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)

Mesa's Venus Now Exposes Vulkan 1.4 Support

([Mesa] 23 February 03:00 AM EST Vulkan 1.4 For Venus)

The Mesa Venus driver code for use with VirtIO-GPU for exposing accelerated Vulkan API support within virtualized environments (VMs) now is advertising Vulkan 1.4 API support.



Wine Staging 10.2 Adds Support For AF_UNIX Sockets

([WINE] 22 February 08:18 PM EST Wine Staging 10.2)

Following Friday's release of Wine 10.2, Wine Staging 10.2 is out for testing as this more experimental/leading-edge version of Wine that is shipping with 300+ extra patches for testing.



Microsoft Makes More Of Their DirectX Compiler Code Open-Source

([Microsoft] 22 February 12:37 PM EST DirectXShaderCompiler)

Back in 2017 was the initial open-source DirectX Shader Compiler milestone and since then Microsoft has continued iterating on it with better Linux support, new features, and ironing out other gaps in this "DirectXShaderCompiler" project. On Friday they released the newest version of this DirectX Shader Compiler that features another newly open-sourced component.



Asahi Linux's Honeykrisp Vulkan Driver Gains Sparse Support In Mesa 25.1

([Mesa] 22 February 09:14 AM EST Asahi Mesa Sync)

Alyssa Rosenzweig has carried out a fresh sync of the Asahi Linux AGX Gallium3D and Honeykrisp Vulkan driver changes of the work that was being carried by the Asahi Linux development tree and now upstreamed to Mesa proper.



FreeBSD 13.5 Beta 3 Drops KDE Packages From DVD ISOs

([BSD] 22 February 06:49 AM EST FreeBSD 13.5 Beta 3)

FreeBSD 13.5 Beta 3 is out this weekend in being the newest weekly development version leading towards next month's stable release to cap off the FreeBSD 13 series.



SystemV Filesystem Being Removed From The Linux Kernel

([Linux Storage] 22 February 06:57 AM EST Dropping SysV Filesystem)

The SystemV file-system that implements Xenix FS, SystemV/386 FS, and Coherent FS is set to be removed from the Linux kernel. The SystemV file-system was orphaned back in 2023 while now is set to be removed entirely after developers realized the code was fundamentally broken.



Niri 25.02 & Labwc 0.8.3 Wayland Compositors Released

([Wayland] 22 February 06:41 AM EST Niri + Labwc Releases)

The Niri and Labwc Wayland compositor projects are both out with new releases this weekend to further their efforts.



KDE Plasma 6.4 Preps Improvement To Help KWin Reduce Frame Drops

([KDE] 22 February 06:28 AM EST Plasma Changes)

In addition to this week's release of Plasma 6.3.1, KDE developers have been busy preparing more bug fixes for what will become Plasma 6.3.2 next month. Additionally, more feature code for Plasma 6.4 continues to bake.



Ubuntu 25.04 Working To Better Cope With BitLocker-Enabled Windows, Other Improvements

([Ubuntu] 22 February 12:00 AM EST Ubuntu 25.04)

Jean Baptiste Lallement was recently appointed at Canonical as the new Director of Engineering for Ubuntu Desktop. Jean Baptiste Lallement has a decade and a half history at Canonical working on Ubuntu QA, Ubuntu Phone / Unity, and other projects while now he is leading the charge on further enhancing the Ubuntu desktop initiatives. As somewhat of a mid-point for the Ubuntu 25.04 cycle, he published a Discourse post on Friday to outline some of the recent and ongoing improvements for the Ubuntu desktop.



Firefox 137 To Support HEVC/H.265 Video Playback On Linux With VA-API

([Mozilla] 21 February 08:33 PM EST VA-API HEVC)

Anticipated for the April release of the Mozilla Firefox 137 web browser is finally supporting HEVC (H.265) video playback in an accelerated manner using the Video Acceleration API (VA-API).



Wine 10.2 Upgrades VKD3D, Supports Setting Thread Priorities

([WINE] 21 February 07:25 PM EST Wine 10.2)

Following last month's release of Wine 10.0 one month ago, Wine 10.2 is now available as the newest bi-weekly development release that will culminate with the Wine 11.0 stable release in early 2026.



System76 Releases COSMIC Alpha 6 Desktop Environment

([Desktop] 21 February 01:34 PM EST COSMIC Alpha 6)

System76 engineers remain quite busy working on their Rust-written COSMIC desktop environment to be used by their Pop!_OS operating system as well as other Linux distributions moving forward.



Linux's FineIBT Protections "Critically Flawed" Until Intel CPUs Appear With FRED

([Linux Security] 21 February 11:28 AM EST FineIBT Broken)

FineIBT is a Linux kernel initiative led by Intel engineers that aimed to combine the best of Intel Control-flow Enforcement Technology (CET) and Control Flow Integrity. FineIBT was merged in 2022 for the Linux 6.2 kernel as an alternative control flow integrity implementation. Some FineIBT weaknesses were previously addressed but now the implementation has been determined to be "critically flawed" at least until next-generation Intel processors appear with FRED.



Benchmarks: Excellent Power Efficiency With 5th Gen AMD EPYC Using amd-pstate & Power Profiles

([Processors] 21 February 03:00 PM EST 1 Comment)

The AMD EPYC 9005 "Turin" processors that launched last year offer excellent performance and power efficiency out-of-the-box. For those wanting to pursue maximum power efficiency and running in the most optimal configuration for performance-per-Watt, AMD EPYC BIOS tunables as well as recent Linux kernel driver improvements can help in driving even greater efficiency. Today's article is a look at the impact of the AMD P-State driver usage and options with recent kernel versions as well as the Power Profile Selection BIOS option for the impact on 5th Gen EPYC performance and power efficiency.



Ubuntu 25.04 Working On More Improvements For Snapdragon X1 Elite Laptop Support

([Ubuntu] 21 February 08:30 AM EST Ubuntu 25.04)

We are nearing one year since the first Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Elite laptops shipped with Windows 11 ARM. For the upcoming Ubuntu 25.04 release it's looking like more of these ARM-powered laptops will have somewhat usable support at least for those wanting to avoid Intel Core Ultra or AMD Ryzen laptops.



PCSX2 Enables Wayland Support By Default - After Previously Calling It "Super Broken"

([Linux Gaming] 21 February 07:30 AM EST PCSX2)

The latest open-source project enabling Wayland support by default today is PCSX2 as the PlayStation 2 game emulator for Linux and other platforms.



Z3fold & Zbud Allocators Likely To Be Removed In Linux 6.15

([Linux Kernel] 21 February 06:42 AM EST Dropping Z3fold + Zbud)

It's looking like Linux 6.15 will be the kernel that does away with the Z3fold and Zbud allocators.



Ubuntu 25.04 Now Under Feature Freeze Ahead Of April Release

([Ubuntu] 21 February 06:18 AM EST Ubuntu 25.04)

The Ubuntu 25.04 feature freeze is now in effect as Canonical and the Ubuntu Linux developer community work toward releasing the "Plucky Puffin" in April.



Gentoo Linux Announces Official QCOW2 Images For Cloud VMs

([Operating Systems] 21 February 06:54 AM EST Gentoo For The Cloud)

One of the Linux distributions we hear very little about in the industry for cloud/VM usage is Gentoo Linux. But that could change with the Gentoo project now putting out official QCOW2 disk images to make it easier deploying this source-based Linux distribution within virtual machines.



Chromium Ozone Support For Wayland Continues Progressing In 2025

([Google] 21 February 06:06 AM EST Chromium Ozone)

Google engineers themselves haven't been energetically pursuing Wayland support within the Ozone abstraction layer for the Chrome/Chromium web browser but thankfully the consulting firm Igalia continues pushing this native Wayland support along. Nick Yamane with Igalia has out a new blog post covering the remaining items being addressed.



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