The newest Linux file-system driver proposed for the kernel is... VMUFAT.

Before getting too worked up about yet-another-Linux-filesystem, VMUFAT is for the vintage Sega Dreamcast game console. The Visual Memory Unit (VMU) on the Dreamcast has a small slab of flash memory formatted with a FAT-based file-system. With the proposed Linux kernel driver in 2026, that file-system on the Dreamcast can be accessed in a hardware-independent manner.

This VMUFAT driver

The Linux 7.0 kernel is gearing up for its stable release and should be out this coming Sunday, 12 April, barring any major last minute issues.

Linux 7.0 is coming with Linus Torvalds preferring to bump the major kernel version after x.19, as opposed to being driven by any particular features/changes or breakage. In any event with Linux 7.0 as with most kernel cycles there is quite a lot of new features and changes to get excited about. Ahead of Sunday'

A big kernel patch series was posted today by longtime Linux developer Thomas Gleixner. The set of 38 patches amount to some big time "spring cleaning" with addressing some code remnants still around that originated back in the very early Linux v0.1 kernel while some other code being cleaned up dates back to the Linux 1.3~2.1 kernel series from the 90's.

Gleixner posted today a big tree-wide cleanup for addressing code "[ab]use" around the LATCH,

Bitland, the Chinese OEM that manufactured systems for Lenovo and other companies until being added to the US Entity List due to being accused of using Uyghur forced labor, is expected to see a WMI driver added to the Linux 7.1 kernel for better supporting Bitland laptops.

The Bitland MIFS WMI driver was developed via reverse engineering the Windows Management Instrumentation interface on the systems. This open-source driver for Bitland laptops allows setting the quiet/balanced/performance platform profiles, hardware sensor monitoring support exposed via HWMON interfaces, keyboard

Vulkan 1.4.349 is out today as a small update to the Vulkan API specification that incorporates various fixes that accumulated over the past week. Plus there is one new extension.

The lone new extension of Vulkan 1.4.349 is VK_ARM_data_graph_optical_flow. This Arm vendor extension of data graph optical flow can be used by applications to estimate the 2D displacement of pixels between two images. VK_ARM_data_graph_optical_

Linux-friendly hardware vendor Framework Computer sent out a notice this morning that they will be announcing their new 2026 hardware products later this month.

Framework is set to announce their next-gen wares at an event later this month in San Francisco. They will be announcing their latest upgrade-friendly, modular hardware on 21 April at 10:30AM PT.

TUXEDO Computers' laptops received some heat in the past from upstream Linux kernel developers over their out-of-tree kernel drivers but fortunately that situation has been improving. The Uniwill driver premiered in the Linux 6.19 kernel with that OEM manufacturing many of the TUXEDO Computers laptop models. That Uniwill x86 platform driver enabled more functionality for TUXEDO hardware in the mainline kernel and has continued improving since its upstreaming. More features are on the way for Linux 7.1.

The Uniwill x86 platform driver

The SpacemiT K3 is exciting as one of the first RISC-V RVA23 designs coming to market. For the Linux 7.0 kernel there is initial K3 support in the mainline kernel while the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window is expected to land more K3 enablement.

SpacemiT Device Tree updates were sent out recently for queuing with the other DT changes ahead of the Linux 7.1 merge window, which is expected to open next week assuming no delays. With the DT updates are enabling more