section
FOSS
Kernel, distros, and the wider free and open source software world.
663 stories archived
Linux 7.2 Released With Faster I/O, New AMD & Intel Driver Improvements
Linus Torvalds just released Linux 7.2 as stable! After a very busy kernel cycle due to the increased patch and reporting churn due to AI/LLM ages, Linux 7.2 managed to make it out today on-schedule for this feature-packed kernel. Linux 7.2 is going on to power Ubuntu 26.10 and other upcoming Linux distribution releases...
The 7.2 kernel has been released
The 7.2 kernel has been released. Linus said: Well, this last week of the release was - once again - bigger than I would have wished for, but hey, with the whole "new normal" thing, if I delayed releases for that reason we'd probably never have a release at all. Significant features in this release include common attributes support in the bpf() system call, cache-aware load balancing for the CPU scheduler, large-folio support in the Btrfs filesystem, further swap subsystem improvements , improvements to the Landlock security module, support for block devices with inline encryption hardware via the dm-inlinecrypt device-mapper target, and much more. See the LWN merge window summaries ( part 1 , part 2 ) and the KernelNewbies 7.2 page for more information.
Linux 7.2 brings cache-aware scheduling, faster ext4 and Btrfs
Linux kernel 7.2 has been released, adding cache-aware scheduling, ext4 filesystem performance boosts and a slew of new and improved hardware drivers for laptops and peripherals. A merge widow record was also set during the 9-week development cycle, with more than 2,100 individual contributors involved. AI, obviously, has helped. Commit-crunching by LWN found roughly 5% of commits in 7.2 have an ‘assisted-by’ tag, indicating AI usage. Not that the latest kernel update was all additions. More than 13,000 lines of code for legacy i486 CPU emulation were removed from Linux 7.2, as was a 40-year-old Hercules graphics card driver, AppleTalk […] You're reading Linux 7.2 brings cache-aware scheduling, faster ext4 and Btrfs , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
GIMP Making Progress On New Project File Format After Nearly 30 Years With XCF
The GIMP project has published their latest development update to highlight the interesting work that's ongoing toward GIMP 3.4 and future releases...
tlbi= Boot Option Submitted Ahead Of Linux 7.2 Kernel Release
Ahead of the Linux 7.2 kernel stable release expected to occur in the coming hours, a last minute "x86/urgent" pull request was submitted with one patch for adding the new tlbi= boot option...
Debian Marks 33rd Birthday As One Of The Oldest Maintained Linux Distros
Today marks thirty three years since the Debian Linux distribution was started by the late Ian Murdock...
AVX-512 xor_gen Continues To Look Exciting For Helping Linux RAID With Modern CPUs
Google engineer Eric Biggers back in June posted an AVX-512 optimization for Linux RAID yielding up to a 41% improvement on a modern AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) processor. A revised patch then put it as much as a 43% improvement for this AVX-512 optimized xor_gen() function. The code hasn't yet been merged to mainline but an updated version of it is now available...
Linux 7.3 binfmt_misc To Allow BPF Programs To Dynamically Choose Execution Environments
The Linux kernel's binfmt_misc functionality allows non-native/custom files to ne run directly such as for Windows EXE files to be handled by Wine or JAR files to be handled by the Java runtime. For the upcoming Linux 7.3 merge window, the miscellaneous binary formats support is being extended so a binary type can be matched programmatically and the interpreter determined on a per-exec basis. BPF programs can also then be attached to dynamically choosing an execution environment on a per-binary basis...
New Linux Driver Enables 12VHPWR Monitoring For ASUS ROG Astral Graphics Cards
For those concerned about current imbalance or voltage changes with the 12VHPWR power connectors and having an ASUS ROG Astral graphics card, there is now an open-source driver for Linux available that integrates with the hardware monitoring (HWMON) subsystem for 12VHPWR reporting on these ASUS graphics cards...
Marek Olšák's 19 Latest Patches Further Optimizing RADV & ACO
Legendary Mesa Radeon Gallium3D driver developer Marek Olšák who was a longtime AMD employee and then joined Valve's Linux graphics driver team earlier this year has continued his focus now on perfecting his art around the RADV Vulkan driver and ACO shader compiler...
GNOME 51 Beta Released With Many Minor Improvements
The beta release of GNOME 51 is now available for testing. This cycle for the beta milestone is mostly a wide collection of minor improvements throughout the vast package set...
Intel's Jay Graphics Shader Compiler Now Passing Vulkan CTS With Xe2/Xe3 Hardware
Last year Alyssa Rosenzweig joined Intel to work on their Linux graphics drivers after previously serving as a contractor for Valve on their graphics stack and also previously leading the Mesa driver work for the Asahi Linux Apple Silicon graphics support. Since joining Intel, she has been leading the development of Jay as a new SSA-based shader compiler for Intel graphics hardware to be used by the Mesa Iris Gallium3D and ANV Vulkan drivers...
RustConn 0.20 Continues Further Polishing This GTK4/libadwaita-Based Connection Manager
RustConn has been in development for a while now as a modern GTK4 connection manager supporting a variety of protocols like SSH, RDP, VNC, Telnet, and more. RustConn 0.20 was released this week as the latest major step forward to this Rust-based connection manager leveraging the GTK4 toolkit and libadwaita...
Late Sound Fixes For Linux 7.2 Bring More Device Quirks, Intel Nova Lake HDMI-In Capture
Ahead of the presumed Linux 7.2 stable kernel release tomorrow, some last minute sound fixes/quirks have been merged for this next kernel version...
KDE Plasma 6.8 To Allow Fine-Tuning Mouse/Touchpad Speeds
KDE developers continue to be quite busy this summer baking improvements for the upcoming Plasma 6.8 desktop release. This Week in Plasna is out with its newest issue to outline all of these interesting enhancements...
Debian Developers Begin Voting Over LLM Usage Within The Project
Debian developers have been considering a general resolution over LLM usage within the project. After collecting a variety of proposals, voting has now commenced for Debian developers to decide how comfortable they are with AI / Large Language Model contributions in the project or not...
Overshared to an AI? Proton's Tool Will Give You a Reality Check
Powered by Lumo, the tool turns your exported AI chat history into a personalized report of your privacy exposure.
Nitrux Shows Off a New Desktop Approach Other Distros Might Want to Take Note of
It is meant to be a middle ground between window managers and desktop environments.
AMD Posts Massive 109 Patch Series For GFX 12.1 RAS Support On Friday Evening
AMD has a tendency to send out large feature patch series for their open-source Linux drivers on Friday afternoons/evenings. Today we were greeted by a set of 109 patches working on RAS support for the upcoming AMD GFX12.1 target...
D7VK 2.1 Brings Faster Load Times, More Performance Tweaks
D7VK as the open-source implementation of the Direct3D 7 / 6 / 5/ 3 APIs atop the Vulkan API for Linux/Wine usage is out with another feature update. D7VK continues to mature quite well for further enhancing these older Direct3D API versions that cover the span prior to DXVK's focus of Direct3D 8 to Direct3D 11 or VKD3D-Proton's Direct3D 12...
Lemonade 11.6 Integrates Muse-Glimmer 30B, Experimental TheNoise ROCm Image Generation
For those dabbling with generative AI on the weekends, the AMD-led Lemonade SDK 11.6 is out today with its newest feature release of this open-source software for running local AI apps with optimized LLMs across CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs...
Omarchy 4.0 Linux Distro Released With Desktop Shell Now Implemented Via Quickshell
Omarchy as the Arch Linux distribution developed by David Heinemeier Hansson "DHH" / Basecamp is out today with Omarchy 4.0 as the distro's biggest release to date...
Add multiple picture widgets to your Ubuntu desktop
If you remember that desktop picture widget for GNOME I wrote about last year, but found it a bit too basic for your personalisation preferences, you weren’t alone. Another user felt it could lacked enough flexibility, so forked and improved it. Picture Desktop Widget Remake improves on the original. It lets add multiple picture widgets to your Ubuntu desktop, and assign each one a different folder to pull images from, at random. Plus, you can set the size, position, border radius and aspect ratio of each widget individually. Each photo frame has its own on/off button in Preferences, so you […] You're reading Add multiple picture widgets to your Ubuntu desktop , a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu . Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.
Linux 7.1, Linux 7.2 Performance On The Intel Xeon 600 Series
With Linux 7.2 expected for its stable release this weekend, today's testing has some additional testing of the Linux 7.2 Git kernel as well as Linux 7.1 stable compared to Linux 7.0 as used by default on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. Phoronix testing previously conducted of Linux 7.2 have shown benefits for Intel Arc B390 Xe3 in some configurations, faster poll performance on AMD Ryzen Threadripper and other hardware, and some nice I/O performance gains on AMD EPYC Turin. Today's kernel benchmarks are with the Intel Xeon 678X Granite Rapids WS currently in the lab as part of the HP Z4 G6i workstation testing.