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)

NVIDIA Adds Official Support For RHEL-Compatible Distributions Like AlmaLinux With CUDA 13.2

([NVIDIA] 9 March 02:41 PM EDT CUDA 13.2 Update)

With CUDA 13.2 that is now shipping, NVIDIA has provided official support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux compatible distributions/downstreams like AlmaLinux to CUDA. With this official NVIDIA CUDA support for these RHEL-compatible distributions, NVIDIA is also allowing the NVIDIA packages to be distributed directly from the OS package repositories.


Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Officially Supporting Cloud-Based Authentication With Authd

([Ubuntu] 9 March 11:45 AM EDT Ubuntu 26.04 LTS + Authd)

Canonical for a while has been developing Authd as an authentication service for external cloud-based identity providers. Authd was designed from the ground-up to provide secure management of identity and access for Ubuntu systems while only with next month's Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release is it actually hitting the universe archive.


Intel Publishes XeSS 3 SDK To GitHub - Still As Windows-Only Binaries

([Intel] 9 March 11:10 AM EDT XeSS 3 SDK)

Intel just published the XeSS 3.0 SDK to GitHub as the newest version of their Xe Super Sampling AI-enhanced upscaling technology for gamers. Sadly though it remains proprietary software and only with native support for Windows.


AMD Formally Launches Ryzen AI Embedded P100 Series 8-12 Core Models

([AMD] 9 March 10:10 AM EDT AMD Ryzen AI Embedded P100)

AMD announced back at CES the Ryzen AI Embedded P100 series with initially the models up to six Zen 5 cores launching while the eight through twelve core models would be available later in H1. Today AMD formally announced those higher-tier Ryzen AI Embedded P100 series parts.


NVIDIA 595 Linux Driver Running Well In Early Benchmarks

([Display Drivers] 9 March 10:35 AM EDT 21 Comments)

Last week NVIDIA released the 595.45.04 beta Linux driver as their first public build in the R595 release branch. The NVIDIA R595 Linux driver is bringing a number of Vulkan driver improvements, HDR enhancements, DRI3 v1.2 support, and a variety of other improvements. Benchmarking the NVIDIA 595.45.04 Linux driver the past few days on GeForce RTX 50 "Blackwell" have been showing some nice incremental performance improvements over the current NVIDIA 590 driver stable series.


New Rust Driver Aims To Improve Upstream Linux On Synology NAS Devices

([Hardware] 9 March 09:08 AM EDT Synology Microp)

A set of patches posted to the Linux kernel mailing list last week introduce a new driver for enhancing the upstream/mainline Linux kernel support for Synology network attached storage (NAS) devices. This new driver is Synology Microp and is making use of the Linux kernel's modern Rust programming language support.


GCC 16 Compiler Aiming For Mid-April Release Candidate But "Slow" Progress On Fixes

([GNU] 9 March 06:28 AM EDT GCC 16.1)

Richard Biener of SUSE published a new status report on the state of GCC 16 development. Regression fixing has been going slow but they are hoping to publish a release candidate by mid-April.


Rust Coreutils 0.7 Released With Many Performance Optimizations

([Programming] 9 March 12:00 AM EDT Rust Coreutils 0.7)

Rust Coreutils 0.7 released on Sunday as a performance-focused update to this popular alternative to GNU Coreutils that is still striving for 100% compatibility against the GNU Test Suite.


Linux 7.0-rc3 Released: "Some Of The Biggest In Recent History"

([Linux Kernel] 8 March 08:27 PM EDT Linux 7.0)

Linux 7.0-rc3 is out as the latest weekly test candidate in leading up to the stable Linux 7.0 release in mid-April.


CachyOS Handheld Edition Switches To Wayland, CachyOS Installer Drops Bcachefs

([Arch Linux] 8 March 01:20 PM EDT CachyOS March 2026)

The March 2026 ISO refresh of the Arch Linux powered CachyOS distribution is now available for new installations and upgrading from existing CachyOS installs.


FFmpeg 8.1 Preparing For Release With Vulkan Improvements, JPEG-XS & More

([Multimedia] 8 March 08:42 AM EDT FFmpeg 8.1)

FFmpeg developers are preparing to soon release FFmpeg 8.1 with some great new features and other improvements.


Linux 7.0 Fixes Battery Reporting For The Apple Magic Trackpad 2

([Apple] 8 March 06:58 AM EDT Apple Magic Trackpad 2)

Merged back in 2018 for Linux 5.0 was support for the Apple Magic Trackpad 2. Merged this week for the in-development Linux 7.0 kernel is fixing battery reporting for those using the Magic Trackpad 2 under Linux.


Experimental Intel Nova Lake P Device Bits Merged For Mesa 26.1

([Intel] 8 March 07:53 AM EDT Disabled By Default)

Merged this week for Mesa 26.1 are the initial Nova Lake P "NVL-P" device bits for Intel's ANV Vulkan and Iris Gallium3D drivers. But this support isn't yet exposed by default and not yet ready for end-users with more driver changes still to be published.


Notable Intel & AMD CPU Changes Merged For Linux 7.0-rc3

([Linux Kernel] 8 March 07:38 AM EDT Intel + AMD CPU Changes)

This week's batch of "x86/urgent" patches that were merged overnight for Linux 7.0 contain some fixes and other adjustments worth highlighting for both AMD and Intel.


LLM-Driven Large Code Rewrites With Relicensing Are The Latest AI Concern

([AI] 8 March 07:29 AM EDT Chardet)

The newest open-source concern around AI that is seeing a lot of interest this weekend is when large language models / AI code generators may rewrite large parts of a codebase and then the "developers" claiming an alternative license incompatible with the original source license. This became a real concern this week with a popular Python project experiencing an AI-driven code rewrite and now published under an alternative license that its original author does not agree with and incompatible with the original code.


digiKam 9.0 Leading Open-Source Digital Photo Manager Software Released

([KDE] 8 March 07:05 AM EDT digiKam 9.0)

The KDE/Qt-aligned digiKam software for managing RAW digital photos is out today with the big digiKam 9.0 release.


Linux 7.0 Adds A New Minor Performance Optimization Shown With AMD Zen 2 CPUs

([Linux Kernel] 7 March 08:23 PM EST Linux 7.0 epoll)

The Linux event poll "epoll" code for efficient I/O multiplexing and monitoring of file descriptors for seeing when I/O is possible has a new optimization merged today for Linux 7.0.


Budgie 10.10.2 Brings Improved Labwc Wayland Compositor Integration

([Desktop] 7 March 12:46 PM EST Budgie 10.10.2)

Out today is Budgie 10.10.2 as the latest minor update to this open-source desktop environment that began as part of the Solus Linux project.


AMD GAIA 0.16 Introduces C++17 Agent Framework For Building AI PC Agents In Pure C++

([AMD] 7 March 10:07 AM EST AMD GAIA 0.16)

AMD's GAIA open-source framework for building AI agents that run locally on Ryzen AI hardware via the Radeon iGPUs and/or NPUs is up to version 0.16. With this new GAIA release is support for developing AI agents purely in C++ with no longer needing to depend upon Python.


FreeBSD 15.1 On Track With Better Realtek WiFi & KDE Desktop Install Option

([BSD] 7 March 07:13 AM EST FreeBSD On Laptops)

The effort around improving FreeBSD on laptops continues full speed ahead in 2026. The upcoming FreeBSD 15.1 remains on track with not only having a KDE desktop option from FreeBSD's text-based installer UI but also improved Realtek WiFi adapter support is on the way, updating of the graphics drivers from Linux, and more.


More

... an anecdote from IBM's Yorktown Heights Research Center. When a
programmer used his new computer terminal, all was fine when he was sitting
down, but he couldn't log in to the system when he was standing up. That
behavior was 100 percent repeatable: he could always log in when sitting and
never when standing.

Most of us just sit back and marvel at such a story; how could that terminal
know whether the poor guy was sitting or standing? Good debuggers, though,
know that there has to be a reason. Electrical theories are the easiest to
hypothesize: was there a loose wire under the carpet, or problems with static
electricity? But electrical problems are rarely consistently reproducible.
An alert IBMer finally noticed that the problem was in the terminal's
keyboard: the tops of two keys were switched. When the programmer was seated
he was a touch typist and the problem went unnoticed, but when he stood he was
led astray by hunting and pecking.
-- "Programming Pearls" column, by Jon Bentley in CACM February 1985