Svobodný software

A few days ago the Intel QuickAssist "QAT" accelerators were demoted by FSCRYPT in the Linux 6.17 development code due to being slow and bug prone with AVX-512 showing to be much faster than leveraging the QAT accelerators in this file encryption framework. With the Linux 6.17 crypto subsystem is a second separate demotion to Intel's QAT support for kernel use...

Earlier this year there was talk of Linux potentially dropping its Apple HFS and HFS+ file-system drivers as they had been orphaned for a decade and proving to be a maintenance burden. Following that some developers stepped up to better maintain the code for HFS and HFS+ file-system support. In Linux 6.17 we are seeing some of the fruits of that work...

For those shopping for a high-end desktop power supply for use under Linux and interested in being able to take advantage of sensor monitoring capabilities, the 2025 edition of the Corsair HX1200i PSU can now enjoy working sensor monitoring under Linux...

The Compute Express Link code changes landed this weekend for the Linux 6.17 kernel with development continuing to be quite active around this subsystem for supporting latest and next-generation servers...

As has been the trend with recent Linux kernel releases, a lot of Rust programming language abstractions and other additions are coming for the in-development Linux 6.17 kernel...

All of the memory management "MM" changes were merged this week for the ongoing Linux 6.17 merge window...

Newelle is a virtual AI assistant developed for the GNOME desktop that supports voice chat and can handle carrying out web searches, terminal command execution, website reading, file management, document editing, and more. Newell v1.0 was released this week for advancing this GNOME AI virtual assistant...

All of the HID subsystem device driver updates have been merged for the Linux 6.17 merge window...

FEX 2508 as the open-source emulator that allows running x86_64 Linux binaries on AArch64, including the likes of Wine and Valve's Steam Play, is boasting some "big juicy" optimizations with its new release. Many games are now significantly faster atop FEX...

While Apple removed FireWire support from the upcoming macOS 26 "Tahoe" release, Linux support for the IEEE-1394 standard continues. With the in-development Linux 6.17 there is some modernization work on the FireWire subsystem code with plan still being to maintain FireWire support on Linux until at least 2029...

KDE developer Nate Graham is out with his weekly report on the interesting Plasma desktop changes for the week. This week a long-sought feature for the Plasma desktop was finally merged...

Back in February Steam on Linux was at a 1.45% marketshare, then was corrected to 2.33% for Linux gaming in March, 2.27% for April, a nice jump to 2.69% for Linux gaming in May, and June came in at 2.57% for the Linux gaming population as a percent of Steam users. The July numbers were published this evening and show a new recent high for Linux gamers...

In time for some weekend testing, Wayback 0.2 is now available for this X11 compatibility layer leveraging Wayland components. Wayback 0.2 remains at an alpha quality state but more functionality is now wired up...

Linus Torvalds today merged the initial deferred unwinder infrastructure into the Linux 6.17 kernel on the path toward enabling SFrame stack trace format support...

Today the first Linux kernel patch was posted for Intel's Nova Lake as the anticipated successor to the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 "Arrow Lake" processors. Today's patch confirms that Intel Nova Lake will be the first Intel processors under their new "Family 18" umbrella...

The Attack Vector Controls work is now in Linux 6.17 for those new tuning knobs worked on by AMD engineer David Kaplan to make it more straight-forward for Linux server administrators and power users to more easily select the CPU security mitigations relevant to their system(s) and intended workloads...

Vulkan 1.4.324 is out today as the first Vulkan API specification update in two weeks with a variety of clarifications/corrections plus a new extension from AMD...

Following the recent Intel driver being orphaned due to layoffs at the company and other Intel Linux engineering changes due to the ongoing restructuring at the company, for the Linux 6.17 kernel there are some additional Intel driver maintainer changes spotted...

The media subsystem updates were submitted and subsequently merged on Thursday for the ongoing Linux 6.17 merge window. There are several notable media changes for Linux 6.17 but arguably most prominent is the IPU7 driver entering staging for working on web camera support for Intel Lunar Lake and next-generation Panther Lake laptops...

The EXT4 file-system enhancements for Linux 6.17 were merged on Thursday and bring better scalability to the block allocation code as well as fixing the file-system's large folios support. The scalability work can show some wild gains in select areas...