NVIDIA vs. AMD GPU Workstation Performance For Blender 4.3
With the recent release of Blender 4.3 for this leading open-source 3D modeling software, I’ve been carrying out some fresh NVIDIA vs. AMD GPU benchmarks for accelerated rendering across several different popular benchmark scenes. ⌘ Read more

OpenVPN DCO Looks Like It Might Be Ready For Linux 6.14 To Speed-Up VPN Performance
In development for several years has been the OpenVPN DCO Linux kernel module for data channel offload (DCO) capabilities to provide for much faster virtual private networking (VPN) performance. It’s looking like the lengthy review process on OpenVPN DCO is about wrapping up and leaving hope that it will be ready to premiere in next year’s Linux 6.14 kernel… ⌘ Read more

Debian 13 Desktop Theme Finalized Ahead Of Next Year’s Release
As a follow-up to last month’s article around the Debian 13 release processes continuing and desktop artwork voting underway for Debian 13 “Trixie”, the winning desktop theme/artwork was announced today… ⌘ Read more

AMDVLK 2024.Q4.2 Released With New Extensions, Other Changes
AMDVLK 2024.Q4.2 is out today as the newest official open-source AMD Radeon Vulkan driver release for Linux systems… ⌘ Read more

Fedora 42 Looking To Package Intel SGX Software Stack
Fedora stakeholders are evaluating supporting an Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) software stack with next year’s Fedora 42 release… ⌘ Read more

New Linux Patches Cleanup Code For Running x86 32-bit Kernels On x86_64 CPUs
As we approach 2025, hopefully none of you are still running x86 32-bit kernels / 32-bit OS software on x86_64 processors, but should you still be into that, there are improvements on the way… ⌘ Read more

Intel Compute Runtime 24.45.31740.9 Released Ahead Of The Arc B580 “Battlemage” Launch
The Intel Compute Runtime 24.45.31740.9 is out as the newest monthly-ish update to this open-source GPU compute stack used on Linux and Windows for the OpenCL and Level Zero support. This Compute Runtime 24.45.31740.9 is also the last update ahead of next week’s Battlemage availability with the Arc B580 graphics card… ⌘ Read more

VTE-Based Linux Terminals Now Support A Nice Feature Led By Windows Terminal
VTE-based terminals on Linux like Ptyxis are now seeing support introduced to better display progress state for long-running processes with a more visually pleasing progress bar. Microsoft’s Windows Terminal has already supported this feature while now with systemd beginning to support using these Operating System Command escape sequences, Linux terminal support is on the rise… ⌘ Read more

SDL Introducing Async I/O APIs - Backed By IO_uring On Linux
Longtime Linux game porter Ryan Gordon has introduced initial asynchronous I/O APIs for the in-development SDL3 library. On Linux these async I/O APIs allow making use of the modern kernel IO_uring functionality… ⌘ Read more

AMD ROCm 6.3 Tags Begin Appearing On GitHub
Last week ROCm 6.3 was announced on the AMD Community Blog with a set of nice enhancements to this open-source GPU compute stack. While some good additions, when the announcement went live ROCm 6.2 software was still showing up as the latest and the open-source code via GitHub wasn’t yet reflecting ROCm 6.3… That changed today… ⌘ Read more

Fedora 42 Aims To Enhance The Windows Subsystem For Linux Experience
A new feature proposal seeks to improve the Fedora Linux experience when running under Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on Windows 11… ⌘ Read more

Intel Announces Arc B-Series “Battlemage” Discrete Graphics With Linux Support
Succeeding the Intel Arc Graphics discrete graphics cards that launched two years ago as the DG2/Alchemist series, the next-gen Battlemage graphics cards are being announced today. The embargo lifts today on the new Intel Arc B-Series graphics cards with initial availability next week. Like the prior generation Intel graphics and as discussed already in many Phoronix articles, Battlemage is still treated to fully open-source graphic … ⌘ Read more

AMD User Queue Support Merged For Linux - Submitting Work Directly To The GPU
After an exciting day yesterday of Vulkan 1.4 driver support arriving in Mesa 25.0 drivers, there is more exciting code that was merged today for Mesa 25.0: the AMDGPU code now allows for user queue support on the latest Linux kernels for submitting rendering work directly to the GPU hardware… ⌘ Read more

AMD NPU Firmware Upstreamed For The Ryzen AI AMDXDNA Driver Coming In Linux 6.14
With the AMDXDNA kernel driver for Ryzen AI NPU support on Linux now ready for merging and is queued in drm-misc-next for the Linux 6.14 kernel early next year, the AMD NPU firmware binaries have also now been upstreamed to linux-firmware.git for having the necessary firmware support in place… ⌘ Read more

Rustls Multi-Threaded Performance Is Battering OpenSSL
The Rustls project as a modern TLS library written in the Rust programming language and an alternative to the likes of the widely-used OpenSSL and Cloudflare’s BoringSSL has published some new performance figures. When looking at the multi-threaded server performance of Rustls, its performance is typically outperforming BoringSSL by a significant margin and downright dominating over OpenSSL… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA RTX Remix 0.6 Brings CPU/GPU Performance Improvements
NVIDIA’s RTX Remix software for remastering DirectX 8 and DirectX 9 era games is out with the newest version of the RTX-Remix runtime that is powered in part by DXVK for Direct3D to Vulkan mapping… ⌘ Read more

PostgreSQL Finally Deprecates MD5 Passwords
While long overdue, the PostgreSQL database server has finally deprecated MD5 password support with its latest code… ⌘ Read more

Last Call For This Year’s Phoronix Premium Cyber Week Sale
If you would like to show your support this holiday season and enjoy the site ad-free, multi-page articles on a single page, and other benefits, today is the last day of the discounted rate on joining Phoronix Premium… ⌘ Read more

FreeBSD 14.2 Released With OpenZFS Upgrade, Installer Improvements
FreeBSD 14.2-RELEASE is out today as a strong, incremental update to the FreeBSD 14 series… ⌘ Read more

NVK, RADV, & Other Mesa Drivers Ready With Launch Day Vulkan 1.4 Support
Years ago when new OpenGL spec releases would occur, it could take months or years for the open-source Mesa drivers to catch-up in supporting the latest versions… Thankfully in the Vulkan space it continues to prove to be a very different story. As we’ve seen with prior Vulkan specs, today’s Vulkan 1.4 spec release is greeted by same-day Mesa patches… ⌘ Read more

Mir 2.19 Released With Atomic KMS Platform Support, New Wayland Protocols
Mir 2.19 is out today as the newest version of this Ubuntu/Canonical project making it easier for other desktops/environments to embrace Wayland support. This set of libraries for building Wayland-based shells has added a few new features with today’s update… ⌘ Read more

Vulkan 1.4 Released With More Extensions Mandated, Better 8K Rendering
As a lovely early Christmas present, The Khronos Group used SIGGRAPH Asia today for announcing the Vulkan 1.4 specification release… ⌘ Read more

AMD Per-Core Energy Counter Support Slated For Linux 6.14
While the Linux 6.13 merge window just closed yesterday in landing all of the new features and functionality for that first kernel version of 2025, already for the Linux 6.14 kernel cycle to follow a feature was queued up early this morning in a TIP branch: AMD per-core energy counter support… ⌘ Read more

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger Retires
While Intel has been under much financial difficulties and as they pursue their build out of new fabs to better compete with TSMC, to much surprise Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has retired effective today… ⌘ Read more

Qt 6.8.1 Toolkit Released With 550+ Bug Fixes
Building off the early October release of Qt 6.8 LTS, Qt 6.8.1 is out today with more than 550 fixes collected over the past two months… ⌘ Read more

Vulkan Video Now Enabled By Default For Radeon VCN2/VCN3 Hardware On Linux
An exciting merge today for the Radeon “RADV” Vulkan driver with next quarter’s Mesa 25.0 is enabling Vulkan Video API support by default for AMD graphics having VCN 2.x and VCN 3.x hardware… ⌘ Read more

Llamafile 0.8.17 Brings New Web UI For This Easy-To-Distribute AI LLM Framework
Llamafile 0.8.17 debuted this weekend as the newest version of this Mozilla research project for making it easy to distribute and run AI large language models (LLMs) within a single file. As implied by its name, Llamafile leverages Llama.cpp along with other open-source software into one consistent framework for helping to make single-file LLM executables a reality… ⌘ Read more

Imagination Lands Big PowerVR Compiler Update In Mesa 25.0
Merged over the US holiday weekend was a big update to the Imagination PowerVR Vulkan driver code for Mesa 25.0… 71 patches in fact making up this merge request… ⌘ Read more

XWayland Lands Support For xdg-system-bell
Olivier Fourdan has merged support for using the xdg-system-bell protocol by XWayland for dealing with “system bell” functionality for Wayland compositors supporting this newer protocol for ringing the system bell or otherwise implementing a visual indicator that a system bell type event may have been triggered… ⌘ Read more

Steam Survey Results For November 2024: Linux Gaming Marketshare Slightly Higher
During October the Steam Linux marketshare crawled back up to 2.0% while overnight Valve published the Steam Survey results for November 2024… ⌘ Read more

Lutris 0.5.18 Linux Game Manager Brings Many Improvements
Lutris 0.5.18 is out today as the newest version of this open-source game manager for Linux systems to help with installing and playing a variety of games whether they be native Linux titles, emulated Windows games with the likes of Wine / Proton, or console emulated games and more. Lutris also continues integrating with the likes of Steam, GOG, Humble Bundle, and other online game services for providing a nice Linux gaming experience… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.13-rc1 Released With Many New Features
As expected, this evening Linus Torvalds released Linux 6.13-rc1 to cap-off the two-week Linux 6.13 merge window. With Linux 6.13 comes many new features… ⌘ Read more

Xfce 4.20 Pre2 Released For Testing
Following the Xfce 4.20 Pre1 release from one month ago, Xfce 4.20 Pre2 is ready for testing ahead of the planned desktop release in two weeks… ⌘ Read more

Turbostat Utility Lands New Features With Linux 6.13
The turbostat utility that lives within the Linux kernel source tree for reporting CPU frequency/idle statistics and other metrics is gaining some new capabilities as part of the Linux 6.13 cycle… ⌘ Read more

Apple M4, More AMD Zen 5 Benchmarks & Linux Kernel Drama From November
November was filled with interesting Linux benchmarks ranging from the Apple M4 testing kicking off to ongoing AMD Zen 5 benchmarks both for desktops and servers, a lot of exciting upstream kernel activity (and some drama…), and more. Even with the end of year holidays around, there remains new and original content on Phoronix each and every day. During November there were 250 original news articles on Phoronix along with another 14 Linux ha … ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA’s New Linux Patches For GPU Direct RDMA For Device-Private Pages
NVIDIA engineer Yonatan Maman posted a set of “request for comments” patches this Sunday to implement GPU Direct RDMA “P2P DMA” for device private pages. This is the latest in the effort by multiple vendors to allow more efficient data sharing between GPUs/accelerators and other devices like network adapters… ⌘ Read more

Linux Fixes Issue Where Applying AMD Zen1/Zen2 Microcode Updates Could Slow Boot Times
Submitted today for the Linux kernel ahead of the Linux 6.13-rc1 release as part of the “x86/urgent” material is a fix for aging Zen 1 and Zen 2 processors where for the past year and a half they could potentially find very slow boot times… ⌘ Read more

Clang AutoFDO + Propeller Optimization Support Merged For Linux 6.13
Last night when writing about the Clang AutoFDO and Propeller optimization patches sent in for Linux 6.13 I had wondered whether Linus Torvalds would go through with the pull request given some of his past commentary around aggressive compiler optimizations… But to much delight, this evening Linus Torvalds has merged the Kbuild pull request that introduces Clang-based AutoFDO and Propeller compiler optimization support for allowing greater … ⌘ Read more

Wayland Color Management Protocol Might Finally Be Close To Merging
In what could be a wonderful holiday for the Linux desktop, it looks like the Wayland color management protocol might finally be close to merging after four years in discussion… ⌘ Read more

Resources System Monitoring App For GNOME Now Displays NPU Usage
As an alternative to the GNOME System Monitor application for system monitoring, Resources has been in development as a currently unofficial, GNOME-aligned resource/hardware monitoring application written in the Rust programming language. Resources v1.7 was released on Friday and now has the ability to monitor NPU usage and other enhancements… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.13 Hits A “Tipping Point” With More Rust Drivers Expected Soon
In addition to the USB updates and big staging flush merged yesterday for the Linux 6.13 kernel merge window, the “char/misc” pull was also honored for that catch-all of various kernel changes. With the char/misc pull there are some notable additions for those wanting to write kernel drivers within the Rust programming language… ⌘ Read more

Rust Hypervisor Firmware v0.5 Supports For More CPUs & Improves EFI Support
The Rust Hypervisor Firmware is a project out of the Cloud Hypervisor umbrella for developing open-source, Rust-based firmware that can be launched from any environment able to load ELF binaries and run them via the PVH booting standard. Rust Hypervisor Firmware v0.5 is out this weekend with the newest capabilities… ⌘ Read more

KDE Ends November With More KWin Fixes & Other Polishing Ahead Of Plasma 6.3
KDE developers have wrapped up a busy November with many fixes and other refinements landing this last week of the month… ⌘ Read more

Clang AutoFDO & Propeller Optimization Support Sent In For Linux 6.13: 5~10% More Performance
Making for an even more exciting Black Friday is the Kbuild pull request submitted today for the near-over Linux 6.13 merge window… And it includes Clang Auto Feedback Directed Optimization (AutoFDO) support for kernel builds as well as Clang’s Propeller… ⌘ Read more

Clang AutoFDO & Propeller Optimization Support Sent In For Linux 6.13: 5~10% More Performance
Making for an even more exciting Black Friday is the Kbuild pull request submitted today for the near-over Linux 6.13 merge window… And it includes Clang Auto Feedback Directed Optimization (AutoFDO) support for kernel builds as well as Clang’s Propeller… ⌘ Read more

LibreOffice 25.2 Alpha 1 Open-Source Office Suite Released
For those with some extra time over the US holiday weekend, LibreOffice 25.2 Alpha 1 has been published as the newest feature version of this open-source, cross-platform office suite that is a great alternative to the likes of Microsoft Office… ⌘ Read more

AMD BIOS Tuning Guide Impact For Boosting AI/ML Performance On EPYC 9005 Series
Following the release last month of the EPYC 9005 series processors, AMD published a BIOS and Workload Tuning Guide of straight-forward settings recommendations for those running new EPYC Turin servers to optimize the performance of different workloads like databases and Java to HPC and AI/ML software. Recently I started running some benchmarks to look at the impact of AMD’s recommended BIOS tuning and beginning this comparison by look … ⌘ Read more

Improved USB4 Debugging Support With Linux 6.13
Along with the staging changes, Greg Kroah-Hartman this morning also sent out the USB/Thunderbolt changes for the nearly-over Linux 6.13 merge window… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.13 Staging Clears Out 107k Lines Of Code From Old & Unmaintained Drivers
Greg Kroah-Hartman is out today with all of the pull requests for Linux 6.13 of the areas of the kernel he oversees. Most notable with the updates on the staging side are clearing out several drivers seeing no real code activity and no apparent users of the mainline Linux kernel… As such the staging pull lightens the kernel by around 107k lines of code… ⌘ Read more

FFmpeg Git Continues Landing A Number Of Vulkan Video Enhancements
A number of Vulkan Video enhancements landed this week in FFmpeg Git thanks to open-source developer Lynne that has been advancing the Vulkan Video encode/decode capabilities in this widely-used multimedia library… ⌘ Read more