Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 1 hour 22 min ago
Google Releases Chrome 96 With Back-Forward Cache Enabled For The Desktop
Google has released Chrome 96 a day early as the latest routine update to their cross-platform web browser...
Intel's Linux Graphics Driver To Allow Runtime Power Management Auto-Suspend By Default
Following a lot of improvements the past few years to the Intel Linux kernel graphics "i915" driver it looks like it's ready to enable run-time power management auto-suspend support by default...
Vulkan Video Support Progressing For Open-Source Intel, AMD Radeon Hardware
The open-source Vulkan driver support for the video decode (and presumably after that, encode) extensions continues moving along for the Radeon "RADV" and Intel "ANV" Mesa drivers...
GCC Patches Pending For RISC-V's Scalar Cryptography Extension
Patches were recently sent out that implement support for RISC-V's Scalar Cryptography Extension within the GNU Compiler Collection...
Linux 5.16-rc1 Released With Intel AMX, FUTEX2, Folios & A Lot More
Linus Torvalds has released Linux 5.16-rc1 in moving past the exciting merge window and onto bug fixing for this next version of the Linux kernel...
Linux 5.16's New Cluster Scheduling Is Causing Regression, Further Hurting Alder Lake
Linux 5.16-rc1 is coming out later today and already I'm seeing some fallout in the new kernel's performance... In particular, bad news for Alder Lake that is already seeing the Linux performance trailing Windows 11 seemingly due to the lack of Thread Director integration right now in the kernel and any other missing optimizations around Intel's hybrid architecture. A new feature of Linux 5.16 is unfortunately having unintended regressions for Alder Lake with at least the flagship Core i9 12900K. Here are the results from the latest kernel bisecting that uncovered this latest upstream slowdown.
Tensor LLVM Extensions Proposed For Targeting AI Accelerators, Emerging Hardware
Intel, Amazon AWS, IBM, Qualcomm, and UIUC researchers have been collaborating over a proposed "Tensor LLVM Extensions" (TLX) to make this open-source compiler infrastructure more suitable for targeting AI accelerators and other emerging classes of hardware...
"MGLRU" Code Updated For More Performant Linux Page Reclamation
While not coming as part of the new 5.16 cycle, one of the exciting patch series to come about this year has been Google's work on the Multigenerational LRU (MGLRU) Framework for improving performance around the kernel's page reclaim handling...
QEMU 6.2 On The Way With SGX For VMs, Apple Silicon, More RISC-V
This week marked the release of QEMU 6.2-rc0 as the first test candidate for this upcoming update that plays an important role in the open-source Linux virtualization stack...
Mesa's Turnip Driver For Qualcomm Adreno GPUs Now Exposes Vulkan 1.2
Mesa's open-source "Turnip" driver that provides Vulkan support for Qualcomm Adreno graphics hardware and complementary to the Freedreno Gallium3D driver can now handle Vulkan 1.2...
Modernized Zstd Merged Into Linux 5.16 For Much Greater Performance
While Zstd is used in various areas of the Linux kernel for data compression from transparent file-system compression with the likes of Btrfs to allowing kernel modules be compressed with this Zstandard algorithm, the in-kernel code had fallen years outdated. Finally with Linux 5.16 that Zstd in-kernel implementation is now being brought up to modern standards and delivering better performance too...
Microsoft Has More SMB3/CIFS Enhancements For Linux 5.16, Including For Performance
Another batch of SMB3/CIFS client changes were submitted and merged today for the Linux 5.16 merge window. Plus the KSMBD changes were also merged today for that in-kernel SMB3 file server...
AFS, 9p, Netfslib Wired Up To Use Newly-Merged Folios In Linux 5.16
Merged at the start of the Linux 5.16 cycle was the long in development memory "folios" code. That initial pull had the changes to the kernel page cache and memory management code while now before ending out the merge window is converting some file-system code to using folios...
DXVK-NVAPI 0.5 Released With NVIDIA DLSS 2.x Bits, Other Improvements
DXVK-NVAPI as the project providing NVIDIA driver API integration "NVAPI" around DXVK/VKD3D-Proton is out with a new feature release...
Linux 5.16 To Support AMD SEV/SEV-ES Intra-Host Live Migration
Last week was the main set of Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) changes for Linux 5.16 that introduced RISC-V hypervisor support and AMD PSF control bit support, among other changes. A second set of KVM changes were sent out on Friday that is headlined by having AMD SEV/SEV-ES intra-host migration support...
RISC-V With Linux 5.16 Enabling Open-Source NVIDIA Driver As Part Of Default Kernel
The RISC-V architecture updates were sent out on Friday for targeting the nearly-over Linux 5.16 merge window...
KDE Lands More Plasma Wayland Fixes, Other Enhancements For Plasma 5.24
Like clockwork KDE developer Nate Graham is out with his weekly development summary each Saturday highlighting the accomplishments of this free software desktop project...
Valve Shares New Steam Deck Details, Proton Update Available For Testing
Valve today hosted the much anticipated Steam Deck Development Livestream where they and their partners at AMD talked more about the forthcoming Steam Deck's hardware and software...
Intel Posts Linux Graphics Driver Patches For Raptor Lake - Same As Alder Lake
When writing this morning about intel "Raptor Lake" Linux enablement to begin, I didn't expect that to bear fruit so quickly in just a matter of hours... As predicted, that Linux bring-up for the Alder Lake successor is beginning now -- and doing so at full-speed with the initial Raptor Lake S (RPL-S) graphics support being posted...
Radeon Software 21.40.1 Linux Driver Unifies ROCm, Uses New Driver Distribution Model
AMD this week quietly released Radeon Software for Linux 21.40.1 as a fundamentally big update for this packaged driver stack targeting enterprise Linux distributions...