The Linux 6.19 kernel remains on track for its official release two weeks from today, with the extra RC being baked in due to the end of year holidays. Out today is Linux 6.19-rc7 with a few changes worth highlighting for the week.

With Linux 6.19-rc7 there is the newly-merged continuity planning for the Linux kernel development should Linus Torvalds' official upstream Git kernel repository ever become inaccessible or other unforeseen circumstances arise. An important fix/revert

In the absence of any official GUI control panel from AMD or Intel for their graphics cards on Linux, LACT remains a popular choice particularly for AMD Radeon Linux gamers/enthusiasts to manage various aspects of their GPU from a convenient UI. LACT also supports Intel GPUs and some features on NVIDIA GPUs too. Out today is LACT 0.8.4 for further enhancing this third-party GPU driver user interface.

LACT 0.8.4 brings various user interface improvements to the GPU overclocking page. With NVIDIA GPUs on

This week's batch of AMDGPU and AMDKFD changes queued up ahead of the next kernel merge window is focused on delivering a variety of driver fixes.

Already queued up in DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 6.20~7.0 merge window is new RDNA 3.5 and RDNA4 GFX12.1 hardware IP blocks being enabled , improved support for DP-HDMI dongles , and a variety of other improvements . This week's round of AMDGPU/AMDFD material heading to DRM-Next

Following discussions from the 2025 Linux Maintainer Summit, merged overnight for the Linux 6.19 kernel is documentation concerning the Linux kernel project's continuity in the event that Linus Torvalds' official Git repository were to disappear or otherwise be inaccessible for continuing the upstream development of the Linux kernel.

Linux engineer Dan Williams drafted the Linux project continuity document following the Maintainer Summit discussions over a plan of events should there be some unfortunate incident involving torvalds/linux.git . The documentation merged today to Linux Git comes

The Focusrite Forte 2-in, 4-out USB audio interface as a portable audio recording solution will be supported by the mainline Linux 7.0 kernel. The patches are queued in the Linux kernel's sound subsystem development tree. While a convenient little device, the Focusrite Forte is no longer manufactured but can still be found used online.

The Focusrite Forte was designed for Windows and macOS as a USB audio interface for microphones, musical instruments, and any other line-level audio signals. The 24-

Rob Clark this week sent out the latest MSM DRM kernel driver updates for the latest Qualcomm display/graphics enhancements ahead of next month's Linux 7.0 merge window.

While Linux 6.19 brought initial Adreno Gen 8 hardware support for the GPU with the Snapdragon X2 Elite and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, only with the Linux 7.0 kernel is the display support for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 now in place. With Linux 7.0 the MSM kernel driver will actually be able to

SVT-AV1 4.0 is out as the newest major feature release for this open-source AV1 video encoder that was originally started by Intel as an open-source project and now continuining on thanks to the Alliance For Open Media.

SVT-AV1 4.0 brings some API updates and with the breakage there yields the new 4.0 version. Exciting end-users though will be the continued performance improvements, ARM optimizations, and more with SVT-AV1 4.0:

- Significant

While the GIMP 3.2 release is expected out soon, GIMP 3.0.8 is available tonight as what could end up being the last set of bug fixes for GIMP 3.0.

GIMP 3.0.8 back-ports faster font loading as a change originally found for GIMP 3.2. GIMP 3.0.8 will see better font loading performance at start time for those with large numbers of fonts.

GIMP 3.0.8 also brings other fixes such as for WebP exporting

Following yesterday's release of Wine 11.1 for kicking off the new post-11.0 development cycle, Wine-Staging 11.1 is now available for this experimental/testing version of Wine that present is around 254 patches over the upstream Wine state.

Besides re-basing those 250+ patches to the latest Wine Git state, the latest VKD3D Git code is also pulled into Wine-Staging 11.1. There is some new feature work with