Phoronix

Intel has released a new version of their open-source, interactive visualization software OSPray Studio that is built atop their OSPray ray-tracing rendering engine...

PipeWire continues with its rapid sequence of releases in continuing to fine-tune this audio/video stream server for the Linux desktop so it can successfully address the roles long-served by the likes of PulseAudio and JACK...

Long before the likes of VA-API and VDPAU for GPU video playback acceleration on Linux, there was X-Video and X-Video Motion Compensation (XvMC). Finally in 2022 the widely-used FFmpeg multimedia library has decided to drop that XvMC hardware acceleration code...

Last week marked the release of the big AMD ROCm 5.0 update to the Radeon open-source GPU compute stack. Out already is now ROCM 5.0.1 with documentation updates as well as initiating the change around the hipcc and hipconfig commands moving forward...

With OpenBMC 2.10 never having materialized beyond a release candidate, the release of OpenBMC 2.11 today is a big one with roughly a year's worth of changes since OpenBMC 2.9. OpenBMC 2.11 brings many improvements for this Linux distribution intended for baseboard management controllers (BMCs) on servers and other management controllers...

The NVIDIA GeForce FX "NV30" graphics cards are nearly two decades old while via the open-source, community-driven Nouveau project even these old GPUs still see occasional Linux graphics driver improvements. Hitting Mesa 22.1-devel today is the most notable driver work we've seen in years for the open-source NV30 and NV40 (GeForce 6 / 7 series) graphics cards...

XWayland 22.1 is out today as the newest standalone feature release for this XWayland code issued separately from the X.Org Server. XWayland continues in very robust shape for allowing X11 clients whether it be games or applications to run atop capable Wayland compositors...

As with most modern SoCs/processors, proper CPU frequency scaling / performance state management is absolutely critical for achieving good performance out of the hardware either for ensuring the CPU is hitting its capable performance states and also to reduce power consumption / heat when not needed in order to avoid thermal throttling and prolonging battery life. Fortunately, a proper CPUFreq driver for the Apple M1 is in development for Linux and is allowing for a combination of enticing performance and good battery life for this community-driven, open-source support around the Apple Silicon...

Back in January I wrote how Valve is working on dynamic Variable Rate Shading (VRS) for the Mesa Radeon Vulkan driver "RADV" to dynamically control the shading performance to help with battery life. That work has now successfully been merged into Mesa 22.1 for the open-source AMD Radeon Linux graphics stack...

The Bcachefs file-system that was born out of the Linux kernel's block cache code has over the past few years matured greatly. Now in 2022 the core fundamentals of the file-system are "pretty close to done" and will hopefully be mainlined this calendar year into the Linux kernel...

With the forthcoming Linux 5.17 kernel there is the new AMD P-State driver aiming to provide better power efficiency than the ACPI CPUFreq driver that has long been used on AMD platforms. For complementing that AMD P-State driver, AMD has also been working on adding their CPU P-State support to Linux's cpupower tool...

Ahead of the Steam Deck beginning to ship at month's end, Valve overnight released Proton 7.0-1 as the newest version of their software that allows many Windows games to run on Linux with great success. Proton 7.0 is rebased against the new upstream Wine 7.0 while also having many other changes in tow...

Gigabyte and Canonical today announced that they will be working together to certify Gigabyte server hardware moving forward for use under Ubuntu Server...

Last June the Linux kernel disabled support for Intel's ENQCMD instructions as the kernel support was found to be "broken beyond repair" for this feature that's part of the Data Streaming Accelerator with upcoming Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" processors. Fortunately, now in time for Sapphire Rapids ramping up, Intel engineers have fixed up the ENQCMD code and looks like the next Linux kernel cycle will re-enable the functionality...

Back in November NVIDIA announced their open-source Image Scaling SDK with cross-platform GPU support to better position their DLSS technology given the ground that AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) has been gaining. The Image Scaling SDK is complementary to DLSS but still requires integration on the behalf of the game/engine developer. Today marks a new update to the NVIDIA Image Scaling SDK...

Finally released earlier this month was the first official 64-bit build of Raspberry Pi OS, the official Debian-based operating system of the low-cost Raspberry Pi single board computers. Following that I posted some Raspberry Pi 32-bit vs. 64-bit benchmarks. Given that generated a fair amount of interest and also some open questions, here is round two of looking at the Raspberry Pi 32-bit vs. 64-bit performance including its impact on memory usage and thermals.

Up to now the Intel DG2/Alchemist graphics driver code for Linux has enabled driving up to four displays, but it turns out these forthcoming Intel Arc graphics cards will be capable of powering five displays concurrently...

The Linux and Coreboot support for the AMD "Sabrina" SoC continues to be worked on while recently Google has merged a new motherboard target for a Sabrina-powered Chromebook...

Linaro is proposing a thermal library that interfaces with the Linux kernel's thermal framework. As part of this is also a thermometer utility for user-space that would live within the Linux kernel source tree for monitoring the thermal data...

One day after AMD completed its acquisition of Xilinx, Intel has announced this morning they plan to acquire Tower Semiconductor...