Linux Hardware Reviews & Performance Benchmarks, Open-Source News

Going back to February there was a bug report around the xHCI controller dieing on resume from s2idle when using an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ "Strix Halo" Framework Desktop. In turn all USB devices behind the xHCI controller are lost on resume, but unbinding and binding the driver can restore the functionality without a reboot. After months of back and forth communication, it looks like a solution has been figured out and comes down to a nuance of the PCI spec with needing a brief wait.

Newer Lenovo ThinkPad systems feature a security feature called USB-C Security Restricted Mode that is in the process of being wired up for reporting under Linux.

With the Linux 7.2 kernel there is initial support for booting the Apple M3 SoC on Linux but it's not yet functional for end users with just booting to a simple console. There are now Device Tree files posted for booting the Apple M4 on Linux but also not yet useful for any typical Apple Mac/MacBook usage on Linux.

The AMD Ryzen AI Halo mini PC powered by Ryzen AI Max+ "Strix Halo" began shipping this week. It features very nice Linux support out-of-the-box with the Debian-based Ryzen AI Developer Platform operating system. For those wishing to run their own x86_64 Linux distribution, one of the only caveats in the Linux support is quite small... No mainline kernel support yet for controlled the RGB LED light strip on the driver. But that driver is coming and will hopefully be mainlined soon.

Zlib-rs 0.6.6 was just released by the Trifecta Tech Foundation. Just weeks after the prior release with a fix for Intel Raptor Lake and bringing new SIMD optimizations, zlib-rs 0.6.6 is about delivering updated Zlib API compatibility.

The open-source, Rust-based Redox OS platform had a very eventful June with many new features implemented and more software ported over to run on this from-scratch operating system.

The Document Foundation today announced the first beta release of the LibreOffice 26.8 open-source office suite set for its stable debut in August.

The OpenMandriva project put out a statement today concerning an attempted distribution sabotage effort. Part of the OpenMandriva GitHub repository was deleted and there was an empty package push made to OpenMandriva's Cooker repository in trying to obsolete all GNOME and COSMIC packages.

Given today's pricing environment around system memory, a Phoronix Premium supporter recently requested some benchmarks to quantify the performance difference from single to dual channel memory. In considering a new computer build, he is contemplating whether to go for a single stick of DDR5 memory until memory prices hopefully subside in the future. For those in a similar boat, here are some benchmarks of single versus dual channel memory on an Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus "Arrow Lake" desktop.

8 July 09:37 AM EDT - Intel - Intel Open-Source Archivals

Intel has formally archived some more of their now-unmaintained open-source projects this week.

AMD ZenDNN 6.0 released today as a significant update to this open-source deep neural network library for helping to accelerate inferencing on AMD Zen processors from Ryzen to EPYC.

The Linux Mint distribution has published their June development summary that most notably includes work on Cinnamon's Wayland support where it's now ready to graduate.

Introduced to the Linux kernel nearly six years ago was the Syscall User Dispatch feature to help with Linux gaming. Specifically, Syscall User Dispatch was developed to help Windows games run on Linux more efficiently. While it was upstreamed in Linux 5.11 for more efficiently intercepting system calls from Windows software under Wine, now in the name of security there are patches working their way to the mainline kernel to more easily disable it.

Two more security issues were made public today concerning the X.Org Server codebase and in turn XWayland also being affected.

Proton 11.0-1 was just released as stable as the newest major version of this downstream of Wine that powers Valve's Steam Play to provide for a great Windows gaming experience across conventional Linux systems plus the popular Steam Deck and brand new Steam Machine.

AMDGPU kernel driver maintainer Alex Deucher of AMD sent out a set of 30 patches today working on clearing out all of the BUG() usage within this Linux kernel graphics driver.

7 July 11:45 AM EDT - NVIDIA - GCC 17 + NVIDIA Rigel

That didn't take long... Mere minutes after NVIDIA confirmed some basic Rosa CPU details and its "Rigel" CPU core, merged to the upstream GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) codebase is initial enablement on the NVIDIA Rigel core.

Razer is a brand synonymous with gaming and finally in 2026 they are in the process of certifying their first laptop for Ubuntu Linux. This laptop going through Ubuntu Linux certification is the Razer Blade 18 RZ09-0582 and it offers incredible performance with the Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus processor and GeForce RTX 5090 graphics but with that also comes a very high price tag.

In a blog post today talking up the single threaded CPU performance of their Vera CPU with Olympus cores, NVIDIA confirmed a few basic details of their next-gen Rosa CPU featuring their "Rigel" core.

NVIDIA today published their latest stable driver update for Linux customers in their newest R610 release branch.

7 July 08:06 AM EDT - Debian - TUXEDO Computers + Debian

Bavarian Linux PC vendor TUXEDO Computers announced they are switching from Ubuntu to Debian as the base for their TUXEDO OS platform.

The Linux kernel's AF_ALG interface was deprecated in Linux 7.2. This interface for letting user-space programs interact directly with the Linux kernel crypto API has proven to be a "massive attack surface" due to a variety of security concerns. With its deprecation in Linux 7.2, some AF_ALG features are already removed and for Linux 7.3 this interface is being further restrained.

One of the original developers behind the work to allow the Linux kernel to be compiled using LLVM/Clang as an alternative to the GCC compiler is now back in the saddle working on LLVM Linux support. LLVM/Clang support for building the Linux kernel has been important for improving code portability and addressing GCC'isms, making use of LLVM compiler features not yet found with the GNU toolchain, evaluating the performance between GCC and Clang, and all the more important these days with the Linux kernel Rust integration.

In 2026 it's not too surprising when seeing old PCMCIA and ISA drivers being removed from the mainline Linux kernel source tree and old very low-speed network interfaces, with arguably the most surprising fast being how long they lasted in the mainline kernel. Meanwhile for the upcoming Linux 7.3 kernel, one of the first 10Gb Ethernet drivers is already set for retirement from the mainline Linux kernel.

The newest, unexpected addition to the Mesa codebase by Microsoft engineers is contributed accelerated AV1 video encoding on the GPU using a combination of DirectX 12 and the Hardware Media Foundation Transform (HMFT) support that is part of the Windows Media Foundation layer.

6 July 05:04 PM EDT - Intel - Intel Gen12.5 Graphics

Earlier this year Vulkan Video encode was disabled on newer generations of Intel graphics hardware due to insufficient testing with the Intel ANV open-source driver. That impacted Gen12.5 graphics and newer - basically Alchemist and anything newer. Now at least Gen12.5 graphics with the likes of the Arc A-Series is seeing H.264 and H.265 encoding re-enabled.

Longtime AMD Linux graphics driver expert Marek Olšák, who joined Valve earlier this year and now focusing more on RADV rather than the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver, has seen some of his latest work now merged for Mesa 26.2. Marek landed a big overhaul to the variable rate shading (VRS) code that in some cases can double the performance.

Earlier this year AMD announced the Ryzen AI Halo as their in-house mini PC offering built around their leading Ryzen AI Max+ "Strix Halo" platform. After pre-orders began last month, the Ryzen AI Halo is officially beginning to ship this week and over the past few weeks we have been testing it out at Phoronix.

With the AMD Ryzen AI Halo developer platform there is the option of ordering this Ryzen AI Max+ mini PC with either Microsoft Windows 11 or "Linux OS". When receiving a AMD Ryzen AI Halo review sample last month, I fully expected it to just be an Ubuntu LTS install with ROCm preloaded. I was quite surprised when powering it up to find that it's an OS called the AMD Ryzen AI Developer Platform 1 "Rex" and is based on Debian Linux.

Going back to early May there were patches for improving the Linux scheduler to help with gaming performance on old "potato" hardware by providing better cgroup scheduling. Those patches, referred to as the "flatten the pick" patch series, are now slated for introduction in the Linux 7.3 kernel.

6 July 08:29 AM EDT - Intel - Intel i915 + Real-Time

When it comes to the real-time "RT" patches carried outside of the Linux kernel, a number of them pertain to adjustments around the Intel i915 kernel DRM graphics driver. The mainline Linux kernel and its RT support depend upon not building "PREEMPT_RT" for the i915 driver support while patches have been worked on recently for making this Intel kernel graphics driver code play nicely with real-time Linux.

The Ubuntu Foundations Engineering Manager, Ravi Kant Sharma, with Canonical has provided an update regarding the current ARM64 state on Ubuntu Linux.

The Pioneer DJM-S11 is a professional scratch style 2-channel DJ mixer that retails for $2,269 USD. But if currently connecting this expensive piece of kit to Linux, it does nothing and is unusable. With 87 new lines of code, it will begin to work with the Linux 7.3 kernel later this year.

The Unwill laptop driver on Linux for supporting various device-specific features by that major OEM/ODM will be seeing several new features with the Linux 7.3 cycle later this year. One of the most notable users of the Unwill driver is Bavarian Linux PC vendor TUXEDO Computers.

In addition to Sunday's release of DXVK 3.0.1, D7VK 1.12 was separately released as the latest version of this implementation for Direct3D 7 and older atop the Vulkan API.

Linux 7.2-rc2 is now available for testing in working toward the stable Linux 7.2 release in August.

Following the release of DXVK 3.0 from late June that brought several big changes, DXVK 3.0.1 is out today with shipping various game fixes and other improvements to this important piece of Valve's Steam Play (Proton) for Direct3D Windows games on Linux.

One month ago it was exciting to see the open-source ReactOS operating system running Valve's Half-Life game. Little to realize less than 30 days later it would also be running Half-Life 2.

5 July 06:32 AM EDT - AMD - Linux 7.3 AMDGPU + AMDKFD

In addition to Intel beginning to volley graphics driver patches for Linux 7.3, this week AMD also began sending out their pull requests of "new stuff" to DRM-Next for the Linux 7.3 kernel cycle.

5 July 06:14 AM EDT - Intel - Intel IPU8 With Nova Lake

More Linux kernel patches have been surfacing that confirm next-gen, high-end Nova Lake laptops will feature IPU8 image processing capabilities.

OpenRazer 3.12.4 is now available as the newest update to these out-of-tree, unofficial Linux drivers for Razer devices. OpenRazer when paired with the likes of Polychromatic or other GUI options is what makes for a nice experience running Razer gaming peripherals under Linux.

The FEX Emulator that allows running Linux x86/x86_64 software on ARM64 (AArch64) systems, including the likes of Wine / Valve's Steam Play (Proton) for Windows gaming on ARM, is out with its newest monthly feature release. The Valve-backed project for running x86_64 games and other software on ARM for the upcoming Steam Frame and other more typical ARM Linux systems has been baking more optimizations and improvements.

A set of patches to the Linux kernel's Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) scheduler that is shared among different kernel graphics drivers is showing the potential of delivering much lower job submission latency when the system is loaded with many runnable CPU processes.

One area of Linux hardware testing I haven't explored much in many years has been modern USB video capture for the lack of said hardware. The last time I did much video capturing on Linux was during the Hauppauge PCI card days. It turns out though that USB video capture of 4K 60 FPS content has been a pain point under Linux but is finally smoothing out with newer versions of the Linux kernel.

For those that missed Phoronix turning 22 years old last month when running a special to help support the site, a few readers mentioned recently they missed out on seeing the deal in time. Paired with the US Independence Day holiday and summer sales elsewhere, now through 10 July is a Phoronix Premium summer sale if wishing to view the site ad-free while supporting the daily open-source/Linux news coverage and relentless Linux hardware testing.

4 July 08:14 AM EDT - GNOME - Mutter + ext-background-effect-v1

Added to the Wayland Protocols repository back in May of 2025 was the ext-background-effect-v1 protocol for background blur that had been under discussion since early 2024. The initial focus is on being able to apply a blur effect on a window's background or otherwise a specified screen region. GNOME 51 has now merged support for ext-background-effect-v1 with the latest Mutter code.

In addition to this week's drm-intel-next pull request beginning to lay out the Intel kernel graphics driver changes for Linux 7.3, the first drm-xe-next pull request was sent out on Friday. Intel Nova Lake enablement remains the hot area for the Intel GPU driver code.

4 July 06:09 AM EDT - RISC-V - 256 Cores For RISC-V NR_CPUs

A post merge-window change that landed in Linux Git overnight ahead of tomorrow's Linux 7.2-rc2 release is bumping the default limit on the number of supported CPU cores for RISC-V 64-bit. Now by default Linux will support up to 256 cores with RISC-V 64-bit kernel builds.

4 July 05:52 AM EDT - KDE - KWin 6.8 Drops Desktop OpenGL

Along with releasing Plasma 6.7.2 this week, KDE developers continue to be quite busy working on new features and improvements for the Plasma 6.8 release while also furthering along fixes for future Plasma 6.7 point releases.