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Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 1 hour 25 min ago

An Important Note On The Alder Lake Mobile Power/Performance With Linux 5.19

Mon, 07/18/2022 - 21:00
After dealing with the Intel Alder Lake P GuC firmware breakage around Linux 5.19 Git that is now to be addressed by the upstream Intel developers, it was on to performance testing the shiny new Core i7 1280P with this kernel due to be released as stable within the next two weeks... For those concerned about maximum performance, there was a glaring performance regression for this Alder Lake P on the new kernel being released as stable later this month. Well, a default change in performance/behavior at least but the power efficiency / performance-per-Watt tended to be better on this new kernel.

Asahi Linux Update Brings Experimental Apple M2 Support

Mon, 07/18/2022 - 18:30
Asahi Linux has issued an update with initial support for the Mac Studio powered by the M1 Ultra SoC as well as having initial (experimental) suppoirt for the new Apple M2 hardware...

Linux Laying Out Guidelines To Avoid Kernel Updates Breaking Firmware Compatibility

Mon, 07/18/2022 - 18:01
Stemming from my article last week noting how Linux 5.19 Git broke Intel Alder Lake P graphics support due to requiring new firmware while not retaining backwards compatibility with the existing Intel GuC firmware, a solution is still being worked on prior to Linux 5.19 final whether it be a revert or the proposed patch working on GuC v69/70 firmware compatibility. Linux firmware guidelines are also being proposed to ensure kernel developers in the future don't try to break firmware support guarantees...

XFS Improvement For Linux 5.20 Enhances Scalability For Large Core Count Systems

Mon, 07/18/2022 - 17:45
One of several improvements being prepared for the XFS file-system with the upcoming Linux 5.20 cycle is focused on improving the CIL scalability for systems with many CPU cores...

More ASUS Motherboards Will Have Working Sensor Support With Linux 5.20

Mon, 07/18/2022 - 17:32
The ASUS-EC-Sensors driver that provides better and faster hardware sensor reading for ASUS motherboards on Linux and premiered earlier this year in Linux 5.18 is continuing to broaden its list of supported ASUS motherboards...

Another Longtime Intel Linux Engineer Joins Google

Mon, 07/18/2022 - 17:19
Ben Widawsky who had been at Intel for the past seventeen years, most of which were spent improving their open-source Linux graphics driver as well as other Linux kernel contributions, has joined Google...

Stalld 1.17 Brings LoongArch Support, Bug Fixes For Thread Stall Detection & Boosting

Mon, 07/18/2022 - 17:03
Red Hat released Stalld 1.17 this past week as the newest version of this open-source daemon used for thread stall detection and boosting on Linux...

Linux 5.19-rc7 Released Following A Tough Week With Retbleed, Intel GPU Firmware Snafu

Mon, 07/18/2022 - 05:18
Linus Torvalds just released Linux 5.19-rc7 following a busy week due to the Retbleed security mitigation and not only the CPU overhead performance impact it puts on users but the mess it has on kernel development especially when it comes to embargoed issues that make the patches difficult to review/test well prior to embargo lift...

The Current Retbleed Performance Costs With An AMD Ryzen 7 4800U

Mon, 07/18/2022 - 00:50
Following some weekend benchmarks here are more complementary numbers on the Retbleed mitigation performance benchmark costs. These additional numbers are on a Zen 2 based AMD Ryzen 7 4800U APU that has been common both to laptops as well as embedded/low-profile devices for thin client computing, IoT / edge use-cases, and more...

Retbleed: Call Depth Tracking Mitigation Eyed To Avoid IBRS "Performance Horror Show"

Sun, 07/17/2022 - 18:18
Due to the new "Retbleed" security mitigation further hurting CPU performance for affected processors, Intel engineers have revisited work on call depth tracking mitigation as an alternative to the Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (IBRS) mitigation to help in lowering the overhead costs...

Raptor Computing To Launch "Arctic Tern" As An FPGA-Based Soft BMC

Sun, 07/17/2022 - 17:55
Raptor Computing Systems that is known for their open-source POWER9-based Talos II and Blackbird systems that are fully open-source designs and running on free software down to the firmware level are preparing for a new product launch...

RADV Vulkan Driver Now Supports NVIDIA's Device Generated Commands

Sun, 07/17/2022 - 17:42
As of this week in Mesa 22.2, the open-source Radeon Vulkan driver "RADV" has added support for the VK_NV_device_generated_commands extension. This NVIDIA-created extension that has been around for a few years with their hardware allows for the GPU to generate some of the most frequent rendering commands on the hardware itself...

Debian's DebConf22 Kicks Off In Kosovo

Sun, 07/17/2022 - 17:23
After the COVID-19 pandemic hiatus, Debian's annual conference "DebConf" is back to being an in-person event and started this morning in Kosovo...

Intel's Compute Runtime To Default To Disabling Gen11 & Older Support On Windows

Sun, 07/17/2022 - 17:16
Intel this week issued their Compute Runtime 22.28.23726 pre-release for this open-source GPU compute stack on Windows and Linux for OpenCL and oneAPI Level Zero support on their graphics hardware...

Fedora 37 Hopes To Have A Preview Of The New Web-Based Install UI

Sat, 07/16/2022 - 18:19
The existing GTK-based Anaconda installer is to remain the default installation experience for Fedora 37 this autumn but a change proposal has been filed with hopes of having a public preview image for Anaconda's next-gen web-based interface for installations...

Igalia Working Towards Faster 2D Rendering For Older Raspberry Pi Boards

Sat, 07/16/2022 - 17:32
Igalia developer Christopher Michael has begun a blog post series outlining the consulting firm's work on improving the accelerated 2D rendering for the Raspberry Pi 1 through Raspberry Pi 3 single board computers...

Arcan 0.6.2 Display Server Continues Working On Network Transparency

Sat, 07/16/2022 - 17:19
Arcan 0.6.2 was released this week as the newest version of the open-source display server built atop a game engine and aiming to compete with the likes of X11 and Wayland while focusing on advanced capabilities...

Vulkan 1.3.221 Released With VK_EXT_pipeline_robustness

Sat, 07/16/2022 - 17:01
Vulkan 1.3.221 was released this week as the newest spec update for this industry-standard graphics/compute API...

KDE Plasma 5.26 Continues Preparing More Features, More Plasma Wayland Fixes Too

Sat, 07/16/2022 - 16:50
KDE developer Nate Graham is out with another great weekly recap of all the interesting changes coming together in the KDE desktop space...

Wine 7.13 Converts Its USB Driver To PE Format, Brings Theming Improvements

Sat, 07/16/2022 - 06:45
Wine 7.13 is now available as the newest bi-weekly development release for running Windows games and applications on Linux and other platforms...

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