Phoronix

XWayland 22.1 is out today as the newest standalone feature release for this XWayland code issued separately from the X.Org Server. XWayland continues in very robust shape for allowing X11 clients whether it be games or applications to run atop capable Wayland compositors...

As with most modern SoCs/processors, proper CPU frequency scaling / performance state management is absolutely critical for achieving good performance out of the hardware either for ensuring the CPU is hitting its capable performance states and also to reduce power consumption / heat when not needed in order to avoid thermal throttling and prolonging battery life. Fortunately, a proper CPUFreq driver for the Apple M1 is in development for Linux and is allowing for a combination of enticing performance and good battery life for this community-driven, open-source support around the Apple Silicon...

Back in January I wrote how Valve is working on dynamic Variable Rate Shading (VRS) for the Mesa Radeon Vulkan driver "RADV" to dynamically control the shading performance to help with battery life. That work has now successfully been merged into Mesa 22.1 for the open-source AMD Radeon Linux graphics stack...

The Bcachefs file-system that was born out of the Linux kernel's block cache code has over the past few years matured greatly. Now in 2022 the core fundamentals of the file-system are "pretty close to done" and will hopefully be mainlined this calendar year into the Linux kernel...

With the forthcoming Linux 5.17 kernel there is the new AMD P-State driver aiming to provide better power efficiency than the ACPI CPUFreq driver that has long been used on AMD platforms. For complementing that AMD P-State driver, AMD has also been working on adding their CPU P-State support to Linux's cpupower tool...

Ahead of the Steam Deck beginning to ship at month's end, Valve overnight released Proton 7.0-1 as the newest version of their software that allows many Windows games to run on Linux with great success. Proton 7.0 is rebased against the new upstream Wine 7.0 while also having many other changes in tow...

Gigabyte and Canonical today announced that they will be working together to certify Gigabyte server hardware moving forward for use under Ubuntu Server...

Last June the Linux kernel disabled support for Intel's ENQCMD instructions as the kernel support was found to be "broken beyond repair" for this feature that's part of the Data Streaming Accelerator with upcoming Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" processors. Fortunately, now in time for Sapphire Rapids ramping up, Intel engineers have fixed up the ENQCMD code and looks like the next Linux kernel cycle will re-enable the functionality...

Back in November NVIDIA announced their open-source Image Scaling SDK with cross-platform GPU support to better position their DLSS technology given the ground that AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) has been gaining. The Image Scaling SDK is complementary to DLSS but still requires integration on the behalf of the game/engine developer. Today marks a new update to the NVIDIA Image Scaling SDK...

Finally released earlier this month was the first official 64-bit build of Raspberry Pi OS, the official Debian-based operating system of the low-cost Raspberry Pi single board computers. Following that I posted some Raspberry Pi 32-bit vs. 64-bit benchmarks. Given that generated a fair amount of interest and also some open questions, here is round two of looking at the Raspberry Pi 32-bit vs. 64-bit performance including its impact on memory usage and thermals.

Up to now the Intel DG2/Alchemist graphics driver code for Linux has enabled driving up to four displays, but it turns out these forthcoming Intel Arc graphics cards will be capable of powering five displays concurrently...

The Linux and Coreboot support for the AMD "Sabrina" SoC continues to be worked on while recently Google has merged a new motherboard target for a Sabrina-powered Chromebook...

Linaro is proposing a thermal library that interfaces with the Linux kernel's thermal framework. As part of this is also a thermometer utility for user-space that would live within the Linux kernel source tree for monitoring the thermal data...

One day after AMD completed its acquisition of Xilinx, Intel has announced this morning they plan to acquire Tower Semiconductor...

GNOME Shell and Mutter have issued their "42.beta" releases ahead of next month's GNOME 42.0 stable release...

OBS Studio as the wonderful, cross-platform open-source software for screen recording and screencasting purposes is out with a shiny new feature release...

Earlier this month I posted some Ubuntu 22.04 Linux gaming benchmarks with X.Org vs. (X)Wayland performance for NVIDIA GeForce graphics now that the NVIDIA 510 driver has the GBM support in good shape. NVIDIA's (X)Wayland gaming performance is largely in good shape now while for those wondering how it compares to AMD Radeon on Ubuntu 22.04 daily, here are some benchmarks...

Two weeks ago NVIDIA released the 510.47.03 Linux driver as their first stable driver in the 510 series. Today that has been succeded by the NVIDIA 510.54 stable update...

As was expected with last week AMD receiving all necessary regulatory approvals for its acquisition of Xilinx, today the deal successfully closed...

While PowerTOP was immensely helpful when the Intel open-source project started out in 2007 for reporting untuned kernel parameters and noting what's keeping the CPU from reaching its deeper sleep states, over the past decade Linux has greatly improved when it comes to power management and better behavior out-of-the-box. PowerTOP continues to see occasional commits and new releases, but there's less talk about it these days than going back a number of years when it was a must-have for x86_64 laptops. In any case I was curious to see if following its tips still provided any meaningful difference on a modern AMD Ryzen powered laptop...