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)

OpenZFS 2.4-rc1 Brings Linux 6.16 Compatibility, Better Encryption Performance With AVX2

([Linux Storage] 22 August 04:26 PM EDT OpenZFS 2.4-rc1)

The first release candidate of OpenZFS 2.4 is now available for testing of this ZFS file-system implementation for Linux and FreeBSD systems.



Mesa 25.3 Lands More Changes To Prepare For OpenGL Mesh Shaders

([Mesa] 22 August 10:08 AM EDT OpenGL Mesh Shaders)

Being worked on for a number of months now is GL_EXT_mesh_shader as an extension for bringing mesh shaders to OpenGL. This is an alternative to NVIDIA's GL_NV_mesh_shader extension being worked on for Mesa drivers and in particular the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver.



New Ubuntu Snapdragon X1E Concept ISO Published - Still A Mess On The Acer Swift 14 AI

([Ubuntu] 22 August 09:32 AM EDT X1E Concept ISO)

Released on Thursday were new Ubuntu X1E "Concept" install images for installing the modified Ubuntu 25.04 environment on Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 powered laptops.



FFmpeg 8.0 Released With OpenAI Whisper Filter, Many Vulkan Video Improvements

([Multimedia] 22 August 08:24 AM EDT FFmpeg 8.0)

FFmpeg 8.0 is now available! FFmpeg 8.0 is a magnificent update to this widely-used open-source multimedia library and with this new version is the introduction of an OpenAI Whisper filter for automatic speech recognition, many Vulkan Video improvements for greater GPU-accelerated video handling, and a number of CPU performance optimizations.



FreeRDP 3.17 Released With Fullchain Support

([Desktop] 22 August 06:19 AM EDT FreeRDP 3.17)

FreeRDP as one of the leading open-source / free software implementations of Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is out with a new release. While FreeRDP 3.17 is primarily focused on shipping bug fixes, there is one noteworthy addition: fullchain support.



Servo Lands APNG & Animated WebP Support, Vello Backends For Faster 2D Graphics

([Free Software] 22 August 06:29 AM EDT Servo)

The Servo browser project has published a monthly status report to outline all of the interesting changes made to this interesting, Rust-based browser layout engine over the past several weeks. Development continues moving along with Servo as more critical functionality continues to be added as well as new performance optimizations and other features to make it a compelling option for future embedded web use and more.



Intel's New LLM-Scaler Beta Update Brings Whisper Model & GLM-4.5-Air Support

([Intel] 22 August 05:59 AM EDT llm-scaler-vllm)

Earlier this month Intel released LLM-Scaler 1.0 as part of their Project Battlematrix initiative. This is a Docker container effort to deliver speedy AI inference performance with multi-GPU scaling and PCIe P2P support and more.



Linux Kernel Patches Posted For Enabling USB3 Support On Apple M1 / M2

([Apple] 21 August 04:38 PM EDT Apple Silicon USB3)

In addition to this week seeing Apple SoC DT updates prepped for Linux 6.18 and Apple laptop lid events and power button driver patches posted for review for the mainline Linux kernel, published today on the Linux kernel mailing list are the request for comments (RFC) on patches for enabling USB3 support with Apple Silicon M1 / M2 SoCs.



AMD Ryzen AI 5 340 Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu Linux Performance For Budget "Krackan Point" Laptops

([Operating Systems] 21 August 10:15 AM EDT 68 Comments)

Earlier this month we looked at the Linux laptop performance of AMD's Krackan Point using the Ryzen AI 5 340 within a HP OmniBook 5 that can be found for as low as ~$450 during sales. For six Zen 5 cores and RDNA 3.5 graphics, Krackan Point worked well as a budget Linux laptop option. For those wondering how the Linux vs. Windows 11 performance compares for the budget HP OmniBook, here are some benchmarks.



Linux Driver Under Review For Apple Laptop Lid Events & Power Button

([Apple] 21 August 09:24 AM EDT Apple Laptops)

Following the recent Apple SMC driver upstreaming to handle rebooting Apple Silicon Macs under Linux, the latest code volleyed on the kernel mailing list for review is support for handling laptop lid events and power buttons. Plus Apple sensor monitoring driver support too.



Intel Compute Runtime 25.31.34666.3 Continues Prepping For Panther Lake

([Intel] 21 August 08:35 AM EDT 25.31.34666.3)

Released minutes ago was the newest monthly feature release to the Intel Compute Runtime providing open-source OpenCL and Level Zero capabilities on Intel graphics hardware.



VKD3D 1.17 Released With More Improvements For Direct3D 12 On Vulkan

([WINE] 21 August 07:58 AM EDT VKD3D 1.17)

VKD3D 1.17 made its debut this morning as the newest version of this Direct3D 12 over Vulkan API implementation.



Panthor Open-Source Driver To Support Many More Arm Mali GPUs In Linux 6.18

([Arm] 21 August 06:27 AM EDT Panthor DRM Driver)

The open-source Panthor Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver providing the modern kernel graphics driver support for recent Arm Mali GPUs will be supporting a number of additional GPU models with the Linux 6.18 kernel later this year.



NVIDIA Begins Linux Kernel Upstreaming Work For Their Vera Rubin NLV144 Platform

([NVIDIA] 21 August 06:17 AM EDT Vera Rubin NLV144)

The first Linux kernel patches specific to their next-gen Vera Rubin NLV144 "VR144NVL" were posted today to the public Linux kernel mailing list.



RADV Vulkan Video Lands Intra-Refresh Encode

([Radeon] 21 August 05:58 AM EDT VK_KHR_video_encode_intra_refresh)

David Rosca who started out as a contractor for AMD working on their open-source video encode/decode capabilities for Linux formally joined the company earlier this summer. He's continued to be quite busy plumbing numerous enhancements into their accelerated video support on Linux, which includes RADV with Vulkan Video.



Libre-Chip Awarded NLnet Grant To Prototype A CPU That Isn't Vulnerable To Spectre Flaws

([Hardware] 20 August 04:45 PM EDT Libre-Chip)

The Libre-Chip project led by Jacob Lifshay has received a grant from NLNet to develop a prototype/proof-of-concept processor design that can be high performance but not vulnerable to speculative execution vulnerabilities like Spectre.



systemd 259 To Raise Linux System Requirements

([systemd] 20 August 01:00 PM EDT systemd 259)

Systemd 258 is nearing release with many big changes to this init system / service manager. Systemd 258-rc3 was released today with some last minute fixes while also now adding that the next release, systemd 259, will face increased Linux system requirements.



AMD FidelityFX SDK 2.0 Released With FSR 4 Included

([Radeon] 20 August 11:49 AM EDT FidelityFX SDK 2.0)

AMD's GPUOpen team just released the FidelityFX SDK 2.0 development kit and with it is now the inclusion of the FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 (FSR 4) upscaling tech to complement the existing FSR 2 / FSR 3 support.



Mesa 25.2.1 Released: Restores NVK On Kepler, Additional Intel Battlemage ID

([Mesa] 20 August 10:38 AM EDT Mesa 25.2.1)

Following the release of Mesa 25.2 from two weeks ago, Mesa 25.2.1 is out now as the first point release. Mesa 25.2.1 is quite heavy on bug fixes and some other notable back-ports from Mesa 25.3-devel.



MoltenVK 1.4 Released For Bringing Vulkan 1.4 To macOS Atop Metal

([Vulkan] 20 August 10:21 AM EDT MoltenVK 1.4)

MoltenVK 1.4 is available today for this Vulkan portability implementation that layers the Vulkan API atop Apple's Metal graphics drivers for allowing Vulkan games/apps to run across macOS, iOS, and tvOS devices.



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People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people
have been left out on the pleasure.
-- Russell Baker