Long past due for retirement, the Linux 7.0 kernel has removed the obsolete Mwave driver for the 3780i ACP Modem found in some Pentium II era IBM ThinkPads from the 1990s.

The Mwave Linux driver was for the 3780i ACP Modem found in some ThinkPads. Found on the likes of the IBM ThinkPad 600E, 600, and 770 these modems allowed 56K connectivity. IBM wrote the Mwave kernel driver and the associated

Back in 2022 Intel announced OpenPGL as an open-source library for path guiding to help enhance the quality of path-based renderers. With time Blender began making use of OpenPGL and other industry interest and adoption. Unfortunately, Intel quietly ended work on OpenPGL in 2025 but has now fortunately found a new home.

The Apache 2.0 licensed Intel Open Path Guiding Library was started as part of the Intel (oneAPI) Rendering Toolkit and found use by not only Blender but also OpenMoonRay as

Linux hardware vendor System76 has begun teasing a redesign of their Thelio chassis that is used by their modern desktops and workstations. Helping distinguish System76 from other Linux desktop/PC vendors has been their custom-engineered, built-in-the-USA enclosures and now they are preparing to launch a next-generation design.

System76 CEO Carl Richell posted on X that " Ground-up redesigned @system76 Thelio hardware coming soon. "

Carl commented that it's been ten months of

The x86 platform driver updates were merged recently for the ongoing Linux 7.0 merge window. As is a common theme for platform-drivers-x86, a lot of the feature work is around Linux laptop drivers for enhancing the support on modern hardware.

Some of the x86 platform driver highlights for Linux 7.0 include:

- The AMD Platform Management Framework (PMF) driver has seen various fixes as well as support for exposing AMD Ryzen AI NPU metrics to user-space and use

The Linux 7.0 kernel is shipping improvements for LoongArch, the Chinese CPU architecture inspired by MIPS64 and RISC-V and has been showing much potential for their domestic PC manufacturing.

With Linux 7.0 the LoongArch architecture now has SMT hot-plug support, 128-bit atomic CMPXCHNG compare and exchange support, the MEMFD_SECRET system call is now supported, and various other updates:

- Select HAVE_CMPXCHG_{LOCAL,DOUBLE}
- Add 128-bit atomic cmpxchg

Asahi Linux developers have published a status report following the recent Linux 6.19 kernel release to outline recent progress and upcoming items around Apple Silicon support on Linux. This year will also mark five years that Asahi Linux has been around for bringing Linux to the Apple M-Series hardware.

Their latest progress report began by commenting that the DisplayPort Alt Mode support with USB-C -- a very frequent question from users -- will be "done when it's done". There still is a "fairy

As part of enhancing the FreeBSD experience on laptops and desktops, FreeBSD developers have been working toward adding a convenient desktop install option to their text-based installer for easily deploying the KDE Plasma desktop along with the necessary GPU drivers. After it didn't get wrapped up in time for the FreeBSD 15.0 release, that desktop installer option is now ready for testing.

The FreeBSD Foundation's Laptop Project published their January 2026 development summary to outline recent advancements in enhancing FreeBSD on laptops. Many

Last year we began seeing Linux patches preparing the kernel for Intel Data Streaming Accelerator "DSA" 3.0 IP . Finally with the Linux 7.0 kernel those patches in updated form have now been merged.

The Intel Data Streaming Accelerator helps offload data movement and transformation tasks from the CPU to the dedicated engine silicon found on recent Xeon CPUs. The Intel Data Streaming Accelerator can provide high performance data copy and analytics acceleration with software adapted to make use of the engine. Intel DSA 3.0 is their next-