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.
KDE Plasma 6.7 Ready With Wayland Session Management, Other New Improvements
([KDE] 18 April 06:05 AM EDT
KDE Plasma 6.7)
KDE Plasma 6.7 enjoyed a lot of recent feature development work thanks to a developer sprint in Graz, Austria. Also because of that developer sprint, This Week In Plasma wasn't published last week and so in turn a new issue is now available to highlight the changes over the past two weeks.
The "NTFS Resurrection" Has Occurred For Linux 7.1
([Linux Storage] 17 April 08:57 PM EDT
New NTFS Driver)
As a very exciting follow-up to the recent article around the new NTFS driver being submitted for Linux 7.1 to address the shortcomings of the current Paragon NTFS3 driver and the prior read-only NTFS kernel driver, that work has been merged!
AMD FP-DSS Security Bug For Zen 1 CPUs Made Public, Linux Kernel Patched
([AMD] 17 April 08:35 PM EDT
AMD FPDSS)
Made public today was the Floating Point Divider State Sampling bug (stylized as FP-DSS or FPDSS) affecting original AMD Zen 1 (and Zen 1+) processors. The Linux kernel is already to go with a security fix for those still relying on the very first Ryzen or EPYC processors.
Wine 11.7 Brings VBScript Fixes, DirectSound 7.1 Channel Support
([WINE] 17 April 08:24 PM EDT
Wine 11.7)
For those using upstream Wine for running your Windows games/apps on Linux rather than the likes of the Proton 11.0 beta, out today is Wine 11.7 as the newest bi-weekly development release.
Intel Xe2 Lunar Lake Linux Graphics Performance Up ~17% Over Past Year
([Display Drivers] 17 April 10:52 AM EDT
5 Comments)
Given the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release being imminent and also realizing it's been nearly one year to the day since reviewing the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition laptop under Linux, I ran some fresh benchmarks for seeing how the integrated Xe2 graphics have evolved on Linux over the past year.
Valve Developer Lands RADV/ACO Changes For AMD's GFX11.7 / RDNA 4m
([Radeon] 17 April 09:48 AM EDT
AMD RDNA 4m)
The open-source Linux graphics driver work continues around AMD's GFX11.7 GPU target for some yet-to-be-launched APUs/SoCs and to be branded as "RDNA 4m".
Glibc Lands A Big Optimization For LoongArch CPUs
([Hardware] 17 April 08:47 AM EDT
Faster LoongArch)
Loongson's LoongArch processors are running decent in our recent Loongson 3B6000 benchmarks but even better performance is on the way with the next GNU C Library "glibc" release.
Linux 7.1 Crypto Code Rework Enables More Optimizations By Default
([Linux Kernel] 17 April 08:27 AM EDT
More Performance)
Linux libcrypto cryptography subsystem changes for the v7.1 kernel are enabling more optimizations by default and in turn helping to achieve better crypto/hashing performance on this next kernel version.
Fedora 44 Will Not Be Released Next Week
([Fedora] 17 April 08:17 AM EDT
No-Go)
Fedora 44 final had been aiming for an early release target of 21 April, but due to outstanding blocker bugs, it's now revised to target a release on 28 April.
GCC Compiler Adds Arm AGI CPU Target
([Arm] 17 April 06:19 AM EDT
-mcpu=armagicpu)
The GCC open-source compiler has landed initial targeting support for Arm's newly-announced AGI CPU.
Linux 7.1 x86/x86_64 Aligns With Other Architectures Now For Supporting Custom Restart Handlers
([Hardware] 17 April 06:07 AM EDT
Custom Restart Handlers)
With the vast majority of x86/x86_64 systems supporting restarting the system using ACPi, BIOS, or even the KBD keyboard controller, with Linux 7.1 is now support in place for using custom restart handlers registered by drivers, such as in place for other CPU architectures.
New Lenovo Fan Driver, More ASUS Motherboards With Sensor Monitoring For Linux 7.1
([Hardware] 17 April 05:53 AM EDT
HWMON)
All of the hardware monitoring "HWMON" subsystem updates were merged this week for the Linux 7.1 kernel.
New NTFS File-System Driver Submitted For Linux 7.1
([Linux Storage] 16 April 08:25 PM EDT
New NTFS Driver)
Making today very exciting in Linux 7.1 merge window land was a pull request being sent out for introducing the new, modern NTFS file-system driver. Linus Torvalds has yet to comment if he's going to merge the new driver but it looks like it's ready for providing a better Linux NTFS experience over the current NTFS3 driver that was upstreamed by Paragon Software a few years ago and hasn't seen too much feature progress.
Proton 11.0 Beta Released With More Games Playable On Steam Play
([Valve] 16 April 05:33 PM EDT
Proton 11.0 Beta)
Valve and CodeWeavers have just released Proton 11.0 Beta as their first beta milestone for this software that powers Steam Play now rebased against upstream Wine 11.0.
Linux 7.1 sched_ext Brings cgroup Sub-Scheduler Groundwork, Idle SMT Sibling Improvement
([Linux Kernel] 16 April 05:24 PM EDT
sched_ext)
The extensible scheduler "sched_ext" code for allowing Linux scheduling behavior to be defined via BPF programs is seeing some useful improvements with the in-development Linux 7.1 kernel.
Mir 2.26 Begins Working On Rust-Based Input Platform
([Ubuntu] 16 April 01:51 PM EDT
Mir 2.26)
Canonical today released Mir 2.26 as the newest feature release for this compositor for building Wayland-based shells. Notable with Mir 2.26 is a Rust-based input platform is in development as part of their broader effort for bringing Rust code into Mir.