Notable with the staging area updates for the in-development Linux 6.16 kernel is word that the GPIB driver code may be ready to leave the staging area in the next kernel cycle (Linux v6.17) in then being promoted to the main driver area in signifying the maturity of the code and being cleaned up to meet kernel coding standards. The GPIB drivers are for the General Purpose Interface Bus that was introduced back in 1972...

The GNOME 49 Alpha release isn't expected until the end of June but for facilitating additional testing and a number of prominent changes this cycle, a number of GNOME packages have begun releasing "GNOME 49 Alpha 0" tags as part of plans to issue multiple alpha releases this cycle. Notable for GNOME 49 are plans moving forward for disabling X11 session support by default with that code then likely to be removed entirely with GNOME 50 for a Wayland-only desktop...

This week in marking Phoronix.com turning 21 years old there was a Phoronix Premium special for those wanting to enjoy the site ad-free, multi-page articles on a single page, and other benefits. That special deal is ending at end of day Monday (9 June) as your last chance to hop on this special...

All of the LoongArch CPU architecture changes have been merged for the Linux 6.16 kernel with the merge window set to wrap up later today...

The Linux Mint project published its newest monthly status report to outline various interesting development activities around this Linux desktop distribution project building off Ubuntu and Debian bases...

All of the kernel build system "Kbuild" updates were merged today for the nearly-over Linux 6.16 merge window that is expected to conclude tomorrow with the Linux 6.16-rc1 release. Notable with the Kbuild pull is the introduction of the EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL_FOR_MODULES helper...

NumPy 2.3 is out today as the latest release of this widely-used library for scientific computing. Notable with NumPy 2.3 is finally adding some parallelization support via OpenMP...

The RISC-V architecture feature updates were merged on Friday for the Linux 6.16 merge window that is set to end on Sunday with the Linux 6.16-rc1 release...

PikaOS Linux is a Linux distribution based on Debian's cutting-edge "Unstable" branch, optimised for gaming. It is designed to provide out-of-the-box gaming experience, excellent performance with up-to-date drivers and custom-tweaked Linux kernel, and a choice of GNOME or KDE Plasma desktops, with separate editions that use the Hyprland Wayland compositor.

It was just earlier this week that Mesa 25.1.2 arrived as the newest bi-weekly bug-fix release for these open-source OpenGL and Vulkan drivers. Coming out today is an emergency bug-fix release to fix a regression affecting AMD Radeon RX 9000 series RDNA4 graphics card owners...

AUSTRUMI (Austrum Latvijas Linukss) is a bootable live Linux distribution based on Slackware Linux. It requires limited system resources and can run on any Intel-compatible system with a CD-ROM installed. The entire operating system and all of the applications run from RAM, making AUSTRUMI a fast system and allowing the boot medium to be removed after the operating system starts.

Vulkan 1.4.317 was made public on Friday with a number of exciting new extensions, including VP9 video decoding for Vulkan Video, 8-bit floating-point data type support, and other additions...

For those making use of GNOME Papers as the increasingly popular document viewer app for the GNOME desktop, a major rework was merged to enhance the annotations experience...

Intel's Clear Linux distribution has made some packaging improvements to help better suit the needs of its users...

While there isn't much new MIPS activity taking place due to other CPU architectures like RISC-V and LoongArch taking the interest away, the MIPS code within the Linux kernel does continue seeing enhancements as well as upstreaming of hardware that has long been relegated to downstream kernels...

Merged on Friday to the Linux 6.16 kernel by way of the USB/Thunderbolt branch was the massive set of patches (12k+ lines of code) for USB offload support for audio devices...

KDE developers are on the final stretch of fixes and polishing ahead of the Plasma 6.4 release next Thursday. Plus there has been plenty of early work building toward Plasma 6.5...

Posted as a request for comments this week were the initial Linux kernel patches for the Hierarchical Constant Bandwidth Server (HCBS)...

Ultimate Edition, first released in December 2006, was a fork of Ubuntu and Linux Mint though recent versions (starting in 2024) have been based on Arch Linux. The goal of the project is to create a complete, seamlessly integrated, visually stimulating, and easy-to-install operating system. Single-button upgrade is one of several special characteristics of this distribution. Other main features include custom desktop and theme with 3D effects, support for a wide range of networking options, including WiFi and Bluetooth, and integration of many extra applications and package repositories.

Archman Linux is an Arch Linux-based distribution which features the Calamares system installer and a pre-configured desktop environment. Archman also features the Pamac package manager for easy installation of new software packages.

New AMD code merged today to the mainline Linux 6.16 kernel that's in-development is the introduction of the AMD-SBI driver/subsystem for primarily benefiting EPYC server platforms. AMD-SBI is for their Side-Band Interface also known as the Advanced Platform Management Link (APML)...

Merged today to Mesa 25.2 is an adjustment for the Intel "ANV" open-source Vulkan driver to help with Direct3D games running under Linux with Valve's Steam Play via Proton + VKD3D...

Last month Intel software engineers began posting Linux enablement patches for Wildcat Lake. Some of those first patches were merged for Linux 6.16 while more work is forthcoming. Posted yesterday for the first time on the Linux kernel mailing list was enabling the NPU accelerator support for Wildcat Lake...

LibreOffice 25.2.4 is now available for download as the fourth point release to the latest LibreOffice 25.2 office suite with 52 bug fixes.

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Classic racing games FlatOut 1 & 2 just got upgraded, and there's also a small update for FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage too.

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Ubuntu developers are discussing whether to split the large linux-firmware package into smaller vendor-specific packages to reduce its size.

You're reading Ubuntu Devs Debate Splitting Linux Firmware to Reduce Size, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without permission.

Since recently picking up a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite laptop for Linux testing now that the Linux support is starting to evolve into better shape (albeit still with many rough corners limiting the daily usability of such devices with Linux), one of the areas I was curious about was looking at the performance of Linux binaries with GCC vs. LLVM Clang. Here are some benchmarks for those wondering how the GCC and Clang compilers are competing on the Snapdragon X Elite with the Oryon CPU cores.

If you love sports and fast-paced action, Sparkball will be one you need to check out with a playable demo coming in Steam Next Fest.

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9 Kings is a fast-paced roguelike kingdom builder where you get to watch tiny armies fight and it's surprisingly absorbing of your time.

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Just a few days after the FEX 2506 release for that open-source emulator enabling x86_64 binaries to run on ARM64 (AArch64) hosts, Box64 is out with its newest feature update for this open-source project with similar goals...

It was the art style of Sol Cesto that first pulled me in, now I'm hooked on the roguelite slot-machine like mechanics of it.

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While the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Strix Halo SoCs have a nice out-of-the-box experience with modern Linux distributions for the Radeon 8050S and Radeon 8060S graphics, if going for the recently-released Linux 6.15 kernel there are some performance gains to enjoy as well as if opting for the latest Mesa 25.2 development code for the latest RadeonSI OpenGL and RADV Vulkan driver support...

A chance for you to buy some games and feel slightly better about it. The World Ocean Day Sale on Steam is now live.

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Now this is seriously cool! Net.Attack() takes the basics of Vampire Survivors, and gets you doing a little visual programming.

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Following all of the Linux kernel graphics driver features merged last week for the Linux 6.16 kernel, sent out this morning were the initial batch of fixes to the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) code. Besides fixes to these graphics / display / accelerator drivers, there is one new feature: the AMDKFD kernel compute driver can now be enabled on RISC-V systems...

The many PCI subsystem changes have been merged for the in-development Linux 6.16 merge window...

In addition to the NFS server changes for Linux 6.16 with now supporting larger I/O block sizes, the Network File-System (NFS) client changes were merged this week for this next kernel version...

Following the Intel TDX host support for KVM being merged for the Linux 6.16 merge window, another batch of Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) changes were merged for the ongoing Linux 6.16 merge window...

Near-Mage is a brand new hand-painted adventure from Stuck In Attic, who also made Gibbous - A Cthulhu Adventure.

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KDE Gear 25.04.2 is now available as the second maintenance update to the latest KDE Gear 25.04 open-source software suite series with fixes for various KDE applications.

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