One of the many exciting features merged for Linux 6.11 is getrandom() in the vDSO for very fast yet secure random number generation. Now that the kernel bits have landed, it's on to making use of it in the GNU C Library and other libc implementations.

There's been no shortage of cheap, ARM-based handheld game consoles coming to market. Given Linux on Arm tending to work better than Windows and in keeping vendor costs to a minimum, they've tended to be running Linux or Android with various open-source games/emulators. Many of the vendors have kept their Linux support downstream while with time more of these gaming handheld consoles are seeing mainline Linux support. Yet another one being worked on for mainline Linux kernel support is the GameForce Ace.

Merged on Sunday prior to tagging the first release candidate of Linux 6.11 were some last minute updates to Turbostat, the tool that lives within the kernel source tree and used for reporting CPU frequency and idle statistics along with other useful metrics. With Linux 6.11, Turbostat is gaining some new abilities.

For those enjoying the classic game Snake (Blockade) or rather wanting to learn about the SDL3 API to develop your own software using this cross-platform software/hardware abstraction library, a game of Snake has been added to the SDL3 repository to serve as a more full-featured example.

While the Linux 6.11 merge window ended just days ago, Intel engineers are already beginning to submit kernel graphics driver changes to the DRM-Next branch of material they want to get in for the Linux 6.12 cycle that will end out 2024. Notable is they are trying to wrap up the Xe2 graphics support for Lunar Lake and Battlemage discrete graphics so that the support can be exposed by default.

Last year the oneAPI Construction Kit was introduced by Intel-owned Codeplay Software for bringing SYCL to new hardware even for hardware outside of Intel's offerings. One of the early targets of this oneAPI Construction Kit support was for RISC-V processors and now with today's release of oneAPI Construction Kit 4.0 there is finally RISC-V host CPU support.

With the AMD Ryzen AI 300 "Strix Point" laptops now shipping this week, Intel has announced that their Intel Core Ultra "Lunar Lake" processors as the successor to Meteor Lake will be formally launching on 3 September.

After seeing how the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 Zen 5 Strix Point performance is under Linux against a range of other Intel/AMD laptops, the next obvious question is... how does this compare to Windows? In this article is an initial look at the Windows 11 versus Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Linux performance for the same AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 SoC within an ASUS Zenbook S16 and running the same benchmarks in looking at the out-of-the-box performance difference.

Since last year there's been support available in the MSM DRM kernel driver for Qualcomm's Adreno 700 series graphics processors. There's also been some Adreno 700 series support in TURNIP as the Mesa Vulkan driver for these newer Adreno GPUs. Now finally the Freedreno Gallium3D driver has merged initial Adreno 700 series support for the Mesa 24.3 release.

Google engineer Rong Xu has proposed adding AutoFDO and Propeller support to the mainline Linux kernel for its Clang-based build as it can help the system performance improve in the up to 5~10% range.

AdaptiveCpp as the open-source compiler formerly known as hypSYCL and Open SYCL is out with a new feature release for this C++ heterogeneous compiler supporting all major CPUs and GPUs.

Ubuntu maker Canonical (Canonical Group Limited) recently filed their financial statements with UK's Companies House that offers a fresh look at their financial performance.

Two years ago DreamWorks Animation made the exciting decision that they would open-source their MoonRay renderer that's been used in production for a variety of animated feature films. That initial open-source drop took place last year as OpenMoonRay and since then it has continued to be improved as an open-source project.

As noted in yesterday's launch-day AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 review with 100+ benchmarks, I've also been testing an AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 Zen 5 laptop too. Here are those initial benchmarks of the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 as the 10-core / 20-thread laptop Zen 5 SoC. Like with the HX 370 testing, the Ryzen AI 9 365 continues to reinforce the great power efficiency uplift of Zen 5 as one of the most exciting advancements. In fact, for many benchmarks the Ryzen AI 9 365 was delivering even greater performance per Watt than the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370.

It was just two months ago that Oded Gabbay, the longtime maintainer of the Habana Labs kernel accelerator driver for Linux, announced he was stepping down from his software role and leaving Intel. Oded Gabbay was also a maintainer of the new Intel Xe kernel graphics driver. That was a surprising move with Oded Gabbay having been at Intel / Habana Labs for 7+ years and oversaw the creation of the Linux kernel's "accel" accelerator subsystem and more while prior to that having been at Red Hat and AMD. Ofir Bitton was named the Habana Labs driver maintainer following that but now he announced he too is leaving Intel.

While most Linux distributions are running on systemd as the init/service manager, SysVinit is continuing to be maintained. SysVinit 3.10 was released today with one new feature and some fixes. Coincidentally the new feature of SysVinit 3.10 is improving compatibility with systemd's machinectl command.

Immediately prior to the Linux 6.11-rc1 kernel being released yesterday, a set of Compute Express Link (CXL) patches were merged for the Linux kernel. There is some more CXL feature work this cycle but also notable is a documentation update as it now provides a concise look at the current state of CXL support on Linux.

As I noted in yesterday's AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 review and in particular the new RDNA3.5-based Radeon 890M graphics, I used updated DMCUB firmware with the open-source Linux graphics driver stack to workaround some screen freezes and kernel errors initially experience while using the Linux 6.10 kernel. That updated DMCUB firmware is now public within the upstream linux-firmware.git repository for those that may be picking up a new AMD Ryzen AI laptop with RDNA3.5 graphics in the coming days.

Intel is kicking off the new week with a new release to their open-source Compute Runtime stack that provides OpenCL and Level Zero support across Windows and Linux systems with Intel integrated/discrete graphics.

Alan Coopersmith of Oracle -- thanks to his work on Solaris and maintaining the X11 support -- continues to be one of the few developers left managing new X.Org software component releases. This weekend Coopersmith released libX11 1.8.10 as the newest version of this client-side library for the core X11 protocol.