There's activity again around potentially disabling and then ultimately removing the RNDIS Linux kernel code for those drivers complying with the Microsoft Remote Network Driver Interface Specification (RNDIS) protocol specification. RNDIS was used atop USB for virtual Ethernet but has proven insecure and problematic.

Systemd had another busy year working on many new features from run0 as a sudo alternative to making systemd-homed more robust, increasing Varlink use, systemd-boot continuing to gain more traction, and more.

A patch series six months in the making and consisting of 24 patches by longtime Intel Linux graphics engineer Ian Romanick was merged on Christmas Eve for Mesa 25.0.

Ruby 3.4 is out today as yet another annual major feature release for this programming language known for its major updates on Christmas Day.

While there has been Vulkan Video support within Intel's open-source "ANV" driver since early 2023 and extended over time to handle H.265/HEVC decode, H.264 and H.265 encode, and more, the AV1 decode support has lagged behind until now.

The CachyOS Linux distribution has really been on fire this year delivering impressive new features and performance optimizations for this Arch Linux derived OS.

With 2024 drawing quickly toward a close, here is a look back at the most popular Linux kernel news of the year ranging from exciting performance optimizations and new features such as QR code error messages over to kernel drama around Russian kernel developers, Bcachefs disturbances, and the contentious growing Rust programming language use within the kernel.

A new feature landing in the SDL3 software/hardware abstraction library today that is commonly used by cross-platform games is a native system tray implementation that works across operating systems.

Using the 5th Gen EPYC BIOS tuning guide published by AMD, I recently looked at the impact of AI and machine learning optimized performance by adjusting some simple BIOS knobs as well as the Java throughput, latency and power efficiency for the EPYC 9005 class processors. In this article is following the AMD BIOS tuning guide to see what performance difference there is for high performance computing (HPC) workloads following the BIOS tuning recommendations compared to the defaults with an AMD EPYC 9575F server.

Longtime open-source Radeon graphics driver developer Marek Olšák that is well known for his Mesa improvements over the years and countless optimizations even before being employed by AMD has seen some exciting patches merged just in time for Christmas.

The Intel Compute Runtime 24.48.31907.7 just released a few minutes ago as a Christmas Eve treat for Intel Linux graphics compute users. This updated open-source OpenCL and oneAPI Level Zero driver stack now advertises production support for Battlemage (BMG / Xe2) discrete graphics along with other optimization and feature work.

Linux I/O expert and storage expert Jens Axboe of Meta is hoping to have the uncached buffered I/O support squared away for Linux 6.14 -- a feature that's been a half-decade in the making.

A new release of libcamera is now available for this open-source camera stack solution that is increasingly used now for getting newer web cameras working on Linux and similar. With the libcamera 0.4 release there is improved hardware support and other enhancements to this camera framework solution.

The AMD Platform Management Framework "PMF" driver is set to see some enhancements come the Linux 6.14 merge window.

The widely-used FFmpeg multimedia library saw a number of commits land yesterday for enhancing the support around High Dynamic Range (HDR) content.

As a follow-up to the article about Ubuntu 25.04 preparing for GIMP 3.0 in its repositories, this past week finally brought the GIMP 3.0 release candidate into the Ubuntu 25.04 "Plucky Puffin" repository.

The Intel Arc Graphics B570 graphics card isn't hitting retailers until January and the review embargo doesn't expire until then, but fair game now are pictures/video of the Arc B570 hardware... The ASRock Challenger Arc Graphics B570 arrived today for Linux testing at Phoronix in the coming weeks for this second Battlemage graphics card.

Four years ago already the Raspberry Pi 400 was announced as a Raspberry Pi keyboard computer built around the Raspberry Pi 4, passively-cooled, and all packaged up nicely in a keyboard form factor. Announced earlier this month was the Raspberry Pi 500 as the successor and now built around the Raspberry Pi 5. For $90 USD this keyboard computer is a very versatile and convenient compact Linux PC.

The patch series in the works for a while to provide the necessary kernel abstractions for the Rust programming language to actually implement real device drivers looks like it will finally premiere in the Linux 6.14 kernel cycle.

It's been a few months since hearing anything new out of Serpent OS, the original Linux distribution led by Ikey Doherty, who started Solus Linux and also was involved with Intel's Clear Linux. As a Christmas surprise, Serpent OS has now reached the alpha stage of development.