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)

New FUTEX Syscalls Back To Being Worked On For Helping Valve's ARM64 Gaming Ambitions

([Valve] 25 September 06:42 PM EDT get_robust_list2 / set_robust_list2)

Going back to last year the Igalia open-source consulting firm has been working on enhancing the Linux kernel to help Steam Play gaming on ARM64 and ensuring the FEX emulator is operating efficiently for x86/x86_64 games running on the likes of the Steam Frame. After other kernel work in recent months, there's finally an updated round of the FUTEX get_robust_list2 and set_robust_list2 system call patches.



GDB 18.1 Debugger Brings Better Windows Support

([GNU] 25 September 12:47 PM EDT GNU Debugger 18.1)

GDB 18.1 is out today as the newest version of the GNU Debugger that works across C/C++, Fortran, Rust, and other languages like Go, Ada, and more.



Redox OS Adds IO_uring-Like API, NUMA & Gets QEMU Working

([Operating Systems] 25 September 11:51 AM EDT Redox OS Improvements)

The Redox OS open-source, Rust-based operating system has seen a lot of activity in recent weeks with many notable improvements landing.



Approaching A 10 Second Linux Kernel Build

([Software] 25 September 10:46 AM EDT 29 Comments)

The coffee window is closing. Going back many years with the time it's taken to compile the Linux kernel has been a well known opportunity for a coffee break or even eating a meal during the lengthy Linux kernel build process. Even when the Linux kernel was much smaller than it is today, with the hardware at the time it would often be a very time consuming process... Thus incredible to think that we are now on the horizon of a ten second clean, default kernel build on Linux x86_64.



Patches Posted For Enabling NVMe On All Apple M3 Based SoCs With Linux

([Apple] 25 September 06:27 AM EDT NVMe For Apple M3)

While Linux 7.2 brought initial Apple M3 support and Linux 7.3 brought M3 Pro / Max / Ultra support, the mainline Linux kernel support for the M3 series hardware remains very basic and not yet ready for daily driving. But more work continues to be upstreamed and today the patches were posted for getting NVMe storage up and running across all Apple M3 hardware.



AMD Sends Out New Linux Patches Further Enhancing HDMI 2.1 Reliability

([Radeon] 25 September 06:12 AM EDT HDMI 2.1 Reliability)

Linux 7.4 is going to be the big kernel release where the AMD graphics driver will finally expose HDMI 2.1 by default and comes with features including HDMI FreeSync, VRR, and ALLM. Ahead of that milestone there have been various other last minute tweaks and improvements to its HDMI 2.1 support. Sent out on Thursday was the latest round of AMDGPU DC patches that includes a few more patches for improving the HDMI 2.1 reliability.



Last Call For The Autumn Special For Ad-Free Viewing & Supporting Linux Hardware Testing

([Phoronix] 25 September 09:00 PM EDT Autumn Special)

Last call for the Phoronix autumn "Oktoberfest" Premium sale: it runs through end of day Sunday, 27 September (any timezone - I'm not particularly strict). If you have been meaning to support the site, this is the window.



Go's Improving SIMD Support, Platform-Independent SIMD Interface

([Programming] 25 September 05:50 AM EDT Go SIMD)

A new blog post published on Thursday covers the experimental support for SIMD with the Go programming language. This expanding Go SIMD support also includes a platform-independent API for making use of SIMD with modern processors.



Samba 4.25 Released With Experimental SMB3 Persistent Handles

([Free Software] 25 September 05:38 AM EDT Samba 4.25)

Samba 4.25 is out as the newest stable release for this open-source software enabling file and print services sharing between Linux servers and Windows systems.



Linux Kernel Developers Consider Adding AGENTS.md To Help Guide AI/LLM Agents

([Linux Kernel] 24 September 08:53 PM EDT AGENTS.md)

While the Linux kernel continues to be bombarded with patches from AI/LLM agents, to date the kernel hasn't carried an AGENTS.md Markdown file with instructions catering to AI/LLM agents. But a patch set out today would finally introduce one.



Qualcomm Posts Patches For Enabling GPU Support In Their Snapdragon X2 Mahua SoC

([Hardware] 24 September 08:25 PM EDT Mahua GPU Support)

Yesterday Qualcomm posted open-source GPU driver patches for their Adreno 850 GPU one day after being announced with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. Yesterday Qualcomm also announced their Snapdragon X2 Linux support plans. Today they have posted the GPU enablement patches for what's found in the Mahua SoC for lower-tier Snapdragon X2 SoCs.



ReactOS Lands Significant DirectX Stack Update From Wine For Enabling More Games

([Operating Systems] 24 September 05:43 PM EDT ReactOS)

The open-source ReactOS project striving to provide binary compatibility with Microsoft Windows applications/games as well as drivers took a huge step forward today with landing a significant update to its DirectX stack from code leveraged from the Wine project.



Ubuntu 26.10 Delivers Some Nice Gains For Intel Panther Lake / Framework Laptop 13 Pro

([Operating Systems] 24 September 02:46 PM EDT Add A Comment)

For those with a Framework Laptop 13 Pro or another Intel Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" laptop, the upcoming Ubuntu 26.10 release is delivering some nice out-of-the-box improvements over Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.



COSMIC Epoch 1.9 Brings New Image Viewer & On-Screen Keyboard

([Desktop] 24 September 01:11 PM EDT COSMIC Epoch 1.9)

COSMIC Epoch 1.9 was released last night as the newest version of the System76-sponsored, Rust-based desktop environment. COSMIC Epoch 1.9 release notes only became available today and it's a big one with new apps and improvements to existing offerings.



AMD Posts GCC Compiler Patches For AVX10V1AUX ISA Support

([GNU] 24 September 12:12 PM EDT AVX10V1AUX)

Following their recent AVX10_V2_AUX support for GCC as part of the bring-up for the AI Compute Extensions "ACE" in GCC 17, AMD compiler engineers this week posted the initial patches for enabling the AVX10V1AUX ISA support.



Fedora Discussion Raises The Idea Of Replacing LibreOffice With Collabora Office

([Fedora] 24 September 09:39 AM EDT Fedora + Collabora Office?)

One of the livelist Fedora Discourse community discussions in recent days -- or even in quite a period of time for that matter -- comes down to a user having suggested that Fedora replace LibreOffice by default with the downstream Collabora Office.



KDE Plasma 6.8 Beta 2 Released With Union Theming Engine Maturing

([KDE] 24 September 09:27 AM EDT KDE Plasma 6.8 Beta)

Following the KDE Plasma 6.8 Beta from earlier this month, the second and last beta of the upcoming Plasma 6.8 desktop is now available for testing.



AlmaLinux Rolls Out New Software/Hardware Certification Portal, Self-Certify App

([Operating Systems] 24 September 09:02 AM EDT AlmaLinux Certification Program)

Two years ago RHEL-derived AlmaLinux announced a hardware certification program as part of their Certification Special Interest Group (SIG). They have now expanded their hardware certification program to include third-party software certification on AlmaLinux too plus a new app that users can install for self-certifying their system.



Linux Kernel Introducing New Taint Due To Fuzzing Bots Yielding Impractical Bug Reports

([Linux Kernel] 24 September 08:08 AM EDT TAINT_FORCED_BIND)

The Linux kernel is having to introduce a new taint flag "TAINT_FORCED_BIND" to deal with fuzzing bots like Syzbot abusing Linux's bind/unbind sysfs functionality and generating bug reports for impractical and not at all relevant hardware/driver combinations.



Mir 2.30 Released Now With Rust Required, Mir Roadmap Published

([Wayland] 24 September 07:51 AM EDT Mir 2.30)

Canonical today released Mir 2.30 as the newest release of this Wayland compositor library for building out different shells and other functionality from smart mirrors to other consumer devices.



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