Linux NewsLinux phones are getting even better with postmarketOS 25.12
Now based on Alpine Linux 3.23.
Winux 11: A Linux Distribution Designed for Windows Users
There are quite a few people still using Windows yet, and some that want to switch to Linux. People are comfortable with the look of Windows and dislike the Linux desktops. Now, there is Winux that looks exactly like Windows 11. NOTE: Winux 11 looks like Windows 11 or Windows 10, whichever style you choose. Winux Requirements Winux has more relaxed requirements than Windows for hardware. The Operating System requires: 3 GB of RAM (4 GB is preferred) Intel or... https://www.linux.org/threads/winux-11-a-linux-distribution-designed-for-windows-users.58122/
Elementary OS 8.1 released
Version 8.1 of elementary OS has been released. Notable changes in this release include making the Wayland session the default, changes to window management and multitasking, as well as a number of accessibility improvements. The 8.1 release is the first to be made available for Arm64 devices, which should allow users to run elementary on Apple M-series hardware or other Arm devices that can load UEFI-supporting firmware, such as some Raspberry Pi models. See the blog post for a full list of changes.
[$] A high-memory elimination timeline for the kernel
Arnd Bergmann began his 2025 Linux Plumbers Conference session on the future of 32-bit support in the Linux kernel by saying that it was to be a followup to his September talk on the same topic. The focus this time, though, was on the kernel's "high memory" abstraction, and when it could be removed. It seems that the kernel community will need to support 32-bit systems for some time yet, even if it might be possible to remove some functionality, including support for large amounts of memory on those systems, more quickly.
Open-Source Linux Driver Christmas Surprise For 20~23 Year Old Radeon GPUs
If Linux 6.19 switching from the Radeon legacy to AMDGPU kernel drivers for the GCN 1.0/1.1 GPUs for those ~13 year old GPUs isn't nostalgic enough for you, here's something a bit more nostalgic this holiday season: fresh open-source driver commits to the Radeon R300g driver for supporting those 23 year old ATI R300 GPUs up through the 20 year old R500 class graphics processors...
postmarketOS 25.12 Linux Mobile OS Rolls Out Based on Alpine Linux 3.23
postmarketOS 25.12 distribution based on Alpine Linux is now available for download with support for new devices and new features. Here's what's new!
postmarketOS 25.12 Brings GNOME 49, Plasma Mobile 6.5, and Phosh 0.51
The postmarketOS 25.12 release updates all major mobile Linux interfaces, including GNOME 49, Plasma Mobile 6.5.3, and Phosh 0.51.
[$] Verifier-state pruning in BPF
The BPF verifier works, on a theoretical level, by considering every possible path that a BPF program could take. As a practical matter, however, it needs to do that in a reasonable amount of time. At the 2025 Linux Plumbers Conference, Mahé Tardy and Paul Chaignon gave a detailed explanation (slides; video) of the main mechanism that it uses to accomplish that: state pruning. They focused on two optimizations that help reduce the number of paths the verifier needs to check, and discussed some of the complications the optimizations introduced to the verifier's code.
LibreOffice 26.2 Gets Rid Of The "Community" Edition Branding
With the upcoming LibreOffice 26.2 open-source office suite release, they are getting rid of the "Community Edition" branding for the standard version of this widely-used cross-platform office suite...
Security updates for Tuesday
Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (binutils, curl, gcc-toolset-13-binutils, git-lfs, httpd, httpd:2.4, keylime, libssh, mod_md, openssh, php:8.3, podman, python3.12, python3.9, python39:3.9, skopeo, tomcat, tomcat9, and webkit2gtk3), Fedora (mingw-glib2, mingw-libsoup, and mingw-python3), Mageia (roundcubemail), Oracle (git-lfs and mod_md), and SUSE (glib2, kernel, mariadb, and qemu).
Stop Manually Checking GitHub Releases — These Tools Automatically Install & Update Apps on Linux
These handy utilities tools simplify installing and managing binaries from GitHub releases on Linux.
Micro QuickJS Engine Compiles & Runs JavaScript With As Little As 10kB Of RAM
Very talented open-source developer Fabrice Bellard who already is well known for his work on QEMU, the Tiny C Compiler, and FFmpeg, has another accomplishment: Micro QuickJS. The Micro QuickJS JavaScript engine can compile and run JavaScript programs with as little as 10 kB of RAM...
Intel NPU Firmware Published For Panther Lake - Completing The Linux Driver Support
Ahead of Intel Panther Lake laptops expected to debut next month at CES in Las Vegas, the Linux driver support for the next-gen "50xx" NPU of Panther Lake is now complete. The last piece of the driver support puzzle is now in place with the NPU firmware binaries having been upstreamed today to the linux-firmware.git repository...
AMD Krackan Point Sub-$500 Laptop Linux Performance Improves By ~8% In Just Six Months
As an end-of-year tradition at Phoronix for running a lot of year-over-year comparison performance benchmarks and other long-term performance evaluations, it's typically done on the higher-end hardware. That's done for a matter of time savings with maximum performance when running often 100~200+ benchmarks per article, the highest-end hardware typically being the most interesting in terms of features and capabilities, and more often than not getting flagship hardware review samples as opposed to the lower-end hardware. There have been benchmarks recently showing the big gains for AMD EPYC from a one year Linux LTS kernel upgrade, Intel Granite Rapids over the past year, and even the AMD Milan-X performance over the last four years, among other end-of-year 2025 articles. Today is a look at how the AMD Ryzen AI 5 "Krackan Point" CPU/iGPU performance has evolved simply over the last six months. It was a rather surprising twist how much better the Linux performance is over simply the past
QEMU 10.2 Expands RISC-V, PowerPC, and s390x Emulation Capabilities
QEMU 10.2 expands emulation support for RISC-V, PowerPC, and s390x, adding performance improvements, new machine support, and fixes.