ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Linux 7.0-rc7 Released With Improved Docs For AI Agents, WiFi Driver Performance Fix

([Linux Kernel] 5 April 06:42 PM EDT Linux 7.0-rc7)

Timed for Easter this year is the seventh weekly release candidate for the Linux 7.0 kernel. If all goes well, Linux 7.0 stable will be out next week.



Linux 7.1 Expected To Begin Removing i486 CPU Support

([Linux Kernel] 5 April 12:56 PM EDT Linux 7.1)

It's finally time: a patch queued into one of the development branches ahead of the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window is set to finally begin the process of phasing out and ultimately removing Intel 486 CPU support from the Linux kernel. Anyone still using an i486 CPU with an upstream Linux kernel would be incredibly rare and no known Linux distribution vendors are still shipping with i486 CPU support, but in case you are, you can continue to be running one of the existing Linux LTS kernel versions.



AMD & Valve Deliver Better Kaveri / Kabini APU Experience With Upcoming Linux 7.1

([AMD] 5 April 09:31 AM EDT AMDGPU By Default)

A nice Easter surprise are some last minute updates submitted to DRM-Next of the final planned AMDGPU/AMDKFD feature changes for the upcoming Linux 7.1 feature cycle.



Linux 7.0-rc7 Adding More Documentation For AI Tools To Send Better Security Bug Reports

([AI] 5 April 07:34 AM EDT Security Reports)

For helping with the increase of AI tools scouring the Linux kernel source tree and sending security bug reports, a pull request sent today ahead of the Linux 7.0-rc7 improves the documentation to better guide AI agents -- and anyone reading the documentation -- how to send better quality bug reports.



hid-omg-detect: Linux Driver In Development To Detect Malicious HID Devices

([Hardware] 5 April 06:44 AM EDT hid-omg-detect)

Zubeyr Almaho has been leading work on a new HID driver named hid-omg-detect with an intent on passive monitoring to watch out for any malicious HID devices being connected to the system.



Linux Sees Fixes For Its GD-ROM Driver In 2026 For Sega Dreamcast

([Hardware] 5 April 06:34 AM EDT GD-ROM Sega Dreamcast Fix)

Seeing new Linux patches for benefiting Sega Dreamcast devices wasn't on my bingo card for 2026. A patch series was sent out today for fixing the Linux kernel's GD-ROM driver for accessing media using the drivers on "real" Sega Dreamcast devices.



Mesa 26.1 Makes It Easier To "Fake" A GPU Reset Using LLVMpipe

([Mesa] 5 April 06:23 AM EDT Fake GPU Resets)

As a small but interesting addition coming for this quarter's Mesa 26.1 release is making it easy to simulate a GPU reset with the LLVMpipe software driver. While seemingly mundane, this can be quite handy for compositor developers and other app/software developers wanting to more easily test how their code behaves when encountering a GPU reset.



Debian Is Figuring Out How Age Verification Laws Will Impact It

([Debian] 4 April 03:05 PM EDT Debian + Age Verification Laws)

With age verification/attestation laws down to the OS level enacted by California and being decided upon by other US states, it's been a hot topic of discussion in the open-source world. For the Debian project that is strictly volunteer/community-driven unlike various commercial Linux platforms, they are figuring out how such laws will impact them.



Razer Wolverine V3 Pro & Betop KP50 Controllers To Be Supported By Linux 7.0

([Hardware] 4 April 12:51 PM EDT New Input Devices)

Ahead of tomorrow's Linux 7.0-rc7 kernel release, this week's batch of input fixes were sent in and merged. Besides a few small input fixes are also some new device IDs and quirks for hardware now to be handled by Linux 7.0.



Linux 7.1 To Expose AMD Zen 6's AVX-512 BMM For Guest VMs

([Virtualization] 4 April 10:28 AM EDT Linux 7.1)

A small but important patch that looks like it will be merged for the upcoming Linux 7.1 kernel is for enumerating AVX-512 BMM support for KVM virtualized guests. AVX-512 BMM is one of the exciting ISA additions with next-gen AMD Zen 6 processors.



AWS Engineer Reports PostgreSQL Performance Halved By Linux 7.0, But A Fix May Not Be Easy

([Linux Kernel] 4 April 07:36 AM EDT 50% The Performance)

An Amazon/AWS engineer raised the alarms on Friday over the current Linux 7.0 development kernel leading to the throughput for the PostgreSQL database server being around half that of prior kernel versions. The culprit halving the PostgreSQL performance is known but a revert looks like it may not happen and currently suggesting that PostgreSQL may need to be adapted.



3mdeb Makes Progress Bringing AMD openSIL + Coreboot To Ryzen AM5 Motherboard

([AMD] 4 April 06:50 AM EDT MSI PRO B850-P)

In addition to 3mdeb firmware engineers porting AMD openSIL and Coreboot to a Gigabyte EPYC Turin server motherboard, the staff at this firmware consulting company are also porting AMD openSIL and Coreboot to a modern Ryzen AM5 desktop motherboard. They continue making good strides with that quest for the first readily-available Ryzen desktop motherboard with open-source system firmware.



2D CAD Design Tool For GNOME Desktop Lands More Features

([GNOME] 4 April 06:26 AM EDT Design For GNOME)

In the past few days was the release of FreeCAD 1.1 and SolveSpace 3.2 for open-source computer aided design (CAD) while now joining the party is Design 50 Alpha as a GNOME-aligned 2D CAD design tool.



KDE's KWin Continues Working On Vulkan Support, Other Improvements For Plasma 6.7

([KDE] 4 April 06:11 AM EDT Plasma 6.7 Features)

KDE Plasma developers continue working on new features for Plasma 6.7 while continuing to land more fixes and hardening for the current Plasma 6.6 stable series.



OpenRazer 3.12.1 Enables Two More Razer Devices Under Linux

([Hardware] 3 April 07:34 PM EDT OpenRazer 3.12.1)

OpenRazer 3.12 released in mid-March as the latest feature update to these open-source drivers for Razer hardware on Linux. Out today is OpenRazer 3.12.1 for enabling two more Razer products on Linux plus shipping a couple fixes.



Wine 11.6 Begins Reviving Its Android Driver

([WINE] 3 April 06:36 PM EDT Wine 11.6)

Wine 11.6 is out as the newest bi-weekly development release for this open-source software enabling Windows games and applications on Linux, macOS, and other platforms.



Redox OS Introducing New CPU Scheduler For ~1.5x Performance In Heavy Tasks

([Operating Systems] 3 April 02:57 PM EDT New CPU Scheduler)

The Rust-based Redox OS operating system is preparing to land a new CPU scheduler thanks to work being carried out by open-source developer Akshit Gaur on modernizing the platform's process scheduling subsystem.



Intel Linux NPU Driver 1.32 Adds Wildcat Lake Support

([Intel] 3 April 12:37 PM EDT Intel NPU Linux Driver 1.32)

Intel today released their Linux NPU Driver 1.32 as the user-space driver components that interacts with the upstream IVPU kernel accelerator driver for supporting the NPU hardware with Core Ultra processors.



CachyOS Delivers More Performance Out Of Intel Panther Lake

([Operating Systems] 3 April 11:00 AM EDT 28 Comments)

Most of my Intel Panther Lake benchmarking over the past two months for the new Core Ultra Series 3 hardware has been done with Ubuntu Linux given the pervasiveness of it, especially in the corporate/enterprise space. But for those looking at achieving even greater out-of-the-box Linux performance on Intel Panther Lake, the Arch Linux based CachyOS does a pretty fine job at further advancing the performance.



Gentoo Releases Experimental Images Using GNU/Hurd

([Operating Systems] 3 April 10:37 AM EDT Gentoo GNU/Hurd)

Following an April Fools' Day tease of Gentoo claiming they were going to switch to GNU Hurd as their primary kernel moving forward, they have now acknowledged the joke but in fact also announcing there are now experimental Gentoo GNU/Hurd images available.



More

World War Three can be averted by adherence to a strictly enforced dress code!