Open-source News

GAFAM Hates - Except in a Worryingly Parasitic Way - GNU/Linux and Its Freedoms (or Its Users)  LXer

The "char/misc" pull request was submitted today for the ongoing Linux 6.14 merge window and already merged to the Linux Git tree... As expected, the completed code around the NTSYNC driver has landed for better emulating the Windows NT synchronization primitves as a big win to Wine / Steam Play (Proton) Windows gaming on Linux...

Completed NTSYNC Driver Merged For Linux 6.14: "Should Make Many SteamOS Users Happy"  Phoronix

Facebook removing Linux discussions as security threats  Boing Boing

In beginning the NVIDIA Blackwell Linux testing with the GeForce RTX 5090 compute performance, besides all the CUDA/OpenCL/OptiX benchmarks delivered last week a number of readers asked about AI performance and in particular the Llama.cpp performance with the RTX 5090 flagship graphics card. Here are some initial benchmarks looking at the GeForce RTX 5090 performance in Llama.cpp compared to prior RTX 40 and RTX 30 graphics cards.

Llama.cpp AI Performance With The GeForce RTX 5090 Review  Phoronix

Released last November following the AMD 5th Gen EPYC "Turin" server processor launch was ZenDNN 5.0 as their deep neural network library optimized for EPYC/Ryzen processors. ZenDNN 5.0 is their updated version of their neural network library that is compatible with the APIs from Intel oneDNN/DNNL and in turn can be used with the likes of PyTorch. It turns out ZenDNN 5.0 is capable of delivering a 400% performance uplift over their prior ZenDNN software release on the same hardware...

AMD ZenDNN 5.0 Software For AI Delivers "400% Performance Uplift"  Phoronix

Facebook flags Linux topics as 'cybersecurity threats' — posts and users being blocked  Tom's Hardware

Solus 4.7 out now with expanded Nvidia GPU support  Neowin

Solus 4.7 out now with expanded Nvidia GPU support  Neowin

5 of the most unique Linux distros you need to try out  XDA Developers

Hyprland 0.47 is out to begin a new week with some exciting enhancements to this visuals-focused Wayland compositor...

It's still not looking like triple buffering will land for GNOME 48 with the feature freeze set for next weekend. But that Mutter dynamic triple buffering support has been improved upon and now at least is working for direct scan-out situations as well as variable rate refresh (VRR)...

Linux Foundation Launches ‘Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers’  WebProNews

The x86 platform driver updates have been merged for the ongoing Linux 6.14 merge window. As usual the x86 platform driver updates are predominantly to benefit the many different Intel/AMD laptops out there with various OEM vendor features/functionality. Plus within the platform-drivers-x86 space is a growing number of AMD SoC drivers for not only laptops but also desktops/servers...

With now having a Linux driver for running GPU compute workloads on the GeForce RTX 5090 (as mentioned, Linux gaming benchmarks will come following the formal R570 Linux driver release in the coming days that is better optimized for gaming), I ran some additional GPU compute benchmarks on the GeForce RTX 5090 "Blackwell" graphics card over the weekend...

In addition to all of the exciting "MM" changes for Linux 6.14 that were submitted by Andrew Morton's pull request, he also sent out the set of "non-MM" updates for the Linux 6.14 merge window...

The hardware monitoring "HWMON" subsystem updates have been merged for the Linux 6.14 kernel. As happens with most kernel releases, there are a number of already-launched desktop motherboards beginning to see working sensor monitoring support under Linux...

Desktop Motherboards Continue Playing Catch-Up For Linux Monitoring Support  Phoronix