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)

AMD ROCm TheRock 7.11 Released, Ubuntu Making Progress On Shipping ROCm Packages

([AMD] 11 February 11:00 AM EST AMD ROCm)

Two useful bits of ROCm news today for those interested in AMD's open-source GPU compute stack.



Linux Mint Developing New Wayland-Compatible Screensaver

([Operating Systems] 11 February 10:45 AM EST Linux Mint)

The Linux Mint developers have been hard at work continuing to develop new features following their recent Mint 22.3 release. There is continued enhancements around keyboard support, a new administration tool for users, and there are also considerations being made around moving to a longer development cycle between Linux Mint releases.



Linux 7.0 Now Defaults To Intel TSX Auto Mode For Performance Benefits On Newer CPUs

([Intel] 11 February 09:11 AM EST Intel TSX Performance)

The x86/cpu changes have been merged for Linux 7.0 and include finally setting the default Intel TSX mode to "auto" rather than being off by default.



OpenVPN 2.7 Released With Multi-Socket Server & DCO Linux Kernel Driver Support

([Linux Networking] 11 February 08:27 AM EST OpenVPN 2.7)

For those using the open-source OpenVPN for your virtual private networking (VPN) needs, OpenVPN 2.7 is out today with some notable improvements.



Intel Releases New Compute Runtime, Upstreams More SYCL Code To LLVM

([Intel] 11 February 08:19 AM EST Intel Compute Runtime + IGC)

Intel today released a new version of their Compute Runtime stack and IGC graphics compiler for Level Zero and OpenCL usage with their integrated and discrete graphics. Separately they also upstreamed more SYCL code this week into mainline LLVM.



Linux 7.0 Scores +12% In UDP Network Performance Test From Manually Inlining Function

([Linux Networking] 11 February 06:32 AM EST Performance Improvement)

The core timer changes to the Linux 7.0 kernel score a rather nice performance improvement in a UDP receive network stress test from inlining a function that compilers haven't been able to tackle with their optimizations.



Upstream Wine Making Progress On Patches For Satisfying Adobe Photoshop

([WINE] 11 February 06:08 AM EST Adobe Photoshop Installer)

There were recently patches for getting the Adobe Photoshop 2025 installer to work on Linux under Wine. Those patches were picked up by Wine-Staging and now more traction is coming for getting those patches into the upstream Wine codebase, some of which have now been merged.



Compiler-Driven Static Analysis Locking Context Checking Merged For Linux 7.0

([Linux Kernel] 11 February 05:56 AM EST Linux 7.0 Locking)

The locking code changes have been merged for the Linux 7.0 kernel and it introduces support for a new compiler-driven feature being introduced on the compiler side with the upcoming LLVM Clang 22.



Google Chrome 145 Released With JPEG-XL Image Support

([Google] 10 February 07:26 PM EST Chrome 145)

Back in 2022 Google deprecated and then removed JPEG-XL image support from the Chrome/Chromium browser codebase and now in 2026 it's back. Last month I wrote about JPEG-XL decoding merged back to Chromium/Chrome and that has rolled out today as part of today's Chrome 145 stable debut.



Linux 7.0 Scheduler Updates Land Time Slice Extension, Performance & Scalability Work

([Linux Kernel] 10 February 05:28 PM EST Linux 7.0 Scheduler)

Merged today for the Linux 7.0 kernel are some pretty exciting scheduler changes: new features and never-ending work around scheduler performance optimizations and greater scalability with today's increasingly high core count systems.



Go 1.26 Introduces Two Language Changes, New Performance Improvements

([Programming] 10 February 03:20 PM EST Go 1.26)

For programmers fond of the Go programming language, Go 1.26 is out today with two language changes, performance improvements, and other alterations to this Google-backed programming language.



Intel CPU Microcode 20260210 Brings Security Updates & Functional Fixes

([Intel] 10 February 01:46 PM EST Intel 20260210 Microcode)

Intel today for Patch Tuesday released several generations worth of CPU microcode updates for addressing multiple security issues and functional issues.



Linux 7.0 Bringing Mainline Support For The SpacemiT K3 RVA23 SoC, Qualcomm Kaanapali

([Hardware] 10 February 01:24 PM EST Linux 7.0 SoCs)

The various SoC and platform Device Tree additions were sent out today for the Linux 7.0 kernel. Easily most exciting on the SoC side this cycle among the ARM and RISC-V changes is getting support ready for the SpacemiT K3 RVA23 SoC.



Linux 7.0 VFS Changes: Non-Blocking Timestamps, Standardized Generic I/O Error Reporting

([Linux Storage] 10 February 12:20 PM EST Linux 7.0 VFS)

In addition to introducing nullfs and the OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE support for containers, there were also a number of other interesting VFS updates merged on Monday for the Linux 7.0 kernel.



CrossOver 26 Released - Powered By Wine 11.0 For Windows Apps/Games On Linux + macOS

([Linux Gaming] 10 February 11:11 AM EST CrossOver 26)

CodeWeavers just announced CrossOver 26, the newest version of their commercial software built atop Wine for running Windows games and applications under Apple macOS and Linux.



Intel Xeon 6780E Sierra Forest vs. AMD EPYC 9965 On Linux 6.18 Performance

([Processors] 10 February 10:32 AM EST 1 Comment)

With recently having carried out benchmarks and finding the Intel Xeon 6780E "Sierra Forest" performance has improved ~14% since launch day thanks to open-source/Linux software improvements plus also recently having carried out Xeon 6980P Granite Rapids vs. EPYC 9755 128-core benchmarks using the latest upstream software, here is a look at how the Xeon 6780E "Sierra Forest" dual socket server is comparing up against the AMD EPYC 9965 Turin Dense flagship when both are running up-to-date software.



Redis 8.6 Released With "Substantial" Performance Improvements & Memory Reduction

([Free Software] 10 February 09:25 AM EST Redis 8.6)

The open-source Redis 8.6 release is now available and this GA release has brought "substantial" performance improvements and to memory reduction too. Plus various new features like TLS certificate-based automatic client authentication, time series enhancements, and new eviction policies.



Linux 7.0 Block Changes Land, Bounce Buffer DIO For Stable Pages

([Linux Storage] 10 February 09:09 AM EST Linux 7.0 Block)

In addition to the BPF filtering support for IO_uring that was merged on Monday, the other block device changes and IO_uring updates were also merged for the newly-opened Linux 7.0 merge window.



Experimental Zones Protocol Merged To Wayland After 2+ Years, 620+ Comments

([Wayland] 10 February 08:22 AM EST xx-zones)

After the merge request was opened back in 2023 and after going through 628 comments/activity, merged now to Wayland Protocols is the experimental zones "xx-zones" implementation for area-limited window positioning.



Linux 7.0 Adds support For BPF Filtering To IO_uring

([Linux Kernel] 10 February 08:09 AM EST IO_uring BPF Filtering)

The wonderful IO_uring for the Linux kernel for high performance asnyc I/O has picked up a new capability with Linux 7.0: BPF filtering.



More

"They know your name, address, telephone number, credit card numbers, who ELSE
is driving the car "for insurance", ... your driver's license number. In the
state of Massachusetts, this is the same number as that used for Social
Security, unless you object to such use. In THAT case, you are ASSIGNED a
number and you reside forever more on the list of "weird people who don't give
out their Social Security Number in Massachusetts."
-- Arthur Miller