AMD GFX 11.5.3 Graphics Support Added To Mesa 25.0
AMD has added support for another RDNA 3.5 refresh variant to the Mesa graphics driver code for Linux systems… ⌘ Read more

KDE Gear 24.12 Released With Many Improvements To KDE Apps
Right ahead of the holidays, KDE Gear 24.12 is out to deliver four months worth of refinements to the KDE desktop applications… ⌘ Read more

Linux Mint 22.1 Beta Released With Cinnamon 6.4 Desktop, Updated Apt Code
The beta release of Linux Mint 22.1 “Xia” is now available for testing of this desktop Linux distribution based on Ubuntu LTS releases and known for its Cinnamon desktop environment… ⌘ Read more

Linux Fixes Regression That Broke File Names With ❤️ & Other Special Characters
Linus Torvalds took to reverting some code tonight within the mainline Linux kernel that inadvertently had broken support having filenames with ❤️ and other special Unicode characters in filenames when on file-systems with case-folding (optional case insensitive file/folder name) support… ⌘ Read more

Linux Fixes Regression That Broke File Names With ❤️ & Other Special Characters
Linus Torvalds took to reverting some code tonight within the mainline Linux kernel that inadvertently had broken support having filenames with ❤️ and other special Unicode characters in filenames when on file-systems with case-folding (optional case insensitive file/folder name) support… ⌘ Read more

OpenZFS 2.2.7 Released With Linux 6.12 Support, Many Fixes
While we are awaiting the release of OpenZFS 2.3 that has been seeing release candidates since early October, OpenZFS 2.2.7 is out today as the newest stable release of this ZFS file-system implementation for Linux and FreeBSD systems… ⌘ Read more

Proton 9.0-4 Released To Improve More Windows Games On Linux
Valve and CodeWeavers today released Proton 9.0-4 as the newest version of their Wine downstream that powers Steam Play for running an incredible number of modern Windows games on Linux… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.13 Delivering Some Incremental Gains With AMD EPYC 9575F Performance
With the in-development Linux 6.13 kernel one of the biggest features for those using new AMD EPYC 9005 “Turin” processors is using the AMD P-State driver by default for servers/motherboards with ACPI CPPC support enabled. But even for platforms without that where ACPI CPUFreq remains the default, the Linux 6.13 kernel is still showing some nice incremental uplift at large on these new AMD server processors. Here are some Linux 6.11 vs … ⌘ Read more

SiFive HiFive Premier P550 RISC-V Price Lowered, Ubuntu 24.04 Support Ready
Going back to April 2024, SiFive announced the HiFive Premier P550 as an interesting RISC-V developer board to succeed their HiFive Unleashed that was a nice little RISC-V board. There were delays in shipping the HiFive Premier P550 but they have been making progress and are now ready to ship Ubuntu 24.04 LTS pre-installed on this RISC-V board. They have also lowered the pricing on these RISC-V boards… ⌘ Read more

OpenMandriva ROME 24.12 Released With KDE Plasma 6 Desktop By Default
For fans of OpenMandriva or just wanting to reminisce over the former Mandrake Linux days, OpenMandriva ROME 24.12 is out today as the newest update to this Linux distribution… ⌘ Read more

AlmaLinux 10 Beta Released For Testing
It was just a little more than one month ago that AlmaLinux Kitten 10 became available for testing for this new OS release derived from the CentOS Stream 10 sources that is upstream to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10. Today the AlmaLinux crew announced the first beta release of AlmaLinux 10… ⌘ Read more

Miracle-WM 0.4 Released With i3 IPC Support
Miracle-WM is the Mir-based Wayland tiling window manager that is inspired in part by the likes of i3 and Sway. Miracle-WM also has a goal to be a flagship example of a Mir-based full featured window manager with this project being led by a Canonical engineer. Out today is Miracle-WM 0.4 to deliver the latest features… ⌘ Read more

How AMD Is Taking Standard C/C++ Code To Run Directly On GPUs
Back at the 2024 LLVM Developers’ Meeting was an interesting presentation by AMD engineer Joseph Huber for how they have been exploring running common, standard C/C++ code directly on GPUs without having to be adapted for any GPU language / programming dialects or other adaptations… ⌘ Read more

QEMU 9.2 Released With VirtIO GPU Vulkan Support, AVX10 & Experimental Rust Support
QEMU 9.2 is out today for this processor emulator that plays an important role within the open-source Linux virtualization stack… ⌘ Read more

Haiku OS Developers Fixed Plenty Of Bugs In November
The BeOS-inspired Haiku open-source operating system project is out with a new monthly status update to detail their latest efforts… ⌘ Read more

Intel Compute Runtime 24.45 vs. AMD ROCm 6.3 vs. NVIDIA R565 Linux GPU Compute Benchmarks
Complementing yesterday’s fresh Linux gaming benchmarks of mid-range Intel Arc Graphics “Alchemist” vs. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 vs. AMD Radeon RX 7000 series cards ahead of the upcoming Battlemage availability, today’s article is providing a fresh look at the latest Intel Compute Runtime performance for Level Zero / OpenCL on current-gen Intel discrete graphics compared to mid-range AMD Radeon GPUs on ROCm 6.3 and similar NVIDIA … ⌘ Read more

systemd 257 Debuts With systemd-keyutil & systemd-sbsign Tools, Other Improvements
Coincidentally coming one day after the GNU Shepherd 1.0 service manager release, the systemd 257 release is now shipping as the newest feature release for this widely-used service manager / init system to Linux systems. Systemd 257 brings a number of new features and improvements for powering late 2024 and early 2025 Linux distributions… ⌘ Read more

Ptyxis Becomes Ubuntu’s Recommended Replacement To GNOME Terminal
While the Ubuntu desktop has been offered the newer GNOME Console as an alternative to GNOME Terminal, there’s been a recent fondness around Ptyxis and apparently is becoming the recommended replacement to GNOME Terminal for the Ubuntu camp… ⌘ Read more

New Linux Patch Establishes “CONFIG_X86_64_NATIVE” For -march=native Kernel Builds
Last week I wrote about Linux patches cleaning up x86 32-bit kernel builds for x86_64 CPUs. The new iteration of those patches were sent out today, including the addition of a patch adding the CONFIG_X86_64_NATIVE Kconfig tunable for enabling “-march=native” kernel builds to cater your optimized kernel compilation for the CPU on which you are building the kernel… ⌘ Read more

Perf Support For 2,048 CPU Cores Is Becoming Not Enough - Patches Bump Kernel Limit
Currently the Linux kernel’s “perf” performance monitoring subsystem has a limit on 2,048 CPU cores for its CPU map that is set by the MAX_NR_CPUS value. But that’s becoming not enough in today’s high core count era that patches are looking to raise it to a 4,096 CPU core limit by default… ⌘ Read more

Updated Dasharo Firmware Pulls In Raptor Lake Instability Fix, Other Enhancements
For those wanting to run Coreboot or Coreboot-derived firmware on a modern desktop motherboard with good performance and features, the main contender currently is 3mdeb’s Dasharo downstream that can be flashed on the MSI PRO Z790-P/Z790-P motherboards for using with Intel Core Alder Lake and Raptor Lake processors. Firmware consulting firm 3mdeb today published a new Dasharo firmware update for the MSI PRO Z790-P WIFI motherboard… ⌘ Read more

Optimizing Linux MD Bitmap Code Yields 89% Throughput Boost For Quad SSDs
A promising patch for the Linux kernel is optimizing the locking contention and scattered address space for the MD bitmap code to improve both the storage throughput and latency… ⌘ Read more

IBM Deprecating Linux Drivers For CXL Coherent Accelerators & CAPI Flash
IBM engineers announced they are deprecating the upstream CXL & CXLFLASH Linux kernel drivers with plans to then remove the drivers from the mainline kernel the following cycle. Before getting too worked up when seeing the “cxl: Deprecate driver” patch, this is about the Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (CAPI) that predates the Compute Express Link… ⌘ Read more

Servo Browser Engine Landed More Performance Optimizations In November
The Servo browser engine project is out with their latest monthly status update to outline improvements made to this Rust-based open-source engine… ⌘ Read more

NTSYNC Linux Patches Revived To Help Boost Steam Play Gaming Performance
Back in May for the Linux 6.10 kernel the initial bits of the NTSYNC driver was upstreamed for helping to emulate the Windows NT synchronization primitives so Windows games running under Wine/Proton (such as Valve’s Steam Play) can enjoy a very nice performance boost. That NTSYNC code for Linux 6.10 wasn’t yet in functioning shape and now a half-year later the newest NTSYNC patch series has been sent out for review… ⌘ Read more

GNU Shepherd 1.0 Service Manager Released As “Solid Tool” Alternative To systemd
GNU Shepherd as a service manager for both system and user services that is used by Guix and relying on Guile Scheme has finally reached version 1.0. For those not pleased with systemd, GNU Shepherd can be used as an init system and now has finally crossed the version 1.0 milestone after 21 years of development… ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA R565 vs. Linux 6.13 + Mesa 25.0 Git AMD / Intel Graphics For Linux Gaming
It’s been a few months since running any fresh Linux graphics driver comparison benchmarks. But given the imminent availability of the first Intel Arc Battlemage graphics cards, I have been carrying out some fresh Linux GPU driver testing. Given the recently-stabilized NVIDIA R565 Linux driver series and then also the newest upstream code in Linux 6.13 Git and Mesa 25.0-devel for the AMD Radeon and Intel Arc Graphics hardware on … ⌘ Read more

Rust-Based, Memory-Safe PNG Decoders “Vastly Outperform” C-Based PNG Libraries
Video and image encoders/decoders written in the Rust programming language for its memory safety guarantees is often viewed as one of the compelling areas for the programming language to better protect against malformed/malicious content especially within web browsers. Not only are Rust-based PNG image decoders proving to be more secure than C-based decoders, but the performance of the Rust solutions can be even faster… ⌘ Read more

The 2024 LLVM Developers’ Meeting Videos Now Online
For those wishing to kick off the new week with some interesting technical videos and are into compiler tech, the video recordings from the 2024 LLVM Developers’ Meeting are now online… ⌘ Read more

ASUS TUF GAMING X670E PLUS Seeing Linux Sensors Support
For those with the ASUS TUF GAMING X670E PLUS as a ~$230 USD AM5 motherboard for Ryzen 7000/9000 series processors, this desktop motherboard is seeing support tacked onto the asus-ec-sensors hardware monitoring driver so you can enjoy working sensor readings under Linux… ⌘ Read more

Glibc 2.41 Adds C23’s sinpi / cospi / tanpi Functions
Ahead of the GNU C Library “glibc” 2.41 release due out around early February, more C23 features are being finished up. The latest crossing the finish line is support for C23’s sinpi, cospi, and tanpi trigonometric functions… ⌘ Read more

openSUSE Touts Improved Multi-GPU Switching Support
Te openSUSE project shared today that there is enhanced multi-GPU switching support to enjoy now with openSUSE Linux… ⌘ Read more

Raspberry Pi 500 Launches Along WIth Raspberry Pi Monitor
Launched four years ago was the Raspberry Pi 400 as the Raspberry Pi 4 adapted for a keyboard form factor. Launching today is the Raspberry Pi 500 for upgrading that keyboard computer using the Raspberry Pi 5 internals. An official Raspberry Pi Monitor was also released… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.13-rc2 Released With An Initial Batch Of Fixes
Linus Torvalds just issued Linux 6.13-rc2 with an initial serving of bug/regression fixes following last week’s Linux 6.13-rc1 release that capped off the feature-packed Linux 6.13 merge window… ⌘ Read more

Linux EFI Zboot Abandoning “Compression Library Museum”, Focusing On Gzip & Zstd
The Linux kernel EFI Zboot code for carrying the Linux kernel image for EFI systems in compressed form is doing away with its “compression library museum” of offering Gzip, LZ4, LZMA, LZO, XZ, and Zstd compression options to instead just focus on Gzip and Zstd compression support… ⌘ Read more