Phoronix

Intel software engineers have released version 0.7 of Open PGL, their open-source Path Guiding Library (PGL) that can be used by 3D renderers to enjoy state-of-the-art path guiding methods for better sampling quality and efficiency...

Apache CouchDB 3.4.1 was released today after the developers decided at the last minute before releasing CouchDB 3.4 to drop automatic upgrading of password hashes... Thus CouchDB 3.4.1 is out as the big "CouchDB 3.4" release. The CouchDB 3.4 series brings a number of performance improvements, QuickJS as an alternative to the SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine, and other enhancements...

Patches for wiring up async device shutdown within the Linux kernel were queued via the driver core branch for the in-development Linux 6.12 kernel. However, at the last minute these asynchronous device shutdown patches were reverted so that they can be reworked and hopefully land for the Linux v6.13 kernel in the new year...

If you wanted to get in on the last Phoronix Premium promotion before the end-of-year holidays, this is your last chance to do so with the "Oktoberfest" sale ending this weekend for helping to support the site while enjoying ad-free browsing, native dark mode, multi-page articles on a single page, and other benefits...

Sound Open Firmware 2.11 is now available for this open-source audio DSP firmware infrastructure and SDK project backed by Intel, AMD, and other IHVs/ISVs. With SOF 2.11 comes support for new hardware from both AMD and Intel...

The upstream Linux 6.11 kernel introduced the ability to easily produce a Pacman kernel package for Arch Linux with the new "make pacman-pkg" target. With Linux 6.12 new additions to the Kbuild code make it easy to also produce a debug kernel build for Arch Linux systems...

As part of his new hope for helping to accelerate Wayland protocol development, Mike Blumenkrantz with Valve proposed an "experimental" protocol development area within Wayland-Protocols. He's also laid out a proposal for seeking to solidify the means by which suggested protocol changes can be rejected...

BusyBox 1.37 has been released as the first feature release in one and a half years for this "Swiss Army Knife of embedded Linux" systems. With BusyBox 1.37 comes some new options, many fixes, and other enhancements...

There's been much speculation since this morning over a reported "severe" unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) flaw affecting Linux systems that carries a CVSS 9.9.9 score... The embargo has now lifted with the details on this nasty issue...

Earlier this week in the launch-day Intel Xeon 6980P Granite Rapids review/benchmarks I unfortunately wasn't able to provide any CPU power consumption and performance-per-Watt benchmarks due a Linux kernel issue and the minimal time ahead of launch for testing. I've now repeated the Xeon 6980P benchmarking on the Linux 6.8 kernel of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS with power monitoring working and have those power efficiency numbers to share today for how Granite Rapids compares to prior Emerald Rapids / Sapphire Rapids / Ice Lake and against the current AMD EPYC Bergamo/Genoa(X) competition.

PostgreSQL 17 is out today as the newest annual feature release to this widely-used SQL database server. Notable with PostgreSQL 17 is having an AVX-512 optimized bit_count function along with several other heavy hitting performance optimizations...

Following the release of the COSMIC Alpha desktop in early August, System76 is closing out September by issuing the second alpha release of their Rust-based open-source desktop environment...

The USB/Thunderbolt subsystem updates were submitted today for the Linux 6.12 kernel merge window along with the other areas of the kernel overseen by Greg Kroah-Hartman. A new USB driver is the 9p network gadget driver that has been in development for quite a while and aims to help ease embedded Linux device development...

The RISC-V architecture updates have been submitted for the Linux 6.12 kernel cycle. More RISC-V CPU ISA extensions are being supported along with enabling some additional kernel features for this CPU architecture...

The VirtIO Vsock guest/host communication interface using virtual sockets will see better performance with the in-development Linux 6.12 kernel...

It's been nearly three months since the last DXVK release for this Direct3D 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 implementation built atop Vulkan for Steam Play (Proton) / Wine. That changed today with Philip Rebohle having just released DXVK 2.4.1...

Vulkan 1.3.296 is out as the first spec update in nearly one month. Given the time that has passed there are more bug fixes than usual but there is also a prominent new extension: VK_EXT_device_generated_commands...

Valve open-source graphics software engineer Mike Blumenkrantz is well known in the Linux community for his work on the Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan driver code, various Mesa driver optimizations, and creative writing on his blog. He's also taken up a new task: further accelerating Wayland protocol development...

ChipStar 1.2 has been released as the open-source software enabling HIP/CUDA programs to be compiled and run atop SPIR-V whether it be OpenCL or Vulkan drivers...

While Intel has been making steady progress around enhancing the Linux kernel handling for CPUs with a mix of P and E cores for proper task placement and power optimizations, one area that still is less than desirable for these hybrid Intel Core processors is around virtualization. But Intel engineers are now actively working on improving the Linux virtualization infrastructure for being able to convey the P/E core differences among vCPUs so that the guest VMs can better behave in such environments...