Slimbook OS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution customised for the Slimbook line of Linux computers assembled in Spain. It offers a choice of GNOME or KDE Plasma desktops on a single ISO image which also includes some custom extensions and utilities. The distribution provides its own repositories for some software, prioritising DEB and Flatpak packages over Ubuntu's snap options. Some of the other interesting features of Slimbook OS include touchpad gestures (enabled by default), Slimbook service notifications, window tiling, the Terminator terminal emulator, a Ulauncher application for fast searching, and a day/night mode switcher.

Nitrux is a desktop Linux distribution built from Debian, but with an immutable base system, the OpenRC init system, and without any traditional Debian package management tools. It uses the Calamares system installer and includes the Hyprland window manager, Hypr utilities, the greetd+QtGreet login manager, and the Waybar Wayland bar. Nitrux emphasizes the use of AppBox to manage end-user software and it also supports AppImage and Flatpak package formats.

A request for comments (RFC) patch series was posted today to the Linux kernel mailing list to introduce the AMD Dynamic Power and Thermal Configuration Interface "DPTCi" driver. With this driver it would provide better upstream Linux kernel support for tuning the power / performance / thermals of modern Ryzen-powered gaming handheld devices. Though don't get too excited right away as the driver was assembled in part by AI that is already causing a bit of a ruckus on the LKML due to lack of disclosure...

Google announced today that beginning later this year they are moving the Chrome web browser from its four week release cycle down to a two week release cadence...

NetHydra (formerly HydraPWK GNU/Linux) is a Debian-based distribution designed primarily for penetration testing. It contains a collection of penetration testing tools, including tools for information gathering, scanning, stress testing, exploitation, cracking, reversing engineering and forensics. Formerly known as BlackTrack, the distribution uses a real-time Linux kernel and features the Xfce desktop.

Over the past month I have been running a lot of Linux benchmarks on Intel's new Panther Lake using the Core Ultra X7 358H and its Xe3-based Arc B390 Graphics. The Arc B390 on Linux has been quite interesting with its OpenGL and Vulkan graphics performance compared to prior generations of Intel graphics plus the Intel Compute Runtime / OpenCL performance too. In today's article are more benchmarks of the latter in looking at the Intel Rendering Toolkit and OpenVINO AI performance on the Xe3 B390 Panther Lake graphics compared to prior Lunar Lake and Meteor Lake.

There is two weeks to go until the GNOME 50 stable release while out today is the release candidate of Mutter 50. This Mutter 50.rc release brings some exciting last-minute enhancements to this Wayland compositor...

Germany's Sovereign Tech Agency announced a new and expanded Sovereign Tech Fellowship program that is now open to community managers and technical writers, beyond just FOSS maintainers from the prior round...

Apple announced today the new Fusion Architecture with the M5 Pro and M5 Max SoCs that also feature a next-generation GPU...

Resident Evil 4 (the 2023 remake) now seemingly has no special DRM attached to it, as Capcom finally listened to fans to improve the game.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Last year AMD and Intel as part of the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group announced ChkTag for x86 memory tagging across processors to better fight buffer overflows and use-after-free errors. In preparing for ChkTag with future processors, Intel has begun adapting their Linear Address Masking (LAM) support to more nicely jive with it...

Intel yesterday sent out their first "drm-xe-next" pull request to DRM-Next of new Xe kernel graphics driver improvements they have readied for their eventual upstreaming into the Linux 7.1 kernel...

Releasing March 30th, Old World - Empires of the Indus is a big India-themed DLC for the great 4x strategy game that has full Linux support.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Timberborn hits the big 1.0 really soon on March 12th, and they've teased a huge addition coming to the game with automation that sounds exciting.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

HydraPWK GNU/Linux is a Debian-based distribution designed primarily for penetration testing. It contains a collection of penetration testing tools, including tools for information gathering, scanning, stress testing, exploitation, cracking, reversing engineering and forensics. Formerly known as BlackTrack, the distribution uses a real-time Linux kernel and features the Xfce desktop.

FunOS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution which features the JWM graphical user interface. The project is intended to be more lightweight than official Ubuntu community editions while providing the same application compatibility and hardware support.

CentOS as a group is a community of open source contributors and users which started in 2003 and has been sponsored by Red Hat since 2014. CentOS Linux versions up to CentOS Linux 8 are 100% compatible rebuilds of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in full compliance with Red Hat's redistribution requirements. In 2020 it was announced CentOS Linux is being discontinued and replaced with CentOS Stream, a developer-focused distribution which acts as a middle-stream between Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

d77void GNU/Linux is a Void-based Linux distribution created to demonstrate the capabilities of Void's tools, such as void-mklive and void-packages. Originally initiated as a Void respin with the Fluxbox window manager, the project has evolved to offer a wide range of window manager, Wayland compositor and desktop environment options, including Awesome, bspwm, COSMIC, dwm, Fluxbox, herbstluftwm, Hyprland, i3wm, JWM, labwc, LeftWM, LXQt, Niri, Openbox, Qtile, River, Sway, Wayfire and Xfce. The distribution can be installed to a hard disc with the text-mode d77void-installer.

AMD open-sourced the ROCprof Trace Decoder "rocprof-trace-decoder", a tool useful for developers targeting the AMD GPU compute stack...

A Linux driver has been published for the ARCTIC Fan Controller to be able to read fan speeds under Linux as well as setting the PWM fan speed for each of the ten fans supported by this controller. Making this driver all the more exciting is that ARCTIC Cooling is directly working on this driver rather than just being a community/third-party creation. Furthermore, ARCTIC Cooling is working on getting this driver to the upstream Linux kernel...

Cleared Hot is a truly fun helicopter combat game made in the spirit of Desert Strike and Jungle Strike - with a big update due this month.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

EvoCreo 2 from Ilmfinity Studios is the second in the series of popular mobile monster catching games and it's confirmed for a Steam release on April 6th.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Megaquarium has evolved with the latest big free update for this aquarium building sim, along with a fun sounding new DLC expansion out now.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Bazzite has a big new update available for your PC gaming handhelds and desktops with some major packaging upgrades to play with.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.