Open-source News

Linux 7.0 Adds Support For New Keys On Upcoming Laptops For Expanded AI Agent Interactions  Phoronix

Since last year the Linux kernel already supported the Microsoft Copilot key appearing on recent laptops to trigger AI agent interactions. That keyboard key is becoming more common but now three additional new keys have been standardized for additional AI integration on future PCs. Merged today for Linux 7.0 is supporting those new standardized keycodes for AI use...

TrueNAS 26 Beta released today as the initial test release for this next version of this Linux-based operating system for network attached storage (NAS) devices and more...

TrueNAS 26 Beta Brings Linux 6.18 LTS + OpenZFS 2.4 Combination For NAS Devices  Phoronix

KDE Linux is the purest form of Plasma I've tested - but the install isn't for the meek  ZDNET

The Rust-based Redox OS open-source operating system provided a status update on all of their interesting development activities during the month of March. In addition to a lot of code improvements, Redox OS also enhanced its documentation as well as added an AI policy to reject any contributions relying on large language models...

Ubuntu calls its new 6GB requirement an honesty bump  TechRadar

I tried Flatpak, AppImage, and Snap — this one made Linux easier  MakeUseOf

Windows 11 just beat Ubuntu 26.04 LTS in resource requirements, and nobody saw this coming  Windows Central

Little Snitch, the macOS network tool, is now available on Linux  OMG! Ubuntu

GNU nano 9.0 CLI Text Editor Released with New Features and Improvements  9to5Linux

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 To Be Priced At $899 USD  Phoronix

At the end of March AMD announced the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 processor with both dies having 3D V-Cache. This 16 core processor with 206MB of total cache is quit exciting and will be on sale later this month but AMD refrained from commenting on the price until today...

Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0.8 Released with Fastboot Improvements, Bug Fixes  9to5Linux

From the C: to the /Mnt/s, Linux is better than ever for PC gaming – and easier to switch to from Windows  Rock Paper Shotgun

New PGP signing key for GitHub CLI Linux packages  The GitHub Blog

Intel Arc Pro B70 Benchmarks With LLM / AI, OpenCL, OpenGL & Vulkan Review  Phoronix

Intel Arc Pro B70 Benchmarks With LLM / AI, OpenCL, OpenGL & Vulkan Review  Phoronix

Last month Intel announced the Arc Pro B70 with 32GB of GDDR6 video memory for this long-awaited Battlemage G31 graphics card. This new top-end Battlemage graphics card with 32 Xe cores and 32GB of GDDR6 video memory offers a lot of potential for LLM/AI and other use cases, especially when running multiple Arc Pro B70s. Last week Intel sent over four Arc Pro B70 graphics cards for Linux testing at Phoronix. Given the current re-testing for the imminent Ubuntu 26.04 release, I am still going through all of the benchmarks especially for the multi-GPU scenarios. In this article are some initial Arc Pro B70 single card benchmarks on Linux compared to other Intel Arc Graphics hardware across AI / LLM with OpenVINO and Llama.cpp, OpenCL compute benchmarks, and also some OpenGL and Vulkan benchmarks. More benchmarks and the competitive compares will come as that fresh testing wraps up, but so far the Arc Pro B70 is working out rather well atop the fully open-source Linux graphics driver stack.

Set to be merged for the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window is the "Yogafan" hardware monitoring driver to provide fan speed monitoring not only for Lenovo Yoga laptops but also various Legion and IdeaPad laptops too...