Phoronix

KDE Plasma 5.24 is out as the newest version of this popular open-source desktop environment that will also be their new Long-Term Support (LTS) release...

While so many Linux distributions these days are just cosmetic changes and basic package alterations atop the likes of Ubuntu / Debian and Fedora, Chimera Linux that started last year continues to be an interesting project to watch for using the Linux kernel but with the FreeBSD user-space, making use of the LLVM Clang compiler rather than GCC, using musl as its preferred C library, and other differences...

Intel's open-source engineers have already begun preparing Linux kernel patches around 802.11be Extremely High Throughput (EHT) support that will be known as WiFi 7...

One of the developers involved in the initiative of porting the Linux kernel and open-source software to Nintendo's Wii U game console has brought up the possibility of getting the kernel changes mainlined into the Linux kernel. While Linux on the Wii U may sound exciting - especially for those having the aging console otherwise collecting dust - but the Linux support falls short for now and it would be a lengthy process to get the code cleaned up and properly upstreamed...

Yesterday I published an article looking at the unfortunate state of Arch Linux's GNU compiler toolchain that it's fallen behind and users raising concerns over it for months. Following that article the current Arch Linux GNU toolchain package maintainer has provided an update and is calling for at least another package maintainer to get involved...

The "hid-sigmamicro" driver is queued up in HID-next ahead of Linux 5.18 for dealing with keyboards exhibiting problematic behavior that use SiGma Micro keyboard control ICs...

With Linux 5.17 are some nice networking performance optimizations touching different areas while the never-ending optimization work will continue with Linux 5.18...

Fwupd 1.7.5 is out as the latest feature update to this open-source solution for updating system and component firmware under Linux that is easily distributed by the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS)...

Intel Foundry Services already courted SiFive as a customer and there were even those talks last year of Intel reportedly trying to acquire that leading RISC-V chip designer while today Intel has announced it joined RISC-V International as its latest move around this open-source processor ISA...

Last week marked the long awaited release of a 64-bit spin of Raspberry Pi OS. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has now made available a 64-bit build of their default Linux OS build derived from Debian for all recent Raspberry Pi hardware supporting AArch64. For those curious, here are some benchmarks looking at the performance improvement by switching from Raspberry Pi OS 32-bit to 64-bit.

After establishing a new organization within AMD last year focused on improving AMD client platforms on Linux, they are now hiring again for this endeavor...

With the Linux 5.18 kernel coming later this year, the Intel Protected Processor Inventory Number (PPIN) will be more easily exposed for their server processors...

While Arch Linux is known to be at the forefront of rolling-release Linux distributions, when it comes to its compiler toolchain the packages have fallen behind over the past year...

While much of the Intel DG2/Alchemist open-source driver support has already been upstreamed into the Linux kernel, Mesa for OpenGL and Vulkan, and related components like IGC and Compute-Runtime, there are various bits still pending ahead of the Intel Arc graphics cards set to make their debut in the next few months. One of those pieces still working their way upstream is enabling the GSC block, the Graphics System Controller...

OpenMandriva Lx 4.3 was released this FOSDEM weekend for this distribution derived from the once great Mandriva Linux, formerly Mandrake...

Linus Torvalds just released Linux 5.17-rc3 as the latest test kernel for Linux 5.17 that should be out as stable before the end of March...

The Linux 5.18 kernel this spring is adding support for the Intel Hardware Feedback Interface (HFI, also talked about sometimes as the Enhanced Hardware Feedback interface - EHFI)...

While the Apple M1 SoC is a great piece of hardware, a large part of what has made Apple Silicon so successful with their newest Macs has been their Rosetta 2 software for dynamically translating x86/x86_64 software to run well on these 64-bit Arm systems. Existing applications and games optimized for prior Intel Macs continue running generally in excellent shape on their newest hardware thanks to Rosetta 2. While there is the ongoing Linux bring-up work for Apple Silicon on Linux, the open-source world doesn't currently have that advantage of a compelling Rosetta 2 alternative but the FEX-Emu project hopes to change that outlook...

A Linux kernel driver was posted today for platform control support for Valve's upcoming Steam Deck...

While Linux 5.17 is introducing the ASUS WMI EC Sensors driver for greatly expanding Linux's support for hardware sensor coverage on newer ASUS desktop motherboards, already with Linux 5.18 that driver will be deprecated to make way for a new ASUS EC sensor driver replacement...

Besides all of the Linux-focused talks at the annual FOSDEM conference, another favorite track of mine is that on micro-kernels and other operating systems. While there wasn't the GNU/Hurd status update in 2022 as there has been in some recent years, there was a talk over GNU/Hurd using NetBSD kernel drivers in order to expand its hardware coverage...

For use with Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), Oracle this week released Oracle Linux 8.5 onto the Microsoft Store...

There's been some activity on AMD open-source firmware support for newer hardware platforms but for those wanting a fully open-source firmware stack, there remains work on older generations of AMD server platforms. Michał Żygowski of firmware consulting firm 3mdeb presented today at FOSDEM 2022 as to the current state AMD open-source firmware efforts around Coreboot...

Microsoft continues work on their controversial "DXGKRNL" driver they hope to mainline into the Linux kernel for benefiting their Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) efforts...

Ahead of the Steam Deck shipping later this month, here is where the Steam on Linux marketshare currently stands...

KDE continues seeing a lot of Wayland fixes landing as well as general crash fixes and addressing other glitches with this popular desktop environment...

As a particularly important move for Linux gamers and enthusiasts where you may be riding frequent Git builds of new Mesa graphics drivers or even the bi-weekly point releases - compared to the multi-week/monthly update regiment for Windows graphics drivers - Valve's Steam client will now flush its stale shader cache upon GPU/driver changes. This is important for conserving disk space especially where storage constraints are possible like with the Steam Deck...

While it's not the same as sitting in Brussels and enjoying some Belgian beers while socializing in-person with developers, the annual Free Open-Source Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) is happening this weekend online...

In a short period of time Microsoft's D3D12 Gallium3D driver has gone from implementing OpenGL 3.3 atop the Direct3D 12 interface to now having working OpenGL 4.2 support...

As part of an effort to update LLVM Clang's "-mtune" handling to cater to newer processors, AMD Zen processors with LLVM/Clang 15 later this year will be able to enjoy faster and more accurate square root calculations with tuning to use SQRTSS/SQRTPS instructions...

Libinput 1.19 launched last September with high resolution scroll wheel support finally in place while libinput 1.20 is in preparation for release that improves that functionality. Libinput 1.20 also makes other improvements to this widely-used input library on the Linux desktop that is leveraged by both X.Org and Wayland based environments...

Back in the day I enjoyed Zenwalk as a great desktop-focused, ready out-of-the-box Linux distribution built atop Slackware. After not hearing much from the project in a while, I am glad to see it's still going strong and they have today issued Zenwalk 15 that is built atop the newly-released Slackware 15.0...

Ahead of the planned release of Qt 6.3.0 next month, The Qt Company today has made available the first Qt 6.3 beta...

When it comes to small form factor (SFF) industrial PCs and IoT computers, it's been an area where Intel has traditionally dominated and served quite well. But now with the continued success of AMD's Ryzen processors, we are beginning to see more AMD-powered industrial computer solutions become available such as the recent OnLogic ML100 series with AMD SoC options. I've been testing out the OnLogic ML100G-41 powered by a Ryzen 7 4800U SoC for many weeks now and this fanless, industrial-grade computer has been running very well for a diverse variety of workloads.

This week marked the release of LibreOffice 7.3 but already for LibreOffice 7.4 coming at the end of summer is a change many users will enjoy: the open-source office suite has finally decided to support the WebP image format...

GStreamer 1.20 is out as stable as the newest version of this widely-used, open-source and cross-platform multimedia framework...

Following this week's release of Chrome 98 stable, Google has now promoted Chrome 99 to beta status...

Slackware 14 released back in 2012 and has finally been succeded by Slackware 15.0 as stable! Slackware remains the oldest, still-maintained Linux distribution that has been around since 1993...

Back in November AMD announced the MI200 accelerator that has seen its Linux open-source driver support developed under the "Aldebaran" codename going back to February of last year. The AMD developers are now removing the "experimental" flag from that Aldebaran class GPU support...

Intel today published their annual security report that provides various insights into the different security vulnerabilities disclosed and mitigated over the past calendar year...

A few years ago Mozilla started Firefox Reality as a browser focused on AR/VR mixed reality. Like Mozilla's other failed projects, Firefox Reality is being tossed into the scrap bin next to the likes of Firefox OS and Firefox Send. But thanks to the nature of open-source, the work is being continued on independently by Igalia with the new Wolvic project...

PipeWire 0.3.45 is out today as the newest update to this audio/video stream server that is becoming increasingly common on the Linux desktop...

Recently I tested the Intel Celeron G6900 Alder Lake processor as a $40~60 CPU and the lowest-end SKU as part of the latest-generation Intel desktop CPU line-up. Those tests were carried out on Ubuntu Linux (as usual) for that dual-core processor and was an interesting little processor for the price and for the lack of any AMD Zen 3 competition currently at that low price point. If needing to make daily use of such an Intel Celeron system, switching out your Linux distribution can help. In this article are benchmarks of the Celeron G6900 across Arch-based Manjaro, Intel's Clear Linux, Fedora Workstation 35, Ubuntu 22.04 daily, and openSUSE Tumbleweed.

Not only is Microsoft after having OpenGL and OpenCL layered atop Direct3D 12 for usage by Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) or where the host has no native GL/CL drivers available, but they are also after Vulkan support on top of D3D12. It's looking like Mesa may be close to merging the "Dozen" driver that provides this preliminary Vulkan on Direct3D 12 support...

It took them until 2022, but Arch Linux now provides debug packages for easing the process of debugging software packages rather than having to recompile the software yourself with debug symbols included...

Version 2.35 of the GNU C Library (Glibc) is now available with a variety of changes to this crucial low-level library for Linux systems...

While LLVM 14 should be released in March, LLVM 13.0.1 is out this week as the first and only planned point release to the LLVM 13 stable series...

After a three week delay to the Mesa 22.0 schedule to allow Vulkan 1.3 to land among other last minute features, the code was branched today that marks the end of feature development on this quarterly Mesa3D driver stack. Mesa 22.0 stable should be out in a few weeks time and with it comes many new features to this collection of open-source OpenGL/Vulkan drivers predominantly used on Linux systems but of growing use on Windows with the D3D12 driver and other platforms...

While the Raspberry Pi 3 and newer have featured 64-bit Cortex CPU cores and even the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 is 64-bit-capable, Raspbian OS as the official Raspberry Pi operating system has remained 32-bit. Finally in 2022 they now have an official 64-bit build...

Quietly making its v1.0 debut today is system76-scheduler as a Rust-written daemon aiming to improve Linux desktop responsiveness and catering to their Pop!_OS distribution...