Merged for the nearly-over Linux 7.1 merge window are a number of enhancements to the LoongArch architecture support for that Chinese CPU architecture inspired by MIPS and RISC-V.

LoongArch with Linux 7.1 is now showing and handling CPU vulnerabilities correctly, implementing more atomic instructions for the BPF JIT, implementing more features for the BPF trampoline, and various other low-level enhancements.

Somewhat surprisingly is work on 32-bit support in LoongArch with this pull. There is now HIGHMEM (PKMAP and FIX_

Godot 4.7 reached its beta milestone on Friday for this leading open-source, cross-platform game engine.

Most exciting with the upcoming Godot 4.7 release is HDR output support for use with modern GPU/display setups. This high dynamic range output works on Linux when using Wayland and having all the necessary driver requirements and a capable HDR display.

KDE developers continued to land more feature changes for the upcoming Plasma 6.7 desktop release. It's a busy spring of fixes, optimizations, and shiny new features for Plasma 6.7.

This Week in Plasma is out with its newest issue to highlight all of the interesting KDE Plasma desktop changes. This week's highlights include:

- Plasma 6.7 now enables overlay planes for Intel graphics hardware/drivers for helping improve performance and conserving energy for some games and apps. This default change is coming

Linus Torvalds did it! He merged the pull request to rid the Linux kernel of the old Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) subsystem and various other old network drivers largely for PCMCIA era network adapters. This was the code suggested for removal given the recent influx of AI/LLM-generated bug reports against this dated code that likely has no active upstream users remaining.

It's been a fast-paced week with the patch series to remove old network drivers due to AI-driven bug reports now making these drivers

The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) now has a working group established by their steering committee to study the use of AI and large language models (LLMs) within the context of GCC compiler development.

Stemming from ongoing questions and differing views over whether AI/LLMs belong in the area of GCC compiler development for aiding in the development of the compiler and/or code review processes and the like, the GCC Development AI Policy Working Group is going to make considerations and report back to the GCC Steering Committee with their recommendations.

Fwupd 2.1.2 is out today as the latest update to this open-source firmware updating utility that allows for updating system firmware and device/peripheral firmware under Linux.

LVFS/Fwupd lead developer Richard Hughes of Red Hat just announced the availability of Fwupd 2.1.2. Included with Fwupd 2.1.2 are a number of different device fixes, daemon support for modems that export ttyUSB devices, various device quirks, and of course the latest batch of hardware support.

New device support for

As usual in recent years, there were many x86 platform driver changes merged this cycle for benefiting modern AMD Ryzen and Intel Core (Ultra) laptops. A variety of new features and laptop hardware support additions were merged for Linux 7.1 .

For the ASUS WMI driver the battery charge threshold is now preserved during the boot process and there is improved screenpad power/brightness handling.

The HP WMI driver meanwhile added support for more Omen laptops: Omen 14-fb0xxx, 16-n0

The Linux kernel continues getting ready for AMD's upcoming Zen 6 processors.

The past few months the patch flow has continued picking up for the Linux kernel and related open-source projects like the GNU and LLVM toolchains for AMD Zen 6 at large and of course an important and special emphasis for the EPYC "Venice" platforms. For Linux 7.1 there's been new AMD SMCA bank types added, FRED enabled by default , AVX-512 BMM for KVM guest VMs , new AMD P-