Phoronix

A new Family 19h microcode binary was merged today into the linux-firmware.git repository that serves as the central source for all of the binary firmware/microcode files for Linux systems...

Git 2.34 is out today as the newest feature update to this widely-used, distributed version control system...

Now that the Linux 5.16 merge window has ended with yesterday's Linux 5.16-rc1 release, here is my lengthy original overview of what I find most interesting out of this new kernel version. Linux 5.16 won't be out as stable until around the end of the calendar year or early next year, but it will sure make one nice Christmas gift with all of the shiny new features in tow.

With the big Blender 3.0 release due out near year's end there was the Cycles X rewrite that landed and unfortunately removed OpenCL support in the process. While that left AMD Radeon graphics without Blender GPU-accelerated support, in time for the v3.0 release there is now AMD HIP support in place...

Google has released Chrome 96 a day early as the latest routine update to their cross-platform web browser...

Following a lot of improvements the past few years to the Intel Linux kernel graphics "i915" driver it looks like it's ready to enable run-time power management auto-suspend support by default...

The open-source Vulkan driver support for the video decode (and presumably after that, encode) extensions continues moving along for the Radeon "RADV" and Intel "ANV" Mesa drivers...

Patches were recently sent out that implement support for RISC-V's Scalar Cryptography Extension within the GNU Compiler Collection...

Linus Torvalds has released Linux 5.16-rc1 in moving past the exciting merge window and onto bug fixing for this next version of the Linux kernel...

Linux 5.16-rc1 is coming out later today and already I'm seeing some fallout in the new kernel's performance... In particular, bad news for Alder Lake that is already seeing the Linux performance trailing Windows 11 seemingly due to the lack of Thread Director integration right now in the kernel and any other missing optimizations around Intel's hybrid architecture. A new feature of Linux 5.16 is unfortunately having unintended regressions for Alder Lake with at least the flagship Core i9 12900K. Here are the results from the latest kernel bisecting that uncovered this latest upstream slowdown.

Intel, Amazon AWS, IBM, Qualcomm, and UIUC researchers have been collaborating over a proposed "Tensor LLVM Extensions" (TLX) to make this open-source compiler infrastructure more suitable for targeting AI accelerators and other emerging classes of hardware...

While not coming as part of the new 5.16 cycle, one of the exciting patch series to come about this year has been Google's work on the Multigenerational LRU (MGLRU) Framework for improving performance around the kernel's page reclaim handling...

This week marked the release of QEMU 6.2-rc0 as the first test candidate for this upcoming update that plays an important role in the open-source Linux virtualization stack...

Mesa's open-source "Turnip" driver that provides Vulkan support for Qualcomm Adreno graphics hardware and complementary to the Freedreno Gallium3D driver can now handle Vulkan 1.2...

While Zstd is used in various areas of the Linux kernel for data compression from transparent file-system compression with the likes of Btrfs to allowing kernel modules be compressed with this Zstandard algorithm, the in-kernel code had fallen years outdated. Finally with Linux 5.16 that Zstd in-kernel implementation is now being brought up to modern standards and delivering better performance too...

Another batch of SMB3/CIFS client changes were submitted and merged today for the Linux 5.16 merge window. Plus the KSMBD changes were also merged today for that in-kernel SMB3 file server...

Merged at the start of the Linux 5.16 cycle was the long in development memory "folios" code. That initial pull had the changes to the kernel page cache and memory management code while now before ending out the merge window is converting some file-system code to using folios...

DXVK-NVAPI as the project providing NVIDIA driver API integration "NVAPI" around DXVK/VKD3D-Proton is out with a new feature release...

Last week was the main set of Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) changes for Linux 5.16 that introduced RISC-V hypervisor support and AMD PSF control bit support, among other changes. A second set of KVM changes were sent out on Friday that is headlined by having AMD SEV/SEV-ES intra-host migration support...

The RISC-V architecture updates were sent out on Friday for targeting the nearly-over Linux 5.16 merge window...

Like clockwork KDE developer Nate Graham is out with his weekly development summary each Saturday highlighting the accomplishments of this free software desktop project...

Valve today hosted the much anticipated Steam Deck Development Livestream where they and their partners at AMD talked more about the forthcoming Steam Deck's hardware and software...

When writing this morning about intel "Raptor Lake" Linux enablement to begin, I didn't expect that to bear fruit so quickly in just a matter of hours... As predicted, that Linux bring-up for the Alder Lake successor is beginning now -- and doing so at full-speed with the initial Raptor Lake S (RPL-S) graphics support being posted...

AMD this week quietly released Radeon Software for Linux 21.40.1 as a fundamentally big update for this packaged driver stack targeting enterprise Linux distributions...

While we are used to running AMD and Intel benchmarks between Microsoft Windows and Linux while most often finding that our favorite open-source operating systems normally lead the race from desktops through HEDT and server platforms, when it comes to the Core i9 12900K "Alder Lake" that is currently not the case. Going into this round of Windows vs. Linux testing quite curious given some Intel hybrid architecture oddities we have been seeing under Linux, indeed when hitting Windows 11 and an assortment of Linux distributions with benchmarks we were left disappointed. Not only did Windows 11 come out faster overall, but related is now Linux also had much higher run-to-run variance due to the mix of P and E cores with Thread Director not making the wisest choices under Linux.

Following Mesa's Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan translation driver finally running "glxgears" in a correct and performant manner, the newest milestone achieved by lead Zink developer Mike Blumenkrantz is managing to run Wayland's Weston compositor...

Following today's inaugural patch, over the coming weeks we are expected to see Intel Raptor Lake patches beginning to make it out onto the public kernel mailing list for review...

The Ceph open-source distributed storage system can now enjoy better performance out-of-the-box with Linux 5.16...

Red Hat's David Airlie has been working on early support for Vulkan Video API support with Mesa's Radeon "RADV" driver while the past week he spent time working on similar treatment for Intel's open-source "ANV" Vulkan driver and also resurrecting some unfinished VA-API video acceleration code he was working on for the Intel Crocus Gallium3D driver...

While the AMD Radeon "AMDGPU" Linux kernel graphics driver has supported VESA Display Stream Compression (DSC) over DisplayPort connections, until now it hasn't supported the power-savings feature for eDP panels...

While the Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan code within Mesa is close to OpenGL 4.6 conformant and running many OpenGL games at good performance, it's taken until now to see good performance out of the glxgears benchmark...

Following Amazon's DAMON being merged in Linux 5.15 as a data monitoring access framework, being merged for Linux 5.16 is an addition building on top of that for memory reclamation when experiencing system RAM pressure...

Announced back in May was the Cortex-A710 as the first-generation Armv9 "big" core and successor to the Cortex-A78. The initial Cortex-A710 support is now present in the GCC 12 code compiler...

PipeWire 0.3.40 is out today with various bug fixes but also a number of improvements...

Prominent Btrfs file-system developer Josef Bacik is working through a big set of patches that will result in on-disk format changes to Btrfs but address some of "the more painful parts" to the file-system's design...

OEMs have begun releasing updated BIOS/firmware revisions to address new security vulnerabilities disclosed this week by Intel. Most pressing are potential security vulnerabilities within the BIOS reference code used by various Intel CPUs that could lead to privilege escalation by local users and ranked a "high" impact severity...

As part of Google's effort around fuzzing for improving open-source security, the company today announced ClusterFuzzLite as their new, easy-to-use solution for fuzzing open and closed-source projects with ease as part of the CI/CD process...

Jaegeuk Kim submitted the Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) updates on Wednesday for the nearly over Linux 5.16 merge window...

Last week saw the main set of ACPI and power management changes for Linux 5.16 while merged on Wednesday were a secondary set of updates. Notable on the ACPI side are some changes in preparing for allowing Linux drivers to "probe" hardware while being powered off...

The Mesa 21.3 development cycle continues dragging on due to blocker bugs affecting the Intel code, so instead it's another week with a new release candidate...

Coreboot 4.15 was tagged today as the latest advertised version of this open-source firmware implementation for systems. With this new version are 21 additional laptops and motherboards supported...

While many Linux users were excited years ago around EOMA68 and in part the possibility of an open, upgradeable laptop design, it has yet to ship and looking like it never will -- not to mention being very outdated specifications by today's standards. Entirely unrelated to that prior upgradeable hardware effort but continuing in similar goals is The Framework Laptop. The Framework Laptop is a thin, upgradeable notebook that is Linux-friendly and allows the user to easily upgrade their own components. I was testing The Framework Laptop for a while and from the hardware perspective is a very nice device and running well under Linux.

Over the past nearly two decades Google Summer of Code (GSoC) has been known as an initiative for getting students involved with open-source software development over the course of a summer while receiving a stipend/grant from Google. Beginning next year, GSoC will no longer be limited to students but open to all adults. Additionally, other changes are also coming...

Valve just sent out an email to pre-order customers that the Steam Deck release is being delayed by two months...

While since the end of October there has been NVIDIA 495.44 as the stable 495 series driver beta for Linux users, out today is their v470.86 release for those using that older long-term support branch...

The annual OpenZFS Developer Summit wrapped up yesterday with interesting talks on this open-source, cross-platform ZFS file-system implementation...

For fans of Jolla's Linux-based smartphone platform, Sailfish OS 4.3 "Suomenlinna" is out today...

Seagate engineers yesterday used the Open Compute Project Global Summit for the first public demonstration of a native NVMe hard drive. The hope is moving forward both HDDs and SSDs in the data center will consolidate to using the NVMe interface...

Posted last year for introduction in the GCC 11 stable compiler released earlier this year was the initial Alder Lake "alderlake" target. Now that Intel 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" processors are officially out, Intel engineers have updated their Alder Lake tuning for the GNU Compiler Collection to yield more efficient performance with GCC 12 due out in Q2'2022...

Running the past two days was the annual OpenZFS Developer Summit. One of the most interesting presentations from this virtual event was on the status of DirectIO (O_DIRECT) support for the OpenZFS file-system and the performance boost it can offer in relevant areas...