
Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 13 min 18 sec ago
LLVM/Clang Compiler Being Adapted For AVX10.2 Now Making 512-bit Support Mandatory
Coming out this week was an updated AVX10 whitepaper from Intel with the surprising decision that 512-bit floating point and integer support is no longer considered optional for AVX10.2. AVX10.2 now mandates 128 / 256 / 512-bit support and in turn also dropped the 256-bit embedded rounding support with the focus on 512-bit. The LLVM/Clang compiler had seen its AVX10 support designed around Intel's original AVX10 design assumptions and thus now is being modified to address these changes...
Qualcomm Iris Video Decode Driver & DesignWare HDMI Input Support Ready For Linux 6.15
Among the earliest of pull requests this week ahead of the Linux 6.15 merge window expected to begin tomorrow were the media subsystem updates. In addition to continuing to improve the common "uvcvideo" web camera driver and other routine refinements, there is also some new media hardware support slated to be included as part of the Linux 6.15 kernel...
Rust Additions For GCC 15 Bring Support For if-let Statements, Other Improvements
This past week a lot of new code for the Rust "gccrs" front-end began being merged for the upcoming GCC 15.1 stable release... The Polonius borrow checker landed along with other big improvements to the Rust code ahead of this annual GNU Compiler Collection release. A third round was merged on Friday adding yet more gccrs features...
Sched_Ext Changes Submitted For Linux 6.15
The sched_ext code for extensible scheduler support and being able to quickly prototype new Linux kernel scheduling improvements continues evolving nicely since its much anticipated merging to the mainline kernel in 2024. Ahead of the imminent Linux 6.15 merge window, the sched_ext feature updates were sent out today for this next kernel cycle...
FreeDesktop.org GitLab Transitions To New Server Infrastructure
Last weekend FreeDesktop.org began transitioning to their new server/cloud infrastructure after recently finding out their sponsored Equinix Metal services were shutting down. Following the complex migration process this past week, FreeDesktop.org GitLab is up and running on the Hetzner server infrastructure in Germany...
Linux 6.15 Plans To Drop Support For A Useless CRC-32 Checksum In The Kernel Image
Ingo Molnar began sending out the pull requests today for the upcoming Linux 6.15 merge window of code areas he oversees for the Linux kernel. Among those early pulls are of the x86/build updates, which includes removing some seemingly useless CRC-32 checksum code from the kernel...
AMD RDNA 3.5 Cleaner Shader Support Prepped For Linux 6.15
Ahead of the imminent Linux 6.15 merge window expected to begin next week, a batch of AMDGPU/AMDKFD Radeon kernel driver updates were sent out on Friday for this next kernel cycle. It's mostly about bug fixes but does container cleaner shader support for AMD RDNA 3.5 graphics...
KDE KWin Lands FIFO v1 Wayland Support, GNOME 48 Squeezed In XDG Toplevel Drag v1
There is some new Wayland protocol support activity this week worth mentioning for both the KDE Plasma and GNOME desktops...
Code Submitted Ahead Of Linux 6.15 For Enabling Block Sizes Greater Than Page Size
Ahead of the Linux v6.14 kernel expected for release tomorrow and in turn the Linux 6.15 merge window, Linux engineer Christian Brauner at Microsoft began sending out his pull requests today of new code he's hoping to see merged for this next cycle. One of those interesting pulls is the work for block devices to allow for block sizes to be greater than the page size...
NVIDIA's Open-Source Kernel Driver Ported To Haiku OS, Mesa NVK Adapted To Run On Top
Haiku OS developer X512 has managed a rather impressive feat: porting NVIDIA's open-source kernel modules to Haiku. Not only did he get NVIDIA's official Linux kernel modules running on Haiku but he also ported the Mesa NVK Vulkan driver to be able to run atop the NVIDIA kernel driver interface...
KDE Continues Prepping More Features For Plasma 6.4
KDE developers continue pushing ahead with new feature development on the Plasma 6.4 desktop to further refine Plasma 6...
Wine 10.4 Brings More Direct3D To Vulkan Video Handling, Continued Bluetooth Driver Work
Wine 10.4 is out tonight as the newest bi-weekly development release of this open-source software for running Windows games and applications on Linux, macOS, and other platforms...
AMD Announces AITER For ROCm To Help Boost AI Performance
AMD has been on a software / container / documentation spree recently around ROCm and today are announcing another software addition to the ROCm portfolio: AITER...
Microsoft Proposes "Hornet" Security Module For The Linux Kernel
Microsoft's newest open-source contribution to the Linux kernel being proposed is... Hornet, a Linux security module (LSM) for providing signature verification of eBPF programs...
ReactOS 0.4.15 Released For This "Open-Source Windows" OS With Tons Of Enhancements
It's been over three years since the last ReactOS open-source operating system release for this platform working on API/ABI compatibility with Microsoft Windows. Today ReactOS 0.4.15 was finally published...
Linux Security Hardening Cache Randomization Was Inadvertently Using The Same Seed
Ahead of the upcoming Linux 6.15 kernel cycle a few early pull requests have already been sent in to Linus Torvalds in advance of the anticipated v6.14 release on Sunday. Among those early changes for Linux 6.15 are the SLAB allocator updates that include a fix for cache randomization with kvmalloc inadvertently being inadequate due to accidentally using the same randomization seed...
New Intel/AMD GPU Features, Apple Touch Bar Drivers & Other Likely Changes For Linux 6.15
With the Linux 6.14 stable kernel likely debuting on Sunday, the Linux 6.15 merge window will then open for kicking off the next development cycle. There's a lot of exciting changes and new features building up ahead of the Linux 6.15 merge window...
Raspberry Pi Announces rpi-image-gen To Help Craft Custom Software Images
Following a slew of hardware announcements in the past few months like the RP2350 shipping, Raspberry Pi 5 16GB, Raspberry Pi Monitor, and Raspberry Pi 500, today they have a new software announcement. Today they formally announced "rpi-image-gen" as a new tool to help customers in crafting customized software OS images...
Linux 6.14 Sees Last Minute Fix For A Two Year Old Regression Causing A 30% Performance Drop
Submitted today ahead of the Linux 6.14 stable release expected Sunday is a lone scheduler fix for the kernel. This patch is for reverting a change made to the Linux kernel two years ago that ended up regressing some workloads with a significant performance hit...
AMD Announces Open-Source "GAIA" For GenAI But Currently Windows-Only
AMD on Thursday announced GAIA for "Generative AI Is Awesome" as a means of easily running local large language models (LLMs) on Ryzen AI PCs with the XDNA NPU. GAIA provides an easy software demonstration for Ryzen AI capabilities but sadly for the moment is limited to Microsoft Windows platforms...