Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 2 hours 11 min ago
Oracle Continues Building DTrace For Linux Atop BPF
More than a decade ago Linux users tended to be envious of Sun Microsystems' Solaris for ZFS and DTrace as the two most interesting technical selling points of the platform. In that time OpenZFS is now extremely vibrant for offering ZFS on BSD and Linux systems while DTrace is barely brought up these days. This tracing framework originally developed for Solaris was fantastic back in the day but over the years Linux has stepped up its game with various efforts. Now as we hit the end of 2020, Oracle engineers continue working on bringing better DTrace support to Linux...
Intel's Cloud-Hypervisor 0.11 Adds Windows Guest Support
Intel has a shiny new feature release out of their open-source Cloud-Hypervisor that runs atop KVM and leveraging the Rust programming language...
Linux 5.11 To Land Optimization That Helps IO_uring Performance
At the start of October we mentioned a kernel optimization that can help IO_uring performance. Now as we approach the end of the month, Linux 5.11 is poised to land the optimization that especially helps out with threaded workloads...
It's Now Even Easier Setting Up Windows Subsystem For Linux On Windows 10
When Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) initially debuted there were a few different steps that needed to be carried out for setting up this Linux binary compatibility layer atop Windows. But now with the latest Windows 10 Insider Preview builds it's becoming increasingly trivial to get going with WSL...
AMD Navi "Blockchain" Card Support Being Added To Linux 5.10
Last week we were first to report on a PCI ID being added for a Navi 1 "Blockchain" graphics card without display outputs and seemingly focused on cryptocurrency mining. This card wasn't talked about at yesterday's Radeon RX 6000 series launch but that support is now on the way to the Linux 5.10 kernel...
RHEL 8.3 Released With TSX Disabled By Default To Avoid Mitigation Overhead
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 is out today as the latest release of the RHEL8 platform...
SiFive Is Launching The Most Compelling RISC-V Development Board Yet
If you've been waiting to port your software to RISC-V until having a decent RISC-V system where you can develop on-host, wanting to experiment with the libre processor architecture or even use it as a daily desktop system, or just wanting a Linux system that's not x86_64 / ARM / POWER, SiFive today is announcing a new board today that is the most promising yet. The SiFive HiFive Unmatched is the best RISC-V development board we've seen to date and the closest to being the first "RISC-V PC" for Linux use.
Intel Reveals Few More Details Regarding 11th Gen "Rocket Lake" Processors
While 11th Gen "Rocket Lake" desktop processors aren't expected to be released until the end of Q1'2021, given the interest building around AMD Ryzen 5000 "Zen 3" processors, Intel revealed a few more details today about their next-generation wares...
NVIDIA 455.38 Linux Driver Released With RTX 3070 Support, AMD SME Compatibility
Timed with today's (limited) availability of the GeForce RTX 3070 graphics cards, the NVIDIA Unix driver team has released the 455.38 Linux driver with support for this new Ampere graphics card plus tucking in a few new features and fixes too...
The FSF Is Looking To Update Its High Priority Free Software Projects List
As we roll into 2021 the Free Software Foundation is looking to update its high priority free software projects list. These are the software projects that should be incorporating "the most important threats, and most critical opportunities, that free software faces in the modern computing landscape." For now the FSF is looking for help deciding what to include...
AMDVLK 2020.Q4.2 Vulkan Driver Released
As we hit the end of October AMD has issued their second open-source Vulkan driver code drop of the quarter with the AMDVLK 2020.Q4.2 availability...
Intel's oneDNN Continues Improving Support For Non-Intel Hardware
Earlier this year was the surprising move of Intel's oneDNN neural network library adding AArch64 support and that was then complemented by adding IBM POWER support to this neural network library that is part of their oneAPI collection. Now with the latest oneDNN 2.0 beta they have furthered the support and performance for non-Intel hardware...
AMD ROCm 3.9 Released With AOMP OpenMP Offloading Integrated
A new version of the AMD Radeon Open eCosystem (ROCm) has been released on the same day as the company announcing the Radeon RX 6800/6900 series. Meet ROCm 3.9...
GNU Toolchain Begins Adding ARMv8.7-A Support
The GNU compiler toolchain has begun landing Arm's contributions around ARMv8.7-A architecture support...
Intel Begins Their Open-Source Driver Support For Vulkan Ray-Tracing With Xe HPG
Intel's open-source developers have begun publishing their patches enabling their "ANV" Vulkan Linux driver to support Vulkan ray-tracing! This is in preparation for next year's Xe HPG graphics card that will feature hardware-accelerated ray-tracing...
Real-Time Patches Updated For Linux 5.9/5.10 With The Code Not Yet Mainlined
There was talk earlier this year of mainlining the real-time Linux kernel patches after similar discussions last year didn't result in it happening. Merging the RT code didn't happen for the recent Linux 5.10 merge window but at least the out-of-tree patches were quickly re-based for Linux 5.9 stable and 5.10-rc1...
Pyston v2 Released As ~20% Faster Than Python 3.8
Version 2.0 of Pyston is now available, the Python implementation originally started by Dropbox that builds on LLVM JIT for offering faster Python performance...
Linux Support Expectations For The AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series
Lisa Su is about to begin the presentation unveiling the much anticipated Radeon RX 6000 "Big Navi" (RDNA 2) graphics cards. This article will be updated live as the event progresses but first up let's recap the current Linux open-source driver state for these forthcoming graphics cards.
Adam Jackson On The State Of The X.Org Server In 2020
Adam Jackson who on Red Hat's Graphics Team served as the X.Org Server release manager for many years and being heavily involved in the xorg-server development and related components as shared his views on whether the X.Org Server is "abandonware."..
Ubuntu 21.04 Is The "Hirsute Hippo", Releasing On 22 April
Following last week's Ubuntu 20.10 "Groovy Gorilla" release, Ubuntu 21.04 development is now getting underway as the Hirsute Hippo...