Phoronix

There has been a multi-year effort to overhaul the Linux kernel's printk() code and as part of that the newest patch series out is providing threaded console printing support...

Fwupd 1.7.5 is out as the latest feature update to this open-source solution for updating system and component firmware under Linux that is easily distributed by the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS)...

Intel Foundry Services already courted SiFive as a customer and there were even those talks last year of Intel reportedly trying to acquire that leading RISC-V chip designer while today Intel has announced it joined RISC-V International as its latest move around this open-source processor ISA...

Last week marked the long awaited release of a 64-bit spin of Raspberry Pi OS. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has now made available a 64-bit build of their default Linux OS build derived from Debian for all recent Raspberry Pi hardware supporting AArch64. For those curious, here are some benchmarks looking at the performance improvement by switching from Raspberry Pi OS 32-bit to 64-bit.

After establishing a new organization within AMD last year focused on improving AMD client platforms on Linux, they are now hiring again for this endeavor...

With the Linux 5.18 kernel coming later this year, the Intel Protected Processor Inventory Number (PPIN) will be more easily exposed for their server processors...

While Arch Linux is known to be at the forefront of rolling-release Linux distributions, when it comes to its compiler toolchain the packages have fallen behind over the past year...

Thanks to Mozilla's Telemetry capabilities, there is some interesting insight to how many Linux desktop users are still relying on an X.Org (X11) Server without Wayland...

While much of the Intel DG2/Alchemist open-source driver support has already been upstreamed into the Linux kernel, Mesa for OpenGL and Vulkan, and related components like IGC and Compute-Runtime, there are various bits still pending ahead of the Intel Arc graphics cards set to make their debut in the next few months. One of those pieces still working their way upstream is enabling the GSC block, the Graphics System Controller...

OpenMandriva Lx 4.3 was released this FOSDEM weekend for this distribution derived from the once great Mandriva Linux, formerly Mandrake...

Linus Torvalds just released Linux 5.17-rc3 as the latest test kernel for Linux 5.17 that should be out as stable before the end of March...

The Linux 5.18 kernel this spring is adding support for the Intel Hardware Feedback Interface (HFI, also talked about sometimes as the Enhanced Hardware Feedback interface - EHFI)...

While the Apple M1 SoC is a great piece of hardware, a large part of what has made Apple Silicon so successful with their newest Macs has been their Rosetta 2 software for dynamically translating x86/x86_64 software to run well on these 64-bit Arm systems. Existing applications and games optimized for prior Intel Macs continue running generally in excellent shape on their newest hardware thanks to Rosetta 2. While there is the ongoing Linux bring-up work for Apple Silicon on Linux, the open-source world doesn't currently have that advantage of a compelling Rosetta 2 alternative but the FEX-Emu project hopes to change that outlook...

While Linux 5.17 is introducing the ASUS WMI EC Sensors driver for greatly expanding Linux's support for hardware sensor coverage on newer ASUS desktop motherboards, already with Linux 5.18 that driver will be deprecated to make way for a new ASUS EC sensor driver replacement...

A Linux kernel driver was posted today for platform control support for Valve's upcoming Steam Deck...

Besides all of the Linux-focused talks at the annual FOSDEM conference, another favorite track of mine is that on micro-kernels and other operating systems. While there wasn't the GNU/Hurd status update in 2022 as there has been in some recent years, there was a talk over GNU/Hurd using NetBSD kernel drivers in order to expand its hardware coverage...

For use with Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), Oracle this week released Oracle Linux 8.5 onto the Microsoft Store...

There's been some activity on AMD open-source firmware support for newer hardware platforms but for those wanting a fully open-source firmware stack, there remains work on older generations of AMD server platforms. Michał Żygowski of firmware consulting firm 3mdeb presented today at FOSDEM 2022 as to the current state AMD open-source firmware efforts around Coreboot...

Microsoft continues work on their controversial "DXGKRNL" driver they hope to mainline into the Linux kernel for benefiting their Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) efforts...

Intel has for a while been posting Linux kernel patches for implementing Control Flow Enforcement (CET) technology, both for the Indirect Branch Tracking and Shadow Stack features. However, as written about earlier this week, Intel is focusing on the shadow stack support for user-space. The patches posted this past week by Intel for Linux Shadow Stack for User-Space support was limited to their own processors but fortunately it's appearing to be work out fine for AMD CPUs too...