Phoronix

Going back to at least late 2017 have been proposals for Zstd-compressing the Linux kernel images for the Facebook-developed Zstandard compression algorithm. In 2020 perhaps we will finally see the support mainlined...

Back in January we reported on the lead developer of the CUPS printing system quitting Apple and following that he began development of LPrint as a new label printer software solution for Linux and macOS. It turns out he has another software projects in the works too...

Here is an up-to-date look at how the very latest Mesa 20.1 Git performance is for the Radeon "RADV" Vulkan driver both out-of-the-box and when enabling the Valve-backed ACO compiler back-end alternative to AMDGPU LLVM. Plus there are benchmarks of the latest AMDVLK open-source AMD Vulkan driver and also when using AMDGPU-PRO's Vulkan packages that still rely upon AMD's proprietary shader compiler.

While the Debian 11 "Bullseye" code freeze isn't for another year, the second alpha release of the Debian Installer to ultimately provide the installation process is now available...

As a move ultimately for Red Hat Enterprise Linux as well, Red Hat developers working on Fedora are planning to transition the RPM database (RPMDB) away from the long-standing Berkeley DB to using SQLite...

The upcoming Linux 5.7 kernel is preparing to bid farewell to KVM virtualization support on 32-bit ARM architectures...

AMD today announced the Ryzen 9 4900H as their new top-end Zen 2 mobile processor for notebooks...

While many would argue it's past due for the Linux kernel's floppy disk code to be gutted from the mainline code-base, instead it's seeing improvements in 2020 ahead of the Linux 5.7 kernel... The same kernel where Intel stabilized Tiger Lake graphics, AMD preparing Zen 3 support, a new exFAT driver, and a multitude of other modern improvements is also now seeing floppy work...

Intel has begun piping the Linux support for Keem Bay...

Kernel patches pending that might see mainlining for the upcoming Linux 5.7 window provide ASpeed XDMA engine support for the plethora of AST2500 BMCs found on server platforms and the forthcoming AST2600-based platforms...

Linux 5.7's Netfilter framework is set to see better performance on modern Intel and AMD systems thanks to AVX2 optimizations...

Linus Torvalds just released Linux 5.6-rc6 and the code metrics are looking good for this stage of the kernel cycle...

While a lot of feature work has been building up for Linux 5.7 in various subsystem development repositories ahead of the merge window in a few weeks, one of the big driver additions many users have been clamoring for isn't yet queued. The AMD Sensor Fusion Hub open-source driver for Linux appears stalled pending more reviews from upstream developers...

Flying under our radar until now was that KDE Frameworks 5.68 was released last week as the monthly update to this collection of KDE-minded libraries complementing the Qt tool-kit...

Complementing the Firefox 73 vs. 74 vs. 75 Beta benchmarks on Ubuntu Linux from AMD Ryzen this week, here are those numbers side-by-side with the Google Chrome 80 web-browser for putting the performance into more perspective...

Marcel Holtmann of Intel's open-source Linux team released BlueZ 5.54 this morning as the latest version of this widely-used user-space Linux Bluetooth stack...

Coming just past the GNOME 3.36.0 release is the merging of a year-old patch-set to tie in middle mouse button click emulation with libinput for Mutter...

The Coronavirus doesn't appear to be impacting KDE development speed at all as it's been another week seeing a ton of feature activity for this open-source desktop...

After being in development for two years, GNOME Shortwave has seen its first stable release shortly after this week's GNOME 3.36 desktop debut...

Back in January "iGPU Leak" was disclosed as CVE-2019-14615 as an information leakage vulnerability affecting Intel's graphics architecture leading to both register and local memory leaks. While Intel "Gen9" graphics were patched right away on the disclosure date and Gen8 Broadwell graphics were already mitigated, Gen7/Gen7.5 graphics took longer... In fact, not until the Linux 5.7 release this spring is there the mitigation for iGPU Leak...