Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 49 min 30 sec ago
Linux 6.18 Block Code Introduces Lockless Bitmap For Software RAID
Last week the block subsystem and IO_uring updates were merged for the Linux 6.18 kernel with a few items to draw attention to...
Linux 6.18 USB Brings Intel USBIO Drivers, Offload Improvements
In addition to the Linux 6.18 kernel bringing initial bindings for writing Rust USB drivers, the main USB/Thunderbolt subsystem updates for Linux 6.18 brought a variety of other enhancements...
System76 Pop!_OS 24.04 Beta Performing Well In Early Benchmarks
Last week System76 released the Pop!_OS 24.04 beta along with the beta COSMIC desktop. This long overdue update to Pop!_OS re-bases against the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS base while featuring their modern, Rust-based desktop environment. For those curious I ran some benchmarks of Pop!_OS 24.04 beta compared to the current Pop!_OS 22.04 stable release.
Linux 6.18 RISC-V Default Kernel Builds To Support Front Panel Shutdown/Reboot Buttons
Following last week's RISC-V pull request that brought support for the MIPS Vendor Extensions and other changes plus separately the SoC pull that added mainline ESWIN EIC7700 SoC support and the HiFive Premier P550, a secondary round of RISC-V architecture updates was submitted for the Linux 6.18 merge window...
Blender 5.0 Beta Builds Available Ahead Of Next Month's Official Release
Beta builds of the Blender 5.0 3D modeling software are now available ahead of the planned stable release in mid-November...
Linux Fair DRM Scheduler Graduates Out Of The "RFC" Phase
Tvrtko Ursulin of Igalia has been leading the work on developing a "fair" DRM scheduler for Linux kernel graphics drivers. This scheduling algorithm is inspired by CFS and aims to improve the experience of running interactive graphical clients in parallel with heavy GPU workloads. This scheduler is inching closer to being ready for the mainline Linux kernel...
GCC 16 Compiler Shifting To "Stage 3" Development Next Month
The GNU Compiler Collection will be shifting to its "stage three" development in November as focusing more on bug fixing now and new ports and less on existing compiler functionality/features...
KVM Virtualization Sees Several Exciting Improvements For AMD & Intel In Linux 6.18
In recent days there have been two rounds of Kernel-based Virtual Machine "KVM" feature updates to be merged for Linux 6.18 in enhancing the open-source virtualization stack...
Linux 6.18 exFAT Driver Lands An Enticing Optimization
In addition to the NTFS3 driver changes to land last week for the Linux 6.18 kernel, the exFAT file-system driver for that other Microsoft file-system has also seen some notable updates this cycle...
Meta Opens Up OpenZL As Format-Aware Compression Framework
Meta already has Zstd (Zstandard) compression while this week they announced the release of OpenZL as a new open-source, format-aware compression framework...
Linux 6.18 Lands Initial Framework For USB Driver Rust Bindings
In addition to a lot of rust code merged last week for Linux 6.18, more Rust code has since landed by way of the char/misc pull request...
Python 3.14 Released With Performance Improvements, Free-Threading & Zstd
Python 3.14 is now available as the newest annual major feature release for the Python programming language...
AMD Announces Ryzen Embedded 9000 Series
AMD today announced the Ryzen Embedded 9000 series for industrial computing and automation platforms...
The Many Memory Management Improvements In Linux 6.18
The many memory management "MM" changes were recently merged into the Linux 6.18 kernel, consisting of a number of interesting patch series...
Qualcomm Acquires Arduino, Announces Arduino UNO Q Built On Dragonwing
Qualcomm announced today that they are acquiring Arduino, the popular open-source hardware/electronics prototyping platform for single-board micro-controllers...
Linear Address Space Separation Revised Following Prior Intel Engineer's Departure
Being worked on for the past roughly three years has been Linear Address Space Separation "LASS" for the Linux kernel as a security improvement in light of Spectre/Meltdown...
Realtek ECC Engine Driver Upstreamed For Linux 6.18
The Memory Technology Device "MTD" subsystem updates are merged for the in-development Linux 6.18 kernel...
Intel QAT Zstd Plugin 1.0 Released With Optimizations, Zstd 1.5.7 Support
Initially released two years ago was an Intel QuickAssist/QAT adaptation for Zstd compression. The v0.1 release happened just over two years ago followed by a v0.2 release one year later... Since then, it had been all quiet. Arriving today to surprise is the QAT Zstd 1.0 plug-in release...
New In 2025: Linux Patches Enable PCI Support For The Amiga 4000
For any Amiga 4000 hobbyists running a Linux m68k operating system, a PCI driver was finally published three decades later for Linux. Patches posted for mainline Linux kernel review today enable the Mediator 4000 PCI bridge available for the Amiga 4000 computer from the early 90's...
Loongson Security Engine Support Added To Linux 6.18
Upstreamed for the Linux 6.18 kernel is supporting the Loongson Security Engine chip found on modern versions of these Chinese computing platforms...
