Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 1 hour 43 min ago
NVIDIA & Others Form The Open Secure AI Alliance
NVIDIA and more than two dozen other companies have started the Open Secure AI Alliance for helping to keep open-source AI models secure. The other founding members range from Microsoft to Adobe, IBM, Red Hat, SpaceX, OpenClaw, Palantir, and others...
Linux 7.2-rc5 Released: "Once More We Have Quite A Massive -rc5"
In working toward releasing the stable Linux 7.2 kernel in less than one month's time, out today is Linux 7.2-rc5 to ship this week's latest bug/regression fixes and help facilitate more testing of this in-development kernel version...
GNU Binutils 2.47 Released With More RISC-V Extensions, New Options
Along with this weekend's release of GNU C Library 2.44, the GNU Binutils 2.47 release is also now available for this important set of binary utilities common to Linux systems and other platforms with the GNU toolchain...
"KVM Chainsaw" Expected To Hit Linux 7.3 For Dealing With God Data Structure
A patch series that appears destined for the upcoming Linux 7.3 merge window is what's dubbed the "KVM Chainsaw" as a major code clean-up in dealing with the kvm_mmu "god data structure"...
User Frustrations Over The "Tragic State of FreeBSD Audio/Sound" Support
Besides the FreeBSD graphics and WiFi drivers lagging behind Linux and other operating systems, the FreeBSD audio driver support and handling of audio streams with FreeBSD on the desktop can be problematic depending upon the hardware/system. One of the most active mailing list threads this week in the FreeBSD camp was over the "tragic state" of FreeBSD audio/sound support...
Auto-CPUFreq 3.1 Adds Monitoring Mode To GUI, New Configuration Options & Fixes
Auto-CPUFreq is one of the open-source projects striving to be a CPU speed and power optimizer for Linux systems to improve battery life without making any real compromises to the user experience. Out today is v3.1 as the newest feature release of Auto-CPUFreq...
Realtek RTL8723B/RTL8723BS Trying To Be Tacked On To The RTW88 Linux Driver
Since 2017 in Linux 4.12 has been the Realtek rtl8723bs WiFi driver where it was introduced into the staging area and remains there nearly a decade later. The rtl8723bs driver for this Realtek 802.11n WiFi SDIO driver has seen a lot of code cleaning over the years and all these years later still is needing lots of code clean-ups from unnecessary code abstractions to dealing with malicious WiFi APs for what Greg Kroah-Hartman has called a "beast of a driver". The latest twist is there now being patches for adding Realtek RTL8723BS and RTL8723B onto the existing RTW88 driver...
Linux 7.2-rc5 Fixing Longstanding Bug In IPv4 Networking Over Firewire
Firewire still isn't dead yet on Linux. Current plans call for maintaining IEEE-1394 Firewire on Linux at least through 2029 and with today's Linux 7.2-rc5 kernel release is a fix for those wanting to leverage IPv4 networking over Firewire...
Ubuntu Touch 24.04-2.0 Released With Support For Notches & Rounded Corners
Following last month's beta release, Ubuntu Touch 24.04-2.0 is now available as the latest feature release for this Ubuntu 24.04 LTS derived mobile operating system for select smartphones and tablets...
Fedora Working To Establish Conflict of Interest Policy
Posted this week is a draft copy of the Fedora Conflict of Interest policy being worked on for dealing with identifying, disclosing, and managing any actual, actual, or perceived conflicts of interest within the Fedora Project...
Kiwi Menu Continues Bringing macOS Vibes To GNOME
Kiwi Menu as the macOS-inspired quick menu option for the GNOME Shell desktop is continuing to enhance its macOS-esque experience on GNOME...
GNU C Library 2.44 Released With /etc/tunables.conf, More Optimizations
GNU developers today released GNU C Library "glibc" 2.44 as the newest feature release for this critical library to modern Linux systems and other platforms...
KDE Plasma 6.8 Introducing New kscreenctl Tool
KDE developers have been working on kscreenctl as a utility replacement to kscreen-doctor. Plasma and related code has also seen a number of bug/crash fixes coming about this week too...
Wine 11.14 Brings WoW64 Mode To FreeBSD, Icon Support In Start Menu
Wine 11.14 was tagged today as the newest bi-weekly development release of this open-source software for running Windows games and applications on Linux, macOS, and other platforms...
Debian Considering General Resolution Over LLM Usage In The Project
Debian developers are discussing a general resolution whether to permit AI large language model (LLM) usage within the Debian software project...
AMD ROCm Committed To Six Week Release Cycle Moving Forward
One of many interesting takeaways from this week's AMD Advancing AI event in San Francisco was word that ROCm will be on a rigid six week release cycle moving forward...
Qualcomm QCE Driver On The Chopping Block With ~48x Slower Than Armv8 Crypto Extensions
A few days back I wrote about upstream Linux kernel developers marking the Qualcomm crypto accelerator driver as "broken" and "harmful" due to its slow performance, history of bugs, and other limitations. Now this Qualcomm Crypto Engine "QCE" driver might be removed outright from the Linux kernel source tree after discovering it's even worse than anticipated...
Imagination PowerVR Driver Marking BXM-4-64 MC1 GPU As Supported In Linux 7.3
Sent out today was the weekly round of drm-misc-next patches of new Direct Rendering Manager feature material ready to be queued in DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 7.3 merge window...
Ubuntu Linux Looking To Get Rid Of /etc/debian_version Historical Artifact
Ubuntu Linux has shipped /etc/debian_version that is carried over from upstream Debian and in turn just indicating the Debian Sid development version from which the packages are arrived. Besides it being inaccurate, /etc/os-release has been the long preferred standard for reading the OS release information. Thus finally Ubuntu developers are looking at dropping the /etc/debian_version file...
Fedora 45 Looks To Begin Phasing Out In-Kernel Crypto Userspace API
Going along with the upstream Linux 7.2 kernel deprecation of AF_ALG and Linux 7.3 to further restrict this interface for letting user-space programs interact directly with the Linux kernel crypto API, Fedora 45 is looking to follow and help support this transition...
