Released last month was the VirtualBox 7.1 Beta 1 virtualization software release from Oracle. This new version is bringing a modernized GUI, Wayland clipboard sharing, and other improvements. Released yesterday was the second beta of this big VirtualBox update.

Today marks the beginning of the string freeze for the long-awaited GIMP 3.0 open-source image editor release as one of the leading free software alternatives to Adobe Photoshop.

Andrea della Porta of SUSE has been working on upstreaming the Linux kernel support to boot the Raspberry Pi 5 on a mainline kernel. Over the past few months Andrea has posted a number of different patches derived in part from Raspberry Pi's downstream kernel code. The latest effort being pursued by the SUSE engineer is on upstreaming Raspberry Pi RP1 PCI device support using a DeviceTree overlay.

As part of my ongoing AMD Ryzen 9 9950X Linux testing, last week I provided a look at the AVX-512 benefits to Zen 5 and also the Windows vs. Linux performance for the Ryzen 9 9950X. For sharing today is a look at multiple Linux distributions up and running on the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) desktop. Among the distributions in the mix are Intel's Clear Linux distribution that is optimally tuned for maximum x86_64 Linux performance and once again even on AMD hardware shows the significant benefits to a well-tuned Linux software stack.

Queued yesterday into the Linux power management subsystem's "linux-next" branch ahead of the Linux 6.12 kernel are some important additions for Intel processors and also an important fix for AMD processors to enjoy package power monitoring.

While the Unigine SDK these days is more known for its simulation and engineering offerings rather than as a game engine, this engine remains visually impressive and continues advancing. Unigine 2.19 has been released that brings a number of improvements to the engine and leaves us clamoring to see a new/updated benchmark.

There are a few interesting bits of information as part of this week's updates from the Ubuntu Desktop Team Integration Squad.

LunarG engineer Aitor Camacho Larrondo has proposed VK_EXT_external_memory_metal, a new extension for the Vulkan API to allow for more easily sharing memory objects from Vulkan with Apple's Metal.

A new batch of HID subsystem fixes were merged today for the ongoing Linux 6.11 kernel development.

The FreeBSD open-source operating system project published their Q2'2024 status report that outlines some interesting work happening to this leading BSD project.

NVIDIA recently sent over their RTX 2000 Ada Generation and RTX 4000 Ada Generation graphics cards suited for designers, engineers, and creative professionals. In my testing the past several weeks these professional graphics cards have been working out with NVIDIA's Linux driver stack -- including their open-source kernel modules now the default with the R555 driver series and later. While there is that previous article looking at how their open-source kernel drivers are at parity to the former proprietary kernel modules, today's article is looking at how the NVIDIA RTX 2000/4000 Ada Generation performance stacks up against the AMD Radeon Pro competition.

Red Hat engineer Jan Grulich has provided an update today on PipeWire camera handling with the upcoming Fedora 41 release.

GameMode as the open-source daemon from Feral Interactive to optimize Linux system performance on-demand when running games is out with its first release of 2024.

To date the Raspberry Pi 5 single board computer has been offered with either 4GB or 8GB of system memory. The Raspberry Pi 5 4GB has retailed for $60 USD while the Raspberry Pi 5 8GB at $80 USD. For those needing something a little cheaper and not needing as much system memory, the Raspberry Pi 5 2GB model launched today.

If you are picking up one of the new AMD Ryzen 9000 series desktop processors soon for Linux use, you may be wondering whether it's worthwhile or even necessary moving to the latest Linux kernel code compared to the likes of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS that are shipping a Linux 6.8 derived kernel. Here are some quick benchmarks in looking at that question.

AMD just announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement to acquire ZT Systems, a hyperscale solutions provider focused on AI.

The fourth weekly release candidate of Linux 6.11 is now available for testing.

Arch Linux powered CachyOS that is known for its performance optimizations and other enhancements is out with its "August 2024" rolling release update.

While Linus Torvalds was hoping to merge the sched_ext extensible scheduler for the Linux v6.11 kernel cycle, that didn't end up happening after some technical issues were raised on the kernel mailing list. Since then though the kernel developers have been collaborating and given the latest sched_ext patches with "for-next" and "for-6.12" markings, it's looking like the extensible scheduler will be attempted again for the Linux 6.12 merge window.

Ahead of the Linux 6.11-rc4 kernel release coming up later today, some more Bcachefs file-system patches were merged this weekend for this experimental copy-on-write file-system.