LXer Linux News

An ARM Linux engineer leveraged AI/LLMs to help uncover some improvements to "significant speed up" the Linux kernel build times. In the process the LLM used generated "a lot of code, much of it hideous" but in the end was used to find some very significant time savings for faster kernel builds via more task parallelization in different areas of the kernel build process.

One of Linux's oldest surviving distributions is moving closer to its next major release. Slackware 16 Alpha 1 became available on September 5, 2026, marking the first formal alpha milestone on the road toward Slackware Linux 16. The release follows a major rebuild of Slackware-current using a substantially newer GNU toolchain and brings together several upgrades that have accumulated since Slackware 15.0 arrived more than four years ago.

For the current Linux 7.3 kernel many older 32-bit ARM platforms are deprecated and in turn orphaning hundreds of drivers only relevant to those out-of-date ARM platforms. The removal of that now deprecated code is planned for the next kernel cycle or two. A lot of old 32-bit ARM code is on the chopping block after being deprecated.

BleachBit 6.0.4 is now available as the latest maintenance update to the popular open-source system cleaner, introducing support for Android Studio and Gradle Cache, along with new cleaners for Fish, Zsh, and Python command history. The developers say startup and scanning are now faster thanks to reduced redundant filesystem checks, deferred imports, more efficient cleaner indexing, and several other optimizations.

CHUWI recently launched the UniBook laptop powered by the Intel Core 3 304 "Wildcat Lake" SOC and priced at just $449 USD. Especially with today's high component pricing, a brand new sub-$500 laptop is extremely rare.

OpenPaper L is a new 13.3-inch color E-Ink picture frame from the German team at paperlesspaper. It builds on last year’s smaller Paper 7 model, but this version is much larger and still follows an open-source philosophy. The device features a 13.3-inch Spectra 6 color E-Ink screen with a 1600×1200 resolution at 150 ppi and a visible area of 200 by 268 mm. The display is set in a real-wood frame with a white border and UV70 museum glass to cut down on reflections.

The development team behind the Gentoo-based, independently developed MocaccinoOS distribution released MocaccinoOS 26.09 today as the latest stable ISO snapshot with various improvements and updated components.

FEX 2609 was released overnight as the newest monthly feature release for this open-source emulator that allows running Linux x86_64 binaries on AArch64, including the likes of Steam and Steam Play (Proton) for enabling Windows games to run rather well on ARM64 Linux systems. FEX 2609 features a lot of work on its just-in-time (JIT) compilation support, including for better performance that may be seen in Geekbench and some games.

GStreamer 1.28.7 has been released today as the seventh maintenance update to the latest and greatest GStreamer 1.28 series of this powerful, free, open-source, and cross-platform multimedia framework.

It turns out one of the feature limitations of the AMDGPU Linux graphics driver is HDMI 1.4 3D output support with frame packing, top-and-bottom, and side-by-side options for transmitting simultaneous video streams. I wasn't aware of this limitation for the lack of any 3D displays and many Linux enthusiasts/gamers as well, but if you happen to have a compatible HDMI 1.4 3D display, there are pending patches to finally make this a reality.