As some interesting food for thought and weekend forum discussions, this week at the Linux Plumbers Conference in Prague, Qualcomm engineer Khem Raj questioned the relevance of Linux Long Term Support (LTS) distributions in the era of generative AI with the constantly heavy patch flow and bug reports. Khem Raj argued the benefits of rolling release distributions in the GenAI era and the benefits it provides staying up-to-date with mainline...
Many x86 platform driver improvements have been queuing ahead of the upcoming Linux 7.4 merge window to offer a variety of laptop and gaming handheld device improvements with this next kernel version...
Woodpecker CI 3.19 fixes a security issue involving matrix variables, adds server-enforced agent labels, and improves pipeline reliability.
Phoronix reports on a presentation this week by Meta engineer Gregory Price at the Linux Plumbers Conference in Prague:
With today's memory shortages, high prices, and ever increasing memory capacity needs, Meta engineers have been working on Compressed RAM ("CRAM") for Linux.
This hardware-offloaded compression still allows cacheline/byte access to compressed memory and in turn a better implementation than the likes of ZRAM and Zswap. Very promising is that there is near-native performance to raw DRAM speeds with CRAM... For end-users that may already be relying on the likes of Zswap or ZRAM, CRAM is offering near-native DRAM speeds. Read-only data is shown to be as fast as the raw DRAM performance. And for memory writes, CRAM is much faster than ZRAM or Zswap or plain swap.
"Most of the individual pieces needed to support CRAM are already mainline," the article points out.
Tom's Hardware writes that "It uses a private NUMA node (essentially, a ghost CPU) instead of pretending to be a block device, and this lets Linux continue using all of its memory semantics, including migration and ballooning, to manage CRAM."
Because CRAM is stored in RAM and treated as RAM, with full cacheline/byte access, it can be accessed in a read-only fashion with little delay; just the cost of hardware-offloaded compression...
Even when you enable writes, CRAM is still much faster than ZRAM; 5.4x in the worst tested case of 20% writes. That's a huge drop from the 452x read-only case, but keep your context; a 5.4x speedup is still titanic. The massive performance cliff when writes are involved comes down to the need to page fault and migrate folios back to the original NUMA domain, as you can't write directly to compressed data; you'd corrupt everything...
While the obvious target of the work here (given its origin at Meta Platforms) is big Linux servers, ZRAM and Zswap are used all over the Linux ecosystem, even on machines as constrained as the Steam Deck. Many distributions enable one or the other by default. CRAM seems like it could offer a considerable speed-up for some of these machines, so hopefully it finds its way into the kernel once the remaining implementation questions are answered.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A while back we covered KNOD as an experimental solution for in-kernel network offloading to AMD GPUs. The open-source KNOD project allows leveraging GPUs to handle packet processing in a very performant and energy efficient manner without needing any specialized hardware. KNOD has continued and a development update was shared this week at the Linux Plumbers Conference in Prague...
Ahead of the Linux 7.3-rc7 kernel due for release on Sunday, this week's batch of networking fixes were submitted and merged. The vast networking subsystem of wired and wireless drivers plus the various other networking features continues to see a lot of activity due to AI-driven bug reports and patches...
KDE Plasma 6.8 is gearing up for its official debut next week in coinciding with the 30th anniversary since the KDE project began...
OnLogic’s newest industrial edge gateway, the Helix 320, features a fanless design powered by Intel N-Series Twin Lake processors. The compact system includes four 2.5GbE ports, two configurable serial ports, M.2 expansion, and support for up to three displays. OnLogic offers the Helix 320 with two Intel N-Series “Twin Lake” processors: N250 – 4-core/4-thread architecture, […]
Frame of Suffering is an upcoming ARPG rogue-lite that combines Diablo with customizable mechs and I really do need it now.Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.
This open source, browser-based PDF toolkit is free to use and ships with a surprisingly long list of tools.
The curiosity into secretive semiconductor startup Rosaic Labs builds. Earlier this year it was noted that Intel was providing Rosaic Labs with access to its Atom technology with RTL code. There have also been rather mysterious x86 additions not from Intel or AMD (or Zhaoxin / Hygon) that given the timing may pertain to Rosaic Labs. News today is that Rosaic recently hired a long-time, Linux x86 developer veteran...
Valve have another release ready for testing, with the Steam Client Beta - October 9th update now available bringing Remote Play updates.Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.
Researchers in Vienna and Beijing have independently built the first nuclear clocks based on oscillations inside thorium nuclei, marking a major milestone for a field that could eventually produce highly portable, ultra-precise timekeepers. The clocks are already precise enough to lose only about a second over millions of years. The New York Times reports: The first nuclear clocks are not going to immediately supplant the worldwide network of atomic clocks, whose steady ticking we rely on for GPS and the definition of a second. Nor have they captured the record for most precise timepiece; the best atomic clocks are about 10,000 times more reliable and would take more than 100 billion years to lose one second.
But nuclear clocks hold a bevy of potential advantages over existing atomic clocks. One day, they could be more reliable than the leading atomic versions, and nuclear clocks could be made more portable. They even hold the ability to search for certain kinds of dark matter -- the invisible stuff whose clumps make up 83 percent of the matter in the universe. If a particle of dark matter passed through the thorium nuclei, it could register as a wobble in the nuclear clock's otherwise steady ticktock. The findings have been published in the journal Nature.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Valve released two Proton updates to bring more Windows game compatibility to SteamOS / Linux. A small Proton 11.0-2e and a Proton 11.0-3 Release Candidate.Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.
Valve have released an update that should give you just a little bit more clarity on when you can expect to get a Steam Frame, plus the CAD files are out now.Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.
Ventoy 1.1.18 introduces experimental SteamOS recovery support, improves ISO partition mounting on Linux, and fixes several boot issues.
The KDE Project released KDE Frameworks 6.31 today as the latest stable update to this open-source collection of more than 80 add-on libraries to Qt and a companion to the KDE Plasma desktop environment and KDE Gear software suite.
Reuters reports:
Flock plans to let go of about 18% of its employees, people with direct knowledge of the plans said on Thursday, as the maker of AI-powered surveillance cameras and license-plate readers faces mounting opposition to its products from communities and lawmakers....
The company has about 1,500 employees [with job cuts hitting 270 employees]. Flock faces growing scrutiny from regulators, lawmakers, and privacy advocates, despite drawing strong investor interest among venture capitalists. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Americans are divided on whether Flock cameras are a good idea. Some 38% of the country supports the use of Flock cameras in their community, compared to 47% who oppose their use.
A related story... In Texas this week a county commissioner decommissioned all 61 of their Flock surveillance cameras and license plate readers, according to a local news report. County residents "have raised serious questions about who can access this data, what vendors can disclose, improper searches, and records being kept after data expires," the precinct's Chief Public Affairs Officer said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
SQLite 3.54 released today for this wildly popular embedded SQL database engine used by countless applications and other software. With SQLite 3.54, support for Microsoft Windows XP and older is finally removed...
A Redditor counted who wrote every change to xz, sudo, bash, tz and 19 more projects. 11 of 23 rely on one or two people. See who they are and who pays.
Ubuntu maker Canonical announced today the general availability of Ubuntu Desktop images for the RISC-V architecture, along with unofficial and unsupported Xubuntu Minimal images for RISC-V.
aerynOS moves Budgie 10.10.3 from testing to its Unstable Stream, making it broadly available alongside COSMIC Desktop 1.10 and Linux 7.2.9.
Ubuntu Linux ISOs for RISC-V 64-bit to date have just been the server/CLI version without any desktop environment pre-seeded. But with next week's Ubuntu 26.10 release, there will now be Ubuntu 26.10 RISC-V desktop ISOs for both Ubuntu proper and a Xubuntu minimal ISO...
CodeWeavers working with Valve today released Proton 11.0-2e as their downstream of Wine that powers Steam Play for enjoying Windows games on Linux...
Version
3.15 of the Python programming language has been released. Notable changes
in this release include the addition of the sentinel and frozendict built-in types,
the use of UTF-8 encoding by default, package
start-up configuration files, as well as improvements in the experimental
JIT compiler. See the "What's new in Python
3.15" article for an in-depth look at new features in this release, and the
changelog
for a full list of changes.
While many developers are struggling to keep up with the flood of
vulnerability reports, others are still focused on preventing those reports
from happening in the first place. Control-flow integrity (CFI) is the
term for preventing (or at least detecting) exploits that divert the flow
of control from its intended paths. At the 2026 GNU Tools Cauldron, Kees Cook
presented his changes to the GCC compiler suite to support forward-edge CFI
for the kernel.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Cloudflare doesn't block pirate sports streaming sites through its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver in France, only through its CDN. The Paris Judicial Court has now accepted that stance, rejecting [French pay-TV provider] Canal+'s request for penalties of 50,000 euros per site, per day. Interestingly, the court's conclusion relies on statistics provided by Canal+ itself. [...] As a result, Cloudflare will not be penalized under these orders, even though its public DNS resolver is not blocking the sites in question. That is in line with the company's long-standing claim that it doesn't interfere with its DNS.
In its recent transparency reports, Cloudflare repeatedly stated that it hasn't blocked any content through 1.1.1.1, despite orders from French and Italian courts. "To date, Cloudflare has not blocked content through the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver," the company's latest report reads. [...] Blocking through the CDN is another matter. According to the same report, Cloudflare geoblocked 1,238 domains in France in the second half of 2025, all under a single court order. In the first half of the year, it geoblocked 662 domains under seven orders. Cloudflare recently explained its position to the European Commission, in a submission (PDF) to its Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List consultation, stressing that global public DNS resolvers should not be used to block or restrict access.
Instead, it highlights its real-time pirate stream blocking program, which allows vetted rightsholders to flag pirate streams that run through its network. These streams are disrupted "within seconds," Cloudflare says, without any DNS or IP address blocking. "For live content, where speed is crucial, Cloudflare has built real-time mitigation mechanisms that allow vetted rightsholder partners to flag infringing streams. When those streams are running through our network, we act on them in seconds," Cloudflare informed the Commission. For now, Cloudflare can continue to block pirate sites through its CDN only, while its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver remains untouched. Canal+ can still appeal the rulings, so it may not be the last we hear of it.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
At the 2026 All Systems Go!
conference, systemd maintainers Luca Boccassi and Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek
delivered the traditional "state of the project" session with an overview of the
systemd project's accomplishments in the past year. That was followed by a
maintainer round table where Boccassi, Jędrzejewski-Szmek, Daan De Meyer, and
project leader Lennart Poettering fielded questions about systemd's size,
health, and if it might replace Kubernetes. (It will not.)
Python 3.15 is out today as the newest annual feature release for the Python programming language...
Last week I ran benchmarks of the new AMD PerfOpt feature being introduced in Linux 7.4. In those PerfOpt benchmarks on current-gen AMD Ryzen AI APUs/SoCs the AI performance improved as much as 18~23%. Several Phoronix readers expressed interest in seeing how prior-gen AMD Ryzen hardware benefited or not from PerfOpt, so here are some additional benchmarks.
The Fanatical Build your own All Stars Bundle (Winter) has launched giving you the chance to save even more monies on various games together.Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.
Let's
Encrypt, the nonprofit that provides free TLS certificates for millions of
sites, has announced that
it will be moving to certificates with 64-day lifetimes on February 10,
2027:
This means that any certificate we issue or renew on and after that date will
have a 64 day validity period, and we expect the last 90-day certificate to
expire on May 11, 2027. We will not revoke valid certificates as a part of this
process.
This is the second stage of Let's Encrypt's plan, announced in 2025,
to move to 45-day certificate lifetimes as required by the the CA/Browser
Forum Baseline Requirements. In 2028, Let's Encrypt will switch to 45-day certificates.
The OpenRadioss fork is already drawing an impressive community as contributors help restore builds and missing components.
From a performance and enthusiast perspective, what I personally find most disappointing and puzzling with the imminent release of Ubuntu 26.10 comes down to its default compiler version...
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (bind, bind9.16, freerdp, glibc, kbd, mod_auth_openidc, openssl, perl-DBI, python3.12, python3.14, and tftp), Debian (rails and twitter-bootstrap3), Fedora (barman, cockpit, hcloud, libmodsecurity, nginx-mod-modsecurity, perl-DBI, sudo, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), Mageia (libxfont2), Oracle (bind9.18, firefox, kernel, nodejs24, perl-DBI, and vim), Red Hat (kernel, libreswan, opentelemetry-collector, osbuild-composer, rhc, and runc), SUSE (alloy, amazon-ecs-init, bind, busybox, distribution, emacs, ghostscript, glibc, GraphicsMagick, hauler, helm, helm3, jackson-annotations, jackson-core, jackson-databind, kernel, libpoppler-cpp3, libxtst, logback, nvidia-open-driver-G07-signed, perl-DBI, php-composer2, pi-coding-agent, portprotonqt, pvetui, python-hpack, python313-GitPython, and wpa_supplicant), and Ubuntu (apache2, bluez, libarchive, libde265, libgit2, libpng1.6, libxml2, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-6.8, linux-aws-fips, linux-fips, linux-realtime, linux-realtime-6.8, linux-aws-7.0, linux-azure, linux-azure-6.8, linux-azure-fde, linux-azure-fde-6.8, linux-azure-fips, linux-azure-7.0, linux-azure-fde-7.0, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-6.8, linux-gcp-fips, linux-gcp-7.0, linux-hwe-7.0, linux-oracle-7.0, linux-gke, linux-gkeop, linux-ibm, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.8, linux-nvidia, linux-nvidia-6.8, linux-nvidia-lowlatency, linux-oracle, linux-ibm-6.8, linux-nvidia, and linux-oem-6.17).
Ubuntu or Linux Mint? See how they compare on speed, software, updates and ease of use, and find out which one fits you before you install.
For those making increased use of Linux's Zswap as a compressed RAM cache for swap pages amid these times of sky high RAM prices, a new patch series was posted providing some incremental performance gains for Zswap by batching the writeback I/O...
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: A physicist has put a definite date on Doomsday," The New York Times wrote on November 4, 1960. "He calculates that it will come on Friday the Thirteenth in November, 2026 A. D. On that date, or thereabouts, the human population will have expanded so far as to approach infinity and thus will automatically annihilate itself." The newspaper was right -- but the prediction was wrong. That week, Austrian American physicist Heinz von Foerster and two colleagues published a paper in Science with the stunningly succinct title "Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026."
The work was based on a simple observation: The time it took for the human population to double in size kept getting shorter. Using population estimates from about 400 B.C.E. until 1958 C.E., the authors -- all from the department of electrical engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign -- came up with an equation that best described the trend. If things continued the way they were going, the number of humans on Earth would rise faster and faster, reaching more than 25 billion by 2020. The researchers didn't calculate when humanity would run out of food, land, or energy. They just concluded that at some point this year, the equation ceased to give meaningful results because the predicted population shot toward infinity. That was their doomsday. "Our great-great-grandchildren will not starve," they wrote. "They will be squeezed to death."
The exact date was somewhat arbitrary, however. The formula solved to 2026.87 plus or minus 5.5 years, and The New York Times reported that von Foerster "searched the center of this doom-time span for an appropriate date and found that a Friday the Thirteenth would fall conveniently in November of 2026." (November 13 also happened to be his birthday.) [...] [D]emographers, annoyed by what they saw as a provocation by outsiders, pointed out obvious flaws. For example, the time it takes for the number of humans to double could get a lot shorter, but certainly not shorter than the 9 months it takes for a baby to develop. "In view of the comments that subsequently were published in this journal, an extensive discussion of this article does not seem to be required," public health expert Harold Dorn drily noted in Science 2 years after von Foerster's article was published. The forecast would set a record, he predicted, "for the short length of time required to demonstrate its unreliability." "The failure of the Doomsday equation is ultimately a cautionary tale about the dangers of extrapolating from historically exceptional circumstances," writes economist Javier Birchenall of the University of California, Santa Barbara writes in a Perspective published in Science today.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Another Triple-I Initiative Showcase came and went yesterday, here's some of the really cool looking games featured in it.Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.
Those trying to access the Ubuntu website, ISO downloads, and similar Ubuntu resources today are finding the site inoperable amid what's now confirmed as an ongoing distributed denial of service attack...
When booting the Linux kernel using UEFI SecureBoot, the kernel is put in the lockdown mode to restrict the ability to modify the running kernel image or leaking data from kernel memory. Kernel lockdown mode can also be manually enabled by the user/administrator. Among the limitations imposed in Linux's lockdown mode is no hibernation support. But that soon may be relieved with new patches proposed...
Over the past few months NVIDIA has been developing Boro as a new AI-assisted kernel development CLI written in Rust and focused on local AI for enhancing efficiency for kernel development...
AMD on Thursday sent out a final pull request of their feature work aiming to be submitted for the upcoming Linux 7.4 merge window. This round of "few last odds and ends" is mostly about landing some bug fixes but of which there are a few worth mentioning...
For those making use of Qualcomm Snapdragon X laptops on Linux, one of the features coming to the MSM DRM kernel driver is static HDR support for DisplayPort outputs and eDP panels...
Paradox Tower brings a clever mixture of puzzles and RPG mechanics about helping a witch find her way through a labyrinth tower.Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.
Google is exploring a new approach to Linux kernel security that could significantly change how device drivers interact with the operating system. The experimental project, known as Kage, uses compiler-based sandboxing to isolate drivers inside the kernel, potentially limiting the damage caused by memory corruption, programming errors, and exploitable vulnerabilities without requiring drivers to run as separate user-space processes.
I'm not sure my heart will be able to manage LIVING HELL but it sure does look interesting from the developer of the popular DEVOUR.Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.