Phoronix

The Ubuntu xx.04.2 LTS releases tend to be a bit more meaningful for long-term support users since it includes the back-ported hardware enablement "HWE" stack with updated Linux kernel from the newer non-LTS release. Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS had been due for release on 9 February with that updated stack but is now pushed back to the end of the month over technical issues...

While we await the next post-R525 driver series feature release, NVIDIA today issued their newest production driver update for this current stable series...

As I wrote about earlier this week, Linux 6.3 is positioned to support AMD Zen 4's Automatic IBRS feature. AMD's Linux enablement code around Automatic IBRS has been undergoing review the past few months and now via TIP's x96/cpu Git branch is to be sent in next month for the Linux 6.3 merge window. I've run some preliminary benchmarks of the Automatic IBRS support on Zen 4 and it's looking positive for further enhancing the performance of AMD's new Ryzen 7000 series and EPYC 9004 series processors.

The KDE Plasma 5.27 beta is available for testing today as the next big update to the KDE desktop due out as stable next month...

Today a new drm-misc-next pull request was submitted for DRM-Next of various Direct Rendering Manager changes queuing for Linux 6.3. Most significant with today's pull request is eliminating seven old DRM drivers that are for vintage hardware and these open-source drivers are no longer maintained...

While there tend to be new Vulkan API specification updates weekly or bi-weekly for most of the year, there was a one month hiatus due to Christmas and other end of year holidays with many of the corporate developers taking time off work. But that is now over and out today is Vulkan 1.3.239 as the first update in exactly one month...

Debian 12 (codenamed "Bookworm") is expected to be released later this year and as such the first of several code/package freezes has begun...

Linux game porter and developer Ethan Lee has added initial support to Mesa for Microsoft's Xbox Game Development Kit (GDK). In turn this early code can allow running the "GLon12" Mesa driver atop the Xbox One and Xbox Series X / S game consoles that can ease porting OpenGL games to the Xbox...

Intel yesterday submitted another batch of material from drm-intel-gt-next to DRM-Next as new feature code and fixes to queue ahead of the Linux 6.3 merge window opening next month...

Squeezing into the current Linux 6.2 kernel cycle is support for the XP-PEN Deco 01 V2 drawing tablet...

With last week's launch of Intel's 4th Gen Xeon Scalable Sapphire Rapids server processors, Intel heavily talked up the shiny new accelerators and the big performance potential of AMX, but not really showcased and only heard through the grapevine was the improved AVX-512 implementation found with these new processors. With Sapphire Rapids there is reduced penalties from engaging AVX-512 -- and for some AVX-512 instructions, no longer any measurable impact -- compared to prior generation Xeon processors. In this article is a look at the performance for a wide variety of workloads with AVX-512 on/off not just for Sapphire Rapids but also for prior generation Ice Lake as well as AMD's new EPYC 4th Gen "Genoa" processors where they have introduced AVX-512 for the first time.

Last month a change proposal was filed for aiming to yield faster reboots and shutdowns of Fedora Linux by shortening the time window that services can block the shutdown process. A modified version of that change proposal has now been cleared by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee...

Starting to appear in Linux 6.2 as part of the various "fixes" pull requests are new device IDs for adding Intel 5th Gen Xeon Scalable "Emerald Rapids" support for drivers not requiring any other code changes over the existing Sapphire Rapids code path.s..

With AMD Zen 4 processors there is a new Automatic IBRS (Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation) similar to Intel's Enhanced IBRS (eIBRS) functionality for offering lower-overhead Spectre V2 mitigations compared to the Retpoline approach used on Zen 3 and prior. Finally with Linux 6.3 that Auto IBRS support is now set to be merged...

Over the past year NVK has taken shape as a -- currently out-of-tree -- Mesa Vulkan driver for supporting NVIDIA graphics hardware. This open-source NVIDIA Vulkan driver is inching closer to the point of being upstreamed into Mesa, but before it's usable for gamers/enthusiasts there is kernel work that must happen too...

One of the exciting announcements Intel made just before Christmas was announcing their work on the new "Xe" kernel graphics driver for Linux. This new Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver will eventually replace the long-standing i915 kernel driver when it comes to handling Gen12 integrated and discrete graphics as well as future Intel graphics hardware...

The Windows game Control that runs via Valve's Steam Play no longer needs the RADV_PERFTEST=rt environment variable override to enjoy the ray-tracing support but with Mesa 23.1 (and potentially backported for 23.0) will work out-of-the-box...

The Genode open-source operating system framework that pursues a micro-kernel design has published their technical roadmap for the 2023 calendar year...

Stemming from the X.Org Server change to no longer allow byte-swapped clients by default due to the feature being rarely used but of significant security concerns with being a large attack surface, GNOME's Mutter compositor has added optional support for being able to enable byte-swapped XWayland clients...

Earlier this month at CES, Intel announced the 35 and 65 Watt Raptor Lake processors alongside the 13th Gen Core Mobile CPUs. Those new Raptor Lake desktop CPUs are now available from multiple Internet retailers and the mid-range Core i5 13400 recently arrived at Phoronix to put it through its paces under Linux.