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)

Ubuntu 26.10 Snapshot 1 Released For Testing

([Ubuntu] 29 May 08:14 PM EDT Ubuntu 26.10 Snapshot 1)

Canonical today released the first monthly snapshot of the Ubuntu 26.10 "Stonking Stingray" release.



Wine 11.10 Released With VKD3D 2.0, Improved VBScript Compatibility

([WINE] 29 May 06:14 PM EDT Wine 11.10)

Wine 11.10 marks the latest bi-weekly development release of Wine for running Windows games and applications on Linux, macOS, and other platforms.



AMD ROCm 7.2.4 Released With Performance & Stability Fixes

([AMD] 29 May 02:34 PM EDT ROCm 7.2.4)

AMD's ROCm open-source compute stack is up to version 7.2.4 stable as it continues seeing new fixes while on the tech preview feature side is the recent ROCm 7.13 release.



Fwupd 2.1.4 Brings Many Fixes For Bugs Spotted By Anthrophic's Mythos, Firmware Update Support For Intel Arc Pro B65/B70

([LVFS] 29 May 02:41 PM EDT Fwupd 2.1.4)

Fresh off the funding round from HP, Fwupd 2.1.4 was christened today as the newest stable update to this open-source firmware updating solution for Linux systems.



CachyOS Delivers Lead Over Arch Linux, Pop!_OS & Ubuntu On System76 Thelio Major

([Operating Systems] 29 May 10:00 AM EDT 37 Comments)

The new System76 Thelio Major powered by the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series and optionally with the Radeon AI PRO R9700 graphics card for an all-open-source AMD Linux stack is a mighty powerful workstation. If desiring even more compute potential out of this high-end desktop/workstation, CachyOS works pretty darn well on this new system with lofty leads over upstream Arch Linux as well as Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and the stock Pop!_OS 24.04 distribution.



Linux Networking Still Seeing "Significantly Bigger" Pull Requests Due To AI

([Linux Networking] 29 May 09:39 AM EDT Significantly Bigger)

Last week's collection of networking subsystem fixes for Linux 7.1 noted craziness continuing with no end in sight with a large pull request of fixes with many of them spurred on by AI/LLM coding agents. This week it's "significantly bigger" than prior kernel cycles for this late stage of kernel development due to this assistance of large language models.



Btrfs Change Coming For Linux 7.2 Yields Very Healthy Performance Gain

([Linux Storage] 29 May 07:17 AM EDT Direct I/O)

A change coming on the way for the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel cycle is yielding a significant improvement to the direct I/O write performance. While a big gain, technically it's a regression fix after a change mistakenly dropped the behavior several years ago.



Intel To Support DRM Background Color Property With Linux 7.2

([Intel] 29 May 06:25 AM EDT BACKGROUND_COLOR)

Introduced in Linux 7.1 is a dedicated CRTC background color property for DRM graphics/display drivers. The "BACKGROUND_COLOR" property can be used with capable drivers and display controllers as the default background color when not covered by any plane or from transparent regions of higher planes. With the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel cycle, the Intel DRM driver will begin supporting this background color property.



Fedora 45 Considering Use Of PURL Metadata For Uniquely Identifying Software Packages

([Fedora] 29 May 06:01 AM EDT Package-URL)

One of the Fedora 45 change proposals under consideration at the moment is making adding PURL "Package-URL" to Fedora's package metadata for simplifying the mapping between upstream projects and Fedora packages.



Linux 7.2 To Bring Graphics Driver Fix For Old Integrated Graphics On Intel Sandy Bridge

([Intel] 29 May 05:46 AM EDT Sandy Bridge Fix)

For those still making use of Intel Sandy Bridge processors from 15 years ago, the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel is bringing a fix for an engine reset issue when using the old integrated graphics with Sandy Bridge.



Radeon Software For Linux 26.12 Brings Ubuntu 26.04 Support

([Radeon] 29 May 05:32 AM EDT Radeon Software For Linux 26.12)

While most Linux enthusiasts and desktop users/gamers are comfortable just riding the latest upstream Linux kernel and Mesa drivers shipped by their distribution, for those enterprises preferring the officially blessed and QA'ed driver packages from AMD, last week marked the release of the Radeon Software for Linux 26.12 driver.



Intel Sends Out Revised Linux Patches For Directed Package Thermal Interrupts

([Intel] 28 May 08:51 PM EDT Directed Package Thermal Interrupts)

Back in March was an initial patch series out of Intel for Linux support for Directed Package Thermal Interrupts as a new feature of recent Intel CPUs. There wasn't much to report over the past three months on this work but today a second iteration of the patches emerged on the Linux kernel mailing list.



Linux 7.2's Open-Source Nouveau Driver To Finally Support The NVIDIA GA100

([Nouveau] 28 May 08:34 PM EDT GA100 + Linux 7.2)

Sent out today was the last drm-misc-next pull request ahead of the Linux 7.2 merge window getting underway in June. As part of this last batch of small Direct Rendering Manager graphics/accelerator driver changes is finally enabling the NVIDIA GA100 within the Nouveau driver.



Intel Arc Pro B70 BMG-G31 Linux Gaming Performance

([Linux Gaming] 28 May 11:01 AM EDT 15 Comments)

In recent weeks we have been exploring different areas of the Intel Arc Pro B70 graphics performance on Linux from various OpenCL and Vulkan to Level Zero compute benchmarks, scaling up to four Arc Pro B70 graphics cards, comparing to NVIDIA RTX PRO Blackwell, and other relevant tests. While not intended for gaming, many Phoronix readers keep raising requests for seeing the Arc Pro B70 performance for Linux gaming given the lack of any consumer BMG-G31 GPU. So for those curious, here is a look at the Linux gaming performance with the Arc Pro B70 graphics card.



Arm Announces Metis: Agentic AI Security Framework

([Arm] 28 May 10:20 AM EDT Arm Metis)

Arm today announced the open-sourcing of Metis, an agentic AI security framework that delivers context AI-powered security analysis in looking out for software vulnerabilities.



QEMU Shifting On AI Policy To Allow Some AI/LLM-Generated Contributions

([Virtualization] 28 May 09:50 AM EDT Allowing Some AI)

The QEMU processor emulator that plays an important role in the open-source Linux virtualization stack had a policy that forbid any contributions including or derived from AI-generated content. But there are now second thoughts with a proposed patch that will permit AI/LLM contributions in non-critical areas.



Qualcomm Snapdragon C Announced For $300+ Laptops

([Hardware] 28 May 09:23 AM EDT Snapdragon C)

For competing with the Apple MacBook Neo, Google Chromebooks, and other entry-level laptops, Qualcomm today announced the Snapdragon C series SoCs.



Intel Arc G-Series Processors Announced For Handheld Gaming Devices

([Intel] 28 May 09:16 AM EDT Intel Arc G-Series)

Ahead of Computex, Intel today announced the introduction of the Arc G-Series. While taking on the "Arc" branding, this isn't a new graphics card from Intel but rather their new processors with integrated graphics for handheld gaming devices.



KDE Plasma 6.7 Beta 2 Released With More Bug Fixes

([KDE] 28 May 09:09 AM EDT Plasma 6.7 Beta)

Building off the KDE Plasma 6.7 Beta release earlier in May, a second beta was declared today in preparing for the Plasma 6.7 stable debut in mid-June.



24 Years After The ATI R300 Launched, Open-Source R300 Driver Continues With Big Rework

([Radeon] 28 May 08:23 AM EDT R300 Gallium3D)

While there has been talk of potentially branching off the older Mesa graphics drivers, the ATI R300 Gallium3D driver just won't die yet. The R300 Gallium3D driver for supporting ATI R300 through R500 graphics cards saw a big rework merged today in restructuring the driver's intemediate representation (IR) handling.



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I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk
and says the wrong things. Talking's something you can't do judiciously,
unless you keep in practice. Now, sir, we'll talk if you like. I'll tell
you right out, I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk.
-- Sidney Greenstreet, "The Maltese Falcon"