
Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 1 hour 12 min ago
Linux Kernel Looks To Remove 32-bit Xen PV Guest Support
Coming soon to a kernel near you could be the removal of 32-bit Xen PV guest support as better jiving with Xen's architectural improvements and more of the Linux/open-source community continuing to shift focus to 64-bit x86 with trying to finally sunset 32-bit x86...
Clear Linux Could Soon Be Faster Within Containers On AVX2 Systems
While Clear Linux as part of its standard bare metal installations has long defaulted to having an AVX2-optimized GNU C Library installed by default, it turns out that it wasn't part of the default os-core bundle as used by containers. That though is changing and should yield even better out-of-the-box performance when running Clear Linux within containers...
VIRTIO-IOMMU Driver Merged For Linux 5.3 Kernel
With the VirtIO standard for cross-hypervisor compatibility of different virtualized components there is a virtual IOMMU device that is now backed by a working driver in the Linux 5.3 kernel...
Mageia 7.1 Released With Systemd Fix For AMD Ryzen 3000 Systems
While Mageia 7 released at the start of July for this Mandrake/Mandriva-derived Linux distribution, out today is already Mageia 7.1 as a rush release to fix AMD Zen 2 support...
Linux Mint 19.2 "Tina" Available In Beta Form
The Linux Mint crew today released their 19.2 "Tina" beta releases of their Xfce, MATE, and Cinnamon desktop flavors...
Firefox 69 Beta On Linux Bringing Better Performance
With the recent release of Mozilla Firefox 68 there are some nice WebRender performance improvements that Linux users can enjoy. But with Firefox 69 now in beta there is even better performance, including when enabling WebRender on Linux.
Ubuntu 19.10 To Ship With Flicker-Free Boot Support
Thanks to the upstream work achieved by Red Hat engineers working on Fedora the past few cycles, Ubuntu 19.10 should have a flicker-free boot experience...
Intel Is Still Working On Upstreaming SGX Enclave Support To Linux - Now At 21 Revisions
Intel Software Guard Extensions "SGX" have been around since Skylake for allowing hardware-protected (via encryption) memory regions known as "enclaves" that prevent processes outside of the enclave from accessing these memory regions. While supported CPUs have been out for years, the Intel SGX support has yet to make it into the mainline kernel and this week marks the twenty-first revision to these patches...
Ubuntu-WSL Package Offers Better Ubuntu Integration On Windows Subsystem For Linux
Canonical's Balint Reczey has announced the addition of a new ubuntu-wsl package that will be installed by default when running Ubuntu on Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) in order to provide better integration...
AMDVLK 2019.Q3.2 Released With Navi 10 Support
Just over one week after the Radeon RX 5700/5700XT "Navi" graphics cards began shipping, the AMDVLK open-source AMD Radeon Vulkan Linux driver support is now available for these first RDNA offerings...
AMDVLK 2019.Q3.2 Released With Navi 10 Support
Just over one week after the Radeon RX 5700/5700XT "Navi" graphics cards began shipping, the AMDVLK open-source AMD Radeon Vulkan Linux driver support is now available for these first RDNA offerings...
AMDVLK 2019.Q3.2 Released With Navi 10 Support
Just over one week after the Radeon RX 5700/5700XT "Navi" graphics cards began shipping, the AMDVLK open-source AMD Radeon Vulkan Linux driver support is now available for these first RDNA offerings...
A Vulkan Extension Is Being Worked On To Acquire Exclusive Control Of A Wayland Display
Drew DeVault of Sway/WLROOTS fame has been dabbling with his first Vulkan extension as part of work with other upstream Wayland developers on DRM lease support and better supporting VR headsets under Wayland...
Btrfs Gets Cleaned Up & Code Refactoring For Linux 5.3
David Sterba sent in the Btrfs file-system updates on Monday for the Linux 5.3 kernel...
AMDGPU DC Gets A Number Of Fixes For Navi & Other Clean-Ups
The past few weeks while AMD open-source developers were busy getting their Navi enablement code public and aligned for the Linux 5.3 merge window, the display core "DC" frequent code drops ceased. Every so often AMD developers volley their DC patches from their internal development trees to the public mailing list for queuing ahead of the next cycle. Now that Navi is out there and getting stabilized, they've issued a new set of DC patches and it's coming in heavy...
Linux 5.3's ASUS WMI Driver Add ASUS TUF Gaming Laptop Support & More
The x86 platform driver updates were sent in and already merged for the ongoing Linux 5.3 kernel. It's the x86 platform driver updates that bring the recently mentioned Intel Speed Select Technology for Linux driver but there is also more...
AMD Sends Out Linux Graphics Driver Patches For "Arcturus" As New Vega Derived GPU
Remember last September when that AMD Arcturus codename dropped in our forums for what at first appeared to be a successor to Navi but later clarified to be used as a Linux driver enablement codename? Well, the Linux kernel driver patches for this "Arcturus" GPU have just been posted...
D9VK 0.13f Brings Extra Features For Direct3D 9 Over Vulkan
It was just earlier this month that D9VK 0.13 was released with new features while now a "0.13f" Hypnofrog release is available in pre-release form...
Intel Speed Select Technology Comes To Linux With The 5.3 Kernel
With the in-development Linux 5.3 kernel is now support for Intel Speed Select Technology (SST) that was introduced as part of Cascade Lake processors. Speed Select Technology allows optimizing the system with per-core performance configurations to prioritize certain workloads while lowering the performance envelope for other cores...
Spectre Mitigation Performance Impact Benchmarks On AMD Ryzen 3700X / 3900X Against Intel
AMD Zen 2 processors feature hardware-based mitigations for Spectre V2 and Spectre V4 SSBD while remaining immune to the likes of Meltdown and Zombieload. Here are some benchmarks looking at toggling the CPU speculative execution mitigations across various Intel and AMD processors.