Phoronix

Fwupd 2.0.11 is now available as the latest update to this open-source firmware updating tool for Linux systems...

A big project was merged into FFmpeg overnight in providing a WHIP muxer for sub-second latency streaming...

Ubuntu developers have recently started a discussion over possibly splitting up the "linux-firmware" package into multiple sub-packages given the growing size of all the different firmware binaries needed to support the diverse range of hardware supported by the Linux kernel. It's nice in theory for helping to reduce the install footprint of Ubuntu Linux but in practice will be difficult to pull off without potentially risking the out-of-the-box hardware support on Ubuntu Linux...

Linux kernel developers continue building out the support around the Compute Express Link (CXL) specification for benefiting modern high performance servers. With the in-development Linux 6.16 kernel there are more CXL features now in place...

One of the niftiest kernel innovations to be upstreamed into Linux over the past year was sched_ext for extensible scheduler behavior in allowing kernel schedulers to be implemented via BPG programs. Sched_ext can allow for interesting scheduler improvements with a variety of use-cases and showed much potential even before being upstreamed. The work on sched_ext isn't yet over though and yet more improvements landed for Linux 6.16...

The numerous hardware monitoring "HWMON" subsystem updates were merged to Linux 6.16 on Tuesday for further enhancing the desktop hardware reporting capabilities and more with this next kernel release...

SquashFS-Tools 4.7 is out today as a big feature update to the user-space utilities for creating/modifying/extracting SquashFS read-only file-system images. SquashFS 4.7 delivers some big performance improvements and other nice enhancements...

While Linux 5.13 back in 2021 added support for the Apple Magic Mouse 2, only now with the Linux 6.16 kernel is there support arriving for the USB-C version of the Apple Magic Mouse 2 that debuted last year...

The wide assortment of x86 platform driver updates have been merged for the Linux 6.16 kernel due out as stable in July. As is usually the case, there are a number of Intel and AMD platform updates along with a wide assortment of driver improvements primarily for laptops from the major OEMs/ODMs...

While Intel opted against implementing Hyper Threading for their latest Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake processors, Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) still proves very effective on the AMD side. Even though the top-end AMD Ryzen AI MAX "Strix Halo" SoCs provide 16 Zen 5 cores, the presence of SMT for 32 threads still proves worthwhile from both a performance and power efficiency perspective. Here is an on/off comparison for SMT with the flagship AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ PRO 395 within the HP ZBook Ultra G1a.

AMD compiler engineer Joseph Huber is the one who ported DOOM to run on GPUs atop ROCm + LLVM libc as part of taking standard C/C++ code to run on GPUs and more recently has also been pursuing Flang/Fortran support atop GPUs. The latest in this ongoing quest is implementing efficient malloc support for memory allocation support on GPUs via the LLVM libc library...

Valve engineer Pierre-Loup A. Griffais contributed ByoWave Proteus controller support to the Linux kernel. ByoWave Proteus are some modular controller designs that can be adapted based upon the needs of the gamer and even what title you may be playing at the moment. The triggers and buttons are all repositionable for a very customized controller experience. The only downside is the modular gaming controller kit retails for $299 USD, but at least now works off the mainline Linux kernel...

Merged last week for the Linux 6.16 kernel coming later this summer were the many block subsystem updates as well as the IO_uring feature updates...

The FUSE improvements have been merged for the Linux 6.16 in enhancing the capabilities for file-systems implemented in user-space...

This week on 5 June marks 21 years since I started Phoronix.com for providing Linux hardware reviews and open-source news. In marking the 21st birthday of Phoronix is a special Phoronix Premium offering if you wish to show your support and hopefully provide for a successful year...

More Rust programming language abstractions for core code of the Linux kernel continues to land for the ongoing Linux 6.16 merge window...

One day after Steam on Linux set a recent high with the Steam Survey, a new Steam client beta is out today to fix an excruciating annoyance affecting some Linux gamers...

Intel's Linux graphics driver engineers continue working on enabling support for the Xe3 integrated graphics premiering with next-gen Core Ultra "Panther Lake" SoCs. Today a number of additional PCI device IDs have been merged to the Mesa 25.2 code to reflect the growing family...

Kexec HandOver "KHO" was merged for the in-development Linux 6.16 kernel as part of all the memory management "MM" changes. Kexec HandOver is providing the basis for some nifty low-level features moving forward...

Researchers from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have announced TPDE as a fast and adaptable compiler back-end framework. The code is now open-source and they are talking up some very wild compile time improvements... Compiling code for x86_64 and AArch64 with TPDE can be ten to twenty times faster than using the LLVM Clang compiler...

A very convenient addition to Linux 6.16 for system administrators is reporting to user-space via sysfs counters for the number of hard and soft lock-ups as well as RCU stalls...

In April we looked at the Framework 13 updated for the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series and its great out-of-the-box performance and nice power efficiency of Strix Point. Via ACPI platform profiles the power/performance mode can be tuned if desiring a longer battery life or preferring even greater performance. Today's article is looking at that power/performance impact of the different ACPI platform profiles available on the Framework 13 motherboard with the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370.

For those running an Network File System "NFS" server, the upcoming Linux 6.16 kernel will allow optionally enabling a larger payload size that may yield better performance. Eventually the default payload size may be increased if all goes well from user feedback and testing...

Posted for the AMDGPU Linux kernel driver in early 2024 was the initial Video Core Next 5.0 IP enablement that was part of their bring-up for the Radeon RX 9000 "RDNA4" graphics processors. It's taken until now though for enabling the VCN5 video encode/decode support within the user-space code for the RADV driver with Mesa 25.2...

While Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) has been around since Sapphire Rapids with select SKUs and with widespread availability since Emerald Rapids in late 2023, only now with the Linux 6.16 kernel debuting in H2'2025 is there going to be mainline kernel support for TDX on the host-side with the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)...

A new version of the Genode open-source operating system framework was released last week that powers its Sculpt OS general purpose OS and over the years has proven to be an interesting technical grounds for those interested in OS concepts...

Valve just published the Steam Survey results for May 2025 with a nice increase for the Linux gaming marketshare...

Wine 10.9 fell slightly off its bi-weekly Friday release rhythm with only debuting today, but in any event it's now available for testing with the latest features for enjoying Windows games/applications on Linux and other platforms...

Merged today for the Linux 6.16 kernel were all of the Watchdog subsystem updates for monitoring system health and taking action such as rebooting if the system state goes bad. With the Linux 6.16 is the introduction of the Intel Overclocking Watchdog "OC WDT" driver...

The Linux 6.15 kernel that shipped as stable last week mistakenly shipped with a nasty CPU power regression for some systems. The issue is now fixed in Linux 6.16 Git and will be fixed shortly in the Linux 6.15 point releases...

The Linux kernel had not enabled support for Arm Scalable Matrix Extension (SME) due to bugs, but with the in-development Linux 6.16 kernel those issues have been resolved and so SME can now be enabled for the rare SoCs having said hardware support...

The Linux 6.16 merge window this weekend suffered an unexpected twist this weekend when Linus Torvalds noticed some unusual Git activity by a longtime Linux kernel developer. The issue is still being sorted through but it would appear that the possible malicious activity came down to some scripting issues around Git...

The release candidate of FreeBSD 14.3 is now available for testing ahead of the official operating system release this month...

May was another busy month when it comes to Linux hardware and software milestones albeit depressing when looking at the ongoing state of the web/ad industry. In any event there were 25 featured Linux hardware reviews / multi-page benchmark articles and another 268 original Linux-related news articles all written by your's truly for the month. Here is a look back at what excited Phoronix readers the most during May...

OpenBMC 2.18 released on Friday as the newest version of this Linux Foundation project providing an open-source baseboard management controller (BMC) firmware stack implementation. In recent years OpenBMC has been enjoying increasing success in deploying to server platforms from the mega hyperscalers to the more prominent OEM/ODM vendors seeing increasing customer demand for open-source BMC as part of broader open-source firmware interest from the industry...

To compile the Linux x86/x86_64 kernel has already enforced a minimum compiler version of GCC 8 while now with Linux 6.16 this requirement is in place for all other architectures. The GCC 8 and GNU Binutils 2.30 baseline for all Linux kernel architectures now allows removing a number of old workarounds from the codebase...

All of the big SoC and DeviceTree board updates have been submitted for the Linux 6.16 kernel including support for a number of new Arm SoCs as well as a RISC-V server SoC. Plus many new board additions, including continued work on bettering the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite/Plus laptop support under Linux...

In a blog post dated for 28 May that was only made public on Friday night followed by a new ROCm build tag, AMD engineers have begun sharing more details publicly about changes coming for ROCm 7.0. In particular, the HIP 7.0 interface is going to be "aligning HIP C++ even more closely with CUDA."..

Merged back in late 2023 for Linux 6.7 was a cross-vendor solution for confidential computing attestation reports with the Linux Trusted Security Manager (TSM). In the succeeding kernel releases there weren't any further TSM updates issued but now for Linux 6.16 there finally is renewed work on this confidential computing code...

The popular Arch Linux derived CachyOS operating system that is known for its nice out-of-the-box performance and other optimizations is out with a new build. CachyOS is closing out the month of May with some nice refinements in its newest ISO refresh of the year...

A few new media drivers have been introduced as part of the Linux 6.16 merge window...

Along with this week bringing the Plasma 6.4 Beta 2 desktop, there's been other changes merged for Plasma 6.4 as well as some early feature work on Plasma 6.5...

The many power management subsystem updates and related changes have been merged for the in-development Linux 6.16 kernel...

Intel engineers are preparing the Linux kernel for future Data Center GPUs. This work confirms new Intel Data Center GPUs coming based on Battlemage...

Alpine Linux 3.22 is now available as the newest version of this Linux distribution popular for use with containers and embedded purposes due to its small, simple, and secure focus...

Sandisk earlier this month announced the WD_BLACK SN8100 as what they claim is the current world's fastest PCIe Gen 5.0 NVMe SSD for consumers. Given how well the WD_BLACK SN850X performs under Linux as a PCIe Gen 4.0 drive, I decided to buy a WD_BLACK SN8100 for some Linux testing at Phoronix to compare to various other drives in the lab. Here is a preliminary look at the WD_BLACK SN8100 2TB performance under Ubuntu Linux.

The latest upstream Linux kernel improvement for AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization "SEV" is the introduction of a virtual TPM driver...

With how well the open-source and upstream AMD Radeon Linux graphics driver stack is these days between the mainline Linux kernel and Mesa, the Radeon Software for Linux packaged driver releases are not usually notable these days on Phoronix... The packaged Radeon Software for Linux drivers haven't been popular with gamers/enthusiasts in years given how good the upstream support is and those packaged bits mostly useful for those just running enterprise Linux distributions with older versions of Linux and Mesa. But the next Radeon Software for Linux packaged driver release is set to introduce a big change...

For making use of AMDGPU user queue functionality, the latest Mesa user-space side work has been merged for Mesa 25.2 to enable support for high priority graphics user queues...

Intel's Software Guard Extensions (SGX) updates for the in-development Linux 6.16 contain a fix so SGX is now less likely to cause a fatal machine check...