Over the past two months I have been publishing a number of fresh benchmarks of the Intel Xeon 6980P "Granite Rapids" flagship processor performance under Linux. All of those new Xeon 6900 series benchmarks on Phoronix have been from the Giga Computing R284-A92-AAL1 2U rack server that has proven to be a very robust and reliable server platform.
Announced last month was the NTFSPLUS driver as a new NTFS file-system driver for the Linux kernel with better write performance and more features compared to the existing NTFS options. A second iteration of that driver was recently queued into "ntfs-next" raising prospects that this NTFSPLUS driver could soon attempt to land in the mainline Linux kernel...
While TUXEDO Computers recently ended their efforts for a Snapdragon X Elite Linux laptop, their Linux Intel/AMD laptop efforts continue going well and recently they have been posting patches working to enhance the upstream kernel support for those x86_64 devices...
Following approval of the /nix top-level directory with Fedora Linux, the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) has additionally signed off on allowing the Nix package tool to appear in the Fedora 44 repository...
A Huawei engineer sent out a proposed driver for the Linux kernel to enable "cache lockdwon" behavior for HiSilicon ARM64 processors for greater control over the processor's L3 cache usage...
For those continuing to make use of the X.Org Server, a new point release is now available in the 21.1 series. While most often X.Org Server stable releases these days are driven by shipping new security fixes, the X.Org Server 21.1.21 release is to fix several regressions introduced for various functional issues...
Intel software engineers continue to be hard at work on LLM-Scaler as their solution for running vLLM on Intel GPUs in a Docker containerized environment. A new beta release of LLM-Scaler built around vLLM was released overnight with support for running more large language models...
Red Hat's leading Linux input expert Peter Hutterer released libinput 1.30 today as the newest update to this input handling library used on both X.Org and Wayland desktops...
The end of 2025 is quickly approaching and while there are the various end of year holidays, you can still expect to find new and original content on Phoronix each and every single day of the year just as it's been for more than a decade of the now 21-year-old Phoronix.com. The last day without any new content on Phoronix was all the way back in May of 2012. That's due to my passion for Linux hardware and open-source, paired in more recent years with the more grueling environment to make ends meet with the ever increasing state of the web advertising industry, rampant ad-block use, and related challenges for web publishers. If you would like to show your support for Phoronix's Linux hardware content over the past two decades, this week is the "Cyber Week" / "Black Friday" sale to go ad-free, multi-page-articles on a single page, and other benefits at a reduced rate...
With Advanced Performance Extensions (APX) on upcoming Intel processors doubling the number of general purpose registers (GPRs) among other advantages, Intel engineers are beginning to think of possible kernel uses for the extra registers...
Alex Gaynor recently announced he is formally stepping down as one of the maintainers of the Rust for Linux kernel code with the removal patch now queued for merging in Linux 6.19...
Building off the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.1 from two weeks ago, AlmaLinux 10.1 is now available in GA form for this community-oriented RHEL10 downstream. Making AlmaLinux 10.1 all the more interesting is the project's decision to promote Btrfs file-system support...
A year and a half after the Linux kernel patches were first posted, SDCIAE that is found with AMD Zen 5 server processors is set to finally be supported by the mainline kernel come Linux 6.19...
The most exciting hardware to arrive this month in the Phoronix lab is Dell having sent over two of their new Dell Pro Max with GB10 systems. The Dell Pro Max with GB10 is their build-out around NVIDIA's GB10 superchip with ten Cortex-X925 CPU cores and ten Cortex-A725 cores plus the GB10 Blackwell GPU. With 128GB of LPDDR5X memory and 2TB or 4TB SSD by default all within the small chassis, this is an interesting workstation for AI developers.
A set of patches implementing async I/O IOCB_NOWAIT support for the loop block device is heading to the Linux 6.19 kernel with some performance improvements that will make loop block device users "wow"...
The Raspberry Pi Imager application that makes it easy to generate install media / OS image flashing for different Raspberry Pi devices is out with a big feature update...
The upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel cycle is set to introduce initial support for Xe3P graphics to be found initially with Nova Lake processors. While that initial support is landing for Linux 6.19, other extra Xe3P features are still to be added to the open-source kernel driver over coming release cycles. One of those extra features being currently tackled is a new element with Xe3P_LPD: the ability to use the system cache for FBC...
Canonical and AMI announced a partnership today so that there will be an Ubuntu Netboot option added within AMI's UEFI firmware to allow booting to the Ubuntu installer without the need for even having any install media...
Since the 2022 release of memtest86+ 6.0 as a rewrite of this long-used RAM testing utility, this open-source software has continued advancing nicely after a decade hiatus. Released on Sunday night was memtest86+ 8.0 as the latest iteration of this popular RAM tester for enthusiasts...
Linux 6.18-rc7 just arrived in the Git tree as the newest weekly test build leading up to Linux 6.18 stable hopefully debuting next Sunday, 30 November...
Wayland Protocols 1.46 released this evening with new experimental protocols for text improvements as well as refinements to the color management protocol for HDR...
AWS engineers have been working on Linux kernel improvements to KVM's VMX code for enhancing the unmanaged guest memory when dealing with nested virtual machines. The improved code addresses some correctness issues as well as delivering wild performance improvements within a synthetic benchmark...
Merged this week to the GNU C Library "glibc" code is dropping the ldbl-96 FMA implementation from this library as in doing so they found a 4x improvement to throughput and latency on AMD Zen 3 hardware...
Back in 2022 was the surprising decision by Google that they were going to deprecate JPEG-XL image support in Chrome. By the end of 2022 they went ahead and removed JPEG-XL support from Chrome/Chromium to the frustration of many web developers and end-users interested in this image format. Now though as we get ready to roll into 2026, Google engineers are looking at bringing back JPEG-XL support to the Chrome web browser...
Joining Ada, C/C++, COBOL, D, Fortran, Go, Modula-2, Objective-C/Objective-C++ and Rust is now another programming language expected to be added for the GCC 16 compiler release due out in the new year...
An interesting anecdote from this week's batch of RISC-V fixes for the Linux 6.18 kernel exposed that the MIPS RISC-V/JEDEC vendor ID was wrong for code merged at the start of the kernel cycle. The testing hadn't caught it either as the QEMU emulation also ended up inadvertently using the wrong vendor ID too...
FreeBSD 15.0 is working toward its stable release in early December. As part of reaching that major release, FreeBSD 15.0-RC3 released today as what may be the final release candidate before FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE...
Yesterday TUXEDO Computers cancelled their Snapdragon X Elite Linux laptop plans. In their announcement discontinuing work on this X1E Linux laptop, they said they would still upstream the Device Tree support to the mainline Linux kernel. Indeed they posted a new revision of their DT patches on Friday for the Linux kernel, but there is diminishing outlook that they will be accepted upstream for this cancelled product...
More features continue piling on for the KDE Plasma 6.6 desktop, including an important performance fix this week for those running displays with a higher than 60Hz refresh rate...
Since the start of the new year, there have been patches being posted for proposing a new GCC compiler front-end for the half-century old Algol 68 programming language. Oracle engineer Jose Marchesi has been leading the Algol 68 effort for GCC and this weekend posted a new revision of the patches, which now includes a working modules system implementation...
Sent out today were a set of input subsystem fixes for the near-final Linux 6.18 kernel. A bit of a notable addition via this "fixes" pull is getting both touchscreens working on the AYANEO Flip DS, a dual-screen gaming handheld device that can be loaded up with Linux...
Just last week GNOME's Nautilus file manager "GNOME Files" made headlines for finally supporting Ctrl+INsert and Shift+Insert while this week there is more activity worth pointing out. Nautilus in GNOME 50 will be loading thumbnail images much faster than in prior versions...
NVIDIA today issued the 580.94.11 driver release as their newest Vulkan beta driver for Linux customers. Most notable with this beta driver update is adding VK_EXT_hdr_metadata support...
In addition to Valve contributing to the open-source Radeon Vulkan driver for enhancing the Linux gaming experience and their AMD-powered Steam Deck, the upcoming Steam Frame VR headset is making use of Mesa's open-source "Turnip" Vulkan driver for Qualcomm Adreno graphics...
Back in mid-2024, the Bavarian Linux PC vendor TUXEDO Computers teased plans for developing a Snapdragon X Elite Linux laptop. Initially they hoped to have it out by Christmas 2024. That didn't happen and now approaching Christmas 2025 they confirmed they have stopped their plans for shipping a Snapdragon X1 Elite laptop for Linux customers...
One of the areas I've been meaning to run more benchmarks on this season has been for the recently released Clang 21 compiler. Back in September when LLVM Clang 21 was debuting I ran some initial benchmarks and found it to deliver some nice performance gains on AMD EPYC Zen 5 but then have been busy with other benchmarks/articles for expanding that testing. Recently with having some spare cycles and gratis access still to the Microsoft Azure HBv5 instance for AMD EPYC Zen 4 with HBM3, I ran some Clang 20 vs. Clang 21 performance benchmarks there for those wondering about any performance benefits of this new compiler release on Zen 4.
Germany's Sovereign Tech Fund / Sovereign Tech Agency has been a godsend the past few years for the open-source community. This funding from the German government has led to significant funding for dozens of prominent open-source infrastructure projects to provide more resources for enhancing security, enabling new features, and more. As the Sovereign Tech Fund prepares for the next phase of growth, they are hiring a new head to lead the efforts...
With Lunar Lake and newer Intel graphics there is a new feature called the Common Mode Timing Generator (CMTG) that so far hasn't been enabled by the open-source Intel Linux graphics driver. But patches being worked on are enabling this CMTG feature that will unlock other functionality moving forward...
One of the improvements that Intel software engineers have been working on for the Linux kernel around their Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) functionality for confidential computing VMs is reducing the memory use. That work is under the Dynamic PAMT umbrella and this week brought the latest iteration of patches to help lower RAM use when engaging TDX for confidential VMs...
Expected to be introduced in the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel cycle is the ASUS Armoury "asus-armoury" driver for enhancing support for the ASUS ROG Ally gaming handhelds and other ASUS enthusiast/gaming devices under Linux...
The Servo open-source web browser engine has been making good progress in recent times. Long outside the confines of Mozilla and working as a Linux Foundation Europe project, Servo has been advancing thanks to Igalia and other open-source developers while getting by on around ~$5.7k USD per month thanks mostly to donations from individuals. Servo has now announced sponsorship tiers in hopefully to solicit more donations from larger organizations...
Released tonight was the Intel Compute Runtime 25.44.36015.5 as their roughly monthly update to this open-source GPU compute stack providing Level Zero and OpenCL support for Intel's integrated and discrete graphics hardware...
Dell announced today that their new Pro Max 16 Plus laptop with a Qualcomm discrete NPU is now shipping... That is if you are running Ubuntu Linux while the Windows 11 pre-load option is expected in early 2026. An exciting twist with the Linux version of the Dell Pro Max 16 Plus shipping before Microsoft Windows...
Canonical has been bullish on RISC-V with Ubuntu being one of the most common Linux distributions endorsed by RISC-V board vendors. Canonical also has been bullish on the Flutter toolkit for crafting their desktop installer UI and other modern UI/app interfaces. But these two together haven't panned out with Flutter not currently supporting RISC-V. Canonical has submitted pull requests now for enabling RISC-V support with Flutter...
An updated version of the Steam Linux Runtime 4 branch was rolled out that has now shifted from Debian 11 to Debian 13 libraries for some significant upgrades. In the process more libraries have gone x86_64 only in foregoing the i386 builds. In addition, the SDL 2 library support for the Steam Runtime is now provided by sdl2-compat as the compatibility layer for SDL2 atop SDL3...
We're closing in on the Linux 6.18 stable kernel release likely in little more than one week (30 November barring any delays) and today's batch of x86 platform driver updates is bringing some new hardware support as well as some notable consumer device fixes/improvements...
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