Ahead of the Linux 7.1-rc1 kernel release due out later today for closing the Linux 7.1 merge window, I was curious if all the code removals would lead to a negative change in line count over Linux 7.0. The removals were not enough and Linux 7.1 Git is fast approaching 40 million lines.

With Linux 7.1 removing ISDN, ham radio, and other old network driver code that yielded a 138k lines of code reduction, I was curious

Earlier this month on Phoronix we were the first to draw attention to a new fuzzing tool / AI bot uncovering kernel bugs by Greg Kroah-Hartman , the "second in command" for Linux kernel development and stable maintainer. Greg has now shared more light on the "gregkh_clanker_t1000" for this tool that has been uncovering more Linux kernel bugs the past few weeks.

As of writing there are nearly two dozen patches in the mainline Linux kernel that were merged since 7 April for fixing

A new progress report from the Asahi Linux project is now published that highlights recent upstreaming work for the Linux 7.0 kernel release as well as the latest additions to the downstream Asahi Linux code. The Asahi Linux project also pushed out their first updated Asahi installer in nearly two years.

After nearly two years, a new Asahi Linux installer release is now available due to the complexities involved with their installer and all the other processes for generating a new release build.

Asahi Linux has also made progress on its firmware handling/

The legacy xf86-video-nv driver for user-space mode-setting on old NVIDIA GPUs is out with a rather rare release and the first in over two years with a collection of different bug fixes.

It was more than a decade and a half ago when NVIDIA announced they would be dropping support for the xf86-video-nv driver with their GeForce 400/500 "Fermi" generation. Even before that, the xf86-video-nv driver was

LACT, one of the leading open-source solutions to provide a graphics card management GUI that works across AMD / NVIDIA / Intel graphics hardware on Linux, is out with a major update this weekend.

With Intel and AMD not providing any official Linux GPU driver settings / management app and the NVIDIA option being limited to just their official driver stack and nothing for Nouveau/Nova, LACT has been one of the popular community creations working to provide a cross-vendor GPU/driver management UI with information, sensor reporting,

Niri 26.04 is out today as the latest feature update to this scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor.

The biggest feature of Niri 26.04 is transparent window blur support. The blur support has been " the most requested niri feature by far. Our highest upvoted issue on GitHub. " Now it's finally in place for windows and layer shell components to be able to request blur support using the ext-background-effect:

Microsoft's in-house Azure Linux operating system used within Azure and for WSL and other purposes is reportedly pursuing an overhaul where it would be derived from Fedora Linux.

Azure Linux -- originally known as CBL-Mariner -- is already an RPM-based Linux distribution that is catering to the various Linux needs at Microsoft. It's scope and capabilities of Azure Linux have grown a lot the past few years and now it may evolve into being derived from Fedora.

With the recent proposal to build x8

Following last week's Linux 7.1 sound subsystem feature pull that added bus keeper support in working toward better Apple Silicon support along with a variety of other new audio hardware support, a secondary set of sound updates were merged as we approach the end of the Linux 7.1 merge window.

Besides various bug fixes that have collected over the past week, there are a few smaller additions too with the now-merged sound patches.

With the Linux 7.1-rc1 kernel release due out tomorrow to cap off the Linux 7.1 merge window, one of the most notable additions this cycle is the introduction of the new NTFS driver that aims to provide better performance and more modern features than the existing NTFS3 in-kernel driver that was originally contributed by Paragon Software.

Namjae Jeon spearheaded the work on this new NTFS driver that began as overhauling the Linux kernel's original NTFS (pre-NTFS3) driver with adding write support