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Windows users have it easy. The XTU (Intel Extreme Tuning Utility) allows laptop users to undervolt their laptop processors. On Linux, you have to rely on either a good fan setup in your notebook, or on intel-undervolt , the unofficial undervolting project. It seems like Intel is considering to implement their own Kernel driver solution for undervolting Intel CPUs in laptops. See this Kernel mailing list:  https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20200907094843.1949-1-Jason@zx2c4.com/T/#u There is some discussion going on about the undocumented MSR and if it should be permitted to play around with it for the sake of cooler laptop CPUs. Most developers seem to agree that it would be indeed a good idea to implement CPU undervolting on the Kernel level. Intel needs to provide better documentation of their CPU features, including MSR. Since Intel has a huge team of open source developers on their payroll, the development of a new Intel undervolting solution for Linux users seems to be very likely ...

On October 18th, NetBSD 9.1 was released. A few of the highlights included in the latest NetBSD upgrade are listed below: Parallelized disk encryption with cgd(4) Added support for Xen 4.13 Added support for more hardware RNGs in the entropy subsystem Various reliability fixes and improvements for ZFS X11 improvements, default window manager switched to ctwm(1) Improved framebuffer console performance on amd64 Various instances of kernel memory corruption and information leakage were fixed Many other miscellaneous bug fixes, and additions to existing device drivers see the full changelog here NetBSD 9.1 was released on the same day as OpenBSD 6.8 , giving BSD users an interesting choice between two very stable operating systems based on a BSD Kernel. The last update before 9.1 was NetBSD 9.0 in February 2020. NetBSD is known to support dozens of different host machines and architectures. The following are probably the most no...

Linux 5.7 will probably soon become available as a stable release, until then the new 5.7-rc7 Kernel has been distributed to toy around with and reports bugs. The full message regarding Linux 5.7-rc7 can be found here: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=whan1CiRtcgBt-5SkW-ga_GeLH5+AO26RmK7vOA5yw9ng@mail.gmail.com/ The quoted part is about Linus Torvalds looking forward to getting more performance out of his rig, now sporting an AMD Threadripper 3970x instead of an Intel processor. In fact, the biggest excitement this week for me was just that I upgraded my main machine, and for the first time in about 15 years, my desktop isn't Intel-based. No, I didn't switch to ARM yet, but I'm now rocking an AMD Threadripper 3970x. My 'allmodconfig' test builds are now three times faster than they used to be, which doesn't matter so much right now during the calming down period, but I will most definitely notice the upgrade during the next merge window.

We try to cover mostly Linux news but since we love all open source projects , sometimes there are news and gossip not related to a specific Linux distribution. Recently, we reported on Hyperbola becoming a BSD , so the following ReactOS news fit right in here. The official changelog is bursting with cool additions, critical fixes, and loads of new hardware supported. Read the full changelog here , we'll only provide a preview with the best of the best features: Improved USB storage handling Fixed various boot problems (especially Live CD related) Lots of love for HP laptop hardware (also AMD SB600) Many BSOD issues have finally been closed Fixed hundreds of critical regressions Another impressive release, although the cynics among the open-source community might not see this. Download the updated ReactOS 0.4.13 ISO from SourceForge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/reactos/files/ReactOS/0.4.13/ BTW, the ReactOS project recently re-launched their website, now based o...

Although this blog has its focus on Linux operating systems, we don't want to exclude other excellent operating systems. NetBSD 9.0 has been released a few days ago , on Valentine's Day. The NetBSD project ("Of course it runs NetBSD") dates back to 1993 . Founded by Chris Demetriou, Theo de Raadt (going his own ways with OpenBSD later), Adam Glass and Charles M. Hannum, the NetBSD project has released 17 major versions of their operating system. NetBSD 9.0 includes: + support for AArch64 machines + enhanced hardware support for Armv7-A + upgraded GPU drivers on x86 (Linux 4.4 DRM/KMS) + new GPU drivers for Arm + support for hardware-accelerated virtualization via the NVMM hypervisor + loads of other improvements (see release notes) Installing NetBSD 9.0 is relatively easy and I found a short video that illustrates the process of installing NetBSD 9.0. NetBSD 9.1 was released in October, 2020.

MX Linux 19.1 is available now and, according to the release notes , is packed with useful software updates and loads of bugfixes. If you're already running MX Linux 19, there is no need to wipe your HD and start fresh. You should be able to update normally. The MX Linux 19.1 release contains all the goodies from both the Debian 10.3 (Buster) repositories and the MX repos. MX Linux 19.1 comes with: Xfce 4.14 Mesa 18.3.6 Kernel 4.19 The standard applications coming with the default MX installation: - GIMP 2.10.12 - Firefox 73.0 - VLC 3.0.8 - Clementine 1.3.1 - Thunderbird 68.4.0 - LibreOffice 6.1.5 (+ security fixes!) Not many users know this, but MX Linux provides not only 32-bit and 64-bit ISOs, but also the AHS (Advanced Hardware Support) ISO which ships with bleeding-edge software, including the 5.4 Kernel and Mesa 19.2.1. Read about AHS here . Get MX Linux here and have fun.

Firefox 73.0 was released yesterday as the new stable Firefox browser version used by millions of people around the globe. Whether it's to avoid yet another Google spyware product (like Chrome) or just because Firefox offers so much more flexibility through extensions, Firefox is still going strong. With the new update, Mozilla introduces several useful things that users might have missed before. One feature seems to be extremely useful for web developers: the console has become smarter, according to the Firefox devs. Console output can be styled pretty easily via options added to the console.log() function. The following is the example from the Mozilla blog: console.log('There has been a problem with your fetch operation: %c' + e.message, 'color: red; padding: 2px 2px 2px 20px; background: yellow 3px no-repeat url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAwAAAAMCAYAAABWdVznAAAACXBIWXMAAA 7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAApUlEQVQoz5WSwQ3DIBAE50wEEkWkABdBT+bhNqwoldBHJ...