
Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 2 hours 38 min ago
Mozilla Has A New CEO To Focus On The Future
Mitchell Baker announced today she is stepping down as CEO of Mozilla Corporation but will retain the position of Mozilla Corporation Executive Chairwoman...
Cyberus Develops Open-Source KVM Backend For VirtualBox
Cyberus Technology announced today the open-source release of a KVM back-end developed for VirtualBox. This new back-end allows the VirtualBox VMM to run virtual machines utilizing the Linux KVM hypervisor instead of the custom kernel module relied upon by the standard Oracle VM VirtualBox software...
Fwupd 1.9.13 Adds Support For Newer Acer USB Docks
Fwupd 1.9.13 was released today by Red Hat's Richard Hughes as the newest feature update to this open-source firmware updating solution for Linux systems and more...
Arm Lands Mali Gen10 "Panthor" Firmware Blob In Linux-Firmware.Git
As the first of Arm Mali firmware to be added to the linux-firmware.git repository, the Gen10 Mali "Panthor" firmware has been added as part of the effort on the new open-source Panthor DRM kernel driver currently working its way upstream...
Canonical Improving The Thunderbird Snap For Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
Canonical is continuing the emphasis on Snaps for the upcoming Ubuntu 24.04 LTS release...
A New Attempt At Async Device Shutdown Support For Linux
Asynchronous device shutdown support for the Linux kernel has been pursued in the past as with hyperscalers like Google too many NVMe storage devices can slow the shutdown/reboot process. Red Hat on Wednesday submitted a new patch series aiming to implement async device shutdown support...
WireGuard Driver Merged To DragonFlyBSD Kernel
Merged today to DragonFlyBSD Git is the WireGuard protocol driver for leveraging this popular tech...
Blender 4.1 Will Further Expand Linux's CPU Rendering Performance Lead Over Windows
When running Windows vs. Linux performance benchmarks one of the real-world areas where Linux consistently dominates across both AMD and Intel platforms is for the Blender 3D modeling software's rendering performance. For CPU-based rendering in Blender as well as other 3D modeling software, Linux typically dominates by wide margins. With the upcoming Blender 4.1 release, it looks like Linux's lead will only further expand...
Microsoft Confirms Bringing Sudo For Windows, Is Open-Source Too
There's been recent reports that Microsoft is bringing sudo to Windows as discovered in recent Windows 11 Insider previews. This was briefly confirmed today by Microsoft in a since-removed blog post as well as noting that it's open-source...
AMD Ryzen 5 8500G: A Surprisingly Fascinating Sub-$200 CPU
After reviewing the Ryzen 7 8700G and the Ryzen 5 8600G as these new Zen 4 processors with RDNA3 integrated graphics, the latest AMD 8000G series CPU in the Linux benchmarking lab at Phoronix is the Ryzen 5 8500G. The Ryzen 5 8500G is a 6-core / 12-thread processor with RDNA3 graphics that retails for just $179 USD. Here's a look at how it's performing against other AMD and Intel processors on Ubuntu Linux. The Ryzen 5 8500G ends up being decent on the GPU side but making me genuinely excited is the Zen 4C prospects in the low-power space for AI workloads at the edge, low power servers, and other different deployments for great low-power performance. Under load this AVX-512 wielding budget desktop processor was typically pulling 50 Watts or less!
New Linux Kernel Patches Begin Plumbing Rust Support Into Bcachefs Driver
There's been much excitement around the Bcachefs file-system since it was mainlined in the Linux kernel at the end of last year. Looking ahead to Linux 6.9 it's looking like it may be one of the first file-system drivers to begin making use of the Rust programming language...
Snaps & Ubuntu Core Desktop Talked Up At FOSDEM 2024
Canonical engineer Till Kamppeter was at FOSDEM 2024 last weekend in Belgium to talk up the Snap packaging format spearheaded for Ubuntu Linux as well as their ongoing work around Ubuntu Core Desktop for providing an all-Snap based operating system...
The Mold Linker Is Great & Set To Become Even Better
When it comes to open-source compiler toolchain components and more broadly often unsung heroes in the low-level open-source space, one of the most interesting successes in recent years has been the Mold linker that has proven itself a viable alternative to GNU ld and Gold or LLVM's lld linkers. Mold is already in great shape and typically proving itself well while moving ahead they are working toward kernel/embedded programming support as one of the last grounds to tackle...
AMD Updates Mesa Video Driver Code With Geometric Scaling & HLG
AMD has merged updated video processing engine "VPElib" code into their Mesa driver with their latest feature work...
AMD Posts Linux Graphics Driver Patches For New IP Blocks - Presumably For RDNA4
AMD engineers on Monday posted a few new patch series for enabling some updated IP (intellectual property) blocks within their open-source AMDGPU Linux kernel graphics driver. This new IP is presumably part of the ongoing hardware enablement work for their next-generation RDNA4 graphics...
Intel Arrow Lake OpenGL & Vulkan Driver Support Merged For Mesa 24.1
Intel Arrow Lake platform support has been merged to Mesa 24.1 for providing the ANV Vulkan and Iris Gallium3D (OpenGL) open-source drivers with support for the next-generation Intel Core integrated graphics...
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Leaning Toward Low-Latency Kernel Optimizations By Default
Last month it was noted on Phoronix that Canonical's kernel team is looking at folding their low-latency kernel optimizations into their generic kernel builds. Right now Ubuntu maintains a separate "lowlatency" kernel flavor with Kconfig tweaks in the name of low-latency responsiveness as an alternative to their "generic" kernel default, but for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS it continues looking like they'll move forward with this change of incorporating the changes into their default kernel build...
The Greenfield In-Browser Wayland Compositor Is Fast Enough For Gaming
While there are a lot of Wayland compositors out there that aren't too different from each other in terms of features, one of the more unique ones is Greenfield. The Greenfield Wayland compositor has been out there for a few years now as an in-browser HTML5-based solution that is continuing to prove itself capable and even fast enough for handling Linux gaming...
Mozilla's Latest Plan To Make Money Is Mozilla Monitor Plus
Mozilla's latest non-browser foray and attempt at generating additional revenue is Mozilla Monitor Plus, what formerly was known as the free service Firefox Monitor for monitoring of exposed personal information such as email addresses as part of security breaches to various web services...
AMD Announces Embedded+ Architecture For Ryzen Paired With Xilinx IP
With Ryzen AI found in the very newest Ryzen processors, AMD began making use of IP from their acquisition of Xilinx. Today though AMD is announcing their Embedded+ Architecture that is taking the marriage of AMD and Xilinx tech much further by combining the wares onto a single PCB for new embedded applications as an integrated compute platform.