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FOSS
Kernel, distros, and the wider free and open source software world.
491 stories archived
SpacemiT Announces The V100 Server-Class RISC-V Processor
Following the interesting SpacemiT K3 RVA23 RISC-V SoC, SpacemiT today announced the V100 server-class RISC-V processor...
People Are Using AI to Get Rid of Smart TV Ads and Make Their TVs Faster
Android TV owners are pointing Claude Code at their TVs over ADB to strip out ads, telemetry and bloat. Here's how it works and where it can go wrong.
BeamFS Sent Out As Newest File-System Proposal For Linux
There is yet-another-Linux-file-system attempt... An initial request for comments (RFC) patch series was sent out this morning for BeamFS. The proposed BeamFS is a Reed-Solomon protected file-system...
Linux 7.4 Removing Its Broken & Rarely Touched Code For ARM64 Big Endian
The ARM64 code for Linux 7.4 is stripping away its support for big-endian kernel builds for 64-bit ARM...
RADV Promotes VK_EXT_host_image_copy To Enabled By Default For RDNA1 GPUs
Going back to July 2025 the open-source Radeon RADV Vulkan driver has offered experimental host image copy support with the API's VK_EXT_host_image_copy extension. This has been for RDNA1 and newer GPUs while now GFX10 RDNA 1 GPUs have this extension enabled by default while also enabling experimental support for prior GFX9 era GPUs too...
TAINT_FORCED_BIND Sent In For Linux 7.4 To Deal With Major Fuzzing Attack
Among the early pull requests sent out in advance of the Linux 7.4 kernel merge window opening were the driver core updates. Standing out here is the new TAINT_FORCED_BIND for dealing with the recent major fuzzing "attack" by AI agents/bots testing impractical driver/hardware combinations...
Linux Kernel 7.3 Release is Good News For Gamers Short on VRAM
A fix for memory freezes lands alongside Zen 6 groundwork, and early Apple M3 support.
Linux 7.3 released, this is what’s new
Linus Torvalds has announced the release of Linux 7.3, a new mainline kernel – the one Ubuntu 26.10 is running on. Linux 7.3 is another big update, improving gaming performance for AMD GPUs with low VRAM, boosting ext4 I/O and reworking how the kernel splits CPU time between groups of apps to improve efficiency. It’s expected to become the new Long Term Support version. Writing on the Linux kernel mailing list, Torvalds said: “It’s Sunday afternoon, and this week I somehow kept my wits together long enough to keep track of the day of the week, so the release isn’t […] You're reading Linux 7.3 released, this is what’s new , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
The 7.3 kernel has been released
Linus Torvalds has released the 7.3 kernel, as expected. It's Sunday afternoon, and this week I somehow kept my wits together long enough to keep track of the day of the week, so the release isn't randomly delayed. Will wonders never cease? Anyway, nothing very special seems to have happened this last week, so as expected the final 7.3 is out, and thus tomorrow the merge window for 7.4 opens. Except I'm on my annual family vacation, so instead of merging anything first thing in the morning, I'll spend most of the day on a boat and under water. I'll get back to merging in the afternoon, but I expect my schedule to be a bit unusual for a while. This release is a record-breaker on all fronts; it brought in 18,765 non-merge commits from 3,021 developers, 807 of whom were first-time kernel developers. Significant changes in this release include some significant binfmt_misc extensions , some group-scheduling work aimed at improving performance on large systems, the new failfs filesystem that fails all operations, the fchroot() system call, global per-CPU data for BPF programs, the completion of the sched_ext subscheduler feature , working-set tracking for virtual machines, alternative data-stream support in the ntfs3 filesystem, a long list of SMB server improvements , and much more. See the LWN merge-window summaries ( part 1 , part 2 ) and the KernelNewbies 7.3 page for details.
Linux 7.3 Released With Faster I/O Performance, AMD Zen 6 Preparations & More
The Linux 7.3 kernel is out today for an on-time release of this next stable kernel version...
Tiling Shell now supports mouse button layout activation
A new version of the Tiling Shell GNOME extension is out, adding support for GNOME 51 and a faster way to tile app windows using nothing but your mouse. Tiling Shell v18.0 lets you use your right mouse button for tiling system activation. You click your left button to grab and drag the window then, with it held, hold the right mouse button to trigger the on-screen tiling layout. Release the left button over a zone and the window snaps to it – no keys needed. It sounds more laborious than it feels in use, here’s a quick video demo: […] You're reading Tiling Shell now supports mouse button layout activation , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Linux Mint’s new system monitor utility is a big improvement
December’s Linux Mint 27 release will include a brand new system monitor tool preinstalled. The app is called Superlight (well, that’s the project and package name; the user-facing label is just System Monitor). It shows hardware, app and process usage, relays battery stats and has an interactive storage page to find out what files and folders are using the most space. It’s still under active development, but I took it for a spin to see how it fares and what it offers. Keep in mind that more features may be added or changed between now and when it gets its […] You're reading Linux Mint’s new system monitor utility is a big improvement , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
It Turns Out Intel TDX Doesn't Need So Much Cache Flushing
Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) for confidential computing with VMs has assumed the need to perform cache flushing when transitioning memory between KeyIDs used by the total memory encryption (MKTME) for unique AES encryption keys. But it's turned out to be unneeded and the Linux kernel is working now to reduce the excessive cache flushing...
Linux 7.4 Features Very Exciting With Radeon HDMI 2.1 By Default, AMD PerfOpt, Apple M4
The Linux 7.3 kernel is expected to be released as stable later today and with that version there are many exciting changes and improvements. However, the Linux 7.4 kernel merge window will then open up and there are even more exciting changes expected to be merged for this follow-on kernel cycle. Here is a preview of some of the many exciting feature changes expected for Linux 7.4...
Omarchy Gets The Web Browser Launching Faster By Avoiding XDG Overhead
Omarchy 4.0.5 released this weeekend as the newest version of this Arch Linux based distribution built around the Hyprland desktop. Omarchy 4.0.5 pulls in the latest Linux 7.2 stable kernel with BORE scheduler, updates against the Qt 6.12 toolkit, and a variety of smaller improvements...
Servo Gets CSS Grid Working, Threadboost Offering Big Speed-Ups
Servo's August status report has finally appeared for outlining progress made on this open-source, Rust-based browser engine. This follows the recent release of the Servo 0.6 software, including the Servoshell demo browser...
Now Playing Card shows media info for more than one app at a time
Now Playing Card is an extension for GNOME Shell that can show playback info and media controls from multiple sources at the same time. You're reading Now Playing Card shows media info for more than one app at a time , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Synchronous Queues For VirtIO-FS Show Huge Performance Potential
VirtIO-FS as the shared file-system for transferring data between guest VMs to/from a host server is showing some promising performance results with pending code for allowing synchronous queues rather than always being asynchronous...
ReactOS Can Now Be Installed & Used With Its NTFS Driver
The ReactOS open-source operating system has seen its NTFS file-system driver mature to the point that it can be finally used for installing and using ReactOS with it. NTFS formatting support is also finally now possible with this driver too...
MeshXFS: AI Adapts XFS Into A Clustered File-System
MeshXFS is a clustered open-source file-system in which "no human wrote any of its own code". Depending upon your views of AI, not necessarily something you want to hear for entrusting your data in an AI-created solution. Instead, Claude Opus was tasked with adapting the XFS file-system driver into a clustered file-system...
Linux Lands Fix for Rare, Varying SMP Boot Hangs Affecting Kernels Since 2024
Among the flurry of last minute patch activity ahead of tomorrow's presumed Linux 7.3 stable kernel release is a fix for addressing some rare hangs at boot time. The reports varied but ultimately tracked down to a kernel change made two years ago...
GNOME's New Local/Cloud AI Chat App Gains More Features
Coming about the past few months has been Moose as a GNOME-aligned AI chat application built around GTK4 and libadwaita. It began as a local AI chat app for the GNOME desktop and grew to support cloud AI services as well. This past week marked the latest feature release for Moose...
Linux 7.3 Lands Last-Minute Fixes For Samsung 990 PRO & 990 EVO Plus SSDs
Ahead of the Linux 7.3 stable kernel expected to be released tomorrow, last minute workarounds were merged for the Samsung 990 PRO and Samsung 990 EVO Plus NVMe solid state drives...
KDE Plasma 6.9 To Debut New Weather Widget & On-Screen Keyboard
With KDE Plasma 6.8 released earlier this week, KDE developers have begun working on more feature activity toward Plasma 6.9...