The Daily Brief — Tech Edition

Daily tech news, edited and dated.

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Friday, 31 July 2026

74 stories filed.

AMD Posts Linux Patches For HDMI 2.1 Auto Low-Latency Mode "ALLM" & VRR

Phoronix ·

Following AMD posting AMDGPU patches for HDMI 2.1 FRL support after the HDMI 2.1 open-source support was long blocked by the HDMI Forum, as part of working toward a complete HDMI 2.1 implementation in this AMD Linux driver it was followed by HDMI 2.1 Display Stream Compression (DSC) support. Now the latest on the AMDGPU HDMI 2.1 enabling path is enabling Auto Low-Latency Mode (ALLM) as well as…

There's Finally A New Game Powered By The Unigine 2 Engine

Phoronix ·

It's been about a decade since seeing any new games released on the visually-impressive, Linux-friendly Unigine Engine. Unigine Corp has mostly been focusing on Unigine Engine usage for simulations and other professional applications, but coming as a surprise today is a new game being developed on their latest Unigine 2 engine technology...

OPI Abstraction v0.1 Published With Aiming To Standardize DPU/IPU Ecosystems

Phoronix ·

The Linux Foundation hosted Open Programmable Infrastructure "OPI" announced its first coordinated release with OPI Abstraction v0.1. The work of the Open Programmable Infrastructure is hoping to standardize the data processing unit (DPU) and infrastructure processing unit (IPU) ecosystems...

Stacked PRs are now live on GitHub

Hacker News ·

Article URL: https://github.blog/changelog/2026-07-30-stacked-pull-requests-are-now-in-public-preview/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49112232 Points: 220 # Comments: 82

Discussion: Hacker News thread →

The Economic Benefit of Refactoring

Hacker News ·

Article URL: https://martinfowler.com/articles/exploring-gen-ai/refactoring-economic-benefit.html Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49111176 Points: 143 # Comments: 64

Discussion: Hacker News thread →

Nouveau vs. NVIDIA R610 On CachyOS With The GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU

Phoronix ·

With the Razer Blade 18 as the first laptop Razer's certifying for (Ubuntu) Linux use while testing it out I was predominantly using the NVIDIA R610 official driver stack. Some users were interested though in how well this laptop is working with the open-source, upstream Nouveau+NVK driver stack given Razer is marketing this high-end laptop for Linux use too. Before sending the review unit back…

Hacker Public Radio

Hacker News ·

Article URL: https://hackerpublicradio.org/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49110547 Points: 102 # Comments: 20

Discussion: Hacker News thread →

AMD Zen 6 Client HSMP Patches Point To "Ryzen Master" Functionality On Linux

Phoronix ·

In an interesting twist, patches this week posted to the Linux kernel mailing list are enabling AMD Zen 6 client desktop and laptop SoCs for the HSMP driver. Up to now the AMD HSMP Linux driver was just used for modern EPYC server processors while now we are seeing this HSMP driver supporting the upcoming Medusa and Olympic Ridge client platforms... Including mentions of overclocking and even…

From individual achievement to partner impact

The Register ·

PARTNER CONTENT: Databricks survey data suggests certified professionals lift partner delivery capacity, customer credibility, and AI readiness well beyond the individuals who earn the credential

Huawei Considers Open-Sourcing A Half-Hearted Mesa Vulkan Driver

Phoronix ·

A Huawei engineer posted to the Mesa mailing list today over potentially upstreaming a Vulkan driver they have developed for an in-house GPU. However, at least in current form, this new in-house GPU Vulkan driver is likely dead in the water from being upstreamed into Mesa...

Patches Posted To Improve Linux Media Acceleration On Intel Alchemist GPUs

Phoronix ·

The Intel Arc A-Series graphics (DG2) remains in a bit of an awkward state on Linux due to the transition period moving from the i915 kernel driver to more modern and feature capable Xe kernel driver. It's only post-Alchemist where the Intel Xe driver is officially supported and used by default while those opting for the Xe driver with the A-Series can often enjoy better performance and…

Five Proposals Now Being Weighed For Debian AI/LLM Usage

Phoronix ·

Last week Debian developers began considering a general resolution over AI large language model (LLM) usage within the Debian project. They are now up to weighing five different proposals for how to permit or block AI/LLM usage in the Debian space...

DRM Format Modifiers For Old AMD GPUs Coming With Linux 7.3: Thanks Valve

Phoronix ·

Sent out today was another week's worth of features and other code changes to the AMDGPU kernel graphics driver and AMDKFD kernel compute driver. We are nearing the cut-off of new feature material for next month's Linux 7.3 kernel but there is some nice feature work in store for this week...

Vibe Coded X11 YSERVER Gets Steam Working, Full-Screen Games With Cinnamon

Phoronix ·

A new software creation that debuted this summer was YSERVER as a modern X11 server written in Rust largely by AI via Claude Code. This YSERVER implementation has continued implementing more X11 protocol and other functionality to get more desktop environments and apps working surprisingly okay on this vibe coded X11 server. YSERVER 1.4 is now available as the latest in this quest...

FreeBSD's Kernel Still Has A Bit Of GPL Code While Its Base User-Space Is GPL-Free

Phoronix ·

A few weeks ago there was excitement in the FreeBSD camp with FreeBSD 16 set to retire the last of its GPL code from the base system. While the retiring of the dialog code proclaimed that it was the last remaining piece of GPL software in the base system for FreeBSD, it turns out now that there is some GPL code within the FreeBSD kernel...

ARCTIC Launches Its New Fan Controller That Already Has Mainline Linux Support

Phoronix ·

In over 22 years of Linux hardware reviews and testing at Phoronix, I have never been more excited for a fan controller... ARCTIC today launched their new Fan Controller and in making the product very unique for Linux users, it already has mainline Linux kernel support via a open-source driver contributed directly by ARCTIC...

Starling: A New Linux Desktop Written In Swift, Own Wayland Compositor & Written With AI

Phoronix ·

There's yet another new open-source desktop option for Linux users in the era of new open-source projects largely written via AI/LLMs. Starling is this new project largely written via Claude and using the Swift programming language for the desktop while having its own Wayland compositor implemented in C. It also includes a built-in X11 server for handling X11 clients...