Vanilla OS 2 debuted on Sunday as a major release to this Linux distribution now built atop a Debian base for this distro that started out being an immutable and atomic version of Ubuntu. Vanilla OS 2 besides switching its packaging base has pulled in the GNOME 46 desktop, the Linux 6.9 kernel, and made a slew of other enhancements to polish its desktop experience while offering a great and secure platform.

While Linus Torvalds stated in mid-June that he intended to merge sched_ext for Linux 6.11 as the exciting extensible scheduler code, it didn't end up happening... The Linux 6.11-rc1 kernel was just released to close the Linux 6.11 merge window and the sched_ext code wasn't pulled.

The Linux 6.11 merge window is over with the Linux 6.11-rc1 release now out the door.

While the upcoming AMD Ryzen 9000 series desktop processors continue to make use of RDNA2 graphics, with the Ryzen AI 300 series shipping today in notebooks there are RDNA3.5 graphics being introduced alongside the Zen 5 CPU cores and upgraded Ryzen AI XDNA2 NPU. While just an evolution of RDNA3, the initial benchmarks of RDNA3.5 graphics with the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 are looking rather promising for both the raw graphics performance as well as the power efficiency. The Radeon 890M RDNA3.5 graphics are working on Linux when using a new enough software stack.

With the AMD Zen 5 generation, the timing is interesting where it's not the desktop processors launching first but happens to be in the form of AMD Ryzen AI 300 series laptops. With the last minute delay of the Ryzen 900 series by 1~2 weeks, the embargo lift for the Ryzen AI 300 series is timed for this Sunday morning where I can now present the first AMD Zen 5 Linux benchmark results. And with being the first Zen 5 chip in my lab, I have been pushing it hard... Here is an extensive look at the ASUS Zenbook S 16 I received with the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 current flagship SoC compared to a variety of other AMD and Intel laptop models. The focus was on both the raw performance and the package performance-per-Watt for the overall power efficiency of this Zen 5 SoC. And with it being the first Zen 5 hardware in the lab, I didn't limit the selection to just conventional laptop workloads but also explored the performance characteristics for various other workloads of interest to diverse Linux users and for an idea of the HX 370 potential or similar Zen 5 chips appearing in thin client / edge / IoT type devices. This initial taste of AMD Zen 5 has me extremely excited about the performance potential of the upcoming Ryzen 9000 series and EPYC Turin processors.

Merged back in 2021 for Linux 5.13 was Landlock as a means of unprivileged application sandboxing. The Landlock Linux security module has continued to be improved since but it turns out there's been a big hole within this security module since its introduction... The possibility for apps to drop restrictions on itself.

The mainline RISC-V Linux kernel port continues to become more featureful each kernel cycle... Last week for the start of the Linux 6.11 merge window there were new RISC-V ISA extensions wired up while in ending out the v6.11 merge window this weekend there is yet more enablement activity.

As part of the early Mesa 24.3 changes for this open-source 3D graphics driver stack coming out in Q4, a new "legacy-x11" build option has been introduced to its Meson build system.

OpenSUSE's Aeon is up to its third release candidate as what was formerly known as MicroOS Desktop GNOME for a container-based, immutable desktop operating system. With the Aeon RC3 release, full disk encryption is enabled by default as an exciting development.

Merged one year ago for Linux 6.6 was the EEVDF scheduler as a replacement to the CFS code and designed to provide a better scheduling policy for the kernel and being more robust. With a new set of patches for this "Earliest Eligible Virtual Deadline First" scheduling code, it's nearing the point of officially being completed.

Ahead of the Linux 6.11 merge window set to close tomorrow, Linux engineer Christian Brauner at Microsoft sent in a set of two VFS fixes. One of the fixes is more noteworthy that is for a five year old bug that could cause on-disk corruption, security issues, or a kernel crash.

While most Linux file-systems are rather robust in recovering when the system experiences a power loss, the UBIFS file-system is more prone to problems when a power-cut happens. With patches submitted for the Linux 6.11 merge window, UBIFS is seeing some hardening so it can better cope with the loss of power.

In addition to refining the KDE Human Interface Guidelines, KDE developers have been busy with a variety of other tasks this week in polishing their open-source desktop stack.

Merged today for Q4's Mesa 24.3 feature release is a brand new open-source Vulkan driver: Honeykrisp, the driver providing Vulkan API support for Apple Silicon GPUs as part of the Asahi Linux effort.

Following Linus Torvalds receiving an Ampere Altra Max workstation from Ampere Computing, he's been dabbling more with ARM64 now that it affords him more AArch64 compute power than his Apple Silicon powered MacBook. Torvalds kicked off the Linux 6.11 merge window by landing some of his own code to further enhance the ARM64 kernel and as we approach the end of the v6.11 merge window this weekend, he's merged some more ARM64 code.

With the recently introduced NVIDIA 555 Linux driver stable series their open-source GPU kernel driver modules are in great shape across consumer and professional graphics products. Over the past two years the support has evolved so much that NVIDIA is now promoting their open-source kernel driver usage and with the NVIDIA 560 Linux driver beta posted this week they are defaulting to using their open-source kernel driver modules in place of the proprietary option -- on the Turing and newer GPUs supported by the open-source code. Here is a fresh look at the impact.

LLVM 19.1-rc1 was released today as the first tagged development snapshot of LLVM 19 that is working its way toward the stable LLVM 19.1 version expected in September.

Richard Hughes of Red Hat just released Fwupd 1.9.22 as the newest version of this open-source solution for allowing system and peripheral firmware updates to be carried out quickly and easily from Linux systems.

With the Linux 6.11 kernel merge window wrapping up this weekend, I've begun "kicking the tires" on the new kernel that will then see the weekly release candidates over the next two months. For some initial Linux 6.10 vs. 6.11 Git benchmarking on an AMD Ryzen Threadripper workstation, the new kernel is appearing fit and offering some nice performance gains in a few areas.

For those striving for a quiet PC while having high-end specs, ASRock today announced passively-cooled Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards.