KDE's Plasma 6.6 desktop release is due out next week (17 February) and there's been some last minute fixes to land. Additionally, KDE Plasma developers continue to be quite active in already landing feature work for Plasma 6.7...

One of the latest exciting developments for the open-source Godot game engine is beginning to lay out support for Vulkan ray-tracing...

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.

The GNOME 50 beta release is now available ahead of the official GNOME 50 desktop due out in March...

One of the latest NVIDIA open-source contributions this week wasn't for the in-development Nova kernel driver but for enhancing the existing Nouveau kernel driver. The patch posted is for bringing up the NVIDIA GA100 GPU under Nouveau using the GPU System Processor (GSP)...

With the Serial Peripheral Interface "SPI" subsystem updates for the Linux 7.0 kernel comes support for multi-lane SPI...

Synex is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Debian's "Stable" branch, developed with the official Debian Live Build tool. It offers four separate desktop options with GNOME, LXDE, KDE Plasma and Xfce, all of which are composed of a rather frugal set of applications in its default state, without any development tools or offices suites. Some of the distribution's main features include Calamares installer with support for both BIOS and UEFI, CUPS integration for printing and network support, out-of-the box support for Flatpak applications, official NVIDIA driver installation assistant with support for both X11 and Wayland, and additional repositories containing Microsoft Edge, OnlyOffice and Zabbix.

The retro single-player FPS Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! has a demo available on Steam and it's going to release March 16th.

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Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown has an upgraded Steam demo ahead of release, with a teaser of new voice-overs and the proper music.

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Adding to the exciting features for the big Linux 7.0 kernel release is support for the Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Algorithm "ML-DSA" quantum-resistant signature algorithm...

AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization with Secure Nested Paging (SEV-SNP) provides memory encryption and integrity protections that can be especially useful in modern cloud computing. Typically a 2~10% performance overhead is reported when engaging AMD SEV-SNP for these hardware-backed security protections. In this article is an extensive look at the current AMD SEV-SNP performance impact for confidential computing on EPYC 9005 "Turin" servers. The current Ubuntu 24.04 LTS was tested as well as an Ubuntu 26.04 development snapshot in evaluating the latest optimizations and what is on the horizon this year for AMD EPYC Linux server performance.

Along with their new installers for each classic game, they have a big Unreal Tournament 2004 patch in preview with overhauled Linux and macOS support.

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After arriving on GOG early in 2025, Dino Crisis 1 and 2 are now available directly on Steam but they have issues running on Linux / SteamOS.

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Whonix is an operating system focused on anonymity, privacy and security. It is based on the Tor anonymity network, Debian GNU/Linux and security by isolation. Whonix consists of two parts: One solely runs Tor and acts as a gateway, which is called Whonix-Gateway. The other, which is called Whonix-Workstation, is on a completely isolated network. Only connections through Tor are possible. With Whonix, you can use applications and run servers anonymously over the Internet. DNS leaks are impossible, and even malware with root privileges cannot find out the user's real IP.

As some long overdue housekeeping, the Linux 7.0 kernel has removed an Error Detection And Correction "EDAC" driver for the Intel 440BX and 440GX chipset. The driver is being removed not only because that chipset was just used by old Celerons and Pentium II / Pentium III CPUs but that it's been in the kernel all this time while being known to be broken for 19+ years...

A new Steam Beta update for Desktop and Steam Deck / SteamOS allows you to add hardware details for reviews and give more Steam Deck Verified feedback.

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The slab memory allocator feature updates have been merged for the Linux 7.0 kernel. Most notable this cycle is expanded use of the recently-introduced Sheaves functionality...

Kicksecure is a security-hardened Linux distribution based on Debian's "Stable" branch, with Xfce as the default desktop user interface. It is a hardened operating system designed to be resistant to viruses, malware and attacks, and extensively reconfigured in accordance with an advanced multi-layer defense model, thereby providing in-depth security. Kicksecure provides protection from many types of malware in its default configuration with no customization required.

Sony State of Play for February 2026 happened last night, and we finally got the Death Stranding 2: On the Beach PC release announcement. Plus various others.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Merged for the Linux 6.19 kernel was initial Nova Lake S audio support. Now merged this week for the Linux 7.0 kernel is enabling sound support for additional Nova Lake platforms...

Red Hat's leading input expert Peter Hutterer announced the release overnight of libinput 1.31, the input handling library used by the Linux desktop on both X.Org and Wayland desktop sessions...

All of the hardware monitoring "HWMON" subsystem updates have been merged for the ongoing Linux 7.0 merge window...

The Haiku open-source operating system project inspired by BeOS kicked off 2026 by making many improvements to its kernel, device drivers, and user-space software...