Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 3 min 12 sec ago
GNOME 3.37.3 Released With More Features, Code Improvements
GNOME 3.37.3 is out today as the newest development snapshot working towards the September release of GNOME 3.38...
AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT / Ryzen 7 3800XT / Ryzen 9 3900XT Linux Performance In 130+ Benchmarks
After the AMD Ryzen 3000XT series was announced last month, these new higher-clocked Zen 2 desktop processors are shipping today. Here are 130+ benchmarks on each of the Ryzen 5 3600XT, Ryzen 7 3800XT, and Ryzen 9 3900XT parts compared to various Intel and AMD CPUs. Tests under Ubuntu Linux and also complemented by performance-per-Watt / power and performance-per-dollar data points.
OpenXR Conformance Tests Open-Sourced
The Khronos Group today continued with their relatively recent trend of the past few years of open-sourcing their conformance tests. The OpenXR conformance tests are now open-source...
Zstd'ing The Kernel Might See Mainline With Linux 5.9 For Faster Boot Times
It looks like the long ongoing work for compressing the Linux kernel image with Zstd might finally soon be mainlined, potentially for next month's Linux 5.9 cycle kicking off as the "v6" patches sent out this week were done as a Git pull request...
CentOS Stream Begins Seeing RHEL 8.3 Bits, Real-Time Repository
Introduced alongside CentOS 8 last year was CentOS Stream as a developer-focused, rolling-release of CentOS/RHEL. With those processes getting squared away and CentOS recently debuting its RHEL 8.2 rebuild, CentOS Stream is beginning to see new and interesting material...
GNU Guix Begins Publishing System Images Based On Hurd
Earlier this year was news of GNU Guix wanting to replace their Linux kernel usage with the Hurd microkernel. For those interested, the project recently began producing system images with indeed Hurd wired up for this software distribution...
Glibc-HWCAPS To Help With AMD Zen Optimizations, Other Per-CPU Performance Bits
Experimental patches under discussion for the GNU C Library (glibc) would make it easier to dynamically load optimized libraries (shared objects) on systems depending upon the CPU in use and its hardware capabilities. This glibc-hwcaps work stems from the desired work on being able to better leverage Linux performance optimizations on AMD Zen-based systems but the hardware capabilities patches themselves can help any CPU microarchitecture family in more easily shipping optimized support...
Better Mouse Reporting For The Linux Virtual Terminal Is Being Worked On
The mouse reporting functionality offered by the Linux VT console is rather basic and seemingly seldom used by text-based, mouse-aware programs. However, a series of patches was sent out this week for improving the implementation to provide for more xterm-like mouse reporting...
Valve Working On A VKD3D Fork For Getting Direct3D 12 Advanced For Proton / Steam Play
While upstream Wine developers continue working on VKD3D for providing a Direct3D 12 to Vulkan translation layer for Wine, a developer on Valve's Proton team has now forked it as Proton-VKD3D for focusing their efforts on getting the D3D12 support moved along for Proton that powers Steam Play...
The Document Foundation Clarifies LibreOffice 7.0's "Personal Edition" Branding
Yes, it's true the LibreOffice builds in recent days -- including the new LibreOffice 7.0 RC1 -- have "Personal Edition" branding for the open-source builds. But given user concerns, The Document Foundation board has issued some clarifications to try to ease any immediate rumors, etc...
Seagate FireCuda 520 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD Linux Performance
For those that have been considering the Seagate FireCuda 520 as a PCI Express 4.0 NVMe solid-state drive, here are some benchmarks under Ubuntu Linux with this ZP500GM3A002 drive.
LibreOffice 7.0 RC1 Is Out For Testing This Skia+Vulkan Open-Source Office Suite
With just about one month to go until the official release, the first release candidate is out today of the LibreOffice 7.0 open-source, cross-platform office suite software...
H.266/VVC Standard Finalized With ~50% Lower Size Compared To H.265
The Versatile Video Coding (VVC) standard is now firmed up as H.266 as the successor to H.265/HEVC...
LLVMpipe Now Exposes OpenGL 4.2 For GL On CPUs
It was just a few days ago that the LLVMpipe OpenGL software rasterizer within Mesa finally achieved OpenGL 4.0 support while today it has crossed both OpenGL 4.1 and 4.2 milestones...
GCC Compiler Support Posted For Intel AMX
Building upon Intel working on GNU toolchain support for AMX, the newly-detailed Advanced Matrix Extensions being introduced next year with "Sapphire Rapids" Xeon CPUs, the GCC compiler support has been sent out in patch form...
Linux 5.9 To Bring Arm Memory Tagging Extension Support
The 64-bit ARM code building up for the Linux 5.9 cycle is set to mainline Memory Tagging Extension (MTE) support as another security improvement inbound...
Linux 5.8-rc4 Released Following A Calm Week
While last Sunday Linus Torvalds was concerned over a big Linux 5.8-rc3 release, this Sunday he is reporting that Linux 5.8-rc4 is on the smaller side...
Monado OpenXR Runtime Now Supports Multi-Application Rendering / Overlays
The Monado open-source OpenXR runtime has seen a lot of features added this year and the most recent is support for OpenXR's XR_EXTX_overlay extension to allow for multi-application / overlay rendering...
Reiser5 Pursuing Selective File Migration For Moving Hot Files To High Performance Disks
Edward Shishkin continues pursuing development of new file-system functionality for Reiser5, the next-generation evolutionary advancement over the controversial Reiser4 file-system...
Frame-Buffer Compression Support For Vintage Intel i865 Graphics Revived
Back in April I wrote about patches for enabling FBC on the Intel 865 chipset nearly two decades after that chipset first shipped. Those patches didn't yet hit the mainline Linux kernel but they were revived again this week...