LWN.net

Zig 0.16.0 has been released after 8 months of development, incorporating contributions from 244 contributors across 1183 commits. The headline feature is 'I/O as an Interface', alongside language changes, compiler improvements, build system enhancements, linker updates, fuzzer improvements, and toolchain updates.

Zig 0.16.0 released

Modal

Modal has acquired Butter, a San Francisco-based AI sandbox technology startup. Butter founder Erik Dunteman and researcher Raymond Tana will join the Modal Sandbox team. The Butter team brings expertise in agent harness engineering, computer-use agents, deterministic memory systems, and codegen. Their most recent project, bVisor, is a virtual Linux kernel built in Zig for lightweight, ephemeral sandboxes. The acquisition aims to make Modal Sandboxes a best-in-class product.

Butter is joining Modal

Phoronix

Ghostty, an OpenGL-accelerated terminal emulator written in Zig, is now available in the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS universal archive. While Ptyxis remains the default terminal on this long-term support release, users can install Ghostty as a preview option via 'sudo apt install ghostty'. The announcement was made by Canonical engineer Pushkar Niranjan Kulkarni.

Ghostty OpenGL-Accelerated Terminal Available On Ubuntu 26.04 LTS

Zig is a general-purpose programming language designed for performance, safety, and simplicity. Understanding Zig introduces readers to modern programming language design principles and systems programming concepts. Readers can explore Zig's features, syntax, and capabilities, helping them develop efficient and reliable software solutions for various domains, including systems programming, application development, and game development.

Best of Zig — April 2026