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 6.11 Hardening Makes FineIBT Default Configurable At Build Time

([Linux Security] 21 July 09:08 AM EDT FineIBT)

Kees Cook submitted all of the hardening updates this week for the Linux 6.11 merge window in beefing up the kernel's defenses against various attack vectors and vulnerabilities.



LXQt 2.0 Desktop Planned For Availability In Fedora 41

([Fedora] 21 July 06:43 AM EDT LXQt 2.0)

A change proposal was raised this week for upgrading Fedora's LXQt desktop offering to the recently released LXQt 2.0 for the upcoming Fedora 41 release.



Initial AMD SEV-SNP KVM Guest VM Support Merged Into Linux 6.11

([Virtualization] 21 July 06:34 AM EDT KVM Updates)

The Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) updates for Linux 6.11 have been merged and it's a very exciting one for AMD EPYC servers with SEV-SNP guest VM support finally being in the mainline kernel.



RISC-V Sees Support For New ISA Extensions In Linux 6.11

([RISC-V] 21 July 06:19 AM EDT Linux 6.11 RISC-V)

Palmer Dabbelt on Saturday sent out the RISC-V architecture updates for the ongoing Linux 6.11 merge window.



OpenMandriva ROME 24.07 Released With KDE Plasma 6 But Wayland Not Mature Enough

([Operating Systems] 20 July 07:16 PM EDT OpenMandriva ROME 24.07)

OpenMandriva ROME 24.07 debuted as stable today for this rolling release model of OpenMandriva. With the new release comes the transition to the KDE Plasma 6 desktop but the OpenMandriva developers aren't yet comfortable enough to use Wayland by default and thus the X11 session is preferred.



USB & Thunderbolt Improvements Land In Linux 6.11

([Hardware] 20 July 08:43 AM EDT Linux 6.11 USB)

Greg Kroah-Hartman on Friday sent out all of the USB/Thunderbolt subsystem feature updates destined for the Linux 6.11 kernel of which there are many different patches across the board.



AVX-512/AVX10 & VAES Optimized AES-GCM Implementation Lands In Linux 6.11

([Linux Kernel] 20 July 06:46 AM EDT Linux 6.11 Crypto)

The crypto subsystem updates have landed for the Linux 6.11 kernel.



New Linux Patches Enable The Snapdragon X1 Elite Powered Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6

([Hardware] 20 July 06:34 AM EDT Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6)

With Linux 6.11 support for the Lenovo Yoga Slim7x and ASUS Vivobook S15 are upstreamed for some of the first Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Elite powered laptops. But for follow-on kernel cycles you can expect yet more Snapdragon X1 Elite/Plus powered laptop support to appear with new DeviceTree additions. On Friday, Linaro engineer Konrad Dybcio sent out the patches for enabling the X1 Elite powered Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 laptop.



Linux 6.11 MIPS Upstreams Realtek RTL9302C & Mobileye EyeQ6H Chips

([Hardware] 20 July 06:09 AM EDT Linux 6.11 MIPS)

With Linux 6.11 over on the Arm-focused SoC side there were three new SoCs and 59 new machines/boards added for Arm and RISC-V. The MIPS pull request was submitted overnight for this next kernel version and there is just two new SoCs being introduced.



KDE Developers Tackle The Five Most Common Plasma Crashes

([KDE] 20 July 05:58 AM EDT KDE Changes)

KDE developer Nate Graham is out with a summer time update that highlights the interesting improvements made to the KDE desktop and related apps over the past two weeks.



Mesa 24.2-rc1 Released With Many OpenGL & Vulkan Driver Improvements

([Mesa] 19 July 03:55 PM EDT Mesa 24.2)

Eric Engestrom is once again serving as the Mesa release manager and today took to forking the Mesa 24.2 codebase followed by issuing the first release candidate.



AMD XDNA Ryzen AI Linux Kernel Driver Posted For Review

([AMD] 19 July 02:30 PM EDT AMD XDNA Linux Driver)

Back in January AMD quietly posted an XDNA Linux kernel driver for enabling the Ryzen AI NPUs. The driver has been maintained within that GitHub repository since but without any clear effort for getting this accelerator driver reviewed and merged into the upstream Linux kernel. Today that first step is finally being taken with the Ryzen AI XDNA Linux kernel driver patches posted to the Linux kernel mailing list and dri-devel to begin facilitating the upstream review process for getting this AI accelerator driver in the mainline kernel.



Rusticl In Mesa 24.2 Now Supports OpenCL Read-Write Images

([Mesa] 19 July 10:29 AM EDT Read-Write Images)

Red Hat developer Karol Herbst continues improving the support for Rusticl, the Rust-based modern OpenCL implementation for Mesa's Gallium3D drivers.



Linux 6.11 Lands Support For Snapdragon X1 Elite ASUS Vivobook S15 & Lenovo Yoga Slim7x

([Hardware] 19 July 09:49 AM EDT Linux 6.11 SoC Updates)

All of the SoC and platform updates slated for the Linux 6.11 kernel have been merged including new SoCs and adding DeviceTree files for a number of new systems, including some of the first Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 powered laptops.



NVIDIA's EGL-Wayland Library v1.1.14 Adds Explicit Sync

([NVIDIA] 19 July 08:27 AM EDT NVIDIA EGL-Wayland 1.1.14)

NVIDIA's EGL-Wayland library continues to be maintained as an EGLStream-based Wayland external platform library for client-side Wayland support to EGL atop EGLDevice/EGLStream.



Intel Panther Lake, Realtek RT1318 & Other Sound Hardware Supported By Linux 6.11

([Hardware] 19 July 07:02 AM EDT Linux 6.11 Sound)

Linux sound subsystem maintainer Takashi Iwai has sent out all of the sound driver patches for the in-development Linux 6.11 kernel.



Vulkan 1.3.291 Published With VK_AMD_anti_lag, AMD Anti Lag Extension

([Vulkan] 19 July 06:42 AM EDT VK_AMD_anti_lag)

Vulkan 1.3.291 was published this morning and with this specification update comes one prominent new extension: VK_AMD_anti_lag.



Linux 6.11 Brings A Dedicated Bucket Allocator For Better Security

([Linux Kernel] 19 July 06:35 AM EDT Linux 6.11)

The SLAB pull request landed in Linux 6.11 Git on Thursday with kmem_buckets-based hardening of kernel memory allocations.



Freedreno Gallium3D Driver Now Enables The Snapdragon X1 Elite/Plus SoC's GPU

([Mesa] 18 July 04:37 PM EDT Freedreno + Snapdragon X1 GPU)

The Freedreno Gallium3D driver that started out a decade ago providing reverse-engineered, open-source 3D driver support for Qualcomm Adreno hardware has now enabled support for the X1-85 GPU that is found within the Snapdragon X1 Elite and Snapdragon X1 Plus laptop SoCs.



Fedora 41 Proceeds With AMD SEV-SNP Virtualization Host Support For Confidential VMs

([Fedora] 18 July 02:43 PM EDT Fedora 41 + AMD SEV-SNP)

The Fedora change proposal was approved this week by their engineering and steering committee to support AMD SEV-SNP virtualization host support to allow easily launching confidential computing virtual machines (VMs) with Fedora 41.



More

Man Charged With Crashing Windows

MOUNTAIN HOME, AR -- Eric Turgent, a closet Linux advocate, was arrested
yesterday for intentionally crashing his co-worker's Windows box at the
offices of the "Roadkill Roundup" newspaper. Turgent disputes the charges,
saying, "If causing an operating system to crash is illegal, than why
isn't Bill Gates serving life without parole?"

Turgent's co-worker, Mr. Stu Poor, the clueless technology pundit for the
newspaper, is a heavy Microsoft supporter. He frequently brags in his
weekly Tech Talk column that he "once had a conversation with Bill Gates."
A heated argument broke out yesterday morning in which the two insulted
each other ("You're nothing but a Linux hippie freak on the Red Hat
payroll!" vs. "You make Jesse Berst and Fred Moody look like [expletive]
geniuses!") for two hours.

At the heat of the moment, Turgent shoved Poor aside and typed in
"C:\CON\CON". The machine crashed and the pundit lost all of his work (a
real loss to humanity, to be sure). Turgent is in jail awaiting trial for
violating the "Slash Crashes Act". This bill was enacted in 1999 after a
Senator's gigabyte cache of pornography was destroyed by a Windows crash.