GCC 15 Lands New Optimization For AMD Zen 4 & Zen 5 CPUs
Merged today for the upcoming GCC 15 stable release is a new “X86_TUNE_AVX512_TWO_EPILOGUES” tuning optimization that is enabled by default for AMD Zen 4 and Zen 5 processors… ⌘ Read more

DXVK 2.5 Brings Memory Management Rewrite & Other Improvements
DXVK 2.5 was just released as the newest version of this open-source project implementing Direct3D APIs atop the Vulkan API for better handling of Windows games on Linux systems as used by Valve’s Steam Play (Proton) software… ⌘ Read more

Memtest86+ 7.20 Adds Support For Intel Arrow Lake & AMD Zen 5
Memtet86+ 7.0 debuted back in January while now as we approach the end of 2024, Memtest86+ 7.20 is now available as the latest significant update to this open-source memory tester commonly used on Intel and AMD systems… ⌘ Read more

Fedora Stakeholders Debate Concerns Over “Karma” Term For Their Updates System
The latest terminology within the Fedora camp causing concern is “karma” that’s long been used for conveying feedback around package updates with their Bodhi software used for gating Fedora Linux package updates… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Announces Open-Source Hyperlight For Embedded VMM Within Linux/Windows Apps
Microsoft last month announced the open-source Rust-written OpenHCL for running confidential Intel TDX and AMD SEV-SNP virtual machines. Today Microsoft is announcing another interesting open-source, Rust-based project in the virtualization space: Hyperlight. Microsoft’s Hyperlight project is an embed-friendly, lightweight VMM for use within Linux and Windows applications… ⌘ Read more

Basic Support For Many Pre-M1 Apple Devices Coming To Linux 6.13
While not as exciting as if it were Apple M3/M4 device support hitting the upstream mainline Linux kernel, but for those with some older Apple (pre-M1) devices around, support for a number of older SoCs and boards is set to arrive with the upcoming Linux 6.13 kernel… ⌘ Read more

Intel Adapting Energy Aware Scheduling “EAS” To P-State Driver For Lunar Lake
As another effort for boosting the energy efficiency and behavior of Intel Core platforms with a mix of energy efficient “E” and performance “P” cores, a set of patches were posted Friday night for adapting Energy Aware Scheduling (EAS) to the Intel P-State CPU frequency scaling driver with a focus on providing better energy efficient performance initially for Lunar Lake SoCs… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.13 Rust Support Allowing For In-Place Modules
Set to be merged during the upcoming Linux 6.13 merge window is support with the Rust programming language infrastructure for allowing in-place kernel modules… ⌘ Read more

Intel Diamond Rapids “-march=diamondrapids” Merged Into GCC 15
The Intel Diamond Rapids target has been merged in time for the upcoming GCC 15 compiler release to allow for “-march=diamondrapids” targeting for leveraging the array of new CPU ISA additions found with these next-gen Xeon processors… ⌘ Read more

Servo Browser Engine Seeing Many Performance Optimizations & SubtleCrypto API
The Rust-written Servo browser web layout engine project is out with its October 2024 status update that provides insight to their development activities the past several weeks… ⌘ Read more

PHPStan 2.0 Released For Leading PHP Static Analyzer
PHPStan 2.0 is out today as what is the best open-source static analyzer for the PHP programming language… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.12-rc7 Released: Linux 6.12 Stable On Track For Release Next Sunday
Linus Torvalds just christened the Linux 6.12-rc7 kernel today for what will hopefully be the last release candidate before declaring Linux 6.12 stable next week Sunday… ⌘ Read more

Arch Linux Powered CachyOS Pulls In THP Shrinker & AMD Cache Optimizer
The Arch Linux based CachyOS Linux distribution has issued its November 2025 media refresh. Notable this time are pulling a few performance-related patches into its kernel build… ⌘ Read more

Linux Optimization Patches Significantly Speed-Up Debuggers Using /proc/kcore
A set of Linux kernel patches posted on Friday by Meta/Facebook provide for sizable performance optimizations for applications leveraging /proc/kcore such as for debuggers… ⌘ Read more

Debcow Optimizing Debian Packages For Copy-On-Write File-Systems
Debcow is an experimental implementation of deploying Debian packages on copy-on-write file-systems like Btrfs and Bcachefs. Debcow adapts DPKG to use reflinks for installing packages. With reflinking to the file contents from the Debian package archives rather than copying of files, it can lead to a dramatic speed-up of installing Debian packages: as much as 6x faster on CoW file-systems… ⌘ Read more

Linux Support For Apple’s Latest Magic Trackpad USB-C Model
A patch is pending for enabling support for the USB-C model of Apple’s latest Magic Trackpad input device under Linux… ⌘ Read more

Wine-Staging 9.21 Fixes Some Old Game Crashes & Hangs Due To DirectMusic
Building off Friday’s release of Wine 9.21, Wine-Staging 9.21 is available as this experimental blend of Wine that carries extra patches for testing/evaluation to enhance the ability for Windows games and apps to run on Linux… ⌘ Read more

Linux Support For Apple’s Latest Magic Trackpad USB-C Model
A patch is pending for enabling support for the USB-C model of Apple’s latest Magic Trackpad input device under Linux… ⌘ Read more

Niri 0.1.10 Scrollable-Tiling Wayland Compositor Brings Many Improvements
If this weekend’s release of Hyprland 0.45 doesn’t suit your fancy, Niri is also out this weekend with a new feature release. Niri is the scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor for an interesting Linux desktop experience… ⌘ Read more

Linux Support For Apple’s Latest Magic Trackpad USB-C Model
A patch is pending for enabling support for the USB-C model of Apple’s latest Magic Trackpad input device under Linux… ⌘ Read more

Debian 12.8 Released With Many Bug Fixes & Security Updates
Debian 12.8 is out today as the latest media refresh for the “Bookworm” release with numerous security fixes along with other general bug fixes included as part of the assortment of package updates… ⌘ Read more

Hyprland 0.45 Compositor Smooths Round Edges, Window Snapping For Floating Windows
Hyprland 0.45 released today as the newest version of this Wayland compositor focused on being an independent, very customizable, and dynamic tiling compositor… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA Outlines Current Wayland Limitations & Upcoming Driver Features
Longtime NVIDIA Linux engineer Aaron Plattner shared a status update on Friday around the current feature parity difference between the NVIDIA driver stack on X11 and under (X)Wayland… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.13 Bringing DRM Panic Support To NVIDIA GPUs
Friday saw a final round of “drm-misc-next” feature updates ahead of the upcoming Linux 6.13 kernel merge window. The DRM Panic code continues to be enhanced for improving this “Blue Screen of Death” like experience on the Linux desktop… ⌘ Read more

New Patches Aim To Optimize Context Switching With Two Improvements
A set of Friday night patches provide for some exciting context switching optimizations to the Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Azure Linux 3.0 Update Pushes Additions For Intel, AMD & Arm
Microsoft overnight released the newest version of their Azure Linux 3.0 in-house Linux distribution that is used by a variety of internal services at the company as well as external customers… ⌘ Read more

KDE’s Info Center Now Shows Multi-GPU Information, Plasma 6.3 Bringing UI Refinements
KDE developer Nate Graham is out with his usual weekly development recap of all the interesting Plasma desktop changes to have landed over the past week… ⌘ Read more

Mesa 24.3-rc1 Released With Big Improvements For AMD Radeon & Intel Graphics
The belated first release candidate of Mesa 24.3 is now available for testing of the upgraded OpenGL and Vulkan open-source drivers commonly used on Linux systems and elsewhere… ⌘ Read more

Wine 9.21 Brings DirectPlay Network Enhancements, I/O Completion Fixes
Following a one week delay, Wine 9.21 has been released as the latest development release of this open-source software for enjoying Windows games and applications on Linux and other operating systems. We are also closing in on the approaching Wine 10.0 stable release… ⌘ Read more

OpenZFS 2.3-rc3 Adds JSON Output For Commonly Used Commands
OpenZFS 2.3 continues working its way toward release as a big step forward for this open-source ZFS file-system implementation for Linux and FreeBSD systems… ⌘ Read more

Linux Fix Pending For Annoying Intel Lunar Lake Laptop Problems
A patch is working its way to the mainline Linux kernel for addressing an annoyance affecting new Intel Core Ultra 200V “Lunar Lake” laptops… ⌘ Read more

Google Axion CPU With GCE C4A vs. AWS Graviton4 Performance
Last week Google announced the general availability of their C4A instances powered by their in-house Axion processors. I delivered launch-day benchmarks looking at the Google Axion CPU performance with the C4A instances compared to other Google Cloud instance types powered by Ampere Altra and Intel Xeon. In this article is a look at how the Google Axion processor performance compares to the competing Amazon/AWS Graviton4 processor. ⌘ Read more

Fedora KDE Desktop Spin Promoted To Same Tier As GNOME-Based Fedora Workstation
Earlier this year was a Fedora change proposal seeking to make KDE Plasma the default over GNOME for Fedora 42. A compromise of sorts has now been settled on with the Fedora Desktop Spin being promoted to an “Edition” status that will put it on the same level as the GNOME-based Fedora Workstation Edition… ⌘ Read more

Intel Spots A 3888.9% Performance Improvement In The Linux Kernel From One Line Of Code
Intel’s Linux kernel test robot has reported a 3888.9% performance improvement in the mainline Linux kernel as of this past week… ⌘ Read more

Mesa 24.3 Code Branched, Mesa 25.0 Enters Development
Mesa 24.3 feature development is now over and Mesa 25.0 has entered development with Mesa Git… ⌘ Read more

AMX-AVX512 Support Merged For LLVM Clang 20 Compiler
As the latest on the compiler enablement front for Intel’s next-gen Xeon “Diamond Rapids processors, LLVM Git has merged support for the AMX-AVX512 instructions for next spring’s Clang 20 compiler release… ⌘ Read more