Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 15 min 11 sec ago
Intel oneDNN 3.9 Making More Preparations For Xe3, Nova Lake & Diamond Rapids
Released on Friday was a new version of the oneDNN deep neural network library maintained by Intel and the UXL Foundation. This library used by various deep learning applications continues preparing for upcoming Intel CPUs and GPUs...
KDE Plasma 6.5 Adds Notifications For Low Printer Ink Levels
One week ago in the KDE Plasma land it was talking about rounded bottom corners for windows by default while this week in the KDE Plasma space is another long overdue feature: notifications for Plasma around low printer ink cartridge levels. The upcoming KDE Plasma 6.5 will finally feature built-in notifications on printer ink levels running low...
Linux 6.17 Will Be Exciting With Intel "Project Battlematrix" GPU Driver Changes & More
With Linux 6.16 expected to be released on Sunday unless an extra week of testing is deemed necessary, the Linux 6.17 merge window will then kickoff the next day. Based on monitoring the various subsystem "-next" trees and other mailing list activity, here is a look at many of the changes expected for Linux 6.17 barring last minute issues or other objections raised by Linus Torvalds...
Linux Kernel Proposal Documents Rules For Using AI Coding Assistants
Longtime Linux developer Sasha Levin of NVIDIA (and formerly of Google and Microsoft) as well as being the Linux LTS kernel co-maintainer today proposed a Linux kernel AI coding assistant configuration and documentation/rules for contributing to the Linux kernel with patches that are (co)authored by AI coding utilities...
Linux Will Finally Be Able To Reboot Apple M1/M2 Macs With The v6.17 Kernel
While there have been various elements of the Apple M1 and M2 SoC support in the mainline Linux kernel along with support for various Macs, different features have been missing from the upstream kernel such as the Apple GPU kernel graphics driver as one big example. On a more fundamental level, the upcoming Linux 6.17 kernel is going to cross off another low-level expectation for Apple Silicon Macs on the mainline kernel: the ability to reboot the system...
Intel Quietly Sunset Its PlaidML Open-Source Deep Learning Software
Another hit to the open-source Intel software ecosystem this year was the company formally archiving/discontinuing work on the PlaidML deep learning software. PlaidML was the deep learning framework that Intel acquired back in 2018 as part of their acquisition of Vertex.AI. PlaidML had a goal of "deep learning for every platform" but unfortunately those ambitions didn't materialize...
Linux 6.16 Is Exciting For Open-Source NVIDIA, OpenVPN DCO & More Performance
The Linux 6.16 kernel is expected to be released as stable this coming Sunday, 27 July, barring any last minute issues that cause Linus Torvalds to have reservations over issuing v6.16 stable and to instead do a v6.16-rc8 test release. With Linux 6.16 imminent, here's a reminder about some of the most interesting features in this next Linux kernel version...
Bcachefs Lands Last Minute Fixes For Linux 6.16
Ahead of the Linux 6.16 stable kernel expected to be released on Sunday, some last minute Bcachefs file-system fixes join various other kernel regression/bug fixes landing today in Git...
Final Benchmarks Of Clear Linux On Intel: ~48% Faster Than Ubuntu Out-Of-The-Box
Last week Friday the unfortunate news came down that Intel was discontinuing their Clear Linux project effective immediately. For the past ten years Intel software engineers have been crafting Clear Linux as a high performance distribution that is extensively optimized for x86_64 processors via aggressive compiler tuning, various patches to the Linux kernel and other packages, and a variety of other optimizations throughout the operating system. For years Clear Linux has led Linux x86_64 performance not only on Intel desktop/mobile/server hardware but on AMD systems too. Here is a final look at the Clear Linux performance on the Intel side compared to the performance of the latest Ubuntu 25.04 release.
Threadripper 9000 Series Available On 31 July, 9980X For $4999 USD
Last month AMD detailed the Ryzen Threadripper 9000 series as the new Zen 5 Threadrippers. After the Threadripper PRO 9000WX Series debuted this week, AMD announced today that the Threadripper 9000 series will begin hitting retailers next week...
Fedora Considers Reducing The Scope That BIOS Systems Can Hold Up A Release
Given that non-UEFI BIOS systems are quite old at this point and Intel/AMD systems for the past number of years have all supported UEFI, another change proposal being considered this week by Fedoa Linux is limiting the release-blocking status of various (non-UEFI) BIOS systems...
Ayn Gaming Handhelds To See Better Linux Support With New Open-Source Driver
Ayn is a Chinese brand of handheld gaming devices that have included Arm-based devices shipping Android as well as AMD Ryzen powered handhelds with Windows 11 or even the option of installing Ubuntu. Better support for the Ayn x86 gaming handheld devices is on the way with patches posted for a new Ayn platform driver for the Linux kernel...
Red Hat Has Been Rewriting Bash-Based Greenboot In Rust
Greenboot is a generic health check framework for systemd on RPM-OSTree based Linux distributions. Red Hat engineers have worked on Greenboot as part of the likes of Fedora IoT and their other RPM-OSTree initiatives for checking on the overall system health with ease...
Fedora 43 Looks To Offer Support For The Hare Programming Language
Fedora 43 is looking to offer packages to support the Hare system programming language...
Vulkan + Mesa Drivers For AI Inferencing? It's Already Showing Potential On Radeon RADV
Following the Vulkanised 2025 presentation how NVIDIA is finding great success with Vulkan for AI / machine learning and already competitive to CUDA in some areas, Red Hat engineer and DRM subsystem lead maintainer David Airlie began exploring the potential of Mesa Vulkan drivers for AI inferencing. He was successful in using the Intel ANV, NVIDIA NVK, and Radeon RADV drivers for Vulkan-based AI inferencing while for the Radeon hardware tested is where it's showing the most potential (performance) at the moment and for even competing with the ROCm compute stack...
New AMD Linux Driver Ushers In Seamless Firmware Servicing "SFS"
A new Linux driver patch series posted by AMD today introduces a new kernel driver "SFS" for Seamless Firmware Servicing. I hadn't heard AMD talk about Seamless Firmware Servicing at any previous events but it appears to be supported for current-generation AMD EPYC 5th Gen "Turin" processors...
Linux 6.16 Brings Some Minor Performance Boosts For Strix Halo's Radeon Graphics
With the Linux 6.16 kernel that will be debuting as stable as soon as this coming Sunday there are some minor performance benefits for the Radeon integrated graphics with the incredible Strix Halo SoC. Here are some comparison benchmarks of Linux 6.15 vs. Linux 6.16 Git for the AMD Radeon graphics of the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 with the HP ZBook Ultra G1a laptop...
Ubuntu Concept For Snapdragon X1 Laptops Moves To Linux 6.16, Enables More Devices
The Ubuntu Concept ISO images that contain experimental patches -- or "hacks" to make things work -- to enable Ubuntu Linux on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Elite powered laptops is out with a fresh spin. The new Ubuntu Concept ISOs move to using the Linux 6.16 kernel while also enabling some additional Snapdragon X laptop models...
Mesa 25.3 Merges Vulkan AMD Anti-Lag Support
An exciting addition landing into the Mesa 25.3 codebase today is support for AMD's Vulkan anti-lag extension, VK_AMD_anti_lag...
AMD RadeonSI Driver Enables OpenGL Sparse Texture Support For RDNA4 GPUs
Well known open-source AMD Mesa developer Marek Olšák has landed his latest set of 16 patches into Mesa 25.3-devel for enhancing the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver. Notable here is getting OpenGL sparse textures working on the latest Radeon RX 9000 series RDNA4/GFX12 graphics cards...
