Ahead of the Linux 6.12 kernel release expected today there is a last minute "x86/urgent" pull request. Notable with this last minute x86 urgent fixes for Linux 6.12 -- and also to be back-ported to prior kernel versions -- is working around an issue with AMD Ryzen Zen 4 client processors such as the Ryzen 7000/8000 series processors when making use of virtualization that could lead to the host randomly being rebooted.

As part of the SLAB (SLUB) allocator updates pending for the upcoming Linux 6.13 cycle is a new "slab_strict_numa" option that is reported to further help ARM Linux performance such as for Ampere Computing servers.

Rust Coreutils 0.0.28 "uutils" has been released for this implementation of the GNU Coreutils utilities within the Rust programming language for better memory safety and greater robustness. With the Rust Coreutils 0.0.28 there is increased GNU compatibility as well as better performance.

Archinstall is the convenient text/CLI-based installer for Arch Linux that allows getting the Linux distribution easily installed in a matter of minutes. Released today is Archinstall 3.0 that overhauls the Arch Linux installer with now using the curses library for rendering of the text interface.

Bcachefs has now joined the party of various kernel components sending in preemptive pull requests ahead of the Linux 6.13 merge window that is expected to open following the expected Linux 6.12 release on Sunday.

Google software engineer Pasha Tatashin has proposed Page Detective as a new kernel debugging tool that is able to provide greater insight around the usage and mapping of physical memory pages.

Following the proposed patches this week to adjust the Linux kernel's module loader to treat the TUXEDO Computers drivers as proprietary due to being GPLv3 licensed rather than GPLv2 to jive with the rest of the upstream kernel code, some of the TUXEDO drivers have now been re-licensed.

Rustls 0.23.17 is out today as the newest version of this modern TLS library written in the Rust programming language and a great alternative to the likes of OpenSSL.

Alongside the VFS pull requests on Friday for case insensitive Tmpfs support and atomic writes for EXT4 and XFS, Christian Brauner also submitted a pull request for introducing some new file abstractions for the Rust programming language within the Linux kernel.

The GCC 15 compiler on Friday switched its default C language version from the GNU dialect of C17 to the current C23 standard.

While Plasma 6.3 feature development is continuing, KDE developers this week spent more time fixing bugs and polishing up existing code for ensuring a solid foundation to this open-source desktop.

In commemorating twenty years since the release of the highly acclaimed Half-Life 2 game, Valve today released the Half-Life 2 20th Anniversary update with various fixes and other refinements. Half-Life 2 is also being made free-to-own through November 18th for those that never experienced this legendary game.

Released last week was systemd 257-rc1 while succeeding that already is systemd 257-rc2 and it comes with a new tool: systemd-keyutil.

In addition to the EXT4 and XFS atomic write support, another interesting pull request sent in today by Microsoft's Christian Brauner is adding case-insensitive file/folder support for the Tmpfs file-system to benefit use-cases like Wine / Steam Play compatibility layers and sandboxing/container facilities like Flatpak.

Prominent Linux developer Christian Brauner with Microsoft has begun sending out various pull requests of VFS feature changes for the imminent Linux 6.13 merge window. One of the interesting early pull requests is the VFS untorn writes series with getting atomic writes support enabled for the EXT4 and XFS file-system.

While Linux 6.12 should be out this weekend with its many exciting features, following that will mark the start of the Linux 6.13 kernel cycle with what will be the first stable kernel release of 2025... Already there is a lot of exciting feature work expected to land during the Linux 6.13 merge window.

The GNOME Mutter compositor has switched its KMS thread priority from a real-time value over to high priority to workaround a situation where the GNOME Shell / Mutter could crash or see its process killed.

The Linux 6.12 kernel is expected to be released this coming Sunday, 17 November, barring any last minute issues that would force the stable kernel to be diverted to the following Sunday. Linux 6.12 is delivering many exciting new features and beyond that it's all the more exciting with it expected to be this year's Long-Term Support (LTS) kernel version.

Google engineer Saravana Kannan has posted a set of patches to better optimize async device suspend and resume handling within the Linux kernel. With these patches there are "significant improvements" to async device suspend/resume with testing being done on a Google Pixel 6 smartphone but other devices stand to benefit too.

AMD ZenDNN 5.0 was rolled out this morning as the newest version of this deep neural network library that is compatible with Intel's oneDNN APIs and infrastructure. ZenDNN 5.0 is now optimized for AMD Zen 5 processors such as the EPYC 9005 series. ZenDNN 5.0 also ships performance enhancements for generative large language models (LLMs) with its PyTorch plug-in.