Phoronix

Merged last cycle was a big Zstd update for Linux 6.2 that took the kernel's Zstandard compression/decompression implementation to match that of upstream v1.5 after being stuck in the v1.4 series for more than a year. Following that, Zstd 1.5.4 was released last month. The hope was Zstd 1.5.4 would quickly follow into the mainline kernel while that is now delayed to Linux 6.4 and for the 6.3 kernel cycle seeing just a few fixes...

A set of patches sent out this morning lay out the initial foundation for RISC-V auto-vectorization support within the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC)...

Posted today was the "v1" patch series implementing threaded/atomic console infrastructure for printk. This is one of the last steps needed before the real-time (PREEMPT_RT) support can be finally mainlined into the Linux kernel...

After earlier this week providing the initial Linux benchmarks of the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D across many Linux gaming tests as well as nearly 400 other tests, in today's article I am looking at the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D as the 12-core / 24-thread processor with the hefty 128MB L3 cache on this Zen 4 desktop processor. Due to having less time with the 7900X3D thus far, today's article is just getting things started in looking at the Linux gaming performance -- both native Linux games as well as many Windows games running on Linux thanks to Valve's wonderful Steam Play (Proton + DXVK / VKD3D-Proton) software.

The rolling-release openSUSE Tumbleweed package has begun rolling out a new "patterns-glibc-hwcaps-x86_64_v3" package that is automatically installed on supported systems and allows for automatically installing "recommended" x86-64-v3 optimized packages where available in the name of enjoying greater performance...

For those doing large Linux kernel builds such as with the "allyesconfig" build option for including as many of the available drivers as possible into the assembled Linux kernel image, objtool improvements ready to go with Linux 6.3 should cut down on the RAM usage and also speed-up the kernel build time. These improvements were motivated by Linux kernel developers beginning to run out of memory when trying to carry out the "allyesconfig" kernel builds on desktops with 32GB of RAM...

Going back to 2016 Intel began work on the SoundWire support for Linux, the MIPI standard started in 2014 to help consolidate audio interfaces between PC and mobile hardware. In preparation for seemingly new AMD hardware coming to market with SoundWire support, AMD engineers recently began working on an AMD SoundWire driver...

While the open-source Mesa 3D drivers are most well known for use on Linux, they are used by other platforms too like Haiku, the BSDs, and even Microsoft Windows with WSL and the like. For those making use of the Mesa 3D drivers on the BeOS-inspired Haiku operating system to enjoy OpenGL support, merged for Mesa 23.1 is an improved EGL implementation for that platform...

A lot of Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) updates were merged for the Linux 6.3 cycle to further enhance the open-source virtualization stack...

Following last week's SoC and platform updates that included mainlining of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 support, new Qualcomm 5G RAN platform support, and many more Arm boards being enabled, this week saw the SoC driver updates now submitted...

Valve has just published the Steam Survey results for the month prior and it points to Steam on Linux as a percentage dropping as well as a similar pullback in the Steam Deck hardware usage...

Earlier this week Greg Kroah-Hartman submitted the USB/Thunderbolt subsystem updates for the ongoing Linux 6.3 kernel merge window...

Following a three month lull, last week Intel got back to releasing Compute-Runtime and IGC compiler updates. They have been working to shift to a monthly release cadence while during this transition period they needed extra time as it also rolled out some compiler/runtime interface changes. Now back into their swing of things, for kicking off the new month they have the Compute Runtime 22.53.25242.13 release...

The Godot engine developers are starting off March with a bang... The much anticipated Godot 4.0 engine that has been in development for years has been released as stable!..

An updated scheduler model for Intel Alder Lake P processors has been merged into the LLVM compiler after finding some differences compared to Intel's documentation/guidance...

In addition to the in-development Apple M1/M2 DRM kernel graphics/display driver being written in Rust, there is now a second graphics-related kernel driver seeing early work in Rust. The existing VGEM driver is being rewritten in the Rust programming language...

Microsoft engineers continue to work heavily on enhancing the Linux support for Hyper-V considering that in the Azure public cloud at last report was more than 50% of their VMs running Linux. Microsoft has continued implementing more Hyper-V features within the Linux kernel and their latest is working on Virtual Trust Level (VTL) integration as part of Virtual Secure Mode (VSM) handling...

A few months back the generic xf86-video-modesetting X.Org driver added TearFree page-flipping support. The option eliminates screen tearing without the use of a compositor and was seen as a win by many for this generic DDX driver that works atop the modern DRM/KMS kernel drivers. But a rather annoying issue was discovered that could lead to audio/video synchronization problems was uncovered and is now fixed in the latest driver code...

Loongson engineers continue working to improve their MIPS64-derived, RISC-V-inspired LoongArch CPU architecture code. With the in-development Linux 6.3 kernel are yet more improvements, including now supporting Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization (KASLR) for better security...

The BFQ I/O scheduler has long been suited well for MMC/SD card storage devices with a single queue now finally with Linux 6.3 the Kconfig setup will suggest/imply that I/O scheduler to help ensure it gets built...