The Regata OS 25 “Maverick” is now available for download. Initially, the new version of the operating system was released gradually via system updates for existing users. However, an updated ISO file is now available for those who wish to make new installations.
Among the highlights is KDE Plasma 6.3, which arrives with new fixes and improvements, such as the fractional scaling feature that has been reworked to better adjust the image to the screen's pixel grid, reducing blur and producing sharper, more defined images.
In addition, for those who love to customize the desktop, leaving everything their way, the new Plasma 6.3 makes it easier to clone panels when the user is in edit mode.
Other changes include improvements to the System Monitor application, which now uses less CPU resources, as well as displays more detailed processor usage information, and if notifications arrive when Do Not Disturb mode is active, Plasma will now only show the number of available notifications.
For more details, be sure to check out the official announcement of KDE Plasma 6.3.
Linux Kernel 6.13 is here
As usual, new major releases of Regata OS arrive with the latest stable version of the Linux Kernel, which helps to properly support new hardware. This time it could not be different, with Regata OS 25 arriving with Linux Kernel 6.13 “under the hood”.
Highlights include: a new HID driver to support Kysona devices, which currently displays the battery status of the Kysona M600 gaming mouse (more devices should be added over time), support for the NVMe 2.1 specification and the ability to disable the Zero RPM feature of Radeon 7000 GPUs.
In addition, with the new Linux Kernel 6.3, AMD EPYC 9005 processors now use the AMD P-State driver, the AMD 3D V-Cache Optimizer driver has been added to help AMD Ryzen X3D CPUs and an issue with microcode updates for AMD Zen 1/Zen 2 CPUs that caused slowdowns at startup has been fixed.
Finally, there is support for files that are not sensitive to Tmpfs case-sensitive to help with Steam Play and Flatpaks, new sound hardware support for AMD, Allwinner, Cirrus Logic and other hardware, as well as Platform Profile support for the WMAX interface found on these Dell/Alienware laptops.
For more technical details on Linux Kernel 6.13, be sure to check out this very thorough article from Phoronix.
ACO shader compiler enabled by default for pre-RDNA GPUs
Adding to Linux Kernel 6.13 is Mesa 25, which enables the ACO shader compiler backend by default for pre-RDNA GPUs (GCN) with RadeonSI Gallium3D, the OpenGL driver for GPUs AMD.
ACO, short for AMD COmpiler, is a Valve-led effort to create a more performant shader compiler optimized for the Radeon graphics driver.
In addition to attempting to generate the fastest shaders, ACO also aims to provide fast shader compilation as an alternative to the AMDGPU LLVM shader compiler backend. ACO was initially created for the Vulkan RADV driver, but is now implemented in the OpenGL RadeonSI driver.
Also on the AMD side, there is support for Vulkan 1.4 with the Vulkan RADV driver, and initial support for a new process queue feature to send work directly to the AMD GPU to bypass more of the kernel driver overhead. On the other hand, the Vulkan ANV driver for Intel GPUs now also supports AV1 video decoding and other new features.
Download Regata OS 25
You can update to Regata OS 25 right now via the Regata OS Update application. However, those who want to perform a fresh installation can download the Regata OS 25 ISO image from the official website.
