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1825 Monetary Lane Suite #104 Carrollton, TX
Do a presentation at NTLUG.
What is the Linux Installation Project?
Real companies using Linux!
Not just for business anymore.
Providing ready to run platforms on Linux
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Show Descriptions... (Show All)
(Two Column)
- OpenShot 4.0 released
Version4.0 of the OpenShot video editor has been released.
OpenShot 4.0 has arrived, bringing some of the biggest creative workflowupgrades in our history. You can now record your screen, webcam, microphone, andsystem audio directly into a project. You can correct and grade footage withcolor wheels, curves, LUTs, and professional video scopes. You can also isolatesubjects with locally run machine learning models and create everything fromanimated audio visualizations to cinematic film looks.
See the releasenotes for a full list of changes.
- Netdev 0x1A videos and slides are now live
The Netdev 0x1A conference washeld in Rome, Italy from July 13 through July 16. Conference organizerJami Hadi Salim has let us know that the videos and slides for all sessions are nowavailable. Topics include Linux QUIC, shared memory socket transport, eBPF-basedDDoS protection, and more.
- [$] The rest of the 7.3 merge window
By the time Linus Torvalds released7.3-rc1 and closed the merge window for this release, 15,267 non-mergechangesets had been pulled into the mainline repository. That is thesecond-highest commit count for an -rc1 release in the kernel's history;only the 6.7-rc1 release, which included nearly 3,000 commits of bcachefshistory, had more. About 13,000 of those commits entered the mainlineafter the first 7.3 merge-window summarywas written so, needless to say, there are a lot of changes to cover.
- Security updates for Monday
Security updates have been issued by Debian (kernel, libarchive, libdbi-perl, libnet-dns-perl, librabbitmq, roundcube, starlette, and xrdp), Fedora (bluez, postgresql16-anonymizer, pyOpenSSL, python-cryptography, python-pynitrokey, and rust-h2), Gentoo (Chromium, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Freenet, and Tor), Mageia (golang and python-nltk), Red Hat (nodejs22, nodejs24, nodejs:22, and nodejs:24), SUSE (7zip, apptainer, broot, cadvisor, coredns, coturn, distribution-registry, gh, git-lfs, grafana, gzip, java-25-openjdk, libopenssl-3-devel, libsoup-3_0-0, mozjs102, OpenRGB, openssl-3, openvpn, podman, pyenv, python, python-PyPDF2, python310, python312, python313-Authlib, python36, rekor, rsync, rsyslog, tor, trivy, v2ray-core, vim, wget, and wicked), and Ubuntu (bzip2 and openjdk-26).
- Kernel prepatch 7.3-rc1
Linus has released 7.3-rc1 and closed themerge window for this release. "Nothing really stands out - except forthe fact that it's big. It's not the biggest rc1 we've ever had, but it'scertainly up there, at least in number of commits." He pulled 15,267commits during this merge window, making it the second busiest ever; only6.7 has exceeded it.
- Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"
The results of theDebian general-resolution vote on the useof large language models have been posted; the winner is choice 5:Responsible Use of Generative AI.
Debian neither endorses nor prohibits the use of generative AI tools in the development, maintenance, or documentation of software, packaging, documentation, and other media published within the Debian Project. We recognize that such tools can substantially improve the productivity of contributors when used responsibly, allowing volunteers to spend more of their limited time on work that requires technical expertise, judgment, review, and collaboration.
The Debian Project nevertheless expects that all contributions submitted to Debian, regardless of how and with which tools they were produced, satisfy the same standards of quality, correctness, maintainability, and legal compliance. The use of a generative AI tool does not diminish the contributor's responsibility for the work they submit. Contributors are expected to understand, review, test, and, where appropriate, modify AI-assisted output before incorporating it into Debian.
- Ryabitsev: Creepy crawlies
Konstantin Ryabitsev has written a blog post withhard numbers about the impact of AI crawlers on the Linux kernelrepositories at git.kernel.org:
Today, git.kernel.org receives about 6M daily requests demanding to seerandom commits. Of these, 66% are still immediately batted away with the Anubischallenge, but 33% are now solving the math and getting through to the main site— because apparently what we have to offer is worth spending a ton of cycles tocalculate the Anubis challenge.
It's impossible to tell with certainty which of these are bots and which arereal humans — but chances are, if it's asking for an old commit in a random oldfork, it's probably not a real developer trying to do their work.
With a bunch of generous assumptions, legitimate requests are only about 2%of git.kernel.org traffic — everything else are scrapers.
- Car: Dolphin 26.08 and KIO performance improvements
Méven Car has written a pair of interesting blog posts (part 1,part 2). Thefirst post is largely about some of the recent new features and performance workthat have gone into the Dolphin filemanager 26.08 release, as well as the KIO framework. The second looks atthe performance improvements and benchmarks for previous, current, and upcomingreleases.
Copying many small files is more than twice as fast as it was in April. Thegain falls off as files get larger, which is what you would expect: the fix isto the per-file overhead, and once each file carries a megabyte of actual I/Othe overhead stops being what you are waiting for.
There is still a gap with cp, discussed at length in theJuly post. KIO is doing more than cp does, but not five times more,and the batching work that closes most of the rest of that gap is still inprogress.
- [$] The "rnull" Rust block driver
Thenull blockdriver (null_blk)is a small driver that is mostly useful for benchmarking block-layerimplementations. It accepts all requests and marks them complete as quickly aspossible, doing as little work as possible. In June 2026, Andreas Hindborg shareda patch set implementing the same functionality in Rust, in order to showthat a simple block driver is now possible to write using the kernel'sRust APIs and to enable comparisons between the C and Rustimplementations.A minimal version of the "rnull" driver is already present in the mainlinekernel, but Hindborg's patch set brings it up to feature parity with the Cversion.
- Eight stable kernels with fix for a single vulnerability
Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 7.2.2, 7.1.12, 6.18.48, 6.12.107, 6.6.155, 6.1.186,5.15.219, and 5.10.268 stable kernels.
Each of these contains asingle fix for avulnerability (CVE-2026-80590)that allows marking IPv4 or IPv6 fragments as GSO,which can allow an unprivileged user to cause a kernel panic. This vulnerabilityhas been present since Linux 2.6.27. Users are advised to upgrade.
- Former Intel Engineer Who Was One Of The Clear Linux Architects Is Starting A New Distro
One of the former Intel engineers who was a Linux OS architect on their legendary Clear Linux distribution and before that also driving their Moblin and MeeGo Linux efforts is starting a new distribution project. This new initiative, named The Ur Project, is highly leveraging Rust and will rely on AI/LLMs in part and aims to incorporate some deisng improvements Clear Linux...
- California Lawmakers Greenlight Solar Panels You Can Plug Into the Wall
California lawmakers have passed a bill that would legalize plug-in "balcony" solar systems, allowing residents to connect small solar panels directly to a standard wall outlet after completing a simple online registration. The systems would be capped at 1,200 watts and must meet safety requirements designed to prevent power from feeding back onto the grid during outages. KQED reports: The legislation, SB 868, sailed through the state assembly and senate with bipartisan support. The bill now moves to the governor's desk for signature. The devices can be tented in a backyard, hung off a balcony or placed on a roof. Models range from as low as $300 to $2200, depending on size. The bill would open the solar market to people who were previously left out: renters, people with unsuitable roofs, and those lacking the capital to build out a rooftop system, which can cost in the tens of thousands of dollars. [...] If signed into law by Newsom, the legislation would exempt plug-in solar devices from what critics say is a cumbersome and expensive interconnection application process, and replace registration with a free and straightforward online form. [...] The newly passed bill outlines several device requirements. The balcony solar systems must be capped at generating 1,200 watts per home, plug into a standard outlet, offset a customer's onsite electricity use and meet state and national electrical codes. They also must be certified by an outside safety organization like Underwriters Laboratories and have a feature that would prevent electricity from feeding back into the grid if there's a power outage.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Electrically Charged Raindrops Can Corrode Cars and Buildings
Researchers have found that tiny electrical charges picked up by moving water droplets may be damaging cars and buildings like the Eiffel Tower. In experiments, thousands of charged droplets degraded Teflon and corroded the copper beneath it, while uncharged droplets caused no comparable damage. C&EN reports: For years, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have studied how water droplets from rain, dew, ocean waves, and melting snow become electrically charged. They say the process is like tribocharging, which causes static when we rub certain objects together, such as a balloon on our hair or a sweater on our skin. "Water drops spontaneously become electrically charged when moving on different surfaces, such as plant leaves, insect wings, building walls, window glass, and plastic. This process, known as contact or sliding electrification, is analogous to tribocharging between solids," says study coauthor Zhongyuan Ni, a PhD candidate at Max Planck. "Water drops getting charged is not a new phenomenon, but for the past 200 years, people have not paid attention to this," Ni says. In 2023, Ni and colleagues set out to determine whether electrically charged water droplets affect the surfaces they contact. To find out, the team poured water over four common surfaces -- a plant leaf; polyvinyl chloride foam board; polystyrene glass; and perfluoro octadecyltrichlorosilane (PFOTS), a commonly used water-repelling coating -- and let it drip onto sheets of Teflon-coated copper tilted at 50 degrees. When the experiments began, the team would allow only a few dozen drops to fall onto the copper before using electron microscopy to examine it. The researchers repeatedly failed to find any evidence of decay. But one day, Ni just let the drops keep falling. "After thousands of drops, it looked like the drops were pinning onto the surface," he says. After inspecting the copper under the microscope, Ni got his first glimpse of the destructive strength of electrically charged water drops. After repeating the experiment several times with thousands rather than dozens of drops, the researchers found that the electrified water drops not only broke down the Teflon coating but also corroded the underlying copper. Up close, the copper sheets looked like scraped-up skin. But when the experiment was conducted with nonelectrified drops, neither the copper nor its Teflon coating was any worse for wear. Even though the drops contained only around 0.2 to 2.0 nanocoulombs of charge -- around one billionth of a standard unit -- the impact of the charged drops was significant. "The finding is important because it suggests that the electrical state of a water droplet, not just its chemical composition, acidity, or mechanical impact, can influence how corrosion begins," says Guangwen Zhou, a professor of mechanical engineering at Binghamton University who was not involved in the study. "This perspective could open up new approaches to designing protective coatings and materials that are more resistant to corrosion in environments where charged water droplets are present."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Trump Tells FCC To Punish Journalist For Calling His Election Results 'Mixed'
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: President Trump yesterday demanded that the Federal Communications Commission punish or rebuke an NBC journalist for saying he has "mixed results" in his election endorsements. In the latest example of how Trump is using the FCC to harass reporters and news organizations that he dislikes, he said Meet the Press host Kristen Welker "will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment" for what he claimed was a "purposeful inaccuracy." "Kristen Welker, the Unpopular 'Hostess' of the once great Meet the Press, now considered Meet the Fake Press, just stated that Donald Trump has 'mixed results' on his Endorsements of Candidates, when the recent WINS of Darline Graham and Mike Mazzei, stand at 100% for the U.S. Senate, and 98% for the U.S. House, recently and over the longterm. How can anyone be allowed to say this, working for freely given Public Airwaves? Results are attached. Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. A separate post from Trump yesterday said, "THE FAKE POLLS USED BY OUR CROOKED MEDIA ARE OUT OF CONTROL, AND SOMETHING MUST BE DONE ABOUT IT. FCC TO THE RESCUE! President DJT." Trump also posted a rant on Friday about New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman, calling her "an unattractive person both inside and out" who "should be forced to turn over any and all money that she's made through her fake reporting on me." Trump referred to Haberman throughout his post as "Maggot Haberman." Trump's post about Welker included an image purporting to show he has near-perfect results in his endorsements this year. "The Press is a Disgrace to our Nation, and I hope that Chairman Brendan Carr, and the fine people of his Commission, will take this Threat to our Country very seriously," Trump wrote. Perhaps indicating that he will refer additional journalists for FCC punishment, Trump wrote that Welker "is not the only one. The Radical Left News is going out of their way to harass, demean, and libel anything 'TRUMP.'" The FCC website says the commission "cannot prevent the broadcast of any particular point of view," and that it "generally will not intervene" in complaints about "one-sided news reports" because "it would be inconsistent with the First Amendment to replace the journalistic judgment of licensees with our own." As noted by Ars, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has "made it clear he takes orders from Trump, abandoning his previous position -- which he held under Democratic presidents -- that the FCC must operate independently of White House interference." Carr could use the commission's regulatory authority over licensed broadcasters to open an investigation into Welker, potentially creating pressure on NBC and its affiliated stations through licensing proceedings or other FCC actions. The most likely vehicle would be the FCC's rarely enforced news distortion policy, which Carr has repeatedly revived to target coverage he considers misleading; historically, however, the policy required an unusually high evidentiary bar and was seldom enforced.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- FTC Sues Amazon, Accusing the E-Commerce Giant of Misleading Advertisers
The FTC and 22 state attorneys general are suing Amazon, accusing the company of secretly inflating advertising prices through undisclosed changes to its auction system that may have extracted more than $20 billion from advertisers since 2019. "Amazon has millions of advertising customers who were misled into paying significantly higher prices," FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said in a statement. "These higher costs were largely passed on to American consumers." CNBC reports: The complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, centers on Amazon's sponsored products ads, brands ads and display ads that run alongside search results on its sprawling webstore. Amazon has amassed the third-largest digital advertising business globally, trailing only Google and Meta. The company hauled in more than $68 billion in ads revenue last year, with the lion's share coming from sales of sponsored products ads. Third-party sellers who hawk their wares on Amazon's marketplace have recently criticized surging advertising costs on the site, including a string of recent policy changes, which led to some top merchants withholding their ad spend in a boycott. The company has traditionally used a "second-price" auction system, wherein it told advertisers they "only pay the least bid amount needed in order to win," the complaint states, citing Amazon's own marketing materials. The FTC alleges in its complaint that Amazon in 2019 changed its auction rules without notice by adding an undisclosed surcharge it referred to as a "soft reserve price," which led to higher ad prices. "Amazon made this surreptitious change to its auction because it was unhappy about how much revenue its advertising auctions were generating," the agency said in its complaint, which cites internal communications between Amazon ad executives. In one exchange, a company executive allegedly acknowledged it uses an "invented auction participant" to increase prices, the FTC said. The FTC and the states alleged Amazon's practices violate federal and state consumer protection laws, and they're seeking civil penalties, restitution and other unspecified damages. In a blog post, Amazon called the FTC's lawsuit "misguided" and said the complaint "fundamentally misunderstands how advertisers operate." The company added that the agency's lawsuit doesn't include evidence of consumer price increases. "We've provided advertisers with guidance about our auctions and pricing in the main tools they use to manage their campaigns, and we continue to update that guidance," the company said. "We look forward to making our case in court."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Apple Caught Off Guard by AI Demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio
According to The Information (paywalled), Apple reportedly moved up the release of new Mac mini and Mac Studio models after unexpectedly strong enterprise demand for Macs capable of running AI workloads. MacRumors reports: Apple normally releases new Mac models in the autumn, closer to October or November, making this week's announcement unusually early, falling just before the anticipated arrival of new iPhone models. The Information says that the AI-driven boom in Mac Studio and Mac mini sales is behind the early launch. Apple noticeably promoted the ability to link multiple Mac Studios together into a single, more capable system for running large frontier AI models, a feature aimed at business and developer customers rather than everyday consumers. Apple highlighted the Mac mini and Mac Studio's shift toward business buyers in June, with a "Business at the Park" event involving executives from major companies Ford, Disney, and Anthropic. The Mac mini was said to be the "darling" of the event. Even so, enterprise's rush toward powerful desktop Macs more broadly took Apple by surprise. The company reportedly did not possess an engineering team dedicated to business customers or staff focused on developer relations, and lacked an enterprise AI strategy. Businesses that approached Apple asking to buy access to the company's Private Cloud Compute infrastructure were reportedly turned down. Apple is instead leaning on partners such as WebAI and Mount Thor, which provide AI tools and execution environments built on Apple hardware.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Broadcom Pledges to Lock Down Open Source Python, Java Libraries
Broadcom is launching "TrueSource," an effort to curate and secure open-source components used with its Tanzu platform, including Spring, RabbitMQ, and libraries across Java, Python, and Node.js. "The idea is to provide a set of solutions focused on providing clean and secure artefacts," Purnima Padmanabhan, vice president of Broadcom's Tanzu Division, told The Register. "We choose and build every Spring library, databases, other Java components," she said. The Register reports: Padmanabhan said that promise means VMware will also provide "TrueSource trusted artifacts" for code that is not part of Spring, including the wider Java ecosystem, Python, and Node.js. "Broadcom's curation process ensures that the libraries conform to a reference architecture and are supportable by the maintainers of record," according to a company statement. "Thousands of engineers across Broadcom's software divisions scan, fix, contribute to, and consume them every day." A VMware spokesperson told The Register the Broadcom business unit "will work with and support maintainers on open source software and we will provide fixes to open source upstream for any active projects." "With Spring and RabbitMQ, we are the maintainers. For other open source software, we will work with the maintainers. We believe that the community maintainers must remain the source of truth," the spokesperson said. This is just the sort of contribution that the open-source community wants vendors to do to reflect the value they extract from software they did not create alone. It's also the sort of thing vendors sometimes conclude they need to do to keep products based on FOSS viable.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Kalshi Dishes Out Its First-Ever Lifetime Ban to George Santos
Kalshi has issued its first-ever lifetime ban to former U.S. Rep. George Santos after concluding he failed to fully cooperate with an insider-trading investigation. He is also being fined $71,356, according to a filing (PDF) on its website. Engadget reports: It was reported in June that Santos was under investigation from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) over insider trading. Prediction markets like Kalshi allow users to buy contracts or shares in the outcome of events. Participants don't necessarily have to wait for an event to resolve before selling these contracts and cashing in. Santos allegedly bought contracts on Kalshi indicating that he would not attend this year's State of the Union speech after weather disrupted his travel plans. According to the CFTC, Santos then sold those contracts for a profit after claiming on social media that he would be in attendance. The former congressman is said to have made more than $17,500 through this scheme, which Kalshi reportedly detected and flagged to authorities. In July, Santos agreed to pay over $35,000 to settle the CFTC's claims against him. The agency also issued him a three-year trading ban. Kalshi, however, doesn't plan to allow Santos back on its platform in 2029 (or anytime after that). The company confirmed to The Wall Street Journal this was the first time it had given anyone a lifetime ban and that it did so because Santos didn't fully cooperate with its investigation. He can appeal the decision to the CTFC.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Bank of England Chief Warns New AI Models Threaten Global Financial Stability
Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey is warning that advanced "frontier" AI models could materially increase cyber risk across the global financial system by making attacks faster, cheaper, and more scalable. In a letter to G20 finance officials, he said financial firms need stronger defenses and contingency plans for simultaneous disruptions. CNBC reports: Writing in his capacity as chair of the Financial Stability Board, an international body that coordinates policy and makes recommendations to national authorities, Bailey identified the potential impact of frontier AI -- which refers to the most advanced AI models -- on cyber risk as "the most immediate concern" for the financial system. "Frontier AI may have the ability materially to alter the speed, scale and economics of cyber risk, which could undermine market confidence system-wide, especially due to highly concentrated third-party service providers," Bailey said. "Recent developments have also highlighted to me that many jurisdictions do not have the protocols in place to manage the development, release, and deployment of advanced frontier AI models, heightening risks for the financial sector and beyond," he added. [...] Financial institutions and technology providers will need to improve vulnerability management, response and recovery capabilities -- "and prepare for more severe scenarios involving simultaneous disruption across multiple firms or shared technology dependencies," Bailey said. Alongside new AI models, Bailey cited "fragilities" in sovereign debt markets, the growing use of debt by investors in equity markets and stretched asset valuations, particularly AI-related investments, as among his concerns.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Tim Cook's Last Day As CEO of Apple
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Mac: Today is Tim Cook's last day as Apple CEO, with John Ternus set to take over tomorrow. To mark his last day in the role, Cook penned an emotional memo to Apple employees today. In the memo sent to employees this morning and obtained by 9to5Mac, Cook reflects on his time at Apple and thanks employees for all of their work. He also says he takes "enormous comfort in handing the helm to someone as brilliant and wonderful and capable" as John Ternus. "Few people understand what it takes to build products that change the world the way John does and I could not be more excited for his leadership," Cook writes. "There is something truly special about Apple," writes Cook. "I am most proud of what an annual report could never capture. This place is proof that culture triumphs over everything. We share a belief that what we build matters, and that we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to leave the world better than we found it. That purpose is part of what makes this place extraordinary. Apple helps nurture it, but I believe it lived within each of you long before you arrived here. It is what brought you to this company and what continues to drive the work you do every day." He continues: "Together, we have created something far greater than any one of us could have imagined or accomplished alone. And that's the secret to our success. We bring out the best in each other. We lift each other up. We have made it possible to leave our 'dent in the universe,' as Steve once described it, because of who we are and what we believe, because of what we value and how we see the world. How fortunate we are. How fortunate I am..." Cook also thanked the Apple community in a post on social media, writing: "Sending lots of love to the Apple community on my last day as CEO. My title changes tomorrow, but the love I have for the Apple community never will. Thank you for being a constant source of inspiration. My gratitude is endless, and I'm excited for the next chapter!"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- MapQuest's App Surges to No. 1 In Navigation After Refusing to Rename Lake Ontario
MapQuest's refusal to rename Lake Ontario as "Lake America" has sent its app surging up the charts, making it the No. 1 navigation app in the U.S. and driving "hundreds of thousands" of new downloads. In contrast, Google Maps announced on Saturday that it was complying with the Trump administration's name change. TechCrunch reports: The "OG of online mapping," as the company calls itself, announced on Thursday that it would not change the name of Lake Ontario on its maps to Lake America, despite Trump's executive order directing the U.S. Department of the Interior to update the lake's name in the U.S. geographic naming service. As a result, MapQuest's mobile app downloads soared, sending the iOS app to the No. 4 position on the U.S. App Store's Top Charts for apps (not including games) as of Monday morning on the U.S. east coast. MapQuest also reached the No. 8 position overall in the U.S. App Store across both apps and games, and it became the No. 1 Navigation app in the United States. In Canada's App Store, the app reached No. 2 overall as of Sunday evening. The 30-year-old company remarked that it received "hundreds of thousands" of new downloads since its decision to keep the name Lake Ontario in place, and saw its app's usage climb to 50 times above its normal levels. "We took the same approach we did with the Gulf of Mexico: be part of the conversation, and give people an app that keeps the names they're familiar with," said Doug Berger, general manager of MapQuest, in a statement. "Hundreds of thousands of people signaled to us this weekend that we got it right by downloading our app."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Security: Why Linux Is Better Than Windows Or Mac OS
Linux is a free and open source operating system that was released in 1991 developed and released by Linus Torvalds. Since its release it has reached a user base that is greatly widespread worldwide. Linux users swear by the reliability and freedom that this operating system offers, especially when compared to its counterparts, windows and [0]
- Essential Software That Are Not Available On Linux OS
An operating system is essentially the most important component in a computer. It manages the different hardware and software components of a computer in the most effective way. There are different types of operating system and everything comes with their own set of programs and software. You cannot expect a Linux program to have all [0]
- Things You Never Knew About Your Operating System
The advent of computers has brought about a revolution in our daily life. From computers that were so huge to fit in a room, we have come a very long way to desktops and even palmtops. These machines have become our virtual lockers, and a life without these network machines have become unimaginable. Sending mails, [0]
- How To Fully Optimize Your Operating System
Computers and systems are tricky and complicated. If you lack a thorough knowledge or even basic knowledge of computers, you will often find yourself in a bind. You must understand that something as complicated as a computer requires constant care and constant cleaning up of junk files. Unless you put in the time to configure [0]
- The Top Problems With Major Operating Systems
There is no such system which does not give you any problems. Even if the system and the operating system of your system is easy to understand, there will be some times when certain problems will arise. Most of these problems are easy to handle and easy to get rid of. But you must be [0]
- 8 Benefits Of Linux OS
Linux is a small and a fast-growing operating system. However, we can’t term it as software yet. As discussed in the article about what can a Linux OS do Linux is a kernel. Now, kernels are used for software and programs. These kernels are used by the computer and can be used with various third-party software [0]
- Things Linux OS Can Do That Other OS Cant
What Is Linux OS? Linux, similar to U-bix is an operating system which can be used for various computers, hand held devices, embedded devices, etc. The reason why Linux operated system is preferred by many, is because it is easy to use and re-use. Linux based operating system is technically not an Operating System. Operating [0]
- Packagekit Interview
Packagekit aims to make the management of applications in the Linux and GNU systems. The main objective to remove the pains it takes to create a system. Along with this in an interview, Richard Hughes, the developer of Packagekit said that he aims to make the Linux systems just as powerful as the Windows or [0]
- What’s New in Ubuntu?
What Is Ubuntu? Ubuntu is open source software. It is useful for Linux based computers. The software is marketed by the Canonical Ltd., Ubuntu community. Ubuntu was first released in late October in 2004. The Ubuntu program uses Java, Python, C, C++ and C# programming languages. What Is New? The version 17.04 is now available here [0]
- Ext3 Reiserfs Xfs In Windows With Regards To Colinux
The problem with Windows is that there are various limitations to the computer and there is only so much you can do with it. You can access the Ext3 Reiserfs Xfs by using the coLinux tool. Download the tool from the official site or from the sourceforge site. Edit the connection to “TAP Win32 Adapter [0]
- EasyEffects should be part of every Linux distribution and desktop environment to massively improve laptop speaker sound quality
Virtually all laptop speakers suck. Its the one area where even really expensive laptops tend to fall on their ass, leaving users with a tinny, harsh, and hollow sound experience. While you cant exactly overcome physics laptop speakers are necessarily small and thus just cannot ever sound as good as proper speakers theres a lot you can do with proper tuning and software magic. If youre a desktop Linux user, you actually already possess all the plumbing needed to fix your audio; its just not exposed to you in any way. Luckily, an application called EasyEffects allows you to actually make use of desktop Linux advanced audio features to massively improve the sound quality of your laptops speakers. EasyEffects own description on its GitHub page doesnt really explain what it does or what its capable of, so heres the description from Wikipedia instead. EasyEffects uses PipeWire to process incoming and outgoing audio streams independently and can apply various sound effects in the form of plug-ins made by different developer teams such as Calf Studio Gear, MDA.LV2 and GStreamer. All plugins have their own presets and can be applicable inside the suite rather than having to use a different mixer or executing a script from the command line. Available output effects are limiter, auto volume, compressor of dynamic range, filter, 30 bands parametric equalizer, bass enhancer, exciter, reverbation, crossfeed, delay, maximizer and spectrum analyzer. Available input effects are WebRTC, limiter, compressor, filter, equalizer, de-esser, reverbation, pitch shift and spectrum analyzer. ↫ EasEffects Wikipedia page None of this matters, and you can forget everything from these two paragraphs. What matters is that using EasyEffects, you can tune the audio coming out of your speakers to make them sound a lot better. The few laptops on the market that do have decent audio MacBooks, some Dell XPS laptops, and surely a few more arent magically defying physics. While they probably do have objectively higher-quality speakers, the main difference between those laptops and laptops with crappy-sounding speakers is that the former come with built-in tuning from the factory to make them sound much better than they would without any software trickery. If you know your way around audio, you can very much use EasyEffects and tune your laptop speakers from scratch to massively improve how they sound. However, that requires time, experience, knowledge, and expertise that most people lack, including myself. Lucky for us, though, there are countless downloadable presets out there for EasyEffects designed specifically to make laptops sound better. In an ideal world, youd pick a preset created specifically for your laptop make and model, but odds are you wont find one, so for most laptops youll have to settle for a generic preset that tries to do its best. Ive long settled on the Advanced Auto Gain.json preset from JackHack96, which greatly improves the audio performance on any laptops Ive tried it on, but of course, theres countless other presets for you to try to see if theres anything that suits your particular laptop and ears better. Getting all of this up and running is really easy. EasyEffects is most likely packaged by your Linux distribution, and the latest version is always available as a Flatpak from Flathub. Download the preset(s) you want to try, copy them either to ~/.config/easyeffects (if you use your distributions package) or to ~/.var/app/com.github.wwmm.easyeffects/data/easyeffects/output/ (if you use the Flatpak version). Theyll show up right away in the Presets tab in EasyEffects, ready to be turned on and off whenever you want, making it very easy to compare and contrast to find the one you like best. EasyEffects can live in your system tray giving you easy access to your presets without having to open the main window, and it can be set to start automatically at boot. EasyEffects can also be turned on and off on the fly. Theres obvious downsides to all of this, too, of course. First, since youre most likely going to be using a generic preset not specifically crafted for your laptop, theres no guarantee the results will be positive for you. Second, not every preset is ideal for every type of audio. Most of my audio consists of YouTube videos with mostly speech; if you listen mostly to music, different presets may yield better results. Third, audio quality is deeply subjective, and what sounds good to my ears may sound like total garbage to yours. Fourth, EasyEffects does take up a tiny fraction of CPU power (Im talking 0.1-0.2% according to KDEs System Monitor), but I have never seen it have any noticeable performance impact on anything. Even the generic preset I use makes such a massive difference for me on every laptop Ive ever tried it on, that Ive become convinced EasyEffects and a few of the generic presets should be installed by default by any desktop-oriented Linux distribution. On top of that, Linux laptops OEMs like System76, Nova Custom, Star Labs, and so on, should really take the time to create proper presets for their laptops to improve their sound quality out of the box. I feel like if youre already designing and selling laptops, you probably also have the skills and means to create a decent preset. In fact, Id take it a step further and urge desktop environments like KDE and GNOME to properly integrate EasyEffects into their sound settings. They shouldnt include the entire application and its user interface, but should make it so that you can configure and manage presets right from the sound settings panels, and switch between presets from their volume applets (as well as turn it off entirely, of course). This would leave the full EasyEffects application for people who need more control, manual tuning, and more advanced features. Theres absolutely no reason why speakers on Linux laptops should sound tinny, harsh, and hollow. The Linux desktop has all the technologies and features built right in to make speakers sound much better than they do without any tuning,
- IBM announces dual-ISA processor: ARM and IBM Z code running natively on the same cores
Built on a 2 nanometer technology node, the processor’s design will contain 11 high-performance cores operating at more than 5.7 GHz, AI inference accelerators for in-transaction fraud detection, a dedicated on-chip data processing unit for I/O acceleration, and a large cache architecture for demanding enterprise workloads. The chip is architected to not contain separate Arm and IBM cores: each processor core can natively execute Arm and IBM Z, or Arm and LinuxONE, instructions concurrently while prioritizing the platforms established performance, security, encryption, and availability characteristics. IBM Z and LinuxONE platforms are capable of scaling to hundreds of cores and tens of terabytes of memory. ↫ IBM press release IBM is still doing some amazing chip architecture design. ServeTheHome has more details of how this works: A key choice here is that IBM implemented AArch64 in full hardware rather than through translation. This design uses a little-endian Arm implementation alongside big-endian z/Architecture, with AArch64 v9.3, SVE and SVE2 support, and 2,792 implemented AArch64 instructions. IBM also claims Arm SystemReady compliance, which matters for how much off-the-shelf Arm software this core can absorb. This is absolutely crazy technology. Arm software sees a native Arm processor. Arm runs unmodified, out-of-the-box, and onto a standard Arm platform. IBM said the 2792 AArch64 instructions are more than twice the Z instructions. IBM made a funny quip about “reduced” in RISC. ↫ Patrick Kennedy at ServeTheHome This is bonkers technology. We can only dream of this ever serving a home.
- Haiku R1/beta6 released
Its always a special day on OSNews when Haiku has a new release. While OSNews was founded in 1997, it wasnt until 2001, when Eugenia took over and relaunched the site, that we really got going. Eugenia came from BeNews, a popular BeOS news website, which shut down in the wake of Be, Incs infamous focus shift! away from BeOS as a general purpose desktop operating system. BeOS continues to have a special place on OSNews ever since. Today marks the release of Haiku R1/beta6, the first official Haiku release in two years. As such, this new beta covers a monumental amount of progress since beta5, progress Ive reported on diligently. The highlights of this new beta include a port of Firefox (including branding) and many of its forks, much improve support for Qemu, a new memory allocated largely based on the one from OpenBSD, and improved support for various filesystems. Of course, theres a massive list of performance improvements, memory management changes, as well as a truly massive number of new application ports. Its important to note, as I usually do, that while these Haiku beta releases serve as patches of calm in rough seas, Haiku is generally stable and capable enough that using the projects nightly releases is usually a totally acceptable way of installing and running the operating system. If youre not comfortable running nightly releases, however, and havent tried Haiku since the previous beta, youre in for a massive overall improvement. Everybody loves Haiku.
- Genode OS Framework 26.08 released
Right on schedule as always theres a new Genode OS Framework release, version 26.08. The highlights of Genode 26.08 are VirtualBox 7, improved PC performance of our custom microkernel, the new ability to transparently reconfigure virtual file systems, revised timing and timeout handling, and a Linux 6.18.19 device-driver environment for ARM. Furthermore, the first version of a Goa-based SDK has become natively available for Sculpt OS. ↫ Release announcement on the Genode website The release announcement linked above is a mere quick overview; if you want all the possible details you could want, the release notes got you covered.
- An actively maintained and updated Motif fork actually exists
Motif is great, I love how it looks and feels, and I want it to be actively maintained. I want a healthy ecosystem of Motif applications and even window managers and desktop environments, so I can run a real Motif environment. Sadly, while Motif has been open source for a while, the project itself stalled years ago, with little to no activity from anyone involved. That may be changing, as a number of developers decided to take matters into their own hands last year. This fork of Motif was born of a desire to keep Motif (and other X11 technologies) alive and well. The original upstream Sourceforge project hasnt had any activity in over two years, none of the project admins have been active for at least that amount of time, the official bug tracker has disappeared into the void; and the user forum was closed way back in 2017. Sadly, it appears that the original upstream has abandoned the project. Ive incorporated some fixes from upstream that have laid dormant for years, a few others from Gentoo, and made a few improvements of my own. I intend to maintain this fork, and in doing so advocate for the continued use of the user interface toolkit that defined an era, and influenced many of the user interfaces that came after it. ↫ Tim Hentenaar at the Motif forks GitHub page Some of the people involved are people I know online, so I have a bit of faith in this fork being able to stand the test of time, but of course, managing a complex project like this is hard, so who knows how long the enthusiasm remains. Still, this fork has seen five releases since its inception a little over a year ago, which seems promising. It may seem weird for some to have a love for Motif, but Im the kind of person who installs weird, outdated corporate and industrial software I dont understand on my HP c8000 dual PA-RISC workstation running HP-UX just to enjoy the Motif interfaces they sometimes ship. We all have our quirks. From my experiences talking to people online, I know theres actually a rather solid number of people like me, and I hope that at some point the developers in this group can gain enough critical mass to build something like a basic Linux distribution or desktop environment using the disparate, actively-maintained Motif projects out there that yes, still exist. Its a long shot, but in todays computing landscape, where more and more people feel uncomfortable with modern! software, I really feel like theres a niche for something like this to exist. A really small niche, surely, but a niche all the same.
- AROS gets official Raspberry Pi images
AROS, the open source Amiga OS-compatible operating system, now has images available for the Raspberry Pi 3 (although some people state it also works on the Pi 4), in both 32bit and 64bit versions. According to the AROS team, they are quite stable, but not yet complete, so do know what youre getting into. Dan Wood posted a YouTube video about these new images, providing much more insight into how well they work if you want more insight into how well they work. The images are, of course, the basic AROS operating system, so expect a rather barebones experience. If youre used to some of the AROS distributions for x86, which come loaded with software and customisations, these images will feel quite bare to you. Its going to take some time to port over all of these applications and customisations to the ARM version of AROS, but if and once that happens, I expect more complete images to appear as well. Great news for AROS and the Amiga community in general.
- Japan tried to build an operating system for the entire world: TRON
Ah, Japans TRON project every few years someone discovers it anew and it bubbles back up the surface, and deservedly so, as its an incredibly interesting operating system project that, like so many others, deserved a better fate. Theres a version of computing history where the desktop OS that won wasnt Windows. Not because the alternative was Unix-based or because Apple pulled off something different, but because an operating system designed at the University of Tokyo in 1984 was ambitious enough to try to replace the file system with a hypermedia document model, run on a custom Japanese CPU architecture, and encode 1.5 million characters, only to have a US trade report single it out as an unfair trade barrier in 1989. That project was TRON (The Real-time Operating system Nucleus), a real, government-backed Japanese computing initiative whose desktop variant, BTRON, was named in a US trade barrier report and effectively killed before it could reach schools nationwide. Meanwhile, its embedded counterpart, ITRON, quietly became one of the most deployed operating systems in history. TRONs history has since attracted some genuinely wild conspiracy theories, including one claiming that Japan Airlines Flight 123 was deliberately crashed in order to target the TRON developers on board, despite there being no evidence that any TRON developers were even on the flight. But the strangest part of the story isnt even a conspiracy theory: BTRONs hypermedia desktop was decades ahead of what the market could support, and SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son may have helped sink it from the inside. ↫ Adam Conway at XDA The most interesting part of TRON for me was the different ways it treated files and documents compared to other operating systems. Instead of focusing on applications and files as the core interaction points for users, it focused on the document. While most operating systems associate specific files with specific applications, TRON associated individual components of documents with individual handlers. If you want to edit a Word document today, you open Word and do all your editing work inside Word, whether youre editing blocks of text or an image, or you open entirely different applications when Words capabilities for a certain component in a document are too limited. In TRON, youd open a document, and only once you wanted to edit specific components did it open! an application! to perform the editing, without actually leaving the document in question. Want to edit an image inside your document? In most operating systems, youd have to open a separate image editor, load the relevant image file into it, make your edits, save the image file, and then paste said edited image file back into your document. Theres a considerable amount of overhead here that shouldnt really exist; a computer is more than smart enough to open up just the editing controls from a different application if need be. In our current paradigm, applications often solve! this by adding ever more features and controls and tools to cover every possible object or component you might have to deal with, but that just makes applications more complex, more bloated, and more difficult to use. TRONs approach has been tried in a variety of times and places, but it never caught on. My personal pet theory is that the application-first model is far better at wealth extraction and concentration than TRONs model, and as such, thats what we ended up with. If a users document and all of its constituent parts are tied to and wrapped up into a single application from a single vendor, its much easier to control said user and extract wealth from them than when that user can just pick and choose whatever handler they want to use for whatever object they happen to run into in a document, without having to open tons of different applications and move, copy, and paste stuff all the time. In fact, this is also why consistency in user interface design is now all but dead; application developers and vendors use their own weird, non-standard, custom user interfaces for branding purposes. Sticking to a platforms standards and conventions makes it harder to stand out and put your brand! in peoples faces. But I digress. Regardless, Im not sure if all the stories about the US trying to bury TRON have any real value to them, as even the article itself notes (undoing its own clickbaity headline) that the project already seemed to be in dire straights even before it got a buried mention in some trade document. On top of that, ITRON, the embedded TRON variant, survived and thrives to this very day, powering untold numbers of devices. It seems to have done quite well for itself, supposed US government intervention or no. This article by Steven J. Searle also takes a look at the workstation-focused variant of TRON.
- Reverse-engineering Apples Find My people
So that is the whole pipeline exercised end-to-end. GrandSlam authenticates the Apple Account and obtains the IDS delegate. authenticateDS and id-register turn the Linux process into a registered Apple messaging identity. The Friends sequence attaches that identity to the existing accepted relationship. A missing-key SubscribeAndFetch makes the sharing device deliver its current P-224 key over APNs/IDS, inside a sender-verified P-256 NGM envelope. A second SearchParty fetch returns the encrypted report, and the P-224 key opens it locally. So yeah, in one sentence: authenticate to Apple’s private services, register the Linux machine as an IDS client, receive the existing Find My share key, and use it to fetch and decrypt a consented friend’s latest location. ↫ Zerotistic I wonder if it would be possible to build a proper third-party client for Apples Find My network like this, or if it would be trivial for the company to block it. Im fairly sure quite a few people would love to be able to keep using Find My when moving away from Apples operating systems.
- Windows news sites are reviewing context menus and its perversely delightful
When I wrote about using Windows 11 for a month as part of the ongoing OSNews fundraiser (keep donating to get me to do the same for macOS!), one of the things I mentioned was that the modern desktop context menu has its own classic Win32 context menu!. This is, in fact, a long-standing complaint Ive repeatedly used as the perfect example of just how chaotic and low-quality Windows has become. Thankfully, and naturally I fully attribute this to my repeated complaints (*), Microsoft has been working on a brand new, faster, configurable context menu, and Neowin actually reviewed it. If you ask me, this revamped context menu addresses just about the biggest problem users had with the one in Windows 11, and that is the need to click through more buttons than necessary to do simple things like renaming a file or opening its properties. That problem is now basically gone. I have no issues with the new design. It looks modern, it feels more consistent with the rest of Windows, and even though all the new sections can still make it look a little busy, you now have the option to make it as simple or as button-packed as you want. That should cover most use cases and preferences well. I’d even say that when the new context menu becomes available to everyone, my guide on how to bring back the classic context menu might become obsolete. ↫ Ivan Jenic at Neowin The biggest reason Im linking to this is not because I care about whatever monster of a context menu Windows users are having to deal with. No, Im only linking to this because I never in my life imagined Id be linking to a review of a context menu. I mean, at least its not the chess application icon. That would be embarrassing. I get a perverse sense of joy out of this.
- The road to MS-DOS 2
A great and concise history of the run-up to MS-DOS 2.0. Yet, there was a nagging feeling that a single-tasking CP/M clone was inadequate for the new generation of personal computers. Digital Research released multi-user, multitasking MP/M-86 in September 1981 and announced the single‑user multitasking Concurrent CP/M in early 1982. In response, Microsoft came up with a plan for tiered approach to its operating systems: single-user/single-tasking MS-DOS at the bottom; multi-user/multitasking XENIX at the top; and in the middle, something called XEDOS: a single-user version of XENIX. This “pyramid of upward-compatible operating systems” was announced in a Byte Magazine editorial in January 1982. ↫ Nemanja Trifunovic Ive always found this tiered approach fascinating, and the world surely wouldve looked quite different had Microsoft been able to make it work. I doubt Windows NT would ever have existed, and most of the world would probably be running a XENIX-based Windows today (all else being equal, which is of course unlikely and silly). Regardless, MS-DOS 2.0 contained a few UNIX-like utilities to deal with its brand new support for directory trees and other new features, and even had a /dev directory.
- The New Way Security Teams Evaluate Pentesting Vendors
by George Whittaker
Why security buyers are rethinking what matters most.
Security teams typically don’t struggle to find vulnerabilities as much as they have in the past. The harder part usually begins after the report arrives, once dozens of findings land in front of engineering teams already juggling patch schedules, production deadlines, and internal disagreements about urgency. Platforms like Go to Full Article
- New Linux “Steal Governor” Targets CPU Contention in Overcommitted Virtual Machines
by George Whittaker
Linux kernel developers are considering a new “steal governor” designed to improve performance when multiple virtual machines compete for limited physical CPU resources. The proposal uses the amount of CPU steal time observed inside a guest to dynamically reduce or expand the number of virtual CPUs on which that VM prefers to schedule work.
The feature is primarily aimed at heavily virtualized servers where administrators deliberately assign more virtual CPUs than the host can physically execute at once. Under heavy load, that overcommitment can lead to frequent vCPU preemption, lock-holder delays, cache disruption, and ultimately lower overall throughput.
The latest v11 patch series was posted on August 25, 2026, and its developer has proposed consideration during the Linux 7.3 development cycle, potentially targeting Linux 7.4 for inclusion. This means the feature is still under review and is not part of a stable Linux kernel yet.
What Is CPU Steal Time?
CPU steal time is a concept specific to virtualization.
Imagine a virtual machine has eight vCPUs. From inside that VM, the operating system behaves as though those eight CPUs are available. But those virtual CPUs ultimately need to run on the host's physical processors.
If several VMs are competing for the same physical CPU resources, the hypervisor may temporarily prevent one VM's vCPU from running so another VM can use the processor.
The time during which the guest wanted to execute but couldn't because the hypervisor was using the underlying CPU elsewhere is known as steal time.
High steal time is therefore a useful indication that the physical host is experiencing CPU contention.
The “Noisy Neighbor” Problem
The steal governor is designed primarily to address what virtualization engineers commonly call the noisy neighbor problem.
Consider a server hosting several VMs:
VM A has 32 vCPUs. VM B has 32 vCPUs. VM C has 32 vCPUs. The physical server has only 64 CPU threads available to those workloads.
That configuration can work perfectly well when the VMs aren't simultaneously busy.
If all three suddenly become heavily loaded, however, they may collectively request more CPU time than the physical machine can provide.
The hypervisor then has to constantly switch between vCPUs.
Those interruptions can become particularly expensive if a vCPU is preempted while holding a lock or executing another latency-sensitive section of code. Other threads may then wait for a vCPU that isn't currently being allowed to run.
The result can be counterintuitive: giving the VMs more virtual CPUs can sometimes make the combined workloads slower.
Go to Full Article
- Thunderbird 154 Released with System Tray Mode, Microsoft Graph Support, and Major Mail Fixes
by George Whittaker
The Thunderbird team has officially released Thunderbird 154, delivering several useful new features alongside a substantial collection of fixes for email, calendars, address books, authentication, and stability. Released on August 18, 2026, Thunderbird 154 is now the latest monthly release of the popular open-source email client.
For Linux users, one of the most interesting additions is a new optional system tray mode, while Microsoft 365 users gain Microsoft Graph support. The release also improves global search, attachment handling, IMAP reliability, Exchange authentication, and CalDAV synchronization.
New Optional System Tray Mode
One of Thunderbird 154's most welcome additions is an optional system tray mode.
When enabled, closing Thunderbird's last window no longer needs to completely terminate the application. Instead, Thunderbird can remain running in the background through the system tray.
This can be particularly useful for users who want Thunderbird available throughout the day without keeping its main window open.
For Linux desktop users, the feature could make Thunderbird feel more like a traditional background email client, especially on desktops where tray-based applications remain part of the normal workflow.
Microsoft Graph Enabled for Microsoft 365
Thunderbird 154 also enables Microsoft Graph for Microsoft 365.
Microsoft Graph is Microsoft's API platform for accessing Microsoft 365 services and data. Its integration is particularly important as Thunderbird continues improving its support for Exchange and Microsoft-hosted email environments.
Thunderbird has been steadily expanding its Microsoft ecosystem compatibility, making the open-source client increasingly practical for users who need to access workplace Microsoft 365 accounts from Linux.
Global Search Gets a Useful New Option
Thunderbird's global search functionality also receives an improvement.
Users can now configure global search results to open in list view by default, providing another option for people who prefer a more traditional message-list workflow when reviewing search results.
It's a relatively small addition, but one that can make repeated searches more convenient for users managing large mailboxes.
Better Attachment Management
Thunderbird 154 introduces several improvements for handling email attachments.
A new "Copy To" folder context menu has been added for message/rfc822 attachments, and these attached messages can now be dragged directly into Thunderbird's folder tree.
These changes should make it easier to organize attached email messages without having to use additional steps or workarounds.
Go to Full Article
- Linux Kernel 7.2 Officially Released with Cache-Aware Scheduling, USB4STREAM, and Major AMD Improvements
by George Whittaker
Linux creator Linus Torvalds has officially released Linux Kernel 7.2, opening another chapter in the development of the world's most widely deployed open-source kernel. The final release arrived on August 16, 2026, following seven release candidates and roughly two months of development. Kernel.org now lists Linux 7.2 as the latest mainline release.
Linux 7.2 is a substantial update with improvements spanning CPU scheduling, storage performance, AMD and Intel hardware support, graphics, networking, virtualization, RISC-V, and Apple Silicon. Among its biggest additions are Cache-Aware Scheduling, USB4STREAM, AMD ISP4 support, and initial AMDGPU HDMI 2.1 FRL functionality.
Cache-Aware Scheduling Lands in Linux
One of the most interesting performance additions in Linux 7.2 is Cache-Aware Scheduling (CAS).
Modern processors frequently contain multiple last-level caches shared between groups of CPU cores. Traditional scheduling decisions don't always account optimally for those cache relationships, potentially moving tasks between cores in ways that increase cache misses.
Cache-Aware Scheduling gives the Linux scheduler additional information about cache topology so it can make smarter decisions about where workloads should run.
Early testing during development produced particularly impressive results for some server workloads, including major gains in certain MySQL configurations. The improvement varies significantly by hardware and workload, so users shouldn't expect similarly dramatic gains everywhere.
For modern AMD and Intel systems with increasingly complex CPU topologies, however, CAS provides another tool for extracting better performance from existing hardware.
USB4STREAM Enables High-Speed Connections Between Computers
Linux 7.2 also introduces USB4STREAM, an interesting new capability for transferring data directly between computers over USB4 or Thunderbolt connections.
Rather than treating USB primarily as a traditional host-to-device interface, USB4STREAM can facilitate high-speed communication between systems.
Potential applications include:
Large file transfers Development environments High-speed system-to-system networking Debugging Specialized workstation workflows
With USB4 and Thunderbolt increasingly common on laptops and desktops, this could eventually become a useful option for moving large amounts of data between Linux machines.
AMD ISP4 Finally Reaches the Mainline Kernel
AMD users receive another important addition with the arrival of the AMD ISP4 driver.
ISP stands for Image Signal Processor, hardware responsible for processing camera data before it reaches applications.
Go to Full Article
- Linux 7.2 Reverts DRM Scheduler Change After Serious GPU Regressions
by George Whittaker
Linux kernel developers made a significant last-minute graphics change for Linux 7.2, reverting the DRM GPU scheduler back to its previous FIFO policy by default after the newer fair scheduling implementation caused serious performance regressions. The revert was submitted just before the final Linux 7.2 release after users reported severe slowdowns and desktop freezes under sustained GPU workloads.
The decision demonstrates the kernel community’s conservative approach to regressions: when a new feature causes problems this late in a development cycle, restoring known-good behavior can be safer than rushing an incomplete fix.
What Changed in Linux 7.2?
Earlier in the Linux 7.2 development cycle, the DRM subsystem switched its default GPU scheduling policy to a new fair scheduler.
The goal was to distribute GPU execution time more fairly between competing workloads. Instead of relying on the established FIFO scheduling behavior, the new implementation uses a fairness-oriented approach designed to prevent one workload from dominating GPU resources.
However, real-world testing exposed problems that had not appeared during earlier development.
The final DRM fixes for Linux 7.2 therefore:
Revert the fair scheduler changes Restore FIFO as the default Restore selectable scheduling policies Mark the fair scheduling policy as experimental
DRM maintainer Dave Airlie acknowledged that developers may have moved too aggressively when switching to the new scheduler.
AMD Radeon Gaming Exposed the Regression
The problem became particularly noticeable during gaming on an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT.
A regression report described severe performance degradation when the GPU remained close to 100% utilization. A game running through Proton could drop to roughly 10 FPS or freeze, while audio continued playing normally.
The problem could become severe enough that the entire KDE Plasma Wayland session stopped responding, sometimes requiring the compositor to be killed or the computer to be rebooted.
Interestingly, reducing GPU load—such as by opening an in-game menu or switching away from the game—could immediately stop the stuttering.
FIFO Worked, FAIR Did Not
Testing provided strong evidence that the new scheduling policy was responsible.
The reporter compared Linux 7.2 release candidates using FAIR against configurations using the previous FIFO policy. Under otherwise similar conditions:
FAIR: reproduced the performance problem.
FIFO: survived extended stress testing without the regression.
Linux 7.1.x also behaved normally.
Go to Full Article
- Intel’s Linux Vulkan Driver Adds AV1 Video Encoding for Arc Alchemist GPUs
by George Whittaker
Intel’s open-source Linux graphics stack has taken another step forward with hardware-accelerated AV1 encoding through Vulkan Video. New code merged for Mesa’s ANV Vulkan driver enables the VK_KHR_video_encode_av1 extension on Intel’s DG2/Alchemist graphics hardware, including Arc A-Series GPUs.
The development expands Intel’s Vulkan Video capabilities on Linux and gives applications another standardized way to access the dedicated video encoding hardware found in modern Intel GPUs.
AV1 Encoding Arrives in Intel ANV
The key change is support for the Vulkan extension VK_KHR_video_encode_av1 in Mesa’s open-source Intel ANV driver.
The extension was finalized by the Khronos Group in 2024 and provides a standardized Vulkan interface for hardware-accelerated AV1 encoding. It complements Vulkan Video’s existing AV1 decoding support and means Vulkan can provide both encoding and decoding interfaces for AV1, H.264, and H.265.
Intel had previously stated that its Arc graphics products would support Vulkan Video AV1 encoding through a future software update.
Initially Targeting Intel Arc Alchemist
The newly enabled Linux support specifically targets DG2, better known commercially as Intel’s Arc Alchemist GPU generation.
These GPUs already contain dedicated hardware capable of AV1 encoding, so the Mesa update does not add AV1 capability through software. Instead, it provides Vulkan applications with another way to access the GPU’s existing hardware video engine.
That distinction is important because hardware encoding can deliver much better performance and efficiency than encoding AV1 entirely on the CPU.
Why AV1 Matters
AV1 has become increasingly important for streaming, screen recording, video conferencing, and online video distribution.
The codec can provide high image quality at relatively low bitrates, making it attractive for applications where bandwidth and storage efficiency matter. It is also royalty-free, which has helped encourage adoption throughout the open-source ecosystem.
Hardware AV1 encoding can be particularly useful for:
Game streaming
Desktop recording
Live broadcasting
Video conferencing
Video transcoding
Content creation
For Linux users with supported Intel Arc hardware, Vulkan Video now has the potential to provide a common API for these workloads.
Building on H.264 and H.265 Support
The AV1 work follows recent improvements to Intel’s Vulkan Video encoding support for other codecs.
Go to Full Article
- New AMD P-State Patch Delivers Major Linux Gaming Performance Boost
by George Whittaker
A newly proposed patch for the Linux kernel's AMD P-State CPU frequency scaling driver is showing impressive gaming performance improvements, potentially delivering a noticeable boost for Ryzen users without requiring new hardware. Early benchmarks indicate that the optimization can significantly improve frame rates in CPU-bound games by allowing processors to respond more quickly to changing workloads. (phoronix.com)
Although the patch has not yet been merged into the mainline Linux kernel, the initial results have generated considerable excitement among Linux gamers and kernel developers alike.
What Is AMD P-State?
AMD P-State is the modern CPU frequency scaling driver for AMD Ryzen processors on Linux. Rather than relying on the older ACPI CPUFreq driver, AMD P-State communicates directly with the processor to adjust clock speeds based on workload demands.
Its goals include:
Faster frequency scaling Improved power efficiency Better responsiveness Higher performance during demanding workloads Lower power consumption when the system is idle
Most modern Linux distributions already support AMD P-State on compatible Ryzen processors. (kernel.org)
A Focus on Gaming Performance
The new patch specifically targets how quickly AMD P-State responds when a game suddenly demands additional CPU performance.
Many games rapidly alternate between light and heavy CPU workloads. If the processor takes too long to increase its clock speed, short performance dips can occur.
The proposed optimization reduces that delay, allowing the CPU to boost more aggressively when needed and helping maintain smoother gameplay. (phoronix.com)
Promising Benchmark Results
According to early testing, the patch delivers meaningful improvements across several Linux gaming workloads.
Reported benefits include:
Higher average frame rates Better 1% low FPS performance Faster CPU frequency response Improved responsiveness during gameplay More consistent frame delivery
The biggest gains appear in CPU-limited games where processor performance has a greater impact than GPU performance. Systems that are already GPU-bound may see smaller improvements. (phoronix.com)
Designed for Modern Ryzen CPUs
The patch targets systems using the AMD P-State driver, which supports many recent Ryzen processors.
Compatible platforms generally include:
Go to Full Article
- Linux Kernel Begins Phasing Out the crypto_rng Layer to Simplify Random Number Generation
by George Whittaker
Linux kernel developers are moving forward with plans to remove the crypto_rng API layer, a long-standing component of the kernel's cryptographic subsystem. The proposed change is part of a broader effort to simplify the kernel's internal architecture by eliminating redundant code paths and encouraging developers to rely on the kernel's modern random number generation interfaces instead. (phoronix.com)
Although the change happens entirely behind the scenes, it reflects the Linux kernel community's ongoing commitment to reducing technical debt, improving maintainability, and modernizing core infrastructure.
What Is the crypto_rng Layer?
The crypto_rng framework is an API within the Linux kernel's Crypto API that provides random number generation services for kernel components.
Historically, it allowed different kernel subsystems and drivers to request random data through a generic cryptographic interface. Over time, however, the kernel's dedicated random number generator has matured considerably, making much of the crypto_rng abstraction unnecessary. (kernel.org)
Today, developers generally recommend using the kernel's built-in random number generation functions directly instead of routing requests through the older crypto layer.
Why Developers Want to Remove It
According to discussions on the Linux kernel mailing list, the crypto_rng layer has become largely redundant.
Modern kernel code already relies on well-established interfaces such as:
get_random_bytes() get_random_u32() get_random_u64()
These functions are maintained as part of the kernel's primary random number generation subsystem and are widely used throughout Linux. Maintaining an additional abstraction layer increases code complexity without providing significant practical benefits. (phoronix.com)
Removing unnecessary infrastructure also makes the kernel easier to maintain and audit over the long term.
Simplifying the Crypto API
The Linux Crypto API has evolved significantly over the years as new algorithms, hardware accelerators, and security features have been introduced.
Kernel maintainers have increasingly focused on:
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- GNU Binutils 2.47 Released with New RISC-V Features, Linker Improvements, and Reproducible Builds
by George Whittaker
The GNU Project has officially released GNU Binutils 2.47, the latest version of its essential collection of binary development tools for Linux and other Unix-like systems. The release delivers numerous bug fixes alongside new assembler, linker, and disassembler capabilities, expanded RISC-V support, reproducible source archives, and continued modernization of the GNU toolchain.
Used by developers worldwide, GNU Binutils forms a core part of the software development ecosystem, providing the low-level tools needed to assemble, link, inspect, and manipulate executable programs and object files.
What Is GNU Binutils?
GNU Binutils is a collection of command-line utilities that work closely with compilers such as GCC and Clang. While a compiler translates source code into object files, Binutils provides the tools needed to transform those object files into executable programs and libraries.
The package includes well-known utilities such as:
ld (GNU Linker) as (GNU Assembler) objdump objcopy readelf nm strip ar strings
Together, these tools are used daily by Linux distributions, embedded developers, operating system projects, and software engineers building applications in C, C++, Rust, Go, and many other languages.
Expanded Support for RISC-V
One of the biggest improvements in Binutils 2.47 is expanded support for the rapidly growing RISC-V architecture.
The release adds support for several additional standard RISC-V extensions, allowing developers targeting modern RISC-V processors to work with newer instruction sets and hardware capabilities. These additions continue the GNU toolchain's strong commitment to one of the fastest-growing open processor architectures.
As more Linux distributions, development boards, and enterprise hardware adopt RISC-V, keeping development tools current is becoming increasingly important.
New Assembler Options
GNU Assembler (gas) gains several useful enhancements in version 2.47.
Among the most notable is a new command-line option:
--reloc-section-sym=[all|internal|none]
This option gives developers finer control over how relocations referencing locally bound symbols are converted to section symbols, improving flexibility for certain assembly and linking workflows.
The release also introduces numerous assembler improvements across multiple CPU architectures.
Better Disassembly for AArch64
Developers working with Arm-based systems also benefit from new functionality.
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- GOG Officially Expands Linux Support with Native Galaxy Client in Development
by George Whittaker
After years of requests from the Linux gaming community, GOG has officially confirmed that it is developing native Linux support for the GOG Galaxy launcher. The announcement marks one of the biggest shifts in the company's history and signals a stronger commitment to Linux as a first-class gaming platform. While GOG has offered DRM-free Linux game downloads since 2014, its Galaxy launcher has remained exclusive to Windows and macOS—until now.
Although the company has not announced a release date, GOG says Linux has become a major area of investment, with development already underway.
A Long-Requested Feature Finally Becomes Reality
Native GOG Galaxy support has consistently ranked among the most requested features from Linux users. Until now, players who wanted to use Galaxy's library management, cloud saves, achievements, and automatic updates had to rely on compatibility layers or community-developed launchers.
In a statement to GamingOnLinux, GOG joint CEO Krzysztof Papliński said the company has hired a dedicated specialist and is actively exploring the best approach for bringing Galaxy to Linux. He described Linux as "one of the topics we hear the most about from our community," emphasizing that the project is now an active development priority.
Why GOG Galaxy Matters
Unlike the web-based game downloads that Linux users already have access to, GOG Galaxy serves as a full-featured game management application.
The launcher currently offers features including:
Automatic game installation and updates Cloud save synchronization Achievement tracking Playtime statistics Game library organization Integrated storefront browsing Friends lists and social features Cross-platform launcher integration
Today, Linux users typically access these capabilities through community projects such as Heroic Games Launcher, Lutris, or Bottles. A native Galaxy client would provide an officially supported alternative with direct integration into GOG's ecosystem.
Linux Is No Longer an Afterthought
GOG's announcement reflects the growing importance of Linux gaming over the past several years.
The rapid adoption of Valve's Steam Deck, continuous improvements to Proton, and increasing hardware compatibility have significantly expanded Linux's role in PC gaming. As Linux's share of Steam users has grown, more developers and publishers have begun treating the platform as a viable target rather than a niche operating system.
For GOG, supporting Linux more fully aligns with its philosophy of giving users greater control over their purchased games.
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