Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 2 hours 19 min ago
GNU Jami Taranis Released For Free Software Conferencing, Peer-To-Peer Communication
GNU Jami "Taranis" has been released as a major update to this free software project for peer-to-peer communication and SIP-based messaging. GNU Jami is what previously started out as SFLphone and then GNU Ring for initially being focused on softphones...
Another ASRock Sandy Bridge / Ivy Bridge Motherboard Ported To Open-Source Coreboot
Another aging Intel motherboard is now supported by Coreboot for those wanting to free your system down to the BIOS...
Darktable 3.8 Released For This Great Open-Source Alternative To Adobe Lightroom
Just in time for dealing with any holiday photos, Darktable 3.8 is out today as the latest shiny feature update to this open-source RAW photography post-production software...
Intel Prepares More DG2 + XeHP Bits For Linux 5.17
Intel on Thursday submitted a final drm-intel-gt-next pull of new material slated for introduction in the upcoming Linux 5.17 cycle...
Ogre 2.3 Released With Vulkan Render Support, Other Engine Updates
Ogre 2.3 is out for a holiday release as the newest feature release of the Ogre-Next open-source 3D rendering engine code used both for games and applications...
systemd 250 Released With A Huge Number Of New Features, Improvements
Systemd 250 is the latest major open-source software project release for those trying to get out their releases before year's end... Simply put, systemd 250 is a very big feature release...
Polychromatic 0.7.3 Released With New Razer Device Support, 8000Hz Polling
Polychromatic as the open-source GUI front-end for working in turn with OpenRazer for configuring Razer peripherals under Linux is out with a new holiday release...
LLVM Clang Lands Initial SPIR-V Toolchain Support
An exciting LLVM development has landed in time for Christmas! Complementary to the LLVM SPIR-V back-end work that could soon be mainlined, Clang has now merged the initial SPIR-V toolchain support. This allows going from Clang to the SPIR-V intermediate representation that is conformant to the OpenCL environment specification -- such as for compiling OpenCL kernels into SPIR-V...
macOS 12.1 vs. Ubuntu vs. Clear Linux vs. Windows Benchmarks
Recently I looked at the macOS 12 performance against Linux when it comes to the Intel-based Macs. Stemming from reader requests and curiosity how Windows would perform in the mix, here are such benchmark results with macOS 12.1, Windows 10, Clear Linux, and Ubuntu 21.10.
Sway 1.7-rc1 Has Better Zero-Copy Direct Scanout, Drops "--my-next-gpu-wont-be-nvidia"
The first release candidate of the Sway 1.7 Wayland compositor is now available for testing...
Krita 5.0 Released With Big Improvements For Open-Source Digital Painting / 2D Animation
Krita is easily one of the best digital painting / 2D animation / raster graphics programs out there for being open-source / free software and today is now even better with the Krita 5.0 release...
GNOME's Mutter Lands Some Fixes For Hybrid Laptop Graphics Crashes
For those making use of the GNOME desktop and running a laptop with dual-GPU hybrid graphics, Mutter has landed some fixes that may help if you have been experiencing crashes...
New Linux Patches For AMD i2c Bus Sharing With The PSP
The newest Linux hardware support patches for the kernel revolve around i2c bus sharing support for newer SoCs where the i2c bus is being shared by AMD's Platform Security Processor (PSP). This i2c controller is based on common DesignWare IP but new kernel code is being crafted for handling that bus sharing between the kernel and the PSP co-processor...
GNOME's Wayland Session Shows Potential For Better Battery Life Than With X.Org
While not talked about as much as raw performance and other factors, but in the recent testing of the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen2 laptop with AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U, it was observed that the GNOME Wayland session by default on Ubuntu 21.10 is delivering better battery life / lower power consumption than using the GNOME X.Org session...
SuperTux 0.6.3 Brings In-Game Improvements, WebAssembly Support
Well known open-source video game SuperTux that is inspired by Super Mario Bros is out with its first release in one and a half years for the Tux-themed platform game...
Manjaro 21.2 Released With Better Btrfs Support, Linux 5.15 LTS Powered
Arch-based Manjaro Linux is out with version 21.2 "Qonos" ahead of the holidays in offering some nice incremental updates for this popular enthusiast distribution...
Valve's Steam Winter Sale Is Now Underway
For those wanting to pickup some new games to enjoy around the holidays and/or expand your game collection ahead of the Steam Deck beginning to ship next quarter, Valve's Winter Sale is now underway...
CodeWeavers Planning For A Busy 2022 With VKD3D D3D12 For CrossOver
While the VKD3D-Proton fork has been very active and running an increasing number of Direct3D 12 Windows games well as part of Valve's Steam Play, CodeWeavers and the upstream Wine community does continue working on VKD3D. CodeWeavers is planning to make big improvements to VKD3D in 2022 to offer better DirectX 12 support with their commercial CrossOver software for Linux and macOS...
Intel oneAPI Toolkits 2022 Released
Intel has now made their oneAPI Toolkits 2022 release publicly available after announcing it earlier this quarter...
AMD AOCC 3.2 Helps Squeeze A Bit More Out Of Zen 3
Released earlier this month was AMD's AOCC 3.2 compiler based on LLVM/Clang/Flang that provides optimized support for AMD Zen processors. I've been running some benchmarks of AOCC 3.2 compared to prior AMD Optimizing C/C++ Compiler releases and this newest release has been helpful in squeezing a bit more out of Zen 3.