Sent out and already merged today for the Linux 7.0 kernel are the EXT4 file-system updates...

Merged today to Mesa 26.1-devel is unifying of the AMD video decode implementation between the RadeonSI Gallium3D and RADV Vulkan drivers...

Mesa 26.0 was just officially released as this quarter's new feature release for these open-source OpenGL / Gallium3D and Vulkan drivers used commonly on Linux systems and elsewhere like within the confines of Microsoft's WSL...

With Linux 6.19 due for release later today it then opens up the next kernel merge window. It could be Linux 6.20 but more than likely the next kernel version will be called Linux 7.0 with Linus Torvalds' past tradition of bumping the major version number after X.19. Whatever it ends up being called, here is a look at various "-next" changes that have been queuing up ahead of the merge window...

D7VK is a fork of the DXVK project that is an important part of Valve's Steam Play (Proton) for Direct3D 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 support atop Vulkan. With D7VK the original goal was a Direct3D 7 implementation on Vulkan. D7VK 1.1 brought experimental Direct3D 6 support and now with today's release of D7VK 1.3 is support for Direct3D 5...

There is less than two weeks to go until the official KDE Plasma 6.6 desktop release. Plasma 6.6 is still seeing bug fixes in this final stretch of development while KDE developers are also busy already on Plasma 6.7 feature work...

Linux input expert Peter Hutterer of Red Hat announced today the first release candidate of libinput 1.31, the input handling library used by both modern X.Org Server and Wayland desktop environments...

A one-line patch to the HP WMI x86 platform driver for Linux was posted for allowing the HP OMEN Transcend Gaming Laptop 14-fb1xxx to correctly hit its rated TDP limit for allowing better performance outside of the Microsoft Windows confines...

For those interested in the Dolby Digital Plus "Enhanced AC-3" audio compression format for open-source software, the last of the patents for this widely-used format by streaming services and more appears to have expired...

Another great albeit overdue improvement for GNOME 50 has landed: Variable Rate Refresh "VRR" functionality for modern displays is now promoted and no longer treated as an experimental feature...

Timur Kristóf of Valve's Linux graphics team last year addressed remaining issues in the open-source AMDGPU kernel graphics driver so old AMD GCN 1.0 and GCN 1.1 GPUs could transition to using AMDGPU by default rather than the former "Radeon" kernel driver that is largely in maintenance mode for pre-GCN/RDNA GPUs. One caveat though was the GCN 1.1 APU support still having some limitations leading to Kaveri and friends not being able to use the modern AMDGPU DC "Display Core" code. But new patches from Timur take care of those limitations...

Following NVIDIA's announcement back at CES of their GeForce NOW game streaming service coming to Linux as a native desktop application, today's the day. The GeForce NOW Linux-native build is being published and the review embargo has lifted.

An exciting new announcement is the formation of the Open Gaming Collective, a collaborative organisation between many names in the Linux sphere.

The Vulkan EXT_present_timing was in development for years to help avoid game stuttering and released this past November with Vulkan 1.4.335. This significant extension as of today has been wired up in Mesa 26.1-devel for the key Vulkan drivers and working on both X11 and Wayland...

Xfce developers are using their donations from the community to fund a longtime core developer to create Xfwl4, an entirely new Wayland compositor for Xfce...

TigerVNC 1.16 is out today for this high performance, multi-platform VNC server and client implementation. Most notable with TigerVNC 1.16 is "w0vncserver" as a new server for sharing Wayland desktops...

Kairui Song of Tencent sent out a new patch series overnight working on enhancing the Linux kernel's swap code. With the patches there are some memory savings -- and more on the way -- while also providing for slightly faster performance...

For the Intel-powered LG Gram Style 14 laptop one of the Linux support caveats is the internal speakers not working properly under Linux, but with a patch expected for the upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle it will finally fix the laptop speaker support for one of the laptop models in this series...

A patch series posted last week for the open-source AMDGPU kernel driver implements HDMI Variable Rate Refresh "VRR" and other gaming features for HDMI displays. With the HDMI Forum blocking HDMI 2.1 open-source support, these HDMI gaming features for the AMDGPU driver were developed via trial-and-error and the limited public knowledge available. A second iteration of these patches are now available for testing...