Phoronix

While still an experimental option, the rolling-release systemd Tumbleweed Linux distribution is finding great results in using systemd-boot rather than the GRUB bootloader...

For those still on the FreeBSD 13 series with not having migrated yet to FreeBSD 14, FreeBSD 13.3 was released overnight as the newest incremental update to this mature BSD platform...

GStreamer 1.24 is out today as a major enhancement to this open-source multimedia framework...

The AMDGPU Linux driver up until the recent Linux 6.7 kernel release has let you lower the power limit of your graphics card with, well, no limits... This has allowed AMD Radeon Linux users to limit their GPU power draw when desiring for power/efficiency reasons. But since Linux 6.7 they've begun enforcing a lower-power limit set by the respective graphics card BIOS. Users petitioned to have this change reverted but in the name of safety this lower-limit enforcement will stand...

Xiph.Org's Opus open-source audio format for lossy audio coding has rolled out Opus 1.5 as a big update that is now making greater use of machine learning...

Open-source developer Roman Gilg who is known for his work on KWinFT prior to its rebranding as Theseus' Ship has some more important news to share today by way of Phoronix. Here's his guest post announcing The Compositor Modules.

While there is a lot of frustration from the news last week of the HDMI Forum rejecting AMD's open-source HDMI 2.1 driver support plans, the open-source NVIDIA "Nouveau" driver won't hopefully have too challenging of an experience in enabling HDMI 2.1 functionality since much of the display handling there is left up to NVIDIA's (closed-source) firmware binaries...

When it comes to the AMD "RDNA3 Refresh" GFX11.5 open-source driver support, to date it's mostly been focused on the GFX 11.5.0 (GFX1150) IP while now being enabled within Mesa 24.1 for the open-source RadeonSI/RADV drivers is support for a GFX 11.5.1 (GFX1151) variant...

The VK_EXT_descriptor_buffer extension was made public in November 2022 with Vulkan 1.3.235 while finally this past week Intel's open-source Mesa "ANV" driver has merged support for this extension. This Vulkan extension is important for Linux gaming and other scenarios to lower CPU overhead...

It was two years since the release of Pacman 6.0 as Arch Linux's package manager software while overnight Pacman 6.1 was released with a tag line "it's been a while..." With Pacman 6.1 comes a few new features...

With the absence of any official AMD Radeon graphics control panel / settings GUI for Linux enthusiasts/gamers, there are several open-source projects striving to be a viable Radeon GUI control area for Linux gamers/enthusiasts. LACT 0.5.3 was released this weekend as the newest version of this option for AMD Radeon information reporting, GPU overclocking, fan control, power/thermal monitoring, and additional power state configurations...

For those that have experienced glitches while playing back VP9 video content using AMD's Video Core Next (VCN) for GPU acceleration, updated firmware should fix those VP9 decode problems...

Linus Torvalds just issued Linux 6.8-rc7 as we close in on the Linux 6.8 stable release in the next week or two...

In preparation for the GNOME 46 release candidate, the "46.rc" versions of GNOME Shell and Mutter were published this morning. The release candidate work is mostly about fixing outstanding issues but there are also some lingering fixes that made it into these releases...

OpenMediaVault 7.0 was released today as a major update to this open-source Network Attached Storage (NAS) solution built around Debian Linux. This plug-based NAS platform with web UI allows supporting a variety of services/protocols is now even more capable with the OpenMediaVault 7.0 availability...

The Rust-written Redox OS is out with a new monthly status report to outline the enhancements made to this open-source operating system during the month of February...

Merged this week ahead of the Wine 9.4 development release due out next Friday is support for using the new Vulkan VK_EXT_map_memory_placed extension to overcome a performance penalty with Windows on Windows 64-bit (WOW64) for games/apps...

GDB 14.2 has been released to provide a few fixes for the GNU Debugger over its state found in last year's GDB 14.1...

Better late than never, merged yesterday into the FFmpeg Git codebase is a DVD-Video demuxer...

Nate Graham is out with his belated weekend update to highlight all of the interesting KDE development activity for the week. This week, of course, saw the release of KDE MegaRelease 6 with Plasma 6.0, KDE Gear 24.02, and KDE Frameworks 6.0 in tow. Post-launch Graham characterizes Plasma 6.0 as being in good shape and the extra QA paying off. He commented, "Hopefully this should help banish those now 16-year-old painful memories of KDE 4. It’s a new KDE now. Harder, better, faster, stronger!"..