
Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 2 hours 49 min ago
Updated Steam Client Beta For Linux Fixes Slow Install Speeds For Updates
One day after Steam on Linux set a recent high with the Steam Survey, a new Steam client beta is out today to fix an excruciating annoyance affecting some Linux gamers...
More Intel Panther Lake Graphics Device IDs Added To Open-Source Linux Driver
Intel's Linux graphics driver engineers continue working on enabling support for the Xe3 integrated graphics premiering with next-gen Core Ultra "Panther Lake" SoCs. Today a number of additional PCI device IDs have been merged to the Mesa 25.2 code to reflect the growing family...
Kexec HandOver "KHO" Merged For Linux 6.16
Kexec HandOver "KHO" was merged for the in-development Linux 6.16 kernel as part of all the memory management "MM" changes. Kexec HandOver is providing the basis for some nifty low-level features moving forward...
Open-Source TPDE Can Compile Code 10-20x Faster Than LLVM
Researchers from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have announced TPDE as a fast and adaptable compiler back-end framework. The code is now open-source and they are talking up some very wild compile time improvements... Compiling code for x86_64 and AArch64 with TPDE can be ten to twenty times faster than using the LLVM Clang compiler...
Linux 6.16 Will Now Conveniently Report Hard/Soft Lockups & RCU Stall Counts
A very convenient addition to Linux 6.16 for system administrators is reporting to user-space via sysfs counters for the number of hard and soft lock-ups as well as RCU stalls...
Power & Performance Tuning For The Framework 13 With AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series
In April we looked at the Framework 13 updated for the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series and its great out-of-the-box performance and nice power efficiency of Strix Point. Via ACPI platform profiles the power/performance mode can be tuned if desiring a longer battery life or preferring even greater performance. Today's article is looking at that power/performance impact of the different ACPI platform profiles available on the Framework 13 motherboard with the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370.
NFS Server Supporting Larger I/O Block Size With Linux 6.16
For those running an Network File System "NFS" server, the upcoming Linux 6.16 kernel will allow optionally enabling a larger payload size that may yield better performance. Eventually the default payload size may be increased if all goes well from user feedback and testing...
Phoronix Turns 21 This Week - Show Your Support For Linux Hardware Reviews
This week on 5 June marks 21 years since I started Phoronix.com for providing Linux hardware reviews and open-source news. In marking the 21st birthday of Phoronix is a special Phoronix Premium offering if you wish to show your support and hopefully provide for a successful year...
Mesa 25.2 Lands RADV VCN5 Video Encode/Decode Support For RDNA4 GPUs
Posted for the AMDGPU Linux kernel driver in early 2024 was the initial Video Core Next 5.0 IP enablement that was part of their bring-up for the Radeon RX 9000 "RDNA4" graphics processors. It's taken until now though for enabling the VCN5 video encode/decode support within the user-space code for the RADV driver with Mesa 25.2...
Intel TDX Host Support Merged For KVM With Linux 6.16
While Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) has been around since Sapphire Rapids with select SKUs and with widespread availability since Emerald Rapids in late 2023, only now with the Linux 6.16 kernel debuting in H2'2025 is there going to be mainline kernel support for TDX on the host-side with the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)...
Genode OS Improves Intel GPU Driver, Sandboxing Enhancements
A new version of the Genode open-source operating system framework was released last week that powers its Sculpt OS general purpose OS and over the years has proven to be an interesting technical grounds for those interested in OS concepts...
Steam On Linux Use Hit A Recent High Of 2.69% During May
Valve just published the Steam Survey results for May 2025 with a nice increase for the Linux gaming marketshare...
Wine 10.9 Released With EGL Support For All Graphics Drivers
Wine 10.9 fell slightly off its bi-weekly Friday release rhythm with only debuting today, but in any event it's now available for testing with the latest features for enjoying Windows games/applications on Linux and other platforms...
Intel Overclocking Watchdog Driver Merged For Linux 6.16
Merged today for the Linux 6.16 kernel were all of the Watchdog subsystem updates for monitoring system health and taking action such as rebooting if the system state goes bad. With the Linux 6.16 is the introduction of the Intel Overclocking Watchdog "OC WDT" driver...
Linux 6.15 Shipped With A Nasty Power Regression For Some Systems
The Linux 6.15 kernel that shipped as stable last week mistakenly shipped with a nasty CPU power regression for some systems. The issue is now fixed in Linux 6.16 Git and will be fixed shortly in the Linux 6.15 point releases...
Linux 6.16 Enables Support For Arm Scalable Matrix Extension "SME"
The Linux kernel had not enabled support for Arm Scalable Matrix Extension (SME) due to bugs, but with the in-development Linux 6.16 kernel those issues have been resolved and so SME can now be enabled for the rare SoCs having said hardware support...
Apparent Git Scripting Issue Raised Concerns Of Possible Malicious Linux Kernel Activity
The Linux 6.16 merge window this weekend suffered an unexpected twist this weekend when Linus Torvalds noticed some unusual Git activity by a longtime Linux kernel developer. The issue is still being sorted through but it would appear that the possible malicious activity came down to some scripting issues around Git...
FreeBSD 14.3 RC1 Brings OCI Images To Docker & GitHub
The release candidate of FreeBSD 14.3 is now available for testing ahead of the official operating system release this month...
Snapdragon X Elite & AMD's Grado + Strix Halo CPUs Captured Phoronix Reader Interest In May
May was another busy month when it comes to Linux hardware and software milestones albeit depressing when looking at the ongoing state of the web/ad industry. In any event there were 25 featured Linux hardware reviews / multi-page benchmark articles and another 268 original Linux-related news articles all written by your's truly for the month. Here is a look back at what excited Phoronix readers the most during May...
OpenBMC 2.18 Released With Many More Motherboard Ports Upstreamed
OpenBMC 2.18 released on Friday as the newest version of this Linux Foundation project providing an open-source baseboard management controller (BMC) firmware stack implementation. In recent years OpenBMC has been enjoying increasing success in deploying to server platforms from the mega hyperscalers to the more prominent OEM/ODM vendors seeing increasing customer demand for open-source BMC as part of broader open-source firmware interest from the industry...