Linux Hardware Reviews & Performance Benchmarks, Open-Source News (original) (raw)

AMD 3D V-Cache Performance Optimizer Driver Posted For Linux

43 Minutes Ago - AMD - AMD 3D V-Cache Performance Optimizer

AMD today quietly posted a new open-source Linux kernel driver for review... the AMD 3D V-Cache Performance Optimizer Driver. This AMD 3D V-Cache Performance Optimizer Driver for Linux is intended to help optimize performance on systems sporting 3D V-Cache such as the AMD Ryzen "X3D" parts and the EPYC "X" processors.

Intel Begins Working On Next-Gen Xe3 Graphics With Linux 6.13

56 Minutes Ago - Intel - Intel Xe3 Graphics

While Intel Xe2 graphics have just debuted with Lunar Lake and we are awaiting Battlemage discrete GPUs with Xe2, Intel's open-source Linux driver engineers have begun work enabling Xe3 graphics! Xe3 driver work is now underway for next-generation Intel graphics.

Restartable Sequences "RSEQ" Seeing Up To 16.7x Speedup With Newest Linux Patch

For those making use of Restartable Sequences (RSEQ) on Linux systems, there is an enticing performance optimization on the way.

9 October

Open3D Engine "O3DE" 24.09 Released With Performance Improvements & More

The Open 3D Engine as the open-source game engine developed under the Linux Foundation umbrella and began as an advanced version of the Amazon Lumberyard engine is out with a new feature release. Open 3D Engine "O3DE" 24.09 is out today with a variety of enhancements for this cross-platform game engine.

Ubuntu Server 24.10 Brings Experimental NVMe/TCP Installation Support

9 October 12:40 PM EDT - Ubuntu - NVMe/TCP Installations

While not a long-term support release, Ubuntu Server 24.10 is delivering an interesting proof-of-concept for supporting NVMe/TCP based installations.

Vulkan 1.3.297 Introduces VK_EXT_present_mode_fifo_latest_ready

9 October 12:12 PM EDT - Vulkan - VK_EXT_present_mode_fifo_latest_ready

Slipping under my radar until now was the Vulkan API 1.3.297 spec update released last week that introduces a new extension, VK_EXT_present_mode_fifo_latest_ready.

Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu 24.10 Performance For Intel Core Ultra 7 Lunar Lake

Following my recent Intel Core Ultra 7 200V "Lunar Lake" Linux benchmarks and looking at the Xe2 Lunar Lake graphics (including Windows 11 vs. Linux already), you may be wondering about the Lunar Lake CPU performance between Windows and Linux... Here are some benchmarks of the ASUS Zenbook S 14 with Core Ultra 7 256V under Windows 11 and Ubuntu 24.10 Linux.

GNOME Triple Buffering May Need To Be Re-Engineered - Helping NVIDIA Performance

9 October 08:55 AM EDT - GNOME - GNOME Triple Buffering

The long-in-development GNOME triple buffering support that is patched into the Ubuntu and Debian builds and available for years in patch form might need to undergo a redesign. That's to better accommodate the NVIDIA Linux driver and likely help other non-Mesa graphics drivers too.

Microsoft Continues Working On Hyper-V Dom0 Support For Linux

9 October 08:41 AM EDT - Microsoft - Hyper-V Dom0

Microsoft Linux engineers have continued preparing the Linux kernel to support Hyper-V Dom0 for Linux to run as the root partition.

Intel Revs Linux Driver Patches To Fend Off PCIe Thermal Issues Via Bandwidth Reduction

9 October 06:31 AM EDT - Hardware - bwctrl

Originally published last summer were patches from Intel for the Linux kernel to introduce a PCI Express bandwidth controller Linux driver to provide a PCIe cooling mechanism via bandwidth reduction to devices in order to prevent thermal issues. One year later this driver continues to be worked on and today brought the eighth iteration of these patches.

GCC 15 Un-Deprecates Itanium IA-64 Linux Support

9 October 06:14 AM EDT - GNU - Itanium Sticking Around

The GCC 14 compiler marked Itanium IA-64 support as obsolete with plans to remove that Intel architecture in GCC 15. But for now at least the Itanium Linux compiler support has seen some reprieve with it being un-deprecated.

8 October

NTFS Driver Lands Some Late Feature Enhancements For Linux 6.12

While the Linux 6.12 merge window has been closed for more than one week, the modern NTFS "NTFS3" driver has seen some late feature enhancements as well as some fixes merged today for this new kernel version.

Arm's Guarded Control Stack "GCS" Support Looks Like It Will Be Ready For Linux 6.13

8 October 02:26 PM EDT - Arm - Arm Guarded Control Stack

For more than one year Arm engineers have been working on Guarded Control Stack "GCS" support for the Linux kernel as a means of protecting against return-oriented programming (ROP) sttacks with modern AArch64 processors. It looks like for Linux 6.13 this Arm GCS support will be ready for upstreaming.

Intel Xeon 6980P 1S Performance With DDR5-6400/MRDIMM-8800

With the Xeon 6980P Granite Rapids benchmarking at Phoronix the past few weeks it's been in a dual socket (2S / 2P) configuration. For those curious about the Intel Xeon 6980P 128-core server performance for a single socket (1S) configuration, here are those complementary results out today and for both DDR5-6400 and MRDIMM-8800 memory configurations. Thus a well-rounded look at the single Xeon 6980P performance compared to other single and dual socket Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC server processors.

Intel's Rendering Toolkit Turns To More Open, Community-Welcoming Development Model

8 October 09:51 AM EDT - Intel - oneAPI Rendering Toolkit

Intel's oneAPI Rendering Toolkit with the likes of OSPRay, Embree, OpenVKL, Open Image Denoise, and others has been open-source for years. But it's not been exactly an open-source development model with making it easy for independent contributors to propose code changes. But Intel has now decided to make these projects more like traditional open-source projects and welcoming community contributions -- including from different hardware vendors.

KDE Plasma 6.2 Released With More Desktop Polishing

8 October 06:58 AM EDT - KDE - Plasma 6.2

KDE Plasma 6.2 is now available as the latest refinement to the modern Plasma 6 desktop environment.

A Few Intel Xe2 Graphics Tuning Updates Found In Linux 6.12-rc2

8 October 06:43 AM EDT - Intel - Intel Xe2 Performance Tuning

Merged as part of last week's Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) graphics/display driver fixes for Linux 6.12-rc2 are a few performance tuning updates for Intel Xe2 graphics to benefit the recently released Core Ultra 200 Series "Lunar Lake" laptops.

LunarG Exploring Vulkan To Metal Translation With Mesa

8 October 06:19 AM EDT - Mesa - Vulkan To Apple Metal

While there is the open-source MoltenVK project that implements the Vulkan API atop Apple's Metal graphics drivers on iOS/macOS, the 3D graphics consulting firm LunarG is exploring the possibility of implementing Vulkan to Metal translation using Mesa.

Qt 6.8 LTS Released With XR Module, Lower RAM Usage & Quicker Start Times

8 October 06:05 AM EDT - Qt - Qt 6.8 LTS

Today marks the release of Qt 6.8 as not only a new feature release but also the latest long-term support (LTS) release for this open-source, cross-platform toolkit.

7 October

GNOME Foundation Announces Cost Cutting Measures Due To Budget Woes

7 October 09:00 PM EDT - GNOME - Reducing Travels + More

While the recently-departed GNOME Foundation Executive Director in the summer statement was described as "drafting a bold five-year strategic plan for the Foundation, securing two important fiscal sponsorship agreements with GIMP and Black Python Devs, writing our first funding proposal that will now enable the Foundation to apply for more grants, vastly improving our financial operations, and implementing a break-even budget to preserve our financial reserves." It turns out that wasn't enough. The GNOME Foundation today announced some new cost-cutting measures for the project overseeing the open-source GNOME desktop.

OpenBSD 7.6 Released With AVX-512, Initial Support For Snapdragon X Elite SoCs

7 October 07:19 PM EDT - BSD - OpenBSD 7.6

OpenBSD 7.6 is out this evening as another major step forward for this BSD operating system with enhanced hardware support, security improvements, updating various user-space software, and enabling other kernel enhancements.

FEX 2410 Released With New JIT Optimizations

FEX 2410 is out as the newest monthly update to this open-source emulator that allows running Linux x86/x86_64 binaries on Linux AArch64 (ARM 64-bit) systems, including for games and software like Steam. With FEX 2410 there are yet more fixes as well as some new JIT optimizations.

Python 3.13 Debuts With New Interactive Interpreter & Experimental JIT

7 October 01:57 PM EDT - Programming - Python 3.13 Released

Following a last minute delay due to a performance regression, Python 3.13 stable is out today as the annual major feature release to this widely-used scripting language implementation.

Git 2.47 Released With Improvements & Encouraging More Positive Code Reviews

Git 2.47 is out today as the newest feature release to this immensely popular distributed revision control system.

Gentoo Linux To See Improved ARM64 Support Thanks To An Ampere Altra Max Server

Gentoo Linux will be working on better support for ARM64/AArch64 and 32-bit ARM now that they have received an Ampere Altra Max server to help expedite their ARM build times for binary packages and installation stage builds.

openSUSE Leap 16.0 Pre-Alpha Available, GA Next October

7 October 08:56 AM EDT - SUSE - openSUSE Leap 16 Pre-Alpha

While not expected to reach general availability (GA) state until October of 2025, available today in pre-alpha form is the openSUSE Leap 16.0 distribution.

RPM 4.20 Released With Declarative Build System Support, Public Plugin API

RPM 4.20 is out today as the newest feature release to this package manager system that's been in development the past year and featuring a variety of improvements for the likes of RHEL and Fedora based distributions.

The Speedy Ptyxis Terminal Emulator Available On Ubuntu 24.10

7 October 06:59 AM EDT - Ubuntu - Ptyxis On Ubuntu

For those on Debian experimental or planning on upgrading to Ubuntu 24.10 that is releasing this week, the Ptyxis terminal emulator is now available in the package archive if wanting to try out this speedy terminal option.

Linus Torvalds Asks Kernel Developers To Write Better Git Merge Commit Messages

Yesterday when announcing the Linux 6.12-rc2 kernel, Linus Torvalds asked that the kernel maintainers do a better job moving forward with their commit messages.

NVGRACE-GPU VFIO Driver Preparing For NVIDIA Grace Blackwell

7 October 06:39 AM EDT - NVIDIA - NVIDIA Grace Blackwell VFIO Support

The NVGRACE-GPU VFIO driver was introduced for handling Virtual Function I/O support with the NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip so that the GPU device could be assigned to guests using KVM/QEMU and similar for virtualization. The NVGRACE-GPU driver is now being extended for supporting the forthcoming NVIDIA Grace Blackwell "GB" designs.

Linux Thermal/Power Platform Profile Support Coming For Alienware Systems

7 October 06:23 AM EDT - Hardware - dell-wmi-awcc

Following work last month for extending the Dell WMI sysman Linux driver to handle Alienware systems for managing the system BIOS within the confines of Linux, another separate improvement is on the way for enhancing Alienware hardware support under Linux. This newest effort is introducing the "dell-wmi-awcc" driver for handling functionality found under Windows with the Alienware Command Center.

6 October

Linux 6.12-rc2 Released With Initial Batch Of Fixes

Building off last Sunday's inaugural release candidate of Linux 6.12, Linus Torvalds tagged the Linux 6.12-rc2 kernel a few minutes ago.

More Intel Diamond Rapids Enablement Landing For Linux 6.12

6 October 11:51 AM EDT - Intel - Intel Diamond Rapids

In addition to Intel's Linux engineers being busy preparing hardware enablement support for next-gen Panther Lake client processors, they are also busy beginning to plumb Linux driver support for next-generation Xeon "Diamond Rapids" support as the successor to Xeon 6 Granite Rapids. With Linux 6.12 some new bits are now set to land for Diamond Rapids.

Cage 0.2 Released For Wayland-Powered Kiosks With Single, Maximized Apps

6 October 10:34 AM EDT - Wayland - Cage 0.2

Prominent Wayland developer Simon Ser has released Cage v0.2, a Wayland kiosk compositor that runs single, maximized applications.

Mesa 24.3 Adds New Build Option To Allow Rusticl Driver Support To Be Enabled By Default

6 October 10:22 AM EDT - Mesa - Rusticl Default

Red Hat engineer Karol Herbst continues enhancing Mesa's Rusticl driver that allows for a Rust-based OpenCL driver implementation for use by Gallium3D drivers. The newest addition is a build-time option for controlling devices to be enabled by default.

Wasmer 4.4 Released To Continue Pushing Universal Apps With WebAssembly

Wasmer 4.4 is out as the newest version to this prominent WebAssembly (WASM) runtime that supports WASIX / WASI / EmScripten to "run software anywhere" by effectively serving as lightweight containers and being able to scale from the edge to the cloud.

Apple Vulkan Driver "HoneyKrisp" Lands Many Fixes & Features

6 October 06:24 AM EDT - Mesa - HoneyKrisp

HoneyKrisp as the open-source Mesa Vulkan driver for Apple Silicon graphics and developed as part of the Asahi Linux project has landed a number of enhancements into the mainline Mesa code.

OpenRazer 3.9 Adds Support For Many Newer Razer Devices On Linux

6 October 06:15 AM EDT - Hardware - OpenRazer 3.9

OpenRazer 3.9 is out today as the newest version of this community project providing open-source driver support for Razer peripherals on Linux. This out-of-tree set of Linux kernel drivers allows for various Razer devices to be configured and fully leveraged under Linux.

5 October

Bcachefs Fixes Pull Once Again Frustrates Linus Torvalds - Two Choices Offered

Linus Torvalds merged the newest round of fixes to the experimental Bcachefs file-system, but it's left Linux creator Linus Torvalds frustrated and he's presented two choices for the file-system moving forward due to the continued LKML drama.

The Long-Awaited GIMP 3.0 Closing In On Its First Release Candidate

5 October 01:12 PM EDT - Free Software - GIMP 3.0 RC1 Coming Soon

The long-in-development GIMP 3.0 open-source alternative to Adobe Photoshop hopes to ship its release candidate in the near future.

Fedora 41 Has Working Intel IPU6 Web Camera Support With Modern Laptops

5 October 09:42 AM EDT - Fedora - Fedora 41 + Intel IPU6

It's been a long journey to see good web camera support for Intel Alder Lake and newer designs making use of the IPU6 imaging IP. But with Fedora 41 due for release in the coming weeks, there will finally be good out-of-the-box, open-source support for the IPU6-based web cameras in modern Intel Core laptops across Tigerlake / Alder Lake / Raptor Lake laptops.

Linux 6.12 Patches Neoverse-N3 & Microsoft Azure Cobalt 100 For Speculative SSBS

5 October 08:53 AM EDT - Arm - Plus Neoverse-A715

We are not done yet seeing new Arm cores still impacted by the Speculative Store Bypass handling errata. Merged to Linux 6.12 on Friday was adding the speculative SSBS workaround for the Cortex-A715, Neoverse-N3, and Microsoft Azure Cobalt 100 cores.

OpenZFS 2.3-rc1 Delivers RAIDZ Expansion, Fast Dedup & Direct IO

OpenZFS 2.3-rc1 is now available for testing as the next major feature release to this open-source ZFS file-system implementation for Linux and FreeBSD systems.

SDL 3.1.3 Stable ABI Preview Release

Sam Lantinga released SDL 3.1.3 on Friday as their "stable ABI preview" version ahead of the SDL 3.2.0 stable release. The developer at Valve notes that SDL3 has already been "battle tested by millions of people in DOTA, CS2 and Steam" and they are now gearing up for the SDL 3.2 stable release to get SDL3 out to the masses.

KDE Plasma 6.2 Preparing For Release Next Week

5 October 06:11 AM EDT - KDE - KDE Plasma 6.2 On 8 October