Ubuntu 26.10 amd64v3 Packages Provide Some Additional Uplift On AMD EPYC
In addition to Ubuntu 26.10 itself delivering some nice performance gains on Ubuntu 26.10 for AMD EPYC servers and other hardware, the optional and currently-unofficial amd64v3 package archive also provides additional performance uplift. Here is a look quantifying the performance impact of amd64v3 packages on AMD EPYC 9005 series servers. ⌘ Read more

Linux Finally Making It Easier To Answer The Question: “Is This RISC-V System RVA23?”
The RISC-V RVA23 profile is a big deal for reducing fragmentation in the RISC-V ecosystem and standardizing more of the ISA to make it easier to distribute modern RISC-V binaries and the like. Modern versions of Ubuntu mandate RVA23 even though compliant hardware is still quite limited. Somewhat surprisingly, only coming about now is an easy ability for Linux users to find the answer to “is my RISC-V system RVA23 compliant … ⌘ Read more

BeOS-Inspired Haiku Landed More Hardware Improvements & Other Changes In September
Released at the end of August was Haiku R1 Beta 6 and over the course of September, further improvements continued to land for this BeOS-inspired project now in its 25th year of development… ⌘ Read more

Ledger Confirms Spy Chip Implant Behind Wallet Crypto Thefts
Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from BleepingComputer: Ledger has confirmed that some of its devices distributed through Southeast Asian reseller CryptoBilis were compromised with a hardware implant that drained users’ cryptocurrency wallets. The company has been investigating reports of users losing funds from wallets purchased through Cr … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Reveals Maia 300 AI Chip As It Works To Reduce Dependence On Nvidia
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Yahoo Finance: Microsoft has debuted its latest AI chip, the Azure Maia 300, as it looks to reduce its reliance on third-party processors from the likes of Nvidia and AMD. Unveiled at the OCP Global Summit 2026 in San Jose on Monday, the Maia 300 will join Microsoft’s Maia 200 … ⌘ Read more

IREE 3.12 Introduces Rolls Out Rewritten Vulkan Driver, Experimental AMD HSA HAL
Rolling out last week was a new version of IREE as the Intermediate Representation Execution Environment for MLIR-based end-to-end compiler and run-time for lowering machine learning models into a unified IR and working across different hardware/driver stacks. Making IREE 3.12 notable is a rewrite to its Vulkan code… ⌘ Read more

ROCm 10 OpenCL vs. Mesa 26.3-dev Rusticl Performance On AMD Strix Halo
With all the recent progress on Mesa’s Rusticl driver as a Rust-based OpenCL driver working across the different Mesa Gallium3D hardware drivers, a Phoronix Premium supporter inquired about seeing some fresh benchmarks of this open-source OpenCL solution. Here is a look at how the Mesa 26.3 Rusticl driver is looking against AMD’s official OpenCL driver within ROCm 10. ⌘ Read more

Amazon In Talks To Buy AI Startup Decart For Around $7 Billion
Amazon is reportedly in talks to acquire AI startup Decart in a deal that could value the company at up to $7 billion. Decart’s DOS software helps developers optimize AI models for different processors in weeks rather than months, a capability that could be particularly useful to AWS as it pushes its own Trainium chips. SiliconANGLE reports: The c … ⌘ Read more

Q3 2026 Was Historically Bad For PC Shipments
PC shipments fell 20.1% year over year to 62.7 million units in the third quarter of 2026, the worst Q3 decline IDC has recorded. “The top three PC makers – Lenovo, Dell, and HP – also saw their shipments fall by over 20% year over year,” reports PCMag. From the report: “If looking at all quarters, then we have seen other quarters in recent years with larger declines, such as 2 … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.4 To Upstream Support For Three Snapdragon X2 Elite Laptops
For those looking to run Linux on new Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 hardware, there are laptops from ASUS, HP, and Lenovo that are powered by the X2 Elite and will be supported with the mainline Linux 7.4 kernel… ⌘ Read more

How the US Nuclear Plant Fleet Is Leaning Into AI
“This year, nearly the entire fleet of 94 U.S. nuclear reactors has been offered the chance to integrate AI into its operations, and most have taken it,” reports IEEE Spectrum:

In August, California-based Atomic Canyon launched NIVA, the Nuclear Industry Virtual Assistant, which was developed in cooperation with nuclear-industry groups. The assistant was pilot-tested in … ⌘ Read more

Game Console Market Craters: Xbox and PS5 Sales Plummet Over 25%
“Video game console sales in the U.S. have cratered,” reports Tom’s Hardware, with sales through August far below where they’d been in 2025:

Mat Piscatella, the video game industry advisor at research firm Circana, shared the numbers on his Bluesky account — PlayStation 5 sales have dropped by 25%, putting it at its lowest point since 2013, whe … ⌘ Read more

OMT - in my experience, having just a single hardware token (for a password, passkey, 2FA, or whatever) is dangerous, as it’s too easy to lose it or get it wet, so I tend to keep two: one on my keychain, one at the house. I’m not sure how well this kind of device would work in tandem with another just like it, especially at $100 a pop (and coupled with my previously mentioned concerns about crowdfunding hardware).

@prologic@twtxt.net Hmm… Interesting. 🤔

They definitely made some bold decisions with it, but I’m always skeptical of crowd-funded hardware projects…

Meta Developing Compressed RAM ‘CRAM’ For Linux: Better Than ZRAM and Zswap?
Phoronix reports on a presentation this week by Meta engineer Gregory Price at the Linux Plumbers Conference in Prague:

With today’s memory shortages, high prices, and ever increasing memory capacity needs, Meta engineers have been working on Compressed RAM (“CRAM”) for Linux.

This hardware-offloaded compression still al … ⌘ Read more

KNOD Progressing For Linux In-Kernel GPU Offloading For Network Packet Processing
A while back we covered KNOD as an experimental solution for in-kernel network offloading to AMD GPUs. The open-source KNOD project allows leveraging GPUs to handle packet processing in a very performant and energy efficient manner without needing any specialized hardware. KNOD has continued and a development update was shared this week at the Linux Plumbers Conference in Prague… ⌘ Read more

AMD PerfOpt Boosting Prior-Gen Ryzen APU Performance For AI
Last week I ran benchmarks of the new AMD PerfOpt feature being introduced in Linux 7.4. In those PerfOpt benchmarks on current-gen AMD Ryzen AI APUs/SoCs the AI performance improved as much as 18~23%. Several Phoronix readers expressed interest in seeing how prior-gen AMD Ryzen hardware benefited or not from PerfOpt, so here are some additional benchmarks. ⌘ Read more

Ubuntu 26.10 Delivers Nice I/O Performance Wins Over Ubuntu 26.04 On AMD EPYC
While Ubuntu 26.10 is not a Long-Term Support (LTS) release and thus will see limited enterprise deployments compared to Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, for those not after that long-term deployment support and preferring to live more on the leading-edge, Ubuntu 26.10 is delivering some nice performance gains on current 5th Gen AMD EPYC “Turin” hardware. ⌘ Read more

Microsoft and Nvidia Unveil Surface Laptop Ultra For $2,599
At a press event today, Microsoft unveiled the new Surface Laptop Ultra featuring an NVIDIA RTX Spark platform with a Blackwell-based GPU capable of up to one petaflop of AI compute. The laptop supports up to 128GB of unified memory for running models as large as 120 billion parameters locally, while also adding a 15-inch mini-LED display, expanded ports … ⌘ Read more

Star Labs StarFighter Ultra: A Modern High-End Linux Laptop With Coreboot
When it comes to Linux pre-loaded laptops, I have looked at hardware from most of these vendors over the past 22+ years of Phoronix. One vendor I haven’t had the chance to personally test until now is the UK-based Star Labs. That changed recently and over the past few weeks I have been testing out their new StarFighter laptop that offers great Linux support and comes pre-loaded with Coreboot and streamlined firmware updates via LVFS. For tho … ⌘ Read more

Qualcomm Posts QPaCE Linux Driver Code For Faster ZRAM On Newest SoCs
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 “Hawi” SoC features the Qualcomm Page Compression Engine “QPaCE” hardware accelerator. Linux patches posted recently provide a QPaCE driver for accelerating page compression and decompression for the ZRAM block device… ⌘ Read more

Google Enters Massive 3.6-GW Power Deal With Constellation Energy
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Google has contracted for 3,590 megawatts of power from Constellation Energy on the largest US power grid, with new nuclear energy accounting for about a quarter of that supply, the companies said on Tuesday. Constellation will make more than $4.3 billion of new investments in its fleet as par … ⌘ Read more

Vulkan API Improvements Coming For The AMD Polaris GPUs With Mesa RADV
Timur Kristóf of Valve’s Linux graphics team has done an incredible job improving older AMD GPU support under Linux with migrating GCN 1.0/1.1 era hardware to the modern AMDGPU kernel driver and an assortment of other improvements for various older Radeon GPUs. The newest work is on enhancing the RADV Vulkan driver support for old Radeon RX 400/500 “Polaris” graphics cards… ⌘ Read more

Meta Developing Compressed RAM “CRAM” For Linux: Better Than ZRAM & Zswap
With today’s memory shortages, high prices, and ever increasing memory capacity needs, Meta engineers have been working on Compressed RAM “CRAM” for Linux. This hardware-offloaded compression still allows cacheline/byte access to compressed memory and in turn a better implementation than the likes of ZRAM and Zswap. Very promising is that there is near-native performance to raw DRAM speeds with CRAM… ⌘ Read more

Mac Users Reclaim 12GB+ of Storage With Apple Intelligence Removal Tool
A new open-source command-line tool called RemoveMacAI lets macOS 27 users disable Apple Intelligence and reclaim around 12GB or more of storage. MacRumors reports: In macOS 27, Apple removed the toggle to disable Apple Intelligence wholesale, and simply disabling individual features doesn’t remove the models from your Mac’s driv … ⌘ Read more

Anthropic Reports Florida Woman’s Claude ‘Diary’ Threat to Law Enforcement
A Florida woman was arrested on a felony charge after Anthropic’s human review team flagged and reported a Claude conversation in which she allegedly threatened to “shoot up” the Lee County Sheriff’s Office and later mentioned acquiring a new gun. Tom’s Hardware reports: Anthropic monitors chats for key phrases and content that co … ⌘ Read more

Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5 2GB get price increases due to RAM demand
The RAM crisis continues to deepen thanks to the mass hardware buying from data centres, with Raspberry Pi yet again raising some prices.

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Read the full article on GamingOnLinux. ⌘ Read more

Qualcomm Patching Linux For Hardware Thermal Binning To Benefit Snapdragon X Laptops
A new patch series sent out from Qualcomm that aims to help at least the Snapdragon X series laptops is hardware-binned trip point support. Some Qualcomm SoCs are available in different multiple thermal/package bins with different junction temperature limits but otherwise being the same silicon. The new Linux patches are working to properly convey that information around the thermal limits for a given piece of silicon… ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.4 To Support The Raspberry Pi 10-Inch Touch Display 2
We are nearing the cut-off of new feature material being accepted to DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 7.4 merge window. But this week another round of DRM-Misc changes made it, which included some new hardware support and other last minute items… ⌘ Read more

Apple Tightens macOS ‘Full Disk Access’ Controls As AI Agents ‘Substantially’ Increase Risk
Apple says it will tighten macOS Full Disk Access controls as increasingly capable AI agents raise the risks of apps gaining broad access to users’ files, messages, mail, and browsing history. TechCrunch reports: Days after a journalist claimed that Meta’s Muse app on Mac read their private me … ⌘ Read more

Used Processor Leads To Game Ban
AmiMoJo shares a report from heise online: Anyone buying used hardware for a gaming PC needs to be careful: not just whether the components are still in order but also what the previous owner did with them. A case on Reddit shows this. Someone installed a used AMD processor, a Ryzen 7 5800X3D, in their PC. Because the previous owner was caught cheating, the new owner cannot start several online games.

Th … ⌘ Read more

Apex Compute Developing Open-Source Mesa Vulkan Driver For Their Hardware
Apex Compute is the company started in California in 2024 that aims to produce high-efficiency AI accelerators for real-time edge AI inferencing. So far they have an FPGA prototype for licensing and deployment and carries the bold claim of being “20x faster than the NVIDIA Jetson” and at under 10W and one fifth the cost. Making Apex Compute much more interesting to us now is that they are developing an open-source, Mesa-based Vulkan driver … ⌘ Read more

Steam Survey for September 2026 shows a drop in Linux with Simplified Chinese rising
The Steam Hardware & Software Survey for September 2026 is here, showing another swing for Simplified Chinese as a language on Steam.

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Read the full article on [GamingOnLinux](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/10/steam-survey-for-september-2026-shows-a-drop-in-linux-with-simplified … ⌘ Read more

Micron Projects Tightening RAM Shortages Through 2028 As It Generates Record Profit
Micron says the global RAM and storage shortage will tighten further through 2027 and 2028, with CEO Sanjay Mehrotra saying the company has already sold most of next year’s capacity. “In calendar 2027 as well as 2028, we see demand exceeding supply. In fact, we see greater tightness in the industry in 202 … ⌘ Read more

Nearing A 10 Second Kernel Build, Xeon 600 & Other September Excitement On Phoronix
During the past month on Phoronix were 284 original news articles and another 19 featured Linux hardware reviews/multi-page benchmark articles. A lot of exciting happenings both on the hardware and software fronts while October is sure to be another interesting month with the releases of Ubuntu 26.10, Fedora 45, and some more hardware fun… ⌘ Read more

HP’s Answer to the MacBook Neo Is Thinner, Lighter, and Comes With OLED
HP is taking aim at Apple’s MacBook Neo with the new OmniBook 5 14, a $699.99 Windows laptop that starts with an Intel Core 5 315 processor, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage but includes an OLED display even on the base model. It’s also slightly thinner and lighter than the Neo. The Verge reports: The OmniBook 5 14 can be configured … ⌘ Read more

Intel Optimization Zone 1.2 Released With New Guides & Recommendations
Earlier this year Intel announced the “Optimization Zone” as their new initiative to provide a centralized place to collect all their resources for maximizing performance and software tuning on Intel hardware platforms. They’ve continued building out more resources for the Intel Optimization Zone and yesterday released v1.2 with more tuning guides and best practices for optimal performance on Intel hardware… ⌘ Read more

Mesa Developers To Work Toward Eliminating TGSI IR
TGSI was the intermediate representation (IR) developed for Mesa’s Gallium3D drivers by Tungsten Graphics at the time. It worked fine more than a decade ago but since then the Mesa front-ends and hardware drivers have largely transitioned over to the superior NIR format. Work is underway toward eliminating TGSI in the Mesa codebase… ⌘ Read more

AMD Boosting AI/LLM Performance For Radeon iGPUs As Much As 18~23% With Linux 7.4
If you have an AMD Ryzen laptop/desktop and looking to leverage AI/LLM capabilities with the integrated graphics, Linux 7.4 is going to be a real treat especially for lower-end hardware. AMD’s new PerfOpt feature being introduced in Linux 7.4 is set to provide some solid gains as shown in these benchmarks today across different AMD Ryzen/Radeon hardware. ⌘ Read more

hw-monitor 0.6 Released With Per-Process GPU Usage & Memory Reporting
For those after in-depth hardware and system monitoring support from the Linux desktop, hw-monitor continues to advance as one of the modern options. Released on Monday was hw-monitor 0.6 with per-process GPU reporting metrics when using capable DRM drivers like the AMDGPU, Intel i915 and Xe, and Nouveau drivers… ⌘ Read more

Mesa 26.3 Enables Intel’s New Jay Shader Compiler By Default, Compile Times 55% Faster Or 66% Faster Than Windows
Over the past year Jay has been in development as a new open-source shader compiler for Intel GPUs. Alyssa Rosenzweig has been leading its development since joining Intel in 2025. For Mesa 26.3 the Jay shader compiler is being enabled by default for modern Intel graphics hardware and is around ~10% faster than the existing BRW compiler code… ⌘ Read more

Data Center Developer Offers $10,000 Checks To Nearby Households
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom’s Hardware: NorthPoint Development wants to build a data center on 1,300 acres in the Pocono foothills, near Hazle Township, Pennsylvania. As well as seeking to charm the local government with various funding packages, it has proposed paying checks of $10,000 per household. Despite the Pennsylvania town’s … ⌘ Read more

Nvidia Unveils AI Agent Safety Platform With Hardware-Based Watchdog
wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Nvidia on Monday announced the Open Agent Safety Platform, which combines open source software and a reference system design to keep AI agents within set boundaries from testing through deployment. The chipmaker explained that the platform pairs the open-source OpenShell runtime with Sentry, an o … ⌘ Read more

Fedora 45 To Feature Smoother Experience For Snapdragon X1 Laptops
Qualcomm hiring one of Red Hat’s top x86_64 Linux laptop experts last year, Hans de Goede, is indeed having a positive benefit on enhancing the Fedora Linux support for Qualcomm Snapdragon X powered hardware… ⌘ Read more

Firefox 157 Now Available With Visual Refresh, WebRTC Hardware AV1 Decode
As part of the Mozilla Firefox bi-weekly release regiment, the Firefox 157 binaries are now available for this open-source web browser… ⌘ Read more

AMD PerfOpt To Deliver New Performance Optimization For AMD iGPUs With Linux 7.4
Those using AMD integrated graphics on Linux such as the beefy Ryzen AI Max+ Strix Halo and Gorgon Halo hardware will be able to enjoy even better performance with the upcoming Linux 7.4 kernel… ⌘ Read more

New Tin-based Solar Cells Trap Heat 1,000 Times Longer, Could Beat 33% Limit
Could this push solar cell efficiency beyond the theoretical 33% limit? Interesting Engineering reports:

Researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands found that tin-based perovskite solar cells can slow heat loss from high-energy “hot electrons…”

When sunlight strikes a panel, photons jump-start elect … ⌘ Read more

AMDXDNA Linux Driver Being Enhanced For Current NPU3 Hardware
The AMDXDNA open-source Linux kernel accelerator driver is seeing a fair amount of work for better supporting current-generation NPU3 neural processing units. The AMD NPU3 is what’s found in current AMD Ryzen AI 300 / Ryzen AI 300 PRO series SoCs… ⌘ Read more

Approaching A 10 Second Linux Kernel Build
The coffee window is closing. Going back many years with the time it’s taken to compile the Linux kernel has been a well known opportunity for a coffee break or even eating a meal during the lengthy Linux kernel build process. Even when the Linux kernel was much smaller than it is today, with the hardware at the time it would often be a very time consuming process… Thus incredible to think that we are now on the horizon of a ten second clean, default kernel build on … ⌘ Read more

Raspberry Pi Stock Jumps 30% as Demand Surges. (And Boards Now Locked to Their Original RAM Size)
Raspberry Pi’s stock shot up over 30% in the last week. Why are investors so excited? For the six months ending June 30, revenue for Raspberry Pi Holdings “jumped 90% to $256.9 million,” reports Investing.com, “while adjusted EBITDA more than doubled to $40.3 million, and profit be … ⌘ Read more