Linux NewsMastodon 4.6 Released with Collections and Redesigned Profiles
Mastodon 4.6 brings curated profile Collections, redesigned profiles, email subscriptions, landing page changes, and more to the decentralized social media platform.
How NVIDIA Vera CPU Performance Compares To The Ampere Altra Max
Last month on Phoronix was an exclusive first look at the NVIDIA Vera CPU performance compared to prior-generation NVIDIA Grace as well as the current AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon competition. Following that was looking at how the ARM Linux server performance has evolved over the past eight years of AArch64 Linux servers. A Phoronix Premium supporter recently requested wanting to see how Vera compares to Ampere Altra. While Ampere Altra has been in the marketplace now for more than five years, they are some of the most readily available ARM Linux server options for DIY/enthusiast builds given the scarcity of AmpereOne and lack of other readily available socketed ARM CPU options. This article shows how the performance compares between Ampere Altra Max and NVIDIA Vera.
Ubuntu flavours now need a beta release to ship
Ubuntu has announced an ‘important policy update’, making beta releases mandatory for all Ubuntu flavours, no exceptions. Most flavours already hit the beta milestone every six months without issue. But until now a flavour that missed the deadline could still be granted a one-off exception. During the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS cycle, that’s what happened with Ubuntu Kylin, the Chinese-orientated spin that uses the UKUI desktop. It missed the Beta window but still made the final release. That won’t happen again. To get an official stable release, a flavour now must have a beta release out the same time as every […]
Mozilla Opens Up Firefox Roadmap with Big Browser Changes Ahead
Mozilla plans native Containers, expanded PDF editing, Quick Answers, Smart Window, and other upcoming Firefox features.
EXT4 Reworks Fast Commit Handling & Faster Directory Hash Computation
The EXT4 file-system improvements were merged today for Linux 7.2 with some enticing optimizations...
[$] The first half of the 7.2 merge window
The 7.2 merge window started with the 7.1 kernel release on June 14. As of this writing, just over 7,000 non-merge changesets have been pulled into the mainline for the next kernel release. Many of the core subsystems have been pulled at this point, meaning that most of the changes that can be expected in 7.2 have now come into focus.
Mastodon 4.6 released
Version 4.6 of the Mastodon fediverse platform has been released. The headliner of this release is Collections, a way to create and share curated collections of profiles. Part of Mastodon's work ethos is our commitment to trust and safety, so we've put a lot of thought and care into the design of this feature to avoid some of the pitfalls and abuse people have experienced with similar features on other platforms, while focusing on its primary goal: Helping new users discover more of the Fediverse. Other new features include support for subscribing to posts via email, the ability to generate a "year in review" post, accessibility improvements, and more.
[$] Single-hop block replication with RMR and BRMR
How can cloud providers efficiently supply durable virtual block devices? Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) provides a way for servers in a cluster to share chunks of memory, but there still needs to be a protocol that operates on top of RDMA to provide the guarantees expected of a block device. The kernel's RDMA transport library (RTRS) provides a way to send messages via RDMA. I presented about two new components built on top of RTRS at the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory Management and BPF Summit: Reliable Multicast over RTRS (RMR) and Block device over RMR (BRMR). These modules, which I am working on with Jia Li, could be a way for cloud providers to expose durable block devices with as little overhead as possible. To accomplish that, however, we need some discussion and feedback from the community before sending the modules upstream.
Security updates for Thursday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (dracut, podman, postfix, rsync, xorg-x11-server, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), Debian (atril, firefox-esr, and nginx), Mageia (libcap, perl, and python-pillow), Oracle (firefox, gstreamer-plugins-base and gstreamer-plugins-good, httpd:2.4, kernel, libpng12, libpng15, libxml2, libxslt, opencryptoki, openssl, postfix, rsync, webkit2gtk3, xorg-x11-server, and xorg-x11-server-Xwayland), Slackware (bind, libidn, mozilla, and openssl), SUSE (alloy, docker, elemental-system-agent, glibc, grafana, helm, LibVNCServer, openssh8.4, perl-GD, perl-HTTP-Daemon, python-WebOb-doc, python311-google-adk, rustup, traefik2, wireshark, and xwayland), and Ubuntu (dolibarr, golang-go.crypto, graphite2, gst-plugins-bad1.0, kitty, libconfig-inifiles-perl, libnginx-mod-js, and webpy).
Rust PNG Image Decoder Now Even Faster: Benefiting Chrome, GNOME, Etc
The Rust PNG crate, image-png, for PNG image encoding and decoding was already claimed to be the fastest PNG decoder in the world for the past year. Now with the latest optimizations, it's even faster...
Commodore's New Flip Phone Skips Android for Linux-Based Sailfish OS
The Callback 8020 still runs apps made for Android, btw.
5 things that are surprisingly easier on Linux than Windows
Windows seems like the easier operating system, until it is not.
Tails 7.9 Anonymous OS Rolls Out with Tor Browser and Firmware Updates
The privacy-focused Tails 7.9 is now available with Tor Browser 15.0.16, updated firmware for newer hardware, and a Secure Boot notification fix.
These 4 alien Linux concepts confused me when I switched from Windows
Linux isn’t harder than Windows—it’s just unfamiliar and works with very different computing concepts.
KDE Plasma 6.7 Release Resurrects Two Themes From the KDE 4 Era
The release also brings per-screen virtual desktops and Union, a new CSS-based theming system.