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)

Raspberry Pi OS Moves To Linux 6.18 LTS Kernel, Updated LabWC Compositor

([Raspberry Pi] 19 June 09:07 AM EDT Raspberry Pi OS)

Raspberry Pi engineers have released their first update to Raspberry Pi OS since April. With this new version comes the upgrade to the latest Linux 6.18 LTS kernel.



Apple M3 Booting On Linux After Three Years Plus Other SoC Updates In Linux 7.2

([Hardware] 19 June 07:09 AM EDT Linux 7.2 SoC)

Just shy of 1,000 new patches were merged on the SoC side for the Linux 7.2 kernel. Among all those patches are enabling five more SoCs to work with the mainline Linux kernel -- including the long-awaited Apple M3 support.



AMD Introduces An AI-Powered Bash Coding Agent

([AMD] 19 June 06:31 AM EDT AMD Bash Coding Agent)

Just days after AMD engineers released a new Lemonade AI server with MCP server integration to make it much more useful, they have now released a new release of their GAIA "Generative AI Is Awesome" open-source software. With AMD GAIA 0.21.2, they have introduced a bash coding agent is their latest big ticket item in the AI space.



Intel TDX Now Much More Practical With Ability To Apply Important Updates Without Reboot

([Intel] 19 June 06:18 AM EDT Intel Trust Domain Extensions)

For those interested in Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) with modern Intel Xeon processors for confidential computing but also view system uptime as critical, beginning in Linux 7.2 the TDX support is now much more practical with allowing live updates without the need to reboot the running system in the event of security updates and similar.



ARCTIC Fan Controller, More ASUS & ASRock Boards Have Sensor Monitoring With Linux 7.2

([Hardware] 19 June 06:08 AM EDT Hardware Monitoring)

For those that enjoy keeping an eye on all their system vitals from temperatures to voltages, the hardware monitoring "HWMON" updates have seen many device additions for Linux 7.2.



AMD ISP4 Driver Merged To Linux 7.2 Kernel

([AMD] 18 June 09:00 PM EDT AMD ISP4)

The media subsystem changes were merged tonight for the Linux 7.2 merge window and it includes the long-awaited AMD ISP4 driver now in the mainline kernel.. This ISP4 driver is what completes the loop for enabling the web camera on the HP ZBook Ultra G1a and other future high-end AMD Ryzen laptops.



Linux 7.2 Gets Rid Of The Last Optimized MD5 Implementation

([Linux Kernel] 18 June 08:47 PM EDT MD5 Generic Only)

The Linux kernel has dropped the last of its architecture-specific optimized MD5 hashing algorithm implementations.



Godot 4.7 Released With HDR Output Support

([Linux Gaming] 18 June 03:42 PM EDT Godot 4.7)

Godot 4.7 is out today as the newest feature release for this leading open-source, cross-platform game engine.



How NVIDIA Vera CPU Performance Compares To The Ampere Altra Max

([Processors] 18 June 02:43 PM EDT 14 Comments)

Last month on Phoronix was an exclusive first look at the NVIDIA Vera CPU performance compared to prior-generation NVIDIA Grace as well as the current AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon competition. Following that was looking at how the ARM Linux server performance has evolved over the past eight years of AArch64 Linux servers. A Phoronix Premium supporter recently requested wanting to see how Vera compares to Ampere Altra. While Ampere Altra has been in the marketplace now for more than five years, they are some of the most readily available ARM Linux server options for DIY/enthusiast builds given the scarcity of AmpereOne and lack of other readily available socketed ARM CPU options. This article shows how the performance compares between Ampere Altra Max and NVIDIA Vera.



EXT4 Reworks Fast Commit Handling & Faster Directory Hash Computation

([Linux Storage] 18 June 01:53 PM EDT EXT4 Improvements For Linux 7.2)

The EXT4 file-system improvements were merged today for Linux 7.2 with some enticing optimizations.



Rust PNG Image Decoder Now Even Faster: Benefiting Chrome, GNOME, Etc

([Programming] 18 June 01:04 PM EDT Rust PNG Image Decoder)

The Rust PNG crate, image-png, for PNG image encoding and decoding was already claimed to be the fastest PNG decoder in the world for the past year. Now with the latest optimizations, it's even faster.



Claude AI Assists In Fixing Years Old AMD Radeon Linux Display Bug Affecting Numerous Laptops

([Radeon] 18 June 10:00 AM EDT Laptop Display Freezes)

A bug in the AMDGPU Linux kernel graphics driver leading to some laptop displays freezing after periods of use may finally be close to being resolved. Given the length and quantity of bug reports and one of the problematic commits being tracked back to 2017, it's a heavy hitting issue for some Linux users. With the help of Claude Code, it looks like a fix is on the way to the Linux kernel.



AF_ALG Deprecation Approved For Linux 7.2, Useless & Insecure Crypto Driver Code Removed

([Linux Kernel] 18 June 09:43 AM EDT Linux 7.2 Crypto)

The cryptographic subsystem updates have been merged for the ongoing Linux 7.2 kernel merge window.



Ubuntu Flavors Now Mandated To Participate In Beta Releases For Official Status

([Ubuntu] 18 June 08:39 AM EDT Ubuntu Beta Requirement)

Canonical and the Ubuntu Release Team have implemented an important policy change for Ubuntu flavors moving forward. If they are to have an official release, they must now successfully submit a beta release.



Latest LLVM Patch Further Points To AMD GFX1250/GFX1251 Being Instinct Hardware

([AMD] 18 June 06:36 AM EDT SRAM ECC)

With the ongoing work around the AMD GFX1250 (and GFX1251) in the open-source AMD Linux driver stack, it's led to a lot of speculation about these parts in the GFX12 series associated with RDNA4. RDNA4 refresh? Or a lot of signals have pointed to GFX125x being possible AI/HPC accelerators such as for the upcoming Instinct MI400 series. Adding to the intrigue is GFX1251 being an APU. The latest LLVM compiler activity is further pointing to GFX1250/GFX1251 being for enterprise hardware.



Linux 7.2 EDAC Drivers Prep For Diamond Rapids, Nova Lake H

([Hardware] 18 June 06:24 AM EDT Error Detection And Correction)

The Error Detection And Correction (EDAC) drivers, such as for dealing with ECC memory error reporting, are heavy on the Intel side with Linux 7.2 in preparing for upcoming hardware.



SteamOS 3.8.10 Stable Released With Updated Arch, Steam Machine Support & Wayland Desktop Default

([Valve] 18 June 06:06 AM EDT SteamOS 3.8 Stable)

Overnight Valve released SteamOS 3.8.10 into the stable channel. for succeeding SteamOS 3.7. There's a lot happening across the board to their in-house Linux platform for the likes of the Steam Deck and upcoming Steam Machine hardware.



Linux 7.2 Protects Against "Stupid Or Malicious" DoS Attempts By Arming Timers In The Past

([Linux Kernel] 18 June 05:58 AM EDT timers/core)

There are a number of time(r) core subsystem changes for the Linux 7.2 kernel to better harden the kernel.



AI/LLM Patch Craziness Having An Impact On ARM64 Linux Kernel Development

([Arm] 17 June 08:26 PM EDT AArch64 Linux)

The ongoing rise in AI/LLM-generated patches hitting the mailing lists and affecting development workflows continues to impact Linux kernel development. For the ARM64 architecture updates in Linux 7.2 is an interesting anecdote over over feeling like this activity has "slowed us down a little on the feature side" and having to deal with this AI/LLM patch activity resulted in some features now being postponed from making it for this current Linux kernel development cycle.



Bcachefs Tools 1.38.6 Brings Many Performance Improvements

([Linux Storage] 17 June 04:06 PM EDT Bcachefs Tools 1.38.6)

Kent Overstreet announced the release today of Bcachefs-Tools 1.38.6 as the user-space tools built around the Bcachefs copy-on-write file-system. There are a few new features and a lot of performance work in v1.38.6 without bringing any on-disk format breakage.



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"Sometimes insanity is the only alternative"
-- button at a Science Fiction convention.