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)

Linux ACPI Idle Driver Being Improved For Hybrid CPUs

([Hardware] 11 August 06:41 AM EDT ACPI Processor Idle Driver)

For hybrid CPU core designs from recent Intel Core (Ultra) processors to ARM big.LIITTLE, a patch series was posted today in seeking to enhance the generic ACPI processor idle driver around processors with multiple types of CPU cores.



Blender 5.0 Will Likely Default To Using OpenGL Rather Than Vulkan

([Free Software] 11 August 06:30 AM EDT Blender 5.0)

While there was previously talk of Blender 5.0 likely defaulting to using the Vulkan API for rendering but keeping the OpenGL driver around, those plans look like they may be changing. OpenGL-by-default looks to now be on the table for Blender 5.0 due out later this year.



Logitech G13 Linux Support Patch Proposed 16 Years After Hardware Release

([Hardware] 11 August 06:20 AM EDT Logitech G13 + Linux)

With the increased popularity of Linux gaming these days, a patch has been proposed to improve the hardware support for the Logitech G13 gameboard under Linux. The only problem is the hardware is now 16 years old and since been discontinued.



Ubuntu 25.10 Will Ship With Linux 6.17 Even If It Means An Unstable "-rc" Kernel

([Ubuntu] 11 August 06:10 AM EDT Ubuntu 25.10 + Linux 6.17)

Back in May the Ubuntu engineers at Canonical announced plans to ship Ubuntu 25.10 with Linux 6.17 given their recent commitment to always shipping with the latest upstream Linux kernel version. They still are committing to it even if it means the kernel and Ubuntu schedules don't perfectly align and Ubuntu 25.10 out-of-the-box may end up being on an unstable "-rc" kernel.



FFmpeg Develops Vulkan Hardware Acceleration For Apple ProRes RAW Codec

([Multimedia] 10 August 08:53 PM EDT Vulkan + Apple ProRes RAW)

The upcoming FFmpeg 8.0 release continues to increase in excitement with this weekend Vulkan hardware acceleration for Apple's ProRes RAW codec being merged.



Linux 6.17-rc1 Released With Many New Features But No Bcachefs Changes

([Linux Kernel] 10 August 12:55 PM EDT Linux 6.17-rc1)

Linus Torvalds just released the Linux 6.17-rc1 kernel a few hours ahead of his typical release regiment due to currently being in Europe. That marks the end of the Linux 6.17 merge window with many exciting changes merged this cycle. This is notable with Linux 6.17 expected to power Ubuntu 25.10 and other late 2025 Linux distribution releases.



Debian 14 Eyes LoongArch CPU Support

([Debian] 10 August 08:55 AM EDT Debian Loong64 / LoongArch64)

Debian 13.0 released yesterday while already Debian developers are beginning to think about Debian 14 as the next major release due out in 2027. Debian 14 is codenamed Forky and among the changes expected is LoongArch64 "Loong64" CPU port support being improved.



GNOME Shell 49 Beta Finally Brings Media Controls To The Lock Screen

([GNOME] 10 August 06:32 AM EDT GNOME Shell)

In preparing for the GNOME 49 beta release, GNOME Shell this weekend released 49.beta.1 with a few changes worth highlighting.



Turbostat Now Displays CPU L3 Cache Topology Information

([Hardware] 10 August 06:18 AM EDT Turbostat)

Ahead of the Linux 6.17-rc1 release due out in the coming hours, the Turbostat updates for that tool living within the kernel source tree were merged.



Btrfs Has Saved Meta "Billions Of Dollars" In Infrastructure Costs

([Linux Storage] 9 August 05:47 PM EDT Btrfs)

Amid the ongoing discussion over what will happen too Bcachefs in the mainline Linux kernel, an interesting anecdote around Btrfs was mentioned.



Debian 13.0 "Trixie" Now Available - Powered By Linux 6.12 LTS

([Debian] 9 August 02:14 PM EDT Debian 13)

Debian 13.0 "Trixie" is now officially out as the newest two-year stable release to Debian GNU/Linux.



Linux 6.17 EFI Stub Will Try To Maintain a Cleaner Boot Experience

([Linux Kernel] 9 August 12:35 PM EDT Less Debug Fluff)

The EFI code updates were merged today for the nearly-over Linux 6.17 kernel with two changes worth mentioning.



Vulkan 1.4.325 Released With Untyped Pointers Extension

([Vulkan] 9 August 09:00 AM EDT VK_KHR_shader_untyped_pointers)

Vulkan 1.4.325 was released on Friday with one new extension in tow: VK_KHR_shader_untyped_pointers for untyped pointers.



Linus Torvalds Rejects RISC-V Changes For Linux 6.17: "Garbage"

([Linux Kernel] 9 August 06:50 AM EDT Linux 6.17 + RISC-V)

Linus Torvalds has used his authority to reject the RISC-V architecture changes for the Linux 6.17 kernel. The RISC-V updates won't land this cycle and will need to try again for v6.18 later in the year. Linus refers to at least some of the proposed RISC-V code as garbage along with being submitted rather late during the merge window.



GNU/Hurd Now An Official Platform For SDL Cross-Platform Gaming Library

([Linux Gaming] 9 August 06:28 AM EDT SDL)

GNU/Hurd has made it as an official platform target within SDL that is the open-source library widely-used by cross-platform games and other applications for software/hardware abstractions across operating systems.



GNOME Mutter On Wayland Adds ICC Profile Support, Backlight Improvements

([GNOME] 9 August 06:19 AM EDT Mutter Enhancements)

There were a lot of interesting changes that landed in GNOME's Mutter compositor codebase to end out the weekend and ahead of next month's big GNOME 49 release.



KDE Plasma 6.5 Continues Seeing More Features Added & Polishing

([KDE] 9 August 06:04 AM EDT Plasma 6.5)

Like clockwork KDE developer Nate Graham is out with his weekly recap of all the interesting Plasma changes for the week. There continues to be a lot of feature work and polishing that is building up for the Plasma 6.5 desktop release.



Additional Intel Linux Drivers Left Orphaned & Maintainers Let Go

([Intel] 8 August 04:32 PM EDT Intel Linux Pain)

Well, it's an unpleasant afternoon in Linux land with more signs of the ongoing impact from Intel's corporate-wide restructuring. Just after writing about Intel's CPU temperature monitoring driver now left unmaintained/orphaned, more patches hit the public Linux kernel mailing list to mark additional Intel drivers as orphaned and removing maintainer entries for Linux developers no longer at Intel.



Intel CPU Temperature Monitoring Driver For Linux Now Unmaintained After Layoffs

([Intel] 8 August 02:55 PM EDT coretemp)

There is yet more apparent fallout from Intel's recent layoffs/restructurings as it impacts the Linux kernel... The coretemp driver that provides CPU core temperature monitoring support for all Intel processors going back many years is now set to an orphaned state with the former driver maintainer no longer at Intel and no one immediately available to serve as its new maintainer.



Bcachefs Maintainer Comments On The LKML While Waiting To See What Happens

([Linux Storage] 8 August 02:36 PM EDT Bcachefs + Linux 6.17)

We still don't know what's going to happen for Bcachefs in the Linux 6.17 kernel even with the merge window set to end on Sunday with the Linux 6.17-rc1 release. Linus Torvalds commented over one month ago that they would be parting ways for Linux 6.17. At the start of the Linux 6.17 merge window a Bcachefs pull request was submitted but nearly two weeks later it's still not been pulled and Linus Torvalds hasn't commented on the matter.



More

It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas,
and not in circumstances.
-- Emerson