
Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 1 hour 7 min ago
OnLogic Karbon 700: Passively-Cooled, Up To 8 Core / 16 Thread Industrial & Rugged PC
OnLogic (formerly known as Logic Supply until a recent rebranding) announced the Karbon 700 back in August as a durable Linux-friendly computer largely intended for industrial applications but nothing prevents the user from using it as a passively, well-built desktop PC either. OnLogic recently sent over the Karbon 700 and it's been working out very well even with passively cooling an Intel Xeon eight-core / sixteen-thread processor, 16GB of RAM, 512GB NVMe storage, and more.
Android-x86 9.0 Nearing Release - RC1 Brings Experimental Vulkan, Text-Based Installer
While Android 10 is the latest release of Google's mobile operating system, the downstream Android-x86 has been on the Android 8 "Oreo" series for stable while now the first release candidate of Android-x86 9.0 is available for testing...
Linux 5.5 To Finally Kill The Async Block Cipher API In Favor Of SKCIPHER
The crypto code within the Linux kernel for the upcoming 5.5 cycle finishes converting the drivers to making full use of the four-year-old SKCIPHER interface so that the old ABLKCIPHER code can be removed...
Intel Spins Up Latest Graphics Compiler + Compute Runtime With Ice/Tiger Lake Work
The Intel developers working on their open-source compute run-time this morning released a new version as they continue making improvements to their Gen11 Ice Lake support as well as further bringing up the Gen12/Xe Tiger Lake support...
Experimental Work Allows DXVK To Be Natively Used For Direct3D 11 On Linux
The DXVK Direct3D 10/11 over Vulkan implementation to date has been built as a Windows library run under Wine along with the game/software being rendered for converting the calls to Vulkan for execution by the host drivers. There is now experimental work for building DXVK as a native Linux library for converting D3D10/D3D11 calls to Vulkan outside of Wine...
OpenWrt 19.07 RC Offers WPA3 Configuration Support, All Targets On Same Kernel Version
OpenWrt 19.07 is on the way as the next feature release to this router/network focused Linux distribution that remains quite popular with hobbyists...
Picolibc 1.1 Released With POSIX File I/O Support
Longtime X11 developer Keith Packard has spent a lot of time in recent months while being employed by SiFive working on Picolibc as a new C library for embedded systems...
Canonical Finally Discovers "--no-install-recommends" Is Worthwhile For Docker
Debian's APT package manager has supported the --no-install-recommends for years so only the main dependencies are installed and not the "recommended" packages. Seemingly it's taken Canonical until now to figure out how practical that option is for reducing the size of their Docker containers...
Oracle Linux 8 Update 1 Announced With Udica, Optane DCPM Support
Fresh off the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1 at the beginning of November, Oracle is now shipping Oracle Linux 8 Update 1 as their spin of RHEL 8.1 with various changes on top -- including their "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel" option...
PHP 7.4 Aims For Release In Two Weeks With FFI, Performance Improvements
The sixth and final release candidate of PHP 7.4 is now available with it being on track for the general availability release before month's end...
Zombieload V2 TAA Performance Impact Benchmarks On Cascade Lake
While this week we have posted a number of benchmarks on the JCC Erratum and its CPU microcode workaround that introduces new possible performance hits, also being announced this week as part of Intel's security disclosures was "Zombieload Variant Two" as the TSX Async Abort vulnerability that received same-day Linux kernel mitigations. I've been benchmarking the TAA mitigations to the Linux kernel since the moment they hit the public Git tree and here are those initial benchmark results on an Intel Cascade Lake server.
Darktable 3.0 RC1 Released With Greater Undo/Redo Support, More SSE Optimizations
Darktable 3.0 is coming soon as the next major release for this open-source RAW photography workflow software...
GCC 7.5 Released With 215+ Bug Fixes As The Last Update To GCC7
For those still on the GCC 7 series, GCC 7.5 was released this morning as the final point release to this compiler series with that branch that saw its original release in 2017 now closed...
Intel's Assembler Changes For JCC Erratum Are Not Hurting AMD
When writing about the Intel Jump Conditional Code (JCC) Erratum and how Intel is working to mitigate the performance hit of the CPU microcode update with patches to the GNU Assembler, there was some concern expressed by readers that it might hurt AMD performance. That does not appear to be the case...
NVIDIA 435.27.06 Vulkan Linux Driver Has Useful Display Improvements
Released on Wednesday was the NVIDIA 435.27.06 Linux driver as their newest beta build focused on offering better Vulkan driver support...
Mesa 19.2.4 Released As Emergency Update After 19.2.3 Broke All OpenGL Drivers
Mesa 19.2.4 was released on Wednesday as an "emergency release" after a bug was discovered that made last week's Mesa 19.2.3 version buggy for all OpenGL drivers...
CodeWeavers Is Hiring Another Graphics Developer To Help With Wine D3D / Steam Play
CodeWeavers is looking to hire another developer to work on Wine's graphics stack and in particular the WineD3D code while having an emphasis that it's part of Valve's Steam Play (Proton) efforts...
The Firefox + Chrome Web Browser Performance Impact From Intel's JCC Erratum Microcode Update
With yesterday's overview and benchmarks of Intel's Jump Conditional Code Erratum one of the areas where the performance impact of the updated CPU microcode exceeding Intel's 0~4% guidance was on the web browser performance. Now with more time having passed, here are more web browser benchmarks on both Chrome and Firefox while comparing the new CPU microcode release for the JCC Erratum compared to the previous release. Simply moving to this new CPU microcode does represent a significant hit to the web browser performance.
LibreOffice 6.4 Branched - Beta Release Underway With QR Code Generator, Threading Improvements
As of this morning LibreOffice 6.4 was branched from master and the beta release tagged with those LO 6.4 Beta binaries expected out shortly...
Radeon Pro Software for Enterprise 19.Q4 for Linux Released
AMD on Tuesday released their Radeon Pro Software for Enterprise 19.Q4 for Linux package as their newest quarterly driver release intended for their professional graphics card offerings...