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

Phoronix Black Friday Reminders
Just a quick reminder this “Black Friday” if you would like to help show your support… ⌘ Read more

UBports’ Ubuntu Touch OTA-7 Atop Ubuntu 20.04 Released
The UBports community today released Ubuntu Touch OTA-7 as the latest version of the smartphone/tablet Linux platform currently running off an Ubuntu 20.04 base… ⌘ Read more

Updated Ubuntu 24.10 Install Image Released For Snapdragon X1 Elite Laptops
In mid-October was the release of a developer preview for Ubuntu 24.10 on Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 powered laptops. Yesterday an updated Ubuntu 24.10 release was made available catering to these popular, current-generation ARM-powered laptops that typically ship with Windows 11 for ARM… ⌘ Read more

NFS Server Scalability Improvement & Other NFS Enhancements For Linux 6.13
There are a few Network File System (NFS) enhancements worth pointing out with the in-development Linux 6.13 kernel… ⌘ Read more

Linux Kernel Performance Bottlenecks Spotted By Mold Developer
Open-source developer Rui Ueyama who is the lead developer of the Mold high performance linker and previously on the LLVM lld linker has written a detailed mailing list post that highlights some observed performance bottlenecks within the Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

Intel Graphics Compiler Removes Support For Ice Lake & Older
The Intel Graphics Compiler (IGC) that is used by the Intel Compute Runtime for Level Zero and OpenCL GPU compute support as well as being depended upon by the Windows 3D driver stack has now removed platform support up to and including Ice Lake… ⌘ Read more

Mozilla Firefox Switches To .tar.xz For Linux Packaging
It’s not any shiny new web browser feature but Mozilla announced they are moving from .tar.bz2 packages for their Firefox Linux binaries over to using .tar.xz for a faster and lighter experience… ⌘ Read more

IO_uring Enjoys Hybrid IO Polling & Ring Resizing With Linux 6.13
Merged last week back toward the start of the Linux 6.13 merge window were a number of interesting IO_uring enhancements for this first major kernel version of 2025… ⌘ Read more

Feature-Packed systemd 257 Nears Release With RC3 Availability
Systemd 257 is nearing release as the next major feature release for this widely-used init system and software suite on Linux systems… ⌘ Read more