All of the memory management "MM" related patches have now been merged for the ongoing Linux 7.0 merge window.

The XFS file-system has some interesting new feature work and performance tuning with the Linux 7.0 kernel that will be used by the likes of Fedora 44 and Ubuntu 26.04 LTS this spring.

Not in time for the current Linux 7.0 cycle but posted for another round of review is Intel's latest work around Cache Aware Scheduling for enhancing the performance of modern CPUs with multiple cache domains. This is the first set of updates to Cache Aware Scheduling for the new year and succeed the v2 patches from early December. This work not only benefits modern Intel CPUs but our testing has shown can also provide some very nice gains too for AMD EPYC processors.

Sent out and already merged today for the Linux 7.0 kernel are the EXT4 file-system updates.

Merged today to Mesa 26.1-devel is unifying of the AMD video decode implementation between the RadeonSI Gallium3D and RADV Vulkan drivers.

In addition to all of the exciting Intel and AMD x86_64 enhancements that have been landing this week so far for the Linux 7.0 kernel, the aging SPARC, Alpha, and Motorola 680x0 "m68k" CPU ports have also seen some patches for this new kernel.

Earlier this month I posted benchmarks of the Loongson 3B6000 for this 12-core / 24-thread LoongArch Chinese CPU with DDR4 ECC memory. Those initial benchmarks were done with Debian LoongArch64 while since then I've shifted over to using Arch Linux on LoongArch.

Canonical released Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS today as the newest point release to the Noble Numbat.

The Linux 7.0 networking pull request showcases two extremes and the diversity and robustness of the open-source kernel ecosystem. Linux 7.0 is laying the groundwork for WiFi 8 Ultra-High Reliability (UHR) support while this kernel version is also bidding farewell to the last Ethernet driver for use over parallel printer ports.

The Linux kernel's workqueue for async task handling within a dedicated kernel thread is seeing some useful improvements with Linux 7.0.

The performance "perf" events changes for the Linux 7.0 kernel are continuing to prepare for next-generation Xeon Diamond Rapids processors as the successor to current Xeon 6 Granite Rapids.

Intel has upstreamed some Resource Control "resctrl" improvements to Linux 7.0 for enhanced telemetry monitoring. This is the good kind of telemetry with this new code being useful for being able to monitor how much energy or work is attributed to a group of tasks / process IDs on the system.

The Linux 7.0 kernel has removed support for signing kernel modules using SHA-1 as it's no longer considered secure but existing SHA-1 signed modules can still be loaded.

All of the media subsystem driver updates have been merged for the in-development Linux 7.0 kernel and brings some new work around AV1 acceleration as well as other driver updates.

The massive set of Linux kernel graphics/display driver Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) updates were sent out and merged today for the Linux 7.0 kernel. This also includes the growing work around accelerator "accel" drivers for AI NPUs and the like.

The Linux MultiMediaCard "MMC" subsystem was set to see some new hardware support, optimized support for secure erase/trim on some eMMCs, and a variety of other improvements. But all of the MMC changes are rejected and will be for the duration of the Linux 7.0 cycle due to an apparent lack of testing and vetting via linux-next that led Linus Torvalds to calling it "complete garbage" and "untested crap".

Well known open-source Linux graphics driver developer David Airlie of Red Hat, who is the co-maintainer of the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel graphics/display drivers and accelerator "accel" drivers, announced experimental work on AI-drive code/patch review for these open-source kernel drivers.

Longtime Linux users may recall the Sabayon Linux distribution that was Gentoo-based and focused on a nice out-of-the-box experience from the mid 2000s through 2019 before fading away after 2018. Sabayon Linux creator Fabio Erculiani wrote in to Phoronix today to announce he's begun working on a new Linux distribution called matrixOS.

Mesa 26.0 was just officially released as this quarter's new feature release for these open-source OpenGL / Gallium3D and Vulkan drivers used commonly on Linux systems and elsewhere like within the confines of Microsoft's WSL.

Following yesterday's Chrome 145 release with JPEG-XL support, Chrome 146 today was promoted to the beta channel to help facilitate broader testing of the next round of Chrome/Chromium browser improvements.