Phoronix

Last week the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) feature patches were sent out and subsequently merged for Linux 5.16...

It's been a while since last having any major progress to report on Etnaviv, the open-source Mesa Gallium3D driver supporting Vivante graphics IP. But a rather fundamental change was made this past week in that Etnaviv is now (finally) using NIR by default...

Linux 5.16 is an action-packed kernel with a ton of exciting additions and improvements. Adding to the growing list of changes to look forward to with v5.16 is mainline support for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4...

While it was initially communicated by Intel that Alder Lake's Golden Cove P-Cores has AVX-512 "fused off", that has turned out not to be the case at least with the initial batch of processors and current BIOS/firmware configurations. If disabling the power-efficient Gracemont E-Cores, it's possible to enable AVX-512 and make use of it. Here are some initial AVX-512 benchmarks in such a configuration under Linux with the Core i9 12900K.

Added to the Arch Linux ISOs earlier this year was Archinstall as an easy-to-use installer for Arch. In the months since its introduction the code continues to be improved upon and is preparing for its next feature release...

Released this week was Rav1e 0.5 as the newest feature release for this Rust-written AV1 video encoder backed by Xiph.Org and self-proclaimed to be the world's "fastest and safest" AV1 encoder...

The USB and Thunderbolt updates for the Linux 5.16 kernel have arrived. This time around the changes are on the smaller side but there are two additions worth mentioning...

The "char/misc" changes have landed in Linux 5.16 as the catch-all area for code not fitting more appropriately within another subsystem or being a portion of the kernel that's too small for submitting pull requests directly to Linus Torvalds. For Linux 5.16, the IIO code has moved from being part of the staging area also maintained by Greg Kroah-Hartman to now being under the char/misc umbrella. Additionally, another big item is the Intel Habana Labs driver updates...

System76's Pop!_OS Linux distribution already has their own "COSMIC" desktop that is based on GNOME, but moving ahead they are working on their own Rust-written desktop that is not based on GNOME or any existing desktop environment...

While we eagerly await the release of Godot 4 as a massive update to this leading open-source game engine, out this weekend is Godot 3.4 as a rather significant update to Godot 3.x with a number of new features and improvements...

Proposed Linux kernel patches by a Google engineer -- based on existing functionality found within Android and Chrome OS kernel builds -- would allow Linux's DRM display/GPU drivers to more easily know when system input events occur...

There isn't any shiny new drivers part of the kernel's staging area for Linux 5.16 but exciting from a maintenance perspective is a rather healthy clean-up affecting multiple areas of this "proving grounds" area of the kernel...

Sent in on Friday by Bjorn Helgaas were all of the PCI subsystem updates for the Linux 5.16 merge window...

KDE developers began November working on yet more Plasma Wayland session fixes and other enhancements to their open-source desktop environment...

Today marks nine years already since Valve began rolling out their Steam Linux beta client after a very exciting summer. While the initial Steam on Linux excitement phased out a bit after Steam Machines didn't materialize, as we approach a decade with Steam on Linux it's easily as exciting as ever thanks to Steam Play / Proton for allowing massive amounts of Windows games to run on Linux and the imminent release of the Steam Deck that has fueled renewed interest around Linux gaming...

Back in September it was announced that the BattlEye anti-cheat technology would support Proton with an emphasis on the forthcoming Steam Deck. Now as a nice present for Steam's 9th birthday on Linux, that BattlEye support is coming together...

Wine 6.21 is out as the latest bi-weekly development release of this open-source software for enjoying Windows games and applications on Linux...

Kent Overstreet who has been working relentlessly on Bcachefs for over a half-decade now issued his latest status update on this Linux file-system born out of the kernel's block cache code...

Published yesterday was the Core i5 12600K / Core i9 12900K Linux review looking at the exciting performance uplift provided by Alder Lake. One of the areas only talked about briefly in yesterday's article were the UHD Graphics 770 found with these new desktop processors, due to time constraints with only having a few days so far for carrying out tests. Today the initial batch of UHD Graphics 770 / ADL-S GT1 Linux graphics/gaming benchmarks have wrapped up to show how the Intel graphics performance compares to prior generation Rocket Lake as well as AMD's Ryzen 7 5700G.

The HID subsystem updates have been sent in for the ongoing Linux 5.16 merge window with some notable improvements for Linux gamers...