On top of all the recent x86/x86_64 Linux kernel crypto improvements made recently by Google engineer Eric Biggers to better laverage AVX-512 and other modern x86 ISA features, a new patch-set posted today by Biggers would help make all x86/x86_64 kernel encryption/decryption at least slightly faster.

A new debug option was merged on Wednesday to Mutter Git ahead of the upcoming GNOME 48 release. This new debug option is to override the GPU copy mode handling for multi-GPU setups.

Zstandard 1.5.7 was released a short time ago as the newest update to this widely-used compression algorithm backed by Meta. Zstd 1.5.7 packs more than 500 commits, including new performance optimizations and other enhancements.

Just a few weeks after the ROCm 6.3.2 update, ROCm 6.3.3 is out this evening with a few more incremental improvements to this open-source AMD GPU compute stack.

The Fedora Project is rolling out expanded coverage of RISC-V hardware moving forward and making it easier for those with RISC-V developer boards to run Fedora Linux.

Mesa 25.0 was officially released today as the newest quarterly feature release for this set of open-source OpenGL, OpenCL, Vulkan, and video acceleration drivers used on Linux systems by multiple hardware vendors.

A set of patches were posted today for review by the upstream Linux kernel developers in providing driver support for the Apple web camera and image signal processing (ISP) for Apple M-Series devices. This is enough to get the web camera support working on recent MacBooks while this code is now undergoing review for hopefully being mainlined in the Linux kernel.

VKD3D 1.15 is out today as the newest version of this upstream Wine project for implementing the Microsoft Direct3D 12 APIs atop the Vulkan API for better Windows gaming on Linux and other D3D12 workloads on Linux or macOS when paired with MoltenVK.

The debate over the Linux kernel's Rust programming language policy continues... While some kernel maintainers are against it, Linus Torvalds has reportedly said he would override maintainers that may be against honoring Rust code. Linux's second-in-command Greg Kroah-Hartman has also been a big proponent of Rust kernel code. He's crafted another Linux kernel mailing list post today outlining the benefits of Rust and encouraging new kernel code/drivers to be in Rust rather than C.

One of the most logical paths forward for the Servo web browser engine is making it compelling for embedding within applications as an alternative to the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF), WebKitGTK, and other browser engines. Servo developers recently realized though it's around 200 lines of Rust code to embed Servo compared to around 50 lines of C code if targeting WebKitGTK... So improvements are being made to the Servo embedding API.

Manjaro Linux lead developer Philip Müller has provided a status update concerning the upcoming Manjaro 25.0 distribution release.

Yesterday a number of Windows reviews began appearing for the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 "Strix Halo" with the debut of the ASUS ROG Flow Z13 as the first laptop to ship this SoC with 16 cores / 32 threads, 64 MB L3 cache, and 40 graphics cores with the Radeon 8060S Graphics. As expected, AMD Strix Halo is a beast with its very capable CPU performance and very compelling integrated graphics, at least under Windows 11.

Intel software engineers on Tuesday released oneDNN 3.7 as the newest version of this oneAPI Deep Neural Network Library that is in turn used by software like ONNX, MATLAB, PaddlePaddle, Apache MXNet, and others as part of the building blocks for deep learning software.

Germany's Sovereign Tech Agency (née Sovereign Tech Fund) announced they have begun investing into the Eclipse Foundation and the work they are doing on open-source integrated development environment (IDE) software.

Merged today for the widely-used FFmpeg open-source multimedia library was yet another AVX-512 optimized code path... Compared to the pure C code, the AVX2 code path was 10.98x faster while this new AVX-512 code path clocks in at 18x the performance of the common C code.

Last week NeatLab released Neat Video 6 as the newest version of their video engine to reduce noise and enhance video quality that can be used with the likes of DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut, and Premiere Pro software. Neat Video 6 features a faster render engine, optimized CPU + GPU performance, enhanced memory management, and other improvements. Neat Video 6 continues to support Linux natively when it comes to DaVinci Resolve usage as well as various OFX hosts like Natron / Flame / Mistika / Fusion Studio / Nuke. As they also updated their NeatBench benchmark, I was curious to see how the performance of Neat Video 6 is for the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Blackwell GPUs.

The drama surrounding Rust code within the Linux kernel continues... Christoph Hellwig is the maintainer of the DMA mapping helpers and several other areas of the kernel has been an outspoken critic of Rust code or secondary programming languages within the Linux kernel kernel. Hellwig has been critical of Rust code for the Linux kernel and its long-term maintainability. Today he's out with another mailing list post where he notes that Linus Torvalds mentioned in private he would override maintainer vetoes on Rust code within the kernel.

For those interested in WebAssembly for the "run anywhere" prospects and container-like secure execution, Wasmer remains one of the leading WASM runtime options. Wasmer 6.0 Alpha 1 is out today as the latest to further along this quest.

For those that typically wait for the first point release before moving to a new software version, KDE Plasma 6.3.1 is out today with a few dozen fixes for the week since the Plasma 6.3 debut.

Ubuntu developers at Canonical are looking at including more Intel graphics driver packages as part of the hardware enablement "HWE" stacks shipped as part of Ubuntu Long Term Support (LTS) point releases. This would provide more comprehensive coverage of newer Intel driver components with future Ubuntu LTS point releases to benefit both the integrated and discrete graphics.