section
FOSS
Kernel, distros, and the wider free and open source software world.
328 stories archived
Intel To Support DRM Background Color Property With Linux 7.2
Introduced in Linux 7.1 is a dedicated CRTC background color property for DRM graphics/display drivers. The "BACKGROUND_COLOR" property can be used with capable drivers and display controllers as the default background color when not covered by any plane or from transparent regions of higher planes. With the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel cycle, the Intel DRM driver will begin supporting this background color property...
Fedora 45 Considering Use Of PURL Metadata For Uniquely Identifying Software Packages
One of the Fedora 45 change proposals under consideration at the moment is making adding PURL "Package-URL" to Fedora's package metadata for simplifying the mapping between upstream projects and Fedora packages...
Linux 7.2 To Bring Graphics Driver Fix For Old Integrated Graphics On Intel Sandy Bridge
For those still making use of Intel Sandy Bridge processors from 15 years ago, the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel is bringing a fix for an engine reset issue when using the old integrated graphics with Sandy Bridge...
Radeon Software For Linux 26.12 Brings Ubuntu 26.04 Support
While most Linux enthusiasts and desktop users/gamers are comfortable just riding the latest upstream Linux kernel and Mesa drivers shipped by their distribution, for those enterprises preferring the officially blessed and QA'ed driver packages from AMD, last week marked the release of the Radeon Software for Linux 26.12 driver...
Intel Sends Out Revised Linux Patches For Directed Package Thermal Interrupts
Back in March was an initial patch series out of Intel for Linux support for Directed Package Thermal Interrupts as a new feature of recent Intel CPUs. There wasn't much to report over the past three months on this work but today a second iteration of the patches emerged on the Linux kernel mailing list...
Linux 7.2's Open-Source Nouveau Driver To Finally Support The NVIDIA GA100
Sent out today was the last drm-misc-next pull request ahead of the Linux 7.2 merge window getting underway in June. As part of this last batch of small Direct Rendering Manager graphics/accelerator driver changes is finally enabling the NVIDIA GA100 within the Nouveau driver...
Rust 1.96.0 released
Version 1.96.0 of the Rust programming language has been released. Changes include a new set of Copy -implementing Range types, assertions with pattern matching, a number of stabilized APIs, and two Cargo vulnerability fixes.
Gรณrny: why Gentoo?
Gentoo developer Michaล Gรณrny has written a lengthy article explaining the philosophy and purpose of the Gentoo Linux distribution, in response to a thread on Mastodon : Gentoo is a source-first distribution, which means the primary method of installing software is to build it from source. Of course, that doesn't mean manually building stuff, following some kind of how-to: finding all the dependencies, installing them manually, going through a series of magical incantations, and eventually ending up no better than if we were installing a binary package. The package manager takes care of all the necessary steps and more, making package installs easy; well, at least unless something fails. But I'm digressing... [...] We try to build a friendly and welcoming community around Gentoo, and we truly want using Gentoo be an enjoyable experience. We want it to be a system that doesn't betray you.
Intel Arc Pro B70 BMG-G31 Linux Gaming Performance
In recent weeks we have been exploring different areas of the Intel Arc Pro B70 graphics performance on Linux from various OpenCL and Vulkan to Level Zero compute benchmarks, scaling up to four Arc Pro B70 graphics cards, comparing to NVIDIA RTX PRO Blackwell, and other relevant tests. While not intended for gaming, many Phoronix readers keep raising requests for seeing the Arc Pro B70 performance for Linux gaming given the lack of any consumer BMG-G31 GPU. So for those curious, here is a look at the Linux gaming performance with the Arc Pro B70 graphics card.
[$] Policies for merging new filesystems
In a filesystem-track session at the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit , Amir Goldstein wanted to discuss his proposed documentation on adding new filesystems to the kernel. There are a number of unmaintained and untestable filesystems already in the kernel, which are a burden to VFS-layer developers who are trying to make sweeping changes, such as switching to folios and the "new" mount API. Goldstein's document is an attempt to head off the addition of filesystems that may increase that burden down the road.
Arm Announces Metis: Agentic AI Security Framework
Arm today announced the open-sourcing of Metis, an agentic AI security framework that delivers context AI-powered security analysis in looking out for software vulnerabilities...
QEMU Shifting On AI Policy To Allow Some AI/LLM-Generated Contributions
The QEMU processor emulator that plays an important role in the open-source Linux virtualization stack had a policy that forbid any contributions including or derived from AI-generated content. But there are now second thoughts with a proposed patch that will permit AI/LLM contributions in non-critical areas...
IBM's "Project Lightwell"
IBM has sent out a press release touting a claimed $5ย billion investment into an operation called Project Lightwell: Project Lightwell will establish a trusted enterprise clearinghouse combined with a global force of engineers to identify and fix vulnerabilities at scale. The clearinghouse will serve as a security coordination layer, using advanced AI capabilities to validate and test fixes across an unprecedented volume of open source code. These capabilities will be offered through commercial subscriptions, allowing enterprises to integrate secure patches directly into their existing software supply chains with enterprise-grade validation and lifecycle management. Toward the bottom, it does also mention sharing vulnerability information with upstream projects.
Qualcomm Snapdragon C Announced For $300+ Laptops
For competing with the Apple MacBook Neo, Google Chromebooks, and other entry-level laptops, Qualcomm today announced the Snapdragon C series SoCs...
Intel Arc G-Series Processors Announced For Handheld Gaming Devices
Ahead of Computex, Intel today announced the introduction of the Arc G-Series. While taking on the "Arc" branding, this isn't a new graphics card from Intel but rather their new processors with integrated graphics for handheld gaming devices...
[$] Separating memory descriptors from struct page
The kernel's memory-management subsystem is currently partway through a multi-year project to replace the page structure (which represents a page of physical memory) with memory descriptors . At the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit , Vishal Moola ran a fast-paced session in the memory-management track to describe the current state of that work and what is likely to happen next.
KDE Plasma 6.7 Beta 2 Released With More Bug Fixes
Building off the KDE Plasma 6.7 Beta release earlier in May, a second beta was declared today in preparing for the Plasma 6.7 stable debut in mid-June...
24 Years After The ATI R300 Launched, Open-Source R300 Driver Continues With Big Rework
While there has been talk of potentially branching off the older Mesa graphics drivers, the ATI R300 Gallium3D driver just won't die yet. The R300 Gallium3D driver for supporting ATI R300 through R500 graphics cards saw a big rework merged today in restructuring the driver's intemediate representation (IR) handling...
KRAID Being Developed As New Compiler For Modern Arm Mali Graphics
KRAID is a new Rust-written shader compiler currently being developed for the Panfrost/PanVK open-source Arm Mali driver code. KRAID is designed for Mali's Valhall graphics processors and new as a modern, clean sheet design...
O3DE 26.05 Released With New Open Particle System, Other Engine Improvements
It's been nearly five years already since the start of O3DE as the Open 3D Engine that began as Amazon's Lumberyard project spun into an open-source project under the Linux Foundation umbrella. Out this week is O3DE 26.05 for shipping the latest improvements to this cross platform game engine...
GTK Introduces Snapping Feature For Better Fractional Scaling Experience
The upcoming GTK 4.23.1 development release is introducing a new feature called Snapping, which should enhance the experience when dealing with fractional scaling on today's high resolution displays...
[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for May 28, 2026
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition: Front : Dirk and Linus talk; BPF and GCC; private memory modes; BPF page-cache policies; major page faults; LLM kernel review; tiered-memory support; transparent huge pages; page mappings; Model Openness Tool. Briefs : Stenberg security stress; GTK PDF problems; Morton 2004 keynote; OpenBSD 7.9; Bambu's AGPLv3 violations; Quotes; ... Announcements : Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.
Mesa 26.0.8 Released To End Out The Series
Eric Engestrom announced the release of Mesa 26.0.8 today as the latest stable point release of that Q1'2026 driver series and the last planned update for that stable series...
NVIDIA CUDA 13.3 Rolls Out CUDA Python 1.0, CUDA Tile For C++
NVIDIA on Tuesday released CUDA 13.3 as another significant advancement for their unified GPU programming stack for NVIDIA hardware...