FreeBSD 15.0 vs. Ubuntu Linux For AMD EPYC Server Performance
Given the recent release of FreeBSD 15, I started off my testing in looking at how FreeBSD 15.0 improves performance versus FreeBSD 14.3. Now it’s onto the next important question: how is FreeBSD 15.0 performing relative to Linux on servers? Here are some benchmarks exploring that topic today. ⌘ Read more

AMD FSR SDK 2.1 Released With FSR Redstone - Windows-Only For Now
AMD FSR SDK 2.1 is now available that includes their “FSR Redstone” machine learning based upscaling tech for gaming.. ⌘ Read more

Turbostat Introduces New Cache Statistics, Nova Lake + Wildcat Lake Support
Turbostat is the Linux command-line utility for reporting CPU frequency / power / C-states and related performance / power management items namely for modern AMD and Intel processors. This CLI utility lives within the Linux kernel source tree and for Linux 6.19 has picked up a few new features… ⌘ Read more

Budgie 10.10 Desktop Approved For Fedora 44 Packaging, Fedora Budgie Spin All-Wayland
In addition to approving Fedora Cloud switching /boot to a Btrfs subvolume, another change approved this week by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) is for shipping the Budgie 10.10 desktop packages in Fedora 44… ⌘ Read more

Linux Fixes A Performance Regression In The Slab Code
A performance fix has been submitted to the Linux kernel for dealing with a regression in the Slab memory allocation code… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Gets Rid Of The Kernel’s “Genocide” Function
While the Linux kernel has inclusive terminology guidelines for the past five years to replace phrases like master/slave and blacklist/whitelist, there has surprisingly been a “genocide” function within the kernel that was questioned when it was first submitted for inclusion but now removed in Linux 6.19… ⌘ Read more

Fedora Cloud Will Switch To /boot As A Btrfs Subvolume
The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee “FESCo” today signed off on a new feature for Fedora Cloud 44 to switch /boot to being as a Btrfs sub-volume rather than a separate partition… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 For RISC-V Brings Parallel CPU Hotplugging, Zalasr Ratified ISA Support
The RISC-V CPU architecture changes have been merged for the in-development Linux 6.19 kernel… ⌘ Read more

AerynOS 2025.12 Brings Many Package Updates
AerynOS 2025.12 is available today as the latest installment of this from-scratch Linux distribution originally known as Serpent OS… ⌘ Read more

Canonical To Distribute AMD ROCm Libraries With Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
AMD previously talked of simplifying the in-box Linux support for ROCm during the second half of 2025. So far we haven’t seen any groundbreaking changes from that initiative besides AMD working on various package archives/repositories to make it easier to install the latest ROCm on different Linux distributions. But today a big announcement is now public that Canonical with next year’s Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release will provide official ROCm packages al … ⌘ Read more

Linux Foundation’s Newest Endeavor: The Agentic AI Foundation
The Linux Foundation today announced it’s formed another foundation under its growing umbrella that extends well beyond the traditional “Linux” landscape: the Agentic AI Foundation… ⌘ Read more

Firefox 147 Beta Released With XDG Base Directory Support
With Firefox 146 released, which is exciting for delivering fractional scaling on Wayland, Firefox 147 Beta is now available and it’s also quite exciting to Linux users for another reason… ⌘ Read more

Scheduler Woes: Bisecting Early Performance Regressions Found In Linux 6.19
Yesterday I noted some early performance regressions I’ve found on the Linux 6.19 kernel compared to Linux 6.18 LTS stable. Those initial benchmarks were on an AMD EPYC server. Since then I’ve seen many of the same workloads regressing similarly on an AMD Ryzen Threadripper workstation between Linux 6.18 and Linux 6.19 Git. Given the significant impact and AMD Threadripper processors always helping out to speed-up Linux kernel build time … ⌘ Read more

AMD EPYC Embedded 2005 Series Announced For BGA Zen 5 CPUs
AMD today announced their newest member of their expansive EPYC family: the EPYC Embedded 2005 series. The new AMD EPYC Embedded 2005 Series are intended primarily for networking, storage, and industrial devices while these BGA processors will likely see other interesting thin-server uses as well. ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Has Many Hyper-V Virtualization Improvements For Linux 6.19
For benefiting their Azure cloud and other users of Hyper-V virtualization at large, Microsoft has rolled out a number of feature additions and improvements for their Hyper-V kernel code in Linux 6.19… ⌘ Read more

Bug-Catching “Smatch” Static Analysis On The Linux Kernel Under Threat Due To Funding Gap
For the past 15 years the Smatch static analysis tool has been routinely run for uncovering countless bugs within the Linux kernel. Dan Carpenter who authored Smatch and has been routinely analyzing the Linux kernel with it has authored more than 5,568 patches over the years to become one of the top bug fixers for the kernel. But his funding at Linaro has been cut and the project’s future now in question… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Enables Per-CPU BIO Caching By Default For Helping Performance
Last week saw the main set of block and IO_uring feature patches for the Linux 6.19 merge window but some additional block subsystem material was merged on Monday. There are various NVMe updates now merged plus enabling per-CPU BIO caching by default to help with file-system performance… ⌘ Read more

F2FS Brings More Performance Optimizations To Linux 6.19
The Flash-Friendly File-System “F2FS” is enjoying more performance optimizations and other improvements for the Linux 6.19 kernel cycle… ⌘ Read more

Rust-Based Project Aims To Provide Modern Thumbnails For Audio/Video Files On GNOME
Since Showtime replaced Totem as the default video player of GNOME, the desktop has lacked thumbnail capabilities for audio and video files. But to address that defect, the Rust-based gst-thumbnailers project has been in development to leverage GStreamer and paired with Rust to provide safe thumbnail generation capabilities for audio and video content… ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.0 Lands Initial Support For Adreno Gen 8 - Including For The Snapdragon X2
The newest Mesa 26.0-devel code as of today has landed initial support for Qualcomm Adreno Gen 8 graphics into the Freedreno Gallium3D driver. The Adreno Gen 8 graphics so far are most notably used by the new Snapdragon X2 Elite laptop SoC with its X2-85 GPU as well as the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 with Adreno 840 graphics… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19’s Hung Task & System Lockup Detectors Can Provide Greater Insight
Beginning with the Linux 6.19 kernel, the hung task detector and system lock-up detector are now optionally able to provide greater insight into the issues by dumping additional system information. The new lockup_sys_info and hung_task_sys_info sysctl knobs were merged over as part of the pull requests managed by Andrew Morton… ⌘ Read more

Live Update Orchestrator “LUO” Merged For Linux 6.19
Google engineers for the past number of months have been working on the Live Update Orchestrator as a new way of applying live Linux kernel updates. The Live Update Orchestrator “LUO” builds atop the Kexec Handover “KHO” functionality already within the kernel. Google has since been deplyoing LUO in their production environments for faster security updates to kernels, especially when involving VMs. LUO is now upstream in Linux 6.19… ⌘ Read more

Meson 1.10 Build System Adds OS/2 Support, Experimental C++ “import std”
Meson 1.10 is out today as the newest feature release for this popular cross-platform build system… ⌘ Read more

Firefox 146 Now Available With Native Fractional Scaling On Wayland
The Mozilla Firefox 146.0 release binaries are now available with a very exciting improvement for Linux users relying on Wayland… ⌘ Read more

Intel Arc B580 vs. AMD Radeon RX 9000 vs. NVIDIA RTX 50 Series For Llama.cpp Vulkan Performance
Recently there were Phoronix benchmarks looking at the Intel Battlemage GPU compute performance since last year when the Arc B580 graphics card launched as well as the OpenGL and Vulkan graphics performance for the B580 on Linux since launch. There was much progress on the open-source Intel Linux graphics drivers at large this year but especially for Battlemage. Following that a Phoronix Premium reader asked about se … ⌘ Read more

Early Benchmarks Of Linux 6.19 Git Showing Some Concerns
While just half-way through the Linux 6.19 merge window, over the weekend I began running some benchmarks of the current Linux 6.19 Git state compared to Linux 6.18 LTS stable. There are some minor performance improvements to note in a few of the tests on the first system I tested but also some regressions at this very early pre-RC1 state of the Linux 6.19 kernel… ⌘ Read more

AMD Working On Push-Based Load Balancing For Linux To Further Enhance Performance
One of the new Linux engineering initiatives out of AMD is working to further enhance Linux performance on today’s large core count systems by introducing push-based load balancing… ⌘ Read more

Several Logitech Devices Seeing New/Improved Support With Linux 6.19
All of the Human Interface Devices (HID) subsystem updates were merged a few days ago for the ongoing Linux 6.19 kernel merge window. Standing out this cycle on the HID side are seeing new/improved support for several Logitech devices… ⌘ Read more

Linux I3C Gains “HDR” Support For Faster Data Transfers
I2C in Linux 6.19 brought support for Rust-written I2C drivers. The newer I3C “Improved Inter-Integrated Circuit” interface changes have now been merged and the big feature there is HDR support. Not to be confused with the more common High Dynamic Range acronym usage for HDR, HDR in the I3C context is for the “High Data Rate” mode for facilitating faster data transfers… ⌘ Read more

Arm MPAM Driver Upstreamed To The Linux 6.19 Kernel
The ARM64 code changes were merged last week into the in-development Linux 6.19 kernel. The most notable of the ARM64 architecture changes this cycle is landing the Arm MPAM driver for Arm’s Memory System Resource Partitioning and Monitoring… ⌘ Read more

Iced 0.14 Released For Popular Rust Cross-Platform GUI LIbrary
Released today is a new version of Iced, the popular cross-platform GUI library for the Rust programming language. Iced is notably used by the COSMIC desktop environment and a growing variety of different Rust apps… ⌘ Read more

Linux GPIB Drivers Declared Stable - 53 Years After HP Introduced The Bus
Merged to the mainline Linux kernel last year was GPIB drivers in the kernel’s “staging” area. GPIB is the General Purpose Interface Bus launched by HP back in 1972 for lab equipment and more. After a year of cleaning up the code in the kernel’s staging area, for Linux 6.19 the GPIB drivers have been promoted out of the staging area and into the Linux kernel proper. The Linux kernel now has stable driver support for this 8 Mbyte/s parallel … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Introduces PCIe Link Encryption & Device Authentication, AMD SEV-TIO Enabling
One of the most exciting merges this weekend to the Linux 6.19 kernel is establishing the infrastructure for supporting PCI Express link encryption and device authentication. Multiple vendors are working on PCIe link encryption for their hardware while this initial pull begins laying the foundation of AMD SEV-TIO Trusted I/O support for the mainline kernel… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Delivers Working USB3 Support For Apple Silicon Devices
Merged last night for the Linux 6.19 kernel merge window were all of the USB and Thunderbolt driver changes. Standing out this cycle is Apple Silicon devices like the M1 Macs now having working USB3 support on the mainline Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Delivers Working USB3 Support For Apple Silicon Devices
Merged last night for the Linux 6.19 kernel merge window were all of the USB and Thunderbolt driver changes. Standing out this cycle is Apple Silicon devices like the M1 Macs now having working USB3 support on the mainline Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA Plumbs DMA-BUF Support For VFIO PCI Devices In Linux 6.19
In addition to NVIDIA improving peer-to-peer (P2P) DMA for block devices in Linux 6.19, NVIDIA also led an effort providing DMA-BUF support for VFIO PCI devices for opening up some interesting new cases moving forward. As part of the VFIO pull request this new functionality has landed for Linux 6.19… ⌘ Read more

Using AI To Modernize The Ubuntu Error Tracker Produced Some Code That Was “Plain Wrong”
A week ago I wrote about AI being used to help modernize Ubuntu’s Error Tracker. Microsoft GitHub Copilot was tasked to help adapt its Cassandra database usage to modern standards. It’s worked in some areas but even for a rather straight forward task, some of the generated functions ended up being “plain wrong” according to the developer involved… ⌘ Read more

Rust Drivers In Linux 6.19 Will Now Support… Module Parameters
On top of the Rust driver core changes and other Rust code for Linux 6.19, the modules infrastructure for this new kernel version is also bringing some new code. Surprisingly, it’s taken until now for Rust kernel modules/drivers to support module parameters as is common practice for passing different options when booting the kernel or manually loading kernel drivers with extra non-default options… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Adds New Console Font To Better Handle Modern Laptops With HiDPI Displays
Sent in for the Linux 6.19 merge window when it comes to the frame-buffer device “FBDEV” subsystem are just a set of “fixes” for FBDEV drivers and code clean-ups. But it does also include a new console font option for better supporting modern laptops with high density displays… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft’s RAMDAX Driver Merged For Linux 6.19 To Carve Out RAM As NVDIMM Devices
The Non-Volatile Memory Device (NVDIMM) subsystem updates were merged today for the in-development Linux 6.19 kernel. Most notable this cycle for the NVDIMM code is a new open-source driver addition courtesy of Microsoft… ⌘ Read more

AMD Starts Enabling Zen 6 “znver6” Compiler Support In GCC
Making for a bit more exciting weekend is that minutes ago AMD has posted their first patch for enabling Zen 6 processor support within the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) for -march=znver6 targeting… ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.0 Bringing Support For 64K x 64K Textures With AMD RDNA4 GPUs
The latest improvement to the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver by prominent AMD Mesa developer Marek Olšák is enabling support for up to 64K x 64K textures with RDNA4 GPUs… ⌘ Read more

Tenstorrent Blackhole Support & Other New RISC-V + ARM64 Hardware In Linux 6.19
The set of six branches containing SoC and platform updates/additions for the Linux 6.19 kernel have been merged for enabling a lot of new RISC-V and ARM 64-bit hardware as well as enhancing some existing SoCs/platforms… ⌘ Read more

FEX 2512 Released With More Improvements For Gaming On ARM64 Linux
FEX 2512 is out toda as the newest monthly update for this software that enables running x86/x86_64 Linux binaries on ARM64 Linux, including the likes of Wine and Valve’s Steam Play (Proton) for being able to run Windows games on 64-bit ARM Linux devices… ⌘ Read more

Solaris 11.4 SRU 87 Released With New Security Features, GCC 15
For anyone still relying on Solaris in production or just nostalgic Solaris users from the grand Sun Microsystems days, Solaris 11.4 SRU 87 was released by Oracle this week as one of the heavier stable release updates in recent memory… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Brings Many Driver Core Changes For Rust, Housekeeping CPUs Exposed
Beyond the main set of Rust changes to land in Linux 6.19 earlier this week, as we near the end of the first week of two for the Linux 6.19 merge window… More Rust changes. This time around the driver core updates for the kernel bring a number of Rust changes… ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.6 Supporting Per-DRM-Plane Color Pipelines, More Hardware Quirks/Fixes
It was a busy start of December for KDE Plasma developers in working out several hardware fixes for the current Plasma 6.5 series while also working on new Plasma 6.6 features like the per-DRM-plane color pipelines… ⌘ Read more

An Intel Fellow & Prominent Linux Performance Engineer Resigns From Intel
There have been many Intel Linux/open-source software engineers to leave the company over the past year among other setbacks for their Linux/open-source initiatives. Announced this Friday night is one of their highest profile departures of the year as it pertains to their Linux efforts… ⌘ Read more

Wine 11.0-rc1 Released With TWAINDSM 64-bit Module For Scanners
As anticipated the first release candidate of Wine 11.0 is now available in working toward the annual stable release in January… ⌘ Read more

Linux Still Dealing With Quirky Firewire Devices As We Enter 2026
For Linux 6.19 as what will be the first stable kernel release of 2026, the IEEE-1394 Firewire stack continues dealing with device quirks and improving support for different Firewire-connected devices. In 2026 is also when the Linux Firewire maintainer plans to begin recommending users migrate away from the IEEE-1394 bus followed by closing the Linux Firewire efforts in 2029… ⌘ Read more