SysAdmin Morning Brief: Linux Containers & Security July 2026
Tags: sysadmin, linux, containers, kubernetes, security, devops, ci-cd
TL;DR: 1. KDE KWin Introduces Support For Server-Side Drop Shadows; 2. AMD's GAIA Continues Striving To Be Your Ultimate AI Companion For Emails; 3. FreeBSD Intern Working On Porting AMD ROCm To The BSD World
What You'll Find in This Digest
This daily SysAdmin briefing delivers curated Linux ecosystem updates with a focus on infrastructure automation and DevOps best practices.
Top Stories Today
Phoronix Headlines
KDE KWin Introduces Support For Server-Side Drop Shadows
The KDE Plasma 6.8 will be introducing support for server-side drop shadows with the feature recently having been merged to KWin...
AMD's GAIA Continues Striving To Be Your Ultimate AI Companion For Emails
Yesterday saw the release of AMD's Lemonade 11.0 local AI server as well as ROCm 7.14 as the first production release built using TheRock. Out today is AMD's GAIA 0.22 software as their latest AI software release in working toward the AMD Advancing AI event next week in California...
FreeBSD Intern Working On Porting AMD ROCm To The BSD World
An intern with the FreeBSD Foundation is working on porting AMD's ROCm compute stack to run on this popular BSD environment...
Wayland 1.26 Released With New Pointer Warp Event
Simon Ser just announced the stable release of the Wayland 1.26 release...
Microsoft Goes Nostalgic In Newest Open-Source Drop: Comic Chat Open-Sourced After 30 Years
Introduced in 1996 with Internet Explorer 3.0, Microsoft Comic Chat provided comic-like avatars driven IRC chat client. After 30 years, this proprietary IRC chat client that was removed in Internet Explorer 6.0, is now open-source software...
SysAdmin Morning Brief: Linux Containers & Security July 2026
Tags: sysadmin, linux, containers, kubernetes, security, devops, ci-cd
TL;DR: 1. Mesa 26.2-rc1 Released In Ending Feature Work For This Quarter's 3D Graphics Stack; 2. AMD Releases Lemonade 11.0 Local AI Server With Text-To-Speech, Other New Features; 3. Ubuntu 26.04 LTS vs. Windows 11 vs. CachyOS Performance On A $5399 Laptop
What You'll Find in This Digest
This daily SysAdmin briefing delivers curated Linux ecosystem updates with a focus on infrastructure automation and DevOps best practices.
Top Stories Today
Phoronix Headlines
Mesa 26.2-rc1 Released In Ending Feature Work For This Quarter's 3D Graphics Stack
Mesa 26.2 was branched today from Mesa Git and in turn Mesa 26.3-devel is now open on mainline...
AMD Releases Lemonade 11.0 Local AI Server With Text-To-Speech, Other New Features
Ahead of the AMD Advancing AI event next week, today AMD released Lemonade 11.0 as the latest feature release of their local AI server supporting AMD Ryzen CPUs, AMD Radeon GPUs, and AMD Ryzen AI NPU acceleration...
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS vs. Windows 11 vs. CachyOS Performance On A $5399 Laptop
Earlier this month on Phoronix I reviewed the Razer Blade 18 RZ09-0582 as the first laptop Razer is certifying for Linux use via Canonical's hardware certification program for Linux. It offered very nice performance with the Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 graphics albeit costly with a configured price of $5399 USD. That review featured benchmarks on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS but
Linux Patches Finally Allow Apple Magic Keyboard/Mouse Battery Monitoring Via Bluetooth
Besides the ongoing challenges of enabling newer Apple Silicon SoC support on Linux, Apple peripheral support on Linux remains a mixed bag depending on the product as well. The latest functionality now being addressed is for having battery reporting work for the Apple Magic Mouse and Magic Keyboard when connected via Bluetooth...
Linus Torvalds Reaffirms That Linux Is Not "Anti-AI" & Not A "Social Warrior" Project
Overnight Linux creator Linus Torvalds wrote another well crafted message that reaffirms the Linux kernel position of not being against AI and lashing back against some kernel developers that are against AI/LLM usage within the kernel project...
SysAdmin Morning Brief: Linux Containers & Security July 2026
Tags: sysadmin, linux, containers, kubernetes, security, devops, ci-cd
TL;DR: 1. COSMIC Epoch 1.3 Released With New Frosted Glass Option; 2. FreeBSD 16 Retires The Last Of Its GPL Code From Its Base System; 3. BOSGAME VTA-439: A Great, Linux-Friendly Mini PC Powered By AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470
What You'll Find in This Digest
This daily SysAdmin briefing delivers curated Linux ecosystem updates with a focus on infrastructure automation and DevOps best practices.
Top Stories Today
Phoronix Headlines
COSMIC Epoch 1.3 Released With New Frosted Glass Option
For those that were intrigued by the COSMIC desktop's "Frosted Glass" effect, it's now available in released form with today's COSMIC Epoch 1.3 release...
FreeBSD 16 Retires The Last Of Its GPL Code From Its Base System
As of this past week in the FreeBSD source tree for FreeBSD 16, the last of the GNU GPL licensed code from the base system has been retired...
BOSGAME VTA-439: A Great, Linux-Friendly Mini PC Powered By AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470
For those that were intrigued by the recent launch of the AMD Ryzen AI Halo developer platform with a very capable mini PC but looking for something more affordable and not needing quite as much horsepower or AI focus, BOSGAME recently launched their VTA-439 mini PC. The BOSGAME VTA-439 is powered by the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 with Radeon 890M graphics for those wanting still quite a capable mini P
Blender 5.2 LTS Released With Many Great Enhancements
Blender 5.2 is out today as the newest Long Term Support release for this leading, open-source 3D modeling software...
System76 Launches New Adder Pro Laptop With NVIDIA GPU, 2K OLED & Up To 96GB RAM
System76 today announced their new Adder Pro laptop that they are promoting as the "gamer's dream machine" with its NVIDIA graphics, 2K OLED 500 nit display, up to 96GB RAM, and 3.37 lb weight...
SysAdmin Morning Brief: Linux Containers & Security July 2026
Tags: sysadmin, linux, containers, kubernetes, security, devops, ci-cd
TL;DR: 1. Graviton5 Outperforming Intel Xeon Granite Rapids But Falls Short Of AMD EPYC Turin; 2. FreeBSD Desktop Installer Option Working Through NVIDIA Driver Handling, Licensing; 3. GNOME OS Creating "Test Center" As Its Take On Apple TestFlight For Experiment Software
What You'll Find in This Digest
This daily SysAdmin briefing delivers curated Linux ecosystem updates with a focus on infrastructure automation and DevOps best practices.
Top Stories Today
Phoronix Headlines
Graviton5 Outperforming Intel Xeon Granite Rapids But Falls Short Of AMD EPYC Turin
Following the recent GA of the AWS M9g series as the first instances powered by the new Graviton5 CPUs, I recently ran benchmarks looking at Graviton4 vs. Graviton5 CPU performance. There was very nice generational gains for the new AWS Graviton processors with the shift from Arm Neoverse-V2 to Neoverse-V3 cores and from DDR5-5600 to DDR5-8800 memory, among other improvements. For those wondering
FreeBSD Desktop Installer Option Working Through NVIDIA Driver Handling, Licensing
Alfonso Siciliano, who has been one of the FreeBSD developers leading the effort on adding a KDE-based desktop option to the FreeBSD installer, provided an update on recent work around adding integrating this desktop option...
GNOME OS Creating "Test Center" As Its Take On Apple TestFlight For Experiment Software
GNOME developers working on GNOME OS have received funding from Germany's Prototype Fund to work on creating the GNOME OS "Developer Tool Suite" or also tentatively called their "Test Center" to help in testing experimental applications/libraries in a modern Linux computing world with systemd-sysext, Buildstream, and other newer tech...
Reworked System Call Entry Handling Slated For Linux 7.3
Stemming from looking at a proposed Linux kernel patch to alter the Linux kernel's system call number handling, veteran Linux kernel developer Thomas Gleixner went down a rabbit hole of the kernel's system call entry handling to make a number of clean-ups and improvements to the code. That rework to the system call entry handling is now expected to land for the Linux 7.3 kernel cycle...
Raspberry Pi 5 IOMMU Driver Being Worked On For The Mainline Linux Kernel
While the Raspberry Pi 5 is already over two and a half years old, one of the missing elements of its support from the mainline Linux kernel has been the IOMMU driver. We are now seeing Raspberry Pi's downstream IOMMU driver being adapted for mainline with hopes of getting it into the upstream kernel...
SysAdmin Morning Brief: Linux Containers & Security July 2026
Tags: sysadmin, linux, containers, kubernetes, security, devops, ci-cd
TL;DR: 1. Linux 7.2-rc3 Released: Close To The "New Normal"; 2. Linux 7.2 Enabling UltraRISC RISC-V Support In The Default Kernel Build; 3. HFI BIOS Aims To Provide A POST-Like Power On Screen & BIOS Setup Utility For RISC-V
What You'll Find in This Digest
This daily SysAdmin briefing delivers curated Linux ecosystem updates with a focus on infrastructure automation and DevOps best practices.
Top Stories Today
Phoronix Headlines
Linux 7.2-rc3 Released: Close To The "New Normal"
Linux 7.2-rc3 is now available for testing in working toward the stable Linux 7.2 kernel version coming up in August...
Linux 7.2 Enabling UltraRISC RISC-V Support In The Default Kernel Build
Similar to Linux 7.2 enabling Eswin SoC support by default in the RISC-V "defconfig" kernel build, UltraRISC RISC-V coverage is also now being enabled by default for RISC-V kernel builds in Linux 7.2...
HFI BIOS Aims To Provide A POST-Like Power On Screen & BIOS Setup Utility For RISC-V
The Harmonic Firmware Initiative "HFI" is trying to provide a generic, standardized power-on firmware experience for RISC-V boards. Akin to the x86 world with having immediate graphics card initialization to provide a display while the system is booting and also having a BIOS setup utility for system configuration, HFI is trying to do the same for the RISC-V world...
Linux 7.2-rc3 Bringing Fixes For The SEGA Dreamcast Drivers In 2026
It wasn't on my bingo card for the week but merged to Git ahead of today's Linux 7.2-rc3 kernel release are a number of fixes for the SEGA Dreamcast drivers...
Realtek RTL8723BS WiFi Linux Driver Hardened Against Malicious WiFi Access Points
The staging driver fixes that were sent out this week ahead of the Linux 7.2-rc3 release is predominantly made up of hardening the Realtek RTL8723BS WiFi driver. In particular, a number of fixes for addressing out-of-bounds behavior when connecting to "bad" WiFi hosts...
SysAdmin Morning Brief: Linux Containers & Security July 2026
Tags: sysadmin, linux, containers, kubernetes, security, devops, ci-cd
TL;DR: 1. Debian 13.6 Released To Ship All The Latest Security Fixes, Reverts GeoIP Database; 2. Linux 7.2-rc3 Bringing Display Detection Improvement To Help Some Multi-GPU Systems; 3. LLVM Merges x86 LFI "Lightweight Fault Isolation" Target For In-Process Sandboxing
What You'll Find in This Digest
This daily SysAdmin briefing delivers curated Linux ecosystem updates with a focus on infrastructure automation and DevOps best practices.
Top Stories Today
Phoronix Headlines
Debian 13.6 Released To Ship All The Latest Security Fixes, Reverts GeoIP Database
Debian 13.6 is out today as the newest point release of Debian Trixie to ship the latest security fixes and other maintenance updates...
Linux 7.2-rc3 Bringing Display Detection Improvement To Help Some Multi-GPU Systems
Sent out today was this week's round of x86 (x86_64) fixes ahead of the Linux 7.2-rc3 kernel test candidate due out on Sunday...
LLVM Merges x86 LFI "Lightweight Fault Isolation" Target For In-Process Sandboxing
Stanford researchers have been developing Lightweight Fault Isolation "LFI" compiler passes and targets for LLVM as a means of efficient, native code sandboxing. The AArch64 LFI target was previously upstreamed while this week the x86/x86_64 LFI target was also upstreamed for this means of in-process sandboxing...
KDE Developers Continue Landing More Features For Plasma 6.8
KDE developers continue to be very busy this summer landing more features for the upcoming Plasma 6.8 desktop...
Mesa's Rusticl Now Enables Arm Mali Panfrost Driver Support By Default
A change upstreamed to Mesa by an Arm engineer now enables the Panfrost Gallium3D driver for Arm Mali graphics to work with the Rusticl driver by default...
SysAdmin Morning Brief: Linux Containers & Security July 2026
Tags: sysadmin, linux, containers, kubernetes, security, devops, ci-cd
TL;DR: 1. KDE Plasma 6.7 X11 vs. Wayland Session Gaming Performance For NVIDIA On CachyOS; 2. Linux 7.3 Enabling Second Graphics Pipe For Modern AMD APUs; 3. Linux DT Patches Provide Very Basic Support For Apple M3 Pro / Max / Ultra
What You'll Find in This Digest
This daily SysAdmin briefing delivers curated Linux ecosystem updates with a focus on infrastructure automation and DevOps best practices.
Top Stories Today
Phoronix Headlines
KDE Plasma 6.7 X11 vs. Wayland Session Gaming Performance For NVIDIA On CachyOS
With KDE Plasma 6.7 now having seen a few point releases to further polish this last version with X11 support ahead of Plasma 6.8 going Wayland-only, here are some NVIDIA Linux gaming benchmarks between the X11 and Wayland sessions on Plasma 6.7.2 using the popular Arch Linux based CachyOS.
Linux 7.3 Enabling Second Graphics Pipe For Modern AMD APUs
AMD on Thursday sent out another round of AMDGPU kernel graphics driver and AMDKFD kernel compute driver updates to DRM-Next of new feature material ahead of the Linux 7.3 merge window...
Linux DT Patches Provide Very Basic Support For Apple M3 Pro / Max / Ultra
Upstreamed for the Linux 7.2 kernel was initial support for booting Linux on the Apple M3 SoC devices. But just the barebones suppport for booting with not yet any accelerated graphics or other typical function needed for daily use of M3 Apple devices on Linux, just booting to a console. Now this work is complemented by additional Device Tree patches for also booting M3 Pro / Max / Ultra devices o
HiZ Plane Optimization Merged For Intel Vulkan Linux Driver For Some Performance Benefit
After two years being on the TODO list for a possible performance optimization, the Intel open-source "ANV" Vulkan driver has now merged an HiZ plane optimization that can yield up to a few percent frame-rate improvement for Linux gaming/graphics on newer Intel integrated and discrete graphics hardware...
LLVM Clang Merges Initial Support For NVIDIA Rigel Core With Next-Gen Rosa CPU
Earlier this week NVIDIA confirmed some basic details around their next-gen Rosa CPU that succeeds Vera. Among the public confirmation was that it will feature a "Rigel" Armv9.2-A core iterating on their Olympus core design. With the basic details published, NVIDIA immediately introduced Rigel core support into the GCC compiler. Now they have also upstreamed their initial Rigel core enablement in
SysAdmin Morning Brief: Linux Containers & Security July 2026
Tags: sysadmin, linux, containers, kubernetes, security, devops, ci-cd
TL;DR: 1. Graviton5 CPU Benchmarks: 30% Geo Mean Improvement Over Graviton4; 2. Wayland 1.26 RC1 Released With New Event To Help Ensure Correct Pointer Coordinates; 3. Proposed Linux Patch For A Brief Delay To Match PCI Spec Will Hopefully Address Some Bugs
What You'll Find in This Digest
This daily SysAdmin briefing delivers curated Linux ecosystem updates with a focus on infrastructure automation and DevOps best practices.
Top Stories Today
Phoronix Headlines
Graviton5 CPU Benchmarks: 30% Geo Mean Improvement Over Graviton4
After originally announcing Graviton5 last December, recently AWS finally made the M9g and M9gd instances generally available as the first featuring these new in-house ARM server processors for the EC2 cloud. Graviton5 makes use of Arm Neoverse-V3 cores compared to Neoverse-V2 with Graviton4, support up to 192 cores, and feature a higher 3.3GHz clock speed compared to 2.8GHz on the prior-generatio
Wayland 1.26 RC1 Released With New Event To Help Ensure Correct Pointer Coordinates
In addition to Weston 16 nearing release and its release candidate out today, the Wayland 1.26 release candidate was just issued with a few notable changes on top of the more typical bug fixing...
Proposed Linux Patch For A Brief Delay To Match PCI Spec Will Hopefully Address Some Bugs
Going back to February there was a bug report around the xHCI controller dieing on resume from s2idle when using an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ "Strix Halo" Framework Desktop. In turn all USB devices behind the xHCI controller are lost on resume, but unbinding and binding the driver can restore the functionality without a reboot. After months of back and forth communication, it looks like a solution has bee
Linux Prepares For New USB-C Security Feature On Lenovo ThinkPads
Newer Lenovo ThinkPad systems feature a security feature called USB-C Security Restricted Mode that is in the process of being wired up for reporting under Linux...
Initial Patches Posted For Booting The Apple M4 On Linux
With the Linux 7.2 kernel there is initial support for booting the Apple M3 SoC on Linux but it's not yet functional for end users with just booting to a simple console. There are now Device Tree files posted for booting the Apple M4 on Linux but also not yet useful for any typical Apple Mac/MacBook usage on Linux...
SysAdmin Morning Brief: Linux Containers & Security July 2026
Tags: sysadmin, linux, containers, kubernetes, security, devops, ci-cd
TL;DR: 1. Redox OS Gets GTK3 Backend For Orbital Desktop, Fractional Scaling & USB Gamepads; 2. LibreOffice 26.8 Beta Released For Improving This Free Software Office Suite; 3. OpenMandriva GitHub Disrupted & Nefarious Package Push In Sabotage Attempt
What You'll Find in This Digest
This daily SysAdmin briefing delivers curated Linux ecosystem updates with a focus on infrastructure automation and DevOps best practices.
Top Stories Today
Phoronix Headlines
Redox OS Gets GTK3 Backend For Orbital Desktop, Fractional Scaling & USB Gamepads
The open-source, Rust-based Redox OS platform had a very eventful June with many new features implemented and more software ported over to run on this from-scratch operating system...
LibreOffice 26.8 Beta Released For Improving This Free Software Office Suite
The Document Foundation today announced the first beta release of the LibreOffice 26.8 open-source office suite set for its stable debut in August...
OpenMandriva GitHub Disrupted & Nefarious Package Push In Sabotage Attempt
The OpenMandriva project put out a statement today concerning an attempted distribution sabotage effort. Part of the OpenMandriva GitHub repository was deleted and there was an empty package push made to OpenMandriva's Cooker repository in trying to obsolete all GNOME and COSMIC packages...
Single vs. Dual Channel Memory Performance With The Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus
Given today's pricing environment around system memory, a Phoronix Premium supporter recently requested some benchmarks to quantify the performance difference from single to dual channel memory. In considering a new computer build, he is contemplating whether to go for a single stick of DDR5 memory until memory prices hopefully subside in the future. For those in a similar boat, here are some benc
Intel Sunsets Quantum Intrinsics & Other Open-Source Projects This Week
Intel has formally archived some more of their now-unmaintained open-source projects this week...
SysAdmin Morning Brief: Linux Containers & Security July 2026
Tags: sysadmin, linux, containers, kubernetes, security, devops, ci-cd
TL;DR: 1. Proton 11.0-1 Released To Advance Valve's Steam Play For The Best Linux Experience Yet; 2. AMD Linux Graphics Driver Working To Clear Out All Of Its BUG()s; 3. NVIDIA Upstreams Initial Rigel CPU Core Support Into GCC Compiler
What You'll Find in This Digest
This daily SysAdmin briefing delivers curated Linux ecosystem updates with a focus on infrastructure automation and DevOps best practices.
Top Stories Today
Phoronix Headlines
Proton 11.0-1 Released To Advance Valve's Steam Play For The Best Linux Experience Yet
Proton 11.0-1 was just released as stable as the newest major version of this downstream of Wine that powers Valve's Steam Play to provide for a great Windows gaming experience across conventional Linux systems plus the popular Steam Deck and brand new Steam Machine...
AMD Linux Graphics Driver Working To Clear Out All Of Its BUG()s
AMDGPU kernel driver maintainer Alex Deucher of AMD sent out a set of 30 patches today working on clearing out all of the BUG() usage within this Linux kernel graphics driver...
NVIDIA Upstreams Initial Rigel CPU Core Support Into GCC Compiler
That didn't take long... Mere minutes after NVIDIA confirmed some basic Rosa CPU details and its "Rigel" CPU core, merged to the upstream GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) codebase is initial enablement on the NVIDIA Rigel core...
Razer Certifying Their First Laptop For Linux: Razer Blade 18 RZ09-0582
Razer is a brand synonymous with gaming and finally in 2026 they are in the process of certifying their first laptop for Ubuntu Linux. This laptop going through Ubuntu Linux certification is the Razer Blade 18 RZ09-0582 and it offers incredible performance with the Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus processor and GeForce RTX 5090 graphics but with that also comes a very high price tag.
NVIDIA Confirms Some Rosa CPU Details With Its Rigel Core
In a blog post today talking up the single threaded CPU performance of their Vera CPU with Olympus cores, NVIDIA confirmed a few basic details of their next-gen Rosa CPU featuring their "Rigel" core...
SysAdmin Morning Brief: Linux Containers & Security July 2026
Tags: sysadmin, linux, containers, kubernetes, security, devops, ci-cd
TL;DR: 1. Vulkan Video H.264/H.265 Encode Now Working For Intel Alchemist GPUs On Linux; 2. Marek Olšák At Valve Lands RADV Code That Can "Double Performance" With Some VRS Cases; 3. Ryzen AI Developer Platform: AMD's Own Linux Distribution Built Atop Debian
What You'll Find in This Digest
This daily SysAdmin briefing delivers curated Linux ecosystem updates with a focus on infrastructure automation and DevOps best practices.
Top Stories Today
Phoronix Headlines
Vulkan Video H.264/H.265 Encode Now Working For Intel Alchemist GPUs On Linux
Earlier this year Vulkan Video encode was disabled on newer generations of Intel graphics hardware due to insufficient testing with the Intel ANV open-source driver. That impacted Gen12.5 graphics and newer - basically Alchemist and anything newer. Now at least Gen12.5 graphics with the likes of the Arc A-Series is seeing H.264 and H.265 encoding re-enabled...
Marek Olšák At Valve Lands RADV Code That Can "Double Performance" With Some VRS Cases
Longtime AMD Linux graphics driver expert Marek Olšák, who joined Valve earlier this year and now focusing more on RADV rather than the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver, has seen some of his latest work now merged for Mesa 26.2. Marek landed a big overhaul to the variable rate shading (VRS) code that in some cases can double the performance...
Ryzen AI Developer Platform: AMD's Own Linux Distribution Built Atop Debian
With the AMD Ryzen AI Halo developer platform there is the option of ordering this Ryzen AI Max+ mini PC with either Microsoft Windows 11 or "Linux OS". When receiving a AMD Ryzen AI Halo review sample last month, I fully expected it to just be an Ubuntu LTS install with ROCm preloaded. I was quite surprised when powering it up to find that it's an OS called the AMD Ryzen AI Developer Platform 1 "
AMD Ryzen AI Halo Is An Excellent & Powerful Mini PC With Fully Open-Source Software
Earlier this year AMD announced the Ryzen AI Halo as their in-house mini PC offering built around their leading Ryzen AI Max+ "Strix Halo" platform. After pre-orders began last month, the Ryzen AI Halo is officially beginning to ship this week and over the past few weeks we have been testing it out at Phoronix.
Linux 7.3 Expected To "Flatten The Pick" For Better Scheduling While Gaming & More
Going back to early May there were patches for improving the Linux scheduler to help with gaming performance on old "potato" hardware by providing better cgroup scheduling. Those patches, referred to as the "flatten the pick" patch series, are now slated for introduction in the Linux 7.3 kernel...
SysAdmin Morning Brief: Linux Containers & Security July 2026
Tags: sysadmin, linux, containers, kubernetes, security, devops, ci-cd
TL;DR: 1. ReactOS "Open-Source Windows" Project Now Capable Of Running Half-Life 2; 2. AMD Begins Staging Graphics Driver Changes For Linux 7.3; 3. Intel Preparing Linux For IPU8 Web Camera Support With Nova Lake Laptops
What You'll Find in This Digest
This daily SysAdmin briefing delivers curated Linux ecosystem updates with a focus on infrastructure automation and DevOps best practices.
Top Stories Today
Phoronix Headlines
ReactOS "Open-Source Windows" Project Now Capable Of Running Half-Life 2
One month ago it was exciting to see the open-source ReactOS operating system running Valve's Half-Life game. Little to realize less than 30 days later it would also be running Half-Life 2...
AMD Begins Staging Graphics Driver Changes For Linux 7.3
In addition to Intel beginning to volley graphics driver patches for Linux 7.3, this week AMD also began sending out their pull requests of "new stuff" to DRM-Next for the Linux 7.3 kernel cycle...
Intel Preparing Linux For IPU8 Web Camera Support With Nova Lake Laptops
More Linux kernel patches have been surfacing that confirm next-gen, high-end Nova Lake laptops will feature IPU8 image processing capabilities...
OpenRazer 3.12.4 Fixes Compatibility With Linux 7.2
OpenRazer 3.12.4 is now available as the newest update to these out-of-tree, unofficial Linux drivers for Razer devices. OpenRazer when paired with the likes of Polychromatic or other GUI options is what makes for a nice experience running Razer gaming peripherals under Linux...
FEX 2607 Optimizing For Yet-To-Be-Released ARM 256-bit SVE2 Hardware
The FEX Emulator that allows running Linux x86/x86_64 software on ARM64 (AArch64) systems, including the likes of Wine / Valve's Steam Play (Proton) for Windows gaming on ARM, is out with its newest monthly feature release. The Valve-backed project for running x86_64 games and other software on ARM for the upcoming Steam Frame and other more typical ARM Linux systems has been baking more optimizat
SysAdmin Morning Brief: Linux Containers & Security July 2026
Tags: sysadmin, linux, containers, kubernetes, security, devops, ci-cd
TL;DR: 1. FEX 2607 Optimizing For Yet-To-Be-Released ARM 256-bit SVE2 Hardware; 2. Linux DRM Scheduler Patches Yield Massive Improvement For Job Submission Latency; 3. 4K @ 60 FPS USB Video Capture Finally Becomes Less Problematic On Linux
What You'll Find in This Digest
This daily SysAdmin briefing delivers curated Linux ecosystem updates with a focus on infrastructure automation and DevOps best practices.
Top Stories Today
Phoronix Headlines
FEX 2607 Optimizing For Yet-To-Be-Released ARM 256-bit SVE2 Hardware
The FEX Emulator that allows running Linux x86/x86_64 software on ARM64 (AArch64) systems, including the likes of Wine / Valve's Steam Play (Proton) for Windows gaming on ARM, is out with its newest monthly feature release. The Valve-backed project for running x86_64 games and other software on ARM for the upcoming Steam Frame and other more typical ARM Linux systems has been baking more optimizat
Linux DRM Scheduler Patches Yield Massive Improvement For Job Submission Latency
A set of patches to the Linux kernel's Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) scheduler that is shared among different kernel graphics drivers is showing the potential of delivering much lower job submission latency when the system is loaded with many runnable CPU processes...
4K @ 60 FPS USB Video Capture Finally Becomes Less Problematic On Linux
One area of Linux hardware testing I haven't explored much in many years has been modern USB video capture for the lack of said hardware. The last time I did much video capturing on Linux was during the Hauppauge PCI card days. It turns out though that USB video capture of 4K 60 FPS content has been a pain point under Linux but is finally smoothing out with newer versions of the Linux kernel...
Phoronix Premium Summer Sale To Help Support Linux Hardware Testing
For those that missed Phoronix turning 22 years old last month when running a special to help support the site, a few readers mentioned recently they missed out on seeing the deal in time. Paired with the US Independence Day holiday and summer sales elsewhere, now through 10 July is a Phoronix Premium summer sale if wishing to view the site ad-free while supporting the daily open-source/Linux news
GNOME Lands ext-background-effect-v1 Support For Background Blur Effect
Added to the Wayland Protocols repository back in May of 2025 was the ext-background-effect-v1 protocol for background blur that had been under discussion since early 2024. The initial focus is on being able to apply a blur effect on a window's background or otherwise a specified screen region. GNOME 51 has now merged support for ext-background-effect-v1 with the latest Mutter code...
SysAdmin Morning Brief: Linux Containers & Security July 2026
Tags: sysadmin, linux, containers, kubernetes, security, devops, ci-cd
TL;DR: 1. GNOME 51 Alpha Released With Numerous Enhancements; 2. UPower 1.91.3 Fixes Behavior To Avoid Degrading Your Laptop Battery Faster; 3. Vulkan Adds Extension For OCP's Microscaling MX Formats To Help Machine Learning
What You'll Find in This Digest
This daily SysAdmin briefing delivers curated Linux ecosystem updates with a focus on infrastructure automation and DevOps best practices.
Top Stories Today
Phoronix Headlines
GNOME 51 Alpha Released With Numerous Enhancements
In working toward the stable GNOME 51 desktop release due out in September, today marks the alpha release of GNOME 51...
UPower 1.91.3 Fixes Behavior To Avoid Degrading Your Laptop Battery Faster
The UPower abstraction layer used for power management on Linux systems, especially laptops and desktops, is out with an important fix today to avoid inadvertently falling back to the laptop battery "fast" charging mode on some laptops that in turn could degrade your laptop battery faster...
Vulkan Adds Extension For OCP's Microscaling MX Formats To Help Machine Learning
Vulkan 1.4.356 is out today and it's interesting for the lone new extension debuting: VK_EXT_shader_ocp_microscaling_types. The VK_EXT_shader_ocp_microscaling_types is for enabling the Open Compute Project's Microscaling MX data types to help with machine learning workloads with Vulkan...
Coreboot + AMD openSIL On MSI Ryzen Motherboard Now Works With Windows 11
With 3mdeb's Dasharo port of AMD openSIL and Coreboot running on the Gigabyte EPYC motherboard, 3mdeb engineers have been devoting more time to their bring-up of Coreboot+openSIL on the MSI PRO B850-P consumer motherboard for desktop AMD Ryzen. They now even have Microsoft Windows 11 working atop this open-source firmware alternative along with other features implemented...
Rust Coreutils cp Ended Up Breaking Ubuntu Image Builds With Latest Incompatibility
While the Rust Coreutils offers better memory safety than GNU Coreutils due to being written in the Rust programming language, subtle incompatibilities continue to be spotted in the Rust Coreutils implementations of the different commands. The latest coming to light this week was the Rust Coreutils cp command breaking Ubuntu image builds due to differences in argument handling...
SysAdmin Morning Brief: Linux Containers & Security July 2026
Tags: sysadmin, linux, containers, kubernetes, security, devops, ci-cd
TL;DR: 1. Fedora 45 Considering x86_64 Shadow Stack Usage By Default; 2. EFS File-System Slated For Removal With Linux 7.3 After 20+ Years Unmaintained; 3. Linux Kernel Developers Again Discussing AI Agent Attribution - Potentially Dropping It
What You'll Find in This Digest
This daily SysAdmin briefing delivers curated Linux ecosystem updates with a focus on infrastructure automation and DevOps best practices.
Top Stories Today
Phoronix Headlines
Fedora 45 Considering x86_64 Shadow Stack Usage By Default
A change proposal under consideration for Fedora Linux 45 would enable x86_64 Shadow Stack usage by default in the name of better security on modern Intel and AMD systems...
EFS File-System Slated For Removal With Linux 7.3 After 20+ Years Unmaintained
The EFS file-system was used for non-ISO9660 CD-ROMs and disk partitions on SGI IRIX before IRIX 6.0 switched over to XFS. Inside the Linux kernel has been a read-only EFS file-system driver without a maintainer for 20+ years while for Linux 7.3 it's expected to be removed...
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RISC-V RVV Vector Performance Benchmarks With The SpacemiT K3 SoC
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The x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group led by Intel and AMD recently firmed up the AI Compute Extensions (ACE) specification for optimizing x86 for AI computation tasks around matrix multiplication and the like for machine learning workloads. The cross-vendor ACE extension is ultimately a successor to Intel's Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX). Posted to the GCC mailing list today by Intel engineers are t
Weekly SysAdmin News: Container Security Scanning Goes Mainstream in DevOps Pipelines
Tags: sysadmin, containers, security, devops, automation
The Latest in Systems Administration
This week's hot topic in the sysadmin community: automated container vulnerability scanning is no longer optional—it's become a mandatory gate in CI/CD pipelines across enterprises.
What Changed
Major infrastructure providers have been rolling out policy-as-code frameworks that enforce security compliance at deployment time. Key developments:
- Runtime Security Policies: Kubernetes admission controllers now integrate with vulnerability databases in real-time
- Supply Chain Security: SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) generation is now standard in container builds
- Automated Patching: GitOps workflows can now trigger rolling updates when base image vulnerabilities are detected
Why It Matters
For sysadmins managing containerized workloads, this means:
- Shift Left Security: Vulnerabilities caught before production, not after
- Compliance Automation: No more manual security audits for every deployment
- Reduced MTTR: Mean time to remediation dropped from hours to minutes
Implementation Tips
- Integrate Trivy or Clair into your build pipelines
- Use policy engines like OPA (Open Policy Agent) for enforcement
- Enable image signing with Cosign for supply chain integrity