If you are an early customer of the Framework Laptop 13 Pro or other Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Panther Lake laptop and using Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, there can be real benefit from upgrading your Mesa stack for the newer Iris Gallium3D and ANV Vulkan drivers. In this article are some benchmarks of the Framework Laptop 13 Pro with Core Ultra X9 388H with Arc B390 Xe3 integrated graphics for looking at the performance impact of using Mesa Git on Ubuntu Linux.
For nearly the past decade has been the kernel lockdown mode for tightening up kernel access from user-space such as when UEFI Secure Boot is enabled. The kernel lockdown mode restricts PCI BAR access, no writing to /dev/mem, and other restrictions so user-space can't can't modify the running kernel or access sensitive kernel memory. An oversight has allowed legacy I/O and memory interfaces via sysfs to remain open in lockdown mode, but a fix is on the way...
In addition to the Linux kernel staging area now rejecting AI/LLM-generated patches except for real security fixes, the Linux wireless networking code is also seeing some shifts around how it will deal with AI/LLM generated patches...
A new kernel feature proposed by a Google engineer is Page Alloc Hogger to allow for fine control over where memory pages are allocated in order to more easily reproduce low-memory conditions, make it simpler to exert memory pressure, and enable other stressful memory conditions for testing/debugging how Linux copes...
Earlier this year we began seeing patches for AMD GFX1170 graphics IP labeled as "RDNA 4m" and that was then completed with also adding GFX1171 and GFX1172 as additional targets for the AMDGPU LLVM compiler back-end and AMDGPU kernel driver. Merged today for Mesa 26.3 is now adding the GFX1171 target to Mesa 26.3 for the RADV and RadeonSI drivers...
Qualcomm engineers have initiated a discussion over upstreaming Synx to the Linux kernel, which is a global synchronization framework across different parts of SoCs. Qualcomm is already using Synx internally and is reported to provide "significant" power and performance benefits...
If you happen to have a gaming headset from the latest SteelSeries Nova 5X or Nova 7 series, the upcoming Linux 7.3 kernel will begin properly supporting those headsets...
For those with one of the original Valve Steam Controllers from a decade ago and looking to make use of it with the native HID Linux driver outside of the Steam client or SDL, an important addition is coming with the Linux 7.3 kernel release later in the year...
Rust Coreutils 0.10 is out today from the uutils project for this alternative to GNU Coreutils. Rust Coreutils 0.10 development focused on additional security hardening plus also increasing the GNU test suite compatibility and robustness...
Mesa 26.2 stable is now available as the newest quarterly feature release for this set of open-source OpenGL and Vulkan drivers typically used on Linux systems...
One of the nifty new features of Linux 7.2 is USB4STREAM as an Intel-developed solution for quickly sending data between USB4 connected systems. Now for the upcoming Linux 7.3 cycle, a busy poll mode is being added to provide lower-latency data transfers at the expense of increased CPU activity...
The newest Wayland compositor to talk about and discuss is Denial, a Wayland compositor focused on optimal Arch Linux integration and that embeds the Flutter engine directly into the codebase. Denial makes use of the Rust programming language and leverages Smithay to help in the compositor responsibilities...
Cloudflare today announced the open-sourcing of Cloudflare OS as an "open platform for agents, apps, and work." Cloudflare OS is an AI "operating system" but not in the traditional OS sense...
A patch for the Intel P-State CPU frequency scaling Linux driver is pending to avoid confusing the processor firmware on newer platforms like Intel Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" where Dynamic Efficiency Control (DEC) is supported...
There continues to be a lout of cleaning up of the kernel source tree to deal with noise generated by AI / LLM coding agents sending in reports and patches for old drivers that are likely not actively used by anyone on modern upstream kernel builds. Rather than continuing to carry these old drivers around with the uptick in AI/LLM-generated noise, kernel maintainers are finding it better to just retire the old drivers...
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