ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Linux 6.15 Landing Backlight Driver For Various Apple iPhones & iPads

([Apple] 28 March 11:09 AM EDT Apple DWI Backlight Driver)

Back during the Linux 6.13 kernel cycle initial support for many (pre-M1) Apple devices were upstreamed including various iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch devices. That though was the very preliminary support and continuing to work their way upstream are various drivers/patches to further enhance the support. Now for the Linux 6.15 kernel is a new Apple backlight driver for controlling the backlight on various mobile Apple devices.


Linux 6.15 Networking Delivers Many Nice Performance Optimizations & New Hardware

([Linux Networking] 28 March 09:00 AM EDT Linux 6.15 Networking)

The networking subsystem updates for the in-development Linux 6.15 kernel bring multiple nice performance optimizations to enhance Linux networking speeds. The Linux 6.15 networking pull also has support for a number of new wireless and wired network chipsets.


Linux Flips Around Its Behavior For Spectre-BHB Handling On ARM64

([Arm] 28 March 07:00 AM EDT Linux 6.15 ARM64)

All of the ARM64 changes were merged this week to the Linux 6.15 kernel for enhancing the 64-bit ARM processor support.


Ubuntu Provides More Insight Into Their Decision Not To "-O3" Optimize All Packages

([Ubuntu] 28 March 06:37 AM EDT No -O3 Everywhere)

Since last year Canonical had been investigating using -O3 compiler optimizations for their Ubuntu package builds in the name of delivering better performance for Ubuntu Linux. A few weeks back though they decided they would not use -O3 optimizations for all packages. They have now provided more engineering insight into their reasoning and the results of their investigation into -O3 compiler optimizations for more packages.


Two Years In The Making, Intel Linux Driver Enables CPS Compression For Alchemist GPUs

([Intel] 28 March 06:29 AM EDT Lossless Compression)

A two year old Intel Mesa merge request was finally merged for Mesa 25.1 today for enabling functionality on DG2/Alchemist GPUs and newer.


Linux 6.15 Better Handles PS5 Controllers, AMD Human Presence Detection Off By Default

([Hardware] 28 March 06:16 AM EDT Linux 6.15 HID Subsystem)

All of the HID subsystem updates have been merged for the ongoing Linux 6.15 merge window.


Nova DRM Skeleton Patches Further Flesh Out This Open-Source NVIDIA Kernel Driver

([Nouveau] 27 March 08:52 PM EDT Nova DRM Skeleton Driver)

Set to be merged for the Linux 6.15 kernel is the very initial NOVA driver core code that will be incrementally built up over time in succeeding kernel versions. For Linux 6.15, this open-source NVIDIA kernel driver isn't of any use for end-users as it's just the very preliminary pieces to begin crafting the foundation for the driver that is leveraging the NVIDIA GSP found with Turing and newer hardware. In preparation for future kernel cycles, the NOVA skeleton driver pieces were posted for review yesterday to begin fleshing out more of the driver's design.


Linux 6.15 SoC/DT Additions: Arm Morello, Versal NET, Apple T2, MNT Reform 2 & More

([Hardware] 27 March 03:40 PM EDT Linux 6.15 SoC)

The many SoC and DeviceTree updates have now been merged for the Linux 6.15 kernel merge window. There's a lot on the ARM hardware side plus some additions for RISC-V and various interesting new device/board additions.


Ubuntu 25.04 Beta Officially Released

([Ubuntu] 27 March 02:25 PM EDT Ubuntu 25.04)

The Ubuntu 25.04 "Plucky Puffin" beta is now available for testing ahead of the official release set for 17 April.


EXT4 Better Hardened Against Maliciously-Fuzzed File-Systems

([Linux Storage] 27 March 01:23 PM EDT EXT4)

Ted Ts'o at Google has sent out the EXT4 file-system updates for the in-development Linux 6.15 kernel.


Ubuntu 25.04 Beta Delivering Some Nice Performance Improvements Over Ubuntu 24.10

([Operating Systems] 27 March 10:30 AM EDT 34 Comments)

Ubuntu 25.04 beta is set to be released today and thus this week I've begun testing out the latest Ubuntu 25.04 builds on different systems for seeing how this six-month Ubuntu Linux update is looking compared to the prior Ubuntu 24.10 release. In this first Ubuntu 25.04 beta benchmarking article is a look at the performance using an AMD Ryzen 9000 series desktop and Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics.


Akamai Now Providing The Hosting Infrastructure For Kernel.org

([Linux Kernel] 27 March 10:00 AM EDT Akamai + Kernel.org)

It's not only FreeDesktop.org that has been transitioning to new infrastructure this month but separately, Kernel.org is now receiving hosting and CDN needs provided by Akamai.


Zstd 1.5.7 Lands In Linux 6.15 For Better Performance & APIs For Intel QAT Acceleration

([Linux Kernel] 27 March 08:26 AM EDT Zstd 1.5.7)

Linux 6.15 keeps getting more exciting... The big Zstd update has landed! The in-kernel Zstandard compression code is finally re-based against the newer upstream state that brings better performance as well as new APIs for allowing Intel QAT acceleration by Intel hardware offering QuickAssist Technology. This Zstd code is relied upon by Btrfs transparent file-system compression and other in-kernel users for compression/decompression.


Linux 6.15 To Gain New Option For Those Building The Kernel Without Virtual Terminal

([Linux Kernel] 27 March 08:02 AM EDT NULL_TTY_DEFAULT_CONSOLE)

The printk changes submitted for the Linux 6.15 kernel introduce a new "NULL_TTY_DEFAULT_CONSOLE" Kconfig build-time option for allowing the null TTY to be the default for those building the Linux kernel without virtual terminal (VT) support.


PostgreSQL Database Lands Initial Support For IO_uring: "Can Be Considerably Faster"

([Linux Storage] 27 March 06:43 AM EDT PostgreSQL + IO_uring)

As a very exciting improvement for the open-source PostgreSQL database server, it has merged initial support for making use of IO_uring on Linux servers for asynchronous I/O and can provide for some nice performance improvements.


Linux 6.15 Brings Support For New Sound Hardware, Continued SoundWire Improvements

([Multimedia] 27 March 06:23 AM EDT Linux 6.15 Sound)

Linux sound subsystem maintainer Takashi Iwai of SUSE has submitted all the feature updates slated for Linux 6.15. There is a lot of new audio hardware support and other enhancements that are now merged for this next kernel release.


RadeonSI Goes Rusticl-Only, Clearing Out Support For Old Clover OpenCL

([Radeon] 27 March 06:07 AM EDT RadeonSI)

Earlier this month Mesa deprecated the Clover OpenCL driver in favor of the modern Rust-written Rusticl Gallium3D state tracker. Clover is expected to be removed in Q3's Mesa 25.2 release while today the RadeonSI driver has decided to preemptively remove its Clover support.


NVIDIA Vulkan Beta Driver Introduces BFloat16 Support

([Nouveau] 26 March 08:32 PM EDT NVIDIA + VK_KHR_shader_bfloat16)

NVIDIA has published new Vulkan beta driver builds for Windows and Linux that introduce VK_KHR_shader_bfloat16 for BFloat16 "BF16" support within shaders.


Linux 6.15 Adds Support For The New AMD Versal NET SoC

([AMD] 26 March 03:38 PM EDT FPGA + ARM Cotex-A78 Cores)

Submitted today for upstreaming into the Linux 6.15 kernel is support for the Versal NET SoC, an addition to the AMD/Xilinx Versal family that doesn't appear to have been talked about much publicly yet but should be an interesting addition to their product line-up.


Microsoft Announces Open-Source "Hyperlight Wasm" Project

([Microsoft] 26 March 01:44 PM EDT Hyperlight Wasm)

Microsoft last year announced the open-source Hyperlight project as an embedded VMM for use as a micro-VM manager of sorts that can be run within Windows and Linux applications. This VM-based security for small embedded functions now has its scope expanded with the open-source release today of Hyperlight Wasm for bringing in WebAssembly to the party.


More

Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios, mixers,
etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have any of these
things, which is just as well because there was no place to plug them in.
Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer, Benjamin Franklin, who flew a
kite in a lighting storm and received a serious electrical shock. This
proved that lighting was powered by the same force as carpets, but it also
damaged Franklin's brain so severely that he started speaking only in
incomprehensible maxims, such as "A penny saved is a penny earned."
Eventually he had to be given a job running the post office.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"