RadeonSI Driver Lands Multi-Slice Video Encoding For AVC/HEVC
AMD has been on a streak recently of improving their open-source video acceleration capabilities for the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver… ⌘ Read more

LoongArch Picks Up New CPU Capabilities With Linux 6.1
While initial LoongArch CPU support merged in Linux 5.19, it was still in an immature state and since then missing features and functionality continue to be ironed out. With Linux 6.0 came LoongArch PCI support and other changes while for Linux 6.1 come additional features for this Chinese CPU architecture derived from MIPS64 and some elements of RISC-V… ⌘ Read more

Picolibc 1.7.9 Adds Support For More CPU Targets
Longtime open-source developer Keith Packard has announced the release of Picolibc 1.7.9, the newest version of his C library for embedded systems. Picolibc 1.7.9 adds support for several new CPU architectures and other enhancements for his miniature libc implementation… ⌘ Read more

VirtIO-GPU Venus Driver Now Exposes Vulkan 1.3
Mesa’s Venus driver provides Vulkan support for VirtIO-GPU since it was merged last year as a creation by Google. As of yesterday, the Venus driver has moved on to exposing Vulkan 1.3 capabilities… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.1 Drops Old Driver For High Speed Serial / TTY Over IEEE-1394 Firewire
The staging changes for Linux 6.1 aren’t particularly notable but of the code churn is lightening the kernel a bit by dropping the old “fwserial” driver that allows for TTY support over IEEE-1394 Firewire connections… ⌘ Read more

The Linux Kernel Looks To Drop Support For Intel’s ICC Compiler
While LLVM Clang is increasingly being used by various developers and organizations for building the mainline Linux kernel as complementary support to the GCC compiler that has long been the predominant compiler target, Intel’s ICC compiler has also been able to build the Linux kernel albeit not widely used. Kernel developers are now looking at removing that ICC compiler support… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA 520.56.06 Linux Driver Released With OTA Updates For Proton/Wine NVIDIA NGX Build
With the GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards shipping today, NVIDIA has published their first R529 series Linux driver with initial support for the GeForce RTX 40 “Ada Lovelace” graphics cards… ⌘ Read more

Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu Linux Performance Is Very Close On The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X
One of the leading test requests at Phoronix around my AMD Zen 4 Linux benchmarking has been some side-by-side comparisons against Microsoft Windows 11. While older, high core count AMD systems have particularly performed very well under Linux against Windows, with new hardware there is sometimes hiccups and various limitations with the at-launch support especially on the open-source Linux side. So for your viewing pleasure today are some … ⌘ Read more

Mesa 22.2.1 Released With Dozens Of OpenGL/Vulkan Driver Fixes
For those that have been holding off on upgrading to the Mesa 22.2 open-source OpenGL and Vulkan drivers until the first point release arrives with any early fixes and fallout corrections, that v22.2.1 release is now available… ⌘ Read more

Unigine 2.16 Released With Experimental Vulkan Support
The Unigine game and simulation 3D engine has released version 2.16 and with this update finally comes the much anticipated Vulkan and Direct3D 12 graphics API support… ⌘ Read more

uutils 0.0.16 Released As Rust-Based GNU Coreutils Replacement
Among the many Rust-written projects that have been gaining steam in recent years has been uutils as a Rust-based replacement to GNU Coreutils that is commonly used on Linux systems. Out today is uutils 0.0.16 as the latest step in this Rust-replacement quest… ⌘ Read more

RISC-V Adds Support For CD-ROM Images To Its Default Linux 6.1 Kernel Configuration
Not that you are likely to connect a CD/DVD drive to a RISC-V system in 2022+, but RISC-V’s default kernel configuration with the upcoming Linux 6.1 kernel is adding support for CD-ROM file-systems… ⌘ Read more

Kernel Memory Sanitizer Lands For Linux 6.1
In addition to Linux 6.1 x86_64 defaulting to warning over W+X mappings and other security-minded improvements this merge window, another benefit of this next kernel is the mainlining of the Kernel Memory Sanitizer (KMSAN)… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.1 Drops BF16 Support For Cortex-A510 Due To Hardware Bug
The 64-bit Arm (ARM64 / AArch64) architecture changes were merged last week for the ongoing Linux 6.1 merge window… ⌘ Read more

LLVM Clang 15 Delivers Some Small x86_64 Performance Improvements But Mostly Flat
Released last month was LLVM/Clang 15 and since then a number of Phoronix readers have been inquiring about Clang 15 compiler benchmarks or there the lack of on Phoronix. I’ve been testing various Intel and AMD systems with Clang 15, but it hasn’t been particularly exciting – but that’s not a bad thing, just that it doesn’t make for particularly compelling benchmark articles… ⌘ Read more

Zink Lands Async Pipeline Precompiles For Better Performance, Less Game Stuttering
Mesa’s Zink driver implementing the OpenGL API atop Vulkan continues advancing at a rapid pace and today the latest major addition landed: async pipeline precompiles… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.1 Lands Code To Warn About W+X Mappings By Default
In addition to MGLRU and Maple Tree having been merged overnight, Linus Torvalds also picked up the x86/mm changes for Linux 6.1 that will now by default warn about W+X mappings… ⌘ Read more

Valve Steam Deck Docking Station Hands-On
Last week Valve launched their much anticipated Steam Deck Docking Station as the official “dock” for the Steam Deck to allow connecting up to two external displays, power, additional USB ports, and Gigabit Ethernet. I’ve been testing out the Steam Deck Docking Station and it’s been working out well but on the pricier side compared to alternatives. ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 5.26 Released With Many Great Desktop Improvements
The KDE community has just published Plasma 5.26 as the newest update to this open-source desktop environment and as the end of Plasma 5 feature development quickly approaches… ⌘ Read more

Modula-2 GCC Compiler Front-End Patches Sent Out For Review
While 2023 is quickly approaching and the Modula-2 programming language has since been succeeded by the Modula-3 and Oberon languages since the late 80’s, GNU Modula-2 continues to be worked on as a front-end to the GNU Compiler Collection for this structured, procedural programming language… ⌘ Read more

AMD IOMMU v2 Page Tables Getting Wired Up For Linux 6.1
For more than a year AMD engineers have been working on IOMMU v2 page table support and with the in-development Linux 6.1 kernel the initial patches are finally being merged… ⌘ Read more

Blender 3.4 Aims To Ship Wayland Support Enabled
The latest daily development builds of the Blender 3D modelling software have enabled native support for Wayland. If all goes well, the Blender 3.4 release coming up will ship with this native Wayland support for Linux… ⌘ Read more

MGLRU Merged For Linux 6.1
MGLRU has successfully landed in Linux 6.1 as one of the best kernel innovations of the year to be mainlined. Along with that the new Maple Tree data structure was also merged… ⌘ Read more

VirtGPU DRM Native Contexts Show Potential For Good VM Gaming Performance
At last week’s XDC 2022 conference, Google engineer Rob Clark presented on VirtGPU DRM Native Contexts and the potential there for much better performance - especially for gaming - within virtual machines than using API-level virtualization like with Virgl… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.1 Finishes Gutting Out The Old a.out Code
Back in 2019 the Linux kernel finally deprecated a.out support for that format superseded by ELF long ago. Since earlier this year kernel developers moved ahead with beginning to remove a.out support, including the old x86 a.out support. Now with Linux 6.1 some lingering remnants of a.out are being cleared away… ⌘ Read more