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)

AES-GCM Optimizations Land In Linux 6.19 - Benefiting AMD Zen 3, AVX-512 CPUs Too

([Linux Kernel] 3 December 06:14 AM EST AES-GCM Optimizations)

Google engineer Eric Biggers who is known for his many Linux crypto subsystem performance optimizations has seen his latest pull requests land in Linux 6.19. Notable among them are some AES-GCM optimizations benefiting AMD Zen 3 processors and separately AVX-512 processors also benefit too from this latest round of optimization work.


X.Org Server's xkbcomp Updated For Four Security Issues Dating Back Years

([X.Org] 3 December 05:49 AM EST xkbcomp 1.5)

Red Hat's Peter Hutterer announced the release today of xkbcomp 1.5, the CLI utility used for compiling X Keyboard Extension (XBD) keyboard descriptions for the X.Org Server. Driving this new xkbcomp release are fixes for four security issues.


Intel LASS, SGX EUPDATESVN & Microcode Staging Features Land In Linux 6.19

([Intel] 2 December 08:26 PM EST New Intel Features)

In addition to new AMD CPU features being merged today for Linux 6.19, there are also some new Intel CPU features that hit Linux Git today that are worth highlighting.


AMD Zen 6 RAS Preparation, AMD SDCI Features Merged For Linux 6.19

([AMD] 2 December 04:28 PM EST AMD Zen 6 RAS + SDCI Merged)

Linus Torvalds just merged another set of pull requests to Git for the in-development Linux 6.19 kernel. With the latest round of merges, there are two separate AMD changes worth highlighting.


3mdeb Ports Their Dasharo Firmware To A Recent ASRock Rack Motherboard

([Coreboot] 2 December 02:53 PM EST ASRock Rack SPC741D8/2L2T)

Open-source firmware consulting firm 3mdeb published a blog post today outlining their work on bringing their Coreboot-downstream Dasharo to the ASRock Rack SPC741D8/2L2T, a recent server motherboard for supporting Intel Xeon Sapphire Rapids and Emerald Rapids processors.


Important Performance Work: Overhaul Of RSEQ & CID Management Merged For Linux 6.19

([Linux Kernel] 2 December 02:29 PM EST core/rseq)

An important set of patches were just merged a few minutes ago to Linux Git for the ongoing Linux 6.19 kernel with some important performance implications.


Linux 6.19 Merges "klp-build" As New Livepatch Module Generation Solution

([Linux Kernel] 2 December 01:00 PM EST Linux 6.19 klp-build)

Merged as part of the objtool changes for the Linux 6.19 kernel is introducing the "klp-build" script as a new solution to generate livepatch modules using a source .patch file as the input. This klp-build effort was spearheaded by Josh Poimboeuf with ideas learned from the out-of-tree Kpatch project over the past decade.


TornadoVM 2.0 Released For Java On NVIDIA PTX, OpenCL & SPIR-V Devices

([Programming] 2 December 12:23 PM EST TornadoVM 2.0)

TornadoVM 2.0 is out today as the newest feature release for this OpenJDK and GraalVM plug-in that allows Java programs to run on heterogeneous hardware. TornadoVM targets continue to be OpenCL, NVIDIA PTX, and SPIR-V compatible devices for a range of accelerator support for use from conventional Java code.


Linux 6.19 To Allow File-Systems To Increase The Writeback Chunk Size

([Linux Storage] 2 December 10:12 AM EST Larger Writeback Chunk Size)

Linux has maintained a default 4MB minimum writeback chunk size but with the in-development Linux 6.19 kernel it will allow file-systems to override that minimum value. This in turn can help avoid fragmentation and yield a better experience for zoned rotation media and other uses.


NVIDIA 590.44.01 Beta Linux Driver Released With Wayland Improvements

([NVIDIA] 2 December 09:08 AM EST NVIDIA 590 Beta)

NVIDIA today released the 590.44.01 Linux driver build as the first beta of their R590 series driver branch for Linux customers.


Canonical Now Offering Ubuntu Pro For WSL

([Ubuntu] 2 December 08:24 AM EST Ubuntu Pro For WSL)

Evidently Canonical has been pretty pleased with the uptake of Ubuntu on Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) within enterprise/corporate environments as they are now offering Ubuntu Pro for WSL.


openSUSE Begins Rolling Out Intel NPU Support

([SUSE] 2 December 06:21 AM EST openSUSE + Intel NPU)

Via the openSUSE Innovator Initiative, packaging of the Intel Neural Processing Unit (NPU) driver for the openSUSE ecosystem has begun. This is helping to jump-start the Intel NPU support within the openSUSE space although user-space applications ready to leverage the Intel NPU still remains very limited.


Optimized NUMA Distances For Intel GNR & CWF, Other Scheduler Improvements In Linux 6.19

([Linux Kernel] 2 December 06:03 AM EST Linux 6.19 Scheduler)

The big set of kernel scheduler changes were merged on Monday for the in-development Linux 6.19 kernel.


Kernel Credential Guards Merged For Linux 6.19

([Linux Kernel] 2 December 05:50 AM EST Linux Kernel Credential Guards)

Merged yesterday for the Linux 6.19 kernel were "substantial" improvements to the kernel's credential infrastructure to provide guard-based management that allows for kernel code simplification and avoiding manual reference counting across many subsystems.


Steam On Linux Use Easily Hits An All-Time High In November

([Valve] 1 December 08:05 PM EST Up Up Up)

The Steam Survey results are out for November 2025 and continue to be very positive for the growing adoption of Linux gaming thanks to the success of the Steam Deck, the underlying Steam Play (Proton) software, and now further excitement thanks to the upcoming Steam Machine and Steam Frame.


FreeBSD 15.0 Now Officially Available With Many Software Updates, Reproducible Builds

([BSD] 1 December 07:50 PM EST FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE)

FreeBSD 15.0 is officially released as the newest major update to this leading BSD operating system.


Btrfs In Linux 6.19 Adds Experimental Features, Continues Preparations For FSCRYPT

([Linux Storage] 1 December 03:47 PM EST Linux 6.19 Btrfs)

SUSE engineer David Sterba submitted the Btrfs pull request for Linux 6.19 on Friday, ahead of the Linux 6.18 stable kernel release that took place on Sunday. This copy-on-write file-system continues seeing some enticing feature work and other improvements for this next version of the Linux kernel.


Fedora 44 Granted Approval For A Nicer NTSYNC Experience For Wine & Steam Play

([Fedora] 1 December 02:19 PM EST Fedora 44 + NTSYNC)

Fedora stakeholders have been eyeing a nicer experience for NTSYNC usage with Wine and Steam Play by being able to have the NTSYNC kernel module load when it's likely to be used. That approval has now been granted by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) for the Fedora 44 release.


AMD GPU Managed Memory Support Merged For The GCC 16 Compiler

([GNU] 1 December 01:49 PM EST AMD Managed Memory)

When it comes to AMD Radeon/Instinct GPU compiler support much of the emphasis is on the LLVM/Clang compiler stack with their official AMDGPU LLVM shader compiler back-end as well as having the AOMP downstream compiler fork and the like. But the GNU Compiler Collection "GCC" does continue allow targeting AMD GPU targeting with its "AMDGCN" back-end and using the likes of the OpenMP API. It's not too often seeing new AMD GPU activity there for GCC but merged today is now support for managed memory.


AI Is Being Used To Help Modernize The Ubuntu Error Tracker

([Ubuntu] 1 December 12:29 PM EST AI + Ubuntu Error Tracker)

While some Linux distributions have begun establishing AI policies, we haven't seen any communicated from the Ubuntu camp yet but will apparently be permitted at least for project infrastructure. AI is being used currently in an effort to help modernize the Ubuntu Error Tracker.


More

Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something I
saw at the airport ... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of computer
magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport store. Does
it bother anyone else that half the world is being told all of our hard-won
secrets of computer technology? Remember how all the lawyers cried foul
when "How to Avoid Probate" was published? Are they taking no-fault
insurance lying down? No way! But at the current rate it won't be long
before there are stacks of the "Transactions on Information Theory" at the
A&P checkout counters. Who's going to be impressed with us electrical
engineers then? Are we, as the saying goes, giving away the store?
-- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President