Gentoo developer Michaล Gรณrny has written a lengthy article explaining the philosophy and purpose of the Gentoo Linux distribution, in response to a thread on Mastodon: Gentoo is a source-first distribution, which means the primary method of installing software is to build it from source. Of course, that doesn't mean manually building stuff, following some kind of how-to: finding all the dependencies, installing them manually, going through a series of magical incantations, and eventually ending up no better than if we were installing a binary package. The package manager takes care of all the necessary steps and more, making package installs easy; well, at least unless something fails. But I'm digressing... [...] We try to build a friendly and welcoming community around Gentoo, and we truly want using Gentoo be an enjoyable experience. We want it to be a system that doesn't betray you.
by George Whittaker The NixOS project has officially released NixOS 26.05, codenamed โYarara,โ continuing the distributionโs unique approach to Linux system management through declarative configuration, atomic upgrades, and reproducible deployments. The release introduces several important platform-level changes, modernized infrastructure components, and continued refinement of the Nix ecosystem. As one of the most distinctive Linux distributions available today, NixOS continues attracting developers, DevOps engineers, and advanced Linux users who value predictable system behavior and highly reproducible environments. What Makes NixOS Different? Unlike traditional Linux distributions that install packages directly into shared system locations, NixOS is built around the Nix package manager, which stores software in isolated, versioned paths and generates complete system configurations declaratively. This architecture provides several advantages: Atomic system upgrades Reliable rollback
In a filesystem-track session at the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, Amir Goldstein wanted to discuss his proposed documentation on adding new filesystems to the kernel. There are a number of unmaintained and untestable filesystems already in the kernel, which are a burden to VFS-layer developers who are trying to make sweeping changes, such as switching to folios and the "new" mount API. Goldstein's document is an attempt to head off the addition of filesystems that may increase that burden down the road.
IBM has sent out a press release touting a claimed $5 billion investment into an operation called Project Lightwell: Project Lightwell will establish a trusted enterprise clearinghouse combined with a global force of engineers to identify and fix vulnerabilities at scale. The clearinghouse will serve as a security coordination layer, using advanced AI capabilities to validate and test fixes across an unprecedented volume of open source code. These capabilities will be offered through commercial subscriptions, allowing enterprises to integrate secure patches directly into their existing software supply chains with enterprise-grade validation and lifecycle management. Toward the bottom, it does also mention sharing vulnerability information with upstream projects.
The kernel's memory-management subsystem is currently partway through a multi-year project to replace the page structure (which represents a page of physical memory) with memory descriptors. At the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management, and BPF Summit, Vishal Moola ran a fast-paced session in the memory-management track to describe the current state of that work and what is likely to happen next.
In recent weeks we have been exploring different areas of the Intel Arc Pro B70 graphics performance on Linux from various OpenCL and Vulkan to Level Zero compute benchmarks, scaling up to four Arc Pro B70 graphics cards, comparing to NVIDIA RTX PRO Blackwell, and other relevant tests. While not intended for gaming, many Phoronix readers keep raising requests for seeing the Arc Pro B70 performance for Linux gaming given the lack of any consumer BMG-G31 GPU. So for those curious, here is a look at the Linux gaming performance with the Arc Pro B70 graphics card.
Arm today announced the open-sourcing of Metis, an agentic AI security framework that delivers context AI-powered security analysis in looking out for software vulnerabilities...
The QEMU processor emulator that plays an important role in the open-source Linux virtualization stack had a policy that forbid any contributions including or derived from AI-generated content. But there are now second thoughts with a proposed patch that will permit AI/LLM contributions in non-critical areas...
Linux News