
Linux Hardware Reviews, Performance Benchmarks & Open-Source / Free Software News
Updated: 2 hours 50 min ago
Debian Installer Buster RC3 Brings Last Minute Improvements
While Debian 10.0 "Buster" is due to be released this weekend, a seemingly last release candidate of the Debian Installer is now available...
Intel SVT-AV1 0.6 Released With AV1 Decoding, SIMD Optimizations
Intel's open-source developers working on their Scalable Video Technology video encoders (and decoders) on Tuesday released SVT-AV1 0.6 as their latest work on high-performance AV1 support using CPU-based encoding/decoding...
Ubuntu 19.10 Indeed Working On "Experimental ZFS Option" In Ubiquity Installer
It looks like in July we could finally see an "experimental ZFS" option within Ubuntu 19.10 and its daily images for those wanting an easy-to-use ZFS On Linux based installation of Ubuntu...
Libdrm 2.4.99 Released With Navi Support, AMDGPU Changes
AMD's Marek Olšák released a new version of the Mesa DRM library (libdrm) on Tuesday...
AMD Posts Open-Source Linux Driver Support For "NAVI 14" GPU
While the Radeon RX 5700 "Navi 10" series is launching on 7 July and there was the recently presented open-source Linux patches (so far for the AMDGPU kernel driver and RadeonSI OpenGL; Vulkan support still pending), today was the surprise move of posting the kernel patches for an unannounced "Navi 14" graphics processor...
Odake BladeX: A 4K 15.6-inch Portable Monitor Supporting HDMI & USB-C
A few years back we looked at the ASUS ZenScreen USB-C Portable Monitor that took until recently when it began playing working nicely on Linux due to its DisplayLink hardware and also the state of Type-C DP AlternateMode support at the time. What we've been trying out over the past week has been the Odake BladeX as a much more interesting portable monitor: it's a 15.6-inch display in 1080p and 4K options that also supports native HDMI input and other functionality unmatched by the ZenScreen.
NVIDIA Open-Sources TensorRT Library Components
NVIDIA announced via their newsletter today that they've open-sourced their TensorRT library and associated plug-ins...
AMDVLK 2019.Q3.1 Adds HDR10 Support For Direct Display Mode, Fixes Issues
AMDVLK 2019.Q3.1 is out as the latest update to AMD's official open-source Vulkan Linux driver...
AMD Radeon Pro WX 3200 Announced As A Small Form Factor $199 USD Workstation Card
For those looking for a small form factor workstation-oriented graphics card or just a budget workstation GPU in general, AMD today announced the Radeon Pro WX 3200...
NVIDIA Announces GeForce RTX 2060 / 2070 / 2080 SUPER GPUs
Following weeks of leaks and other rumors, NVIDIA today finally lifted the lid on their new "SUPER" line-up with the revised RTX 2060 / RTX 2070 / RTX 2080 graphics cards with more competitive value especially in light of AMD's Radeon RX 5700 series offerings coming to market next week...
AMD "GFX8" Hardware Now Has Expanded DCC Support With RADV Vulkan Driver
The latest work by Valve open-source Linux graphics driver contributor Samuel Pitoiset is on offering Delta Color Compression (DCC) support for layers with the Vulkan RADV driver...
Mir 1.3 Released With Wayland Improvements, New AL Features
Mir 1.3 was released today as the newest version of Canonical's project making it easier to write desktop shells with Wayland support...
NVIDIA 418.52.14 Linux Driver Brings Full-Screen Exclusive & Calibrated Timestamps
NVIDIA released update Vulkan beta drivers on Monday for both Windows and Linux...
Valve's Steam Survey Data Shows Linux Usage Pulling Back During June
While Linux usage of Steam as a percentage has generally been flat or ticking up slightly each month since last year when Valve introduced Steam Play for allowing many Windows games to run gracefully on Linux, during June was the first time in a while seeing a decline...
Godot Engine 4.0 Continues Working Towards Vulkan Support
Godot lead developer Juan Linietsky has been spending much of his time working on porting their open-source game engine to Vulkan for the Godot 4.0 release to follow Godot 3.2. Good progress is being made in getting this increasingly popular game engine rendering with Vulkan...
It's A Last Call For Speakers At X.Org's XDC2019 Event
The 2019 X.Org Developers Conference for "all-things open-source graphics" is coming up at the start of October. But if you've been wanting to talk about something related to the Linux kernel, Mesa, Wayland, or related components, this week is your last chance to apply...
Xfce 4.14 "Pre2" Brings Bug Fixes, GLX Compositing Improvements & More
The second preview release of the long-awaited Xfce 4.14 is now available for testing ahead of its official debut later this summer...
Longtime X11/Linux Developer Joins SiFive To Work On RISC-V Processors
Keith Packard has joined RISC-V company SiFive. Yes, the same Keith Packard that is the longest still active (though somewhat more dormant these days) X Window System developer who for many years had led much of the X11/X.Org efforts and worked for nearly a decade at Intel on their open-source Linux graphics driver stack before working for HP Labs and also a side-gig for Valve improving the Linux stack for VR...
An Initial Look At The IBM POWER9 4-Core / 16-Thread CPU Performance On The Blackbird
A few weeks ago we received a POWER9 Raptor Blackbird for testing that features an IBM POWER9 4-core (16 thread) processor clocked at 3.80GHz. For those curious about the performance potential for low-end POWER9 parts compared to the more common high-core/thread count POWER processors we have benchmarked before like in the Talos II server, here are some initial tests of that petite POWER9 processor.
GNU Rush 2.0 Released For Restricted User Shell
GNU Rush 2.0 is out today as the latest major update to this restricted user shell that allows administrators greater control over the command line support exposed to users as well as system resource control and running remote programs within a chroot...