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

GNOME 50 Lands Updated Wayland Color Management v2 Support
Following GNOME 50’s Mutter merging sdr-native color mode support for wide color gamut displays this week, another late addition to Mutter has now been merged ahead of next month’s GNOME 50 stable release… ⌘ 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

Ubuntu 26.04 Begins Its Feature Freeze
Canonical engineer Utkarsh Gupta announced today on the behalf of the Ubuntu Release Team that the Ubuntu 26.04 “Resolute Raccoon” has entered its feature freeze… ⌘ Read more

NASA Chief Classifies Starliner Flight As ‘Type A’ Mishap, Says Agency Made Mistakes
NASA has officially classified Boeing Starliner’s 2024 crewed flight as a “Type A” mishap, acknowledging serious technical failures and leadership shortcomings that nearly left astronauts unable to safely return. Administrator Jared Isaacman released (PDF) a 311-page internal report citing flawed decision-m … ⌘ Read more

Trump Directs US Government To Prepare Release of Files on Aliens and UFOs
US President Donald Trump says he will direct US agencies, including the defence department, to “begin the process of identifying and releasing” government files on aliens and extraterrestrial life. From a report: Trump made the declaration in a post on Truth Social, after he accused Barack Obama earlier in the day of revealin … ⌘ Read more

Vulkan 1.4.344 Released With New Extension From Valve
Vulkan 1.4.344 is out today as the latest routine spec update for this high performance graphics and compute API. Besides a handful of fixes and clarifications, Vulkan 1.4.344 brings a new extension courtesy of Valve engineers… ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Moving To OpenJDK 25 By Default
It’s not too surprising but the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 Long Term Support release will be transitioning to OpenJDK 25 as its default Java version… ⌘ Read more

PipeWire 1.6 Released With Many New Features
PipeWire 1.6 is out today as the newest feature release for this software widely used by the Linux desktop for managing of audio and video streams while nicely integrating with sandboxed Flatpak apps and more… ⌘ 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

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

Apple M3 With Asahi Linux Continues Making Progress, No ETA Yet For Shipping
Asahi Linux developers have published a status report following the recent Linux 6.19 kernel release to outline recent progress and upcoming items around Apple Silicon support on Linux. This year will also mark five years that Asahi Linux has been around for bringing Linux to the Apple M-Series hardware… ⌘ 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

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

Claude Sonnet 4.6 Model Brings ‘Much-Improved Coding Skills’, Upgraded Free Tier
Anthropic has released Claude Sonnet 4.6, the first upgrade to its mid-tier AI model since version 4.5 arrived in September 2025. The new model features a “1M token context window” and delivers a “full upgrade of the model’s skills across coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, agent planning, knowledge wor … ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.6 Released
Longtime Slashdot reader jrepin writes: KDE Plasma is a popular desktop (and mobile too) environment for GNU/Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems. Among other things, it also powers the desktop mode of the Steam Deck gaming handheld. The KDE community today announced the latest release: Plasma 6.6.

In this new major release, Spectacle can recognize texts from screenshots, a new on-screen keyboard and new login manager a … ⌘ Read more

Most VMware Users Still ‘Actively Reducing Their VMware Footprint,’ Survey Finds
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: More than two years after Broadcom took over VMware, the virtualization company’s customers are still grappling with higher prices, uncertainty, and the challenges of reducing vendor lock-in. Today, CloudBolt Software released a report, “The Mass Exodus That Never … ⌘ Read more

DNF 5.4 Released With Some New Options & AI Contributions Policy
DNF 5.4 is out today as the latest release for this next-generation RPM package management solution used by Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and various other RPM-based Linux distributions… ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.6 Released With Many Excellent Improvements
KDE Plasma 6.6 is now officially out as the newest feature update to this prominent open-source desktop environment. Plasma 6.6 is self-described by KDE developers as “the best desktop in the known universe (according to us). Plasma 6.6 is all about making your life as easy as possible without sacrificing any of the flexibility.”.. ⌘ Read more

Samsung Ad Confirms Rumors of a Useful S26 ‘Privacy Display’
Samsung has all but confirmed that its upcoming Galaxy S26 will feature a built-in privacy display, releasing an ad that demonstrates a “Zero-peeking privacy” toggle capable of blacking out on-screen content for anyone peering over the user’s shoulder.

The underlying technology is reportedly Samsung Display’s Flex Magic Pixel OLED panel, first shown at MWC … ⌘ 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

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 6.19.2 & Other LTS Kernels Released To Fix Systems Not Booting
Linux 6.19.1 was released earlier today while it’s since been replaced by Linux 6.19.2 to address fallout from that first point release with some systems not booting. This also resulted in new LTS kernel releases too due to the problematic code being picked up there too… ⌘ Read more

InputPlumber 0.74 Released With Hardware Support Improvements
InputPlumber 0.74 is now available for this open-source input routing and control daemon for Linux systems. InputPlumber enables combining of multiple input devices, emulating different inputs, and a variety of other features particularly of benefit for Linux gaming… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19.1 Released To Ship Some Early Fixes & Device Quirks
For those preferring to wait for the first point release of a new Linux kernel version before upgrading, Linux 6.19.1 is out today to address some early bugs that made it into the Linux 6.19 kernel stable release one week ago… ⌘ Read more

SNEWS
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wlroots 0.20 Nears Release With New Protocols, Enhanced Vulkan Renderer
Version 0.20 of the popular wlroots Wayland support library is nearing its official release. Over the past week were two release candidates for wlroots 0.20 were published for this library used by Sway, Wayfire, Cage, Gamescope, and numerous other Wayland compositors… ⌘ Read more

Oldest Active Linux Distro Slackware Finally Releases Version 15.0
Created in 1993, Slackware is considered the oldest Linux distro that’s still actively maintained. And more than three decades later… there’s a new release! (And there’s also a Slackware Live Edition that can run from a DVD or USB stick…)
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Slackware’s latest version was released way back in 2016, notes the blog It’s FOSS:

The major hi … ⌘ Read more

Vim 9.2 Released
“More than two years after the last major 9.1 release, the Vim project has announced Vim 9.2,” reports the blog Linuxiac:

A big part of this update focuses on improving Vim9 Script as Vim 9.2 adds support for enums, generic functions, and tuple types.

On top of that, you can now use built-in functions as methods, and class handling includes features like protected constructors with _new(). The :defcompile command has also been impro … ⌘ Read more

NFS Server Adds Dynamic Thread Pool Sizing In Linux 7.0
The NFS server changes for Linux 7.0 happen to include some nice improvements for this big kernel version number release… ⌘ Read more

Vim 9.2 Released With Experimental Wayland Support, Better HiDPI Display Support
Vim 9.2 is out today as the newest feature release for this robust and comprehensive text editor. This Valentine’s Day release for Vim lovers brings experimental Wayland support, XDG Base Directory specification support, modernized defaults for HiDPI displays, new completion features, and an improved diff mode… ⌘ Read more

Anna’s Archive Quietly ‘Releases’ Millions of Spotify Tracks, Despite Legal Pushback
Anna’s Archive, the shadow library that announced last December it had scraped Spotify’s entire catalog, has quietly begun distributing the actual music files despite a federal preliminary injunction signed by Judge Jed Rakoff on January 16 that explicitly barred the site from hosting or distributing the copyrigh … ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.6 Sees Last Minute Fixes, Plasma 6.7 Aims For Painless Samba Shares
KDE’s Plasma 6.6 desktop release is due out next week (17 February) and there’s been some last minute fixes to land. Additionally, KDE Plasma developers continue to be quite active in already landing feature work for Plasma 6.7… ⌘ Read more

GNOME 50 Beta Released With Stable VRR, GDM Improvements
The GNOME 50 beta release is now available ahead of the official GNOME 50 desktop due out in March… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 Lands ML-DSA Quantum-Resistant Signature Support
Adding to the exciting features for the big Linux 7.0 kernel release is support for the Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Algorithm “ML-DSA” quantum-resistant signature algorithm… ⌘ Read more

Libinput 1.31 Released With Configurable Timeouts, Fast 3-Finger Swipes
Red Hat’s leading input expert Peter Hutterer announced the release overnight of libinput 1.31, the input handling library used by the Linux desktop on both X.Org and Wayland desktop sessions… ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS Now Available With Linux 6.17 HWE Kernel
Canonical released Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS today as the newest point release to the Noble Numbat… ⌘ Read more

Siri’s AI Overhaul Delayed Again
Apple’s long-promised overhaul of Siri has hit fresh problems during internal testing, forcing the company to push several key features out of the iOS 26.4 update that was slated for March and spread them across later releases, Bloomberg is reporting.

The new Siri – first announced at WWDC in June 2024 and originally due by early 2025 – struggles to reliably process queries, takes too long to respond and s … ⌘ Read more

Is Linux Mint Burning Out? Developers Consider Longer Release Cycle
BrianFagioli writes: The Linux Mint developers say they are considering adopting a longer development cycle, arguing that the project’s current six month cadence plus LMDE releases leaves too little room for deeper work. In a recent update, the team reflected on its incremental philosophy, independence from upstream decisions like Snap, and … ⌘ Read more

Go1.26 Released
1 points posted by John Doak ⌘ Read more

Chrome 146 Now In Beta With WebNN Origin Trial For Neural Networks In The Browser
Following yesterday’s Chrome 145 release with JPEG-XL support, Chrome 146 today was promoted to the beta channel to help facilitate broader testing of the next round of Chrome/Chromium browser improvements… ⌘ Read more

AMD ROCm TheRock 7.11 Released, Ubuntu Making Progress On Shipping ROCm Packages
Two useful bits of ROCm news today for those interested in AMD’s open-source GPU compute stack… ⌘ Read more

Linux Mint Developing New Wayland-Compatible Screensaver
The Linux Mint developers have been hard at work continuing to develop new features following their recent Mint 22.3 release. There is continued enhancements around keyboard support, a new administration tool for users, and there are also considerations being made around moving to a longer development cycle between Linux Mint releases… ⌘ Read more

Intel Releases New Compute Runtime, Upstreams More SYCL Code To LLVM
Intel today released a new version of their Compute Runtime stack and IGC graphics compiler for Level Zero and OpenCL usage with their integrated and discrete graphics. Separately they also upstreamed more SYCL code this week into mainline LLVM… ⌘ Read more

ByteDance Suspends Seedance 2 Feature That Turns Facial Photos Into Personal Voices Over Potential Risks
hackingbear writes: China’s Bytedance has released Seedance 2.0, an AI video generator which handles up to four types of input at once: images, videos, audio, and text. Users can combine up to nine images, three videos, and three audio files, up to a total of twelve fi … ⌘ Read more

Google Chrome 145 Released With JPEG-XL Image Support
Back in 2022 Google deprecated and then removed JPEG-XL image support from the Chrome/Chromium browser codebase and now in 2026 it’s back. Last month I wrote about JPEG-XL decoding merged back to Chromium/Chrome and that has rolled out today as part of today’s Chrome 145 stable debut… ⌘ Read more

Go 1.26 Introduces Two Language Changes, New Performance Improvements
For programmers fond of the Go programming language, Go 1.26 is out today with two language changes, performance improvements, and other alterations to this Google-backed programming language… ⌘ Read more

The US Is Flirting With Its First-Ever Population Decline
The U.S., whose population the Census Bureau did not expect to start shrinking until 2081, may record its first-ever decline as early as this year because of the Trump administration’s accelerating immigration crackdown. Census data released in late January showed US population growth slowed to just 0.5% in the year prior to July 2025 – the lowest rate since t … ⌘ Read more

Intel CPU Microcode 20260210 Brings Security Updates & Functional Fixes
Intel today for Patch Tuesday released several generations worth of CPU microcode updates for addressing multiple security issues and functional issues… ⌘ Read more

CrossOver 26 Released - Powered By Wine 11.0 For Windows Apps/Games On Linux + macOS
CodeWeavers just announced CrossOver 26, the newest version of their commercial software built atop Wine for running Windows games and applications under Apple macOS and Linux… ⌘ Read more