In addition to GNOME's Mutter compositor removing its X11 back-end support to focus exclusively on Wayland while keeping around XWayland client support, another notable GNOME change this week was the GTK toolkit adding a "reduced motion" accessibility option...
It's been a while since having anything major to talk about with the NILFS2 file-system but it looks like that could be changing. NILFS2 as a reminder is a log-structured file-system with continuous snapshotting with its NILFS predecessor having been in the mainline kernel for two decades since the mid Linux 2.6 days...
It has been two years already since the Linux Containers project forked Canonical's LXD project as Incus. Now joining the Incus family is IncusOS as an immutable Linux OS built atop a Debian base with OpenZFS file-system support and designed around running containers with Incus...
Posted last month were new Linux kernel scheduler-related patches rewriting the MM CID management code. The main takeaway for end-users from this set of 19 Linux kernel patches from an Intel engineer was seeing 14~18% improvement in a PostgreSQL database benchmark but that more benchmarks were needed. Curiosity got the best of me and I recently tested these patches on an AMD EPYC server to seeing some very enticing results for this in-development code.
DXVK is an important piece of Steam Play (Proton) that over time expanded to supporting Direct3D 9 / 10 / 11 and even D3D8 too. Meanwhile VKD3D-Proton delivers Direct3D 12 atop Vulkan. Now there is a fork of the DXVK project working to bring Direct3D 7 support atop Vulkan...
New code likely to be submitted for the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel would introduce ML-DSA/Dilithium post-quantum cryptography to be initially used for dealing with kernel module signing...
A new driver planned to be sent to the mainline Linux kernel for the upcoming Linux 6.19 merge window is yet another new contribution from Microsoft...
Vulkan 1.4.332 is out today as the latest weekly update to this high performance graphics and compute API specification. Besides a number of documentation clarifications/corrections, there is one new extension this week in the name of AI / machine learning...
Merged overnight to Mesa 26.0-devel and likely to be back-ported for the upcoming Mesa 25.3 release are a few fixes around high dynamic range (HDR) support within the common Vulkan windowing system integration (WSI) / display code...
Last week Canonical announced Ubuntu "architecture variants" with initially supporting "amd64v3" optimized packages built using the x86_64-v3 micro-architecture feature level. For this initial debut in the Ubuntu 25.10 archive an initial subset of packages are built using that higher feature level that can assume AVX/AVX2 and other more recent CPU ISA additions. More details on that and some initial desktop benchmarks can be found within the Ubuntu 25.10 amd64v3 Benchmarks article. Complementing that are some Ubuntu Server 25.10 benchmarks carried out on an AMD EPYC "Turin" server of the base amd64 packages versus amd64v3...
Just days after the Archinstall 3.0.12 release for this text-based Arch Linux installer, Archinstall 3.0.13 is now available to deliver a new feature. That new feature is a text-based interface for being able to connect to a WiFi network within Archinstall...
With Intel having sunset Clear Linux, when it comes to aggressive out-of-the-box Linux performance there is the Arch Linux based CachyOS as the leading contender. Given the recent releases of Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora Workstation 43, if you are curious about the out-of-the-box performance here are some fresh benchmarks of all three using the Framework Desktop.
Introduced back in August of 2024 with Vulkan 1.3.294 was VK_KHR_pipeline_binary as a pipeline binary extension to retrieve binary data associated with individual pipelines. The focus of this is to bypass the Vulkan pipeline caching mechanism and so applications can manage caches themselves. Finally today for Mesa 26.0-devel the Intel "ANV" open-source Vulkan driver has enabled this extension...
CodeWeavers announced this morning a new CrossOver Preview that includes Linux ARM64 support for the first time. This commercial software built atop Wine is now comfortable with the state of running Windows x86/x64 apps on Linux ARM64 and even the ability ro enjoy many Windows games on ARM64 Linux devices like the System76 Thelio Astra...
Cloudflare announced today they have open-sourced the code to Tokio-Quiche as their async QUIC library that combines their previously-open-sourced Quiche QUIC implementation with Rust's Tokio async runtime...
Last week Mesa 26.0-devel enabled the ACO back-end by default within the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver for all supported Radeon graphics cards by this open-source Linux driver. This move was done in the name of better performance, faster shader compilation times, and ACO being all-around better than the AMDGPU LLVM back-end these days for both OpenGL and Vulkan use. It was also noted that RadeonSI has "slightly better" viewperf performance with NIR+ACO than using the AMDGPU LLVM back-end. Curious about that SPECViewPerf impact, here are some benchmarks with the recently released AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700 graphics card...
Adding to the array of software projects and specifications under the FreeDesktop.org umbrella, the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard "FHS" has been adopted by these desktop-focused open-source developers...
Merged yesterday to the mainline Linux 6.18 development kernel were the latest round of x86 platform driver fixes. Mostly some small fixes but standing out is electronic privacy screen hotkey support for some Dell laptops...
NVIDIA engineers continue working a lot on the open-source and upstream Nova driver for the Linux kernel. This modern, Rust-written open-source NVIDIA driver is still taking shape as an alternative to NVIDIA's official downstream open-source driver and the aging and reverse-engineered Nouveau driver. Out on the horizon for Nova is Hopper and Blackwell GPU support...
FEX 2511 is out today for this open-source emulator akin to Apple's Rosetta that allows running x86/x86+64 applications on ARM64. But in the case of FEX, for ARM64 Linux devices and akin to other open-source projects like Box64...
Following Intel's disclosure less than one month ago of Crescent Island as a upcoming Xe3P graphics card with 160GB of vRAM focused on enterprise-level AI inferencing, Intel's open-source Linux graphics driver engineers have been quick to begin plumbing the Xe kernel graphics driver for this next-generation graphics card...
A new feature of Intel Xeon 6 "Birch Stream" platforms is the "Latency Optimized Mode" performance setting. The Intel Latency Optimized Mode will keep the uncore clock frequencies higher for more consistent performance but at the cost of increased power use. For those wondering about the performance and power impact, here are some comparison benchmarks of engaging this Latency Optimized Mode with Intel Xeon 6980P "Granite Rapids" server processors.
In mid-2024, Bavarian PC vendor TUXEDO Computers began teasing a Snapdragon X Elite powered Linux laptop with hopes of having it available by Christmas 2024. As we approach Christmas 2025, there still are no immediate signs of this new ARM-based TUXEDO laptop soon shipping but there are signs of life still with new Linux kernel patches posted for enabling this Snapdragon X Elite laptop...
Days after the Linux Vendor Firmware Service celebrated 135 million firmware downloads, a new version of the Fwupd utility is now available for firmware updating systems and peripherals under Linux...
Sent out today to DRM-Next was the latest weekly batch of drm-misc-next patches for enhancing the various smaller Direct Rendering Manager drivers within the kernel. Included with this week's update is supporting some additional Mali and Vivante hardware as well as continuing to enhance the in-kernel accelerator "accel" drivers...
The merge to GNOME Mutter has finally happened that "completely drops" the X11 back-end to make GNOME strictly focused on Wayland-based environments...
Over the past few months the open-source firmware consulting firm 3mdeb has been porting Coreboot and AMD's new openSIL silicon initialization library to the Gigabyte MZ33-AR1. The Gigabyte MZ33-AR1 is a broadly available motherboard that supports the latest-generation AMD EPYC 9005 "Turin" server processors. 3mdeb has been fairly successful in their quest and an early demonstrator for openSIL...
Given this week's release of Flatpak 1.17 for app sandboxing, open-source developer Sebastian Wick published a blog post on Tuesday around the latest Flatpak developments and a look ahead at some of the feature development planned. Arguably most significant of that is the plans for systemd-appd...
AMD software engineers continue making interesting contributions to the LLVM compiler stack around SPIR-V as the IR used by Vulkan and other Khronos APIs...
Nearly one year ago Microsoft announced the HBv5 virtual machines powered by a custom-designed AMD 4th Gen EPYC processor with high bandwidth memory (HBM3). Finally today the Azure HBv5 series is reaching general availability for those with memory-intensive HPC applications and other workloads. Microsoft kindly provided Phoronix with HBv5 access in advance to begin testing these new VMs with the AMD EPYC 9V64H CPUs featuring HBM memory, so here are some of the first independent benchmarks of these exciting processors powering Azure's new HPC VM instances.
The Rust Foundation announced today the creation of the Rust Foundation Maintainers Fund as a new means of providing consistent, transparent, and long-term support for developers that make the Rust programming language possible...
Going all the way back to early 2024, Intel Linux engineers have been working on supporting an Adaptive Sharpening Filter new to Lunar Lake. While Lunar Lake later launched in September 2024, the Linux patches for this feature remained under review and discussion. Besides the Intel driver implementation itself for Lunar Lake and newer, it also ushers in a new DRM sharpness property to help standardize such functionality for user-space that could be used by other kernel graphics drivers. Finally with the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel, this Intel Content Adaptive Sharpness Filter "CASF" feature is being introduced to the mainline kernel...
The Open Container Initiative unveiled today the OCI Runtime Specification v1.3 update for this standard around operating system process and application containers. This runtime specification continues to evolve for outlining the configuration, execution environment, and lifecycle of a container. Notable with the v1.3 revision is introducing official FreeBSD support...
The ARMEL and MIPS64EL architectures have been dropped from Debian unstable and experimental. This is the end of the road for these aging ARM and MIPS targets in the Debian world...
AMD's RDSEED issue with Zen 5 processors that is in the process of being addressed with microcode/BIOS updates is in the interim causing headaches for Arch Linux powered CachyOS that provides optimized binaries for these latest Ryzen processors...
Wild 0.7 released on Monday as the newest feature release for this very fast linker for Linux systems competing with Mold on x86_64 / ARM64 / RISC-V devices...
Back in August was the announcement of LLM-Scaler as part of Project Battlematrix. LLM-Scaler is a new Intel software project to provide optimized AI inference capabilities on Intel graphics hardware. A new beta release of LLM-Scaler "llm-scaler-vllm" is now available with expanded LLM model coverage...
The libinput input handling library for the Linux desktop on both Wayland and X.Org based systems is rolling out Lua plug-in support. Out today is libinput 1.30-rc1 with the initial infrastructure for supporting plug-ins written in the Lua scripting language...
Last month Intel's open-source Linux software engineers began sending out Xe3P_LPD display support in preparation for display capabilities with Nova Lake. Now being built out atop that is further functionality with the most recent talking point being DisplayPort 2.1 Advanced Link Power Management (ALPM)...
The Rust-based Redox OS open-source operating system project is out with its October 2025 status report. Most notable is this Rust-based OS now having the Rust-based Servo web engine running... Albeit in extremely crude form at the moment...
Queued up in a TIP branch ahead of the Linux 6.19 merge window opening in about one month's time is optimizing the Restartable Sequences "RSEQ" code for its exit to user-space code path...
The first test release of the Git 2.52 distributed revision control system is now available. As has been a common trend, Git 2.52 is making further preparations in anticipation of the big Git 3.0 milestone...
Flatpak 1.17 is out today as the newest feature release for this Linux app sandboxing/distribution tech. Flatpak 1.17 brings a number of exciting new features...
Last week the AMD Radeon PRO R9700 officially began shipping for that new AI-minded workstation/professional graphics card built on RDNA4 and packing 32GB of RAM to accommodate large language models (LLMs) especially with multi-GPU configurations. While the focus of the product has been all about AI workloads, you may be wondering about the graphics capabilities of the Radeon AI PRO R9700 given the lack of any other "Radeon PRO 9000" series product at this point. In today's testing is a look at the workstation graphics capabilities for the AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700.
With the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver now defaulting to the ACO compiler back-end for all Radeon GPUs rather than the conventional AMDGPU LLVM shader compiler back-end, I ran some quick comparison benchmarks on AMD Ryzen AI Max+ "Strix Halo" with Radeon 8060S Graphics for comparison...
A few weeks back I reported on Linux kernel patches surfacing for implementing Microsoft's ACPI Fan Extensions. This should help some HP devices and hardware from other OEMs for obtaining fan information reporting under Linux. The good news now is that the patches should be part of the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel cycle...
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