While there are many exciting features with Linux 6.5 which will hopefully be released as stable later today, ahead for the imminent Linux 6.6 merge window are another hearty batch of new features set to be introduced…

Source: Phoronix – Many Features Ahead With Linux 6.6: EEVDF Scheduler, New AMD CPU Features, NVK uAPI

While the release cycle dragged on for several extra months, available this weekend is the release of Mageia 9 for this Linux distribution long ago derived from Mandriva that in turn was an evolution going back to the glorious Mandrake days. Mageia 9 is a nice update pulling in many package updates along with other fundamental changes like shifting to SQLite for its RPM package database…

Source: Phoronix – Mageia 9 Released With SQLite-Based RPM Package Database, Zstd Compressed Images

While Linux 6.5 is expected for release tomorrow, the flow of last minute fixes isn’t over…

Source: Phoronix – Linux 6.5 Last Minute Fixes A Performance Regression – 34% Drop In A Micro-Benchmark

LXD 5.17 is now available as the system container and virtual machine manager, which since last month has been reigned into control by Canonical and maintainership being limited to Canonical engineers. With this new LXD release there is ZFS delegation support as found with the upcoming OpenZFS 2.2…

Source: Phoronix – Canonical Releases LXD 5.17 With OpenZFS 2.2 Delegation Support

Barring any last minute problems from coming up, the Linux 6.5 kernel is expected to be released as stable tomorrow, 27 August. Here’s a reminder about all of the great changes and new features with this next kernel version, which is especially heavy on exciting additions for Intel and AMD Linux users…

Source: Phoronix – Linux 6.5 Ready To Ship With Initial USB4 v2, More WiFi 7, AMD P-State EPP Default & More

In addition to GNOME’s Sysprof integrating CPU scheduler data this week for GNOME 45, this system-wide profiling tool has also added support for FlameGraphs…

Source: Phoronix – GNOME’s Sysprof Adds FlameGraphs To Better Visualize Output

Last week KDE Plasma 6 made the default change from single click to double click for opening files/folders while this week brings another notable default settings change for the desktop… Tap-to-click is finally enabled by default…

Source: Phoronix – KDE Plasma 6 Now Enables Tap-To-Click By Default

AMD used the Gamescom gaming conference in Cologne, Germany for announcing the Radeon RX 7700 XT and Radeon RX 7800 XT graphics cards as the newest consumer cards in the RDNA3 family.

Source: Phoronix – AMD Announces The Radeon RX 7700 XT & RX 7800 XT Graphics Cards

Oliver Smith at Canonical who serves as the Product Manager for Ubuntu Desktop published a post on “charting a course for the future” of the Ubuntu desktop…

Source: Phoronix – Ubuntu Desktop “Charting A Course For The Future” With Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Next Year

Since 2021 among other Snap’ing efforts for converting formerly Ubuntu DEB packages to Canonical’s Snap sandboxed app packaging format has been the CUPS print server. The plan was to replace the Debian-packaged CUPS with the Snap-based CUPS for Ubuntu 23.10 but now that is being pushed back to next year…

Source: Phoronix – Ubuntu Delays Transition To Snap’ed CUPS Print Server

It looks like the further-tuned AMD Inception / SRSO (Speculative Return Stack Overflow) mitigation code will be submitted for the upcoming Linux 6.6 merge window…

Source: Phoronix – Further Cleaned-Up AMD Inception/SRSO Mitigation Code Ready Ahead Of Linux 6.6

Coreboot 4.21 is available this week as the newest tagged release for this open-source system BIOS/firmware solution. Coreboot 4.21 brings a number of new motherboard ports as well as various core improvements…

Source: Phoronix – Coreboot 4.21 Brings More System76 Laptops, Star Labs & MSI Z790-P Support

Miguel Ojeda who leads the “Rust for Linux” effort of integrating Rust programming language support into the Linux kernel has already submitted his pull request of planned feature updates for the upcoming Linux 6.6 cycle…

Source: Phoronix – Linux 6.6 To Bring Another Rust Toolchain Upgrade

Libinput 1.24 is available today for this input handling library used by Linux systems both legacy X11/X.Org desktops and especially by modern Wayland compositors for unifying input handling in the open-source world…

Source: Phoronix – libinput 1.24 Brings Changes For Apple Touchpads, Drawing Tablets

The Vulkan 1.3.262 revision to this industry standard for high performance graphics and compute is now published. There is the usual assortment of minor changes/fixes plus four new extensions, which all happen to be new vendor extensions from Qualcomm…

Source: Phoronix – Vulkan 1.3.262 Rolls Out With Four New Extensions

Following AMD recently posting Linux graphics driver patches for enabling a GFX 11.5 graphics engine and new DCN 3.5 display block that are presumably for an RDNA3 refresh such as for the Ryzen 8000 series APUs, today AMD posted additional open-source driver patch series for enabling additional new IP…

Source: Phoronix – AMD Posts Linux Driver Patches For New VPE & UMSCH Components With Future GPUs

The Linux 6.5 kernel is expected to be released as stable this weekend barring any last minute issues from being raised. One of the notable changes with this new kernel version is Linux now defaulting to the AMD P-State “EPP” active driver configuration for modern Ryzen systems rather than the long-used generic ACPI CPUFreq driver default. In some cases this can mean better performance but particularly should yield a nice improvement to the power efficiency of Ryzen Zen 2 and newer platforms, especially laptops and other portable Linux systems like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally. I am working on some fresh AMD Ryzen Linux laptop comparison benchmarks but for this article is a look at Linux 6.5 on the desktop side with the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.

Source: Phoronix – Ryzen 9 7950X Performance With The New AMD P-State Default Of Linux 6.5

SQLite 3.43 is out today as the newest version of this popular open-source embedded SQL database library that is widely used by countless applications and other software for a variety of data storage purposes…

Source: Phoronix – SQLite 3.43 Released With Up To 2x Performance For JSON Processing

OpenMandriva developers today formally announced the release of their rolling-release OpenMandriva ROME 23.08 Linux OS installation images, which are also being treated as a release candidate for the OMLx 5.0 non-rolling distribution variant. Making OpenMandriva ROME 23.08 more exciting is that they are now offering separate install media as well that features the KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment in its current experimental state but is being offered by OpenMandriva as a “technical preview” around the future direction of the desktop…

Source: Phoronix – OpenMandriva ROME 23.08 Brings KDE Plasma 6 TP Option, Continues With AMD Zen Spin

Fedora with their more liberal update policies will soon be rolling out the Thunderbird 115 mail client to stable Fedora Linux users…

Source: Phoronix – Thunderbird 115 Will Be Rolling Out To Fedora Users