Linux 7.1 Delivers Performance Regression Fix For Sheaves
The Linux 7.1 kernel is bringing performance improvements for Sheaves, the per-CPU caching layer introduced several kernel cycles ago (Linux 6.18) for better efficiency on today’s high core count hardware. Sheaves began as an opt-in feature but since Linux 7.0 is now being used for all caches… ⌘ Read more

SDL Adds Policy To Forbid LLM/AI Generated Code Contributions
The SDL library widely used by cross-platform games and part of the Steam Runtime has now established a policy to block code contributions made using AI / Large Language Models (LLMs)… ⌘ Read more

WQ_AFFN_CACHE_SHARD Merged For Linux 7.1: Significant Win For CPUs With Many Cores Per LLC
The workqueue changes merged today for the Linux 7.1 kernel are significant for today’s modern high-end processors where there can be many CPU cores per last level cache (LLC / L3 cache). The new WQ_AFFN_CACHE_SHARD affinity scope can reduce some contention on such systems and help achieve greater performance… ⌘ Read more

Arch Linux’s Archinstall 4.2 Fixes Botched Disk Encryption Security
Archinstall 4.2 is now available as the latest update to this very convenient, text-based Arch Linux OS installer… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Is A Big Win For Intel Panther Lake With FRED Now Enabled By Default
Last month I ran benchmarks showing the very positive performance impact FRED has on Intel’s new Panther Lake processors while wondering why Flexible Return and Event Deliver wasn’t enabled by default yet on Linux. Hours after that story was published, an Intel engineer posted the patch to enable FRED by default with the rationale they were waiting for hardware to be publicly released in order to evaluate the performance benefit. D … ⌘ Read more

Intel Arc Pro B70 Open-Source Linux Performance Against NVIDIA RTX & AMD Radeon AI PRO
Last week after receiving the Intel Arc Pro B70 review hardware I began with some benchmarks looking at how the Arc Pro B70 compared to existing Intel GPUs on Linux with their fully open-source driver stack. Today’s article features the latest Arc Pro B70 benchmarks under Linux in looking at how the performance and value compares to other NVIDIA RTX and AMD Radeon (AI) PRO workstation graphics cards in the lab. ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.1-rc1 Released For Testing With Many New Vulkan Extensions & Optimizations
Eric Engestrom stepped up again to serve as Mesa release manager for this quarter’s Mesa 26.1 feature release. Mesa 26.1-rc1 was just released in kicking off the weekly release candidate dance until Mesa 26.1 stable is ready for debut in May… ⌘ Read more

Fedora 45 To Consider Building x86_64-v3 Packages
A change proposal has been filed to build x86_64-v3 micro-architecture feature level packages alongside the existing x86_64-v1 packages for Fedora Linux… ⌘ Read more

Sched QoS For Linux Aims To Improve Scheduling & Inspired In Part By Apple’s QoS Classes
Linux developer Qais Yousef with Google has announced the alpha release of Sched QoS as a new initiative for user-space assisted scheduling. The scheduling model in turn is based in part on Apple’s quality of service classes used by iOS for classifying software as user interactive, user initiative, utility, or background tasks… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Adds New Child Auto-Reap & PIDFD Auto-Kill Flags For clone3()
The clone3() system call in Linux 7.1 is adding three new flags for greater control over the creation of child processes… ⌘ Read more

AMD EDAC Driver In Linux 7.1 Adds Support For Zen 3 Rembrandt Hardware With ECC
The Error Detection And Correction “EDAC” subsystem updates have been merged for Linux 7.1 that deal with reporting of ECC memory errors and the like from various hardware drivers… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Gets Rid Of Some Unnecessary Memory Clobbers
The x86/asm changes merged yesterday for the Linux 7.1 kernel with a few low-level improvements… ⌘ Read more

exFAT For Linux 7.1 Helps Reduce File Fragmentation, Fixes
The exFAT file-system changes have landed for the in-development Linux 7.1 kernel… ⌘ Read more

Linus Torvalds Merged The Code Beginning To Remove Intel 486 CPU Support In Linux 7.1
As a follow-up to the news first-covered on Phoronix earlier this month about Linux 7.1 expected to begin removing i486 CPU support: it indeed happened. Linus Torvalds took the initial removal bits today without any fuss today for beginning the phase out of M486 / M486SX / ELAN kernel support… ⌘ Read more

AMD ROCm 7.2.2 Brings Optimization Guide For Ryzen AI / RDNA 3.5 Hardware
ROCm 7.2.2 is out today as a small point release to this open-source AMD GPU compute stack. There are a few code changes but most notable is arguably on the documentation side… ⌘ Read more

LLM-Assisted Patches For Linux 7.1 May Have Negative Impact On 32-bit Systems
Code now merged for the Linux 7.1 kernel may provide some negative performance implications for those still running modern Linux kernels on 32-bit hardware. A fundamental change can present cache line alignment and slab sizing implications for 32-bit Linux OS users but will provide for cleaner code with modern 64-bit computing… ⌘ Read more

Linus Torvalds Rejects Performance Fix “Hack” & Kconfig “Terrible Things” For Linux 7.1
While a lot of interesting new features and changes have been merged already for the Linux 7.1 merge window, two pull requests stand out so far for being rejected by Linus Torvalds and complete with his to-the-point commentary… ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu 26.04 Delivers Great Performance Improvements For AMD Strix Point, Especially For RDNA 3.5 Graphics
As part of my ongoing testing around the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 release I have been running a lot of benchmarks. After recently showing some nice performance gains for AMD Ryzen AI Max “Strix Halo” with Ubuntu 26.04, several Phoronix readers inquired about any performance uplift from the more modest but still powerful Strix Point laptops like the popular Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 SKU. Here are benchmarks showing the … ⌘ Read more

Nginx 1.30 Released With Multipath TCP, ECH & More
Nginx 1.30 was just released as the newest stable version of this popular web server. Nginx 1.30 incorporates all of the changes from the Nginx 1.29.x mainline branch to provide a lot of new functionality like Multipath TCP (MPTCP)… ⌘ Read more

GNOME Mutter 50.1 Fixes Performance Regression For Some NVIDIA Driver Versions
GNOME Shell 50.1 and Mutter 50.1 were released today as the first point releases in the GNOME 50 series… ⌘ Read more

Sunshine Game Streaming Introduces Vulkan Video Encode Support
Sunshine v2026.413.143228 released this week as a new feature release for this self-hosted game stream host for Moonlight, an open-source game streaming client that is an implementation of the NVIDIA GameStream protocol. Notable with this Sunshine release is Vulkan Video encode support as an alternative to using the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) for game streaming… ⌘ Read more

OpenSSL 4.0 Released With Encrypted Client Hello, RFC 8998 Support
OpenSSL 4.0 was just released as a big update for this widely-used SSL/TLS and crypto library… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Revamps T10 PI Data Integrity Handling For Better Read Performance
Merged yesterday for the Linux 7.1 kernel is overhauling the T10 PI code for generating and verifying data integrity information. In turn the new code is cleaner while also allowing for better read storage performance… ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.1 RADV Driver Merges Vulkan Descriptor Heap As Big Improvement For Steam Play
As a big helper for Valve’s Steam Play with DXVK and VKD3D-Proton, the Mesa Radeon Vulkan driver “RADV” has merged its initial support for the VK_EXT_descriptor_heap Vulkan extension… ⌘ Read more

KDE Merges Per-Screen Virtual Desktops After 21 Years
A request made a KDE user all the way back in June 2005 on KDE 3.3.2 is finally resolved. After being sought after for 21 years, the latest KWin code now has support for per-screen virtual desktops… ⌘ Read more

AMD Ready With CPPC Performance Priority & Dynamic/Raw EPP In Linux 7.1
All of the power management subsystem feature updates have been merged for the Linux 7.1 kernel… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Lands ARM64 NEON-Accelerated CRC64-NVMe For ~6x Improvement
Merged yesterday were all the CRC code updates for the Linux 7.1 kernel. Most notable with that pull is an ARM64-optimized CRC64-NVMe implementation that can deliver multiple times faster performance… ⌘ Read more

jemalloc 5.3.1 Released With Many Improvements After Nearly Four Year Hiatus
Jemalloc 5.3.1 was released today with next month marking four years since the prior release, jemalloc 5.3.0. While the version bump may not seem like much, jemalloc 5.3.1 comes with many performance improvements, new features, and other enhancements… ⌘ Read more

GreenBoost Memory Orchestrator For NVIDIA GPUs Introduces GreenBoost-Proton For Gaming
Last month we showcased GreenBoost as an open-source means of augmenting NVIDIA GPU vRAM with system RAM and NVMe storage. This memory tiering solution for NVIDIA GPUs was developed by an open-source developer with a focus on CUDA and allowing larger LLMs to be handled on graphics cards with smaller vRAM capacities. There was a setback to the project due to NVIDIA legal but now the project is going in new form and also has … ⌘ Read more

Coreboot Comes To AMD Ryzen Powered Star Labs StarBook MK VI After 3+ Year Wait
For those that had purchased a StarBook MK VI laptop 3+ years ago over the advertised support for Coreboot, Star Labs has now delivered with a Coreboot build finally available and working for this AMD Ryzen 5000 series powered laptop… ⌘ Read more

user.* xattrs On Sockets Merged For Linux 7.1 As Sought By GNOME & systemd Developers
On this first day of the Linux 7.1 merge window, among the early pull requests merged were beginning to land the various VFS pull requests submitted by Christian Brauner. Among that code merged is enabling support for user.* extended attributes on sockets… ⌘ Read more

The Good & The Bad When Using LLMs To Write Spack Packages
The Spack package manager is quite popular in the HPC / supercomputer space for scientific software. Even with the more selective niche than a typical general purpose OS package manager, large language models (LLMs) have already proven capable of being useful in generating new Spack packages. But there have also been some headaches involved too for Spack developers… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA Hiring More LLVM Engineers To Work On CUDA Tile
Last year NVIDIA announced the new CUDA Tile programming model as one of the biggest updates ever to the CUDA platform. CUDA Tile brings a virtual ISA for tile-based parallel programming and they subsequently open-sourced the CUDA Tile IR as an intermediate representation built atop LLVM’s MLIR. Now they are looking to hire additional LLVM compiler engineers to help foster their CUDA Tile initiatives… ⌘ Read more

Rust For Linux 7.1 Bringing Experimental Option That Can Help Performance
In advance of the Linux 7.1 merge window opening, Miguel Ojeda sent out all of the Rust feature updates on Friday. This includes bumping the minimum Rust version for building the Linux kernel as well as a new experimental option that can provide better performance for Rust code within the kernel, alongside other updates… ⌘ Read more

FTRFS: New Fault-Tolerant File-System Proposed For Linux
Sent out today was an initial patch series for comment on introducing the FTRFS file-system. The FTRFS proposal is more interesting than last week’s VMUFAT file-system proposal… ⌘ Read more

Servo Browser Engine Making It Easier For Embedded Use
The open-source, Rust-based Servo browser engine has been improving its Servoshell demo browser application while one of the most promising potentials for this engine is around embedded use as an alternative to the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF). With the latest moves by Servo developers, they are making for a more compelling story for its use… ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.1 RadeonSI Driver Lands Improvement For AMD APUs With Rusticl
For those wishing to make use of modern OpenCL 3.0 capabilities on AMD APUs/SoCs with integrated Radeon graphics using Mesa’s Rusticl driver, an improvement was merged this weekend to the RadeonSI driver ahead of this quarter’s Mesa 26.1 release… ⌘ Read more

Apple HFS / HFS+ File-System Support Seeing Many Fixes For Linux 7.1
Nearly one year ago to the day I noted Linux developers were considering the removal of the Apple HFS and HFS+ file-system drivers from the kernel. They were orphaned the past decade and turning into a maintenance burden for upstream developers. But then to some surprise, a few developers stepped up to maintain the HFS(+) drivers. One year later it’s proving to be a success story with more fixes for this aging Apple file-system support continui … ⌘ Read more

Btrfs Brings Performance Improvements, Shutdown ioctl Stable With Linux 7.1
Among the early pull requests sent out to Linus Torvalds even before the Linux 7.0 kernel officially released on Sunday were the Btrfs file-system updates. This feature-packed CoW file-system is seeing more performance optimizations for Linux 7.1 as well as its shutdown ioctl feature no longer being experimental and a variety of fixes… ⌘ Read more

GNU Linux-libre 7.0 Deals With Deblobbing More Drivers & Cleansing DT Files
Building off last night’s release of the Linux 7.0 kernel is now the GNU Linux-libre 7.0-gnu kernel release for that downstream kernel that removes support for loading non-free-software kernel modules, blocks the loading of loadable microcode/firmware even when it means greatly reduced hardware support, and other sanitization of code in the name of software freedom… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 Released With New Hardware Support, Optimizations & Self-Healing XFS
As expected the stable Linux 7.0 kernel was just released today in marking this next kernel release. The Linux 7.0 milestone comes due to Linus Torvalds’ preference of bumping the major version number after hitting X.19 as opposed to any single major change, but in any event there are a lot of great improvements and changes to find with this new kernel version. Linux 7.0 is also what’s powering the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release… ⌘ Read more

Linux Out-Of-Bounds Access Fixed For Unprivileged Users With Specially Crafted Certs
An out-of-bounds access within the Linux kernel has existed in mainline the past three years that could be exploited by an unprivileged user submitting a specially crafted certificate to the kernel… ⌘ Read more

Many Wonderful Improvements Expected For Linux 7.1, Especially For AMD & Intel
With Linux 7.0 expected for release later today, in turn the Linux 7.1 merge window will kick off for the two week period of landing all sorts of exciting new features, changes, and removal of old features from the kernel. Here is a look at some of what is on the table for the Linux 7.1 merge window… ⌘ Read more

CMake Pursuing Tighter Integration With Package Managers, Other Improvements
While the Meson build system has been capturing much of the limelight in recent years by open-source projects, the cross-platform CMake build system also shows no signs of slowing down and continues evolving with new features and functionality… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 Sees Last Minute Fix For Bogus Hardware Errors On AMD Zen 3
Ahead of the Linux 7.0 stable kernel release expected later today are some last minute pull requests sent out this morning. Notable for those using AMD Zen 3 hardware is addressing some bogus hardware errors that began appearing for some users on recent versions of the Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

Trisquel 12.0 Released For Free Software Foundation Endorsed Distribution
For those sticking to absolute free software ideals, Trisquel 12.0 was released this weekend for this Free Software Foundation (FSF) approved distribution for only containing free software and foregoing loadable microcode/firmware and running on the Linux-libre kernel even with its reduced scope in hardware support… ⌘ Read more

AMD’s GAIA Now Allows Building Custom AI Agents Via Chat, Becomes “True Desktop App”
In addition to their efforts around the Lemonade SDK itself, AMD software engineers working on their AI initiatives continue to be investing quite a bit into the Lemonade-using GAIA, the project that originally stood for “Generative AI Is Awesome”. AMD’s GAIA now allows building your own custom AI agents via chatting with GAIA as well as becoming a “true desktop app” so it’s easier to deploy across Windows, Linux, and macOS envi … ⌘ Read more

D7VK 1.7 Brings More Improvements For Legacy Direct3D On Vulkan
D7VK as the open-source project that began as a fork of DXVK in adding support for Direct3D 7 atop Vulkan has with time extended its range to also supporting Direct3D 6, 5, and 3 APIs. Out today is D7VK 1.7 in continuing to better support those vintage versions of Microsoft’s Direct3D API… ⌘ Read more

RISC-V BeagleV Ahead Single Board Computer To See Working HDMI With Linux 7.1
The BeagleV Ahead is an open-source RISC-V single board computer S(BC) built around the quad-core TH1520 SoC. With the Linux 7.1 mainline kernel there is HDMI display support coming now that the Device Tree bits have been added… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Upgrades Its WSL2 Kernel Against Linux 6.18 LTS
Microsoft on Friday released linux-msft-wsl-6.18.20.1 as the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2) kernel updated against the Linux 6.18 LTS series… ⌘ Read more