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Updated 2025-09-17 12:30
Ubuntu Will Be Skipping Non-Critical Linux Kernel Updates For September
With the exception of critical security issues/bugs, Canonical will be skipping over shipping stable release updates for the Linux kernel in Ubuntu until early October...
Mozilla Developing Whisperfile For Local Audio-To-Text Translation
The Mozilla Ocho group leads "innovation and experiments" at Mozilla. Following all of their work on Llamafile for easily distributing large language models as a single file that can be easily executed across different hardware/software, their newest effort is Whisperfile for easy audio-to-text translations...
Intel Further Speeds Up strnlen() In The GNU C Library For Recent Intel/AMD CPUs
Intel software engineers are responsible for many of the great x86_64-related optimizations to the GNU C Library "glibc" over the years. While they've extensively tuned many Glibc functions for achieving peak performance on their modern CPUs, it's a never-ending quest. Merged this week was another optimization to strnlen(), the function for determining the number of bytes in a fixed-size string...
Fwupd 1.9.24 Adds Support For More Mediatek & Parade Tech Devices
While celebrating the 9th birthday of the Linux Vendor Firmware Service, LVFS/Fwupd lead developer Richard Hughes has released a new version of the Fwupd firmware updating utility...
LibreOffice 24.8 Delivers Many Advancements To This Free Software Office Suite
LibreOffice 24.8 is officially out today as the latest major feature update to this open-source office suite that's the leading free software alternative to Microsoft Office. With LibreOffice 24.8 comes many new features throughout its various components...
Chrome 128 Released With Isolated Web Apps, Standardized CSS Zoom
Google has promoted Chrome 128 to its stable channel across macOS, Windows, and Linux platforms...
Intel Uncore Linux Driver Prepares ELC "Efficiency Latency Control" Feature
Intel's uncore Linux platform driver is preparing for a new feature found on newer SoCs: ELC, or Efficiency Latency Control. This ELC feature for the Intel uncore handling allows fine tuning efficiency versus latency characteristics...
Intel Discontinues High-Speed, Open-Source H.265/HEVC Encoder Project
As part of Intel's Scalable Video Technology (SVT) initiative they had been developing SVT-HEVC as a BSD-licensed high performance H.265/HEVC video encoder optimized for Xeon Scalable and Xeon D processors. But recently they've changed course and the project has been officially discontinued...
Over 9 Years LVFS Has Served Over 110 Million Firmware Files To Linux Systems
This week marks nine years since the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) was started by Richard Hughes of Red Hat to ease the firmware updating/distribution process with the open-source Fwupd firmware updating utility...
NVIDIA 560.35.03 Linux Driver Released With More Wayland Fixes
Building off the prior NVIDIA 560 beta driver releases, the NVIDIA 560.35.03 stable Linux driver was released today for providing the latest official NVIDIA graphics/compute support for Linux systems...
Experimental Schedutil Patches Yield 30% Boost To Web Browser Benchmark On Linux
Google engineer Qais Yousef has posted a set of 16 patches for the "Schedutil" scheduler utilization code within the Linux kernel to better manage system response time. Schedutil is often used by default on many Linux distributions and with these patches a popular web browser benchmark can be as much as 30% faster with these kernel patches...
Linux Support Emerging For The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge X1 Elite Laptop
Following all of the Snapdragon X1 upstream enablement work over the past number of months by Qualcomm and then DeviceTree additions emerging for enabling the likes of the ASUS Vivobook S 15, Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6, and Microsoft Surface 7, the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge is the newest Snapdragon X1 Elite laptop seeing Linux DT support...
Zed Code Editor Begins Adding AI Features Powered By Anthropic's Claude
Zed, the code/text editor being developed by former Atom editor developers, has continued to gain interest among developers since going open-source, being written in the Rust programming language, and native Linux builds taking shape. The latest feature work on Zed is beginning to integrate AI-powered functionality by leveraging Anthropic's Claude LLM...
SVT-AV1 2.2 Delivers More Performance Improvements
SVT-AV1 2.2 is now available for this leading open-source AV1 video encoder. With this new version comes yet more performance optimizations...
VirtualBox 7.1 Beta 2 Released For This Big Oracle Virtualization Update
Released last month was the VirtualBox 7.1 Beta 1 virtualization software release from Oracle. This new version is bringing a modernized GUI, Wayland clipboard sharing, and other improvements. Released yesterday was the second beta of this big VirtualBox update...
GIMP 3.0 Enters String Freeze, Inching Closer To Release
Today marks the beginning of the string freeze for the long-awaited GIMP 3.0 open-source image editor release as one of the leading free software alternatives to Adobe Photoshop...
Linux Patches Work To Upstream Raspberry Pi's RP1 PCI Device Support
Andrea della Porta of SUSE has been working on upstreaming the Linux kernel support to boot the Raspberry Pi 5 on a mainline kernel. Over the past few months Andrea has posted a number of different patches derived in part from Raspberry Pi's downstream kernel code. The latest effort being pursued by the SUSE engineer is on upstreaming Raspberry Pi RP1 PCI device support using a DeviceTree overlay...
Intel Continues To Show AMD The Importance Of Software Optimizations: 16% More Ryzen 9 9950X Performance
As part of my ongoing AMD Ryzen 9 9950X Linux testing, last week I provided a look at the AVX-512 benefits to Zen 5 and also the Windows vs. Linux performance for the Ryzen 9 9950X. For sharing today is a look at multiple Linux distributions up and running on the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (Zen 5) desktop. Among the distributions in the mix are Intel's Clear Linux distribution that is optimally tuned for maximum x86_64 Linux performance and once again even on AMD hardware shows the significant benefits to a well-tuned Linux software stack.
Granite Rapids Idle/P-State Work For Linux 6.12 & An Important AMD Energy Reporting Fix
Queued yesterday into the Linux power management subsystem's "linux-next" branch ahead of the Linux 6.12 kernel are some important additions for Intel processors and also an important fix for AMD processors to enjoy package power monitoring...
Unigine 2.19 Rolls Out OpenXR Support, Multi-Threaded Renderer
While the Unigine SDK these days is more known for its simulation and engineering offerings rather than as a game engine, this engine remains visually impressive and continues advancing. Unigine 2.19 has been released that brings a number of improvements to the engine and leaves us clamoring to see a new/updated benchmark...
Ubuntu Fixes Old NVIDIA Wayland Support For GNOME, Hiring More Desktop Engineers
There are a few interesting bits of information as part of this week's updates from the Ubuntu Desktop Team Integration Squad...
Proposed Vulkan Extension To Improve Memory Sharing With Apple's Metal
LunarG engineer Aitor Camacho Larrondo has proposed VK_EXT_external_memory_metal, a new extension for the Vulkan API to allow for more easily sharing memory objects from Vulkan with Apple's Metal...
ASUS ROG Ally X & GT7868Q See HID Fixes With Linux 6.11
A new batch of HID subsystem fixes were merged today for the ongoing Linux 6.11 kernel development...
AMD & FreeBSD Begin Collaborating Over OS Improvements
The FreeBSD open-source operating system project published their Q2'2024 status report that outlines some interesting work happening to this leading BSD project...
NVIDIA RTX 2000 & RTX 4000 Ada Generation Linux Performance
NVIDIA recently sent over their RTX 2000 Ada Generation and RTX 4000 Ada Generation graphics cards suited for designers, engineers, and creative professionals. In my testing the past several weeks these professional graphics cards have been working out with NVIDIA's Linux driver stack -- including their open-source kernel modules now the default with the R555 driver series and later. While there is that previous article looking at how their open-source kernel drivers are at parity to the former proprietary kernel modules, today's article is looking at how the NVIDIA RTX 2000/4000 Ada Generation performance stacks up against the AMD Radeon Pro competition.
Fedora 41 To Rely On PipeWire By Default For Firefox Camera Handling
Red Hat engineer Jan Grulich has provided an update today on PipeWire camera handling with the upcoming Fedora 41 release...
Feral's GameMode 1.8.2 Fixes Hybrid CPU Core Pinning
GameMode as the open-source daemon from Feral Interactive to optimize Linux system performance on-demand when running games is out with its first release of 2024...
Linux 6.11 Kernel Performance On The AMD Ryzen 9 9000 Series
If you are picking up one of the new AMD Ryzen 9000 series desktop processors soon for Linux use, you may be wondering whether it's worthwhile or even necessary moving to the latest Linux kernel code compared to the likes of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS that are shipping a Linux 6.8 derived kernel. Here are some quick benchmarks in looking at that question...
Raspberry Pi 5 2GB Launches At $50 USD
To date the Raspberry Pi 5 single board computer has been offered with either 4GB or 8GB of system memory. The Raspberry Pi 5 4GB has retailed for $60 USD while the Raspberry Pi 5 8GB at $80 USD. For those needing something a little cheaper and not needing as much system memory, the Raspberry Pi 5 2GB model launched today...
AMD Acquiring Another Company To Bolster Its AI Play
AMD just announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement to acquire ZT Systems, a hyperscale solutions provider focused on AI...
Linux 6.11-rc4 Released: "Nothing Feels All That Odd"
The fourth weekly release candidate of Linux 6.11 is now available for testing...
Arch Linux Based CachyOS Switches To Open NVIDIA Kernel Modules, COSMIC Desktop Option
Arch Linux powered CachyOS that is known for its performance optimizations and other enhancements is out with its "August 2024" rolling release update...
It's Looking Like sched_ext Will Try Again To Land For Linux 6.12
While Linus Torvalds was hoping to merge the sched_ext extensible scheduler for the Linux v6.11 kernel cycle, that didn't end up happening after some technical issues were raised on the kernel mailing list. Since then though the kernel developers have been collaborating and given the latest sched_ext patches with "for-next" and "for-6.12" markings, it's looking like the extensible scheduler will be attempted again for the Linux 6.12 merge window...
Bcachefs Merges New On-Disk Format Version For Linux 6.11, Working Toward Defrag
Ahead of the Linux 6.11-rc4 kernel release coming up later today, some more Bcachefs file-system patches were merged this weekend for this experimental copy-on-write file-system...
More NVK Driver Improvements Merged For Mesa 24.3
Faith Ekstrand has merged another two dozen patches for the open-source NVIDIA "NVK" Vulkan driver with next quarter's Mesa 24.3...
Lab Wayland Compositor 0.8 Released, Ported To wlroots 0.18
Lab Wayland Compositor "labwc" v0.8 is now available as the newest release of this Wayland compositor that has been re-based against the wlroots 0.18 Wayland library...
Vulkan 1.3.293 Released With NVIDIA Command Buffer Inheritance Extension
Vulkan 1.3.293 released on Friday as the newest specification for this industry standard graphics and compute API. In addition to a handful of fixes/clarifications, Vulkan 1.3.293 introduces a new NVIDIA vendor extension...
GNOME Session & GDM Can Now Be Built Without X11 Support
Following the recent work to Mutter and GNOME Shell that was merged for allowing to build with X11 support disabled, the GDM display manager and GNOME-Session code have also seen the ability added to compile without X11 support...
Archinstall 2.8.2 To Speed Up Arch Linux Installations, Other Fixes
Archinstall is the wonderful command-line driven installer that was introduced to the Arch Linux ISOs three years ago for making it quicker and easier to get a customized Arch Linux installation. Out today is Archinstall 2.8.2 to further refine that experience...
KDE Implements More Wayland Bits, Lowers Bug Count To Match Plasma 5 Stability
KDE developer Nate Graham is out with his weekly recap that highlights all of the interesting KDE desktop changes to have landed over the past week...
AMD Preparing Linux For Smart Data Cache Injection With "Upcoming" CPUs
AMD Linux engineers are preparing the kernel for Smart Data Cache Injection (SDCI) as a feature for AMD EPYC server processors. Smart Data Cache Injection is a nifty new feature that allows for direct insertion of data from I/O devices into the CPU's L2/L3 cache...
Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu 24.04 Linux Performance For The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X
With all of my AMD Ryzen 9900X and 9950X Linux benchmarking and Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X reviews as well, many have wondered if AMD Zen 5 is just really great on Linux, if Windows 11 is in particularly poor shape for these new AMD Ryzen 9000 series processors, if it's just the different/diverse benchmarks being run, or simply why are these new desktop CPUs running so well on Linux but less so with Windows?
Canonical Makes More Snap Improvements Ahead Of Ubuntu 24.10
Oliver Smith as the Interim Engineering Director for the Ubuntu desktop provided an update around recent efforts on Ubuntu 24.10...
Cloud Hypervisor 41 Brings Performance Improvements & Landlock Sandboxing
The Cloud Hypervisor open-source project that serves as a Rust-written VMM focused on security and started by Intel but now backed by a multitude of vendors is out with its newest feature release. Cloud Hypervisor 41 is the new feature release worked on by engineers at Intel, Google, Microsoft, Rivos, Tencent, Ant Group, and others for this cloud and security minded virtual machine monitor...
Ubuntu's X.Org Session Support Now Split Into Separate Package
Ahead of the now in-place Ubuntu 24.10 feature freeze, the Ubuntu GNOME X.Org session support was split off into its own separate binary Debian package from the main (default) Wayland session handling...
Radeon "RADV" Vulkan Driver Now Handles 12-bit AV1 Video Decoding
The Vulkan Video support within Mesa's Radeon "RADV" Vulkan driver continues to be improved upon. The newest addition now found in the code for Mesa 24.3 is enabling 12-bit AV1 content accelerated decoding...
Rockchip Driver Will Be Able To Drive 4K @ 60Hz HDMI Displays With Linux 6.12
Sent out today was the latest round of DRM-Misc-Next patches to DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 6.12 merge window opening up in mid-September. For those using ARM single board computers with a Rockchip SoC and have been struggling for 4K support over HDMI, the Rockchip updates in Linux 6.12 should excite you...
Preemption Support Being Tackled For Adreno 700 Series With Linux MSM DRM Driver
For improving the open-source graphics driver support for Qualcomm Adreno 700 series hardware such as what's found in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and other SoCs, preemption support is finally being tackled...
Red Hat Developing Ramalama To "Make AI Boring" By Offering Great AI Simplicity & Ease Of Use
Red Hat engineers have been developing Ramalama as a new open-source project that hopes to "make AI boring" by this inferencing tool striving for simplicity so users can quickly and easily deploy AI workloads without much fuss...
Quantifying The AVX-512 Performance Impact With AMD Zen 5 - Ryzen 9 9950X Benchmarks
With the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X Linux review out of the way yesterday, today's benchmarking of the Ryzen 9000 series is looking closely at the AVX-512 performance impact. With the Ryzen 9000 series the Zen 5 cores have a full 512-bit data-path compared to the "double pumped" 256-bit data path found in the Zen 4 processors as well as the Strix Point SKUs. In this article is an AVX-512 enabled versus disabled comparison for not only the Ryzen 9 9950X but also the prior generation Ryzen 9 7950X and looking too at the CPU power use, thermals, and peak frequency when engaging a variety of AVX-512 workloads.
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