Phoronix

We're half-way through the Linux 4.4 kernel merge window so here's a recap of the features that have made it thus far for this next open-source kernel cycle...

Systemd.conf, the inaugural systemd conference for developers, has successfully concluded in Berlin...

60% of the Phoronix readers that participated in our weekend survey feel that SteamOS / Steam Machines will lead to a significantly greater market-share for Linux...

It doesn't look like KDBUS will be ready for merging into the mainline Linux kernel anytime soon...

This week is the last chance for developers to land new features into the GCC 6 compiler stack before it moves onto the next stage of development...

The Enlightenment developers at Samsung have announced the release of the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) 1.16 along with updates to Elementary, Evas GL, and Eo...

It's been the better part of the year since the last ALSA update while out today is version 1.1 of the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture...

David Airlie sent in the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem update today for the Linux 4.4 merge window...

Thanks to work done by AMD, the Gallium3D "OMX" OpenMAX state tracker will now support headless operation for video decoding/encoding/transcoding...

Plasma 5.5 is due out next month and with this update will come many new features...

As it's been a while since my last Windows vs. Linux graphics comparison and haven't yet done such a comparison for Intel's latest-generation Skylake HD Graphics, the past few days I was running Windows 10 Pro x64 versus Ubuntu 15.10 graphics benchmarks with a Core i5 6600K sporting HD Graphics 530.

With having an Arch-based Manjaro Linux installation around from the recent large Linux distribution comparison / performance showdown I carried out some extra tests this weekend...

The latest Nouveau Gallium3D driver work enables compute support for GeForce GTX 400/500 "Fermi" graphics cards...

I've been meaning to pass along a bit of advice if you're trying to use Intel HD/Iris Graphics to drive a 4K display: you may need to use the Linux 4.3 kernel...

With the Linux 4.4 HID update came support for the Logitech G29, a racing wheel for gamers, while just missing that pull are patches for another Logitech Driving Force Racing Wheel...

The networking subsystem update landed earlier this week in the Linux 4.4 Git code and it comes with several new features...

After months of experimenting with different methods for better cooling the basement server room where 60+ systems are running Linux benchmarks on a daily basis, for less than $100 USD I've found a fan that does an amazing job keeping the temperature suitable for all of the running systems.

Takashi Iwai has lined up the sound driver updates for the Linux 4.4 kernel merge window...

The HID driver updates were mailed in on Friday for the Linux 4.4 merge window...

It's now been three years since Valve rolled out the Steam Linux beta...

Besides the Btrfs pull request being sent in today for the Linux 4.4 merge window, the EXT4 updates were also sent in today by Ted Ts'o...

Dmitry Torokhov sent in the input driver updates today for the Linux 4.4 merge window...

Chris Mason sent in the pull request today for updating the Btrfs file-system for Linux 4.4...

This week marks five years since Mark Shuttleworth shared with us Ubuntu intended to eventually switch to a Wayland-based environment for their Unity desktop rather than an X.Org Server... Most Phoronix readers know how that turned out...

My most recent Windows 10 benchmarks compared to Linux were some NVIDIA numbers from early August. With the ever-advancing state of Linux graphics on both the open and closed-source driver fronts, I've started this week with doing another fresh Windows 10 vs. Linux performance comparison for Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA...

With Ubuntu 15.10, Fedora 23, and openSUSE 42.1 Leap all having been released in the past week, for your open-source benchmarking pleasure today is a comparison of these Linux distributions along with some other modern Linux distributions: Antergos 2015.10-Rolling, Debian 8.2, CentOS 7, and Manjaro 15.11.

KWin maintainer Martin Gräßlin has written a monthly status update concerning the state of KWin and KDE Plasma on Wayland...

A Phoronix reader pointed out that a developer has released an assembler for AMD GCN GPUs that supports both the open and closed-source Catalyst drivers on Linux...

For KDE users interested in the latest Wayland porting process, one of the big tasks currently being tackled is on Plasma's screen management handling...

Intel's Darren Hart has sent in the x86 platform driver updates for the Linux 4.4 kernel merge window...

Peter Hutterer is back to working on tablet protocol and support for Wayland/Weston. In this context, it's for drawing tablets like the popular Wacom hardware...

Martin Jambor at SUSE is looking to begin mainlining the HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) support within the GCC compiler...

The first-ever systemd conference began today in Berlin and runs through Saturday...

The GNOME 2-forked desktop environment MATE has announced their v1.12 release today with a plethora of changes...

Last year SUSE announced KGraft as a new form of live Linux kernel patching to reduce downtime by avoiding reboots when applying kernel security updates, etc. The initial combined infrastructure work of kGraft and Red Hat's Kpatch was merged in Linux 4.0. Here's how SUSE is showing off their live kernel patching method...

Jaegeuk Kim sent in the Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) updates today for targeting the Linux 4.4 kernel...

One month after Trine 3 went into beta on Linux, this action role-playing game has been officially release for SteamOS / Linux...

Red Hat's Paolo Bonzini sent out the KVM updates today for the Linux 4.4 kernel...

If you are curious how the Chrome OS graphics rendering pipeline works, Tiago Vignatti and Dongseong Hwang of Intel's Open-Source Technology Center has written an interesting article about how they achieve zero-copy texture uploads in Chrome OS and other details of their low-level graphics implementation...

Aside from trying to make Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Python-3-only, Kubuntu developers planning for Xenial, and Mark Shuttleworth's keynote, there's also been a lot of other interesting sessions to happen over the first two days of this week's Ubuntu Online Summit...

Greg Kroah-Hartman sent in his staging driver patches for the Linux 4.4 kernel on Wednesday...

Intel's Mesa driver is finally seeing work done to support 16x multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA)...

Version 0.9.0 of the GNU Guix functional package manager is now available and with this release comes USB installation images to install GuixSD from source or binaries atop of a GNU/Linux system...

While the DRM-Next pull request hasn't even been issued yet for the Linux 4.4 merge window, AMD's Alex Deucher has already sent in some extra fixes for the AMDGPU DRM kernel driver...

According to well-known open-source contributor Eric S Raymond, various "feminists" are trying to frame Linus Trovalds for sexual harassment...

For years Ubuntu developers have been working on moving from Python 2 to Python 3 and for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS next April that goal will hopefully be finally realized...

Many 64-bit ARM (ARM64) changes are inbound for the Linux 4.4 kernel...

Intel's Skylake audio binary-only firmware landed today within the linux-firmware Git tree...

For those still relying upon NetBeans as an integrated development environment primarily built around Java, the big 8.1 release is now available...

The latest development release of Phoronix Test Suite 6.0 (codenamed Hammerfest) is now available for open-source, cross-platform benchmarking...