Linux Hardware Reviews & Performance Benchmarks, Open-Source News

The Gentoo Linux project last year announced plans to move their code hosting to Codeberg rather than GitHub. Gentoo's desire to move away from GitHub was motivated by Microsoft's Copilot training on GitHub repositories. Those plans are turning into action now with the main Gentoo project up on Codeberg and honoring pull requests.

4 Hours Ago - AMD - AMD Zen 5 Address Translation

A long-in-development feature for AMD EPYC Zen 5 server platforms now merged for the Linux 7.0 kernel is ACPI PRMT-based address translation for the Compute Express Link (CXL) subsystem.

This month I have been doing a lot of Panther Lake benchmarking under Linux with the Core Ultra X7 358H. One of the areas of much interest has been the Arc B390 Xe3 graphics that have been working nicely out-of-the-box with the Intel open-source driver stack on Linux although there still are some gaps to fill against Windows. Those Intel Arc B390 Linux benchmarks so far have been focused on OpenGL and Vulkan graphics, but what about OpenCL and GPU compute with the open-source Intel Compute Runtime? Today's article is looking at the performance of the Xe3 Panther Lake graphics on the newest Compute Runtime release compared to prior Intel graphics generations and the AMD Ryzen AI competition.

DRM Panic is the Linux kernel infrastructure now supported by most of the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel graphics/display drivers for being able to render a QR code kernel error message or similar when a kernel panic occurs to provide a cleaner interface should your system run into serious problems. An idea has been raised now within the Fedora Linux camp to provide an improved experience around this feature akin to Windows' "Blue Screen of Death" functionality.

For fans of Lutris as the open-source desktop client for installing and playing many games on Linux, Lutris 0.5.20 is out today with new features that further enhance the integration with different emulators and compatibility layers.

The RISC-V architecture updates have been merged for Linux 7.0 with a few items to note.

Merged a few days ago for the Linux 7.0 kernel were all of the driver core enhancements. As has been the common theme in recent kernel releases, a lot of the driver core code churn revolves around additions for allowing more Rust kernel driver usage.

Linux 6.19.1 was released earlier today while it's since been replaced by Linux 6.19.2 to address fallout from that first point release with some systems not booting. This also resulted in new LTS kernel releases too due to the problematic code being picked up there too.

The PCI subsystem updates for Linux 7.0 are aplenty as usual and contain a wide assortment of different fixes and code improvements.

Upstreamed last week to the linux-firmware.git repository by Qualcomm was the GPU firmware files needed for enabling the Adreno GPU on the new Snapdragon X2 Elite laptop SoC.

While the OpenRISC project began ten years before RISC-V was started, it hasn't enjoyed the hardware ecosystem successes of the latter but still the upstream Linux kernel support continues moving forward and the ability to run OpenRISC on FPGA developer boards.

InputPlumber 0.74 is now available for this open-source input routing and control daemon for Linux systems. InputPlumber enables combining of multiple input devices, emulating different inputs, and a variety of other features particularly of benefit for Linux gaming.

For those preferring to wait for the first point release of a new Linux kernel version before upgrading, Linux 6.19.1 is out today to address some early bugs that made it into the Linux 6.19 kernel stable release one week ago.

Linus Torvalds merged the code this weekend that allows easily replacing the Tux penguin boot logo used during the boot process. This new code optionally allows specifying an alternative boot logo at compile/build time.

The open-source Linux file-system driver for supporting Microsoft's exFAT now can deliver better sequential read performance with Linux 7.0 thanks to multi-cluster support.

Version 0.20 of the popular wlroots Wayland support library is nearing its official release. Over the past week were two release candidates for wlroots 0.20 were published for this library used by Sway, Wayfire, Cage, Gamescope, and numerous other Wayland compositors.

A patch series sent out for review this weekend can significantly improve the system hibernation performance under Linux. Particularly for those with slower SSDs, the patches can make Linux hibernate up to several times faster.

Announced last year by consulting firm LunarG was KosmicKrisp as a Vulkan-on-Metal driver for efficiently leveraging the Vulkan API on Apple macOS systems as an alternative to the MoltenVK project. KosmicKrisp was upstreamed for Mesa 26.0 and continues making great progress for opening up more Vulkan possibilities in Apple's world.

The NFS server changes for Linux 7.0 happen to include some nice improvements for this big kernel version number release.

15 February 06:07 AM EST - Hardware - PCIe M.2 Connectors In Device Tree

The power sequencing subsystem updates have been merged for the Linux 7.0 cycle. Typically not an area of the kernel too exciting but one new driver addition is the "pwrseq-pcie-m2" to provide power sequencing for PCIe M.2 connectors.

The Flash Friendly File-System (F2FS) has multiple performance improvements to provide its users with on the in-development Linux 7.0 kernel.

This Valentine's Day there is a lot of red on the screen for the X.Org Server with the code delta as a result of renaming of their main Git development branch and in the process selectively dropping questionable patches to the prior "master" codebase.

Vim 9.2 is out today as the newest feature release for this robust and comprehensive text editor. This Valentine's Day release for Vim lovers brings experimental Wayland support, XDG Base Directory specification support, modernized defaults for HiDPI displays, new completion features, and an improved diff mode.

The HID subsystem changes were merged this week for the ongoing Linux 7.0 kernel merge window. Among the Human Interface Devices (HID) work this cycle were supporting more guitars while also adding more device IDs and different laptop quirks.

14 February 09:08 AM EST - Intel - Intel Quantum Passes

Following Intel recently discontinuing a number of open-source projects, this week they formally discontinued their Quantum Passes open-source project that was intended to provide additional passes for their LLVM-based compiler in the Intel Quantum SDK.

In addition to this week's GNOME 50 beta release, there were also other exciting developments in the GNOME ecosystem.

14 February 06:47 AM EST - Arm - ARM64 LS64/LS64V

Beyond all of the exciting Intel/AMD x86_64 changes and improvements to enjoy with the upcoming Linux 7.0, there is one notable ARM64 feature addition this kernel cycle.

The Linux Memory Technology Device (MTD) subsystem updates have been merged for the Linux 7.0 kernel and include introducing Octal DTR "8D-8D-8D" support in SPI NAND for better performance.

For those that may be considering the new ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED (UM3406GA) laptop that has been refreshed for the new AMD Ryzen AI 400 series, Cirrus Logic has now upstreamed the necessary firmware for the cs35l41 audio amplifier for working speaker support.

13 February 08:40 PM EST - KDE - KDE Plasma 6.6

KDE's Plasma 6.6 desktop release is due out next week (17 February) and there's been some last minute fixes to land. Additionally, KDE Plasma developers continue to be quite active in already landing feature work for Plasma 6.7.

One of the latest exciting developments for the open-source Godot game engine is beginning to lay out support for Vulkan ray-tracing.

The GNOME 50 beta release is now available ahead of the official GNOME 50 desktop due out in March.

13 February 02:36 PM EST - NVIDIA - NVIDIA GA100 + Nouveau GSP

One of the latest NVIDIA open-source contributions this week wasn't for the in-development Nova kernel driver but for enhancing the existing Nouveau kernel driver. The patch posted is for bringing up the NVIDIA GA100 GPU under Nouveau using the GPU System Processor (GSP).

With the Serial Peripheral Interface "SPI" subsystem updates for the Linux 7.0 kernel comes support for multi-lane SPI.

Adding to the exciting features for the big Linux 7.0 kernel release is support for the Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Algorithm "ML-DSA" quantum-resistant signature algorithm.

AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization with Secure Nested Paging (SEV-SNP) provides memory encryption and integrity protections that can be especially useful in modern cloud computing. Typically a 2~10% performance overhead is reported when engaging AMD SEV-SNP for these hardware-backed security protections. In this article is an extensive look at the current AMD SEV-SNP performance impact for confidential computing on EPYC 9005 "Turin" servers. The current Ubuntu 24.04 LTS was tested as well as an Ubuntu 26.04 development snapshot in evaluating the latest optimizations and what is on the horizon this year for AMD EPYC Linux server performance.

As some long overdue housekeeping, the Linux 7.0 kernel has removed an Error Detection And Correction "EDAC" driver for the Intel 440BX and 440GX chipset. The driver is being removed not only because that chipset was just used by old Celerons and Pentium II / Pentium III CPUs but that it's been in the kernel all this time while being known to be broken for 19+ years.

The slab memory allocator feature updates have been merged for the Linux 7.0 kernel. Most notable this cycle is expanded use of the recently-introduced Sheaves functionality.

Merged for the Linux 6.19 kernel was initial Nova Lake S audio support. Now merged this week for the Linux 7.0 kernel is enabling sound support for additional Nova Lake platforms.

Red Hat's leading input expert Peter Hutterer announced the release overnight of libinput 1.31, the input handling library used by the Linux desktop on both X.Org and Wayland desktop sessions.

All of the hardware monitoring "HWMON" subsystem updates have been merged for the ongoing Linux 7.0 merge window.

The Haiku open-source operating system project inspired by BeOS kicked off 2026 by making many improvements to its kernel, device drivers, and user-space software.

All of the memory management "MM" related patches have now been merged for the ongoing Linux 7.0 merge window.

The XFS file-system has some interesting new feature work and performance tuning with the Linux 7.0 kernel that will be used by the likes of Fedora 44 and Ubuntu 26.04 LTS this spring.

12 February 04:18 PM EST - Intel - Cache Aware Scheduling

Not in time for the current Linux 7.0 cycle but posted for another round of review is Intel's latest work around Cache Aware Scheduling for enhancing the performance of modern CPUs with multiple cache domains. This is the first set of updates to Cache Aware Scheduling for the new year and succeed the v2 patches from early December. This work not only benefits modern Intel CPUs but our testing has shown can also provide some very nice gains too for AMD EPYC processors.

Sent out and already merged today for the Linux 7.0 kernel are the EXT4 file-system updates.

12 February 01:20 PM EST - Mesa - AMD Unified Video Decode

Merged today to Mesa 26.1-devel is unifying of the AMD video decode implementation between the RadeonSI Gallium3D and RADV Vulkan drivers.

In addition to all of the exciting Intel and AMD x86_64 enhancements that have been landing this week so far for the Linux 7.0 kernel, the aging SPARC, Alpha, and Motorola 680x0 "m68k" CPU ports have also seen some patches for this new kernel.

Earlier this month I posted benchmarks of the Loongson 3B6000 for this 12-core / 24-thread LoongArch Chinese CPU with DDR4 ECC memory. Those initial benchmarks were done with Debian LoongArch64 while since then I've shifted over to using Arch Linux on LoongArch.

Canonical released Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS today as the newest point release to the Noble Numbat.

The Linux 7.0 networking pull request showcases two extremes and the diversity and robustness of the open-source kernel ecosystem. Linux 7.0 is laying the groundwork for WiFi 8 Ultra-High Reliability (UHR) support while this kernel version is also bidding farewell to the last Ethernet driver for use over parallel printer ports.

The Linux kernel's workqueue for async task handling within a dedicated kernel thread is seeing some useful improvements with Linux 7.0.

The performance "perf" events changes for the Linux 7.0 kernel are continuing to prepare for next-generation Xeon Diamond Rapids processors as the successor to current Xeon 6 Granite Rapids.

12 February 06:31 AM EST - Intel - Resource Control

Intel has upstreamed some Resource Control "resctrl" improvements to Linux 7.0 for enhanced telemetry monitoring. This is the good kind of telemetry with this new code being useful for being able to monitor how much energy or work is attributed to a group of tasks / process IDs on the system.

The Linux 7.0 kernel has removed support for signing kernel modules using SHA-1 as it's no longer considered secure but existing SHA-1 signed modules can still be loaded.

All of the media subsystem driver updates have been merged for the in-development Linux 7.0 kernel and brings some new work around AV1 acceleration as well as other driver updates.

The massive set of Linux kernel graphics/display driver Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) updates were sent out and merged today for the Linux 7.0 kernel. This also includes the growing work around accelerator "accel" drivers for AI NPUs and the like.

The Linux MultiMediaCard "MMC" subsystem was set to see some new hardware support, optimized support for secure erase/trim on some eMMCs, and a variety of other improvements. But all of the MMC changes are rejected and will be for the duration of the Linux 7.0 cycle due to an apparent lack of testing and vetting via linux-next that led Linus Torvalds to calling it "complete garbage" and "untested crap".

Well known open-source Linux graphics driver developer David Airlie of Red Hat, who is the co-maintainer of the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel graphics/display drivers and accelerator "accel" drivers, announced experimental work on AI-drive code/patch review for these open-source kernel drivers.

Longtime Linux users may recall the Sabayon Linux distribution that was Gentoo-based and focused on a nice out-of-the-box experience from the mid 2000s through 2019 before fading away after 2018. Sabayon Linux creator Fabio Erculiani wrote in to Phoronix today to announce he's begun working on a new Linux distribution called matrixOS.

Mesa 26.0 was just officially released as this quarter's new feature release for these open-source OpenGL / Gallium3D and Vulkan drivers used commonly on Linux systems and elsewhere like within the confines of Microsoft's WSL.

Following yesterday's Chrome 145 release with JPEG-XL support, Chrome 146 today was promoted to the beta channel to help facilitate broader testing of the next round of Chrome/Chromium browser improvements.

11 February 11:00 AM EST - AMD - AMD ROCm

Two useful bits of ROCm news today for those interested in AMD's open-source GPU compute stack.

The Linux Mint developers have been hard at work continuing to develop new features following their recent Mint 22.3 release. There is continued enhancements around keyboard support, a new administration tool for users, and there are also considerations being made around moving to a longer development cycle between Linux Mint releases.

11 February 09:11 AM EST - Intel - Intel TSX Performance

The x86/cpu changes have been merged for Linux 7.0 and include finally setting the default Intel TSX mode to "auto" rather than being off by default.

For those using the open-source OpenVPN for your virtual private networking (VPN) needs, OpenVPN 2.7 is out today with some notable improvements.

11 February 08:19 AM EST - Intel - Intel Compute Runtime + IGC

Intel today released a new version of their Compute Runtime stack and IGC graphics compiler for Level Zero and OpenCL usage with their integrated and discrete graphics. Separately they also upstreamed more SYCL code this week into mainline LLVM.

The core timer changes to the Linux 7.0 kernel score a rather nice performance improvement in a UDP receive network stress test from inlining a function that compilers haven't been able to tackle with their optimizations.

11 February 06:08 AM EST - WINE - Adobe Photoshop Installer

There were recently patches for getting the Adobe Photoshop 2025 installer to work on Linux under Wine. Those patches were picked up by Wine-Staging and now more traction is coming for getting those patches into the upstream Wine codebase, some of which have now been merged.

The locking code changes have been merged for the Linux 7.0 kernel and it introduces support for a new compiler-driven feature being introduced on the compiler side with the upcoming LLVM Clang 22.