section
FOSS
Kernel, distros, and the wider free and open source software world.
491 stories archived
Killed by Ubuntu, Linux Mint is Bringing This Classic Feature Back
Linux Mint is bringing back a feature most Linux distributions quietly gave up on years ago: hibernation.
Radeon RADV Vulkan Driver Adopts An LLM Policy
The Mesa RADV driver that provides Vulkan API support for AMD Radeon GPUs on Linux has adopted its own policy around AI / large language models (LLMs) for code contributions...
FreeRDP 3.33 Released With WebAssembly Support, Huge Influx Of Activity Due To AI
The FreeRDP 3.33 software released today as the newest version of this open-source Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) implementation...
KDE Linux Nearing Its Beta Milestone, Now Ships With NTSYNC By Default
KDE developer Nate Graham published his monthly blog post on Sunday to outline the current state of KDE Linux and some of the changes made to this in-house Linux distribution over the course of October. Additionally, KDE Linux is nearing its beta milestone after beinbg in development for over one year as a reference Linux distribution for KDE...
Raspberry Pi 5 16GB Price Rises To $385 USD
Raspberry Pi announced their latest round of price hikes as a result of the RAM shortages and increased pricing continuing to affect the industry...
France’s Weird Per-Gigabyte Data Tax Could Cost VLC Over €1 Million a Year!
France's National Assembly has voted in favour of a new "internet tax" that would charge companies for every gigabyte of data they send to users in France. It may get messier than GDPR.
Steam On Linux Just Under 4% For October 2026
Valve just published their Steam Survey results for October and point to a small uptick in Linux gaming use on a relative basis...
Kernel prepatch 7.4-rc1
The 7.4-rc1 kernel prepatch is out, and the merge window is closed for this development cycle. This is a *BIG* merge window. I think the reason is the by now obvious one, but I'm actually taking it as a good sign: I'm *much* happier with the flood of AI triggered work going into the merge window than it showing up mainly as extra fixes during the -rc period. So I'm hoping that this merge window being larger than usual is a sign that the AI fixes are becoming more part of the "normal development" than a flood of fixes that go into the whole stabilization phase. I think that's a much healthier model. There were 18,591 non-merge changesets brought in during this merge window — this is not just a record, but it nearly matches the patch volume during the entire (record-setting) 7.3 development cycle. So far, 2,678 developers have contributed to 7.4; 625 of them are first-time kernel contributors. Subscribers can find more details in the KSDB 7.4 page .
Linux App Release Roundup (October 2026)
October’s Linux app releases brought plenty of treats, a couple of tricks and mercifully few frights. In this post, I recap the updates that landed last month. There were other spooks in the shadows with a spotlight. October gave us a double-whammy of Firefox and Calibre updates, with JEPG XL support added in the former and AI reading voices in the latter – among other changes in both. It also delivered a ‘fully rebuilt’ ONLYOFFICE 10.0 with optional AI tools and KeePassXC 2.8, which added its long-awaited support for Wayland auto-type. System cleaning tool BleachBit fixed issues with admin cleaning […] You're reading Linux App Release Roundup (October 2026) , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Linux 7.4-rc1 Released With Nice Performance Improvements, AMD Ryzen Zen 6 Preparations & AMDGPU HDMI 2.1 Default
Even with Linus Torvalds having been on holiday, Linux 7.4-rc1 is out today on-schedule for capping off the Linux 7.4 merge window...
Enlightenment desktop 0.28 released with better networking
Enlightenment 0.28 has been released, the first major update to the open-source desktop environment since early 2025. Given the time between this and the previous 0.27 release, the changelog is suitably lengthy. Networking and audio stack enhancements, UI and UX tweaks and, of course, plenty of bug fixes are listed – no jaw-dropping UI changes, though. v0.28 adds a new Network Manager module. This supports connecting to and managing wireless, wired and Bluetooth networking connections, as well as VPNs. It plays signal strength, security and other connection details. On the audio side, a native PipeWire mixer is available alongside the […] You're reading Enlightenment desktop 0.28 released with better networking , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Final release for the 7.2 stable series
Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 7.2.15 kernel, with a handful of updates. Note, this is the LAST 7.2.y kernel release. After this one the 7.2.y kernel tree is end-of-life. Please move to 7.3.y at this time. And yes, you aren't imagining things, this one went "end-of-life" a bit sooner than normal. But based on the release cycle at the moment, and the number of pending cc: stable patches in the queue, I figured it was better this way so we can focus on the latest 7.3.y release as it would require us to keep 8 different branches alive at the same moment, a taxing task under the best of times.
Kwi Being Developed As New KDE Terminal Emulator With 3x To 35x Performance
A new KDE terminal emulator is in development as a modern alternative to Konsole. Kwi is this new terminal app being built atop the Ghostty library...
The Linux 7.4 Merge Window Is Easily The Largest In Kernel History
After writing this morning with some stats about the size of the Linux 7.4 merge window and the kernel's source tree approaching 42 million lines, I was curious to run some numbers for putting the size of the merge window into perspective against the major kernel releases of the past 15 years. This shows the definite recent uptick due to AI/LLM activity...
OverlayFS Sees Many Fixes Thanks To AI Code Review
Merged this weekend for Linux 7.4 and also marked for back-porting to current stable kernel versions are a number of fixes to the OverlayFS union mount file-system...
AI Use In The Linux Kernel, Microsoft Defender On Linux & Other October Highlights
October brought the releases of Linux 7.3, Ubuntu 26.10, the KDE Plasma 6.8 desktop, and a wealth of other open-source software releases. The expanding use of AI/LLMs within Linux kernel development also made for interesting discussions in October. Microsoft bringing their Defender software to the Linux desktop was perhaps the biggest surprise out of October. Here is a look back at the past month...
Linux's Perf Python Scripts More Robust & Faster With Linux 7.4
Merged this weekend to Linux 7.4 Git were all of the perf subsystem tooling updates. Most notable to these tooling updates for dealing with performance counters and more on Linux is an overhaul to the Python code...
Linux 7.4 Merge Window Saw Nearly 20k Commits, Source Tree Approaching 42 Million Lines
Linux 7.3 started out just under 41 million lines in total in the kernel source tree. In the end the Linux v7.3 tag came in at 41,019,555 lines as measured by cloc while now with Linux 7.4 we are inching ever closer to 42 million lines. On a Git commit basis, the Linux 7.4 merge window has been the busiest on record...
Brief Server Downtime Expected Tonight
Just a friendly heads up that Phoronix.com and associated sites will be down briefly at around midnight PST / 3AM EST on 1 November for a failed drive in the NVMe SSD RAID array...
OpenShot 4.1 Released With Auto-Optimize, CLI Automation & ARM64 Linux Builds
OpenShot is closing out the month of October by releasing OpenShot 4.1 as the latest major feature release for this useful open-source video editing solution...
A massive pile of security updates for Saturday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (.NET 10.0, .NET 11.0, .NET 8.0, .NET 9.0, aspell, bind, bind9.18, container-tools:1.0, container-tools:rhel8, curl, dogtag-pki, ignition, java-21-openjdk, python-pillow, tomcat, and virt:rhel, virt-devel:rhel), Debian (antiword, cyrus-sasl2, dovecot, dpdk, nss, python-git, and thunderbird), Fedora (7zip, aegisub, aom, apptainer, arm-none-eabi-binutils-cs, assimp, avr-binutils, baresip, barman, bind9-next, btrfs-backup-ng, chezmoi, chromium, cifs-utils, clevis-pin-trustee, composer, containerd, curl, docker-buildx, dotnet10.0, evolution, evolution-data-server, evolution-ews, exim, fips-provider, firefox, flare-im, forgejo, freeipa, freerdp, gcc, gegl04, ghostscript, GitPython, glib-networking, gnome-shell-extension-gsconnect, golang-x-mobile, hcloud, helix, httpd, ImageMagick, iperf3, jfrog-cli, jupyterlab, keepassxc, kernel, knot-resolver, krb5, kryoptic, libdigidocpp, libheif, libindi, libinstpatch, libpng12, libpng15, librabbitmq, libre, libXi, libzip, linux-firmware, Lmod, log4net, markdownlint-cli2, mingw-freetype, mingw-gstreamer1, mingw-gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free, mingw-gstreamer1-plugins-base, mingw-gstreamer1-plugins-good, mingw-libpng, mingw-LibRaw, mingw-python-certifi, mingw-python3, mongo-c-driver, mstflint, mutt, nant, nebula, nix, nsd, ntpsec, openbao, openjpeg, openssl3, openvpn, perl-Badger, perl-CLI-Simple, perl-Cpanel-JSON-XS, perl-CSS-Inliner, perl-Encoding-FixLatin, perl-ExtUtils-Typemaps-Default, perl-GD-SecurityImage, perl-HTML-Query, perl-libnet, perl-Markdown-Render, perl-Net-IDN-Encode, perl-Net-Whois-Raw, perl-Plack, perl-Plack-Middleware-ReverseProxy, perl-Text-CSV_XS, pgbouncer, php-getid3, php-pecl-mongodb2, python-boto3, python-botocore, python-cairosvg, python-django5, python-django6, python-jupyter-builder, python-mkdocs-rss-plugin, python-nbdime, python-nh3, python-notebook, python-pydantic-core, python-pypdf, python-uv-build, python3.10, python3.11, python3.12, python3.13, python3.14, qdigidoc, qdl, qt5-qtbase, radicale, rclone, rt, ruff, rust-ammonia, rust-archive-trait, rust-astral-html, rust-astral-ini, rust-astral-mail-headers, rust-astral-pubgrub, rust-astral-version-ranges, rust-astral_async_http_range_reader, rust-astral_async_zip, rust-asyncband, rust-backtrace, rust-blake2b_simd, rust-blake3, rust-cargo-semver-checks, rust-chrono, rust-clap-cargo, rust-constant_time_eq, rust-dua-cli, rust-faster-hex, rust-gengo-bin, rust-gitui, rust-lzma-rust2, rust-object, rust-object0.37, rust-object0.38, rust-object0.39, rust-onefetch, rust-ppmd-rust, rust-quick-junit, rust-rbw, rust-regorus, rust-reqsign, rust-reqsign-aliyun-oss, rust-reqsign-aws-core, rust-reqsign-aws-v4, rust-reqsign-aws-v4a, rust-reqsign-azure-storage, rust-reqsign-command-execute-tokio, rust-reqsign-core, rust-reqsign-file-read-tokio, rust-reqsign-google, rust-reqsign-http-send-reqwest, rust-reqsign-huaweicloud-obs, rust-reqsign-oracle, rust-reqsign-tencent-cos, rust-reqsign-volcengine-tos, rust-routinator, rust-rustls, rust-ruzstd, rust-sccache, rust-tar-codec, rust-tar-framing, rust-tokei, rust-totp-rs, rust-trustfall-rustdoc-adapter, rust-trustfall-rustdoc-adapter57, rust-trustfall-rustdoc-adapter60, rust-typed-path, rust-zip, rust-zip0.6, rust-zip2, rustup, samba, SDL3_image, socat, stargz-snapshotter, stgit, sudo, syncthing, thunderbird, tor, trafficserver, ty, unbound, unshield, uv, webkitgtk, wordpress, xorg-x11-server, xorg-x11-server-Xwayland, zchunk, and zvbi), Mageia (libgit2), Red Hat (go-toolset:rhel8 and rhc), SUSE (ab-av1, ansible-core, aws-nitro-enclaves-cli, bouncycastle, cadvisor, chromium, cifs-utils, coredns, crun, dr_libs-devel-20260901, dssim, epiphany, expat, forgejo, freetype2-devel, fuseiso-20260614, gh, ghostscript, gosec, gvfs, hashcat, hauler, hugo, ImageMagick, kernel-devel, kubevirt1.9, libmikmod, libsoup, percona-toolkit, perl-cpanel-json-xs, perl-dancer2-plugin-auth-extensible, perl-mozilla-ca, pocketbase, putty, python-brotli, python-CairoSVG, python-cairosvg, python-django, python-pypdf, python-urllib3_1, roundcubemail, rsyslog, shadowsocks-rust, shadowsocks-libev, stgit, suseconnect-ng, tailscale, trivy, and vlc), and Ubuntu (brotli).
Sanket lets you redesign GNOME’s date menu and Quick Settings
Sanket is a GNOME Shell extension that lets you rejig how the desktop’s date menu, calendar, notifications and Quick Settings look and behave – and then some. It can put notifications beneath the Quick Settings menu in a floating island, or embedded inside of it. Quick Settings toggles can shrink to dots when space is tight, and expand again as and when needed, Android-style. As well as shrinking Quick Settings pills to dots, other menu tweaks let you show up two rows of controls and choose if volume and brightness sliders remain visible in compact mode. An ‘edit’ mode lets […] You're reading Sanket lets you redesign GNOME’s date menu and Quick Settings , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Enlightenment 0.28 Released With Many Improvements
Enlightenment 0.27 released at the beginning of 2025 and since then there's been no major feature update, falling off their roughly 12 month release cadence. But out this Halloween is Enlightenment 0.28 now with the better part of two years worth of changes...
Linux Mint Developing New Apps For Terminal & System Monitoring
Linux Mint is out with their October 2026 status report to outline various initiatives they have underway in their lead-up to the Linux Mint 27 stable release happening on/around Christmas...