Mesa 26.0 RADV Lands Dedicated Transfer-Only Queue Using SDMA
There is another open-source Radeon Vulkan driver (RADV) improvement to look forward to in the upcoming Mesa 26.0 release that was worked on by one of Valve’s Linux graphics driver developers… ⌘ Read more

Qualcomm Sends Out Linux Patches For RAS Support On RISC-V For Reporting Hardware Errors
The latest work by Qualcomm on the RISC-V CPU architecture is sending out their first non-RFC patch series for enabling Reliability, Availability and Serviceability (RAS) support by making use of the RISC-V RERI specification. This RISC-V RAS support is useful for conveying hardware errors to users and will be especially important with future RISC-V Linux servers… ⌘ Read more

Canonical Builds Steam Snap For Ubuntu ARM64 Leveraging FEX
Canonical is making it easier for ARM64 Ubuntu users like those on the NVIDIA DGX Spark to do a bit of gaming with Steam. Canonical engineers have assembled a Steam Snap for 64-bit ARM that comes complete with the FEX emulator for running Windows/Linux x86-based games on ARM64 Linux… ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.0 RADV Merges The Big Ray-Tracing Improvement For UE5 Lumen
The RADV ray-tracing improvement covered earlier this week for some big performance gains for Unreal Engine 5 titles running under Linux thanks to Steam Play has been merged for Mesa 25.0… ⌘ Read more

Logitech MX Anywhere 3S Mouse With Linux 6.19 Now Supports High Resolution Scrolling
For those that happen to have a Logitech MX Anywhere 3S mouse connected via Bluetooth, the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel release is enabling HID++ support for it to enjoy high resolution scrolling and other functionality of the updated protocol… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.18 LTS vs. Liquorix Kernel On AMD Ryzen Threadripper Workstation Performance
It’s been a while since running benchmarks of the Liquorix kernel as an enthusiast-tailored downstream version of the Linux kernel focused on responsiveness for gaming, audio/video production, and other creator/enthusiast workloads. In today’s article is a look at how the latest Liquorix kernel derived from Linux 6.18 is competing against the upstream Linux 6.18 LTS kernel on the same system. ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA Optimizes Printing Of Linux Memory Stats For 11% System Time Savings
A NVIDIA engineer restructuring some of the printf-related code within the memory resource controller “memcg” statistics printing code to reduce the system time by 11% for dumping those stats… ⌘ Read more

SteamOS Continues Its Slow Spread Across the PC Gaming Landscape
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: SteamOS’s slow march across the Windows-dominated PC gaming landscape is continuing to creep along. At CES this week, Lenovo announced it will launch a version of last year’s high-priced, high-powered Legion Go 2 handheld with Valve’s gaming-focused, Linux-based OS pre-installed starting in J … ⌘ Read more

Linux Patches Enable Intel GPU Firmware Updating From Non-x86 Systems
The modern Intel Xe kernel graphics driver was designed from the start to be more broadly compatible with non-x86 architectures given their discrete graphics processors being front and center, unlike the legacy i915 kernel graphics driver being very x86 minded. While this allows running Intel Arc Graphics on ARM or RISC-V, there are some other kinks still being ironed out with using Intel graphics in the non-x86 world. One of those limitatio … ⌘ Read more

Etnaviv Driver Wires Up PPU Flop Reset Support Needed By Some Vivante Hardware
Sent out today was the latest batch of drm-misc-next changes to DRM-Next for staging ahead of the upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle. The reverse-engineered Etnaviv DRM driver for Vivante graphics/NPU hardware has added a new “PPU flop reset” feature gleaned off studying the downstream vendor kernel driver… ⌘ Read more

Linux Kernel Considers Linking The Relocatable x86 Kernel As PIE In 2026
To allow for additional security hardening of the Linux kernel, a patch series has been updated more than one year later to link the relocatable x86_64 kernel as Position Independent Executable (PIE) code… ⌘ Read more

FEX 2601 Brings Various Fixes, Improvements For Wine & DXVK/VKD3D-Proton
FEX, the open-source emulator for running x86 and x86_64 binaries on AArch64 (ARM64) Linux and that is sponsored by Valve and to be used by the Steam Frame, is out with a new monthly feature release… ⌘ Read more

AMD Linux GPU Driver Improvement Coming For DP-HDMI Dongles
For those using a DisplayPort to HDMI dongle currently with the AMDGPU Linux kernel graphics driver may find some higher resolutions / modes unavailable. Fortunately, a fix is on the way for dealing with this situation due to an oversight in the kernel driver… ⌘ Read more

@zvava@twtxt.net and the year of the Linux desktop, I swear! No more procrastination, this year is it.

Radeon RADV Vulkan Driver Is On The Verge Of Another Big Ray-Tracing Performance Gain
Natalie Vock as one of the open-source developers on Valve’s Linux graphics team has been spearheading another big ray-tracing performance improvement for the AMD Radeon Vulkan driver. RADV ray-tracing performance improved a lot in 2025 but it’s looking like 2026 could be even more exciting… ⌘ Read more

Compiler-Based Context & Locking Analysis On Deck For Linux 7.0 Paired With Clang 22+
A new feature in the queue for likely introduction with the next version of the Linux kernel (Linux 6.20~7.0) is compiler-based context and locking analysis. This kernel code depends on the yet-to-be-released LLVM Clang 22 compiler but can provide some powerful insights to kernel developers… ⌘ Read more

Acer Laptop Battery Control Driver Looks Toward The Upstream Linux Kernel
For those with Acer laptops running Linux on GitHub there has been an out-of-tree driver providing an experimental “acer-wmi-battery” kernel module to allow controlling battery-related features. Now a cleaned-up version of that driver is working on getting into the mainline Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

DRM Splash Screen Updated To Simply Drawing A Colored Background, Displaying A BMP Image
Back in October was an initial proposal for a DRM splash screen client for the Linux kernel that would be primarily useful for embedded systems for rendering a simple “splash screen” when updating the system firmware/software, early display activation at boot, during system recovery, or similar processes. Sent out today was a second revision to the DRM splash screen code… ⌘ Read more

Linux’s Old Mount API Code On The Chopping Block For The 7.0 Kernel
The Linux kernel’s “new mount API” that has been in the kernel since 2019 and recently made rounds for taking 6+ years to land the man page documentation on it will soon be the the only mount API internally within the kernel. Removing the “old” Linux kernel mount API internals is a candidate for the upcoming Linux 7.0 kernel cycle… ⌘ Read more

Gentoo Linux Made Progress On RISC-V, WSL, & More While Pulling In Just $12k USD
The Gentoo Linux project published their 2025 retrospective this week with their many accomplishments, including the recruitment of four more developers and now being up to 31,663 ebuilds and a total of 89GB worth of x86_64 binary packages on mirrors… ⌘ Read more

Transparent Hugepage Performance On Linux 6.18 LTS: Madvise vs. Always
With some Linux distributions like Fedora Workstation and Ubuntu defaulting to “madvise” Transparent Hugepages (THP) while others like CachyOS and openSUSE defaulting to “always”, you may be curious about the madvise vs. always THP difference in modern Linux environments. If so this round of benchmarking is for you in looking at the performance impact of madvise vs. always THP. ⌘ Read more

Revised Steam Survey For December 2025 Puts Linux Gaming Marketshare At 3.58%
Back on the 1st Valve published the Steam Survey results for December 2025 and they put the Linux gaming marketshare at 3.19%, a 0.01% dip from November. But now the December results have been revised with a nice bump to the Linux marketshare… ⌘ Read more

AMD Releases GAIA 0.15 - Positioning It As A Framework/SDK For Building AI PC Agents
Last year AMD announced GAIA as short for “Generative AI Is Awesome”. It started off as a Windows-only AI demo but over time added Linux support along with introducing different AI agents. For going along with AMD’s AI announcements at CES 2026, AMD released GAIA 0.15 where they are now positioning this software as a framework/SDK for building AI PC agents… ⌘ Read more

Radeon Linux Driver Patches For Next-Gen Hardware Point To New NPU Integration
Back in November AMD began posting open-source Linux graphics driver patches for some next-gen graphics IP. Those IP block patches were for MMHUB, PSP, and other blocks making up modern AMD GPUs. The GFXHUB patch pointed it to being part of the GFX12 / RDNA4 family. Out today are new patches for enabling the SMU15 IP and an interesting takeaway there is some apparent NPU integration for future Radeon graphics… ⌘ Read more

Apple SMC Power Driver Posted For Linux To Expose Battery Stats
The newest open-source Apple Silicon driver being submitted for review in working toward its inclusion in the mainline Linux kernel is the Apple Silicon SMC power driver for being able to expose MacBook battery power metrics as well as AC power adapter status reporting under Linux… ⌘ Read more

Patches Posted Seeking To Mainline Support For The Acer Swift SFA14-11 Snapdragon Laptop
Patches posted to the Linux kernel mailing list are hoping to provide mainline support for the Acer Swift SFA14-11 laptop powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Elite X1E78100 SoC… ⌘ Read more

Linux Kernel AES Library Seeing Improvements For Better Performance & More
A set of 36 patches sent out overnight is making big improvements to the Linux kernel’s AES library. The patches allow for making use of the kernel’s existing architecture-optimized AES code for better performance, that code is also constant-time, lower memory use, and all-around a nice improvement over the status quo… ⌘ Read more

There Is No One Left On Debian’s Data Protection Team
Besides Debian’s aging bug tracker interface, another challenge as the Debian Linux distribution project begins 2026 is that all volunteers have left their Data Protection Team. The Debian Data Protection Team deals with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) issues and related data protection/privacy related matters… ⌘ Read more

Workstation Owner Sadly Marks the End-of-Life for HP-UX
Wednesday marked the end of support for the last and final version of HP-UX, writes OSNews.

They call it “the end of another vestige of the heyday of the commercial UNIX variants, a reign ended by cheap x86 hardware and the increasing popularisation of Linux.”

I have two HP-UX 11i v1 PA-RISC workstations, one of them being my pride and joy: an HP c8000, the last … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19-rc4 Released Following A Quiet Holiday Week, 6.19-rc8 Already Planned
Following the holidays, Linux 6.19-rc4 was released today in working toward the Linux 6.19 stable kernel release in early February… ⌘ Read more

And now the event loop is not a simple loop around curses’ getch() anymore but it can wait for events on any file descriptor. Here’s a simple test program that waits for connections on a TCP socket, accepts it, reads a line, sends back a line:

https://movq.de/v/93fa46a030/vid-1767547942.mp4

And the scrollbar indicators are working now.

I’ll probably implement timer callbacks using timerfd (even though that’s Linux-only). 🤔

Archboot Adds COSMIC Desktop as a New Install and Rescue Option
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Linux news site Linuxiac:

Archboot, a guided, user-friendly, menu-driven installer for Arch Linux that automates much of the traditional manual installation process (while still allowing advanced users to intervene when needed), has added the COSMIC desktop environment as a new selectable option. The … ⌘ Read more

Manjaro Linux 26.0 Rolling Out - Xfce Edition Recommended If Wanting To Use X11
Package updates for the Arch Linux powered Manjaro Linux distribution have been pushed out for Manjaro 26.0 “Anh-Linh” while updated ISOs are expected to soon become available. The Manjaro 26.0 milestone brings KDE Plasma 6.5 and GNOME 49 but with both of those you may lose X11 session support so they are recommending their Xfce Edition for wanting wanting to continue using an X.Org desktop session… ⌘ Read more

TrixiePup64 2601 Released For Debian 13 Powered Puppy Linux In Wayland & X11 Flavors
For those with fond memories of Puppy Linux as a very lightweight Linux distribution, released last month was a new TrixiePup64 for continuing the Puppy Linux spirit atop Debian. The new TrixiePup64 is based on Debian 13 components while shipping in both X11 and Wayland flavors. Out now is TrixiePup64 2601 as the latest iteration of this lightweight Linux distribution… ⌘ Read more

Linux’s Hung Task Detector Will Be Able To Be Reset For Easing System Administration
Worked on back in 2024 for the Linux kernel was a built-in counter to keep track of the number of hung tasks since boot. That feature for keeping track of the number of hung tasks since boot was merged in Linux 6.13 and exposed via /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_detect_count. For helping ease use around it, new code working its way to the kernel will allow resetting that “hung_task_detect_count” counter… ⌘ Read more

Patches Posted For Bringing Rock Band 4 PS4 / PS5 Guitar Support To Linux
Following Linux 6.19 adding support for CRKD guitar controllers, new patches posted to the Linux kernel mailing list are bringing some additional guitar controllers to Linux. This latest work is around enabling the Rock Band 4 guitars for the PlayStation 4 and PS5 consoles to work under Linux… ⌘ Read more

New AMD Linux Driver Patches Posted For Batch Userptr Allocation Support
A new feature being worked on recently for the AMDKFD kernel compute driver is batch user pointer “userptr” allocation support. With this new user-space API it will become possible to support allocating multiple non-contiguous CPU virtual address ranges that map to a single contiguous GPU virtual address… ⌘ Read more

Box64 v0.4 Improves Support For DRM Protected Games, Steam Is Now More Stable
While Fex-Emu has been getting a lot of attention lately for being Valve-sponsored and powering the upcoming Steam Frame, Box64 continues making progress as another great open-source project for running x86_64 Linux binaries on AArch64 Linux as well as an eye on other architectures like RISC-V… ⌘ Read more

Linux Audio Quirk Handling On The Way For Dell Panther Lake Laptops
Ahead of the initial batch of Intel Panther Lake laptops expected to be showcased at CES next week in Las Vegas, we’re seeing last minute quirk updates for these products expected to soon come to market… ⌘ Read more

GNOME Glycin Adds XPM/XBM Support To Address Fedora’s Last Unsandboxed Image Loader
GNOME’s Glycin project as the Rust-based sandboxed and extendable image loading library now supports XPM and XBM images. This is notable since those formats were the last unsandboxed image loading formats used on Fedora Linux… ⌘ Read more

RADV Driver Lands Another Big Improvement For Early AMD GCN Graphics Cards
Beyond Linux 6.19 switching old AMD GCN 1.0 and 1.1 GPUs to the AMDGPU kernel driver by default for better performance, RADV out-of-the-box, and more, there are still more improvements planned for these aging AMD graphics cards. Timur Kristóf of Valve’s Linux graphics team has been leading the effort to enhance the old graphics card support and on Friday night merged a big improvement for the RADV Vulkan driver in Mesa 26.0… ⌘ Read more

Aeryn OS Continuing To Focus On Tooling & Infrastructure In 2026
The Aeryn OS Linux distribution formerly known as Serpent OS has published a 2025 retrospective to recap the project changes over the past year as well as a look ahead to 2026… ⌘ Read more

Linux Addressing Out-Of-Memory Killer Inaccuracy On Large Core Count Systems
A patch is on the way to the Linux kernel and looks like it could be ready for the 6.20~7.0 kernel for addressing out-of-memory “OOM” killer inaccuracy behavior when dealing with large core count systems… ⌘ Read more

New Linux Patches Allow More Easily Changing The Tux Kernel Boot Logo
A new patch series that was posted this week allow for users to more easily replace the default kernel boot logo. While many of us are long accustomed to seeing the picture of Tux as the kernel boot logo, for those preferring to better customize your console boot experience these patches allow it to be easily manipulated via the kernel configuration “Kconfig” options… ⌘ Read more

Radeon Linux Driver Enhancements, Linux 6.19 Activity & Other December Highlights
During the month of December on Phoronix there was new and original content each and every day, ending the month with 305 original news articles and 25 featured Linux hardware reviews / multi-page benchmark articles. Here is a look back at the most exciting Linux/open-source hardware content in ending out 2025… ⌘ Read more

Steam On Linux Ends 2025 With 3.19% Marketshare, AMD Linux CPU Use Approaches 72%
Back in November Steam on Linux use hit an all-time high at 3.2%. With the still increasing popularity around the Steam Deck powered by the Arch Linux based SteamOS, Linux gaming continuing to grow thanks to Steam Play (Proton), and excitement around the upcoming Steam Frame and Steam Machine hardware, the Linux gaming outlook continues to be positive. The Steam Survey results for December 2025 are out tonight and with just a tiny … ⌘ Read more

Valve’s Linux Efforts, Kernel Improvements & KDE Plasma Wayland Advancements Topped 2025
After looking yesterday at the most viewed Linux hardware reviews and benchmarks of 2025, today’s look is at the most popular open-source/Linux news of the past year. There were 3,286 original news articles on Phoronix during 2025 written by your’s truly, here’s a look back at what excited readers the most over these past twelve months… ⌘ Read more

SDL 3.4 Released With Many New APIs, Better Emscripten & Native PNG Support
Kicking off the new year for Linux gaming and cross-platform gaming at large is the release of the SDL 3.4 library. SDL is part of the Steam runtime and continues to be widely-used for abstracting software/hardware for creating more portable games and other applications… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Lands Fix For Dead WiFi With MediaTek MT792x Wireless
Merged to Linux Git on New Year’s Eve was a fix in the form of a code revert for broken MediaTek WiFi on the in-development Linux 6.19 kernel… ⌘ Read more

More Improvements To Old AMD GPU Support On Linux Are Planned For 2026
With Linux 6.19 aging AMD GCN 1.0 and GCN 1.1 GPUs switched the default kernel driver used to provide for much better performance, RADV Vulkan support out-of-the-box, and other improvements compared to using the legacy Radeon DRM kernel driver. For 2026, Timur Kristóf of Valve’s Linux graphics team has more improvements still planned to enhance these older AMD graphics cards on Linux… ⌘ Read more