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FOSS
Kernel, distros, and the wider free and open source software world.
664 stories archived
Qualcomm QCE Driver On The Chopping Block With ~48x Slower Than Armv8 Crypto Extensions
A few days back I wrote about upstream Linux kernel developers marking the Qualcomm crypto accelerator driver as "broken" and "harmful" due to its slow performance, history of bugs, and other limitations. Now this Qualcomm Crypto Engine "QCE" driver might be removed outright from the Linux kernel source tree after discovering it's even worse than anticipated...
Ubuntu 26.04 Stopped Notifying Users About Updates, But That Was Intentional
Luckily, a fix is already out, shipped as a security update.
Imagination PowerVR Driver Marking BXM-4-64 MC1 GPU As Supported In Linux 7.3
Sent out today was the weekly round of drm-misc-next patches of new Direct Rendering Manager feature material ready to be queued in DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 7.3 merge window...
Hefty stable kernel updates for Friday
Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 7.1.5 , 6.18.40 , 6.12.97 , 6.6.145 , 6.1.178 , 5.15.212 , and 5.10.261 stable Linux kernels. This batch of kernels includes a hefty set of updates, possibly the the largest ever. 7.1.5-rc1 , for example, included more than 2,000 patches, 6.18.40-rc1 included 1,611 patches, and so forth. Users are advised to upgrade.
Codeberg Has Drawn a Hard Line on Use of AI With Community Backing
While many projects are warming up to AI, Codeberg went the other way.
Linux Plumbers Conference 2026 registration open
Registration is now open for the 2026 Linux Plumbers Conference, to be held October 5 to 7 in Prague, Czechia. Tickets to this event tend to sell out quickly, so interested attendees probably should not procrastinate.
Firefox’s new tab page widgets adds AI-powered daily crossword
More widgets are coming to Firefox’s New Tab page, including an interactive crossword puzzle powered by the AI news service Particle. The mini crossword game is updated daily, with puzzles based around recent content from the AI summary app Particle, replete with links to articles on the site you can read to help you deduce crossword answers from the clues provided. You click on a square to activate the row or column (clicking on it again switches between “Across” and “Down”). You read read the clue at the bottom, and then you type in your answer. Use the hint button […] You're reading Firefox’s new tab page widgets adds AI-powered daily crossword , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
De Vlieger: The Fedora 45 sausage factory
Fedora contributor Simon de Vlieger has published a blog post with a walkthrough of how the project turns source code and packages into the final release that users install on their systems. It follows the a package from a packager's git push to a composed release: ISOs, cloud images, container images, and OSTree deployments. The walkthrough describes how the Fedora 'sausage' is created as of Fedora 45, things change all the time; I hope to have time to update this document every cycle or every few cycles of Fedora releases so there's both history and people can find up to date information.
Ubuntu Linux Looking To Get Rid Of /etc/debian_version Historical Artifact
Ubuntu Linux has shipped /etc/debian_version that is carried over from upstream Debian and in turn just indicating the Debian Sid development version from which the packages are arrived. Besides it being inaccurate, /etc/os-release has been the long preferred standard for reading the OS release information. Thus finally Ubuntu developers are looking at dropping the /etc/debian_version file...
Fedora 45 Looks To Begin Phasing Out In-Kernel Crypto Userspace API
Going along with the upstream Linux 7.2 kernel deprecation of AF_ALG and Linux 7.3 to further restrict this interface for letting user-space programs interact directly with the Linux kernel crypto API, Fedora 45 is looking to follow and help support this transition...
[$] An update on netkit and the use of BPF in user space
Daniel Borkmann led a session at the 2026 Linux Filesystem, Memory-Management, and BPF Summit about the progress that has been made with netkit, the subsystem that allows virtual machines (VMs) running on Linux to perform networking efficiently. When that did not fill the full time, he went on to discuss his idea for using BPF to live-patch user-space applications. While netkit is making progress, and can now support zero-copy receipt of packets into a VM in a network namespace, the idea of using BPF for patching user-space programs remains entirely speculative.
Home Assistant Device Database public preview
The Open Home Foundation , which governs the Home Assistant home-automation project, has announced the "public preview" of its Device Database : Providing a public, open way to browse the anonymous, aggregated device data we collect was always part of the plan, and this preview is our first step toward it. You can already use it to search and filter devices to see aggregated community insights, starting with a deliberately focused set of specifics, such as whether a device requires an internet connection, and which protocols and integrations it works with. We've kept that initial scope narrow on purpose, giving us a solid foundation we can build on together with you, our community, as the database grows. LWN looked at Home Assistant in May 2025.
AMD Advancing AI 2026: Open, Open-Source & More Open-Source
At this week's AMD Advancing AI 2026 event, "AI" was mentioned thousands of times in talks and in demos. As expected. Beyond that, the other term likely most heard during the event was "open"... Not particularly new for AMD with their long history of open-source efforts but I'd wager at this year's AMD Advancing AI 2026 event they were more acutely bringing up open-source, open ecosystems, and open standards. Certainly seemed like an uptick in "open" mentions and a ramp that's been building each year at the AMD events...
Snapdragon X Elite Laptop Experience Still Lackluster On Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
At the end of last year when checking out the latest Linux experience on the Snapdragon X Elite it was a disappointing affair. The performance had regressed and overall a more headache-inducing experience than just running a modern AMD Ryzen AI or Intel Core Ultra laptop on Linux. Given the recent release of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, I've been re-testing the Acer Swift 14 AI laptop with Snapdragon X Elite SoC to see how its performing under Linux now and against the AMD/Intel competition. Unfortunately, it's regressed even further than the last round of testing.
Codeberg members ban hosting ‘mostly’ AI-generated code
Codeberg, the nonprofit alternative to GitHub used by number of popular FLOSS projects, will no longer host software that’s “mostly” AI-generated. A vote closed yesterday (22 July, 2026), passing 358 to 144 with 14 abstentions on roughly 50% turnout to stop hosting software that’s largely vibe-coded. A second motion, also passed, commits Codeberg to never training AI models on hosted code or user data. Not that it was ever likely to. A Terms of Use amendment now prohibits projects that “mostly consist of code written by” generative AI tools. In a blog post, Codeberg explains the economic need for a […] You're reading Codeberg members ban hosting ‘mostly’ AI-generated code , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
AMD EPYC Zen 7 "Florence" Confirmed With ACE, Next-Gen Memory
After announcing the AMD EPYC 9006 "Venice" processors today at AMD Advancing AI 2026, Lisa Su ended her keynote by confirming EPYC Zen 7 "Florence" details as well as EPYC Zen 8 "Ravenna" being in development...
Mourning Dan Williams
I have just received the shocking news that Dan Williams, a longtime, high-profile kernel developer, has passed away. I knew him primarily through his long service on the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board; he was always a strong, thoughtful, and intelligent presence. Dan will be deeply missed. There is a support effort underway for Dan's family as they come to terms with this loss.
AMD Announces ROCm.AI As AI-Driven Platform For Developers
In addition to Instinct MI455X and Helios launching along with the new AMD EPYC 9006 "Venice" processors, AMD used their annual Advancing AI day to announce ROCm.AI as an AI-driven platform for developers...
AMD EPYC 9006 Venice Announced & Looks Poised To Be A Grand Slam
While AMD EPYC 9005 "Turin" launched just under two years ago, it has aged remarkably well. It is one of the few CPU generations in my past 22 years of Linux hardware reviews/benchmarking that has still captivated me two years on in finding still typically industry-leading performance across varying workloads, exceptional reliability, and all around a very robust platform. Today though at AMD Advancing AI 2026, Lisa Su formally announced EPYC 9006 "Venice" for taking their server offerings to the next level in the agentic AI era.
AMD Launches Instinct MI455X, Helios AI Rack
Lisa Su at AMD Advancing AI 2026 just launched the new Instinct MI455X GPUs and the Helios rack...
FreeBSD Ports Currently Frozen Due To A Very Large Commit
The FreeBSD project issued a statement today over the FreeBSD Ports repository having been frozen for the past two days. The freeze is not due to a malicious compromise but rather a very large commit breaking things...
[$] An operations structure for swap devices
One of the ideas raised at the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit (LSFMM+BPF) was the creation of an operations structure for the swap subsystem. Like many parts of the kernel, the swap layer evolved over time, with pieces being added as needed; the end result of this evolution is rarely what one would expect had the subsystem been designed today. The interface between the swap layer and the devices it uses is just one example. It appears that one result of the swap subsystem's evolution — the lack of an abstraction layer to interface with underlying storage — will soon be addressed, but in a different way than was initially envisioned.
Collabora Online Turns 10, Refusing to Hand Over Your Data to Someone Else's AI
Its newest version pulls in improvements from CODE 26.04, so there's AI involved.
Fedora 45 Atomic Desktops Look To Allow For Web-Based Remote Installations
One of the latest change proposals filed for Fedora Linux 45 is for supporting web-based remote installations of Fedora Atomic Desktop images...