Linux 7.0 Release, Age Verification Laws, Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 & Other April Happenings
April 2026 saw major developments in the Linux and open-source community, including the release of Linux 7.0, Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, and Fedora 44. New hardware like the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 and Intel Arc Pro B70 were benchmarked on Linux, showing strong performance for developers and AI workloads. Browser performance comparisons between Firefox 149 and Chrome 147 on Linux also highlighted ongoing competition in the open-source ecosystem.
- ▪Linux 7.0 was released, with Linux 7.1 set to drop legacy hardware drivers.
- ▪AMD launched the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition, a 16-core/32-thread processor with 3D V-Cache for high-performance computing on Linux.
- ▪Intel's Arc Pro B70 with 32GB GDDR6 and 32 Xe cores was benchmarked on Linux, showing promise for AI/LLM and multi-GPU use cases.
- ▪Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Fedora 44 were released, marking significant updates for major Linux distributions.
- ▪Firefox 149 and Chrome 147 were compared on Linux using JetStream 3 and other benchmarks, assessing performance on modern desktop workloads.
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Linux 7.0 Release, Age Verification Laws, Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 & Other April Happenings Written by Michael Larabel in Phoronix on 1 May 2026 at 05:56 AM EDT. Add A Comment A lot happened in the Linux and open-source world during the month of April. Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Fedora 44 shipped, a lot of news around age attestation/verification laws, the Linux 7.0 kernel was released, Linux 7.1 is bringing many exciting changes as well as removing of old hardware drivers, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition CPU was released, we began testing the Intel Arc Pro B70 "BMG-G31", and much more software and hardware content that made the month interesting. Last month on Phoronix were 303 original news articles and 16 Linux hardware reviews / multi-page featured benchmark articles.
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