With Linux 7.2 expected to see its stable debut Sunday , here is a look at what I have been monitoring as changes expected to be submitted during the Linux 7.3 merge window that will open on Monday.

As usual, each new Linux kernel release is packed with changes between new features and hardware support, iterating on existing functionality, and as of late also removing more old hardware/driver support where it becomes a greater maintenance burden in the era of AI. There is a lot on the table for

Ahead of the Linux 7.2 kernel release expected out on Sunday, the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem was forced to revert their "fair" scheduler policy default new for this kernel. Due to a last minute user-reported regression, FIFO returns as the default DRM scheduler policy for Linux 7.2. But patches are now available for addressing that regression and thus hopefully for Linux 7.3 there will be the fair scheduler becoming the default.

Igalia engineer Tvrtko Ursulin has been working through the regression reported

Ahead of the Linux 7.2 kernel release expected on Sunday, a new release of the exFAT file-system user-space programs was released overnight.

The exfatprogs 1.4.3 release provides for faster file-system checking "fsck" behavior with increased scanning speed when scanning large unused directory tails. The fsck.exfat program will now optimize unused dentry scans and scan unused dentries in larger reads, though no performance numbers were provided on either patch.

The new exfatprogs release will also now honor the user'

It's been a long time since hearing much out of the Zenwalk project, the Linux distribution built off Slackware. It's still around though and with their latest kernel work are hoping for a "true low latency desktop experience" by employing the BORE scheduler.

Most Zenwalk news is close to twenty years old on Phoronix but for this Slackware-compatible distro but was surprised this week with a Phoronix reader sending in a news tip over their effort to have a "true low latency desktop experience". Zenwalk was

AMD's GAIA open-source AI software built atop Lemonade for serving as an AI companion for emails , a Bash coding agent , and other AI agent skills is out with a new version today with more features while also improving security and making other improvements.

AMD GAIA 0.23 introduces the ability to install and run agents directly from the terminal. Up to this point with AMD GAIA, users have needed to run a graphical app for installing new AI agents or know the manual Python pip commands for manual installation

KDE e.V. along with Linux PC vendor Kubuntu Focus and KDE-aligned consulting firm Techpaladin Software have announced a collaboration of the "bullet-proof KDE Software initiative" for providing at least three years of bug fixes and security updates to KDE Plasma 6.6 LTS and related software.

Kubuntu Focus has pledged to provide $100k in direct payments to Techpaladin Software over the next three years for working on this "bullet proof" KDE stack for Plasma 6.6 LTS maintenance. This includes not

With the Linux 7.2 kernel expected to be released on Sunday, 16 August, here is a look at some of the most interesting new features and changes to find with this next kernel version to be used by Ubuntu 26.10 and other upcoming Linux distribution releases.

Cache Aware Scheduling is easily one of the most exciting features of this new kernel for those running on modern systems that sport multiple last-level cache (LLC) domains. For some workloads Cache Aware Scheduling can yield very nice performance

In addition to 3mdeb providing their Coreboot-based Dasharo built atop AMD openSIL on a Gigabyte EPYC server motherboard and recently making their first Dasharo release for an AMD Ryzen AM5 platform with the MSI PRO B850-P WIFI, the firmware consulting firm today released updated versions of their MSI PRO Z690-A and MSI PRO Z790-P Dasharo ports to those Intel Core motherboards.

Back in 2022 they originally debuted Dasharo for the MSI PRO Z690