We’ve just reviewed the GEEKOM A7 2026 Edition mini PC on Windows 11 after having checked out the hardware with an unboxing and a teardown in the first part of the review. We’ve now had time to review the AMD Ryzen 5 7545U mini PC on Linux using Ubuntu 26.04 distribution. The Ubuntu 26.04 review includes feature testing, benchmarks, storage and networking (2.5GbE and WiFi 6) tests, and…

Linux on Qualcomm SoCs has been a roller coaster, with hope often followed by disappointment, at least for the Snapdragon family. The company aims to change that with Qualcomm Linux 2.0 for Dragonwing IoT platforms, as announced on LinkedIn: With Qualcomm Linux 2.0, we’re shifting to an upstream-first, open development model that is unified and scalable across all Qualcomm Dragonwing IoT…

While writing about the recent Linux 7.1 release, I came across the “OneThing Edge Cube” (OEC) based on the Rockchip RK3566 SoC. I assume it may have been some type of NAS, but instead it’s a box for the OpenThingCloud decentralized bandwidth sharing solution. People purchase the OEC or OEC-Turbo device and install it at home to be part of a distributed P2P CDN (Content Delivery Network), caching…

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 7.1 on LKML: So it’s only Sunday morning back home, but it’s Sunday afternoon where I am right now, so I’m doing the 7.1 release at the regular time – just not in the regular timezone. This obviously means that the merge window opens tomorrow, but I’ll be in yet another timezone by then, so timing will all be a bit irregular. Normally I try to front-load the…

Canonical has just announced the release of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS “Resolute Raccoon” Linux distribution about two years after Ubuntu 24.04 LTS “Noble Numbat” was introduced. The new version of the operating system comes with the just-released Linux 7.0 kernel, GNOME 50, and a range of updates and new features. As a long-term support release, Ubuntu 26.04 LTS will be supported for 5 years until April…

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…

VDPU381 and VDPU383 video decoders are found in Rockchip RK3588 and RK3576 SoCs and variants like the RK3588S and RK3576J. So far, we had to rely on the Rockchip BSP to support hardware video decoding, but Collabora has just announced upstream/mainline Linux support for H.264 (AVC) and H.265 (HEVC) video decoding for RK3588 and RK3576 SoCs. Highlights of H.265/H.264 video decoder implementation…

MediaTek MT7902 wireless modules are used in many Windows laptops, but so far, a Linux driver has been missing. This is about to change, as Mediatek has finally committed a patchset for MT7902 to the mainline Linux mailing list. This is personal. I bought an ASUS Vivobook 16 in August 2023, and Ubuntu 22.04 worked pretty well out of the box, except for support for the Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth…