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

exFAT Driver With Linux 6.13 Reduces FAT Chain Traversal For Better Performance
For those making use of the Microsoft exFAT file-system on Linux systems, the upcoming Linux 6.13 kernel brings an optimization that will help some operations by reducing the FAT chain traversal… ⌘ Read more

AMD Begins Work Upstreaming More Versal 2 SoC Support For Linux
Back in April AMD announced the Versal Gen 2 Adaptive SoCs for AI-driven embedded systems. In preparing for Versal2 evaluation kits expected around the middle of the year and production silicon by the end of 2025, AMD software engineers have begun ramping up their open-source and upstream-focused Linux driver support… ⌘ Read more

RISC-V Changes For Linux 6.13 Deliver Pointer Masking In User-Space
The RISC-V CPU port updates have been sent out for the in-development Linux 6.13 kernel… ⌘ Read more

Corsair Vengeance Airflow Memory Cooling For DDR5 Server RAM
For those building your own server around the new Intel Xeon 6 “Granite Rapids” or AMD EPYC 9005 “Turin” platforms and using DDR5-6000/DDR5-6400 memory (or the interesting MRDIMM-8000 memory with Xeon 6 P), one of the factors you need to be much more mindful about than in the past is that at least the initial generation of DDR5-6000+ memory is running much hotter than prior server memory. There’s been guidance from Intel and AMD as well as seve … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.13 SoundWire Preps DisCo 2.0 Support
The SoundWire subsystem updates were sent out today for the Linux 6.13 kernel. This cycle brings new AMD driver support as well as supporting the MIPI DisCo 2.0 specification… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Makes An Interesting Improvement To Kernel Modules With Linux 6.13
Sent out on Tuesday was the modules pull request for Linux 6.13 that have some low-level improvements but it noted that the biggest kernel modules highlight wasn’t in that pull request itself but had been added by way of the memory management pull. This was a change by a Microsoft engineer around caching of kernel modules into huge pages… ⌘ Read more

MIPS P8700 RISC-V CPU Support Posted For LLVM Compiler
MIPS has begun working on the open-source compiler toolchain support for their P8700 RISC-V based processors. Initial patches posted today bring-up the MIPS P8700 RISC-V support for the LLVM compiler stack… ⌘ Read more

Raspberry Pi Launches The Compute Module 5 For $45 USD
Days after announcing the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W for $7, Raspberry Pi today announced the Compute Module 5 at the $45 price point… ⌘ Read more

FSF “Excited” For 802.11n WiFi USB Adapter Costing €50 In 2024 Holiday Shopping Guide
In prior years the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has published an Ethical Tech Giving Guide for holiday shopping where they recommend products like old AMD Opteron motherboards and USB to parallel printer cables that “respect your freedoms” and meet their strict free software definitions. Out today is their newest annual FSF Ethical Tech Giving Guide… ⌘ Read more

AMD GFX9.4.4 CDNA Firmware Published, More GFX950 Changes Point To Being MI350
There are some new open-source/Linux details to note when it comes to the AMD accelerators in the Instinct “CDNA” land… ⌘ Read more

F2FS Brings Interesting “Device Aliasing” Feature To Linux 6.13 To Carve Out Partition
The Flash Friendly File-System (F2FS) updates were sent out on Monday for Linux 6.13 and include one very interesting new feature for this file-system: device aliasing as a means of being able to temporarily carve out a portion of the partition for other purposes… ⌘ Read more

Granular Power Savings Patches Posted For Common “uvcvideo” Linux Webcam Driver
Google engineer Ricardo Ribalda has proposed a set of patches for the common “uvcvideo” kernel driver that supports UVC-compliant web cameras and the like to provide granular power saving support… ⌘ Read more

Intel Xe2 Lunar Lake Graphics Compute / OpenCL Performance Looking Great
Now that Linux 6.12 has a fix for the Lunar Lake performance with the ASUS Zenbook I have been using for my Core Ultra 200V series Linux testing as well as there recently being an updated Intel Compute Runtime with Lunar Lake fixes, I have been working on some fresh Lunar Lake Xe2 graphics benchmarks using the very latest upstream open-source code. In today’s article is exploring how the Xe2 Lunar Lake graphics is performing for OpenCL … ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu 25.04 Begins Preparations For GIMP 3.0
With GIMP 3.0-RC1 out for testing since earlier this month, the hope is that GIMP 3.0 stable will in fact ship in time for the release of Ubuntu 25.04 next April. The current GIMP 3.0 release candidate is working its way to Debian Unstable and in turn soon should be available via the Ubuntu 25.04 archive… ⌘ Read more

AMD I3C Controller ACPI Support Added To DesignWare Driver In Linux 6.13
The I3C subsystem updates were submitted for the Linux 6.13 kernel on Monday and include support for another I3C HCI controller used on AMD systems… ⌘ Read more

3K Lines Of New Rust Code Head Into Linux 6.13
Overnight the Rust for Linux lead developer Miguel Ojeda submitted the big set of Rust infrastructure/toolchain updates for the Linux 6.13 holiday kernel… ⌘ Read more

Linus Torvalds Improves Futex Code To Improve User-Space Accesses
In between managing all of the pull requests being submitted during this two week long merge window for the Linux 6.13 kernel, Linus Torvalds has merged some of his own code this cycle… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.13 RDMA Changes Headlined By NVIDIA’s New Data Placement Ordering Feature
The RDMA subsystem updates were sent out last Friday for the ongoing Linux 6.13 kernel cycle. Most notable with the RDMA updates is the NVIDIA Mellanox “MLX5” network driver introducing a new Data Direct Placement (DDP) feature to further help with performance… ⌘ Read more

AMD Talks Up Imminent ROCm 6.3 With Big Performance Gains, New Features
Either due to a mistimed blog post or other factors, a big feature article is out talking up the new ROCm 6.3 features… But the updated ROCm 6.3 open-source GPU compute software doesn’t appear to actually be released yet at all their usual sources. In any event there are new features and big performance gains being talked up for ROCm 6.3… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.13 PCI: AMD Enables PCIe TPH For Zen 5 Servers, Intel Adds PCIe Cooling Driver
Sent out today were the big set of PCI subsystem updates ready to be merged for the Linux 6.13 kernel. Most notable of the PCI updates is PCI Express TLP Processing Hints (TPH) with that kernel support worked on by AMD engineers as part of one of the new hardware features found with the AMD EPYC 9005 server processors. Over on the Intel side is the new PCIe cooling driver and other changes… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.13 KVM Eliminates An “Awful Idea”, Many x86_64 Improvements
The KVM changes were merged yesterday for Linux 6.13 in further enhancing the open-source virtualization stack… ⌘ Read more

GCC 15 Ends Support For Altera Nios II Embedded Processors
The GCC 15 code compiler that is releasing as stable in the early months of 2025 has removed all support for the Altera Nios II CPU target… ⌘ Read more

SilverStone XE360-SP5 & XE04-SP5 For Cooling AMD EPYC 9004/9005 4U Servers
With my recent AMD EPYC 9005 1P 4U server build using a Supermicro H13SSL-N motherboard, SilverStone kindly sent over their two Socket SP5 cooling options for AMD EPYC processors: the XE04-SP5 4U-compatible heatsink fan and then the XE360-SP5 AIO liquid cooler with a triple 120mm fan radiator to allow effectively cooling up to the new 400~500 Watt EPYC Turin processors. Here is a look at these two high-end AMD EPYC cooling options for those … ⌘ Read more

FUSE Enhancements Submitted For Linux 6.13
The FUSE feature enhancements were submitted today for the Linux 6.13 kernel as part of improving the file-system in user-space capabilities… ⌘ Read more

Phoronix Premium Cyber Week Sale To Better Enjoy Our Linux Hardware Reviews & News
While the end of year holidays are fast approaching, my commitment to Linux hardware and open-source software remains and there still is a lot of interesting content to come this year still – each and every day, without change for roughly a decade. Unfortunately though due to the (sad) state of the ad industry, many major companies focusing on the likes of Facebook/Meta ads, and the frequent use of ad-blockers by Linux/FLOSS readers m … ⌘ Read more

Large Folio Patches For EXT4 Show Some Nice Performance Gains
Huawei engineer Zhang Yi posted a set of nine patches today for enabling large folio support for regular files with the EXT4 file-system. These patches enable large folios for EXT4 on regular files except when using FSVERITY, FSCRYPT, or the journaled data mode. Long story short, these large folio patches can deliver some nice performance gains for both reads and writes… ⌘ Read more

New AMD Zen 5 Perf Events Going Into Linux 6.13
Sent out last night for the ongoing Linux 6.13 merge window were all of the perf tool changes for the wonderful “perf” subsystem for performance profiling and the like. In addition to adding the HWMON PMU to “perf stat”, leader sampling for inherited task events, and various other tooling improvements, there are also vendor event updates. Most notable with the updated CPU vendor events are new AMD Zen 5 processor events… ⌘ Read more

Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W Launches For $7
Complementing the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 that launched this summer, the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W was announced today for $7 as the wireless-enabled variant of this small microcontroller board… ⌘ Read more

Fwupd 2.0.2 Allows Updating Firmware On Many More Devices
Richard Hughes of Red Hat has released Fwupd 2.0.2 as the newest update to this open-source firmware updating solution for Linux systems… ⌘ Read more

Phoronix Premium Cyber Week Sale To Better Enjoy Our Linux Hardware Reviews & News
While the end of year holidays are fast approaching, my commitment to Linux hardware and open-source software remains and there still is a lot of interesting content to come this year still – each and every day, without change for roughly a decade. Unfortunately though due to the (sad) state of the ad industry, many major companies focusing on the likes of Facebook/Meta ads, and the frequent use of ad-blockers by Linux/FLOSS readers m … ⌘ Read more

AMDXDNA Driver For Ryzen AI Now Ready To Appear In The Linux kernel
The AMDXDNA kernel driver for Linux systems that was made open-source in January for supporting the Ryzen AI NPU on laptop SoCs going back to the Ryzen 7040 “Phoenix” series is now one step away from appearing in the mainline Linux kernel in the near future… ⌘ Read more

Virtual CPUFreq Driver Coming With Linux 6.13 For Better Power/Performance Within VMs
Earlier this week was the main power management updates for Linux 6.13 that included switching AMD EPYC Turin to using the amd_pstate driver on supported systems. Sent out this weekend was another set of power management updates that also includes a notable addition: the virtual CPUFreq driver… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.13 Will Report The Number Of Hung Tasks Since Boot
Following all of the MM patches earlier this week sent in by Andrew Morton, on Sunday morning he sent out all of the non-MM patches that he manages for the Linux kernel. Notable for Linux 6.13 with this pull request is presenting the hung task counter as well as finishing off the folio conversion in the NILFS2 code… ⌘ Read more

FreeBSD 14.2-RC1 Brings Install Image Improvements
Ahead of FreeBSD 14.2 hopefully releasing in just over one week, FreeBSD 14.2-RC1 is out this weekend as the last planned development release for testing ahead of that much anticipated point release… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Continues “Demikernel” Development LibOS For Kernel-Bypass I/O
A Microsoft Research project that was quietly announced a few years ago to some fanfare but not hearing much about since has been Demikernel as their library OS architecture for kernel-bypass I/O. A Phoronix reader brought up Demikernel this week and while it hasn’t been talked about much in recent years it does remain under active development with the most recent commits as of hours ago… ⌘ Read more

IBM Power11 CPUs Launching In 2025 - Linux 6.13 Preps KVM Nested Guests For Power11
IBM isn’t formally releasing Power11 processors until next year, but their software engineers continue being quite busy preparing the Linux kernel and other open-source software for Power11. The newest on the kernel side is enabling support for KVM nested guests on IBM Power11 platforms… ⌘ Read more

9elements Takes Over Intel 1st Gen Xeon Scalable “Skylake” Support Within Coreboot
For those still running a 1st Generation Xeon Scalable “Skylake” era server, support for it within the open-source Coreboot firmware may continue to improve all these years later thanks to firmware consulting firm 9elements… ⌘ Read more

Wine 9.22 Enables Wayland Driver By Default
Wine 9.22 is out this weekend ahead of the Wine 10.0-rc1 in two weeks… ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.3 Sees More Feature Work, One More Crash Fix For KWin
KDE developer Nate Graham is out with his traditional weekly development recap that highlights all of the interesting work taking place within the KDE desktop space… ⌘ Read more

Linux CoC Announces Decision Following Recent Bcachefs Drama
Following the recent messaging from Bcachefs lead developer Kent Oversteet that Bcachefs changes for Linux 6.13 were rejected on the basis of his Code of Conduct, the Linux CoC committee has now formally announced their decision… ⌘ Read more

AMD 3D V-Cache Optimizer Driver Headlines The x86 Platform Enhancements In Linux 6.13
The x86 platform driver updates were merged this week for the in-development Linux 6.13 and include some nice refinements, especially for those using AMD Ryzen on Linux… ⌘ Read more