Feed phoronix Phoronix

Favorite IconPhoronix

Link https://www.phoronix.com/
Feed http://www.phoronix.com/rss.php
Updated 2025-07-07 04:15
Libreboot 20230625 Released With A Few More Old Systems Added
Libreboot as the downstream of Coreboot focused on providing fully open-source system firmware without binary blobs has been quite active recently. There have been several new systems added recently, introducing support for shipping ROMs without CPU microcode included, and other changes. This latest wor has culminated into the Libreboot 20230625 release...
Vulkan 1.3.255 Released With Cooperative Matrix Extension
Vulkan 1.3.255 was quietly released prior to the weekend and brings with it a new cooperative matrix extension...
Linux 6.4 Released With Early Apple M2 Code, More WiFi 7, AMD Guided Autonomous Mode
As expected Linux 6.4 is out today as stable as an on-time release following a relatively quiet cycle the past two months...
Mesa's Rusticl Lands Experimental FP16 OpenCL Support
Mesa's Rust-written OpenCL implementation Rusticl for Gallium3D drivers has now added experimental FP16 to its feature set...
Linux 6.5 Features Expected: Parallel CPU Bring-Up, Intel Shadow Stack, MIDI 2.0 & More
With Linux 6.4 expected for release today the Linux 6.5 merge window will then open. From my close monitoring of the many "-next" Git development branches along with some early pull requests already submitted, here is a look at some of the features that will likely be found in Linux 6.5 barring any last minute issues or objections from Linus Torvalds himself...
Zink's Mike Blumenkrantz Tackling Mesa WSI Inefficiencies
Earlier this month I ran some fresh benchmarks of Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan against RadeonSI. While Zink in general is already quite speedy and in good shape for most workloads, those tests uncovered some troubled spots and Zink lead developer Mike Blumenkrantz of Valve has been diving into some of those issues with fixes. Another merge request is pending to deal with inefficiencies in the Mesa Vulkan windowing system integration (WSI) code...
Wine-Staging 8.11 Brings Performance Improvements, Registering URL Protocol Handlers
Building off Friday's release of Wine 8.11, Wine-Staging 8.11 is out this Sunday morning with 502 patches atop the upstream Wine code...
New Patches Allow LoongArch ClangBuiltLinux Builds
While the upstream LLVM/Clang compiler has been building the AArch64 and x86_64 mainline Linux kernel builds for quite some time, for those interested in China's LoongArch CPU architecture it's the latest target seeing work to enable compiling the Linux kernel under Clang...
Linux's Corsair PSU Driver Being Updated For Newer Power Supplies
Added to the Linux kernel back in 2020 was a community-written Corsair power supply driver for exposing various sensor data that their higher-end PSUs make available via a USB interface. This reverse-engineered "corsair-psu" driver has continued to be improved upon and adding support for newer Corsair PSUs. A new patch out this weekend extends the corsair-psu driver for handling newer 2022~2023 model power supplies...
Linux 6.4 Bringing Great Improvements From AMD G.A.M. To Early Apple M2 Code, More Rust
With it having been another smooth week so far in the upstream kernel world, it's looking like Linus Torvalds is likely to promote Linux 6.4 tomorrow rather than going ahead with an extra release candidate. As such, here's a reminder about what makes Linux 6.4 a great summer-time kernel upgrade...
Intel Arc Graphics Driver Change Leads To A Big Speed-Up Under Linux
With the latest Mesa 23.2 code as of Friday there is now a rather significant performance optimization for Intel's graphics driver stack that really helps out Intel Arc Graphics DG2/Alchemist along with upcoming Meteor Lake graphics. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, for example, was found to be 11% faster now with this single driver change and other Vulkan apps/games benefiting as well...
More Plasma 6 Work Continues, SDDM To Be Incubated By KDE
The KDE Plasma 6 desktop is becoming more "livable" and each week new features continue to be implemented. This week was another lively phase of development toward Plasma 6.0...
GCC 14 Adds Initial "-std=c++26" Plumbing
Similar to LLVM Clang 17 adding -std=c++26 support as the open-source compiler begins work on the next major revision of the C++ programming language, the GCC 14 compiler code has now also added the -std=c++26 compiler option...
Wine 8.11 Brings Various Improvements For Windows Apps On Linux
A new bi-weekly release of Wine is now available for enjoying Windows applications and games on Linux and other platforms...
Intel Releases x86-simd-sort 2.0 With Faster AVX-512 Sorting, New Algorithms
Earlier this year Intel software engineers published a blazing fast AVX-512 sorting library that was initially picked up by Numpy where it netted them 10~17x faster sorts. Today marks the release of x86-simd-sort 2.0 with even more AVX-512 features in place and additional sorting algorithms added...
Firewalld 2.0 Released With Faster Forwarding Performance Via NFTables Flowtable
The Firewalld open-source firewall daemon has been in development since 2011 while only two years ago did it reach the Firewalld 1.0 milestone. Thus it was a bit surprising to find Firewalld 2.0 being released today...
Two Fedora Spins Eye Going X.Org-less
The Fedora Sericea and Sway spins are eyeing the possibility of shipping without the xorg-x11 packages for being the first X.Org-less desktop spins in the Fedora Linux world...
Linux 6.5 To Bring Better NUMA Awareness For The NFSD/RDMA Server
Among the early pull requests already submitted for the Linux 6.5 merge window that is expected to open next week are the Linux NFS server (NFSD) changes. Notable this cycle is the NFSD and RDMA server code having better NUMA awareness...
SDDM 0.20 Display Manager Released With Experimental Wayland Greeter
SDDM as the QML-based X11 and Wayland display manager commonly used on KDE systems and elsewhere is finally out with a new release...
GNOME Lands Nice Optimization For Wayland Gaming
Merged this week into the GNOME Mutter compositor codebase is what should be a beneficial optimization for those enjoying Linux gaming under the GNOME Wayland session...
Mesa Turns To BLAKE3 For Faster Vulkan Shader Hashing
Mesa has switched from SHA1 to BLAKE3 for its shader hashing to deliver better performance...
FLAC 1.4.3 Released With More Optimizations, Drops PowerPC-Specific Code
FLAC 1.4.3 is out today as the first update to this Xiph.Org royalty-free, lossless audio codec since last October...
Fedora May Make It Easier To Switch To systemd-boot, Making A GRUB-Free System
A change proposal that hopes to take place for Fedora 39 would make it easier to have an optionally GRUB-free system by instead performing a clean install with systemd-boot for booting on EFI platforms...
Windows 11 vs. Linux Gaming Performance On The ASUS ROG Ally
Many readers have been curious about the performance of Linux gaming on the ASUS ROG Ally gaming handheld that out-of-the-box runs Microsoft Windows 11 Home... Well, the wait is over with the first benchmarks today of Windows 11 against Ubuntu 23.04 Linux on the ROG Ally. Beyond looking at the out-of-the-box performance, the results under Windows 11 with ASUS' "Turbo Mode" is also included plus some modifications to allow Linux to be more competitive to Windows 11 for games.
Wasmer 4.0 WebAssembly Implementation Brings WASIX Support
Wasmer is an open-source WebAssembly implementation that is focused on running sandboxed applications everywhere thanks to the power of WASM while being as performant as traditional native applications. Today marks the availability of Wasmer 4.0 as another step forward for this project...
AlmaLinux Figuring Out Path Forward Following RHEL Source Code Policy Change
AlmaLinux, the popular community-oriented distribution that was established following Red Hat's decision to discontinue development on CentOS (non-Stream) and is backed by AMD and other organizations, is trying to chart its path forward following Red Hat's latest curve ball...
KDE's KWin Begins Plotting Path To Vulkan Support
Going back a few years there has been experimental development around a Vulkan back-end for KDE's KWin compositor while now a road-map is being formalized for actually bringing Vulkan support to fruition...
Linux 6.4 Squeezes In Crash Fix For New AMD Ryzen 7040 Series Laptops
Sent in today for the mainline Linux kernel -- days ahead of the expected Linux 6.4 stable release -- is a crash fix for just-released AMD Ryzen 7040 series laptops...
Xonotic 0.8.6 Released With Various In-Game Improvements
Xonotic 0.8.6 is out as the latest update to this long-running, open-source first person shooter game...
Sound Quirks For The ASUS ROG Ally Queued For Linux 6.5
Ahead of the Linux 6.5 merge window expected to open up next week, a patch providing sound quirks for the ASUS ROG Ally's CS35l41 audio is now queued in the sound subsystem's for-next branch...
AMD Hardware-Accelerated Virtualized IOMMU Patches Posted For Linux
Following the recent AMD IOMMU v2 page table work and other IOMMU improvements as part of AMD's effort to further enhance the Linux virtualization support on EPYC server platforms, the latest patches out of AMD as of yesterday are for wokring on hardware-accelerated virtualized IOMMU (AMD HW-vIOMMU)...
PoCL 4.0 OpenCL Implementation Released With Intel oneAPI Level Zero Driver
PoCL 4.0 is out as the latest major update to this "Portable Computing Language" implementation that started out as an OpenCL-on-CPU effort while with time has expanded its sights beyond just OpenCL on processors to providing OpenCL on other accelerators/devices via leveraging different LLVM target back-ends. With PoCL 4.0, there is also now an Intel oneAPI Level Zero driver for using this OpenCL stack on Intel graphics processors...
Go 1.21 Enabling PGO For Faster Performance, Tuned Garbage Collector
The Go 1.21 release candidate is out today and it's interesting on the performance front plus a few language additions like min / max / clear functions as well as further enhancing its standard library...
Linux 6.3.9 Released With Fix For Nasty Nouveau Issue
For those making use of the current Linux 6.3 stable series, Linux 6.3.9 is out today and it's particularly important if you make use of the open-source NVIDIA "Nouveau" kernel graphics driver...
Linux Mint 21.2 Promoted To Beta With Desktop Improvements, HEIF & AVIF Support
Linux Mint as the popular desktop Linux distribution derived from Ubuntu LTS releases and known for their Cinnamon desktop is out today with their 21.2 "Victoria" beta release for testing...
Red Hat Now Limiting RHEL Sources To CentOS Stream
Red Hat announced today that CentOS Stream will now be the sole repository for public RHEL-related source code releases...
Intel Continues Working On IAA Crypto Compression Driver For Linux
Introduced with 4th Gen Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" processors are various new accelerators available on select SKUs or via the Intel On Demand offering. One of the initial challenges there though is the early accelerator software support limitations and many upstream open-source (or even just widespread) software not yet enabled to make use of these new accelerators. One of the improvements on that front has been Intel engineers working on an IAA crypto compression driver for the kernel so that the In-Memory Analytics Accelerator can be transparently accessible to kernel features making use of the crypto API...
GCC Adopts A Code of Conduct
While a few years late compared to many other open-source projects adopting a Code of Conduct, the GCC Steering Committee has now adopted a Code of Conduct "CoC" for this open-source compiler project...
Valve Still Making RADV Driver Improvements To AMD GCN 1.0 Era Hardware
On a quest toward trying to get the game Halo Infinite running under Linux via Steam Play (Proton) with AMD GFX6 / GCN 1.0 era graphics processors, Valve's prolific open-source driver contributor Samuel Pitoiset has added VK_NV_device_generated_commands support for these original Radeon GCN GPUs...
LLVM Clang 17 Now Defaulting To OpenMP 5.1
The LLVM Clang 17 C/C++ compiler when shipping later this year will now use OpenMP 5.1 as the default version of this multi-processing programming API...
SDL2 Now Transitioning To Maintenance Mode
With today's release of SDL 2.28 it also marks the SDL2 library entering maintenance mode for this open-source software that's relied upon by Valve and many cross-platform games...
Linux 6.5 Slated To Add Provisioning Primitives For Thinly Provisioned Storage
Another feature scheduled to be sent in for the upcoming Linux 6.5 kernel merge window is introducing support for provisioning primitives for thinly provisioned storage with the Device Mapper (DM) code...
Linux 6.5 Adding Qualcomm Adreno 690 Open-Source GPU Support
The upcoming Linux 6.5 kernel is poised to add support for Qualcomm's Adreno 690 GPU to the open-source MSM kernel graphics/display driver. The A690 is notably used by the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 (SC8280XP) platform that in turn is what's found inside the Lenovo ThinkPad X13s laptop and other hardware...
XFS Large Extent Counts Feature No Longer Considered Experimental
As another feature on the way for the upcoming Linux 6.5 kernel cycle is the large extent counts feature of the XFS file-system no longer being treated as "experimental" but is now considered safe to deploy...
Linux 6.5 Preps For IBM POWER's "DEXCR"
Patches being queued ahead of the upcoming Linux 6.5 kernel merge window prepare initial support for DEXCR that is found in recent Power ISA specifications...
Libreboot To Provide New Firmware ROMs With CPU Microcode Removed
CPU microcode updates are commonly done in the name of security fixes and resolving functionality issues.. In recent years, CPU microcode updates have been a much more common -- and important -- occurrence. While all modern CPUs rely on microcode it's just a matter of whether the version used is baked into the hardware or an updated version loaded by the BIOS or OS at boot time, a "vocal minority" of users are unhappy with CPU microcode being included in Libreboot ROMs. Thus moving forward there will be alternative builds of Libreboot for different motherboards with the CPU microcode stripped out in the name of software freedom...
Linux 6.5 Adding Support For NCT6799D Sensors Found In Various Newer Motherboards
If your newer desktop motherboard has a NCT6799D Super I/O controller or one of the variants like NCT6799D-S, the Linux 6.5 kernel is set to introduce support for this ASIC in order to expose hardware sensor support under Linux...
F2FS Preparing To Land Async Buffered Write Support
The Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) is preparing to land async buffered write support into the Linux kernel as another performance win for this flash-optimized file-system...
Red Hat Aiming To Address IBRS Mitigation Still Being Too Costly On Performance
Red Hat engineers are working to deal with Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (IBRS) being too costly for mitigating Spectre V2 and Retbleed on older Intel Xeon Scalable processors. A new patch has been floated to disable IBRS when idle and is working out well at least for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 while isn't clear yet if it will be accepted into the upstream kernel...
SVT-AV1 1.6 Squeezes Out Even More Performance For CPU-Based AV1 Encoding
SVT-AV1 1.6 is now available as the latest version for this leading CPU-based AV1 encoder that is now enjoying 30~40% faster performance with high quality presets...
...127128129130131132133134135136...