This week's batch of AMDGPU and AMDKFD changes queued up ahead of the next kernel merge window is focused on delivering a variety of driver fixes.

Following discussions from the 2025 Linux Maintainer Summit, merged overnight for the Linux 6.19 kernel is documentation concerning the Linux kernel project's continuity in the event that Linus Torvalds' official Git repository were to disappear or otherwise be inaccessible for continuing the upstream development of the Linux kernel.

The Focusrite Forte 2-in, 4-out USB audio interface as a portable audio recording solution will be supported by the mainline Linux 7.0 kernel. The patches are queued in the Linux kernel's sound subsystem development tree. While a convenient little device, the Focusrite Forte is no longer manufactured but can still be found used online.

Rob Clark this week sent out the latest MSM DRM kernel driver updates for the latest Qualcomm display/graphics enhancements ahead of next month's Linux 7.0 merge window.

SVT-AV1 4.0 is out as the newest major feature release for this open-source AV1 video encoder that was originally started by Intel as an open-source project and now continuining on thanks to the Alliance For Open Media.

While the GIMP 3.2 release is expected out soon, GIMP 3.0.8 is available tonight as what could end up being the last set of bug fixes for GIMP 3.0.

Following yesterday's release of Wine 11.1 for kicking off the new post-11.0 development cycle, Wine-Staging 11.1 is now available for this experimental/testing version of Wine that present is around 254 patches over the upstream Wine state.

The Arch Linux powered CachyOS distribution is out with its first new ISO release of 2026. This Linux distribution continues to be quite popular with Linux gamers, enthusiasts craving peak performance, and others for wanting to enjoy a polished Arch Linux desktop experience.

There's yet another new Linux file-system on the block: DAXFS has been announced as a new read-only open-source file-system.

DXVK-NVAPI 0.9.1 is out today as this NVIDIA NVAPI implementation that is used by Valve's Steam Play (Proton) with DXVK and VKD3D-Proton. This is the important piece of the Steam Play puzzle to allow for NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA Reflex, PhysX, and other features for Windows games running on Linux.

With the upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle it looks like the time slice extension work could finally been merged, which has seen various attempts over the past decade. Time slice extension for the Linux kernel implemented using Restartable Sequences "RSEQ" allows user-space processes to request a temporary, opportunistic extension of their CPU time slice without being preempted.

In addition to AMD releasing the Ryzen AI Software 1.7 release on Friday, they also published a new version of their MLIR-AIE compiler toolchain for targeting AMD Ryzen AI NPU devices with this LLVM-based MLIR-focused stack.

Merged on Friday as part of this week's DRM kernel graphics driver fixes for the week is addressing a regression affecting many different users with the Linux 6.19 development kernel.

Newlle as a virtual AI assistant for the GNOME desktop with API integration for Google Gemini, OpenAI, Groq, and also local LLMs is out with a new release. Newelle has been steadily expanding its AI integration and capabilities and with the new Newelle 1.2 are yet more capabilities for those wanting AI on the GNOME desktop.

A new driver in the Linux 6.19 kernel is the ASUS Armoury driver for supporting additional functionality with the ROG Ally gaming handhelds and other ASUS ROG gaming hardware like their laptops.

KDE Plasma 6.6 feature development work continues winding down while Plasma 6.7 has begun seeing more feature work. This week also saw at least nine different crash fixes affecting Plasma/KWin.

Version 2.43 of the GNU C Library "glibc" was released on Friday evening as the newest half-year feature update. This is a very feature packed update and even managed to be released ahead of the 1 February release plan.

Following the release of Wine 11.0 stable just under two weeks ago, Wine 11.1 is now available as the first of the bi-weekly development snapshots for Wine in leading toward the Wine 12.0 release next January.

Similar to the new Intel IPU 7.5 firmware upstreamed for Panther Lake this week, Cirrus has upstreamed their CS42L45 codec firmware for upcoming Dell and Lenovo laptops making use of this audio codec.

Queued into tip/tip.git's "sched/urgent" Git branch today is a patch to disable the kernel scheduler's NEXT_BUDDY functionality that was re-implemented back during the Linux 6.19 merge window. It turns out to cause some performance regressions that have yet to be otherwise addressed.