Phoronix

KDE developers remain quite busy working on the Plasma 6.0 desktop development as well as making other enhancements and fixes to their open-source desktop stack...

While Solus is still working toward its new approach based on Serpent OS and other significant fundamental changes to the Linux distribution, shipping today is Solus 4.4 as the latest incremental update to this Linux distro popular with enthusiasts...

Wine 8.12 is available today as the newest bi-weekly development release of this open-source software for enjoying Windows games and applications under Linux and other platforms...

The Intel Xeon Max 9480 flagship Sapphire Rapids CPU with HBM2e memory tops out at 56 cores / 112 threads, so how can that compete with the latest AMD EPYC processors hitting 96 cores for Genoa (or 120 cores with the forthcoming Bergamo)? Besides the on-package HBM2e that is unique to the Xeon Max family, the other ace that Xeon Max holds with the rest of the Sapphire Rapids line-up is support for the Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX). In today's benchmarks of the Intel Xeon Max performance is precisely showing the impact of how HBM2e and AMX in order to compete -- and outperform -- AMD's EPYC 9554 and 9654 processors in AI workloads when effectively leveraging AMX and the onboard HBM2e memory.

Meta has published the Intermediate Graphics Library (IGL) as a new cross-platform library to provide a single low-level interface that works atop native graphics APIs from OpenGL and Vulkan to Apple's Metal...

A new system call found in Linux 6.5 is "cachestat" that allows user-space to query page cache statistics for a file in order to make more informed decisions...

In addition to Fedora 39 aiming to use the Anaconda WebUI for Fedora Workstation, shipping the latest and greatest open-source compiler toolchain components, enhance Linux gaming compatibility, eliminate Flathub filtering, and dozens of other improvements, there are also plans for a more mundane change: a colored bash prompt...

Ubuntu's NVIDIA Unified Device Architecture (UDA) driver package intended for GPU compute acceleration has enabled the NVIDIA Open GPU Kernel driver support in their packages since the end of last year. Now with the new NVIDIA Enterprise Ready Driver "ERD" Ubuntu package hitting Ubuntu LTS users, they are also supporting the NVIDIA open GPU kernel driver option there...

As was anticipated, UEFI Unaccepted Memory support was successfully merged for Linux 6.5 to support this standard that's important with the likes of Intel Trusted Domain Extensions (TDX) and AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization Secure Nested Page (SEV-SNP) backed virtual machines...

Hopefully by now all of you have moved off PS/2 mice and keyboards, but should you still have some old systems chugging along with PS/2 hardware, there are some improvements to find with the Linux 6.5 kernel currently under development...

AMD's GPUOpen team on Thursday released the newest version of their Advanced Media Framework "AMF" SDK for Linux and Windows developers...

The Linux 6.5 media subsystem updates were merged this week for the merge window that is wrapping up this weekend...

For those on the three-year-old GCC 10 compiler series, it's really time to move to a newer GNU Compiler Collection release for enjoying the latest language support, new hardware features, various optimizations, enhanced diagnostics, and more. But for those still bound to GCC 10 for whatever reason, GCC 10.5 was released today as one final update in the branch...

For weeks and weeks I've been eager to see how well the new AMD Zen 4 based "Phoenix" laptop SoCs function and perform under Linux. Recently I finally found an interesting AMD Ryzen 7 7840U laptop to test and today have some initial Linux benchmarks to share from this Acer Swift Edge 16 laptop with Ryzen 7 7840U SoC and a 3.2K 120Hz OLED display, among other interesting specs.

Out today is the first release candidate of systemd 254. This systemd update is another big feature release with new settings, new components, and many additions to existing systemd components. Plus there is some deprecations and breakage ahead for future releases...

If there wasn't enough Red Hat drama happening in recent weeks, the Red Hat Display Systems Team is now considering to implement privacy-preserving telemetry beginning with Fedora Workstation 40...

It looks like the first patches have dropped today for early AMD bring-up around their next-generation "Zen 5" processors...

We've known since last year when Imagination published their open-source PowerVR Vulkan driver that they'd be focusing on a Vulkan hardware driver only and using the likes of the Zink compatibility layer for OpenGL support. Today Imagination formally announced OpenGL 4.6 for their GPUs via Zink...

Following the release of Godot 4.0 earlier this year, Godot 4.1 has been released today as an incremental update to this incredibly powerful, open-source game engine...

Going back to last year Intel added Granite Rapids support to GCC 13 as part of their usual early bring-up of new product families into the GNU Compiler Collection. That initial Granite Rapids target premiered in the since-released GCC 13.1 alongside Emerald Rapids and Sierra Forest too. Hitting the GCC developers' mailing list today is initial support for Intel Granite Rapids D...

For Linux gamers running the lightweight Openbox X11 window manager, the newest Steam beta update brings a new option to fix problems with Steam's dropdown menus being unclickable...

It's now more clear why last week Linus Torvalds personally took to improving the Linux kernel's user-mode stack expansion code: it's necessary to address a now disclosed security vulnerability dubbed StackRot...

Tow-Boot has been a "user-friendly" distribution of U-Boot that was seeing regular updates but for nearly one year has been on hiatus without any new releases. That changed overnight with Tow-Boot 2022.07-006 being released and a call for new developers...

CodeWeavers developer Zebediah Figura opened up the initial merge request yesterday that is the first step of a multi-part effort for reorganizing and cleaning up the Wine Direct3D "WineD3D" code...

The Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) is tacking on a few new features for the Linux 6.5 kernel...

It's already time for the first alpha release of the in-development GNOME 45 desktop...

With the ASUS ROG Ally gaming handheld that began shipping last month I've so far looked at the Linux support for this device as well as looking at the Windows 11 vs. Linux gaming performance as well as the Ryzen Z1 Extreme CPU performance. What many Phoronix readers have been most interested in seeing though are the side-by-side benchmarks for Valve's Steam Deck up against the ASUS ROG Ally. Today's benchmarks provide just that comparison plus some CPU benchmarks too.

There's been a lot of AMD-Xilinx code going upstream in the Linux kernel over the past few months to benefit AMD's embedded efforts from the QDMA driver to CDX bus to XDMA and more. The latest hitting the kernel is an AMD-Xilinx Versal watchdog driver...

As I've written about a few times in recent months, AMD has been enhancing GPU support for use under Xen virtualization. Their interests in Xen weren't clear to this point given that KVM virtualization tends to be the dominant solution these days when it comes to open-source Linux virtualization. Now it's been revealed that the AMD GPU interests in Xen stem from an in-vehicle infotainment play...

UDisks 2.10 was released last week for this set abstraction layer providing a daemon and tooling around the manipulation of disks and storage devices under Linux...

Thanks to Joshua Ashton of Valve's Linux team, the Mesa RADV driver has added support for the VK_EXT_pipeline_robustness Vulkan extension as an efficiency win and will be beneficial for Steam Play gaming...

In addition to Lunar Lake sound driver support in Linux 6.5 and the recent SOF update for Sound Open Firmware for Lunar Lake, Linux 6.5 is also bringing initial SoundWire Intel ACE2.x support that is part of the Lunar Lake audio capabilities...

Released yesterday was a new version of UPower, the FreeDesktop.org software known long ago as DeviceKit-Power and used as an abstraction layer for enumerating power devices on Linux and other platforms. The new UPower 1.90.1 release is the first update to this software in just shy of one year...

LXD as the open-source container management extension for Linux Containers (LXC) has long been closely associated with Canonical due to its founding and pushed along by the Ubuntu maker as one of their software offerings. However, it has to this point been part of the Linux Containers project except moving forward Canonical has decided to pull it more into their direct control...

Here comes a very exciting addition to the Linux 6.5 kernel: the initial infrastructure has landed for scope-based resource management...

While it's likely been years since most of you touched any Firewire devices, for those still having any old DV cameras around or professional audio hardware with an IEEE-1394 interface, Linux 6.5 is bringing improvements to its Firewire subsystem that until recently has been rather dormant for years...

Mozilla Firefox 115.0 official builds are now available for this notable update to this open-source web browser while also marking the new Extended Support Release (ESR) series...

The GNU Compiler Collection 14 (GCC 14) will feature support for the new RISC-V processor ISA vector cryptographic extensions...

Tejun Heo last week submitted the workqueue changes for the Linux 6.5 kernel and they include an interesting addition...

The libjpeg-turbo 3.0 open-source release occurred today for this open-source JPEG image codec implementation focused on SIMD instruction usage for optimized efficiency. While libjpeg-turbo has been a great open-source development success and has seen widespread use, its feature development moving forward may be limited due to funding gaps...

The Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) changes were submitted today that are ready for introduction in the Linux 6.5 kernel...

GNU Binutils 2.41 was branched today in its Git repository in preparations for releasing this collection of binary utilities widely relied upon by Linux and other platforms...

Last year the USB4 v2.0 specification was published as the next iteration of the USB4 standard. USB4 v2 supports 80 Gbps transfer rates with USB Type-C active cables and the ability to handle up to 120 Gbps in one direction and 40 Gbps for the other direction. Intel is contributing initial support for USB4 v2 to the Linux 6.5 kernel along with initial enablement on their new Intel Barlow Ridge discrete controller...

After being in development for more than one year, Perl 5.38 released today as the latest feature update to this programming language...

Jonas Adahl of Red Hat today published a new version of the Wayland-Protocols package that consists of all the stable and staging protocol definitions for use in the Wayland world...

The Virtual Function I/O "VFIO" changes were merged last week for the ongoing Linux 6.5 kernel merge window. This IOMMU/device agnostic framework has added an AMD CDX driver this cycle along with other improvements for this subsystem that is important to the Linux virtualization stack...

The in-development GCC 14 compiler has added support for the MIPS16e2 processor ISA...

Besides being curious about the Steam Survey results for indicating the size of the Linux gaming marketshare as an overall percentage, one of the interesting metrics we are curious about each month is the AMD vs. Intel CPU marketshare for Linux gaming. AMD has been on quite an upward trajectory among Linux gamers/enthusiasts in recent years not only for their Radeon graphics cards with their popular open-source driver stack but their Ryzen CPUs have become extremely popular with Linux users. With the new Steam Survey results for June, AMD CPUs are found on nearly 70% of Linux gaming systems polled by Steam...

This past week at the Linux Foundation's Embedded Open-Source Summit in Prague, Sony engineer Tim Bird who is prominent in the embedded Linux community provided another insightful presentation to sum up the current state of the embedded Linux ecosystem...

In a move similar to GCC's implementation, LLVM Git landed this week initial support for fat LTO objects. This "-ffat-lto-objects" support will be found with the LLVM/Clang 17 release this autumn...