With the in-development Linux 4.7 kernel there is a new CPUFreq governor that leverages the kernel's scheduler utilization data in an attempt to make better decisions about adjusting the CPU's frequency / performance state. Here are some benchmarks of that new CPUFreq governor, Schedutil, compared to the other CPUFreq governors as well as the Intel P-State CPU frequency scaling driver.
We've been waiting to see Vulkan on Mir after the developers working on this display server for Ubuntu missed their original Ubuntu 16.04 target but the latest chatter indicates we might be seeing the support materialize soon...
For Broadwell hardware and newer, this week marked the milestone of the Intel Mesa driver exposing OpenGL 4.2 support. However, they are only one extension away from OpenGL 4.3 compliance for the newer Intel graphics hardware and a new version of that patch-set was just posted...
We've already covered at length the many AMDGPU/Radeon changes, the usual Intel DRM churn, and the multiple new DRM drivers coming for Linux 4.7. Missing from our coverage has been the Nouveau driver, but that work is finally getting queued up for this next kernel version...
It's been a year since the last LM-Sensors release and the project isn't as vibrant or active as it once was while the project site has been down for a while now and it doesn't appear to be coming back...
Following all of the Intel 3D graphics tests this week for DRM-Next code for Linux 4.7, Mesa 11.3-devel, and more, there's been a few readers requesting a fresh xf86-video-intel vs. xf86-video-modesetting comparison...
Up to now Mir servers (basically compositors / shells) have only supported OpenGL ES but now with the latest Mir work they are able to support full OpenGL...
The newest module added to the Phoronix Test Suite is the start of a watchdog implementation with initially being focused on watching the system's thermal state to trip the benchmarking process if any of the selected sensors cross a defined threshold...
For those curious whether Mesa 11.3 improves the performance at all for users bound to an old AMD Radeon graphics card using the R600 Gallium3D driver, I have some tests of that to share this morning...
Libreboot, the downstream of Coreboot that doesn't permit any closed-source microcode/firmware blobs as part of the hardware initialization process for this alternative to proprietary BIOS/UEFI, has become an official GNU project...
Virgil 3D (also sometimes marked as VirGL 3D) is now part of all the key mainline components for supporting 3D acceleration on guest VMs that's then passed onto the host using a pure open-source software stack by creating a virtual 3D GPU inside QEMU. Here are some benchmark numbers...
There were a lot of exciting Google announcements yesterday in kicking off the company's annual I/O conference while today there's a big piece of news: the Google Play store is coming to Chrome OS. Yes, all Android apps...
While "Light Ridge" was the first copper Thunderbolt controller and released back in 2010, only now in 2016 is the first-generation controller seeing mainline Linux support...
OpenGL tests I published yesterday show that Intel Broadwell graphics are much faster with Mesa 11.3 -- and that's on top of the newly-minted OpenGL 4.2 support -- but the same can't be said for Haswell...
We are just a few days into the two-week merge window for the Linux 4.7 merge window. But given all of the pull requests already sent in so far, here's a quick recap of what's been submitted for this next major version of the Linux kernel...
The Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) code for Linux 4.7 is adding x86 AVIC support for further optimizing virtualization performance. AVIC is of relevance to AMD's Carrizo hardware and newer...
There is OpenMW as a re-implementation of Morrowind, OpenRA as a re-implementation of Command and Conquer, and many other open-source game projects out there seeking to be free engine re-implementation of popular classic games. The latest of these projects is OpenRW, a re-implementation of Grand Theft Auto III...
Last week I published a 16-way NVIDIA GeForce performance comparison on Linux looking at the OpenGL performance evolution from the GeForce 9800GTX to the GeForce GTX 980 Ti / TITAN X, in getting ready to compare the long-term NVIDIA Linux performance to Pascal. This week I've done similar tests on the AMD Radeon side and compared these OpenGL performance and power consumption / performance-per-Watt numbers to NVIDIA.
With the GTX 1080 media embargo lifted yesterday, NVIDIA is spending today getting out more details on the GTX 1070 that will begin shipping in early June...
For those having some extra time today to help test out some new Mesa patches or just curious about what's on the horizon, Nicolai Hähnle of AMD has posted some Mesa state tracker patches for benefiting several modern Linux games...
Not only is there now OpenGL 4.2 support for Intel's Mesa driver but also as part of the massive Mesa 11.3 release in development there are OpenGL performance improvements too, at least for newer Broadwell hardware.
Per the Wayland 1.11 schedule, Wayland and its reference Weston compositor saw their v1.11 beta releases during the night. Wayland 1.11 remains on target for release at the end of May...
Krita, KDE's incredible digital painting and illustration program, is getting very close to their major 3.0 milestone with today's availability of their release candidate...
With today marking the milestone of Intel's Mesa driver jumping ahead to OpenGL 4.2 compliance after just yesterday hitting OpenGL 4.0, I decided to try out the Mesa Git code of the i965 driver on an Ubuntu 16.04 system...
Jiri Kosina sent in the pull requests today for the subsystems he is responsible for, including the HID area. Here are the changes from that stack coming to Linux 4.7...
Another day, another round of more open-source driver work out of the AMD folks. The latest are some minor Polaris updates for the AMDGPU DRM driver...