Git 2.53 Released With More Optimizations, One Step Closer To Making Rust Mandatory While we might see Git 3.0 released around the end of 2026, Git 2.53 is out today as the latest feature release and continuing to make changes with an eye toward that big Git 3.0 milestone... https://www.phoronix.com/news/Git-2.53-Released

Experimental Linux Code For 1GB PUD-Level THPs Shows 34% Faster Memory Access Times Early, experimental code for implementing 1GB PUD-level THPs in the Linux kernel are showing positive benchmark results but other upstream stakeholders were surprised by this patch series appearing and it looking like it could be a while until if/when the patches are mainlined for helping to reduce translaction lookaside buffer (TLB) pressure without resorting to Hugetlbfs... https://www.phoronix.com/news/1GB-PUD-Level-THPs-Linux

Linux From Scratch Abandoning SysVinit Support Linux From Scratch was one of the holdouts continuing optional SysVinit init system support through 2026, but that's now ending. Linux From Scratch "LFS" and Beyond Linux From Scratch "BLFS" are ending their System V Init support moving forward... https://www.phoronix.com/news/LFS-Dropping-SysVinit

Steam Survey Results For January 2026 After Steam on Linux gaming hit a record high in December of 3.58%, the January 2026 numbers are now published... https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-Survey-January-2026

GNU Hurd Is "Almost There" With x86_64, SMP & ~75% Of Debian Packages Building Samuel Thibault offered up a status update on the current state of GNU/Hurd from a presentation in Brussels at FOSDEM 2026. Thibault has previously shared updates on GNU Hurd from the annual FOSDEM event while this year's was a bit more optimistic thanks to recent driver progress and more software now successfully building for Hurd... https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNU-Hurd-In-2026

GNOME Resources 1.10 Adds Monitoring Support For AMD Ryzen AI NPUs GNOME Resources 1.10 was christened today as the newest version of this modern system monitoring app for the GNOME desktop that is now used by default on the likes of the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. With GNOME Resources 1.10 they have added AMD Ryzen AI NPU monitoring support and other new capabilities... https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNOME-Resources-1.10

Linux 7.0 Aims To Replace More Caching Code With Sheaves For "Hopefully" Improved Performance Introduced to the mainline Linux kernel last year was "sheaves" as an opt-in per-CPU array-based caching layer. Sheaves was merged back in Linux 6.18 and while it started as an opt-in caching layer, the plan is to replace more CPU slabs / caches with sheaves. Queued up for slated introduction in the upcoming Linux 7.0 cycle is replacing more of those caches with sheaves... https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.0-Replace-Slabs-Sheaves

Phosh Mobile Phone UI Making Progress On GTK4 Port Evangelos Ribeiro Tzaras presented today at FOSDEM on the latest work around Phosh, the mobile phone user interface / Wayland shell project for mobile Linux environments. Phosh has been making steady progress and has more features out on the horizon... https://www.phoronix.com/news/Phosh-GTK4-Progress

Linuxulator-Steam-Utils To Enjoy Steam Play Gaming On FreeBSD & Other Options Presented today at FOSDEM in Brussels was the state of gaming on FreeBSD by Thibault Payet. Besides various open-source games able to be compiled natively for FreeBSD, this BSD can get in on the Steam Play gaming scene thanks to the "linuxulator-steam-utils" project as a set of workarounds for the Steam Linux client on FreeBSD 14 and newer. Linuxulator-steam-utils builds off FreeBSD's Linuxula… https://www.phoronix.com/news/FreeBSD-Gaming-2026

GNOME 50 Is No Longer Treating Variable Rate Refresh "VRR" As Experimental Another great albeit overdue improvement for GNOME 50 has landed: Variable Rate Refresh "VRR" functionality for modern displays is now promoted and no longer treated as an experimental feature... https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNOME-50-VRR-Not-Experimental