Open-source News

Linux 5.5 is likely to be released later today and with that are many new features. But as soon as 5.5 is released it marks the opening of the Linux 5.6 merge window and this next kernel has us particularly exciting... It's certainly shaping up to be one of the most exciting kernel cycles in recent times with many blockbuster features and improvements...

Dracut that is used for generating the initramfs image on Linux distributions like Fedora / RHEL, Debian, openSUSE, and many other distributions could be much faster...

The Dracut Initramfs Generator Is Slow - Could Be Much Faster As Shown By Distri's Minitrd  Phoronix

Fedora IoT already uses swap-on-ZRAM by default given IoT devices are often running with limited amounts of RAM, but for Fedora Workstation 33 the developers are looking at enabling SWAP-on-ZRAM by default for all new installations...

KDE developers were busy as always this week working to polish up the forthcoming KDE Plasma 5.18 and other areas of their open-source desktop stack...

Last year, I brought you 19 days of new (to you) productivity tools for 2019. This year, I'm taking a different approach: building an environment that will allow you to be more productive in the new year, using tools you may or may not already be using.

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What's your favorite Linux distribution? Take our 7th annual poll. Some have come and gone, but there are hundreds of Linux distributions alive and well today. The combination of distribution, package manager, and desktop creates an endless amount of customized environments for Linux users.

We asked the community of writers what their favorite is and why. While there were some commonalities (Fedora and Ubuntu were popular choices for a variety of reasons), we heard a few surprises as well. Here are a few of their responses:

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The widely-used SQLite embedded database library saw its first major release of 2020 this week...

Linux for everyone  Mid-day

Earlier this month I wrote about Intel SST Core-Power patches as part of Intel's Speed Select's functionality for more control over per-core power/frequency behavior based upon the software running on each core. The "core-power" profile support appears ready now for Linux 5.6...

Intel SST Core-Power Support Ready For Linux 5.6  Phoronix

"Rocket League" Will Not Be Playable On Mac or Linux Online  Bleeding Cool News

Rocket League ditching Mac and Linux, Stardew Valley sales pass 10 million, and more of the week's PC game news  Rock Paper Shotgun

As shown yesterday the new video BIOS of the Radeon RX 5600 XT paired with the corrected SMC firmware on Linux yields impressive performance improvements that -- similar to Windows -- allows the card to compete better with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2060. For Linux users, activating the Valve-funded ACO compiler back-end for the Radeon "RADV" Vulkan driver helps turn up the competition even more...

Valve's ACO Helps The Radeon RX 5600 XT Compete With NVIDIA's RTX 2060  Phoronix

Valve's ACO Helps The Radeon RX 5600 XT Compete With NVIDIA's RTX 2060  Phoronix

It's already been over nine months since the release of Solus 4 while now this popular Linux desktop distribution has been succeeded by Solus 4.1..

Solus 4.1 Released With Application Changes, ESYNC Support For Linux Gaming  Phoronix

Patches written two months ago for Intel's ANV open-source Vulkan driver have now been merged ahead of the imminent Mesa 20.0 feature freeze and branching...

Some exciting news this week for Firefox users running on Wayland.....