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FOSS
Kernel, distros, and the wider free and open source software world.
437 stories archived
KDE Plasma 6.8 To Support System Monitor With Intel Xe, Plasma 6.7 Sees More Crash Fixes
KDE developers continue to be quite busy in preparing for next month's Plasma 6.7 stable desktop release due out in mid-June while also beginning more feature work toward Plasma 6.8...
More ASUS & HP Laptops See Platform Driver Support For Linux 7.1-rc5
This week's x86 platform driver fixes include not only a handful of bug fixes but also enabling some additional laptops within existing drivers for HP and ASUS devices...
DreamWorks' Open-Source MoonRay Renderer Now Part Of The Academy Software Foundation
Back in 2022 it was announced DreamWorks Animation was open-sourcing their MoonRay renderer that has been used in production feature films. It ended up being published as open-source in March 2023 as OpenMoonRay and since then has continued advancing with new feature releases and improvements. Now it's being contributed to the Academy Software Foundation as the newest project...
FreeBSD 15.1-RC1 Released: Fixes With Now Seeing More AI-Discovered Security Issues
In addition to the recent influx of Linux security vulnerabilities affecting Linux, FreeBSD has also begun receiving security reports via AI/LLM-driven discovery tools. FreeBSD 15.1-RC1 is out today ahead of the planned official release in June and it brings a handful of security fixes out of this new AI-driven security research space...
Rust-Based Wild Linker 0.9 Brings New Platform Coverage, Linker Plugin API
Wild Linker 0.9 was released today as the latest version of this very fast linker for Linux systems that is written in the Rust programming language...
Linux Mint Making Improvements To Its File Manager, Theme & Dialogs
The Linux Mint project today published their May 2026 status report to outline recent work done to this Ubuntu/Debian-based Linux platform and much of their focus in recent weeks on enhancements to their Cinnamon desktop environment...
Intel's Latest Round Of Open-Source Projects Ended: OBS Studio Plugin, CVE Binary Tool & More
With Intel having been one of the most dominant open-source contributors for years across the software ecosystem, months after they began sunsetting various software projects no longer aligned with today's Intel, they continue formally sunsetting/archiving different open-source projects...
AV2 Codec Looks Like It Will Be Officially Released Next Week
For years already AV2 has been in development as the successor to AV1 for this wonderful open-source, royalty-free video codec. While there was talk about releasing AV2 by the end of 2025, that didn't happen but now latest indicators are pointing toward its formal debut next week...
FreeBSD Foundation Executive Director Tries Daily Driving FreeBSD On Laptop
With FreeBSD having worked on improving its laptop support over the past two years with some big changes and ongoing efforts for making a nice KDE desktop experience on FreeBSD, FreeBSD Foundation's Executive Director has been trying to daily drive FreeBSD on laptops...
Linux To Remove ISA Speech Synthesizer Driver That Likely Hasn't Been Used In Decades
Following the process of phasing out Intel 486 CPU support and other old hardware drivers that were dropped in the Linux 7.1 kernel cycle for reducing the kernel maintenance burden, the upcoming Linux 7.2 cycle is continuing the trend of phasing out some of the old hardware support that is very obsolete, likely having no users on the latest upstream kernels, and no one formally maintaining the obsolete drivers...
KernelScript: A Programming Language For Kernel Customization & App Optimizations
Multikernel Technologies Inc has been working on a multi-kernel architecture for the Linux kernel while in addition to that they have been developing KernelScript as a domain-specific language for carrying out Linux kernel customizations and app-specific optimizations...
Boot-Time Wizard Aims To Help Reduce Linux Boot Times
While in the past decade or so Linux desktop/laptop users likely have little to complain about boot times and there hasn't been much emphasis around trying to make boot times even faster on the Linux desktop especially in an era where many systems are always-on and suspend/resume working more reliably these days, boot times are still an important factor in the embedded Linux world. Boot-Time Wizard is one of the new efforts aiming to help embedded Linux makers cut-down on their boot times...
California's Age Verification Law May End Up Exempting Most Linux Distributions
While not as good as repealing AB 1043 outright for requiring operating system providers to ask for a user's age or birth date at device setup, open-source Linux distributions and other open-source OSes may end up seeing some reprieve before this law goes into effect at the start of 2027...
Linux 7.1-rc5 Released With Fixes Ramping Up From AI Coding Agents
In the road to releasing Linux 7.1 in June, out today is Linux 7.1-rc5 that continues coming on heavy with fixes...
GitHub Copilot & Claude Code Helped With Graphics, WiFi Linux Driver Issues This Week
For those curious about the growing use of AI and coding agents within the Linux kernel, this week there was another large batch of new patches fixed that were generated or co-authored by agents like Claude Code and GitHub Copilot...
RADV Driver Lands Support For VK_KHR_shader_fma
Merged today for what will become Mesa 26.2 next quarter is the Radeon Vulkan driver "RADV" now supporting the VK_KHR_shader_fma extension...
Intel Introducing USB4STREAM Protocol For Linux - Opening Up Some Nifty Uses For USB4
An exciting Intel innovation expected to be added for the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel is introducing the new USB4STREAM protocol for USB4/Thunderbolt as a "super simple" way to "basically just transfer raw packets from one host to another". This can be useful for quickly backing up a system from one host to another, sharing of web cameras or other peripherals across systems, or other environments where not having networking or wanting to avoid the traditional Linux networking stack...
Linux To Drop ARCnet Support For Old ISA & PCMCIA Hardware
With Linux 7.1 ISDN, ham radio, and other old network code was removed in lightening the kernel source tree by around 138 thousand lines of code. Some additional Linux networking code cleaning is expected for Linux 7.2 with the ISA and PCMCIA hardware around ARCnet set to be removed...
Redis 8.8 Released With New Array Data Structure, More Performance Optimizations
Redis 8.8 reached GA today for the Redis open-source project providing a high performance, in-memory data store...
Cinnamon desktop is getting its own, native screenshot tool
Linux Mint developers are building a new screenshot utility for the Cinnamon desktop, ahead of its next major release. The home-grown tool will give users more options when taking screenshots and will “accommodate the differences between CSD (Client Side Decoration) and SSD (Server Side Decoration) windows” to provide ‘cleaner’ looking screenshots. Currently, Cinnamon rolls with the GTK-based gnome-screenshot. That tool works fine, but it doesn’t render shadows in windowed app screenshots on Cinnamon. It does, however, include pixel artefacts around the corners of windows, caused by the drop shadow bleeding through: It’s not super pretty, and as someone who works […] You're reading Cinnamon desktop is getting its own, native screenshot tool, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Canonical to shut Ubuntu Pastebin after 18 years of service
Canonical will decommission its long-running text-hosting service Ubuntu Pastebin on May 31. The company is pulling the plug as part of a broader “infrastructure modernization and migration project”, according to Canonical Community Engineer Aaron Prisk. Ubuntu Pastebin works similarly to GitHub’s Gist, albeit without the revision history. It’s been available as a tool the community can use since late 2007. The service was partly launched to help the distro’s official IRC support channels. They were often flooded with reams of terminal output from users requesting help. Paste links were also used by the wider community, often to provide quick access […] You're reading Canonical to shut Ubuntu Pastebin after 18 years of service, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Ubuntu 26.10 daily builds now available to download
Daily builds of Ubuntu 26.10 ‘Stonking Stingray’ are now available for download, as development on the distro’s next major release kicks in to gear. As the name suggests, new ISOs are produced from development code on a (mostly) daily basis, giving those keen to test October’s release in advance the ability to do so. However, because package updates can break the ability for a bootable image to be created, it’s not unusual for there to be temporary gaps between new daily builds being available. Daily builds will continue to be produced for remainder of the Ubuntu 26.10 development cycle, right […] You're reading Ubuntu 26.10 daily builds now available to download, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
AMD Pulls a Bait-and-Switch on Linux Users with Vivado Licensing Changes
Tells Linux users to either pay up or get stuck on an aging, unsupported version forever.
GNOME Sushi spacebar preview fix coming to Ubuntu 26.04
GNOME Sushi fans, rejoice: the spacebar preview feature is being fixed in Ubuntu 26.04. If you’re not familiar with it, GNOME Sushi is a file preview tool similar to Quick Look on macOS. Select a file in Nautilus, press space and a floating preview window appears. It works with images, video and audio files, PDFs, plain text files and more. GNOME’s Sushi isn’t preinstalled in Ubuntu but many users install it themselves as it makes it easier to find specific files when rooting through folders filled with samey-seeming documents, audio files and video clip. —Well, except it doesn’t (or rather, […] You're reading GNOME Sushi spacebar preview fix coming to Ubuntu 26.04, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.