
Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 58 min 2 sec ago
AlmaLinux's ELevate Begins Handling EPEL Repositories
AlmaLinux's ELevate software is a wonderful utility to help ease migration between existing major versions of RHEL derivatives. In particular, it's been very useful for moving past CentOS 7 and/or upgrading from AlmaLinux 8 to 9, along with the ability to even move to other RHEL derivatives...
SQLite Lands JSONB For Much Faster JSON Functions
SQLite as the leading open-source embedded database solution has landed JSONB, a rewrite of the SQLite JSON functions that can be up to "several times faster" than the existing JSON functions...
One Week Left To Vote On openSUSE's New Logo
The openSUSE project has been working on a rebranding to better differentiate between this community open-source project and SUSE itself. There's been work on a logo design contest with just under one week left to vote in this survey...
The Performance & Power Improvement Of Steam Deck OLED's 6nm APU
The Steam Deck OLED has been on the test bench the past few weeks at Phoronix. The HDR OLED display of the updated Steam Deck handheld game console is gorgeous and was very impressed by it. On a technical level the battery life improvements are significant and one of the items I was most curious about were the power/performance implications in moving from the 7nm Van Gogh APU to a 6nm die shrink version of it while retaining the Zen 2 CPU cores and RDNA2 integrated graphics. Here's a look at the performance and CPU power consumption between the Steam Deck LCD and Steam Deck OLED models not only for gaming but other Linux workloads too.
Linux 6.8 To Drop The SLAB Allocator, SLUB Optimizations Coming Too
Following the SLOB allocator removal earlier this year, the Linux 6.8 kernel in the new year is now positioned to remove the SLAB allocator. Additionally, the lone good-for-everything SLUB allocator is set to receive further optimizations...
GNOME Shell Lands Improved Icon & Text Scaling
GNOME Shell has merged a set of 35 patches to fix/improve icon and text scaling support, especially when using the Large Text mode for accessibility...
Fedora Workstation 39 Delivers Some Nice Gains For AMD Ryzen 7040 Series Graphics
Here are some benchmarks looking at the performance uplift in migrating from Fedora Workstation 38 to Fedora Workstation 39 on an AMD Ryzen 7040 "Phoenix" series laptop...
Intel, AMD, Red Hat / IBM, Meta & Others Launch The AI Alliance
The AI Alliance has launched as a consortium focused on advancing open, safe, and responsible AI...
TornadoVM 1.0 Released For Running Java On Heterogeneous Hardware: CPUs, GPUs & FPGAs
TornadoVM 1.0 has been released as the open-source software providing an OpenJDK and GraalVM plug-in for allowing Java on heterogeneous hardware from multi-core CPUs to GPUs and FPGAs. TornadoVM allows targeting OpenCL, NVIDIA PTX, and SPIR-V devices for a rather robust array of hardware support...
LZ4 Support Revised For Faster Restore From Linux Hibernation
Published originally back in October were a set of patches for allowing different compression algorithms for the Linux hibernation image to yield faster restore times. That work -- focused on LZ4 compression support -- has been revised as it works toward the mainline kernel...
Intel's Linux CPU Temperature Driver Being Adapted To Handle 128+ CPU Cores
Intel's CPU temperature driver "coretemp" within the Linux kernel is being adapted so it can report CPU core temperatures in excess of 128 cores...
Mainline Linux Support Is Being Worked On For A $100~200 ARM Handheld Gaming Console
If the likes of the Steam Deck or ASUS ROG Ally are out of your budget or you just prefer enjoying more classic, less demanding games, there are Linux kernel patches being floated to allow mainline support for a sub-$200 ARM-powered handheld gaming console...
"Panthor" DRM Driver Coming Together For Newer Arm Mali GPUs
Being worked on recently by Boris Brezillon at Collabora is Panthor, a new Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver for supporting the newer Arm Mali graphics processors...
Flowblade 2.12 Video Editor Brings Faster Proxy Rendering, Continued GTK4 Porting
Flowblade 2.12 is now available as this multi-track, non-linear video editor for Linux systems. Shotcut as another open-source video editor also recently put out a new version too...
AMD Posts Linux Patches For QoS RMID Pinning / ABMC
One of the latest Linux kernel patch series posted by AMD Linux engineers is for enabling an AMD QoS RMID pinning feature found within their latest generation processors...
AWS Nitro Secure Module Driver Going Upstream For Linux 6.8
As part of AWS Nitro Enclaves, coming for the Linux 6.8 kernel in the new year is a Nitro Secure Module driver...
AMD Threadripper 7980X Kernel Benchmarks On Linux 6.5 / 6.6 / 6.7
A number of Phoronix readers have been inquiring whether using the newer Linux 6.6 stable kernel or Linux 6.7 development kernel deliver any additional gains when running on the new AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series hardware. Here are some benchmarks looking at that while using a Threadripper 7980X workstation...
TuxClocker 1.4 Brings More CPU & GPU Features
TuxClocker continues on its quest as being one of the leading open-source GUI control panels for overclockers and enthusiasts on Linux. Out this morning is TuxClocker 1.4 that brings more features for making this Qt-based open-source app more useful for those overclocking or just wanting to keep a better eye on their hardware's performance and thermals/power from the Linux desktop...
FEX 2312 Brings More Optimizations For Running x86_64 Games/Apps On AArch64
The newest monthly release of FEX is now available for this open-source project that allows running x86_64 games and applications on 64-bit ARM (AArch64) Linux environments...
Fwupd 1.9.10 Adds LoongArch Support & Firmware Updating For A ~$1k USD Web Camera
Red Hat's Richard Hughes just released Fwupd 1.9.10 as the newest version of this open-source utility for facilitating device and system firmware/BIOS updates under Linux in conjunction with the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) for the easy distribution of such firmware updates...