There are a few Network File System (NFS) enhancements worth pointing out with the in-development Linux 6.13 kernel.

Open-source developer Rui Ueyama who is the lead developer of the Mold high performance linker and previously on the LLVM lld linker has written a detailed mailing list post that highlights some observed performance bottlenecks within the Linux kernel.

The Intel Graphics Compiler (IGC) that is used by the Intel Compute Runtime for Level Zero and OpenCL GPU compute support as well as being depended upon by the Windows 3D driver stack has now removed platform support up to and including Ice Lake.

It's not any shiny new web browser feature but Mozilla announced they are moving from .tar.bz2 packages for their Firefox Linux binaries over to using .tar.xz for a faster and lighter experience.

Adding to the interesting code building up for next spring's release of the LLVM 20 compiler stack is having the Tenstorrent TT-Ascalon D8 as the newest RISC-V processor target.

Merged last week back toward the start of the Linux 6.13 merge window were a number of interesting IO_uring enhancements for this first major kernel version of 2025.

Systemd 257 is nearing release as the next major feature release for this widely-used init system and software suite on Linux systems.

For those making use of the Microsoft exFAT file-system on Linux systems, the upcoming Linux 6.13 kernel brings an optimization that will help some operations by reducing the FAT chain traversal.

Back in April AMD announced the Versal Gen 2 Adaptive SoCs for AI-driven embedded systems. In preparing for Versal2 evaluation kits expected around the middle of the year and production silicon by the end of 2025, AMD software engineers have begun ramping up their open-source and upstream-focused Linux driver support.

The RISC-V CPU port updates have been sent out for the in-development Linux 6.13 kernel.

For those building your own server around the new Intel Xeon 6 "Granite Rapids" or AMD EPYC 9005 "Turin" platforms and using DDR5-6000/DDR5-6400 memory (or the interesting MRDIMM-8000 memory with Xeon 6 P), one of the factors you need to be much more mindful about than in the past is that at least the initial generation of DDR5-6000+ memory is running much hotter than prior server memory. There's been guidance from Intel and AMD as well as sever vendors about the thermal considerations with DDR5-6000/DDR5-6400 and extra precautions. Here's a look at the DDR5-6000 thermals on a recent AMD EPYC 9655 Turin server build and then taming the DDR5 server memory modules using Corsair Vengeance Airflow Memory Cooling Fans.

The SoundWire subsystem updates were sent out today for the Linux 6.13 kernel. This cycle brings new AMD driver support as well as supporting the MIPI DisCo 2.0 specification.

Sent out on Tuesday was the modules pull request for Linux 6.13 that have some low-level improvements but it noted that the biggest kernel modules highlight wasn't in that pull request itself but had been added by way of the memory management pull. This was a change by a Microsoft engineer around caching of kernel modules into huge pages.

MIPS has begun working on the open-source compiler toolchain support for their P8700 RISC-V based processors. Initial patches posted today bring-up the MIPS P8700 RISC-V support for the LLVM compiler stack.

Merged for the Linux 6.12 kernel was the long-awaited real-time "PREEMPT_RT" kernel support and allowing it to be enabled across x86/x86_64, ARM64, and RISC-V CPU architectures. With the Linux 6.13 kernel, LoongArch is joining the RT party.

Days after announcing the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W for $7, Raspberry Pi today announced the Compute Module 5 at the $45 price point.

In prior years the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has published an Ethical Tech Giving Guide for holiday shopping where they recommend products like old AMD Opteron motherboards and USB to parallel printer cables that "respect your freedoms" and meet their strict free software definitions. Out today is their newest annual FSF Ethical Tech Giving Guide.

There are some new open-source/Linux details to note when it comes to the AMD accelerators in the Instinct "CDNA" land.

The Flash Friendly File-System (F2FS) updates were sent out on Monday for Linux 6.13 and include one very interesting new feature for this file-system: device aliasing as a means of being able to temporarily carve out a portion of the partition for other purposes.

Google engineer Ricardo Ribalda has proposed a set of patches for the common "uvcvideo" kernel driver that supports UVC-compliant web cameras and the like to provide granular power saving support.