
Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 2 hours 56 min ago
Updated Patches For AMD "Fast CPPC" To Yield Higher Performance At Same Power Level
One of the patch series that sadly was not ready in time for the Linux 6.10 merge window and thus will need to wait a few months for at least the next kernel is enabling AMD Fast CPPC support for Zen 4 processors. Fast CPPC aims to allow the processor to deliver higher performance at the same power consumption...
Nouveau DRM_Panic Being Worked On For Linux "Blue Screen Of Death" Type Situations
Merged for Linux 6.10 is DRM_Panic as a kernel panic screen for situations akin to Windows' well known "Blue Screen of Death". This is a kernel-based panic screen as an alternative to systemd's recent systemd-bsod. Patches have been posted by Red Hat for allowing the open-source NVIDIA "Nouveau" Direct Rendering Manager driver to work with DRM Panic...
Modern NTFS Driver Sees Bug Fixes With Linux 6.10
While not as exciting as XFS expanding its online repair support, Bcachefs prepping for online fsck, Btrfs seeing some performance work, or F2FS improving zoned storage support, the modern NTFS driver "NTFS3" saw a set of fixes land for the Linux 6.10 kernel...
Linux 6.10 Improves AMD ROCm Compute Support For "Small" Ryzen APUs
Sneaking in as a "fix" for the Linux 6.10 kernel is an enhancement to the AMDKFD kernel compute driver used by the ROCm compute stack for better supporting small Ryzen APUs like client and embedded SoCs...
Linux 6.10 On RISC-V Allows Configurable Boot Image Compression
A few days ago with the main RISC-V architecture pull for Linux 6.10 was enabling Rust support within the kernel for this ISA as well as other additions. A secondary set of RISC-V changes have been merged as well ahead of the Linux 6.10 merge window closing this weekend...
Llamafile 0.8.5 Delivers Greater Performance: Tiny Models 2x Faster On Threadripper
The Mozilla Ocho group has published their newest version of Llamafile, the open-source project that makes it very easy to distribute and run large language models (LLMs) as a single file. Llamafile is an excellent solution for easily sharing and running LLMs and supporting both speedy CPU-based execution as well as GPU acceleration where available...
GNOME Continues Working On New Installer, "Major Issue" With STF
This Week In GNOME is out with their newest edition to outline all of the interesting developments as we approach the end of May...
Intel NPU Acceleration Library 1.1 Adds New Model Support & Optimizations
Intel software engineers did a late Friday night release of the Intel NPU Acceleration Library v1.1, their Python library for tapping into the Intel Neural Processing Unit (NPU) found on the new Core Ultra (Meteor Lake) processors. This Python library makes it easier to interface with the Intel VPU/NPU kernel driver and in turn enjoying accelerated operations for AI...
KDE Landed Many Last Minute Features Ahead Of The Plasma 6.1 Beta
It was a busy week for KDE developers ahead of yesterday's Plasma 6.1 Beta release. KDE developer Nate Graham in his weekly development summary outlined all of the interesting changes to make it into the Plasma 6.1 desktop ahead of the feature freeze that went into effect with the beta release...
Memory Sealing "mseal" System Call Merged For Linux 6.10
Merged this Friday evening into the Linux 6.10 kernel is the new mseal() system call for memory sealing...
New AMD RDNA3 APUs Added To Open-Source Linux Driver Along With RDNA4 Fixes
Famed open-source AMD Mesa driver developer Marek Olšák has landed 13 more patches in Mesa 24.2-devel to provide fixes for GFX12 (RDNA4) graphics IP while also adding more GFX11 (RDNA3) APUs...
KDE Plasma 6.1 Beta Released With Wayland Explicit Sync, Input Capture Portal & More
The beta release of Plasma 6.1 is now available for testing over the US holiday weekend...
KDE Plasma 6.1 Lands Dynamic Triple Buffering Support
The four month old KWin merge request by Xaver Hugl to allow for triple buffering has been merged and just in time for the Plasma 6.1 code branching!..
Intel Core Ultra 7 165U "Meteor Lake" Linux Performance
For those considering an Intel Core Ultra 7 165U "Meteor Lake" powered laptop, here are some benchmarks of the 165U using a Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 5 compared against the Acer Swift 14 with the Core Ultra 7 155H (Meteor Lake), the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U (Zen 4) within the Framework 13, and the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS (Zen 4) within the Framework 16 under Linux.
PoCL 6.0-RC1 OpenCL Bringing OpenMP, Intel oneTBB Driver & Better Level Zero
POCL as the "Portable Computing Language" OpenCL implementation that originally began as a CPU-based run-time and has expanded to support a variety of GPU and accelerator targets is out with its first release candidate of the upcoming PoCL 6.0...
Btrfs Sends In Fixes For Linux 6.10 & Restores "norecovery" Mount Option
Last week saw the main Btrfs pull request for Linux 6.10 that delivered on some performance optimizations while today saw a secondary set of merge window changes for this CoW file-system that is now adding back the "norecovery" mount option...
DM-Crypt "High Priority" In Linux 6.10 Makes For Better Throughput & Latency
The Device Mapper changes were merged last week into the Linux 6.10 kernel, including a new "high priority" option for DM-Crypt...
PipeWire 1.2 Can Stream To Snapcast Servers For Multi-Room Audio
Following the recent PipeWire 1.2 release candidate, a second release candidate is out today that also includes the ability to stream to Snapcast servers...
Linux 6.10 Hardware Monitoring Includes New Lenovo ThinkStation Driver
The hardware monitoring "HWMON" subsystem changes for the Linux 6.10 kernel include enabling monitoring of more all-in-one liquid coolers for CPUs, a new driver for exposing monitoring on Lenovo ThinkStation workstations, and other new monitoring capabilities...
Framework 13 & 16 Added To ChromeOS Platform Driver In Linux 6.10
The Framework 13 and Framework 16 AMD Ryzen powered laptops make use of an NPCX embedded controller that rely on the ChromeOS open-source embedded controller (EC) firmware. With the Linux 6.10 kernel the Chrome OS "cros_ec_lpc" driver is being extended to support these latest Framework upgradeable laptops...