
Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 2 hours 39 min ago
Two Decades Late: Mainline Linux Kernel Getting Keyboard / Mouse Driver For SGI Octane
The MIPS-based SGI Octane IRIX workstations were first introduced in the late 90's while recently there has been a resurgence in the work on getting these vintage PCs running off a mainline Linux kernel...
Mesa 20.0 Now Defaults To The New Intel Gallium3D Driver For Faster OpenGL
After missing their original target of transitioning to Intel Gallium3D by default for Mesa 19.3 as the preferred OpenGL Linux driver on Intel graphics hardware, this milestone has now been reached for Mesa 20.0!..
ZFS On Linux 0.8.3 Released With Many Fixes
ZFS On Linux 0.8.3 is out today as the first official update to ZoL since last September...
AMD Ryzen 4000 Mobile Series "Renoir" Graphics No Longer Experimental With Linux 5.5
While the Linux 5.5 kernel is expected to be released as soon as this Sunday, a last minute change to the AMDGPU DRM driver makes the Renoir graphics no longer treated as experimental. With that, there is open-source support out-of-the-box rather than being hidden behind a kernel module flag...
Linux 5.6 To Bring FQ-PIE Packet Scheduler To Help Fight Bufferbloat
In addition to WireGuard being part of "net-next" as the networking subsystem material targeting the upcoming Linux 5.6 cycle, there is another big last minute addition to the networking space: the Flow Queue PIE packet scheduler has been merged...
Valve's ACO Shader Compiler Back-End For Radeon Vulkan Is Now In Good Shape For GCN 1.0
As last minute material for Mesa 20.0 is making Valve's "ACO" AMD compiler back-end for the RADV Vulkan driver in better shape for GFX6/GCN1.0 graphics hardware...
AMD vs. Intel Contributions To The Linux Kernel Over The Past Decade
Driven by curiosity sake, here is a look at how the total number of AMD and Intel developers contributed to the upstream Linux kernel during the 2010s as well as the total number of commits each year from the respective hardware vendors...
LibreOffice 7.0 Is The Version Now In Development With Its Skia + Vulkan Support
LibreOffice 6.4 is set to be released in the coming days while succeeding that will now be LibreOffice 7.0...
Flatpak 1.6.1 Released Due To Security Issue - Special Case Of Getting Access Outside Home
Flatpak 1.6 was an exciting update for this Linux application sandboxing/distribution tech in that it started laying the foundation to support a paid app store but elsewhere in the code-base a security issue came about...
Gutting Out Intel MPX Support To Be Finished Up In The Linux 5.6 Kernel
Last year Linux kernel developers began removing support for Intel's Memory Protection Extensions (MPX) and that looks like it will be finished up in the forthcoming Linux 5.6 cycle...
RHEL 8.2 Beta Application Streams Bring GCC 9.1, Python 3.8
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 entered public beta this week as the latest installment to RHEL8...
Linux k10temp Driver For AMD CPUs Updated To Better Handle Power/Temp Analysis
As we have been eagerly talking about for the past week, the Linux kernel's k10temp driver was updated for better AMD CPU CCD temperatures and voltage/current reporting. Those improvements have been quickly evolving thanks to the work of the open-source community with AMD still sadly holding the datasheets concerning the power/temperature registers close to their vest. A new version of k10temp was sent out on Wednesday...
Vulkan 1.2 Comes To macOS / iOS Via Updated MoltenVK
While Apple still isn't officially supporting the Vulkan graphics/compute API in remaining focused on their Metal drivers, MoltenVK at least has been updated for Vulkan 1.2 in allowing developers to target this Vulkan-to-Metal abstraction layer for macOS and iOS...
Mesa 20.0 Feature Development Is Ending Next Week
Mesa developers are planning to end feature work on Mesa 20.0 next week as this first quarter update to the Mesa 3D graphics stack...
Android-x86 Is Still Working Towards Its 9.0 "Pie" Release
Android 9.0 "Pie" is approaching two years of age and already succeeded by Android 10, but on the Android-x86 front the 9.0 release is finally getting closer...
Dav1d AV1 Decoder Begins Adding AVX-512 Optimizations For Intel Ice Lake
Ahead of the forthcoming dav1d 0.6 release, this open-source AV1 video decoder has begun implementing AVX-512 optimizations targeting Intel Ice Lake processors...
Sway 1.4 Wayland Compositor Brings VNC Support, Initial Bits For MATE Panel Support
Sway 1.4 is out today as the newest version of this i3-inspired Wayland compositor that has a growing following...
GhostBSD 20.01 Released For FreeBSD 12.1 + MATE 1.22.2 Desktop Experience
GhostBSD 20.01 is out today as the first release of 2020 for this desktop-focused BSD operating system built off FreeBSD...
Debian 7 Through Debian Testing Benchmarks With/Without Mitigations
As part of our many Linux benchmarks in ending out the 2010s we ran tests looking at CentOS 6 through CentOS 8, seven years of Ubuntu Linux performance, and various other Linux distribution benchmarks and testing other important pieces of open-source software over time. One of the additional comparisons now wrapped up is looking at the performance of Debian GNU/Linux going back from the old 7 series through the current 10 stable series and also Debian Testing. Tests where relevant were done out-of-the-box with the default security mitigations and again with mitigations disabled.
AMDVLK 2020.Q1.1 Brings Some Performance Tuning, Still On Vulkan 1.1
Out this morning is AMDVLK 2020.Q1.1 as AMD's first official open-source Vulkan driver code drop of the new year...