Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 2 hours 38 min ago
Dbus-Broker 34 Released For High Performance D-Bus Message Broker
There's been nothing new on the BUS1 front this year for capability-based IPC within the Linux kernel... In fact, the BUS1 out-of-tree kernel module has gone untouched for years now. But out of the BUS1 project has been Dbus-Broker for a high performance D-Bus message broker in user-space that doesn't break existing D-Bus compatibility. Out today is the newest version of that project closely tied to systemd developers...
Arch Linux ALHP Adds x86-64-v4 Repository For Packages Built With AVX-512
The unofficial "ALHP" repositories for Arch Linux have begun offering an x86-64-v4 tuned repository for packages built against this current highest x86-64 micro-architecture feature level for the latest Intel and AMD processors with AVX-512 support...
KDE Plasma Mobile 6 Porting Underway
While there has been much talk this year about KDE Plasma 6.0 on the desktop as it gears up for release at the end of February, there's been less talk about the Plasma Mobile work for having the KDE stack on smartphones. But it turns out some progress is quietly being made on KDE Plasma Mobile for bringing it aligned with the "6" platform...
openSUSE Logo Contest Concludes With Winners Selected
For those that were interested in the openSUSE logo contest, the voting wrapped up on Tuesday and the results of this logo contest for new openSUSE branding have been selected...
Power Management Bugs Hold Up Some Linux Laptops Due To Regulatory Requirements
Holding up some laptops from shipping Linux pre-loaded around the world come down to regulatory certifications for power management not currently being met on Linux while working fine on Windows...
Glibc Is The Latest Open-Source Project Adopting A Code of Conduct
The GNU C Library "glibc" is the latest free software project to adopt a Code of Conduct (CoC) in aiming to encourage welcoming behavior and less controversy among developers and other stakeholders when engaging this key component to the Linux software ecosystem...
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS To Enable Frame Pointers By Default For Better Profiling/Debugging
Canonical has decided for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS that they will now enable frame pointers by default when building packages. There will still selectively be some packages where they decide to disable frame pointers due to the performance overhead, but the focus on this change is to improve the out-of-the-box debugging and profiling support on the Linux distribution...
X.Org Server & XWayland Updated Due To Two Decade-Old Security Vulnerabilities
The X.Org Server doesn't see much in the way of feature work these days with Red Hat and others divesting from classic X.Org/X11 sessions. But there continues to be new point releases of the X.Org Server and the XWayland code due to long-standing security issues within the X.Org codebase. New point releases were out last night due to two CVEs for bugs dating back to 2007 and 2009...
LibreOffice 24.2 Beta Released For Testing This Free Software Office Suite
LibreOffice 24.2 Beta 1 is available today as the latest test candidate for this cross-platform open-source office suite that is packing many new features while also changing its approach to versioning...
FreeRDP 3.0 Released With WebSocket Transport, Relative Mouse Movement & More
FreeRDP 3.0 stable was released today as this open-source implementation of the Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) for allowing nice remote access support...
It Looks Like AMD Zen 5 SoCs Will Support ACPI PHAT
A few months ago I wrote about AMD Linux engineers working on ACPI PHAT support for the Linux kernel. This week new patches around Linux ACPI PHAT handling have been posted with further confirmation of this functionality coming to "future" AMD SoCs...
Linux To Drop Support For 15 Year Old, Never-Shipped Intel "Carillo Ranch"
With Intel's very timely upstream Linux hardware support going back years, they typically start on the upstream hardware enablement well in advance of the product's planned public launch. On a number of occasions this has meant adding support to the Linux kernel for hardware that never ends up being released to consumers. There's been recent cases like the Thunder Bay support that was dropped from the kernel after it became clear that the SoC would never ship to now a more extreme case of a driver being in the mainline kernel for 15 years to support never-released hardware...
Cold Trip Points Proposed For The Linux Kernel's Thermal Handling
The Linux kernel's thermal driver has the obvious notion of hot and critically-hot trip points while to this point there hasn't been the opposite: cold trip points (events) but that's finally been proposed as we approach the end of 2023...
SVT-AV1 1.8 Brings More Performance Improvements Plus ARM Neon SIMD Optimizations
SVT-AV1 v1.8 was released this week as the newest version of this open-source AV1 video encoder originally started by Intel and continues to be developed by Intel engineers in cooperation with the Alliance for Open Media. As with most releases, optimizing this CPU-based AV1 encoder's performance continues to be a key priority...
Ubuntu Linux Evaluating x86-64-v3 Based Build - AVX & Newer Intel/AMD CPUs
Canonical is experimenting with x86_64 micro-architecture feature levels! They have produced an experimental build of Ubuntu Server using x86_64_v3 for requiring basically Intel and AMD CPUs with AVX capabilities. But they aren't yet committing to it as a default or when such a change may materialize...
HP Z6 G5 A Makes For An Incredibly Powerful AMD Workstation For Creators & Developers
Since the release of the Threadripper 7000 series on 20 November I've carried out and published many benchmarks of these new HEDT/PRO CPUs including the flagship AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX featuring 96-cores / 192-threads. All of my Threadripper PRO 7995WX benchmarks have been carried out using an HP Z6 G5 A workstation and it's proven to be an outright beast for creators, software developers, and others needing immense multi-threaded capabilities at your finger tips. Here's more about my experience with this new high-end HP workstation.
Red Hat Looks For Feedback On Its New Initoverlayfs File-System Proposal
Red Hat engineers have been developing Initoverlayfs as a scalable initial file-system. The code is currently in early form and the developers are still looking for feedback from the community as well as figuring out whether it properly belongs in kernel or user-space...
LXD 5.20 Released With Canonical Changing It To AGPLv3 Licensing
Following Canonical pulling on control of LXD and maintainership being limited to Canonical employees, LXD 5.20 was released today where they have also decided to change its license moving forward to AGPLv3 by default...
ONNX Releases TurnkeyML In Collaboration With AMD For An "AI Insights Toolchain"
ONNX in collaboration with AMD have announced TurnkeyML as a new open-source machine learning toolchain focused on agile model development and deployment...
Linux 6.8 Will Make It More Clear When x86 32-bit Support Is Disabled
With Linux 6.7 there's now support for enabling/disabling 32-bit program support at boot-time. The "ia32_emulation=" argument can be used for enabling/disabling 32-bit user-space program support and the ability to support 32-bit system calls. Right now when forcing off the x86 32-bit support it can be confusing if the user is unaware as no warning is currently provided, but that is about to change...
