Phoronix

Intel's open-source SVT video encoder team today released a new feature update to their HEVC/H.265 open-source video encoder...

AMD is striking well over the past month with their Linux hardware bring-up. In the past month we've seen the Navi 10/12/14 support get in order for Linux as well as support for the future Vega-based Arcturus GPU and now we see the initial enablement patches for their next-generation APUs, Renoir...

While AMD's hardware folks were launching the EPYC 7002 series, their software crew was pushing out the AMD Optimizing C/C++ Compiler 2.0 with support/optimizations for the Zen 2 micro-architecture. Using the top-end AMD EPYC 7742 in a 2P Linux server configuration, here are C/C++ compiler benchmarks looking at the performance when built by the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), LLVM Clang, and AOCC 2.0.

EXT4 set off the new trend for opt-in, per-directory case-insensitive file/folder support on Linux systems. EXT4 picked up that optional case-insensitive support for Linux 5.2 while the for Linux 5.4 kernel cycle the Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) is set to receive similar support...

While the tide may be eventually turning, as it stands today for those wanting to run Coreboot on x86 desktop/server hardware you are largely limited to generations-old platforms. But now there is a new option and that is a Coreboot port having been completed to a modern Supermicro motherboard for use with Intel Xeon "Kabylake" processors...

Drew DeVault is working on buttoning up the Sway 1.2 Wayland compositor release as the newest feature update to this i3 window manager inspired compositor...

Canonical's designers have been working to update their Yaru desktop theme ahead of the upcoming Ubuntu 19.10 "Eoan Ermine" release...

Following the big Proton 4.11 update for Valve's Steam Play that just arrived over one week ago, a second update to this Wine-derived software is now available for enhancing the Windows games on Linux experience...

If you didn't have a chance since last night to check out our benchmarks of the AMD EPYC 7742 and EPYC 7502 Linux performance, I certainly encourage you to do so. Even if you aren't a server enthusiast, it's incredible to see the engineering achievement of AMD with Zen 2 and how the race is certainly back on in the CPU space. If you are short on time, here's the quick summary of our initial AMD EPYC 7002 benchmark results...

Canonical has announced the immediate availability of Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS as the newest update to this long-term support series...

After a slight delay, The Document Foundation this morning announced the release of the LibreOffice 6.3 cross-platform open-source office suite...

By now you've likely seen the fantastic performance out of AMD's new "Rome" 7002 series processors. The performance is phenomenal and generally blowing well past Intel's Xeon Cascade Lake processors. So that's all good and it can get even better outside of performance: I asked AMD about the prospects of Coreboot / open-source BIOS support and got a surprising response...

Red Hat has joined the RISC-V Foundation to help foster this open-source processor ISA...

Yesterday marked the release of GTK-VNC 1.0 as GNOME's VNC viewer widget for the GTK tool-kit...

Coinciding with yesterday's glorious AMD EPYC "Rome" 7002 series CPU launch, AMD's software folks released AOCC 2.0 as their LLVM/Clang-based compiler optimized for Zen processors. AOCC 2.0 brings optimized compiler support now for Zen 2 processors not just only the EPYC 7002 line-up but also the Ryzen 3000 series consumer processors...

Version 1.14 of the libinput library for unified input handling on Linux X.Org and Wayland systems is now available...

Now that you have read our AMD EPYC "Rome" 7002 series overview, here is a look at the initial performance benchmarks from our testing over the past few weeks. This testing focused on the new AMD EPYC 7502 and EPYC 7742 processors in both single (1P) and dual (2P) socket configurations using AMD's Daytona server reference platform. Tests were done on Ubuntu Linux and compared to previous AMD EPYC processors as well as Intel Xeon Scalable.

One month ago today we were talking about the AMD Ryzen 3000 series processor and new Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards, all manufactured on TSMC's 7nm process. Today, for 7th August, the embargo has now lifted and we are talking about something arguably more exciting, or at least the ability to more profoundly impact an industry (data centers): AMD's EPYC 7002 series is ready and their line-up and ultimately the resulting performance is the most exciting and competitive we have seen ever out of AMD in the server space.

Today is a wild one for open-source/Linux users. Let's begin with the unexpected news: NVIDIA is releasing more GPU hardware documentation at long last! Yes, freely-available hardware interface documentation to assist in the development of the open-source NVIDIA Linux driver (Nouveau)...

Yesterday the SWAPGS vulnerability was made public as a new variant of Spectre V1 that affects all operating systems and is believed to affect only Intel CPUs. The SWAPGS discovery by Bitdefender was quietly mitigated by Microsoft for Windows 10 last month while yesterday the patches were posted for the mainline Linux kernel as the Grand Schemozzle. As soon as learning of this SWAPGS vulnerability and seeing the kernel code, I began running some preliminary performance tests to look at the impact of this latest CPU mitigation.