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)

Popular Rust-Based Database Turns To AI For Up To 1.5x Speedup, Other Improvements

([Linux Storage] 20 April 06:27 AM EDT Redb 4.1)

Redb is one of the open-source, embed-friendly key-value databases written in the Rust programming language. Redb is ACID-compliant while known for being high performance and with its new Redb 4.1 release is even faster thanks to some improvements authored by Claude (AI).



Linux 7.1 Kernel Graphics Driver Changes Merged With Intel & AMD Leading The Way

([Linux Kernel] 20 April 06:12 AM EDT Linux 7.1 DRM)

The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel graphics driver and accelerator driver changes for Linux 7.1 were recently merged to Git. As usual, it's the Intel and AMD kernel graphics drivers seeing a bulk of the interesting open-source GPU driver activity. Plus ongoing work to make Rust-based GPU drivers more viable.



JFS Sees Data Integrity Hardening With Linux 7.1

([Linux Storage] 20 April 05:58 AM EDT JFS File-System)

It's pretty rare nowadays seeing any real changes to the JFS file-system on Linux when there are multiple far superior solutions available. But in any event, the JFS file-system driver has seen a few fixes in Linux 7.1.



LXQt 2.4 Released With More Wayland Fixes/Improvements

([Desktop] 20 April 05:36 AM EDT LXQt 2.4)

The LXQt 2.4 desktop released today for joining the modern open-source desktop party alongside the likes of the recently debuted GNOME 50, KDE Plasma 6.6, and others.



New Lenovo Legion Go Drivers & More Sony HID Device Support In Linux 7.1

([Hardware] 19 April 08:42 PM EDT Linux 7.1 HID)

The HID subsystem updates landed this week for the in-development Linux 7.1 kernel that includes new hardware support and other changes.



GIMP 3.2.4 Released With A Fix For Its XCF Code That Has Existed Since 1999

([Free Software] 19 April 06:45 PM EDT GIMP 3.2.4)

Following last month's GIMP 3.2 feature release that was followed by the GIMP 3.2.2 point release at the end of March, out now is GIMP 3.2.4 to ship more fixes to users of this open-source alternative to Adobe Photoshop and other imaging applications.



New Debian Project Leader Elected For 2026

([Debian] 19 April 04:58 PM EDT Sruthi Chandran)

Sruthi Chandran has been elected the new Debian Project Leader "DPL" after running unopposed in this year's elections.



GNOME Fixes Screencasting Issue With H.264 Recordings Being ~18x Larger Than VP8

([GNOME] 19 April 03:14 PM EDT Rate Control)

A fix today for GNOME Shell's screen casting/recording service was merged after it was reported that H.264 recordings using the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) are around 18x larger than they should be like when using the VP8 software fallback.



Linux 7.1 Adds Some New PCIe Drivers While Nuking Some PCI Drivers

([Hardware] 19 April 01:40 PM EDT Linux 7.1)

The PCI subsystem updates were merged this week for the Linux 7.1 kernel with a wide assortment of PCI(e) changes from new to old hardware.



Valve Developer Further Improves Old AMD GPUs: HD 7870 XT Finally Working On Linux

([Radeon] 19 April 09:25 AM EDT Harvested GPU Support)

Timur Kristóf of Valve's Linux graphics driver team is the one that worked on improving the old AMD Radeon GCN 1.0/1.1 graphics card support by making AMDGPU driver improvements so it could become the default for these Southern Islands and Sea Islands GPUs rather than the legacy Radeon kernel driver. That meant better performance, RADV Vulkan support out-of-the-box, and other benefits. More recently he finished AMDGPU improvements for Kaveri and other GCN 1.1 era APUs. Now Timur's out with some more fixes for helping select GCN 1.0 hardware.



Linux 7.1 Sound Code Adds Bus Keepers: Aiming For Better Apple Silicon Support

([Multimedia] 19 April 07:07 AM EDT Linux 7.1 Sound)

The sound subsystem changes were merged this week for Linux 7.1 that include some new hardware support and other useful additions.



CachyOS Rolls Out A Super-Charged Linux 7.0 Kernel

([Arch Linux] 19 April 06:44 AM EDT CachyOS + Linux 7.0)

The popular Arch Linux based CachyOS has now rolled out the Linux 7.0 kernel to its users. But beyond re-basing against the latest upstream kernel version it is also carrying some extra patches.



Intel QAT Zstd, QAT Gen6 Improvements Merged For Linux 7.1

([Linux Kernel] 19 April 06:30 AM EDT Linux 7.1 Crypto)

In addition to the notable libcrypto optimizations and improvements merged during this first week of the Linux 7.1 merge window, the main cryptography subsystem pull was also merged. Notable here are the Intel QuickAssist (QAT) improvements.



Linux 7.1 Sees RAID Fixes, IO_uring Enhancements

([Linux Storage] 18 April 08:25 PM EDT Linux 7.1 Block)

The block subsystem and IO_uring changes were merged this week for Linux 7.1 in continuing to enhance Linux storage capabilities.



GhostBSD 26.1 Now Based On FreeBSD 15.0, Switches to XLibre X Server

([BSD] 18 April 03:15 PM EDT GhostBSD 26.1)

GhostBSD 26.1-R15.0p2 released today as a big upgrade for this desktop-focused, BSD operating system derived from FreeBSD.



Linux 7.1 Adds New AMD SMCA Bank Types, Presumably For Upcoming EPYC Venice

([AMD] 18 April 02:41 PM EDT New AMD SMCA Bank Types)

The AMD Machine Check Exception "mce_amd" driver as part of the Error Detection And Correction (EDAC) subsystem is introducing support for new SMCA bank types on AMD platforms. Given the timing these new bank types are presumably for AMD's upcoming Zen 6 / EPYC Venice hardware.



WireGuard For Windows Reaches v1.0

([Microsoft] 18 April 01:40 PM EDT WireGuard)

For those making use of the WireGuard open-source, secure VPN tunnel software, WireGuard For Windows 1.0 is finally available.



Linux 7.1 Scheduler Changes May Benefit Some Workloads

([Linux Kernel] 18 April 07:06 AM EDT Linux 7.1 Scheduler)

The scheduler changes for Linux 7.1 are now in place and may bring performance benefits for at least some systems and workloads.



GNOME's Maps, Graphs, RustConn & Other App Improvements

([GNOME] 18 April 06:45 AM EDT GNOME Apps)

For pairing nicely with the GNOME 50 desktop release last month, a number of GNOME-associated apps have been seeing new features and refinements.



Linux 7.1 Lands High Resolution Timer "HRTIMER" Overhaul

([Linux Kernel] 18 April 06:36 AM EDT HRTIMER Rework)

Merged this week for Linux 7.1 was a rework of the high resolution timer "HRTIMER" subsystem for reducing the overhead of frequently-armed timers, such as the HRTICK scheduler timer. The HRTICK scheduler timer is useful for enhancing system responsiveness and fairness.



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