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)

Google Working To Leverage More Compiler Optimizations Within The Linux Kernel

([Google] 8 October 05:57 AM EDT AutoFDO + PGO + Propeller)

While Linus Torvalds previously shot down plans for Profile Guided Optimizations (PGO) in the mainline Linux kernel, Google engineers are hoping still to get that out-of-tree functionality upstream. They also would like to see PGO supported for Linux kernel modules rather than just the main Linux kernel image. Additionally, they hope to see limitations overcome around AutoFDO and Propeller optimizations of kernel modules.


Steam Beta Now Defaults Non-Steam Windows Binaries To Using Proton

([Valve] 7 October 09:09 PM EDT Steam Beta)

Valve released tonight a new Steam client beta that includes some notable improvements for Linux users.


Microsoft Issues First Release Of Their LiteBox Sandboxing Library OS

([Microsoft] 7 October 08:43 PM EDT Microsoft LiteBox)

Back in February we featured LiteBox as a new Microsoft open-source project building out a Rust-based sandboxing Library OS. LiteBox leverages Linux virtualization security features and Rust language inherent benefits to provide the ability for sandboxing Linux apps on Linux, Linux programs on Windows, and other security-oriented deployments. Out today is the first tagged release of LiteBox for this open-source library operating system.


AI Makes "Open-Source, Clean Room" Implementations Of Adobe Photoshop & Premier In Rust

([AI] 7 October 08:12 PM EDT Photocraft + Filmcraft)

As an interesting demonstrator for the power of AI and potentially pressing legal challenges, Claude Code and AI agents have created "open-source, clean-room reimplementation" versions of Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premier, and Adobe Lightroom. These new creations from the ArtCraft project are implemented in the Rust programming language.


FEX 2610 Released With Handling For AVX-VNNI, Disk Cache Improvements

([Linux Gaming] 7 October 05:16 PM EDT FEX 2610)

FEX 2610 released today as the newest monthly release of this open-source emulator for running x86_64 games/apps on AArch64 for ARM64 Linux systems, including most notably by Valve's Steam Frame headset.


Star Labs StarFighter Ultra: A Modern High-End Linux Laptop With Coreboot

([Computers] 7 October 12:00 PM EDT 19 Comments)

When it comes to Linux pre-loaded laptops, I have looked at hardware from most of these vendors over the past 22+ years of Phoronix. One vendor I haven't had the chance to personally test until now is the UK-based Star Labs. That changed recently and over the past few weeks I have been testing out their new StarFighter laptop that offers great Linux support and comes pre-loaded with Coreboot and streamlined firmware updates via LVFS. For those after a high-end mobile workstation, the Star Labs StarFighter offers a lot of performance potential while being open-source friendly and with Coreboot in tow.


NVIDIA 615.78.08 Linux Driver Adds VK_NV_low_latency2 r3 For Improved VKD3D-Proton

([NVIDIA] 7 October 09:45 AM EDT NVIDIA 615.78.08)

NVIDIA today released their 615.78.08 Linux driver build with a useful improvement for gamers using Steam Play (Proton) with Direct3D 12 games via VKD3D-Proton along with a variety of other fixes.


Kage: Google Experimenting With Linux Driver Isolation Using In-Kernel LFI Sandboxes

([Google] 7 October 08:50 AM EDT Kage)

Google engineers are experimenting with Linux kernel device driver isolation using in-kernel sandboxes leveraging LLVM's Lightweight Fault Isolation (LFI) functionality.


Qualcomm Posts QPaCE Linux Driver Code For Faster ZRAM On Newest SoCs

([Linux Kernel] 7 October 07:21 AM EDT Qualcomm QPaCE)

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 "Hawi" SoC features the Qualcomm Page Compression Engine "QPaCE" hardware accelerator. Linux patches posted recently provide a QPaCE driver for accelerating page compression and decompression for the ZRAM block device.


XMFS: Experimental File-System Being Worked On By Huawei For Modern Linux Servers

([Linux Storage] 7 October 06:20 AM EDT XMFS)

Huawei engineers are experimenting with a new file-system called XMFS. XMFS was presented this week at LPC 2026 in Czechia as a file-system for modern Linux servers with CXL 3.0 or Huawei United Bus connectivity.


Microsoft Updates Its WSL2 Linux Kernel With DXGKRNL Improvement, More Features Enabled

([Microsoft] 7 October 05:57 AM EDT WSL2 Linux Kernel)

Following the Windows Subsystem for Linux 3.0.2 release with support for running WSL2 now on very large servers and also experimental sparse VHD storage support, Microsoft has now released a new version of the WSL2 Linux kernel as their downstream kernel configuration tailored for WSL2 usage.


AMD Engineer Talks Up New IBS Memory Profiler Feature Found On Zen 6

([AMD] 7 October 05:47 AM EDT IBS Memory Profiler)

One of the AMD Zen 6 CPU features that hasn't been talked about too widely beyond appearing in a public AMD tech doc is the IBS Memory Profiler. This week in Prague at LPC 2026 an AMD engineer talked up Zen 6's IBS Memory Profiler and its benefits for hot page detection and promotion on Linux systems.


Another Dozen Vulnerabilities Found In The X.Org Server & XWayland

([X.Org] 6 October 09:31 PM EDT 12 New Vulnerabilities)

With the assistance of AI, another dozen security vulnerabilities affecting both the conventional X.Org Server as well as XWayland were made public this evening.


New Patches For Linux's Zswap Show Major Improvements

([Linux Kernel] 6 October 08:56 PM EDT Zswap)

Amid multiple ongoing innovations being pursued in the Linux memory management space amid sky high RAM prices, a new patch series posted on Monday aim to enhance the Zswap performance for this compressed RAM cache for swap pages.


Canonical Reaffirms Plans For Ubuntu 27.04 To Use ntpd-rs By Default

([Ubuntu] 6 October 05:08 PM EDT Ubuntu 27.04 + ntpd-rs)

Back in March Canonical announced switching to ntpd-rs was its next target as part of transitioning more Ubuntu Linux system components to Rust-based implementations. This time synchronization package is available for testing in the upcoming Ubuntu 26.10 release while it aims to be the default for Ubuntu 27.04.


Meta Engineer's Linux Patches For Boosting AMD P-State / Steam Deck Gaming Performance

([AMD] 6 October 02:21 PM EDT Boosting Recently Busy CPUs)

Back in July I wrote about AMD P-State driver patches boosting 1%-low frame rates for gaming by as much as 31%. That work was done by David Vernet who is a Linux kernel engineer/hacker at Meta. This week Vernet presented on the topic at the Linux Plumbers Conference happening in Prague.


NVIDIA Vera HPC Performance Benchmarks Take On AMD EPYC, Intel Xeon

([Processors] 6 October 12:00 PM EDT 7 Comments)

While most everyone understandably likes to talk about AI these days, one of the areas of NVIDIA's Vera CPU I have been most eager to test has been for conventional high performance computing (HPC) workloads. HPC was talked up as one of Vera's strengths thanks to its 1.2TB/s LPDDR5x memory bandwidth and custom Olympus cores. Vera is seeing deployments at HPC labs like Los Alamos. With recently having unfettered remote access to a dual NVIDIA Vera server, I ran through a variety of HPC workloads and similar performance benchmarks. Here is a look at how NVIDIA Vera performs against AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon, including with CPU power and frequency metrics.


Vulkan API Improvements Coming For The AMD Polaris GPUs With Mesa RADV

([Radeon] 6 October 10:21 AM EDT Polaris Vulkan Reliability)

Timur Kristóf of Valve's Linux graphics team has done an incredible job improving older AMD GPU support under Linux with migrating GCN 1.0/1.1 era hardware to the modern AMDGPU kernel driver and an assortment of other improvements for various older Radeon GPUs. The newest work is on enhancing the RADV Vulkan driver support for old Radeon RX 400/500 "Polaris" graphics cards.


IBM & Red Hat Find More Than 400 New Vulnerabilities In Popular Java Code

([Red Hat] 6 October 09:23 AM EDT 400+ Vulnerabilities)

IBM and Red Hat announced today they have identified and remediated more than 400 previously unknown vulnerabilities across popular Java libraries.


The Importance Of Intel's LPMD For Linux Gaming Performance & Power Efficiency

([Intel] 6 October 09:11 AM EDT Intel LPMD)

Intel's LPMD project as the Low Power Mode Daemon for modern Intel Core Ultra desktops and laptops is quite important for achieving peak performance and optimal power efficiency. Here are some of Intel's own findings on the importance of LPMD for Linux gaming


More

This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly, because
the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under which it
recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has "deregulated"
the airline industry. What this means for you, the consumer, is that the
airlines are no longer required to follow any rules whatsoever. They can
show snuff movies. They can charge for oxygen. They can hire pilots right
out of Vending Machine Refill Person School. They can conserve fuel by
ejecting husky passengers over water. They can ram competing planes in
mid-air. These innovations have resulted in tremendous cost savings which
have been passed along to you, the consumer, in the form of flights with
amazingly low fares, such as $29. Of course, certain restrictions do apply,
the main one being that all these flights take you to Newark, and you must
pay thousands of dollars if you want to fly back out.
-- Dave Barry, "Iowa -- Land of Secure Vacations"