Latest Linux Hardware Reviews, Open-Source News & Benchmarks

Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu 24.04 Linux Performance For The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X
Windows 11 vs. Ubuntu 24.04 Linux Performance For The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X

With all of my AMD Ryzen 9900X and 9950X Linux benchmarking and Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X reviews as well, many have wondered if AMD Zen 5 is just really great on Linux, if Windows 11 is in particularly poor shape for these new AMD Ryzen 9000 series processors, if it's just the different/diverse benchmarks being run, or simply why are these new desktop CPUs running so well on Linux but less so with Windows?

Cloud Hypervisor 41 Brings Performance Improvements & Landlock Sandboxing
Cloud Hypervisor 41 Brings Performance Improvements & Landlock Sandboxing
14 Hours Ago - Virtualization - Cloud Hypervisor 41 - 1 Comment

The Cloud Hypervisor open-source project that serves as a Rust-written VMM focused on security and started by Intel but now backed by a multitude of vendors is out with its newest feature release. Cloud Hypervisor 41 is the new feature release worked on by engineers at Intel, Google, Microsoft, Rivos, Tencent, Ant Group, and others for this cloud and security minded virtual machine monitor.

15 August

Quantifying The AVX-512 Performance Impact With AMD Zen 5 - Ryzen 9 9950X Benchmarks
Quantifying The AVX-512 Performance Impact With AMD Zen 5 - Ryzen 9 9950X Benchmarks
15 August 09:00 AM EDT - Processors - 37 Comments

With the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X Linux review out of the way yesterday, today's benchmarking of the Ryzen 9000 series is looking closely at the AVX-512 performance impact. With the Ryzen 9000 series the Zen 5 cores have a full 512-bit data-path compared to the "double pumped" 256-bit data path found in the Zen 4 processors as well as the Strix Point SKUs. In this article is an AVX-512 enabled versus disabled comparison for not only the Ryzen 9 9950X but also the prior generation Ryzen 9 7950X and looking too at the CPU power use, thermals, and peak frequency when engaging a variety of AVX-512 workloads.

AmpereOne Performance In The Cloud With Oracle Cloud A2
AmpereOne Performance In The Cloud With Oracle Cloud A2
15 August 07:00 AM EDT - Processors - 2 Comments

After talking about AmpereOne for the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure since last year, earlier this month Oracle finally announced general availability on their OCI Ampere A2 instances for tapping into these latest-generation Ampere Computing AArch64 server processors in the public cloud. Here's a brief look at the OCI Ampere A2 performance with AmpereOne compared to their prior A1 instances powered by Ampere Altra.

Intel Linux NPU Driver 1.6 Released For Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake & Lunar Lake
Intel Linux NPU Driver 1.6 Released For Meteor Lake, Arrow Lake & Lunar Lake
15 August 02:00 AM EDT - Intel - Intel Linux NPU Driver 1.6 - Add A Comment

Intel engineers on Wednesday released the Linux NPU Driver v1.6 release for this for this MIT-licensed user-space mode driver support for the Neural Processing Unit (NPU) found since the Core Ultra Series 1 "Meteor Lake" SoCs and currently supporting the upcoming Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake processors as well. This Intel Linux NPU Driver in user-space interfaces with their iVPU kernel accelerator driver for making a nice open-source and upstream NPU software stack on Linux systems.

14 August

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X & Ryzen 9 9900X Deliver Excellent Linux Performance
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X & Ryzen 9 9900X Deliver Excellent Linux Performance
14 August 09:00 AM EDT - Processors - 97 Comments

Last Wednesday was the review embargo for the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X Zen 5 desktop processors that proved to be very exciting for Linux workloads from developers to creators to AVX-512 embracing AI and HPC workloads. Today the review embargo lifts on the Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X and as expected given the prior 6-core/8-core tests: these new chips are wild! The Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X are fabulous processors for those engaging in heavy real-world Linux workloads with excellent performance uplift and stunning power efficiency.

SiFive Announces P870-D For Up To 256 RISC-V Cores
SiFive Announces P870-D For Up To 256 RISC-V Cores
14 August 09:00 AM EDT - RISC-V - SiFive P870-D - 25 Comments

SiFive today lifted the lid on the P870-D, its new RISC-V processor dor data center and AI workloads. The P870-D is designed to scale up to 256 cores while supporting modern features like CXL and other AI/HPC minded features.

13 August

Framework Laptop 13 With Intel Core Ultra Series, 2.8K 120Hz Display
Framework Laptop 13 With Intel Core Ultra Series, 2.8K 120Hz Display
13 August 12:00 PM EDT - Computers - 19 Comments

Back in May the folks at Framework Computer announced Framework Laptop 13 support for the Intel Core Ultra Series 1 (Meteor Lake) alongside announcing a new 2.8K 120Hz display option, a new web camera upgrade, and new colors for their expansion cards. Today marks the review embargo expiration with the hardware now shipping. Here's my initial look at the Intel Core Ultra Series (Meteor Lake) within the confines of the modular and upgradeable Framework Laptop 13.

ASUS ROG Ally X Audio Support Being Fixed Up Ahead Of Linux 6.12
ASUS ROG Ally X Audio Support Being Fixed Up Ahead Of Linux 6.12
13 August 06:55 AM EDT - Hardware - ASUS ROG Ally X - Add A Comment

In addition to the ASUS ROG Ally X revision of this handheld gaming console having more (and faster) system memory, doubling of the battery capacity, upgraded storage, improved cooling, and other refinements over the original ROG Ally gaming handheld, there is a different audio amplifier. In turn a Linux kernel patch is needed to fix-up the audio support on the ASUS ROG Ally X as well as needing to fetch a new firmware binary.

AMDVLK 2024.Q3.1 Brings Official Ubuntu 24.04 Support & New Performance Tuning
AMDVLK 2024.Q3.1 Brings Official Ubuntu 24.04 Support & New Performance Tuning
13 August 06:32 AM EDT - Radeon - AMDVLK 2024.Q3.1 - 4 Comments

Hitting the release button minutes ago, AMDVLK 2024.Q3.1 is available as the newest version of AMD's official open-source Vulkan driver and the first new release since the end of June. This driver continues to trail in popularity to the likes of the Valve-backed Mesa RADV Radeon Vulkan driver but does well in areas like Vulkan ray-tracing and is officially backed by AMD.

Mir-Based Miracle-WM Updated Ahead Of Fedora Miracle Spin
Mir-Based Miracle-WM Updated Ahead Of Fedora Miracle Spin
13 August 06:19 AM EDT - Wayland - Miracle-WM 0.3.1 - 16 Comments

Miracle-WM as a reminder is a Wayland tiling window manager that is built atop Canonical's Mir. Miracle-WM also happens to be developed by a Canonical engineer, Matthew Kosarek. Miracle-WM is inspired by i3 and Sway but the main difference is turning to Mir to do the heavy lifting. Miracle-WM 0.3.1 was released on Monday as the project prepares for its Fedora Miracle Spin debut coming up.

12 August

AMD Bus Lock Detect Positioned Ahead Of Linux 6.12
12 August 09:51 AM EDT - AMD - AMD Bus Lock Detect - 7 Comments

Going back four years ago Intel engineers worked out bus lock detection for the Linux kernel to benefit their processors able to detect bus locks and then notify the kernel, given the negative performance implications associated with bus locks. That Intel support was merged in Linux 5.13 back in 2021 while now AMD has their equivalent ready for mainlining in the Linux kernel.

GNOME Developers New Code Takes On Cursor Stutters
12 August 08:30 AM EDT - GNOME - Dynamic Deadline Evasion v3 - 43 Comments

It's been one year since Canonical desktop engineer Daniel van Vugt, who is known for his upstream GNOME contributions, touched his patch-set implementing dynamic deadline evasion support. But this week brought the long-awaited third iteration of the patches that aim to eliminate cursor stutters from the Mutter compositor's KMS thread.

GCC 15 Merges Initial Support For Intel AVX10.2 Support
12 August 06:48 AM EDT - GNU - GCC 15 - 8 Comments

As a follow up to the article from a few weeks ago of Intel publishing the AVX10.2 specifications and posting GCC compiler patches for that next iteration of AVX10, the initial support was merged today into the GNU Compiler Collection.

Updated XZ Code For The Kernel Looks Like It's Ready For Linux 6.12
12 August 06:41 AM EDT - Linux Kernel - Linux Kernel XZ Update - 8 Comments

The past few months have seen patches for updating the XZ (de)compression code within the Linux kernel that's been a lengthy process in part due to the XZ backdoor situation earlier this year and the reputable XZ developers in turn being busy cleaning up that mess. In any event it appears that the updated XZ code for the Linux kernel is now on track for mainlining come Linux 6.12.

GTK Making Progress On HDR & Supporting More Color Spaces
12 August 06:05 AM EDT - GNOME - GTK HDR Display - 15 Comments

Colors within the GTK toolkit have been represented to date using sRGB but developers have been working on supporting other color spaces like Display-P3 and BT.2100-PQ as they work to better support High Dynamic Range (HDR) displays on the Linux desktop.

11 August

FFmpeg Merges Vulkan Video Encode Support
11 August 08:47 AM EDT - Vulkan - Vulkan Video Encoding - 20 Comments

Since the release of FFmpeg 6.1 last year there has been accelerated Vulkan Video decoding support while being merged to FFmpeg Git this weekend is the Vulkan Video encode support.

Wayland Merges New Screen Capture Protocols
11 August 06:43 AM EDT - Wayland - ext-image-capture-source-v1 - 70 Comments

Nearly three years in the making, the ext-image-capture-source-v1 and ext-image-copy-capture-v1 protocols have been merged into the Wayland Protocols repository for vastly improving screen capture support on the Wayland desktop.

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