Sent out today was an initial patch series for comment on introducing the FTRFS file-system. The FTRFS proposal is more interesting than last week's VMUFAT file-system proposal.

The open-source, Rust-based Servo browser engine has been improving its Servoshell demo browser application while one of the most promising potentials for this engine is around embedded use as an alternative to the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF). With the latest moves by Servo developers, they are making for a more compelling story for its use.

For those wishing to make use of modern OpenCL 3.0 capabilities on AMD APUs/SoCs with integrated Radeon graphics using Mesa's Rusticl driver, an improvement was merged this weekend to the RadeonSI driver ahead of this quarter's Mesa 26.1 release.

Nearly one year ago to the day I noted Linux developers were considering the removal of the Apple HFS and HFS+ file-system drivers from the kernel. They were orphaned the past decade and turning into a maintenance burden for upstream developers. But then to some surprise, a few developers stepped up to maintain the HFS(+) drivers. One year later it's proving to be a success story with more fixes for this aging Apple file-system support continuing.

Merged for the Linux 7.0 kernel was a power sequencing driver for PCIe M.2 connectors as part of an effort to allow describing PCIe M.2 connectors in Device Tree files. For Linux 7.1, that driver is extending support for PCIe M.2 Key E connectors.

Among the early pull requests sent out to Linus Torvalds even before the Linux 7.0 kernel officially released on Sunday were the Btrfs file-system updates. This feature-packed CoW file-system is seeing more performance optimizations for Linux 7.1 as well as its shutdown ioctl feature no longer being experimental and a variety of fixes.

Building off last night's release of the Linux 7.0 kernel is now the GNU Linux-libre 7.0-gnu kernel release for that downstream kernel that removes support for loading non-free-software kernel modules, blocks the loading of loadable microcode/firmware even when it means greatly reduced hardware support, and other sanitization of code in the name of software freedom.

As expected the stable Linux 7.0 kernel was just released today in marking this next kernel release. The Linux 7.0 milestone comes due to Linus Torvalds' preference of bumping the major version number after hitting X.19 as opposed to any single major change, but in any event there are a lot of great improvements and changes to find with this new kernel version. Linux 7.0 is also what's powering the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release.

An out-of-bounds access within the Linux kernel has existed in mainline the past three years that could be exploited by an unprivileged user submitting a specially crafted certificate to the kernel.

With Linux 7.0 expected for release later today, in turn the Linux 7.1 merge window will kick off for the two week period of landing all sorts of exciting new features, changes, and removal of old features from the kernel. Here is a look at some of what is on the table for the Linux 7.1 merge window.

While the Meson build system has been capturing much of the limelight in recent years by open-source projects, the cross-platform CMake build system also shows no signs of slowing down and continues evolving with new features and functionality.

Ahead of the Linux 7.0 stable kernel release expected later today are some last minute pull requests sent out this morning. Notable for those using AMD Zen 3 hardware is addressing some bogus hardware errors that began appearing for some users on recent versions of the Linux kernel.

For those sticking to absolute free software ideals, Trisquel 12.0 was released this weekend for this Free Software Foundation (FSF) approved distribution for only containing free software and foregoing loadable microcode/firmware and running on the Linux-libre kernel even with its reduced scope in hardware support.

In addition to their efforts around the Lemonade SDK itself, AMD software engineers working on their AI initiatives continue to be investing quite a bit into the Lemonade-using GAIA, the project that originally stood for "Generative AI Is Awesome". AMD's GAIA now allows building your own custom AI agents via chatting with GAIA as well as becoming a "true desktop app" so it's easier to deploy across Windows, Linux, and macOS environments.

D7VK as the open-source project that began as a fork of DXVK in adding support for Direct3D 7 atop Vulkan has with time extended its range to also supporting Direct3D 6, 5, and 3 APIs. Out today is D7VK 1.7 in continuing to better support those vintage versions of Microsoft's Direct3D API.

The BeagleV Ahead is an open-source RISC-V single board computer S(BC) built around the quad-core TH1520 SoC. With the Linux 7.1 mainline kernel there is HDMI display support coming now that the Device Tree bits have been added.

Among the new VFS features expected to land for the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window is FSMOUNT_NAMESPACE.

Microsoft on Friday released linux-msft-wsl-6.18.20.1 as the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) kernel updated against the Linux 6.18 LTS series.

Cage as the Wayland compositor providing a kiosk mode for single, maximized apps is out with a new feature release more than six months after its prior version.

A few weeks past the GNOME 50 release and there continues to be a lot of ongoing GNOME app activity worth highlighting.