Distributions quote of the week

2,442 days is a fair amount of time, and that’s how long I had been
on the openSUSE Board as its chair when I started this note.

That journey began on August 19th, 2019, and it ends today as I am
stepping down as chair of the openSUSE Board.

It’s been an intense time for most of it — just a bit calm the last
year and a half. A time of joy and frustration, anger occasionally
and rewarding more often than that.

During those years we have seen SUSE and openSUSE carve out from Micro
… ⌘ Read more

GCC Git Lands Fix For Missing AVX-512 Optimizations On AMD Zen 6
Last week marked the release of GCC 16.1 as the first GCC 16 stable release. While that release introduces initial AMD Zen 6 “znver6” support well in advance of those next-generation AMD processors debuting, it’s not yet in perfect shape with just today two missing optimizations around AVX-512 having been merged… ⌘ Read more

Coinbase Lays Off Nearly 700 Workers In ‘AI-Native’ Restructuring
Coinbase is laying off about 700 workers, or 14% of its workforce, as CEO Brian Armstrong says the company is restructuring to become “lean, fast, and AI-native.” Engadget reports: Armstrong claimed he’d seen engineers “use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks” and that non-technical teams in the company are “shipping production code,” wh … ⌘ Read more

Intel Drivers With Mesa 26.2 Ready For Xe’s Support In Linux 7.1 To Better Handle Memory
Merged to the Intel Xe kernel graphics driver with Linux 7.1 is an addition to improve the video RAM memory pressure or out-of-memory behavior for Intel graphics with dedicated video memory. Introduced is support for purgeable buffer objects via a new user-space API to provide usage hints for enhancing what is purged under vRAM pressure. Merged this week to Mesa 26.2-devel is support for the Intel Mesa drivers to make … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1-rc2 Released With Audio Fix For Steam Deck OLED, Other Fixes
Linux 7.1-rc2 is out for testing with its accumulation of initial bug and regression fixes that have been collected over the past week since the Linux 7.1 merge window was capped off… ⌘ Read more

ReactOS Introduces Unified Live/Install Media, New Storage Driver
ReactOS as the “open-source Windows” operating system project striving for binary compatibility with Microsoft Windows has seen some exciting improvements this week… ⌘ Read more

Many Exciting Google Summer of Code 2026 Projects & A Lot Of AI
This week Google announced the selected Google Summer of Code “GSoC” 2026 projects for providing stipends to student developers for engaging in different open-source projects. This year a lot of open-source projects involve AI/LLM adoption but there are also a number of other interesting student projects at large from GNOME Mutter GPU reset recovery to adding new features to FreeBSD… ⌘ Read more

Chinese Exports of Green Technologies Surged to Record Levels After Iran War Began
“The war in Iran has sent oil-starved countries scrambling for fuel,” CNN reported this week. And many of those countries now want renewable fuels, the article points out, “leaving them turning to the renewables king of the planet: China.”

Chinese exports of solar technology, batteries and electric vehicle … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1-rc2 Bringing Some More Improvements/Fixes For Older AMD GPUs
Merged on Friday ahead of the Linux 7.1-rc2 kernel release due out tomorrow were this week’s batch of Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel graphics / display / accelerator driver fixes… ⌘ Read more

Retina Scan for Diabetes Could Also Reduce Deaths During Pregnancy in Developing Countries
This week Bill Gates wrote a blog post about a special camera from medtech startup Remidio, which delivers high-resolution images of a patient’s retina in seconds. The camera plugs into a phone running an AI system that watches for early signs of diabetes — all without needing a blood draw, e … ⌘ Read more

Disneyland Now Uses Face Recognition on Visitors
Plus: The NSA tests Anthropic’s Mythos Preview to find vulnerabilities, a Finnish teen is charged over the Scattered Spider hacking spree, and more. ⌘ Read more

Why Does Wikipedia Think I’m Evan Spiegel?
For the past week, a photo of me has been plastered on the CEO of Snap’s Wikipedia page. No one, not even Spiegel, seems to care. ⌘ Read more

Microsoft’s Xbox Mode Is Now Available For All Windows 11 PCs
Microsoft is rolling out Xbox mode to all Windows 11 PCs, bringing a full-screen Xbox PC app interface similar to Steam’s Big Picture Mode. “Some players in select markets will be able to download the Xbox mode experience today, with availability expanding to more players in those markets over the next several weeks,” says the Xbox team. The Verge repo … ⌘ Read more

I’m in such a good mood lately, ready for an exciting week ⌘ Read more

This Treatment Could Reverse Osteoarthritis Joint Damage With a Single Injection
Osteoarthritis has no cure, but researchers have developed new therapies that help aging or damaged joints repair themselves in a matter of weeks. ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Open-Sources ‘Earliest DOS Source Code Discovered To Date’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Several times in the last couple of decades, Microsoft has released source code for the original MS-DOS operating system that kicked off its decades-long dominance of consumer PCs. This week, the company has reached further back than ever, releasing “the earliest DOS source code discove … ⌘ Read more

AMD Posts Newest Linux Patches To Accelerate Page Migration For Better Performance
Posted to the Linux kernel mailing list this week was the newest revision of a patch series originally started in early 2025 by a NVIDIA engineer for accelerating page migration. Now being worked on by AMD engineers, this accelerated page migration via batch copies and hardware offloading continues to show promising results… ⌘ Read more

[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for April 30, 2026
Inside this week’s LWN.net Weekly Edition:

• Front: Famfs; Python packaging council; Zig concurrency; pages and folios; Strawberry music manager; 7.1 merge window.

• Briefs: GnuPG 2.5.19; Copy Fail; Plasma security; Fedora 44; Ubuntu 26.04; Niri 26.04; pip 26.1; RIP Seth Nickell; RIP Tomáš Kalibera; Quotes; …

• Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patc … ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu’s AI Plans Have Linux Users Looking For a ‘Kill Switch’
Canonical’s plan to add AI features to Ubuntu has sparked pushback from users who are concerned it could follow Windows 11’s AI-heavy direction. “After Canonical’s announcement earlier this week that it’s bringing AI features to Ubuntu, replies included requests for an AI ‘kill switch’ or a way to disable the upcoming features,” reports The Verge. Canoni … ⌘ Read more

AMD Introducing New Linux Driver For Their Halo Box: For Its RGB LED Light Bar
AMD CEO Lisa Su back at CES 2026 showed off the Ryzen AI Halo box as a mini PC built around their excellent Strix Halo SoC. The Ryzen AI halo box is to serve as an AI development platform to compete with the likes of NVIDIA’s DGX Spark and Dell GB10. This week is the first time I am seeing new Linux driver activity specifically referencing this exciting AMD “Halo Box” system… ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Leads Over Windows 11 In Creator Workstation Performance
The past few weeks I have been testing out the new HP Z6 G5 A workstation desktop PC. It’s a beast in being powered by the AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 9975WX, eight channels of DDR5-5600 memory, and paired with a NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Max-Q workstation graphics card. The full review on the HP Z6 G5 A workstation will be published on Phoronix in the next week or so but given the timing and that it shipped with WIndows 11 Pro, here is a look at … ⌘ Read more

GCC 16’s Improved Error Messages, Experimental HTML Output
GCC 16.1 as the first stable version of the GCC 16 compiler is releasing as soon as later this week if all goes well. Among the many improvements in this year’s open-source compiler update are continued enhancements to the error messages as well as having an experimental HTML output option for messages… ⌘ Read more

Proton 11.0 Beta 2 Updates VKD3D-Proton
Following the release of Proton 11.0 Beta 1 from two weeks ago that updated against Wine 11.0, this heart to Valve’s Steam Play is now out with a second beta release… ⌘ Read more

Stop Trying to Unmask Satoshi Nakamoto
On this week’s Big Interview podcast, actor-director Ben McKenzie talks about the rise of crypto, why he finds it dangerous, and why it benefits from having a mysterious creator. ⌘ Read more

I am in a very good mood these days, ready for very exciting week ⌘ Read more

Two Hot Climate Tech Startups Just Raised $1 Billion+ in IPOs
Public stock exchanges “appear to be warming to climate tech startups,” reports TechCrunch. “Or at least some of them.”

This week, nuclear startup X-energy went public, raising $1 billion in an upsized share offering that appears to have delivered a windfall for its investors, including Amazon [and Google]. Retail investors apparently can’t get enough … ⌘ Read more

Linux Version of Framework’s Laptop 13 Pro is Outselling Its Windows Variant
Framework began shipping its new Laptop 13 Pro this week. And the Ubuntu variant is outselling the Windows variant, reports PC World:

[I]t’s selling quickly by Framework’s internal metrics, with six batches of the Intel version of the laptop already sold out. [A later Framework social media post added “Spoke too soon, w … ⌘ Read more

The New Linux Kernel AI Bot Uncovering Bugs Is A Local LLM On Framework Desktop + AMD Ryzen AI Max
Earlier this month on Phoronix we were the first to draw attention to a new fuzzing tool / AI bot uncovering kernel bugs by Greg Kroah-Hartman, the “second in command” for Linux kernel development and stable maintainer. Greg has now shared more light on the “gregkh_clanker_t1000” for this tool that has been uncovering more Linux kernel bugs the past few weeks… ⌘ Read more

Free Software Foundation Says ‘Responsible AI’ Licenses Which Restrict Harmful Uses are Unethical and Nonfree
The Free Software Foundation’s Licensing and Compliance Manager published a blog post this week to explicitly state that”Responsible AI” Licenses (RAIL) are nonfree and unethical. The licenses restrict AI and ML software “from being used in a specific list of h … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Brings Audio Support For The Line6 POD HD PRO & NexiGo N930W Webcam
Following last week’s Linux 7.1 sound subsystem feature pull that added bus keeper support in working toward better Apple Silicon support along with a variety of other new audio hardware support, a secondary set of sound updates were merged as we approach the end of the Linux 7.1 merge window… ⌘ Read more

Fedora 44 Releasing Next Week
After being deemed not ready for debuting this week as an early release target, Fedora stakeholders have decided that Fedora 44 will be ready to officially debut next Tuesday… ⌘ Read more

Discord Sleuths Gained Unauthorized Access to Anthropic’s Mythos
Plus: Spy firms tap into a global telecom weakness to track targets, 500,000 UK health records go up for sale on Alibaba, Apple patches a revealing notification bug, and more. ⌘ Read more

I left at full sunshine and completely forgot to bring my bicycle’s headlamp. The taillight is always on the bike, but the front one gets charged in the house after every trip. Luckily, I found a torch and roll of duct tape in my hiking backpack. It finally paid off that I always carry all this silly gear around.

A few weeks ago, I actually thought about removing the torch, because it’s been a hot minute when I last used it. Fortunately, I did not. :-)

Linux 7.1 Removes Drivers For Long Obsolete Input Hardware: Bye Bus Mouse Support
Beyond Linux looking to remove old drivers due to the surge of AI/LLM bug reports, the Linux 7.1 kernel is also removing some old hardware drivers simply on the basis of long obsolete hardware. The input subsystem saw several drivers removed this week for decades old hardware… ⌘ Read more

Apple’s Next Chapter, SpaceX and Cursor Strike a Deal, and Palantir’s Controversial Manifesto
In this week’s episode of Uncanny Valley, we talk about Tim Cook’s legacy as CEO at Apple and what his long-rumored departure means for the future of one of the world’s biggest companies. ⌘ Read more

53 Nations Gather To Plan a Fossil Fuel Phaseout
Ancient Slashdot reader hwstar shares a report from The Conversation: For the first time ever, more than 50 nations will gather next week in Colombia to hash out how to wind down and end their dependence on coal, oil and gas. The history-making conference was planned before the Iran war. But this year’s energy crisis has greatly raised the stakes. […] Around 80% of the trap … ⌘ Read more

Many USB Improvements & New Hardware Merged For Linux 7.1
Ready to go ahead of the Linux 7.1 merge window closing at week’s end are numerous new USB device support additions and other USB subsystem enhancements… ⌘ Read more

[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for April 23, 2026
Inside this week’s LWN.net Weekly Edition:

• Front: LLMs and Python bugs; scheduler regression; new Rust traits; dependency cooldowns; 7.1 merge window; Shor’s algorithm; drama at The Document Foundation.

• Briefs: Firefox zero-days; kernel code removal; reproduceible Arch; Debian election; Firefox 150; Forgejo 15.0; Git 2.54.0; KDE Gear 26.04; LillyPond 2.26.0; Rust 1.95.0; Quotes; …

• [Announcements](https:/ … ⌘ Read more

Intel Ends Open Ecosystem Community/Evangelism, Archives Other Open-Source Projects
Over the past number of months there has been a steady flow of Intel open-source projects archived on GitHub amid the corporate restructuring at the company and realigning of their open-source focus. This week another batch of Intel open-source projects were formally archived… ⌘ Read more

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Gets a Price Cut
Microsoft is cutting the monthly price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, but the tradeoff is that new Call of Duty releases will no longer arrive on the service at launch. Instead, they’ll show up about a year later. The Verge reports: After Xbox CEO Asha Sharma admitted last week that “Game Pass has become too expensive for players,” Microsoft is dropping the price of Xbox Game Pa … ⌘ Read more

NTFS-3G FUSE Driver Sees First New Release In Four Years
Coming today as a big surprise – one week after the new NTFS file-system driver was merged for Linux 7.1 and separately the existing NTFS3 kernel driver seeing some fixes – is a new release of the NTFS-3G driver providing a FUSE-based user-space driver for NTFS on Linux and other platforms… ⌘ Read more

While New NTFS Driver Merged, NTFS3 Driver Sees Fixes & Minor Changes For Linux 7.1
Last week saw the “NTFS resurrection” as Linux Torvalds put it with the new/overhauled NTFS driver having been merged for Linux 7.1. Even still, the NTFS3 driver that was contributed a few years ago by Paragon Software remains in the mainline kernel and today were some fixes/improvements merged for that existing driver… ⌘ Read more

Git 2.54.0 released
Git maintainer Junio Hamano has announced
Git 2.54.0, which includes contributions from 137 people; 66 of those
people are first-time contributors to the project. Changes include the
addition of Git history rewriting, Git’s web interface (gitweb)
“has been taught to be mobile friendly”, and much more. See the
announcement for all improvements, additions, and bug fixes. Hamano
is now taking a short break:

I will go offline for a couple of weeks starting thi … ⌘ Read more

Allbirds’ Move To AI Has Echoes of the Dot-Com Frenzy
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg, written by writer Austin Carr: Allbirds is pivoting to artificial intelligence. The San Francisco brand, whose wool running shoes were once the sneaker du jour among the tech crowd, announced last week that it was expanding into AI computing infrastructure. The bizarre strategic shift was immediately greeted with a surpris … ⌘ Read more

[$] Digging into drama at The Document Foundation
The Document Foundation (TDF) is
the nonprofit entity behind the LibreOffice productivity suite. Most of the
time, the software takes the spotlight, but that has changed in the past few weeks, and
not for pleasant reasons. TDF has revoked\
foundation membership status from about 30 people who work for or have
contracting statu … ⌘ Read more

Intel Compute Runtime Promotes Support For Wildcat Lake, “Early” Crescent Island
Out today is the Intel Compute Runtime 26.14.37833.4 that now includes production support for the newly-launched Wildcat Lake cut-down Panther Lake SoCs that debuted last week as the Core Series 3… ⌘ Read more

I won our only game of Magic for this week with my (yet-to-be published) “Bolas Triumphant” deck: 5 players over 3 hours, including 4 board wipes (one of which came from my Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh), and I even got to cast Omniscience via a Fae of Wishes. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know I had a good time. 😁

New Lenovo Legion Go Drivers & More Sony HID Device Support In Linux 7.1
The HID subsystem updates landed this week for the in-development Linux 7.1 kernel that includes new hardware support and other changes… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Adds Some New PCIe Drivers While Nuking Some PCI Drivers
The PCI subsystem updates were merged this week for the Linux 7.1 kernel with a wide assortment of PCI(e) changes from new to old hardware… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Sound Code Adds Bus Keepers: Aiming For Better Apple Silicon Support
The sound subsystem changes were merged this week for Linux 7.1 that include some new hardware support and other useful additions… ⌘ Read more