Svobodný software

Back during the Linux 6.17 merge window was an optimization geared for ARM64 that could have a "16x reduction" in the number of calls. Unfortunately that commit ended up causing a rather significant regression for some systems that has now been addressed...

Google engineers today introduced KFuzzTest as a new lightweight framework for in-kernel fuzz targets for internal kernel functions. KFuzzTest aims to make it easier to exercise Linux kernel code paths that are difficult to do from the system call boundary...

A new version of the Intel Implicit SPMD Program Compiler "ISPC" was just published for supporting that C programming language variant optimized for single program. multiple data (SPMD) programming that is optimized for Intel's various hardware offerings. While catering to Intel hardware, ISPC 1.28 notably adds new AMD Zen 4 and Zen 5 processor targets...

The IDXD Linux kernel driver used for the Data Streaming Accelerator (DSA) support on recent Xeon processors is being cleaned up for some "not so happy code paths" after an Intel engineer uncovered memory leaks and other troubles with the open-source driver code...

It was nearly one year ago in the Linux 6.13 kernel that the ReiserFS file-system was dropped from the mainline kernel after having been deprecated in 2022. That dropped 32.8k lines of code from the Linux kernel but some documentation remnants of ReiserFS were mistakenly left in but now in the process of dropping those remnants for the defunct file-system...

The upcoming FFmpeg 8.0 multimedia library release continues to get more exciting almost by the day. The newest feature being squeezed into this next release is a Whisper audio filter for making use of OpenAI's Whisper model for providing automatic speech recognition / transcription capabilities...

Last week Microsoft released new versions of WSL2 for a yet-to-be-public security vulnerability affecting their Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 implementation. Those details around CVE-2025-53788 are now public for this vulnerability that could lead to elevation of privileges...

The xf86-input-mouse driver for mouse support when using the X.Orrg Server on operating systems like the BSDs, Illumos, GNU Hurd, and Solaris is out with a rare update...

Following the discussion over potentially obsoleting/deprecating the Itanium IA-64 support within the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), developers are discussing similar treatment for some of the other poorly-maintained CPU ports...

Go 1.25 is out today as the newest half-year update to this popular programming language. What I find most exciting with Go 1.25 is the new experimental garbage collector yielding 10~40% reduction in overhead...

Several years ago Google engineers began exploring address space isolation for the Linux kernel and ultimately proposing Linux ASI for better dealing with CPU speculative execution attacks. While the hope was it would better cope with the ever growing list of CPU speculative execution vulnerabilities, the effort was thwarted initially by I/O throughput seeing a 70% performance hit. That level of performance cost was unsustainable. But now that I/O overhead has been reduced to just 13%...

This Patch Tuesday has brought a slew of Intel CPU microcode updates for the past few processor generations to address six new high severity vulnerabilities...

While most Linux gamers are content using Valve's Steam Play (Proton) these days for Linux gaming, a new release of CodeWeavers' CrossOver is now available for enjoying other Windows applications and games on Linux as well as macOS. CrossOver 25.1 enhances the stability of the Microsoft Office office suite on Linux among other changes...

This Patch Tuesday the only new security fix merged to the Linux kernel is addressing a vulnerability affecting AMD SEV-SNP secure virtual machines...

Last week alongside our Framework Desktop review with the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 "Strix Halo" SoC I posted benchmarks of the Strix Halo performance compared to the Ryzen 9 9950X / 9950X3D socketed desktop processors. For those wondering similarly how the top-end Strix Halo SoC in the Framework Desktop competes with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K "Arrow Lake" flagship in performance and power efficiency, here are those comparison benchmarks.

Following this weekend's release of Debian 13.0 "Trixie", Debian GNU/Hurd 2025 has been released as the state of Trixie while running atop Hurd rather than Linux...

Following the NVIDIA 580 Linux beta driver from just one week ago, today NVIDIA issued a new R580 series Linux driver build...

ZLUDA as the open-source solution bringing CUDA to non-NVIDIA hardware has been seeing a nice uptick in activity the past several months for its latest take on life. The latest feature merged to ZLUDA is the all-important kernel cache to help with performance...

The GCC 14 compiler had marked the Itanium IA-64 code as being obsolete and slated for removal in GCC 15. But then last year the Itanium port was un-deprecated with plans to "support this for some years to come." Now one year later it's back to talking about deprecating/obsoleting the Itanium IA-64 compiler code in GCC...

Intel has introduced another new PCI device ID to their open-source Linux graphics driver stack for signifying another likely product on the way based on the Battlemage BMG-G21 GPU...