Linux 6.16 -ytimen julkaisu tuo merkittäviä parannuksia suorituskykyyn, laitetukeen ja kehitystyökaluihin. Uusi versio on nyt saatavilla, ja se sisältää useita päivityksiä, jotka hyödyttävät sekä työpöytäkäyttäjiä, palvelinympäristöjä että tekoälysovellusten kehittäjiä.

Yleisellä tasolla Linux 6.16 parantaa suorituskykyä useilla osa-alueilla. Intelin Lunar Lake -prosessoreille ja AMD:n uusille RDNA 3.5 / Strix Halo -grafiikkapiireille on tehty optimointeja, jotka parantavat suoritustehoa. Myös EXT4- ja Btrfs-tiedostojärjestelmien toimintaa on hiottu tehokkaammaksi. Lisäksi uusi OpenVPN DCO -ajuri mahdollistaa nopeamman VPN-liikenteen käsittelyn, kun osa työstä siirtyy käyttäjätilasta suoraan ytimen puolelle. Kehittäjille tarjolla oleva uusi X86_NATIVE_CPU-asetus helpottaa ytimen kääntämistä optimoituna suoraan käytössä olevalle prosessorille.

Immutable distributions are slowly spreading across the Linux world– but should you care? Are they hacker friendly? What does “immutable” mean, anyway?

Immutable means “not subject or susceptible to change” according to Merriam-Webster, which is not 100% accurate in this context, but it’s close enough and the name is there so we’re stuck with it. Immutable distributions are subject to change, it’s just that how you change them is quite a bit dif/Bferent than bog-standard Linux. Will this matter to you? Read on to find out! (Or, if you know the answers already, read on to find out how angry you should be in the comments section.)

Immutability is cloud-based thinking: the system has a known-good state, and it’s always in it. Everything that is not part of the core system is containerized and controlled. I’m writing this from a KDE-based distribution called Aurora, part of the Universal Blue project that builds on Fedora’s Atomic Desktop work. It bills itself as being for “lazy developers”.

The advantage to this hypothetical lazy dev is that the base system is already built, and you can’t get distracted messing around with it. It works, and it isn’t at all likely to break. Every installation is essentially identical to every other installation, which means reproducibility is all but guaranteed. No more faffing about arguing on forums to figure out which library is conflicting with which. In an immutable system, they’ve all been selected to play well together, and anything else is safely containerized. (Again, a cloud ideal.) If the devs make a mistake during an update, well, just roll back!

Ubuntun takana oleva Canonical on ilmoittanut, että tulevassa Ubuntu 25.10 -versiossa perinteinen sudo korvataan uudella versiolla nimeltä sudo-rs. Tämä uusi komento on kirjoitettu Rust-ohjelmointikielellä ja se toimii lähes identtisesti vanhan sudon kanssa, mutta sen sisäinen toteutus on turvallisempi ja modernimpi.

The i486 series launched in 1989, and the i586 series debuted in 1993.

Linux is renowned for supporting incredibly ancient hardware, but there are limits to even what Linux developers can support. Phoronix reports that Linux developers are finally proposing removing support for ancient i486 and early i586 (Pentium) CPUs to unburden developers.

Linux kernel developer Ingo Molnar proposed in an RFC patch thread to remove support for these ancient 32-bit processors due to the few people running these chips combined with the latest Linux kernels. Compatibility has allegedly reached a point where supporting these chips is causing more headaches in the codebase than it’s worth.

Molnar also stated that Linus Torvalds has similar feelings and desires to “…leave i486 support behind.” Specifically, ending i486 and early Pentium support will allegedly remove 14,104 lines of code inside 80 files in the Linux kernel. Removing support would bump up the minimum kernel support level to include TSC and CX8 hardware support.

Linux kernel development boss Linus Torvalds has admitted his own “pure incompetence” led him to forget to deliver version 6.14 of the project.

Torvalds usually delivers new Linux kernel release candidates and full releases on Sunday afternoon, and documents each with a post. If he is traveling for work or pleasure, he usually gives advance notice so penguinistas don’t worry if his posts and releases don’t appear at the usual time.