A bit of time has passed since having any exciting performance improvements to report on within the GNU C Library “glibc” but that changed today with another nice x86_64 optimization for modern CPUs…

FFmpeg 8.1 is out today as the newest stable release of this widely-used, open-source multimedia library…

The Linux kernel’s extensible scheduler class “sched_ext” to allow for custom CPU scheduling policies as BPF programs continues enabling new functionality. Queued up in the sched_ext development code ahead of next month’s Linux 7.1 cycle is the new SCX_ENQ_IMMED capability for enabling tighter control over when tasks land on a CPU…

Kurt Roeckx has announced
that Debian has moved to the campaigning period for the 2026 Debian
Project Leader (DPL) election. This year there is only one candidate,
Sruthi Chandran, so Debian voters will have a choice between Chandran
as DPL or “None of the above”. The campaign period will run through
April 3, and the voting period will run from April 4 to
April 17. Chandran has not yet posted a platform for the 2026
election, but her 2024
platform is available on the Debian wiki.

F is for Free, FSF, and fat chanceThe Free Software Foundation (FSF) has rattled a saber at Anthropic over the use of its materials in training the AI vendor’s models.…

After a year’s worth of development since GIMP 3.0 was released,
the team behind the open-source image editor has released
GIMP 3.2. It comes as part of the plan
to release GIMP more frequently, rather than wait six or seven years
between releases. The release comes with lots of new features (as can
be seen in more detail in the release notes),
including 20 new brushes for the MyPaint Brush tool, an “overwrite” paint
mode, new and upgraded file formats, UI improvements in a variety of
places, such as the on-canvas text editor, and new non-destructive layers:

• You can now use Link Layers to incorporate external image as
  part of your compositions, easily scaling, rotating, and transforming them
  without losing quality or sharpness. The link layer’s content is updated
  when the source file is modified
• The Path tool can now create Vector Layers, which lets you draw
  shapes with adjustable fill and stroke settings.

Since last week’s Fedora 44 Beta release I have been testing out this upcoming Fedora Linux version on a few systems in the lab, most notably with the Framework Desktop powered by the powerful AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 “Strix Halo”. Fedora Workstation 44 Beta has been looking nice and running stable albeit in some instances seeing lower performance at this point than Fedora Workstation 43 but overall in good shape.

The past several years Imagination Tech has been investing in an upstream and open-source DRM kernel graphics driver as well as a PowerVR Vulkan driver in Mesa. Their Mesa focus has exclusively been on the PowerVR Vulkan driver with the plans all along to use the Zink generic OpenGL-on-Vulkan implementation. With next quarter’s Mesa 26.1 release, that goal is being realized with Zink now working nicely atop the PowerVR Vulkan driver for in turn achieving open-source OpenGL support on PowerVR…

A round of Intel graphics driver updates were sent today to DRM-Next in staging ahead of April’s Linux 7.1 merge window. The changes in this pull aren’t too particularly exciting with a lot of code refactoring and other work, but there are preparations made for supporting UHBR DP tunnels…

A pull request that touches over 8,000 files, changing over 20,000 lines of
code in the process, is (fortunately) not something that happens every day.
It did happen at the end of the 7.0 merge window, though, when Linus
Torvalds merged
an extensive set of changes by Kees Cook to the venerable kmalloc() API (and
its users). As a result of that work, though, the kernel has a new set of
type-safe memory-allocation functions, with a last-minute bonus change to
make the API a little easier to use.

The work by Derek Clark on enhancing the Lenovo Legion Go gaming handheld support for Linux continues panning out nicely. The latest driver effort, the creation of the Lenovo Legion Go and Go S Series HID Drivers to help with controller configuration, is set to be introduced in Linux 7.1…

The upcoming Linux 7.1 kernel cycle is set to retire UDP-Lite support. The UDP-Lite protocol allowed for partial checksums where potentially damaged/corrupted packets are still delivered to the application. Since the Linux 2.6.20 days there has been UDP-Lite support but the kernel is now set to retire it given breakage that has persisted for years and cleaning up the networking code can yield a performance advantage for non-UDP-Lite users…

A four year old optimization idea for the RADV driver was scratched off the TODO list last week for next quarter’s Mesa 26.1 release…

Last week yet more AMDGPU kernel graphics driver updates were submitted to DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 7.1 merge window happening in April…

The Open Source Endowment promises a permanent funding fix for vital open source infrastructure, yet its slow‑drip investment approach raises questions about how much help will reach projects that need cash now.

The post Can the Open Source Endowment Fix What Years of Neglect Broke? appeared first on FOSS Force.

The 283rd installment of the 9to5Linux Weekly Roundup is here for the week ending March 15th, 2026, keeping you updated on the most important developments in the Linux world.

AMYboard is a compact DIY music synthesizer board designed for integration into custom music projects or installation as a Eurorack-compatible 10HP module. The board is powered by an ESP32-S3 module and runs the open-source AMY synthesizer engine, which supports multiple synthesis techniques including virtual analog, FM, wavetable, and sample playback. The system is built around […]

SuperTux 0.7.0 is finally here as a hefty new update for this open-source, free, and cross-platform classic 2D jump’n run sidescroller game in the style of the Super Mario games.

Join Brandon Vigliarolo, Tobias Mann, and Avram Piltch to discuss our predictions for this week’s GTCKettle It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year – if you’re an AI aficionado, that is, as chip giant Nvidia, now the most valuable company in the world, is kicking off its GPU Technology Conference (GTC) on Monday.…

Catch up on the latest Linux news: Debian 13.4, EndeavourOS Titan, Fedora 44 Beta, GIMP 3.2, OBS Studio 32.1, TrueNAS deprecates public build repository, APTUI is a modern TUI for Debian’s APT, and more.