Canonical today released LXD 6.7 as the latest feature update to this system container and virtual machine manager commonly used in Ubuntu Linux environments.

Most notable with today's LXD 6.7 release is introducing AMD GPU passthrough support via the AMD CDI interface. LXD can now support AMD GPU passthrough for containers using the AMD CDI container toolkit bundled into the Snap package. This depends upon a new "gpu_cdi_amd" extension for the Container Device Interface (CDI) specification to configure the AMD GPU passthrough for

The fourth and final monthly snapshot of Ubuntu 26.04 "Resolute Raccoon" is now available for testing. This alternative to the Ubuntu 26.04 daily ISOs is a monthly test release that also helps exercise the Ubuntu Linux release automation processes.

Resolute Snapshot 4 images are available for those wanting to help test Ubuntu 26.04 that is set to become a Long Term Support release in April.

On recent builds of Ubuntu 26.04 when being prompted by sudo for the password, password feedback is now enabled by default to show asterisk ( * ) characters when inputting your password. Traditionally sudo has not provided password feedback in the name of security to not divulge the length of your password in case anyone is looking/capturing your screen. But upstream sudo-rs has now changed the default behavior in the name of an improved UX.

Some new Linux users have initially been confused by the lack of any

Microsoft has published a new version of its open-source DirectX Shader Compiler. Besides adding Shader Model 6.9 production support, making this DX Compiler update interesting to us are the SPIR-V back-end improvements and enhancing interoperability with Vulkan drivers.

Microsoft open-sourced their DirectX Shader Compiler all the way back in 2017. Since then they've made interesting inroads with it from improving Linux build support to plumbing SPIR-V integration and in turn Vulkan driver interoperability. Besides the open-source

The Linux kernel continues seeing more open-source kernel drivers emerge for supporting different AI accelerators / NPUs. The newest open-source driver breaking cover today is from NXP and is for enabling their Neutron neural processing unit.

The NXP Neutron NPU is designed for machine learning acceleration for edge AI applications. This Neutron NPU is found with select NXP SoCs like the i.MX95.

While the Linux 7.0 feature merge window ended this past weekend and that next kernel release won't debut as stable until April, there are already features out on the horizon that are being positioned for likely merging into the Linux 7.1 kernel assuming no issues appear or objections raised by Linus Torvalds. One of the features already looking like it will be submitted for Linux 7.1 is supporting extended attributes on sockets.

Christian Brauner has been working on support for extended attributes on sockets. He explained last week

Fwupd/LVFS lead developer Richard Hughes of Red Hat today released Fwupd 2.0.20 with continuing to advance firmware updating on Linux systems.

New hardware support in Fwupd 2.0.20 includes the ability now to update firmware on the HP Engage One G2 Advanced Hub, the PixArt PJP274 found in the Framework Laptop, and several new Jabra GNP audio devices. The PJP274 is used by both the latest Framework Laptop 13 and Framework Laptop 16 models.

Merged yesterday to Mesa 26.1 for the open-source NVIDIA Vulkan driver "NVK" is ZCULL support for more efficient rendering and bringing some small performance gains to this open-source NVIDIA driver stack.

Merged yesterday for next quarter's Mesa 26.1 release is ZCULL support for NVK. While merged, this does depend upon some Nouveau kernel driver patches too that have yet to reach the mainline Linux kernel. The Nouveau patches allow using the ZCULL hardware of NVIDIA GPUs for improving the memory bandwidth thanks