OpenCL 3.0.18 Published With New Extensions & Other Updates
The Khronos Group today published the OpenCL 3.0.18 specifications as the latest incremental update to OpenCL 3.0… ⌘ Read more

AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D Impact Of The 3D V-Cache Optimizer Linux Driver
Last month I posted benchmarks showing the performance when using the new 3D V-Cache Optimizer driver on Linux using the flagship Ryzen 9 9950X3D. This optimizer driver allows tuning the “amd_x3d_mode” for indicating your prefereoce for the CCD with the higher frequency or larger cache size. For some additional insight into the 3D V-Cache Optimizer driver performance impact on Linux, here are benchmarks looking at the difference while using the … ⌘ Read more

Intel Updates Linux Patches For Adaptive Sharpness Property, Xe VRAM Self Refresh
Two separate patch series updated this week for the open-source Intel Linux graphics driver stack is the still-ongoing work around the DRM sharpness property for the new adaptive sharpening filter with Xe2 Lunar Lake graphics and then separately is the work to bring VRAM Self Refresh (VRSR) over to the modern Xe kernel driver… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.15’s New “hugetlb_alloc_threads” Option Can Help Speed-Up Boot Times
Among the changes that landed this week for the Linux 6.15 merge window were all of the memory management “MM” updates, of which there are several notable patch series included… ⌘ Read more

Intel Patches Finally Exposing NPU Frequency Under Linux
For those looking into some insight around the Intel neural processing unit (NPU) utilization with modern Core Ultra systems, pending Linux patches will finally introduce the ability for user-space to obtain the current NPU frequency… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.15 Brings Improvements For Five Decade Old GPIB Bus
Going back to 1972 is the General Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB, a.k.a. IEEE-488) as a parallel interface bus developed by HP. GPIB pre-dates the Linux kernel itself while it wasn’t until last year that the GPIB driver subsystem was added to the Linux kernel’s staging area with GPIB still seeing some use by scientific equipment and other devices. For Linux 6.15, the GPIB code has seen a thorough round of code clean-ups and improvements… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.15 Device Mapper Brings Inline Crypto Passthrough For DM-Stripe
All of the Device Mapper “DM” changes have been merged to mainline for the in-development Linux 6.15 kernel… ⌘ Read more

Rust 1.86 Released With Trait Upcasting, Deprecates i586-PC-Windows-MSVC
Rust 1.86 is now available today as the latest version of this popular programming language… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.15 Removes Support For IBM’s CXL/CAPI Drivers
Not to be confused with the modern Compute Express Link (CXL) standard, but IBM’s Coherent Accelerator Interface “CXL” / Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface “CAPI” support was stripped away today from the mainline Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.15 Further Improves AMD P-State Driver, Intel Dev Tackles A ~50% SPEC Regression
Linux power management and ACPI subsystems maintainer Rafael Wysocki last week sent out the assortment of ACPI/PM material for the new Linux 6.15 kernel cycle. The AMD P-State driver continues to be heavy with its code churn and there have been various other optimizations and code clean-ups. The CPUIdle Menu governor also received some performance tuning worth mentioning… ⌘ Read more

Framework Laptop 12 Pre-Orders Open Next Week
Back in late February when Framework announced a slew of new hardware products they will be launching next year, they also teased the Framework Laptop 12 as a new, smaller laptop while continuing to be modular/upgradeable. They announced today that Framework Laptop 12 pre-orders will begin next week… ⌘ Read more

GNOME & KDE Plasma Wayland Sessions Outperforming Xfce + LXQt On Ubuntu 25.04 For Linux Gaming
Last week I posted some initial GNOME 48 and KDE Plasma 6.3 desktop gaming benchmarks on Ubuntu 25.04 beta for looking at the performance of those two leading desktop options for this upcoming Ubuntu Linux release. Both GNOME and KDE under Wayland were outperforming KDE on X11 (and GNOME on X11 wasn’t even working due to bugs). Some Phoronix readers questioned though whether the Wayland advantage on GNOME/KDE was due to … ⌘ Read more

Many KVM Updates Merged For Linux 6.15
This morning’s Intel TDX update reminded me that I still hadn’t gotten around to digging into the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) changes merged last week for the ongoing Linux 6.15 kernel merge window. Here is a look at the KVM changes this cycle that continue to be particularly heavy on Intel and AMD virtualization improvements… ⌘ Read more

Intel TDX Is Becoming Potentially Faster, Avoiding “Slow & Buggy” Code Path On Linux
Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) for providing hardware-backed isolation and confidential computing support for virtual machines (VMs) on modern Xeon processors is about to become more reliable and potentially faster for some workloads… ⌘ Read more

Qt 6.9 Released With Performance Work, Better Emoji Handling & Greater Visualizations
Qt 6.9 was just released as the newest version of this open-source, cross-platform graphics toolkit… ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma 6.3.4 Now Shipping With The Latest Crash Fixes
KDE Plasma 6.3.4 shipped this morning as the newest monthly point release for the Plasma 6.3 desktop… ⌘ Read more

Intel Linux Driver Finally Dropping The Experimental Flag For Original DG1 Graphics
Intel’s original DG1 discrete GPU was principally a development vehicle on the path to DG2/Alchemist. It did appear with the Iris Xe Max laptop dGPU in very few configurations but surprisingly it’s taken until now where the Intel Linux graphics driver is set to remove the experimental “force_probe” flag on these pre-Alchemist discrete GPUs… ⌘ Read more

Steam On Linux Shows A Wild Swing Back Up For March 2025
The Steam Survey results for February showed a 0.61% drop for Linux gaming marketshare following a 20.8% increase to the Chinese use, which was yet another month of such wild swings attributed to a large influx in Simplified Chinese survey respondents. The March results for Steam Survey were published this evening and show the Linux marketshare more than recovering now that the English survey results have shot back up… ⌘ Read more

Linux Kernel Developments, AMD RX 9070 GIMP 3.0 & Other March Highlights
There were 281 original news articles on Phoronix during the month of March along with another 14 Linux hardware reviews / multi-page featured-length articles and benchmarks. Here is a look back at the most exciting Linux and open-source content over the past month, in case you missed any of the interesting hardware launches, open-source software milestones, kernel changes, and other milestones… ⌘ Read more

Early Features Approved For Fedora 43: Maven 4, RPM 6.0, JPEG-XL Wallpapers
While Fedora 42 isn’t being released until later in the month, already a number of new features for Fedora 43 have been granted approval by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee… ⌘ Read more

FUSE File-Systems To Support Much Longer Filenames With Linux 6.15
All of the FUSE updates have been sent in for the in-development Linux 6.15 kernel for supporting file-systems in user-space… ⌘ Read more

Intel Posts New Linux Kernel Patches To “Hide The Disgusting Turds”
No, it’s not at all an April Fools’ Joke or anything along those lines… An Intel open-source engineer just posted the patch series entitled “hide the disgusting turds” for the Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

Linux Patches Enable Support For The Snapdragon X1 Powered ASUS Zenbook A14
For those interested in the Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 powered laptops, there’s another option to consider for Linux use soon with pending patches: the ASUS Zenbook A14… ⌘ Read more

Another New Intel Battlemage Device ID Added To Mesa Graphics Driver Code
Merged today for the Mesa 25.1-devel graphics driver code and also marked for back-porting to the Mesa 25.0 OpenGL/Vulkan drivers is another new Intel Battlemage device ID… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.15 Brings New Hardware Monitoring Additions For AMD BC-250 & Various Sensor ICs
Merged for the Linux 6.15 kernel last week was the big set of hardware monitoring “HWMON” subsystem updates with new hardware support as well as a few new sensor drivers… ⌘ Read more

AMD’s Latest Wares, NVIDIA RTX 50 & Kernel Changes Excited Linux Users So Far In 2025
As the last planned article of the quarter, here is a look back at the most popular Phoronix content from Q1’2025 with 822 original news articles and 40 featured articles / Linux hardware reviews written by your’s truly. There were interesting hardware launches from Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA this quarter along with a never-ending pace of new open-source software innovations and the unfortunate ongoing drama within the free softw … ⌘ Read more

Wayland Is On Track For A Very Exciting 2025
While the first quarter is coming to an end, there has already been immense progress this year to the Wayland protocols and compositors along with associated Linux desktop software for embracing this alternative to legacy X11/X.Org. From HDR color management seeing much adoption this quarter to Wine Wayland becoming more viable and the large number of Wayland compositors maturing, it was a pretty incredible quarter… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.15 Perf Tooling Introduces Ability For Latency Profiling
The perf tools changes were merged today for the Linux 6.15 kernel. Most notable this cycle for the wonderful perf tooling is introducing the notion of latency profiling by leveraging kernel scheduler information. This latency data will be further useful for Linux software engineers working to optimize system latency/performance… ⌘ Read more

wlroots Merges Wayland Color Management / HDR Support
The wlroots library used by the Sway compositor and other Wayland compositors has merged support for the color-management-v1 protocol that is notable for enabling High Dynamic Range (HDR) display use under Linux… ⌘ Read more

Dasharo Platform Driver Aims To Enhance The Experience Using This Coreboot Downstream
The consulting firm 3mdeb’s Dasharo open-source firmware distribution derived from Coreboot could soon feature improved integration under Linux thanks to a pending ACPI platform driver… ⌘ Read more

Redis-Forked Valkey 8.1 Released - Turns To AVX2 For Better Performance
It’s been just over one year since the Linux Foundation and partners announced Valkey as a fork of Redis. Following the release of Redis 8.0 in September for this in-memory key-value database, Valkey 8.1 is out today… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.15 exFAT Can Delete Files Much Faster: 4+ Minutes To 1.6 Second Optimization
For those dealing with exFAT formatted storage devices under Linux, the upcoming Linux 6.15 kernel has a big optimization for yielding much faster delete performance when making use of the “discard” mount option… ⌘ Read more

AMD Software Advancements, RDNA4 & Ryzen 9900X3D Series Excited Linux Users In Q1
With Q1 drawing to an end, here is a look back at the most popular Linux/open-source news and Linux hardware reviews around AMD during the quarter on Phoronix. With 109 AMD news articles so far this quarter around their Linux software/hardware efforts and another 20 AMD Linux hardware reviews / featured benchmark articles, they continue firing on all cylinders for pushing both their client and server wares forward outside the confines … ⌘ Read more

FreeBSD On Laptops Sees New Power Management Driver, WiFi 4 / WiFi 5 Progress
Over the past number of months there has been an effort underway to improve FreeBSD laptop support with financial backing by Dell, AMD, and Framework among others. This has resulted in power management improvements, increasing the focus on WiFi driver support for FreeBSD, and related areas to make FreeBSD on laptops more appealing and relevant in 2025… ⌘ Read more

Firefox 137 Release Brings VA-API Accelerated H.265 On Linux
The Mozilla Firefox 137 release binaries are now available ahead of the official release set for Tuesday… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.15 Introduces SPI Offloading, Converts More Drivers To The Faux Bus
Greg Kroah-Hartman on Sunday submitted all of the “char/misc” patches for the Linux 6.15 merge window for this random catch-all area of the kernel with small drivers and other random/obscure hardware support… ⌘ Read more

PostgreSQL Lands Batch Mode & Other Async I/O Improvements
Last week PostgreSQL merged support for IO_uring that can provide for “considerably faster” performance of this popular open-source database server. Over the weekend some additional improvements were merged to the asynchronous I/O “AIO” code to PostgreSQL, including introducing a new batch mode that can also provide a performance win… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.15 Wires Up SoundWire Bulk Register Access
The in-development Linux 6.15 kernel is continuing to enhance its support for MIPI’s SoundWire specification for small audio peripherals with this two-pin, low-complexity audio interface… ⌘ Read more

Many Rust Changes Submitted For Linux 6.15
All of the Rust programming language infrastructure updates for the Linux 6.15 kernel have now been submitted. In addition to a lot of technical Rust improvements for the Linux kernel, this cycle also marks the first time Rust Linux maintainer Miguel Ojeda has taken a pull request directly from another contributor as they prepare to work out sub-trees for the Rust ecosystem… ⌘ Read more

CachyOS Adds Limine Bootloader, Easier Samba Integration & NTSYNC Wine
The Arch Linux powered CachyOS is out with its March 2025 update that delivers a number of new features for this OS that is popular with open-source enthusiasts and power users for its out-of-the-box performance optimizations and extensive tuning… ⌘ Read more

Chromium Web Browser Lands Support For Wayland XDG-Session-Management
Google’s Ozone Wayland support continues to improve for benefiting the Chrome/Chromium web browser. The newest addition merged this past week is support for the xdg-session-management protocol… ⌘ Read more

IO_uring Network Zero-Copy Receive Lands In Linux 6.15
IO_uring continues maturing while being one of the greatest innovations within the Linux kernel in the past number of years. With Linux 6.15, IO_uring is getting even more interesting with introducing network zero-copy receive support. With this new code a 200G link could be saturated off a single CPU core in a recent demonstration… ⌘ Read more

Lenovo ThinkEdge SE30 Watchdog Driver Coming For Linux 6.15
The watchdog subsystem changes have been submitted for the Linux 6.15 merge window that is now at the mid-way point… ⌘ Read more

IO_uring Network Zero-Copy Receive Lands In Linux 6.15
IO_uring continues maturing while being one of the greatest innovations within the Linux kernel in the past number of years. With Linux 6.15, IO_uring is getting even more interesting with introducing network zero-copy receive support… ⌘ Read more

MIPS Lands Multi-Cluster Support In Linux 6.15 For The EyeQ6 SoC
While the upstream MIPS architecture is at a dead-end due to RISC-V, the Linux kernel code for the MIPS CPU architecture continues to improve for all the existing MIPS-based platforms out there. With Linux 6.15 there is new work for enhancing the Mobileye EyeQ6 SoC support… ⌘ Read more

Shotcut 25.03 Open-Source, Cross-Platform Video Editor Released
Shotcut 25.03 is now available for this open-source and cross-platform video editor built atop the MLT Multimedia Framework… ⌘ Read more

Intel’s 2025-Q1 Linux Excitement With Battlemage, AVX10 & Other Kernel Improvements
With the first quarter quickly drawing to a close, here’s a look back at the most popular Intel Linux news of the quarter. There’s been excitement with the Battlemage discrete graphics cards with their open-source driver, early work on Xe3 graphics, AVX10.2 dropping the optional 512-bit features to make it mandatory now (thankfully!), and a lot of exciting upstream Linux kernel improvements… ⌘ Read more

Firmware Loader Makes It Possible To Use Old Samsung TV Cameras On Linux
Samsung used to sell web cameras for their smart TVs for use with living room video chatting with the likes of Skype. Samsung no longer supports Skype on their TVs (goodbye Skype!) or these devices but if you happen to have one laying around or buy one used for cheap, it’s now possible to use these Samsung TV cameras as a standard web camera under Linux… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.15 PCI Brings New Drivers For Agilex PCIe Controller & AMD Multimedia DMA Bridge
All of the PCI subsystem feature updates have now been merged for the Linux 6.15 kernel cycle. This includes some new drivers from AMD and Intel-Altera as well as various other PCI changes… ⌘ Read more

Xiph.Org’s Theora libtheora 1.2 Officially Released: 16 Years After v1.0
Earlier this month brought the Theora 1.2 beta release coming 16 years after Theora’s libtheora 1.0 release for this video codec designed by Xiph.Org for use with Ogg audio. Theora is derived from the now rather ancient VP3 video codec, but for those continuing to enjoy content in Theora format, today brings the version 1.2 library… ⌘ Read more