire and thus looking less likely it will make it unless action is taken in the coming days. Today though a sixth version of this AMD ISP4 image signal processor driver was posted for this last piece of the puzzle in enabling the web camera on the HP ZBook Ultra G1a Strix Halo laptop as well as … ⌘ Read more

NTFSPLUS Now Supports $MFT File Extension, FITRIM, More Mount Options
The NTFSPLUS Linux kernel driver as a modern NTFS file-system driver implementation continues quickly taking shape as it aims to become the most performant and feature-rich NTFS read/write driver for Linux systems… ⌘ Read more

HQspinlock Proposal For Linux Shows Very Nice Performance Benefits For Large Servers
A Huawei engineer has sent out patches proposing HQspinlock as a Hierarchical Queued NUMA-aware spinlock for the Linux kernel. HQspinlock aims to addresss inefficiencies within the Linux kernel’s spinlock on modern NUMA-systems due to frequent and costly cross-NUMA cache-line transfers… ⌘ Read more

next-20251128: linux-next
Version:next-20251128 (linux-next)Released:2025-11-28 ⌘ Read more

Black Friday Reminder For Those Hating Ads But Loving Linux Hardware/Software
As the one and last friendly reminder, if you enjoy the daily and original content found on Phoronix.com but not liking ads and wanting to view multi-page articles on a single page, native dark mode, and more: the 2025 Black Friday / Cyber Week deal is ending Monday to help support the site while enjoying a discounted rate… ⌘ Read more

One Of Intel’s Xe Open-Source Linux Graphics Driver Maintainers Is Departing
It’s been two months since there were any notable Intel Linux engineering departures to note following various layoffs and voluntary departures this year that have unfortunately impacted their Linux/open-source talent. Sadly this US Thanksgiving is a new departure to note: one of Intel’s maintainers for the Xe open-source Linux kernel graphics driver is leaving the company. This is for the modern Xe driver used by default since Lunar … ⌘ Read more

Intel Battlemage Graphics Enjoyed Nice GPU Compute Performance Gains In 2025
In addition to Intel Arrow Lake desktop performance evolving nicely on Linux over the course of 2025, the Intel Arc B-Series graphics that launched last December with the Arc B580 have evolved quite nicely too with their open-source driver stack. With it coming up on one year since the Arc B580 launch, here is a look at how the GPU compute performance has evolved since that point. Similar Intel Arc B580 Linux graphics comparisons ar … ⌘ Read more

Valve-Backed Color Pipeline API For Linux Is Finally Ready For Upstream
For those Linux desktop users in the US needing another reason to be thankful this Thanksgiving, a huge and long-awaited accomplishment is ready for merging to the kernel: the Color Pipeline API that is important for HDR is ready for merging! As of last night the code is queued in DRM-Misc-Next for this years-in-the-making effort… ⌘ Read more

next-20251127: linux-next
Version:next-20251127 (linux-next)Released:2025-11-27 ⌘ Read more

Vulkan’s VK_EXT_present_timing Merged After Five Years In The Making
Originally opened in September 2020 by NVIDIA Linux engineer James Jones, tonight the Vulkan VK_EXT_present_timing extension was finally merged! Five years in the making and incorporating contributions from Google, NVIDIA, AMD, Collabora, Samsung, Unity, and Red Hat is this prominent new addition to the Vulkan API… ⌘ Read more

Radeon Software for Linux 25.20.3 Released - “Exclusively Open-Source” With RADV
With the great upstream support for AMD Radeon graphics in the Linux kernel and Mesa, most desktop users / gamers / enthusiasts are best off just using the latest code shipped by their distributions or via the enthusiast-supported third-party archives/repositories. But for those on older enterprise Linux distributions, Radeon Software for Linux 25.20.3 was recently released for shipping that packaged AMD Linux graphics driver st … ⌘ Read more

AMD ROCm 7.1.1 Released With RHEL 10.1 Support, More Models Working On RDNA4
Following the release of ROCm 7.1 from just under one month ago, ROCm 7.1.1 is now available with expanded Linux operating system support, continued Instinct MI350 series work, more large language models working on RDNA4 GPUs, and other enhancements… ⌘ Read more

Fedora SIG Proposed To Improve Production Stability
A Fedora special interest group is being proposed to help improve production stability of Fedora Linux and better handling incident management when problems do arise… ⌘ Read more

Urgent ACPI Revert For Linux 6.18 To Deal With Some Hardware Crashing
The Linux 6.18 kernel is anticipated for release this coming Sunday while this week a last-minute crisis was averted following reports of a kernel crash from recent ACPI code changes… ⌘ Read more