Phoronix

In addition to Linux 6.1 x86_64 defaulting to warning over W+X mappings and other security-minded improvements this merge window, another benefit of this next kernel is the mainlining of the Kernel Memory Sanitizer (KMSAN)...

The 64-bit Arm (ARM64 / AArch64) architecture changes were merged last week for the ongoing Linux 6.1 merge window...

Released last month was LLVM/Clang 15 and since then a number of Phoronix readers have been inquiring about Clang 15 compiler benchmarks or there the lack of on Phoronix. I've been testing various Intel and AMD systems with Clang 15, but it hasn't been particularly exciting -- but that's not a bad thing, just that it doesn't make for particularly compelling benchmark articles...

Mesa's Zink driver implementing the OpenGL API atop Vulkan continues advancing at a rapid pace and today the latest major addition landed: async pipeline precompiles...

In addition to MGLRU and Maple Tree having been merged overnight, Linus Torvalds also picked up the x86/mm changes for Linux 6.1 that will now by default warn about W+X mappings...

Last week Valve launched their much anticipated Steam Deck Docking Station as the official "dock" for the Steam Deck to allow connecting up to two external displays, power, additional USB ports, and Gigabit Ethernet. I've been testing out the Steam Deck Docking Station and it's been working out well but on the pricier side compared to alternatives.

The KDE community has just published Plasma 5.26 as the newest update to this open-source desktop environment and as the end of Plasma 5 feature development quickly approaches...

While 2023 is quickly approaching and the Modula-2 programming language has since been succeeded by the Modula-3 and Oberon languages since the late 80's, GNU Modula-2 continues to be worked on as a front-end to the GNU Compiler Collection for this structured, procedural programming language...

For more than a year AMD engineers have been working on IOMMU v2 page table support and with the in-development Linux 6.1 kernel the initial patches are finally being merged...

The latest daily development builds of the Blender 3D modelling software have enabled native support for Wayland. If all goes well, the Blender 3.4 release coming up will ship with this native Wayland support for Linux...

MGLRU has successfully landed in Linux 6.1 as one of the best kernel innovations of the year to be mainlined. Along with that the new Maple Tree data structure was also merged...

At last week's XDC 2022 conference, Google engineer Rob Clark presented on VirtGPU DRM Native Contexts and the potential there for much better performance - especially for gaming - within virtual machines than using API-level virtualization like with Virgl...

Back in 2019 the Linux kernel finally deprecated a.out support for that format superseded by ELF long ago. Since earlier this year kernel developers moved ahead with beginning to remove a.out support, including the old x86 a.out support. Now with Linux 6.1 some lingering remnants of a.out are being cleared away...

This should come as little surprise with the GeForce RTX 4090 series releasing this week as the first Ada Lovelace GPUs, but NVIDIA is releasing a new feature branch driver for Linux users...

It's been a long time since last having anything significant to report on for Oracle's VM VirtualBox software: VirtualBox 6.0 debuted in 2018 and VirtualBox 6.1 in 2019, but since has been rather quiet... But out today is now VirtualBox 7.0 with big features like support for full virtual machine encryption and a new Direct3D 11 based graphics stack, which for Linux use is now going through DXVK...

The "perf" kernel subsystem for Linux with the perf performance analyzing tool has picked up some new AMD processor capabilities for Linux 6.1...

The platform drivers x86 updates were merged a few days ago for the Linux 6.1 kernel. Most notable is the introduction of the AMD Platform Management Framework (PMF) while there are also a number of laptop driver updates too as part of this feature update...

For those wondering the difference using the aging ACPI CPUFreq driver or the newer AMD P-State CPU frequency scaling drivers make for modern Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" desktops, here are some CPUFreq/P-State driver tests using the Ryzen 9 7950X as well as testing the various governor options and looking at the impact on the CPU power consumption, peak frequency, and thermals too.

Over the weekend code began landing in mainline Coreboot for an AMD SoC codenamed Morgana -- another new codename -- as well as prepping for an AMD Glinda SoC too...

Following the recent HID driver updates for Linux 6.1, the other input subsystem driver updates for this new kernel version have been submitted. The input driver updates this cycle range from supporting the optional PinePhone keyboard to a driver enabling the IBM Operation Panel used by some IBM servers...