Phoronix

This month I have been running many Linux benchmarks of the HP ZBook Ultra G1a with the very exciting Ryzen AI MAX+ PRO 395 Strix Halo SoC featuring the powerful Radeon 8060S graphics. While there were the very promising OpenGL and Vulkan benchmarks shown so far from AMD Strix Halo on Linux -- including the very compelling performance compared to Microsoft Windows 11 -- many are interested in the ROCm compute aspects for Strix Halo. Here are some of the first benchmarks of the GPU compute performance for the Ryzen AI MAX+ PRO with the new ROCm 6.4.1 release compared to Strix Point as well as Intel Xe2 Lunar Lake on their Compute Runtime stack.

Google engineer Eric Biggers took time away from all his impressive crypto performance optimizations to the Linux kernel for modern Intel and AMD CPUs to spend time getting support for hardware-wrapped inline encryption keys into the mainline kernel. Google's Android kernel has been carrying this functionality for several years to help enhance security and will now be found in the mainline kernel too for capable platforms...

Merged for the Linux 6.16 kernel are all of the x86 core enhancements that provide a variety of benefits to Intel as well as AMD processors...

Building off the recent release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.0, AlmaLinux 10.0 stable is now available as this RHEL-derived popular community Linux OS alternative...

After being under discussion since January of 2024, the ext-background-effect-v1 staging protocol proposal by KDE developer Xaver Hugl has finally been merged to the Wayland-Protocols repository. This new Wayland protocol is intended for handling effects like background blur on terminals...

Building off the atomic write preparations that landed in prior Linux kernel versions, merged for the Linux 6.16 cycle is atomic write support for the XFS file-system...

The X86_NATIVE_CPU Kconfig build time option has been merged for the Linux 6.16 merge window as an easy means of enforcing "-march=native" compiler behavior on AMD and Intel processors to optimize your kernel build for the local CPU architecture/family of your system...

Rav1e v0.8 was released on Monday for this self-proclaimed "fastest and safest AV1 encoder" that makes use of the Rust programming language...

The many scheduler updates have been merged for the Linux 6.16 kernel which include a wide assortment of different fixes and new improvements...

The open-source Qt toolkit is deeply rooted in C++ code but over the past decade also has enjoyed Python language bindings. Now thanks to new work by the Qt Group on what they are calling Qt Bridging Technology, the toolkit will be enjoying more robust support across different programming languages...

The Linux kernel Performance Events changes were merged for the newly-opened Linux 6.16 cycle. Most notable are some new additions on the Intel side while AMD also saw a few changes too...

On this first day of the Linux 6.16 merge window, Linus Torvalds merged the locking code changes for the kernel that includes some additions to the FUTEX2 interface...

Among the many VFS pull requests merged today by Linus Torvalds for the now-open Linux 6.16 merge window is support by the power subsystem for being able to initiate file-system freeze/thaw events as part of the system suspend and resume cycle...

While there has been the Sony PlayStation 5 DualSense controller support for Linux going back several years and has been improved upon with more recent versions of the Linux kernel, there's been some shortcomings around the audio jack handling with the DualSense controller. A new patch series out today aims to enhance that capability...

Following last night's release of the Linux 6.15 stable kernel, the FSF Latin America team has released GNU Linux-libre 6.15-gnu for their downstream kernel that strips out the ability to load non-free firmware/microcode and other elements of the Linux kernel deemed for not aligning with their software freedoms...

Armbian 25.5 is out today as the newest version of this Debian-based Linux distribution catering primarily to ARM and RISC-V single board computers...

The Rust project this morning published a status update on some of their top project goals, including for enhancing the async Rust experience to make it closer to the sync programming experience as well as stabilizing the tooling needed for Rust programming use within the Linux kernel...

Among the early pull requests sent out today with the Linux 6.16 merge window now open are all of the Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) subsystem updates...

Mozilla Firefox 139.0 release binaries have been pushed out to mirrors today ahead of the formal announcement tomorrow. With the Firefox 139 browser update comes a few new features worth mentioning...

Bcachefs lead developer Kent Overstreet has already sent out the plethora of feature updates destined for the now-open Linux 6.16 kernel cycle. There has been a lot of work going on for Bcachefs that is ready for merging in Linux 6.16 with several performance improvements, continued self-healing / recovery work, improved error messages, and more for this copy-on-write file-system...

Merged for Linux 5.12 back in early 2021 was a new dynamic preemption mode. Finally now for H2'2025, the IBM POWER CPU ISA kernel code is supporing dynamic preemption...

As anticipated the Linux 6.15 kernel is out today in stable form. Linux 6.15 brings a lot of new hardware support, security improvements, various other kernel innovations, and more...

ConfigFS is seeing a new maintainer step up to manage this RAM-based file-system. With Andreas Hindborg taking over maintainership of ConfigFS he's also landing patches authored by him for adding Rust programming language support to this file-system...

Ahead of the Linux 6.16 merge window opening, several early pull requests were already sent out this week in advance of Linux 6.15 expected for release later today. Among those early feature pulls was Btrfs maintainer David Sterba sending out updates to this advanced copy-on-write file-system...

The Dell Latitude 7455 (X1E-80-100) is the latest laptop powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite SoC seeing patches for enabling Linux support...

With Linux 6.15 there are many exciting new features for this kernel version expected to debut as stable later today. Following the Linux 6.15 stable release, the Linux 6.16 merge window will then open. Here is an early look at a portion of the changes anticipated to be submitted and more than likely merged for this next kernel version...

Ahead of the Linux 6.15 kernel stable release expected later today, more input driver updates have been merged for this new kernel version that include introducing compatibility with some newer gaming controllers...

With Ubuntu 25.10 planning to ship the Rust-based Coreutils "uutils" by default, it's a big year ahead for this alternative to GNU Coreutils. In furthering along the project's goals, today marks the Rust Coreutils v0.1 release...

The GNOME Web "Epiphany" web browser is making it easier to toggle WebKit web engine features at run-time...

While there was the big 62k lines of code patch from Microsoft merged yesterday to Mesa, separately there was also some code cleaning to remove some previously-deprecated code from the codebase...

While the open-source, Rust-based Cloud Hypervisor project was started by Intel as a modern VMM for cloud workloads and focused on security, some Intel CPU features are now bit-rotting. In turn the new Cloud Hypervisor 46 release has deprecated support for Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) while even their modern Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) feature is in jeopardy but now with Google engineers set to takeover that code...

KDE developers have been busy addressing bugs within the Plasma 6.4 desktop ahead of its stable release in June. But there has been some last minute feature work to arrive, including support for time-of-day wallpapers with Plasma 6.4...

Merged on Friday for the GCC 16 compiler is better handling of the "-march=" compiler option on RISC-V systems when seeing multiple -march= hits and wanting to specify the RISC-V CPU name for targeting...

Ahead of the Linux 6.15 kernel release expected on Sunday, a final round of Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel graphics driver fixes were merged today to the kernel. Notable with these updates on the Intel side is squeezing in some additional PCI device IDs for upcoming Panther Lake integrated graphics...

Microsoft's open-source code contributions to the Mesa 3D graphics stack continues... Hitting Mesa 25.2-devel today was a patch adding 61,925 lines of code patch as they introduce a new Gallium3D front-end...

With the Linux 6.15 kernel expected to be released as stable on Sunday unless Linus Torvalds has last-minute reservations, here's a look back at some of the most interesting Linux 6.15 changes...

The GNOME Release Team is issuing a call for help as GNOME Help and the associated GNOME documentation are much in need of some assistance...

This week Intel released the Compute Runtime 25.18.33578.6 release for Windows and Linux. This updated open-source GPU compute stack for OpenCL and Level Zero brings the latest work on Ultra Low Latency Scheduling (ULLS) for Xe2 Lunar Lake graphics and other ongoing Xe2 improvements along with further preparations for next-gen Xe3 hardware. This new Intel Compute Runtime release is clocking in around 76x lower OpenCL kernel latency and other nice wins for those with current-generation Intel Lunar Lake hardware.

For those not yet on the newest GCC 15 compiler that debuted as stable one month ago, GCC 14.3 is out today in delivering the latest fixes for the GCC 14 stable series...

Sent out today as part of last minute x86 platform driver fixes for Linux 6.15 is a rather important power-savings fix for Intel Arrow Lake U and Arrow Lake H laptops...

Back in April Mesa deprecated Gallium Nine alongside the XA state tracker used for X.Org Server acceleration. Gallium-XA was developed by VMware for use with their DDX driver for accelerating X11 within their virtualized environments. XA isn't really used these days and the generic GLAMOR code is in much better shape. Thus Mesa is now no longer building the XA code as the next step toward its removal...

While there is the AMDXDNA accelerator driver that was upstreamed to the mainline kernel earlier this year with Linux 6.14 for supporting the AMD Ryzen AI NPUs and also their AIE Plugin for IREE user-space components, it seems something more is on the way...

Following the recent decision to no longer issue alpha or beta releases of Wayland, the Wayland 1.24 release candidate was issued on Thursday in working toward that next release...

It looks like the upcoming Linux 6.16 kernel will feature several additions to the FUTEX2 support...

Valve today released SteamOS 3.7.8 to their stable channel as the first stable version of their Arch Linux based SteamOS 3.7 operating system...

Ubuntu 25.10 is joining the likes of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise that are using Chrony as their Network Time Protocol (NTP) implementation. Ubuntu 25.10 is switching over to Chrony in enabling Network Time Security (NTS) support on Ubuntu Linux...

Mozilla announced today it's going to be shutting down its Pocket read-it-later bookmarking service this summer...

The Canonical Kernel Team confirmed their plans today that with the Ubuntu 25.10 release in October they are planning to employ the Linux 6.17 kernel...

Adding on to the Intel Xeon 6 "Granite Rapids" CPU family are today three new models focused on delivering enhanced GPU-accelerated AI performance...

Last week I began posting Linux benchmarks of the flagship "Strix Halo" SoC, the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 with powerful Radeon 8060S graphics using the HP ZBook Ultra G1a laptop. Both the CPU and GPU results for the data published thus far have been mighty impressive and done at the Ubuntu Linux defaults... But the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 within the ZBook Ultra G1a can be pushed even further by leveraging the ACPI Platform Profiles capabilities. In this article is showing how much further performance -- and the power costs -- can be achieved out of this AMD Strix Halo SoC when leveraging the HP Power Profiles as well as the power efficiency for those wanting to run the SoC instead in the "power saver" / "low power" configuration.