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)

Microsoft's Azure Linux Preps For NVIDIA GB200 Servers

([Microsoft] 28 May 06:30 AM EDT Azure Linux 3.0.20250521)

Microsoft on Tuesday released a new version of Azure Linux, their in-house Linux distribution that is used for a variety of purposes from the Azure cloud to powering other Microsoft services.



Linux 6.16 Merges A Fix For The Macintosh II

([Hardware] 28 May 06:09 AM EDT Mac II)

Hobbyists continue to tinker around with the Motorola 68000 "m68k" support within the Linux kernel and even landing a fix now in 2025 for the vintage Macintosh II.



Arch Linux Installer Adds Option To Configure Btrfs Snapshots Post-Install

([Arch Linux] 28 May 05:57 AM EDT Archinstall 3.0.7)

Archinstall 3.0.7 is out today as the newest feature update to this text-based Arch Linux installer that makes it quick and easy to deploy a new Arch Linux installation.



EXT4 For Linux 6.16 Brings A Change Yielding "Really Stupendous Performance"

([Linux Storage] 27 May 08:57 PM EDT Linux 6.16 + EXT4)

Ted Ts'o sent out the EXT4 file-system changes today for the Linux 6.16 kernel. While EXT4 may not see as much code churn these days given its mature state compared to say Btrfs and Bcachefs, with Linux 6.16 are some tantalizing performance improvements.



Xfce's xfwm4 Merges Wayland Compositor Code Based On wlroots

([Wayland] 27 May 08:25 PM EDT xfwm4 Wayland Compositor)

Merged today for Xfce's Xfwm4 window manager component is a built-in Wayland compositor using wlroots.



Linux 6.16 Upstreams Support For Hardware-Wrapped Encryption Keys

([Linux Storage] 27 May 04:15 PM EDT Hardware-Wrapped Inline Encryption Keys)

Google engineer Eric Biggers took time away from all his impressive crypto performance optimizations to the Linux kernel for modern Intel and AMD CPUs to spend time getting support for hardware-wrapped inline encryption keys into the mainline kernel. Google's Android kernel has been carrying this functionality for several years to help enhance security and will now be found in the mainline kernel too for capable platforms.



Intel APX Ready With Linux 6.16, Outdated Intel CPU Microcode Reporting Merged

([Intel] 27 May 02:00 PM EDT x86 Core)

Merged for the Linux 6.16 kernel are all of the x86 core enhancements that provide a variety of benefits to Intel as well as AMD processors.



AlmaLinux 10.0 Stable Released - Unlike RHEL 10, It Continues Supporting x86-64-v2 CPUs

([Operating Systems] 27 May 12:59 PM EDT AlmaLinux OS 10.0)

Building off the recent release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.0, AlmaLinux 10.0 stable is now available as this RHEL-derived popular community Linux OS alternative.



Wayland ext-background-effect-v1 Merged For Background Blur Feature

([Wayland] 27 May 12:19 PM EDT ext-background-effect-v1)

After being under discussion since January of 2024, the ext-background-effect-v1 staging protocol proposal by KDE developer Xaver Hugl has finally been merged to the Wayland-Protocols repository. This new Wayland protocol is intended for handling effects like background blur on terminals.



ROCm GPU Compute Performance With AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ "Strix Halo"

([Graphics Cards] 27 May 05:00 PM EDT 23 Comments)

This month I have been running many Linux benchmarks of the HP ZBook Ultra G1a with the very exciting Ryzen AI MAX+ PRO 395 Strix Halo SoC featuring the powerful Radeon 8060S graphics. While there were the very promising OpenGL and Vulkan benchmarks shown so far from AMD Strix Halo on Linux -- including the very compelling performance compared to Microsoft Windows 11 -- many are interested in the ROCm compute aspects for Strix Halo. Here are some of the first benchmarks of the GPU compute performance for the Ryzen AI MAX+ PRO with the new ROCm 6.4.1 release compared to Strix Point as well as Intel Xe2 Lunar Lake on their Compute Runtime stack.



XFS Atomic Writes Support Merged For Linux 6.16

([Linux Storage] 27 May 07:53 AM EDT XFS Atomic Writes)

Building off the atomic write preparations that landed in prior Linux kernel versions, merged for the Linux 6.16 cycle is atomic write support for the XFS file-system.



Linux 6.16 Adds "X86_NATIVE_CPU" Option To Optimize Your Kernel Build For Your CPU

([Linux Kernel] 27 May 06:38 AM EDT CONFIG_X86_NATIVE_CPU)

The X86_NATIVE_CPU Kconfig build time option has been merged for the Linux 6.16 merge window as an easy means of enforcing "-march=native" compiler behavior on AMD and Intel processors to optimize your kernel build for the local CPU architecture/family of your system.



Rav1e v0.8 Released For Rust-Based AV1 Encoding

([Programming] 27 May 06:28 AM EDT Rav1e v0.8)

Rav1e v0.8 was released on Monday for this self-proclaimed "fastest and safest AV1 encoder" that makes use of the Rust programming language.



Linux 6.16 Lands "rt_group_sched" Option, Faster Core Offlining & Scheduler Improvements

([Linux Kernel] 27 May 06:17 AM EDT Linux 6.16 Scheduler)

The many scheduler updates have been merged for the Linux 6.16 kernel which include a wide assortment of different fixes and new improvements.



Qt Bridges To Take The UI Toolkit To New Programming Languages: Rust, C#, Java & Swift

([Qt] 27 May 06:04 AM EDT Qt Bridging Technology)

The open-source Qt toolkit is deeply rooted in C++ code but over the past decade also has enjoyed Python language bindings. Now thanks to new work by the Qt Group on what they are calling Qt Bridging Technology, the toolkit will be enjoying more robust support across different programming languages.



Intel Auto Count Reload & Clearwater Forest PMU Support Merged For Linux 6.16

([Intel] 27 May 05:53 AM EDT Performance Events)

The Linux kernel Performance Events changes were merged for the newly-opened Linux 6.16 cycle. Most notable are some new additions on the Intel side while AMD also saw a few changes too.



FUTEX2 Improvements Merged For Linux 6.16

([Linux Kernel] 26 May 08:51 PM EDT FUTEX2)

On this first day of the Linux 6.16 merge window, Linus Torvalds merged the locking code changes for the kernel that includes some additions to the FUTEX2 interface.



Linux 6.16 Adds Ability For Power Code To Freeze The File-System For Suspend & Hibernate

([Linux Storage] 26 May 03:05 PM EDT Filesystem Freezing)

Among the many VFS pull requests merged today by Linus Torvalds for the now-open Linux 6.16 merge window is support by the power subsystem for being able to initiate file-system freeze/thaw events as part of the system suspend and resume cycle.



New Linux Patches Properly Handle The Audio Jack On Sony's PS5 DualSense Controller

([Linux Gaming] 26 May 11:39 AM EDT DualSense Controller Audio Jack)

While there has been the Sony PlayStation 5 DualSense controller support for Linux going back several years and has been improved upon with more recent versions of the Linux kernel, there's been some shortcomings around the audio jack handling with the DualSense controller. A new patch series out today aims to enhance that capability.



Armbian 25.5 Adds Support For Newer Single Board Computers

([Operating Systems] 26 May 09:00 AM EDT Armbian 25.5)

Armbian 25.5 is out today as the newest version of this Debian-based Linux distribution catering primarily to ARM and RISC-V single board computers.



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