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April 13, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Linux 7.0 Release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 7.0 on LKML: The last week of the release continued the same “lots of small fixes” trend, but it all really does seem pretty benign, so I’ve tagged the final 7.0 and pushed it out. I suspect it’s a lot of AI tool use that will keep finding corner cases for us for a while, so this may be the “new normal” at least for a while. Only time will tell. Anyway, this last week was a little bit of everything: networking (core and drivers), arch fixes, tooling and selftests, and various random fixes all over the place. Let’s keep testing, and obviously tomorrow the merge window for 7.1 opens. I already have four dozen pull requests pending – thank you to all the early people. Linus This follows the Linux 6.19 release about two months ago, which brought us PCIe link encryption and […]

March 3, 2026March 3, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear Elite wearable platform offers 5G RedCap, WiFi 6, Bluetooth 6.0, built-in AI accelerator

Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear Elite is described as the “world’s first Personal AI wearable platform”, and features an NPU for on-device AI delivering up to 12 TOPS of performance at low power, supporting 2B parameter models. It delivers up to 5x single-core CPU improvement and up to 7x faster GPU compared to the previous-generation Snapdragon W5+ Gen 2 Wearable Platform while offering up to 30% more battery life for multi-day battery life, thanks to a 3nm architecture. The new Snapdragon Wear Elite platform also supports fast charging with up to 50% charge in under 10 minutes. Snapdragon Wear Elite specifications: CPU – Up to 2.1 GHz GPU Qualcomm Adreno 3D GPU supporting OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.2, and OpenCL 2.0 APIs 2.5D GPU co-processor clocked at up to 500 MHz ISP – Qualcomm Spectra AI accelerator – Qualcomm Hexagon NPU; up to 12 TOPS of AI performance; support for up tp 2B […]

February 9, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Linux 6.19 Release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 6.19 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): No big surprises anywhere last week, so 6.19 is out as expected – just as the US prepares to come to a complete standstill later today watching the latest batch of televised commercials. The betting man would expect them all to be AI-generated, but maybe some enterprising company decides to buck the trend? Doubtful, but there’s always a slight chance. But for anybody outside the US, maybe taking the newest kernel out for a spin instead is an option? I have more than three dozen pull requests for when the merge window opens tomorrow – thank you to all the early maintainers. And as people have mostly figured out, I’m getting to the point where I’m being confused by large numbers (almost running out of fingers and toes again), so the next kernel is going to […]

February 3, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

End-of-life notice for Samsung/Nexell S5P4418 processor

Samsung/Nexell S5P4418 SoC is being phased out, according to a somewhat recent post by EmbSoM/Graperain stating that the SoC was discontinued by the original manufacturer. Most people will likely not care about an old quad-core Cortex-A9 SoC being discontinued, but the S5P4418 was found in several interesting hardware platforms we’ve covered here, mostly from FriendlyELEC, previously FriendlyArm. This includes the FriendlyELEC Core4418, NanoPi2 and Fire2A SBCs, Samsung Artik 530 modules, and several others. Graperain provides more details about the end-of-life notice, notably the key dates for their products: Last Time Buy (LTB) – 2026-03-31 Last Shipment Date – 2026-09-30 This impacts the company’s S5P4418 system-on-module and the S5P4418 single board computer. The Samsung Artik family has been discontinued for several years, and if I look at the FriendlyELEC store, they only sell the Fire2A and Smart4418 CPU board without an end-of-life notice, but they should probably be subject to a similar […]

December 1, 2025December 12, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Linux 6.18 LTS release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.18 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), which will likely become the next LTS kernel [update: it’s now official]: So I’ll have to admit that I’d have been happier with slightly less bugfixing noise in this last week of the release, but while there’s a few more fixes than I would hope for, there was nothing that made me feel like this needs more time to cook. So 6.18 is tagged and pushed out. Most of the last-minute fixes are minor fixes to drivers, with some random noise elsewhere (bluetooth, ceph, afs..). Nothing strikes me as standing out, but hey, there’s a shortlog appended if you want to see the details. And this obviously means that the merge window will open tomorrow, and I already have three dozen pull requests pending. Thanks. And as I already mentioned a couple of […]

September 29, 2025November 6, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Linux 6.17 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.17 has just been released on LKML: No huge surprises this past week, so here we are, with kernel 6.17 pushed out and ready to go. Below is the shortlog for just the last week – not the full 6.17 release – as usual. It’s not exciting, which is all good. I think the biggest patch in there is some locking fixes for some bluetooth races that could cause use-after-free situations. Whee – that’s about as exciting as it gets. Other than that, there’ the usual driver fixlets (GPU and networking dominate as usual, but “dominate” is still pretty small), there’s some minor random other driver updates, some filesystem noise, and core kernel and mm. And some selftest updates. This obviously means that the merge window for 6.18 will open tomorrow, and I already have four dozen pull requests pending. Thanks to the proactive people – you know who […]

July 28, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Linux 6.16 Release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.16 on LKML: It’s Sunday afternoon, and the release cycle has come to an end. Last week was nice and calm, and there were no big show-stopper surprises to keep us from the regular schedule, so I’ve tagged and pushed out 6.16 as planned. It’s worth noting that the upcoming merge window for 6.17 is going to be slightly chaotic for me: I have multiple family events this August (a wedding and a big birthday), and with said family being spread not only across the US, but in Finland too, I’m spending about half the month traveling. That means that I will try very hard to get most of the merge window done the first week before my travels start, and I already ended upgiving a heads-up on that to the people who tend to send me the most pull requests. […]

May 26, 2025July 28, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Linux 6.15 Release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.15: So this was delayed by a couple of hours because of a last-minute bug report resulting in one new feature being disabled at the eleventh hour, but 6.15 is out there now. Apart from that final scramble, things looked pretty normal last week. Various random small fixes all over, with drivers as usual accounting for most of it. But we’ve got some bcachefs fixes, some core networking, and some mm fixes in there too. Nothing looks particularly scary. And this obviously means that the merge window opens tomorrow as usual, and I see the usual people being proactive and having sent me their pull requests. It’s memorial day tomorrow here in the US, but like the USPS, “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” – nor memorial day – stops the merge window. [ Actually, thinking back […]