AMD recently started posting Linux patches for a Platform Management Framework "PMF" driver that is designed to "enhance end user experience by making AMD PCs smarter, quieter, power efficient by adapting to user behavior and environment."..
With there recently being a number of new driver proposals for various AI-focused accelerators for the Linux kernel, currently they either go into "char/misc" as the random catch-all area of the kernel or within the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem traditionally used for GPU drivers. There's been yet another discussion happening this week over introducing a formal "accelerator" subsystem in the kernel for the growing number of AI devices that may be seeking to provide open-source drivers...
Back in 2020 with Linux 5.11 Intel SGX support was finally merged after undergoing 40+ revisions over the span of years. Fortunately, not taking as long is now Intel SGX2 support that is set to be mainlined with the new Linux 6.0 kernel...
Vulkan 1.3.224 was released earlier today and with this spec update comes VK_EXT_attachment_feedback_loop_layout as another extension started by Valve developers and will help their Steam Play (Proton) efforts...
A lot of great features are landing for Linux 6.0 but two more are now confirmed to partake in this next major kernel version: Multi-Gen LRU (MGLRU) and the Maple Leaf data structure...
In addition to continuing to ramp up their Steam Deck production to fulfill existing pre-order reservations this calendar year thanks to addressing supply chain bottlenecks, Valve announced today that in partnership with Komodo they are bringing this Linux-powered gaming console to Asian markets...
After a few week delay to allow additional features to land, feature development on Mesa 22.2 has ended with Mesa 22.2-rc1 now being available ahead of its stable release in the coming weeks...
Over the past two years Google has been spearheading an effort to make silicon design more open-source and allowing more projects to get started in chip fabrication. That got started with a partnership with SkyWater Technology and Google covering the costs for open-source projects to see their initial chips fabricated on a 130nm process. Google's Open-Source Silicon Design Initiative recently announced SkyWater 90nm manufacturing will get underway for future manufacturing runs. Today the news out of Google's open-source group is that GlobalFoundries has joined this initiative and is providing 180nm manufacturing access...
Another big ticket feature has made it for the Linux 6.0 kernel: the Runtime Verification infrastructure for running Linux on safety-critical systems...
Merged last year into the Linux kernel's Nouveau DRM driver was initial support for GeForce RTX 30 "Ampere" GPUs initially in the form of the GA100 and GA102 parts. That support for the moment is still limited to just mode-setting/display support with 3D still being tackled, but now a patch has been posted that rather trivially extends the support to cover the GA103 GPU too...
After recently looking at the AMD Rembrandt Windows 11 vs. Linux performance using the new Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U laptop SoC, you may be wondering about the latest Windows vs. Linux performance over on the Intel side with their latest "Alder Lake P" wares. If so, today's benchmarks are for you with putting the Core i7 1280P on Windows 11 up against Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Intel's own Clear Linux platform.
With the Linux 5.19 kernel there are some exciting networking improvements like big TCP support, PureLiFi drivers for light-based networking, WFX WiFi being promoted out of staging, and much more. Now with the in-development Linux 6.0 there is a lot more work in store...
Canonical is putting the finishing touches on Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS that is due for release tomorrow as the first collection of stable release updates in re-spun ISO form for this "Jammy Jellyfish" long-term support series...
Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem maintainer David Airlie has submitted all of the open-source GPU/display driver updates for the Linux 6.0 (nee 5.20) merge window. Much of this work is centered around bringing up the Intel Arc Graphics DG2/Alchemist discrete graphics cards and on the AMD side continued work around enabling RDNA3 and Instinct MI300 graphics processors...
Earlier this year Intel released SVT-AV1 1.0 as a big update to this leading open-source AV1 video encoder. Since then they have not let up and now three months after v1.1, SVT-AV1 1.2 is now shipped as the latest update to this cross-platform, high performance AV1 encoder...
Valve this evening has begun shipping SteamOS 3.3 to Steam Deck customers as the latest version of their Arch Linux based software stack initially targeting their handheld game console...
A month ago there was the Fedora 37 change proposal for Fedora to officially support the Raspberry Pi 4, including its accelerated Broadcom graphics and to better advertise Fedora for the Raspberry Pi. The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) has now signed off on this "official" support for the Raspberry Pi 4...
Last month I ran a number of GCC 12 compiler optimization benchmarks for this latest-stable compiler atop an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X workstation. Those tests included various optimization levels as well as link-time optimizations (LTO). Some Phoronix Premium supporters also requested to see some fresh GCC 12 Profile Guided Optimization (PGO) benchmarks, so here in this article are those PGO benchmark results...
DXVK 1.10.3 has been released as the newest update for an upcoming Proton release, which powers Steam Play for allowing Windows games to run often very well under Linux...
Performance tuning work to the Linux kernel's Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) subsystem will pay off for embedded systems and other SPI-heavy platforms with Linux 6.0...
The CXL Consortium today announced the Compute Express Link 3.0 specification that doubles the data rate of CXL 2.0 to 64 GT/s while introducing no added latency...
Back in May was a proposal by Canonical desktop software engineer Jeremy Bicha to use the new GNOME Console as the default terminal application in Ubuntu 22.10, replacing the GNOME Terminal. That default change hasn't happened yet but some necessary improvements have now been made to Ubuntu Kinetic's gnome-console package ahead of that possible shift...
Miguel Ojeda has posted the newest patch series implementing the Rust programming language infrastructure and initial sample code for the Linux kernel...
Some of the newest Linux patches out of AMD for new processors are implementing support for some recently-documented Quality of Service extensions: L3SBE and BMEC...
As part of getting PREEMPT_RT support ready to be mainlined at long last for real-time kernel builds, a number of Linux 6.0 (nee 5.20) pull requests have revolved around additional RT preparatory changes. With the printk changes for Linux 6.0, the console drivers will now be skipped in RT mode...
During the month of June the Steam on Linux usage hit a multi-year high point of 1.18% while for July there is another tick upwards thanks to the continued interest in Linux gaming around the Steam Deck...
DECnet as a set of networking protocols from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) that date back to 1975 are expected to be finally removed from the Linux kernel. The DECnet protocols have long been obsolete, the Linux kernel implementation has been orphaned for more than one decade, and is code that belongs more in a history museum than the mainline kernel...
IO_uring continues to be one of the greatest Linux kernel innovations in recent years and with the in-development Linux 6.0 kernel is getting even better along with some nice block updates and other storage-related enhancements...
Ingo Molnar today submitted the main set of kernel scheduler updates for the in-development Linux 6.0 (nee 5.20). The scheduler updates contain some notable changes that will be interesting to benchmark in the days ahead...
Sven Peter who has worked a lot on various aspects of Apple Silicon enablement for Linux today posted the patches enabling Apple Bluetooth driver support for Apple Silicon M1/M2 hardware and also for some Apple x86 Macs...
Merged in early July to Mesa 22.2 was the rewritten R600g NIR back-end for improving older AMD Radeon HD 5000/6000 series graphics cards on Linux with this open-source OpenGL driver. That NIR code was limited to "newer" Radeon GPUs supported by the R600g driver while now it's been extended for supporting pre-Evergreen GPUs too...
Released on Sunday was Unvanquished 0.53 Beta as the latest in a long string of betas for this one of the most promising open-source first person shooter (FPS) games...
In addition to being busy leading WireGuard, Jason Donenfeld continues working heavily on the Linux kernel's random number generator (RNG) code. For Linux 6.0, a number of RNG improvements are ready...
Following yesterday's release of Linux 5.19 stable the FSFLA folks maintaining the GNU Linux-libre kernel released their downstream version that strips out support for loading proprietary kernel modules as well as stripping out drivers/support that requires non-free/closed-source microcode/firmware files...
In case you missed it in yesterday's Linux 5.19 announcement and to avoid reader questions/confusion in the days ahead, just making it loud and clear here: what was referred to as the Linux 5.20 kernel in development will most likely be called Linux 6.0...
July was another exciting month for Linux and open-source software fans from being the first to report on the news of systemd creator Lennart Poettering joining Microsoft, Linux 5.19 getting wrapped up, popularity of the Rust programming language continues to climb, lots of open-source graphics driver news, and much more...
Linus Torvalds just released Linux 5.19 as stable for the newest version of the Linux kernel. He also mentioned this is the first time he released the new Linux kernel from an ARM64 laptop in the form of an Apple MacBook running an AArch64 Apple M2 SoC...
OpenRazer as the independent open-source project providing Linux drivers and user-space daemon for Razer peripherals is out with its newest feature release...
At DebConf22 in Kosovo that recently wrapped up, Lenovo's Mark Pearson who leads the company's Linux initiatives talked in-person about their 2022 platform support for Linux and their progress over the past year. In 2022 they expect 30+ platforms with Linux support...
Ahead of the Linux 5.19 stable kernel being launched later today, a few pull requests have already begun queuing for the Linux 5.20 merge window. Among those early pulls are the hardware monitoring "HWMON" subsystem updates...
You may recall a month ago the lone developer still working on open-source VIA x86 graphics support for Linux hoped to finally mainline this "OpenChrome" DRM/KMS driver for the Linux 5.20 cycle. Well, Linux 5.19 is being released today and that opens up the Linux 5.20 merge window but still the OpenChrome DRM driver isn't ready to go yet...