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Many Exciting Features & New Hardware Support Expected For Linux 6.14
Many Exciting Features & New Hardware Support Expected For Linux 6.14
7 Hours Ago - Linux Kernel - Linux 6.14 Features - 1 Comment

Linux 6.13 is bringing many exciting features for its stable debut expected this Sunday. But following that it's onward to the Linux 6.14 kernel merge window for which it will be yet another very exciting round from completing the NTSYNC driver to adding new hardware support and much more. Here is a preview of some of the changes expected to be submitted for the Linux 6.14 cycle.

Fedora 42 Boot Splash Screen Looks To Workaround GPU Drivers Taking Too Long To Load
Fedora 42 Boot Splash Screen Looks To Workaround GPU Drivers Taking Too Long To Load
11 Hours Ago - Fedora - Plymouth + Simple DRM - 21 Comments

Linux kernel graphics drivers have been growing too much in size that they are taking too long to load at boot time for quickly lighting up the display to present the nice Plymouth boot splash experience. This has led to situations of the Plymouth boot splash screen falling back to its simple text-based interface after timing out. As a workaround, Fedora 42 is looking to use the generic "SimpleDRM" driver during this initial boot splash screen experience to initially avoid the bulky DRM drivers.

16 January

Intel Arc B570 Graphics Performance On Linux
Intel Arc B570 Graphics Performance On Linux
16 January 09:00 AM EST - Graphics Cards - 24 Comments

Last month when Intel formally introduced Battlemage graphics their initial products in the B-Series were the B570 and B580 graphics cards. The B580 went on sale in December and we've been busy testing the B580 on Linux since while today the embargo expires on the Arc B570 with those graphics cards going on sale this morning. Here is a first look at the Intel Arc B570 graphics and compute performance under Linux with their latest open-source drivers.

AT_EXECVE_CHECK Submitted For Linux 6.14 To Help With Consistent Security
AT_EXECVE_CHECK Submitted For Linux 6.14 To Help With Consistent Security
16 January 06:55 AM EST - Linux Kernel - AT_EXECVE_CHECK - Add A Comment

In anticipation of the Linux 6.14 merge window opening next week if Linux 6.13 releases as expected this coming Sunday, Google engineer Kees Cook has already sent out pull requests to Linus Torvalds of new feature code he's been aligning for the v6.14 cycle. One of the interesting pulls is the introduction of the AT_EXECVE_CHECK flag to the execveat call.

CXL Address Translation Support For AMD Zen 5 Sees Linux Patches
CXL Address Translation Support For AMD Zen 5 Sees Linux Patches
16 January 06:48 AM EST - AMD - AMD EPYC 9005 + CXL Address Translation - Add A Comment

A set of Linux kernel patches posted by AMD engineers last week are working on enhancing the CXL address translation support between the HPA decoder and system physical memory addresses. These patches get that CXL address translation support working for the recently launched AMD EPYC 9005 "Turin" Zen 5 server processors.

Expanding Web Camera Support Among Newer Intel Laptops Planned For Fedora 42
Expanding Web Camera Support Among Newer Intel Laptops Planned For Fedora 42
16 January 06:13 AM EST - Fedora - Intel IPU6/IPU7 - Add A Comment

Red Hat engineer Hans de Goede wrote a blog post a few days ago around the Intel IPU6 and newer web camera support still being a challenge on Linux. While various Intel IPU6 open-source code has been upstreamed, there remain differences with a number of laptops currently available still not working out-of-the-box for web camera support on Linux. Hans de Goede has now initiated a change proposal for Fedora 42 to take care of more Intel web camera issues.

GCC Goes Ahead With The ARM64 ILP32 Deprecation
GCC Goes Ahead With The ARM64 ILP32 Deprecation
16 January 06:02 AM EST - GNU - 32-bit ARM64 ABI Deprecated - Add A Comment

As a follow-up to the recent news around GCC considering deprecating ARM64 ILP32 support, the free software developers have indeed decided to move ahead in deprecating this 32-bit ABI for ARM64.

15 January

Intel THC Drivers To Be Submitted For Linux 6.14
Intel THC Drivers To Be Submitted For Linux 6.14
15 January 02:49 PM EST - Intel - Touch Host Controller - 6 Comments

The upcoming Linux 6.14 kernel cycle is poised to introduce support for Intel THC... The Touch Host Controller IP block found in the PCH of modern Intel laptops for dealing with touchscreen, touchpads, and similar functionality.

Triple Buffering Support Updated Against Latest GNOME 48 Code
Triple Buffering Support Updated Against Latest GNOME 48 Code
15 January 08:45 AM EST - GNOME - GNOME 48 Triple Buffering - 30 Comments

It's been over four years now that the GNOME Mutter pull request has been open for introducing dynamic triple/double buffering support. It's still not clear that it will be ready for merging with GNOME 48 due out in March but at least the patches have been updated to work with the latest upstream Mutter code.

Linux 6.14 To Bring An Important Improvement For AMD Preferred Core
Linux 6.14 To Bring An Important Improvement For AMD Preferred Core
15 January 07:00 AM EST - AMD - AMD Preferred Core Fix - 9 Comments

Being merged back in the Linux 6.9 kernel was AMD Preferred Core support within the amd_pstate driver for being able to communicate the "preferred" cores to the kernel for those that are able to reach a higher maximum frequency or otherwise be preferred over other CPU cores. For the upcoming Linux 6.14 merge window, an important set of patches are queued up for better positioning this Preferred Core handling.

LACT Linux GPU Control Panel Adds Support For Intel Graphics
LACT Linux GPU Control Panel Adds Support For Intel Graphics
15 January 03:00 AM EST - Hardware - LACT 0.7 - 15 Comments

In development for several years has been LACT as a Linux GPU Control Application to allow adjusting various GPU/driver settings via a convenient graphical application. AMD and NVIDIA graphics have been supported to date while now Intel graphics are also supported with the brand new LACT 0.7.

14 January

Intel Arc B580 Linux Graphics Driver Performance One Month After Launch
Intel Arc B580 Linux Graphics Driver Performance One Month After Launch
14 January 03:47 PM EST - Intel - Arc B580 Vulkan - 10 Comments

Yesterday I looked at how the Intel OpenCL GPU compute performance evolved for the Arc Graphics B580 in the one month since that first Battlemage graphics card premiered. There were nice Intel GPU compute optimizations merged over the past month to improve the experience. Here are some Linux graphics/gaming benchmarks for the Intel Arc B580 comparing the prior launch day Linux driver performance to where the Mesa performance is at now.

GCC Developers Consider Deprecating ARM64 ILP32 Support
GCC Developers Consider Deprecating ARM64 ILP32 Support
14 January 11:01 AM EST - Arm - ARM64 ILP32 - 11 Comments

ARM64 ILP32 is the Armv8 architecture with a 32-bit ABI rather than 64-bit -- akin to the "x32" x86 effort that never really took off on Linux. ARM64 ILP32 support never ended up making it into the mainline Linux kernel or GNU C Library but did appear within the GNU Compiler Collection. But years later and little use, GCC developers are consider deprecating ILP32 support ahead of its eventual removal.

Intel IPU6 Web Camera Support Still Poses A Challenge For Linux Laptops
Intel IPU6 Web Camera Support Still Poses A Challenge For Linux Laptops
14 January 10:11 AM EST - Intel - Intel IPU6 Web Cameras - 22 Comments

Back in 2022 there were Linux kernel developers like Linux's second-in-command Greg Kroah-Hartman recommending that Intel Alder Lake laptops be avoided. This was due to the Intel web camera support in those new-at-the-time laptops yet to be properly upstreamed and relying on binary bits. Over time that Intel IPU6 MIPI camera support has seen portions of the code upstreamed into the mainline Linux kernel and distributions like Fedora taking extra steps to make them work but still in 2025 those with newer Intel laptops boasting the latest web camera technology are often facing a challenging experience.

13 January

Intel Battlemage Showing Off Nice OpenCL Gains With Newest Open-Source Compute Stack
13 January 02:52 PM EST - Display Drivers - 32 Comments

Last month with the launch of Intel Battlemage with the Arc B580 graphics card, there was fairly nice open-source GPU compute performance but with some outliers... Today it's a pleasure to report that with the newest open-source GPU compute stack as of this past week, there are some nice Xe2 / Battlemage improvements for enhancing the performance of some OpenCL workloads and also correcting the performance of some workloads that were in poor standing on launch day.

12 January

Linux 6.13-rc7 Released: Linux 6.13 Stable Likely Next Week
12 January 06:24 PM EST - Linux Kernel - Linux 6.13 - 6 Comments

Linux 6.13-rc7 is out as the newest weekly release candidate for Linux 6.13 is a more exciting one than weeks prior with many of the developers and kernel testers returning from the end-of-year holiday break. Linux 6.13 remains on track for releasing as stable during the back half of January.

NTSYNC Driver Ready For Enhancing Windows Gaming With Linux 6.14
12 January 08:00 AM EST - Linux Kernel - Linux 6.14 NTSYNC - 30 Comments

Set to make the upcoming Linux 6.14 kernel cycle even more exciting is that it looks like the completed NTSYNC driver will be ready for merging. The NTSYNC driver enhances Wine / Proton (Steam Play) gaming by better matching the Windows NT synchronization primitives to allow for better gaming performance. The NTSYNC code has long been a work-in-progress but this week the revised code made it into the relevant "-next" branch ahead of Linux 6.14.

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