Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 2 hours 20 min ago
Pioneer DJM-S11 Professional DJ Mixer To Be Supported By Linux 7.3
The Pioneer DJM-S11 is a professional scratch style 2-channel DJ mixer that retails for $2,269 USD. But if currently connecting this expensive piece of kit to Linux, it does nothing and is unusable. With 87 new lines of code, it will begin to work with the Linux 7.3 kernel later this year...
Uniwill Laptop Driver Preparing A Number Of Features For Linux 7.3
The Unwill laptop driver on Linux for supporting various device-specific features by that major OEM/ODM will be seeing several new features with the Linux 7.3 cycle later this year. One of the most notable users of the Unwill driver is Bavarian Linux PC vendor TUXEDO Computers...
D7VK's Performance Gains Since Its Inception For Older Direct3D Versions On Linux
In addition to Sunday's release of DXVK 3.0.1, D7VK 1.12 was separately released as the latest version of this implementation for Direct3D 7 and older atop the Vulkan API...
Linux 7.2-rc2 Released: "Things Look Very Normal"
Linux 7.2-rc2 is now available for testing in working toward the stable Linux 7.2 release in August...
DXVK 3.0.1 Released With More Game Fixes, Other Improvements
Following the release of DXVK 3.0 from late June that brought several big changes, DXVK 3.0.1 is out today with shipping various game fixes and other improvements to this important piece of Valve's Steam Play (Proton) for Direct3D Windows games on Linux...
ReactOS "Open-Source Windows" Project Now Capable Of Running Half-Life 2
One month ago it was exciting to see the open-source ReactOS operating system running Valve's Half-Life game. Little to realize less than 30 days later it would also be running Half-Life 2...
AMD Begins Staging Graphics Driver Changes For Linux 7.3
In addition to Intel beginning to volley graphics driver patches for Linux 7.3, this week AMD also began sending out their pull requests of "new stuff" to DRM-Next for the Linux 7.3 kernel cycle...
Intel Preparing Linux For IPU8 Web Camera Support With Nova Lake Laptops
More Linux kernel patches have been surfacing that confirm next-gen, high-end Nova Lake laptops will feature IPU8 image processing capabilities...
OpenRazer 3.12.4 Fixes Compatibility With Linux 7.2
OpenRazer 3.12.4 is now available as the newest update to these out-of-tree, unofficial Linux drivers for Razer devices. OpenRazer when paired with the likes of Polychromatic or other GUI options is what makes for a nice experience running Razer gaming peripherals under Linux...
FEX 2607 Optimizing For Yet-To-Be-Released ARM 256-bit SVE2 Hardware
The FEX Emulator that allows running Linux x86/x86_64 software on ARM64 (AArch64) systems, including the likes of Wine / Valve's Steam Play (Proton) for Windows gaming on ARM, is out with its newest monthly feature release. The Valve-backed project for running x86_64 games and other software on ARM for the upcoming Steam Frame and other more typical ARM Linux systems has been baking more optimizations and improvements...
Linux DRM Scheduler Patches Yield Massive Improvement For Job Submission Latency
A set of patches to the Linux kernel's Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) scheduler that is shared among different kernel graphics drivers is showing the potential of delivering much lower job submission latency when the system is loaded with many runnable CPU processes...
4K @ 60 FPS USB Video Capture Finally Becomes Less Problematic On Linux
One area of Linux hardware testing I haven't explored much in many years has been modern USB video capture for the lack of said hardware. The last time I did much video capturing on Linux was during the Hauppauge PCI card days. It turns out though that USB video capture of 4K 60 FPS content has been a pain point under Linux but is finally smoothing out with newer versions of the Linux kernel...
Phoronix Premium Summer Sale To Help Support Linux Hardware Testing
For those that missed Phoronix turning 22 years old last month when running a special to help support the site, a few readers mentioned recently they missed out on seeing the deal in time. Paired with the US Independence Day holiday and summer sales elsewhere, now through 10 July is a Phoronix Premium summer sale if wishing to view the site ad-free while supporting the daily open-source/Linux news coverage and relentless Linux hardware testing...
GNOME Lands ext-background-effect-v1 Support For Background Blur Effect
Added to the Wayland Protocols repository back in May of 2025 was the ext-background-effect-v1 protocol for background blur that had been under discussion since early 2024. The initial focus is on being able to apply a blur effect on a window's background or otherwise a specified screen region. GNOME 51 has now merged support for ext-background-effect-v1 with the latest Mutter code...
Linux 7.3 Adding More Graphics PCI IDs For Intel Nova Lake S
In addition to this week's drm-intel-next pull request beginning to lay out the Intel kernel graphics driver changes for Linux 7.3, the first drm-xe-next pull request was sent out on Friday. Intel Nova Lake enablement remains the hot area for the Intel GPU driver code...
Linux 7.2-rc2 Raising The Default RISC-V 64-bit CPU Limit To 256 Cores
A post merge-window change that landed in Linux Git overnight ahead of tomorrow's Linux 7.2-rc2 release is bumping the default limit on the number of supported CPU cores for RISC-V 64-bit. Now by default Linux will support up to 256 cores with RISC-V 64-bit kernel builds...
KWin Compositor In KDE Plasma 6.8 Drops Support For Desktop OpenGL
Along with releasing Plasma 6.7.2 this week, KDE developers continue to be quite busy working on new features and improvements for the Plasma 6.8 release while also furthering along fixes for future Plasma 6.7 point releases...
GNOME Mutter GPU Reset Recovery Becoming A Reality
While typically quite rare encountering a GPU reset under Linux in most conditions, currently if encountering one under GNOME your session gets wiped out. But thanks to a Google Summer of Code "GSoC" project this year, GNOME's Mutter compositor is finally seeing real GPU reset recovery handling...
GNOME 51 Alpha Released With Numerous Enhancements
In working toward the stable GNOME 51 desktop release due out in September, today marks the alpha release of GNOME 51...
UPower 1.91.3 Fixes Behavior To Avoid Degrading Your Laptop Battery Faster
The UPower abstraction layer used for power management on Linux systems, especially laptops and desktops, is out with an important fix today to avoid inadvertently falling back to the laptop battery "fast" charging mode on some laptops that in turn could degrade your laptop battery faster...
