Patch Posted To Enable Intel FRED By Default On Linux
Following today’s article exploring the performance benefits of Intel Flexible Return and Event Delivery “FRED” with Panther Lake and also pointing out the rather obscure nature of FRED being disabled-by-default, an Intel Linux kernel engineer posted a patch to now enable FRED by default for better performance… ⌘ Read more
XMMS Codebase Brought Back To Life By AI With GTK4 + GStreamer/PipeWire Port
Longtime Linux desktop users will likely remember the glorious days of the XMMS music player inspired by Winamp. It’s been about two decades since the last official release but thanks to AI there is now a modern port of the codebase to GTK4 and GStreamer/PipeWire… ⌘ Read more
Intel FRED Can Yield Great Performance - FRED Benchmarks On Panther Lake
With Intel’s new Core Ultra Series 3 “Panther Lake” laptop SoCs, the Xe3-based Arc B390 graphics and much improved CPU performance capture much of the spotlight. One new capability with Panther Lake that isn’t featured as much though is the new FRED capability with Flexible Return and Event Delivery. Today’s Intel Panther Lake testing is looking at the very interesting performance impact of FRED on Linux. ⌘ Read more
Linux’s sched_ext Will Prioritize Idle SMT Siblings For Better Performance
A change to the Linux kernel’s extensible scheduler class “sched_ext” for allowing nifty scheduler implementations via BPF programs will begin to prioritize SMT siblings to help with better performance… ⌘ Read more
AMD Posts Latest “pghot” Code For Overhauling Linux Hot Page Tracking & Promotion
One of the core Linux infrastructure improvements that AMD engineers have been working on recently is pghot as a hot-page tracking and promotion subsystem. This proposed addition to the Linux kernel could be quite beneficial especially for those using modern AMD EPYC servers with CXL and multiple memory tiers… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0-rc5 Released: Linux 7.0 “Starting To Calm Down”
Linus Torvalds just issued Linux 7.0-rc5 as we inch toward the stable Linux 7.0 kernel release in April… ⌘ Read more
D7VK 1.6 Overhauls Interaction With DXVK’s D3D9 Backend
D7VK is the open-source project that began as a Direct3D 7 implementation atop the Vulkan API for Linux gamers and with time expanded to support all the way back to Direct3D 3. Out today is D7VK 1.6 with continuing to enhance this D3D compatibility layer atop Vulkan for enhancing retro/vintage gaming on Linux… ⌘ Read more
mdadm 4.6 Released With Boot Failure Fixes, New Lockless Bitmap
The mdadm utility for managing software RAID on Linux systems is out with a new release that adds new features while addressing some recent boot failure issues that were reported… ⌘ Read more
Electron’s Investment Into Good Wayland Support
For years Electron apps were notorious for continuing to depend upon X11/XWayland and not jive well with the modern Wayland experience on modern Linux desktops. But for the past several months, Wayland has been well supported out-of-the-box on upstream Electron. An Electron blog post this week outlined the technical work done for achieving good Wayland support… ⌘ Read more
Loongson Linux Display Driver No Longer Orphaned
The Loongson Direct Rendering Manager driver for handling the display controller on LS7A/LS2K SoCs is no longer orphaned with new Loongson engineers stepping up to maintain the code moving forward… ⌘ Read more
OneXPlayer Configuration HID Driver Posted For Linux By Valve Developer
Open-source developer Derek Clark of Valve’s Linux engineering team has been responsible for many improvements for gaming handheld devices. Such as Lenovo Legion improvements for Linux, Ayn gaming handheld improvements, and most recently Linux 7.1 set to introduce the new Lenovo Legion Go HID drivers. With the latest Lenovo Legion driver work wrapped up for Linux 7.1, Derek Clark today posted a set of patches providing a OneXPlayer Config … ⌘ Read more
Sashiko Now Providing AI Reviews On Rust Code For The Linux Kernel
A few days ago Google engineers went public with Sashiko with their agentic AI code review for the Linux kernel. The Google Gemini Pro powered AI code review service is automatically monitoring the Linux kernel mailing list for new patch submissions and has proven useful already. Interest continues to build by upstream Linux kernel stakeholders around Sashiko and the latest addition is now covering the Rust-For-Linux mailing list submission … ⌘ Read more
SystemD Adds Optional ‘birthDate’ Field for Age Verification to JSON User Records
“The systemd project merged a pull request adding a new birthDate field to the JSON user records managed by userdb in response to the age verification laws of California, Colorado, and Brazil,” reports the blog It’s FOSS.
They note that the field “can only be set by administrators, not by users themselves” — it’s … ⌘ Read more
Linux Driver Being Worked On For Pulsar Gaming Mice
A Linux HID driver is being developed for Pulsar branded gaming mice to expose additional information and capabilities… ⌘ Read more
Wine 11.5 Release Is Big: Syscall User Dispatch Feature Supported On Linux
Wine 11.5 is out today as the latest bi-weekly development release for this software to run Windows games and applications on Linux and other platforms. Most exciting with Wine 11.5 is the introduction of the Syscall User Dispatch feature on Linux… ⌘ Read more
Dell Upstreams Firmware For The XPS Snapdragon X Elite Laptop
When it comes to using Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Elite laptops on Linux, one of the big challenges have involved the need to extract the necessary firmware from the Windows 11 partition due to most vendors not providing the firmware in an easily redistributable and public form. The one exception has been the Lenovo ThinkPad with X1 Elite having upstream firmware in linux-firmware.git while now the Dell XPS model has joined the party too… ⌘ Read more
Ubuntu 26.04 Delivers Enhanced Performance For AMD Radeon Linux Gaming
Earlier this month was a preview of the Ubuntu 26.04 performance benefits for NVIDIA Linux gaming while today’s article is providing an early look at how the open-source AMD Radeon gaming experience is looking for the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release. ⌘ Read more
Ubuntu 26.04 Delivers Enhanced Performance For AMD Radeon Linux Gaming
Earlier this month was a preview of the Ubuntu 26.04 performance benefits for NVIDIA Linux gaming while today’s article is providing an early look at how the open-source AMD Radeon gaming experience is looking for the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release. ⌘ Read more
Patches Sent Out For Booting Linux On Apple M3 But Without Much Functionality
Asahi Linux developers have been working for a while now on porting Asahi Linux to the Apple M3 hardware that launched back in 2023. Sent out today to the Linux kernel mailing list were finally Device Tree files for booting Linux on Apple M3 hardware but it’s far from functional for end-users… ⌘ Read more
Linux Patches Updated To Steal Tasks For Improving CPU Utilization
Huawei engineer Chen Jinghuang posted the latest request for comments (RFC) patches for stealing tasks from overloaded CPUs in the same last level cache (LLC) in order to improve overall CPU utilization with today’s large core count servers… ⌘ Read more
Opera GX Web Browser Comes To Linux
BrianFagioli writes: Opera GX has officially landed on Linux, bringing its gamer-focused browser experience to Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE-based systems. The browser includes GX Control for limiting RAM and network usage, a Hot Tabs Killer to shut down resource-heavy tabs, and built-in sidebar integrations for Discord and Twitch. Opera says this is not just a one-off port, but a long-term effo … ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.1 Adding DRM Dedicated CRTC Background Color Property
Sent out today was the latest weekly round of drm-misc-next patches for queuing ahead of the Linux 7.1 merge window that is set to happen in mid-to-late April… ⌘ Read more
Steam Linux Beta Prepares For 64-bit, Can Be Run Inside Steam Runtime Container
An interesting new Steam client beta dropped overnight from Valve with some exciting low-level enhancements… ⌘ Read more
Microsoft’s DXGKRNL Driver Updated For Linux - Many Changes After Four Years
Well, here’s an unexpected surprise… A new version of the Linux kernel patches for DXGKRNL were posted today for that DirectX kernel driver that began a few years ago for supporting Windows Subsystem For Linux (WSL) use-cases. This comes four years to the month after the prior version was posted and without much excitement for getting it into the mainline Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more
AMD Preps More GFX12.1 Enablement For Linux 7.1, Initial VCN 5.0.2 & JPEG 5.0.2 IP
AMD today sent out another batch of AMDGPU kernel graphics driver and AMDKFD kernel compute driver changes to DRM-Next ahead of next month’s Linux 7.1 merge window… ⌘ Read more
Blender 5.1 Delivers Some Nice Gains For CPU Rendering Performance On Linux
With this week’s release of Blender 5.1 I have begun benchmarking it on different CPUs and GPUs. In this article is an initial look at the positive impact Blender 5.1 is having on CPU-based rendering performance on Linux. ⌘ Read more
OpenGL Lands New Extension To Benefit Wine
The OpenGL API is still seeing new extensions introduced in 2026. Merged today to the OpenGL Registry is a new extension intended to help Wine usage for 32-bit Windows games/apps on 64-bit Linux systems… ⌘ Read more
Opera GX Web Browser Released For Linux
It’s been a while since most of you probably thought about the Opera web browser, but these days they have been catering their “Opera GX” web browser to gamers. Today they have finally delivered this Opera GX gaming-focused browser for Linux users… ⌘ Read more
Virtual Swap Space Patches Updated For Improving Linux’s Swap Design
The fourth iteration of patches implementing Virtual Swap Space for Linux were sent out on Wednesday. This stems from ideas going back years for an abstraction to better separate a swap entry from its physical backing storage… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.1 Should See Working HDMI Support For The Lichee Pi 4A RISC-V Board
Drew Fustini sent out DeviceTree patches this past weekend for enabling the HDMI display controller on the T-Head TH1520 RISC-V SoC. Additionally, there’s a patch for lighting up the HDMI display support on the LicheePi 4A RISC-V board… ⌘ Read more
Virtual Swap Space Patches Updated For Improving Linux’s Swap Design
The fourth iteration of patches implementing Virtual Swap Space for Linux were sent out on Wednesday. This stems from ideas going back years for an abstraction to better separate a swap entry from its physical backing storage… ⌘ Read more
Fedora Asahi Remix 43 Released For Apple Silicon Macs
While Fedora 43 was released at the end of October and there is just one month to go now until the release of Fedora 44, Fedora Asahi Remix 43 debuted today as this spin of Fedora Linux for Apple Silicon Macs… ⌘ Read more
Btrfs Performance From Linux 6.12 To Linux 7.0 Shows Regressions
Last week I provided a look at the EXT4 and XFS performance from Linux 6.12 LTS through Linux 7.0 in its current development form. As mentioned in that article and as requested by many Phoronix readers, benchmarks have since wrapped up looking at how the Btrfs copy-on-write file-system performance has evolved since that late 2024 period and all major Linux kernel releases past that Long Term Support version. ⌘ Read more
Ubuntu’s Snap Affected By Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability
Last week it was security issues with AppArmor to worry about on Ubuntu Linux while this week a “high” rated vulnerability for Ubuntu’s Snap daemon has been revealed… ⌘ Read more
Linux MGLRU Improvements Net A 30% Increase For MongoDB, More Than 100% On HDDs
It’s been a while since having any improvements to talk about for the MGLRU multi-gen LRU functionality for the Linux kernel to optimize page reclamation and help with system performance especially when enduring memory pressure. But this week a Tencent engineer posted some very promising patches for further enhancing this kernel feature… ⌘ Read more
Google Engineers Launch “Sashiko” For Agentic AI Code Review Of The Linux Kernel
Google engineers have been spending the past number of months developing Sashiko as an agentic AI code review system for the Linux kernel. It’s now open-source and publicly available and will continue to do upstream Linux kernel code review thanks to funding from Google… ⌘ Read more
Arm Preparing Live Firmware Activation Support For Linux
A new platform feature being worked on by Arm engineers for the Linux kernel is Live Firmware Activation to allow for updated firmware components to be deployed without requiring a system reboot… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.0 Better Supporting The Logitech MX Master 4 Bluetooth Mouse
For those that happen to have the Logitech MX Master 4 wireless mouse or are considering this high-end ~$120 USD Bluetooth mouse, better support for it was merged yesterday to Linux 7.0… ⌘ Read more
systemd 260 Released: mstack, SysV Service Scripts Removed & AI Agents Documentation
Systemd 260 was just released as the newest stable version of this widely-used Linux init system and service manager. Systemd 260 brings yet more features to this critical open-source project and to be incorporated into H1’2026 Linux distributions… ⌘ Read more
AMD MLIR-AIE Releases New AIECC C++ Compiler To Help Bring New Workloads To Ryzen AI NPUs
AMD Ryzen AI NPUs are now running LLMs on Linux with the recently debuted Lemonade 10.0 server and FastFlowLM 0.9.35 adding Linux support. In addition to those software components, AMD engineers have also been developing MLIR-AIE as a compiler toolchain for AMD AI Engine devices such as Ryzen AI NPUs in leveraging LLVM-based code generation with the Multi-Level Intermediate Representation (MLIR). Out today is MLIR-AIE v1.3 with some not … ⌘ Read more
AMD MLIR-AIE Releases New AIECC C++ Compiler To Help Bring New Workloads To Ryzen AI NPUs
AMD Ryzen AI NPUs are now running LLMs on Linux with the recently debuted Lemonade 10.0 server and FastFlowLM 0.9.35 adding Linux support. In addition to those software components, AMD engineers have also been developing MLIR-AIE as a compiler toolchain for AMD AI Engine devices such as Ryzen AI NPUs in leveraging LLVM-based code generation with the Multi-Level Intermediate Representation (MLIR). Out today is MLIR-AIE v1.3 with some not … ⌘ Read more
Microsoft, OpenAI & Others Pony Up $12.5M To Strengthen Open-Source Security
The Linux Foundation announced today that $12.5 million USD in grants from the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS, GitHub, Google, and Microsoft have been collected to invest in strengthening the security of the open-source software ecosystem… ⌘ Read more
System76 New Thelio Mira Linux Desktop Running Strong - Powered By AMD Ryzen 9000 Series
Last week we provided a first look at the new and completely-redesigned System76 Thelio Mira desktop chassis. Today System76 is formally announcing the availability of their new Thelio Mira Linux desktop. ⌘ Read more
Intel Compute Runtime 26.09.37435.1 Brings More Features & Performance Optimizations
Following this morning’s Intel Graphics Compiler 2.30.1 release, the Intel Compute Runtime 26.09.37435.1 is now available for this open-source OpenCL and Level Zero compute stack for Intel graphics hardware on Windows and Linux… ⌘ Read more
System76 Makes The Best Open-Source Keyboard Even Better
If System76 engineers didn’t already have enough going on with recently shipping the COSMIC Rust-based desktop environment and also shipping Pop!_OS 24.04 as their in-house Linux distribution plus completely redesigning the Thelio Desktop, they also recently revised their Launch Keyboard. They have made this leading open-source keyboard design even better with the latest iteration of the System76 Launch Keyboard. ⌘ Read more
Intel Graphics Compiler 2.30.1 Exposes HF8 Support For Crescent Island
Intel Graphics Compiler 2.30.1 is now available for this LLVM/Clang-based compiler stack used by the Compute Runtime on Linux and under Windows is used both for graphics and compute… ⌘ Read more
Mesa & AMDGPU Linux Driver See Patches For The Sony PS5 GPU
Open-source developer Andy Nguyen recently demonstrated porting Linux to the Sony PlayStation 5. The PS5 notably uses a custom AMD SoC and with some patches is able to play nicely with the open-source AMD graphics driver stack… ⌘ Read more
ARM NEON Accelerated CRC64 Optimization Shows Nearly 6x Improvement
A patch posted today to the Linux kernel mailing list provides an ARM64-optimized CRC64-NVMe implementation for nearly a 6x improvement on modern Arm SoCs… ⌘ Read more
Canonical Plans To Integrate NVIDIA DOCA-OFED Into The Ubuntu Archive
An interesting Linux detail from today’s NVIDIA GTC 2026 kickoff is that Canonical will be integrating NVIDIA’s DOCA-OFED software framework into the Ubuntu Linux archive for leveraging the high-speed networking stack for HPC and AI… ⌘ Read more
Linux 7.1 sched_ext To Add “SCX_ENQ_IMMED” For Tighter Control When Tasks Land On A CPU
The Linux kernel’s extensible scheduler class “sched_ext” to allow for custom CPU scheduling policies as BPF programs continues enabling new functionality. Queued up in the sched_ext development code ahead of next month’s Linux 7.1 cycle is the new SCX_ENQ_IMMED capability for enabling tighter control over when tasks land on a CPU… ⌘ Read more