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)

TrixiePup64 11.2 Released For Debian-Based Puppy Linux With Wayland & X11 Options

([Operating Systems] 13 December 08:32 PM EST TrixiePup64 11.2)

For those with fond memories of the original Puppy Linux as a lightweight Linux distribution that used to run well back in the day on systems with less than 1GB of RAM, TrixiePup64 is out with a new release of this Puppy Linux based distribution with Debian GNU/Linux components. The new TrixiePup64 11.2 release is based on the latest Debian Trixie sources while continuing to offer separate builds for either X11 or Wayland usage.


Exciting Laptop & Gaming Handheld Device Improvements Merged For Linux 6.19

([Hardware] 13 December 03:53 PM EST Linux 6.19 x86 Platform Drivers)

Merged during this second week of the Linux 6.19 feature merge window were the many x86 platform driver changes. As usual, much of the x86 platform driver activity surrounds bettering Linux hardware laptop support but also a growing number of handheld computers / gaming devices.


Oracles Releases Updated "bpftune" For BPF-Based Auto-Tuning Of Linux Systems

([Oracle] 13 December 12:27 PM EST bpftune)

The past few years Oracle has been working on bpftune as a solution for BPF-based, automatic tuning of Linux systems. Bpftune has been available via Oracle Linux and GitHub while finally their open-source GitHub code has seen the first new tagged release in a while.


NFS Lands Initial Support For Directory Delegations In Linux 6.19

([Linux Storage] 13 December 10:13 AM EST NFS Directory Delegatiosn)

The Network File-System (NFS) client changes were merged today for the Linux 6.19 kernel with the most notable feature addition being initial support for basic directory delegations.


New RTC Drivers For Apple & NVIDIA With Linux 6.19

([Linux Kernel] 13 December 09:28 AM EST Real Time Clock)

The Real Time Clock (RTC) driver changes were merged today for Linux 6.19 ahead of the merge window wrapping up on Sunday.


New Rule Forbids GNOME Shell Extensions Made Using AI Generated Code

([GNOME] 13 December 06:41 AM EST GNOME.org Extensions)

The GNOME.org Extensions hosting for GNOME Shell extensions will no longer accept new contributions with AI-generated code. A new rule has been added to their review guidelines to forbid AI-generated code.


LoongArch32 Support Begins Taking Shape In Linux 6.19, GCC 16

([Linux Kernel] 13 December 06:20 AM EST LoongArch 32-bit)

The LoongArch CPU architecture changes have been merged for the Linux 6.19 merge window. This domestic Chinese CPU architecture inspired by MIPS and RISC-V began with 64-bit LoongArch64 but with Linux 6.19 the foundation is being laid for LoongArch32 as a 32-bit variant.


New Linux Patch Confirms: Rust Experiment Is Done, Rust Is Here To Stay

([Linux Kernel] 12 December 08:35 PM EST Rust In The Linux Kernel)

Rust for Linux lead developer Miguel Ojeda posted the patch a short time ago to "conclude the Rust experiment". The "experiment" of Rust programming language code in the Linux kernel is over as it's now accepted to be a success and "Rust is here to stay" in the kernel.


KDE Plasma 6.6 Will Finally Support Proper Screen Mirroring On Wayland

([KDE] 12 December 08:20 PM EST Wayland Screen Mirroring)

It's an exciting week in KDE Plasma development land ahead of the holidays. Plasma 6.6 continues tacking on more feature work for Wayland.


Haiku OS Sees Port Of Go 1.18 Programming Language

([Operating Systems] 12 December 08:10 PM EST Haiku + Go)

The BeOS-inspired Haiku operating system has received a recent port of the Go programming language to the platform. Plus Haiku also saw app improvements and more over the month of November.


Wine 11.0-rc2 Released With 28 Known Bug Fixes

([WINE] 12 December 06:05 PM EST Wine 11.0-rc2)

Following last week's Wine 11.0-rc1 release that marked the feature freeze as well in working toward Wine 11.0 in January, out today is Wine 11.0-rc2.


Linux 6.19 Lands x2AVIC Patches For AMD SVM Handling Up To 4096 vCPUs

([Virtualization] 12 December 02:23 PM EST 4K vCPUs)

The Kernel-based Virtual Machine "KVM" updates for Linux 6.19 include preparations by AMD for handling up to a possible 4,096 virtual CPUs for VMs.


New Patches Lay Out Linux Kernel Adjustments For RISC-V RVA23 Hardware

([RISC-V] 12 December 01:58 PM EST RISC-V RVA23 Linux Kernel)

With the first of RISC-V RVA23-compatible hardware expected to be released in 2026, we are beginning to see more Linux developers prepare for this RVA23 profile and the now-mandated extensions. Sent out this week was an initial "request for comments" patch series on RVA23 adjustments for the Linux kernel.


Linux 6.19 Improves User-Space I/O "UIO" With Shared Virtual Addressing

([Linux Kernel] 12 December 12:20 PM EST SVA For UIO)

Merged a few days ago for the ongoing Linux 6.19 merge window were all of the "char/misc" updates. A lot of random changes throughout this time from the Industrial I/O "IIO" drivers to an interesting new feature for User-Space I/O "UIO" for PCI/PCIe devices.


Cache Aware Scheduling Raises Performance For Intel Xeon 6 Granite Rapids

([Processors] 12 December 10:10 AM EST 2 Comments)

Over the past year Intel engineers have worked a lot on Cache Aware Scheduling for the Linux kernel. The yet-to-be-merged functionality allows for the Linux kernel to better aggregate tasks sharing data to the same last level cache (LLC) domain to reduce cache misses and cache bouncing. The Cache Aware Scheduling development was led by Intel but helps other CPU vendors too for processors with multiple cache domains. Back in October I showed some nice performance wins for AMD EPYC Turin with Cache Aware Scheduling while today's article are some benchmarks of the newest CAS code and looking at the performance benefit on Xeon 6 "Granite Rapids" processors.


Blender Working On KosmicKrisp Support For Vulkan On macOS

([Free Software] 12 December 09:26 AM EST Blender + KosmicKrisp)

The Blender 3D modeling software could enjoy better macOS support with better cross-platform code paths thanks to in-development work for leveraging KosmicKrisp for Vulkan API usage on macOS via Metal.


AMD ROCm 7.10 Released - Strix Point APUs Now Officially Supported

([Radeon] 12 December 08:15 AM EST AMD ROCm 7.10)

Sure enough, yesterday's inaugural TheRock 7.10 release tag ended up being a precursor to ROCm 7.10 as predicted in the earlier article. Overnight ROCm 7.10 was released as a new developer preview and with it comes expanded hardware support -- including for Ryzen AI 300 Strix Point APUs finally being officially mentioned.


Framework Raises DDR5 Memory Prices By 50% For DIY Laptops

([Hardware] 12 December 06:41 AM EST DDR5 Memory Pricing)

Framework Computer had worked to keep their memory prices lower than other laptop vendors amid the ongoing memory shortages throughput the industry worldwide. But today they've finally had to cave in and increase their DDR5 memory modules for the Framework Laptop DIY Editions by 50%.


Linux Patches Fix eMMC Secure Erase Of 1GB Taking ~10 Minutes To Now Just 2 Seconds

([Linux Storage] 12 December 06:33 AM EST Faster Secure Erase)

A new patch series from an NXP engineer optimizes the secure erase performance for certain Kingston eMMC devices. Currently with the Linux kernel performing a secure erase on 1GB of data can take around ten minutes. With these new patches that 1GB secure erase can be done in around two seconds.


Vulkan 1.4.336 Released With NVIDIA Compute Occupancy Priority Extension

([Vulkan] 12 December 06:17 AM EST Vulkan 1.4.336)

Vulkan 1.4.336 is out today as the first spec update in two weeks for this high performance graphics and compute API.


More

Florence Flask was ... dressing for the opera when she turned to her
husband and screamed, "Erlenmeyer! My joules! Someone has stolen my
joules!"

"Now, now, my dear," replied her husband, "keep your balance and reflux
a moment. Perhaps they're mislead."

"No, I know they're stolen," cried Florence. "I remember putting them
in my burette ... We must call a copper."

Erlenmeyer did so, and the flatfoot who turned up, one Sherlock Ohms,
said the outrage looked like the work of an arch-criminal by the name
of Lawrence Ium.

"We must be careful -- he's a free radical, ultraviolet, and
dangerous. His girlfriend is a chlorine at the Palladium. Maybe I can
catch him there." With that, he jumped on his carbon cycle in an
activated state and sped off along the reaction pathway ...
-- Daniel B. Murphy, "Precipitations"