Phoronix

Valve is ending out the month of July with a new Steam beta release that has a few Linux-specific fixes...

All of the open-source kernel graphics driver feature changes were merged earlier today for the Linux 6.17 kernel. For Linux 6.17 there is an enormous amount of new feature work ready to go with the modern Intel graphics driver code. Plus the always active AMD graphics driver changes and various refinements to the many smaller graphics/display drivers...

The x86 platform driver updates have been merged for the in-development Linux 6.17 kernel. The x86 platform drivers area traditionally has been around Linux laptop hardware support but in recent years more work on handheld devices too plus Intel/AMD server platform functionality...

Back in May when AMD launched the EPYC 4005 "Grado" processors for low-power, low-cost server processors we tested the EPYC 4565P and EPYC 4585PX. The EPYC 4565P is their standard 16-core offering while the EPYC 4585PX is the 3D V-Cache variant for these processors catering to web hosting, SOHO servers, edge computing, and other applications where not needing the performance of the flagship EPYC 9005 "Turin" processors. There is also another 16-core variant with the EPYC 4545P and what makes this SKU interesting is the 16-cores / 32-threads but with a 65 Watt TDP. In the Ryzen 9000 series so far AMD hasn't introduced any 16-core, 65-Watt part that makes the EPYC 4545P all the more interesting. Here are some benchmarks of the EPYC 4545P for those shopping for an affordable and very power efficient server platform that still sharply outperforms Intel's Xeon E / Xeon 6300 competition.

For the Ubuntu 25.10 development cycle to complement the daily ISOs, Canonical began releasing monthly snapshots to facilitate more testing from the community and also in working to enhance their build automation / infrastructure. Today marks the third monthly release of Ubuntu 25.10 for testing...

The Apple System Management Controller (SMC) driver was successfully merged this week into Linux 6.17 for being able to reboot modern Apple M1 / M2 Macs under Linux (the Apple M3 / M4 Linux support remains in development). It's the latest improvement for Apple Silicon on the upstream Linux kernel compared to the downstream Asahi Linux code that has been carrying the SMC driver and other in-development/tentative patches...

The AMD Radeon RX 480 / RX 580 "Polaris" graphics cards remain very popular on the Steam Survey and among enthusiasts/desktop users at large even though they are nearly a decade old. The nine year old Polaris graphics cards have aged well in the marketplace and are an affordable choice. For Linux users they continue enjoying strong open-source driver support. It turns out Linux creator Linus Torvalds himself is still relying on an AMD Radeon RX 580 with one of his main systems...

Another change proposal filed recently for the Fedora Linux 43 release is to hardlink identical files within /usr by default for RPM-provided files that are 100% identical and can be then deduplicated to help conserve disk space and increase system efficiency...

Upstreamed to the Linux kernel back in 2019 was the Lockdown security module for opt-in hardware/kernel security restrictions. It was a difficult and contentious process getting to the Linux kernel but then was left without any formal maintainer shortly after being mainlined. Now for helping to renew this Linux security module, two developers have stepped up to takeover maintainership of Lockdown...

Libinput 1.29 was just released as the newest version of this open-source input handling library used on the modern Linux desktop both under X.Org and Wayland environments...

In recent days there have been an increasing flow of leaks surrounding the Legion Go 2 as the next-generation handheld from Lenovo. The Lenovo Legion Go 2 is reported to be launching later this year with an AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme SoC, 144Hz OLED display, and a variety of other hardware upgrades over the original Lenovo Legion Go. Linux driver activity around the Legion Go 2 has begun...

The Linux 6.17 kernel has merged a new driver for powering up the Imagination PowerVR-based graphics processor found within the Alibaba T-HEAD TH1520 RISC-V SoC. This power sequencing driver is just for being able to power-up the GPU before the actual graphics driver can takeover...

The third weekly release candidate of Mesa 25.2 is now available for testing ahead of its planned stable release in August...

Upstreamed to the Linux kernel back in 2021 was Landlock as a new means of unprivileged application sandboxing. It aimed to be very powerful and since being upstreamed four years ago has seen some minor enhancements and fixes but has been without any formal code maintainer. Thankfully two developers have stepped up to oversee this Linux security module going foreward...

Ahead of the Threadripper 9000 series hitting store shelves tomorrow, today the review embargo lifts on these new high-end desktop/workstation Zen 5 processors. I have been testing out the Threadripper 9970X and 9980X this month and have been extremely excited about the generational uplift and all-around performance of these new AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9970X/9980X processors on Linux for delivering the best possible workstation performance in 2025.

Merged already for the in-development Linux 6.17 kernel were the many block subsystem and IO_uring changes for enhancing I/O on Linux as we roll toward the H2'2025 Linux distribution releases...

Two notable AMD CPU feature additions were merged overnight for the in-development Linux 6.17 kernel...

AMD yesterday upstreamed a batch of new CPU microcode files to linux-firmware.git as the de facto repository where component firmware/microcode is easily distributed to Linux distributions. This also marks the first time that Family 1Ah (Family 26) CPU microcode is updated there for the latest Zen 5 processors...

Earlier this year Linux kernel patches were posted for making SMP support unconditional so the kernel is always built for multi-core capabilities. With uniprocessor core environments being extremely rare especially for those that would be using an up-to-date, upstream Linux kernel, dropping non-SMP support would allow simplifying code paths within the kernel. Well, for Linux 6.17 it's finally happening...

Archinstall 3.0.9 released today as the newest iteration of this text-based Arch Linux operating system installer...