RISC-V CPU Performance Up 8x In Five Years: SiFive HiFive Unmatched To SpacemiT K3
Recently I published some initial SpacemiT K3 benchmarks for that first-to-market RISC-V RVA23 SoC with the K3 Pico-ITX mini computer. In there was a comparison against modern Intel Core Ultra and AMD Ryzen desktop CPUs along with the likes of the Raspberry Pi 5, Loongson 3B6000, and SiFive HiFive Premier. For those curious about the longer-term RISC-V performance, here is a look at how far the RISC-V hardware performance has co … ⌘ Read more

LLVM/Clang Lands Initial Compiler Targeting For Hygon x86 CPUs
Following the recent Hygon C86-4G CPU support added to the GCC 17 compiler, the open-source LLVM Clang compiler has similarly seen Hygon c86-4g-m4 / c86-4g-m6 / c86-4g-m7 CPU support merged… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.2 Preparing Intel Key Protection Technology “KPT” For Next-Gen QAT
Going back to the launch of 1st Gen Xeon Scalable processors in 2017 was Intel Key Protection Technology (KPT) promoted and there have been Key Protection Technology references in QuickAssist (QAT) documentation since 2016. Surprisingly we are only now seeing Key Protection Technology references for the upstream Linux QAT driver as Intel engineers prepare for their next-gen “Gen6” QuickAssist hardware support… ⌘ Read more

Lightweight Pragtical Code Editor Adds SDL GPU Backend
Pragtical, the lightweight open-source code editor that prides itself on using just ~50MB of RAM and ~10MB of disk space while being a full-featured code editor, is tacking on more features. Most notable with the new Pragtical release is adding an SDL-based GPU back-end for this MIT-licensed editor… ⌘ Read more

Vortex 3.0 Released As Full-Stack, Open-Source RISC-V GPU Now With 3D Pipeline
The open-source developers at Georgia Tech working on Vortex as an OpenCL-compatible RISC-V GPGPU implementation are out with their next major release for this open-source GPU design… ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu MATE Is Continuing Despite No Ubuntu MATE 26.04 Release
Back in March, Martin Wimpress stepped down as the longtime Ubuntu MATE leader and was looking for contributors to keep this Ubuntu derivative going with its GNOME2-derived desktop. That change in leadership paired with no Ubuntu MATE 26.04 release having occurred led to some concerns among users, but the plan is still for Ubuntu MATE to continue moving forward… ⌘ Read more

Fedora 44 RISC-V Images Released, Including New “Omni” Kernel For Broader RISC-V Hardware Support
Following the official Fedora 44 images released one month ago, Fedora 44 RISC-V images were published today for those wanting to run this newest Fedora Linux on RISC-V hardware… ⌘ Read more

AMD Support Being Added To UFS Host Controller PCI Driver In Linux 7.2
Linux’s ufshcd-pci as the Universal Flash Storage host controller PCI driver has supported a variety of Intel devices to this point while for Linux 7.2 the first AMD device is set to be added… ⌘ Read more

Running CachyOS With The BORE Scheduler While Disabling Ananicy-CPP
Last week I ran benchmarks of CachyOS with the BORE scheduler using its “linux-cachyos-bore” kernel option. The results didn’t end up being as enticing as anticipated but the developer behind the BORE scheduler commented in the forums that he recently received reports from users experiencing game stuttering while using BORE that was attributed to CachyOS’ default use of Ananicy-Cpp. So over the weekend I did another CachyOS BORE run without t … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 Helping Intel Arc Battlemage Graphics Achieve Better Performance
Recent testing of the Intel Arc B580 Battlemage desktop graphics card has shown that the upcoming Linux 7.1 kernel release is delivering superior graphics performance over the current stable Linux 7.0 kernel. ⌘ Read more

Canonical Experimenting With x86-64-v3 Packages For Ubuntu 26.10
Canonical engineers are again evaluating the impact of building the Ubuntu Linux archive for the x86-64-v3 “amd64v3” micro-architecture feature level for its performance benefits on modern Intel and AMD systems. An amd64v3 archive is available of Ubuntu 26.10 for testing with the packages targeting this level that allows for AVX/AVX2 and other newer CPU x86_64 ISA capabilities of the past decade… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.2 To Add ACPI CPPC v4 Support Authored By NVIDIA
Ahead of NVIDIA Vera ramping up, the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel is adding the ACPI CPPC v4 support authored by a NVIDIA engineer… ⌘ Read more

Flatpak 1.18 Released With Integration For AMD ROCm
Flatpak 1.18 is out today for providing the latest improvements to this leading open-source app sandboxing and distribution tech… ⌘ Read more

Linux EFS File-System May Have New Maintainer - Or It Might Just Get Removed
An interesting quandary has arose on the Linux kernel mailing list over maintainership of old, unmaintained code within the Linux kernel. Someone has stepped up to maintain an old, very rare file-system driver but admittedly doesn’t even use it and just submitted basic fixes. Or is it just better removing that old code?.. ⌘ Read more

Vintage AMD R600 Graphics Driver Sees Code Cleanups Thanks To GitHub Copilot
As the discussions continue among developers over potentially branching off some of the older Mesa drivers, the AMD R600 Gallium3D driver saw 59 commits on Sunday to Mesa 26.2. Making this code restructuring and code cleaning all the more notable is that the improvements to this old AMD Radeon graphics driver was done in part by GitHub Copilot… ⌘ Read more

BeagleV Ahead & Lichee Pi 4a RISC-V Boards To See Working WiFi With Linux 7.2
In addition to the SpacemiT K1 and K3 RISC-V SoC Device Tree updates sent out last week, the RISC-V T-HEAD Device Tree “DT” changes were also sent out last week ahead of the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel merge window… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1-rc7 Released: Stable Hopefully Next Sunday
Last week Linux 7.1-rc6 was larger than Linus Torvalds wished for and for Linux 7.1-rc7 it has come in still heavier than typically seen this late in the cycle, but is shrinking and making Linus comfortable in hopefully releasing Linux 7.1 stable next Sunday… ⌘ Read more

Firefox Merges Support For Vulkan Video Decoding
As an exciting development for GPU-accelerated video decoding within the Mozilla Firefox web browser, initial support for Vulkan Video has landed in the web browser!.. ⌘ Read more

Wayland Protocols 1.49 Released With Improved Multi-GPU Support, Windows BT.2100
Simon Ser just published Wayland Protocols 1.49 as the latest version for this primary set of Wayland protocol definitions… ⌘ Read more

“Flatten The Pick” Linux Patches Progress For Better cgroup Scheduling While Linux Gaming
A month ago I wrote about Linux scheduler work to help boost gaming performance on old “potato” hardware with Intel engineer Peter Zijlstra noting that Linux cgroup scheduling has continued to be “a pain in the arse.” This work continues advancing with a third iteration of these “flatten the pick” patches being posted… ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.2 Lands VK_GOOGLE_display_timing Support For Direct Display Mode
The VK_GOOGLE_display_timing extension for obtaining display timing information that can be useful for frame-pacing and eliminating micro-stuttering in games now has direct display mode support with KHR_display for the Mesa Vulkan drivers. This now merged addition immediately benefits the Intel ANV and Radeon RADV drivers as well as the PowerVR, Turnip, and V3DV drivers too… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1-rc7 Adding More AMD Zen 6 CPU Models
Ahead of the Linux 7.1-rc7 test kernel release due out later today, a pull request has been submitted of some “x86 fixes” for this kernel release. Most notable with this pull request is acknowledging some additional AMD Zen 6 CPU models… ⌘ Read more

Some Broadcom V3D Graphics Support On Path For Removed Over Lack Of Testing
Broadcom V3D 3.3 and V3D 4.1 graphics IP is set to be deprecated and removed from the V3D kernel graphics/display driver after the Mesa driver support was removed two years ago already. The situation in both cases amount to lack of hardware by developers for testing and with that likely no other known users of these particular Broadcom graphics in selects SoCs… ⌘ Read more

FreeBSD 15.1 Delayed To Mid-June Due To Critical x86 Bug Fixes
FreeBSD 15.1 was supposed to be out at the start of June but a second release candidate pushed it back by a week and now a third needed release candidate has pushed out the stable release by an additional week… ⌘ Read more

GNOME File Previewer Finally Switches TO GTK4, Adds Dark Mode
GNOME Sushi as the file previewer component for the GNOME Files (Nautilus) file manager has now been adapted to make use of GTK4 as well as delivering other enhancements for a nicer file previewing experience on GNOME… ⌘ Read more

OpenCV 5.0 Released With Rewritten DNN Engine, Built-In LLM & VLM Support
OpenCV 5.0 released today as a major update to this widely-used, open-source computer vision (CV) library… ⌘ Read more

Valve Developer Posts New AMD Anti-Lag Implementation For RADV Driver
Daniel Schürmann of Valve’s Linux team has posted a new VK_AMD_anti_lag implementation for the RADV open-source Radeon Vulkan driver… ⌘ Read more

Ape: A New Vulkan Driver Written In The Zig Programming Language
Ape is a new open-source Vulkan driver written in the Zig programming language and not dependent upon any Mesa code… ⌘ Read more

GNU Gets Back Into Nutrition Software After 14 Year Hiatus
For those looking for open-source food nutrition software, GNU’s GNUtrition has seen its first new release in 14 years… ⌘ Read more

Linux DRM Ioctl Developed By AMD Being Disabled Following Ongoing Security Issue
It’s unfortunately another busy week in the Linux 7.1 kernel space with not everything slowing down so well, late in the cycle and leading to the upcoming 7.1 stable release. This week’s DRM pull request of kernel graphics/accelerator drivers is again heavy on fixes and also ends up disabling an ioctl interface given ongoing security concerns from that code merged last year… ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu 26.10 To Begin Laying Foundation For Context-Aware Desktop, Other New Features
Jean Baptiste Lallement of the Canonical Desktop Team today posted a roadmap of many development items they are hoping to tackle for Ubuntu 26.10 due out in October. Some of these desktop plans are more ambitious and will take multiple release cycles to fully realize, but it goes to show their continued investment into the Ubuntu desktop… ⌘ Read more

CUDA-Oxide 0.2 Brings Early Improvements To Pure Rust CUDA Kernels
Last month CUDA-Oxide was introduced as an experimental Rust-to-CUDA compiler. From pure Rust programming language code, one can write CUDA GPU kernels in a “safe(ish)” manner with the CUDA-Oxide compiler emitting NVIDIA PTX output directly. Out today is the second update to CUDA-Oxide… ⌘ Read more

ARM Linux Server Performance Up More Than 7x Geo Mean In 8 Years, As Much As 15x With NVIDIA Vera CPU
NVIDIA’s Vera CPU is delivering the fastest ARM performance I have ever seen. For putting it into perspective how far the ARM server CPU hardware has come in just the last decade and for some “fun” benchmarks as part of Phoronix marking 22 years of Linux hardware reviews and benchmarking, here are some benchmarks showing the Ampere eMAG from September 2018 to the performance now with NVIDIA Vera. Not even factori … ⌘ Read more

More SpacemiT K3 & K1 Support Landing In Upstream Linux 7.2
In addition to Apple M3 Device Trees for Linux 7.2, the SpacemiT RISC-V SoCs are seeing some notable Device Tree improvements with this next version of the Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA’s Nova Driver Continues Being Built Up In Linux 7.2 Along With Other DRM Rust Code
Danilo Krummrich sent out the main set of DRM Rust subsystem changes on Thursday that are targeting the Linux 7.2 kernel. NVIDIA’s open-source Nova driver continues seeing a bulk of the DRM Rust work as this modern successor to Nouveau continues taking shape… ⌘ Read more

GNOME 51 Retires Legacy NVIDIA Driver Support With Removing EGLStreams
EGLStreams was NVIDIA’s original route to supporting Wayland with their official Linux graphics driver stack. Adoption was limited and driver vendors outside of NVIDIA didn’t end up going with EGLStreams/EGLDevice. Thankfully, NVIDIA corrected course long ago with DMA-BUF, GBM, and KMS support that aligns with the rest of the ecosystem, and now that old code path is being removed from GNOME Mutter… ⌘ Read more

Today Marks 22 Years Of Phoronix For Linux Hardware Testing & Benchmarking
Today marks 22 years since I started Phoronix.com to focus on Linux hardware reviews. It’s been quite a journey from the early state of Linux hardware support….. ⌘ Read more

Benchmarking The BORE Scheduler Performance With CachyOS Linux
Earlier this week I ran benchmarks of different CachyOS Linux kernel flavors that proved interesting from the performance overhead of their hardened kernel build to various other interesting performancr takeaways. One kernel flavor I hadn’t tested though was their build with the BORE scheduler. Given the interest and feedback from Phoronix readers, here is an article focused on looking at the performance of the BORE scheduler for the Linux kernel on CachyOS. ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.1 + Mesa 26.1 Performance With The Radeon RX 9070 GRE, RX 9070 XT
With this week’s launch day review of the AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE, Ubuntu 26.04 with its Linux 7.0 and Mesa 26.0 default driver stack was used for testing. That choice was made since the Ubuntu 26.04 release is still fresh, the RDNA4-based RX 9070 GRE was working without issue there, and from other RDNA4 testing knowing there isn’t much uplift from the in-development Linux 7.1 kernel or the current stable Mesa 26.1 OpenGL RadeonSI / V … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.2 Will Be Able To Boot On Apple M3 Macs - But Far From Useful For End-Users
The upcoming Linux 7.2 mainline kernel is expected to be able to boot on Apple M3 devices including the M3-powered iMac and MacBook products. But before getting too excited it’s still a long ways to go before it will actually be useful for any Apple M3 daily usage under Linux with the overall support at this stage still being very limited for these 2~3 year old Apple Macs… ⌘ Read more

Qualcomm Gets The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen11 Snapdragon X2 Laptop Working On Linux
For those interested in the prospects of running Snapdragon X2 laptops on Linux rather than Windows 11 on ARM, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen11 has emerged as one of the initial X2 laptops with tentative Device Tree handling to allow Linux to boot on this latest-generation Qualcomm-powered laptop,.. ⌘ Read more

Blender 5.2 LTS Enters Beta With New Features
Blender 5.2 is now available in beta form for this leading open-source 3D modeling software… ⌘ Read more

Qualcomm Gets The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen11 Snapdragon X2 Laptop Working On Linux
For those interested in the prospects of running Snapdragon X2 laptops on Linux rather than Windows 11 on ARM, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen11 has emerged as one of the initial X2 laptops with tentative Device Tree handling to allow Linux to boot on this latest-generation Qualcomm-powered laptop,.. ⌘ Read more

AMD’s GAIA Finally Has A Nice Multi-Device Experience For AI
AMD’s GAIA open-source project geared for building AI agents that run locally on your PC is out with a significant new feature release for Windows and Linux systems… ⌘ Read more

GCC Git Enables Additional Tuning For AMD Zen 6
In addition to Intel adjusting their Nova Lake and Diamond Rapids targets in GCC this week to deal with APX realities, AMD this week also adjusted some tuning bits for their Zen 6 “znver6” target… ⌘ Read more

systemd 261-rc3 Released With Individual Binaries Now Embedding dlopen ELF Metadata Note
The stable release of systemd 261 is quickly approaching for being found in H2’2026 Linux distributions… ⌘ Read more

AMD Submits Its Long-Awaited HDMI 2.1 FRL Support For Linux 7.2 AMDGPU
It’s happening! The long-awaited HDMI 2.1 Fixed Rate Link “FRL” support for handling higher resolutions and higher refresh rates on modern AMD Radeon graphics cards with the upstream AMDGPU open-source driver has been submitted to DRM-Next ahead of this month’s Linux 7.2 merge window!.. ⌘ Read more

Crown Engine 0.63 Restores Its OpenGL Renderer For Legacy Hardware Support
While not as well known as the likes of the Godot or O3DE open-source game engines, Crown Engine continues advancing as an open-source, C++-based game engine… ⌘ Read more

LLVM To Begin Offering Zstd-Compressed Binaries For “Significantly Reduced” Downloads
The LLVM project will begin offering Zstd-compressed archives of their binaries in addition to the existing XZ-compressed releases. LLVM developers are finding Zstd working out great with “significantly reduced” download sizes… ⌘ Read more

Steam Survey For May 2026 After Delay: Linux Just Under 4%
Back in March Steam on Linux skyrocketed to 5.33% with more than double the Steam gaming marketshare of macOS. Then for April Steam on Linux pulled back to a still-great 4.52%, well above the times when Steam on Linux was at 2% or less for many years. Now the May 2026 figures have been published overnight by Valve… ⌘ Read more