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Updated 2025-07-11 07:45
16-Core HoneyComb LX2K ARM Workstation Looks To Offer A Decent Performance Oomph
When it comes to ARM-powered workstation boards there hasn't been a whole lot to get excited about with the likes of the Socionext 96Boards Developerbox being quite expensive and not yielding good performance or featureful boards compared to alternative Intel/AMD/POWER workstation/enthusiast boards. One of the more promising ARM workstation boards we have been following is the HoneyComb LX2K (formerly the "ClearFog" board) and it's looking like it could end up being a decent offering in this space...
Linux 5.4 To Fix Many Newer 64-bit Windows Games On Wine / Steam Play
A kernel patch from CodeWeavers is landing in the Linux 5.4 kernel and will help some 64-bit Windows games run nicely under Wine (and the likes of CrossOver / Valve's Proton) with newer Intel and AMD systems...
GNU Linux-libre 5.3 Continues Deblobbing & Dealing With Firmware Trickery
Hot off last night's Linux 5.3 release, the GNU folks have this morning released GNU Linux-libre 5.3-gnu as their downstream flavor of the kernel that strips out support for loading proprietary kernel modules and the ability to load binary-only microcode/firmware files, among other steps for aiming at a pure free software kernel...
Radeon RADV Vulkan Driver Tackling NGG Stream-Out
One of the areas the RadeonSI OpenGL and RADV/AMDVLK Vulkan drivers have had a challenging time promptly support with AMD Navi GPUs has been the NGG (Next-Gen Geometry) functionality but it's slowly getting worked out...
New WireGuard Snapshot Offers Better Compatibility With Distributions/Kernels
WireGuard sadly isn't slated for the now-open Linux 5.4 merge window, but lead developer Jason Donenfeld has put out a new development snapshot of this open-source secure VPN tunnel...
Google's FS-VERITY File Authentication Called For Inclusion In Linux 5.4 Kernel
Linux kernel engineer Eric Biggers of Google has sent in a pull request adding FS-VERITY support to the Linux 5.4 but it remains to be seen if Linus Torvalds is content with pulling the code at this stage...
The State Of Qt Quick Vulkan Support With Qt 5.14
Of the exciting changes so far for Qt 5.14, one of the big ticket items on the path to Qt 6 is the experimental implementation of Qt's new graphics API independent scenegraph renderer. Rather than being limited to OpenGL, Qt 5.14+ can target Vulkan, Direct3D 11, and even Apple's Metal API for rendering...
Linux 5.4 Brings Working Temperature Reporting For AMD Ryzen 3000 Series CPUs
One of the early pull requests for the just-opened Linux 5.4 kernel merge window is the hardware monitoring "hwmon" subsystem changes. This time around the notable change is CPU temperature reporting for Ryzen 3000 series processors...
Linux 5.3 Kernel Released With AMD Navi Support, Intel Speed Select & More
Linus Torvalds just went ahead and released the Linux 5.3 kernel as stable while now opening the Linux 5.4 merge window...
Intel's Gallium3D Driver Is Running Much Faster Than Their Current OpenGL Linux Driver With Mesa 19.3
Last month I did some fresh benchmarks of Intel's new open-source OpenGL Linux driver with Mesa 19.2 and those results were looking good as tested with a Core i9 9900K. Since then, more Intel Gallium3D driver improvements have landed for what will become Mesa 19.3 next quarter. In taking another look at their former/current and new OpenGL drivers, here are fresh benchmarks of the latest code using a Core i7 8700K desktop as well as a Core i7 8550U Dell XPS laptop.
Linux 5.4 Cycle To Begin With exFAT Driver, EPYC Improvements & New GPU Support
The Linux 5.3 kernel is expected to be released as stable today and that will mark the opening of the two-week Linux 5.4 merge window. Here is a look ahead at some of the material expected to make it into this next version of the Linux kernel that will also be the last major stable release of 2019...
KDE's KWin Options UI Improved, Various Other Enhancements During Akademy Week
KDE's annual Akademy developer conference took place this past week in Milan, Italy. But even with that in-person event the development of the KDE desktop environment didn't let up in landing new improvements...
Mesa Vulkan Drivers Now Tracking Game Engine/Version For Handling More Workarounds
Currently the Mesa OpenGL/Vulkan drivers have relied upon matching executable names for applying game/application-specific workarounds. But with Vulkan as part of the instance creation information and VkApplicationInfo it's possible to optionally advertise the rendering engine and version in use. The Mesa Vulkan drivers are now making use of that information to allow for more uniform workarounds...
How Google's Android Maintains A Stable Linux Kernel ABI
While the Linux kernel is well known for not offering a stable API/ABI, Google and other enterprise Linux distribution vendors tend to aim at providing their own stable ABI for the lifespan of their products. Google engineers talked in Portugal this week at Linux Plumbers Conference 2019 about some of their means to maintaining a stable API/ABI for Android's Linux kernel...
Fedora Is Beginning To Spin Workstation & Live Images For POWER
If you are running the likes of the Raptor Blackbird for a POWER open-source desktop and wanting to run Fedora on it, currently you need to use the Fedora "server" CLI installer and from there install the desired packages for a desktop. But moving forward, Fedora is beginning to spin Workstation and Live images for PPC64LE...
Intel Continues Investing In Execute-Only Memory Support For The Linux Kernel
One of the steps Intel's open-source developers continue working on for Linux is supporting "execute only memory" that will already work with some of today's processors and serve as another defense for bettering the security of systems particularly in a virtualized environment...
An Alternative exFAT Linux File-System Driver Based On Samsung's sdFAT
While the upcoming Linux 5.4 kernel cycle is finally bringing a driver for Microsoft exFAT file-system read/write support, it's dated on an old Samsung code drop that has seen little public work over the years. Since queued for staging-next, there has been a big uptick in clean-ups and other activity, but there also exists another alternative out-of-tree exFAT Linux driver...
An Improved Linux MEMSET Is Being Tackled For Possibly Better Performance
Borislav Petkov has taken to improve the Linux kernel's memset function with it being an area previously criticzed by Linus Torvalds and other prominent developers...
Clear Linux Is Being Used Within Some Automobiles
Intel's speedy Clear Linux distribution could be running under the hood of your car...
The Linux Kernel Is Preparing To Enable 5-Level Paging By Default
While Intel CPUs aren't shipping with 5-level paging support, they are expected to be soon and distribution kernels are preparing to enable the kernel's functionality for this feature to extend the addressable memory supported. With that, the mainline kernel is also looking at flipping on 5-level paging by default for its default kernel configuration...
KDE Frameworks 5.62 Released With KWayland Additions & Other Improvements
KDE Frameworks 5.62 is out today as the latest monthly update to this collection of KDE libraries complementing the Qt5 tool-kit offerings...
GNOME Shell + Mutter Patches Pending For Wayland Fullscreen Compositing Bypass
There's an exciting patch set to GNOME Shell and Mutter now pending for finally wiring up the full-screen unredirected display / full-screen bypass compositing for helping the performance of full-screen games in particular on Wayland...
Wine-Staging 4.16 Brings Rendering Fix For A Number Of Direct3D Games
Based off yesterday's release of Wine 4.16, the Wine-Staging 4.16 update out today is more prominent with a number of new patches introduced to this experimental/testing flavor of Wine for running Windows games/applications on Linux...
Slax 9.11 Released While Re-Base To Debian 10 Is In Development
For fans of the lightweight Slax Linux distribution, version 9.11 is now available and is re-based against upstream Debian 9.11 for this operating system that was resurrected two years ago...
Kernel Address Space Isolation Still Baking To Limit Data Leaks From Foreshadow & Co
In addition to the work being led by DigitalOcean on core scheduling to make Hyper Threading safer in light of security vulnerabilities, IBM and Oracle engineers continue working on Kernel Address Space Isolation to help prevent data leaks during attacks...
Radeon ROCm 2.7.2 Released
Radeon ROCm 2.7.2 is now available as the newest update to AMD's open-source GPU compute stack for Linux systems...
Proton 4.11-4 Released With Updated DXVK, Improved PS4 Controller Handling
In time for any weekend gaming, Valve's team maintaining their Proton downstream of Wine for powering Steam Play to run Windows games on Linux has issued their v4.11-4 update...
Wine 4.16 Bringing Better Compatibility With Windows Debuggers
Wine 4.16 is out as the newest bi-weekly development snapshot leading up to the Wine 5.0 release in just a few more months...
The Sandy Bridge Core i7 3960X Benchmarked Against Today's Six-Core / 12 Thread AMD/Intel CPUs
Complementing our recent AMD Ryzen 5 3600X Linux benchmarking, with recently having out the Intel Core i7 3960X Sandy Bridge Extreme Edition, here are benchmarks showing that previous $999 USD six-core / twelve-thread processor compared to today's Ryzen 5 3600X (and previous-generation Ryzen 5 2600X) as well as the Core i7 8700K.
Linux 5.4 Bringing Support For Lenovo's "PrivacyGuard" On Newer ThinkPads
Newer high-end Lenovo ThinkPad laptops feature an option called "PrivacyGuard" for restricting the usable vertical and horizontal viewing angles of the LCD display, similar to what has been achievable previously using film covers and the like. With Linux 5.4 this feature will be supported by the kernel if concerned about others looking over your shoulders at your screen, etc...
Qt 5.14 Is Bringing Significantly Better HiDPI Support
Besides KDE seeing its own HiDPI improvements like fractional scaling on Wayland recently landing, the Qt5 tool-kit is seeing more HiDPI improvements on its end too...
Fwupd 1.3.1 Released With GNOME Firmware 3.34
Richard Hughes has released GNOME Firmware 3.34, his new project formerly known as the GNOME Firmware Update as an alternative interface outside of GNOME Software for managing firmware updates on Linux. Additionally, Fwupd 1.3.1 is out with the newest firmware updating bits...
Kernel Lockdown Feature Will Try To Land For Linux 5.4
After going through 40+ rounds of revisions and review, the Linux kernel "LOCKDOWN" feature might finally make it into the Linux 5.4 mainline kernel...
DigitalOcean Continues Working On Linux Core Scheduling To Make HT/SMT Safer
With Hyper Threading continuing to look increasingly unsafe in data centers / shared computing environments in light of all the speculative execution vulnerabilities exposed thus far particularly with L1TF and MDS having no SMT-secure mitigation, DigitalOcean continues working on their Linux kernel "core scheduling" patches so they can still make use of HT/SMT in a sane and safe manner...
Support Is Being Worked On For Root File-System Support Over SMB Protocol
A Phoronix reader pointed out recent patches by a SUSE engineer working on support for mounting root file-systems over SMB (Samba)...
Linux 5.4 Pull Requests Begin With AMD EPYC Rome EDAC Support, 64-Bit ARM Updates
Linux 5.3 isn't being released until this weekend after being delayed by one week, but already there have been a few early pull requests submitted for the to-be-opened Linux 5.4 merge window...
Intel's H.265 Encoder SVT-HEVC 1.4.1 Released With Optimizations & More
While not quite as exciting as the big performance boost found with SVT-VP9 for AVX2 CPUs a few days ago, Intel's Scalable Video Technology team has released SVT-HEVC 1.4.1 as their newest feature release to this open-source H.265/HEVC video encoder...
MariaDB 10.4 + PHP 7.4 Slated For Fedora 32
This shouldn't come as much surprise, but the upcoming Fedora 32 will offer the latest "L.A.M.P." stack components...
Intel Resurrecting FSGSBASE Support For Linux To Help With Performance
Going on for months had been work by Intel Linux developers on supporting the FSGSBASE instruction for helping Intel CPU performance going back to Ivybridge where this instruction set extension was first introduced. The FSGSBASE support was queued for the Linux 5.3 kernel but was reverted due to "serious bugs" in the implementation. Intel has now published a revised version of this support...
GNOME 3.34 Released With Its Many Performance Improvements & Better Wayland Support
Red Hat developer Matthias Clasen has just announced the release of GNOME 3.34 as this widely anticipated update to the GNOME 3 desktop environment...
AMDGPU Driver Looking To Re-Enable Performance-Boosting "Bulk Moves" Functionality
AMD developers are looking at finally re-enabling the LRU bulk moves functionality in their AMDGPU Linux kernel graphics driver that has the ability to help with performance...
AMD/Intel Benchmarks: Building The Mainline Linux x86_64 Kernel With LLVM Clang
With the upcoming LLVM Clang 9.0 compiler release there is an amazing achievement more than a decade in the making... The mainline Clang compiler can finally build the mainline Linux x86_64 kernel. The AArch64 state has been in better shape in recent years with multiple Arm vendors using Clang as their default compiler including to build the Linux kernel, but finally in 2019 the mainline Clang can build mainline Linux x86_64. There are a few caveats, but in this article is my experience in doing so with LLVM Clang and the Linux 5.3 kernel as well as running some preliminary benchmarks on AMD and Intel hardware.
GNOME Shell Picks Up Performance Improvements For Extensions
While days too late for squeezing into GNOME 3.34.0, the GNOME Shell has landed a one year old merge request providing various fixes and performance improvements to its extension system...
Mesa 19.2-RC3 Released While Final Release Expected Around Month's End
The third release candidate of the belated Mesa 19.2 is now available while a fourth and likely final RC is expected next week while the stable release of this quarterly Mesa3D update should be out at month's end...
Intel Tightens Up Its AVX-512 Behavior For The LLVM Clang 10 Compiler
Intel engineer Craig Topper who frequently contributes the new Intel CPU support to LLVM/Clang has made an AVX-512 behavioral change for next spring's LLVM Clang 10 release...
Better Flatpak Support For Firefox Appears To Be Coming
One of the best and most practical use-cases for sandboxed Linux apps via Flatpak or Snaps is certainly web browsers. There has been unofficial Firefox Flatpaks offered to this point but it's looking like better support for a Flatpak'ed Firefox could be coming down the pipe soon...
Manjaro 18.1 Released With Choice Of Office Suite
Manjaro 18.1 "Juhraya" is now available as the newest six-month feature release to this Arch Linux based operating system...
NVIDIA 430.50 Linux Driver Brings Color Fix For Pre-Turing GPUs
While the NVIDIA 435 series is now stable, for those sticking to the previous NVIDIA 430 driver series that is their current "long-lived" driver branch, a new version is available...
NVIDIA's Latest Open-Source Project Is Their NVDLA Deep Learning Compiler
Two years ago NVIDIA announced the NVDLA as an open-source hardware project with this "NVIDIA Deep Learning Accelerator" to be a free and open architecture for inference accelerators. NVIDIA has now expanded the open-source software ecosystem around NVDLA...
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Benchmarks On 11 Linux Distributions
Now that BIOS updates over the past month have resolved the early boot issue with Ryzen 3000 processors and thus the new AMD CPUs playing nicely with modern Linux distributions, here is the long-awaited benchmark comparison of the Ryzen 9 3900X + X570 system benchmarked across an array of different Linux distributions... In fact, 11 Linux OS releases in total were tested on this high-end 12-core / 24-thread desktop processor.
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