
Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 2 hours 12 min ago
Linux Scheduler Adapted For A Latency Win & Avoiding An RT Deadlock
A patch series for the Linux kernel scheduler code is queued up for expected introduction in Linux 6.18 to defer throttle when tasks exit to user-space. These changes to switch the scheduler to a task-based throttle model and task-based throttle time accounting can provide a latency win and also address a possible deadlock situation for real-time "RT" kernels...
Linux Sees Fresh Fixes For PCMCIA PC Card Support In 2025
It's not too often hearing PCMCIA these days as that defunct PC card standard for laptops from the 90's and early 00's. Back in 2023 Linux began dropping old PCMCIA drivers from the kernel while coming as a surprise today are some clean-ups for the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) subsystem code persisting within the Linux kernel...
Improved Intel Vulkan Video Code Merged For Mesa 25.3
Merged overnight to Mesa 25.3 is an improvement for the Intel driver's Vulkan Video encode/decode handling that has been in the works the past few months...
ollama 0.11.9 Introducing A Nice CPU/GPU Performance Optimization
The ollama open-source software that makes it easy to run AI large language models (LLMs) across different operating systems, hardware, and models is about to enjoy a nice speed boost...
SDL Merges X11TK: A Basic X11 Toolkit
It looks like the Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) library widely used by cross-platform games for software/hardware abstractions isn't done enhancing its support for running on the X.Org/X11 Server. Similarly, Valve is still committing resources to enhancing the support...
Fedora ARM Release Changes Due To Red Hat QA Team Reduction
Due to a "significant portion" of Red Hat's internal QA team responsible for Fedora QA leaving the company or switching to other teams at Red Hat, there are some Fedora ARM release changes coming to deal with the reduced abilities of their quality assurance team...
AMD "sbtsi_temp" Driver Being Updated For Linux 6.18 To Handle Freezing CPU Temperatures
Two years ago the AMD Linux CPU temperature driver was updated to handle negative temperature reporting. That's for some users with exotic cooling systems and then also use within some industrial applications where the systems may be subject to sub-zero temperatures. The AMD sbtsi_temp driver is also now being similarly updated for handling freezing CPU temperatures...
NVIDIA 580.82.07 Driver Brings Fix For Vulkan On Wayland, Smooth Motion For RTX 40
NVIDIA just released the 580.82.07 stable Linux driver as their newest R580 driver series update...
LLVM Clang 21 Compiler Helping Squeeze More Performance On 5th Gen AMD EPYC "Turin"
With LLVM 21.1 having been released last week as the newest half-year feature update to this open-source compiler stack, I have begun benchmarking Clang 21 on a variety of systems for getting a feel for the performance over Clang 20. Eventually it will be extended as well to looking at the Clang 21 performance against GCC and vendor compilers. For some initial Clang 21 benchmarking, here is a look at how the Clang 21 C/C++ compiler is performing on 5th Gen AMD EPYC "Turin" Zen 5 processors compared to the prior release.
Arch Linux's Archinstall No Longer Treating LVM-Based Installs As "Beta"
Arch Linux's convenient text-based OS installer "archinstall" is out with a new release today that promotes Logical Volume Manager (LVM) based installs no longer as "beta" quality...
sudo-rs Is Now The Default sudo Of Ubuntu 25.10
Earlier this year Canonical announced plans for using sudo-rs as the Rust-written sudo implementation by default for Ubuntu 25.10 along with Rust Coreutils and other Rust system components. The sudo-rs goal has been achieved with the newest Ubuntu 25.10 daily ISOs now using this sudo implementation by default...
New GIMP Plug-In Integrates Google Gemini AI Image Creation
Separate from yesterday's upstream new GIMP 3.2 development release, open-source developer Josh Ellithorpe announced the creation of a new GIMP plug-in dubbed "Dream Prompter" for bringing the power of Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash Image Preview model to this open-source photo/image editing software...
FFmpeg swscale Rewrite Begins Landing With 2.6x Faster Overall, As Much As 254x
Now that FFmpeg 8.0 has shipped for this widely-used multimedia library, development is back on of major feature work toward the next major release. Landing on Monday was the initial code for a major rewrite to the swscale code in providing a new framework that is faster and more maintainable/extensible moving forward...
Intel Power Slider Support For Panther Lake Set To Premier In Linux 6.18
Last month Intel posted new Linux patches for a "SoC power slider" feature premiering with upcoming Intel Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" laptops. That SoC Power Slider support for the Intel int340x is now expected to be upstreamed with the Linux 6.18 kernel later this year...
Linux's Current & Future Rust Graphics Drivers Getting Their Own Development Tree
To help in accelerating the development of kernel graphics drivers and any other NPU/accelerator drivers written in the Rust programming language, the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem is creating its own DRM-Rust development tree for drivers and associated Rust infrastructure...
Steam On Linux Use Recedes Slightly During August
For the Steam Survey results published last month for July it showed Steam on Linux use approaching 3%. With hitting 2.89% in July there was hope that perhaps in August it would breach the elusive 3.0% threshold not seen since the original days of Steam on Linux when the overall Steam user base was also much smaller than it is today. But that didn't pan out and Steam on Linux numbers for August are showing a small dip...
GIMP 3.1.4 Released With A Project From 2006 Resurrected And Another Big Feature
GIMP 3.1.4 is out today as the second development release treking toward GIMP 3.2. Most notable with GIMP 3.1.4 are the initial implementations of two of the main features planned for GIMP 3.2: link layers and vector layers...
Rust 1.90 Switching To LLD Linker On Linux For Faster Linking Times
With the Rust 1.90 release due out in mid-September, the Rust compiler on Linux x86_64 will begun using the LLD linker by default in order to "significantly reduce" linking times...
AMD Begins Queuing Graphics Driver Changes For Linux 6.18
On Friday AMD sent out their initial batch of kernel graphics driver feature changes intended for merging to the Linux 6.18 kernel later this year...
Gentex PLACE Any Space PL1AS / PL1K As A Replacement For Nest Protect Smoke Detectors
Not your typical review on Phoronix today but rather a brief look at the Gentex PLACE Any Space smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors. For those facing ten years on their Nest Protect smoke detectors and looking for an end-of-life replacement to these smoke detectors discontinued by Google, the Gentex PLACE smart smoke detectors are an interesting and capable alternative. Being faced by needing to find a replacement to Nest Protects myself that have now expired and finding many others in the same boat with no clear winning smart smoke detector right now, I decided to go with the Gentex PLACE and figured it worthwhile to share a bit of my experience.