Linux NewsFOSS Weekly #26.03: Torvalds Using AI, Dash to Dock, Linux Kernel Bugs, Pacman's Rust Replacement and More
2026 is the year of vibe coding?
Tails 7.4 Released With Persistent Language and Keyboard Settings
Tails 7.4, a privacy-focused Linux distro, introduces persistent language and keyboard settings, along with Tor Browser 15.0.4.
Debian Plans to Remove GTK2 Before Debian 14
Debian maintainers argue that shipping dead upstream software, such as GTK2, is a growing security and stability liability.
Imagination Driver To Support The TI AM62P SoC In Linux 6.20~7.0
Sent out today was the latest DRM-Misc-Next pull request of new material ahead of the next kernel cycle either Linux 6.20 or 7.0 depending upon what Linus Torvalds decides to call it...
Whisper.cpp 1.8.3 Delivers A "12x Performance Boost" With Integrated Graphics
Whisper.cpp as the open-source high performance inference project built around OpenAI's Whisper and from the same developers as Llama.cpp / GGML is out with a big new release. Whisper.cpp 1.8.3 is capable of delivering a 12x performance boost for systems with integrated AMD and Intel graphics...
D7VK 1.2 Released For Improving Direct3D 6 Front-End
Started last year was D7VK as a project bringing Direct3D 7 implemented over the Vulkan API for enjoying better performance and support for legacy Windows games on Linux, akin to DXVK and VKD3D-Proton for newer versions of Direct3D over Vulkan that is used by Valve's Steam Play (Proton). Back in December D7VK added a Direct3D 6 front-end for allowing even older game titles to be accelerated using the modern Vulkan API. Today D7VK 1.2 is out for furthering the D3D6 support...
Ubuntu 25.04 “Plucky Puffin” Reached End of Life, Upgrade to Ubuntu 25.10
Ubuntu 25.04 “Plucky Puffin” reached end of life on January 15th, 2026, and it will no longer be supported. All users should upgrade to Ubuntu 25.10 “Questing Quokka” as soon as possible.
libvirt 12.0 Released - Bhyve ARM64 Support & Other Improvements For The BSD Hypervisor
Libvirt 12.0 released today as this open-source virtualization API for management across different virtualization technologies/hypervisors. With libvirt 12.0, improving Bhyve as the FreeBSD hypervisor was a big focus...
Linux Patches Bring Mainline Kernel Support For The ASUS IPMI Expansion Card
DeviceTree patches worked on recently allow for the mainline Linux kernel to run on the ASUS "Kommando" IPMI Expansion Card. This is interesting for opening up new possibilities for this external IPMI/BMC expansion card but too bad that less than three years after launching it's difficult to find...
oVirt 4.5.7 Released After Two Years With New OS & CPU Support
The oVirt 4.5.7 open-source virtualization management platform released this week after not seeing any new releases in two years. While Red Hat had started the oVirt open-source project for which their Red Hat Virtualization platform is based, since they shifted that to maintenance mode to focus on the Red Hat OpenShift platform and stopped contributing to oVirt, it's been up to the open-source community to keep it going...
Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ 2 Released & Designed For Running GenAI Models
In late 2024 the folks at Raspberry Pi announced the Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ as an AI accelerator capable of 26 TOPS and costing $110 for pairing with Raspberry Pi single board computers. Today they announced the much more capable Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ 2 that can begin to take on some generative AI "GenAI" models...
Orion Web Browser for Linux Sees Alpha Release
An alpha release of Orion for Linux, a Webkit-based web browser developed by the search engine Kagi is out for testing – though only for paid Orion+ subscribers. Not a subscriber? Don’t worry; an Orion for Linux beta release is reportedly coming as early as next month (February) to allow people who registered their interest in the Linux launch via a newsletter signup to help test it. Announcement of announcements aside, Kagi recently shared a progress update on how Orion’s Linux build is shaping up. I’ll get to what’s been added in a moment, but first I want to recap […]
[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for January 15, 2026
Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition: Front: SFC v. VIZIO; GPLv2 requirements; Debian and GTK 2; OpenZL; kernel scheduler QoS; Rust concurrent data access; Asciinema. Briefs: OpenSSL and Python; LSFMM+BPF 2026; Fedora elections; Gentoo retrospective; EU lawmaking; Git data model; Firefox 147; Radicle 1.6.0; Quotes; ... Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.
OBS Studio 32.1 Promises New Audio Mixer & WebRTC Simulcast Support, Beta Out Now
OBS Studio 32.1 enters public beta testing with new audio mixer, WebRTC simulcast support, new Add Source dialog, and more. Here’s what to expect!
The State of OpenSSL for pyca/cryptography
Paul Kehrer and Alex Gaynor, maintainers of the Python cryptography module, have put out some strongly worded criticism of OpenSSL. It comes from a talk they gave at the OpenSSL conference in October 2025 (YouTube video). The post goes into a lot of detail about the problems with the OpenSSL code base and testing, which has led the cryptography team to reconsider using the library. "The mistakes we see in OpenSSL's development have become so significant that we believe substantial changes are required — either to OpenSSL, or to our reliance on it." They go further in the conclusion: First, we will no longer require OpenSSL implementations for new functionality. Where we deem it desirable, we will add new APIs that are only on LibreSSL/BoringSSL/AWS-LC. Concretely, we expect to add ML-KEM and ML-DSA APIs that are only available with LibreSSL/BoringSSL/AWS-LC, and not with OpenSSL. Second, we currently statically link a copy of OpenSSL in our wheels (binary artifacts). We are beginning t