Linux 6.16 Enabling Support For 11 More SoCs, Sophgo SG2044 & More Snapdragon X Laptops
All of the big SoC and DeviceTree board updates have been submitted for the Linux 6.16 kernel including support for a number of new Arm SoCs as well as a RISC-V server SoC. Plus many new board additions, including continued work on bettering the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite/Plus laptop support under Linux… ⌘ Read more

AMD ROCm 7.0 To Align HIP C++ “Even More Closely With CUDA”
In a blog post dated for 28 May that was only made public on Friday night followed by a new ROCm build tag, AMD engineers have begun sharing more details publicly about changes coming for ROCm 7.0. In particular, the HIP 7.0 interface is going to be “aligning HIP C++ even more closely with CUDA.”.. ⌘ Read more

AMD ROCm 7.0 To Align HIP C++ “Even More Closely With CUDA”
In a blog post dated for 28 May that was only made public on Friday night followed by a new ROCm build tag, AMD engineers have begun sharing more details publicly about changes coming for ROCm 7.0. In particular, the HIP 7.0 interface is going to be “aligning HIP C++ even more closely with CUDA.”.. ⌘ Read more

Linux’s Trusted Security Manager Sees First Updates In Over A Year
Merged back in late 2023 for Linux 6.7 was a cross-vendor solution for confidential computing attestation reports with the Linux Trusted Security Manager (TSM). In the succeeding kernel releases there weren’t any further TSM updates issued but now for Linux 6.16 there finally is renewed work on this confidential computing code… ⌘ Read more

CachyOS Improves NVIDIA Driver Loading, Better Handheld Device Support
The popular Arch Linux derived CachyOS operating system that is known for its nice out-of-the-box performance and other optimizations is out with a new build. CachyOS is closing out the month of May with some nice refinements in its newest ISO refresh of the year… ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.5 Will Help Reduce RAM Use By Keeping Less Wallpaper Copies Around
Along with this week bringing the Plasma 6.4 Beta 2 desktop, there’s been other changes merged for Plasma 6.4 as well as some early feature work on Plasma 6.5… ⌘ Read more

Intel PTC, Intel EAS & AMD Requested CPU Min Freq Features Merged For Linux 6.16
The many power management subsystem updates and related changes have been merged for the in-development Linux 6.16 kernel… ⌘ Read more

Intel Prepping Linux Driver For Future Data Center GPUs Based On Battlemage
Intel engineers are preparing the Linux kernel for future Data Center GPUs. This work confirms new Intel Data Center GPUs coming based on Battlemage… ⌘ Read more

Alpine Linux 3.22 Replaces Gummiboot With systemd-efistub
Alpine Linux 3.22 is now available as the newest version of this Linux distribution popular for use with containers and embedded purposes due to its small, simple, and secure focus… ⌘ Read more

WD_BLACK SN8100 2TB PCIe Gen 5.0 NVMe SSD Linux Benchmarks
Sandisk earlier this month announced the WD_BLACK SN8100 as what they claim is the current world’s fastest PCIe Gen 5.0 NVMe SSD for consumers. Given how well the WD_BLACK SN850X performs under Linux as a PCIe Gen 4.0 drive, I decided to buy a WD_BLACK SN8100 for some Linux testing at Phoronix to compare to various other drives in the lab. Here is a preliminary look at the WD_BLACK SN8100 2TB performance under Ubuntu Linux. ⌘ Read more

AMD Virtual TPM Driver Merged For Linux 6.16 To Enhance Confidential Computing
The latest upstream Linux kernel improvement for AMD’s Secure Encrypted Virtualization “SEV” is the introduction of a virtual TPM driver… ⌘ Read more

Radeon Software For Linux Dropping AMD’s Proprietary OpenGL/Vulkan Drivers
With how well the open-source and upstream AMD Radeon Linux graphics driver stack is these days between the mainline Linux kernel and Mesa, the Radeon Software for Linux packaged driver releases are not usually notable these days on Phoronix… The packaged Radeon Software for Linux drivers haven’t been popular with gamers/enthusiasts in years given how good the upstream support is and those packaged bits mostly useful for those jus … ⌘ Read more

AMDGPU High Priority Graphics User Queue Support Merged For Mesa 25.2
For making use of AMDGPU user queue functionality, the latest Mesa user-space side work has been merged for Mesa 25.2 to enable support for high priority graphics user queues… ⌘ Read more

Intel SGX With Linux 6.16 Less Likely To Cause Fatal Machine Checks
Intel’s Software Guard Extensions (SGX) updates for the in-development Linux 6.16 contain a fix so SGX is now less likely to cause a fatal machine check… ⌘ Read more

Coredump Socket Support Merged For Linux 6.16
As an alternative to Coredumps dumping to a file or a pipe connected to a user-mode helper process, Linux 6.16 is introducing the ability to send Coredumps over an AF_UNIX socket… ⌘ Read more

Intel IPU7 Firmware Binaries Upstreamed For Lunar Lake Webcameras
Overnight Intel upstreamed their IPU7 firmware binaries into the linux-firmware.git repository where Linux distributions will then be able to pick them up for easy consumption. IPU7 is for their latest Image Processing Unit for some web cameras on their latest-generation Lunar Lake platform… ⌘ Read more

F2FS Improvements Merged For Linux 6.16
Following the exciting EXT4 performance work, XFS atomic writes, and other exciting file-system pull requests submitted for the ongoing Linux 6.16 merge window, the Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) changes have been submitted and merged for this next kernel version… ⌘ Read more

OBS Studio 31.1 Bringing Multitrack Video Support To Linux
OBS Studio 31.1 Beta 1 is out today as the newest version of this popular cross-platform and open-source solution for gaming live streaming, desktop screencasting, and similar screencasting/live-streaming uses… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.16 Adds Support For Graceful Host Removal For eMMC & SD Cards
The MMC subsystem feature changes have been merged for the Linux 6.16 kernel. Interestingly and surprisingly, it’s not until now that the Linux kernel has properly supported the graceful host removal for eMMC and SD cards… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA 575.57.08 Linux Stable Driver Released With Smooth Motion & Other Updates
NVIDIA just released their v575.57.08 driver as the first stable Linux driver in their R575 release branch… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.16 Networking Brings Some Big Performance Improvements & OpenVPN Driver
There is a lot of exciting networking changes to find with the in-development Linux 6.16 kernel both for wired and wireless devices as well as some exciting core networking improvements/optimizations… ⌘ Read more

AMD EPYC 4585PX & EPYC 4565P With DDR5-4800 vs. DDR5-5600 Performance
One of the many advantages with the newly announced EPYC 4005 series for entry-level servers is support for DDR5-5600 ECC memory compared to the current Xeon 6300 series being limited to DDR5-4800 memory. With the launch-day EPYC 4005 “Grado” benchmarks earlier this month of the AMD EPYC 4585PX and EPYC 4565P I was running with DDR5-5600 ECC memory modules. But for those wondering about the performance when using DDR5-4800 comparable to … ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.4 Beta 2 Brings XWayland Fixes
The second beta release of KDE’s Plasma 6.4 desktop is now available for testing ahead of the official release in June… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.16 Crypto Brings Faster AES-XTS On AVX-512 CPUs, Intel QAT Gen6 Support
The cryptography subsystem updates have been merged for the start of the Linux 6.16 cycle. Notable with the crypto updates this round are more performance optimizations for Intel and AMD CPUs with AVX-512 and also enabling next-generation Intel QAT accelerators… ⌘ Read more

Out-Of-Date OpenH264 On Fedora Is Frustrating Users With A High Severity CVE
While OpenH264 support coming to Fedora was widely celebrated as part of offering a better codec experience on Fedora Linux, an increasing number of Fedora users have grown frustrated with the OpenH264 packaging in that it’s been out-of-date for several months with a high severity security vulnerability… ⌘ Read more

EROFS Lands Support For Tapping Intel QAT Accelerators
There is a lot of exciting file-system changes landing for the Linux 6.16 kernel… EXT4 brings a “really stupendous performance” change, Btrfs also brings some performance improvements, XFS landed atomic writes, and Bcachefs continues stabilizing. For the EROFS read-only file-system its changes have been merged and includes support for Intel QAT acceleration… ⌘ Read more

Canonical To Release Monthly Ubuntu Snapshots For Testing & Building Out Automation
Canonical is sticking to Ubuntu Linux releases every six months and a Long Term Support (LTS) release every two years, but a new change to their development process is that they are now working to release monthly Ubuntu snapshots of their testing stream… ⌘ Read more

More Intel Battlemage Graphics PCI IDs Added To Mesa OpenGL/Vulkan Drivers
Intel engineers have added yet more PCI graphics device IDs for Battlemage to their open-source driver code within Mesa for Iris OpenGL and ANV Vulkan driver support… ⌘ Read more

Intel Hardware Support Expanded In EDAC Drivers For Linux 6.16
With the Error Detection And Correction (EDAC) subsystem updates sent out this week for the Linux 6.16 kernel there is support for a number of newer Intel hardware platforms… ⌘ Read more

Mesa’s Rusticl Lands Support For Shared Virtual Memory & Intel Subgroups
Rusticl as Mesa’s Rust-based OpenCL driver implementation for Gallium3D drivers is ending the month of May on a high note… Merged this week was support for the Intel Subgroups OpenCL extension (cl_intel_subgroups) and before getting to that on my TODO list, an even bigger item was merged: Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) support… ⌘ Read more

VirtualBox 7.2 Beta Brings Windows 11 Arm Support, Source Code On GitHub
Oracle engineers have released the first public beta of the upcoming VirtualBox 7.2 virtualization software release for Windows, Linux, macOS, and Solaris systems… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.16 GPU Driver Changes Land: NVIDIA Blackwell, Asahi UAPI, Intel Xe Fan Speeds
The hearty set of Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel graphics/display driver changes were merged today for the in-development Linux 6.16 kernel. Most notable is preliminary NVIDIA Blackwell and Hopper GPU support atop the mainline kernel with an open-source driver but there are also big ticket items added for the AMD Radeon/Instinct and Intel graphics drivers too as well as the other smaller drivers… ⌘ Read more

Git 2.50-rc0 Brings New Improvements
The initial release candidate of Git 2.50 is now available for this widely-used, distributed version control system… ⌘ Read more

Big Linux Patch Series Shakes Up The Scheduler Code For Anyone With Only One CPU Core
For anyone still happening to have only one CPU core in their system and running a uni-processor “UP” kernel build without any simultaneous multi-processing (SMP) support enabled, a big patch series posted today for the Linux kernel may affect you… ⌘ Read more

Mesa 25.0.7 Delivers A Last Batch Of Fixes To End The Series
Eric Engestrom just released Mesa 25.0.7 as the newest bi-weekly point release to the Mesa 25.0 series that is also the end of the road for that Q1’2025 release branch… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.16 Will Be Able To Exit User Mode Faster: 2~11% Improvement
While the “core/entry” changes for the Linux kernel merge window aren’t typically too exciting to write about, there is a new optimization for all CPU architectures worth mentioning for the Linux 6.16 cycle… ⌘ Read more

AVX-512 Performance + Power Efficiency Shines With AMD Strix Halo
Several weeks into testing the AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ PRO 395 flagship “Strix Halo” SoC within the HP ZBook Ultra G1a, I continue to be very impressed with its performance capabilities for a wide range of workloads. While the Radeon 8060S integrated graphics easily turn heads and the 16-core / 32-thread Zen 5 cores deliver incredible performance in a laptop form factor, one feature not to be discounted that together really helps make this laptop/SFF SoC … ⌘ Read more

Intel Wildcat Lake Audio Support Merged For Linux 6.16
All of the sound/audio driver changes have been merged for the Linux 6.16 kernel that include new AMD and Intel hardware support among other new audio hardware as well as various other improvements… ⌘ Read more

Intel Releases Updated Battlemage Driver Preview Support For Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
While there is nice out-of-the-box support for the new Intel Arc “Battlemage” graphics cards on the new Ubuntu 25.04 release, if you prefer running the Ubuntu 24.04 Long Term Support (LTS) release there isn’t complete support until the next hardware enablement “HWE” update. But Intel in cooperation with Canonical has now published a new graphics driver preview stack for enabling better Intel Arc B-Series support for Ubuntu 24.04 L … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft’s Azure Linux Preps For NVIDIA GB200 Servers
Microsoft on Tuesday released a new version of Azure Linux, their in-house Linux distribution that is used for a variety of purposes from the Azure cloud to powering other Microsoft services… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.16 Merges A Fix For The Macintosh II
Hobbyists continue to tinker around with the Motorola 68000 “m68k” support within the Linux kernel and even landing a fix now in 2025 for the vintage Macintosh II… ⌘ Read more

Arch Linux Installer Adds Option To Configure Btrfs Snapshots Post-Install
Archinstall 3.0.7 is out today as the newest feature update to this text-based Arch Linux installer that makes it quick and easy to deploy a new Arch Linux installation… ⌘ Read more

EXT4 For Linux 6.16 Brings A Change For “Really Stupendous Performance”
Ted Ts’o sent out the EXT4 file-system changes today for the Linux 6.16 kernel. While EXT4 may not see as much code churn these days given its mature state compared to say Btrfs and Bcachefs, with Linux 6.16 are some tantalizing performance improvements… ⌘ Read more

Xfce’s xfwm4 Merges Wayland Compositor Code Based On wlroots
Merged today for Xfce’s Xfwm4 window manager component is a built-in Wayland compositor using wlroots… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.16 Upstreams Support For Hardware-Wrapped Encryption Keys
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… ⌘ Read more

Intel APX Ready With Linux 6.16, Outdated Intel CPU Microcode Reporting Merged
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… ⌘ Read more

AlmaLinux 10.0 Stable Released - Unlike RHEL 10, It Continues Supporting x86-64-v2 CPUs
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… ⌘ Read more

Wayland ext-background-effect-v1 Merged For Background Blur Feature
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… ⌘ Read more

ROCm GPU Compute Performance With AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ “Strix Halo”
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 … ⌘ Read more

XFS Atomic Writes Support Merged For Linux 6.16
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… ⌘ Read more