Latest Linux Hardware Reviews, Open-Source News & Benchmarks

Nice Performance Gains With SVT-AV1 2.3 Encoding On The System76 Thelio Astra
Nice Performance Gains With SVT-AV1 2.3 Encoding On The System76 Thelio Astra
2 Hours Ago - Arm - SVT-AV1 v2.3 - Add A Comment

With this week's release of SVT-AV1 2.3 for open-source AV1 encoding citing significant performance improvements for running on ARM, I was eager to see how well this AV1 encoder would be performing on the new System76 Thelio Astra ARM developer desktop powered by Ampere Altra. Here are some benchmarks showing those big speed-ups for ARM-based AV1 encoding.

Snapdragon X1 Elite CPUFreq Support Revised In Latest Linux Patches
Snapdragon X1 Elite CPUFreq Support Revised In Latest Linux Patches
3 Hours Ago - Arm - Snapdragon X1 Elite CPUFreq - Add A Comment

While the mainline Linux kernel has begun seeing initial support for various Snapdragon X1 Elite laptops, various feature limitations are outstanding before these Qualcomm-powered laptops really become usable for daily use. For instance, just a few days ago the audio firmware was finally upstreamed to make setting up X1 Elite laptops easier. Another important feature as an example is CPUFreq driver support for CPU frequency scaling to ensure optimal performance and power efficiency.

2 November

1 November

Wine 10.0 Release Plans Aim For Mid-January Release
Wine 10.0 Release Plans Aim For Mid-January Release
1 November 01:28 PM EDT - WINE - Wine 10.0 Release Plans - 9 Comments

Wine project leader Alexandre Julliard has laid out plans for releasing Wine 10.0 around mid-January as the annual stable release for this open-source software to run Windows applications and games on Linux and other platforms.

Ubuntu's Great Mainline Kernel PPA Hasn't Been Working Since Mid-September
Ubuntu's Great Mainline Kernel PPA Hasn't Been Working Since Mid-September
1 November 11:54 AM EDT - Ubuntu - Sad Face - 28 Comments

One of the very convenient features for Ubuntu Linux users who want to run the very newest upstream kernel releases or simply test a new kernel build for verifying bug fixes or functionality has been the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA. It's been around for years, backed by Canonical, and very convenient for fetching pre-built AArch64 / ARM / POWER / RISC-V / x86_64 kernel binaries as Debian packages... With options of stable/test kernel versions as well as daily packages. Sadly, it's been broken once again and has been in that manner since mid-September.

New Intel Diamond Rapids Patch For GCC Confirms AVX10.2-512, APX & Other ISA Features
New Intel Diamond Rapids Patch For GCC Confirms AVX10.2-512, APX & Other ISA Features
1 November 07:00 AM EDT - Intel - -march=diamondrapids - 4 Comments

Intel software engineers have been very busy recently with upstreaming various elements of support into the Linux kernel, open-source compilers and more for the next-generation Xeon Diamond Rapids processors. Following the recent GCC prep patches for Diamond Rapids to work on the ISA additions around AMX-AVX512, AMX-FP8, AMX-FP32, and others, a new patch was posted today for actually exposing the "-march=diamondrapids" compiler target and in turn confirming all of the new ISA capabilities.

Intel Arrow Lake, AMD EPYC Turin & Linux Kernel Drama Made For An Interesting October
Intel Arrow Lake, AMD EPYC Turin & Linux Kernel Drama Made For An Interesting October
1 November 06:34 AM EDT - Phoronix - October Highlights - 2 Comments

October is now in the books after writing 247 original news articles and another 24 Linux hardware reviews / featured multi-page benchmark articles. From the launches of Intel Arrow Lake and AMD EPYC 9005 to other interesting new hardware, the Russian Linux kernel drama, Linux 6.12 developments and early Linux 6.13 patches queuing in "-next" branches, October was an interesting month both for hardware and open-source software.

Ubuntu Hoping To Remove Qt 5 Before Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
Ubuntu Hoping To Remove Qt 5 Before Ubuntu 26.04 LTS
1 November 06:24 AM EDT - Ubuntu - Moving To Qt 6 - 40 Comments

Ubuntu developer Simon Quigley laid out the plans for hoping Ubuntu packages will move from Qt 5 to Qt 6 so that by the time of the Ubuntu 26.04 LTS cycle in early 2026 that the older version of this graphical toolkit can be removed.

31 October

AMD EPYC 9655 Benchmarks Show The Terrific Generational Gains With 5th Gen EPYC
AMD EPYC 9655 Benchmarks Show The Terrific Generational Gains With 5th Gen EPYC
31 October 12:26 PM EDT - Processors - 13 Comments

With the AMD EPYC 9005 "Turin" series launch earlier this month there was launch-day benchmark review results for the EPYC 9575F, EPYC 9755, and EPYC 9965 processors in looking at that frequency optimized SKU, the new flagship 128-core Turin "classic" core model, and the new flagship 192-core Turin "dense" core SKU, respectively. That's interesting for looking at the new 5th Gen AMD EPYC top-end wares but in comparing to 4th Gen EPYC also means higher core counts at the top-end. In being curious about the core-for-core advantages of 5th Gen EPYC, I managed to get my hands on the AMD EPYC 9655 processors for seeing how that model compares to the prior AMD EPYC 9654 "Genoa" flagship model. Here's a look today at how the AMD EPYC 9655 1P/2P 96-core processor compares to the prior EPYC 9654 flagship.

Fedora Stakeholders Debate Idea Of "-O3" Optimized Packages
Fedora Stakeholders Debate Idea Of "-O3" Optimized Packages
31 October 09:00 AM EDT - Fedora - Fedora -O3 Optimized Packages? - 41 Comments

Following the announcement yesterday that Ubuntu 25.04 will default to the -O3 optimization level with GCC for its Debian package builds, Fedora stakeholders have begun debating the merits of switching to the -O3 optimization level or not instead of the existing -O2 optimization level default.

30 October

AMD "Cleaner Shader" Coming For GFX11.0.3 GPUs To Help Ensure User/App Isolation
30 October 08:27 PM EDT - Radeon - AMD Cleaner Shader - 11 Comments

A new patch posted today for the AMDGPU Linux kernel graphics driver is introducing a "cleaner shader" explicitly for GFX11.0.3 GPUs like the Radeon 780M integrated graphics to help ensure that there is sufficient data isolation between different workloads running on the GPUs. The motivation isn't clear if there is some GFX11.0.3 security vulnerability, some AMD Linux customer particularly concerned about security on said GPUs, or some other motivation for focusing this latest cleaner shader work on GFX11.0.3 hardware.

Benchmarks Of Google's Axion Arm-based CPU: Competitive Performance & Compelling Value
30 October 12:00 PM EDT - Processors - 7 Comments

Earlier this year Google announced Axion as their first Arm-based CPU for the Google Cloud. Today already they are taking Axion to general availability with the new C4A instances. These new C4A instances are advertised as offering up to 50% better performance and up to 60% better energy efficiency than their current generation x86 instance types. In this article are some of the first public independent performance benchmarks of the Google Axion CPU along with comparing to existing GCE Arm and x86_64 instance types.

OpenPaX Announced As "Open-Source Alternative To GrSecurity" With Free Kernel Patch
30 October 11:00 AM EDT - Linux Security - OpenPaX - 20 Comments

Enterprise security firm Edera today is announcing OpenPaX that they promoted in their advance press notice as a "new open-source alternative to GrSecurity." GrSecurity being the firm focused on providing out-of-tree Linux kernel patches focused in the name of security enhancements. With OpenPaX they are open-source and publicly available kernel patch for mitigating common memory safety errors and other system hardening.

DRM Panic "Screen of Death" Support Being Extended To All Recent AMD GPUs
30 October 06:23 AM EDT - Radeon - DRM_Panic - 20 Comments

DRM_Panic is the functionality first added in Linux 6.10 for "Blue Screen of Death" type functionality when a kernel panic occurs or similar for displaying a nice graphical error message. Since the initial introduction it's been extended to handle QR code error messages, monochrome logos, and other customization options. The AMDGPU driver has new patches available for expanding the DRM_Panic support to all DCE/DCN-based graphics cards.

29 October

Intel Posts Updated Raptor Lake Microcode For Linux: Fixes Voltage Issue & Other Bugs
29 October 08:36 PM EDT - Intel - Raptor Lake Microcode - 5 Comments

Intel off their typical second Tuesday of the month patch regiment today posted new CPU microcode just for 13th Gen "Raptor Lake" and 14th Gen "Raptor Lake Refresh" processors for Linux systems. Notable with the updated Raptor Lake CPU microcode is the internal voltage handling fix for that well known problem plaguing many Raptor Lake owners plus two other fixes.

AV1 Still Picture Encoding Merged For Mesa 24.3 Radeon Driver
29 October 06:00 AM EDT - Mesa - AV1 Still Picture / AVIF - 10 Comments

David Rosca working for AMD has continued to improve their open-source video acceleration support within Mesa. Merged today for Mesa 24.3 is the code within the Gallium3D video acceleration front-end and the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver for handling AV1 still picture encode.

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