
Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 5 min 4 sec ago
Ryzen 9 7950X Performance With The New AMD P-State Default Of Linux 6.5
The Linux 6.5 kernel is expected to be released as stable this weekend barring any last minute issues from being raised. One of the notable changes with this new kernel version is Linux now defaulting to the AMD P-State "EPP" active driver configuration for modern Ryzen systems rather than the long-used generic ACPI CPUFreq driver default. In some cases this can mean better performance but particularly should yield a nice improvement to the power efficiency of Ryzen Zen 2 and newer platforms, especially laptops and other portable Linux systems like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally. I am working on some fresh AMD Ryzen Linux laptop comparison benchmarks but for this article is a look at Linux 6.5 on the desktop side with the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.
SQLite 3.43 Released With Up To 2x Performance For JSON Processing
SQLite 3.43 is out today as the newest version of this popular open-source embedded SQL database library that is widely used by countless applications and other software for a variety of data storage purposes...
OpenMandriva ROME 23.08 Brings KDE Plasma 6 TP Option, Continues With AMD Zen Spin
OpenMandriva developers today formally announced the release of their rolling-release OpenMandriva ROME 23.08 Linux OS installation images, which are also being treated as a release candidate for the OMLx 5.0 non-rolling distribution variant. Making OpenMandriva ROME 23.08 more exciting is that they are now offering separate install media as well that features the KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment in its current experimental state but is being offered by OpenMandriva as a "technical preview" around the future direction of the desktop...
Thunderbird 115 Will Be Rolling Out To Fedora Users
Fedora with their more liberal update policies will soon be rolling out the Thunderbird 115 mail client to stable Fedora Linux users...
Coreboot Lands Support For The MSI PRO Z790-P Motherboards
Upstreamed into the Coreboot Git repository this week is the ability to run on the MSI PRO Z790-P DDR4 and DDR5 motherboards for enjoying a latest-generation Intel desktop motherboard that is readily available as an alternative to using the proprietary BIOS implementations...
Mesa's Vulkan WSI/Wayland Code Adds "IMMEDIATE" Present Mode Support
Mesa's Vulkan windowing system integration (WSI) code for Wayland has added the "IMMEDIATE" present mode option that uses Wayland's tearing-control unstable extension to allow for images to be presented immediately but at the risk of visible screen tearing...
KDE Gear 23.08 Released With Kalendar Becoming Merkuro, Many App Improvements
KDE Gear 23.08 is available today as the four-month update to this collection of KDE desktop applications...
AMD Acquires An AI Software Company
While AMD has acquired a number of hardware companies in the past several years, software company acquisitions by AMD has been much more rare. This morning AMD announced the acquisition of Mipsology as an AI software company...
Intel Adds New Raptor Lake IDs To Mesa Graphics Drivers
Seemingly for Intel's upcoming Raptor Lake Refresh processors, some new graphics PCI IDs were added today to Mesa for the Iris Gallium3D and ANV Vulkan drivers...
Ubuntu 23.10 Won't Be Shipping A GIMP 3.0 Snapshot
With Ubuntu 23.10 shipping next month one of the changes expected on the desktop side was using a GIMP 3.0 snapshot for this open-source Adobe Photoshop alternative rather than sticking to the aging GIMP 2.10 series. But now it's been determined that this will not happen and GIMP 2.10 will continue to be used...
Intel Brings Up Lunar Lake Display Support For Linux
In addition to AMD sending out DCN 3.5 display patches for that next-gen display IP block presumably for their upcoming Ryzen 8000 series APUs, Intel's open-source engineers today sent out the patches enabling Lunar Lake display support for their i915 kernel driver while there is also support baking for their in-development Xe kernel driver...
AMD Sends Out Patches Enabling New "DCN 3.5" GPU Display Block
Last week AMD sent out initial patches for enabling the "GFX 11.5" graphics IP under Linux for this presumed RDNA3 refresh that is likely for their next-gen Ryzen 8000 series APUs. Today AMD open-source Linux driver engineers sent out DCN 3.5 patches as an updated version of their Display Core Next IP...
Fedora Workstation 39 Planning To Drop Custom Qt Theming
Fedora Workstation has long maintained the QGnomePlatform and Adwaita-qt projects for applying a GNOME/GTK-like interface and styling to Qt applications in order to enhance the experience. However, to reduce the maintenance burden and the ongoing technical debt, Fedora Workstation 39 is planning to eliminate the custom Qt theming and just rely on Qt upstream...
Mir 2.15 Released With Cleaning Up Some APIs, Improved Alt+Tab
Mir 2.15 is out today as the newest version of this Ubuntu-focused Wayland compositor developed by Canonical that makes it easy for building out Wayland-based shells...
More Linux Fixes/Cleanups Coming For AMD Inception/SRSO Mitigation Code
Earlier this month when the AMD Inception CPU vulnerability was disclosed the initial mitigation was merged to Linux kernel right away for what there is referred to as the Speculative Return Stack Overflow (SRSO). Within a day of that code being published there were already efforts to clean it up and merged last week for Linux 6.5-rc7 was that AMD Inception code cleaning. This week a new set of 22 patches were published for further improving the AMD Inception/SRSO mitigation code...
Linux 6.6 MSM DRM Driver Preps For New Hardware, Overhead Optimizations
Googler Rob Clark on Sunday sent out the set of MSM DRM patches prepped for the upcoming Linux 6.6 merge window. The MSM DRM driver is the kernel component for open-source Qualcomm Adreno graphics that goes along with the Freedreno Gallium3D and TURNIP Vulkan drivers in Mesa for having a nice Qualcomm Linux graphics stack...
RADV Implements NVIDIA DGC Compute Extension
The VK_NV_device_generated_commands_compute extension introduced in Vulkan 1.3.258 is now wired up for Mesa's Radeon "RADV" Vulkan driver and should further benefit VKD3D-Proton for Steam Play gaming...
QEMU 8.1 Released With New PipeWire Audio Backend, Many CPU Improvements
QEMU 8.1 is now available as the latest feature update to this important piece of the open-source Linux virtualization stack...
Asahi Linux's Apple M1/M2 Gallium3D Driver Now OpenGL ES 3.1 Conformant
The AGX Gallium3D driver developed by the Asahi Linux crew for providing reverse-engineered OpenGL / GLES support on Apple Silicon M1/M2 hardware is now formally compliant with OpenGL ES 3.1...
Benchmarking Mercury As The "Fastest Firefox Fork" With AVX, AES, LTO + PGO
Following the news last week of Firefox outperforming Chrome in SunSpider, a Phoronix reader pointed out Mercury that is an open-source web browser claiming to be the "fastest Firefox fork" and making use of Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) and AES instructions along with compiler features like Link-Time Optimizations (LTO) and Profile-Guided Optimizations (PGO). The project advertises as being 8-20% faster than upstream Firefox. Curious I ran a couple benchmarks on my end of this Firefox fork.