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Along with new functionality, systemd is broadening its distro support even further, which will surely delight members of the wider Linux community.

Systemd v259-rc1 is the first preview release of what will be the next version of the most widely used system and service manager in the Linux world. It is also, of course, the most controversial, and some of the changes in this version further widen systemd's scope – which we suspect will provoke some push-back, but probably won't slow down its adoption or growth.

The latest plea for official Proton support started on Reddit, where Scout339v2 shared their screenshot of Rust running "on a server with EAC disabled to show that the game already works perfectly on Linux." Disabling Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) is the key factor here, and part of a broader conversation where Facepunch and its Linux/Proton userbase don't see eye-to-eye.

While it's true Rust runs on Proton, you can't join official servers, and most unofficial servers, with EAC disabled. Facepunch considered changing its stance in 2022 when the Steam Deck launched, but didn't end up introducing official Proton support. COO Alistair McFarlane said at the time that Linux is "safer for cheat developers," and that trying to support EAC on another platform could reduce the team's ability to support Windows.

To ensure games run well on Linux either via Native Linux builds or Windows games with Proton, part of the magic is in the Steam Linux Runtime. A new version of it, the Steam Linux Runtime 4.0 was recently put up with some pretty big changes.

What's the point of it? It ensures Steam and games run through Steam on Linux work properly across all the many different Linux distributions. Another secret Valve sauce for Linux. Well, not secret at all but you get my meaning I'm sure.

When talking about recording studios, you can’t avoid two operating systems. One of them comes preinstalled on most PCs and laptops, you can buy the hardware for a few euros at any grocery store, and its name is basically synonymous with “PC”: Windows. The other comes from Apple, is tied to comparatively expensive hardware, and is built on a Unix-like kernel. Usually, producers start out on a Windows PC, then professionalize at some point and switch to Mac. The reason is pretty simple: Mac is stable and doesn’t force updates on you while you’re rendering your 64-track audio.

Mainly because of its widespread use, Windows is the quasi-standard in every smaller studio — and definitely among bedroom producers. But let’s be honest: Is Windows even up to date for studio work anymore?

I used Linux in the studio for many years. Now, as part of becoming more professional as a musician, I had to switch back to Windows. Not because my DAW isn’t available for Linux, but because I rely on plugins that simply don’t work on Linux, even with Wine. This text is a call to Native Instruments, Orchestral Tools, Musio, and all the other brilliant developers who make plugins for Mac and Windows — but neglect Linux.

For owners of either Total War: WARHAMMER I or Total War: WARHAMMER II, soon you'll get Total War: WARHAMMER III - Immortal Empires and this will include The Lost God prologue campaign unlocked as well. When? It's happening on December 4th, when you should see it pop up in your library.

After being funded on Kickstarter back in 2019, dreamed up by actual janitors, the SNES styled JRPG set in a world of trash Kingdoms of the Dump is out now.

It looks really great too, especially if you love retro pixel art RPGs. It launched November 18th, and has thankfully seen quite a positive reception with it now rated Very Positive on Steam. Nice to see another good launch for a game made with the open source Godot Engine as well, and of course it launches with Native Linux support.

I appeared on Piers Morgan's show today with MAGA hacks who, for the first time, couldn't spin, lie, or shamelessly obfuscate for Trump, because they know he's in the Epstein Files, and he's stuck.

In the video above, I present my 3.5-minute case. I also added another segment where I mention the 4 leaks that Trump and MAGA can’t plug when it comes to the Epstein files, no matter how much they retract or keep hidden from the public.

There have been several recent announcements about Linux distributions changing the list of architectures they support, or adjusting how they build binaries for some versions of those architectures. Ubuntu introduced architecture variants, Fedora considered dropping support for i686 but reversed course after some pushback, and Debian developers have discussed raising its architecture baseline for the upcoming Debian 14 ("forky"). Linux supports a large number of architectures, and it's not always clear where or by whom they are used. With increasing concerns about diminishing support for legacy architectures, it's a good time to look at the overall state of architecture support on Linux.

A note on LWN: I was posting subscriber "free links" for a bit from lwn, but was asked to significantly reduce the frequency of that. But I would like to encourage you all to subscribe if you can, a lot of us around here are Linux nerds and they are a great ad free publication with some very indepth and technical articles

Rusticl as a modern OpenCL implementation for Mesa Gallium3D drivers has turned out remarkably well. Rusticl performance has evolved quite well for this Rust-based OpenCL driver and it continues tacking on new features / OpenCL extensions as well as working gracefully with more Mesa drivers. Rusticl lead developer Karol Herbst presented on some of the recent accomplishments for this driver back at XDC2025.

At the X.Org Developers Conference in Vienna, Karol Herbst of Red Hat presented on some of the milestones achieved this year for this driver that has worked out much better than the former Mesa "Clover" OpenCL driver. A lot has happened in the past number of months for Rusticl from Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) finally getting into place, SPIR-V 1.6 features, async and parallel program compilation, and supporting a wide variety of additional OpenCL extensions.

The team behind vkd3d has announced the release of version 1.18. Developed and maintained by the Wine project, it’s an open-source library that translates Microsoft’s Direct3D graphics calls to Vulkan, thus allowing Windows applications and games that use Direct3D 12 to run on systems where only Vulkan is available.

One highlight is the addition of CreateCommandList1() from the ID3D12Device4 interface, extending coverage of newer D3D12 features used by modern Windows titles.

The shader compiler sees the biggest set of changes. vkd3d 1.18 improves HLSL handling by performing more constant folding, simplifying math expressions, and flattening if/else branches when older shader models require it. Plus, it also expands support for older Shader Model 1–3 code, adds StructuredBuffer loads, and implements several widely used HLSL intrinsics.