Zack's Kernel News
Community Notebook: Kernel News
Chronicler Zack Brown reports on the latest news, views, dilemmas, and developments within the Linux kernel community.
Premium Real-Time Mode Support
Vernon Mauery submitted his IBM Real-Time “SMI Free” mode driver for inclusion in the official kernel. The driver would provide a SysFS interface to switch the entire system into and out of IBM Premium Real-Time Mode (PRTM) on x86 hardware that supports it. This functionality would allow user code to disable System Management Interrupts (SMIs), thus allowing the code to decouple itself from the operating system’s normal security and resource allocation controls and interact directly with the hardware in otherwise impossible ways. This feature can do lots of fun things. It can provide an environment for real-time applications to run without fear of being interrupted; it can allow debuggers to do neat stuff; and it can allow really spectacular security breaches on the system.
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News
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Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
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openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
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New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.
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IBM Announces Powerhouse Linux Server
IBM has unleashed a seriously powerful Linux server with the LinuxONE Emperor 5.
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Plasma Ends LTS Releases
The KDE Plasma development team is doing away with the LTS releases for a good reason.
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Arch Linux Available for Windows Subsystem for Linux
If you've ever wanted to use a rolling release distribution with WSL, now's your chance.
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System76 Releases COSMIC Alpha 7
With scores of bug fixes and a really cool workspaces feature, COSMIC is looking to soon migrate from alpha to beta.
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OpenMandriva Lx 6.0 Available for Installation
The latest release of OpenMandriva has arrived with a new kernel, an updated Plasma desktop, and a server edition.
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TrueNAS 25.04 Arrives with Thousands of Changes
One of the most popular Linux-based NAS solutions has rolled out the latest edition, based on Ubuntu 25.04.
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Fedora 42 Available with Two New Spins
The latest release from the Fedora Project includes the usual updates, a new kernel, an official KDE Plasma spin, and a new System76 spin.