Omarchy 4.0.5 Released With Better NVIDIA Laptop Support
Posted: 2026-10-20 16:00:00 Source: https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/omarchy-405-released-better-nvidia-laptop-support
The Omarchy project has released Omarchy 4.0.5, introducing a substantial collection of hardware compatibility improvements, desktop performance optimizations, security fixes, and package updates for the Arch Linux-based operating system. Released on October 18, 2026, the update focuses on refining the existing desktop experience while preparing the distribution for its next major feature release.
Among the most important changes are improved NVIDIA hybrid graphics support for laptops, an updated Linux 7.2.8 kernel featuring the BORE scheduler, and compatibility improvements for Qt 6.12. The release also resolves boot-related black screens, fixes audio problems affecting certain Dell and USB speaker configurations, corrects Steam graphics driver selection, and improves the reliability of several desktop utilities.
Although version 4.0.5 is primarily a maintenance release, its improvements extend across many of the components that determine how smoothly a Linux desktop operates. From faster application launches and more responsive desktop panels to stronger security defaults and more reliable hardware detection, the update demonstrates Omarchy's continued emphasis on delivering a preconfigured Linux environment that requires relatively little manual setup.
Omarchy Continues Refining Its Arch Linux Desktop Experience
Omarchy is an opinionated Arch Linux-based distribution designed to provide a ready-to-use development and desktop environment built around the Hyprland Wayland compositor. Rather than presenting users with a minimal installation that requires extensive customization, Omarchy combines a carefully selected collection of applications, themes, keyboard shortcuts, and system configurations into a cohesive desktop experience.
The distribution has attracted attention among developers and experienced Linux users who appreciate keyboard-driven workflows, tiling window management, and the flexibility of Arch Linux without necessarily wanting to configure every component manually. Its desktop environment emphasizes efficient navigation, integrated development tools, and a consistent visual design, while retaining access to Arch's extensive software repositories.
Version 4.0.5 continues that approach by concentrating on problems that can interrupt everyday workflows. The release improves hardware compatibility, corrects regressions introduced by newer software packages, and reduces unnecessary delays in common desktop operations. Rather than introducing a dramatic redesign, the developers have focused on making the existing environment more predictable and responsive.
Linux Weekly 26: The Data Center's Achilles Heel?
Posted: 2026-10-19 21:31:39 Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRFG7pL-ADw
Raspberry Pi OS Overview: Everything You Need to Know
Posted: 2026-10-19 15:00:04 Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFXL8H-KDXc
7.3: mainline
Posted: 2026-10-18 23:14:58 Source: https://www.kernel.org/
| Version: | 7.3 (mainline) |
|---|---|
| Released: | 2026-10-18 |
| Source: | linux-7.3.tar.xz |
| PGP Signature: | linux-7.3.tar.sign |
| Patch: | full |
Linux Maintainers Can Now Submit AI-Generated Code Without Declaring It
Posted: 2026-10-17 19:00:00 Source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/10/17/0723207/linux-maintainers-can-now-submit-ai-generated-code-without-declaring-it?utm_source=atom1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed
Linux maintainers "have ruled that people no longer have to declare their LLM usage," reports XDA Developers, "as Torvalds himself calls a ban on AI 'utterly stupid.'" The first part of this story comes via a message sent to the Linux mailing list. It announces one of the major changes decided during the Maintainers Summit on October 8, 2026, in Prague, Czechia, where submissions to the kernel no longer need to use the "Assisted-by" tag... meaning that people can submit AI-generated code without needing to declare it as such. In some correspondence regarding concern about this new disclosure removal, the creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds, made his thoughts known... [Torvalds] compares an AI ban to getting rid of text editors, as doing so would prove that someone could write a good commit message without making any mistakes. He then rounds off his argument by asking, "Do you not see how UTTERLY STUPID those kinds of rules would be?" and stating that he simply expects the people working on the Linux kernel to "understand what they are doing." Here's the last line of Torvalds' post. "Quite honestly, in my experience, the people I respect and call intelligent are not the ones that shy away from using new and interesting tools." In a related story, Torvalds says he's used AI to help him understand patches that were hard to follow. And this week Torvalds even posted an LLM-assisted patch, reports Tom's Hardware: The development branch purports to fix an old issue with massive cache contention when many CPUs are reading the same file — a scenario potentially encountered when using shared libraries, databases, and web servers. Several developers had already made attempts over the years at fixing the issue, all with varied results, none quite ideal as an all-encompassing solution... He's now posted his solution in a development branch, and claims that he's seen a 23x performance improvement in a dedicated synthetic benchmark, though he notes that actual real-world impact will be far less significant, as "no real load" will witness those figures. Torvalds used Anthropic's Claude Code, reports The New Stack, and "said the assistant wrote the implementation, tests, and initial documentation, and reviewed the code under his direction. He ran the benchmarks himself, despite having previously criticized developers for claiming AI writes 99% of their code." Tuesday Torvalds submitted a 10-patch series. "Reviewers have since identified a race condition and raised concerns about memory reclamation," adds The New Stack. "Torvalds has handed further development to Kiryl Shutsemau, a Linux kernel developer who previously worked on the same bottleneck."
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Steam For Linux Finally Goes 64-Bit
Posted: 2026-10-16 21:00:00 Source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/10/16/2028232/steam-for-linux-finally-goes-64-bit?utm_source=atom1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed
Valve has released a new Steam Client beta that finally moves the Linux client to 64-bit architecture, while also placing it inside a containerized Steam Runtime environment. However, Linux users still need 32-bit libraries and graphics drivers for compatibility, meaning fully 64-bit-only systems remain unsupported. VideoCardz.com reports: Valve's updated requirements explicitly state that 64-bit-only installations are not supported. Systems must still provide both 32-bit and 64-bit libraries and graphics drivers, including multilib support. The new client also requires Linux kernel 5.6 or newer and glibc 2.31 or newer. The update also introduces Steam Achievement Sets, a feature we covered earlier that allows developers to organize achievements into separate groups for base games, DLCs and seasonal content. Players can complete individual sets without losing their existing completion status when developers add more achievements. Valve has also updated the achievements page to display progress across these groups. The 64-bit Linux client and Achievement Sets are currently available through the Steam Client Beta. Valve has not confirmed when these changes will reach the stable Linux release. Until then, users on the regular Steam client will continue using the existing architecture.
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Ubuntu 26.10 Review: Faster, Better… But Worth Upgrading?
Posted: 2026-10-16 19:45:26 Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa0mU9U5DWw
KDE Plasma 6.8 Released, Marks 30 Years of the KDE Project
Posted: 2026-10-16 15:00:00 Source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/10/15/2248252/kde-plasma-68-released-marks-30-years-of-the-kde-project?utm_source=atom1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phoronix: The feature-packed and polished Plasma 6.8 KDE desktop is now available. Making this release all the more special is that it coincides with the 30th anniversary of the KDE project. KDE Plasma 6.8 ships many exciting improvements including vRAM usage optimizations, dwell clicker support on Wayland, Wayland commit-timing protocol support for KWin, improvements for the Union theme engine, better remote desktop support, multi-GPU handling improvements, the new kscreenctl tool, server-side drop shadow support, multi-monitor improvements, and a lot of other polishing throughout. Especially from the Wayland angle there has been a lot of polishing and fine tuning for Plasma 6.8. Accompanying the release is a new film, The KDE Documentary, which "tells the story of the pioneering open source community that gave computer users a free and open alternative to proprietary desktops like Windows." The documentary is available to stream for free on YouTube.
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Is Linus Torvalds Vibe Coding?
Posted: 2026-10-15 17:27:19 Source: http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Is-Linus-Torvalds-Vibe-Coding
The creator of Linux has added AI into his process for Linux kernel development, and it's more than just for debugging.
KDE Plasma 6.8 Marks 30 Years With a Major Shift to Wayland and a More Powerful Linux Desktop
Posted: 2026-10-15 16:00:00 Source: https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/kde-plasma-68-marks-30-years-major-shift-wayland-and-more-powerful-linux-desktop
The KDE Project has officially released KDE Plasma 6.8, introducing a substantial collection of desktop improvements while celebrating three decades of open-source software development. Released on October 14, 2026, exactly 30 years after Matthias Ettrich announced the original KDE project, this anniversary edition brings significant changes to display management, accessibility, graphics performance, remote desktop functionality, system monitoring, and application theming.
Perhaps the most consequential development is KDE's decision to retire native X11 desktop sessions in Plasma 6.8, completing its transition toward Wayland as the primary display architecture. The release also introduces NVIDIA triple buffering by default, improved HDR support, a more capable remote desktop server, CPU affinity controls in System Monitor, and expanded capabilities for the experimental Union theming engine. These improvements reflect KDE's effort to modernize the Linux desktop while maintaining the customization and flexibility that have defined Plasma for years.
Plasma 6.8 is therefore more than a commemorative release. It represents an important architectural transition for one of Linux's most widely used desktop environments, with changes that affect both everyday users and developers building applications for the next generation of Linux desktops.
KDE Celebrates Three Decades of Open-Source Desktop Development
KDE's history began on October 14, 1996, when Matthias Ettrich proposed creating a consistent graphical desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems. At the time, Linux was becoming increasingly capable as a free operating system, but its graphical experience remained fragmented. Users could choose from several window managers and applications, yet there was no universally integrated desktop environment comparable to the commercial graphical systems available elsewhere.
The original KDE initiative sought to address that limitation by building a cohesive desktop around the Qt application framework. Over the following decades, the project evolved through several major generations, introducing increasingly sophisticated desktop technologies while expanding into applications, development frameworks, mobile interfaces, and other open-source projects.
Plasma 6.8 arrives as KDE marks its 30th anniversary, but its development priorities are focused primarily on the future. Rather than introducing a purely cosmetic anniversary edition, KDE has concentrated on modernizing underlying desktop infrastructure while improving accessibility, usability, and performance. The result is a release that combines immediately visible enhancements with architectural changes intended to support future development.
Microsoft Defender Now Supports Linux Desktops
Posted: 2026-10-14 22:00:00 Source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/10/14/2121212/microsoft-defender-now-supports-linux-desktops?utm_source=atom1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed
"Starting today, Linux desktops are now officially supported by Microsoft Defender," reports Neowin. A public preview of the threat detection app extends its enterprise security platform beyond servers to developer workstations running distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and RHEL. The offering includes antivirus protection, endpoint detection and response, vulnerability management, threat hunting, and device isolation. From the report: Microsoft is also making it easier to onboard desktops through streamlined methods, offering a unified security operations experience, strengthened security, and improved response times. Organizations that are already familiar with securing Linux servers via Defender should feel right at home securing desktops too, as the experience is exactly the same. Defender knows whether it is securing a device in a data center, the cloud, or that it is owned by a developer and identifies them as such in inventory and security workflows. As stated previously, all Linux server distros are supported via Defender on desktops too. These include RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, SLES, Fedora, and Oracle Linux, GNOME, KDE, and more. That said, you do need Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 or a Microsoft 365 E5 and E7 subscription. You can enroll Defender on workstations using the same deployment methods you use for servers, but do check out the prerequisites here.
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Building a Reliable Event-Driven Payment Service With XRP Ledger
Posted: 2026-10-13 16:00:00 Source: https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/building-reliable-event-driven-payment-service-xrp-ledger
Receiving a transaction notification is only the first step. Production software still has to decide whether that event is safe to turn into application state.
A WebSocket callback can arrive in milliseconds. What happens afterward is harder. The XRP Price may be the public-facing metric most people associate with the asset, but developers integrating the XRP Ledger have a different concern. A long-running service has to detect transactions, determine whether their outcomes are final, and update local application state without acting twice or acting too soon.
When an XRPL Event Actually Means Something
A WebSocket connection can save an application from constantly polling for new activity. On a Linux service, that means keeping the connection open and listening for the XRP Ledger events the application cares about.
The XRP Ledger’s subscribe documentation explains how applications can listen for ledger activity, transactions, and account-related events. The transactions stream reports transactions associated with closed ledgers. The transactions_proposed stream goes further and can include proposed activity that never reaches a validated ledger.
That makes an incoming notification useful, but not necessarily authoritative. A service that treats every notification as an instruction to change business state can act before the ledger has established a final result.
For a payment service, the event is where processing begins.
Validation Comes Before Fulfillment
Transaction notifications can include a validated field. When validated is true, the transaction has been included in a validated ledger and its outcome is final.
A service might see a payment involving an account tied to an order and immediately tell a fulfillment system to release the product. If that payment came from proposed activity and has not reached a validated ledger, the application has acted before it knows the final outcome.
Validation is only the first check. Transaction metadata also includes TransactionResult. A transaction can be final without producing the successful result the application expected, so inclusion in a validated ledger should not be treated as proof that a payment succeeded.
For payments, delivered_amount is the field that shows what actually reached the destination. That can matter when the amount requested and the amount ultimately delivered are not identical.
Before an order changes state, the service needs to know whether the transaction is final, whether it succeeded, and what value actually arrived.
Linus Torvalds On Why AI Works For Him
Posted: 2026-10-13 03:30:00 Source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/10/13/034206/linus-torvalds-on-why-ai-works-for-him?utm_source=atom1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Many open-source developers still dislike AI. The latest example is System76 banning AI-generated content from its COSMIC desktop. At Open Source Summit Europe, Linux creator Linus Torvalds offered a different take: "I actually really like using AI," Torvald told Dirk Hohndel, his good friend and head of Ericsson Software Technology, in their latest discussion. [...] Torvalds said, "I think that you need to be very careful using AI when you're doing something real and important." Torvalds explained he hadn't always felt that way about AI programming. "I used to think it was just not very good -- but now I'm at the point where I actually really like using AI." "To be fair," he continued, "I don't do a lot of kernel programming. I'm a maintainer. The Linux kernel is a project where other people do the real work, and I act as the collection point. But I still enjoy programming immensely. I think AI is a wonderful tool if you use it correctly and treat it as a tool, and I find it makes programming much more enjoyable." Torvalds recalled, "I started programming in 1981 or so, and back then computers were much simpler, and you could understand what they were doing, and also the programs you compared your own programs to were much simpler." "It's a different story today," Torvalds said. "The bar in software engineering has grown so high that it's hard to see your own small efforts as worth anything, because you're used to all these polished, professional programs. [...] A lot of people make fun of vibe coding, but I think it's a wonderful way to find joy in programming. It makes you feel like you're doing something relevant. It allows you, as a new programmer, to do things that you would otherwise have a really hard time with." He continued: "I love the concept of AI as a gateway drug because I was working on my own toy project, the guitar pedal, and I knew what I was doing. I had a user interface that I had written myself in C that was running on a microcontroller that was running on this small screen, and I was like, "This is just stupid. It looks like something from the '80s; I wanted it to look like something from this century. But I don't do Java. I do kernels." "So, I use AI to do the things that I'm bad at," Torvalds went on, "I'd seen all the same YouTube videos you have. Give AI a prompt, and it will do it. So I gave it a prompt, and it did it, and it was horrendous. Then I said, 'Hey, look! I already did this in C. I did it the right way. It's just ugly." Torvalds acknowledged that AI tools are helping identify security vulnerabilities and improve the Linux kernel, but at the cost of overwhelming maintainers with questionable bug reports and superficial fixes. He called some submissions "mindless band-aid kind of patches." That said, despite AI's growing influence, Torvalds believes Linux's success comes from steady, incremental development rather than sweeping changes. "I'm a big believer in the whole incremental small changes that, over time, turn into big features," he said. The development goal remains "incremental improvement and steady progress all the time."
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openKylin 3.0 Released with Expanded AI Integration
Posted: 2026-10-12 18:09:06 Source: http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/openKylin-3.0-Released-with-Expanded-AI-Integration
The latest release features a pre-installed AI agent to help perform tasks.
GNOME 51 Review: New Features, Changes & More
Posted: 2026-10-12 18:00:38 Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNgt8QJD5qY
DigitalOcean Ends Open Source Credits Program
Posted: 2026-10-12 16:48:19 Source: http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/DigitalOcean-Ends-Open-Source-Credits-Program
In a change that has surprised many open source developers, DigitalOcean has decided to sunset its Open Source Credits Program.
I Built a WordPress Site on a Linux VPS… Then Made It FAST
Posted: 2026-10-12 11:52:14 Source: https://linuxhint.com/i-built-a-wordpress-site-on-a-linux-vps-then-made-it-fast/
I deployed a wordpress website on a Linux VPS but encountered performance issue which I fixed and made my website super fast. Achieved a score of 99.
Ubuntu 26.10 Will Offer a Rust-based GnuPG Replacement Option
Posted: 2026-10-10 21:59:00 Source: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/10/10/2155227/ubuntu-2610-will-offer-a-rust-based-gnupg-replacement-option?utm_source=atom1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed
The blog It's FOSS reports: You already know that Canonical has been selectively replacing Ubuntu's C-based system components with Rust-written equivalents that don't compromise in terms of functionality, most of the time. Now it looks like the distro's OpenPGP implementation is next, with Sequoia PGP coming preinstalled in Ubuntu 26.10. Canonical wants it to eventually replace GnuPG [the dominant Linux implementation of PGP, written in C] as the default toolchain, though that switch has not happened yet... [The Ubuntu 26.10 release notes say Sequoia PGP's default status will be a future goal...] [Sequoia PGP] was started in 2017 by three former GnuPG developers who chose to build a new OpenPGP implementation in Rust rather than keep evolving GnuPG's existing codebase. Sequoia PGP is designed as a library that other software can use directly, rather than a standalone command-line tool. sq sits on top of that for encryption, decryption, signing, and key management, and sqv handles signature verification, filling in for gpg and gpgv in GnuPG. Sequoia also implements RFC 9580, the 2024 revision of the OpenPGP standard, whereas GnuPG has continued from the RFC 4880 branch, pursuing its own newer extensions and the LibrePGP specification rather than adopting RFC 9580 as its primary standard. From the It's FOSS Weekly newsletter, which also notes that the founder of the It's FOSS blog has also created a Linux-themed game called TUXDLE — a variation on Wordle where all the answers are Linux terms.
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Linux Weekly 25: Durable Software and AI Adobe
Posted: 2026-10-09 21:17:07 Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_ULKUqA3Yg
Linux Moves Closer to Retiring the x32 ABI After Years of Limited Adoption
Posted: 2026-10-08 16:00:00 Source: https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/linux-moves-closer-retiring-x32-abi-after-years-limited-adoption
Linux kernel developers are renewing efforts to retire the x32 application binary interface (ABI), a little-used compatibility feature that attempted to combine the advantages of 64-bit processors with the smaller memory footprint of 32-bit applications. A revised patch series submitted on October 8, 2026, proposes the first steps toward disabling the interface, potentially ending support for an architecture experiment introduced more than 14 years ago.
The latest proposal comes from Sebastian Andrzej Siewior, a Linux kernel developer at Linutronix who has been working on the removal effort throughout 2026. Rather than immediately deleting every component associated with x32, the proposed approach would first prevent the feature from being enabled through normal kernel configuration. This would give remaining users and distribution maintainers an opportunity to respond before the underlying implementation is removed.
The effort reflects a broader challenge in Linux development: maintaining compatibility with older or rarely used technologies while keeping the kernel manageable, secure, and efficient. Although x32 offered theoretical performance and memory advantages, it never achieved widespread adoption. With conventional x86_64 software dominating modern Linux systems, developers are increasingly questioning whether the additional maintenance burden remains justified.
Understanding the Linux x32 ABI
The x32 ABI was introduced with Linux kernel 3.4 in 2012 as an alternative to conventional 32-bit and 64-bit application environments. Its goal was to provide applications with access to the architectural improvements of x86_64 processors while retaining smaller data types and pointers associated with 32-bit software.
Traditional 32-bit x86 applications use the i386 ABI, which operates with a more limited register set and 32-bit execution conventions. Standard x86_64 applications, meanwhile, benefit from additional general-purpose registers, wider registers, and modern calling conventions, but they normally use 64-bit pointers. Those larger pointers can increase memory consumption in applications that maintain large numbers of pointer-heavy data structures.
The x32 ABI attempted to offer a compromise. Applications would execute using the x86_64 instruction set and its larger register file while retaining 32-bit integers, long values, and pointers. This programming model is commonly described as ILP32, meaning that integers, long integers, and pointers are all 32 bits wide.
The distinction can be illustrated by comparing the expected sizes of common C data types: