The CPU Performance Of The NVIDIA GB10 With The Dell Pro Max vs. AMD Ryzen AI Max+ “Strix Halo”
With the Dell Pro Max GB10 testing at Phoronix we have been focused on the AI performance with its Blackwell GPU as the GB10 superchip was designed for meeting the needs of AI. Many Phoronix readers have also been curious about the GB10’s CPU performance in more traditional Linux workloads. So for those curious about the GB10 CPU performance, here are some Linux benchmarks focused today on the CPU performance and going up aga … ⌘ Read more

The CPU Performance Of The NVIDIA GB10 With The Dell Pro Max vs. AMD Ryzen AI Max+ “Strix Halo”
With the Dell Pro Max GB10 testing at Phoronix we have been focused on the AI performance with its Blackwell GPU as the GB10 superchip was designed for meeting the needs of AI. Many Phoronix readers have also been curious about the GB10’s CPU performance in more traditional Linux workloads. So for those curious about the GB10 CPU performance, here are some Linux benchmarks focused today on the CPU performance and going up aga … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 Apple Silicon Device Tree Updates Have All The Bits For USB Type-C Ports
Ahead of the Linux 6.20~7.0 cycle kicking off next month, the Apple Silicon Device Tree updates have been sent out for queuing ahead of that next merge window. Notable this round are the Device Tree additions for rounding out the USB 2.0/3.x support with the USB-C ports… ⌘ Read more

Adjusting One Line Of Linux Code Yields 5x Wakeup Latency Reduction For Modern Xeon CPUs
A new patch posted to the Linux kernel mailing list aims to address the high wake-up latency experienced on modern Intel Xeon server platforms. With Sapphire Rapids and newer, “excessive” wakeup latencies with the Linux menu governor and NOHZ_FULL configuration can negatively impair Xeon CPUs for latency-sensitive workloads but a 16 line patch aims to better improve the situation. That is, changing one line of actual co … ⌘ Read more

New Patches Aim To Make x86 Linux EFI Stub & Relocatable Kernel Support Unconditional
Prominent Intel Linux engineer H. Peter Anvin has posted a new patch series working to clean-up the Linux x86/x86_64 kernel boot code. Besides cleaning up the code, the kernel configuration would drop options around EFI stub mode and relocatable kernels in making those features now always enabled… ⌘ Read more

New Linux Patch Improved NVMe Performance +15% With CPU Cluster-Aware Handling
Intel Linux engineers have been working on enhancing the NVMe storage performance with today’s high core count processors. Due to situations where multiple CPUs could end up sharing the same NVMe IRQ(s), performance penalties can arise if the IRQ affinity and the CPU’s cluster do not align. There is a pending patch to address this situation. A 15% performance improvement was reported with the pending patch… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 ATA Fixes Address Power Management Regression For The Past Year
It’s typically rare these days for the ATA subsystem updates in the Linux kernel to contain anything really noteworthy. But today some important fixes were merged for the ATA code to deal with a reported power management regression affecting the past number of Linux kernel releases over the last year. ATAPI devices with dummy ports weren’t hitting their low-power state and in turn preventing the CPU from reaching low-power C-states … ⌘ Read more

Support For More Bluetooth Guitars & Other HID Changes Ahead Of Linux 6.20~7.0
A lot of HID subsystem updates have been queuing up ahead of the Linux 6.20~7.0 merge window in February. There is a lot of new hardware support on the way along with quirks for some existing hardware support ranging from laptop keyboard issues to enabling support for more PS4/PS5 guitars under Linux… ⌘ Read more

Patches Ready For Linux 7.0 To Enable Intel GPU Firmware Updates On Non-x86 Systems
Patches are now positioned to go into the upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle for supporting Intel discrete GPU firmware updating on non-x86 systems… ⌘ Read more

DragonFlyBSD Now Allows Optional AMD GCN 1.1 Support In AMDGPU Driver
DragonFlyBSD’s AMDGPU kernel graphics driver continues to be a port of the AMDGPU Linux kernel driver. Their latest porting effort for AMD graphics on DragonFlyBSD is now enabling optional support for the GCN 1.1 “Sea Islands (CIK) graphics processors on this modern alternative to the prior Radeon kernel driver… ⌘ Read more

New Patches From Valve Bring AMDGPU Power Management Improvements For Old GCN 1.0 GPUs
Last year Valve contractor Timur Kristóf managed to improve the AMDGPU driver enough for old GCN 1.0 Southern Islands and GCN 1.1 Sea Islands GPUs that with Linux 6.19 AMDGPU is now the default for those GPUs with better performance, RADV Vulkan out-of-the-box, and other benefits. He isn’t done though improving the old GCN 1.0/1.1 era GPU support on this modern AMDGPU kernel driver - a new patch series posted today brings som … ⌘ Read more

OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE To Provide A Security & Performance Win For Dealing With Containers
A new feature expected to be merged for the upcoming Linux 7.0 kernel cycle is adding an OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE flag for the open_tree() system call. This OPEN_TREE_NAMESPACE option can provide a nice performance win with added security benefits if you are dealing a lot with containerized workloads on Linux… ⌘ Read more

CAKE_MQ Slated For Linux 7.0 To Adapt SCH_CAKE For Today’s Multi-Core World
Queued into the Linux networking subsystem’s “net-next” branch ahead of the Linux 6.20~7.0 merge window next month is cake_mq as a multi-queue aware variant of the sch_cake network scheduler. The intent with cake_mq is to better scale the network traffic rate shaper across multiple CPU cores… ⌘ Read more

Revocable Resource Management Appears On Track For Linux 7.0
A new feature that appears ready for introduction in the upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle is revocable resource management… ⌘ Read more

New Patches Provide HDMI VRR & Auto Low Latency Mode Gaming Features For AMD Linux GPU Driver
Support for newer HDMI features in the open-source AMD Linux graphics driver have been limited due to being blocked by the HDMI Forum. There are though some new HDMI gaming features being enabled via new AMDGPU kernel driver patches that are coming outside of AMD and based on public knowledge and/or “trying things out until they work/break” for functionality like HDMI Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) and Auto Low Latency M … ⌘ Read more

RADV Vulkan Driver Now Implements HPLOC For Even Faster Ray-Tracing Performance
There have been a number of nice RADV driver Vulkan ray-tracing performance optimizations for Mesa in recent times… Here is yet another merge request now merged for Mesa 26.0 and helping deliver some nice performance uplift for ray-traced games on Linux. And, yes, this is yet another Valve contribution to this open-source AMD Radeon Linux graphics driver… ⌘ Read more

SPDX SBOM Generation Tool Proposed For The Linux Kernel
For those organizations on the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) bandwagon for increasing transparency around software components with license compliance, vulnerability management, and securing the software supply chain, proposed patches to the Linux kernel would introduce an SPDX SBOM Generation Tool… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19-rc6 Released With More Bug Fixes
Linus Torvalds just tagged the Linux 6.19-rc6 kernel in working toward the stable Linux 6.19 kernel release likely on 8 February… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Landing Fixes For USB2/USB3 Issues With Apple M1/M2 Macs
Ahead of the Linux 6.19-rc6 kernel release due out later today are two USB fixes for Apple M1 / M2 Macs running the mainline kernel. These Apple USB fixes are also marked for back-porting to the stable Linux kernel series… ⌘ Read more

HP OMEN/Victus Gaming Laptops Gaining Fan Control Support Under Linux
With the upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle, the HP-WMI driver is slated to add manual fan control support for HP Victus S-Series gaming laptops as well as for some HP OMEN gaming laptops too… ⌘ Read more

Linux’s Intel-Speed-Select Tool Will Allow Non-Root Use With Linux 7.0
The intel-speed-select tool that lives within the Linux kernel source tree for allowing some control over Intel Speed Select Technology (SST) and managing of clock frequencies / performance behavior will finally allow limited non-root usage… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19-rc6 Bringing Sound Fixes For ROG Xbox Ally X & Various Laptops
With the Linux 6.19-rc6 kernel release due out later today there will be a number of sound fixes/workarounds to note from the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X gaming handheld to several newer laptops seeing fixes for their audio support… ⌘ Read more

Synex Server: A New Debian Based Linux Distro With Native ZFS Installation Support
Synex is a Linux distribution that’s been around for some months as a Debian-based, minimalistic Linux distribution out of Argentina focused on the needs of small and medium businesses. Making it a bit more intriguing for some now is that with their new release based on Debian 13 is a server edition and they have added native OpenZFS file-system support for new installations… ⌘ Read more

Important AMDGPU & AMDKFD Driver Improvements Readied For Linux 6.20~7.0
On Friday AMD sent out another set of AMDGPU kernel graphics driver and AMDKFD kernel compute driver patches for queuing in DRM-Next ahead of the upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle kicking off in February… ⌘ Read more

T2/Linux Brings a Flagship KDE Plasma Linux Desktop to RISC-V and ARM64
After “a decade of deep focus on embedded and server systems,” T2 SDE Linux “is back to the Desktop,” according to its web site, calling the new “T2 Desktop” flavour “ready for everyday home and office use!”

Built on the latest KDE Plasma, systemd, and Wayland, the new T2 Desktop flavour delivers a modern, clean, and performant exp … ⌘ Read more

Upcoming exFAT Linux Driver Patch Can Boost Sequential Read Performance By ~10%
A patch for the open-source exFAT file-system driver for Linux can boost the sequential read performance by about 10% in preliminary tests… ⌘ Read more

Adobe Photoshop 2025 Installer Now Working On Linux With Patched Wine
An open-source developer has worked through the last of the issues preventing the Adobe Creative Cloud installers for Windows from running on Linux via Wine. With pending patches, Adobe Photoshop 2021 and Photoshop 2025 are expected to install and run on Linux… ⌘ Read more

Linux ThinkPad Driver Ready For Reporting Damage Device - Starting With Bad USB-C Ports
Queued yesterday into the platform-drivers-x86.git’s “for-next” branch are the patches for the Lenovo ThinkPad ACPI driver to begin reporting damaged device detection. This code being in the “for-next” branch makes it material for the next version of the Linux kernel and initially will be able to report to the user on damaged USB-C ports… ⌘ Read more

AMD EPYC 8004 “Siena” Shows Some Nice Linux Performance Gains Over The Past Two Years
As part of my various end-of-year benchmarks, recently I looked at the Linux LTS kernel performance on AMD EPYC 9005 over the past year, the AMD EPYC Milan-X performance over the past four years, and various other performance comparisons over time to look the evolution of the Linux software performance. Another run I had carried out was looking at the AMD EPYC 8004 “Siena” series since its launch just over two years ago. Her … ⌘ Read more

I’ve only got a handful of syscalls working right now. Taking inspiration from the calling convention of the Linux kernel and even made the service/interrupt handler int 0x80h 🤣 I’ve only got read, write, alloc and exit working righ tnow 🥲

Linux 7.0 Looks To Enable Intel TSX By Default On Capable CPUs For Better Performance
A patch queued up into tip/tip.git’s x86/cpu Git branch ahead of the upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle enables the Intel Transactional Synchronization Extensions (TSX) functionality by default on the mainline kernel for capable CPUs and those not affected by side-channel attacks due to TSX Async Abort (TAA) and similar vulnerabilities. For newer Intel CPUs with safe TSX support, this change can mean better performance with … ⌘ Read more

Took me nearly all week (in my spare time), but Mu (µ) finally officially support linux/amd64 🥳 I completely refactored the native code backend and borrowed a lot of the structure from another project called wazero (the zero dependency Go WASM runtime/compiler). This is amazing stuff because now Mu (µ) runs in more places natively, as well as running everywhere Go runs via the bytecode VM interpreter 🤞

Patches Positioned Ahead Of Linux 7.0 Cycle For Easy Custom Boot Logo In Place Of Tux
The Linux kernel patches talked about at the start of the year for more easily changing the boot logo of Tux are now queued into a “for-next” branch and thus expected to be submitted for the upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle. Those wanting to replace the Tux icon with an alternative logo during the Linux kernel boot process could already patch the file manually but this new code allows for an easy replacement via Kconfig op … ⌘ Read more

EndeavourOS 2026.01.12 Released With Linux 6.18 LTS Kernel, NVIDIA Open Modules
EndeavourOS 2026.01.12 “Ganymede Neo” is out as the first update of the year to this Arch Linux based distribution… ⌘ Read more

Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 8: A High-End, Intel + NVIDIA Mobile Workstation Great For Linux Use
For those shopping for an AI-ready mobile workstation with NVIDIA RTX PRO Blackwell graphics, the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 8 offers a lot of potential for developers, AI researchers, content creators, and others. This Linux-friendly mobile workstation is well built and aligns with ThinkPad P-Series expectations while being ready to be tasked with demanding workloads. ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 To Expand Temperature Reporting For Intel Graphics Cards
The upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel cycle will provide expanded GPU temperature reporting capabilities for Intel graphics cards. Additional temperature sensors will now be exposed under Linux with the Intel Xe driver using the hardware monitoring (HWMON) interface for easy consumption by different Linux user-space software… ⌘ Read more

Imagination Driver To Support The TI AM62P SoC In Linux 6.20~7.0
Sent out today was the latest DRM-Misc-Next pull request of new material ahead of the next kernel cycle either Linux 6.20 or 7.0 depending upon what Linus Torvalds decides to call it… ⌘ Read more

D7VK 1.2 Released For Improving Direct3D 6 Front-End
Started last year was D7VK as a project bringing Direct3D 7 implemented over the Vulkan API for enjoying better performance and support for legacy Windows games on Linux, akin to DXVK and VKD3D-Proton for newer versions of Direct3D over Vulkan that is used by Valve’s Steam Play (Proton). Back in December D7VK added a Direct3D 6 front-end for allowing even older game titles to be accelerated using the modern Vulkan API. Today D7VK 1.2 is out for furthering the D3D6 sup … ⌘ Read more

Linux Patches Bring Mainline Kernel Support For The ASUS IPMI Expansion Card
DeviceTree patches worked on recently allow for the mainline Linux kernel to run on the ASUS “Kommando” IPMI Expansion Card. This is interesting for opening up new possibilities for this external IPMI/BMC expansion card but too bad that less than three years after launching it’s difficult to find… ⌘ Read more

GRUB 2.14 Bootloader Released With EROFS Support, Shim Loader Protocol
More than two years after the release of GRUB 2.12, GRUB 2.14 shipped today as the newest feature release of this widely-used bootloader on Linux systems and elsewhere… ⌘ Read more

An Early Run With Ubuntu 26.04 On AMD EPYC Turin - The Current Performance Gains Over Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
There still are several months to go until the official Ubuntu 26.04 LTS release – including one month until the feature freeze and the future Linux 6.20~7.0 kernel is expected to land too before the latter kernel freeze in early April. But for those curious how Ubuntu 26.04 is looking so far for servers, here are some very early benchmarks of it on AMD EPYC 9005 “Turin” in its present development state. The … ⌘ Read more

Fedora Games Lab Approved To Switch To KDE Plasma, Become A Better Linux Gaming Showcase
Back in December we reported on drafted plans for revitalizing Fedora Games Lab to be a modern Linux gaming showcase. This Fedora Labs initiative has featured some open-source games paired with an Xfce desktop while moving forward they are looking to better position it as a modern Linux gaming showcase… ⌘ Read more

$99 BeaglePlay Board Achieves “100% Open-Source” Upstream PowerVR Graphics
Going back many years Imagination PowerVR graphics were widely despised by open-source enthusiasts and Linux desktop users for their lack of an open-source GPU driver. But over the past few years the Imagination PowerVR driver focused on their Rogue graphics IP has matured nicely within the Linux kernel and the PowerVR Vulkan driver in Mesa taking shape too. Paired with Zink for OpenGL over Vulkan, there’s a robust open-source PowerVR gr … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 To Focus Just On Full & Lazy Preemption Models For Up-To-Date CPU Archs
A Linux scheduler patch queued up into a TIP branch this past week further restrict is the preemption modes that will be advertised. With it hitting the “sched/core” branch, it will likely be submitted for the upcoming Linux 7.0 (or alternatively, what could be known as Linux 6.20 instead)… ⌘ Read more

Intel Panther Lake GSC Firmware Published Ahead Of Laptop Availability
While Intel has been upstreaming various Panther Lake firmware bits to linux-firmware.git for pairing with their open-source kernel drivers ahead of Core Ultra Series 3 laptops shipping, one piece of the puzzle only published today is the GSC firmware for the Panther Lake graphics… ⌘ Read more

Never-Before-Seen Linux Malware Is ‘Far More Advanced Than Typical’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Researchers have discovered a never-before-seen framework that infects Linux machines with a wide assortment of modules that are notable for the range of advanced capabilities they provide to attackers. The framework, referred to as VoidLink by its source code, features more than 30 modules … ⌘ Read more

New “Thames” Linux Accelerator Driver Posted Along With Companion Gallium3D Driver
Tomeu Vizoso as the open-source developer behind the “Rocket” driver for reverse-engineered Rockchip NPU support, Teflon as a Mesa framework for TensorFlow Lite and NPU uses, and various Etnaviv driver work, has announced his newest creation: Thames… ⌘ Read more

Hangover 11.0 Released: Wine + FEX/Box64 Pairing For Windows x86 Apps On ARM64 Linux
Building off today’s release of Wine 11.0 for enabling countless Windows applications and games to run well under Linux and being the basis of Valve’s Proton for Steam Play, Hangover 11.0 is now available. Hangover is the open-source project that pairs Wine with either the FEX-Emu or Box64 emulators for enabling x86 32-bit and 64-bit Windows games/apps to run on native ARM64 Linux systems… ⌘ Read more

Wine 11.0 Released With Many Improvements For Windows Games & Apps On Linux
As expected, Wine 11.0 stable was officially released today. This is a big step forward for this open-source software to run Windows games and applications on Linux and other platforms. Wine also serves as the basis for Valve’s Steam Play (Proton) that has been critical to the recent successes of Linux gaming… ⌘ Read more

This week, Mu (µ) get s bit more serious and starts to refactor the native backend (a lot). Soon™ we will support darwin/arm64, linux/arm64 and linux/amd64 (Yes, other forms of BSD will come!) – Mu (µ) also last week grew concurrency support too! 🤣