cm0002

We're closing in on the Linux 6.18 stable kernel release likely in little more than one week (30 November barring any delays) and today's batch of x86 platform driver updates is bringing some new hardware support as well as some notable consumer device fixes/improvements.

The x86 platform driver co-maintainer Ilpo Järvinen of Intel sent out today's batch of "fixes" material for the Linux 6.18 cycle.

New hardware support in this pull includes adding support for the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally gaming handheld to the AMD PMC driver for the platform management controller. This was motivated for adding the "spurious_8042" quirk for dealing with spurious interrupts during resume on this Windows-focused gaming handheld.

Zorin OS 18 was released on October 14. Just 48 hours later, the team announced it had already been downloaded 100K times. Now, a month later, they’re reporting an even bigger milestone: Zorin OS 18 has surpassed 1M downloads in its first month.

“We’re thrilled to announce that Zorin OS 18 has amassed 1 million downloads in just over a month since its release, breaking all previous records.”

In fact, it would be great to see more Linux distributions adopt this practice and share their download numbers. That alone would give us a much clearer sense of how widely each one is used, since the Linux community still doesn’t have a reliable way to measure the popularity of individual distros.

• Olmo 3 in the Ai2 Playground → https://playground.allenai.org/
• Download: https://huggingface.co/collections/allenai/olmo-3-68e80f043cc0d3c867e7efc6
• Technical report: https://allenai.org/papers/olmo3

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.