Merged on Friday ahead of the Linux 7.1-rc2 kernel release due out tomorrow were this week's batch of Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel graphics / display / accelerator driver fixes.

Most notable were the many AMDGPU kernel graphics driver fixes to land this week, that range from GFX11.5.4 IP fixes to other newer IP block fixes and then also bringing in some improvements for older AMD GCN 1.0/1.1 era hardware support thanks to Valve's Timur

KDE Linux continues making progress as the in-house Linux distribution to best showcase the latest KDE Plasma desktop innovations.

With the start of the new month comes a new monthly progress report on KDE Linux via KDE developer Nate Graham. One of the most interesting changes in April is KDE Linux now moving from the in-kernel VT to the user-space KMSCON software for their console experience.

This merge by Hadi Chokr switched to KMSCON for a "safer and better" TTY experience. The rationale is better security, mouse

While the Alliance For Open Media had been aiming for the AV2 release by the end of 2025 , as of right now the AV2 specification remains in a draft status. VideoLAN developers though for months have already been working on dav2d as an open-source AV2 decoder and that code was published this weekend.

VideoLAN developers have been working on dav2d as an open-source, CPU-based AV2 video decoder. Dav2d is based off dav1d as their

Following last year's release of FreeBSD 15.0 , FreeBSD 15.1 is working its way toward release release in June. For kicking off the release dance, FreeBSD 15.1 Beta 1 is available today for testing.

FreeBSD 15.1 pulls in a number of driver updates, including for better hardware support and the various WiFi driver enhancements that have been pursued as of late along with working toward better power management. As of writing, the 15.1 release notes have yet

NVIDIA on Friday released the 595.44.06 beta driver build as their newest Vulkan developer beta for Linux. This was joined by the NVIDIA 595.46 Windows Vulkan beta and there are performance improvements in tow and more work on their descriptor heaps support.

The NVIDIA R595 Linux driver is big for introducing VK_EXT_descriptor_heap support . Vulkan descriptor heap functionality allows for explicit management of descriptors and the memory used for descriptors. This extension is important for

We are now just one month out from the planned release of Plasma 6.7 in mid-June. Feature activity continues to be brisk for Plasma 6.7 while KDE developers also continue landing more fixes for the current Plasma 6.6 series.

This Week In Plasma is out with its newest issue to highlight the latest advancements made to KDE Plasma. Some of the great work this week includes:

- Plasma 6.7 is adding support for the Background Apps portal. This is used by some apps to put

Steam on Linux use in March had skyrocketed to 5.33% , a 3.1% boost month-over-month and easily the highest level we've seen Steam on Linux at since its inception more than a decade ago. This record growth came amid the ongoing success of the Steam Deck handheld and Steam Play (Proton) for enabling more Windows games to run well on Linux. The April numbers are in and the Linux gaming marketshare pulled back somewhat but still remaining healthy.

The Steam Survey results

Wine 11.8 delivers the latest and greatest support for running Windows applications and games under Linux and other platforms. This newest bi-weekly development release brings several more enhancements in working toward Wine 12.0 stable due out in early 2027.

Similar to recent Wine bi-weekly development versions, Wine 11.8 continues further working on its MSXML re-implementation without depending upon the libxml2 library. Wine 11.8 also updates its Mono engine against Mono 11.1

In addition to today's monthly ISO refresh of Arch Linux that is now pulling in the Linux 7.0 kernel and other updates, the downstream EndeavourOS also happens to be out with a new ISO release for starting the month of May.

EndeavourOS Titan Neo is the new release of their refreshed ISO. This refresh contains an updated Calamares installer and various software updates from Firefox 150 to Mesa 26.0.5 graphics drivers to the NVIDIA 595.58.03 graphics driver.