Latest Linux Hardware Reviews, Open-Source News & Benchmarks

Ahead of the holidays there is a new Vulkan API spec update from The Khronos Group.

PHP 8.2 is out today as the annual major feature release to this widely-used scripting language primarily for web purposes.

With the Linux 6.1 kernel set to be released this weekend, here is a look back at the prominent changes to find with this kernel. Linux 6.1 besides being the last kernel version of the year is all the more important in that it's expected to be the new Long Term Support (LTS) kernel.

Thanks to the work led by Valve engineers on the open-source Linux graphics stack, Mesa 23.0 continues picking up new features for the Radeon Vulkan "RADV" driver.

While Intel's GPU compute stack for Linux is fully open-source, one area where it still has room for improvement is getting it packaged up on more Linux distributions. The reference binaries published by Intel for their Compute-Runtime and Level Zero components are just Debian/Ubuntu packages but with time -- and as Arc Graphics and other hardware becomes available -- we are seeing more distributions taking a stab at offering up their own package builds.

For those running an AMD Ryzen 5000 series "Cezanne" powered laptop, squeezing into the kernel this week ahead of the Linux 6.1 debut on Sunday is a suspend/resume fix affecting various models.

Fwupd 1.8.8 is available today as the newest update to this excellent solution for allowing system and device/peripheral firmware updates to happen under Linux and other platforms when paired with the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS).

With the AMD P-State CPU frequency scaling driver that has come together over the past year and improved upon there has been the Energy Performance Preference "EPP" mode being worked on recently to further improve the performance/power characteristics of Ryzen and EPYC processors on Linux. A new patch series today implements a third mode for the AMD P-State driver.

Blender 3.4 is now available as the latest feature release for this increasingly popular, industry-supported open-source cross-platform 3D modeling software.

Following the initial AMD Zen 4 "znver4" target for GCC 13 that was published and merged in October (and now a SUSE engineer working on providing actually tuned support and accurate cost tables), an initial AMD Zen 4 patch for the LLVM/Clang compiler was published a few days ago.

With the upcoming Linux 6.2 kernel cycle the Apple Silicon CPU frequency scaling driver is set to be mainlined for further improving the Apple M1/M2 SoC support on the mainline kernel.

The first beta of OpenVPN 2.6 is now available and it's a big one for those using this cross-platform, virtual private network (VPN) system.

The Asahi Linux distribution is now shipping an early, alpha quality graphics driver stack for the Apple M1/M2 SoCs. This work-in-progress driver consists of their experimental Rust-written DRM kernel driver and then the AGX Gallium3D code in Mesa that is currently targeting OpenGL 2.1 and OpenGL ES 2.0 support.

In addition to today seeing the GCC Rust front-end being declared ready for merging with its latest patch series sent out today, the Modula-2 front-end sent out its third revision which is also expected to now be merged as another new programming language front-end for GCC 13.

Among the many exciting new features in Linux 6.1 is the merging of the Multi-Gen LRU "MGLRU" code as what has shaped up to be one of the best kernel innovations for 2022 for overhauling the Linux kernel's page reclamation code. The performance results already are very promising and MGLRU is being used successfully at Google and other large deployments. The work isn't over though on further advancing the kernel in this area.

Among the early pull requests sent out already ahead of the Linux 6.2 merge window opening next week is a change to enable "-funsigned-char" by default for Linux kernel builds. In preparation for this compiler flag change several fixes have already landed along with a lot of early testing, so any fallout is hoped to be minimal.

Back in October AMD sent out their initial Zen 4 "znver4" enablement for the GCC compiler. That initial Zen 4 support was since merged for GCC 13 but that initial enablement carried over the cost tables from Zen 3 and didn't do much in the way of tuning but rather just flipping on the new instructions supported by the Ryzen 7000 series and EPYC 9004 series processors. Today there is finally some juicy tuning patches being sent out for GCC.

The GCC Rust front-end that provides very preliminary support for the Rust programming language atop the GNU Compiler Collection is now cleared for merging to the mainline codebase!

FEX-Emu is the open-source software project working on speedy x86/x86_64 software emulation on AArch64. FEX-Emu is one of the leading options for running x86 binaries on 64-bit Arm and has matured enough for allowing Linux games and Steam Play titles to run on Arm. FEX 2212 is out as the newest shiny feature update to this promising software.

One of the big undertakings this year within the (open)SUSE camp has been the YaST team's work on D-Installer as their next-generation operating system installer. This week they have published a new prototype of this installer with more functionality now in place.

Ahead of LibreOffice 7.5 expected to be released in February, today marks the availability of the first alpha build available for testing.

For FreeBSD users not yet on the FreeBSD 13 stable series, FreeBSD 12.4 is now available as the newest point release to that N-1 series.

The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) has provided their blessing to begin creating new x86_64 and AArch64 ISO images for mobile devices that feature the Phosh Wayland compositor.

Armbian 22.11 is now available as the Debian/Ubuntu-based Linux distribution popular with ARM development boards and supporting a wide range of hardware from different vendors.

Released this morning is Intel IGC 1.0.12504.5 for Linux and Windows systems as the newest version of the open-source Intel Graphics Compiler. As the first tagged update in nearly two months, IGC 1.0.12504.5 is a big one.

PoCL 3.1 is out today as the newest feature update to the "Portable Computing Language" that is effectively a portable OpenCL implementation that originally began focused on being a CPU-based implementation of OpenCL and has grown to support additional back-end drivers via LLVM for targeting NVIDIA CUDA, an experimental Vulkan driver, and other accelerator targets.

Last month I wrote about Intel having worked on USB4 wake-on-connect and wake-on-disconnect handling for the Linux kernel and those patches are indeed primed to be introduced next week with the Linux 6.2 merge window.

As we get ready to enter 2023, the Linux kernel's floppy disk driver is still being maintained.

While X.Org Katamari releases are no longer being organized to bundle up all of the different X11 software components behind one version number and some X.Org software pieces are seeing very seldom updates every number of years, this past week has seen twenty new X.Org software releases.

There isn't too much interest in Solaris these days and the once vibrant open-source (Open)Solaris community is a small fraction of its past, but OpenIndiana Hipster continues pushing forward as the operating system forked from OpenSolaris and now serves as a distribution derived from the Illumos code-base.

As was expected following an uptick in kernel patches mid-to-late in the cycle, Linus Torvalds today opted to issue Linux 6.1-rc8 rather than going straight to the stable release for Linux 6.1, which is also expected to serve as this year's Long Term Support (LTS) kernel.

Ahead of the Linux 6.1-rc8 kernel that Linus Torvalds is expected to issue shortly rather than going straight to Linux 6.1 stable, a revert for a small change leading to "huge performance regressions" in select areas has fortunately been caught and reverted.

A new release of Polychromatic is now available, the open-source GUI front-end for managing Razer devices on Linux by way of the community-managed OpenRazer drivers.

Thanks to the ongoing work led by Intel's Linux engineers, the upcoming Linux 6.2 kernel will feature more feature work around enabling Compute Express Link (CXL) functionality.

The newest Apache software project hitting the version 1.0 milestone is the Apache IoTDB as a time-series database focused on serving as a database to the Internet of Things (IoT).

With SDL 3.0 in development and it taking a more modern focus and doing away with various pieces of old code, one of the latest chunks of code being retired is the OpenGL ES 1.0 2D render path.

CUPS print server lead developer Michael Sweet has announced the release of PAPPL 1.3, his printer application framework to help in developing CUPS Printer Applications as replacements to conventional printer drivers.

Intel's oneAPI Deep Neural Network Library "oneDNN" is preparing to embark on its v3.0 release that improves performance not only for current and upcoming Intel hardware but also furthers along the NVIDIA and AMD support too.

It's been an exciting start to December in the KDE world.