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FOSS
Kernel, distros, and the wider free and open source software world.
664 stories archived
openSUSE Seeking Additional Corporate Sponsors
While openSUSE is closely aligned with SUSE as a company, they aren't the exclusive sponsor of this free and open-source Linux distribution with its rolling-release Tumbleweed and Leap stable releases. AMD has been a longtime major supporter of openSUSE and the Fastly content delivery company has been another platinum sponsor too besides SUSE. There are also various other lower-tier sponsors while today the openSUSE Project put out a call for further corporate sponsorship...
AMD Posts AVX10_V2_AUX ISA Support Patches For GCC Compiler
Earlier this month Intel compiler engineers posted initial GCC compiler patches for the AI Compute Extensions "ACE" that was born out of the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group to augment AVX and scalar code with new capabilities for AI/ML workloads. Now as part of that an AMD compiler engineer posted patches over the weekend for AVX10_V2_AUX ISA support...
Linux's Qualcomm Crypto Accelerator Driver "Harmful" And Being Disabled: Slower Than CPU, History Of Bugs
The Qualcomm Crypto Engine Accelerator "QCE" driver is being disabled within the Linux 7.3 kernel over a number of issues, including being slower than having the CPU cores handling cryptographic work and a history of different driver bugs. Plus race conditions causing security issues and other challenges...
Hyprland 0.56 Released With Many Enhancements To This Wayland Compositor
Out today is Hyprland 0.56 as the newest feature update to this unique Wayland compositor and incorporating just under three months worth of improvements...
Kernel prepatch 7.2-rc4
The 7.2-rc4 kernel prepatch is out for testing. Linus said: " This whole week I had the feeling that people were starting to go on summer vacation, but running the numbers shows that I must have been wrong - it all looks pretty normal. "
Ubuntu’s desktop icons extension completes its GTK4 port
The Desktop Icons NG (aka DING) GNOME Shell extension Ubuntu uses to put icons on your literal desktop, has been busy – it finished its port to GTK4, patched memory leaks and improved a few of its lesser-known features. The GTK4 port landed in v51.0.0, released this month, alongside early support for GNOME 51 (since that’s the GNOME version Ubuntu 26.10 will ship with in October). Prior to that, there were other, smaller in June with fixes for memory leaks and buffs to usability. DING’s GTK4 port – not to be confused with a separate GTK4 fork I covered back in […] You're reading Ubuntu’s desktop icons extension completes its GTK4 port , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Linux 7.2-rc4 Released: Looking Like The "New Normal"
The fourth weekly release candidate of the Linux 7.2 kernel is now available for testing...
The Last MPEG-4 Visual Patent Has Expired
If you are looking for a reason to celebrate today, the last of the MPEG-4 Part 2 patents expired today...
FFmpeg Lands Latest AVX-512 Optimization: 1.372x Faster In Pixel Format Conversion
The latest hand-tuned code in the FFmpeg multimedia library for allowing better performance on today's modern Intel/AMD AVX-512-capable processors is showing 1.372x faster performance for RGB24 to RGBA pixel format conversions...
Legion Y700 Gen4 Tablet Powered By Snapdragon 8 Elite Seeing Linux Patches
The Legion Y700 Gen4 is an Android tablet that debuted last year and powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. This 8.8-inch tablet is now seeing patches for enabling Linux support outside the confines of Android and will hopefully end up in the mainline kernel...
More ASUS Motherboards To Enjoy Working Sensor Monitoring With Linux 7.3
Thanks to the work of the open-source community, more ASUS desktop motherboards for Intel Core and AMD Ryzen systems are seeing working sensor monitoring under Linux. With the upcoming Linux 7.3 cycle, several additional ASUS motherboards will now enjoy working sensor monitoring...
GNU Hurd Makes Progress On AArch64, Writing Translators In Rust
The GNU Hurd project recently issued their Q2'2026 status report to outline recently development efforts. The Hurd is still happening!..
This theme makes Discord look more at home on Ubuntu
The official Discord desktop app supports Linux but it doesn’t make much effort to fit in, which is why alternative clients are popular – not least because they can be themed. Discord GNOME Theme by developer ~ricewind012, is so named because, basically, that’s what it is: a custom theme that restyles Discord to look more like Adwaita and follow the GNOME HIG (well, as close as Discord’s CSS allows). A reminder: Ubuntu’s Yaru theme is based (heavily) on upstream Adwaita, so while this theme won’t give an exact match on Ubuntu, it’s closer than stock. As it’s all CSS, it […] You're reading This theme makes Discord look more at home on Ubuntu , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
NVK Vulkan Performance Improving With Mesa 26.2 Against NVIDIA Proprietary Driver
The performance of the Nouveau kernel driver with the Mesa NVK Vulkan driver continues to improve each feature release in its quest toward better competing with NVIDIA's official Linux graphics driver with its proprietary Vulkan driver...
"Half a Second" — a book on the XZ backdoor
Adrian Mastronardi has released a book called Half a Second ; it is a detailed look into the XZ backdoor attempt of 2024. The book is freely available under a (non-free) noncommercial, no-derivatives CC license. Half a Second tells that story as one continuous narrative: the burned-out volunteer who maintained the code alone and was patiently, expertly manipulated into giving it up; the engineer whose half-second of curiosity caught the attack through a chain of luck and hard-won instinct; and the operator who built it, who has never been identified and, this book argues, may never be.
AMD Linux Graphics Driver Preps Fix For Apple Studio Display
This week's batch of AMDGPU Display Core "DC" updates arrived heavy with 70 new patches for improving that open-source display support for Radeon graphics on the Linux desktop...
GNOME OS Safe Mode Improving The System Reliability
At GNOME's annual GUADEC conference happening this week in Spain, an update was shared on the current state of GNOME OS...
KDE Plasma 6.8 System Monitor Making It Easier Assigning Processes To CPU Cores
Nate Graham and John Veness are out with the latest issue of This Week in Plasma to highlight all of the interesting developments taking place in the KDE Plasma desktop space...
UXL's oneDNN 3.13 Preps For Intel Nova Lake With AVX10.2, More Intel Optimizations
Following the release of AMD's ZenDNN 6.0 earlier this month, there is a new feature release of the oneDNN neural network library that used to be developed by Intel as part of oneAPI and is now under the UXL Foundation umbrella. Even so, oneDNN feature releases continue to be heavy on new Intel optimizations and future hardware support...
D7VK 2.0 Released With Some Nice Performance Improvements: Up To 2x Or More
In addition to Friday night's release of DXVK 3.0.2, debuting separately a short time later was D7VK 2.0 as the latest major feature release for this implementation of Direct3D 7 and earlier built off the Vulkan API...
DXVK 3.0.2 Released With Improved Hang Debugging, Handful Of Game Fixes
In addition to the initial build of Holo Core as AArch64 Arch Linux for the Steam Frame, another software milestone today in Valve's Linux gaming space is the release of DXVK 3.0.2 for Direct3D 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 APIs implemented over the Vulkan API for running Windows games...
Flathub’s AI slop ban looks like it was the right call
When Flathub banned AI-coded app submissions last month, some critics warned the platform was denying the future by dismissing a new wave of “vibe-coded” software as out-and-out “slop”. Well, new data suggests otherwise, as nearly three-quarters of the rejected apps are already dead, existing only a few months. Linux developer Evangelos Paterakis, developer of Tuba, Turntable and others, did the digging, looking at 120 code repositories whose pull requests for inclusion on Flathub were rejected because of their heavy AI usage and given an “AI Slop” tag. Of those rejected, 88 are no longer under active development, many having deleted their […] You're reading Flathub’s AI slop ban looks like it was the right call , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Noctua NL-LC1-36 All-In-One Liquid Cooler
With reviewing hardware for more than 22 years, when it comes to cooling products there are few brands that can still get me intrigued like Noctua. With their recent launch of the NL-LC1 all-in-one liquid coolers, I decided to try out the Noctua NL-LC1-36 360mm AIO cooler that is working out well for cooling high-end desktop CPUs like the recently launched Ryzen 9 9950X3D2.
FastFlowLM Developers Join AMD To Help Push Open-Source NPU Software
On top of releasing ROCm 7.14 as the new production release of ROCm now built offTheRock, rolling out the Lemonade 11.0 local AI server, and GAIA 0.22, AMD has some more open-source news in the lead up to next week's AMD Advancing AI event...