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FOSS
Kernel, distros, and the wider free and open source software world.
497 stories archived
Ubuntu now has official desktop images for RISC-V
Installing the Ubuntu desktop on RISC-V hardware is made easier with 26.10, as Canonical is now building official riscv64 desktop images. Experimental versions of the upcoming Ubuntu 26.10 release are out for testing on a SpacemiT K3 – the board Canonical has been working on with SpacemiT. One ISO ships the standard GNOME desktop, and the other is built around Xubuntu minimal. Canonical’s Valentin Haudiquet says both of the ISOs are “experimental” and “carry no official support” yet. They won’t work flawlessly and do contain some issues hat be addressed in the ‘final’ versions that arrives on 15 October 2026. […] You're reading Ubuntu now has official desktop images for RISC-V , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
The Document Foundation gets its own logo after 16 years
The Document Foundation, the non-profit steering the development of LibreOffice, has unveiled a new logo. The change means that, for the first time since its inception in 2010, TDF no longer shares the same logotype and wordmark as LibreOffice. “The Document Foundation” is now the sole wordmark, written in a different font, Inter, and a refreshed set of brand colours complement it. Unveiling the design, TDF’s Italo Vignoli made the case for a decoupling of the two brands, noting “the foundation speaks as an institution, not as a software project” whose work “extends well beyond the product” that it’s known […] You're reading The Document Foundation gets its own logo after 16 years , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Valve's Proton 11.0-2e Released To Fix EA App Issues
CodeWeavers working with Valve today released Proton 11.0-2e as their downstream of Wine that powers Steam Play for enjoying Windows games on Linux...
Ubuntu 26.10 To Include Desktop Images For RISC-V
Ubuntu Linux ISOs for RISC-V 64-bit to date have just been the server/CLI version without any desktop environment pre-seeded. But with next week's Ubuntu 26.10 release, there will now be Ubuntu 26.10 RISC-V desktop ISOs for both Ubuntu proper and a Xubuntu minimal ISO...
Python 3.15 released
Version 3.15 of the Python programming language has been released. Notable changes in this release include the addition of the sentinel and frozendict built-in types, the use of UTF-8 encoding by default, package start-up configuration files , as well as improvements in the experimental JIT compiler . See the " What's new in Python 3.15 " article for an in-depth look at new features in this release, and the changelog for a full list of changes.
[$] Adding kernel control-flow-integrity checking to GCC
While many developers are struggling to keep up with the flood of vulnerability reports, others are still focused on preventing those reports from happening in the first place. Control-flow integrity (CFI) is the term for preventing (or at least detecting) exploits that divert the flow of control from its intended paths. At the 2026 GNU Tools Cauldron , Kees Cook presented his changes to the GCC compiler suite to support forward-edge CFI for the kernel.
Calibre can now read ebooks aloud without sounding like a robot
A new update to the Calibre ebook manager is out and it brings more natural sounding text-to-speech (TTS) voices, as well as AVIF image support and better handling of PDFs that put text in columns. Calibre v9.16 adds support for Kokoro, an open-weight TTS model, to its Read Aloud feature (which to state the bleedin’ obvious, will read the content of books to you). The new voices are sound to sound ‘much more natural’, especially in English. Kokoro voices aren’t preinstalled or included in Calibre itself. You choose one via the backend picker in the Read aloud configuration panel and […] You're reading Calibre can now read ebooks aloud without sounding like a robot , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
[$] The state of systemd: 2026 edition
At the 2026 All Systems Go! conference, systemd maintainers Luca Boccassi and Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek delivered the traditional "state of the project" session with an overview of the systemd project's accomplishments in the past year. That was followed by a maintainer round table where Boccassi, Jędrzejewski-Szmek, Daan De Meyer, and project leader Lennart Poettering fielded questions about systemd's size, health, and if it might replace Kubernetes. (It will not.)
Python 3.15 Released With Experimental JIT Compiler Running Faster
Python 3.15 is out today as the newest annual feature release for the Python programming language...
AMD PerfOpt Boosting Prior-Gen Ryzen APU Performance For AI
Last week I ran benchmarks of the new AMD PerfOpt feature being introduced in Linux 7.4. In those PerfOpt benchmarks on current-gen AMD Ryzen AI APUs/SoCs the AI performance improved as much as 18~23%. Several Phoronix readers expressed interest in seeing how prior-gen AMD Ryzen hardware benefited or not from PerfOpt, so here are some additional benchmarks.
Let's Encrypt moving to 64-day certificate lifetimes in 2027
Let's Encrypt , the nonprofit that provides free TLS certificates for millions of sites, has announced that it will be moving to certificates with 64-day lifetimes on February 10, 2027: This means that any certificate we issue or renew on and after that date will have a 64 day validity period, and we expect the last 90-day certificate to expire on May 11, 2027. We will not revoke valid certificates as a part of this process. This is the second stage of Let's Encrypt's plan, announced in 2025 , to move to 45-day certificate lifetimes as required by the the CA/Browser Forum Baseline Requirements . In 2028, Let's Encrypt will switch to 45-day certificates.
Ubuntu 26.10 Sticks To Using GCC 15 By Default
From a performance and enthusiast perspective, what I personally find most disappointing and puzzling with the imminent release of Ubuntu 26.10 comes down to its default compiler version...
Faster Zswap With Patches To Batch The Writeback I/O
For those making increased use of Linux's Zswap as a compressed RAM cache for swap pages amid these times of sky high RAM prices, a new patch series was posted providing some incremental performance gains for Zswap by batching the writeback I/O...
Linux Patches Finally Make Hibernation Possible In Secure Boot / Lockdown Mode
When booting the Linux kernel using UEFI SecureBoot, the kernel is put in the lockdown mode to restrict the ability to modify the running kernel image or leaking data from kernel memory. Kernel lockdown mode can also be manually enabled by the user/administrator. Among the limitations imposed in Linux's lockdown mode is no hibernation support. But that soon may be relieved with new patches proposed...
Boro: NVIDIA's Open-Source Effort For AI-Assisted Linux Kernel Development
Over the past few months NVIDIA has been developing Boro as a new AI-assisted kernel development CLI written in Rust and focused on local AI for enhancing efficiency for kernel development...
AMD Caps Off Linux 7.4 Graphics Driver Development With More HDMI 2.1 Fixes
AMD on Thursday sent out a final pull request of their feature work aiming to be submitted for the upcoming Linux 7.4 merge window. This round of "few last odds and ends" is mostly about landing some bug fixes but of which there are a few worth mentioning...
HDR Support Coming For Qualcomm MSM Driver To Benefit Snapdragon X Laptops On Linux
For those making use of Qualcomm Snapdragon X laptops on Linux, one of the features coming to the MSM DRM kernel driver is static HDR support for DisplayPort outputs and eDP panels...