
Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 1 hour 42 min ago
GNU Binutils 2.45 Released With Continued Work Around SFrame Stack Tracing
GNU Binutils 2.45 was released on Sunday morning as the newest version of this set of open-source binary tools...
AMD SEV Optimizations Ready For Linux 6.17 Plus A 10x Improvement For Intel TDX
There are a few AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization improvements on the way for the Linux 6.17 kernel worth noting...
Shotcut 25.07 Video Editor Brings Numerous Improvements
Shotcut 25.07 is out today as the newest feature release for this prominent open-source and cross-platform video editing solution...
Linux 6.17 Looks To Address An Old & Obscure Kernel Limitation From 1993
Assuming no objections are raised by Linus Torvalds, an early pull request has been submitted for the upcoming Linux 6.17 merge window to address an obscure kernel limitation that has been in place going back all the way to 1993 during the Linux v0.99 kernel days...
Qualcomm Prepares IFPC Feature For Adreno X1-85 GPU With The Snapdragon X Laptops
This past week Qualcomm sent out a set of 17 patches for the MSM DRM kernel graphics driver for enabling support for the Inter Frame Power Collapse (IFPC) feature with the X1-85 GPU found in the current Snapdragon X laptops...
Linux 6.17 Sound Code Prepares For Upcoming AMD Hardware
Linux sound subsystem maintainer Takashi Iwai of SUSE submitted already the sound code feature changes ready for Linux 6.17...
FFmpeg 8.0 Preparing For Release In August With Many Great Features
We are just a few weeks out from seeing the release of the FFmpeg 8.0 multimedia library with many new features and improvements for this widely-used open-source software...
Linux's Modern NTFS Driver Will Now Correctly Handle Symlinks Created On Windows
One of the nice Linux kernel accomplishments during the pandemic was getting the NTFS3 driver upstreamed for that modern NTFS file-system read/write driver developed by Paragon Software. In recent times that NTFS3 driver has been seeing occasional fixes and for the Linux 6.17 kernel -- and perhaps then back-ported to existing kernels -- are some notable fixes for those relying on drives formatted with this Microsoft file-system...
Linux 6.17 To Support Arm's BRBE
The ARM64 (AArch64) architecture updates have been submitted ahead of the imminent Linux 6.17 merge window...
Intel oneDNN 3.9 Making More Preparations For Xe3, Nova Lake & Diamond Rapids
Released on Friday was a new version of the oneDNN deep neural network library maintained by Intel and the UXL Foundation. This library used by various deep learning applications continues preparing for upcoming Intel CPUs and GPUs...
KDE Plasma 6.5 Adds Notifications For Low Printer Ink Levels
One week ago in the KDE Plasma land it was talking about rounded bottom corners for windows by default while this week in the KDE Plasma space is another long overdue feature: notifications for Plasma around low printer ink cartridge levels. The upcoming KDE Plasma 6.5 will finally feature built-in notifications on printer ink levels running low...
Linux 6.17 Will Be Exciting With Intel "Project Battlematrix" GPU Driver Changes & More
With Linux 6.16 expected to be released on Sunday unless an extra week of testing is deemed necessary, the Linux 6.17 merge window will then kickoff the next day. Based on monitoring the various subsystem "-next" trees and other mailing list activity, here is a look at many of the changes expected for Linux 6.17 barring last minute issues or other objections raised by Linus Torvalds...
Linux Kernel Proposal Documents Rules For Using AI Coding Assistants
Longtime Linux developer Sasha Levin of NVIDIA (and formerly of Google and Microsoft) as well as being the Linux LTS kernel co-maintainer today proposed a Linux kernel AI coding assistant configuration and documentation/rules for contributing to the Linux kernel with patches that are (co)authored by AI coding utilities...
Linux Will Finally Be Able To Reboot Apple M1/M2 Macs With The v6.17 Kernel
While there have been various elements of the Apple M1 and M2 SoC support in the mainline Linux kernel along with support for various Macs, different features have been missing from the upstream kernel such as the Apple GPU kernel graphics driver as one big example. On a more fundamental level, the upcoming Linux 6.17 kernel is going to cross off another low-level expectation for Apple Silicon Macs on the mainline kernel: the ability to reboot the system...
Intel Quietly Sunset Its PlaidML Open-Source Deep Learning Software
Another hit to the open-source Intel software ecosystem this year was the company formally archiving/discontinuing work on the PlaidML deep learning software. PlaidML was the deep learning framework that Intel acquired back in 2018 as part of their acquisition of Vertex.AI. PlaidML had a goal of "deep learning for every platform" but unfortunately those ambitions didn't materialize...
Linux 6.16 Is Exciting For Open-Source NVIDIA, OpenVPN DCO & More Performance
The Linux 6.16 kernel is expected to be released as stable this coming Sunday, 27 July, barring any last minute issues that cause Linus Torvalds to have reservations over issuing v6.16 stable and to instead do a v6.16-rc8 test release. With Linux 6.16 imminent, here's a reminder about some of the most interesting features in this next Linux kernel version...
Bcachefs Lands Last Minute Fixes For Linux 6.16
Ahead of the Linux 6.16 stable kernel expected to be released on Sunday, some last minute Bcachefs file-system fixes join various other kernel regression/bug fixes landing today in Git...
Final Benchmarks Of Clear Linux On Intel: ~48% Faster Than Ubuntu Out-Of-The-Box
Last week Friday the unfortunate news came down that Intel was discontinuing their Clear Linux project effective immediately. For the past ten years Intel software engineers have been crafting Clear Linux as a high performance distribution that is extensively optimized for x86_64 processors via aggressive compiler tuning, various patches to the Linux kernel and other packages, and a variety of other optimizations throughout the operating system. For years Clear Linux has led Linux x86_64 performance not only on Intel desktop/mobile/server hardware but on AMD systems too. Here is a final look at the Clear Linux performance on the Intel side compared to the performance of the latest Ubuntu 25.04 release.
Threadripper 9000 Series Available On 31 July, 9980X For $4999 USD
Last month AMD detailed the Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series as the new Zen 5 Threadrippers. After the Threadripper PRO 9000WX Series debuted this week, AMD announced today that the Threadripper 9000 series will begin hitting retailers next week...
Fedora Considers Reducing The Scope That BIOS Systems Can Hold Up A Release
Given that non-UEFI BIOS systems are quite old at this point and Intel/AMD systems for the past number of years have all supported UEFI, another change proposal being considered this week by Fedoa Linux is limiting the release-blocking status of various (non-UEFI) BIOS systems...