Linux 6.19-rc8 Released Ahead Of Linux 6.19 Stable Next Week
While typically the stable Linux kernel would come after the -rc7 release a week prior, for Linux 6.19 the release is being dragged out by an extra week not due to any scary bugs but rather due to the holiday downtime at the end of the year. As such Linux 6.19-rc8 is out today with the stable v6.19 release expected next Sunday… ⌘ Read more

Windows 11 Has Reached 1 Billion Users Faster Than Windows 10
An anonymous reader shares a report: Windows 11 now has one billion users. Microsoft hit the milestone during the recent holiday quarter, meaning Windows 11 has managed to reach one billion users faster than Windows 10 did nearly six years ago.

“Windows reached a big milestone, 1 billion Windows 11 users,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on the compa … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19-rc7 Released With Kernel Continuity Plan, A Few Important Fixes
The Linux 6.19 kernel remains on track for its official release two weeks from today, with the extra RC being baked in due to the end of year holidays. Out today is Linux 6.19-rc7 with a few changes worth highlighting for the week… ⌘ Read more

Vulkan 1.4.340 Released With Descriptor Heap & Other New Extensions
Vulkan 1.4.340 is out today as the first significant new Vulkan API update following the end of year holidays. With Vulkan 1.4.340 comes four new extensions worth talking about… ⌘ Read more

LLMinus Working On AI/LLM-Powered Merge Conflict Resolution For The Linux Kernel
Building off an initial request for comments (RFC) patch series posted during the winter holidays, an updated RFC patch series was posted this weekend for LLMinus. LLMinus is an effort led by NVIDIA Linux kernel engineer Sasha Levin to provide a large language model (LLM) assisted merge conflict resolution tool focused on Linux kernel development… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19-rc5 Brings Fix For Newer NVIDIA GPUs, Logitech HID++ For Anywhere 3S & Fixes
In addition to Linus Torvalds doing some vibe coding and more with his new “AudioNoise” project this week, Linux 6.19 kernel development ticked back up with the holidays having passed. A variety of fixes made it into today’s Linux 6.19-rc5 release in working toward v6.19 stable in early February… ⌘ Read more

Amazon’s AI Tool Listed Products from Small Businesses Without Their Knowledge
Bloomberg reports on Amazon listings “automatically generated by an experimental AI tool” for stores that don’t sell on Amazon.

Bloomberg notes that the listings “didn’t always correspond to the correct product”, leaving the stores to handle the complaints from angry customers:

Between the Christmas and New Year holidays, s … ⌘ Read more

Linux Consulting Firm Linutronix Recently Began A New Chapter
Some news that slipped under the radar prior to the holidays… Linutronix as the Linux consulting firm that has led the real-time “PREEMPT_RT” work and more within the Linux kernel – and Linutronix was acquired by Intel back in 2022 as an independent subsidiary – is beginning a “new chapter”… ⌘ Read more

Since I used so much Rust during the holidays, I got totally used to rustfmt. I now use similar tools for Python (black and isort).

What have I been doing all these years?! I never want to format code manually again. 🤣😅

Linus Torvalds’ Latest Open-Source Project Is AudioNoise - Made With The Help Of Vibe Coding
In addition to Linus Torvalds’ recent comments around AI tooling documentation, it turns out in fact that Linus Torvalds has been using vibe coding himself. Over the holidays Linus Torvalds has been working on a new open-source project called AudioNoise that was started with the help of AI vibe coding… ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net I also went back to my duty today and fixed a problem I created right before vanishing into the holidays. Of course, I discovered more problems while fixing the one thing. Luckily, another public holiday tomorrow. :-)

During my time off, I was a very lazy rat. I planned on doing some woodworking again, but instead I started watching Itchy Boot’s Africa season: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMvfS5mbsiI&list=PL8M9dV_BySaXNvQ_V1q4UU-DirPQlX0ZP

@bender@twtxt.net No, I had my break/holiday earlier. I chose to work through, except the public holidays of course.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de hear hear! If anything, holiday breaks help to validate the fact that we are prepared for retirement. At least, I am!

I basically worked through the Christmas break last year. I already had my holidays in Vietnam a few weeks earlier. 😆

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

The Performance Of Arch Linux Powered CachyOS On AMD EPYC Servers
One of the more interesting announcements over the holiday period thus far is that moving into 2026, CachyOS is looking to develop a server edition for their Arch Linux based operating system. CachyOS has garnered quite a following among Linux enthusiasts and gamers for its competitive out-of-the-box performance, employing some of the optimizations by Intel’s now defunct Clear Linux distribution, and pulling in all of the goodness from upstrea … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19-rc3 Released With A Holiday’s Week Of Fixes
Linus Torvalds just released Linux 6.19-rc3 to ship this week’s fixes. Linux 6.19-rc3 is coming in light as expected due to the Christmas week with many corporate developers getting paid time off and others taking part in year-end festivities… ⌘ Read more

Blender 5.0 Benchmarks Since Blender 3.0 For CPU Rendering Performance
As part of the many different year-end benchmarks on Phoronix, over the holidays I was curious about how far the Blender 3D modeling software’s performance has evolved over the past few years. So in looking at the CPU rendering performance I ran benchmarks of the major releases since Blender 3.0 through the recently released Blender 5.0… ⌘ Read more

What Rules Govern Hallmark Christmas Movies?
Hallmark has released more than 300 Christmas-themed TV movies since 2000, and a detailed internal rulebook obtained by film data analyst Stephen Follows explains how the company manages to produce nearly one new holiday film per week during the final quarter of each year without the whole operation collapsing into creative chaos.

The document, referred to as Hallmark’s “bible … ⌘ Read more

Open-Source Linux Driver Christmas Surprise For 20~23 Year Old Radeon GPUs
If Linux 6.19 switching from the Radeon legacy to AMDGPU kernel drivers for the GCN 1.0/1.1 GPUs for those ~13 year old GPUs isn’t nostalgic enough for you, here’s something a bit more nostalgic this holiday season: fresh open-source driver commits to the Radeon R300g driver for supporting those 23 year old ATI R300 GPUs up through the 20 year old R500 class graphics processors… ⌘ Read more

Visa Says AI Will Start Shopping and Paying For You In 2026
BrianFagioli writes: Visa says it has completed hundreds of secure, AI-initiated transactions with partners, arguing this proves agent driven shopping is ready to move beyond experiments. The company believes 2025 will be the last full year most consumers manually check out, with AI agents handling purchases at scale by the 2026 holiday season. Nearly half of U … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19’s Significant ~30% Performance Boost For Old AMD Radeon GPUs
For those still using old AMD GCN 1.0 “Southern Islands” or GCN 1.1 “Sea Islands” graphics cards, the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel is a wonderful holiday gift. With Linux 6.19, the GCN 1.0/1.1 GPUs are now defaulting to the modern AMDGPU kernel driver in place of the legacy “Radeon” DRM driver that has been the default for GCN 1.1/1.0 and other ATI/AMD graphics processors of the past 2+ decades. In this article is a look at the performance ben … ⌘ Read more

Are ‘Geek Gifts’ Becoming Their Own Demographic?
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland wonders if “gifts for geeks” is the next big consumer demographic:

For this year’s holiday celebrations, Hallmark made a special Christmas tree ornament, a tiny monitor displaying screens from the classic video game “Oregon Trail.” (“Recall the fun of leading a team of oxen and a wagon loaded with provisions from Missouri to the West … ⌘ Read more

Linux Mint 22.3 Beta Released With Cinnamon 6.6 Desktop
The beta release of Linux Mint 22.3 “Zena” is now available for testing ahead of the holidays for this latest incremental update to this desktop OS built atop an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS base… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Made Another Copilot Ad Where Nothing Actually Works
Microsoft’s latest holiday ad for its Copilot AI assistant features a 30-second montage of users seamlessly syncing smart home lights to music, scaling recipes for large gatherings, and parsing HOA guidelines – none of which the software can actually perform reliably when put to the test. The Verge methodically tested each prompt shown in the ad and foun … ⌘ Read more

Xorgproto 2025.1 Released To Recognize Newer Keyboard Keys
For X.Org Server users there is a new release of xorgproto for the holidays. Xorgproto as the set of headers and specifications for the X11 core protocols and extensions is out with its first new release since March 2024… ⌘ Read more

Vulkan 1.4.337 Debuts With Long Vector & 3D ASTC Compression Extensions
Vulkan 1.4.337 released a short time ago as what could be the last Vulkan API spec update of 2025 depending upon how much time the working group takes off or not around the holidays. In any case, it’s a nice holiday treat with the new VK_EXT_texture_compression_astc_3d and VK_EXT_shader_long_vector extensions… ⌘ Read more

OpenZFS 2.4 Released With Faster Encryption Performance, Many Other Improvements
OpenZFS 2.4 is out as stable in time for the holidays! The big OpenZFS 2.4 feature release is now available for FreeBSD and Linux systems to continue advancing the open-source ZFS file-system support… ⌘ Read more

Kdenlive 25.12 Video Editor Brings New Docking System, Menu Restructuring
In addition to the release this week of OpenShot 3.4, released today is a major update to another popular open-source video editing application: Kdenlive. The Kdenlive 25.12 release brings many improvements to help with editing of any year-end / holiday videos… ⌘ Read more

AMD Awarding Ryzen AI Max+ “Strix Halo” Laptops To Those Fixing ROCm Bugs
AMD Ryzen AI Max+ “Strix Halo” is beautifully awesome. Probably my favorite hardware of 2025 whether it’s in desktop form with the likes of the Framework Desktop or for very powerful laptops between the Zen 5 CPU cores and very capable Radeon 8060S Graphics within devices like the HP ZBook Ultra G1a. If you are interested by Strix Halo too and looking for a way to obtain one without the high price, AMD is running a holiday special of those … ⌘ Read more

Intel Video Processing Library Adding AI Assisted Video Encoder Features
Intel’s Video Processing Library “libvpl” is out with a new version ahead of the holidays. The only major change with libvpl 2.16 is adding experimental APIs for AI-assisted video encode functionality… ⌘ Read more

@shinyoukai@neko.laidback.moe Funny you should say that, I designed a new Prolog(ish) Symbolic Reasoning Engine and DSl over the holidays 🤣

And I’m back from my holidays! 🥳 Back to work boo 😒

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com probably a bug on my end with the bridge. I’ll figure it out with your help when I get home from my holidays.

Ubuntu 26.04 Snapshot 2 Released As Latest Monthly ISOs
It was just at the end of month that Ubuntu 26.04 Snapshot 1 ISOs were published for the first “Resolute Raccoon” milestone. Out already is now Snapshot 2 with Canonical releasing these images ahead of their engineers having time off for end-of-year holidays… ⌘ Read more

Bring Falling Snow & Christmas Lights to Mac with Snowy
If you ever wished your Mac could feel a bit more seasonal and festive for the holidays and Christmas, you might just appreciate a fun app called Snowy. Snowy brings falling snow, twinkling Christmas lights, and some holiday ambiance, directly to your Mac desktop. You can have dangling twinkling Christmas lights hanging from your menu … Read More ⌘ Read more

AI Slop Ad Backfires For McDonald’s
McDonald’s has pulled an AI-generated Christmas commercial from YouTube after viewers pushed back on what they called a distasteful, “AI slop”-filled take on the holidays. The 45-second ad, titled “It’s the most terrible time of the year,” was a satirical look at holiday chaos – people tripping while carrying overloaded gift bags, getting tangled in lights, burning homemade cookies, starting kitchen fires – … ⌘ Read more

Christmas cards remind prisoners they are ‘not forgotten’ over the holidays
Two Adelaide women have made it their mission to collect 2,000 Christmas cards for prisoners who’ll spend this year’s festive season behind bars. ⌘ Read more

Gearing up for the school holidays? Here’s how to survive them without social media
These school holidays, children under 16 will find themselves with less social media access as a ban comes into place. We asked the experts how parents can best support their kids with the transition. ⌘ Read more

No summer break for Australian athletes chasing Winter Olympic glory
At a time when many Aussies are heading off for beach holidays, a group of snow sports athletes are chasing winter with their sights set on the next Olympic Games. ⌘ Read more

Cost of living still a sore point for voters as politicians go on holiday
A mammoth year in politics ended with a focus on what is worrying most Australians ahead of Christmas: the cost of living. ⌘ Read more

Watch the Fun Apple Holiday 2025 Commercial: A Critter Carol
Apple has launched their official 2025 holiday advertisement for the season. This years commercial comes in at 2 minutes and features two friends taking a snowy hike, one of whom drops their iPhone into the snow, which is soon picked up by a forest creature, who proceeds to gather even more forest creatures to use … [Read More](https://osxdaily.com/2025/12/02/watch-the-fun-apple-holiday-2025-commercial-a-critter-c … ⌘ Read more

Add Christmas Lights to Home Screen, Dock, & Desktop with Festivitas for iPhone & Mac
Festivitas is a fun app that brings some holiday spirit directly to your iPhone or Mac, by allowing you to add some animated holiday lights to your Home Screen or desktop. And if you’re using it on a Mac, you can even make it snow, or add Christmas lights to your Dock too. Deck the … [Read More](https://osxdaily.com/2025/11/30/add-christmas-lights-to-home-scre … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Oh damn ! I’m on holidays in Ciwtnam 🤣 I’ll be late to the party !

Benedict Cumberbatch Films Two Bizarre Holiday Ads: for ‘World of Tanks’ and Amazon
“There are times when World of Tanks feels less like a videogame and more like a giant ad budget looking for something to be spent on,” writes PC Gamer.

This year, all those huge sacks with dollar signs on them have been thrown Benedict Cumberbatch’s way, making him the game’s newest “Holiday Ambassador” and t … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net Sweeet! 🥳 enjoy your holiday!

Algol 68 Programming Language Front-End Merged Into GCC 16
Making for an exciting holiday weekend night is the Algol 68 programming language front-end “ga68” being merged into the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) codebase. After COBOL language support landed in GCC 15 earlier this year, next year’s GCC 16 release is adding support for the half-century old Algol 68 programming language… ⌘ 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

That’s going to be most of our holidays next year 🤣 Mostly because we bought a van to go “glamping” about the country 😆

@movq@www.uninformativ.de You don’t go on holidays anywhere? 🧐