AlmaLinux OS Foundation released AlmaLinux OS 10.2, which includes an additional x86-64-v2 build for older hardware alongside the default x86-64-v3 baseline, and restores support for the 32-bit i686 architecture that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 removed entirely. The release reflects AlmaLinux's shift since 2023 from pursuing exact 1:1 compatibility with RHEL to ABI compatibility, after Red Hat restricted source code access that year. AlmaLinux OS 10 carries active support through 2030 and security support through 2035.
linux.slashdot.org
· 2026-11-07
A developer has released an updated version of a website tracking Linux system call tables across architectures, including x64, ARM, RISC-V, MIPS and others. The site now exposes calling conventions per architecture and offers a JSON API, along with per-kernel-version data showing when syscalls were added or removed.
syscall.sh
· 2026-11-02
The creator of the rat compiler backend rewrote its x86-64 register allocator, discarding a 1392-line linear scan implementation that had grown incrementally over time. The replacement is a priority bin-packing allocator of 584 lines that assigns virtual registers to physical registers or stack slots by visiting live ranges in order of importance rather than program order, similar in approach to LLVM's greedy allocator.
hexrat.cc
· 2026-10-10
Raspberry Pi Desktop, a Debian-based Linux distribution carrying the familiar Raspberry Pi OS interface, is now available again for conventional PCs and Intel-based Macs after a four-year absence. It can be booted from a USB drive without altering an existing installation, or installed directly onto a computer's internal storage, and is offered free of charge.
techspot.com
· 2026-10-08
A Brazilian electronics engineer and assembly programmer named Jessé says he has tested two AMD processors extensively and found that the chips' hardware random number generator, accessed via instructions like rdrand and rdseed, has not produced a single zero value in over nine days of continuous testing. He has reported the issue to AMD, which has escalated it internally, though no technical explanation has been provided yet. Jessé also updated his testing application to benchmark RNG speed and support processors lacking the rdseed instruction, noting large performance differences across CPU generations.
board.flatassembler.net
· 2026-09-22
A technical analysis compares Microsoft's Prism binary translator, which lets x86-64 Windows software run on Arm-based aarch64 processors, against native Geekbench 7 performance. Using a pro key from Primate Labs founder John Poole to profile individual workloads, the tester measures how much performance is lost when translating x86-64 instructions instead of running aarch64 code directly.
chipsandcheese.com
· 2026-09-10
A technical blog post by Martin Uecker examines how GCC compiles nested functions using trampolines placed on the stack, which normally require the stack to be executable. He shows that by extracting the code address and static chain values embedded in the trampoline and passing them to the __builtin_call_with_static_chain built-in, developers can indirectly call nested functions on older GCC versions without needing an executable stack.
uecker.codeberg.page
· 2026-08-29
GoKawiil