Steam On Linux Shows A Wild Swing Back Up For March 2025

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The Steam Survey results for February showed a 0.61% drop for Linux gaming marketshare following a 20.8% increase to the Chinese use, which was yet another month of such wild swings attributed to a large influx in Simplified Chinese survey respondents. The March results for Steam Survey were published this evening and show the Linux marketshare more than recovering now that the English survey results have shot back up…

Linux Kernel Developments, AMD RX 9070 GIMP 3.0 & Other March Highlights

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There were 281 original news articles on Phoronix during the month of March along with another 14 Linux hardware reviews / multi-page featured-length articles and benchmarks. Here is a look back at the most exciting Linux and open-source content over the past month, in case you missed any of the interesting hardware launches, open-source software milestones, kernel changes, and other milestones…

Linux Kernel Developments, AMD RX 9070 GIMP 3.0 & Other March Highlights

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There were 281 original news articles on Phoronix during the month of March along with another 14 Linux hardware reviews / multi-page featured-length articles and benchmarks. Here is a look back at the most exciting Linux and open-source content over the past month, in case you missed any of the interesting hardware launches, open-source software milestones, kernel changes, and other milestones…

[$] Slab allocator: sheaves and any-context allocations

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The kernel’s slab allocator is charged with providing small objects on
demand; its performance and reliability are crucial for the functioning of
the system as a whole. At the 2025 Linux Storage, Filesystem,
Memory-Management, and BPF Summit, two adjacent sessions in the
memory-management track dug into current work on the slab allocator. The
first focused on the new sheaves feature, while the second discussed a set
of allocation functions that are safe to call in any context.

Dockerfile Build – Best Practices & Errors

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Docker has revolutionized application deployment by enabling consistent environments across development and production. At the heart of Docker is the Dockerfile, a script containing instructions to build an image. However, creating efficient Dockerfiles requires understanding certain best practices and avoiding common pitfalls. This tutorial will guide you through Dockerfile optimization techniques and help you troubleshoot common errors.

Amazon’s Alexa+ AI Assistant Starts Rolling Out With Some Big Caveats

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Amazon's Alexa+ AI Assistant Starts Rolling Out With Some Big Caveats
Apple isn’t the only company struggling in its efforts to integrate AI into its various products and services. Amazon’s launch of Alexa+, for example, falls well short of what the company promised during its initial announcement. The Washington Post shared insights into this new offering, which is currently in early access. It was able to

Larry Fink Says Bitcoin Could Replace the Dollar as the World’s Reserve Currency Because of National Debt

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With America’s national debt sitting comfortably over the $36.2 trillion mark, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is warning the burden could one day be the reason the dollar is dethroned as the reserve currency of the world.
From a report: He argues that decentralized currencies like Bitcoin could replace the dollar as worldwide organizations lose faith in national currencies and seek an independent solution. Fink explained his theory in his 2025 letter to shareholders, writing: “The U.S. has benefited from the dollar serving as the world’s reserve currency for decades. But that’s not guaranteed to last forever.

“The national debt has grown at three times the pace of GDP since Times Square’s debt clock started ticking in 1989. This year, interest payments will surpass $952 billion — exceeding defense spending. By 2030, mandatory government spending and debt service will consume all federal revenue, creating a permanent deficit. If the U.S. doesn’t get its debt under control, if deficits keep ballooning, America risks losing that position to digital assets like Bitcoin.”


Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Virtual Desktop’s New macOS Update Is Smoother Than Apple’s Mac Virtual Display

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Virtual Desktop rewrote its macOS streamer from scratch, letting you spawn extra monitors and offering higher framerate and lower latency than even Apple’s Mac Virtual Display.

While Virtual Desktop doesn’t support its now-flagship PC VR streaming feature on macOS, since neither Meta’s PC VR runtime nor Valve’s SteamVR even support macOS, it does stream your monitors as 2D virtual surfaces, which was actually the app’s original feature before VR streaming.

Since June of last year, Virtual Desktop has even been able to spawn extra monitors for Windows PCs, but doing so on macOS required using third-party solutions like BetterDisplay. Now, with the new update, Virtual Desktop, can do this on macOS itself.

Virtual Desktop Now Supports Multiple PC Monitors
Virtual Desktop now supports multiple monitors, including virtual extra monitors. But how many you can use at once depends on your headset.
UploadVRDavid Heaney

The new macOS streamer also brings significantly improved quality, frame rate, stability, and latency. Virtual Desktop developer Guy Godin tells UploadVR that the old solution was subcontracted, and over the past six months he learned low-level macOS development to build his own much better streamer.

In fact, with this new update, Godin says Virtual Desktop on a Quest 3 or Pico 4 Ultra actually offers higher framerate and lower latency than Apple’s own Mac Virtual Display feature of the Apple Vision Pro headset.

Testing the update out, I found Godin’s claim to be accurate. Using an M2 MacBook Air via Virtual Desktop on Quest 3 truly is noticeably smoother than via Mac Virtual Display on Vision Pro. This makes it more suitable for gaming, too.

However, the cornerstone feature of Mac Virtual Display is that it creates a direct wireless connection between your Mac and the Vision Pro headset, entirely independent of your home Wi-Fi network. This means that as long as you’re next to your Mac, it doesn’t matter where the router is. In fact, you don’t need a network at all; Mac Virtual Display will even work on a plane or train. Given that macOS isn’t open-source, though, third-party developers probably can’t even build such a feature. And even if they could, it likely wouldn’t be seamless.

Mac Virtual Display on Vision Pro also does still seem to have the edge in sharpness, too. But it’s unclear whether this is down to software differences or just Vision Pro’s much higher resolution panels.

visionOS 2.2 Brings Ultrawide Mac Virtual Display
The Wide and Ultrawide modes for Mac Virtual Display have now arrived for all Apple Vision Pro owners in visionOS 2.2.
UploadVRDavid Heaney

Another notable difference is that with Virtual Desktop, you have a total of three virtual monitors, while Mac Virtual Display gives you one but lets you decide how wide it is. Which of these two approaches you prefer will be up to you.

Of course, this comparison I’ve been providing will be of no current use to those who already own a headset. Mac Virtual Display is limited to Apple Vision Pro, and Virtual Desktop is limited to Android-based headsets like Quest and Pico.

A more direct comparison for Quest owners would be to Meta’s free Remote Display feature and Horizon Workrooms app. Meta also offers the ability to spawn virtual extra monitors, but I found the quality to be noticeably inferior to the new Virtual Desktop update.

As for Apple Vision Pro owners, Godin announced work on a visionOS port of Virtual Desktop well over a year ago, and confirmed to UploadVR that he’s still “slowly” working on it, but has no launch estimate to announce just yet.

Virtual Desktop & iVRy Both Building For Apple Vision Pro
Virtual Desktop and iVRy are both working on Apple Vision Pro ports for wirelessly streaming VR from your gaming PC.
UploadVRDavid Heaney

To get the new macOS streamer, existing Virtual Desktop users will need to download and install it from the Virtual Desktop website. Future updates will be automatic, but this one is manual.

Dave Täht RIP

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[Dave Täht]

From the LibreQoS site comes the sad
news that Dave Täht has passed away. Among many other things, he bears
a lot of credit for our networks functioning as well as they do. “We’re
incredibly grateful to have Dave as our friend, mentor, and as someone who
continuously inspired us – showing us that we could do better for each
other in the world, and leverage technology to make that happen. He will be
dearly missed“.

Searching through LWN’s archives will turn up many references to his work
fixing WiFi, improving queue management, tackling bufferbloat, and more. Farewell,
Dave, we hope the music is good wherever you are.

(Thanks to Jon Masters for the heads-up).

Cheap TVs’ incessant advertising reaches troubling new lows

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TVs offer us an escape from the real world. After a long day, sometimes there’s nothing more relaxing than turning on your TV, tuning into your favorite program, and unplugging from the realities around you.

But what happens when divisive, potentially offensive messaging infiltrates that escape? Even with streaming services making it easy to watch TV commercial-free, it can still be difficult for TV viewers to avoid ads with these sorts of messages.

That’s especially the case with budget brands, which may even force controversial ads onto TVs when they’re idle, making users pay for low-priced TVs in unexpected, and sometimes troubling, ways.

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