FSMOUNT_NAMESPACE Feature Coming For Linux 7.1
Among the new VFS features expected to land for the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window is FSMOUNT_NAMESPACE… ⌘ Read more

Support For AMD GFX11.7 “RDNA 4m” Pending For RADV & RadeonSI Drivers
Back in February we were the first to report on a new AMD “RDNA 4m” target appearing in the AMDGPU LLVM shader compiler. While part of the “RDNA 4” family, it’s graphics IP version is GFX 11.7 (GFX1170) that is associated with the RDNA 3 family but with some ISA changes to align it slightly more with the newer RDNA 4 graphics IP. While the RDNA 4m AMDGPU LLVM shader compiler patches have been out for two months, the Mesa patches have only been … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 Ready For Release With Many Exciting Changes
The Linux 7.0 kernel is gearing up for its stable release and should be out this coming Sunday, 12 April, barring any major last minute issues… ⌘ Read more

Bitland WMI Laptop Driver Slated For Linux 7.1
Bitland, the Chinese OEM that manufactured systems for Lenovo and other companies until being added to the US Entity List due to being accused of using Uyghur forced labor, is expected to see a WMI driver added to the Linux 7.1 kernel for better supporting Bitland laptops… ⌘ Read more

TUXEDO Laptops Will Enjoy More Features With The Upstream Linux 7.1 Kernel
TUXEDO Computers’ laptops received some heat in the past from upstream Linux kernel developers over their out-of-tree kernel drivers but fortunately that situation has been improving. The Uniwill driver premiered in the Linux 6.19 kernel with that OEM manufacturing many of the TUXEDO Computers laptop models. That Uniwill x86 platform driver enabled more functionality for TUXEDO hardware in the mainline kernel and has continued improvi … ⌘ Read more

ASUS Armoury Driver Supports A Few More Laptops With Linux 7.0
Merged back in Linux 6.19 was the ASUS Armoury driver to enhance support for the ROG Ally gaming handhelds and modern ASUS laptops. The ASUS Armoury driver enables various laptop features to be toggled under Linux and since its introduction it has continued expanding support for more ASUS devices. Ahead of Linux 7.0 coming out on Sunday, a few more devices are now supported by this upstream driver… ⌘ Read more

RISC-V Optimized strnlen Implementation For Linux 7.1 Yields Big Speed-Up
In addition to RISC-V discontinuing its eXecute In Place “XIP” kernel support for Linux 7.1, there is an optimized strnlen() function coming for Linux 7.1 on RISC-V as well as some other optimized functions… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 Adds Support For New Keys On Upcoming Laptops For Expanded AI Agent Interactions
Since last year the Linux kernel already supported the Microsoft Copilot key appearing on recent laptops to trigger AI agent interactions. That keyboard key is becoming more common but now three additional new keys have been standardized for additional AI integration on future PCs. Merged today for Linux 7.0 is supporting those new standardized keycodes for AI use… ⌘ Read more

Lenovo Laptops To Enjoy Better Fan Speed Monitoring With Linux 7.1
Set to be merged for the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window is the “Yogafan” hardware monitoring driver to provide fan speed monitoring not only for Lenovo Yoga laptops but also various Legion and IdeaPad laptops too… ⌘ Read more

Intel QAT Driver With Linux 7.1 Adding Zstd Offload Support
The Intel QuickAssist “QAT” driver for the mainline Linux 7.1 kernel is adding support for Zstd offloading across QuickAssist Gen 4 / Gen 5 / Gen 6 accelerators for Zstandard compression as well as Zstandard decompression (limited there to the latest Gen 6 hardware)… ⌘ Read more

AMD ISP4 Driver On Track To Be Merged For Linux 7.2
It looks like with the Linux 7.2 kernel later in the year the AMD ISP4 driver will finally be merged to mainline. This driver is needed for the web camera on the HP ZBook Ultra G1a Strix Halo laptop and other future AMD Ryzen laptops… ⌘ Read more

China Flies World’s First Megawatt-Class Hydrogen Turboprop Engine
Longtime Slashdot reader walterbyrd shares a report from Fuel Cells Works: China says the AEP100, a megawatt-class hydrogen-fueled turboprop engine developed by the Aero Engine Corporation of China, has completed its maiden flight on a 7.5-ton unmanned cargo aircraft in Zhuzhou, Hunan. The 16-minute test covered 36km at 220km/h and 300 meters … ⌘ Read more

A Small But Useful Debugging Addition For AMD Zen Systems With Linux 7.1
A small but convenient feature is coming with the Linux 7.1 that will be useful in debugging AMD Zen system problems and information reporting/transparency purposes… ⌘ Read more

Linux Finally Starts Removing Support for Intel’s 37-Year-Old i486 Processor
“It’s finally time,” writes Phoronix — since “no known Linux distribution vendors are still shipping with i486 CPU support.”
“A patch queued into one of the development branches ahead of the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window is set to finally begin the process of phasing out and ultimately removing Intel 486 CPU support from … ⌘ Read more

Many MediaTek MT76 WiFi Driver Improvements Coming For Linux 7.1
Separate from the recently discussed work on MediaTek MT7927 “Filogic 380” support being worked on for the MT76 Linux driver (still undergoing review), a number of other MediaTek MT76 wireless driver improvements are queued up ahead of the Linux 7.1 merge window opening as soon as next week… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0-rc7 Released With Improved Docs For AI Agents, WiFi Driver Performance Fix
Timed for Easter this year is the seventh weekly release candidate for the Linux 7.0 kernel. If all goes well, Linux 7.0 stable will be out next week… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Expected To Begin Removing i486 CPU Support
It’s finally time: a patch queued into one of the development branches ahead of the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window is set to finally begin the process of phasing out and ultimately removing Intel 486 CPU support from the Linux kernel. Anyone still using an i486 CPU with an upstream Linux kernel would be incredibly rare and no known Linux distribution vendors are still shipping with i486 CPU support, but in case you are, you can continue to be running one of … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 To Begin Removing i486 CPU Support
It’s finally time: a patch queued into one of the development branches ahead of the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window is set to finally begin the process of phasing out and ultimately removing Intel 486 CPU support from the Linux kernel. Anyone still using an i486 CPU with an upstream Linux kernel would be incredibly rare and no known Linux distribution vendors are still shipping with i486 CPU support, but in case you are, you can continue to be running one of the exis … ⌘ Read more

AMD & Valve Deliver Better Kaveri / Kabini APU Experience With Upcoming Linux 7.1
A nice Easter surprise are some last minute updates submitted to DRM-Next of the final planned AMDGPU/AMDKFD feature changes for the upcoming Linux 7.1 feature cycle… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0-rc7 Adding More Documentation For AI Tools To Send Better Security Bug Reports
For helping with the increase of AI tools scouring the Linux kernel source tree and sending security bug reports, a pull request sent today ahead of the Linux 7.0-rc7 improves the documentation to better guide AI agents – and anyone reading the documentation – how to send better quality bug reports… ⌘ Read more

Razer Wolverine V3 Pro & Betop KP50 Controllers To Be Supported By Linux 7.0
Ahead of tomorrow’s Linux 7.0-rc7 kernel release, this week’s batch of input fixes were sent in and merged. Besides a few small input fixes are also some new device IDs and quirks for hardware now to be handled by Linux 7.0… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 To Expose AMD Zen 6’s AVX-512 BMM For Guest VMs
A small but important patch that looks like it will be merged for the upcoming Linux 7.1 kernel is for enumerating AVX-512 BMM support for KVM virtualized guests. AVX-512 BMM is one of the exciting ISA additions with next-gen AMD Zen 6 processors… ⌘ Read more

AWS Engineer Reports PostgreSQL Performance Halved By Linux 7.0, But A Fix May Not Be Easy
An Amazon/AWS engineer raised the alarms on Friday over the current Linux 7.0 development kernel leading to the throughput for the PostgreSQL database server being around half that of prior kernel versions. The culprit halving the PostgreSQL performance is known but a revert looks like it may not happen and currently suggesting that PostgreSQL may need to be adapted… ⌘ Read more

AWS Engineer Reports PostgreSQL Performance Halved By Linux 7.0, But A Fix May Not Be Easy
An Amazon/AWS engineer raised the alarms on Friday over the current Linux 7.0 development kernel leading to the throughput for the PostgreSQL database server being around half that of prior kernel versions. The culprit halving the PostgreSQL performance is known but a revert looks like it may not happen and currently suggesting that PostgreSQL may need to be adapted… ⌘ Read more

KDE’s KWin Continues Working On Vulkan Support, Other Improvements For Plasma 6.7
KDE Plasma developers continue working on new features for Plasma 6.7 while continuing to land more fixes and hardening for the current Plasma 6.6 stable series… ⌘ Read more

Snapdragon X2’s Adreno X2-85 GPU Sees Driver Improvements For Linux 7.1
Rob Clark on Thursday sent out the batch of MSM DRM driver feature changes targeting the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window. This new work for DRM-Next includes enhancements to the Adreno X2-85 GPU support as found within the new Snapdragon X2 laptop SoCs plus various enhancements to existing Qualcomm graphics/display hardware… ⌘ Read more

AMD P-State Driver Introducing New Features With Linux 7.1
A few Linux kernel releases have passed since there have been any new features to talk about for the AMD P-State driver for CPU frequency scaling / power management with modern AMD Ryzen and EPYC processors. But for the upcoming Linux 7.1 kernel there are some new features now ready for mainline… ⌘ Read more

Linux Fixes Performance Bug Affecting Qualcomm Ath11k & Ath12k WiFi Drivers
Sent out today were the networking subsystem fixes for the ongoing Linux 7.0 kernel. These networking fixes in time for Sunday’s Linux 7.0-rc7 release include addressing performance issues within the Qualcomm Ath11k and Ath12k WiFi drivers that have always existed ever since the drivers were upstreamed… ⌘ Read more

AMD GPU Driver Sees DC Idle Manager & Multi-SDMA Engine Optimization For Linux 7.1
With Linux 7.0-rc6 having released on Sunday, we are hitting the point of the cut-off of new feature material being allowed into the Direct Rendering Manager’s DRM-Next tree of queuing new graphics/display/accelerator feature code ahead of the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window. As presumably the last AMDGPU/AMDKFD feature pull ahead of Linux 7.1, today’s pull request from AMD contains some noteworthy final enhancements… ⌘ Read more

A Lot Of Rust Graphics Driver Changes For Linux 7.1, NVIDIA Nova Driver Additions
Sent out yesterday were the DRM Rust feature changes for DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 7.1 merge window coming in April. The Rust graphics/display driver code for Linux 7.1 includes more programming language abstractions and other Rust infrastructure work to make graphics drivers written in Rust more capable… ⌘ Read more

The Integrated ROCm Story For Ubuntu 26.04 Still Playing Out
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is just three weeks out for release with many great features in tow from the GNOME 50 desktop to the very leading-edge Linux 7.0 kernel and many other package updates. One feature that many had been looking forward to is Canonical’s plans to ship AMD ROCm directly in the Ubuntu archive for a much cleaner experience for those wanting to make use of AMD’s open-source GPU compute stack. As a common question in recent weeks from readers, it … ⌘ Read more

MediaTek MT7927 “Filogic 380” WiFi Support Coming Together For Linux
In addition to the MediaTek MT7902 WiFI Linux support emerging in recent months, the Linux support for the MediaTek MT7927 is also coming together for WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 support for the upstream Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

Intel FRED Appears Ready To Enable By Default With Linux 7.1
Last week I ran benchmarks quantify the performance benefit to Intel FRED for Flexible Return and Event Delivery initially found with the new Core Ultra Series 3 “Panther Lake” processors and also for upcoming Nova Lake and Diamond Rapids CPUs. The FRED performance impact was very beneficial across a variety of workloads but rather strangely was not enabled by default. Mere hours after publishing that article, an Intel engineer posted a patch to en … ⌘ Read more

Intel Graphics Driver For Linux 7.1 Preps Workaround For Dell XPS Panther Lake Laptop
Sent out today was the latest batch of drm-intel-next changes as feature work toward DRM-Next for Linux 7.1 winds down. This week’s drm-intel-next pull is mostly fixes and some low-level code refactoring. The only item really standing out is some new quirk infrastructure for dealing with laptop display panels that may have buggy Panel Replay handling… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0-rc6 Released With The Fixes Still Coming In Heavy
Linux 7.0-rc6 was just released in quickly working toward the stable Linux 7.0 release in mid-April. This was another busy week with lots of bug fixes… ⌘ Read more

Intel Prepares Wireless Mode Support For QAT Gen6 Hardware
Last year Intel began preparing their QuickAsist Linux driver support for QAT Gen6 hardware with upcoming platforms. That initial Intel QAT Gen6 driver enablement landed back in Linux 6.16 while for the upcoming Linux 7.1 kernel they are preparing support for a new wireless mode with this next-gen QuickAssist hardware… ⌘ Read more

Many EXT4 Fixes Lined Up For Linux 7.0-rc6
Ahead of the Linux 7.0-rc6 kernel due to be released later today, quite a number of EXT4 file-system fixes were sent out this morning… ⌘ Read more

Nginx 1.29.7 Delivers Multipath TCP Support
Released this week was Nginx 1.29.7 as the newest mainline version of this HTTP(S) web server. Releasing alongside Nginx 1.28.3 stable, it fixed buffer overflow vulnerabilities and some other vulnerabilities. Making Nginx 1.29.7 more exciting though is that it landed Multipath TCP support… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0-rc6 Bringing A Lot Of Audio Quirks / Fixes
The Linux 7.0-rc6 kernel due for release tomorrow has a lot of audio fixes/quirks to correct a wide variety of different hardware issues, mostly different problematic laptops for their speakers and/or microphone behavior under Linux… ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.7 Addresses 5 Year Old Request For Easier Microphone Testing
It’s been another busy week in the KDE space as Plasma developers continue working on new feature activity for the big Plasma 6.7 release… ⌘ Read more

Intel Xe Driver Improves Memory Pressure / Out-Of-Memory Behavior For vRAM With Linux 7.1
Following the Intel Xe kernel graphics driver pull request landing transparent hugepages for device pages as an SVM win, another round of Intel Xe driver updates were sent out this week ahead of next month’s Linux 7.1 merge window. This latest pull request lands a new user-space API for helping the Intel Xe driver better cope with situations of video memory pressure / out-of-memory behavior for vRAM… ⌘ Read more

AMD ROCm 7.12 Tech Preview Brings More Consumer APU & GPU Support
In addition to this week’s ROCm 7.2.1 stable point release, ROCm 7.12 was also released as the newest tech preview in working toward what will presumably be called ROCm 8.0… ⌘ Read more

AMDGPU Driver For Linux 7.1 Preps Debug Improvements, New Hardware IP
Another round of AMDGPU/AMDKFD kernel driver improvements were sent out this week as feature development for DRM-Next ahead of Linux 7.1 begins to wind down… ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Beta Released: Powered By Linux 7.0 + GNOME 50 + Mesa 26.0
Right on schedule the beta for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is now available for testing. This is a great opportunity to help test this release ahead of the official Long Term Support release due out on 23 April… ⌘ Read more

Open-Source Nouveau Performance With Linux 7.0 + NVK Mesa 26.1-dev vs. NVIDIA Linux Driver
As a few months have passed since our prior round of testing the fully open-source NVIDIA Linux driver stack with the Nouveau kernel driver and Mesa NVK Vulkan driver plus Zink, here is a fresh round of benchmarks using Linux 7.0 and Mesa 26.1-dev compared to the open-source stack shipped by Ubuntu 25.10 (Linux 6.17 + Mesa 25.2) for showing how far the open-source NVIDIA driver has progressed the past few months. Plus testing aga … ⌘ Read more

Intel Xe Driver In Linux 7.1 Enabling THP For Device Pages As A Big SVM Win
Sent out today was a new batch of “drm-xe-next” material of Intel Xe kernel graphics driver improvements ready for the upcoming Linux 7.1 kernel cycle. Standing out in this pull is enabling Transparent Hugepages (THP) support for drm_pagemap as a big win for those making use of Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) for GPU compute and the like… ⌘ Read more

ASUS Armoury & HP WMI Drivers Add More Laptops Ahead Of Linux 7.0-rc6
Merged today was another round of platform-drivers-x86 changes for the ongoing Linux 7.0 cycle. There are bug fixes plus some new hardware support additions that make this merge notable. Due to the new hardware support amounting to just device IDs and not risking existing hardware support, it’s fine for merging at this late stage of Linux 7.0 development… ⌘ Read more

AMD ROCm 7.2.1 Released With Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS Support, Bug Fixes
Building off the release of ROCm 7.2 from January, ROCm 7.2.1 is now available with Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS support as well as various bug fixes to this open-source AMD Radeon/Instinct GPU compute stack… ⌘ Read more

Anthropic’s Claude Can Now Use Your Computer To Finish Tasks
Anthropic is testing a new Claude feature that lets users send a request from their phone and have the AI carry it out directly on their computer, such as opening apps, using a browser, or editing files. The move follows the viral spread of OpenClaw earlier this year, which has gained cult popularity among devs for the ability to run local, 24/7 personal workf … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 To Overcome Reporting Limitation For Multiple Batteries Per HID Device
A limitation affecting various gaming headsets, graphic tablets, wireless earbuds, multi-device receivers and more with Linux has been not being able to report multiple batteries per HID device. After patches were proposed last year for dealing with the increasingly common scenario these days of having multiple batteries per device, the upcoming Linux 7.1 kernel is set to address this limitation… ⌘ Read more