Linux libcrypto cryptography subsystem changes for the v7.1 kernel are enabling more optimizations by default and in turn helping to achieve better crypto/hashing performance on this next kernel version.

Fedora 44 final had been aiming for an early release target of 21 April, but due to outstanding blocker bugs, it's now revised to target a release on 28 April.

The GCC open-source compiler has landed initial targeting support for Arm's newly-announced AGI CPU.

With the vast majority of x86/x86_64 systems supporting restarting the system using ACPi, BIOS, or even the KBD keyboard controller, with Linux 7.1 is now support in place for using custom restart handlers registered by drivers, such as in place for other CPU architectures.

All of the hardware monitoring "HWMON" subsystem updates were merged this week for the Linux 7.1 kernel.

Making today very exciting in Linux 7.1 merge window land was a pull request being sent out for introducing the new, modern NTFS file-system driver. Linus Torvalds has yet to comment if he's going to merge the new driver but it looks like it's ready for providing a better Linux NTFS experience over the current NTFS3 driver that was upstreamed by Paragon Software a few years ago and hasn't seen too much feature progress.

Valve and CodeWeavers have just released Proton 11.0 Beta as their first beta milestone for this software that powers Steam Play now rebased against upstream Wine 11.0.

The extensible scheduler "sched_ext" code for allowing Linux scheduling behavior to be defined via BPF programs is seeing some useful improvements with the in-development Linux 7.1 kernel.

Canonical today released Mir 2.26 as the newest feature release for this compositor for building Wayland-based shells. Notable with Mir 2.26 is a Rust-based input platform is in development as part of their broader effort for bringing Rust code into Mir.

The media subsystem updates have been merged for the ongoing Linux 7.1 merge window and includes new hardware support.

Last month Intel began shipping the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus "Arrow Lake Refresh" desktop processor. This is a mighty interesting processor for the $349 USD price point with more cores and a larger cache compared to the Core Ultra 7 265K and capable of delivering much of the performance of the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K Arrow Lake processor. In today's article is a look at how well the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus performs under Linux with more than 340 different benchmarks representing a range of Linux workloads from gaming to creator to developer and technical computing uses.

The community-based AlmaLinux OS alternative to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) continues exploring ways to better differentiate it from upstream RHEL and other derivatives. The latest difference is AlmaLinux OS Kitten 10 adding i686 user-space packages for those wanting to run on a RHEL 10 based platform but still needing x86 32-bit user-space software compatibility.

Intel today formally announced the Core Series 3 low-end mobile processors previously known as Wildcat Lake. These are the new Intel 18A offerings that are a step below the Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" SoCs that began shipping earlier this year.

Rust 1.95 was released to the wild today as the latest feature update to this popular programming language.

The Linux Mint project published their March 2026 monthly status update where they note the ongoing work toward Mint 23 "Alfa" that will be released under their new longer development lifecycle. Linux Mint 23 will be out for Christmas (December) 2026 atop an Ubuntu 26.04 LTS base.

Mozilla today announced "Thunderbolt" as an open-source AI client built for control and independence. Mozilla Thunderbolt, while having the worst possible name, is built for organizations and others wanting to deploy self-hosted AI infrastructure.

In addition to Linux 7.1 supporting FRED by default for Flexible Return and Event Delivery, another Intel CPU feature now in good shape for this next kernel version is Linear Address Space Separation (LASS).

Beyond Linux 7.1 beginning to phase out Intel 486 CPU support, this next Linux kernel version is also beginning to remove driver code for supporting Russia's Baikal CPUs.

Back during the Linux 7.0 merge window the MMC changes were rejected by Linus Torvalds as "complete garbage" that wasn't building properly and not vetted through linux-next. He went without pulling any MMC changes for the v7.0 cycle while now for Linux 7.1 the code has been better tested and successfully merged.

Following the recent KDE Plasma 6.6 desktop release, KDE Gear 26.04 is out today for shipping all the latest updated KDE desktop applications.